Political Rulers as the Other in Al-Ghazali's Letters

To shed light on the real belief of Abu Hamid Al-Ghazali about political rulers, authors of this paper study the presence of political rulers as the Other in Al-Ghazali's letters. After appointing those parts of the text in which he encounters with political rulers as the Other, we introduce Al-Ghazali's tools for giving a negative presentation of them. Considering his way of using these tools, we enlight that Al-Ghazali's view of political rulers as the Other is oriented to the feature of "being misguided" and indicates his pity. So, instead of squashing and combating the Other, Al-Ghazali uses most of his strategies to encourage the Other to change. Among the two groups of "kings" and "ministers", Al-Ghazali usually engages in ministers and his caution and consideration causes the use of the techniques that increase the text's interpretability. The influence of Al-Ghazali's philosophical studies is apparent in his considering about the chance of change for the Other, using irritation adverbs and the text's high unambiguity.