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/245



AL-GHAZALI AS A MYSTIC 227

ders about in darkness. Prayer, fasting, pilgrim age in all their requirements and the details of their observations have, therefore, a twofold signifi cance; the outward and formal one which is under stood by the common people, and the spiritual, real, esoteric significance which is only grasped by those who give themselves entirely to God.

Al-Ghazali was thoroughly aware of the dangers of Sufism both in its creed by way of becoming pantheistic, and in its antinomian practices. He saw that divorce between religion and morals would be disastrous and must therefore have been shocked by such verses as those of Omar Khayyam:

" Khayyam! why weep you that your life is bad; What boots it thus to mourn? Rather be glad. He that sins not can make no claim to mercy; Mercy was made for sinners be not sad."

His teaching regarding sin and repentance was, as we shall see later, altogether more fundamental.

From the earliest times pantheistic Sufism found a home in Khorasan among the Moslems. The old idea of incarnation emerged when the Shiah sect separated itself and paid such high veneration to Ali. The sect of the Khattahiyah worshipped the Imam Jafar Sadik as God. Others believed that the divine spirit had descended upon Abdallah Ibn Amr. In Khorasan the opinion was widely spread that Abu Muslim, the great general who overturned the dynasty of the Ommeyads and set up that of the Abbassides, was an incarnation of the spirit of