The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (123 page)

(Niche of the Lamp),
al-Qist
s al-mustaq
m
(The Just Balance),
K
miya’ al-Sa‘
da
(The Alchemy of Happiness), and
Tah
fut al-Fal
sifah
(The Incoherence of the Philosophers) in which the inadequacy of reason outside its appropriate spheres points to the necessity for revelation and mystical knowledge. It was his achievement that he successfully harmonized Sufism into the field of orthodoxy and gave it acceptance as an inner dimension of Islam. At the same time, his emphasis on the limits of reason in relation to faith led eventually to a withdrawal of Islam from the leadership it had given to the world in science and philosophy.

 
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al-Hakim
(Druze holy figure)
:

see
DRUZES
.

 
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al-Halal wa’l-Har
m
.

The permitted and the forbidden in Islam. This constitutes the fundamental division between what
All
h
permits and what he forbids. The creation principle (
asl
) is that everything which God has created is for human use (Qur’
n 2. 29; 31. 20; 45. 13), but that for specific reasons in each case, some things are prohibited.
More particularly, the word halal is used as a short-hand for the permitted way of slaughtering animals—by severing blood-vessels, while naming the name of All
h over the animal. This is usually done by cutting through the throat of the animal until the jugular veins are severed. The meat is then halal, permitted. Cf.
SHE
ITAH
.