A Short Creed
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- Clean text
- Extent:
- ~3,370 words · 16 passages
Cite this work
- APAAl-Ghazali. (n.d.). A Short Creed. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/al-ghazali/a-short-creed
- MLAAl-Ghazali. "A Short Creed." SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/al-ghazali/a-short-creed.
- ChicagoAl-Ghazali. A Short Creed. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/al-ghazali/a-short-creed.
What it is about
A short creed: the articles of Sunni Muslim faith, summarised by al-Ghazali for the non-theologian.
Context and history
This is the 'aqida genre, the profession of faith explained. It shows al-Ghazali as teacher rather than polemicist: here he does not argue with the philosophers, he instructs. A short text; for the major work see The Alchemy of Happiness and The Confessions, both in the catalogue.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
We say—and in God is our trust—Praise belongeth unto God, the Beginner, the Bringer back, the Doer of what He willeth, the Lord of the Glorious Throne and of Mighty Grasp, the Guider of His chosen creatures to the right path and to the true way, the Granter of benefits to them after the witness to the Unity (tawhid) by guarding their articles of belief from obscurities of doubt and opposition, He that bringeth them to follow His Apostle, the Chosen one (al-Mustafa), and to imitate the traces of his Companions, the most honored, through His aid and right guidance revealed to them in His essence and His works by His beautiful qualities which none perceives, save he who inclines his ear. He is the witness who maketh known to them that He in His essence is One without any partner (sharik). Single without any similar, Eternal without any opposite, Separate without any like. He is One, Prior (qadim) with nothing before Him, from eternity (azali) without any beginning, abiding in existence with none after Him, to eternity (abadi) without any end, subsisting without ending, abiding without termination. He hath not ceased and He will not cease to be described with glorious epithets; finishing and ending, through the cutting off of the ages and .the terminating of allotted times, have no rule over Him, but He is the First and Last, the External and the Internal, and He knoweth everything. We witness that He is not a body possessing form, nor a substance possessing bounds and limits: He does not resemble bodies, either in limitation or in accepting division. He is not a substance and substances do not exist in Him; and He is not an accident and accidents do not exist in Him, nay He does not resemble an entity, and no entity resembles Him; nothing is like Him and He is not like anything; measure does not bound Him and boundaries do not contain Him; the directions do not surround Him and neither the earth nor the heavens are on different sides of Him. Lo, He is seated firmly up← Back to Al-Ghazali