Allah is not a God of laws because he is not a God of love. It is possible for Muslims to love Allah, but nonsensical to imagine that God loves Muslims, declared Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (1058–1111), still the dominant authority in normative Islam. A leading Western historian of Islam calls him the most influential figure in Islam since the Prophet Mohammed,6 and such putative updaters of Islam as Tariq Ramadan still base their theology on al-Ghazali. “When there is love, there must be in the lover a sense of incompleteness; a recognition that the beloved is needed for complete realization of the
Allah is not a God of laws because he is not a God of love. It is possible for Muslims to love Allah, but nonsensical to imagine that God loves Muslims, declared Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (1058–1111), still the dominant authority in normative Islam. A leading Western historian of Islam calls him the most influential figure in Islam since the Prophet Mohammed,6 and such putative updaters of Islam as Tariq Ramadan still base their theology on al-Ghazali. “When there is love, there must be in the lover a sense of incompleteness; a recognition that the beloved is needed for complete realization of the self,” al-Ghazali wrote. But since Allah is perfect and complete, this notion of love is nonsensical. “There is no reaching out on the part of God...there can be no change in him; no development in him; no supplying of a lack in Himself.”7 Allah is beyond love and has therefore has no need to favor humankind with laws of nature. As al-Ghazali argues, The connection between what is habitually believed to be a cause and what is habitually believed to be an effect is not necessary, according to us. For example, there is no causal connection between the quenching of thirst and drinking, satiety and eating, burning and contact with fire. Light and the appearance of the sun, death and decapitation, healing and the drinking of medicine... and so on to include all that is observable in connected things in medicine, astronomy, arts and crafts. Their connection is due to the prior decree of God...
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, who creates them side by side, not to it being necessary in itself, incapable of separation... the philosophers offer no other proof than the observation of the occurrence of the burning, when there is contact with fire, but observation proves only simultaneity, not causation, and, in reality, there is no other cause but God.
