Preface[Page 5]
Introduction[9]
List of Al Ghazzali’s works[30]
I. The Nature of Man[41]
II. Human Freedom and Responsibility[53]
III. Pride and Vanity[78]
IV. Friendship and Sincerity[95]
V. The Nature of Love, and Man’s highest Happiness[116]
VI. The Unity of God[138]
VII. The Love of God and its Signs[145]
VIII. Riza or Joyous Submission to His Will[164]

INTRODUCTION

The Comparative Study of Religions, interesting as a form of intellectual research, has for many a further value in the influence it may exert upon the widening and the deepening of the religious life. The practical value may become more and more acknowledged, if, as signs suggest, the reality of the religious experience is more keenly felt and mankind recognise the place of religious goods in the highest type of life. Though it is certainly premature to say that there is much serious acknowledgement and recognition of these values amongst the peoples of the world, there are reasons to think that tendencies of thought and feeling in this direction are increasing in power. One of the best means of aiding the Comparative Study of Religions and promoting these tendencies is by the publication of important books connected with the religions, representing the views of leading thinkers and saints.

If we turn to Islam, we find that some Western writers describe it as in a condition of progressive decay, while others would have us believe that its onward march is a menace. It is well to be able to avoid the obvious purpose which lies behind both contentions. Nevertheless, to the present writer it appears true to say that there is much stagnation in Islam (In which religion is there not?), and that its spirit is often lost and its real teachings neglected owing to the general use of Arabic in the recitation of the Quran by persons entirely ignorant of that language, and also to the prevalent mechanical conception of the character of the Quran as a form of divine revelation. We believe that the Comparative Study of Religions will help to turn the attention of Muslims away from these to the emphasising of the essential spirit of Islam. This should be central and normative in the rising movements of reform and rejuvenescence. In this connection, as bringing out this spirit, it is especially appropriate, both for the students of the religions and for those directly interested in the spiritual revival in Islam, to publish in an easily accessible form some of the religious and moral teachings of Ghazzali. A Western scholar has written of him that he is “the greatest, certainly the most sympathetic figure in the history of Islam ... the only teacher of the after generations ever put by Muslims on a level with the four great Imams.”[1] And he goes on to remark further; “In the renaissance of Islam which is now rising to view, his time will come and the new life will proceed from a renewed study of his works.”[2] But Dieterici says of him: “As a despairing sceptic he springs suicidally into the all-God (i.e. all-pervading deity of the Pantheists) to kill all scientific reflection.”[3] To justify such a judgment would indeed be impossible if the whole course of Ghazzali’s works is taken into consideration. The greatest eulogy is perhaps that of Tholuck: “All that is good, worthy, and sublime, which his great soul had compassed, he bestowed upon Muhammedanism, and he adorned the doctrines of the Quran with so much piety and learning that in the form given them by him they seem, in my opinion, worthy of the assent of Christians. Whatsoever was most excellent in the philosophy of Aristotle or in the Sufi mysticism, he discreetly adapted to the Muhammedan theology. From every school he sought the means of shedding light and honour upon religion, while his sincere piety and lofty conscientiousness imparted to all his writings a sacred majesty.”[4]

One feature of Ghazzali’s attitude has considerable significance in looking to an increased study of his works as a factor towards the revivification of Islam: his tolerance. Although regarding Al Hallaj’s expressions, (for example, I am the truth, i.e. God) as incautious, he helped to defend him and to save him from execution on a charge of blasphemy. He wrote a treatise on tolerance: The Criterion of the Difference between Islam and Heresy. In this teaching of tolerance he felt himself to be pointing back to the policy of the earliest Muslim times and to the greatest authorities of early Islam. He “strove to attract the souls of his fellow Muslims to spiritual faith which unifies, to worship at the altars which are in the hearts of men”.[5]

The influence of Ghazzali has been represented by Mr. Macdonald as chiefly that he led men back from scholastic labours upon theological dogmas to living contact with, study and exegesis of the Quran and Traditions; gave Sufiism an assured position within the Church of Islam; and brought philosophy and philosophical theology within the range of the ordinary mind.[6]

Al Ghazzali has given some account of his own religious development in a work entitled: Munqidh min-ad-dalal. This account is significant, but as the Baron Carra de Vaux remarks, his eventual explicit adoption of a Sufi mysticism was not merely a consequence of the failure of his other attempts to find a solution to life’s profoundest problems but a result of his early influences. For, soon after his birth at Tus in Khorassan in 450 A.H. (1059 A.D.), his father died and he was brought up by a Sufi. Nevertheless his mystical leanings did not assert themselves vigorously till he was well on to maturity. Up to that time he devoted himself to the usual studies of canon law, the orthodox theology, the doctrines of the Mutazillites, and a variety of other subjects including the works of the Sufis. For a time he was a student of the Asharite Imam Al Haramayn at Nysabur. He himself represents his attitude as at this time that of one working and wishing for reputation and wealth. In 484 A.H. he was honoured by appointment to the “University” or “Academy” of Baghdad, where he soon acquired great renown as lawyer and theologian.