Al-Ghazali was also a dogmatic theologian and controversialist. He wrote a commentary on the Koran in forty volumes, never printed; and a dozen books against various heretics, including one entitled: “The Best Reply to Those Who Have Tampered with the Gospel.” Al-Ghazali, who was himself cursed for alleged heresy, is memorable among the theologians of Islam in that by his breadth of sympathy he forbade the cursing of Yazid, the notorious slayer of Hussein, Mohammed’s grandson, and gave his opinion in these words: “It is forbidden to curse a Moslem: Yazid was a Moslem. It is not certain that he slew Al-Husain, and it is forbidden to think ill of a Moslem. We cannot be certain that he ordered his death; really we cannot be certain of the cause of the death of any great man, especially at such a distance of time. We have also to remember the party spirit and false statements in this particular case. Again, if he did kill him, he is not an unbeliever because of that; he is only disobedient to God. Again, he may have repented before he died. Further, to abstain from cursing is no crime. No one will be asked if he ever cursed Satan; if he has cursed him he may be asked, Why? The only accursed ones of whom we know are those who die infidels.”[61] Among his books against the philosophers we must mention three which are closely related to one another. They are the _Maqasid-ul-Falasifa_, a statement of the true teachings of the philosophers and a presentation of their views of the world; the _Tahafut ul Falasifa_ which overthrows their views and shows that they are untenable to those who would follow Islam with heart and mind; the _Qawaʾid_, which shows the truths that must be built up to take the place of the errors of the philosophers. In the first-named book, according to Macdonald, he “smites the philosophers hip and thigh, turns their own weapons against them and goes to the extreme of intellectual scepticism; seven hundred years before Hume he cuts the bond of causality with the edge of his dialectic and proclaims that we can know nothing of cause or effect, but simply that one thing follows another.”