Epistle of James, between faith and works. He was a dogmatic theologian
and laid down, as we shall see in this chapter, with punctilious care
every point of dogma; but he was also a moralist and a man of high ideals
which he sought to attain through prayer and fasting and pilgrimage, and
a life of utter devotion to the will of God. His faith was living and
practical, not theoretical and scholastic. In his great work, the _Ihya_,
he discusses the whole subject of faith, and enumerates the following
classes of believers:
“He who combines inner belief with outward confession and good works is a
true believer and enters Paradise.
“He who combines inner belief with outward confession and some good
works but commits one or more great sins, does not thereby cease to be a
believer, though his faith is not of the highest degree. The Muʾtazila
deny that such a one can be considered a believer, but that nevertheless
by committing deadly sins he does not become an unbeliever but is in an
intermediate state between a believer and an infidel. An infidel is an
impious person and goes into everlasting hell-fire.”
The opinions with regard to the person who combines inner belief with
outward confession, but has no good works are divided. Abu Talibu’l
Makki says: “Good works are part of the faith, and faith cannot exist
without them.” The Sunni doctors of Islam, however, reject this opinion
as absolutely false, for they say that it is a truth accepted by general
agreement, that a man who believes and confesses and dies before he has
done any good work, is a true believer and enters Paradise; that good
works cannot consequently be considered as a necessary part of faith, and
that faith can exist without them.
“He who believes in his heart, but dies before he has either confessed
or performed good works, is nevertheless a true believer and enters
into Paradise. Those who consider confession a necessary part of faith
naturally consider that such a one has died without faith, an opinion
absolutely contrary to the Sunni dogma.
“He who believes in his heart, and has time and opportunity of
confessing, and knows that it is the duty of the Moslem to do so, and
does not confess his faith, is nevertheless a believer in the sight
of God, and will not be cast into everlasting hell-fire, for faith is
the mere belief, intellectual conviction and assent, and this belief
does not cease to exist through the want of outward confession. Such a
man is a believer in the sight of God, but an unbeliever in this world
before the court of justice and with regard to the rights of Moslems.
In case of an impediment of the tongue, a sign with the hand is as
good as confession with the tongue. The sect of the Murjiʾa go too far
by saying that a believer, even if he act wickedly, will never enter
hell-fire. _The orthodox doctrine on this subject is that every one,
even the most perfect believer, will enter hell-fire, for no one is free
from committing some sins, for which he must enter fire; only infidels,
however, will remain in it forever._”
“He who confesses with the tongue saying: ‘There is no God but God, and
Mohammed is His apostle,’ but does not believe it in his heart is an
infidel in the sight of God, and will be cast into eternal hell-fire. In
this world, however, he is to be considered and treated as a believer and
a Moslem, for man cannot penetrate into the secrets of the heart, and
the confession of the mouth must be taken to be the interpreter of the
thoughts of the heart. In order, however, to make a man a Moslem in this
world, before the law, in the sight of the Qadi, confession is necessary.”
Not only does he classify believers in this careful way, but he also
discusses the question, in the first book of his _Ihya_, whether Islam
is the same thing as _iman_ (faith) or not, and if these two are not
the same thing, can they exist separately or must they necessarily be
combined? “Some say that Islam and _Iman_ are synonymous terms and that
consequently every believer is a Moslem and every Moslem a believer.”
This is the opinion held by the orthodox school. Others say that they are
distinct things but joined together. Al-Ghazali answers this difficult
question in this way: _Iman_ (Faith), from the linguistic point of
view, means belief, intellectual conviction and assent; Islam means
submission, subjection, obedience. The seat of _Iman_ is the heart or
mind, and the tongue is its interpreter. Islam comprises belief with
the heart and confession with the tongue, and good works by the members
of the body, and is consequently a more comprehensive term than _Iman_.
_Iman_ is one of the component parts of Islam, and Islam, therefore,
includes it; but _Iman_, being a more restricted term, does not include
Islam. From a linguistic point of view the two terms are therefore not
synonymous. From the point of view of the law and religion, and in a
theological sense the two terms are sometimes used as being synonymous,
and sometimes as having different meanings and as being intermingled,
comprised in each other. _Iman_ and Islam are found in the individual who
believes in his heart and outwardly observes the precepts of Islam; Islam
exists separately in the individual, who only believes in his heart; but
neither confesses, nor does good works, and Islam exists separately in
him who outwardly observes the precepts of Islam, without inner belief.
What the faith of Islam meant to Al-Ghazali we know from all his works,
especially from the _Ihya_, which besides other topics gives a full
exposition of Moslem belief in regard to the six articles of their creed
and the five pillars of practice. The reader may judge for himself both
the contents and omissions of Al-Ghazali’s _credo_ from the following
brief exposition which he wrote for his pupils:
HIS CREED[54]
“We say—and in God is our trust—Praise belongeth unto God,
the Beginner, the Bringer-back, the Doer of what He willeth,
the Lord of the Glorious Throne and of Mighty Grasp, the
Guider of His chosen creatures to the right path and to the
true way, the Granter of benefits to them after the witness
to the Unity (_tawhid_) by guarding their articles of belief
from obscurities of doubt and opposition. He that bringeth
them to follow His Apostle, the Chosen one (_Al-Mustafa_) and
to imitate the traces of His Companions, the most honoured,
through His aid and right guidance revealed to them in His
essence and His works by His beautiful qualities which none
perceives, save he who inclines his ear. He is the witness who
maketh known to them that He in His essence is One without any
partner (_sharik_). Single without any similar, Eternal without
any opposite, Separate without any like. He is One, Prior
(_qadim_) with nothing before Him, from eternity (_azali_)
without any beginning, abiding in existence with none after
Him, to eternity (_abadi_) without any end, substituting
without ending, abiding without termination. He hath not ceased
and He will not cease to be described with glorious epithets;
finishing and ending, though the cutting off of the ages and
the terminating of allotted times have no rule over Him, but He
is the First and Last, the External and the Internal, and He
knoweth everything.
“We witness that He is not a body possessing form, nor a
substance possessing bounds and limits; He does not resemble
bodies, either in limitation or in accepting division. He is
not a substance and substances do not exist in Him; and He is
not an accident and accidents do not exist in Him, nay He does
not resemble an entity, and no entity resembles Him; nothing
is like Him and He is not like anything; measure does not
bound Him and boundaries do not contain Him; the directions do
not surround Him and neither the earth nor the Heavens are on
different sides of Him. Lo, He is seated firmly upon His throne
(_ʿarsh_), after the manner which He has said, and in the sense
in which He willed a being-seated firmly (_istawa_), which
is far removed from contact and fixity of location and being
established and being enveloped and being removed. The Throne
does not carry Him, but the Throne and those that carry it are
carried by the grace of His power and mastered by His grasp.
He is above the Throne and the Heavens and above everything
unto the limit of the Pleiades, with an aboveness which does
not bring Him nearer to the Throne and the Heavens, just as
it does not make Him further from the earth and the Pleiades.
Nay, He is exalted by degrees from the Throne and the Heavens,
just as He is exalted by degrees from the earth and the
Pleiades; and He, in spite of that, is near to every entity and
is ‘nearer to a creature than the artery of his neck’ (Koran
50, 15), and He witnesseth everything, since His nearness
does not resemble the nearness of bodies, just as His essence
does not resemble the essence of bodies. He does not exist in
anything, just as nothing exists in Him; He has exalted Himself
far therefrom that a place should contain Him, just as He has
sanctified Himself far therefrom that time should limit Him.
Nay, He was before He had created Time and Place and He is now
above that which He was above, and distinct from His creatures
through His qualities. There is not in His essence His equal,
nor in His equal His essence. He is far removed from change of
state or of place. Events have no place in Him, and mishaps do
not befall Him. Nay, He does not cease, through His glorious
epithets, to be far removed from changing, and through His
perfect qualities to be independent of perfecting increase.
The existence of His essence is known by reason; His essence
is seen with the eyes, a benefit from Him and a grace to the
pious, in the Abiding Abode and a completion in beatitude from
Him, through gazing upon His gracious face.
“We witness that He is living, powerful, commanding,
conquering; inadequacy and weakness befall Him not; slumber
seizes Him not, nor sleep. Passing away does not happen to
Him, nor death. He is Lord of the Worlds, the Visible and the
Invisible, that of Force and that of Might; He possesses Rule
and Conquest and Creation and Command; the heavens are rolled
in His right hand and the created things are overcome in His
grasp; He is separate in creating and inventing; He is one in
bringing into existence and innovating; He created the creation
and their works and decreed their sustenance and their terms of
life; not a decreed thing escapes His grasp and the mutations
of things are not distant from His power; the things which He
hath decreed cannot be reckoned and the things which He knoweth
have no end.
“We witness that He knoweth all the things that can be known,
comprehending that which happeneth from the bounds of the earth
unto the topmost heavens; no grain in the earth or the heavens
is distant from His knowledge. Yea, He knows the creeping of
the black ant upon the rugged rock in a dark night, and He
perceives the movement of the mote in the midst of the air; He
knows the secret and the concealed and has knowledge of the
suggestions of the minds and the movements of the thoughts and
the concealed things of the inmost parts, by a knowledge which
is prior from eternity; He has not ceased to be describable by
it, from the ages of the ages, not by a knowledge which renews
itself and arises in His essence by arrival and removal.
“We witness that He is a Willer of the things that are, a
Director of the things that happen; there does not come
about in the world seen or unseen, little or much, small or
great, good or evil, advantage or disadvantage, faith or
unbelief, knowledge or ignorance, success or loss, increase or
diminution, obedience or rebellion, except by His will. What
He wills is, and what He wills not is not. Not a glance of one
who looks, or a slip of one who thinks is outside of His will;
He is the creator, the Bringer back, the Doer of that which
He wills. There is no opponent of His command and no repeater
of His destiny and no refuge for a creature from disobeying
Him, except by His help and His mercy, and no strength to a
creature to obey Him except by His will. Even though mankind
and the _Jinn_ and the Angels and the _Shaytans_ were to unite
to remove a single grain in the world or to bring it to rest
without His will, they would be too weak for that. His will
subsists in His essence as one of His qualities; He hath not
ceased to be described through it as a Willer, in His infinity
of the existence of things at their appointed times which He
hath decreed. So they come into existence at their appointed
times even as He has willed in His infinity without precedence
or sequence. They happen according to the agreement of His
knowledge and His will, without exchange or change in planning
of things, nor with arranging of thoughts or awaiting of time,
and therefore one thing does not distract Him from another.
“And we witness that He is a Hearer and a Seer. He hears and
sees and no audible thing is distant from His hearing, and no
visible thing is far from His seeing, however fine it may be.
Distance does not curtain off His hearing and darkness does not
dull His seeing; He sees without eyeball or eyelid, and hears
without earholes or ears, just as He knows without a brain and
seizes without a limb and creates without an instrument, since
His qualities do not resemble that quality of created things,
just as His essence does not resemble the essences of created
things.
“And we witness that He speaks, commanding, forbidding,
praising, threatening, with a speech from all eternity, prior,
subsisting in His essence, not resembling the speech of created
things. It is not a sound which originates through the slipping
out of air, or striking of bodies; nor is it a letter which is
separated off by closing down a lip or moving a tongue. And the
Koran and the _Tawrat_ (the Law of Moses) and the _Injil_ (the
Gospel) and the _Zabbur_ (the Psalms) are His books revealed to
His Apostles. And the Koran is repeated by tongues, written in
copies, preserved in hearts; yet it in spite of that, is prior
subsisting in the essence of God, not subject to division and
separation through being transferred to hearts and leaves.
And Musa heard the speech of God without a sound and without a
letter, just as the pious see the essence of God, in the other
world without a substance or an attribute.
“And since He has those qualities, He is living, Knowing,
Powerful, a Willer, a Hearer, a Seer, a Speaker, through Life,
Power, Knowledge, Will, Hearing, Seeing, Speech, not by a thing
separated from His essence.
“We witness that there is no entity besides Him, except what is
originated from His action and proceeds from His justice, after
the most beautiful and perfect and complete and just of ways.
He is wise in His actions, just in His determinations; there is
no analogy between His justice and the justice of creatures,
since tyranny is conceivable in the case of a creature, when he
deals with the property of some other than himself, but tyranny
is not conceivable in the case of God. For He never encounters
any property of some other than Himself so that His dealing
with it might be tyranny. Everything besides Him, consisting
of men and _Jinn_ and Angels and _Shaytans_ and the heavens
and the earth and animals and plants and inanimate things
and substance and attribute and things perceived and things
felt, is an originated thing, which He created by His power
before any other had created it, after it had not existed,
and which He invented after that it had not been a thing,
since He in eternity was an entity by Himself, and there was
not along with Him any other than He. So He originated the
creation thereafter, by way of manifestation of His power, and
verification of that which had preceded of His Will, and of
that which existed in eternity of His Word; not because He has
any lack of it or need of it. And He is gracious in creating
and in making for the first time and in imposing of duty—not
of necessity—and He is generous in befitting; and well-doing
and gracious helping belong to Him, since He is able to bring
upon His creatures different kinds of punishment and to test
them with different varieties of pains and ailments. And if
He did that it would be justice on His part, and would not be
a vile action or tyranny in Him. He rewardeth His believing
creatures for their acts of obedience by a decision which is of
generosity and of promise and not of right and of obligation,
since no particular action towards any one is incumbent upon
Him, and tyranny is inconceivable in Him, and no one possesses
a right against Him. And His right to acts of obedience is
binding upon the creatures because He has made it binding
through the tongues of His prophets, not by reason alone. But
He sent apostles and manifested their truth by plain miracles,
and they brought His commands and forbiddings and promisings
and threatenings. So, belief in them as to what they have
brought is incumbent upon the creation.
“The second Word of Witnessing is witnessing that the
apostolate belongs to the apostle, and that God sent the
unlettered Qurayshite prophet, Mohammed, with his apostolate
to the totality of Arabs and foreigners and Jinn and men.
And He abrogated by his law the other Laws except so much of
them as He confirmed; and made him excellent over the rest of
the prophets and made him the Lord of Mankind and declared
incomplete the Faith that consists in witnessing the Unity,
which is saying, ‘There is no god except God,’ so long as there
is not joined that of witnessing to the Apostle, which is
saying ‘Mohammed is the Apostle of God.’ And He made obligatory
upon the creation belief in Him, as to all which He narrated
concerning the things of this world and the next. And then He
would not accept the faith of a creature, so long as he did not
believe in that which the Prophet narrated concerning things
after death. The first of these is the question of Munkar and
Nakir; these are two awful and terrible beings who will cause
the creature to sit up in his grave, complete, both soul and
body; and they will ask him, ‘Who is thy Lord, and what is thy
religion (_din_), and who is thy Prophet?’ They are the two
testers in the grave and their questioning is the first testing
after death. And that he should believe in the punishment of
the grave—that it is a Verity and that its judgment upon the
body and the soul is just, according to what God wills. And
that he should believe in the Balance—it with the two scales
and the tongue, the magnitude of which is like unto the stages
of the heavens and the earth. In it, deeds are weighed by the
power of God Most High; and its weights in that day will be
the weight of motes and mustard seeds, to show the exactitude
of its justice. The leaves of the good deeds will be placed in
a beautiful form in the scale of light; and then the Balance
will be weighed down by them according to the measure of their
degree with God, by the grace of God. And the leaves of evil
deeds will be cast in a vile form into the scale of darkness,
and the Balance will be light with them, through the justice of
God. And that he should believe that the Bridge (_as-Sirat_)
is a Verity; it is a bridge stretched over the back of Hell
(_Jahannam_), sharper than a sword and finer than a hair. The
feet of the unbelievers slip upon it, by the decree of God,
and fall with them into the Fire. But the feet of believers
stand firm upon it, by the grace of God, and so they pass into
the Abiding Abode. And that he should believe in the Tank
(_Hawdh_), to which the people shall go down, the Tank of
Mohammed from which the believers shall drink before entering
the Garden and after passing the Bridge. Whoever drinks of it a
single draught will never thirst again thereafter. Its breadth
is a journey of a month; its water is whiter than milk and
sweeter than honey; around it are ewers in numbers like the
stars of heaven; into it flow two canals from _Al-Kawthar_
(Koran 108). And that he should believe in the Reckoning
and in the distinctions between men in it, him with whom it
will go hard in the Reckoning and him to whom compassion
will be shown therein, and him who enters the Garden without
reckoning,—these are the honoured (_muqarrab_). God Most
High will ask whomsoever He will of the prophets, concerning
the carrying of His message, and whomsoever He will of the
unbelievers, concerning the rejection of the messengers; and
He will ask the innovators (_Mubtadiʾs_) concerning the Sunna;
and the Moslems concerning works. And that he should believe
that the attestors of God’s Unity (_muwahhids_) will be brought
forth from the Fire, after vengeance has been taken on them, so
that there will not remain in Hell an attestor of God’s Unity.
And that he should believe in the intercession (_shafaʾa_)
of the prophets, next of the learned (_ʿulama_), next of the
martyrs, next of the rest of the believers—each according to
his dignity and rank with God Most High. And he who remains of
the believers, and has no intercessor, shall be brought forth
of the grace of God, whose are Might and Majesty. So there
shall not abide eternally in the Fire a single believer, but
whoever has in his heart the weight of a single grain of faith
shall be brought forth therefrom. And that he should confess
the excellence of the Companions—May God be well pleased with
them—and their rank; and that the most excellent of mankind,
after the Prophet is Abu Bakr, next Umar, next Uthman, next
Ali—May God be well pleased with them; And that he should think
well of all the Companions and should praise them like as he
praises God, whose are Might and Majesty, and His Apostles. All
this is that which has been handed down in tradition from the
Prophet and in narratives from the followers. He who confesses
all this, relying upon it, is of the People of the Truth and
the Company of the Sunna, and hath separated himself from the
band of error and the sect of innovation (_bidʾa_). So we ask
from God perfection of certainty and firm standing in the Faith
(_din_) for us and for all Moslems through His compassion.—Lo!
He is the Most Compassionate!—and may the blessing of God be
upon our Lord Mohammed and upon every chosen creature.”
The above is Doctor Macdonald’s careful translation of what Al-Ghazali
taught was involved when Moslems say: _There is no God but Allah, and
Mohammed is Allah’s Apostle._ Surely he gave this shortest of all creeds
its full significance and value.
It is necessary, however, not only to see in it the faith of Al-Ghazali
but his credulity as well, if we desire to understand the man and
his times. Once his early scepticism was overcome, he was always and
everywhere an orthodox Moslem, and therefore swallowed the Traditions
and the Koran apparently without any philosophic doubt. He believed that
Mohammed was the greatest of all the prophets, and that, so he says, “God
has established Mohammed’s prophetic character by miracles, such as the
splitting of the moon, and the praising of him by stones, the gushing
out of water from between his fingers. One of the greatest miracles,
proving his divine mission, is the Koran, for none of the Arabs were able
to produce anything like it. Another sign of his prophetic character
is his being able to foretell things which are to come to pass, such
as his victorious entry into Mecca, the defeat of the Greeks and their
subsequent victories.” (See the special chapter in the _Ihya_ on this
subject.)