Koran in their perusal of the Scriptures. He tells us we must regard
eight things: the greatness of the revelation; the majesty of the
Speaker; the need of a prepared heart; meditation; understanding the
content of the passage, not twisting its meaning; we are to make the
application to ourselves; and finally we must read it so that its effect
may show in our lives. By the word Koran, he says, “we mean not the
reading but the following of the teaching, for the movement of the tongue
in pronouncing the words is of little value. The true reading is when the
tongue and the mind and the heart are associated. The part of the tongue
is to pronounce the words clearly in chanting. The part of the mind is
to interpret the meaning. The part of the heart is to translate it into
life. So that the tongue chants and the mind interprets and the heart is
a preacher and a warner.”
The greatest chapter of his _opus magnum_ is undoubtedly that on
Repentance. It may well be compared with the fifty-first Psalm or the
seventh chapter of St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans. That Al-Ghazali
himself had a deep sense of sin, no one can doubt. He was not a Pharisee
but an earnest seeker after God. He teaches clearly that all the
prophets, including Mohammed, were sinners, although he nowhere mentions
any sinfulness in Jesus Christ.
One of the most important passages is that in which he speaks of the
benefit of asking pardon. It reads as follows: “Said Mohammed the Prophet
(upon him be peace): ‘Verily, I ask forgiveness of God and repent towards
Him every day seventy times.’” He said this, so says Al-Ghazali, although
God had already testified, “We have forgiven thee, thy former and thy
latter sins.” “Said the Prophet of God, ‘Truly a faintness comes over my
heart until I ask God forgiveness every day one hundred times.’ And said
the Prophet (on him be peace), ‘Whosoever says when he goes to sleep,
“I ask forgiveness of the Great God, than whom there is no other, the
living, and I repent of my sins three times,” God will forgive him his
sins even though they were as the foam of the seas or its sands piled up,
or as the numbers of the leaves on the trees or the days of the world.’
And said the Prophet of God (upon him be peace), ‘Whosoever says that
word I will forgive his sins though he deserts the army.’” Al-Ghazali
relates a story of one Hudhifa, who said, “I was accustomed to speak
sharply to my wife, and I said, ‘O, Apostle of God, I am afraid lest my
tongue should cause me to enter the fire,’ and then the Prophet of God
(upon whom be peace) said, ‘Where art thou in asking for forgiveness
compared with me, for I ask forgiveness of God every day one hundred
times.’ And ʾAyesha said (may God give her His favour), concerning the
Prophet, ‘He said to me, “If you have committed a sin ask forgiveness
of God and repent to Him, for true repentance for a sin is turning away
from it and asking forgiveness.”’ And the Apostle of God (upon whom be
peace) was accustomed to say when he asked for forgiveness: ‘O God,
forgive my sin and my ignorance and my excess in what I have done, and
what Thou knowest better than I do. O God, forgive me my trifling and
my earnestness, my mistakes and my wrong intentions and all that I have
done. O God, forgive me that which I have committed in the past and that
which I will commit in the future, and what I have hidden and what I have
revealed and what Thou knowest better than I do, Thou who art the first
and the last and Thou art the Almighty.’”[80] How different all this
is from the present day superficial teaching about the sinlessness of
Mohammed which is current in popular Islam.
Since Al-Ghazali tells this about Mohammed and _his_ need for
forgiveness, he naturally deals with repentance in no superficial fashion
but as one who has tasted the bitterness of remorse and has discovered
his own inability to meet the demands of the Moral Law. His book on
repentance has the following sections: (1) The reality of repentance.
(2) The necessity for repentance. (3) True repentance expected by God.
(4) Of what a man should repent, namely, the character of sin. (5) How
small sins become great. (6) Perfect repentance, its conditions and its
duration. (7) The degree of repentance. (8) How to become truly penitent.
One can only give a summary of his teaching. He rises far above the
Koran. In fact in some cases his proof texts, when we consider the
context, are a terrible indictment of the Prophet.[81]
He says the necessity of repentance always and for all men is evident
because no one of the human race is free from sin. “For even though in
some cases he is free from outward sin of his bodily members, he is not
free from sin of the heart; though free from passion he is not free from
the whisperings of Satan and forgetfulness of God, or of coming short of
the knowledge of God and His attributes and His works.” All this is a
failure of attainment and has its reasons; but if a man should forsake
the causes of this forgetfulness and employ himself with the opposite
virtues it would be a return to the right way; and the significance of
repentance is the return. You cannot imagine that any one of us is free
from this defect, for we only differ in degrees, but the root undoubtedly
exists in us. Of course he ignores original sin, being a Moslem, but
he makes a great deal of the effect that unrepented sin causes; but it
enters deeper and deeper into the heart until the image of God on the
mirror of the human soul is effaced.
Another illustration he uses is that of the heart as a goodly garment
which has been dragged through filth and needs to be washed again with
soap and water. “Using the heart in the exercise of our passions makes
it filthy. We must therefore wash it in the water of tears and by the
rubbing of repentance. It is for you to rub it clean and then God will
accept it.” How near and yet how far from the teaching of David and
Isaiah and St. Paul! Did Al-Ghazali ever hear some pious Jew quote
Isaiah’s statement that “all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags”?
True repentance has a twofold result according to this Moslem theologian.
Although he does not touch the deeper problem of how God can be just and
justify the sinner, he teaches that the result of the forgiveness of our
sins is that “we stand before God as though we had none,” and that “we
attain a higher degree of righteousness.” The cross of Christ is the
missing link in Al-Ghazali’s creed. He comes very close to Christianity
and yet always misses the heart of its teaching. He is groping towards
the light but does not grasp the hand of a friend or find a Redeemer. It
is all a righteousness by works and an attainment of the knowledge of God
by meditation without justification through an atonement.
Yet Al-Ghazali’s teaching on “the Practice of the Presence of God” is
very much like that of Brother Lawrence in his celebrated Essay. In his
“Beginner’s Guide to Religion and Morals” (Al Badayet) he writes: “Know,
therefore, that your companion who never deserts you at home or abroad,
when you are asleep or when you are awake, whether you are dead or alive,
is your Lord and Master, your Creator and Preserver, and whensoever you
remember Him He is sitting beside you. For God Himself hath said, ‘I am
the close companion of those who remember me.’ And whenever your heart
is contrite with sorrow because of your neglect of religion He is your
companion who keeps close to you, for God hath said, ‘I am with those who
are broken-hearted on my account.’ And if you only knew Him as you ought
to know Him you would take Him as a companion and forsake all men for
His sake. But as you are unable to do this at all times, I warn you that
you set aside a certain time by night and by day for communion with your
Creator that you may delight yourself in Him and that He may deliver you
from evil.”[82] At times, especially when he speaks of the _veils_ that
hide reality and God, we are reminded of the lines of Whitehead on “the
Second Day of Creation”:
“I gaze aloof at the tissued roof
Where time and space are the warp and woof,
Which the King of Kings, like a curtain flings,
O’er the dreadfulness of eternal things.
But if I could see, as in truth they be,
The glories that encircle me,
I should lightly hold this tissued fold
With its marvellous curtain of blue and gold;
For soon the whole, like a parched scroll,
Shall before my amazèd eyes unroll,
And without a screen at one burst be seen
The Presence in which I have always been.”
But Al-Ghazali did not know God’s nearness through the Incarnation of
Christ. The hoped-for Vision of God was always full of fear and dread of
judgment. The _fear_ of God was the beginning and end of wisdom. What he
understood by the fear of God is clear from the following passage taken
from the “Revival of Religious Sciences”: “By the fear of God I do not
mean a fear like that of women when their eyes swim and their hearts
beat at hearing some eloquent religious discourse, which they quickly
forget and turn again to frivolity. That is no real fear at all. He who
fears a thing flees from it, and he who hopes for a thing strives for
it, and the only fear that will save thee is that fear that forbids
sinning against God and instils obedience to Him. Beware of the shallow
fear of women and fools, who, when they hear of the terrors of the Lord,
say lightly, ‘We take refuge in God,’ and at the same time continue
in the very sins which will destroy them. Satan laughs at such pious
ejaculations. They are like a man who should meet a lion in a desert,
while there is a fortress at no great distance away, and when he sees the
ravenous beast, should stand exclaiming, ‘I take refuge in God.’ God will
not protect thee from the terrors of His judgment unless thou really take
refuge in Him.”
Included with his fear of God there was always a fear of death which
can best be described as mediæval or early Moslem. Towards the close of
his life he composed a short work on eschatology called “The Precious
Pearl.” It is no less lurid in its terrible pictures of death and the
judgment than some of his older works. In it he says: “When you watch a
dead man and see that the saliva has run from his mouth, that his lips
are contracted, his face black, the whites of his eyes showing, know that
he is damned, and that the fact of his damnation in the other world has
just been revealed to him. But if you see the dead with a smile on his
lips, a serene countenance, his eyes half-closed, know that he has just
received the good news of the happiness which awaits him in the other
world....
“On the day of Judgment, when all men are gathered before the throne
of God, their accounts are all cast up, and their good and evil deeds
weighed. During all this time each man believes he is the only one with
whom God is dealing. Though peradventure at the same moment God is taking
account of countless multitudes whose number is known to Him only. Men do
not see each other or hear each other speak.”
In summing up the character of the Mystic Claud Field says: “As St.
Augustine found deliverance from doubt and error in his inward experience
of God, and Descartes in self-consciousness, so Ghazali, unsatisfied with
speculation and troubled by scepticism, surrenders himself to the will of
God. Leaving others to demonstrate the existence of God from the external
world, he finds God revealed in the depths of his own consciousness and
the mystery of his own free will.... He is a unique and lonely figure
in Islam, and has to this day been only partially understood. In the
Middle Ages his fame was eclipsed by that of Averroes, whose commentary
on Aristotle is alluded to by Dante, and was studied by Thomas Aquinas
and the schoolman. Averroes’ system was rounded and complete, but
Ghazali was one of those ‘whose reach exceeds their grasp’; he was always
striking after something he had not attained, and stands in many respects
nearer to modern mind than Averroes. Renan, though far from sympathizing
with his religious earnestness, calls him ‘the most original mind among
Arabian philosophers.’”
The disciple of Al-Ghazali is perhaps of all Moslems the nearest to
the Gospel, and we may hope that when his works are carefully studied
and compared with the teaching of Christianity many may find in him a
schoolmaster to lead them to Christ. Educated Moslems of to-day may
well heed the warning with which Al-Ghazali closes his “Confessions”:
“The knowledge of which we speak is not derived from sources accessible
to human diligence, and that is why progress in mere worldly knowledge
renders the sinner more hardened in his revolt against God. True
knowledge, on the contrary, inspires in him who is initiated in it more
fear and more reverence, and raises a barrier of defense between him
and sin. He may slip and stumble, it is true, as is inevitable with one
encompassed by human infirmity, but these slips and stumbles will not
weaken his faith. The true Moslem succumbs occasionally to temptation
but he repents and will not persevere obstinately in the path of error.
I pray God the Omnipotent to place us in the ranks of His chosen, among
the number of those whom He directs in the path of safety, in whom
He inspires fervour lest they forget Him; whom He cleanses from all
defilement, that nothing may remain in them except Himself; yea of those
whom He indwells completely, that they may adore none beside Him.”
Being a Moslem, Al-Ghazali was either too proud to search for the true
historical facts of the Christian religion, or perhaps it would be more
charitable to say that he had no adequate opportunity, in spite of his
quotations and misquotations from the “Gospels.” Otherwise he could
have found there what would have met his heart-hunger and satisfied his
soul—the manifestation of God not in some intangible principle, but in a
living person, in Jesus Christ, who “is the image of the invisible God,
the first born of every creature. For by Him were all things created that
are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether
they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers; in Him are
all things, and by Him all things consist.” (Colossians 1: 15-17.) Those
who dwell in Christ and in whom He dwells are a part of His spiritual
body. They are the branches of the living Vine. They are one in life and
purpose, although they remain conscious evermore of their own individual
existence; they are fitted progressively for a deeper communion with God.
To such a conception the Sufi never attained. Al-Ghazali admits that no
man has seen God at any time, but he failed to realize that “the Only
Begotten, Who is in the bosom of the Father, hath declared Him.” The
artificial glory of Mohammed in his case, as for centuries afterwards,
hid the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus
Christ. Yet not altogether, as the next chapter will make clear.
IX
Jesus Christ in Al-Ghazali
Jesus, the very thought of Thee
With sweetness fills my breast;
But sweeter far Thy face to see,
And in Thy presence rest.
Nor voice can sing, nor heart can frame,
Nor can the memory find,
A sweeter sound than Thy blest name,
O Saviour of mankind!
O hope of every contrite heart!
O joy of all the meek!
To those who fall, how kind Thou art!
How good to those who seek!
But what to those who find? Ah! this
Nor tongue nor pen can show:
The love of Jesus—what it is
None but His loved ones know.
—_Bernard of Clairvaux—almost
a contemporary (1091-1152)._
IX
JESUS CHRIST IN AL-GHAZALI
Jesus Christ is the Touch-Stone of character, the Master of all spiritual
leaders and the one supreme and infallible Judge who can pronounce
an unerring verdict concerning the truth of any religious system or
teaching. What place has Jesus in the teaching of the greatest of all
Moslem theologians, what place had He in the heart of this great mystic,
this seeker after God, who, whatever else he may have been, was utterly
sincere in his search? Al-Ghazali, as a student of the Koran, must have
noticed that in this book Christ occupies a high place; no fewer than
three of the chapters of the Koran, namely, that of Amram’s Family
(Surah III), that of The Table (Surah V), and that of Mary (Surah XIX),
derive their names from references to Jesus Christ and His work. The
very fact that Jesus Christ has a place in the literature of Islam,
and is acknowledged by all Moslems as one of their greater prophets
in itself therefore challenges comparison between Him and Mohammed.
Did Al-Ghazali ever meet this challenge and in how far did he compare
Mohammed with Christ? It is our purpose in this chapter to answer the
question by collating all the important references in the _Ihya_ and his
other works and then to draw some conclusions both as to his sources and
his opinions. The reader may judge for himself how far Al-Ghazali is a
schoolmaster to lead Moslems to Christ.
We search in vain among all his works for a sketch of the life of Christ
or of His teaching. Al-Ghazali doubtless had read and was probably well
acquainted with the only popular work known which gives a connected
account of the life of Jesus Christ according to Moslem sources,
namely, _Kitab qusus al Anbiya_ by _Ibn Ibrahim Ath-Thaʾlabi_, a doctor
of theology of the Shafi School, who died in A. H. 427 (A. D. 1036).
The fabulous character of this mass of traditions has been shown in a
translation of the section which deals with Jesus Christ.[83] Al-Ghazali
does not give altogether the same stories as are given by Ath-Thaʾlabi
but gives a great number of other incidents and reported sayings, many
of which resemble those found in the Gospels and others which are wholly
apocryphal.
The question again arises where did Al-Ghazali gain this knowledge of the
Gospel? Did he have access to a Persian or Arabic translation; or was
all this material which we have collated, the result of hearsay, gathered
from the lips of Christian monks and Jewish rabbis? It is perfectly
clear that he was acquainted with Old Testament tradition even more than
with that of the New Testament. There are scores of passages in which he
refers to the teachings of Moses, the Psalms of David, and the lives of
the Old Testament Prophets. We have already referred to translations of
the Bible into Arabic before the time of Al-Ghazali in our first chapter.
There is a tradition that “the People of the Book used to read the Torah
in Hebrew and interpret it in Arabic to the followers of Islam.” Another
tradition says that “Kaʾab the Rabbi brought a book to Omar the Caliph
and said, ‘Here is the Torah, read it.’”[84] We learn from the Jewish
Encyclopædia that “The _fihrist_ of al-Nadim mentions an Ahmed ibn Abd
Allah ibn Salam who translated the Bible into Arabic, at the time of
Haroun ar-Rashîd, and that _Fahr ud-Din ar-Razi_ mentions a translation
of Habbakuk by the son of _Rabban At-Tabari_. Many of the Arabic
Historians as At-Tabari, Masʾudi, Hamza, and Biruni cite passages and
recount the early history of the Jews in a most circumstantial manner.
Ibn Kutaibah, the historian (d. 889), says that he read the Bible; and
he even made a collection of Biblical passages in a work which has been
preserved by Ibn Jauzi of the twelfth century.” The first important
Arabic translation is that of Saʾadia Gaon (892-942). The influence of
this translation was in its way as great as that of Gaon’s philosophical
work.
A version of the Psalms was made by Hafiz al-Quti in the tenth century
and from internal evidence we know that the author had been Christian.
Another translation of the Old Testament in Arabic was made by the Jews
in Cairo in the middle of the eleventh century. The translation of
Saʾadia had become a standard work in Egypt, Palestine and Syria, by
the end of the tenth century, and it was revised about A. D. 1070.[85]
As regards Persian translations of the Bible we learn from the Jewish
Encyclopædia that according to Maimonides, the Pentateuch was translated
into Persian many hundred years previous to Mohammed. But this statement
cannot be further substantiated. In regard to Arabic versions of the
Gospels we have already given Dr. Kilgour’s statement.
Is it not probable that one or other of these versions of the Gospel was
known to Al-Ghazali? Does he not himself state: “I have _read_ in the
Gospel”? Not only does he reproduce the stories and sayings of Christ
from the Gospels but in some cases, as the reader will see, the very
words of the text. It is true that there is much apocryphal matter also
of which the canonical Gospels know nothing. We are in ignorance and we
must remain in ignorance whence Al-Ghazali derived this material; or did
he invent it even as the men of his day invented stories about Mohammed?
In the _Ihya_ we find the following incidents, real and apocryphal,
regarding the life of Christ on earth as a prophet and saint.[86] We
begin with Al-Ghazali’s witness to His sinlessness: “It is said that
the devil (may God curse him) appeared to Jesus and said, ‘Say there is
no God but God.’ He replied: ‘The word is true but I will not repeat it
after you.’” (Vol. III, p. 23.) Again: “It is related that when Jesus was
born, the devils came to Satan and said: ‘All the idols have fallen on
their faces.’ He said: ‘This has happened on your account.’ Then he flew
until he reached the regions of the earth; there he found Jesus had been
born and the angels were protecting him. So he returned to the devils
and said to them: ‘Truly a Prophet was born yesterday. No woman has ever
given birth before to a child when I was not present except in this
case.’ And that is why men now despair of worshipping idols.” (Vol. III,
p. 26.)
“It is related that Jesus one day was pillowing his head on a stone; and
the devil passed by and said: ‘O Jesus, now you have shown your love for
the world!’ Then Jesus picked up the stone, threw it at him and said:
‘Take it and the world.’” (Vol. III, p. 26.) We find this reference to
the days of His youth in Nazareth: “Some one said to Jesus: ‘Who gave you
your education?’ He replied: ‘No one. But I beheld the ignorance of the
foolish despicable and so I departed from it.’” “Jesus the Prophet was
of those who were especially favoured. Among the proofs of it is this
that he called down peace upon himself, for he said: ‘Peace be on me the
day I was born and the day I shall die and the day I shall be raised up
alive.’ And this was because of his peace of mind and his loving kindness
towards men. But as for John the son of Zachariah (on him be peace),
he took the place of awe and fear towards God and did not utter these
words until after they were repeated to him by his Creator, who said:
‘Peace be upon him the day he was born and the day he died and the day he
was raised again.’” This is an interesting critical comment on the two
passages referred to, which occur in the same chapter of the Koran, and I
have never seen them used elsewhere as an argument for the superiority of
Christ to John. (Vol. IV, p. 245.)
Al-Ghazali gives Jesus the usual titles given Him in the Koran, namely,
Son of Mary, Spirit of God, Word of God, Prophet and Apostle. But these
latter titles mean little because he endorses the strange Moslem theory
that there have been no less than 124,000 prophets since the world began.
In his book “_Al-Iqtasad_” he devotes a long argument to prove to the
Jews that Jesus was indeed a prophet, basing it upon his teaching and
miracles (pp. 83-86). In his _Jawahir ul-Koran_ he even classes Mary the
Virgin with the prophets and gives the list of these worthies in the
following curious order: Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Aaron, Zachariah,
John, Jesus, Mary, David, Solomon, Joshua, Lot, Idris, Khudra, Shuʾaib,
Elijah, and Mohammed!