One feature of Ghazzali's attitude has considerable significance in looking to an increased study of his works as a factor towards the revivification of Islam: his tolerance. Although regarding Al Hallaj's expressions, (for example, I am the truth, i. e. God) as incautious, he helped to defend him and to save him from execution on a charge of. blasphemy. He wrote a treatise on tolerance: The Criterion of the Difference between Islam and Heresy. In this teaching of tolerance he felt himself to be pointing back to the policy of the earliest Muslim times and to the greatest authorities of early Islam. He "strove to attract the souls of his fellow Muslims to spiritual faith which unifies, to worship at the altars which are in the hearts of men".[1]
The influence of Ghazzali has been represented by Mr. Macdonald as chief-
- ↑ I. Goldzieher: Vorlesungen uber den Islam, Leipzig. 1910. p., 185. See translation in the Indian Philosophical Review by the present writer: Vol, I. pp. 260–6.
