Al-Ghazali Story - Part 8

INFLUENCE

Al-Ghazālī’s influence within Islam has been both profound and most widespread: his works have been and still are being read and studied from West Africa to Oceania more than those of any other Muslim writer, and his teaching has been accepted and made a rule of life more than that of any other theologian. It has been claimed and rightly so that “al-Ghazālī’s influence, taken singly, on the Muslim community has been perhaps greater than that of all the scholastic theologians.” {637} But we hasten to add that, like any other original thinker in the world, al-Ghazālī did not go without his share of criticism. The unprecedented attempt on his part to make orthodoxy mystical and mysticism orthodox, and both philosophical, naturally incurred suspicion and criticism from all schools of thought and all shades of opinion both before and after his death. Liberals have criticized him for his conservatism, and conservatives for his liberalism; philosophers for his orthodoxy, and the orthodox for his philosophy.



Al-Ghazālī’s. constant use of philosophical language and his mode of argument and preoccupation with Sufism led Tartushi (d. 520/1126), al-Mazari (d. 536/1141), ibn Jauzi (d. 597/1200), ibn al-Salah (d. 643/1245), ibn Taimīyyah (d. 728/1328), ibn Qayyim (d. 751/1350) and other famous theologians of the orthodox school to denounce him publicly as “one of the misguided.” Ibn Jauzi is reported to have once exclaimed: “How cheaply has al-Ghazālī traded theology for Sufism!”63 Ibn Taimiyyah, on the other hand has accused him of having traded “theology” for philosophy. Qadi abu `Abd Allah Muhammad ibn Hamdin of Cordova went so far as to issue a decree (fatwa) against al-Ghazālī’s works, with the result that all his books including the Ihyā’ 64 were burnt and destroyed throughout Spain and the possession of them was forbidden on the threat of confiscation of property or even on that of death. The destruction of his philosophical and even theological writings was also ordered in North Africa during the reign of the Marrakush Sultan ‘Ali ibn Yusuf ibn Tashifin (477/1084-537/1142), who was fanatically orthodox in his religious views. Both of these incidents, however, bear ample testimony to the fact that al-Ghazālī’s writings had gained a very wide circulation in the Muslim West even as early as that.

Amongst the philosophers, al-Ghazālī’s most renowned and bitterest critic was ibn Rushd (520/1126-595/1198). He took up a point-by-point refutation of al-Ghazālī’s arguments against the philosophers as given in the Tahāfut and named his own work Tahāfut al-Tahāfut  (576/1180). Ibn Rushd’s defence of the philosophers is as subtle and vigorous as is al-Ghazālī’s attack against them. Ibn Rushd indeed handles his arguments with accomplished understanding and ingenious skill, yet, in the considered opinion of those who are competent to judge, al-Ghazālī’s arguments are in the final analysis more telling than those of his adversary.65 Ibn Rushd in the course of his discussion accuses al-Ghazālī of hypocrisy and insincerity by saying that his polemics against the philosophers was merely to win the favour of the orthodox;66 there is nothing to substantiate this charge. He also accused al-Ghazālī of {638} inconsistencies in his thought. He alleges, for example, that in the Mishkāt al-Anwār al-Ghazālī lends wholehearted support to the theory of emanation which he had so vehemently criticised in the Tahāfut.67 Al-Ghazālī’s teaching, according to him, is sometimes detrimental to religion and sometimes to philosophy and sometimes to both. It is said, on the report of ibn Taimiyyah, that ibn Rushd was so struck by the duplicity of al-Ghazālī’s thought that he would often quote the following verse with reference to him. “One day you area Yemenite when you meet a man from Yemen. But when you see someone from Ma’add you assert you are from `Adnān!”68

The charge of inconsistency against al-Ghazālī has also been made by another Muslim philosopher, namely ibn Tufail (d. 501/1185), who says that in his works meant for general readers al-Ghazālī is “bound in one place and loose in another and has denied certain things and then declared them to be true.” In spite of his pointing out certain contradictions in al-Ghazālī’s works, ibn Tufail had on the whole great admiration69 for his teaching, and the influence of it can be seen in his own greatly admired philosophical romance Hayy Bin Yaqzān.

Indeed, the amount of criticism levelled against al-Ghazālī 70 is itself the proof of his widespread influence. The number of al-Ghazālī’s followers and admirers who accepted his teaching and spread it is immensely greater than that of his critics; it is neither possible nor useful here to give a long catalogue of names. One fact, however, becomes conspicuous that it includes mostly people of two types, namely, the orthodox theologians and the Sufis, or those who were equally qualified as both. This makes it clear that the influence of al-Ghazālī within Islam expressed itself simultaneously in two different traditions, i. e., those of mysticism and orthodoxy, and, thus, along with the other forces of history went a long way in determining the permanent attitudes in the religious consciousness of the Islamic community, namely, the attitudes of spiritualization and fundamentalism.

Of all the works of al-Ghazālī it is in his Ihyā’ that he tries to maintain an equidistant poise between these two aspects of the religious consciousness. Ihyā’ indeed is still the most widely read of all the works of al-Ghazālī in all {639} sections of the community, if not in its entirety at least in the form of fragments and summaries which are available in large numbers.71 It has been so eulogized by some that they have not hesitated to call it the second Qur’an, and the theologians and traditionalists have not tired of writing voluminous commentaries on it.

But it is not within Islam only that al-Ghazālī’s influence exerted itself so strongly; it also had its impact on Western, particularly Jewish and Christian, thought, and indeed has flowed right into the most modern of our philosophical traditions. The influence of al-Ghazālī on modern European philosophy is a fascinating subject. It will be dealt with in the next volume in the chapter on “The Influence of Muslim Philosophy on the West.”