_The Gaekwad Studies
in
Religion and Philosophy_: X
SOME RELIGIOUS AND MORAL
TEACHINGS OF AL-GHAZZALI
Printed by Mr. K. G. Patel at the Lakshmi Vilas P. Press
Co. Ltd. and published by A. G. Widgery, the College,
Baroda, 5-1-1921.
Other Works by Professor Nawab Ali
MAA’RIJ-UDDIN.
The Ladder of Religion. A Comparative Study of Religions.
TARIKHI-SOHAF.
History of the Holy Scriptures.
TAZKIRAL-UL-MUSTAFA.
Life of Prophet Mohammed.
May be had from The Seminar, The College, BARODA
SOME RELIGIOUS AND MORAL
TEACHINGS OF AL-GHAZZALI
Being brief extracts from his
_Ihya-u-Ulum-id-din_
Freely rendered into English by
SYED NAWAB ALI M. A.
Professor of Persian, the College, Baroda.
With an introduction by
ALBAN G. WIDGERY M. A.
Professor of the Comparative Study of Religions,
The College, Baroda.
BARODA
PREFACE
The perusal of the constructive treatises of the foremost leaders of the
different religions should help to promote at least more mutual respect,
if not, indeed, actual co-operation, among their devotees than the study
of the critical discussions of lesser minds. For this reason the present
small volume of extracts from the chief constructive work of Al Ghazzali
has been included in the Gaekwad Studies in Religion and Philosophy. The
purpose of that series is to be constructive rather than critical, and
further, it is meant to contain volumes appealing to the general public
as well as to the scholar. For a wider and more correct understanding and
appreciation of the spirit of Islam, it is to be regretted that there
are so few English translations of Muslim works in Arabic and Persian.
It is to be hoped that in future more attention will be turned in this
direction. In the meantime the present volume may serve at least to
arouse some interest.
This work was undertaken at the request of Professor Widgery, to whom I
am indebted for several suggestions and for going through the whole of
the manuscript and the proofs.
NAWAB ALI
_Baroda, 1920._
CONTENTS
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.
On the threshold of maturity he was afflicted by doubts as to the
validity and worth of the theological and philosophical bases of his
religious belief. The strain of his reflection and the intensity of
his anxiety to reach a secure faith seem to have caused a breakdown of
health. With unexpected suddenness he left Baghdad. That was in 488 A.H.
(1095 A.D.) He had examined in all details the traditional orthodox
scholastic system of the _Kalam_, the positions of the Mutazilites and
the philosophers, and in the light of his new doubts and experiences
turned again also to a closer study of the writings of the leading
mystics, such as Abu Talib, Al Muhasibi, and Al Junayd. His early
training had predisposed him to the acceptance of mysticism, and this
acceptance was led up to by the conclusions of his reflection, in which
it has been maintained he carried doubt as far back as did Descartes.
Thus he himself writes: “A thirst to comprehend the essential natures of
all things was, indeed, my idiosyncrasy and distinctive characteristic
from the beginning of my career and prime of my life: a natural gift and
temperament bestowed on me by God, and implanted by Him in my nature
by no choice or device of my own, till at length the bond of blind
conformity was loosed from me, and the beliefs which I had inherited,
were broken away when I was little more than a boy.”[7]
Carra de Vaux[8] thus graphically describes the process in Al Ghazzali’s
mind, as he himself suggests it to us: “Religious beliefs, he reflected,
are transmitted by the authority of parents; but authority is not proof.
To arrive at certitude it was necessary for him to reconstruct all
his knowledge from the very foundation. With a vivid feeling of this
necessity, he aspired to certitude, defining it in a purely psychological
fashion as a state in which the mind is so bound up with and so satisfied
with a piece of knowledge that nothing might henceforth deprive him of
it. This curious definition, which is applied to religious faith as well
as to scientific knowledge, does not escape from being purely subjective.
As one might foresee, the great desire for certitude only led him at
first into a series of doubts. As he sought this state of perfect
assurance, step by step he saw it recede before him. He looked for
certitude in the perceptions of the senses, with the result that he could
no longer trust his senses. Sight, the most powerful of the faculties
of sense, for example, led him to the perception of an immovable shadow
on the sun and an hour afterwards this shadow was gone. Sight showed
him a star which is very small, and geometry made him recognise it to
be greater than the earth. Then he turned to the first principles of
reason; but the perception of the senses took its revenge in saying to
him: ‘Previously you believed in me and you abandoned me when this judge
reason presented itself. If this judge had remained hidden you would have
continued to believe in me. Who can tell you that beyond the reason there
is no other judge, which if it made itself evident, would convict reason
of falsehood?’. That is a movement of thought which is dramatic enough,
though perhaps a little artificial.—The thinker continued his search for
the certain. He halted and concerned himself with the famous comparison
of life with a dream and death with an awakening. Perhaps after that
awakening he would see things in a different manner from that in which he
then saw them. Mysticism thus suggested itself to him: This actual dream
of death could be anticipated by the condition of ecstasy, by less than
ecstasy, by a light which God pours into the heart. In this light, he saw
not only the truth of the dogmas of the faith or the beauty of the moral
life, but he was assured of the truth of the first principles of reason,
the basis of all knowledge and all reasoning. He doubted no longer; he
was cured of his pains; he had found certitude and peace.”
On leaving Baghdad, he retired to meditate in the mosques of Damascus,
and is further reported to have made pilgrimages to Jerusalem, Hebron
(the burial place of Abraham), Medina and Mecca. In abandonment to his
immediate religious experience of the love of God he found more peace. In
the course of time he associated again more definitely with his family.
Eventually in 499 A. H. (1106 A.D.) he was ordered by the Sultan to teach
in the Academy at Nysabur. After a life in which he had written a large
number of independent treatises and indeed brought about a great change
in the tendencies of Islam, he died at his native town of Tus in 505
(1111 A.D.).
If in his initial process of doubt Ghazzali resembled Descartes, in his
view of causality he reminds us of Hume; in his general attitude he
approaches Kant and Schleiermacher. On the one hand he insists on the
limitation of the efficiency of the theoretical reason, on the other he
finds in will, in the moral and the religious experience a more immediate
avenue to real knowledge. For the study of religion in our day it is
important to note that Ghazzali (here unlike Kant) sees in religious
experience a way to certitude. But in this he is led to acknowledge that
the advance of the human mind towards its goal of real knowledge and
peace is dependent upon an active influence of God upon man. It may be
maintained that he puts here in religious terminology the central idea
of the Aristotelian conception of Scholastic times, the relation of the
“Active Intelligence” to the minds of men. His view enabled him to give a
due position to the Prophet and the Quran. For the knowledge of God is to
be conceived as coming not in immediate mystical intuition to all alike,
but while in some degree to all, to some in a special degree. These are
the prophets. The position which Maimonides presents in his _Guide to the
Perplexed_[9] with relation to religious knowledge and the functions of
the prophets is parallel with that of Ghazzali.
From the accompanying list and classification of the works of Ghazzali,
it will be seen that he was a writer on all sides of the theory
and practice of his religion. He was an authority on canon law and
jurisprudence, and a commentator of the Quran. He examined the positions
of the Scholastic theologians, and found that they depended entirely on
the acceptance of their initial dogmatic assumptions. The disputes of the
Scholastics amongst themselves appeared to have little or no relation
with religious life, rather if anything they were a hindrance to true
religion. And in face of the philosophers the Scholastic theologians
were almost helpless. But the books which exerted the greatest influence
both within and beyond Muslim circles, and the books that still retain
their interest today are the Maqasid ul Falasafa (The Aim or Goal
of the Philosophers) the Tahafat ul Falasafa (the Refutation of the
Philosophers) and the Ihya-u-Ulum-id-Din (The Renovation of the Sciences
of Religion.) In the first of these he gives an account of the different
philosophical positions which were more or less prevalent. In the second
he critically examines those positions. In the third he gives a general
survey with a constructive purpose chiefly moral and religious. It
is due to this last work more than all others that Ghazzali has been
called “The Regenerator of Religion”, “The Proof of Islam”. The _Ihya_
“expounds theology and ethics from the moderate Sufi school”. Though it
was committed to the flames, chiefly in Spain, probably by those holding
opinions which Ghazzali had bitterly attacked, it soon established its
position in the Muslim world, in which it has been widely studied up
to today. From it the passages translated in this book are taken. The
following table of contents will show the range of the subjects with
which it deals.
THE RENOVATION OF THE SCIENCES OF RELIGION.
PART I.
1. On Knowledge. Articles of Faith.
2. On Purification.
3. Prayer and Its Meaning.
4. Zakat and Its Meaning.
5. Fasting and Its Meaning.
6. Pilgrimage and Its Meaning.
7. The Reading of the Quran.
8. Varieties of Orisons.
9. The Order of Praying, and Vigils.