A Moslem seeker after God

by Samuel Marinus Zwemer

All this and what he says in his “Alchemy of Happiness” about the love of God leaves no doubt in my mind that he had read the New Testament. It is a sort of Moslem Version of St. John’s Epistles and St. John’s Gospel. The great Mystic gives seven signs of love to God. The first is not to be afraid of death. The second is to prefer the love of God to any worldly object. The third sign of a man’s love to God is that the remembrance of God is always fresh in his heart. He never ceases to meditate upon God. Every man thinks and calls to mind an object in proportion to his love to it. The fourth is love and respect for the Koran. The fifth, secret prayer. The sixth, to find the worship of God delightful. And the seventh sign of love to God is, “That a man loves the sincere friends and obedient servants of God, and regards them all as his friends. He regards all the enemies of God as his enemies and abhors them. And God thus speaks in his eternal word: ‘His companions are terrible towards the infidels, and tender towards each other.’ A Sheikh was once asked, ‘Who are the friends of the exalted and blessed God?’ He replied: ‘The friends of God are those who are more compassionate to the friends of God themselves, than a father or a mother to their children.’”[88] (Compare Psalm 103.)

There seems a great difference between Al-Ghazali as dogmatic theologian, always compelled to agree with the Koran, and Al-Ghazali as the Mystic, when he begins to speculate and lift the veil. We are constantly reminded of the words of Anselm in his great work on the existence of God: “I do not attempt, O Lord, to penetrate Thy depths, for I by no means think my intellect equal to them; but I long to understand in some degree Thy truth, which my heart believes and loves, for I do not seek to understand that I may believe, but I believe that I may understand.”

Whenever Al-Ghazali speaks of God’s nearness to us and of the soul’s desire for human fellowship with the creator, he comes very close to the Christian idea of the Incarnation, and yet always stops short of it. In his “Alchemy of Happiness,” for example, he mentions as the fourth cause of love to God the affinity that exists between man and his Maker, referring to the saying of the Prophet: “Verily God created man in his own likeness.” Immediately afterwards, however, he goes on to say: “This is a somewhat dangerous topic to dwell upon, as it is beyond the understanding of common people, and even intelligent men have stumbled in treating of it, and come to believe in incarnation and union with God. Still the affinity which does exist between man and God disposes of the objection of those theologians mentioned above, who maintain that man cannot love a Being who is not of his own species. However great a distance between them, man can love God because of the affinity indicated in the saying, ‘God created man in His own likeness.’”

Al-Ghazali would doubtless have accepted the statement in the Gospel, “No man hath seen God at any time,” but he omits “the only Begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him.” In speaking of the vision of God he says, “All Moslems profess to believe that the Vision of God is the summit of human felicity because it is so stated in the Law; but with many this is a mere lip-profession which arouses no emotion in their hearts. This is quite natural, for how can a man long for a thing of which he has no knowledge? We will endeavour to show briefly why the vision of God is the greatest happiness to which a man can attain.

“In the first place, every one of man’s faculties has its appropriate function which it delights to fulfill. This holds good of them all, from the lowest bodily appetite to the highest form of intellectual apprehension. But even a comparatively low form of mental exertion affords greater pleasure than the satisfaction of bodily appetites. Thus if a man happens to be absorbed in a game of chess, he will not come to his meal though repeatedly summoned. And the greater the subject-matter of our knowledge, the greater is our delight in it; for instance, we would take more pleasure in knowing the secrets of a king than the secrets of a vizier. Seeing then that God is the highest possible object of knowledge, the knowledge of Him must afford more delight than any other. He who knows God, even in this world, dwells, as it were, in a paradise, ‘the breadth of which is as the breadth of the heavens and the earth,’ a paradise the fruits of which no envy can prevent him plucking, and the extent of which is not narrowed by the multitude of those who occupy it.” (See 1 John 4: 7-21.)

“But the delight of knowledge still falls short of the delight of vision, just as our pleasure in thinking of those we love is much less than the pleasure afforded by the actual sight of them. Our imprisonment in bodies of clay and water and entanglement in the things of sense constitute a veil which hides the vision of God from us, although it does not prevent our attaining to some knowledge of Him. For this reason God said to Moses on Mount Sinai, ‘Thou shalt not see Me.’”

In this book also we are reminded of the statement that only “the pure in heart” can see God, and it seems scarcely possible that what Al-Ghazali here teaches is not based on a knowledge of the Gospel. He says: “He in whose heart the love of God has prevailed over all else will derive more joy from this vision than he in whose heart it has not so prevailed; just as in the case of two men with equally powerful eyesight gazing on a beautiful face, he who already loves the possessor of that face will rejoice in beholding it more than he who does not. For perfect happiness, mere knowledge is not enough unaccompanied by love, and the love of God cannot take possession of a man’s heart till it is purified from the love of the world, which purification can only be effected by abstinence and austerity.” How close is this teaching to the words of Christ, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God”! It is the vision of God which Al-Ghazali sought through all his religious experiences as the highest good in this world and in the next. Yet with all his efforts to explain the nature of the soul and of God, he still finds himself before a blank wall. He covets the vision of God but cannot shake himself free from the Moslem conception that God is unknowable and that nothing in creation resembles the Creator. As Muhammed Iqbal says: “To this day it is difficult to define with accuracy Al-Ghazali’s view of the nature of God. In him, like Borger and Solger in Germany, Sufi pantheism and the Ashʾarite dogma of personality appear to harmonize together, a reconciliation which makes it difficult to say whether he was a Pantheist, or a Personal Pantheist of the type of Lotze. The soul, according to Al-Ghazali, perceives things. But perception as an attribute can exist only in a substance or essence which is absolutely free from all the attributes of body. In his Al-Madnun, he explains why the prophet declined to reveal the nature of the soul. There are, he says, two kinds of men: ordinary men and thinkers. The former who look upon materiality as a condition of existence, cannot conceive an immaterial substance. The latter are led, by their logic, to a conception of the soul which sweeps away all difference between God and the individual soul. Al-Ghazali, therefore, realized the Pantheist drift of his own inquiry and preferred silence as to the ultimate nature of the soul.”[89]

We have seen what Al-Ghazali teaches regarding the life and character of Jesus and also of God’s relation to us through the love of those who seek Him with all their hearts. Are these only Moslems, or is there a wider love of God? Are all souls in His keeping?

What were Al-Ghazali’s ideas regarding the salvation of those not in the fold of Islam? We have two striking passages in this connection which seem to contradict each other. They were probably written at different periods of his life. The first passage which is remarkable indeed for his day and his place in Islam occurs on page 22 of his book Faisul Al-Tafriqa Bain al Islam wa ’l Zandiqa and reads as follows: “I here state that most Christians of the Greeks and of the Turks in our day will be included in the mercy of God. Namely, those who are on the confines of the empire and to whom the call to embrace Islam has not come. For they consist of three classes: One class has never heard the name of Mohammed (upon whom be prayers and peace) and they are excusable. Another class have heard of his name and title and the miracles which were wrought by him; they who live as neighbours among Moslems; these are the true infidels and sceptics. And the other class are between these two; they have heard of the name of Mohammed (upon him be prayers and peace), but have not heard of his title and character. On the contrary they have heard from their youth up that he is a liar and deceiver called Mohammed, who pretended to have the gift of prophecy: in the same way as our children have heard of a false prophet in Khorasan called Al-Mukaffa who pretended to be a prophet. And these last, in my opinion, belong to the first class as to their hope for the future.” This account is the more remarkable because in this very chapter he says that God told Adam, according to Tradition, “that out of a thousand of his descendants nine-hundred-and-ninety-nine go to hell and one only will be saved.”