Al Ghazzali's The Incoherence Of Philosophers

In searching for the exact birth date of Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad Al-Ghazālī, some scholars agreed that Al-Ghazzali was born in 450 AH such as Ibn al-Jawzi ,Yaqut, Ibn Khallikkan, while other sources indicated that the time of his birth was in 448 AH which is more likely due to relevant evidence. However that won’t raise a significant effect, since by the time he was born in Tabran education was of common interest among Muslims specially his father. After his death, Al Ghazzali spent his father’s inheritance for educational purposes. After his inheritance came to an end, he joined a charity school for Sheikh Ahmad b. Muhammad Razakani, where he studied fiqh; later on, he studied in another school for Imam Abu Nasr Isma`ili in Jurjuran.

This raised a new complexity in Al-Ghazzali’s work The Incoherence of Philosophers; such that when a philosopher studied mathematical theories and came up with a logical reasoning, he might be also mentioned in Ghazzali’s book as unbeliever. This dilemma lead a large number of scholars and followers to reject Ghazzali’s fatwa, since that particular philosopher had demonstrated logic in his mathematical reasoning, knowing that math is not connected to religion or revelation. Another drawback from the Incoherence was the rejection of mathematics since at a certain point unbelievers had formed it. In addition to that Al-Ghazzali’s work in the Incoherence created a new divition among people. People who read Al-Ghazzali’s book and aaccepted it were considered true muslims, hence a new “legal statues was formed” due to the group effort between Ghazzali and his collegieus is Islamic Law this was known as “clandestine apostasy”. Also philosophers who avoided the three mentioned teachings’ by him were considered of “tolerated heteroxy” such as Mu`tazilites and Shiites.As a result al Ghazzali sensed the dager of his work and composed a book The Desicive Criterion for Distinguishing Islam from Clandestine Apostasy( Fausal al-tafriqa bayna l-Islam wa-l-zanadaqa) the purpose from this book is to clear out who are neither unbelievers nor clandestine apostasy. Also he disguised why they were considered unbelievers and set the Islamic acceptance for legal and theological positions. Moreover , he adds a aspect for the believers in Islam;not only they should believe in God and the Prophet, but they should also believe as he stated “in everything that comes form him.”. This is known as tasdiq al rasul that was based on revelation. In addition to that, he added a new way to identify an unbeliever on the bases of “fundamental doctrine” which are three: the first is monotheism, second is