The Ethics Of Al Ghazali

In book twenty of the forty books which compose the Revival of the Religious Sciences (Ihya' 'ulum al-din), Abu hamid al-Ghazali gives a full account of the customs and character of the Messenger of God, Muhammad. It is not a biography of Muhammad (peace and blessing of God be upon him) but a roadmap for those who want to strengthen their faith, increase their knowledge, and deepen their understanding of the second part of the testimony of faith, namely the first pillar of Islam. The author details the Messenger's noble nature and his miracles, while removing doubts regarding his message. He deals with the issue of the imitation of Muhammad (peace and blessing of God be upon him) noting that the ultimate source of knowledge is revelation from God which comes to us through the Messenger. This volume lays clear that the aim of the imam in this Series is to call for a return to the Sunna and the imitation of the Messenger in all aspects of life.

This volume explores the relation between ethics and spirituality in Islam through an examination of the genres of Sufi adab, including manuals and hagiographical accounts, from the formative period of Sufism until modernity.

Al-Ghazālī and the Idea of Moral Beauty rethinks the relationship between the good and the beautiful by considering the work of eleventh-century Muslim theologian Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī (d. 1111). A giant of Islamic intellectual history, al-Ghazālī is celebrated for his achievements in a wide range of disciplines. One of his greatest intellectual contributions lies in the sphere of ethics, where he presided over an ambitious attempt to integrate philosophical and scriptural ideas into a seamless ethical vision. The connection between ethics and aesthetics turns out to be a signature feature of this account. Virtue is one of the forms of beauty, and human beings are naturally disposed to respond to it with love. The universal human response to beauty in turn provides the central paradigm for thinking about the love commanded by God. While al-Ghazālī’s account of divine love has received ample attention, his special way of drawing the good into relation with the beautiful has oddly escaped remark. In this book Sophia Vasalou addresses this gap by offering a philosophical and contextual study of this aspect of al-Ghazālī’s ethics and of the conception of moral beauty that emerges from it. This book will be of interest to scholars and students in Islamic ethics, Islamic intellectual history, and the history of ethics.

A study of Ghazali’s ethical thought as shown in his extensive treatment of the virtues and their relation to the ends of life and to each other.

This book studies the interplay of economic philosophy and moral conduct as reflected in the writings of one of the most renowned scholars in Islamic history, Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad al-Ghazālī (d. 1111). As is well known, Imām al-Ghazālī, nicknamed "the proof of Islam", contributed immensely to Islamic theology, philosophy, and Sufism or Islamic mysticism (taṣawwuf). Strikingly enough, al-Ghazālī also made seminal contributions to the field of economic thought, but this contribution has been largely neglected, although al-Ghazālī dedicated many chapters to what he considered just and Sharī'a-based economic conduct in (Muslim) society. This book aims to analyse and revive al-Ghazālī's understudied contribution to economic thought by emphasizing his economic philosophy and its correlation between Sharī'a's moral law and the tradition of taṣawwuf, as well as to situate his thought within the context of modern economic theories.