Al Ghazali

AL-GHAZALI
Al-Ghazali, the author of the autobiographical text, Deliverance from Error, made Islamic mysticism acceptable in Orthodox Islam (Sunni). He was born in 1058 in Iran and died in 1111 in Iran, and he was known as a Muslim mystic. In 1091, he was appointed as professor at the Nazmiyya College in Baghdad, lecturing to more than 300 students. In his text, he emphasizes the love of God, seeking Divine Truth. He also refers to Imam Al-Shafii with great respect and admiration and followed his mathhab (Sunni). Throughout his life, Al-Ghazali faced 2 crises; the crisis of skepticism and the spiritual crisis.
The first crisis that stood in Al-Ghazali’s way while seeking divine Truth is his skepticism and denial of all knowledge. The first thing he becomes skeptical of is sense-perception, where he gives the example of the sun and the fact that it looks like the size of a shilling while in fact it is larger than the size of the Earth. Hence, after his reflection on sense-perception, his reliance on it “has been destroyed”. He then moves on to intellectual truths and determines whether they are to be relied upon or not; he refers to dreams and the fact that we believe in things and imagine circumstances while dreaming and as long as that dream least, we feel like we are living in a reality when we really aren’t. Hence, along with sense-perception, Al-Ghazali dismisses intellectual truths. In about the same skeptic period, Al-Ghazali suffered from a “baffling” disease that lasted 2 months, of which God cured him, helping him regain his confidence and continue his search for the divine Truth. Al-Ghazali eventually came to regard the various seekers of whom he may find Truth from, including the Theologians, the philosophers and the mystics or sufis. While reflecting on the theologians, Al-Ghazali discovered that they were not too concerned with the divine Truth; instead their aim was merely to preserve the creed of orthodoxy and to defend it against the deviations...