Al-Ghazali Quotes on God
al-Ghazali (1058–1111) is the central figure of medieval Islamic religious thought. The intellectual autobiography Deliverance from Error narrates the spiritual crisis that drove him from his professorship at the Nizamiyya in Baghdad to a decade of Sufi seclusion, and the Incoherence of the Philosophers (Tahafut al-Falasifa) supplies the systematic critique of the Aristotelian metaphysics of al-Farabi and Avicenna on twenty contested theses — including the eternity of the world, the denial of bodily resurrection, and the claim that God knows only universals — that al-Ghazali found inconsistent with Quranic revelation. The constructive Revival of the Religious Sciences (Ihya Ulum al-Din) integrates the resulting orthodox theology with Sufi spiritual practice into the synthesis that defined subsequent Sunni religious life.
Quotes
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Attributed to Al-Ghazali:
“The greatest proof for the existence of God is the existence of the human mind.”
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“The man who makes his religion a means to the gaining of this world, will lose both worlds alike; whereas the man who gives up this world for the sake of religion, will get both worlds alike.”
The Faith and Practice of Al-Ghazali , Allen & Unwin (1963), p. 152. -
“For those endowed with insight there is in reality no object of love but God, nor does anyone but He deserve love”
Love, Longing, Intimacy and Contentment . Islamic Texts Society. 2011. p. 23. ISBN 978-1-903682-27-2 . Translated with an introduction and notes by Eric Ormsby. -
“A grievous crime indeed against religion has been committed by the man who imagines that Islam is defended by the denial of the mathematical sciences.”
Deliverance from Error | III. The Classes of Seekers, p. 23.