Imam Ghazali s View of Hypocrisy
We will go through a text written by Hijjatul Islam Abu Hamid Mohammed Ibn-e Mohammed Toosee, popularly known with his appellation Imam Ghazalee.
You might have seen yourself that dry worshipper (pretender) and superficial mystic saints behave arrogantly. They consider others as abject. Due to arrogance they keep their face twisted and thought-provoking as if they are obliging people by performing extra two rak’ats namaz or they have got the certificate of salvation from the hell or they got certificate of admission into the paradise or they believe that only they are pious and virtuous persons and all others are unfortunates. Besides all the evils they dress themselves as helpless, sober and humble persons with woolen or thick silky cloths and display extreme tranquility and vulnerability. However, there is no correlation or link between such dress, tranquility and arrogance. On the contrary, arrogance and tranquility are just opposite and contradictory. But these unsighted persons do not understand.
Imam Ghazalee had defined sense of arrogance as below:
Haughtiness (arrogance) is nothing but to consider one’s own ‘Amal as great and superior
[Minhajuk ‘Abedeen, Pg:283]
