A Moslem seeker after God : $b showing Islam at its best in the life and teaching of al-Ghazali, mystic and theologian of the eleventh century
Al-Ghazali · en
And in the attainment of this ideal he is sure that there must be a fight
for character. The goal is not to be reached by easy stages. The warfare
against passion is real and costs sacrifice. He gives us a picture of
this Holy War almost in the language of John Bunyan. “For the carrying
on of this spiritual warfare by which the knowledge of oneself and of
God is to be obtained, the body may be figured as a kingdom, the soul
as its king and the different senses and faculties as constituting an
army. Reason may be called the vizier, or prime minister, passion the
revenue-collector, and anger the police-officer. Under the guise of
collecting revenue, passion is continually prone to plunder on its own
account, while resentment is always inclined to harshness and extreme
severity. Both of these, the revenue-collector and the police-officer,
have to be kept in due subordination to the king, but not killed or
expelled, as they have their own proper functions to fulfil. But if
passion and resentment master reason, the ruin of the soul infallibly
ensues. A soul which allows its lower faculties to dominate the higher is
as one who should hand over an angel to the power of a dog or a Mussalman
to the tyranny of an unbeliever.”
The struggle is, therefore, between the flesh and the spirit. Like St.
Paul, Al-Ghazali must have experienced that which he describes: “The good
that I would I do not, and the evil that I would not, that I do.” He is
conscious of the inner struggle between the higher and the lower natures
in man. Again and again he contrasts the body and the soul as to their
eternal value in their struggle for supremacy. Both are of God, His gift
to us; both show His wisdom and His power; but there is no comparison
when we try to estimate their real values.
“The body, so to speak, is simply the riding animal of the soul, and
perishes while the soul endures. The soul should take care of the body,
just as a pilgrim on his way to Mecca takes care of his camel; but if
the pilgrim spends his whole time in feeding and adorning his camel, the
caravan will leave him behind, and he will perish in the desert.”[70]
The four leading virtues—the mothers of all other good
qualities—Al-Ghazali says are “Wisdom, temperance, bravery, and
moderation (or the golden mean of conduct).”[71] This classification he
has borrowed from Plato with so much else on the theory of conduct. He
explains all these virtues in terms of the Koran and illustrates them
from the lives of Mohammed and the early saints of Islam as well as the
later mystics.