from it and asking forgiveness.”’ And the Apostle of God (upon whom be peace) was accustomed to say when he asked for forgiveness: ‘O God, forgive my sin and my ignorance and my excess in what I have done, and what Thou knowest better than I do. O God, forgive me my trifling and my earnestness, my mistakes and my wrong intentions and all that I have done. O God, forgive me that which I have committed in the past and that which I will commit in the future, and what I have hidden and what I have revealed and what Thou knowest better than I do, Thou who art the first and the last and Thou art the Almighty.’”[80] How different all this is from the present day superficial teaching about the sinlessness of Mohammed which is current in popular Islam. Since Al-Ghazali tells this about Mohammed and _his_ need for forgiveness, he naturally deals with repentance in no superficial fashion but as one who has tasted the bitterness of remorse and has discovered his own inability to meet the demands of the Moral Law. His book on repentance has the following sections: (1) The reality of repentance. (2) The necessity for repentance. (3) True repentance expected by God. (4) Of what a man should repent, namely, the character of sin. (5) How small sins become great. (6) Perfect repentance, its conditions and its duration. (7) The degree of repentance. (8) How to become truly penitent. One can only give a summary of his teaching. He rises far above the Koran. In fact in some cases his proof texts, when we consider the context, are a terrible indictment of the Prophet.[81] He says the necessity of repentance always and for all men is evident because no one of the human race is free from sin. “For even though in some cases he is free from outward sin of his bodily members, he is not free from sin of the heart; though free from passion he is not free from the whisperings of Satan and forgetfulness of God, or of coming short of the knowledge of God and His attributes and His works.” All this is a failure of attainment and has its reasons; but if a man should forsake the causes of this forgetfulness and employ himself with the opposite virtues it would be a return to the right way; and the significance of repentance is the return. You cannot imagine that any one of us is free from this defect, for we only differ in degrees, but the root undoubtedly exists in us. Of course he ignores original sin, being a Moslem, but he makes a great deal of the effect that unrepented sin causes; but it enters deeper and deeper into the heart until the image of God on the mirror of the human soul is effaced.