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Historically speaking Greek philosophy came several centuries before the birth of Islam. I cannot understand why al-Ghazali felt that Greek philosophy would damage the Islamic faith. Ghazali crusaded against Greek thought and considered it too heretical and damaging to Islamic thought. Al Ghazali bitterly criticized the thinkers who supported the Muta’zillites school of thought which led most historians and critics to say that Al Ghazali was responsible for the fall of the Golden Islamic age. The other school of thought was called Mut’azillites, who believed in liberal thought and also liked to capitalize on Greek philosophy. Going with the stream, he wrote his first philosophical treatise, Maqasid al Falasifa.Īl Ghazali, in his religious philosophy, had argued that God was the centre point of all human life that played a direct role in all world affairs.įrom the year 1095, a crisis turned him around, and he felt that the Greek philosophy lacked intellectual sincerity as a rebuttal, he wrote his monumental book, “Tahaful al Falasifa,” “The Incoherence of the philosophers.” At that time, Muslims in their attitudes towards Greek philosophy and western influences were divided into two classes: Asha’rites who were opposed to any innovation to Islamic theology. Ghazali had started as a sceptic during his early phases when he came to read Greek philosophical treatises written by prominent Muslim scholars like Al-Farabi (d.951) and Ibn Sina (d.980). Most critics also blame him for being a cause of the fall or decadence of the Golden age of Islam, which was finally liquidated by the Mongol invasion of 1258. Despite Al Ghazali’s great contribution to the corpus of Muslim practices, its theology and the development of its mysticism, he remained to the end a controversial figure as his crusade against Greek philosophy and western knowledge were concerned. The Islamic Golden Age-from the 8th to the mid-13th century-was one of the greatest periods of human flourishment in knowledge and progress, with Baghdad as its focal point. Al-Ghazali came to believe in a form of theological occasionalism, which meant that all causal events and interactions are not the product of material conjunctions but rather the immediate and present will of God.Īl-Ghaz?l?’s greatest work is I?y?ul?m al-d?n, which in 40 “books,” he explained the doctrines and practices of Islam and showed how these can be made the basis of a profound devotional life, leading to the higher stages of Sufism, or mysticism. His 11th-century book titled “The Incoherence of the Philosophers” marks a major turn in Islamic epistemology. Al Ghazali has been acknowledged by Encyclopedia Britannica as well as by Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy as the greatest Muslim philosopher whose influence was not limited to Islam only but most of his ideas were widely followed and circulated among Christian and Hebrew scholars and philosophers.