Ghazali's Politics in Context

Yazeed Said

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415625135
• eBook ISBN: 9781136159497
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Eastern Philosophy

Imam Abü Hamid al-Ghazal? is perhaps the most celebrated Muslim theologian of medieval Islam yet little attention has been paid to his personal theology. This book sets out to investigate the relationship between law and politics in the writings of Ghazal? and aims to establish the extent to which this relationship explains Ghazal?'s political theology.

Articles concerned with Ghazal?'s political thought have invariably paid little attention to his theology and his thinking about God, neglecting to ask what role these have contributed to his definition of politics and political ethics. Here, the question of Ghazal?'s politics takes into account his thinking on God, knowledge, law, and the Koran, in addition to political systems and ethics.

Yazeed Said puts forward the convincing argument that if Ghazal?'s legal and political epistemology provide a polemic analogous to his writings on philosophy, for which he is more famed, they would reveal to us a manifesto for an alternative order, concerned with a coherent definition of the community, or Ummah. This book will be an invaluable resource for students and scholars of the Middle East, political theology and Islamic studies.

1 Ghazālī and his works

As a scholar, a theologian, a jurist, and a Sufi, Ghazālī has long been praised for his contribution to the process whereby classical Sunni Orthodoxy was established, bringing together different strands of knowledge, jāmi' ashtāt al-'ulūm’.¹ As such, he was a true legal and theological giant of Islam, whose vision related to the cohesiveness of religion and society. This is reflected in his own story, which scholars have recounted,² as he opens up to different sources of knowledge. There have been a number of attempts to try to provide a chronology of Ghazālī’s works, corresponding to his own story.³ The most dramatic moment of his life is the crisis that beset him around 1095, marking a moment of shift. Scholars tend to argue that this crisis does not lend itself to clarity, though its effects on Ghazālī’s inner journey are evident by the abundant level of complexity in his ideas.⁴

This complexity made the reaction to Ghazālī’s legacy include a variety of opponents and proponents for different reasons.⁵ Richard Frank describes Ghazālī as ‘intellectually pompous, beset by inner uncertainties and often conspicuously superficial in his treatment of important questions’.⁶ However, mirroring Moosa’s idea of ‘bricolage’,⁷ Ormsby speaks of Ghazālī’s customary ‘sly eclecticism’.⁸ For Moosa and Ormsby, the contradictions evident in his works are an exposure not of inconsistency as much as of a depth that reflects Ghazālī’s own questioning of the religious tenets of his time, producing the kind of language born out of his decades-long task, in reaction to the centuries- long formation of Islamic Orthodoxy. At one level, Ghazālī acknowledges that this is a task which the community has to undertake every century.⁹ Therefore, Ormsby asserts that there remains ‘an inner continuity, a hidden coherence, to his career’.¹⁰

Ghazālī’s first major works appear during his ‘public decade’,¹¹ 1085–1095, when he enjoyed his career at the Niẓāmiyya college under the patronage of Niẓām al-Mulk – the remarkable vizier of the Saljūq Sultans Alp Arslān (455–465/1063–1073) and Mālikshāh (465–485/1073–1092). According to one of Ghazālī’s biographers, Niẓām al-Mulk ‘accorded [Ghazālī] much honour and respect, [because] with the vizier there was a group of ‘men of knowledge’, ahl al-'ilm, who debated with him. He triumphed over his opponents, qahara al-khuṣūm, and they acknowledged his virtue, i'tarafū bifaḍlihi.’¹²

He leaves his illustrious post at a time of legal, theological and political plurality,¹³ when the unity and coherence of the Muslim community looked most threatened. Ghazālī, applying Koranic language, describes his era as zamān al-fatra (the wearing away of religion due to the absence of Prophets).¹⁴ During his ‘second public career’, he reflects in hindsight in al-Munqidh min al-ḍalāl,¹⁵ on the facts and effects of ‘the odium theologicum of the day’,¹⁶ as the basis of his doubts and retreat, 'uzla. The conflicts between different groups, iḍṭirāb al-firaq,¹⁷ are the source of the community’s drowning, as he put it, with each group fighting for its own space, paying no regard to the conditions of fellow Muslims: baḥrun 'amīqun gharaqa fīhi al-aktharūn wa mā najā minhu illā al-aqallūn, wa kullu farīqin yaz'amu annahu al-nājī.¹⁸ While he shares the story of his self, his auto, and how through time and exchange of thoughts he found his real self fulfilled in the teachings of the Sufis, it is normally believed that he encountered Sufism at an early age; his father entrusted him and his brother to a Sufi friend after they were left orphans.¹⁹ In Munqidh, he speaks of the truth, which paralysed him – a truth that did not lie with holders of official sources of learning, the 'ulamā', of his day. He was able to receive this truth only through the Sufi notion of ‘taste’, dhawq, which is a gift that reflects his remembrance of the afterlife, al-ināba ilā dāri'l-khulūd.²⁰ Remembering the next life (or not) determines how this life is lived.

The effect of this truth received through experience and taste is evident in his writings on law, kalām, and politics, as shown in his major work, Iḥyā' 'ulūm aldīn, which is usually dated before the Munqidh, and after his desertion of Baghdad, the stage of his life when he also wrote his ‘Book of Counsel for Kings’ (in Persian), ‘an admonitory treatise for the Sultan’s edification’,²¹ and his treatise on Divine Names, al-Maqṣad al-asnā fī sharḥ ma'ānī asmā' Allāh al-ḥusna.²² We will relate below to the discussion over the authenticity of the second part of the ‘Book of Counsel for Kings’ as it affects the discussion in this study. But, more importantly, we cannot do justice to Ghazālī’s ideas without tasting first a bit of the flavours and depth of the Ihyā' in Ghazālī’s comprehensive view of religion, law, and politics. Therefore, we need to relate to the context of the Ihyā': who is he addressing in this text? This will have political implications. Is he talking as a jurist to jurists? Or is he talking to the mutakallimūn? Or is this simply an inner conversation, reflecting the change from his pre-crisis time? Or perhaps he has the wider younger generation in mind that bears the hope for future change?

Laoust suggests that the Ihyā' could be treated as an autobiography, expressing Ghazālī’s ‘real motives’. He asserts that Ghazālī’s interpretation of his society is intrinsic to his self- criticism, while the Ihyā' reflects Ghazālī’s passionate self-involving narrative that sets the mode and the expression of his self-criticism, as well as the criticism of others in his own context, with the primary concern for coherence.²³ This supports Tim Winter’s later observation: ‘The Revival, then, is an attempt to universalise the central transformative experience of the author’s career.’²⁴ Similarly, Eric Ormsby more recently describes the Ihyā' as ‘simultaneously a compendium of law, sacred tradition, theology and philosophy, and Sufi lore and theory, as well as a vivid, if inadvertent, depiction of the world’.²⁵ Ormsby criticises other accounts of the Iḥyā' that consider it ‘dry sounding’, and adds that the two most salient facts about the work are: ‘First, it is driven by intense ambition, and second, its originality and significance reside as much in its magisterial architecture as in its content’.²⁶

Given the undoubtedly comprehensive nature of the text and Ghazālī’s complexities above, he could not simply have had in mind only jurists or only mutakallimūn, nor is it a simple self-reflection. Jurists had specific functions relating to personal transactions and contracts, ‘revelling in nit-picking’.²⁷ Similarly, whereas in his earlier works on law of the Shāfi'ite rite,²⁸ Ghazālī acknowledges in one instance that he was following fully his teacher al-Juwaynī: al-iqtiṣār 'alā mā dhakarahu imām al-ḥaramayn’,²⁹ al-qulūb mā'ila ilā al-taqlīd wa't-tibā' al-rajul al-marmūq fīhi,³⁰ now with a greater Sufi emphasis, without deserting the law, he speaks of fiqh as it relates to spirituality (Chapter 4) with a comprehensive vision that is not simply limited to the establishment of jurists. Mutakallimūn, on the other hand, and as Ghazālī mentioned, dealt with abstract discussions with the aim of defending the tenets of faith.³¹ As we point out later, they did not satisfy the kind of comprehensive knowledge he is concerned with. It would also be difficult to see how a pre-modern thinker like Ghazālī would be more concerned with exposing ‘the self ’, as much as he would be interested in comprehensive Truth that transforms the self.³² Also, Ghazālī did not live in a nation state, so there is no reason to think that he was relating to any particular ethnic group; but, as our discussion in the second chapter suggests, he would have been concerned for a universal claim for truth, as based on the sources of revelation, which also formed the language of politics and law. He is not aiming at an exercise in coordinating the affairs of his immediate community alone, or simply about the brokering of political power in the modern sense, but seeks the effect of shaping the action and definition of the whole ummah.³³

Theoretically, therefore, the Ihyā' remains a clear expression of Ghazālī’s Sufi shift; he relates to the larger picture, and generically speaks of the cohesiveness of religion in a way that non-Sufis did not.³⁴ He is more concerned with those who are seeking God, those called in a saying attributed to Jesus as ‘night-travellers’, mudlijūn, who are being led, alas, by perplexed scholars, mutaḥayyirūn.³⁵ The good scholar is he who, again according to a saying of Jesus, ‘has knowledge, acts, and teaches’.³⁶ Those whose learning does not go beyond verbal knowledge, while their heart and works remains untouched by wisdom, are the hypocrites, munāfiq 'alīm according to the second Caliph 'Umar.³⁷ His vision is that of ‘knowing, doing, and being’.³⁸ Ghazālī deals with big questions that have bearings on different disciplines and are difficult to categorise, relating to what became known as the ‘three dimensions of religion: islām, īmān, and ihsān.³⁹

Politics for Ghazālī is inevitably part of this cohesive vision of faith. Attempts to speak of Ghazālī’s politics that ignore the factors above will fail to address the central issue. The vision of coherence in his context is more likely to emerge by way of reading his text, while keeping in mind the demanding task that he pursues as a Sufi sheikh in relation to what human beings and societies may hope for: a comprehensive confidence in the possi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface and acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Ghazālī and his works
• 2 Primary scholarship on Ghazālī and law
• 3 Politics and Natural Law
• 4 The foundation of Ghazālī's society
• 5 Ethics and society
• 6 Authority and law
• General conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index