The spiritual life in Islam begins with riyadat al-nafs, the inner warfare against the ego. Distracted and polluted by worldliness, the lower self has a tendency to drag the human creature down into arrogance and vice. This translation of two chapters from The Revival of the Religious Sciences (Ihya' 'Ulum al-Din) details the sophisticated spiritual techniques adopted by classical Islam.
Abu Hamid al-Ghazali(1058-1111) is the most famous theologian-mystic of Islam and the equivalent of Thomas Aquinas in Christianity and Maimonides in Judaism. His contribution to the formation of Islamic thought and mysticism is incalculable.TJ Winteris Shaykh Zayed Lecturer in Islamic Studies at the University of Cambridge.
![Al-Ghazali on Disciplining the Soul and on Breaking the Two Desires: Books XXII and XXIII of the Revival of the Religious Sciences [Paperback]](/itemImage/2/6/7/1/2_6844272.jpg "Al-Ghazali on Disciplining the Soul and on Breaking the Two Desires: Books XXII and XXIII of the Revival of the Religious Sciences [Paperback]")