SOURCE: Marmura, Michael E. Translator's introduction to The Incoherence of the Philosophers, by Al-Ghazālī, translated by Michael E. Marmura, pp. xv-xxvii. Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 1997.

In the following excerpt, Marmura assesses the importance of al-Ghazālī's Tahāfut al-falāsifa, explains its purpose and chief arguments, and examines some of the critical responses it generated.

I

Al-Ghazālī's Tahāfut al-falāsifa (The Incoherence of the Philosophers) marks a turning point in the intellectual and religious history of medieval Islam. It brought to a head a conflict between Islamic speculative theology (kalām) and philosophy (falsafa) as it undertook to refute twenty philosophical doctrines. Seventeen are condemned as heretical innovations, three as totally opposed to Islamic belief, and those upholding them as outright infidels. Not that the philosophers it condemned were atheists—far from it. Their entire philosophical system rested on affirming the...