The spiritual quest of al-Ghazali
 

by Abdurrahman Badawi


ABU Hamid al-Ghazali, a great theologian, a penetrating and subtle critic of rationalist philosophy and a mystic with great gifts of psychological and moral analysis, was born in 1058 in Tus, today called Meshhed, in eastern Iran, and died in 1111. One of the greatest thinkers humanity has ever known, he was honoured with the title hujjat-al-islam (Proof of Islam) for his role as a defender of religion against the rationalist atheism of the philosophers and of orthodox Islam against sects preaching heresy and subversion. The lucidity of his writings and the beauty of his prose were such that his works were widely circulated and won a very extensive readership. His masterpiece, entitled Ihya' "ulum al-din ("The Revival of the Religious Sciences'), was, and is still, a reference work on the principles and practice of the Muslim religion.

There were three stages in al-Ghazali'sspiritual development: a stage of practical involvement and political commitment, a stage of doubt and criticism, and a mystical stage.

Having received a sound training in caselaw and theology from the great masters of his time, and primarily from the Imam al-Haramayn (al-Djuwaini), al-Ghazali went to seek favour with the great vizir Nizam al-Mulk in Naysabur. The latter was impressed by al-Ghazali's learning and cogency in debate, and, as an earnest of his admiration, he appointed him in 1091 to teach at the Nizamiyyah school in Baghdad. One year later, Nizam al-Mulk was murdered by a young Batinite. The Batiniyya was a Shi-'ite sect, the militant branch of the Isma'ili sect. During and after the crusades, its members were known by the name of hashishi. The activities of the Batinites posed a serious threat to the Abbasid caliphate in Baghdad.

The Caliph al-Mustazhir accordingly instructedal-Ghazali to wage war with his pen against the Batinite sect. Al-Ghazali wrote a book entitled the Mustazhiri, or The Depravity of the Batiniyya, in which he revealed its impostures and unmasked its evil designs against Islam and its great conspiracy against the State. This work analyses in detail the sect's stratagems to attract well-wishers and rally them to its cause, for the Batinites were skilled at making converts.

At the age of thirty-four, al-Ghazali beganto study philosophy. He then entered a period of profound spiritual crisis in which he came to doubt his faith. That doubt was transient and lasted for only two or three months. It was more a "dark night of the soul' than the methodical type of doubt practised by Descartes, as some scholars have mistakenly suggested. But that doubt was a goad which spurred him to subject his beliefs to unrestricted scrutiny. In Mizan al-amal, he asserts the usefulness of such doubt, for "he who does not doubt, does not think; he who does not think, does not see; he who does not see remains in a state of blindness, perplexity and error'.

Being blessed with a positive attitude ofmind, he could not remain in a state of doubt for very long. Thus we see him entering a new phase: that of certainty based on reason. He had found a new vocation, which drove him to defend the great articles of faith against the rationalism of the Islamic philosophers, including al-Farabi and in particular Ibn Sina (Avicenna).

By way of a prologue to his diatribe against the philosophers, he wrote for the layman a clear and easily grasped summary of the three principles of philosophy: logic, physics and metaphysics. That summary is entitled Maqasid al-Falasifah ("The Aims of the Philosophers'). It is a brief and limpid expose, unclouded by polemic or personal opinions.

This was the prelude to his philosophical masterpiece, Tahafut al-Falasifah ("The Incoherence of the Philosophers'), in which he launches a sustained attack on the rationalist philosophers. As he states in the prologue, this book is a refutation of the ancient philosophers, designed to prove the falsity of their doctrines, to expose their contradictions in the sphere of philosophical theology (metaphysics) and to reveal the dangers inherent in their opinions.

In this work, he claims that between thedifferent philosophers there are huge divergences, and bitter conflicts between the different systems. He therefore confines himself--as he says--to a refutation of the philosophy professed by the greatest of them, namely, Aristotle.

According to al-Ghazali, Aristotle andphilosophers in general "judge by conjecture and presumption, and not by verification and certainty' in the field of metaphysical theology. He therefore sets out to prove the falsity of their ideas in the following fields:

After a disputation with the philosopherson these topics, he concludes with a condemnation of the following three theses: their assertion that the world is eternal; their assertion that God does not know particulars, i.e. the acts of human beings; their denial of resurrection and eternal life.

"These three theses are wholly incompatiblewith Islam. Anyone who professes belief in them is thereby claiming that the prophets are liars and that they made their pronouncements only for utilitarian purposes, using parables for the sake of clarity. But this is a manifest heterodoxy (kufr).' (Tahafut)

As regards the remaining theses, al-Ghazali finds similar tenets in the various Muslim sects; they are therefore not incompatible with Islam.

Some scholars have claimed that al-Ghazali's attacks on the philosophers who had upheld these three theses struck a mortal blow to philosophy in the Islamic world. This allegation is quite false since, during the century which followed al-Ghazali's death, Muslim philosophy reached its apogee in Muslim Spain with Ibn Bajja, Ibn Tufayl and Ibn Rushd (Averroes), and continued to advance in the East with Suhrawardi, Dawwani and Mulla Sadra.

Al-Ghazali argued with the philosophers"using their own method, that is, a logical, rational and rigorous method'. But in the depths of his soul he felt that reason was not enough to attain the supreme truths of religion. He realized that he needed to use quite another faculty in order to penetrate directly to the heart of the mystery of being. In 1095 he experienced another crisis, much more acute than the first, whereupon he abandoned his teaching at the Nizamiyyah school in Baghdad and set out on the pilgrimage to Mecca. After (or before) that pilgrimage, he visited Damascus and Jerusalem. In Jerusalem he began to write his masterpiece, the Ihya' ("The Revival of the Religious Sciences'), which he completed in Damascus during the two years that he spent in that city.

After Damascus he returned, in 1097, to his native town of Tus, where he had resolved to end his days in mystical retreat. But the vizir of Korasan, Fakhr al-Mulk, son of Nizam al-Mulk mentioned earlier, invited al-Ghazali to take up teaching once more. Al-Ghazali demurred, but the vizir was insistent. Al-Ghazali therefore began to teach again, not at the Nizamiyyah of Baghdad, but at that of Naysabur, after an eight-year retreat. However, one year later, in approximately 1106, he returned to Tus in order to devote his time to writing several mystical treatises, including the Mishkat al-anwar ("The Niche for Lights'). He also wrote his autobiography there, Al-Munqidh min al-dalal ("The Deliverer from Error').

In the Mishkat, al-Ghazali draws inspiration from a verse of the Qur'an which proclaims that "God is the light of the heavens and the earth', and reveals a vision of a world structured around the concept of light. He shows how that divine light suffuses and sustains the world with its countless rays. The world is accordingly represented as a pure crystalline sphere, scattered with opaque points of matter.

The Munqidh, his autobiography, is a masterpiece of remarkable psychological insight. It retraces his spiritual development and uncompromisingly dismisses jurists, theologians, Batinites and philosophers alike, reaching the conclusion that the only true Way is that of the mystics. Compared with the Confessions of St. Augustine, the Munqidh is more concentrated, but more precise and structured. It is free of the grandiloquence and prolixity that we find in the Bishop of Hippo.

The influence of al-Ghazali was tremendous, both in the Muslim world and in medieval Europe.

Six of his works were translated into Hebrew in the thirteenth century. Some, including the Maqasid, were even translated several times. Jewish philosophers influenced by al-Ghazali include Isaac Albalag, who translated the Maqasid, Moses of Narbonne, who wrote a major commentary on the same work, and Jehudah Halevi, who makes abundant references to the treatise entitled "The Grounds of Belief' (later incorporated into the Ihya'). David Yehuda Leon even goes so far as to claim that Maimonides drew on the works of al-Ghazali as his main source of inspiration.

The Maqasid was translated into Latin inthe twelfth century by Domingo Gundisalvo, a well-known translator of the Toledo school. The Tahafut (Destructio philosophorum) was likewise translated into Latin, together with its refutation (Destructio destructionis) by Averroes in about 1325.

What influence did the works of al-Ghazali exert over the thinkers of the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance? This his still to be determined. However, we reject the parallels that have been drawn--wrongly, in our opinion--between the method of approach of al-Ghazali and that of certain modern European philosophers: between the doubt of al-Ghazal and that of Descartes, for example, and between the conceptions of causality found in al-Ghazali and in David Hume. These are empty hypotheses, totally without foundation.
 

------------------------- Photo Captions ---------------------
Photo: The decorative qualities of the angular and geometric Kufic style of Arabic calligraphy has led to its widespread use for religious inscriptions carved in stone. Above, reproduction of a Kufic inscription inside a mausoleum at Isfahan (Islamic Republic of Iran). Highly stylized into square and rectangular forms, the calligraphy of this inscription dating from the early 14th century seems to evoke certain trends in modern graphic design.

Photo: In 1095, after being embroiled in a religious controversy with the Islamic philosophers, al-Ghazali experienced a period of doubt. He went on a pilgrimage to Mecca and visited Jerusalem, where he began to write his masterwork Ihya' "ulum al-din ("The Revival of the Religious Sciences'), which he completed during a two-year stay at Damascus. Above, elaborate mosaics on a golden background adorn the cupola of the Dome of the Rock, the shrine built in Jerusalem in AD 691 by the Umayyad caliph "Abd al-Malik. The shrine is built over a flat sacred rock which many traditions connect with Abraham and Muhammad. Right, the Great Mosque of Damascus (Syria) was built in AD 705, also under the Umayyads, on the site of the Byzantine church of St. John the Baptist and of a Roman temple once dedicated to Jupiter.

Photo: The modern town of Meshhed, near the eastern border of the Islamic Republic of Iran, is an offshoot of the ancient city of Tus, the birthplace of al-Ghazali, which was destroyed by the Timurids in 1389. As the site of the mausoleum of the Imam Ali Reza, eighth Imam of the Shi'ites (died AD 818), and of the adjoining mosque of Gawhar Shad (15th century), Meshhed is the Holy City of the Shi'ites and a major pilgrimage centre. Above, enamelled tiles cover minaret and porch of the Shah Mosque (14th century).

Photo: Below, the four minarets of the Kazimayn Mosque, one of the most beautiful in Baghdad, which became the seat of the "Abbasid caliphate in AD 750, and was the greatest religious and economic centre of the Near East until it was sacked by the Mongols in 1258. Al-Ghazali taught law in this prestigious city before applying himself to the study of philosophy, then embarking on the path of Sufi mysticism.
 

--------------------about the author-------------
ABDURRAHMAN BADAWI, of Egypt, is a philosopher and historian of philosophy. A former head of the departments of philosophy at a number of universities in Egypt, the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, and Kuwait, and a visiting professor at the Sorbonne, Paris, he is the author of over a hundred publications in French and in Arabic, mainly concerned with existentialism, Greek and Arab philosophy, and contemporary German philosophy.
 

Source: UNESCO Courier, Nov, 1986 with minor modification due to errors of scanning. COPYRIGHT 1986 UNESCO - COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group

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