He indeed did his best to vitalize the law and the doctrine...

He indeed did his best to vitalize the law and the doctrine of Islam through this emphasis on the living religious experience, and this is evident from the very title of his magnum opus, Ihya’ ‘Ulum al-Din (Revivification of the Sciences of Religion).

But the mystical teaching of al-Ghazālī found in Ihya’ , meant for all to read, must be studied in conjunction with what is given in his other works dealing more specially with the Sufi doctrine such as Mishkat al-Anwar, al-Ma’arif al-‘Aqliyyah, Mukashafat al-Qulub and the like.

The theory developed in these works represents what may be labelled as theosophical mysticism and this cannot be properly understood without reference to al-Ghazālī’s specific views about the nature of God and the human soul. From the point of view of our present study his mystical views with regard to God and soul may be profitably compared with those philosophers, i.e. al-Farabi, ibn Sina, and their followers. 2. God The philosophers have particularly emphasized the absolute unity of God.

No positive attributes can be ascribed to God for that leads to the subject-predicate dualism. Even existence can only be referred to Him. He is above all distinctions and above all the categories of thought. The over-emphasis on unity shorn of all qualities reduces God to a mere non-content inanity. He becomes an ineffable, indescribable, unpredictable something. Such is the result of the dialectic of the philosophers’ monistic reductionism.

As mentioned in the preceding chapter, some (if them, following Aristotle, have described God as thought thinking thought. That which He knows comes into being emanating from the over-effulgence of His Bing, but He does not positively will anything, for willing implies a need – a deficiency. He recognizes only Himself or at best His first eminent, the first intelligence, and, thus, is purely transcendent to this world of change and multiplicity.

Like the philosophers, al-Ghazālī lays stress on the unity of God: God is the sole-existent and the ultimate cause and ground of all being, the only self-subsisting reality. Yet He possesses the fullness of being, all the attributes mentioned in the Qur’an inhere in Him, only the modality of this inherence is rationally unknowable. We should, however, understand that all His attributes are spiritual.