AL-GHAZALI & THE CONTEMPORARY AGE

Chapter One

(Copyright © P.A.W. Greenland 2000 – 2006)

‘The Spirituality of Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazali (1058-1111CE).  An examination of al-Ghazali’s writing and teaching and its relevance for the Islamic Community in the contemporary world’.

Introduction

Ghazali was born in Tus, Persia (modern-day Iran) in 1058 CE where he also died in 1111 CE. He was acknowledged by his peers in his life to be a great intellectual, and after his death, by writers and commentators, for the major contribution he made both to religion and Islamic philosophy. Ghazali’s fame earned him the title of ‘Proof of Islam’ (Hujjat al-Islam [1]). However within the last ten to fifteen years scholars, including W. Montgomery Watt and Idries Shah, have questioned whether or not Ghazali should be accredited single-handedly for achieving Islam’s renewal in the eleventh and twelve centuries CE. Writers such as R.C. Zaehner have advanced al-Muhasibi and al-Junayd as having a greater importance for the development of Islamic intellectual thought. Additionally Avicenna (Ibn Sina [981-1037CE]) who lived before Ghazali and the later Averroes (Ibn Rushd [1128-1198 CE]) are now thought by many scholars as Ghazali’s intellectual equals.

The Dissertation examines and asks:

  1. What was the place of Ghazali both in his own age and in the contemporary world?
  2. Was Ghazali either a true mystic or a supremely gifted theologian?
  3. What is the relevance of Ghazali’s texts, especially Ihya, for the contemporary world?
  4. Is it correct to ask if Ghazali’s teaching leads to the conclusion that there is for the Muslim community (ummah) in any age only one lifestyle choice, which is to live according to the Shari’a?

The aims of these four primary research questions are to answer and discuss four key issues:

  1. If it is true to say that Ghazali was a religious man and teacher?
  2. To examine the claims that Ghazali was the reconciler of Sunni orthodoxy with Sufism (Tasawwuf) and that he achieved the marriage of mysticism and law.
  3. If a thesis can be put forward that Ghazali’s teachings were primarily eschatological?
  4. If they were, then did Ghazali then open up another dimension of time, possibly called ‘non history (2)’, or a sphere of existence where human actions and ethics continuously exist in normal life but are not apprehended by the intellect?

By the time of Ghazali’s birth in 1058 CE the Seljugs had established their rule in Baghdad. The great Seljug Vizier Nizam al-Mulk (in power 1063 to 1092 CE [3]) encouraged the foundation of centres of higher education, especially the Nizamiyya University of Baghdad to rival the famous Caliphate University of Cairo. This was to be of tremendous importance for Ghazali’s career because al-Mulk was so impressed by him that he appointed Ghazali Professor of theology at Nizamiyya when he was only thirty-five years old.

Little is known of Ghazali’s family apart from the fact that he had an uncle, also Abu-Hamid al-Ghazali, who died in 1043. A scholar himself the elder Ghazali had impressed upon the family the values of education. Orphaned at an early age Ghazali had been left sufficient means to complete a good education, including attending the prestigious school, or college (madrassa), of Nisapur in 1077. He also studed both at the madrassa of his home town of Tus and in Gurgan, which was on the southern shore of the Caspian Sea.

Ghazali’s higher education followed the standard curriculum of his age with its predominantly legal slant. It was based on studies of the Qur’an and the Traditions (Hadiths) which together with the Sunna (sayings and actions of Muhammad) forms the Shari’a. Ghazali’s teacher at Nisaphur was the greatest theologian of his age, Abu-l-Ma’ali al-Juwayni, who was also imam of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina (4). Both Watt and Smith comment that Ghazali was a brilliant lecturer attracting many students to hear his delivery including ‘the chief savants of the time (5)’ and Ghazali was all set for an outstanding career at Baghdad University until his encounter with Greek Philosophy. Watt commented on the encounter:

Ghazali at first tried to reconcile faith and reason (but) later he interpreted philosophical concerns as basically antagonistic to religious belief and wrote a book entitled The Destruction of the Philosophers (also called The Inconsistency of the Philosophers [Tahafut al-falasifa]) condemning Aristotle’s theory of knowledge (6).

Margaret Smith in common with Ian Netton gives illness as the reason why Ghazali resigned his post in 1096. Watt instead continues to argue that he resigned through both trying to rationalise Greek philosophy and grave self-questioning about what he actually knew compared to the totality of all knowledge. But given Ghazali’s meteoric rise from student to professor within a short space of time I would argue that the resignation was more out of modesty. Ghazali was a genius and he must have wondered, given the impact of philosophy, if he had the right anymore to lecture when there was so much he did not understand. Also Ghazali had sat on the judicial bench and given rulings, which would have had a tremendous effect on people’s lives, using the same knowledge about which he was increasingly becoming sceptical. Watt names the Third Chapter of Muslim Intellectual The Encounter with Philosophy 7) but I feel a far more accurate title would be ‘the hammer blow from philosophy’ because of its impact on Ghazali’s life.

Ghazali in his spiritual autobiography Deliverance from Error (Munqidh min ad-Dalal) described his own state of mind at the time he left Nisaphur and how the encounter had affected him:

When I examined my knowledge, I found that none of it was certain except matters of sense perception and necessary truths. It further occurred to me, however, that my previous trust in sense perception and necessary truths was perhaps no better founded than my previous trust in propositions accepted from parents and teachers. So I earnestly set about making myself doubt sense perception and necessary truths. With regard to sense-perception I noticed that the sense of sight tells me that the shadow cast by the gnomon of a sundial is motionless; but later observation and reflection shows that it moves, and that it does not do so by jerks but by a constant steady motion. This sense tells me that the sun is the size of a coin, but astronomical proofs show that it is larger than the earth. Thus sense makes certain judgements, and then reason comes and judges that they are false (8).

Tahafut completed in January 1095 may be seen as Ghazali’s last attempt against the force of philosophy. Watt writes:

In all this al-Ghazali was not simply a sceptic, as has sometimes been alleged, though he frankly admits that he is not arguing for any positive views, but has the negative aim of showing that the philosophers are not free from inconsistency and self-contradiction. This limitation of aim is very understandable in his situation. He had come to the conviction that reason is not self-sufficient in either theology or philosophy, but it is in a sense subordinate to a ‘light from God’ shed in the heart which is somehow connected with the light given to men by prophetic revelations. He had only begun, however, the arduous process of giving this conviction a satisfactory expression. The negative aim of The Inconsistency of the Philosophers was a necessary preparation for the erection of a building ‘a clearing of the site’ but the ultimate building was not yet planned in detail (9).

Summarising the content of Tahafut, Ghazali may be seen to deny the assertions of the philosophers on three main points: 1. the assertion that the world is everlasting; the denial that God knows particulars; and the denial of bodily resurrection (10) 2. Ghazali claimed that the philosophers were heretics and those who were Muslims would be, or had been, condemned to Hell. The Muslim philosophers included Avicenna, al-Farabi (d.950 CE), Al-Kindi (d.886 CE), and Ar-Razi (d.923 CE). 3. Further Ghazali may be seen to believe that when alive these philosophers had neither been fit to belong to the ummah, nor capable of understanding the principles of Ukhuwwa, both of which are argued to be requisites for leading a correct Islamic lifestyle choice.

Watt introduces in Muslim Intellectual his theory of ideation, or the relationship between the ruler, and government, and the intellectuals who are the bearers of the ideational foundation (11). The rulers are merely figureheads because the ideational base, within a purely Muslim context, is the Shari’a, which they are powerless to alter. Greek philosophy challenged Watt’s thesis just as it did with Ghazali’s thinking, because it clearly separated the notion of an Ultimate Reality, which had in Islamic belief revealed the law, from the everyday world of rationalism. The conduct of daily life, the philosophers argued, needed instead of a fixed law, such as the Shari’a, a higher degree of pragmatism which in Ghazali’s view was totally alien to the spirit of Islam.

After Tahafut failed in its aim of denouncing the philosophers, together with the publication by Avicenna of its refutation Tahafut al-Tahafut (The Inconsistency of The Inconsistency [of Ghazali]), Ghazali finally turned to Sufism for an answer to the philosophers’ claims. The accuracy or otherwise of the stories concerning his life as a wandering Sufi are, in my opinion, purely speculative and of little value in reaching a working thesis about the reason for the retreat. But a possible exception to these accounts may be the populist one in several biographies concerning Ghazali’s attendance at a mosque for the Friday Salat and being sickened at hearing the imam, during the weekly sermon, read out Ghazali’s own words. This is because if anything the story supports my thesis that Ghazali’s resignation from Nizamiyya was out of modesty. But the retreat itself was far more important for Islam, whatever its causes. Almost immediately it started Ghazali was able to commence writing Ihya.

Ghazali’s thought and influence has been considerable and his theological doctrines, which penetrated Europe soon after his death, are frequently acknowledged to also have influenced both Jewish and Christian Scholasticism (cf. Chapter Two). Scholars including Keith Ward and Idries Shah have claimed that St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274 CE), the acknowledged doctor of the Christian Church, adopted several of Ghazali’s arguments in order to re-establish the authority of orthodox Christian theology.

Watt first published his translation of Munqidh in 1953 and although he expressed reservations on Ghazali’s influence in the Foreword to its 1994 edition, Watt still has no doubts about the contribution Ghazali had made for the future understanding of Islamic theology:

al-Ghazali is one of the Muslim writers best able to help Westerners towards a positive appreciation of Islam; and that is something very necessary at the present time. No other work on Islamic religion has the same appeal as the autobiography (12).

In common with Ghazali, Aquinas and Maimonides dealt primarily with two subjects.  First, to study the scholarship which had been undertaken before Greek philosophy into both religious and philosophical thought. Second, because of Ghazali’s own methodology, to re-examine the vast range of subjects discussed in Ihya. Aquinas followed Ghazali’s methods in dealing with question after question and constantly grinding down the subjects to their barest elements so that nothing remained unanswered. But again like Ghazali, Aquinas felt that his accomplishments were nothing compared to all that remained unknown. I further consider that Ghazali’s writing also influenced St. Francis of Assisi because of the love St. Francis perceived in Ultimate Reality’s essential goodness. Albeit the Christian view of a loving and forgiving God is very different to Islam’s eschatological conception of Ultimate Reality St. Francis did seem, by his teaching, to subscribe to Ghazali’s theory of a Ukhuwwa motivated community.

Notes

  1. Al-Ghazali, Abu Hamid Muhammad (1058-1111 CE), Field, Claus, Trans. And Introduction, The Alchemy of Happiness (Octagon Press, London, 1983, p.12).
  2. 'Non-history' is simply expressed as being timeless, especially the human comprehension of the Cosmos and the nature of Ultimate Reality.
  3. Watt, W. Montgomery, Muslim Intellectual: A study of Al-Ghazali (Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 1963, pp.25-71).
  4. ibid.
  5. Smith, Margaret, Al-Ghazali The Mystic, (Luzac, London, 1944, p.21).
  6. Dowley, Tim, originating editor, The History of Christianity, (Lion, Oxford, 1990, p.291).
  7. Watt, pp.25-71.
  8. ibid., p.48.
  9. ibid., p.59.
  10. ibid.
  11. ibid., p.81.
  12. ibid., p.7.

 

 

(The Winchester Al-Ghazali Site was originally called ‘Peter Greenland’s Web Site’ published

on BT Internet in 1999)