education. There is a special section in the _Ihya_ (Vol. III, p. 53)
which deals with the education of boys and the improvement of their
morals. It is not surprising that nothing is said as regards the
education of girls, for even now many Moslem authorities consider it
inadvisable that they should be taught to read and write. The chapter
referred to begins as follows:
“It is most important to know how to bring up a boy, for a boy is a trust
in the hands of his father, and his pure heart is a precious jewel like
a tablet without inscription. It is therefore ready to receive whatever
impression is applied. If he learns to do good and is taught it, he grows
up accordingly, and is happy in this world and the next and his parents
and teachers will have the reward for their action. But if he learns evil
and grows up in neglect like the dumb cattle, he will turn away from the
truth and perish, and his sin will be on the neck of his guardian. Allah
has said, ‘O ye who believe, guard yourselves and your family from the
fire; and even as the father would guard his son from the fire of this
world, by how much the more should he guard him from the fire of the
world to come? He will guard him from it by chastising him and educating
him and teaching him the best virtues. To this end he will only give his
boy to be nursed by a good, pious woman who eats the proper food, for the
milk from forbidden food has no blessing in it.’”
He then goes on to show that the education of a child consists in
teaching him table manners, the avoidance of unclean food, gluttony and
impoliteness. He advises parents to dress their children simply and not
in costly clothing. To quote once more:
“After teaching him these things it is wise to send him to school where
he shall learn the Koran and the pious traditions, and the tales of
the righteous and their lives, in order that a love of the pious may
be imprinted in his heart; and he should be kept from reading erotic
poetry and prevented from mixing with those people of education who think
that this sort of reading is profitable and elevating, because, on the
contrary, it produces in the hearts of children the seeds of corruption.
Whenever the boy shows a good character or an act which is praiseworthy,
he must be honoured for it and rewarded, so that he will be happy; and
this should especially be done in the presence of others. If, on the
contrary, he should act otherwise once and again, it is necessary to take
no notice of it, nor to lay bare his fault, as though you imagine no one
would dare to do such a thing, especially if the boy himself conceals
it, and has determined to hide it; for exposing would only make him more
bold in the future. If he should repeat the fault, he can be punished in
secret.”
Such is the strange ethical teaching—a mingling of good and bad advice—on
the part of one who has always been considered as the pillar of
orthodoxy and one of the great authorities on Moslem morals.
The ethics of marriage holds a large place in Moslem literature, and
also in the works of Al-Ghazali. Marriage is enjoined upon every Moslem,
and celibacy is discouraged. “Marriage,” said Mohammed the Prophet, “is
my custom, and he who dislikes it does not belong to my people.” And in
another tradition: “Marriage is one-half of true religion.” Even the
members of the ascetic orders in Islam are generally married. The vow of
celibacy was therefore not known among the mystics. Marriage is defined
by Moslem jurists as “a contract by which the husband obtains possession
of the wife and is allowed to enjoy her, if there be no legal impediment
preventing the same.” “Marriage,” says Al-Ghazali himself, “is a kind of
slavery, for the wife becomes the slave of her husband and it is her duty
to obey him absolutely in everything he requires of her, except in what
is contrary to the laws of Islam.”
In the selection of a wife, Al-Ghazali advises his disciples to look
for the following qualifications: (1) piety, (2) good character, (3)
beauty, (4) a moderate dowry, (5) ability to bear children, (6) that she
be a virgin, (7) of a good family, (8) that she be not of near relation.
The duties of the husband to the wife and the duties of the wife to her
husband are given in detail by Al-Ghazali in his _Ihya_ and in some
of his other works. The husband, according to this teaching, ought to
maintain _a golden mean_ in dealing with his wife in twelve points,
that is, he means that there should be no excess of kindness or excess
of harshness in any of these particulars: (1) the marriage feast; (2)
behaviour; (3) playfulness or caressing; (4) maintaining his dignity; (5)
jealousy; (6) pecuniary allowance; (7) teaching; (8) granting every wife
her rights (in the Moslem sense); (9) chastisement; (10) the rules of
cohabitation; (11) childbirth; (12) divorce. In one place he says if the
wife be disobedient and obstinate, the husband has the right to punish
her and force her to obey him, but he must proceed gradually, exhort,
admonish, threaten, abstain from intercourse with her for three days,
beat her so as to let her feel the pain, but be careful not to wound her
in the face, make her blood flow abundantly or break a bone! The teaching
of Al-Ghazali on divorce and slavery is so thoroughly Moslem that much
of it is untranslatable. Suffice it to say that he agrees with other
doctors of Moslem law in excusing onanism and other sins under certain
circumstances, and even indicates that it may become a duty if practiced
in order to escape from greater sins.[68]
In spite of his Islamic conception of the sexual relation, Al-Ghazali
certainly inspires our respect by what he says on the kindly treatment of
the wife and the evil of divorce. Only one would like to know whether he
himself had more than one wife and whether she was a worthy helpmeet to
her husband and he to her. His biographers are silent.
“A man should remain on good terms with his wife. This does not mean that
he should never cause her pain, but that he should bear any annoyance she
causes him, whether by her unreasonableness or ingratitude, patiently.
Woman is created weak, and requiring concealment; she should therefore
be borne with patiently, and kept secluded. The Prophet said, ‘He who
bears the ill-humour of his wife patiently will earn as much merit as Job
did by the patient endurance of his trials.’ On his deathbed also he was
heard to say, ‘Continue in prayer and treat your wives well, for they are
your prisoners.’
“Wise men have said, ‘Consult women, and act the contrary to what they
advise.’ In truth there is something perverse in women, and if they are
allowed even a little license, they get out of control altogether, and
it is difficult to reduce them to order again. In dealing with them one
should endeavour to use a mixture of severity and tenderness, with a
greater proportion of the latter. The Prophet said, ‘Woman was formed of
a crooked rib; if you try to bend her, you will break her; if you leave
her alone, she will grow more and more crooked; therefore treat her
tenderly.’[69]
“The greatest care should be taken to avoid divorce, for, though divorce
is permitted, yet God disapproves of it, because the very utterance of
the word ‘divorce’ causes a woman pain, and how can it be right to pain
any one? When divorce is absolutely necessary, the formula for it should
not be repeated thrice all at once, but on three different occasions.
A woman should be divorced kindly, not through anger and contempt, and
not without a reason. After divorce a man should give his former wife a
present, and not tell others that she has been divorced for such and such
a fault. Of a certain man who was instituting divorce proceedings against
his wife it is related that people asked him, ‘Why are you divorcing
her?’ He answered, ‘I do not reveal my wife’s secrets.’ When he had
actually divorced her, he was asked again, and said, ‘She is a stranger
to me now; I have nothing to do with her private affairs.’”
All the relations of life, its pleasures and duties pass under review in
books on _ʾAdab_. Every detail of outward conduct is regulated by what is
said to have been the practice of the Prophet. How to eat a pomegranate
correctly, how to take a bath, how to use the _Miswak_, or tooth-brush,
how to behave towards Jews and Christians, and what ornaments are
allowed—all this comes under the head of Moslem Ethics. We give the
reader one striking example.
In his work, “The Alchemy of Happiness,” there is a chapter concerning
“Music and Dancing as Aids to the Religious Life.” The question of
musical instruments was discussed as earnestly in the days of Al-Ghazali
as it has been more recently among Christians who dread the desecration
of God’s house by the “cist of whistles.” There was much dispute among
theologians as to the lawfulness of music and dancing as religious
exercises. The Sufis had already introduced the practice. The following
paragraphs show Al-Ghazali’s common sense, keen humour, and at the same
time his rather doubtful conclusion; for he even justifies erotic poetry
if sung for the glory of God:
“The heart of man has been so constituted by the Almighty that, like a
flint, it contains a hidden fire which is evoked by music and harmony,
and renders man beside himself with ecstasy. These harmonies are echoes
of that higher world of beauty which we call the world of spirits; they
remind man of his relationship to that world, and produce in him an
emotion so deep and strange that he himself is powerless to explain it.
The effect of music and dancing is deeper in proportion as the nature on
which they act are simple and prone to emotion; they fan into a flame
whatever love is already dormant in the heart, whether it be earthly and
sensual, or divine and spiritual....
“Passing over the cases where music and dancing rouse into a flame evil
desires already dormant in the heart, we come to those cases where they
are quite lawful. Such are those of the pilgrims who celebrate the
glories of the House of God at Mecca in song, and thus incite others to
go on pilgrimage, and of minstrels whose music and songs stir up martial
ardour in the breasts of their auditors and incite them to fight against
the infidels. Similarly, mournful music which excites sorrow for sin and
failure in the religious life is lawful; of this nature was the music of
David. But dirges which increase sorrow for the dead are not lawful, for
it is written in the Koran, ‘Despair not over what you have lost.’ On the
other hand, joyful music at weddings and feasts and on such occasions as
a circumcision or the return from a journey is lawful....
“The states of ecstasy into which the Sufis fall vary according to the
emotions which predominate in them—love, fear, desire, repentance, etc.
These states, as we have mentioned above, are often the result not only
of hearing verses of the Koran, but erotic poetry. Some have objected to
the reciting of poetry, as well as of the Koran, on these occasions; but
it should be remembered that all the verses of the Koran are not adapted
to stir the emotions—such, for instance, as that which commands that a
man should leave his mother the sixth part of his property and his sister
the half, or that which orders that a widow must wait four months after
the death of her husband before becoming espoused to another man. The
natures which can be thrown into religious ecstasy by the recital of such
verses are peculiarly sensitive and very rare.” They certainly are!
The inconsistencies and contradictions in Al-Ghazali’s theory of conduct
surprise us when we peruse his works. Sometimes he leads us to high
mountain ranges whose summits are gilded with the light of heaven, the
great truths of Theism, the ideals of eternity; and again he plunges us
into the sloughs of sensuous and worldly discussion—themes unworthy of
his pen.
Let us get back to the mountain tops where the air is healthier.
Al-Ghazali, whatever may have been his failure in other respects, had
high ideals for the attainment of morals from the Moslem standpoint.
In his “The Alchemy of Happiness” he says, “When in the crucible of
abstinence the soul is purged from carnal passions it attains to the
highest, and in place of being a slave to lust and anger becomes endued
with angelic qualities. Attaining that state, man finds his heaven in
the contemplation of Eternal Beauty, and no longer in fleshly delights.
The spiritual alchemy which operates this change in him, like that which
transmutes base metals into gold, is not easily discovered, nor to be
found in the house of every old woman.”
And in the attainment of this ideal he is sure that there must be a fight
for character. The goal is not to be reached by easy stages. The warfare
against passion is real and costs sacrifice. He gives us a picture of
this Holy War almost in the language of John Bunyan. “For the carrying
on of this spiritual warfare by which the knowledge of oneself and of
God is to be obtained, the body may be figured as a kingdom, the soul
as its king and the different senses and faculties as constituting an
army. Reason may be called the vizier, or prime minister, passion the
revenue-collector, and anger the police-officer. Under the guise of
collecting revenue, passion is continually prone to plunder on its own
account, while resentment is always inclined to harshness and extreme
severity. Both of these, the revenue-collector and the police-officer,
have to be kept in due subordination to the king, but not killed or
expelled, as they have their own proper functions to fulfil. But if
passion and resentment master reason, the ruin of the soul infallibly
ensues. A soul which allows its lower faculties to dominate the higher is
as one who should hand over an angel to the power of a dog or a Mussalman
to the tyranny of an unbeliever.”
The struggle is, therefore, between the flesh and the spirit. Like St.
Paul, Al-Ghazali must have experienced that which he describes: “The good
that I would I do not, and the evil that I would not, that I do.” He is
conscious of the inner struggle between the higher and the lower natures
in man. Again and again he contrasts the body and the soul as to their
eternal value in their struggle for supremacy. Both are of God, His gift
to us; both show His wisdom and His power; but there is no comparison
when we try to estimate their real values.
“The body, so to speak, is simply the riding animal of the soul, and
perishes while the soul endures. The soul should take care of the body,
just as a pilgrim on his way to Mecca takes care of his camel; but if
the pilgrim spends his whole time in feeding and adorning his camel, the
caravan will leave him behind, and he will perish in the desert.”[70]
The four leading virtues—the mothers of all other good
qualities—Al-Ghazali says are “Wisdom, temperance, bravery, and
moderation (or the golden mean of conduct).”[71] This classification he
has borrowed from Plato with so much else on the theory of conduct. He
explains all these virtues in terms of the Koran and illustrates them
from the lives of Mohammed and the early saints of Islam as well as the
later mystics.
He is at his best when he speaks of vices and their opposite virtues. No
one can read his chapter against pride and boasting without seeing that
he gives us again a page from his own experience. He begins by quoting
the saying of the Prophet, “No one shall enter paradise in whose heart
there is the weight of a grain of mustard seed of pride.” And another
saying, “Said God Most High, ‘Pride is my mantle and majesty is my cloak,
and whosoever takes away one of them from me I will cast him into hell,
and I care not.’” Another saying attributed to Mohammed is evidently
taken from the Gospel, “Whoso humbleth himself before God, God will exalt
him, and whosoever is proud God will bring him low.” His definition of
humility is beautiful: “True humility is to be subject to the truth and
to be corrected by it even though thou shouldst hear it from a mere boy
on the street.” In this connection he quotes also a saying of Jesus:
“Said the Messiah (upon Him be peace), ‘Blessed is he to whom God has
taught His book. He shall never die in his pride.’”
Pride is shown in different ways. Al-Ghazali enumerates pride of
knowledge, of worship, of race and blood, of beauty and dress, of wealth,
of bodily strength, of leadership. He quotes Mohammed as an example of
humility, and also Abi Saeed el Khudri, who said, “Oh, my son, eat unto
God and drink unto God and dress unto God. But whatsoever thou doest
of all of these and there enters into them pride or hypocrisy it is
disobedience. Whatever you do in your house do it yourself as did the
Apostle of God, for he used to milk the goats and patch his sandals and
sew his cloak and eat with the servants and buy in the bazaar, nor did
his pride forbid him carrying his own packages home; and he was friendly
to the rich and to the poor and he gave greetings himself first to every
one whom he met, etc.”
It is noteworthy that when he rises to the highest ethical teaching he
bases his remarks on the sayings (mostly apocryphal) of Christ, which we
collate in our final chapter. Al-Ghazali tried hard but failed to find in
Mohammed the ideals of his own heart. This is the tragedy of Islam.
VIII
Al-Ghazali as a Mystic
“Mysticism is religion, and supplies a refuge for men of
religious minds who find it no longer possible for them to
rest on ‘external authority’—as George Tyrrell both expounded
and illustrated for us. Once turn away from revelation and
little choice remains to you but the choice between Mysticism
and Rationalism. There is not so much choice between these
things, it is true, as enthusiasts on either side are apt to
imagine. The difference between them is very much a matter of
temperament, or perhaps we may even say of temperature. The
Mystic blows hot, the Rationalist cold. Warm up a Rationalist
and you inevitably get a Mystic; chill down a Mystic and you
find yourself with a Rationalist on your hands. The history
of thought illustrates repeatedly the easy passage from one
to the other. Each centers himself in himself, and the human
self is not so big that it makes any large difference where
within yourself you take your center. Nevertheless just because
Mysticism blows hot, its ‘eccentricity’ is the more attractive
to men of lively religious feeling.”
—_Benjamin B. Warfield, in the
“Princeton Theological Review.”_
VIII
AL-GHAZALI AS A MYSTIC
One of the earliest mystics in Islam was Rabiaʾ, who was buried in
Jerusalem. She was a native of Busrah and died at Jerusalem as early as
the second century of Islam. Her tomb, according to Ibn Khallikan, was
an object of pilgrimage in the Middle Ages, and was probably visited by
Al-Ghazali. The following verses are quoted from her in the _Ihya_ (vol.
iv. p. 298):
“Two ways I love Thee: selfishly,
And next, as worthy is of Thee.
’Tis selfish love that I do naught
Save think on Thee with every thought:
’Tis purest love when Thou dost raise
The veil to my adoring gaze.
Not mine the praise in that or this,
Thine is the praise in both, I wis.”
The Moslem mystics, or _Sufis_, however, received their name through Abu
Khair, who lived at the end of the second century of the Hegira. His
disciples wore a woolen garment, and from the word _suf_, which means
wool, they obtained their name. In the next century, al-Junaid (A. H.
297), one of Al-Ghazali’s favourite authorities, was the great leader
of the movement, which spread throughout Islam. It was a reaction from
the barren monotheism and the rigid ritualism of Islam. This kind of
orthodoxy did not meet the needs of the more imaginative mind of the
Eastern races who accepted Islam. The preachers of the new doctrine
travelled everywhere and mixed with men of all conditions. In this way
they adopted ideas from many sources, although always professing to base
their teaching on the Koran and Tradition.
According to Nicholson, the Mystics of Islam borrowed not only from
Christianity and Neoplatonism, but from Gnosticism and Buddhism. Many
Gospel texts and sayings of Jesus, most of them apocryphal, are cited
in the oldest Sufi writings. From Christianity they took the use of the
woollen dress, the vows of silence, the litanies (_Zikr_), and other
ascetic practices. Their teaching also has many interesting parallels
which Nicholson summarizes as follows: “The same expressions are applied
to the founder of Islam which are used by St. John, St. Paul, and later
mystical theologians concerning Christ. Thus, Mohammed is called the
Light of God, he is said to have existed before the creation of the
world, he is adored as the source of all life, actual and possible, he is
the Perfect Man in whom all the divine attributes are manifested, and
a Sufi tradition ascribes to him the saying, ‘He that hath seen me hath
seen Allah.’ In the Moslem scheme, however, the Logos doctrine occupies
a subordinate place, as it obviously must when the whole duty of man is
believed to consist in realizing the unity of God.”[72]
Neoplatonism gave them the doctrine of emanation and ecstasy. The
following version of the doctrine of the seventy thousand veils, as
expounded to Canon Gairdner by a modern dervish, shows clear traces of
Gnosticism. “Seventy Thousand Veils separate Allah, the One reality,
from the world of matter and of sense. And every soul passes before his
birth through these seventy thousand. The inner half of these are veils
of light: the outer half, veils of darkness. For every one of the veils
of light passed through, in this journey towards birth, the soul puts
off a divine quality; and for every one of the dark veils, it puts on
an earthly quality. Thus the child is born weeping, for the soul knows
its separation from Allah, the one Reality. And when the child cries
in its sleep, it is because the soul remembers something of what it
has lost. Otherwise, the passage through the veils has brought with it
forgetfulness (_nisyan_): and for this reason man is called _insan_.
He is now, as it were, in prison in his body, separated by these thick
curtains from Allah. But the whole purpose of Sufism, the Way of the
dervish, is to give him an escape from this prison, an apocalypse of the
Seventy Thousand Veils, a recovery of the original unity with The One,
while still in this body.”[73]
In regard to Buddhist influence, Professor Goldziher has called attention
to the fact that in the eleventh century the teaching of Buddha exerted
considerable influence in eastern Persia, especially at Balkh, a city
famous for the number of Sufis who dwelt in it. From the Buddhists came
the use of the rosary (afterwards adopted by Christians in Europe), and
perhaps also the doctrine of _fana_ or absorption into God.
“While _fana_,” says Nicholson, “in its pantheistic form is radically
different from Nirvana, the terms coincide so closely in other ways
that we cannot regard them as being altogether unconnected. _Fana_
has an ethical aspect: it involves the extinction of all passions and
desires. The passing away of evil qualities and of the evil actions
which they produce is said to be brought about by the continuance of
the corresponding good qualities and actions.”[74] The cultivation
of character by the contemplation of God in a mystical sense was the
real goal. To know God was to be like Him and to be like Him ended in
absorption or ecstasy.[75] One of their favourite sayings was that
attributed to God by the Prophet, “I was a hidden treasure and I desired
to be known, so I created the creation in order that I might be known.”
Just as the universe is the mirror of God’s being, so the heart of man is
to the Sufi the mirror of the universe. If he would know God or Truth he
must look into his own heart.
To quote Al-Ghazali himself: “The aim which the Sufis set before them is
as follows: To free the soul from the tyrannical yoke of the passions, to
deliver it from its wrong inclinations and evil instincts, in order that
in the purified heart there should only remain room for God and for the
invocation of His holy name.