Mohammed al-Ghazali

Al-Ghazali was born in 1917 in the small town of Nikla al-'Inab (نكلا العنب), southeast of the coastal part of Alexandria, in the Beheira Governorate. He graduated from Al Azhar University in 1941.{{Cite news |last=Jehl |first=Douglas |date=1996-03-14 |title=Mohammed al-Ghazali, 78, An Egyptian Cleric and Scholar |language=en-US |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1996/03/14/world/mohammed-al-ghazali-78-an-egyptian-cleric-and-scholar.html |access-date=2023-02-10 |issn=0362-4331}} He taught at the University of Umm al-Qura in Makkah, the University of Qatar, and at al-Amir 'Abd al-Qadir University for Islamic Sciences in Algeria.{{cite web |title=A Thematic Commentary on the Qur'an. Back Matter. |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvh4zgz9.121 |website=JSTOR |access-date=2 April 2025}}

Al-Ghazali was perhaps best known in the West for testifying on behalf of the assassins of secularist author Farag Foda, telling the "Egyptian court that anyone who openly resisted the full imposition of Islamic law was an apostate who should be killed either by the government or by devout individuals. He also called on the Government to appoint a committee to measure the faith of the population and give wayward Egyptian Muslims time to repent. Those who did not should be killed, he said."

In the Muslim world, however, Al-Ghazali "was not closely identified with the militant cause". He "often appeared on state-run television and held a place in the pulpit of one of Cairo's largest mosques," and in 1989 wrote a book "severely" criticizing what he believed to be the "literalism, anti-rationalism, and anti-interpretive approach to Islamic texts" of Ahl al-Hadith, (a term thought to be a euphemism for Wahhabis).Abou el Fadl, Khalid, Great Theft, (2005), p.88-89 The book prompted "several major conferences ... in Egypt and Saudi Arabia" criticizing the book, long articles in response in the Saudi-owned London-based newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat, and assorted writings of others condemning al-Ghazali and questioning "his motives and competence."Abou el Fadl Great Theft, (2005), p.93

After Egyptian Islamic Jihad attempted to kill Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak during a visit to Ethiopia June 1995, "Sheik Ghazali was among the prominent Islamic clerics who traveled to the presidential palace to congratulate Mr. Mubarak on his safe return."

He was married to Lady Amina Kouta; their seven children included two boys and five girls. He was buried in Medina, Saudi Arabia. He was a popular Sheikh in Egypt and remained so after his death.{{cite book |last1=A. C. Brown |first1=Jonathan |authorlink=Jonathan A.C. Brown |title=Misquoting Muhammad: The Challenge and Choices of Interpreting the Prophet's Legacy |date=2014 |publisher=Oneworld Publications |isbn=978-1780744209 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/misquotingmuhamm0000brow/page/136 136–7] |url=https://archive.org/details/misquotingmuhamm0000brow/page/136 }}

Sheikh al-Ghazali held the post of chairman of the Academic Council of the International Institute of Islamic Thought in Cairo. Sheikh al-Ghazali authored more than sixty books, many of which have been translated into various languages.

He was also the recipient of many awards, including the First Order of the Republic (Egypt) (1988), the King Faisal Award (1989) and the Excellence Award from Pakistan.

Some of his books include:{{cite book |last1=A.C. Brown |first1=Jonathan |authorlink=Jonathan A.C. Brown |title=Misquoting Muhammad: The Challenge and Choices of Interpreting the Prophet's Legacy |date=2014 |publisher=Oneworld Publications |isbn=978-1780744209 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/misquotingmuhamm0000brow/page/136 136] |quote=His [Muhammad al-Ghazali] countless books on every aspect of Islam and reviving its proper understanding, with titles like Our Intellectual Heritage, Renew Your Life and Islam and Women's Issues, still sell briskly at Cairo's impromptu sidewalk bookstalls. Through the decades of his prolific writing and serving as an imam in Cairo's leading mosques, Ghazali picked many fights and earned even more admirers. |url=https://archive.org/details/misquotingmuhamm0000brow/page/136 }} See also p. 137–9.

• Islam and the Modern Economy
• Islam and Political Despotism
• An encyclopedic work called "Fanaticism and Tolerance Between Christianity and Islam"
• Fiqh Al Seerah
• Tafsir on the Qur'an
• Laisa Minal Islam (Not From Islam)
• Our Intellectual Heritage
• Renew Your Life
• Islam and Women's Issues
• The Prophetic Sunna: Between the Jurists and the Hadith Scholars (al-Sunna al-nabawiyya bayna ahl al-fiqh wa ahl al-hadith (Cairo, 1989, 2nd edn. 1990))

Al-Ghazali's work The Prophetic Sunna, was "an immediate focus of attention and controversy" when it was published in 1989. It became a best seller, with five impressions made by the publisher in its first five months and a second enlarged edition within a year. Within two years "at least seven monographs were published in response to the book." al-Ahram newspaper compared it to Perestroika restructuring going on in the Soviet Union at that time.{{cite book |last1=Brown |first1=Daniel W. |title=Rethinking tradition in modern Islamic thought |date=1996 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=0521570778 |url=https://www.scribd.com/document/116836545/Rethinking-Traditions-in-Modern-Islamic-Thought-Daniel-w-Brown |ref=DWBRTMIT1996 |page=108 |accessdate=10 May 2018}}

In addition to practical concerns of revivalists—sharia position on economics and taxation, criminal law, the veiling of women, and their place in society and the economy—Al-Ghazli wrote of how to "purify sunna of adulterations". Rather than upending the science of hadith criticism, he sought to redress imbalances in scholars' understanding of it.

Nonetheless, the book's "severe" criticism of what Al-Ghazali believed to be the "literalism, and anti-interpretive approach to Islamic texts" of the Ahl al-Hadith (partisans of hadith) prompted sharp attacks from Islamists even more conservative than Al-Ghazali. "Several major conferences ... in Egypt and Saudi Arabia" criticizing the book, long articles in response in the Saudi-owned London-based newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat, and assorted writings of others condemning al-Ghazali and questioning "his motives and competence."Khaled Abou El Fadl (2005), The Great Theft: Wrestling Islam from the Extremists, p. 93. Harper San Francisco. According to one of his students — Khaled Abou El Fadl — Al-Ghazali was stunned, and disheartened by what he thought was a smear campaign against him and by the silence of his old students.{{cite magazine |last1=FOER |first1=FRANKLIN |title=Moral Hazard |magazine=The New Republic |date=November 18, 2002 |url=https://newrepublic.com/article/136609/moral-hazard |accessdate=14 June 2018}}

• Farag Foda
• Muhammad Metwalli al-Sha'rawi
• Mustafa Mahmoud

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• {{official website |http://www.alghazaly.org/}} (Arabic)

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