Place of publication: United States, Ann Arbor; ISBN=978-1-339-46210-3
Ph.D.
Religion and Culture
The Catholic University of America
2016
This dissertation researches the meaning and function of poverty ( faqr) in the thought of the Muslim theologian al-Ghazali (d. 1111), whose Ihyā' includes an entire book of material devoted to the subject. Here, we find poverty used as a foundational stage of spiritual development in the trajectory of al-Ghazali's mystical ethics, so that a Muslim who becomes materially poor begins a journey along a path that leads to God and thus overcoming the poverty of existence inherent to all of creation. Although Jesus appears in this text as an important exemplar for both poverty and the related renunciation (zuhd) in al-Ghazali's work, the author chooses another figure to represent the highest manifestation of poverty in this life: the Prophet Muhammad's wife 'A'isha. Her detachment from the wealth of the world demonstrates her attainment to the level of 'one without need' (mustaghnī), a designation that aligns her, and any other who reaches it, with the divine attribute of Needlessness (al-Ghani_), and thus with God.
Theology; Islamic Studies; Comparative
Philosophy, religion and theology;Social sciences;Al-ghazali;Bonaventure;Faqr;Poverty;Theology;Zuhd