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BACKGROUND TO THE SITE A website was launched in 1999 to carry
Peter Greenland’s MA dissertation (originally uploaded to BT Internet) - ‘The Spirituality of Abu Hamid al-Ghazali
(1058-1111 CE) : an examination of
Al-Ghazali’s writing and teaching and its relevance for the Islamic Community
in the contemporary world’ – during its writing to get a feedback and
structural criticism. It was then called
‘Peter Greenland’s Al-Ghazali Web Site’.
Now, oweing to its popularity amongst both general readers and scholars,
the site is both rebranded and enlarged to not only include the dissertation
but also Peter’s work 
and
research after graduation plus links to other writers. An html version of the dissertation is
avaliable by clicking MA
Dissertation, plus a pdf document (401 Kb) at ‘Dissertation
on the 11th century philosopher
Muhammad
al-Ghazali’.
To read the latter you will need Acrobat Reader ™ which can be
downloaded by clicking the Adobe icon.
LECTURE
AT SOUTHAMPTON UNIVERSITY – FEBRUARY 2002 This was
essentially based on Chapter Three of Peter’s dissertation which examined in
detail the inner (batin) and outer (zahir) realities of Islamic
worship. But the thesis of Mary Pat
Fisher was also advanced to show that all religions have both a hard (or
dogmatic) and soft (or inner compatible) relationship to each other. Ghazali had tried the latter and wrote
movingly of his experiences in Niche for
Lights (Mishkat al-Anwar) because
of a sense of failure to perceive the nature of God (Allah). Ghazali’s honesty in all that he wrote is a
major factor in attracting people of different or no religious faiths to his
many texts.
ON-GOING
RESEARCH I do
want to get the MA dissertation, and other smaller works, published as soon as
I can. Albeit some ten years later than
I would have wished, a potential text which has claimed my attention, because
of this site and its varied visitors, is a comparative study of al-Ghazali and
St. Thomas Aquinas. The book would be
entitled, Is Thomism The Missing Link?’.
DISSERTATION The dissertation on this site
looks at Ghazali in both his own time and the contemporary era. Ghazali is shown to be a superbly gifted theologian
and philosopher. He is compared with
other ‘greats’ within Islamic intellectual development including Maulana Rumi,
Christians including Thomas Aquinas and finally the philosophers and scientists
Hume, Descartes and Einstein. Ghazali is
shown to have developed a very special place in not only Muslim, but also in
other world intellectual development, and that his influence continues to be
tremendous.
LINKS TO OTHER
SITES Going into an
Internet search engine such as Google ®
and typing ‘Ghazali’ will present you with thousands of entries. The link page homes in on sites considered to
be especially good and worthy of being bookmarked. Additionally you are invited to send details
of other sites to be listed plus, of course, details of your own work.
AL-G
CONTACT Please keep
up your correspondence and comments. But
please also read the terms of the Disclaimer.
(The Winchester Al-Ghazali Web Site was originally published as ‘Peter
Greenland’s Al-Ghazali Web Site’
on BT
Internet in 1999)