Chapter VII: Appendix: I—chronological Table 409 (6)

Before we lightly condemn the robber we must realize his sore need. According to Doughty and other travellers three-fourths of the Bedouin of Northwestern Arabia suffer continual famine and seldom have enough to eat. In the long summer drought when pastures fail and the gaunt camel-herds give no milk they are in a sorry plight; then it is that the housewife cooks her slender mess of rice secretly, lest some would-be guest should smell the pot. The hungry gnawing of the Arab’s stomach is lessened by the coffee-cup and the ceaseless “tobacco-drinking” from the nomad’s precious pipe. The women suffer most and children languish away. When one of these sons-of-desert heard from Doughty’s lips of a land where “we had an abundance of the blessings of Allah, bread and clothing and peace, and, how, if any wanted, the law succored him—he began to be full of melancholy, and to lament the everlasting infelicity of the Arabs, whose lack of clothing is a cause to them of many diseases, who have not daily food nor water enough, and wandering in the empty wilderness, are never at any stay—and these miseries to last as long as their lives. And when his heart was full, he cried up to heaven, ‘Have mercy, ah Lord God, upon Thy creature which Thou createdst—pity the sighing of the poor, the hungry, the naked—have mercy—have mercy upon them, O Allah!’”

As we bid farewell to the tents of Kedar and the deserts of North Arabia let us say amen to the nomad’s prayer and judge them not harshly in their misery lest we be judged.

XVI

“THE TIME OF IGNORANCE”

“The religious decay in Arabia shortly before Islam may well be taken in a negative sense, in the sense of the tribes losing the feeling of kinship with the tribal gods. We may express this more concretely by saying that the gods had become gradually more and more nebulous through the destructive influence exercised, for about two hundred years, by Jewish and Christian ideas, upon Arabian heathenism “—_H. Hirschfeld_, in the “Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society.”

In order to understand the genesis of Islam we must know something of the condition of Arabia before the advent of Mohammed. We shall then be able to discover the factors that influenced the hero-prophet and made it possible for him so powerfully to sway the destinies of his own generation and those that were to follow.

Mohammedan writers call the centuries before the birth of their Prophet _wakt-el-jahiliyeh_—“the time of ignorance”—since the Arabs were then ignorant of the true religion. These writers naturally chose to paint the picture of heathen Arabia as dark as possible, in order that the “Light of God,” as the prophet is called, might appear more bright in contrast. Following these authorities Sale and others have left an altogether wrong impression of the state of Arabia when Mohammed first appeared. The commonly accepted idea that he preached entirely new truth and uplifted the Arabs to a higher plane of civilization is only half true.[49]

No part of Arabia has ever reached the high stage of civilization under the rule of Islam which Yemen enjoyed under its Christian or even its Jewish dynasties of the Himyarites. Early Christianity in Arabia, with all its weakness, had been a power for good. The Jews had penetrated to nearly every portion of the peninsula long before Mohammed came on the scene.[50]

In the “Time of Ignorance” the Arabs throughout the peninsula were divided into numerous local tribes or clans which were bound together by no political organization but only by a traditional sentiment of unity which they believed, or feigned to believe, a unity of blood. Each group was a unit and opposed to all the other clans. Some were pastoral and some nomadic; others like those at Mecca and Taif were traders. For many centuries Yemen had been enriched by the incense-trade and by its position as the emporium of Eastern commerce. Sprenger in his ancient geography of the peninsula says that: “The history of the earliest commerce is the history of incense and the land of incense was Arabia.” The immense caravan trade which brought all the wealth of Ormuz and Ind to the West, must have been a means of civilization to the desert. The tanks of Marib spread fertility around and the region north of Sana was intersected by busy caravan-routes. W. Robertson Smith goes so far as to say that “In this period the name of Arab was associated to Western writers with ideas of effeminate indolence and peaceful opulence ... the golden age of Yemen.”

The Arabs had enjoyed for several thousand years, an almost absolute freedom from foreign dominion or occupation. Neither the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the ancient Persians nor the Macedonians in their march of conquest ever subjugated or held any part of Arabia. But before the coming of the Prophet the proud freemen of the desert were compelled to bend their necks repeatedly to the yoke of Roman, Abyssinian and Persian rulers. In A. D. 105, Trajan sent his general, Cornelius Palma, and subdued the Nabathean kingdom of North Arabia. Mesopotamia was conquered and the eastern coast of the peninsula was completely devastated by the Romans in A. D. 116. Hira yielded to the monarchs of Persia as Ghassan did to the generals of Rome. Sir William Muir writes, “It is remarked even by a Mohammedan writer that the decadence of the race of Ghassan was preparing the way for the glories of the Arabian prophet.” In other words Arabia was being invaded by foreign powers and the Arabs were ready for a political leader to break these yokes and restore the old-time independence. Roman domination invaded even Mecca itself not long before the Hegira. “For shortly after his accession to the throne, A. D. 610, the Emperor Heraclius nominated Othman, then a convert to Christianity, ... as governor of Mecca, recommending him to the Koreishites in an authoritative letter.”[51] The Abyssinian wars and invasions of Arabia during the century preceding Mohammed are better known. Their dominion in Yemen, says Ibn Ishak, lasted seventy-two years, and they were finally driven out by the Persians, at the request of the Arabs.

Arabia was thus the centre of political schemes and plots just at the time when Mohammed came to manhood, the whole peninsula was awake to the touch of the Romans, Abyssinians and Persians, and ready to rally around any banner that led to a national deliverance.

As to the position of women in this “Time of Ignorance” the cruel custom of female infanticide prevailed in many parts of heathen Arabia. This was probably due, in the first instance, to poverty or famine, and afterward became a social custom to limit population. Professor Wilken suggests as a further reason that wars had tended to an excess of females over males. An Arab poet tells of a niece who refused to leave the husband to whom she had been assigned after capture. Her uncle was so enraged that he buried all his daughters alive and never allowed another one to live. Even one beautiful girl who had been saved alive by her mother was ruthlessly placed in a grave by the father and her cries stifled with earth. This horrible custom however was not usual. We are told of one distinguished Arab, named _Saa-Saa_, who tried to put down the practice of “digging a grave by the side of the bed on which daughters were born.”

Mohammed improved on the barbaric method and discovered a way by which not some but _all_ females could be buried alive without being murdered—namely, the veil. Its origin was one of the marriage affairs of the prophet with its appropriate revelation from Allah. _The veil was unknown in Arabia before that time._ It was Islam that forever withdrew from Oriental society the bright, refining, elevating influence of women. Keene says that the veil “lies at the root of all the most important features that differentiate progress from stagnation.” The harem-system did not prevail in the days of idolatry. Women had rights and were respected. In two instances, beside that of Zenobia, we read of Arabian _queens_ ruling over their tribes. Freytag in his Arabian Proverbs gives a list of female judges who exercised their office in the “time of ignorance.” According to Nöldeke, the Nabathean inscriptions and coins prove that women held an independent and honorable position in North Arabia long before Islam; they constructed expensive family graves, owned large estates, and were independent traders. The heathen Arabs jealously watched over their women as their most valued possession and defended them with their lives. A woman was never given away by her father in an unequal match nor against her consent. “If you cannot find an equal match,” said Ibn Zohair to the Namir, “the best marriage for them is the grave.” Professor G. A. Wilken[52] adduces many proofs to show that women had a right in every case to choose their own husbands and cites the case of Khadijah who offered her hand to Mohammed. Even captive women were not kept in slavery, as is evident from the verses of Hatim:

“They did not give us Taites, their daughters in marriage;
But we wooed them against their will with our swords.
And with us captivity brought no abasement.
They neither toiled making bread nor made the pot boil;
But we mingled them with our women, the noblest,
And bare us fair sons, white of face.”

Polyandry and polygamy were both practiced; the right of divorce belonged to the wife as well as to the husband; temporary marriages were also common. As was natural among a nomad race, the marriage bond was quickly made and easily dissolved. But this was not the case among the Jews and Christians of Yemen and Nejran. Two kinds of marriage were in vogue. The _mota’a_ was a purely personal contract between a man and woman; no witnesses were necessary and the woman did not leave her home or come under the authority of her husband; even the children belonged to the wife. This marriage, so frequently described in Arabic poetry, was not considered illicit but was openly celebrated in verse and brought no disgrace on the woman. In the other kind of marriage, called _nikah_, the woman became subject to her husband by capture or purchase. In the latter case the purchase-money was paid to the bride’s kin.

The position of women before Islam is thus described in Smith’s “Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia.” “It is very remarkable that in spite of Mohammed’s humane ordinances the place of woman in the family and in society has steadily declined under his law. In ancient Arabia we find ... many proofs that women moved more freely and asserted themselves more strongly than in the modern East.... The Arabs themselves recognized that the position of woman had fallen ... and it continued still to fall under Islam, because the effect of Mohammed’s legislation in favor of women was more than outweighed by the establishment of marriages of dominion as the one legitimate type, and by the gradual loosening of the principle that married women could count on their own kin to stand by them against their husbands.”[53]

In “the time of ignorance” writing was well known and poetry flourished. Three accomplishments were coveted—eloquence, horsemanship and liberal hospitality. Orators were in demand, and to maintain the standard and reward excellence there were large assemblies as at Okatz. These lasted a whole month and the tribes came long journeys to hear the orators and poets as well as to engage in trade. The learning of the Arabs was chiefly confined to tribal history, astrology and the interpretation of dreams; in these they made considerable progress.

According to Moslem tradition the science of writing was not known in Mecca until introduced by Harb, Father of Abu Scofian, the great opponent of Mohammed, about A.D. 560. But this is evidently an error, for close intercourse existed long before this between Mecca and Sana the capital of Yemen where writing was well known; and in another tradition Abd el Muttalib is said to have _written_ to Medina for help in his younger days, _i.e._, about 520 A. D. Both Jews and Christians also dwelt in the vicinity of Mecca for two hundred years before the Hegira and used some form of writing. For writing materials they had abundance of reeds and palm-leaves as well as the flat, smooth shoulder-bones of sheep. The seven poems are said to have been written in gold on Egyptian silk and suspended in the Kaaba.

In the earlier part of his mission Mohammed despised the poets for the good reason that some, among them a poetess, wrote satirical verses about him. The Koran says “those who go astray follow the poets” (Surah 26: 224) and a more vigorous though less elegant denouncement is recorded in the traditions (Mishkat Bk. 22, ch. 10): “A belly full of purulent matter is better than a belly full of poetry.” When two of the heathen poets, Labid and Hassan embraced Islam, the prophet became more lenient, and is reported to have said “poetry is a kind of composition which if it is good, it is good, and if it is bad, it is bad!”

Concerning the religion of the heathen Arabs the Mohammedan writer Ash-Shahristani says: “The Arabs of pre-islamic times may, with reference to religion be divided into various classes. Some of them denied the Creator, the resurrection and men’s return to God, and asserted that Nature possesses in itself the power of bestowing life, but that Time destroys. Others believed in a Creator and a creation produced by Him out of nothing but yet denied the resurrection. Others believed in a Creator and a creation but denied God’s prophets and worshipped false gods concerning whom they believed that in the next world they would become _mediators_ between themselves and God. For these deities they undertook pilgrimages, they brought offerings to them, offered them sacrifices and approached them with rites and ceremonies. Some things they held to be Divinely permitted, others to be prohibited. This was the religion of the majority of the Arabs.” This is remarkable evidence for a Mohammedan who would naturally be inclined to take an unfavorable view. But his absolute silence regarding the Jews and Christians of Arabia is suggestive.

When the Arabian tribes lost their earliest monotheism (the religion of Job and their patriarchs) they first of all adopted Sabeanism or the worship of the hosts of heaven. A proof of this is their ancient practice of making circuits around the shrines of their gods as well as their skill in astrology. Very soon however the star-worship became greatly corrupted and other deities, superstitions and practices were introduced. Ancient Arabia was a refuge for all sorts of religious-fugitives, and each band added something to the national stock of religious ideas. The Zoroastrians came to East Arabia; the Jews settled at Kheibar, Medina, and in Yemen; Christians of many sects lived in the north and in the highlands of Yemen. For all pagan Arabia Mecca was the centre many centuries before Mohammed. Here stood the Kaaba, the Arabian Pantheon, with its three hundred and sixty idols, one for each day in the year. Here the tribes of Hejaz met in annual pilgrimage to rub themselves on the Black Stone, to circumambulate the Beit Allah or Bethel of their creed and to hang portions of their garments on the sacred trees. At Nejran a sacred date-palm was the centre of pilgrimage. Everywhere in Arabia there were sacred stones or stone-heaps where the Arab devotees congregated to obtain special blessings. The belief in jinn or genii was well-nigh universal, but there was a distinction between them and gods. The gods have individuality while the jinn have not; the gods are worshipped, the jinn are only feared; the god has one form; the jinn appear in many. All that the Moslem world believes in regard to jinn is wholly borrowed from Arabian heathenism and those who have read the Arabian Nights know what a large place they hold in the everyday life of Moslems.

The Arabs were always superstitious, and legends of all sorts cluster around every weird desert rock, gnarled tree or intermittent fountain in Arabia. The early Arabs therefore marked off such sacred territory by pillars or cairns and considered many things such as shedding of blood, cutting of trees, killing game, etc, forbidden within the enclosure. This is the origin of the _Haramain_ or sacred territory around Mecca and Medina. Sacrifices were common, but not by fire. The blood of the offering was smeared over the rude stone altars and the flesh was eaten by the worshipper. First fruits were given to the gods and libations were poured out; a hair-offering formed a part of the ancient pilgrimage; this also is imitated to-day.

W. Robertson Smith tries to prove that _totemism_ was the earliest form of Arabian idolatry and that each tribe had its sacred animal. The strongest argument for this is the undoubted fact that many of the tribal names were taken from animals and that certain animals were regarded as sacred in parts of Arabia. The theory is too far-reaching to be adopted at haphazard and the author’s ideas of the significance of animal sacrifice are not in accord with the teaching of Scripture. It is however interesting to know that the same authority thinks the Arabian tribal marks or _wasms_ were originally totem-marks and must have been tattooed on the body even as they are now used to mark property. The _washm_ of the idolatrous Arabs seems related to their _wasms_ and was a kind of tattooing of the hands, arms and gums. It was forbidden by Mohammed but is still widely prevalent in North Arabia among the Bedouin women.

Covenants of blood and of salt are also very ancient Semitic institutions and prevailed all over Arabia. The form of the oath was various. At Mecca the parties dipped their hands in a pan of blood and tasted the contents; in other places they opened a vein and mixed their fresh blood; again they would each draw the others’ blood and smear it on seven stones set up in the midst. The later Arabs substituted the blood of a sheep or of a camel for human blood.

The principal idols of Arabia were the following; ten of them are mentioned by name in the Koran.

_Hubal_ was in the form of a man and came from Syria; he was the god of rain and had a high place of honor.

_Wadd_ was the god of the firmament.

_Suwah_, in the form of a woman, was said to be from antediluvian times.

_Yaghuth_ had the shape of a lion.

_Ya’ook_ was in the form of a horse, and was worshipped in Yemen. Bronze images of this idol are found in ancient tombs.

_Nasr_ was the eagle-god.

_El Uzza_, identified by some scholars with Venus, was worshipped at times under the form of an acacia tree.

_Allat_ was the chief idol of the tribe of Thakif at Taif who tried to compromise with Mohammed to accept Islam if he would not destroy their god for three years. The name appears to be the feminine of Allah.

_Manat_ was a huge stone worshipped as an altar by several tribes.

_Duwar_ was the virgin’s idol and young women used to go around it in procession; hence its name.

_Isaf_ and _Naila_ stood near Mecca on the hills of Safa and Mirwa; the visitation of these popular shrines is now a part of the Moslem pilgrimage.

_Habhab_ was a large stone on which camels were slaughtered.

Beside these there were numerous other gods whose names have been utterly lost and yet who each had a place in the Pantheon at Mecca. Above all these was the supreme deity whom they called ὁ θεὸς, the God, or _Allah_. This name occurs several times in the ancient pre-islamic poems and proves that the Arabs knew the one true God by name even in the “time of ignorance.” To Him they also made offerings though not of the first and best; in His name covenants were sealed and the holiest oaths were sworn. Enemy of _Allah_ was the strongest term of opprobrium among the Arabs then as it is to-day. Wellhausen says, “In worship _Allah_ had the last place, those gods being preferred who represented the interests of a particular circle and fulfilled the private desires of their worshippers. Neither the fear of _Allah_ nor their reverence for the gods had much influence. The chief practical consequence of the great feasts was the observance of a truce in the holy months; and this in time had become mainly an affair of pure practical convenience. In general the disposition of the heathen Arabs, if it is at all truly reflected in their poetry, was profane in an unusual degree. The ancient inhabitants of Mecca practiced piety essentially as a trade, just as they do now; their trade depended on the feast and its fair on the inviolability of the Haram and on the truce of the holy months.”

There is no doubt that at the time of Mohammed’s appearance the old national idolatry had degenerated. Many of the idols had no believers or worshippers. Sabeanism had also disappeared except in the north of Arabia; although it always left its influence which is evident not only in the Koran but in the superstitious practices of the modern Bedouins. Gross fetishism was the creed of many. One of Mohammed’s contemporaries said, “When they found a fine stone they adored it, or, failing that, milked a camel over a heap of sand and worshipped that.” The better classes at Mecca and Medina had ceased to believe anything at all. The forms of religion “were kept up rather for political and commercial reasons than as a matter of faith or conviction.”[54]

Add to all this the silent but strong influence of the Jews and Christians who were in constant contact with these idolaters and we have the explanation of the _Hanifs_. These Hanifs were a small number of Arabs who worshipped only _Allah_, rejected polytheism, sought freedom from sin and resignation to God’s will. There were Hanifs at Taif, Mecca and Medina. They were in fact seekers of truth, weary of the old idolatry and the prevalent hollow hypocrisy of the Arabs. The earliest Hanifs of whom we hear, were Waraka, the cousin of the prophet Mohammed, and Zeid bin Amr, surnamed the Inquirer. Mohammed at first also adopted this title of Hanif to express the faith of Abraham but soon after changed it to Moslem.

It is only a step from Hanifism to Islam. Primary monotheism, Sabeanism, idolatry, fetishism, Hanifism, and then the prophet with the sword to bring everything back to monotheism—monotheism, as modified by his own needs and character and compromises. The time of ignorance was a time of chaos. Everything was ready for one who could take in the whole situation, social, political and religious and form a cosmos. That man was Mohammed.

XVII

ISLAM IN ITS CRADLE—THE MOSLEM’S GOD[55]

“Islam was born in the desert, with Arab Sabeanism for its mother and Judaism for its father; its foster-nurse was Eastern Christianity.”—_Edwin Arnold._

“A Prophet without miracles; a faith without mysteries; and a morality without love; which has encouraged a thirst for blood, and which began and ended in the most unbounded sensuality.”—_Schlegel’s Philosophy of History._

“As we conceive God, we conceive the universe; a being incapable of loving is incapable of being loved.”—_Principal Fairbairn._

Libraries have been written, not only in Arabic and Persian, but in all the languages of Europe, on the origin, character and history of Islam, the Koran and Mohammed. Views differ “as far as the east is from the west” and as far as Bosworth Smith is from Prideaux. The earlier European writers did not hesitate to call Mohammed a false prophet and his system a clever imposture; some went further and attributed even satanic agency to the success of Islam and to the words of the prophet. Carlyle, in his “Heroes and Hero-worship,” set the pendulum swinging to the other side so far that his chapter on the Hero-prophet is published as a leaflet by the Mohammedan Missionary Society of Lahore. So little did Carlyle understand the true nature of Islam that he calls it “a kind of Christianity.” What Carlyle said was only the beginning of a series of apologies and panegyrics which appeared soon after and placed Mohammed not only on the pedestal of a great reformer but “a very prophet of God,” making Islam almost the ideal religion. Syeed Ameer Ali succeeds in his biography in eliminating every sensual, harsh and ignorant trait from the character of the noted Meccan; and the recent valuable book of T. W. Arnold, professor in Aligarh College, India, attempts to prove most elaborately that Mohammedanism was propagated without the sword.

In contrast to this read what Hugh Broughton quaintly wrote in 1662: “Now consider this Moamed or Machumed, whom God gave up to a blind mind, an Ishmaelite, being a poor man till he married a widow; wealthy then and of high countenance, having the falling sickness and being tormented by the devil, whereby the widow was sorry that she matched with him. He persuaded her by himself and others that his fits were but a trance wherein he talked with the angel Gabriel. So in time the impostor was reputed a prophet of God and from Judaism, Arius, Nestorius and his own brain he frameth a doctrine.” In our day, the critical labors of scholars like Sprenger, Weil, Muir, Koelle and others have given us a more correct idea of Mohammed’s life and character. The pendulum is still swinging but will come to rest between the two extremes.

We have not space to give the story of Mohammed’s life or of the religion which he founded. An analysis of the religion has been attempted by means of two tables, one showing its development from its creed and the other the philosophy of its origin from outside sources.[56] The result of a century of critical study by European and American scholars of every school of thought has certainly established the fact that Islam is a composite religion. It is not an invention but a concoction; there is nothing novel about it except the genius of Mohammed in mixing old ingredients into a new panacea for human ills and forcing it down by means of the sword. These heterogeneous elements of Islam were gathered in Arabia at a time when many religions had penetrated the peninsula, and the Kaaba was a Pantheon. Unless one has a knowledge of these elements of “the time of ignorance,” Islam is a problem. Knowing, however, these heathen, Christian and Jewish factors, Islam is seen to be a perfectly natural and understandable development. Its heathen elements remain, to this day, perfectly recognizable in spite of thirteen centuries of explanation by the Moslem authorities. It is to the Jewish Rabbi Geiger that we owe our first knowledge of the extent to which Islam is indebted to the Jews and the Talmud. Rev. W. St. Clair Tisdall has recently shown how Mohammed borrowed even from the Zoroastrians and Sabeans, while as to the amount of Christian teaching in Islam, the Koran and its commentators are evidence.

There is a remarkable verse in the twenty-second chapter of the Koran, in which Mohammed seems to enumerate all the sources that were accessible to him in forming his new religion; and at that time he seems to have been in doubt as to which was the most trustworthy source. The verse reads as follows: “_They who believe and the Jews and the Sabeans and the Christians and the Magians_ (Zoroastrians) _and those who join other gods to God, verily God shall decide between them on the day of Resurrection._”

The God of Islam. GIBBON CHARACTERIZES THE FIRST PART OF the Moslem’s creed as “an eternal truth “—(“there is no god but God”); but very much depends on the character of the God, who is affirmed to displace all other gods. If _Allah’s_ attributes are unworthy of deity then even the first clause of the briefest of all creeds, is false. There has been a strange neglect to study the Moslem idea of God and nearly all writers take for granted that the God of the Koran is the same being and has like attributes as Jehovah or the Godhead of the New Testament. Nothing could be further from the truth.

First of all the Mohammedan conception of Allah is purely negative. God is unique and has no relations to any creature that partake of resemblance. He cannot be defined in terms other than negative. As the popular song has it,

“Kullu ma yukhtaru fi balik
Fa rabbuna mukhalifun ’an thalik—”[57]

Absolute sovereignty and ruthless omnipotence are his chief attributes while his character is impersonal—that of a monad. Among the ninety-nine beautiful names of God, which Edwin Arnold has used in his poem “Pearls of the Faith,” the ideas of fatherhood, love, impartial justice and unselfishness are absent. The Christian truth “God is love” is to the learned, blasphemy and to the ignorant an enigma. Palgrave, who certainly was not biased against the religion of Arabia and who lived with the Arabs for long months, calls the theology of Islam “the pantheism of force.” No one has ever given a better account of _Allah_, a more faithful portrait of Mohammed’s conception of deity than Palgrave. Every word of his description tallies with statements which one can hear daily from pious Moslems. Yet no one who reads what we quote in all its fullness will recognize here the God whom David addresses in the Psalms or who became incarnate at Bethlehem and suffered on Calvary. This is Palgrave’s statement:

“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 Ilāh illa Allāh,’ 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, ‘Kemā 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 preëminence, 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 as 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.”

The Koran shows that Mohammed had in a measure a correct knowledge of the _physical_ attributes of God but an absolutely false conception of his _moral_ attributes. This was perfectly natural because Mohammed had no idea of the nature of sin—moral evil—or of holiness—moral perfection.

The Imam El Ghazzali a famous scholastic divine of the Moslems says of God: “He is not a body endued with form nor a substance circumscribed with limits or determined by measure. Neither does He resemble bodies, as they are capable of being measured or divided. Neither is He a substance nor do substances exist in Him; neither is He an accident nor do accidents exist in Him. Neither is He like to anything that exists; neither is anything like to Him; nor is He determinate in quantity nor comprehended by bounds nor circumscribed by the differences of situation nor contained in the heavens.... His nearness is not like the nearness of bodies nor is His essence like the essence of bodies. Neither doth He exist in anything; neither does anything exist in Him.” God’s will is absolute and alone; the predestination of everything and everybody to good or ill according to the caprice of sovereignty. For there is no Fatherhood and no purpose of redemption to soften the doctrine of the decrees. Hell must be filled and so Allah creates infidels. The statements of the Koran on this doctrine are coarse and of tradition, blasphemous. Islam reduces God to the category of the will; He is a despot, an Oriental despot, and as the _moral_-law is not emphasized He is not bound by any standard of justice. Worship of the creature is heinous to the Moslem mind, and yet Allah punished Satan for not being willing to worship Adam. (Koran ii. 28-31.) Allah is merciful in winking at the sins of the prophet but is the avenger of all unbelievers in him.

A God-machine, a unit-cause
Vast, inaccessible
Who doles out mercy, breaks His laws
And compromises ill.

A God whose law is changeless fate,—
Who grants each prophet-wish—
For prayer and fasting opes heaven’s gate,
And pardons for backsheesh.

This is _not_ “the only True God” whom we know through Jesus Christ and so knowing have life-eternal. “No man knoweth the Father but the _Son_ and he to whom the Son revealeth Him. He who denies the incarnation remains ignorant of God’s true character. As Fairbairn says, “the love which the _Godhead_ makes immanent and essential to God, gives God an altogether new meaning and actuality for religion; while thought is not forced to conceive Monotheism as the apotheosis of an Almighty will or an impersonal ideal of the pure reason.” Islam knows no Godhead, and Allah is not love.

Transcribers Note: To fit within page and layout constraints this Chart the linked tabular format. The section beginning with A; Faith and B:Practice Appears to derrive equally from "The Doctrine of God" and "The Doctrine of Revelation" so has been abstracted and linked from the position the author seems to have intended. General notes have been abstracted and displayed as footnotes.

ANALYSIS OF ISLAM AS A SYSTEM, DEVELOPED FROM IT’S CREED.
“There is no god but Allah and Mohammed is his apostle.”

The Doctrine of God
(Negative.)
“There is no god but God.”
[Pantheism of Force]
1. His names
of the _essence_, _Allah_ (_the absolute unit_)
of the attributes,—_Ninety-nine names_
2. His attributes
The physical emphasized above the _moral_.
Deification of _absolute force_.
3. His nature
Expressed by a series of _negations_
“He is _not_.”
To second section
The Doctrine of Revelation: (Positive.)
“Mohammed is the apostle of God.”
[The sole channel of revelation and abrogates former revelations.]
I. By the KORAN
(Wahi El Matlu)
Revelation, verbal, and which teaches the twofold demands of
Islam:—
[The Book]
II. By TRADITION
(Wahi gheir Matlu)
Revelation by example of
the perfect prophet
[The Man]
1. Records of what Mohammed _did_ (Sunnat-el-fa’il) (example)
2. Records of what Mohammed _enjoined_ (Sunnat-el-kaul) (precept)
3. Records of what Mohammed _allowed_ (Sunnat-el-takrir)
(license)[A]]
A. The Sunnite Traditions: (collected and recorded by the
following six authorities)
1. Buchari A. H. 256[B]]
2. Muslim ” 261[B]
3. Tirmizi ” 279[B]
4. Abu Daood ” 275[B]
5. An-Nasaee ” 303[B]
6. Ibn Majah ” 273[B]
B. The Shiah Traditions: (five authorities)
1. Kafi A. H. 329
2. Sheikh Ali ” 381
3. “Tahzib” ” 466[C]
4. “Istibsar” ” 466[C]
5. Ar-Razi ” 406
III. Other Authority
a. Among the _Sunnites_:
IJMA’A or unanimous consent of the leading companions of
Mohammed concerning I.
KIYAS or the deductions of orthodox teachers from sources
I. and II.
b. Among the _Shiahs_:
The doctrine of the twelve IMAMS—beginning with _Ali_ who
interpret I. and II.

Second Section

A. Faith:
(what to believe)
“Iman”
1. In God
2. Angels
(angels, jinn, devils)
3. Books
Modern Moslems believe that 104 “books” were
sent from heaven in the following order:
To Adam—ten books
” Seth—fifty
” Enoch—thirty
” Abraham—ten
These are utterly lost.
” Moses—the TORAH
” David—the ZABOOR
” Jesus—the INJIL
These are highly spoken of in the Koran but are now
in corrupted condition and have been abrogated by
the final book.
” _Mohammed_—the KORAN (eternal in origin; complete and
miraculous in character; supreme in beauty and
authority.)
4. Last Day (Judgement)
5. Predestination
6. Prophets
A. _The Greater_:
Adam—“Chosen of God”
Noah—“Preacher of God”
Abraham—“Friend of God”
Moses—“Spokesman of God”
Jesus—called “Word of God and “Spirit of God.”
MOHAMMED, (_who has 201 names and titles_)
Enoch, Hud, Salih,
Ishmael, Issac,
Jacob, Joseph, Lot,
Aaron, Shuaib,
Zakariah, John,
David, Solomon,
Elias, Job, Jonah,
Ezra, Lukman,
Zu-el-kifl and
Alexander the Great,
Elisha.
B. _The Less_: Of these there have been thousands.
Twenty-two are mentioned in the Koran:
7. Resurrection
B. Practice
(what to do)
“Din” [_the five pillars_]
1. Repetition of Creed
2. _Prayer_ (five times daily) including:
1. Purification
washing various parts of the body three times ac’d’g
to fourteen rules
2. Posture (prostrations)
facing the kiblah (Mecca)
prostrations
genuflections
3. Petition
Declaration
the Fatihah or first Surah.
Praise and confession—the Salaam.
3. Fasting (month of Ramadhan)
4. Alms giving (about 1-40 of income.)
5. Pilgrimage
_Mecca_ (incumbent)
Medina (meritorious but voluntary)
Kerbela, Meshed Ali, etc., (Shiahs)

[A] Verbally handed down from mouth to mouth and finally _sifted_ and recorded by both sects:

[B] Not one of them flourished until _three cenruries_ after Mohammed.

[C] By Abu Jaafar.

ANALYSIS OF THE BORROWED ELEMENTS OF ISLAM.

I. From HEATHENISM

(As existing in Mecca or prevalent
in other parts of Arabia.)

a. Sabeanism:

Astrological superstitions, _e. g._, that meteorites are
cast at the devil.

Oaths by the stars and planets. (Surahs 56, 53, etc.)

Circumambulation of Kaaba—and, perhaps, the _lunar_ calendar.

b. Arabian Idolatry:

Allah (as _name_ of supreme deity), used in old poets and
worshipped by Hanifs.

Mecca—centre of religious pilgrimage—The black-stone, etc.

Pilgrimage—_in every detail_: dress, hair offerings,
casting stones, sacrifice, running.

Polygamy, slavery, easy divorce, and social laws generally.

Ceremonial cleanliness, forbidden foods, _circumcision_.

c. Zoroastrianism:

Cosmogony—The different stories of the earth. Bridge over
hell.

Paradise—Its character—the _houris_=pairikas of Avesta.

Doctrine of _Jinn_ and their various kinds. Exorcism of jinn
(Surah 113, 114).

d. Buddhism:

The use of the rosary.

(See Hughes’ Dict. of Islam.)

II. From JUDAISM

(The Old Testament but more especially
the _Talmud_ as the source of Jewish
ideas prevalent in Arabia just
before Mohammed.)

A. Ideas and Doctrines:

(According to the divisions
of Rabbi Geiger.)

1. Words that represent Jewish ideas
(and are _not_ Arabic but Hebrew.) _Taboot_ (ark); _Torah_
(law); _Eden_; _Gehinnom_; _Rabbi_, _Abbar_=teacher;
_Sakinat_=Shekinah; _Taghoot_ (used hundreds of times
in Koran)=error; _Furkan_, etc., etc., etc.

2. Doctrinal views.

_Unity of God._

Resurrection.

Seven hells and seven heavens.

Final judgment. Signs of last day.

Gog and Magog.

3. Moral and Ceremonial laws.

Prayer. Its time, posture, direction, etc.

Laws regarding impurity of body. Washing
with water or with sand.

Laws regarding purification of women, etc.

4. Views of life

Use of “inshallah”; age of discretion corresponds to
Talmud.

B. Stories and Legends:

(According to Rabbi Geiger.)

Adam, Cain, Enoch; the fabulous things in Koran are
_identical_ with Talmud.

Noah—the flood—Eber (Hud)—Isaac,—Ishmael—_Joseph_.
Cf. Koran with Talmud.

Abraham—His idolatry—Nimrod’s oven—Pharao—the calf—(taken
from Talmud.)

Moses—The fables related of him and Aaron are old Jewish
tales.

Jethro (Shuaib); Saul (Taloot); Goliath (Jiloot), and
_Solomon_ especially. Cf. Talmud.

III. From CHRISTIANITY

(Corrupt form, as found in the
apocryphal gospels.)

“_Gospel of Barnabas._”

1. Reverence for New Testament—Injil—(Zacharias, John, Gabriel).

2. Respect for religious teachers; the Koran references to
priests and monks.

3. Jesus Christ—His names—Word of God, Spirit of God, etc.—Puerile
miracles—_Denial of crucifixion_. (Basilidians, etc.)

4. The Virgin—Her sinlessness—and the apostles—“hawari” an
_Abyssinian_ word meaning “pure ones.”

5. Wrong ideas of the Trinity. As held by Arabian heretical sects.

6. Christian legends as of “Seven Sleepers,” “Alexander of the
horns,” “Lokman” (=Æsop.)

7. A fast month. Ramadhan to imitate lent.

8. Alms-giving as an essential part of true worship.

“The Koran could not
have been composed by
any except God....
Will they say he forged
it? Answer bring therefore
a chapter like unto
it.”—THE KORAN. (Surah Yunas.)

XVIII

THE PROPHET AND HIS BOOK

In 570 A. D. Abdullah the son of Abd el Muttalib a Mecca merchant went on a trading trip from Mecca to Medina and died there; the same year his wife, Amina, gave birth to a boy, named _Mohammed_, at Mecca. One hundred years later the name of this Arab lad, joined to that of the Almighty, was called out from ten thousand mosques five times daily, from Muscat to Morocco, and his new religion was sweeping everything before it in three continents.

What is the explanation of this marvel of history? Many theories have been laid down and the true explanation is probably the sum of all of them. The weakness of Oriental Christianity and the corrupt state of the church; the condition of the Roman and Persian empires; the character of the new religion; the power of the sword and fanaticism; the genius of Mohammed; the partial truth of his teaching; the genius of Mohammed’s successors; the hope of plunder and love of conquest;—such are some of the causes given for the early and rapid success of Islam.

Mohammed was a prophet without miracles but not without genius. Whatever we may deny him we can never deny that he was a great man with great talents. But he was not a self-made man. His environment accounts in a large measure for his might and for his method in becoming a religious leader. There was first of all the political factor. “The year of the elephant” had seen the defeat of the Christian hosts of Yemen who came to attack the Kaaba. This victory was to the young and ardent mind of Mohammed prophetic of the political future of Mecca and no doubt his ambition assigned himself the chief place in the coming conflict of Arabia against the Roman and Persian oppressors.

Next came the religious factor. The times were ripe for religious leadership and Mecca was already the centre of a new movement. The Hanifs had rejected the old idolatry and entertained the hope that a prophet would arise from among them.[60] There was material of all sorts at hand to furnish the platform of a new faith; it only required the builder’s eye to call cosmos out of chaos. To succeed in doing this it would be necessary to reject material also; a comprehensive religion and a compromising religion, so as to suit Jew and Christian and idolater alike.

Then there was the family factor, or, in other words, the aristocratic standing of Mohammed. He was not a mere “camel-driver.” The Koreish were the ruling clan of Mecca; Mecca was even then the centre for all Arabia; and Mohammed’s grandfather, Abd el Muttalib, was the most influential and powerful man of that aristocratic city. The pet-child of Abd el Muttalib was the orphan boy Mohammed. Until his eighth year he was under the shelter and favor of this chief man of the Koreish. He learned what it was to be lordly and to exercise power, and never forgot it. The man, his wife and his training were the determinative factors in the character of Mohammed. The ruling factor was the mind and genius of the man himself. Of attractive personal qualities, beautiful countenance, and accomplished in business, he first won the attention and then the heart of a very wealthy widow, Khadijah. Koelle tells us that she was “evidently an Arab lady of a strong mind and mature experience who maintained a decided ascendency over her husband, and managed him with great wisdom and firmness. This appears from nothing more strikingly, than from the very remarkable fact that she succeeded in keeping him from marrying any other wife as long as she lived, though at her death, when he had long ceased to be a young man he indulged without restraint in the multiplication of wives. But as Khadijah herself was favorably disposed toward Hanifism, it is highly probable that she exercised her commanding influence over her husband in such a manner as to promote and strengthen his own attachment to the reformatory sect of monotheists.”

Mohammed married this woman when he had reached his twenty-fifth year. At the age of forty he began to have his revelations and to preach his new religion. His first convert, naturally perhaps, was his wife, then Ali and Zeid his two adopted children; then his friend, the prosperous merchant, Abu-Bekr. Such was the nucleus for the new faith.

Mohammed is described in tradition as a man above middle height, of spare figure, commanding presence, massive head, noble brow, and jet-black hair. His eyes were piercing. He had a long bushy beard. Decision marked his every movement and he always walked rapidly. Writers seem to agree that he had the genius to command and expected obedience from equals as well as inferiors. James Freeman Clarke says that 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.”

As to the moral character of Mohammed there is great diversity of opinion and the conclusions of different scholars cannot be easily reconciled. Muir, Dods, Badger, and others claim that he was at first sincere and upright, himself believing in his so-called revelations, but that afterward, intoxicated by success, he used the dignity of his prophetship for personal ends and was conscious of deceiving the people in some of his later revelations. Bosworth Smith and his like, maintain that he was “a very Prophet of God” all through his life and that the sins and faults of his later years are only specks on the sun of his glory. Older writers, with whom I agree, saw in Mohammed only the skill of a clever impostor from the day of his first message to the day of his death. Koelle, whose book is a mine of accurate scholarship and whose experience of many years mission-work in Moslem lands qualifies him for a sober judgment, sees no striking contrast between the earlier and later part of Mohammed’s life that cannot be easily explained by the influence of Khadijah. He was _semper idem_, an ambitious enthusiast choosing different means for the same end and never very particular as to the character of the means used.

Aside from the question of Mohammed’s sincerity no one can apologize for his moral character if judged according to the law of his time, the law himself professed to reveal or the law of the New Testament. By the New Testament law of Jesus Christ, who was the last prophet before Mohammed and whom Mohammed acknowledged as the Word of God, the Arabian prophet stands self-condemned. The most cursory examination of his biography proves that he broke repeatedly every sacred precept of the Sermon on the Mount. And the Koran itself proves that the Spirit of Jesus was entirely absent from the mind of Mohammed. The Arabs among whom Mohammed was born and grew to manhood also had a law, although they were idolaters, slave-holders and polygamists. Even the robbers of the desert who, like Mohammed, laid in wait for caravans, had a code of honor. Three flagrant breaches of this code stain the character of Mohammed.[61] It was quite lawful to marry a captive woman whose relatives had been slain in battle, but not until _three months after their death_. Mohammed only waited three days in the case of the Jewess Safia. It was lawful to rob merchants but not pilgrims on their way to Mecca. Mohammed broke this old law and “revealed a verse” to justify his conduct. Even in the “Time of Ignorance” it was incest to marry the wife of an adopted son even after his decease. The prophet Mohammed fell in love with the lawful wife of his adopted son Zeid, prevailed on him to divorce her and then married her immediately; for this also he had a “special revelation.” But Mohammed was not only guilty of breaking the old Arab laws and coming infinitely short of the law of Christ, he never even kept the laws of which he claimed to be the divinely appointed medium and custodian. When Khadijah died he found his own law, lax as it was, insufficient to restrain his lusts. His followers were to be content with four lawful wives; he indulged in ten and entered into negotiations for matrimony with thirty others.

It is impossible to form a just estimate of the character of Mohammed unless we know somewhat of his relations with women. This subject however is of necessity shrouded from a decent contemplation by the superabounding brutality and filthiness of its character. A recent writer in a missionary magazine touching on this subject says, “We must pass the matter over, simply noting that there are depths of filth in the Prophet’s character which may assort well enough with the depraved sensuality of the bulk of his followers ... but which are simply loathsome in the eyes of all over whom Christianity in any measure or degree has influence.” We have no inclination to lift the veil that in most English biographies covers the family-life of the prophet of Arabia. But it is only fair to remark that these love-adventures and the disgusting details of his married life form a large part of the “lives of the prophet of God” which are the fireside literature of educated Moslems.