Intellect of the Intellectuals

Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazali (1058-1111) started his career as a philosopher and university professor. When he was nearly 40, however, he had a spiritual crisis that led to a change in his life:

"Were the intellect of the intellectuals and the learning of the learned and the scholarship of the scholars, who are versed in the profundities of revealed truth, brought together in the attempt to improve the life and character of the mystics, they would find no way of doing so.

"For to the mystics all movement and all rest, whether external or internal, brings illumination from the light of the lamp of prophetic revelation. And behind the light of prophetic revelation there is no other light on the face of the earth from which illumination may be received."

(Watt, The Faith and Practice of Al-Ghazali, p. 63)