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/255



AL-GHAZALI AS A MYSTIC 235

It is remarkable that while he founded a cloister for Sufis at Tus and taught and governed there himself during the closing years of his life, he left no established order behind him. Professor Mac donald thinks that in his time the movement to wards continuous corporations and brotherhoods had not yet begun. But this is a mistake, for in the Kashf-al-Mahjub (A. H. 456) we already find a list of the various schools of Dervishes and their peculiar methods of devotion. Al-Ghazali’s teach ing, however, is popular among all the Dervish orders of to-day.

A special study has been made of one of Al Ghazali’s esoteric works on mysticism entitled Mishkat atAnwar, by Canon W. H. T. Gairdner, in which he answers the critics of this work, and shows conclusively that whatever may have been Al-Ghazali’s method he was sincere. We borrow from this interesting and scholarly paper two paragraphs to illustrate the method of Al-Gha zali:

" In expounding the tradition of the Seventy Thousand Veils with which Allah had veiled Him self from the vision of man, Ghazali finds oppor tunity to graduate various religions and sects ac cording as they are more, or less, thickly veiled from the light; i. e., according as they more or less nearly approximate to Absolute Truth (al-Haqq the Real Allah). The veils which veil the vari ous religions and sects from the Divine Li