Al-Ghaza¯lı¯’s Philosophical
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theism of Islam as well as the position (5) that although the teachings of the prophets provide some benefi t ( mas.lah.a ) to both the individual and to society, they are not actually true. 22 In al-Ghaza¯lı¯’s usual formulations of the verdict, however, this last position is listed as a mere result of the earlier three (or four) points in the list. With the exception of the world’s pre-eternity, all positions that al-Ghaza¯lı¯ condemns as unbelief are connected to the political authority of the religious law. 23
effectively the only two Muslim groups that he brands as unbelievers— undermine the moral and legal authority of revelation. In his Balanced Book on What-to-Believe ( al-Iqtis.a¯d f ı¯ l-i ¶tiqa¯d ), he implies why one may not interpret fi guratively passages in revelation that speak of a bodily reward in the hereaf- ter. The fala¯sifa read these passages as symbols that stand for purely spiritual and immaterial bliss. Such interpretation is unbelief, he says, since it leads to a situation in which people no longer take their guidance from the Qur’an or from the teachings of the prophets. 24 For most people, spiritual bliss has no meaning; only the belief in the bodily character of the afterlife will enable the system of rewards and punishment to function suffi ciently drastic as an effective incitement and deterrent in this world. In his Revival of the Religious
creed expressed in the Muslim profession of faith ( shaha¯da )—monotheism and Muh.ammad’s prophecy—the most important belief for Muslims to hold is the belief in an afterlife with paradise and hell, with the rewards and punishments for this world’s actions affecting both body and soul. 25
Al-Ghaza¯lı¯’s fatwa¯ is appended to a work where the specifi c legal status of the twenty teachings discussed in that book never comes up. 26 Indeed, there is a certain argumentative gap between the philosophical discussions of the twenty teachings of the fala¯sifa in the main part of the Incoherence and the brief fatwa¯ at the end. 27 In the several introductory chapters of the Incoherence, al-Ghaza¯lı¯ explains his motivation for writing the work. Providing the basis for a legal condemnation of some of the fala¯sifa ’s teachings is neither mentioned there nor anywhere else in the discussions of the twenty teachings. The long chapter on the world’s pre-eternity, for instance—a discussion that amounts to almost a third of the whole work—focuses on the question of whether the philosophers’ claim of a pre-eternal world is tenable and correct. Although al-Ghaza¯lı¯ denies this, he never engages in a justifi cation why this position cannot be tolerated. Yet there is an additional aspect to his fatwa¯ that is rarely ever mentioned. The above quoted passage continues with a declaration that all teachings other
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than the listed three must be tolerated and should not become the subject of a legal condemnation. Al-Ghaza¯lı¯ says that the fala¯sifa ’s views of God’s unity and His attributes are similar to the ones held by the Mu ¶tazilites. If someone thinks the Mu ¶tazilites are unbelievers, he might also believe that the fala¯sifa are unbe- lievers with regard to these teachings. Al-Ghaza¯lı¯ recommends, however, that one should not regard the Mu ¶tazilites as unbelievers, and consequently also not regard the other teachings of the fala¯sifa as unbelief. Regarding teachings other than the three listed, the fala¯sifa may be accused of undue innovation ( bid ¶a ). Accusing them of introducing such innovations ( tabdı¯ ¶ ), however, is a mere moral or dogmatic judgment that bears no legal consequences: As far as we are concerned, we do not prefer to plunge into the [question] of pronouncing those who uphold innovations ( bid ¶a ) as unbelievers and what is or is not adequate for them lest the discourse could stray from the objective of this book. 28
in al-Ghaza¯lı¯’s subsequent works: Muslims who hold teachings that are not singled out as unbelief ( kufr ) may be accused of being unorthodox, but that ac- cusation cannot lead to legal sanctions. It may, of course, trigger certain social stigmas by those who consider themselves orthodox, stigmas such as refusing to pray behind such a person, refusing to attend his funeral, or even avoiding social contact. Accusing someone of innovation ( tabdı¯ ¶ ), of error ( takhti 7a ), or of deviation ( tad.lı¯l ), however, should not lead to punishments imposed by the judicial and political authorities. Although the state authorities should use co- ercion to prevent the teaching of unbelief ( kufr ), they should not interfere in the teaching of innovation ( bid ¶a ), error ( khata¯ 7 ), or deviation ( d.alal ), Unbelief and Apostasy In terms of its legal contents, there is something strikingly new in al-Ghaza¯lı¯’s fatwa¯ against three teachings of the fala¯sifa . Al-Ghaza¯lı¯ responds to the ques- tion of whether those who teach these three positions can be killed. The real or imagined questioner asks: “Do you say decisively that they hold unbelief ( kufr ) and that the killing of someone who upholds their convictions is obligatory?” Al-Ghaza¯lı¯ answers yes. Whoever publicly supports or teaches the three named positions indeed deserves to be killed. In his legal works, some of them written before the Incoherence , al-Ghaza¯lı¯ explains that those who claim to be Mus- lims while teaching and propagating opinions established as unbelief can be killed without further delay. 29 This judgment is based on the law of apostasy. If Muslims fall into unbelief after having been believers ( kufr ba ¶da ima¯nihi ), this constitutes apostasy from Islam, which carries the death penalty, according to all four schools of Muslim jurisprudence. In early Islam, the unbelief of Muslims was established when they openly renounced Islam to follow a different religion. Only a public renouncement of Islam would constitute apostasy, or a public act such as giving up the Muslim 1 0 4 a l - gh a z a ¯ l 1
¯ ’ s ph ilosoph ic a l t h e olo g y prayer and attending the Christian mass. Any legal condemnation of apostasy required an unambiguous declaration from the side of the accused apostate. Accusing someone of secretly renouncing Islam and clandestinely practicing a different religion always led to a public interrogation. In the early centuries of Islam, a public declaration of belief in Islam by repeating the Muslim profes- sion of faith ( shaha¯da ) was always accepted and would end the legal proceed- ings.
30 Apostasy could only be punished if the accused openly renounced the Muslim faith and was unwilling to pay public lip service to Islam. Hence, apos- tasy and unbelief were two very different things in early Islam. Muslims might be accused of being unbelievers without bringing them anywhere close to the accusation of apostasy. In contrast to these legal formulations, al-Ghaza¯lı¯ equates the unbelief of Muslims with their apostasy from Islam. This required a signifi cant change in the legal meaning of the word “unbelief” ( kufr ). Elsewhere, I give a detailed account of how “unbelief” ( kufr ) was understood in early Islam and how its un- derstanding changed roughly two generations before al-Ghaza¯lı¯. 31 Al-Ghaza¯lı¯ uses “unbelief” ( kufr ) as a legal term, meaning that the legal and political insti- tutions—the jurists, the rulers, and their military—must act whenever unbelief is detected within the Muslim community. 32 Such an understanding reveals a major development away from the earlier meaning of the term. According to the majority opinion of Muslim legal scholars before the mid-fi fth/eleventh century, unbelief ( kufr ) was a matter that God will punish in the afterlife, while in this world it would warrant no more than social sanctions for those associated with it. Consequently, accusing one’s theological opponent as an unbeliever was quite widespread. “Declaring someone an unbeliever” ( takf ı¯r ) was often used to brand and slander one’s theological opponent; it very rarely implied legal sanc- tions, and certainly not the death penalty. Abu ¯ Mu¯sa¯ al-Murda¯r, for instance, a Mu ¶tazilite of the third/ninth century, was known to have accused all people of unbelief who did not share Mu ¶tazilite positions on the most controversial theological issues of his days. When a fellow theologian pointed out that this would apply to almost all people, al-Murda¯r shrugged his shoulders. His col- league wondered in astonishment why the Qur’an says that paradise is as wide as heaven and earth (Q 3:133), when according to al-Murda¯r’s view only he and the three people who agreed with him will enter. 33 The remark illustrates that in the third/ninth century, “unbelief” simply meant that the persons accused of it will—in the opinion of their accusers—suffer in hell. Only in the mid-fi fth/eleventh century did the jurists in the Sha¯fi ¶ite legal tradition begin to connect the unbelief of Muslims with what they called “clan- destine apostasy” ( zandaqa ). 34 Apostasy ( irtita¯d ) from Islam had always been a punishable offence in Islam: a prophetical h.adı¯th says that whoever changes his religion shall be killed. 35 Although this judgment established the death penalty for apostasy from Islam, it was limited to those who made an explicit and clear statement that he or she was renouncing Islam. A philosopher who teaches the pre-eternity of the world did not usually regard himself as a renegade or apos- tate from Islam. Avicenna, for instance, considered himself not only a faithful Muslim but also among the religious elite in Islam. 36 We must assume the a l - gh a z a ¯ l 1
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same was true for his followers—al-Ghaza¯lı¯’s target readership in his Incoher- ence . They certainly considered themselves full members of the Muslim com- munity. Al-Ghaza¯lı¯ and his colleagues in Islamic law effectively created a new legal status, that of “clandestine apostasy” ( zandaqa ). The accused no longer needed to declare or acknowledge his apostasy from Islam: he could be found guilty of clandestine apostasy when he violated certain principles of Islam or refused to subscribe to core elements of the Muslim creed. Along with this judgment of clandestine apostasy comes a systematic ef- fort to disentangle the question of what constitutes unbelief and apostasy from the criteria for religious orthodoxy. Al-Ghaza¯lı¯ understands that orthodoxy is in the eye of the beholder; from the viewpoint of an Ash ¶arite, other Muslim groups such as the Mu ¶tazilites or moderate Shiites are certainly not orthodox. Such heterodox groups, however, were not considered clandestine apostates from Islam, and they continued to enjoy legal status as Muslims. The Ash ¶arites regarded them as tolerated groups within Islam. Distinguishing the criteria for apostasy from simple heterodoxy is one of al-Ghaza¯lı¯’s most important contributions to the legal discourse about unbelief and apostasy in Islam. He fi rmly establishes the legal status of tolerated heterodoxy, a category containing Mu ¶tazilites and most Shiites, for instance. According to this qualifi cation, phi- losophers who avoid the three condemned teachings fall under this category of tolerated nonconformists or dissenters. Al-Ghaza¯lı¯’s distinction between taxing someone with unbelief ( takf ı¯r ) and taxing someone with error ( takhti 7a ), devia- tion ( tad.lı¯l ), or innovation ( tabdı¯ ¶ ) creates two different categories of deviators. The three latter judgments are mere pronouncements that the adversaries hold positions that are not correct and that will, in the opinion of al-Ghaza¯lı¯, lead them toward punishment in the afterlife. Taxing someone with error, deviation, or innovation has no legal implication; in fact, it amounts to the declaration that the Muslim community tolerates such theological positions. 37
The Decisive Criterion (Fays.al al-tafriqa) In the earlier centuries of Islam, someone who accused a Muslim of unbelief ( takf ı¯r ) would assume that his adversary would burn in hell but should not burn at the stake. Now that the parameters of unbelief as a legal judgment had changed, an attitude of frequent accusations could lead to an atmosphere of legal persecution and to a wave of capital punishments. Al-Ghaza¯lı¯ was quite concerned with this dangerous situation. In response, he wrote The Decisive Cri-
unbelief and clandestine apostasy. As such, it establishes a legal and theological place for religious tolerance in Islam. The book also clarifi es the background of al-Ghaza¯lı¯’s earlier judgments about apostasy from Islam. Richard M. Frank remarked that al-Ghaza¯lı¯ wrote Distinctive Criterion in response to accusations that he himself was an unbeliever because he deviated from some early Ash ¶arite teachings in his Revival . 38 This might well have been 1 0 6 a l - gh a z a ¯ l 1
¯ ’ s ph ilosoph ic a l t h e olo g y the case, since at the beginning of the book, al-Ghaza¯lı¯ speaks of “a group of envious people who discredit one of our books about the truths concerning religious practices”—a clear hint to his Revival of the Religious Sciences —“and who claim that there are things in it which are contrary to the teachings of the earlier colleagues of the school,” meaning the Ash ¶arite school. 39 In this case, the goal to defend himself against accusations of unbelief coincides with the objective to limit the practice of accusing one’s theological opponent and also with the desire to clarify the criteria for unbelief and apostasy from Islam. The last point was still a desideratum from the days when he wrote his fatwa¯ at the end of Incoherence . The Distinctive Criterion is a systematic work on the bounda- ries of Islam, and it explains al-Ghaza¯lı¯’s reasoning for condemning the fala¯sifa and the Isma¯ ¶ı¯lite Shiites. At the beginning of this short book of thirty pages, al-Ghaza¯lı¯ approaches his readers to use an “indicator” ( ¶ala¯ma ), or a rule of thumb, any time they feel the urge to accuse someone of unbelief: Based on this indicator you should refrain from accusing any group of unbelief and from spreading rumors about the people of Islam— even if they differ in their ways—as long as they fi rmly confess that there is no god but God and that Muh.ammad is His messenger, and as long as they hold this true and do not contradict it. [The indica- tor is:] Unbelief ( kufr ) is the accusation that something that comes from the Prophet—peace and prayers be upon him—is wrong. Belief ( ı¯ma¯n ) is to consider him true and truthful ( s.idq ) in everything that comes from him. 40
The full implications of this rule of thumb are too manifold to explore here. Compared to earlier Ash ¶arite views, it no longer assumes that a Muslim’s faith and belief ( ı¯ma¯n ) consist in accepting the truthfulness of God ( tas.dı¯q Alla¯h ), rather al-Ghaza¯lı¯ teaches that Muslim faith means accepting the truthfulness of the Prophet Muh.ammad ( tas.dı¯q al-rasu¯l ) in everything that is reliably re- ported of him. 41 This blurs the line between the Qur’an and the .hadı¯th corpus— al-Ghaza¯lı¯ regards both as revelation—and it shifts the burden of proof from the realm of the divine to the truthfulness of a person. This change results from al-Ghaza¯lı¯’s adaptation of Avicenna’s prophetology. Avicenna offers a compre- hensive theory of how revelation comes about in the mind of prophets. Accept- ing this explanation allowed al-Ghaza¯lı¯ to propose ways of verifying a person’s belief in Muh.ammad’s truthfulness ( s.idq ). Al-Ghaza¯lı¯ presents his readers with a demanding theory of how to verify that a certain position implies the accusation that the Prophet Muh.ammad has uttered an untruth ( kidhb ). It requires the reader to accept a quite diffi cult theory of language signifi cation: any given statement from the mouth of the Prophet—no matter whether it has become part of the Qur’an or the h.adı¯th corpus—constitutes a sign that refers to a “being” ( wuju ¯d ). The prophetic state- ment—one can also say the word that comes from the mouth of the Prophet— is a linguistic marker that stands in for a certain entity (“being”). In most cases, these entities are objects in the outside world: places, animals, people, actions, a l - gh a z a ¯ l 1
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and so on. For example, in a usual statement of the Qur’an, such as God’s im- perative to Moses, “Go to Pharaoh since he does wrong!” (Q 20:24 and 20:43), all the “beings” to which the text refers, such as Pharaoh or wrongdoing, are well-known entities or actions in the outside world. Al-Ghaza¯lı¯ discusses this example in the fi rst book of his Revival and points out that the outward meaning of this sentence must not be denied. “Pharaoh is an individual that can be perceived by the senses and [historical] reports reliably confi rm his existence.” 42
phetical h.adı¯th : “Paradise appeared to me on the width of this wall.” 43 A de- monstrative argument ( burha¯n ) establishes, al-Ghaza¯lı¯ argues, that paradise does not fi t on the surface of whatever wall. This argument justifi es that in this context, the original meaning of the word “paradise” must be abandoned. Here the word does not refer to a real being, meaning the true paradise, a material entity that exists somewhere in the outside world, but only to the Prophet’s sense perception. To be more precise, the entity that this h.adı¯th describes ex- ists only within the Prophet’s faculty of sense perception ( h.iss ). Therefore, the word “paradise” does not correspond to a “real being” ( wuju ¯d dha¯tı¯ ) but merely to a “sensible being” ( wuju ¯d h.issı¯ ). In this case, the reader must apply “inter- pretation” ( ta 7wı¯l ), meaning he or she must understand the sentence, not in the original sense of its wording, but in an interpreted sense, and acknowledge that Muh.ammad had the sensory impression of paradise on the surface of a wall while the real, material paradise was not at all involved. In the Arabic tradition, “to interpret” ( awwala ) etymologically means “to bring something to its origin.” Those who practice interpretation ( ta 7wı¯l ) apply the meaning originally intended by the author of the text. 44 Al-Ghaza¯lı¯ assumes that the author of revelation sometimes chose to express himself in metaphors and symbols (singl. maja¯z ). The interpreter traces these metaphors back to their h.aqı¯qa , that to which they truly refer. In the case just discussed, the h.aqı¯qa that corresponds to the text is a “sensible being,” a mere impression or percep- tion in the Prophet’s faculty of sight. In other cases, it may be an “imaginative being” ( wuju ¯d khaya¯lı¯ ), a h.aqı¯qa that exists only in the Prophet’s faculty of im- agination ( khaya¯l ). In others, it may be “conceptual” ( ¶aqlı¯ ), meaning the phrase in question refers to a universal concept in the mind of the Prophet. Finally, the h.aqı¯qa may be just a “similar being” ( wuju¯d shibhı¯ ), an idea with an analogous relationship to the concept originally intended in the text. The two latter levels of existence need to be further explained. According to al-Ghaza¯lı¯, when the Qur’an says that God has a hand, there exists no entity in the outside world called “God’s hand” to which it could refer. There is also no possible sense perception of such a hand, nor can we imagine such a hand in our faculty of imagination, al-Ghaza¯lı¯ says. In this case, the entity that the word “God’s hand” refers to can only be a concept in the mind of the Prophet. When we use the word “hand” in ordinary language, we mean “that with which one seizes something and makes something, with which one gives and takes.” This Download 4.03 Mb. Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: 
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