Having published the abridged English translation of Shaykh Muhammad al-Ghazali s seminal Quranic commentary under the title Journey through the Quran, Dar-al-Taqwa has followed it with the translation of a second important work by the Shaykh Muhammad al-Ghazali about the nature of the Prophetic Sunna. This is greatly needed in the present situation when there is so much misinformation about Islam in the media, often aided and abetted by well meaning but sometimes misguided Muslims. Using many examples and his own compendious knowledge, Shaykh Muhammad al-Ghazali shows how many hadiths have been misunderstood and misused to paint a distorted picture of Islam. With great courtesy and skill he points out the flaws in the positions adopted by extremists at both ends of the spectrum and allows the true picture of the balance and wisdom which in reality make up the Muhammadan Sunna to emerge.
Sheikh Muhammad Al-Ghazali lived from 1917 to 1996 in Egypt. Born Ahmad Al-Saqqa, his father nicknamed him Muhammad Al-Ghazali after the famous ninth century scholar, Abu Hamid al-Ghazali. In 1941, Muhammad Al-Ghazali graduated from al-Azhar University in Egypt, and became a leading figure in the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood before his dismissal from its constituent body. His subsequent rise in the Egyptian Muslim jurisprudence system was accompanied by the publication of more than fifty of his works, ensuring popularity for his approaches to tafsir and his responses to modernity across the Muslim world. In the 1980s, he spent time as the head of the Islamic University academies in Mecca, Qatar, and Algeria.
This book by Muhammad al-Ghazali (not to be confused with the great Imam Abu Hamid al-Ghazali) I have mixed feelings about, although I agree with the overarching message: Namely the supremacy of the Qur'an as a source of legislation over and above the Hadith corpus; The necessity of following qualified scholarship, namely the Fuqaha and their ways in accepting, using and leaving Hadiths; All the while refraining from doing a do-it-yourself approach to learning and misunderstanding the Hadith literature and then inadvertently scaring away Muslims and non-Muslims from the religion of Islam due to an over zealous approach and deep seated misunderstandings, all in the name of Da'wah - God forbid! Whilst reading this book, I gained little new information, but enjoyed reading the examples cited throughout the text in illustration of the points being made. Muhammad al-Ghazali takes a modernist approach with slight traditional leanings - perhaps reflecting his own personal orientation. This book may be recommended to people who are puzzled over the balance in which to hold the Qur'an and Sunnah, with the added caution that the arguments are presented from a modernist point of view and not entirely mainstream/ orthodox. It is clear that this book was written addressing the Salafi/ Wahhabi / Ahl al-Hadith mentality and mindset - their rather puerile and infantile arguments vexed the author enough to have him write a book.