Talk:Al-Ghazali/Archive 4

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Arab vs. Persian

was he a Arab??

He was muslim! Nationalism is a modern concept introduced to the islamic world by colonial powers.

Irrelevant, more quotations might be useful

Nationalism do not changes the fact he was of Persian origin. If he would be an Arab, he surely would had 4 legs and yawling IAAAA IAAA [ Your words tell us enough about your mentality ] —Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.107.217.39 (talk) 14:21, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Not my speciality, but my grasp of the history shows that since the C7th, when arab forces conquered Persia, there have been important questions over ethnicity within the Islamic world. I'd accept that Islam has generally been able to reach across national and racial divides, and that most Muslims accept the idea of a broad community of Islam, but the idea that race and nationality either don't matter within the Umma, or that dividions along these lines are all due to the perfidious colonials is ahistorical.---- Charles Stewart 09:54, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Postscript: wrt to above question: he was Persian. An afterthought on what I have written: I don't mean to say that muslims have no legitimate grievances against their colonisers, rather that, while divide and rule was an explicit, destructive strategy of European colonisers, its effectiveness depended upon there being divisions to exploit. ---- Charles Stewart 10:06, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I think some people?! have this tendency to make all the great Muslim minds "Persian" when one cannot really tell with certainty. This is really very disturbing. -Serkan

I think it's disturbing to see the same thing from the Arab and Turks as well.--Zereshk 00:49, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

There needs to be some sort of consensus among all editors of Muslim scientists, as there are constant revert wars between Turks, Arabs, and Persians on whichever article you look at.Yuber(talk) 01:02, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

I think the only way is to acknowledge everyone and be inclusive. Thus Rumi can be identified as both Turkish and Persian. Or Ibn Rushd can be mentioned to be both Arab and Spanish. Or Zinuddin Zidan is both French and Arab. Only then can we avoid this stupid racial shit, and get to the more important stuff.--Zereshk 07:49, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

Although Islam is inclusive in theory, the reality is more complex. Read for instance this essay: Blasphemy Before God: The Darkness of Racism In Muslim Culture.

This article is unsatisfactory IMHO. It appears to be confusing and contradictory. Was Ghazali an Asharite or wasn't he? I have heard him quoted as saying that "the study of science and philosophy was harmful because it would shake man's faith in God and undermine the Muslim religion." Did he shut the door on Islamic science or not? I'm no clearer on this question after having read the article. --BirgerLangkjer 11:42, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

His name, where he was born and where he died screams Persian! We're not talking about Baghdad or Basrah here, we're talking about Khorasan/Tus and Kharmathein. Alireza Hashemi 22:27, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Al Ghazali is a persian who wrote all his major works in arabic, I don't see what's the point of quarelling about that, it's like discussing whether J.Conrad is English or polish, his works are English literature and that's the most important.--Sayih 17:41, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
Agree with Sayih. He is a persian who wrote (mostly) in arabic.Hence his name should be written only in arabic in the beginning — Preceding unsigned comment added by Aa2-2004 (talk • contribs) 09:26, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

[*] I was going through the same thing with ibn khaldun, and we concluded his last name says it all. Same goes to Al-Ghazali, his last name is Arabic (Al-Ghazali). However, digging further into old Arabic books, I found out that his full last name is (in Chronological order) Al-Ghazali (Arabic, Profession) Al-Nishapur (Persian, Nishapur City) Al-Tus (Persian, Tus City). Therefore, we can safely conclude he is Persian, or at least that what he preferred to be.

Greatest Muslim after Muhammad?

This phrase doesn't sit well with me. It is part of Sunni belief and creed to hold the best of Muslims after Muhammad was Abu Bakr. (See The Creed of al-Tahawi and Abu Hanifa's Al Fiqh al-Akbar). Maybe rephrase this to say something different? M2k41 (talk) 20:21, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps it can be rephrased as follows: Ghazali has sometimes been acclaimed in both the East and the West by secular scholars as the greatest Muslim after Muhammad. A note may be added in the reference describing Imam Abu Hanifa's opinion. Regards-Shahab (talk) 11:18, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Ghazali influenced Islam more than any other person you mentioned . abu bakar was a political figure. It doesn't mean that ghazzali was best. But his influence is more on Islamic philosophy than any other scholar. If you are talking about companions then Ali and ibn Abbas were greatest in knowledge after the prophet. Don't edit article in wrong way. blessings. Zikrullah (talk) 04:28, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Stub and rework

For background information, please see RFC/U and Cleanup. With 87 edits, User:Jagged 85 is the main contributor to this article after 19 October 2007 (2nd is Shahab with 24 edits). The issues are a repeat of what had been exemplarily shown here, here, here or here. I restore contents to the last pre-Jagged 85 version (17 October 2007) with the current categories, references, external links etc. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 12:40, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

Is there any intention to find significant and continuous sections of the article that have nothing to do with any problematic editors? Exempli gratia I have just restored my section on Al-Ghazali's autobiography. I hate to think there may be other such sections indifferently thrown out with the bathwater as it were. Wareh (talk) 13:35, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
Of course there are! Except the strategy of clearing is much less annoying to me ignorant reader, rather than leaving it be so that I all the time have to suspect that I'm being cheated, by being presented a fantasy picture concocted by inflating facts and writing down undue leaps-to-conclusions. Rursus dixit. (mbork3!) 09:15, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

Some comments in the article

Al-Ghazali explained in his autobiography why he renounced his brilliant career and turned to Sufism. It was, he says, due to his realization that there was no way to certain knowledge or the conviction of revelatory truth except through Sufism. (This means that the traditional form of Islamic faith was in a very critical condition at the time.) This realization is possibly related to his criticism of Islamic philosophy.

The comment this means that the traditional ..." seems an original research to me.

"Through his own religious experience, he worked to revive the faith of Islam by reconstructing the religious sciences upon the basis of Sufsm, and to give a theoretical foundation to the latter under the influence of philosophy. Thus Sufism came to be generally recognized in the Islamic community."

I am not sure that Sufism was not recognised in Islamic community before Al-Ghazali.

It wasn't Islamic faith that was in a critical condition, it was Al ghazali's faith. I read a brilliant comment by a Maliki sholar of the period .. and when did the islamic sciences die to be revived by Al Ghazali. Sufism had always been tolerated in Islamic community; but it posed no problem since it wasn't wide-spread. Al Ghazali's book إحياء علوم الدين was the main factor behind its rapid spread and the sudden halt of Islamic scientific movement. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sayih (talk • contribs) 00:37, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

This article is disorganized and needs to be rewritten. At the very least it should have a prominently placed reference to Frank Rippel's entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/al-ghazali/). In addition some links are dead, notably:~ "4. ^ Muslim Philosophy, Islamic Contributions to Science & Math, netmuslims.com" and

"5. ^ Ghazali, The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition 2006" Mkp624 (talk) 12:06, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Decline of Islamic thought

Removed the dubious content under "Ijtihad". Peter Adamson and Richard C. Taylor. "The Cambridge Companion to Arabic Philosophy." Cambridge University Press, 2004, p.105 states:

Partly as a result of al-Ghazali’s attack, Avicenna’s thesis that after death only the soul survives – and his theses that God knows particulars in a universal way and that the world is co-eternal with God – found little sympathy amongst later Muslim thinkers. That is not to say that all of Avicenna’s ideas were dead ends, or worse, to restate the often-repeated claim, now discredited, that al-Ghazali’s attack succeeded in extinguishing philosophical activity in post-classical Islamic intellectual history.

Al-Andalusi (talk) 01:34, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

Drawing pictures of Human beings

Hadith - Bukhari 3:428, Narrated Said bin Abu Al-Hasan:

While I was with Ibn 'Abbas a man came and said, "O father of 'Abbas! My sustenance is from my manual profession and I make these pictures." Ibn 'Abbas said, "I will tell you only what I heard from Allah's Apostle . I heard him saying, 'Whoever makes a picture will be punished by Allah till he puts life in it, and he will never be able to put life in it.' " Hearing this, that man heaved a sigh and his face turned pale. Ibn 'Abbas said to him, "What a pity! If you insist on making pictures I advise you to make pictures of trees and any other unanimated objects."

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Majilis (talk • contribs) 07:03, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Please see wp:notcensored Wikipedia is not bound.
I am not sure what Hadith has to do with this. Wikipedia is not bound by religious teaching, please see WP:CENSOR and WP:NPOV, these documents explain in detail why I and other editors continue to restore your albeit good-hearted acts of vandalism. You are wasting valuable editing time and I will call upon the administrators to look into this matter if we are unable to resolve it calmly by civil discussion. -- Dront (talk) 16:17, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
Because you are putting pictures of Islamic Scholars on the public page, thus you are showing no respect to the people of Islamic faith -- Majilis (talk) 2:27, 31 May 2012 (UTC)
From WP:CENSOR, "Wikipedia will not remove content because of the internal bylaws of some organizations that forbid information about the organization to be displayed online. Any rules that forbid members of a given organization, fraternity, or religion to show a name or image do not apply to Wikipedia because Wikipedia is not a member of those organizations.", can you at least read this paragraph since you appear to be unwilling to follow any of the links we are providing you with? -- Dront (talk) 02:01, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

impact on science

Although it is nowadays disputed one should mention this thesis, that al-ghazalis work led at least partly to the decline of science in the islamic world. there should be a discussion on this. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.35.211.79 (talk) 16:20, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

This is really why people have issues with Wiki. Both sides of the arguments havn't been presented, especially in regards to the refutations from Academia in regards to Al Ghazali having a negative influence on scientific progression. For example, G. Saliba asserts that science continued to flourish well after Ghazali's time - http://muslimheritage.com/topics/default.cfm?ArticleID=1330

I recommend someone with credibility and unbias to look into the matter more and display a more balance article, rather than what is evidently misleading right from the get-go.

Original research in the reception section

I noticed a likely unintentional violation of WP:OR in the reception section recently. The original version said:

"Al-Ghazali was considered by most sunni scholars and laymen to be the Mujaddid (Revivier) of his age."

The source was given as "W. Montgomery Watt, Al-Ghazali: The Muslim Intellectual, p. 180, Edinburgh University Press," which is ok as a citation I suppose, though it would only have taken another minute to complete it (William Montgomery Watt, Al-Ghazali: The Muslim Intellectual, p. 180. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1963.). When I checked, however, this wasn't what was actually found on page 180. Watt states:

"Al-Ghazali thought himself to be the "renewer" of religion for the sixth Islamic century, and many, perhaps most, later Muslims have considered that he was indeed the "renewer" of his age. Some have even spoken of him as the greatest Muslim after Muhammad."

This raised a number of issues. First, Watt is making a value judgment and the word "perhaps" indicates that he is not reporting an absolute factual statement, but rather what he has noticed in his scholarly work. Thus it is more appropriate to report this as Watt's statement, not objective fact.
Second, he indicates that the subject viewed himself that was and "many, perhaps most" later Muslims agreed. Thus to state that he was considered by most to be a renewer is a misrepresentation of the source, and I don't really know where the "scholars and laymen" comment came from - Watt didn't say that.
While Al-Ghazali's reputation is of no dispute, there is occasionally a tendency on the part of some Muslim editors to write overly-positive prose for historical Muslim figures who they personally find to be "good" or "important." Regardless, WP:NPOV must be followed at all times in addition to only writing text which the source itself verifies. Given the first misrepresentation here, I think it would be a good idea to further inspect the other sources in the section for accuracy in the text of this article as well. MezzoMezzo (talk) 05:22, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Name

It is highly improbable that a non-Persian scholar would have produced a work in Persian because Arabic was the predominant language in the Islamic World. I do not know what percentage of the non-Persian population actually spoke Farsi at the time but I am absolutely certain that there were by far more Arabic speaking people than Persian speaking. So,why would a non-Persian scholar write a book in Farsi? So, scholars who have produced some of their works in Farsi must have been Persians who had superior knowledge of their mother tongue, and because they intended to address the Persian audience. Would an American scientist publish his work in French instead of English today? Never! kamimihan — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kamimihan (talk • contribs) 07:57, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

In all Arabic sources, he is referred to as AL-Ghazali. This is likely a "nisba" (relationship) adjective that tells the origin of his family. In any case, he is never referred to as Ghazali, whether in Arabic or in English. I can't speak for popularized descriptions of him, but serious literature about him refers to him always as al-Ghazali, not simply Ghazali. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Agh.niyya (talk • contribs) 06:13, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

Consistency on name: Al-Ghazali or al-Ghazali

I see inconsistency in how his name is written: sometimes it is Al-Ghazali and sometimes it is al-Ghazali. Obviously the beginning of a sentence warrants the capital A, but usage inside sentences should be consistent. Please decide which is appropriate and ensure its use throughout Wikipedia. I came across the problem while reading the Averroes article, but the main Al-Ghazali article also suffers so there are probably more. — Molly-in-md (talk) 12:13, 10 May 2016 (UTC)

There's at least one instance of "al Ghazali", too, without the hyphen. This needs to be consistent. — Molly-in-md (talk) 19:29, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

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