Post by tahawi on Jun 6, 2017 6:16:32 GMT
Al-Ghazālī on the Fate of Non-Muslims
Theological debates have permeated through the fabric of Islamic history from the era of the immediate followers of the Prophet. This is clear from early theological debates between groups like the Mu‘tazilah and the Sunnis, for instance. These debates often exited the gates of mere dialectical theology and entered the realm of politics; the Qur’ānic Inquisition during the reign al-Ma’mūn (r. 198-218 AH) is a glaring case in point. One such discourse is the Islamic view on the fate of others, a theological question that has preoccupied Muslim scholars from an early period of history. It is difficult to overstate the consequences of such a discussion because it forms the lens through which a Muslim views non-Muslims. One thing is for certain: this discourse exceeds the bounds of theology and has political ramifications. Consider the conflicting views of Jean Jacques Rousseau and John Rawls on whether a democratic system can function efficiently by allowing exclusivist views; Rousseau believes it to be an impossibility while Rawls argues that it is part of the very fabric of such a system. For justifiable reasons, contemporary democracies tend to work parallel to Rawl’s philosophy.
The present essay aims to briefly examine the question of “the fate of others” through the ideas of a prominent, and at times polarizing, thinker of Islamic thought: Abū Hāmid Muhammad al-Ghazālī (d. 505 AH).
Reading through al-Ghazālī’s works, one gets the impression that he is reading the ideas of the two different individuals. The apparent inconsistencies, however, are due in large part because of the spiritual, academic, and personal development al-Ghazālī went through in his life. Upon completion of his formal studies, al-Ghazālī quickly made his way through the educational system and secured an endowed chair in the prestigious Nizāmiyyah institute of Baghdād. Despite the fame and acclaim that came with this rightly earned position, with the passing of a few years al-Ghazālī experienced a crisis of faith. After re-evaluating his intentions, he came to a frightening realization: his intentions merited damnation; thus, he abandoned his position and set off to travel the Muslim world. After spending much time in travel and contemplation, he returned back to his lecturing career with a renewed understanding. As such, al-Ghazālī’s works may appear contradictory at times. The answer to this puzzle is that he, like many other scholars, went through multiple stages and evolved in his views.
There are two areas of study in respect to the views of al-Ghazālī vis-à-vis the question of salvation in the afterlife. One is how he views intra-Islamic theological debates, and the other is his stance on the fate of non-Muslims. Regarding the former, he opines that a person will have left the fold of Islam due to theological reasons only when his violation pertains to the fundamentals of faith (e.g., belief in the afterlife) or secondary doctrines that are transmitted widely (tawātur) or backed by consensus. The discussion on how he deals with intra-Islamic theological issues is beyond the scope of the present study, so our focus here is his views on the fate of non-Muslims.
As can be gleaned from his most renowned work Ihyā’ ‘Ulūm al-Dīn, al-Ghazālī associates belief with the quintessence of a person’s primordial temperament (fitrah). The Qur’ān states that every person has affirmed their belief in God when He asked them “Am I not your Lord?” and they replied, “Of course (you are). We testify.” you should say on the Day of Judgment, “We were unaware of this.” The question that follows is: then how is it possible that many people abandoned their original affirmation? To answer this, he writes that people contaminate their pure innate disposition, thereby forgetting their primordial faith, by rejecting the messengers sent by God and adopting false guides in their place.
Al-Ghazālī is clear in his belief in Islamic supersessionism. He writes, “God abrogated all other laws except whatever He confirmed from among them. And He preferred Muhammad over all other prophets and made him master of humanity.” This is further supported by a treatise attributed to him entitled, al-Radd al-Jamīl li Ilāhiyyat ‘Isā bi Sarīh al-Injīl (the Beautiful Response to the Claim of Jesus’ Divinity through Explicit Passages of the Bible). Here al-Ghazāl expends his energy to demonstrate the falsity of Jesus’ divinity and its conflict with reason. He is explicit in his belief that such a doctrine is unacceptable, citing thereby the Bible itself. However, the ascription of the aforementioned treatise to al-Ghazālī is yet to be confirmed.
That being said, in his seminal treatise on the subject entitled, Faysal al-Tafriqah bayn al-Islām wa al-Zandaqah, (the Decisive Criterion for Distinguishing Islam from Masked Infidelity) which was written just a few years prior to his demise, he explains that the intent of hadiths that describe salvation are exclusively in reference to the Muslim community. However, he modifies this general statement by adding that God’s mercy will encompass “most of the Christians of Byzantium and the Turks of this age.” To explain this point, he categorizes non-Muslims into three classes.
The first group are those people who, for whatever reason, were completely unaware of Islam to the point that they never even heard the name of the Prophet. On account of their justifiably excusable circumstance, they will receive salvation in the afterlife. Al-Ghazālī supports this through a number of verses, such as “We do not send down punishment until we dispatch a Messenger” and because it is due to the advent of Prophets “that people may have no plea against God after his messengers (have come).” He makes explicit reference to the Byzantines and Turks during his era as an illustration of who would fall under this category.
The second group are those who lived near the lands of Islam and were thus in contact with Muslims and knew of Muhammad’s true character. Despite all the accessible avenues to learn about the true teachings of Islam, they refused to embrace the faith. These people are “blasphemous unbelievers” and will not be pardoned in the afterlife, al-Ghazālī writes. To justify this position, he uses the verse of the Qur’ān adduced for the first group, i.e. a nation will not be punished until the message is sent to them; since this group was given the message in its accurate form, they will not be excused. He further employs the following hadith, “By God, he who amongst the community of Jews or Christians hears about me, but does not affirm his belief in that with which I have been sent and dies in this state, he shall be an occupant of Hell-Fire.” People from the second category have heard about the Prophet and have not affirmed belief in him, so the warning of the Prophet in this hadith is applicable to them.
It is important to note the words “hears about me” in the aforementioned hadith, which is known as the doctrine of the communication of revelation. This is because a person will only fall under the second category if he hears about the message of the Prophet; otherwise, he will fall under the first group. At first glance, this may seem straightforward, but that is far from the case. What determines whether a person “heard” about the Prophet’s message? Modern scholars like Abū Zahra and ‘Abd al-Wahhāb Khallāf have argued that stringent conditions are to be placed on the doctrine of the communication of revelation. ‘Abd al-Halīm al-Basyūnī provides a strong retort to their claims by stating that due to the accessibility of accurate information one is not easily excused for ignorance of Islam. The doctrine of excuse in the modern context loses much of its strength because with technological advancements, the inaccessibility of accurate Islamic teachings is no longer an issue. Al-Basyūnī’s argument is sound but it fails to take into account the fact that despite the accessibility of accurate information about Islam, an equal, if not greater, amount of anti-Islamic propaganda is also available. People exposed to such propaganda their entire lives can potentially fall under a different category, which brings us to al-Ghazālī’s third group.
The third group are those people who at least knew the name of the Prophet, but were utterly unaware of his true character, and their entire lives they were fed misinformation like claims that the Prophet was an arch-liar. Al-Ghazālī cedes that the matter in respect to such people is not clear-cut. Nonetheless, al-Ghazālī himself is of the opinion that they are on a similar footing as the first group, i.e. they will be excused. Strangely, unlike his position on the first two groups, here he does not provide scriptural evidence to substantiate this position. It appears he bases this on the mercy of God in the afterlife, as mentioned in the verse “And the matter will be decided between them with justice and they will not be wronged.” This is because, as al-Ghazālī explains, “they heard the opposite of what his true attributes were. And this does not provide enough incentive to compel them to investigate his true status.”
Muhammad Hasan Khalil makes an interesting observation in respect to al-Ghazālī’s views on salvation that needs to be examined here. He writes that in effect al-Ghazālī speaks of a fourth group: sincere truth-seekers, who will also be excused. He infers this from a passage in Faysal al-Tafriqah. Basically, al-Ghazāli writes that when the true message reaches a person, one of two responses are bound to take place. The first scenario is that a person receives the true message, but is not inspired with a desire to pursue this message further and thereby accept the faith. This failure is because of his attachment to the world and his disinterest in the veracity of religion. A second scenario is that he is inspired to pursue the message. In this case, if he fails to act upon the inspiration, he will not be excused. But if he is to pursue this inspiration and passes away in the process, he will be excused.
Contrary to Khalīl’s explanation, in light of the above passage it is more likely that al-Ghazālī is not introducing a fourth category. He is simply speaking about those who are near in accepting the faith but pass away in the interim. To use this passage to include sincere truth seekers in general is problematic because it contravenes al-Ghazālī’s views mentioned elsewhere. For instance, in his al-Mustasfā, al-Ghazālī relates the opinion of the Mu‘tazilī theologian ‘Amr ibn Bahr al-Jāhiz that a person who sets out in an honest search for the truth and rejects Islam out of good-faith will receive salvation in the afterlife. Al-Ghazālī then explains that this view is unacceptable because of scriptural evidence to the contrary—it would, however, be tenable on purely logical grounds. If al-Ghazālī believed that honest truth seekers will be pardoned in the afterlife, there would be no reason for him to disprove al-Jāhiz’s opinion. A possible explanation for this can be that al-Ghazālī later changed his view in Fasal al-Tafriqah. Had the passage from Faysal al-Tafriqah been explicit, a strong case could have been made in support of this proposition. But as things stand, the given passage is ambiguous, so there is no need to assert that he changed his earlier view mentioned in al-Mustasfā.
It is worth noting that al-Ghazālī does not discuss the issue of the messenger-of-resurrection, which, as per the hadith, states: As for the person who dies during the fatrah period, he will say (on the day of judgment): O my lord, no messenger of Yours has reached. God will take a pledge of obedience from such a person. And then a messenger will be sent who will proclaim: enter the fire. (The prophet said:) By God, if they enter, it will be cool and peaceful for them.” One reason for this omission can simply be that al-Ghazālī was unaware of this hadīth. As he himself admits elsewhere, his expertise in the sciences of hadith is limited. If however, he was aware of the hadith, he may have not mentioned it because either he did not accept its authenticity or felt that it contradicted other principles and therefore should be abandoned. Other scholars have also objected to the purport of this hadith on similar grounds.
In brief, al-Ghazālī classifies non-Muslims into three groups; two groups (the first and third group) will be saved, while one group (the second group) will not be excused. It is difficult to introduce a fourth category, i.e. sincere truth seekers, into al-Ghazālī’s tripartite classification, as Khalīl attempted, because it is based on an ambiguous passage and contradicts his other writings. Furthermore, al-Ghazālī’s language when discussing the fate of others is clearly sympathetic, which can be gleaned by his readiness to include the third group among the excused due to the mercy of God; this is in spite of him being aware that it is a disputed matter.
References
Al-Dhahabī, al-‘Ibar, vol.1, p.372.
Fadel, M. ‘“No Salvation Outside Islam”: Muslim Modernist, Democratic Politics, and Islamic Theological Exclusivism,’ pp.35-36
Al-Ghazālī, al-Munqidh min al-Dalāl, p.64 f.
Al-Ghazālī, Faysal al-Tafriqah, p.6.
7:172
Al-Ghazālī, Ihyā’ ‘Ulūm al-Dīn, vol.1, p.180
Ibid., p.84
www.ghazali.org/site-ar/gz-default-ar.htm Last accessed 10/15/2016
17:15
4:164
Muslim, al-Musnad al-Sahīh, no.1927
Fadel, ‘“No Salvation Outside Islam”, p.45.
Al-Ghazālī, Faysal al-Tafriqah, p.126
10:54
Al-Ghazālī, Faysal al-Tafriqah, p.126
Khalil, Muhammad (2012), Islam and the Fate of Others, p.35
Al-Ghazālī, Faysal al-Tafriqah, p.128
Al-Ghazālī, Faysal al-Tafriqah, p.128
Ibid., p.40.
Al-Ghazālī, al-Mustasfā, vol.1, p.349
Ahmad, al-Musnad, vol.26, p.228
Al-Ghazālī, Qānūn al-Ta’wīl, p.16
Some have rejected this view on the grounds that the afterlife is a place of judgment and not test. See: Ibn Kathīr, Tafsīr al-Qur’ān al-‘Azīm, vol.5, p.58.