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/219

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is contrary to God’s will is a great sin," but gives Koran passages contradicting this and then escapes the moral difficulty by showing that the smaller sins may become great if we continue in them: " like the dropping of water wearing away a stone "; and " when the servant of God reckons his sin great, God reckons it small, and when he reckons it small, then God reckons it great."

He divides the sins which overcome the heart into four classes: egoistic, satanic, brutal and cruel. Under the first he puts pride, conceit, boasting, selfishness, etc.; envy, hatred, deceit, malice, cor ruption and unbelief, belong to the second; while greed, gluttony, lust, adultery, sodomy, theft, and the robbing of orphans are classed as brutal sins; and anger, passion, abuse, cursing, murder, rob bery, etc., are cruel.

Yet in all of Al-Ghazali’s works on ethics and many of his smaller treatises are on this subject, there is no clear distinction made between the ritual and the moral law. In fact one word used for ethics in Arabic (adab) refers to propriety of con duct, etiquette, politeness, and decency in outward behaviour, reverence in the presence of superiors, rather than to the keeping of the ten command ments or of the principles that are fundamental to noble character. This becomes very clear when we study the contents, for example, of one of his shorter books entitled Al-Adab fi Din (Ethics in