ABSTRACT
We disagree. First, al-Ghazali’s texts, as well as those of other medieval Arab Scholastics, were about as “European” as any scholarship at the time; almost all of these intellectual developments and their interchange were taking place for several centuries in and around the Mediterranean, and the “European/non-European and Western/non-Western” distinctions were hardly relevant at the time. Second, instead of “blocking out” the religious nature of the texts, we remind our readers-almost excessively-that al-Ghazali’s scholarship, as that of others of that era, “imbued as it was with his deep
Islamic faith, assumes its greatest significance in relation to the larger philosophical-theological controversies of the time-between reason and revelation, between faith and skepticism” (1990, 385). It also needs to be pointed out (as we do on 383) that from an Islamic perspective, the word Deen, contrary to Oslington’s interpretation, has a much more comprehensive meaning than mere “religious practice”. That perspective favours, as alGhazali emphasizes, sacred pursuits, along with the secular, including economic activities (though constrained by the scriptures, as even with the moralist Adam Smith’s reference to “Providence” when talking of his selfinterest and invisible-hand notions). In that sense al-Ghazali is secular, though not quite the “post-Enlightenment” secularist. Nor do we characterize him as a “modern” thinker in present-day terms-one who proposes a social system “independent of religious thought”. In fact, we quote him, in that “the state and religion are inseparable pillars of an orderly society…if either pillar is weak, society will crumble” (395; Ihya, 1:17). Further, “the greatest of these Christian writers who was influenced by Ghazali was St Thomas Aquinas who made a study of Arabic writers and admitted his indebtedness to them” (Smith 1944, 220). Similarly, al-Ghazali “influenced deeply the greatest of medieval Jewish philosophers, Maimonides” (Artz 1953, 147).
