Mohammed and Islam.
Se. Recent Works on the Life of Mohammed.
Dr. Samuel Johnson once declared,
“There are two objects of curiosity, the Christian
world and the Mohammedan world; all the rest may be
considered as barbarous.” Since Dr. Johnson’s
time we have learned to be curious about other forms
of human thought, and regard the famous line of Terence
as expressing more accurately the proper frame of mind
for a Christian philosopher. Nevertheless, Mohammedanism
still claims a special interest and excites a peculiar
curiosity. It is the only religion which has
threatened Christianity with a dangerous rivalry.
It is the only other religion, whose origin is in
the broad daylight of history. Its author is
the only one among the great men of the world who has
at the same time founded a religion, formed a people,
and established an empire. The marvellous spread
of this religion is a mystery which never ceases to
stimulate the mind to new inquiry. How was it
that in the short space of a century the Arab tribes,
before always at war among themselves, should have
been united into an irresistible power, and have conquered
Syria, Persia, the whole of Northern Africa and Spain?
And with this religious outbreak, this great revival
of monotheism in Asia, there came also as remarkable
a renaissance of learning, which made the Arabs the
teachers of philosophy and art to Europe during a
long period. Arab Spain was a focus of light
while Christian Europe lay in mediaeval darkness.
And still more interesting and perplexing is the character
of Mohammed himself. What was he,-an
impostor or a prophet? Did his work advance or
retard human progress? What is his position in
history? Such are some of the questions on which
we shall endeavor to throw light in the present chapter.
Within a few years new materials for
this study have been made accessible by the labors
of Weil, Caussin de Perceval, Muir, Sprenger, Doellinger,
and Arnold. Dr. Gustav Weil published his work
in 1843. It was drawn from Arabic manuscripts
and the Koran. When Weil began his studies on
Mohammed in 1837, he found no book except that of
Gagnier, published in 1732, from which he could derive
substantial aid. But Gagnier had only collected,
without any attempt at criticism, the traditions and
statements concerning Mohammed believed by orthodox
Moslems. Satisfied that a literary want existed
at this point, Dr. Weil devoted himself to such studies
as should enable him to supply it; and the result
was a work concerning which Milman says that “nothing
has escaped” the diligence of its author.
But four years after appeared the book of M. Caussin
de Perceval, a work of which M. Saint-Hilaire
says that it marks a new era in these studies, on
account of the abundance and novelty of its details,
and the light thrown on the period which in Arabia
preceded the coming of Mohammed. Dr. A. Sprenger,
an eminent German scholar, early determined to devote
himself to the study of Oriental literature in the
East. He spent a long time in India, and was
for twelve years principal of a Mohammedan school in
Delhi, where he established, in 1845, an illustrated
penny magazine in the Hindoo language. After
returning to Europe with a vast number of Oriental
manuscripts, he composed his Life of Mohammed,
the result of extensive studies. Among the preparations
for this work we will cite only one. Dr. Sprenger
edited in Calcutta the first volume of the Icaba, which
contains the names and biographies of eight thousand
persons who were personally acquainted with Mohammed.
But, as if to embarrass us with riches, comes also
Mr. Muir and presents us with another life of
the prophet, likewise drawn from original sources,
and written with learning and candor. This work,
in four volumes, goes over the whole ground of the
history of Arabia before the coming of the prophet,
and then, from Arabic sources, narrates the life of
Mohammed himself, up to the era of the Hegira.
The result of these researches is that we know accurately
what Mr. Hallam in his time despaired of knowing,-all
the main points of the history of Mohammed. There
is no legend, no myth, to trouble us. M. Saint-Hilaire
says that the French are far less acquainted with
Charlemagne than the Moslems are with their prophet,
who came two centuries earlier.
A Mohammedan writer, Syed Ahmed Khan
Bahador, has lately published, in English, a series
of Essays on the life of Mohammed, Arabia, the Arabs,
Mohammedan traditions, and kindred topics, written
from the stand-point of a believer in Islam.
He is dissatisfied with all the recent works on Mohammed,
including those of Dr. Sprenger and Mr. Muir.
He believes that the Arabic sources from which these
biographies are derived are not the most authentic.
The special objections, however, which this able Mohammedan
urges against these European biographies by Sprenger
and Muir do not affect any of the important points
in the history, but only details of small moment.
Notwithstanding his criticisms, therefore, we may safely
assume that we are in a condition to understand the
actual life and character of Mohammed. All that
the Syed says concerning the duty of an impartial
and friendly judgment of Islam and its author is, of
course, true. We shall endeavor in our treatment
of Mohammed to follow this exhortation.
Something, however, is always gained
by hearing what the believers in a system have to
say in its behalf, and these essays of the Mohammedan
scholar may help us in this way. One of the most
curious parts of the volume is that in which he treats
of the prophecies concerning Mohammed in the Old and
New Testament. Most of our readers will be surprised
at learning that any such prophecies exist; and yet
some of them are quite as striking as many of those
commonly adduced by writers on prophecy as referring
to Jesus Christ. For example (Deut. xvii, 18), when Moses predicts that the Lord will raise
up a prophet for the Jews, from among their brethren;
by emphasizing this latter clause, and arguing that
the Jews had no brethren except the Ishmaelites, from
whom Mohammed was born, an argument is derived that
the latter was referred to. This is strengthened
by the declaration of Moses, that this prophet should
be “like unto me,” since Deuteronomy
xxxi declares that “there arose no prophet
in Israel like unto Moses.”
Habakkuk ii says: “The
Holy One came from Mount Paran.” But Mount
Paran, argues our friend, is the mountain of Mecca.
The Hebrew word translated “desire”
in Haggai i, “The desire of all nations
shall come,” is said by Bahador to be the same
word as the name Mohammed. He is therefore predicted
by his name in this passage.
When Isaiah says (xx, according
to the Septuagint translation, that he “saw
two riders, one on an ass and one on a camel,”
Bahador argues that the rider on the ass is Jesus,
who so entered Jerusalem, and that the rider on the
camel is Mohammed.
When John the Baptist was asked if
he were the Christ, or Elijah, or “that prophet,”
Mohammedans say that “that prophet,” so
anticipated, was their own.
Se. The Arabs and Arabia.
The Arabs are a Semitic people, belonging
to the same great ethnologic family with the Babylonians,
Assyrians, Phoenicians, Hebrews, Ethiopians, and Carthaginians.
It is a race which has given to civilized man his
literature and his religion; for the alphabet came
from the Phoenicians, and the Bible from the Jews.
In Hannibal, it produced perhaps the greatest military
genius the world has seen; and the Tyrian merchants,
circumnavigating Africa, discovering Great Britain,
and trading with India, ten centuries before Christ,
had no equals on the ocean until the time of the Portuguese
discoveries, twenty-five centuries after. The
Arabs alone, of the seven Semitic families, remained
undistinguished and unknown till the days of Mohammed.
Their claim of being descended from Abraham is confirmed
by the unerring evidence of language. The Arabic
roots are, nine tenths of them, identical with the
Hebrew; and a similarity of grammatical forms shows
a plain glossological relation. But while the
Jews have a history from the days of Abraham, the
Arabs had none till Mohammed. During twenty centuries
these nomads wandered to and fro, engaged in mutual
wars, verifying the prediction (Gen. xv concerning
Ishmael: “He will be a wild man; his hand
will be against every man, and every man’s hand
against him.” Wherever such wandering races
exist, whether in Arabia, Turkistan, or Equatorial
Africa, “darkness covers the earth, and gross
darkness the people.” The earth has no
geography, and the people no history. During all
this long period, from the time of Abraham to that
of Mohammed, the Arabs were not a nation, but only
a multitude of tribes, either stationary or wandering.
But of these two the nomad or Bedouin is the true type
of the race as it exists in Northern Arabia.
The Arab of the South is in many respects different,-in
language, in manners, and in character,-confirming
the old opinion of a double origin. But the Northern
Arab in his tent has remained unchanged since the days
of the Bible. Proud of his pure blood, of his
freedom, of his tribe, and of his ancient customs,
he desires no change. He is, in Asia, what the
North American Indian is upon the western continent.
As the Indian’s, his chief virtues are courage
in war, cunning, wild justice, hospitality, and fortitude.
He is, however, of a better race,-more reflective,
more religious, and with a thirst for knowledge.
The pure air and the simple food of the Arabian plains
keep him in perfect health; and the necessity of constant
watchfulness against his foes, from whom he has no
defence of rock, forest, or fortification, quickens
his perceptive faculties. But the Arab has also
a sense of spiritual things, which appears to have
a root in his organization. The Arabs say:
“The children of Shem are prophets, the children
of Japhet are kings, and the children of Ham are slaves.”
Having no temples, no priesthood, no religious forms,
their religion is less formal and more instinctive,
like that of children. The Koran says: “Every
child is born into the religion of nature; its parents
make it a Jew, a Christian, or a Magian.”
But when Mohammed came, the religion of the Arabs
was a jumble of monotheism and polytheism,-Judaism,
Christianity, idolatry, and fetichism. At one
time there had been a powerful and intolerant Jewish
kingdom in one region. In Yemen, at another period,
the king of Abyssinia had established Christianity.
But neither Judaism nor Christianity had ever been
able to conquer the peninsula; and at the end of the
sixth century idolatry was the most prevailing form
of worship.
At this time Mohammed appeared, and
in a few years united in one faith all the warring
tribes of Arabia; consolidated them into a single nation,
and then wielded their mighty and enthusiastic forces
against Syria, Persia, and North Africa, triumphant
wherever they moved. He, certainly, if ever man
possessed it, had the rare gift of natural empire.
To him, more than to any other of whom history makes
mention, was given
“The monarch mind, the
mystery of commanding,
The birth-hour
gift, the art Napoleon,
Of wielding, moulding, gathering,
welding, banding,
The hearts of
thousands till they moved as one.”
Se. Early Life of Mohammed, to the Hegira.
But it was not as a soldier or ambitious
conqueror that Mohammed began his career. The
first forty years of his life were passed in the quiet
pursuits of trade, or taking care of the property of
Khadijah. Serious, thoughtful, devout, he made
friends of all about him. His youth was unstained
by vice, and his honorable character early obtained
for him the title, given him by common consent, of
Al Amin, “the faithful.” At one time
he tended sheep and goats on the hills near Mecca.
At Medina, after he became distinguished he referred
to this, saying, “Pick me the blackest of those
berries; they are such as I used to gather when I fed
the flocks at Mecca. Verily, no prophet has been
raised up who has not performed the work of a shepherd.”
When twenty-five years of age, he entered into the
service of Khadijah, a rich widow, as her agent, to
take charge of her merchandise and to sell it at Damascus.
When the caravan returned, and his adventure had proved
successful, Khadijah, then forty years old, became
interested in the young man; she was wise, virtuous,
and attractive; they were married, and, till her death,
Mohammed was a kind and loving husband. Khadijah
sympathized with her husband in his religious tendencies,
and was his first convert. His habit was to retire
to a cave on Mount Hira to pray and to meditate.
Sadness came over him in view of the evils in the world.
One of the Suras of the Koran, supposed to belong to
this period, is as follows:-
Sura 103.
“By the declining day
I swear!
Verily, man is in the way
of ruin;
Excepting such as possess
faith,
And do the things which be
right,
And stir up one another to
truth and steadfastness.”
About this time he began to have his
visions of angels, especially of Gabriel. He
saw a light, and heard a voice, and had sentences like
the above put into his mind. These communications
were accompanied by strong convulsions (epilepsy,
says Weil), in which he would fall to the ground and
foam at the mouth. Sprenger considers it to have
been a form of hysteria, with a mental origin, perhaps
accompanied with catalepsy. The prophet himself
said: “Inspiration descends on me in two
ways. Sometimes Gabriel cometh and communicateth
the revelation, as one man to another. This is
easy. But sometimes it is as the ringing of a
bell, which rends me in pieces, and grievously afflicts
me.” One day, when Abu Bakr and Omar sat
in the Mosque at Medina, Mohammed came suddenly upon
them, lifting up his beard and looking at it; and
Abu Bakr said, “Ah thou, for whom I would sacrifice
father and mother; white hairs are hastening upon thee!”
“Yes,” said the prophet, “Hud”
(Sura 11) “and its sisters have hastened my white
hairs.” “And who,” asked Abu
Bakr, “are its sisters?” “The Inevitable”
(Sura 56) “and the Striking” (Sura
101), replied Mohammed. These three are called
the “terrific Suras.”
But these last Suras came later than
the period now referred to. At this time his
visions and revelations possessed him; he did
not possess nor control them. In later
years the spirit of the prophet was more subject to
the prophet. But the Koran is an unintelligible
book unless we can connect it with the biography of
its writer. All the incidents of his life took
shape in some revelation. A separate revelation
was given to encourage or to rebuke him; and in his
later years the too subservient inspiration came to
appease the jealousy of his wives when a new one was
added to their number. But, however it may have
been afterward, in the beginning his visions were
as much a surprise to him as to others. A careful
distribution of the Suras, according to the events
which befell him, would make the Koran the best biography
of the prophet. As we said of David and his Psalms,
so it may be said of Mohammed, that his life hangs
suspended in these hymns, as in votive pictures, each
the record of some grave experience.
Now, it is impossible to read the
detailed accounts of this part of the life of Mohammed,
and have any doubt of his profound sincerity.
His earliest converts were his bosom-friends and the
people of his household, who were intimately acquainted
with his private life. Nor does a man easily
begin an ambitious course of deception at the age of
forty; having lived till that time as a quiet, peaceful,
and unobtrusive citizen, what was he to gain
by this career? Long years passed before he could
make more than a handful of converts. During
these weary years he was the object of contumely and
hatred to the ruling tribe in Mecca. His life
was hardly safe from them. Nothing could be more
hopeless than his position during the first twelve
years of his public preaching. Only a strong
conviction of the reality of his mission could have
supported him through this long period of failure,
loneliness, and contempt. During all these years
the wildest imagination could not have pictured the
success which was to come. Here is a Sura in
which he finds comfort in God and his promises.-
Sura 93.
“By the
rising sunshine!
By the night when
it darkeneth!
Thy Lord hath not removed
from thee, neither hath he been displeased.
And verily the future shall
be better than the past....
What! did he not find thee
an orphan, and give thee a home?
And found thee astray, and
directed thee?”
In this Sura, Mohammed refers to the
fact of the death of his mother, Amina, in his seventh
year, his father having died a few months before.
He visited her tomb many years after, and lifted up
his voice and wept. In reply to the questions
of his companions, he said: “This is the
grave of my mother; the Lord hath permitted me to
visit it, and I asked leave to pray for her, and it
was not granted. So I called my mother to remembrance,
and the tender memory of her overcame me, and I wept.”
The child had been taken by his grandfather, Abd al
Mut-talib, then eighty years old, who treated him
with the greatest indulgence. At his death, shortly
after, Mohammed was adopted by his uncle, Abu Talib,
the chief of the tribe. Abu Talib brought him
up like his own son, making him sleep by his bed,
eat by his side, and go with him wherever he went.
And when Mohammed, assuming his inspired position,
declared himself a prophet, his uncle, then aged and
universally respected, protected him from his enemies,
though Abu himself never accepted his teaching.
Mohammed therefore had good reason to bless the Providence
which had provided such protectors for his orphaned
infancy.
Among the earliest converts of Mohammed,
after Khadijah, were his two adopted children, Ali
and Zeid. Ali was the son of his guardian, Abu
Talib, who had become poor, and found it hard to support
his family. Mohammed, “prompted by his
usual kindness and consideration,” says Mr.
Muir, went to his rich uncle Abbas, and proposed that
each of them should adopt one of Abu Talib’s
children, which was done. His other adopted son,
Zeid, belonged to a Syrian tribe, and had been taken
captive by marauders, sold into slavery, and given
to Khadijah, who presented him to her husband.
After a while the father of Zeid heard where he was,
and coming to Mecca offered a large sum as ransom
for his son. Mohammed had become very fond of
Zeid, but he called him, and gave him his choice to
go or stay. Zeid said, “I will not leave
thee; thou art in the place to me of father and mother.”
Then Mohammed took him to the Kaaba, and touching the
Black Stone said, “Bear witness, all here!
Zeid is my son. I shall be his heir, and he mine.”
So the father returned home contented, and Zeid was
henceforth known as “Zeid ibn Mohammed,”-Zeid,
the son of Mohammed.
It is reported that when Ali was about
thirteen years old Mohammed was one day praying with
him in one of the retired glens near Mecca, whither
they had gone to avoid the ridicule of their opponents.
Abu Talib, passing by, said, “My nephew! what
is this new faith I see thee following?” “O
my uncle,” replied Mohammed, “it is the
religion of God, his angels and prophets, the religion
of Abraham. The Lord hath sent me as his apostle;
and thou, uncle, art most worthy to be invited to believe.”
Abu Talib replied, “I am not able, my nephew,
to separate from the customs of my forefathers, but
I swear that while I live no one shall trouble thee.”
Then he said to Ali, “My son, he will not invite
thee to anything which is not good; wherefore thou
art free to cleave to him.”
Another early and important convert
was Abu Bakr, father of Mohammed’s favorite
wife, Ayesha, and afterward the prophet’s successor.
Ayesha said she “could not remember the time
when both her parents were not true believers.”
Of Abu Bakr, the prophet said, “I never invited
any to the faith who did not show hesitation, except
Abu Bakr. When I proposed Islam to him he at
once accepted it.” He was thoughtful, calm,
tender, and firm. He is still known as “Al
Sadich,” the true one. Another of his titles
is “the Second of the Two,”-from
having been the only companion of Mohammed in his
flight from Mecca. Hassan, the poet of Medina,
thus says of him:-
“And the second of the two
in the glorious cave, while the foes were
searching around, and they two were in the
mountain,-
And the prophet of the Lord, they well knew, loved
him more than all
the world; he held no one equal unto him."
Abu Bakr was at this time a successful
merchant, and possessed some forty thousand dirhems.
But he spent most of it in purchasing and giving freedom
to Moslem slaves, who were persecuted by their masters
for their religion. He was an influential man
among the Koreish. This powerful tribe, the rulers
of Mecca, who from the first treated Mohammed with
contempt, gradually became violent persecutors of
him and his followers. Their main wrath fell
on the unprotected slaves, whom they exposed to the
scorching sun, and who, in their intolerable thirst,
would sometimes recant, and acknowledge the idols.
Some of them remained firm, and afterward showed with
triumph their scars. Mohammed, Abu Bakr, Ali,
and all who were connected with powerful families,
were for a long time safe. For the principal
protection in such a disorganized society was the principle
that each tribe must defend every one of its members,
at all hazards. Of course, Mohammed was very
desirous to gain over members of the great families,
but he felt bound to take equal pains with the poor
and helpless, as appears from the following anecdote:
“The prophet was engaged in deep converse with
the chief Walid, for he greatly desired his conversion.
Then a blind man passed that way, and asked to hear
the Koran. But Mohammed was displeased with the
interruption, and turned from him roughly." But
he was afterward grieved to think he had slighted one
whom God had perhaps chosen, and had paid court to
a reprobate. So his remorse took the form of
a divine message and embodied itself as follows:-
“The prophet frowned
and turned aside
Because the blind man came
to him.
Who shall tell thee if he
may not be purified?
Or whether thy admonition
might not profit him?
The
rich man
Thou
receivest graciously,
Although
he be not inwardly pure.
But him who cometh earnestly
inquiring,
And trembling with anxiety,
Him
thou dost neglect."
Mohammed did not encourage his followers
to martyrdom. On the contrary, he allowed them
to dissemble to save themselves. He found one
of his disciples sobbing bitterly because he had been
compelled by ill-treatment to abuse his master and
worship the idols. “But how dost thou find
thy heart?” said the prophet. “Steadfast
in the faith,” said he. “Then,”
answered Mohammed, “if they repeat their cruelty,
thou mayest repeat thy words.” He also
had himself an hour of vacillation. Tired of the
severe and seemingly hopeless struggle with the Koreish,
and seeing no way of overcoming their bitter hostility,
he bethought himself of the method of compromise,
more than seven centuries before America was discovered.
He had been preaching Islam five years, and had only
forty or fifty converts. Those among them who
had no protectors he had advised to fly to the Christian
kingdom of Abyssinia. “Yonder,” said
he, pointing to the west, “lies a land wherein
no one is wronged. Go there and remain until the
Lord shall open a way for you.” Some fifteen
or twenty had gone, and met with a kind reception.
This was the first “Hegira,” and showed
the strength of faith in these exiles, who gave up
their country rather than Islam. But they heard,
before long, that the Koreish had been converted by
Mohammed, and they returned to Mecca. The facts
were these.
One day, when the chief citizens were
sitting near the Kaaba, Mohammed came, and began to
recite in their hearing one of the Suras of the Koran.
In this Sura three of the goddesses worshipped by the
Koreish were mentioned. When he came to their
names he added two lines in which he conceded that
their intercession might avail with God. The Koreish
were so delighted at this acknowledgment of their
deities, that when he added another line calling on
them to worship Allah, they all prostrated themselves
on the ground and adored God. Then they rose,
and expressed their satisfaction, and agreed to be
his followers, and receive Islam, with this slight
alteration, that their goddesses and favorite idols
were to be respected. Mohammed went home and
began to be unhappy in his mind. The compromise,
it seems, lasted long enough for the Abyssinian exiles
to hear of it and to come home. But at last the
prophet recovered himself, and took back his concession.
The verse of the Sura was cancelled, and another inserted,
declaring that these goddesses were only names, invented
by the idolaters. Ever after, the intercession
of idols was condemned with scorn. But Mohammed
records his lapse thus in the seventeenth Sura of the
Koran:-
“And truly, they were near
tempting thee from what we taught thee, that
thou shouldst invent a different
revelation; and then they would have
inclined unto thee.
And if we had not strengthened thee,
verily thou hadst inclined to them
a little.
Then thou shouldst not have found
against us any helper.”
After this, naturally, the persecution
became hotter than ever. A second body of exiles
went to Abyssinia. Had not the venerable Abu Talib
protected Mohammed, his life might have been lost.
As it was, the persecutors threatened the old man
with deadly enmity unless he gave up Mohammed.
But Abu Talib, though agreeing with them in their religion,
and worshipping their gods, refused to surrender his
nephew to them. Once, when Mohammed had disappeared,
and his uncle suspected that the Koreish had seized
him, he armed a party of Hashimite youths with dirks,
and went to the Kaaba, to the Koreish. But on
the way he heard that Mohammed was found. Then,
in the presence of the Koreish, he told his young men
to draw their dirks, and said, “By the Lord!
had ye killed him, not one of you had remained alive.”
This boldness cowed their violence for a time.
But as the unpopularity of Mohammed increased, he
and all his party were obliged to take refuge with
the Hashimites in a secluded quarter of the city belonging
to Abu Talib. The conversion of Omar about this
time only increased their rage. They formed an
alliance against the Hashimites, agreeing that they
would neither buy nor sell, marry, nor have any dealings
with them. This oath was committed to writing,
sealed, and hung up in the Kaaba. For two or
three years the Hashimites remained shut up in their
fortress, and often deprived of the necessaries of
life. Their friends would sometimes secretly
supply them with provisions; but the cries of the
hungry children would often be heard by those outside.
They were blockaded in their intrenchments. But
many of the chief people in Mecca began to be moved
by pity, and at last it was suggested to Abu Talib
that the bond hung up in the Kaaba had been eaten by
the ants, so as to be no longer valid. This being
found to be the case, it was decided that the league
was at an end, and the Hashimites returned to their
homes. But other misfortunes were in store for
Mohammed. The good Abu Talib soon died, and,
not long after, Khadijah. His protector gone,
what could Mohammed do? He left the city, and
went with only Zeid for a companion on a mission to
Tayif, sixty or seventy miles east of Mecca, in hopes
of converting the inhabitants. Who can think
of the prophet, in this lonely journey, without sympathy?
He was going to preach the doctrine of One God to
idolaters. But he made no impression on them,
and, as he left the town, was followed by a mob, hooting,
and pelting him with stones. At last they left
him, and in the shadow of some trees he betook himself
to prayer. His words have been preserved, it
is believed by the Moslems, and are as follows:
“O Lord! I make my complaint unto thee of
the feebleness of my strength, and the weakness of
my plans. I am insignificant in the sight of
men. O thou most merciful! Lord of the weak!
Thou art my Lord! Do not abandon me. Leave
me not a prey to these strangers, nor to my foes.
If thou art not offended, I am safe. I seek refuge
in the light of thy countenance, by which all darkness
is dispersed, and peace comes. There is no power,
no help, but in thee.” In that hour of prayer,
the faith of Mohammed was the same as that of Luther
praying for protection against the Pope. It was
a part of the universal religion of human nature.
Certainly this man was no impostor. A man, going
alone to summon an idolatrous city to repentance,
must at least have believed in his own doctrine.
But the hour of success was at hand.
No amount of error, no bitterness of prejudice, no
vested interest in falsehood, can resist the determined
conviction of a single soul. Only believe a truth
strongly enough to hold it through good report and
ill report, and at last the great world of half-believers
comes round to you. And usually the success comes
suddenly at last, after weary years of disappointment.
The great tree, which seems so solid and firm, has
been secretly decaying within, and is hollow at heart;
at last it falls in a moment, filling the forest with
the echoes of its ruin. The dam, which seems
strong enough to resist a torrent, has been slowly
undermined by a thousand minute rills of water; at
last it is suddenly swept away, and opens a yawning
breach for the tumbling cataract. And almost
as suddenly came the triumph of Mohammed.
At Medina and in its neighborhood
there had long been numerous and powerful tribes of
Jewish prosélytes. In their conflicts with
the idolaters, they had often predicted the speedy
coming of a prophet like Moses. The Jewish influence
was great at Medina, and that of the idolaters was
divided by bitter quarrels. Now it must be remembered
that at this time Mohammed taught a kind of modified
Judaism. He came to revive the religion of Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob. He continually referred to the
Old Testament and the Talmud for authority. He
was a prophet and inspired, but not to teach anything
new. He was to restore the universal religion
which God had taught to man in the beginning,-the
religion of all true patriarchs and prophets.
Its essential doctrine was the unity of God, and his
supremacy and providence. Its one duty was Islam,
or submission to the Divine will. Its worship
was prayer and almsgiving. At this time he did
not make belief in himself the main point; it was to
profess the unity of God, and to submit wholly to
God. So that the semi-Judaized pilgrims from
Medina to Mecca were quite prepared to accept his teachings.
Mohammed, at the time of the pilgrimage, met with
many of them, and they promised to become his disciples.
The pledge they took was as follows: “We
will not worship any but the one God; we will not
steal, nor commit adultery, nor kill our children
(female): we will not slander at all, nor disobey
the prophet in anything that is right.”
This was afterward called the “Pledge of Women,”
because it did not require them to fight for Islam.
This faith spread rapidly among the idolaters at Medina,-much
more so than the Jewish system. The Jews required
too much of their prosélytes; they insisted on
their becoming Jews. They demanded a change of
all their previous customs. But Mohammed only
asked for submission.
About this time Mohammed had his famous
dream or vision, in which he was carried by Gabriel
on a winged steed to Jerusalem, to meet all the prophets
of God and be welcomed by them to their number, and
then to the seventh heaven into the presence of God.
It was so vivid that he deemed it a reality, and maintained
that he had been to Jerusalem and to heaven.
This, and the Koran itself, were the only miracles
he ever claimed.
The Medina Moslems having entered
into a second pledge, to receive Mohammed and his
friends, and to protect them, the prophet gave orders
to his followers to leave Mecca secretly in small
parties, and repair to Medina. As the stout sea-captain
remains the last on a sinking vessel, Mohammed stayed
quietly at Mecca till all the others had gone.
Only Abu Bakr’s family and his own remained.
The rest of the believers, to the number of about
two hundred, had disappeared.
The Koreish, amazed at these events,
knew not what to do. Why had the Moslems gone?
and why had Mohammed remained? How dared he to
stay, unprotected, in their midst? They might
kill him;-but then his tribe would take
a bloody vengeance on his murderers. At last they
proposed to seize him, and that a number of men, one
from each tribe and family, should at the same moment
drive their dirks into him. Or perhaps it might
be better to send an assassin to waylay him on his
way to Medina. While they were discussing these
alternatives, news was brought to them that Mohammed
also had disappeared, and Abu Bakr with him. They
immediately went to their houses. In that of
Mohammed they found the young Ali, who, being asked
where his father was, replied, “I do not know.
I am not his keeper. Did you not order him to
go from the city? I suppose he is gone.”
Getting no more information at the house of Abu Bakr,
they sent out parties of armed men, mounted on swift
horses and camels, to search the whole route to Medina,
and bring the fugitives back. After a few days
the pursuers returned, saying that there were no signs
of any persons having gone in that direction.
If they had gone that way they would certainly have
overtaken them.
Meantime where were the fugitives?
Instead of going north to Medina, they had hidden
in a cave on a mountain, about five or six miles to
the south of Mecca. Here they remained concealed
three days and nights, in imminent danger from their
pursuers, who once, it is said, came to the mouth of
the cave, but, seeing spiders’ webs spun across
the opening, concluded no one could have gone in recently.
There was a crevice in the roof through which the
morning light entered, and Abu Bakr said, “If
one of them were to look down, he would see us.”
“Think not so, Abu Bakr,” said the prophet.
“We are two, but God is in the midst, a third.”
The next day, satisfied that the heat
of the pursuit had abated, they took the camels which
had privately been brought to them from the city by
the son of Abu Bakr, and set off for Medina, leaving
Mecca on the right. By the calculations of M.
Caussin de Perceval, it was on the 20th of June, A.D.
622.
Se. Change in the Character
of Mohammed after the Hegira.
From the Hegira the Mohammedan era
begins; and from that point of the prophet’s
history his fortunes rise, but his character degenerates.
He has borne adversity and opposition with a faith
and a patience almost sublime; but prosperity he will
not bear so well. Down to that time he had been
a prophet, teaching God’s truth to those who
would receive it, and by the manifestation of that
truth commending himself to every man’s conscience.
Now he was to become a politician, the head of a party,
contriving expedients for its success. Before,
his only weapon was truth; now, his chief means was
force. Instead of convincing his opponents, he
now compelled them to submit by the terror of his
power. His revelations changed their tone; they
adapted themselves to his needs, and on all occasions,
even when he wanted to take an extra wife, inspiration
came to his aid.
What sadder tragedy is there than
to see a great soul thus conquered by success?
“All these things,” says Satan, “I
will give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship
me.” When Jesus related his temptation to
his disciples he put it in the form of a parable.
How could they, how can we, understand the temptations
of a nature like that of Christ! Perhaps he saw
that he could have a great apparent success by the
use of worldly means. He could bring the Jew
and the Gentile to acknowledge and receive his truth.
Some slight concession to worldly wisdom, some little
compromise with existing errors, some hardly perceptible
variation from perfect truthfulness, and lo! the kingdom
of God would come in that very hour, instead of lingering
through long centuries. What evils might not be
spared to the race, what woes to the world, if the
divine gospel of love to God and man were inaugurated
by Christ himself! This, perhaps, was one of
the temptations. But Jesus said, “Get thee
behind me, Satan.” He would use only good
means for good ends. He would take God’s
way to do God’s work. He would die on the
cross, but not vary from the perfect truth. The
same temptation came to Mohammed, and he yielded.
Up to the Hegira, Mohammed might also have said, “My
kingdom is not of this world.” But now
the sword and falsehood were to serve him, as his most
faithful servants, in building up Islam. His
ends were the same as before. His object
was still to establish the service of the one living
and true God. But his means, henceforth,
are of the earth, earthy.
What a noble religion would Islam
have been, if Mohammed could have gone on as he began!
He accepted all the essential truths of Judaism, he
recognized Moses and Christ as true teachers.
He taught that there was one universal religion, the
substance of which was faith in one Supreme Being,
submission to his will, trust in his providence, and
good-will to his creatures. Prayer and alms were
the only worship which God required. A marvellous
and mighty work, says Mr. Muir, had been wrought by
these few precepts. From time beyond memory Mecca
and the whole peninsula had been steeped in spiritual
torpor. The influences of Judaism, Christianity,
and philosophy had been feeble and transient.
Dark superstitions prevailed, the mothers of dark
vices. And now, in thirteen years of preaching,
a body of men and women had risen, who rejected idolatry;
worshipped the one great God; lived lives of prayer;
practised chastity, benevolence, and justice; and
were ready to do and to bear everything for the truth.
All this came from the depth of conviction in the
soul of this one man.
To the great qualities which Mohammed
had shown as a prophet and religious teacher were
now added those of the captain and statesman.
He had at last obtained a position at Medina whence
he could act on the Arabs with other forces than those
of eloquence and feeling. And now the man who
for forty years had been a simple citizen and led a
quiet family life-who afterward, for thirteen
years, had been a patient but despised teacher of
the unity of God-passed the last ten years
of his strange career in building up a fanatical army
of warriors, destined to conquer half the civilized
world. From this period the old solution of the
Mohammedan miracle is in order; from this time the
sword leads, and the Koran follows. To this familiar
explanation of Mohammedan success, Mr. Carlyle replies
with the question: “Mohammedanism triumphed
with the sword? But where did it get its sword?”
We can now answer that pithy inquiry. The simple,
earnest zeal of the original believers built up a power,
which then took the sword, and conquered with it.
The reward of patient, long-enduring faith is influence;
with this influence ambition serves itself for its
own purpose. Such is, more or less, the history
of every religion, and, indeed, of every political
party. Sects are founded, not by politicians,
but by men of faith, by men to whom ideas are realities,
by men who are willing to die for them. Such
faith always triumphs at last; it makes a multitude
of converts; it becomes a great power. The deep
and strong convictions thus created are used by worldly
men for their own purposes. That the Mohammedan
impulse was thus taken possession of by worldly men
is the judgment of M. Renan. “From all sides,”
says he, “we come to this singular result:
that the Mussulman movement was started almost without
religious faith; that, setting aside a small number
of faithful disciples, Mahomet really wrought very
little conviction in Arabia.” “The
party of true Mussulmans had all their strength in
Omar; but after his assassination, that is to say,
twelve years after the death of the prophet, the opposite
party triumphed by the election of Othman.”
“The first generation of the Hegira was completely
occupied in exterminating the primitive Mussulmans,
the true fathers of Islamism.” Perhaps
it is bold to question the opinions of a Semitic scholar
of the force of M. Renan, but it seems to us that
he goes too far in supposing that such a movement
as that of Islam could be started without a
tremendous depth of conviction. At all events,
supported by such writers as Weil, Sprenger, and Muir,
we will say that it was a powerful religious movement
founded on sincerest conviction, but gradually turned
aside, and used for worldly purposes and temporal
triumphs. And, in thus diverting it from divine
objects to purely human ones, Mohammed himself led
the way. He adds another, and perhaps the greatest,
illustration to the long list of noble souls whose
natures have become subdued to that which they worked
in; who have sought high ends by low means; who, talking
of the noblest truths, descend into the meanest prévarications,
and so throw a doubt on all sincerity, faith, and
honor. Such was the judgment of a great thinker-Goethe-concerning
Mohammed. He believes him to have been at first
profoundly sincere, but he says of him that afterward
“what in his character is earthly increases
and develops itself; the divine retires and is obscured:
his doctrine becomes a means rather than an end.
All kinds of practices are employed, nor are horrors
wanting.” Goethe intended to write a drama
upon Mohammed, to illustrate the sad fact that every
man who attempts to realize a great idea comes in
contact with the lower world, must place himself on
its level in order to influence it, and thus often
compromises his higher aims, and at last forfeits them.
Such a man, in modern times, was Lord Bacon in the
political world; such a man, among conquerors, was
Cromwell; and among Christian sects how often do we
see the young enthusiast and saint end as the ambitious
self-seeker and Jesuit! Then we call him a hypocrite,
because he continues to use the familiar language
of the time when his heart was true and simple, though
indulging himself in luxury and sin. It is curious,
when we are all so inconsistent, that we should find
it so hard to understand inconsistency. We, all
of us, often say what is right and do what is wrong;
but are we deliberate hypocrites? No! we know
that we are weak; we admit that we are inconsistent;
we say amen to the “video meliora, proboque,-deteriora
sequor,” but we also know that we are not
deliberate and intentional hypocrites. Let us
use the same large judgment in speaking of the faults
of Cromwell, Bacon, and Mohammed.
No one could have foreseen the cruelty
of which Mohammed, hitherto always a kind-hearted
and affectionate man, was capable toward those who
resisted his purpose. This first showed itself
in his treatment of the Jews. He hoped to form
an alliance with them, against the idolaters.
He had admitted the divine authority of their religion,
and appealed to their Scriptures as evidence of the
truth of his own mission. He conformed to their
ritual and customs, and made Jerusalem his Kibla, toward
which he turned in prayer five times a day. In
return for this he expected them to receive him as
a prophet; but this they refused to do. So he
departed by degrees from their customs, changed his
Kibla to Mecca, and at last denounced the Jews as
stiff-necked unbelievers. The old quarrel between
Esau and Jacob could not be appeased, nor an alliance
formed between them.
M. Saint-Hilaire does not think
that the character of Mohammed changed when he became
the founder of a state and head of a conquering party.
He thinks “that he only yielded to the political
necessities of his position.” Granted;
but yielding to those necessities was the cause of
this gradual change in his character. The man
who lies and murders from the necessity of his political
position can hardly remain a saint. Plunder,
cold-blooded execution of prisoners, self-indulgence,
became the habit of the prophet henceforth, as we
shall presently see.
The first battle against the Koreish,
that of Badr, took place in January, A.D. 624.
When Mohammed had drawn up his army, he prayed earnestly
for the victory. After a desperate struggle,
the Koreish fled. Mohammed claimed, by a special
revelation, the fifth part of the booty. As the
bodies of his old opponents were cast into a pit, he
spoke to them bitterly. When the prisoners were
brought before him he looked fiercely at one of them.
“There is death in that glance,” said the
unhappy man, and presently the prophet ordered him
to be beheaded. Two days after, another was ordered
for execution. “Who will take care of my
little girl?” said he. “Hell-fire,”
replied Mohammed, and ordered him to be cut down.
Shortly after the battle, a Jewess who had written
verses against Mohammed, was assassinated by one of
his followers; and the prophet praised him for the
deed in the public mosque. Another aged Jew, for
the same offence, was murdered by his express command.
A quarrel between some Jews and Moslems brought on
an attack by Mohammed upon the Jewish tribe. They
surrendered after a siege of fifteen days, and Mohammed
ordered all the prisoners to be killed; but at last,
at the urgent request of a powerful chief in Medina,
allowed them to go into exile, cursing them and their
intercessor. Mr. Muir mentions other cases of
assassination of the Jews by the command of the prophet.
All these facts are derived from contemporaneous Moslem
historians, who glorify their prophet for this conduct.
The worst action perhaps of this kind was the deliberate
execution of seven or eight hundred Jewish prisoners,
who had surrendered at discretion, and the sale of
their wives and children into slavery. Mohammed
selected from among these women one more beautiful
than the rest, for his concubine. Whether M.
Saint-Hilaire considers all this as “yielding
to the political necessities of his position,”
we do not know. But this man, who could stand
by and see hundreds of captives slaughtered in cold
blood, and then retire to solace himself with the
widow of one of his victims, seems to us to have retained
little of his early purity of soul.
About this time Mohammed began to
multiply wives, and to receive revelations allowing
him to do so beyond the usual limit of his law.
He added one after another to his harem, until he
had ten wives, besides his slaves. His views
on such subjects are illustrated by his presenting
three beautiful female slaves, taken in war, one to
his father-in-law, and the others to his two sons-in-law.
So, in a series of battles, with the
Jewish tribes, the Koreish, the Syrians, passed the
stormy and triumphant years of the Pontiff King.
Mecca was conquered, and the Koreish submitted in
A.D. 630. The tribes throughout Arabia acquiesced,
one by one, in the prophet’s authority.
All paid tribute, or accepted Islam. His enemies
were all under his feet; his doctrines accepted; the
rival prophets, Aswad and Museilama, overcome.
Then, in the sixty-third year of his age, death drew
near. On the last day of his life, he went into
the mosque to attend morning prayer, then back to
the room of his favorite wife, Ayesha, and died in
her arms. Wild with grief, Omar declared he was
not dead, but in a trance. The grave Abu Bakr
composed the excited multitude, and was chosen caliph,
or successor to the prophet. Mohammed died on
June 8, A.D. 632, and was buried the next day, amid
the grief of his followers. Abu Bakr and Omar
offered the prayer: “Peace be unto thee,
O prophet of God; and the mercy of the Lord, and his
blessing! We bear testimony that the prophet of
God hath delivered the message revealed to him; hath
fought in the ways of the Lord until God crowned his
religion with victory; hath fulfilled his words commanding
that he alone is to be worshipped in unity; hath drawn
us to himself, and been kind and tender-hearted to
believers; hath sought no recompense for delivering
to us the faith, neither hath sold it for a price at
any time.” And all the people said, “Amen!
Amen!”
Concerning the character of Mohammed,
enough has been already said. He was a great
man, one of the greatest ever sent upon earth.
He was a man of the deepest convictions, and for many
years of the purest purposes, and was only drawn down
at last by using low means for a good end. Of
his visions and revelations, the same explanation
is to be given as of those received by Joan of Arc,
and other seers of that order. How far they had
an objective basis in reality, and how far they were
the result of some abnormal activity of the imagination,
it is difficult with our present knowledge to decide.
But that these visionaries fully believed in their
own inspiration, there can be little doubt.
Se. Religious Doctrines and
Practices among the Mohammedans.
As to the religion of Mohammed, and
its effects on the world, it is easier to come to
an opinion than concerning his own character.
Its essential doctrine, as before indicated, is the
absolute unity and supremacy of God, as opposed to
the old Arab Polytheism on the one hand and the Christian
Trinity on the other. It however admits of angels
and genii. Gabriel and Michael are the angels
of power; Azriel, angel of death; Israfeel, angel
of the resurrection. Eblis, or Satan, plays an
important part in this mythology. The Koran also
teaches the doctrine of Eternal Decrees, or absolute
Predestination; of prophets before Mohammed, of whom
he is the successor,-as Adam, Noah, Moses,
and Jesus; of sacred books, of which all that remain
are the Pentateuch, Psalms, Gospels, and Koran; of
an intermediate state after death; of the resurrection
and judgment. All non-believers in Islam go into
eternal fire. There are separate hells for Christians,
Jews, Sabians, Magians, idolaters, and the hypocrites
of all religions. The Moslem is judged by his
actions. A balance is held by Gabriel, one scale
hanging over heaven and another over hell, and his
good deeds are placed in one and his bad ones in the
other. According as his scale inclines, he goes
to heaven or hell. If he goes to heaven, he finds
there seventy-two Houris, more beautiful than
angels, awaiting him, with gardens, groves, marble
palaces, and music. If women are true believers
and righteous, they will also go to heaven, but nothing
is said about husbands being provided for them.
Stress is laid on prayer, ablution, fasting, almsgiving,
and the pilgrimage to Mecca. Wine and gaming are
forbidden. There is no recognition, in the Koran,
of human brotherhood. It is a prime duty to hate
infidels and make war on them. Mohammed made it
a duty for Moslems to betray and kill their own brothers
when they were infidels; and he was obeyed in more
cases than one. The Moslem sects are as numerous
as those of Christians. The Dabistan mentions
seventy-three. The two main divisions are into
Sunnites and Shyites. The Persians are mostly
Shyites, and refuse to receive the Sunnite traditions.
They accept Ali, and denounce Omar. Terrible
wars and cruelties have taken place between these
sects. Only a few of the Sunnite doctors acknowledge
the Shyites to be Moslems. They have a saying,
“to destroy a Shyite is more acceptable than
to kill seventy other infidels of whatever sort.”
The Turks are the most zealous of
the Moslems. On Friday, which is the Sabbath
of Islam, all business is suspended. Prayers are
read and sermons preached in the mosques. No
one is allowed to be absent. The Ramadan fast
is universally kept. Any one who breaks it twice
is considered worthy of death. The fast lasts
from sunrise to sunset. But the rich feast in
the night, and sleep during the day. The Turks
have no desire to make prosélytes, but have an
intolerant hatred for all outside of Islam. The
Kalif is the Chief Pontiff. The Ouléma, or
Parliament, is composed of the Imáns, or religious
teachers, the Muftis, or doctors of law, and Kadis,
or ministers of justice. The priests in Turkey
are subordinate to the civil magistrate, who is their
diocesan, and can remove them at pleasure. The
priests in daily life are like the laity, engage in
the same business, and are no more austere than they.
Mr. Forster says, in regard to their
devotion: “When I contrast the silence
of a Turkish mosque, at the hour of public prayer,
with the noise and tumult so frequent in Christian
temples, I stand astonished at the strange inversion,
in the two religions, of the order of things which
might naturally be expected.” “I have
seen,” says another, “a congregation of
at least two thousand souls assembled in the mosque
of St. Sophia, with silence so profound, that until
I entered the body of the building I was unaware that
it contained a single worshipper.”
Bishop Southgate, long a missionary
bishop of the Episcopal Church of the United States,
says: “I have often met with Mussulmans
who seem to possess deep religious feeling, and with
whom I could exercise something of a religious communion.
I have sometimes had my own mind quickened and benefited
by the reverence with which they spoke of the Deity,
and have sometimes mingled in harmonious converse
with them on holy things. I have heard them insist
with much earnestness on the duty of prayer, when they
appeared to have some spiritual sense of its nature
and importance. I have sometimes found them entertaining
elevated views of moral duty, and looking with contempt
on the pleasures of this world. These are indeed
rare characters, but I should do injustice to my own
conviction if I did not confess that I had found them.
In these instances I have been uniformly struck with
a strong resemblance to patriarchal piety.”
He continues: “When we sat down to eat,
the old Turkish Bey implored a blessing with great
solemnity, and rendered his thanks when we arose.
Before he left us he spread his carpet, and offered
his evening devotions with apparent meekness and humility;
and I could not but feel how impressive are the Oriental
forms of worship when I saw his aged head bowed to
the earth in religious homage.”
Bishop Southgate adds further:
“I have never known a Mussulman, sincere in
his faith and devout and punctilious in his religious
duties, in whom moral rectitude did not seem an active
quality and a living principle.”
In seasons of plague “the Turks
appear perfectly fearless. They do not avoid
customary intercourse and contact with friends.
They remain with and minister to the sick, with unshrinking
assiduity.... In truth, there is something imposing
in the unaffected calmness of the Turks at such times.
It is a spirit of resignation which becomes truly noble
when exercised upon calamities which have already
befallen them. The fidelity with which they remain
by the bedside of a friend is at least as commendable
as the almost universal readiness among the Franks
to forsake it.”
Five times a day the Mezzuin proclaims
the hour of prayer from the minaret in these words:
“There is no God but God. Mohammed is his
prophet. Come to prayer.” In the morning
call he adds, “Prayer is better than sleep.”
Immediately every Mussulman leaves his occupation,
and prostrates himself on the floor or ground, wherever
he may he. It is very disreputable to omit this.
An interesting account is given of
the domestic life of Moslem women in Syria, by Miss
Rogers, in her little book called “Domestic Life
in Palestine,” published in 1862.
Miss Rogers travelled in Palestine
with her brother, who was British consul at Damascus.
The following passage illustrates the character of
the women (Miss Rogers was obliged to sleep in the
same room with the wives of the governor of Arrabeh,
near Naplous):-
“When I began to undress the
women watched me with curiosity; and when I put on
my night-gown they were exceedingly astonished, and
exclaimed, ‘Where are you going? Why is
your dress white?’ They made no change for sleeping,
and there they were, in their bright-colored clothes,
ready for bed in a minute. But they stood round
me till I said ‘Good night,’ and then
all kissed me, wishing me good dreams. Then I
knelt down, and presently, without speaking to them
again, got into bed, and turned my face to the wall,
thinking over the strange day I had spent. I tried
to compose myself to sleep, though I heard the women
whispering together. When my head had rested
about five minutes on the soft red silk pillow, I
felt a hand stroking my forehead, and heard a voice
saying, very gently, ‘Ya Habibi,’ i.e.
‘O beloved.’ But I would not answer
directly, as I did not wish to be roused unnecessarily.
I waited a little while, and my face was touched again.
I felt a kiss on my forehead, and a voice said, ‘Miriam,
speak to us; speak, Miriam, darling.’ I
could not resist any longer; so I turned round and
saw Helweh, Saleh Bek’s prettiest wife, leaning
over me. I said, ‘What is it, sweetness,
what can I do for you?’ She answered, ’What
did you do just now, when you knelt down and covered
your face with your hands?’ I sat up, and said
very solemnly, ’I spoke to God, Helweh.’
‘What did you say to him?’ said Helweh.
I replied, ’I wish to sleep. God never
sleeps. I have asked him to watch over me, and
that I may fall asleep, remembering that he never
sleeps, and wake up remembering his presence.
I am very weak. God is all-powerful. I have
asked him to strengthen me with his strength.’
By this time all the ladies were sitting round me
on the bed, and the slaves came and stood near.
I told them I did not know their language well enough
to explain to them all I thought and said. But
as I had learned the Lord’s Prayer, by heart,
in Arabic, I repeated it to them, sentence by sentence,
slowly. When I began, ’Our Father who art
in heaven,’ Helweh directly said, ’You
told me your father was in London.’ I replied,
’I have two fathers, Helweh; one in London, who
does not know that I am here, and cannot know till
I write and tell him; and a Heavenly Father, who is
here now, who is with me always, and sees and hears
us. He is your Father also. He teaches us
to know good from evil, if we listen to him and obey
him.’
“For a moment there was perfect
silence. They all looked startled, and as if
they felt that they were in the presence of some unseen
power. Then Helweh said, ‘What more did
you say?’ I continued the Lord’s Prayer,
and when I came to the words, ‘Give us day by
day our daily bread,’ they said, ‘Cannot
you make bread yourself?’ The passage, ’Forgive
us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass
against us,’ is particularly forcible in the
Arabic language; and one of the elder women, who was
particularly severe and relentless-looking, said,
’Are you obliged to say that every day?’
as if she thought that sometimes it would be difficult
to do so. They said, ‘Are you a Moslem?’
I said, ’I am not called a Moslem. But I
am your sister, made by the same God, who is the one
only God, the God of all, my Father and your Father.’
They asked me if I knew the Koran, and were surprised
to hear that I had read it. They handed a rosary
to me, saying, ‘Do you know that?’ I repeated
a few of the most striking and comprehensive attributes
very carefully and slowly. Then they cried out,
‘Mashallah, the English girl is a true believer’;
and the impressionable, sensitive-looking Abyssinian
slave-girls said, with one accord, ‘She is indeed
an angel.’
“Moslems, men and women, have
the name of Allah constantly on their lips, but it
seems to have become a mere form. This may explain
why they were so startled when I said, ‘I was
speaking to God.’” She adds that if she
had only said, “I was saying my prayers,”
or, “I was at my devotions,” it would
not have impressed them.”
Next morning, on awaking, Miss Rogers
found the women from the neighborhood had come in
“to hear the English girl speak to God,”
and Helweh said, “Now, Miriam, darling, will
you speak to God?” At the conclusion she asked
them if they could say Amen, and after a moment of
hesitation they cried out, “Amen, amen!”
Then one said, “Speak again, my daughter, speak
about the bread.” So she repeated
the Lord’s Prayer with explanations. When
she left, they crowded around affectionately, saying,
“Return again, O Miriam, beloved!”
After this pleasant little picture,
we may hear something on the other side. Two
recent travellers, Mr. Palgrave and Mr. Vambery, have
described the present state of Mohammedanism in Central
Arabia and Turkistan, or Central Asia. Barth
has described it as existing among the negroes in
North Africa. Count Gobineau has told us of Islam
as it is in Persia at the present day. Mr.
MacFarlane, in his book “Kismet, or the Doom
of Turkey,” has pointed out the gradual decay
of that power, and the utter corruption of its administration.
After reading such works as these,-and
among them let us not forget Mr. Lane’s “Modern
Egyptians,”-the conclusion we must
inevitably come to is, that the worst Christian government,
be it that of the Pope or the Czar, is very much better
than the best Mohammedan government. Everywhere
we find arbitrary will taking the place of law.
In most places the people have no protection for life
or property, and know the government only through its
tax-gatherers. And all this is necessarily and
logically derived from the fundamental principle of
Mohammedan theology. God is pure will, not justice,
not reason, not love. Christianity says, “God
is love”; Mohammedanism says, “God is
will.” Christianity says, “Trust in
God”; Mohammedanism says, “Submit to God.”
Hence the hardness, coldness, and cruelty of the system;
hence its utter inability to establish any good government.
According to Mr. MacFarlane, it would be a blessing
to mankind to have the Turks driven out of Europe
and Asia Minor, and to have Constantinople become the
capital of Russia. The religion of Islam is an
outward form, a hard shell of authority, hollow at
heart. It constantly tends to the two antagonistic
but related vices of luxury and cruelty. Under
the profession of Islam, polytheism and idolatry have
always prevailed in Arabia. In Turkistan, where
slavery is an extremely cruel system, they make slaves
of Moslems, in defiance of the Koran. One chief
being appealed to by Vambery (who travelled as a Dervish),
replied, “We buy and sell the Koran itself, which
is the holiest thing of all; why not buy and sell Mussulmans,
who are less holy?”
Se. The Criticism of Mr.
Palgrave on Mohammedan Theology.
Mr. Palgrave, who has given the latest
and best account of the condition of Central and Southern
Arabia, under the great Wahhabee revival, sums
up all Mohammedan theology as teaching a Divine unity
of pure will. God is the only force in the universe.
Man is wholly passive and impotent. He calls
the system, “A pantheism of force.”
God has no rule but arbitrary will. He is a tremendous
unsympathizing autocrat, but is yet jealous of his
creatures, lest they should attribute to themselves
something which belongs to him. He delights in
making all creatures feel that they are his slaves.
This, Mr. Palgrave asserts, is the main idea of Mohammedanism,
and of the Koran, and this was what lay in the mind
of Mohammed. “Of this,” says he,
“we have many authentic samples: the Saheeh,
the Commentaries of Beydawee, the Mishkat-el-Mesabeeh,
and fifty similar works, afford ample testimony on
this point. But for the benefit of my readers
in general, all of whom may not have drunk equally
deep at the fountain-heads of Islamitic dogma, I will
subjoin a specimen, known perhaps to many Orientalists,
yet too characteristic to be here omitted, a repetition
of which I have endured times out of number from admiring
and approving Wahhabees in Nejed.
“Accordingly, when God-so
runs the tradition,-I had better said the
blasphemy-resolved to create the human race,
he took into his hands a mass of earth, the same whence
all mankind were to be formed, and in which they after
a manner pre-existed; and, having then divided the
clod into two equal portions, he threw the one half
into hell, saying, ’These to eternal fire, and
I care not’; and projected the other half into
heaven, adding, ‘And these to paradise, and
I care not.’
“Commentary would here be superfluous.
But in this we have before us the adequate idea of
predestination, or, to give it a truer name, pre-damnation,
held and taught in the school of the Koran. Paradise
and hell are at once totally independent of love and
hatred on the part of the Deity, and of merits and
demerits, of good or evil conduct, on the part of
the creature; and, in the corresponding theory, rightly
so, since the very actions which we call good or ill
deserving, right or wrong, wicked or virtuous, are
in their essence all one and of one, and accordingly
merit neither praise nor blame, punishment nor recompense,
except and simply after the arbitrary value which
the all-regulating will of the great despot may choose
to assign or impute to them. In a word, he burns
one individual through all eternity, amid red-hot
chains and seas of molten fire, and seats another
in the plenary enjoyment of an everlasting brothel,
between forty celestial concubines, just and equally
for his own good pleasure, and because he wills it.
“Men are thus all on one common
level, here and hereafter, in their physical, social,
and moral light,-the level of slaves to
one sole master, of tools to one universal agent.
But the equalizing process does not stop here:
beasts, birds, fishes, insects, all participate of
the same honor or debasement; all are, like man, the
slaves of God, the tools and automata of his will;
and hence Mahomet is simply logical and self-consistent
when in the Koran he informs his followers that birds,
beasts, and the rest are ‘nations’ like
themselves, nor does any intrinsic distinction exist
between them and the human species, except what accidental
diversity the ‘King,’ the ‘Proud
One,’ the ‘Mighty,’ the ‘Giant,’
etc., as he styles his God, may have been pleased
to make, just as he willed it, and so long as he may
will it.”
“The Wahhabee reformer,”
continues Mr. Palgrave, “formed the design of
putting back the hour-hand of Islam to its starting-point;
and so far he did well, for that hand was from the
first meant to be fixed. Islam is in its essence
stationary, and was framed thus to remain. Sterile
like its God, lifeless like its First Principle and
Supreme Original, in all that constitutes true life,-for
life is love, participation, and progress, and of
these the Koranic Deity has none,-it justly
repudiates all change, all advance, all development.
To borrow the forcible words of Lord Houghton, the
‘written book’ is the ‘dead man’s
hand,’ stiff and motionless; whatever savors
of vitality is by that alone convicted of heresy and
defection.
“But Christianity, with its
living and loving God, begetter and begotten, spirit
and movement; nay more,-a Creator made creature,
the Maker and the made existing in one; a Divinity
communicating itself by uninterrupted gradation and
degree, from the most intimate union far off to the
faintest irradiation, through all that it has made
for love and governs in love; one who calls his creatures
not slaves, not servants, but friends,-nay
sons,-nay gods: to sum up, a religion
in whose seal and secret ’God in man is one
with man in God,’ must also be necessarily a
religion of vitality, of progress, of advancement.
The contrast between it and Islam is that of movement
with fixedness, of participation with sterility, of
development with barrenness, of life with petrifaction.
The first vital principle and the animating spirit
of its birth must, indeed, abide ever the same, but
the outer form must change with the changing days,
and new offshoots of fresh sap and greenness be continually
thrown out as witnesses to the vitality within; else
were the vine withered and the branches dead.
I have no intention here-it would be extremely
out of place-of entering on the maze of
controversy, or discussing whether any dogmatic attempt
to reproduce the religious phase of a former age is
likely to succeed. I only say that life supposes
movement and growth, and both imply change; that to
censure a living thing for growing and changing is
absurd; and that to attempt to hinder it from so doing
by pinning it down on a written label, or nailing
it to a Procrustean framework, is tantamount to killing
it altogether. Now Christianity is living, and,
because living, must grow, must advance, must change,
and was meant to do so: onwards and forwards
is a condition of its very existence; and I cannot
but think that those who do not recognize this show
themselves so far ignorant of its true nature and
essence. On the other hand, Islam is lifeless,
and, because lifeless, cannot grow, cannot advance,
cannot change, and was never intended so to do; stand-still
is its motto and its most essential condition; and
therefore the son of Abd-el-Wahhab, in doing his best
to bring it back to its primal simplicity, and making
its goal of its starting-point, was so far in the
right, and showed himself well acquainted with the
nature and first principles of his religion.”
Se. Mohammedanism a Relapse;
the worst Form of Monotheism, and a retarding Element
in Civilization.
According to this view, which is no
doubt correct, the monotheism of Mohammed is that
which makes of God pure will; that is, which exaggerates
personality (since personality is in will), making
the Divine One an Infinite Free Will, or an Infinite
I. But will divorced from reason and love is wilfulness,
or a purely arbitrary will.
Now the monotheism of the Jews differed
from this, in that it combined with the idea of will
the idea of justice. God not only does what he
chooses, but he chooses to do only what is right.
Righteousness is an attribute of God, with which the
Jewish books are saturated.
Still, both of these systems leave
God outside of the world; above all as its
Creator and Ruler, above all as its Judge; but
not through all and in all. The
idea of an Infinite Love must be added and made supreme,
in order to give us a Being who is not only above all,
but also through all and in all. This is the
Christian monotheism.
Mohammed teaches not only the unity
but also the spirituality of God, but his idea of
the divine Unity is of a numeric unity, not a moral
unity; and so his idea of divine spirituality is that
of an abstract spirituality,-God abstracted
from matter, and so not to be represented by pictures
and images; God withdrawn out of the world, and above
all,-in a total separation.
Judaism also opposed idolatry and
idol-worship, and taught that God was above all, and
the maker of the world; but it conceived of God as
with man, by his repeated miraculous coming
down in prophets, judges, kings; also with
his people, the Jews, mysteriously present in their
tabernacle and temple. Their spirituality was
not quite as abstract then as that of the Mohammedans.
But Christianity, as soon as it became
the religion of a non-Semitic race, as soon as it
had converted the Greeks and Romans, not only imparted
to them its monotheism, but received from them their
strong tendencies to pantheism. They added to
the God “above all,” and the God “with
all,” the God “in us all.”
True, this is also to be found in original Christianity
as proceeding from the life of Jesus. The New
Testament is full of this kind of pantheism,-God
in man, as well as God with man.
Jesus made the step forward from God with man to God
in man,-“I in them, thou in me.”
The doctrine of the Holy Spirit is this idea, of God
who is not only will and power, not only wisdom and
law, but also love; of a God who desires communion
and intercourse with his children, so coming and dwelling
in them. Mohammed teaches a God above us; Moses
teaches a God above us, and yet with us; Jesus teaches
God above us, God with us, and God in us.
According to this view, Mohammedanism
is a relapse. It is going back to a lower level.
It is returning from the complex idea to the simple
idea. But the complex is higher than the simple.
The seed-germ, and the germ-cell, out of which organic
life comes, is lower than the organizations which are
developed out of it. The Mollusks are more complex
and so are higher than the Radiata, the Vertebrata
are more complex than the Mollusks. Man is the
most complex of all, in soul as well as body.
The complex idea of God, including will, thought,
and love, in the perfect unity, is higher than the
simplistic unity of will which Mohammed teaches.
But the higher ought to come out of and conquer the
lower. How, then, did Mohammedanism come out
of Christianity and Judaism?
The explanation is to be found in
the law of reaction and relapse. Reaction is
going back to a lower ground, to pick up something
which has been dropped, forgotten, left behind, in
the progress of man. The condition of progress
is that nothing shall be lost. The lower truth
must be preserved in the higher truth; the lower life
taken up into the higher life. Now Christianity,
in going forward, had accepted from the Indo-Germanic
races that sense of God in nature, as well as God above
nature, which has always been native with those races.
It took up natural religion into monotheism.
But in taking it up, it went so far as to lose something
of the true unity of God. Its doctrine of the
Trinity, at least in its Oriental forms, lost the
pure personal monotheism of Judaism. No doubt
the doctrine of the Trinity embodies a great truth,
but it has been carried too far. So Mohammedanism
came, as a protest against this tendency to plurality
in the godhead, as a demand for a purely personal God
It is the Unitarianism of the East. It was a
new assertion of the simple unity of God, against
polytheism and against idolatry.
The merits and demerits, the good
and evil, of Mohammedanism are to be found in this,
its central idea concerning God. It has taught
submission, obedience, patience; but it has fostered
a wilful individualism. It has made social life
lower. Its governments are not governments.
Its virtues are stoical. It makes life barren
and empty. It encourages a savage pride and cruelty.
It makes men tyrants or slaves, women puppets, religion
the submission to an infinite despotism. Time
is that it came to an end. Its work is done.
It is a hard, cold, cruel, empty faith, which should
give way to the purer forms of a higher civilization.
No doubt, Mohammedanism was needed
when it came, and has done good service in its time.
But its time is almost passed. In Europe it is
an anachronism and an anomaly, depending for its daily
existence on the support received from Christian powers,
jealous of Russian advance on Constantinople.
It will be a blessing to mankind to have the capital
of Russia on the Bosphorus. A recent writer on
Turkey thus speaks:-
“The military strength of Mohammedanism
was in its steady and remorseless bigotry.
Socially, it won by the lofty ideality of its precepts,
without pain or satiety. It accorded well, too,
with the isolate and primitive character of the
municipalities scattered over Asia. Resignation
to God-a motto well according with Eastern
indolence-was borne upon its banners,
while in the profusion of delight hereafter was
promised an element of endurance and courage.
It had, too, one strikingly Arabic characteristic,-simplicity.
“One God the Arabian
prophet preached to man;
One God the Orient
still
Adores, through many a realm
of mighty span,-
God of power and
will.
“A God that, shrouded
in his lonely light,
Rests utterly
apart
From all the vast creations
of his might,
From nature, man,
and art.
“A Power that at his
pleasure doth create
To save or to
destroy;
And to eternal pain predestinate,
As to eternal
joy.
“It is the merit and the glory
of Mohammed that, beside founding twenty spiritual
empires and providing laws for the guidance through
centuries of millions of men, he shook the foundations
of the faith of heathendom. Mohammed was the
impersonation of two principles that reign in the
government of God,-destruction and salvation.
He would receive nations to his favor if they accepted
the faith, and utterly destroy them if they rejected
it. Yet, in the end, the sapless tree must fall.”
M. H. Blerzey, in speaking of
Mohammedanism in Northern Africa, says:-
“At bottom there is little difference
between the human sacrifices demanded by fetichism
and the contempt of life produced by the Mussulman
religion. Between the social doctrines of these
Mohammedan tribes and the sentiments of Christian
communities there is an immense abyss.”
And again: –
“The military and fanatic despotism
of the Arabs has vested during many centuries in
the white autochthonic races of North Africa, without
any fusion taking place between the conquering
element and the conquered, without destroying at
all the language and manners of the subject people,
and, in a word, without creating anything durable.
The Arab conquest was a triumph of brute force,
and nothing further.”
And M. Renan, a person well qualified
to judge of the character of this religion by the
most extensive and impartial studies, gives this verdict:-
“Islamism, following as it
did on ground that was none of the best,
has, on the whole, done as much
harm as good to the human race. It has
stifled everything by its dry and
desolating simplicity.”
Again:-
“At the present time, the essential
condition of a diffused civilization is the destruction
of the peculiarly Semitic element, the destruction
of the theocratic power of Islamism, consequently the
destruction of Islamism itself."
Again:-
“Islamism is evidently the product
of an inferior, and, so to speak, of a meagre combination
of human elements. For this reason its conquests
have all been on the average plane of human nature.
The savage races have been incapable of rising
to it, and, on the other hand, it has not satisfied
people who carried in themselves the seed of a stronger
civilization."
Note to the Chapter on Mohammed.
We give in this note further extracts
from Mr. Palgrave’s description of the doctrine
of Islam.
“This keystone, this master
thought, this parent idea, of which all the rest is
but the necessary and inevitable deduction, is contained
in the phrase far oftener repeated than understood,
‘La Ilah illa Allah,’ ’There
is no God but God.’ A literal translation,
but much too narrow for the Arab formula, and quite
inadequate to render its true force in an Arab mouth
or mind.
“‘There is no God but
God’ are words simply tantamount in English to
the negation of any deity save one alone; and thus
much they certainly mean in Arabic, but they imply
much more also. Their full sense is, not only
to deny absolutely and unreservedly all plurality,
whether of nature or of person, in the Supreme Being,
not only to establish the unity of the Unbegetting
and Unbegot, in all its simple and uncommunicable Oneness,
but besides this the words, in Arabic and among Arabs,
imply that this one Supreme Being is also the only
Agent, the only Force, the only Act existing throughout
the universe, and leave to all beings else, matter
or spirit, instinct or intelligence, physical or moral,
nothing but pure, unconditional passiveness, alike
in movement or in quiescence, in action or in capacity.
The sole power, the sole motor, movement, energy, and
deed is God; the rest is downright inertia and mere
instrumentality, from the highest archangel down to
the simplest atom of creation. Hence, in this
one sentence,’ La Ilah illa Allah,’
is summed up a system which, for want of a better
name, I may be permitted to call the Pantheism of Force,
or of Act, thus exclusively assigned to God, who absorbs
it all, exercises it all, and to whom alone it can
be ascribed, whether for preserving or for destroying,
for relative evil or for equally relative good.
I say ‘relative,’ because it is clear
that in such a theology no place is left for absolute
good or evil, reason or extravagance; all is abridged
in the autocratic will of the one great Agent:
’sic volo, sic jubeo, stet
pro ratione voluntas’; or, more significantly
still, in Arabic, ’Kema yesha’o,’
‘as he wills it,’ to quote the constantly
recurring expression of the Koran.
“Thus immeasurably and eternally
exalted above, and dissimilar from, all creatures,
which lie levelled before him on one common plane of
instrumentality and inertness, God is one in the totality
of omnipotent and omnipresent action, which acknowledges
no rule, standard, or limit save his own sole and
absolute will. He communicates nothing to his
creatures, for their seeming power and act ever remain
his alone, and in return he receives nothing from
them; for whatever they may be, that they are in him,
by him, and from him only. And secondly, no superiority,
no distinction, no pre-eminence, can be lawfully claimed
by one creature over its fellow, in the utter equalization
of their unexceptional servitude and abasement; all
are alike tools of the one solitary Force which employs
them to crush or to benefit, to truth or to error,
to honor or shame, to happiness, or misery, quite
independently of their individual fitness, deserts,
or advantage, and simply because he wills it, and as
he wills it.
“One might at first think that
this tremendous autocrat, this uncontrolled and unsympathizing
power, would be far above anything like passions,
desires, or inclinations. Yet such is not the
case, for he has with respect to his creatures one
main feeling and source of action, namely, jealousy
of them lest they should perchance attribute to themselves
something of what is his alone, and thus encroach on
his all-engrossing kingdom. Hence he is ever
more prone to punish than to reward, to inflict than
to bestow pleasure, to ruin than to build. It
is his singular satisfaction to let created beings
continually feel that they are nothing else than his
slaves, his tools, and contemptible tools also, that
thus they may the better acknowledge his superiority,
and know his power to be above their power, his cunning
above their cunning, his will above their will, his
pride above their pride; or rather, that there is no
power, cunning, will, or pride save his own.
“But he himself, sterile in
his inaccessible height, neither loving nor enjoying
aught save his own and self-measured decree, without
son, companion, or counsellor, is no less barren for
himself than for his creatures, and his own barrenness
and lone egoism in himself is the cause and rule of
his indifferent and unregarding despotism around.
The first note is the key of the whole tune, and the
primal idea of God runs through and modifies the whole
system and creed that centres in him.
“That the notion here given
of the Deity, monstrous and blasphemous as it may
appear, is exactly and literally that which the Koran
conveys, or intends to convey, I at present take for
granted. But that it indeed is so, no one who
has attentively perused and thought over the Arabic
text (for mere cursory reading, especially in a translation,
will not suffice) can hesitate to allow. In fact,
every phrase of the preceding sentences, every touch
in this odious portrait, has been taken, to the best
of my ability, word for word, or at least meaning
for meaning, from the ‘Book,’ the truest
mirror of the mind and scope of its writer.
“And that such was in reality
Mahomet’s mind and idea is fully confirmed by
the witness-tongue of contemporary tradition.”
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