Al-Ghazali Quotes

Declare your jihad on thirteen enemies you cannot see -egoism, arrogance, conceit, selfishness, greed, lust, intolerance, anger, lying, cheating, gossiping and slandering. If you can master and destroy them, then you will be read to fight the enemy you can see.

Say to my friends, when they look upon me, dead,
Weeping for me and mourning me in sorrow,
‘Do not believe that this corpse you see is myself,
In the name of God, I tell you, it is not I,
I am a spirit, and this is naught but flesh,
It was my abode and my garment for a time.
I am a treasure, by a talisman kept hid,
Fashioned of dust, which served me as a shrine,
I am a pearl, which has left it’s shell deserted,
I am a bird, and this body was my cage,
Whence I have now flown forth and it is left as a token,
Praise to God, who hath now set me free,
And prepared for me my place in the highest of the Heavens,
Until today I was dead, though alive in your midst.
Now I live in truth, with the grave – clothes discarded.
Today I hold converse with the Saints above,
With no veil between, I see God face to face.
I look upon “Loh-i-Mahfuz” and there in I read,
Whatever was and is, and all that is to be.
Let my house fall in ruins, lay my cage in the ground,
Cast away the talisman, it is a token no more,
Lay aside my cloak, it was but my outer garment.
Place them all in the grave, let them be forgotten,
I have passed on my way and you are left behind,
Your place of abode was no dwelling place for me.
Think not that death is death, nay, it is life,
A life that surpasses all we could dream of here,
While in this world, here we are granted sleep,
Death is but sleep, sleep that shall be prolonged
Be not frightened when death draweth nigh,
It is but the departure for this blessed home,
Think of the mercy and love of your Lord,
Give thanks for His Grace and come without fear.
What I am now, even so shall you be,
For I know that you are even as I am,
The souls of all men come forth from God,
The bodies of all are compounded alike,
Good and evil, alike it was ours.
I give you now a message of good cheer
May God’s peace and joy forever more be yours.

وأما المعارف: فاحذر منهم، فإنك لا ترى الشر إلا ممن تعرفه! وأما المجهول فلا يتعرض لك، وإنما الشر كله من المعارف الذين يظهرون من لك الصداقة بألسنتهم، فأقلل من المعارف ما قدرت. ـ

لو سكت من لا يدري، لقلّ الخلاف بين الخَلق

قال عيسى عليه السلام: (إنّي ما عجزت عن إحياء الموتى و قد عجزت عن معالجة الأحمق).

كلما عز المطلوب و شرف ، صعب مسلكه و طل طريقه و كثرت عقابته

The proximity between the counterfeit and the good coin does not make the good coin counterfeit nor the counterfeit good. In the same way the proximity between truth and falsehood does not make truth falsehood nor falsehood truth.

الصبي أمانة عند واليه، وقلبه الطاهر جوهرة ساذجة خالية من كل نقش وصورة، وهو قابل لكل ما ينقش عليه ومائل إلى كل ما يُمَالُ إليه.

Having being asked about what humility is, Fudayl [ibn Iyad] said, 'It is that you submit to the truth and follow it — even if you hear it from a little boy, you accept it; even if you hear it from the most ignorant of men, you accept it.

"Jesus (upon whom be peace!) saw the world revealed in the form of an ugly old hag. He asked her how many husbands she had possessed; she replied that they were countless. He asked whether they had died or been divorced; she said that she had slain them all. "I marvel", he said, "at the fools who see, what you have done to others, and still desire you.

"فلو وجد العالم عاميا يتعاطى له غسل الثياب محتاطا فهو أفضل فإنه بالإضافة إلى التساهل خير وذلك العامي ينتفع بتعاطيه إذ يشغل نفسه الأمارة بالسوء بعمل المباح في نفسه فيمتنع عليه المعاصي في تلك الحال والنفس إن لم تشغل بشيء شغلت صاحبها "
من كتب أسرار الطهارة

If you were to show a piece of intelligible writing to a reasonable person and say to him: 'do you know its writer?' and he said 'no', he would be speaking truly. But if he said 'yes: its writer is a man living and powerful, hearing and seeing, sound of hand and knowledgeable in the practise of writing, and if I know all this from [the sample] how can I not know him?-he too would be speaking truly. Yet the saying of the one who said 'I do not know him' is more correct and true, for in reality he has not known him. Rather he only knows that intelligible writing requires a living writer, knowing, powerful, hearing, and seeing; yet he does not know the writer himself. Similarly, every creature knows only that this ordered and precisely disposed world requires an arranging, living, knowing, and powerful maker.

"Another dangerous property of worldly things is that they at first appear as mere trifles, but each of these so-called "trifles" branches out into countless ramifications until they swallow up the whole of a man's time and energy. Jesus (on whom be peace!) said, "The lover of the world is like a man drinking sea-water; the more he drinks, the more thirsty he gets, till at last he perishes with thirst unquenched.

فويل للجاهل حيث لم يتعلم مرة واحدة، وويل للعالم حيث لم يعمل بما عمل ألف مرة

وقال أحمد بن حنبل رضي الله عنه: ما صليت صلاة منذ أربعين سنة إلا وأنا أدعو للشافعي رحمه الله تعالي، فانظر إلي إنصاف الداعي وإلي درجة المدعو له وقس به الأفران والأمثال من العلماء في هذه الأعصار وما بينهم من المشاحنة والبغضاء لتعلم تقصيرهم في دعوي الاقتداء بهؤلاء.