Al-Ghazali:

Muhammad al-Ghazali remains one of the most celebrated

scholars in the history of Islamic thought. His exceptional
life and works continue to be indispensable in the study of
jurisprudence, theology, philosophy and mysticism. The
tens of books that he left behind were the result of an
inquisitive mind that began the quest for knowledge at a
very early stage. In the introduction to his
autobiographical work Deliverance from Error (Al-Munqidh
min al-Dalal, p. 81), al-Ghazali said:

“The thirst for grasping the real meaning of things was

indeed my habit and want from my early years and in the
prime of my life. It was an instinctive, natural disposition
placed in my makeup by Allah Most High, not something
due to my own choosing and contriving. As a result, the
fetters of servile conformism fell away from me, and
inherited beliefs lost their hold on me, when I was quite
young.”

Al-Ghazali’s Life:

Al-Ghazali’s full name is Muhammad Ibn Muhammad Ibn

Muhammad Ibn Ahmad al-Tusi. He was born in 450/1058 in
Tus, Khurasan near Meshhad in present-day Iran. He bore
the title of respect Hujjat al-Islam (Proof of Islam) for the
role he played in defending Islam against the trends of
thought that existed at the time. His father was a wool
spinner (ghazzal) and thus, relative to this profession, al-
Ghazali acquired this name. (Al-Subki, Tabaqat al-
Shafi`iyyah al-Kubra, vol. VI, pp. 191-193) Although he was
born in Tus, a Persian, non-Arabic land, Al-Ghazali wrote
the overwhelming majority of his works in Arabic

Al-Ghazali divided the sciences or knowledge into eternal and

accidental. Eternal knowledge belongs to God alone. He divided
accidental knowledge into immediate (hajmiyy) and theoretical
(nazariyy). The first is the kind of knowledge that one has to know
with the beginning of reason, such as the existence of the self. On the
other hand, theoretical knowledge is the result of sound thinking (al-
nazar al-sahih). Related to this is al-Ghazali’s definition of reason. He
said that it is “the qualification which enables the qualified [person] to
perceive knowledge and to think about the cognizable.” (Al-Mankhul,
pp. 44-45)
In Islamic psychology and Sufi psychology, Ghazali discussed the concept of the self and
the causes of its misery and happiness. He described the self using four terms: Qalb
(heart), Ruh (spirit), Nafs (soul) and 'Aql (intellect). He stated that "the self has an
inherent yearning for an ideal, which it strives to realize and it is endowed with qualities
to help realize it." He further stated that the self has motor and sensory motives for
fulfilling its bodily needs. He wrote that the motor motives comprise of propensities and
impulses, and further divided the propensities into two types: appetite and anger. He
wrote that appetite urges hunger, thirst, and sexual craving, while anger takes the form of
rage, indignation and revenge. He further wrote that impulse resides in the muscles,
nerves, and tissues, and moves the organs to "fulfill the propensities."

Ghazali was one of the first to divide the sensory motives (apprehension) into five
external senses (the classical senses of hearing, sight, smell, taste and touch) and five
internal senses: common sense (Hiss Mushtarik) which synthesizes sensuous impressions
carried to the brain while giving meaning to them; imagination (Takhayyul) which
enables someone to retain mental images from experience; reflection (Tafakkur) which
brings together relevant thoughts and associates or dissociates them as it considers fit but
has no power to create anything new which is not already present in the mind;
recollection (Tadhakkur) which remembers the outer form of objects in memory and
recollects the meaning; and the memory (Hafiza) where impressions received through the
senses are stored. He wrote that, while the external senses occur through specific organs,
the internal senses are located in different regions of the brain, and discovered that the
memory is located in the hinder lobe, imagination is located in the frontal lobe, and
reflection is located in the middle folds of the brain. He stated that these inner senses
allow people to predict future situations based on what they learn from past experiences.

In The Revival of Religious Sciences, he wrote that the five internal senses are found in
both humans and animals. In Mizan al Amal, however, he later stated that animals "do
not possess a well-developed reflective power" and argued that animals mostly think in
terms of "pictorial ideas in a simple way and are incapable of complex association and
dissociation of abstract ideas involved in reflection." He wrote that "the self carries two
additional qualities, which distinguishes man from animals enabling man to attain
spiritual perfection", which are 'Aql (intellect) and Irada (will). He argued that the
intellect is "the fundamental rational faculty, which enables man to generalize and form
concepts and gain knowledge." He also argued that human will and animal will are both
different. He wrote that human will is "conditioned by the intellect" while animal will is
"conditioned by anger and appetite" and that "all these powers control and regulate the
body." He further wrote that the Qalb (heart) "controls and rules over them" and that it
has six powers: appetite, anger, impulse, apprehension, intellect, and will. He stated that
humans have all six of these traits, while animals only have three (appetite, anger, and
impulse).[24] This was in contrast to other ancient and medieval thinkers such as Aristotle,
Avicenna, Roger Bacon and Thomas Aquinas who all believed that animals cannot
become angry.

Ghazali wrote that knowledge can either be innate or acquired. He divided innate
knowledge into phenomenal, (material world) and spiritual (related to God and soul), and
divided acquired knowledge into imitation, logical reasoning, contemplation and
intuition. He also argued that there are four elements in human nature: the sage (intellect
and reason), the pig (lust and gluttony), the dog (anger), and the devil(brutality). He
argued that the latter three elements are in conflict with the former element and that
"different people have such powers in different proportions."

Ghazali divided the Nafs into three categories based on the Qur’an: Nafs
Ammarah(12:53) which "exhorts one to freely indulge in gratifying passions and
instigates to do evil", Nafs Lawammah (75:2) which is "the conscience that directs man
towards right or wrong", and Nafs Mutmainnah (89:27) which is "a self that reaches the
ultimate peace." As an analogy between psychology and politics, he compared the soul to
that of a king running a kingdom, arguing that the bodily organs are like the artisans and
workers, intellect is like a wise vizier, desire is like a wicked servant, and anger is like the
police force. He argued that a king can correctly run the state of affairs by turning to the
wise vizier, turns away from the wicked servant, and regulating the workers and the
police; and that in the same way, the soul is balanced if it "keeps anger under control and
makes the intellect dominate desire." He argued that for a soul to reach perfection, it
needs to evolve through several stages: sensuous (like a moth which has no memory),
imaginative (lower animal), instinctive (higher animal), rational ("transcends animal
stage and apprehends objects beyond the scope of his senses") and divine ("apprehends
reality of spiritual things").

He stated that there are two types of diseases: physical and spiritual. He considered the
latter to be more dangerous, resulting from "ignorance and deviation from God", and
listed the spiritual diseases as: self-centeredness; addiction to wealth, fame and social
status; and ignorance, cowardice, cruelty, lust, waswas (doubt), malevolence, calumny,
envy, deception, and greed. To overcome these spiritual weaknesses, Ghazali suggested
the therapy of opposites ("use of imagination in pursuing the opposite"), such as
ignorance & learning, or hate & love. He described the personality as an "integration of
spiritual and bodily forces" and believed that "closeness to God is equivalent to normality
whereas distance from God leads to abnormality."

Ghazali argued that human beings occupy a position "midway between animals and
angels and his distinguishing quality is knowledge." He argues that a human can either
rise to "the level of the angels with the help of knowledge" or fall to "the levels of
animals by letting his anger and lust dominate him." He also argued that Ilm al-Batin
(esotericism) is fard (incumbent) and advised Tazkiya Nafs (self-purification). He also
noted that "good conduct can only develop from within and does not need total
destruction of natural propensities."

As a scholar and teacher, al-Ghazali was interested in the problem of knowledge: its
concepts, methods, categories and aims.26 True knowledge, in al-Ghazali’s view, is
knowledge of
God, His books, His prophets, the kingdoms of earth and heaven, as well as knowledge of
Shari‘an as revealed by His Prophet. Such knowledge is thus a religious science, even if
it includes the study of certain worldly phenomena. Disciplines relating to this world,
such as medicine, arithmetic, etc., are classed as techniques.27
The purpose of knowledge is to help man to achieve plenitude and to attain true
happiness—the happiness of the hereafter—by drawing close to God and gazing upon
His countenance.

Al-Ghazali (Algazel) (1058-1111) discussed the concept of the self and the causes of its
misery and happiness. He described the self using four terms: Qalb (heart), Ruh (spirit),
Nafs (soul) and 'Aql (intellect). He stated that "the self has an inherent yearning for an
ideal, which it strives to realize and it is endowed with qualities to help realize it." He
also stated that there are two types of diseases: physical and spiritual. He considered the
latter to be more dangerous, resulting from "ignorance and deviation from God", and
listed the spiritual diseases as: self-centeredness; addiction to wealth, fame and social
status; and ignorance, cowardice, cruelty, lust, waswas (doubt), malevolence, calumny,
envy, deception, and greed. To overcome these spiritual weaknesses, al-Ghazali
suggested the therapy of opposites ("use of imagination in pursuing the opposite"), such
as ignorance & learning, or hate & love. He described the personality as an "integration
of spiritual and bodily forces" and believed that "closeness to God is equivalent to
normality whereas distance from God leads to abnormality."

Al-Ghazali, known in Europe as Algazel, was one of the most illustrious Muslim
scholars. He was born in 1058 near the city of Tus and died in 1111. He was the son of a
poor, illiterate man and as a youth he studied law, theology and philosophy before
becoming a teacher of law. He became famous throughout Islam for his eloquence and
learning. Al-Ghazali spent much of his life teaching and writing, staying in Jerusalem,
Damascus and Baghdad where he flourished and where he taught at the Nizamiyyah
College. Al-Ghazali wrote:

`It has always been my practice, as a youth and as a man, to thirst for knowledge of the
true nature of things…. So that I can be freed from the bond of imitation.'

For Al-Ghazali, personal knowledge should spur on to good deeds which please God and
lead to salvation. He was also a very influential scholar. His Maqasid Al-Falasifah (The
Aims of the philosophers), translated into Latin in the 12th century, became very
influential amongst scholastic Christian theologians.

In his thirties, Al-Ghazali became the principal teacher at Madrasah Nizamiyyah of

Baghdad, the most renowned institution of learning in eastern Islam (Cordova was its
Western equivalent). His ideas on education dominated Islamic educational thought for
centuries after his death. He studied the education of the child and the role of the master.
According to Al-Ghazali,

`knowledge exists potentially in the human soul like the seed in the soil; by learning the
potential becomes actual.'
The child, Al-Ghazali also wrote,

`Is a trust (placed by God) in the hands of his parents, and his innocent heart is a
precious element capable of taking impressions.'

One of the elements Al-Ghazali insisted upon is that a child should be taught the words of
the creed in his earliest days and be taught the meaning gradually as he grew older;
corresponding to the three stages of memorizing, understanding and conviction. The way
the child relates to the world at large occupies a large concern in Al-Ghazali's mind. In
concert with Ibn Al-Hajj, he stresses that a child must not boast about his father's wealth
and must be polite and attentive to all. He should be taught not to love money for love of
it is a deadly poison. The perspective of Al-Ghazali is centred upon personal effort in the
search for truth; and this presupposes, he insists, a received education and the direction of
a master. Education (tarbiya), Al-Ghazali states in Ayyuha l-walad is like

`The labour of the farmer, who uproots the weeds, trims wheat so as it grows better and
gives a better harvest.'

The religion Al-Ghazali preached was a vivid one, full of the love of God on the one
hand and of the horrors of sin and hell on the other. Al-Ghazali's views on religion and
faith were written largely in Jerusalem after he secluded himself in the Aqsa Mosque and
details on such views are found in the article on the said city. But briefly here, it should
be pointed out that his most influential books were the Destruction of Philosophy and the
Revival of the Science of Religion (Ihya Ulum Addin). In these he argues that sensation is
illusory and that reason, based on sensation, is deceptive and leads only to doubt. Logic
and science cannot prove God the only great reality. Only a life of prayer and good works
can bring man to know God while at the same time, without a belief in God and a desire
to do his will, there can be no moral order in society.