“Over the past three decades, a new current of ‘combative Islam' has appeared and grown rapidly, and is attempting to gain control of the Islamic world”
Nabil Nofal
The Islam was considered as comparatively young religion and it had about one billion followers making it the largest religion in the world. The word Islam is Arabic and means submission, i. e. to submit to God’s will. It is a monotheistic religion, and its adherents are called Muslims. It is interesting that Muslims recognize several Judeo-Christian prophets from early times like Moses and Jesus and they believe that they are also messengers of the same God as well as prophet Muhammad is, but the last one is the greatest. Islam’s sacred text is the Qur’an and Muslims have faith that it comprises God’s words, in writing. Beliefs are very important to the Muslims It was written in the Qur’an: “Righteous is he who believes in Allah and the Last Day and the Angels and the Scriptures and the Prophets" (2:177). (Religiousfacts.com, n. p.)
Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (1058 – 1111 A. D.) was known as one of the notorious Islamic philosophers and even he was considered to be, naturally after the Prophet Muhammad, the main authority on Islamic jurisprudence and theology. What was not known by the people was that he spent a lot of time to research and write on the phenomenon of happiness. His core ideas were that one cannot find the ultimate satisfaction in the physical things, but it can be found in the process of self-discovering someone’s identity through personal experience. (Al Ghazali, n. p.) One of his nicknames was The Proof of Islam and he was addressed by that not only because of the sharpness of his writings but due to the quality of his life. He was chosen by the Baghdad’s University as a Professor of Theology when he was only thirty three. Unfortunately he dropped in emotional crisis for the next couple of years, looking for rational basis for the basic principles of Islam as they were described in the Qur’an. Al Ghazali drew the conclusion that the only way to find the truth was to look for it among the Sufi tradition, i. e. the mystical side of Islam.
In his book The Alchemy of Happiness he wrote: “Soofeeism has existed in one shape or other in every age and region; its mystical doctrines are to be found in the schools of ancient Greece and in those of the modern philosophers of Europe.” (Ibid, Note B, p. 56).
During his years of teaching in Baghdad, Ghazali wrote The Incoherence and that was the end of rejection of Aristotle and Plato by the Islamic philosophy. The book was supported by falasifa, an incorrectly defined group of Islamic philosophers, especially outlined were Ibn Sina (Avicenna) and al-Farabi, who tried to impose intellectual pressure upon the representatives of the Greek philosophy as he criticized such scholars like Socrates, Hippocrates, Aristotle and Plato for deceiving Muslims and reducing the positive aspects of the Islam religion to hypocritical lies and banality. (Ghazali, 1963, 2) With great sadness he named the Greek philosophers polytheists and accused them in corrupting the Islam, respectively the Qur’an.
In the field of education, Ghazali’s philosophy reached the highest point in religious thinking revealing his tendency towards the integration of different intellectual schools. He managed to achieve a synthesis of philosophical, legal and mystical way of thinking. Very interesting confirmation was shared by that time among the scholars and the people who were in touch with the science in a certain way. Nuh Aydin wrote in his article Did al-Ghazali Kill the Science in Islam? that a belief was disseminated among oriental scholars that one of the main reasons, if not the most significant, for the breakdown of science in the Islamic world after flowering during its golden age, was Al Ghazali (Aydin, n. p.) The attack against the philosophers found its culmination in his famous book Tahafut al-Falasifah (The Incoherence of Philosophers).
Many scientists – orientalists insisted that the book Tahafut, written by him, was accountable for the long decline in education and science in the Islamic world. Their key argument in case they intended to describe and explain the Muslim world’s intellectual life was widely spread and also widely adopted explanation of that what happened not only in the West, but among the Muslim population too. The best answer to that accusation was given by George Saliba, a Professor of Oriental Science at the University of Columbia. In his answer he outlined three arguments: the first argument was that many people assumed that it was necessary a sharp conflict between religion and science always to be present. (Saliba, n. p.) Secondly many scientists from the oriental countries were also representatives of the religious authorities. (Ibid) George Saliba gave plenty of examples for early Muslim scholars who looked for scientific knowledge everywhere it was possible to be found. They demanded translations if the knowledge was found in other civilization, Greek, Indian, etc. He wrote that carrying out developments and corrections, and even opening new courses wit new disciplines they tried to show maturity. Saliba added that all these activities led to a new notorious “period of creativity and rapid advancements in many scientific disciplines in the Islamic world”. (Ibid) It happened during the eighth century.
Al Ghazali dedicated Chapters 2 , 3 and 4 to the knowledge, respectively Knowledge of God and Knowledge of World. He began Chapter 2 with the confirmation that it was written in the books of old prophets: "Know thine own soul, and thou shalt know thy Lord," which Ghazali simplified in the following way: "He who knows himself, already knows his Lord." (Al Ghazali, p.41) Here it is necessary to be mentioned that the first four chapters of the book The Alchemy of Happiness contain very rich commentaries on this famous verse.
About himself he thought as a practical mystic whose aim was to make men live better by directing them to the real knowledge of God instead of slumbering in a notional acquiescence in the stereotyped beliefs of Islam. He simply and precisely formulated the process as the appearance of the prophets, sent by God to give the people the “prescription of happiness”. The prescription was simple. The people only needed to know themselves first, to know God second and to know this and the next world. (Ibid, back page)
Chapter 5 was entirely dedicated on the God’s love. Reading the book, especially the last chapter, the similarity between the Old Testament’s language and that of the author are impressive. There he discussed the music and dancing as help to the religious life. He wrote: “The heart of the man has been so constituted by the Almighty that, like a flint, it contains a hidden fire” (Al Ghazali, Ch.5). The author did not discuss the marriage as an institution but as a ritual writing the following: “marriage should be accompanied with beating drums and of music, for man is the crown of creation.” (Ibid, p. 63)
Love, writing love, the author means only the sublimity and nobility of the divine God’s love. He writes “O! Seeker of divine love that which renders man favorably inclined to persons of virtuous characters, is the fact that God has created man after his own.” (Ibid, p. 107) Everything is said in а superb way.
What are the similarities and the differences between the messages that are sent by Confucius, Buddha and the author who was already discussed. The first difference between Confucius and Buddha from one side and Al Ghazali on the other is the approach to the knowledge. Confucius encourages the individual to discover truth instead of to be told what is true. That was the idea of Al Ghazali to teach the Muslim people, to discover the knowledge of truth alone. Along with other positive teachings the silver rule of Confucius gathers admiration through all times and places.
Having in mind the considered above issues, it could be concluded that the accusations between the representatives of elite strata of the societies, regardless scientific or religious, all over the world were due to the natural pursuit of power, wealth and supremacy.
:
Works cited
Al Ghazali, Alchemy of Happiness, trans. Henry A. Homes (Albany, N.Y.: Munsell, Transactions of the Albany Institute, vol. VIII, 1873, Web Accessed July 25, 2016
Aydin, N., Did al-Ghazali Kill the Science in Islam?, Fountain magazine, Issue 87 , 2012, Web Accessed on July25, 2016
Nofal, N., Al-Ghazali's Theory of Education, Muslim Heritage, 1993, Web Accessed on July 25, 2016
Religiousfacts.com, Islamic beliefs, 2015, Web Accessed on July 25, 2016
Saliba, G., Islamic Science and Making of the European Renaissance, Cambridge: MIT Press, 2007, Web Accessed on July 25, 2016
