Thursday, August 28, 2014

How to Write an Introduction to a Book Worth Reading

Now this is how to write an introduction to a book worth reading!  Here is an English translation of Al-Ghazali's introduction to The Incoherence of the Philosophers:

"We ask God in His majesty that transcends all bounds and His munificence that goes beyond all ends to shed upon us the lights of His guidance and to snatch away from us the darkness of waywardness and error; to make us among those who saw the truth as truth, preferring to pursue and follow Its paths, and who saw false as false, choosing to avoid and shun it; to bring us to the felicity He promised His Prophets and saints; to make us attain that rapture and gladness, favored bliss and joy (once we depart from this abode of delusion) from whose heights the greatest ascents of the understanding stand low and from whose distanced stretches the utmost reaches of the arrows of the imagination waste away; to grant us, after arriving at the bliss of paradise and emerging from the terror of the judgment day, “that which neither eye has seen nor ear, heard, nor occurred to the heart of men,” and that He may bestow His prayers and His assured peace upon our prophet, the chosen, Muhammad, the best of men, and upon his virtuous family and his companions pure, keys of guidance and lanterns in the dark."

No comments:

Post a Comment

Please comment here: