Mohammedanism / Lectures on Its Origin, Its Religious and Political Growth, and Its Present State

ded by the continuance of the worst elements of Jahiliyyah (Arabian paganism), side by side with those of Islam. A secular nobility is formed by groups

y barren soil might be made to yield sufficient harvests to satisfy the wants of its members; but among these inhabitants, paralysed by anarchy, chronic famine prevails. Foreigners wisely avoid this miserable country, and if they did visit it, would not

, they even founded states in some of the larger islands or they obtained political influence in existing native states. Under a strong European government they are among the quietest, most industrious subjects, all earning their own living and saving something for their poor relations at home. They come

hat seem to be waiting only for transplantation into a more favourable soil to develop with amazing rap

they might obediently serve Him; who decides everything according to His incalculable will and is responsible to nobody, as the Universe is His; of whom His creatures, if their minds be not led astray, must therefore stand in respectful fear and awe. He has made His will known to mankind, beginning at Adam, but the spreading of mankind over the surface of the earth, its seduction by Satan and

rown and destroyed. Then the dead will be awakened and led before Allah's tribunal. The faithful will have abodes appointed them in well-watered, shady gardens, with fruit-trees richly laden, with luxurious couches upon which they may lie and enjoy the delicious food, served by the ministra

d against each other in the divine scales, and many witnesses are heard before judgment is pronounced. Allah, however, is clement and merciful; He gladly forgives those sinners who have believed in Him, who have sincerely accepted Islam, that is to say: who ha

already in his lifetime it consisted chiefly of the same elements as now: the recital of sacred texts, especially taken from the Revelation, certain postures of the body (standing, inclination, kneeling, prostration) with the face towards Mecca. This last particular and the language of the Revelation are the Arabian elements of the service, which is for the rest

mended above all other virtues, was not only to be practised in obedience to Allah's law and in faith in retribution, but it was to testify contempt of all earthly possessions which might impede the striving after eternal

eligion, the Meccan rites of pagan origin were incorporated into Islam; but only after the purification required by mo

possessions for the defence of Islam, understood, since the conquest of Mecca in 630, as the extension by force of arms of the authority of the

ring any interest at all upon loans, was also forbidden. All tribal feuds with their consequences had henceforward to be considered as non-existent, and retaliation, provided that the offended party would not agree to accept compensation, was put under the control of the head of the community. Polygamy and intercourse of master and female slave were restricted; the obligations arising from blood-relationship or ownership were regulated.

he Christian doctrine of Resurrection and judgment. This explains the large number of weak points that the book of Mohammed's revelations, written down by his first followers, offered to Jewish and Christian polemics. It was easy for the theologians of those religions to point out numberless mistakes in the work of the illiterate Arabian prophet, especially where he maintained that he was repeating and confirming the contents of their Bible. The Qoranic revelations about Allah's intercourse with

ving found a favourable soil for its development; talents and energy, however, not of a missionary kind. If Islam is said to have been from its beginning down to the present day, a missionary religion,[1] then "mission" is to

also of those who do not agree with the writer's argument. Among the many objections that may be raised against Prof. Arnold's conclusion, we point to the undeniable fact, that th

ded they helped with their taxes to fill the Moslim exchequer. This rule was even extended to such religions as that of the Pars?s, although they could not be considered as belonging to the "People of Scripture" expressly recognized in the Qoran. But the social condition of these subjects was gradually made so oppressive by the Mohammedan masters, that rapid conversio

specially from Mecca and Taif, who, before Islam, would have excelled only in the organization of commercial operations or in establishing harmony between hostile families. Now they proved capable of uniting the Arabs commanded by Allah, a unity still many a

to be conquered first, belonged, for the larger part, to heretical sects and were treated by the orthodox Byzantines in such a way that other masters, if tolerant, might be welcome. The Arabian

nce of generally unforeseen events. Circumstances had changed Mohammed the Prophet into Mohammed the Conqueror; and the leaders, who con

tury borrowed freely and simply from the "People of Scripture" whatever was not evidently in contradiction to the Qoran. This was to be expected; had not Mohammed from the very beginning referred to the "people of the Book" as "those who know"? When painful experience induced him afterwards to accuse them of corruption of their Scriptures, this attitude necessitated a certain criticism but not rejection of their tradition. The

es of Professors C.H.

ly taken in connection

hrown much light

equire. The method of fasting seems to follow the Jewish model, wher

had repeatedly declared himself to be an ordinary man chosen by Allah as the organ of His revelation, and whose only miracle was the Qoran, posterity ascribed to him a whole series of wonders, evidently invented in emulation of the wonders of Christ. The reason for this seems to have been the idea that none of the older prophets, not even Jesus, of whom the Qoran tells the greatest wonders, could have worked a miracle without Mohammed, the Seal of the prophets, having rivalled or surpassed him in this resp

independent character. Then a sorting began; and the assimilation of the vast amount of borrowed matter, that had already become an integral part of Islam, was completed by submitting the whole to a peculiar treatmen

g of "tradition" concerning the words and deeds of Mohammed. It is used as well in the s

ide, the only source of decisive decrees, the only touchstone of what was true or false, allowed or forbidden. Reluctantly, but decidedly at last, it was conceded that the foundations laid by Mohammed for the life of his community were by no means all to be found in the Holy Book; rather, that Mohammed's revelations without his explanation and prac

lluded to. So it was assumed that as surely as Mohammed must have surpassed his predecessors in perfection and in wonders, so surely must all the principles and precepts necessary for his community have been formulated by him. Thus, by a gigantic web of fiction, he became after his death the org

Sunnah" to express its pretension to orthodoxy. The contents of the Sunnah, however, was the subject of a great deal of controversy; so that it came to be considered necessary to make the Prophet pronounce his authoritative judgment on t

he sharpness of the political antithesis served to accentuate the importance of the other differences in such cases and to debar their acceptance as the legal consequence of the difference of opinion that God's mercy allowed. That the political factor was indeed the great motive of separation, is clearly shown in our own day, now that one Mohammedan state after the other sees its political independence disappearing and efforts are being made from all sides to re-establish the unity of the Mohammed

sions, the strong catholic instinct of Islam always knew how to prevent schism. Each new generation either found th

n origin, who suggested such doctrinal questions. At first they met with a vehement opposition that condemned all dogmatic discussion as a novelty of the Devil. In the long run, however, the contest of the conservatives against specially objectionable features of the dogmatists' discussions forced them to borrow arms from the dogmatic arsenal. Hence a method with a peculiar terminology came in vogue, to which even the boldest imagination could not

ng His eternity; God one in this sense, that His being admitted of no plurality of qualities, or possessed of qualities, which in all eternity are inherent in His being; in the world to come only bliss and doom, or also an intermediate state for the neutral. We might continue the enumeration and always sh

cepted a place for the neutral between Paradise and Hell; and for some time the favour of the powers in authority seemed to assure the victory of their system. Al-Ash'ar? contradicted all these points, and his system has in the end been adopted by the great majority. The Mu'tazilite doctrines for a long time still enthralled many minds, but they

e worse and worse. Religion and morality will have to wage an ever more hopeless war against unbelief, against heresy and ungodly ways of living. While this is surely no reason for entering into any compromise with doctrines which depart but a hair's breadth from Qoran and Sunnah, it necessitates methods of defence against heresy as unknown in Mohammed's tim

ecent times constantly been overlooked by Western students of Islam, finds its classical expression in the following words, put into the mouth of Mohammed: "My community will never agree in an error." In terms more familiar to us, this means

is infallible Agreement (Ijma') of the Community than through Qoran and Tradition; nay, that the contents of both those sacred sources, without this perfect intermediary, would be to a great extent unintelligible to him. Even the differences between the schools of law may be based on this theory of the Ijma'; for, does not the

educed from Mohammed's message, entered the Moslim world by the permissio

not possible, however, without its reservoir being replenished with all the different kinds of oil that had from time immemorial given light to those different nations. The oil of mysticism came from Christian circles, and its Neo-Platonic origin was quite unmistakable; Persia and India also contributed to it. There were those who, by asceticism, by different methods of mortifying the flesh, liberated the spirit that it might rise and become united with the origin of all being; to such an extent, that with some the profession of faith was reduced to the blasphemous exclamation: "I am Allah." Others tried to become free from the sphere of the material and the temporal by certain methods of thought, combined or not combined with asceticism. Here the necessity of guidance was felt, and congregations came into existence, whose purpose it was to permit large groups of people under the leadership of their sheikhs, to par

is not for the multitude. The development of Islam as a whole, from the Hijrah on, has always been greater in breadth than in depth; and, consequently, its pedagogics have

of sciences of Islam, to the study of which the Arabic humanistic arts serve as preparatory instruments. All other sciences, however useful and necessary, are of this world and have no value for the world to come. The unfaithful appreciate and study them as well as do the Mohammedans; but, on M

mmon, every-day people. So the Qoran was made to speak the language of mysticism; and mystic commentaries of the Holy Book exist, which, with total disregard for philological and historical objections, explain the verses of the Revelation as expressions of the profoundest soul experiences. Clear ut

d's grace. The ethical mysticism of al-Ghazal? is generally recognized as orthodox; and the possibility of attaining to a higher spiritual sphere by means of methodic asceticism and contemplation is doubted by few. The following opinion has come to prevail in

the community of Mohammed, who, according to Tradition, cursed the Jews and Christians because they worshipped the shrines of their prophets. Almost every Moslim village has its patron saint; every country has its national saints; every province of human life has its own human rulers, who are intermediate between the Creator and common mortals. In no other particular h

s ancestors. He is firmly convinced, that the best way to obtain the satisfaction of his desire after earthly or heavenly goods is to give the saint whose special care these are

ricities, and it was much to the advantage of mystic theologians if the vulgar could be persuaded to accept their aberrations from normal rules of life as peculiarities of holy men. But Ijma' did more even than tradition and my

tual asset that another universal religion could boast, it could now put forward something of a similar nature, but which still showed characteristics of its own, and the superiority of which it could sustain by arguments perfectly satisfactory to its followers. From that time on, Islam strove to distin

rmatians, Assassins; nor the modern bastards of Islam, such as the Sheikhites, the Bab?'s, the Beha'?s-who have found some adherents in America-and other sects, which indeed sprang up on Moslim soil, but deliberately t

the first decades after Mohammed's death. In their eyes the Church of later days had degenerated; and they declined to consider the agreement of its doctors as justifying the penetration into Islam of ideas and usages of foreign origin. The cult of saints was rejected by them as altogether contradictory to the Qoran and the genuine tradition. These protestants of Islam may be compared to those of Christianity also in this respect, that they accepted the results of the evolution and assimilation of the first three centuries of Islam, but rejected later additions as abuse and corruption. When on the verge of our

em by Reason; and they found those arguments as easily as former generations had found the bases on which to erect their casuistry, their dogma, and their mysticism. This implied an interpretation of the oldest sources independent from the catholic development of Islam, and in contradiction with the general opinion of the canonists, according to whom, since the f

have seen; the qualification of a man to have his own opinion depends entirely upon the scope of his knowledge or rather of his erudition. There is no lack of standards, fixed by Mohammedan authorities, in which the requirements for a scholar to qualify him for Ijma' are detailed. The principal criterion is the knowledge of the canon law; quite what we should expect from the history of the evolution of Islam. But, of course, dogmatists and mystics had also their own "agreements" on the questions concerning them, and through the compromise between Law, Dogma, and Mysticism, there could not fail to come into existence a kin

very usual, and even official favouring of heresy not quite exceptional with Moslim rulers. Regular maintenance of religious discipline existed nowhere. Thus in the bond of political obedience elements which might otherwise have been scattered were held together. The political decay of Islam i