Not mere vain titles of the First Cause.”
Abu Saʾid bin Abu ’l-Khair, also of Khorasan (A. H. 396-440), was one of Al-Ghazali’s teachers in the school of mysticism. When he was asked what a Sufi was he said: “Whatever is in thy head, forget it; whatever is in thy hand, give it away; and whatever happens to thee, disregard it.”
In regard to the rise of Sufic teaching, its origin and character, Dr. C. Snouck Hurgronje remarks: “The lamp which Allah had caused Mohammed to hold up to guide mankind with its light, was raised higher and higher after the Prophet’s death, in order to shed its light over an ever increasing part of humanity. This was not possible, however, without its reservoir being replenished with all the different kinds of oil that had from time immemorial given light to those different nations. The oil of mysticism came from Christian circles, and its Neoplatonic origin was quite unmistakable; Persia and India also contributed to it. There were those who, by asceticism, by different methods of mortifying the flesh, liberated the spirit that it might rise and become united with the origin of all being; to such an extent that with some the profession of faith was reduced to the blasphemous exclamation: ‘I am Allah.’”
Facsimile title page of the last book Ghazali wrote, entitled “Minhaj Al-ʾAbidin.” On the margin this Cairo edition gives another of his celebrated works, “Badayat-al-Hadaya.”
But he goes on to say that although many went to such extremes and in their pantheistic ideas lost sight of the moral law and the restriction of conduct it was Al-Ghazali who rescued Islam to a large degree from this danger. He recommended moral perfection of the soul by asceticism as the only way through which men could approach nearer to God. “His mysticism wished to avoid the danger of pantheism, to which so many others were led by their contemplations, and which so often engendered disregard of the revealed law, or even of morality.”
It is therefore from the days of Al-Ghazali that ethical mysticism obtained its birthright in the world of Islam together with law and dogma. These now form the sacred trio of religious sciences, and are taught in every great centre of Moslem learning. For dogma other writers are more authoritative. For Moslem law there is the study of the great writers of the four Schools, but in matters of ethics Al-Ghazali still holds his own.
To quote once more from Hurgronje: “The ethical mysticism of Al-Ghazali is generally recognized as orthodox; and the possibility of attaining to a higher spiritual sphere by means of methodic asceticism and contemplation is doubted by few. The following opinion has come to prevail in wide circles: the Law offers the bread of life to all the faithful, the dogmatics are the arsenal from which the weapons must be taken to defend the treasures of religion against unbelief and heresy, but mysticism shows the earthly pilgrim the way to Heaven.”[77]
In one particular, however, this ethical teaching is utterly disappointing. Al-Ghazali’s mysticism is not for the multitude. It is esoteric, for a particular class who are filled with religious pride that they, in this respect, are not as other men. Even the noblest minds in Islam restrict true religious life to an aristocratic minority, and, like the Pharisees of old, consider the ignorance of the multitude an evil that cannot be remedied. The teaching of Al-Ghazali was intended not for the masses but for the initiates.