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/206



distance of time. We have also to remember the party spirit and false statements in this particular case. Again, if he did kill him, he is not an unbe liever because of that; he is only disobedient to God. Again, he may have repented before he died. Further, to abstain from cursing is no crime. No one will be asked if he ever cursed Satan; if he has cursed him he may be asked, Why? The only ac cursed ones of whom we know are those who die infidels." *

Among his books against the philosophers we must mention three which are closely related to one another. They are the Maqasid-ul-Falasifa, a statement of the true teachings of the philosophers and a presentation of their views of the world; the Tahafut ul Falasifa which overthrows their views and shows that they are untenable to those who would follow Islam with heart and mind; the Qawa id, which shows the truths that must be built up to take the place of the errors of the philos ophers. In the first-named book, according to Macdonald, he " smites the philosophers hip and thigh, turns their own weapons against them and goes to the extreme of intellectual scepticism; seven hundred years before Hume he cuts the bond of causality with the edge of his dialectic and proclaims that we can know nothing of cause or effect, but simply that one thing follows an other/

1 Macdonald