al-Ghazali

Since the revelation of the Holy Qur'an to the Prophet Mohammad, Muslim thinkers have been interested in the interpretation of the 35th verse of the Surah "Light". From Fārābi, Avicenna and Sohrawardi to contemporary Islamic scholars, the structure, content and symbolism of this verse, reputed by the title of the verse of the Light, have been studied and commented on several methods. Imam Abu Hamed Mohammad Al-Ghazali (1058-1111), the Great Iranian Master of jurisprudence, theology, ethics, philosophy, logic and gnostic has written a very concise essay on this subject, in order to answer the question of a disciple who asks him to interpret this qur'anic verse. This book, written in Arabic, is called "Mishkat-al-Anwar", which means "The Niche of the lights". In this article, we will faithfully follow the approach taken by Al-Ghazali, this famous Muslim thinker, who was born in Iranian region of Khorasan at the time of the Seljukide dynasty, to explain the qur'anic notion of the Light.

Abu Hamid Al-Ghazali is one of the most important thinkers of the Seljuk period in Iran. Ghazali’s Thought, based on his works, is very wide-ranging in various fields of religious sciences. At the beginning of his scientific life, he wrote a book entitled “Maqasid al Falasifa” (The Aims of Philosophers), but in the final period of his research, he wrote the “Tahafut al-Falasifah” (The Incoherence of the Philosophers) and joined the opponents of philosophy, in which he expressed the contradictions of philosophers. Consequently, many thinkers believe that he is not only against philosophy but also against reason, and as a result reach the conflict between reason and religion or the sharia of religion.This article examines the question of whether there is a conflict between reason and sharia in Ghazali's thought? Does al-Ghazali mean the philosophical views of philosophers only those that are incompatible with the Shari'a? And what should be done if there seems to be a contradiction? This article tries to address these questions by referring to Ghazali's intellectual works.