Page:A Moslem seeker after God - showing Islam at its best in the life and teaching of al-Ghazali, mystic and theologian of the eleventh century (IA moslemseekeraft00zwem).pdf/103



doned all his property, except so much as was nec essary for his own support and that of his children.

This sudden retirement from active life and aca demic honour was unintelligible to the theologians cf his days. They looked upon it as a calamity for Islam. Some interpreted it as fear of the Govern ment, a flight from responsibility, but the real rea son of his renunciation he himself tells us in his " Confessions." This book reveals the story of his spiritual experiences from his youth up to his fiftieth year.

He says: "Know then, my brother (may God direct you in the right way), that the diversity in beliefs and religions, and the variety of doctrines and sects which divide men, are like a deep ocean strewn with shipwrecks, from which very few es cape safe and sound. Each sect, it is true, believes itself in possession of the truth and of salvation; own creed; but as the chief of apostles, whose word is always truthful, has told us, My people will be divided into more than seventy sects of whom only one will be saved/ This prediction, like all others of the Prophet, must be fulfilled. J
 * each party/ as the Koran saith, rejoices in its

" From the period of adolescence, that is to say, . f

previous to reaching my twentieth year to the present time when I have passed my fiftieth, I have ventured into this vast ocean; I have interrogated the beliefs of each sect and scrutinized the mys teries of each doctrine, in order to disentangle truth