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  • The_Savior_from_Spiritual_Error_and_50_Principles, page : 32

Spiritual Error (al-Munqith).

The Philosophers with whom al-Ghazali was chiefly concerned were those
he calls “theistic”, above all, Al-Faraabi and Avicenna (Ibn Sina). Their
philosophy was a form of Neo-Platonism, sufficiently adapted to Islamic
monotheism for them to claim to be Muslims. The achievement of Al-Ghazali
was to master the philosophers technique of thinking -mainly Aristotelian
logic- and then, subject it to itself and to his originality and find its internal
errors, relying on the proof and logic of Divinity. The conflict of Greek
philosophical techniques with Islamic theology, was in fact not fair and quite

lopsided, in which the masters of Muslim theologian, led by Ghazali, put these
techniques in their place if not to shame! Undoubtedly, Al-Ghazali did well in
judging much of Greek Philosophy and Neo-Platonists.

Those whom Al-Ghazali calls the party of ta’lim or academia (authoritative
instruction) such as Isma`iliyah and Batiniyah in his time, and in our time the
academic secularism that replaces the revelation by manmade metaphysical
doctrines, like Psychology and the like.