Islam and Rationality: The Impact of al-Ghazall Papers Collected on His 900th Anniversary.

• Author: Belhaj, Abdessamad

Islam and Rationality: The Impact of al-Ghazall Papers Collected on His 900th Anniversary. Edited by GEORGES TAMER (vol. 1) and FRANK GRIFFEL (vol. 2). Islamic Philosophy, Theology and Science: Texts and Studies, vols. 94, 98. Leiden: BRILL, 2015. Pp. xxiv + 454 (vol. 1), xx + 344 (vol. 2). $202, [euro]154 (cloth, each); $59, [euro]49 (paper, each).

Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (1057-1111) is arguably the most influential medieval Muslim thinker in the history of Islamic thought, from the twelfth century until today. Each year, dozens of books, articles, and editions are dedicated to his thought, in addition to an unknown number of references to his works within scholarly and nonscholarly circles. For the 900th anniversary of al-Ghazali's death, in 2011, several events were organized by scholars of Islamic studies to put in perspective what we have come to know about his legacy and impact on Islamic intellectual history. In this homage, two events in particular stood out: The first, entitled "Islam and Rationality: The Impact of al-Ghazali," was organized by Georges Tamer at Ohio State University, and resulted in volume one of the book under review here. The second, which was organized by Frank Griffel at Yale University on December 9-10, 2011, was entitled "Al-Ghazali and His Influence," and resulted in the second volume. Both volumes were published in 2015.

Let us begin with volume one. Georges Tamer introduces al-Ghazali as a complex thinker with many facets, who evolved overtime and who displays many inconsistencies, even in his later works. 1 would also add that one of the reasons we are faced with so much "incoherence" in al-Ghazali's thought is that few critical editions have been undertaken and little research done into his oeuvre by modern scholars. In sum, al-Ghazali is still seen as an ambivalent intellectual, an heir to kalam (especially Ash'ari) and philosophy (especially Avicennan), but evolving (or maturing) to soundly reject philosophy and endorse mystical thinking (Sufism in particular), thus repudiating the rationality of theologians and philosophers. For this reason, his synthesis between various models of thinking has sparked a debate between those who see him as the champion of anti-rationality and those who see him as a rationalist thinker.

Volume one consists of eighteen chapters and discusses three major questions in connection to al-Ghazali. The first axis is that of epistemology, which tries to answer the questions of...