Then he went on to say: “He deems commendable certain practices that rest on no factual basis—such as trimming the fingernails by starting with the index finger, on the grounds that it enjoys precedence over the other digits because it is the musabbihah (the finger used for saying subḥān Allāh), then moving to the middle finger next to it, since it lies on the right side, and concluding with the thumb of the right hand.” He even narrated a report to that effect.
I replied, “That report is fabricated.”
He further said: “He maintained that whoever reaches puberty and dies without knowing that the Creator is eternal nevertheless dies a Muslim—by consensus.”
He commented: “Anyone who is so careless as to cite consensus on a matter where the more likely view is that the consensus lies in the opposite direction is plainly untrustworthy in what he transmits. I also found him in the first volume saying, ‘Among the sciences I possess are matters that ought not to be consigned to writing.’ Ah, would that I knew— is that statement true or false? If it is false, he has spoken the truth; but if it is true—and that is undoubtedly what he intends—why does he not record it in books? Is it because it is obscure and subtle? If he was able to grasp it, what prevents others from grasping it as well?”
Abū ’l-Faraj Ibn al-Jawzī said: “Abū Ḥāmid composed the Ihyāʾ and filled it with spurious hadiths without realizing their falsity. He spoke about mystical unveiling (kashf), departed from the canons of jurisprudence, and claimed that the star, moon, and sun seen by Abraham were lights that constitute God’s veils, not the familiar heavenly bodies. Such talk resembles that of the Bāṭiniyyah. Ibn al-Jawzī refuted Abū Ḥāmid on the Ihyāʾ and exposed his errors in several volumes that he entitled Kitāb al-Aḥyāʾ.”
Abū l-Ḥasan Ibn Sukkar also produced a refutation of al-Ghazālī in a single volume which he called Reviving the Dead of the Ihyāʾ: A Reply to the Book of the Ihyāʾ.
I say: The leading scholars have always disagreed with one another, each refuting the other,