A Moslem Seeker after God/His Creed and Credulity
V
His Creed and Credulity
"This man, (Al-Ghazali) if ever any have deserved the name, was truly a 'divine,' and he may be justly placed on a level with Origen, so remarkable was he for learning and ingenuity, and gifted with such a rare faculty for the skilful and worthy exposition of doctrine. All that is good, noble, and sublime that his great soul had compassed he bestowed upon Mohammedanism, and he adorned the doctrines of the Koran with so much piety and learning that, in the form given them by him, they seem, in my opinion, worthy the assent of Christians. Whatsoever was most excellent in the philosophy of Aristotle or in the Sufic mysticism he discreetly adapted to the Mohammedan 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. He was the first of Mohammedan divines."
V
HIS CREED AND CREDULITY
ALTHOUGH, according to his own testimony in his "Confessions," Al-Ghazali was troubled from his earliest years with doubt and scepticism, he was not willing to yield to it, and his faith rose triumphant above all his doubts. This is one of the outstanding facts in his biography. He could say with the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews that "faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen." Not only did he find God in nature and in his own conscience and consciousness, but he was a firm believer in revelation. Naturally the only revelation to which Al-Ghazali turned as the basis, the very bed-rock of religious faith, was the Koran, the eternal, uncreated word of God according to Moslem teaching; and also to the life of the Prophet Mohammed, his practices and his precepts handed down in orthodox Tradition—this also was a revelation from God.
Whether he ever read the Old and New Testament is a question we consider unanswered. He did not draw his creed from this source.
Al-Ghazali gives the distinction very clearly, alas clearly as the 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 Mu tazila 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 Murji a 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[1]
"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 (asali) 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 ( f arsh), 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 Him self 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 es sence. He is far removed from change of state or of place. Events have no place in Him, and mis haps 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 be fall 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 Com mand; 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 dis tant 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 Wilier 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 Wilier, 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 Wilier, 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 en counters 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 Shay tans 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 concern ing 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 be lieve 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-Kaivthar (Koran 108). And that he should believe in the Reckoning and in the dis tinctions 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 (Mubtadis) concerning the Sunna; and the Moslems concerning works. And that he should be lieve 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 (shafa a) of the prophets, next of the learned ( ulama), 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 AH 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 (bid a). 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 t herefore 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 any thing 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.)
He was a predestinarian in the fullest sense. In one place he writes: " When God Almighty let His hands pass over the back of Adam and gathered men into His two hands, He placed some of them in His right hand and the others in His left; then He opened both His hands before Adam, and Adam looked at them and saw them like imperceptible atoms. Then God said: "These are destined for Paradise and these are destined for hell-fire" He then asked them: Am I not your Lord? And they replied: Certainly, we testify that Thou art our Lord/ God then asked Adam and the angels to be witnesses to the act; after this God replaced them into the loins of Adam. They were at that time purely spiritual beings without bodies. He then caused them to die, but gathered them and kept them in a receptacle near His throne. When the germ of a new being is placed in the womb of the mother, it remains there till its body is sufficiently developed; the soul in the same is then dead yet. When God Almighty breathes into the spirit, He restores to it its most precious part of which it had been deprived while preserved in the receptacle near the throne. This is the first death and the second life. Then God places man in this world till he has reached the term fixed for him."
The great Mystic was also superstitious. Some of his books deal with magical formulae taken from the Koran and the medicinal use of its text or of the names of God. One of the most celebrated magic squares used on amulets, etc., is called the " Square of Al-Ghazali " or Al-Buduh. It may interest in conclusion to give an account of this form of magic, approved by Al-Ghazali, because it is one of the things by which he is best known among the masses in the world of Islam.
In the older Arabic books on magic this formula plays a comparatively minor part; but after it was taken up by Al-Ghazali and cited in his Munkidh (pp. 46 and 50 of ed. of Cairo, 1303) as an inexplicable, but certain assistance in cases of difficult labour, it came to be universally known as "the three-fold talisman, or seal, or table of Al-Ghaz ali " (al-wakf, al-khatam, al-jadwal, al-muthallath lil-Ghasali) and finally has become the starting point for the whole "Science of Letters" ( ( Ilm ul-huruf) (e. g. f Cf. Al-Buni’s Shems ul Mu arif A. H. 622).
Al-Ghazali is said to have developed the formula, under divine inspiration (ilham), from the combinations of letters which open Suras xix. and xlii. of the Koran, and which by themselves are also used as talismans.[2] Others trace the formula back to Adam, from whom it passed down to Al-Ghazali.[3]
For the popular mind Buduh has become a Jinn whose services can be secured by writing his name either in letters or numbers. The uses of the word are most varied to invoke both good and bad for tune. It is used against menorrhagia, against pains in the stomach, to render oneself invisible, against temporary impotence, etc. Lane’s Cairo magician also used it with his ink mirror (" Modern Egyptians/ chap. xii. ) . We find the same in magical treatises. It is also engraved upon jewels and metal plates or rings which are carried as per manent talismans, and it is inscribed at the beginning of books as a preservative. But by far the most common use is to ensure the arrival of letters and packages.[4] No letter from one pious Moslem to another is ever posted in the Near East without putting the figure 8642 in Arabic on the outside of the envelope where it is sealed. And one may see thousands of children in Egypt who have never heard of Al-Ghazali and cannot read the letters of his name wearing his magic square on lead or silver amulet to protect them from the hideous power of the ChildWitch (Um-as-Subyan). In the Azhar University men study his creed but in the villages they follow his credulity and to all the fellahin of Egypt Buduh has become a guardian Angel!
- ↑ An exposition of the Creed of the People of the Sunna on the two Words of Witnessing (kalimatai sh-shahada) which form one of the foundations of Islam. This creed is intended to be committed to memory by children. It forms the first section of the second book of Ghazali’s Ihya, VoL II, pp. 17-42 of edit, of Cairo with commentary of the Sayyid Murtadha. We are indebted for the translation to Professor Macdonald (Muslim Theology and Jurisprudence)
- ↑ For the process see pp. 170 et seq. of " Mafatih Al-Ghalb" (Cairo, 1327) by Ahmed Al-Zarkawi, a contemporary Egyptian magician, and on the subject in general, the sixth and seventh Risalas in that volume.
- ↑ Cf. "Al-Faidh al Mutawalli of Ahmed Damanhtiri, Cairo, 1331.
- ↑ " Encyclopaedia of Islam," article Buduh.