Draft Notes: Not for Circulation Or Reference Without Permission from the Author

DRAFT NOTES: NOT FOR CIRCULATION OR REFERENCE WITHOUT PERMISSION FROM THE AUTHOR Ghazali confirms that the issue of takfir is indeed a legal one and implicitly suggests that the law can only judge the explicit avowal of a person or group of people in relation their beliefs.1 This has material consequence as Ghazali himself admits despite some scholars attempts to either ignore or dismiss these possible consequences. Sherman Jackson’s claims in in his introduction to the translation of Ghazali’s Faysal that Ghazali’s conception of kufr “is purely a matter of rejecting the truthfulness of the Prophet Muhammad. Beyond this, it reveals, in and of itself, virtually nothing about a person’s moral and religious constitution. On this understanding, the modern Muslim tendency to employ kafir (unbeliever) as a moral, ethnic, cultural, or even civilizational delineator shows itself to be a patent misuse of the category…. For on al-Ghazali’s definition, kafir (qua kāfir) is neither immoral, irreligious, nor exempt from receiving recognition – in this world – for the good he or she commits. As such, it is wholly unnecessary to deny that a person is a kafir simply in order to be able to preserve his or her status as a human being possessed of religion or other laudable qualities”.2 Jackson’s submissions are an incomplete complete reflection of what Ghazali says on the issue. In the Iqtisad Ghazali says the following regarding the meaning of stating that a person is a kafir: “This implies, regarding his place in the hereafter, that he will be in hellfire forever; and, regarding his status in this worldly life, that it is not obligatory to punish the one who kills him, that he cannot marry a Muslim, that his life and property are not inviolable, and the rest of such judgments.”3 Here Ghazali clearly states that the legal consequence of deeming a person an infidel not only has otherworldly affects but theoretically has material effects in this world relating to his (and here Ghazali is referring to a male but the opposite would apply to a female a fortiori) life and property. Where Jackson is correct is on Ghazali’s apparent restrictive test for what constitutes kufr. For Ghazali the test of whether a charge of infidelity?? is justified is 1 Aladdin M. Yaqub. Al-Ghazali’s Moderation in Belief (Al-Iqtisad Fi al-I‘tiqad) (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2013), p. 241. This is an annotated translation of Ghazali’s book. Ghazali penned three important texts which deal with heresy and takfir. The first is a treatise within the firaq (heresiographical) genre of literature which was written at the invitation of the Abbasid Caliph – the title in part bears the Caliph’s name – where al-Ghazali’s main aim was to critique Ismaili beliefs in order to demonstrate their erroneous ways and also to place them outside the fold of Islam. This text is titled Fada’ih al-Batiniyya wa fada’il al-Mustazhiriyya translated by Richard Joseph McCarthy under the title Freedom and Fulfilment (Boston, 1980), pp. 175-286. Toshihiko Izutzu provides an analysis of this text in his book The Concept of Belief in Islamic Theology: A Semantic Analysis of Iman and Islam (Tokyo, 1965), pp. 23-34. A more detailed examination of Ghazali’s critiques of the Ismailis is Farouk Mitha’s Al-Ghazal and the Ismailis: A Debate on Reason and Authority in Medieval Islam (London & New York: I.B Taurus in association with the Institute of Ismaili Studies, 2001). The second text which Ghazali wrote is al-Iqtisad fi al-I’tiqad (Moderation in Belief) which is ultimately a theological defence of the Sunni – particularly Ash’ari – creed. The last chapter of this text which deals with which sects should be charged with infidelity is relevant here. The last book which Ghazali wrote on the subject of heresy and infidelity is a text that has much continuity with the previous two works but where he set out in more detail a systematic method according to which one may determine statements which avoid the charge of disbelief attaching to its originator and those statements which must be considered as warranting the charge of disbelief. This text has been referred to above in footnote 51 under the title of Faysal. 2 Sherman Jackson, Faysal, p. 7. 3 Aladdin M. Yaqub. Iqtisad, p. 241. DRAFT NOTES: NOT FOR CIRCULATION OR REFERENCE WITHOUT PERMISSION FROM THE AUTHOR whether a person is of the view that the Prophet had lied or in the words of Ebrahim Moosa who describes Ghazali’s iman benchmark as “a distorted belief amounts to unbelief (kufr) only when it is tantamount to ‘refuting’ (tadhkib) the authority and incontrovertible teachings of the Prophet.”4 Accordingly, there are three fundamental beliefs that flow from this faith standard: 1.Belief in God; 2. Belief in the Prophet Muhammad as the messenger of God; and 3. Nelief in the Last Day. Following on from this it is also essential to believe in any widely transmitted reports (tawatur), including the Qur’an, that was handed down from the Prophet because such reports equate certainty in that its ubiquitous nature belies any foul play or deception in the content. To reject or display any doubt regarding these things renders one an infidel. Ghazali declares all followers of other religions as infidels who will experience the punishment of hell fire (excluding those infidels who either never heard of the Prophet or who were only subjected to false and hateful rumours about the Prophet). More relevant to our discussion, Ghazali also declares the Muslim philosophers and those Muslims who reject or tacitly doubt tawatur reports as infidels. The former case is the curious one because the philosophers, as Ghazali admits, believes in God and the Prophet, but it is their way of believing that troubles Ghazali. Their belief that the Prophet could not represent the truth explicitly because most people would not be able to comprehend it (except the philosophers and their kind), their denial of the physicality of the hereafter including bodily resurrection, and their claim that God only knows universals and not the particulars of the existential reality and that although God preceded the world in existence, the world will continue to exist forever the same as God.5 While these claims certainly are unsound in terms of Ash’ari doctrine, none of these claims imply that the Prophet was neither a messenger nor truthful. At worst, the philosophers claim that the Prophet explained certain things in a way so that people could understand and use that information in their lives even though such an explanation did not reflect the fullest extent of the actual reality. The other group who Ghazali vociferously attacks is the Ismailis. In the first treatise he wrote, it is clear that Ghazali employs the same tactic to declare Ismailis as kafir. He states that their denial of the physical resurrection and a physical heaven and hell (as the philosophers claimed) also renders the Ismailis as kafir because the physicality of these things are apparent from the Qur’an and therefore to suggest otherwise is to suggest that the Prophet was lied or covered the truth in relation to these aspects.6 Furthermore, Ghazali is quite strident on the importance of the Muslim community having a leader or Imam and that this leader for Ghazali at the time of writing was the Abbasid Caliph whom Ghazali considered the only qualified 4 Ebrahim Moosa. Ghazali and the Poetics of Imagination (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005), p. 194 5 Aladdin M. Yaqub. Iqtisad, pp. 241-250 and Jackson, Faysal, pp. 92-111. 6 Richard Joseph McCarthy. Freedom and Fulfilment, pp. 153-154. DRAFT NOTES: NOT FOR CIRCULATION OR REFERENCE WITHOUT PERMISSION FROM THE AUTHOR person for the office of Imam at the time. To further discredit the Ismaili Imam, Ghazali concentrates on the role ijmaʿ plays in electing and consolidating the Imam of the age. Besides the fact that the Ismaili Imam does not qualify to occupy this position due to his heretical beliefs, the Ismaili conception of the Imam contravened the ijmaʿ since the time of the death of the Prophet and even at the time of writing, the ijmaʿ supporting the Ismaili Imam was numerically insignificant compared to the ijmaʿ of all Muslims who supported the Abbasid Caliph as their Imam.7 This articulation of complete faith in the Abbasid Caliph as a qualified and suitable Imam for Muslims is grounded in realpolitik. In the Iqtisad Ghazali clearly sets out that it suffices for one person who is representative of the community to take the oath of allegiance (bay’a) on the condition that the person has shawka (strength). In other words, the ijmaʿ of the community and the scholars is represented – unilaterally it must be added – by a powerful man, in Ghazali’s time, this being the Seljuq Sultan who in turn appoints the Imam through his political power.8 Ghazali’s construction of orthodoxy and heresy, of right belief and wrong belief and of who is a Muslim and who is not, had as much to do with political expediency as it had to do with any genuine interest in protecting the parameters of orthodox belief. Moosa’s assessment of Ghazali in this respect is rather bleak. He says that Ghazali’s “wish to protect the Abbasid state and, perhaps more important, his impassioned desire to shelter the community from harm got the better of him in political theology […]. In this respect, Ghazali left the theological landscape rather untouched in its substance; cynics might say he left it worse for the wear”.9 The critique, in my view, against Ghazali’s compromised political theology is a valid one.

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