ABSTRACT

Al-Ghazālī held that there is no real knowledge apart from knowledge of God. This knowledge is based on tawhīd (divine unity). Throughout his life al-Ghazālī studied and commented on the Qur’ān in order to increase this knowledge, grounded mainly on God’s ipseity (absolute divine self-identity, which, as will be discussed in subsequent chapters, is very different to either Ibn ‘Arabī’s monism or Avicenna’s account of transcendence) and on the equilibrium between knowledge and action, behaviour and belief. In order to show that al-Ghazālī can still be considered the Muslim intellectual par excellence, the chapter surveys a number of contemporary interpretations of his thought, arguing that jurisprudence, theology, philosophy and spiritual research are intertwined in his works on the basis of a diuturnal Qur’anic meditation.