The Deconstructionist Sufi: Ghazali and the Theosophical Deconstruction of the Text

Ghazali, the sufi, like other sufis has put emphasis on the importance of the science of insight (truth) rather than the science of outsight. From this perspective, interpretation is an endeavor to find out the insight meaning of a text. Thus, in the intellectual system of Ghazali, interpretation is somehow connected to the cognition of the wisdom and conscience of religious law (Sharia). Only Theosophy may cause the cognition elevate to the level of “wisdom”, a level in which one experiences with what s/he knows with all his/her soul, i.e. an experience without the intermediary of God, where there is no more egoism left for the one (a state of self-abandoning or self-denial called “annihilation”) and s/he is fully absorbed by God (“Eternity”). However Ghazali believed that the experience is not to substitute with philosophy and religion, but it is to supplement them and provide a basis and purpose for them.