Qalb
Definition
The qalb — spiritual heart — is al-Ghazali's central concept in Islamic psychology: the seat of the human being's relationship with Allah, the organ through which divine knowledge is received, and the battlefield where the forces of guidance and misguidance contend. Al-Ghazali distinguishes the physical heart (the organ in the chest) from the spiritual heart (the subtle divine reality associated with it), insisting that Islamic teaching is primarily concerned with the latter. The state of the qalb — its hardness or softness, its light or darkness, its orientation toward Allah or toward the world — determines the value and the character of every external action the person performs.
As understood in the classical tradition of Imam al-Ghazali and the scholars of his school.
Appears in
2 books in the library
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