Yazeed Said is a Cambridge-educated Israeli born in Palestine, an Anglican priest, a faculty member at Canadian and Irish universities, and a scholar of Islamic history and theology. The approach that he takes to his subject in Ghazali's Politics in Context reflects this background and biography, resulting in a book that is complex and adventurous. The author notes at the outset that ‘What follows is not an intellectual history of Ghazali's thought’ (p 1). This is certainly true, though the qualification fails fully to disclose Said's unconventional approach to his subject.
Two governing propositions guide the book. First, Ghazali must be opened ‘beyond the frontiers of Islam’ and, secondly, there is ‘theological unity’ to Ghazali's political thought (p 25). By so proposing, Said aims to free Ghazali from the interpretive limitations and blind spots that have dominated scholarship in Oriental studies (p 1). Interpreting Ghazali in this more capacious manner proves to be both a strength and weakness of the book. On the one hand, Said's approach allows him to appropriate Ghazali for novel purposes. Ghazali is freed from a time-bound setting and made a living resource for contemporary debates within ‘theology, ethics, law, and political philosophy’ (p 1). Among the most creative moves that Said makes is to place his subject in conversation with the legal theorist John Finnis and the Christian theologian Rowan Williams.
On the other hand, Ghazali remains a shadowy and elusive figure through much of the book. In the end, Said is not so much writing about, as through, him. Ghazali is a conversation partner whom Said utilises to pursue intellectual concerns at a remove from mediaeval Islamic thought. Ghazali's thought is critically engaged, but never in a particularly systematic or straightforward fashion. The result is a book organised more around a confederation of themes than a unified narrative.
This is a book that displays wide learning, yet might not prove of great use to those seeking a general engagement with Ghazali's political thought. In many respects, the chapters can be read independently of each other. While there are narrative threads that run through the text, individual chapters rarely presuppose familiarity with themes developed elsewhere. Chapter One offers a survey and interpretation of Ghazali's work, giving particular attention to the importance of locating his political thought within ‘a cohesive vision of faith’ (p 12). Chapter Two is one of the more interesting and will appeal to specialists and non-specialists alike. It develops a moral and ultimately theological approach to interpreting historical texts that can be applied to Ghazali's work on law and politics. Chapter Three explores natural law as a point of contact between Christian and Muslim thought, particularly through examining the work of John Finnis. The final three chapters offer a more detailed analysis of central themes in Ghazali's thought. Said explores the topics of political society, ethics, justice and authority. It is here that the author most systematically engages primary texts and begins to construct the theological account of Ghazali's political thought outlined at the book's outset.
This is a difficult and ambitious book that does not have a clear audience. Scholars of Islamic thought and history will benefit from the author's critical exegesis of Ghazali's writings, as well as his critical review of the secondary literature. At the same time, specialists who lack familiarity with contemporary jurisprudence and theology will find significant parts of the book to be elusive. This is certainly the case with Said's discussion of John Finnis. The value of this book for many will be in part rather than the whole.
Finally, one senses that there are unnamed background concerns – intellectual and personal alike – animating Said's investigations. I suspect one such concern is with contemporary Christian–Muslim relations. This is an issue at the forefront of Said's life and biography, as well as his academic and professional training. There are occasional hints of these deeper animating questions to be found in the text, though the author could have been more explicit in establishing these connections. Doing so would have better illuminated the book's methodology, as well as how Ghazali can ‘shed light on modern ideas’ and challenges (p 3).
