By Alyssa A. Lappen
American Thinker | July 21, 2007

All Islamic scholars recognize 12th Century Sufi master, supposedly “liberal” Al-Ghazali (d.1111), to have been an orthodox Muslim.

Even the late hagiographer, professor William Montgomery Watt (1909-2006), wrote that Al-Ghazali, “the greatest Muslim after Muhammad,…brought orthodoxy and mysticism into closer contact,” theologians nearer to accepting “mystics as respectable,” and mystics “within the bounds of orthodoxy.”1

But avowed Naqshbandi Sufi Muslim, Suleyman Ahmad Stephen Schwartz, in a July 20 discussion of Islamic “moderation,” stresses Al-Ghazali’s “beliefs of the heart,”—expunging Al-Ghazali’s fierce advocacy of jihad warfare.

In his Wagjiz, dating to 1101 A.D., Al-Ghazali advised on vanquished non-Muslim dhimmi peoples:

…one must go on jihad (i.e., razzias or raids) at least once a year…one may use a catapult against them [non-Muslims] when they are in a fortress, even if among them are women and children. One may set fire to them and/or drown them…If a person of the Ahl al-Kitab [People of The Book – i.e. Jews and Christians] is enslaved, his marriage is [automatically] revoked….One may cut down their trees…One must destroy their useless books. Jihadists may take as booty whatever they decide...they may steal as much food as they need…

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