Part 12
In the selection of a wife, Al-Ghazali advises his disciples to look for the following qualifications: (1) piety, (2) good character, (3) beauty, (4) a moderate dowry, (5) ability to bear children, (6) that she be a virgin, (7) of a good family, (8) that she be not of near relation. The duties of the husband to the wife and the duties of the wife to her husband are given in detail by Al-Ghazali in his _Ihya_ and in some of his other works. The husband, according to this teaching, ought to maintain _a golden mean_ in dealing with his wife in twelve points, that is, he means that there should be no excess of kindness or excess of harshness in any of these particulars: (1) the marriage feast; (2) behaviour; (3) playfulness or caressing; (4) maintaining his dignity; (5) jealousy; (6) pecuniary allowance; (7) teaching; (8) granting every wife her rights (in the Moslem sense); (9) chastisement; (10) the rules of cohabitation; (11) childbirth; (12) divorce. In one place he says if the wife be disobedient and obstinate, the husband has the right to punish her and force her to obey him, but he must proceed gradually, exhort, admonish, threaten, abstain from intercourse with her for three days, beat her so as to let her feel the pain, but be careful not to wound her in the face, make her blood flow abundantly or break a bone! The teaching of Al-Ghazali on divorce and slavery is so thoroughly Moslem that much of it is untranslatable. Suffice it to say that he agrees with other doctors of Moslem law in excusing onanism and other sins under certain circumstances, and even indicates that it may become a duty if practiced in order to escape from greater sins.[68]
In spite of his Islamic conception of the sexual relation, Al-Ghazali certainly inspires our respect by what he says on the kindly treatment of the wife and the evil of divorce. Only one would like to know whether he himself had more than one wife and whether she was a worthy helpmeet to her husband and he to her. His biographers are silent.
“A man should remain on good terms with his wife. This does not mean that he should never cause her pain, but that he should bear any annoyance she causes him, whether by her unreasonableness or ingratitude, patiently. Woman is created weak, and requiring concealment; she should therefore be borne with patiently, and kept secluded. The Prophet said, ‘He who bears the ill-humour of his wife patiently will earn as much merit as Job did by the patient endurance of his trials.’ On his deathbed also he was heard to say, ‘Continue in prayer and treat your wives well, for they are your prisoners.’
“Wise men have said, ‘Consult women, and act the contrary to what they advise.’ In truth there is something perverse in women, and if they are allowed even a little license, they get out of control altogether, and it is difficult to reduce them to order again. In dealing with them one should endeavour to use a mixture of severity and tenderness, with a greater proportion of the latter. The Prophet said, ‘Woman was formed of a crooked rib; if you try to bend her, you will break her; if you leave her alone, she will grow more and more crooked; therefore treat her tenderly.’[69]
“The greatest care should be taken to avoid divorce, for, though divorce is permitted, yet God disapproves of it, because the very utterance of the word ‘divorce’ causes a woman pain, and how can it be right to pain any one? When divorce is absolutely necessary, the formula for it should not be repeated thrice all at once, but on three different occasions. A woman should be divorced kindly, not through anger and contempt, and not without a reason. After divorce a man should give his former wife a present, and not tell others that she has been divorced for such and such a fault. Of a certain man who was instituting divorce proceedings against his wife it is related that people asked him, ‘Why are you divorcing her?’ He answered, ‘I do not reveal my wife’s secrets.’ When he had actually divorced her, he was asked again, and said, ‘She is a stranger to me now; I have nothing to do with her private affairs.’”
All the relations of life, its pleasures and duties pass under review in books on _ʾAdab_. Every detail of outward conduct is regulated by what is said to have been the practice of the Prophet. How to eat a pomegranate correctly, how to take a bath, how to use the _Miswak_, or tooth-brush, how to behave towards Jews and Christians, and what ornaments are allowed—all this comes under the head of Moslem Ethics. We give the reader one striking example.
In his work, “The Alchemy of Happiness,” there is a chapter concerning “Music and Dancing as Aids to the Religious Life.” The question of musical instruments was discussed as earnestly in the days of Al-Ghazali as it has been more recently among Christians who dread the desecration of God’s house by the “cist of whistles.” There was much dispute among theologians as to the lawfulness of music and dancing as religious exercises. The Sufis had already introduced the practice. The following paragraphs show Al-Ghazali’s common sense, keen humour, and at the same time his rather doubtful conclusion; for he even justifies erotic poetry if sung for the glory of God:
“The heart of man has been so constituted by the Almighty that, like a flint, it contains a hidden fire which is evoked by music and harmony, and renders man beside himself with ecstasy. These harmonies are echoes of that higher world of beauty which we call the world of spirits; they remind man of his relationship to that world, and produce in him an emotion so deep and strange that he himself is powerless to explain it. The effect of music and dancing is deeper in proportion as the nature on which they act are simple and prone to emotion; they fan into a flame whatever love is already dormant in the heart, whether it be earthly and sensual, or divine and spiritual....
“Passing over the cases where music and dancing rouse into a flame evil desires already dormant in the heart, we come to those cases where they are quite lawful. Such are those of the pilgrims who celebrate the glories of the House of God at Mecca in song, and thus incite others to go on pilgrimage, and of minstrels whose music and songs stir up martial ardour in the breasts of their auditors and incite them to fight against the infidels. Similarly, mournful music which excites sorrow for sin and failure in the religious life is lawful; of this nature was the music of David. But dirges which increase sorrow for the dead are not lawful, for it is written in the Koran, ‘Despair not over what you have lost.’ On the other hand, joyful music at weddings and feasts and on such occasions as a circumcision or the return from a journey is lawful....
“The states of ecstasy into which the Sufis fall vary according to the emotions which predominate in them—love, fear, desire, repentance, etc. These states, as we have mentioned above, are often the result not only of hearing verses of the Koran, but erotic poetry. Some have objected to the reciting of poetry, as well as of the Koran, on these occasions; but it should be remembered that all the verses of the Koran are not adapted to stir the emotions—such, for instance, as that which commands that a man should leave his mother the sixth part of his property and his sister the half, or that which orders that a widow must wait four months after the death of her husband before becoming espoused to another man. The natures which can be thrown into religious ecstasy by the recital of such verses are peculiarly sensitive and very rare.” They certainly are!
The inconsistencies and contradictions in Al-Ghazali’s theory of conduct surprise us when we peruse his works. Sometimes he leads us to high mountain ranges whose summits are gilded with the light of heaven, the great truths of Theism, the ideals of eternity; and again he plunges us into the sloughs of sensuous and worldly discussion—themes unworthy of his pen.
Let us get back to the mountain tops where the air is healthier. Al-Ghazali, whatever may have been his failure in other respects, had high ideals for the attainment of morals from the Moslem standpoint. In his “The Alchemy of Happiness” he says, “When in the crucible of abstinence the soul is purged from carnal passions it attains to the highest, and in place of being a slave to lust and anger becomes endued with angelic qualities. Attaining that state, man finds his heaven in the contemplation of Eternal Beauty, and no longer in fleshly delights. The spiritual alchemy which operates this change in him, like that which transmutes base metals into gold, is not easily discovered, nor to be found in the house of every old woman.”
And in the attainment of this ideal he is sure that there must be a fight for character. The goal is not to be reached by easy stages. The warfare against passion is real and costs sacrifice. He gives us a picture of this Holy War almost in the language of John Bunyan. “For the carrying on of this spiritual warfare by which the knowledge of oneself and of God is to be obtained, the body may be figured as a kingdom, the soul as its king and the different senses and faculties as constituting an army. Reason may be called the vizier, or prime minister, passion the revenue-collector, and anger the police-officer. Under the guise of collecting revenue, passion is continually prone to plunder on its own account, while resentment is always inclined to harshness and extreme severity. Both of these, the revenue-collector and the police-officer, have to be kept in due subordination to the king, but not killed or expelled, as they have their own proper functions to fulfil. But if passion and resentment master reason, the ruin of the soul infallibly ensues. A soul which allows its lower faculties to dominate the higher is as one who should hand over an angel to the power of a dog or a Mussalman to the tyranny of an unbeliever.”
The struggle is, therefore, between the flesh and the spirit. Like St. Paul, Al-Ghazali must have experienced that which he describes: “The good that I would I do not, and the evil that I would not, that I do.” He is conscious of the inner struggle between the higher and the lower natures in man. Again and again he contrasts the body and the soul as to their eternal value in their struggle for supremacy. Both are of God, His gift to us; both show His wisdom and His power; but there is no comparison when we try to estimate their real values.
“The body, so to speak, is simply the riding animal of the soul, and perishes while the soul endures. The soul should take care of the body, just as a pilgrim on his way to Mecca takes care of his camel; but if the pilgrim spends his whole time in feeding and adorning his camel, the caravan will leave him behind, and he will perish in the desert.”[70]
The four leading virtues—the mothers of all other good qualities—Al-Ghazali says are “Wisdom, temperance, bravery, and moderation (or the golden mean of conduct).”[71] This classification he has borrowed from Plato with so much else on the theory of conduct. He explains all these virtues in terms of the Koran and illustrates them from the lives of Mohammed and the early saints of Islam as well as the later mystics.
He is at his best when he speaks of vices and their opposite virtues. No one can read his chapter against pride and boasting without seeing that he gives us again a page from his own experience. He begins by quoting the saying of the Prophet, “No one shall enter paradise in whose heart there is the weight of a grain of mustard seed of pride.” And another saying, “Said God Most High, ‘Pride is my mantle and majesty is my cloak, and whosoever takes away one of them from me I will cast him into hell, and I care not.’” Another saying attributed to Mohammed is evidently taken from the Gospel, “Whoso humbleth himself before God, God will exalt him, and whosoever is proud God will bring him low.” His definition of humility is beautiful: “True humility is to be subject to the truth and to be corrected by it even though thou shouldst hear it from a mere boy on the street.” In this connection he quotes also a saying of Jesus: “Said the Messiah (upon Him be peace), ‘Blessed is he to whom God has taught His book. He shall never die in his pride.’”
Pride is shown in different ways. Al-Ghazali enumerates pride of knowledge, of worship, of race and blood, of beauty and dress, of wealth, of bodily strength, of leadership. He quotes Mohammed as an example of humility, and also Abi Saeed el Khudri, who said, “Oh, my son, eat unto God and drink unto God and dress unto God. But whatsoever thou doest of all of these and there enters into them pride or hypocrisy it is disobedience. Whatever you do in your house do it yourself as did the Apostle of God, for he used to milk the goats and patch his sandals and sew his cloak and eat with the servants and buy in the bazaar, nor did his pride forbid him carrying his own packages home; and he was friendly to the rich and to the poor and he gave greetings himself first to every one whom he met, etc.”
It is noteworthy that when he rises to the highest ethical teaching he bases his remarks on the sayings (mostly apocryphal) of Christ, which we collate in our final chapter. Al-Ghazali tried hard but failed to find in Mohammed the ideals of his own heart. This is the tragedy of Islam.
VIII
Al-Ghazali as a Mystic
“Mysticism is religion, and supplies a refuge for men of religious minds who find it no longer possible for them to rest on ‘external authority’—as George Tyrrell both expounded and illustrated for us. Once turn away from revelation and little choice remains to you but the choice between Mysticism and Rationalism. There is not so much choice between these things, it is true, as enthusiasts on either side are apt to imagine. The difference between them is very much a matter of temperament, or perhaps we may even say of temperature. The Mystic blows hot, the Rationalist cold. Warm up a Rationalist and you inevitably get a Mystic; chill down a Mystic and you find yourself with a Rationalist on your hands. The history of thought illustrates repeatedly the easy passage from one to the other. Each centers himself in himself, and the human self is not so big that it makes any large difference where within yourself you take your center. Nevertheless just because Mysticism blows hot, its ‘eccentricity’ is the more attractive to men of lively religious feeling.”
—_Benjamin B. Warfield, in the “Princeton Theological Review.”_
VIII
AL-GHAZALI AS A MYSTIC
One of the earliest mystics in Islam was Rabiaʾ, who was buried in Jerusalem. She was a native of Busrah and died at Jerusalem as early as the second century of Islam. Her tomb, according to Ibn Khallikan, was an object of pilgrimage in the Middle Ages, and was probably visited by Al-Ghazali. The following verses are quoted from her in the _Ihya_ (vol. iv. p. 298):
“Two ways I love Thee: selfishly, And next, as worthy is of Thee. ’Tis selfish love that I do naught Save think on Thee with every thought: ’Tis purest love when Thou dost raise The veil to my adoring gaze. Not mine the praise in that or this, Thine is the praise in both, I wis.”
The Moslem mystics, or _Sufis_, however, received their name through Abu Khair, who lived at the end of the second century of the Hegira. His disciples wore a woolen garment, and from the word _suf_, which means wool, they obtained their name. In the next century, al-Junaid (A. H. 297), one of Al-Ghazali’s favourite authorities, was the great leader of the movement, which spread throughout Islam. It was a reaction from the barren monotheism and the rigid ritualism of Islam. This kind of orthodoxy did not meet the needs of the more imaginative mind of the Eastern races who accepted Islam. The preachers of the new doctrine travelled everywhere and mixed with men of all conditions. In this way they adopted ideas from many sources, although always professing to base their teaching on the Koran and Tradition.
According to Nicholson, the Mystics of Islam borrowed not only from Christianity and Neoplatonism, but from Gnosticism and Buddhism. Many Gospel texts and sayings of Jesus, most of them apocryphal, are cited in the oldest Sufi writings. From Christianity they took the use of the woollen dress, the vows of silence, the litanies (_Zikr_), and other ascetic practices. Their teaching also has many interesting parallels which Nicholson summarizes as follows: “The same expressions are applied to the founder of Islam which are used by St. John, St. Paul, and later mystical theologians concerning Christ. Thus, Mohammed is called the Light of God, he is said to have existed before the creation of the world, he is adored as the source of all life, actual and possible, he is the Perfect Man in whom all the divine attributes are manifested, and a Sufi tradition ascribes to him the saying, ‘He that hath seen me hath seen Allah.’ In the Moslem scheme, however, the Logos doctrine occupies a subordinate place, as it obviously must when the whole duty of man is believed to consist in realizing the unity of God.”[72]
Neoplatonism gave them the doctrine of emanation and ecstasy. The following version of the doctrine of the seventy thousand veils, as expounded to Canon Gairdner by a modern dervish, shows clear traces of Gnosticism. “Seventy Thousand Veils separate Allah, the One reality, from the world of matter and of sense. And every soul passes before his birth through these seventy thousand. The inner half of these are veils of light: the outer half, veils of darkness. For every one of the veils of light passed through, in this journey towards birth, the soul puts off a divine quality; and for every one of the dark veils, it puts on an earthly quality. Thus the child is born weeping, for the soul knows its separation from Allah, the one Reality. And when the child cries in its sleep, it is because the soul remembers something of what it has lost. Otherwise, the passage through the veils has brought with it forgetfulness (_nisyan_): and for this reason man is called _insan_. He is now, as it were, in prison in his body, separated by these thick curtains from Allah. But the whole purpose of Sufism, the Way of the dervish, is to give him an escape from this prison, an apocalypse of the Seventy Thousand Veils, a recovery of the original unity with The One, while still in this body.”[73]
In regard to Buddhist influence, Professor Goldziher has called attention to the fact that in the eleventh century the teaching of Buddha exerted considerable influence in eastern Persia, especially at Balkh, a city famous for the number of Sufis who dwelt in it. From the Buddhists came the use of the rosary (afterwards adopted by Christians in Europe), and perhaps also the doctrine of _fana_ or absorption into God.
“While _fana_,” says Nicholson, “in its pantheistic form is radically different from Nirvana, the terms coincide so closely in other ways that we cannot regard them as being altogether unconnected. _Fana_ has an ethical aspect: it involves the extinction of all passions and desires. The passing away of evil qualities and of the evil actions which they produce is said to be brought about by the continuance of the corresponding good qualities and actions.”[74] The cultivation of character by the contemplation of God in a mystical sense was the real goal. To know God was to be like Him and to be like Him ended in absorption or ecstasy.[75] One of their favourite sayings was that attributed to God by the Prophet, “I was a hidden treasure and I desired to be known, so I created the creation in order that I might be known.” Just as the universe is the mirror of God’s being, so the heart of man is to the Sufi the mirror of the universe. If he would know God or Truth he must look into his own heart.
To quote Al-Ghazali himself: “The aim which the Sufis set before them is as follows: To free the soul from the tyrannical yoke of the passions, to deliver it from its wrong inclinations and evil instincts, in order that in the purified heart there should only remain room for God and for the invocation of His holy name.
“As it was more easy to learn their doctrine than to practise it, I studied first of all those of their books which contain it: _The Nourishment of Hearts_, by Abu Talib of Mecca, the works of Hareth el Muhasibi, and the fragments which still remain, of Junaid, Shibli, Abu Yezid, Bustami and other leaders (whose souls may God sanctify). I acquired a thorough knowledge of their researches, and I learned all that was possible to learn of their methods by study and oral teaching. It became clear that the last stage could not be reached by mere instruction, but only by transport, ecstasy, and the transformation of the moral being” (p. 41, “Confessions”).
“Among the teachings of the Sufis was that of the preëxistence of Mohammed the Prophet in the Essence of Light. According to the Traditions, ‘I was a prophet while Adam was yet between earth and clay,’ and ‘There is no prophet after me,’ Sufis hold that Mohammed was a prophet even before the creation and that he still holds office. This identification of Mohammed with the Primal Element explains the names sometimes given him, such as Universal Reason, the Great Spirit, the Truth of Humanity, the Possessor of the Ray of Light—the Nur-i-Muhammadi—from God’s own splendour.”[76]
Absorption in God, therefore, or union with Him is the goal of all the Sufi teachings and practices. The entire negation of self clears the way for the apprehension of the Truth. This journey towards God has its stages which are generally given as eight in number: service, love, abstraction, knowledge, ecstasy, truth, union, extinction. Some of the Sufis went so far as to set aside external religion, and showed an utter indifference to the ritual as well as to the moral law. Al-Ghazali was not of their number. He teaches, however, that the ordinary theologian cannot enter on the mystic path, for he is still in bondage to dogma and wanders about in darkness. Prayer, fasting, pilgrimage in all their requirements and the details of their observations have, therefore, a twofold significance; the outward and formal one which is understood by the common people, and the spiritual, real, esoteric significance which is only grasped by those who give themselves entirely to God.