آيا غزالي مخالف فلسفه است ؟

Is Al-Gazzali Against Philosophy?

The relation between religion and philosophy or narration and reason is among the major problems with which thinkers of various religions have been dealing for a long time. Muslim thinkers have not been an exception in this connection and have taken that problem into consideration in their works. In the Islamic culture it is very well known that theologians have been against philosophy, for they believed that essentials of philosophy are in contradiction to Shariʹah. The most outstanding figure to be against philosophy is considered Abu Hamid al-Gazzali, the great thinker of the fifth century, who has apparently harmed philosophical thought in the Islamic world more than anyone else by writing Tahafut al-Falasifah. Following a comparative method and taking into consideration the historical itinerary of the problem in question, opinions and essentials of al-Gazzali are compared with such philosophers prior to him as al-Farabi and Ibn Sina, such a well-known opponent of him as Averroes, a philosopher of the sixth century, and such a contemporary philosopher as Tabatabaee in the present essay in order to indicate that opposition of al-Gazzali as well as other theologians to philosophy has in fact been an opposition to some specific philosophical ideas and not to the philosophy itself. Consequently, to consider al-Gazzali an opponent to philosophy does not seem that correct.