A Beautiful Face, a Hidden Heart
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Welcome. This is the twenty-sixth book of The Revival of the Religious Sciences, by Imam al-Ghazali. It is about this world, and the trap it sets for the human heart.
al-Ghazali begins with a striking portrait. This world, he says, looks like a beautiful woman who wins people with her charm. But she hides ugly secrets that ruin everyone who longs to be with her.
She runs from those who chase her, and chases those who run from her. If she is kind for an hour, she is cruel for a year. Her health leads to sickness, her youth to old age, and her pleasures to regret.
She keeps decorating herself, he says, until people fall in love with her. Then she shows her teeth.
And this world, he adds, is an enemy to three. An enemy to Allah, because she blocks the road of His servants. An enemy to His friends, because they must swallow the bitterness of patience to turn away from her. And an enemy to His enemies, because she draws them in, and abandons them when they need her most.
So before we can escape a trap, says al-Ghazali, we must understand it. Whoever does not know what is harmful cannot protect himself from it.
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