Al-Ghazālī’s Ihyāʾ ʿUlūm al-Dīn, however, is riddled with serious flaws and calamities. Admittedly, it does contain elements of benefit and useful insights, yet it also harbours a great deal of ruin and poison. It is a mixed work whose harm outweighs its good. Therefore it is not suitable for a novice or an ordinary person to read it unless he already has sound knowledge and can discern truth from falsehood.

The angels are not mere abstractions, as that view claims; rather, they are real beings with bodies and forms, able to assume shapes that Allah has granted them. Thus the angel Gabriel—peace be upon him—would come to the Prophet ﷺ in the guise of a man. Allah allowed them to take on such appearances for the welfare of the children of Adam, for human beings cannot bear to see the angels in the form in which Allah created them. Out of mercy for humanity, therefore, they appeared to the Prophet ﷺ as a man.

People will not behold the angels in their true form except at the moment of punishment, as the Almighty says: “On the Day when they behold the angels, there will be no good news that day for the sinners” (Qur’an 25:22). At death, too, a person will witness them—the angels of death—but while he is alive in this world he does not see them, for he could not endure it. Allah created the angels from light, the devils from fire, and Adam from earth, and Allah is capable of all things.