Author: Imam Al-Ghazali
Translator(s)/ Edito: Sahib Ahmad Kamali / Prof. Ehsan Ashraf
Publisher: Adam Publishers
Year: 2010
Language: English
Pages: 270
ISBN/UPC (if available): 8174355553
Description
Sufism started as a reaction against formalism pursued by the theologians and the masses, intellectualism of the philosophers and the rationalists and the irreligious ways of the ruling classes. Generally, Sufism was based on the Qur’an and lives of the Prophet and his companions.
Before, A-Ghazali Sufism passed through three stages of development. The Sufis were ascetics and quietists at the first stage. The second stage of development of Sufism was theosophical. The third stage of Sufism was prominently pantheistic in nature.
Ghazali was the greatest figure in the history of Islamic reaction to Neo-Plantonism and despite Ibn Rushd’s refutation of Ghazali’s objection; he dealt a blow to Islamic philosophy from which it would never recover. Ghazali struck a fatal blow from his ‘Incoherence of the philosophers (1095), a withering attack on Arabic philosophy, particularly as exemplified in Aristotle by Farabi and Ibn Sina. It was only after he had thoroughly immersed himself in the teachings of falasifa and even published an exposition of their tenets in ‘Intentions of the Philosophers’ that he felt equipped to defeat the philosopher on their own grounds.
Contents
Problems
Translator’s Preface
Foreword
Introduction
Preface
Refutation of the philosophers belief in the Eternity of the
World
Refutation of their belief in the everlasting nature of the world,
Time and motion
Of their dishonest in saying that God is the agent and the
maker of the world which is His action or product: and the
Explanation of the fact that these words have only a metaphorical,
Not real, significance to them
To show their inability to prove the existence of the creator
Of the world
Of their inability to prove by rational arguments that God is
One, and that it not possible to suppose two necessary
Beings each of which is uncaused
Refutation of their denial of the Divine Attributes
Refutation of their thesis that is impossible that something
Should share a genus with God, being separated from Him
By differentia; and that the intellectual division into genus
And differentia is inapplicable to Him
Refutation of their thesis that God’s is simple being - i.e., it
Is pure being, without a quiddity or essence to which
Existence would be related - and that necessary existence is
To Him what quddity is to any other being
Of their inability to prove by rational arguments that God is
Not body
Of their inability to prove by rational arguments that there
Is a cause or creator of the world
Refutation of those philosophers who hold that God knows
The Other, and that He knows the species and genera in a
Universal manner
To show their inability to prove that God knows Himself
Either
Refutation of their doctrine that God (May He be exalted
Above what they say) does not know the particulars which
Are divisible in accordance with the division of time into
‘will be,’ ‘was,’ and ‘is’
To show their inability to prove that the heaven is living,
And obeys God through its rotatory motion
Refutation of what they consider to be the purpose which
Moves the heaven
Refutation of their theory that the souls of the heavens are
Aware of all particulars, which originate in the world
Refutation of their belief in the impossibility of a departure
From the natural course of events
Of their inability to give a rational demonstration of their
Theory that the human soul is a spiritual substance which
Exists in itself; is not space-filling; is not body, or impressed
upon body; and is neither connected nor Disconnected with
body - as God is neither inside the world Nor outside it, or
as the angels are
Refutation of their thesis that, having come into being, the
Human souls cannot be destroyed; and that their everlasting
Nature makes it impossible for us to conceive other
Destruction
Refutation of their denial of the resurrection of bodies
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index