Editing Al-Ghazali (section)

=== ''Incoherence of the Philosophers'' ===
Al-Ghazali's 11th-century book titled  ''[[The Incoherence of the Philosophers|Tahāfut al-Falāsifa]]'' ("Incoherence of the Philosophers")
marked a major turn in Islamic [[epistemology]]. The encounter with [[skepticism]] led al-Ghazali to investigate a form of theological [[occasionalism]], or the belief that all causal events and interactions are not the product of material conjunctions but rather the immediate and present will of God.

In the next century, [[Ibn Rushd]] (or [[Averroes]]) drafted a lengthy rebuttal of al-Ghazali's ''Incoherence'' entitled ''[[The Incoherence of the Incoherence]]''; however, the epistemological course of Islamic thought had already been set.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Craig |first1=William Lane |author-link=William Lane Craig |title=The cosmological argument from Plato to Leibniz |date=2001 |publisher=[[Wipf and Stock]] |location=Eugene, OR. |isbn=978-1579107871 |page=89}}</ref> Al-Ghazali gave as an example of the illusion of independent laws of cause the fact that cotton burns when coming into contact with fire.  While it might seem as though a natural law was at work, it happened each and every time only because God willed it to happen—the event was "a direct product of divine intervention as any more attention grabbing miracle". [[Averroes]], by contrast insisted while God created the natural law, humans "could more usefully say that fire caused cotton to burn—because creation had a pattern that they could discern."<ref name="Kadri-118">{{cite book |last1=Kadri |first1=Sadakat |title=Heaven on Earth: A Journey Through Shari'a Law from the Deserts of Ancient Arabia .. |date=2012 |publisher=Macmillan |isbn=9780099523277 |pages=118–9 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ztCRZOhJ10wC&q=Heaven+on+Earth:+A+Journey+Through+Shari%27a+Law |via=[[Google Books]]}}</ref><ref>For al-Ghazali's argument see ''The Incoherence of the Philosophers''. Translated by Michael E. Marmura. 2nd ed, Provo Utah, 2000, pp.116-7.</ref><ref>For Ibn Rushd's response, see {{cite book |editor-last=Khalid |editor-first=Muhammad A. |title=Medieval Islamic Philosophical Writings |location=Cambridge UK |date=2005 |page=162}}</ref>

The ''Incoherence'' also marked a turning point in Islamic philosophy in its vehement rejections of [[Aristotle]] and [[Plato]]. The book took aim at the ''Falāsifa'', a loosely defined group of Islamic philosophers from the 8th through the 11th centuries (most notable among them [[Avicenna]] and [[al-Farabi]]) who drew intellectually upon the [[Ancient Greece|Ancient Greeks]].

The influence of Al-Ghazali's book is still debated. Professor of Arabic and Islamic Science [[George Saliba]] in 2007 argued that the decline of science in the 11th century has been overstated, pointing to continuing advances, particularly in astronomy, as late as the 14th century.<ref name=Aydin_Saliba>"Many orientalists argue that Ghazali's Tahafut is responsible for the age of decline in [[science]] in the Muslim World. This is their key thesis as they attempt to explain the scientific and intellectual history of the Islamic world. It seems to be the most widely accepted view on the matter not only in the Western world but in the Muslim world as well. George Saliba, a Professor of Arabic and Islamic Science at Columbia University who specializes in the development of astronomy within Islamic civilization, calls this view the "classical narrative" (Saliba, 2007)".</ref>

Professor of Mathematics Nuh Aydin wrote in 2012 that one the most important reasons of the decline of science in the Islamic world has been Al-Ghazali's attack of ''philosophers'' (scientists, physicists, mathematicians, logicians). The attack peaked in his book ''Incoherence'', whose central idea of theological [[occasionalism]] implies that ''philosophers'' cannot give rational explanations to either metaphysical or physical questions. The idea caught on and nullified the critical thinking in the Islamic world.<ref>
{{cite web |last=Aydin |first=Nuh |title=Did al-Ghazali kill the science in Islam?|url=http://www.fountainmagazine.com/Issue/detail/did-al-ghazali-kill-the-science-in-islam-may-june-2012 |access-date=23 February 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150430051445/http://www.fountainmagazine.com/Issue/detail/did-al-ghazali-kill-the-science-in-islam-may-june-2012 |archive-date=2015-04-30 |url-status=dead}}</ref>

On the other hand, author and journalist [[Hassan Hassan]] in 2012 argued that while indeed scientific thought in Islam was stifled in the 11th century, the person mostly to blame is not al-Ghazali but [[Nizam al-Mulk]].<ref name="thenational.ae">{{cite news |first=Hasan |last=Hasan |author-link=Hasan Hasan |url=https://www.thenationalnews.com/opinion/comment/how-the-decline-of-muslim-scientific-thought-still-haunts-1.382129#:~:text=It%20reported%20that%20India%20and,and%20is%20of%20lower%20quality |title=How the decline of Muslim scientific thought still haunts |work=[[The National (Abu Dhabi)|The National]] |date=9 February 2012}}</ref>