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This issue between the Hellenists and the custodians of the sacred scripts was in doubt until the 12th Century. It was decided by al-Ghazali, a teacher of vast learning and restless piety. He became a sufi and wrote a book called The Decay of the Philosophers, in which he rejected philosophy, pointing out the numerous occasions on which one philosopher contradicted another. A hundred years later, Averraes, greatest of the Hellenized Moslem thinkers, answered al-Ghazali with a book called The Decay of the Decay, pointing out the numerous occasions on which al-Ghazali had contradicted himself. On points, Averraes won the argument — but al-Ghazali won Islam.
This decision was the more important because Islam, with its lean and rigid theological structure, needed a systematic philosophy to help it to meet new situations. After Islam was de-Hellenized and thrown back upon the old texts, it tended to resist all change, because the inflexible scriptures were hard to apply.
This reactionary social outlook has a lot to do with what ails Islam today. The wretched fellahin of Egypt can thank al-Ghazali for part of their lot.
The Major Sects
Islam had other troubles. The identity of church and state meant that political fissures became religious schisms and, occasionally, vice versa. The first and greatest split came over the succession. Ali, the fourth Caliph, was the husband of Mohammed's daughter, Fatima. After a turbulent reign, Ali was assassinated and his partisans later claimed that he should have been the first Caliph and that the succession had to pass through the "seed of the Prophet." Followers of this doctrine (mostly non-Arabs) became known as Shiites; today they dominate Iran. Members of the main body of Orthodox Islam are called Sunnites.
Quarrels among the descendants of the Prophet, assassination and civil war have marked every century including the present. These family claims to spiritual leadership of Islam are history's best argument for the celibacy of the clergy — or at least of major prophets.
Beard Stroking
The impetus which Christendom (thanks largely to Islam) received from its renewed contact with Greek thought pushed Europe into an era of political and economic expansion and Islam fell into the shadow of the European empires. In the 19th Century, some Moslem leaders began to preach a Pan-Islamic revival, but this movement was broken by the rise of nationalism among Moslem peoples. In World War I the Arabs broke away from Turkish domination. Prostrate Turkey was revived by Kemal Atatürk, who achieved a separation of church and state, ended the Caliphate and banished religious leaders from public life.