Al‐Ghazzali on social justice : Guidelines for a new world order from an early medieval scholar

Abstract

States that Abu Hamid Muhammad Al‐Ghazzali (ad1058‐1111) is generally regarded as the Islamic equivalent of Kant. Reveals that he was a prolific and influential scholar, and that a central objective of Ghazzali in all his writings was the unity of knowledge, rooted in the Oneness of God, and reason (i.e. intellect plus free will) as the path for all moral concepts ultimately leading to the belief in God. Argues that Ghazzali’s ideas of good government, Dawlat, based on social justice, ad’l, penned 1,000 years ago, are still refreshing and relevant today. For, as humanity approaches a new millennium and globalization is slowly integrating peoples and cultures of the world, demands for global equity and good governance are at the top of the international reform agenda. Concludes that, in this context, Ghazzali’s ideas are especially relevant for a critical analysis of a discipline, i.e. economic development, which has for too long been Eurocentric.

Citation

Mehmet, O. (1997), "Al‐Ghazzali on social justice : Guidelines for a new world order from an early medieval scholar", International Journal of Social Economics, Vol. 24 No. 11, pp. 1203-1218. https://doi.org/10.1108/03068299710193570