A Moslem seeker after God

by Samuel Marinus Zwemer

But this opinion was not shared by Moslems elsewhere. In his lifetime and especially after his death his works against philosophy and his great exposition of Islam found ever larger circles of readers and commentators.

He has been accused, and not without good reason, both by Moslem writers and European critics, of carelessness and inaccuracy in his quotations and references to other books.[62] One of the charges brought against him by his assailants is that he falsified Tradition. Macdonald’s judgment is very charitable when he says that “he quoted from memory too freely, because he was a man of too large a calibre to watch his quotations and they were loose to the end of his life.”

As-Subqi in his Tabakat-ash-Shafaʾiya al Kubra devotes a special section to what is entitled “A List of all the Traditions given by Al-Ghazali in his Ihya which have no isnad, or pedigree, i. e., Traditions quoted by him as authoritative and yet which from the standpoint of Moslem criticism are on this account absolutely worthless.” This section of the book referred to covers many pages and by actual count I found over six hundred Traditions each catalogued by reference to the chapter in which they occur. Now we have no reason to doubt that As-Subqi (d. 771 A. H.) was an admirer of Al-Ghazali and esteemed his teaching, yet what shall we say when in this collection of the lives of the saints so strong an indictment is made of Al-Ghazali’s inaccuracy by one of his own disciples?

When reading this collection of “true sayings” of the Prophet (which are after all often ascribed to him without any authority or foundation) one is shocked both at the credulity and the lack of love for veracity in this greatest of all Moslem apologists. If even Al-Ghazali handled Tradition so carelessly as to ascribe to Mohammed so much that is altogether puerile, fabulous and often immoral, what confidence can we put in other and later tradition-mongers and how can we clear Al-Ghazali from the charge of using pious falsehood?

We add another fact of great interest in regard to his writings. Al-Ghazali exercised a commanding influence on Jewish thought in the Middle Ages. In the appendix is a list of some of the translations of his books made in Hebrew. Jewish students of philosophy, including Maimonides, drew many of their theories from the Maqasid and his other works. Al-Ghazali’s attacks on philosophy were imitated by Judah ha-Levy in his Cuzari; but it was chiefly his ethical teaching rather than through his philosophy that Al-Ghazali attracted the Jewish thinkers. Broyde says, “He approached the ethical ideal of Judaism to such an extent that some supposed him to be actually drifting in that direction, and his works were eagerly studied and used by Jewish writers. Abraham ibn Ezra borrowed from Al-Ghazali’s Mizan al ʿAmal his comparison between the limbs of the human body and the functionaries of a king, and used it for the subject of his beautiful admonition Yeshene Leb; Abraham ibn Dawud borrowed from the same work the parable used by Al-Ghazali to prove the difference in value between various branches of science; and Simon Duran cites in his Keshet a passage from the Mozene ha-ʾIyyunim, which he calls Mozene ha-Hokmah.”[63]

The translations of his works into Hebrew were made as early as the thirteenth century. Not less than eleven Hebrew commentaries are known on the Maqasid. “Johanan Alemanno recommends Ghazali’s hermeneutic methods, and compares the order and graduation of lights in Ghazali’s theory with those of the theory of the cabalists.”

In regard to science, Al-Ghazali’s views were naturally those of his contemporaries. His world was built on the Ptolemaic system. There are four elements only. Existence has three modes: the world of sense, the world of God’s eternal decree, and the world of ideals or of God’s power. In dreams and visions we are in contact with the two other worlds. Al-Ghazali avoids the difficulties of concrete Moslem teaching by this method. There may be things which are real and actual and yet do not belong to the world of sense.[64]

Doctor Macdonald admirably summarizes his influence on Islam as four-fold. “First of all he led men back from mere scholastic dogma to a living contact with the Koran and the Traditions as the true source of Islam. He might be called a Biblical theologian in our modern use of the word, understanding by ‘Bible’ always the Moslem bible, namely the Koran. Nearly every paragraph of his Ihya begins with a Koran quotation, and his interpretation of the book is not a slavish following of the earlier commentators but a spiritual interpretation of the text.”

“In the second place he reintroduced into Islam the element of fear. In the earliest days, as for example in the Koran itself, the terrors of the day of judgment and the horrors of hell operated in order to lead men to repentance. Al-Ghazali emphasized this part of the Moslem teaching to the utmost, witness his little book Al-Durra al-Fakhira, which has to this day great acceptance among pious Moslems.”

In the third place mysticism, already existing in Islam, but looked upon in many quarters as heretical, received its birthright through Al-Ghazali’s life and teachings, and from his day on held an assured position in orthodox Islam.