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So, what are you reading?
I've finished Al-Ghazali's Prophetic Ethics, the rather slim 20th volume of his Revival of the Religious Sciences. Most of it is a recounting of Hadith, and somewhat threadbare, since the previous 9 books had apparently dealt with the issues presented in detail. The best parts are all when Al-Ghazali speaks in his own voice, which happens rarely near the end. I suspect I'll be pouring over this one occasionally neverthless, looking for lessons to be drawn from its structure and focus.
What particular lessons do you take from al-Ghazali? Are there any highlights worth sharing?
Al-Ghazali was the first time that I actually felt like I understood some of the appeal of Islam.
One of the reasons for that has nothing to do with the books: I actually never knew about hadith (ie. recordings of what people have seen or heard from their Prophet), and it never occured to me that the often harsh tone taken in the Quran (which is narrated from the words of the angel Gabriel) might not necessarily reflect on Muhammad's actual disposition. One wonders if the reason why Muhammad preached at all was because he was terrified of the visions of the fire that he was shown, and he couldn't stand by and do nothing while others quietly walked towards such horrors. A large portion of Al-Ghazali's texts is just hadith and commentary on that, which gave me a very different view of Islam.
Beyond that, there is a clearer sense of the whole picture that can be gleamed. The example that comes to mind is in Principles of the Creed (book 2), where the theological differences between Islam and, say, Christianity become apparent very quickly. At least the Islam of his time taught that everything that happens is God's will, ie. that free will is not a thing, and the justification for punishing those who can do nothing otherwise is that God can do what he wills with his own possessions. Even if God chose to be completely unjust to all human beings, that would be his right. But the mercy of God can be seen in the way that he does not do this. We can see here the meaning of the saying of Muhammad "Surely, of the excellence of a person's Islam is that he leaves what does not concern him." When another person wrongs you, the origin of the wrong is actually God, and the purpose of the wrong is to test you, to see what you will do. Everything thereby becomes subsumed in a dialectical relationship with God:
It helps a lot that Al-Ghazali clearly possessed a highly intelligent mind. I find that the Quran is not as eloquent or sophisticated as other well-known religious texts, though perhaps it comes off better in Arabic. But it becomes clear through Al-Ghazali's treatment that the meaning of that scripture really is something that has intellectual substance. I have not read these books with a systematic intent to study them, so I've only learned through a kind of osmosis the habits and ways of thinking that are either implicit or explicit in the Islamic tradition. There is an idea of seeing what is plain, of moderation. And it is full of gems. Some of the quotes from Al-Ghazali himself (not hadith) that I bothered to copy down are:
There are also deeper issues of Al-Ghazali's thought which I do not yet understand, like his connection to the Sufis and his emphasis on the heart, or his thoughts on what occupations are a communal duty, which fascinate me, but I'm not yet qualified to speak on. I, at least, have found it worth my time.
One of the interesting tensions in Islam, it seems to me, especially as compared to Christianity, is that Islam tends to emphasise firstly that everything is absolutely foreknown and determined by God, and secondly that also human free choice is absolutely vital. Compared to Christianity, Islam has a much stronger teaching on predestination, but also claims to uphold free will to a greater degree. On the face of it this seems like a contradiction.
The latter is probably easier to grapple with. Christianity says that human freedom or human will is in some way blunted or damaged. The Fall happened and so we are either unable to independently choose good, or our ability to choose good is in some way constrained. As such the believer is wholly dependent on the grace of God. While Islam agrees that the believer is always wholly dependent on God (as all things are, at all times, for only God is self-sufficient), within that overall framework, it is much more confident about the ability of people to freely choose the good. Islam assumes from first principles that God would not set before us any task that we are not capable of accomplishing. God asks nothing of us that we cannot do. To do otherwise would be unjust of him.
Christianity tends to say that God asks of us more than we can do. Jesus commands his followers "be perfect, as your heavenly father is perfect" (Mt 5:48). Throughout the gospels Jesus is constantly asking people to do the unreasonable or the extreme, like sell all their possessions, or die with him. He says that if the disciples truly had faith they would be able to ask a mountain to move, and it would. It seems as though, for Jesus, even the very best that a human can do is not enough. The usual interpretation of this is that Jesus wants to challenge people beyond their own capacities so that they realise they radical dependence on God - that they come to understand their own finitude, and therefore are able to wholeheartedly cast themselves upon God's mercy.
Through Islamic eyes, this is unjust. God does not torment people by requiring of them more than they can do. Christianity comes to this conclusion in past as a response to the failure of the Law - Paul spends a long time agonising over the fact (as he sees it) that the Law failed to produce righteousness. Islam, however, is much more positive about the Law, and in fact tends to see Christianity as a retrogression, a kind of civilisational backwards step in abandoning the rigour of divine Law. (Judaism is in principle correct about the Law and its value, but it goes wrong firstly by applying it to only a select people, rather than everyone, and secondly by getting muddled up about some details.) You can see that Islam is thus, in a sense, much more optimistic about human will and the possibility of human righteousness than Christianity.
However, this optimism about free will occurs in front of the backdrop of God's absolute sovereignty. Reconciling God's authorship of all creation with human free will is going to be reminiscent of Calvinist debates - but that might be a discussion for a bit later.
Funny; that's actually how I understand Christianity itself to be, including the concept that "God does not torment people by requiring of them more than they can do". (Which I always found a bit of a fortune cookie when used that way; if you assume this is true, then whatever happens to a man on Earth is by definition what he could bear.)
The latter is kind of Christianity
3:16101. I agree that lots of Christians never really make it past that part, which is why doing things like writing the law on one's heart is a meaningless statement, for the answer it gives would always be wrong. Why even tell us to put on the armor of God when no man could even begin to don it? Why imply that one might even expect to understand what the Lord's will is? How could we even have been created to do good works, and how could they have been prepared in advance for us to do them?In your opinion, what is Islam's relationship with that law?
I'm honestly not even sure how surprised anyone should actually be about that (unless this is in the context that it sucks that you can't just follow the law if you're already doing what, in spirit, it requires). How could a law be expected to produce the behavior of judging one's own heart in its observers? Stereotypically, Judaism is kind of the epitome of
tricking Goddoing everything that the law requires while ignoring its meaning perfectly, which if the Bible is to be believed was as true in Jesus' day as it is today (like that eruv wire strung around the Promised Land of... Manhattan). I don't think Islam is nearly as famous for that.Then again, of course, maybe the huge list of "tricks" generated is part of the point, since an observer ultimately has to make a judgement call about what thing falls within what category, and it is perhaps the act of continually doing that which imparts life/generates the righteousness. Which is perhaps why those laws could ever be condensed down into 2 sentences in the first place.
I always find it odd that, provided we assume Jesus is God, that these things are considered unreasonable or extreme. It would certainly be extreme for any non-God individuals, but 'the entity that is in charge of life even after death is standing in front of you asking a question that involve having to do that' seems to me to be a bit of an extreme circumstance itself.
There are definitely passages in the Bible that point in that direction. Jesus famously says "my yoke is easy and my burden is light", and 1 Cor 10:13 reads, "God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it."
Even so I think there is a tension here in Christianity. God does not test you beyond your strength, but at the same time, it is impossible for you to achieve true righteousness under your own power. Everyone is a sinner.
Certainly it would be a gross misunderstanding of Christianity to say that, because true righteousness is impossible to achieve unaided, we therefore need not strive for it. That would obviously be a perverse position, and as all the passages you've just alluded to indicate, Christians are exhorted to constantly strive for righteousness.
Islam is fairly straightforward, I think. In most matters like this, I find Islam tends to be more straightforward and common-sense than Christianity.
Depending on your perspective, this is either because Islam has the simple clarity of God's true and final revelation, whereas Christianity is such an incoherent, hacked-together set of false assumptions that it requires endless paradoxes and epicycles just to fit together; or it's because Islam is a simplistic creed inadequate to either life or God, whereas the paradoxes of Christianity speak to its deeper truth.
Anyway, Islam is simple. The divine Law is true, obligatory, and binding on all people. It is Sharia. The Law as it is understood in Judaism is a kind of distorted funhouse mirror of Sharia. Ancient believers like Abraham were Muslims and followed Sharia correctly, but at some point their descendants got confused, mixed up records, and so their Law, through a decent approximation of the true Law, nonetheless requires correction. Fortunately God has provided that correction. The next step is obvious - all Jews (and for that matter all people full stop) should become Muslims.
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