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What was Al-Ghazali's view on the relationship between religion and state?
What was Al-Ghazali's view on the relationship between religion and state?
- He believed that they should be separated completely
- He believed that they should be intertwined and mutually reinforcing (correct)
- He believed that the state should have no role in religious matters
- He believed that religion should be abolished in favor of a secular state
What did Al-Ghazali believe about the role of a Sultan in public life?
What did Al-Ghazali believe about the role of a Sultan in public life?
- The Sultan should have no role in religious matters
- The Sultan should be the guardian of religion in public life (correct)
- The Sultan should be the only authority in religious matters
- The Sultan should abolish religion in favor of a secular state
What was Al-Ghazali's magnum opus?
What was Al-Ghazali's magnum opus?
- The Revival of the Religious Sciences (correct)
- The Separation of Religion and State
- The Abolition of Religion
- The Role of the Sultan in Public Life
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Study Notes
- Al-Ghazali believed that religion and state are inseparable and mutually reinforce each other.
- He saw the government as an intermediary to benefit the afterlife and to lead people to the good of the Hereafter.
- Al-Ghazali did not want to separate religion and state and believed that a state government implementing religion's mandate would have to run according to spiritual matters.
- He believed that a Sultan as the holder of political power is the guardian of religion in public life, whereas the state religion is the basis for it all.
- Al-Ghazali was a Sunni Muslim Persian polymath known as one of the most prominent and influential jurisconsults, legal theorists, muftis, philosophers, theologians, logicians, and mystics of the Islamic Golden Age.
- He is considered to be the 11th century's mujaddid, a renewer of the faith, who appears once every 100 years to restore the faith of the Islamic community.
- Al-Ghazali's works were so highly acclaimed by his contemporaries that he was awarded the honorific title "Proof of Islam" (Ḥujjat al-Islām).
- Much of Al-Ghazali's work stemmed around his spiritual crises following his appointment as the head of the Nizzamiyya University in Baghdad.
- He believed that the Islamic spiritual tradition had become moribund and that the spiritual sciences taught by the first generation of Muslims had been forgotten.
- His magnum opus was entitled Iḥyā’ ‘ulūm ad-dīn ("The Revival of the Religious Sciences").
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