Volume 18, No. 5, 2021
Al-Ghazali: A Mélange Of Theology, Law And Mysticism And, A Non-Totalizing Bayeux Tapestry Of Islamic Thought
Dr. Ghulam Shabbir , Saleem Nawaz , Dr. Naima Saeed , Dr. Sajid Mahmood , Mrs Sadia Rehman , Dr. Muhammad Imran
Abstract
Al-Ghazali is the most influential personality of post-classical Islam who reconstituted the fundamental elements of Islam and struck harmony among the fundamental disciplines of Islam i.e. law, theology and Sufism by re-evaluating the kerygma-tic tradition on the touch-stone of his religious experience. His intellectual spiritual odyssey is replete with moral doubts and certainties i.e. an essential commodity for higher realization of Truth which is something quite natural to the Quran (2:260). However, amidst long journey his positions changed and evolved; and if one does not take stock of the crests and the troughs of his inner vicissitudes the fuller titanic grasp of his personality seemed improbable. He has much in his folds to be bracketed in the traditionalists as an anti-science and an arch-rival of philosophy but on the cost of intellectual integrity for his complete intellectual portrait portrays him concerned to keep philosophy in its proper place and secure the right of reason against cheap defenders of religion. He pioneered the discipline of religious philosophy wherefrom benefitted not only his friends and foes in Islam, the theologians of Christianity and Judaism strengthened their traditions by his religious philosophy. Yet he constructed personal-ism i.e. how to be a good person and possess all private soft virtues on a strong foundation of personal faith on the cost of Islamic positivism – how to establish a world social moral order by social or community virtues. This paper intends to evaluate his intellectual and spiritual legacy in systematic order to dislodge illusions and contradictions that emerge from partial and superficial view of his thought. This article is based on qualitative research.
Pages: 2476-2500
Keywords: Islam; metaphysics; Sufism; philosophy; theology; law; Personal-ism; Islamic Positivism; social fact; pure reason; revelation; science; Cartesian doubt; Ghazalian skepticism; and certainty; transcendentalism.