# Islam: Her Moral and Spiritual Value

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> ISLAM
> 
>     HER MORAL AND SPIRITUAL VALUE
> 
>     ISLAM
> 
>     HER MORAL AND SPIRITUAL VALUE
> 
>     A Rational and Psychological Study
> 
>     By
>     MAJOR ARTHUR GLYN LEONARD
> 
>     LATE 2ND BATT. EAST LANCASHIRE REGIMENT
> 
>     _Author of “The Camel, Its Uses and Management,” “How we made
>     Rhodesia,” “The Lower Niger and its Tribes”_
> 
>     With a Foreword by
>     SYED AMEER ALI, M.A., C.I.E.
> 
>     _Author of “The Spirit of Islam,” “Life and Teachings of Mohammed,”
>     “Mohammedan Law,” “Personal Law of the
>     Mohammedans,” etc._
> 
>     LONDON
>     LUZAC & CO
>     46, GREAT RUSSELL STREET
>     1909
> 
> FOREWORD
> 
> I am glad to introduce this book with an expression of the pleasure and
> interest with which I have read Major Leonard’s admirable psychological
> study of a subject, the importance of which it is hardly possible to
> overrate.
> 
> Unfortunately it has been too common hitherto to regard Islam as an
> antagonistic force to Christendom; to depreciate its Founder and to
> discount its Ideals. As the author justly observes, it is hardly
> possible for a student really anxious to acquaint himself with the inner
> spirit of another Faith, to gain an insight into its true character
> until he has divested himself of ancient prejudices that narrow his
> perspective and prevent his taking a broad view of the aims and
> aspirations of the great men who from time to time have tried to uplift
> humanity.
> 
> Major Leonard has dealt with his subject in this broad spirit; he has
> approached it with sympathy born of intimate acquaintance with races
> and peoples who profess the Faith of Islam. His is eminently a
> philosophical study of its Founder, of its true moral and spiritual
> utility, and of the great impetus it gave to the progress of the world.
> 
> In the eight chapters that constitute this book he has discussed the
> entire range of questions affecting the personality of Mohammed and the
> tendency of his religion. In his treatment he shows himself a
> philosophical rationalist animated with a reverence for the Arabian
> Teacher--the evident outcome of a true appreciation of the mainspring of
> his actions.
> 
> In the first chapter the author has applied himself to expose the
> absurdity and hollowness of the Pan-Islamic “bogey.” That the growing
> _rapprochement_ between Moslem communities, hitherto divided by
> sectarian feuds, should be viewed with disfavour by Europe as indicating
> a danger to its predominance and selfish ambitions is intelligible. But
> that it should be regarded as a deliberate challenge to, or intended as
> a hostile demonstration against Christendom, is a mere chimera. Major
> Leonard proves conclusively that the Pan-Islamic movement is no modern
> political movement; but that morally and spiritually Islam, in its very
> essence, is Pan-Islamic; in other words, a creed that recognizes in
> practice the brotherhood of man to a degree unknown in any other
> religion, and admits in its commonwealth no difference of race, colour
> or rank.
> 
> Moslems, laymen and scholars, will probably not agree with some of Major
> Leonard’s remarks in his outline of the Prophet’s character and
> temperament; but they must all acknowledge his sincerity. He describes
> Mohammed as a great and true man--great not only as a teacher, but as a
> patriot and statesman; a material as well as a spiritual builder, who
> constructed a nation and an enduring Faith, which holds, to a greater
> degree than most others, the hearts of millions of human beings; a man
> true to himself and his people, but above all to his God.
> 
> The author has gone to the Koran itself for the animating purpose of
> Mohammed’s strenuous and noble life. He believes that the national good
> to be obtained only by the recognition of the conception of a God who is
> both “national and universal” was the dominant idea that impelled and
> inspired the Prophet of Arabia. In his appreciation of Mohammed’s
> teachings, Major Leonard has grasped the real spirit of Islam; and both
> as regards his moral and spiritual precepts, as also the enunciations
> respecting the duties of every-day life, the author has given the
> Arabian Prophet his due. He dwells on Mohammed’s affection and sympathy
> for the weak, the afflicted and suffering, with the orphan and the
> stricken; on his humanity to the dumb creatures of God; on the duties of
> parents to children, and of children to parents; on his burning
> denunciations of the terrible crime of female infanticide.
> 
> In the eighth and last chapter Major Leonard speaks of the debt Europe
> owes to Islam, and endeavours to show that the religion of Mohammed, far
> from being antagonistic to human development, has materially helped in
> the progress of the world. It is part of Major Leonard’s thesis that
> Christianity and Islam belong to “different spheres of influence”; in
> other words, whilst Christianity is suited to certain races, Islam is
> peculiarly suited to others. Races and peoples adapt their religions to
> their own respective advancement, and the same religion varies among
> different communities according to the stage of their development. The
> Christianity of the barbarous South American Gaucho is not the same as
> that of the cultured Englishman, nor is the Islam of the cultivated
> Moslem identical with that professed by ignorant followers of the Faith.
> But it would be hard to say that philosophical Christianity exactly
> answers the needs of the lower strata of Christendom to whom the
> positive directions of a simple practical faith might appeal with
> greater force. Might not Islam, with its emphatic prohibition of drink,
> the primary cause of all the vice and crime in Europe, prove a far
> greater civilizing agency in the slums of European cities, and do far
> more good in reclaiming the debased, than a religion which does not
> possess that positive character and is only adapted for idealistic
> minds?
> 
> Whatever view a rationalist may hold on this point, I feel that Major
> Leonard has laid the world of literature under a debt for his admirable
> monograph on a peculiarly interesting subject.
> 
>     AMEER ALI.
> 
> CONTENTS
> 
>                                                     PAGE
> 
>     CHAPTER I
> 
>     THE SO-CALLED MOSLEM MENACE!                      13
> 
>     CHAPTER II
> 
>     AN OUTLINE OF MOHAMMED’S TEMPERAMENT
>     AND CHARACTERISTICS                               23
> 
>     CHAPTER III
> 
>     THE ENVIRONMENT THAT MOULDED MOHAMMED             51
> 
>     CHAPTER IV
> 
>     MOHAMMED’S PRINCIPLES AND BELIEFS                 71
> 
>     CHAPTER V
> 
>     THE MATERIAL AND OTHER SIDES OF THE PROPHET’S
>     CHARACTER                                         84
> 
>     CHAPTER VI
> 
>     A BRIEF SUMMARY OF MOHAMMED’S WORK
>     AND WORTH                                        101
> 
>     CHAPTER VII
> 
>     MOSLEM MORALITY AND CHRISTENDOM’S ATTITUDE
>     TOWARDS ISLAM                                    121
> 
>     CHAPTER VIII
> 
>     EUROPE’S DEBT TO ISLAM: ETHNIC SPHERES OF
>     INFLUENCE                                        142
> 
> CHAPTER I
> 
> THE SO-CALLED MOSLEM MENACE!
> 
> For some time past, but more especially during the last year or two, it
> has become quite the fashion in Europe to rail at and to suspect the
> good faith and motives of the Moslem world. If we are to believe the
> European Press, Europe is in deadly danger. The “_Yellow Peril_” of a
> few years ago has, by means of the juggling of modern journalism,
> cleverly transformed itself into the “_Moslem Menace_.” According to
> this trenchant successor of the ancient oracle, there is unrest and
> seething turmoil everywhere. In Egypt, a national confederation; in
> Morocco, a crisis; in the heart of Africa, the Senussi movement; in
> Turkey and Arabia, secret associations and agitation; in Persia even,
> disaffection but co-operation. In one word, Europe--Christian, civilized
> and unoffending Europe--is confronted with a Pan-Islamic confederation,
> that is co-operating to achieve the unity and the nationalization of all
> Islam, with the express object of ultimately turning upon Christendom,
> and rending her into a thousand tattered fragments.
> 
> That there has been no revival of “the chronic conspiracy” within our
> Indian Empire, is, however, easily explained. This, which purposed to be
> a religious agitation among Indian Moslems, was an expression more
> familiar twenty-five years ago and was attributed to the influence of
> Wahabite oratory. It is, of course, possible that the present agitation
> and unrest among the Hindus generally, but the Bengalis in particular,
> has for the time being at all events diverted the attention of the
> outside world in other directions. But it is also more or less generally
> taken for granted that the Moslem population of India has sunk into a
> state of political lethargy, which if it does not betoken loyalty,
> obviously demonstrates a dumb and passive revolutionary torpor that is
> tantamount to it.
> 
> That agitation and unrest exist throughout the Moslem world would be
> nothing either new or unusual. In a human sense, Islam is identical with
> Christendom. She too has her social functions, her political parties,
> associations, confederations and societies. She has her religious sects
> and denominations. As with us, so with Islam, there are affinities, and
> antipathies, emulations and jealousies, competitions and rivalries,
> likes and dislikes, envy, malice, hatred and all uncharitableness. The
> interest of self predominates before all else. In kind there is
> certainly no difference, in degree it is possible that Europe may be a
> step or two higher. But this is not the point that I would here
> emphasize. To fall back on the time-honoured maxim, immortalized by
> Shakespeare, comparisons of this kind are incompatible if not odious.
> Besides, recrimination is as futile as it is injudicious and
> undignified.
> 
> It is not of moral discrepancies on either side that I would speak. Nor
> have I any wish to rake up the low-lying sediment, or to disturb the
> still waters which are running deep in the great ocean of Moslem life.
> Under the conditions that prevail, it is assuredly best to let sleeping
> dogs lie. Left alone they are much less troublesome. There is always the
> possibility that they may oversleep themselves and fall into a dormant
> and inactive state. In this way the still waters of sedition and
> agitation soon find their own level--the embers of revolt may at times
> flare up, but they soon flicker out.
> 
> It is of the moral and spiritual utility, with the soul of Islam, that I
> am now about to deal. For Islam, believe me, has a soul--a sincere and
> earnest soul, a great and profound soul--that is worth knowing. It is in
> this soul that the whole kernel and essence of Islam lies. A thorough
> knowledge and a clear comprehension of this great spirit will alone
> enable the statesmen and thinkers of Europe to understand the complex
> problems of so-called Pan-Islamism. To obtain this grasp, however,
> certain qualifications are absolutely essential. It is necessary--e.g.,
> to approach the subject from a rational and reasonable standpoint--to
> detach the mind from all preconceived dogmas and opinions; to lay aside
> all prejudices, racial, religious, social and otherwise, and all
> bigotries and intolerance; to be confined to no one creed, sect or
> denomination of any kind, sort or description, but the one great world
> of Humanity that, in the eyes of Nature, is of one soul and body. This
> may be a large, or as cousin Jonathan would call it, a tall, order. It
> bulks big and sounds ponderous. In face of what human nature is, it
> appears impracticable. But even in human nature there are exceptions and
> possibilities. An aspect such as this, then, though improbable, is
> certainly possible, if exceptional. Let us presume at least that in this
> instance it is so. It is, at all events, on these broad lines that the
> following pages have been written. It is the true spirit of human
> sympathy and fellowship that has moved me--the sympathy and fellowship
> that would draw together, or at least nearer to each other, the worlds
> of Christendom and Islam.
> 
> The better to achieve my object, I have consulted no works on either
> Mohammed or Islam, but have gone straight to the source or fountain
> head--to Mohammed himself, the Koran, and to Moslems of various
> nationalities with whom I have been brought into close and personal
> touch during a wide and a varied experience. It is here in the man and
> his work that the true soul of Islam is to be found. Just as in its
> founders and foundations lies the heart and essence of Christianity, it
> is in and out of the merits as well as demerits of Mohammed’s work, that
> we shall form the true estimate of Islamic utility. By their fruits ye
> shall know them. Men do not gather figs of thorns, or grapes of
> thistles. Mohammed most certainly did not. As he sowed, so he has
> reaped! So he is still reaping. The Koran was the immediate consequence
> of his concentration and communion with Nature and Nature’s God: Islam
> the natural result. In other words, Islam is the devotion of Moslems to
> Mohammed and the Koran--his work, plus their patient resignation and
> entire submission to God, His will and His service! The man of fixed and
> unchanging purpose has a supreme contempt for obstacles. But when, as in
> Mohammed’s case, that purpose is the glorification of God, he has at
> hand a lever that can move the world. In this peculiar sense the great
> Prophet of Arabia was self-contained. He had everything within himself:
> that everything centred in God and Arabian unity. He sought only what he
> needed. This was to unify God and his country. How he succeeded is a
> matter of history.
> 
> D’Aubigné in his history of the Reformation, speaking of Luther, says:
> “Men, when designed by God to influence their contemporaries, are first
> seized and drawn along by the peculiar tendencies of their age.”
> Undoubtedly this, in a great measure, is so. It is quite evident that
> Mohammed was influenced in this way. Yet it is also obvious that he was
> not so much seized by the peculiar tendencies of his age (for in many
> ways he was far in advance of it), as that he was obsessed and dominated
> by the energy or spirit of God, and utilized these special features with
> the design of disseminating this overmastering God possession to others.
> 
> “There are but three sorts of persons,” Pascal used to say: “those who
> serve God, having found Him; those who employ themselves in seeking Him,
> not having found Him; and those who live without seeking Him or having
> found Him. The first are reasonable and happy; the last are mad and
> miserable; the intermediate are miserable and reasonable.”
> 
> If ever man on this earth found God, if ever man devoted his life to
> God’s service with a good and a great motive, it is certain that the
> Prophet of Arabia was that man. That on the whole and in the truest
> sense of the word he was reasonable, is best seen in the result which
> his labour achieved. That he was happy, is quite another matter. Real as
> is our existence, happiness at best is but an ephemeral phase of it. Yet
> there is much truth in the assertion, that gaiety seeks the crowd, while
> happiness loves silence and solitude as Mohammed himself did. In any
> case, if the satisfaction which ensues as the consequence of duty done,
> and well done, is happiness; if the consciousness that he has done his
> best in all sincerity and conscientiousness, gives happiness to the ego,
> then it is possible to assume that in bequeathing the grand heritage of
> Islam to posterity, Mohammed must have gone to his final rest in a state
> of supreme happiness.
> 
> Self-belief--“that thing given to man by his Creator,” as Carlyle calls
> it--was, as I shall show, a salient feature in Mohammed’s character.
> More than half a Bedawin (or what was practically the same thing,
> passing a great part of his life in deserts), this was only natural. But
> he did not allow this self-consciousness to degenerate, either into
> vanity or egotism. It neither spoilt nor conquered him. He knew his own
> weakness--none better--therefore relied all the more on the power of
> God. It was this outside influence which reacted on him so powerfully
> from within. It was this judicious blend or amalgam of two seemingly
> different thought-currents, which were in reality only a bifurcation of
> the same current, that gave him all his strength. It was this unique
> combination of an apparent dualism (through intense mental
> concentration) in one divine Monism that gave Mohammed victory over
> every obstacle. It was this compressed one-ness--the most sublime
> triumph of individual concentration in the world’s history--that carried
> Islam into the uttermost parts of the earth. It was this centralization
> of moral or religious gravity that swelled the belief of one man--a
> modest camel-driving trader only--into the perfervid belief of hundreds
> of millions. “For given a sincere man, you have given a thing worth
> attending to. Since sincerity, what is it but a divorce from earth and
> earthly feelings?”
> 
> One thing more. To thoroughly comprehend the spirit of Mohammed or the
> soul of Islam, the student himself must be thoroughly in earnest and
> sincere. He must in addition possess that moral, mental and intellectual
> sympathy which gives the ego an insight into human subtleties as well as
> simplicities. He must take Mohammed and Islam as he finds them--in the
> same intensely sincere spirit that constituted the one and inculcated
> the other. He must at the outset recognize that Mohammed was no mere
> spiritual pedlar, no vulgar time-serving vagrant, but one of the most
> profoundly sincere and earnest spirits of any age or epoch. A man not
> only great, but one of the greatest--i.e. truest--men that Humanity has
> ever produced. Great, i.e. not simply as a prophet, but as a patriot and
> a statesman: a material as well as a spiritual builder who constructed a
> great nation, a greater empire, and more even than all these, a still
> greater Faith. True, moreover, because he was true to himself, to his
> people, and above all to his God. Recognizing this, he will thus
> acknowledge that Islam is a profound and true cult, which strives to
> uplift its votaries from the depths of human darkness upwards into the
> higher realm of Light and Truth. It is in this deep sense of
> earnestness, and in this tense but even-minded spirit of equity, that I
> have endeavoured to make my study both rational and psychological: in
> other words, reasonable and true to the spirit. Naturally, therefore, I
> have avoided those narrow and devilish pitfalls of racial, creedal and
> colour prejudices--that awful curse of Humanity, that insuperable
> barrier to the cult of Humanitarianism--which leads to the deadly cancer
> of _Misconception_. Finally--making due allowance for space
> limitations--I have endeavoured to the best of my ability to get to the
> root of all that is good and great in the immortal work of this leader
> of men who was so good and so great in every sense. In this way only is
> it possible to get at the truth. Shallow, superficial and paradoxical
> inquiries are mere empty vanities as utterly useless, from a human
> standpoint, as those which are biassed and one-sided. To reach the
> depths, to touch the bottom, to get to the root of any true man’s
> motives, sincerity and thoroughness are as essential as intellectual
> acumen and profundity.
> 
> In this short study my one idea all through has been to delineate
> Mohammed as he was and Islam as she is. For this reason I have neither
> painted them with my own colouring, nor introduced into their natural
> complexion any outside flesh tints. In plain English, I have not placed
> upon their beliefs and principles a construction that, being ethnically
> foreign to the entire sociological system upon which they are based,
> would have been a fundamental error, at complete variance with them.
> 
> CHAPTER II
> 
> AN OUTLINE OF MOHAMMED’S TEMPERAMENT AND CHARACTERISTICS
> 
> One of the first thoughts that a very careful perusal of the Koran
> brings home to me, is the intense humanity of Mohammed and his work. The
> more one studies the various motives that led to his so-called
> revelations, the more one is struck by the strong associations that
> connect these divine messages and ordinances with the actions and
> movements that were going on all round him, as well as in his own
> mind--owing in a great measure to his own preaching.
> 
> In estimating the moral value of either Christianity or Islam, it is
> necessary to take into consideration, also to make allowance for, the
> times in which their founders lived. To attempt to judge one or other of
> them from the scientific standpoint of modern culture and civilization
> would be not only uneven but impossible. To gauge the standard of their
> mental and moral attainments, the student must investigate their work,
> and compare, then contrast, it with the general intellectual level of
> their own age. When this has been done, he should try and, if possible,
> realize what effect the advent and the doctrines advocated by them (in
> the one case some 1,900 years, and in the other 1,300 years ago) would
> now produce. In this way only is it feasible to arrive at a true and
> legitimate conclusion. But in doing so, the inquirer must divest,
> certainly dissociate himself, from all existing ideas on the subject,
> and deal with it as it is, and not what he thinks it ought to be.
> 
> The more one studies the Koran, the more obvious does it become that
> Mohammed had a powerfully receptive mind, and a specially retentive
> memory. Notwithstanding that he was illiterate, unable even to read and
> write, it is clear that he was well versed in all the tenets and
> traditions of his own people and of the Jews; and that in addition he
> had made himself acquainted with some of the doctrines and dogmas of the
> Christian Gospels. It is above all certain that for a great number of
> years Mohammed concentrated his mind thereon with the force and
> intensity of a sincere and ardent nature. But first and foremost the one
> great idea of the being, unity and providence of God predominated all
> his thoughts. Acting on a temperament that was highly emotional, and
> perceptibly neurotic or melancholic, the revelations embodied in the
> Koran were the natural result of so long and continuous a
> concentration. Still it is equally obvious that combining with this
> emotionalism and neurasthenia was a strong vein of commercialism and
> common sense, also marked political and administrative ability. It is
> further evident that in Mohammed’s character there commingled a very
> curious and conflicting number of elements and tendencies. Dominating
> all of these, however, was an intense zeal, an insatiable ambition, an
> overpowering individuality and egotism, and an inflexible doggedness and
> determination to attain his own ends. To convert, that is, the weakness
> and disintegration of the various tribes that composed the Arab nation
> into the union of one consolidated whole, with himself and family at its
> head, as a human representation of the unity and supremacy of the one
> and only God. This latter, as we know, was in no way original. It is
> clear all throughout that he had profited from his knowledge of Jewish
> tradition and experience, and that he based his theory on the dogmas of
> Moses and Abraham. He had long since realized that it was the worship of
> their own tribal and communal gods by the members of the various Arab
> tribes and communities that accentuated the differences and divisions
> between them. He determined, therefore, as the Jewish leaders long
> before him had attempted, to consolidate and weld them into a single
> nation, through the worship of the one supreme and indivisible God. It
> was on and through this divine indivisibility that he decided to base
> and construct the unity and nationalization of the people.
> 
> Unquestionably Mohammed’s movement was as much political as it was
> religious, as much material as it was spiritual. But being of a
> profoundly reflective, at the same time of a practical, turn of mind, he
> chose religion as the only possible and thoroughly reliable means of
> achieving his great and noble ends; not only possible and thorough,
> however, but the most potential. Mohammed, in fact, judged the capacity
> and characteristics of his countrymen to a nicety. Unconsciously--for
> legislation to him was a natural heritage--he followed the example of
> the most famous legislators, and instituted such laws as at the time
> were the best that the people were capable of receiving. Tactful and
> diplomatic to a degree, it was policy on his part to retain a certain
> number of the old beliefs and customs in order to satisfy the people. He
> knew, none better, the fierce and turbulent temper of his countrymen,
> and how it was most politic to deal with them. In making this concession
> he showed his political wisdom, if not a certain breadth and greatness
> of statecraft. After all it was, from an independent standpoint, but a
> small concession as compared to the prize that he got in return for it.
> It was a compromise in other words. Yet this and his own evidence in the
> Koran is important as showing that Mohammed was not so much in a strict
> sense the originator of a new creed as he was a reformer and the
> renovator of an old one. It was the impress of his great personality,
> distinguished as this was by the intense sincerity and earnestness of
> his nature, that has left its mark on human history.
> 
> Mohammed was a thinker and a worker not only for his own, but for all
> time. He recognized that man was equally a political and religious
> product of God’s creation. He understood that as a counterpoise to man’s
> materialism and to the destructive in his nature, is that indefinable
> essence which we call the spiritual and the constructive. The more one
> looks into and understands the Koran, the more obvious is it that
> Mohammed concentrated all the active and vigorous energies of his vivid
> and powerful imagination, also his virile mentality, on the
> accomplishment of his great design. For design it certainly was. The
> wish undoubtedly was father to the thought. Not, however, in an
> invidious sense, but in the firm conviction that design and not accident
> or chance is one of the controlling principles of God and His creation,
> and that, consistent with this principle, he, Mohammed, had been chosen
> as the divine agent. Personal ambition and aggrandizement never for a
> moment entered his head, or formed part of it. The national good, to be
> attained only by a national or universal God--the one and only God of
> the universe--was the one great ambition that inspired and impelled him.
> Because although every one for himself and God for us all is presumably
> a natural law, Mohammed managed to evade it. But in evading it, he was
> not revolutionary. On the contrary, in this way he rose one step upward
> above the lower human level towards that higher humanity which
> approaches the divine.
> 
> This design, as I have just said, originated from the doctrine of divine
> unity attributed to Moses and Abraham. Indeed, as one reads the Koran
> carefully and steadily through from beginning to end, it is manifested
> in every surah--almost, in fact, on every page. The whole work, in fact,
> is saturated with the one idea, inspired by the one thought. Everywhere
> there is evidence of the final object in view, the unconquerable will,
> the inflexible resolve, the fixed purpose, the indomitable perseverance,
> the unyielding persistency, the infinite and interminable patience, the
> calm endurance, the irresistible courage, and the grim tenacity of the
> ego. So much so is this evident, that when I compare this determinism
> with the neurotic element in Mohammed’s character, I am obliged to
> admit that the balance remains with the former. Yet--and this I think is
> the strangest feature about this strange but commanding
> personality--there is no getting away from the fact that he was much
> under the influence of the latter.
> 
> It is, of course, possible that Mohammed was what in Arabia is called a
> “Saudawi,” or person of melancholy temperament--what nowadays would be
> called a hypochondriacal dyspeptic. Melancholia is a complaint that the
> Arabs are subject to, students, philosophers and literary men more
> especially. A distaste for society, a longing for solitude, an unsettled
> habit of mind, and a neglect of worldly affairs are always attributed to
> it. It is very probably--to some extent at least--as Burton suggests,
> the effect of overworking the brain in a hot, dry atmosphere; also due
> in some measure to the highly nervous and bilious temperament
> constitutional to the Arabs: a temperament that in Mohammed’s case was
> aggravated by excessive emotionalism.
> 
> It is clear that once Mohammed got hold of, or was obsessed by, the idea
> that he was God’s chosen messenger, and that his sayings were inspired
> by God (a very old and primitive belief remember): or rather as soon as
> ever Khadija and others of his household were imbued with the idea, then
> he never relaxed his hold of it for a moment. The confidence of those
> about him, his faithful spouse more especially, gave him confidence in
> himself. Confidence engendered conviction, and conviction led to the
> Koran and the ultimate triumph of his cause. That he was sincere in all
> this, there is not the slightest doubt, but in taking the measure of his
> sincerity we must be guided entirely by the fact that he was essentially
> a man who had long before made up his mind to bring about the unity of
> his country. Indeed the whole history of Khadija’s association with the
> matter shows this. To be a prophet in his own country or household, a
> man must inspire respect, or the still greater feeling of veneration. No
> man, unless he is earnest and devout, could possibly impress the members
> of his family. They are bound to find him out. This applies all the more
> forcibly to an eastern household in which polygamy prevails, and that is
> made up of so many opposing elements and conflicting interests, the
> atmosphere of which is only too often one necessarily of envies,
> jealousies, rivalries, suspicions, intrigues, and even conspiracies. If
> Mohammed had been insincere, if instead of convictions, his belief had
> been a mere profession or a sham; if it had not been one of austere,
> rigid practice and self-denial, then those about him would neither have
> been impressed, nor would they have espoused his cause as warmly and
> valiantly as they did. Not only were they impressed, however, but
> convinced, and it was their convictions that strengthened and confirmed
> his own faith. But once he had gained their confidence, his mission was
> assured. There was no doubt whatever then in his own mind that he was
> God’s chosen apostle, to whom God had revealed His word--the words of
> truth and life. From this out, his own vigour, his own extraordinary
> individuality and inflexibility carried him through from beginning to
> end. Once others believed in and relied on him, his own latent
> self-reliance grew into a living and active factor that carried all
> before it. But as he looked at it, all his strength was from God. God
> was at his elbow and in his heart, therefore he could not fail. Nothing,
> in fact, shows better than this aspect of the matter how very wise and
> all-knowing (his constant refrain about God in the Koran) Mohammed
> himself was. How tactful and diplomatic, but above all, how deep his
> knowledge of human nature. Had Khadija and his household not believed in
> him, it is safe to assume that then there would have been no Prophet and
> no Islam. As Novalis says: “My conviction gains infinitely the moment
> another soul will believe in it.” So it was with Mohammed. So it is with
> us all. So Carlyle pithily observes: “A false man found a religion? Why
> a false man cannot build a brick house!” I have already shown that
> Mohammed was not false. But neither did he found a religion. Apart from
> the fact that he was a reality, and as true as any of the world’s great
> prophets, Mohammed was unable to perform the impossible. Religion as a
> natural product was beyond his comprehension and potentialities. Islam
> like Christianity was a creed--a human or artificial development--the
> healthy and vigorous offspring of a noble and sublime, yet in no sense
> original conception. But there was no demerit in this want of
> originality. Because as Carlyle says: “The merit of originality is not
> novelty; it is sincerity”: and with regard to Mohammed, this has been
> more than once acknowledged.
> 
> Launched upon the world of Arabia in no false and unreal spirit, but
> with the spirit of grim sincerity and earnestness, Islam has proved its
> stability spiritually and materially, the present result of which speaks
> for itself. It is enough to say that a creed whose followers now number
> over 250,000,000, or some 15 per cent. of the human race (an under-
> rather than an over-estimate), could have sprung from a healthy and
> vigorous seed only--a seed that has been nourished and kept alive by the
> vital spark of human sympathies, hopes and aspirations.
> 
> What appears to me as so remarkable and so significant, so truly
> characteristic of the man, is the way in which he never lets go his grip
> of the central idea and purpose, but follows it up step by step. And as
> he follows, he makes every point that he can, seizes every opportunity,
> takes every advantage of every ordinary event and occurrence that is
> going on around him, makes the best of every reverse, turns even his
> set-backs and reverses into moral victories; and accepts it all as
> inevitable with the calmness of a philosophy that emanated from his own
> wondrous egoism and that inexhaustible fund of patience and reserve of
> courage which so distinguishes his character. In this respect alone
> Mohammed truly was a remarkable man--a man infinitely above, not only
> his surroundings, but his age. With Mohammed, not only was the great
> fact of his own existence great to him, but in almost every page of the
> Koran it is obvious that God’s omnipresence and omnipotence had made a
> profound and lasting impression on him. Everywhere and in everything--in
> natural objects more especially--he saw and felt the hand and the power
> of God. And to him it was a power so overwhelmingly terrific and
> transcendent in all its aspects, that it defied description and
> demonstrated the insignificance and impotence of man. In more senses
> than one he was a pantheist. To him, either God was Nature and Nature
> God, or God was in Nature and Nature was in God. At bottom of him the
> old primitive belief was there, but in unity and concentration he saw
> strength. In his mind there was no room, no place, for lesser deities.
> The power and the splendour of the one creative God--who lived and moved
> and had His being throughout the universe, overshadowed, or, rather, had
> absorbed, them all. In the grim silence of the desert, in the vastness
> of the heavens, in the great infinity of space, in the scintillation of
> the stars, in every fibre of his own consciousness, God was with him. To
> Mohammed God was not a personal being but the God and Maker of the
> universe and all mankind. With him the entire theme and volume of his
> stream of thought was God and his religion. Coming from the core and
> centre of him as it did, even through the long vista of thirteen
> centuries, one can picture this overmastering element in every line of
> his stern-set and yet gentle face: a face reflective and speaking, that
> not only had a history stamped upon every feature, but a great, a
> strenuous, and a commanding history. _In vino veritas_ is as true to-day
> as when first it was uttered. So too the saw, that “mastership like wine
> unmasks the man.” But Mohammed needed no unmasking. God and the
> truth--the truth about God as it dominated him--was the rich, strong
> wine which coursed through every vein and fibre of his mental organism,
> stimulating and spurring him onwards to a sustained and continuous
> effort that ended only in death. A sincere and earnest man, a natural,
> therefore a deeply religious man, to him God was also a Dayyan (one of
> the ninety-nine epithets of God), i.e. “A weigher of good and evil”; One
> who computed and settled accounts; the holder of the even balance and
> scales of justice, the Judge and Arbiter of all mankind.
> 
> But apart from these functions, the power and sublimity of the Supreme
> Being, as he saw it expressed in the silent grandeur of the desert, the
> death-like stillness of the sandy sea, the frowning ruggedness and
> majesty of the mountains, the immense universality of Nature, was always
> before his eyes and in all his thoughts. Full of this feeling, of the
> awe and veneration innate in man and co-existent with the eternal ages,
> he bursts out in the second surah: “God! there is no God but He; the
> living, the self-subsisting: neither slumber nor sleep seizeth Him; to
> Him _belongeth_ whatsoever is in heaven, and on earth. Who is he that
> can intercede with Him, but through His good pleasure? He knoweth that
> which is past, and that which is to come unto them, and they shall not
> comprehend anything of His knowledge, but so far as He pleaseth. His
> throne is extended over heaven and earth, and the preservation of both
> is no burden unto Him. He is the high and mighty.”
> 
> As a natural outburst of emotions and convictions that had been pent up
> within his own inner consciousness, that were the offspring of some
> twenty years of journeyings to and fro across the deserts where “Amin”
> the faithful one was in direct and constant contact with Nature, and
> often in silent communion with the Infinite, these few words are truly
> magnificent and sublime; magnificent not only for the boldness and
> sublimity of their imagery and conception, but magnificent also with the
> intensity and profundity of true sincerity. Few, but all the more pithy
> for that, these words are from the heart and soul of the man--a man who
> speaks not unadvisedly with his lips, but who feels with every nerve and
> fibre of his intensely emotional being. They are (as he himself feels)
> the outpouring of an insignificant and impotent atom, yet of a sincere
> and earnest man approaching in all humility and veneration, and with the
> loyalty and allegiance of a true believer and servant, the great,
> invisible He, who holds him and all creatures in the hollow of His
> mighty hand.
> 
> In a conversation that Luther had one day with some friends at table, he
> spoke of the world as a vast and magnificent pack of cards composed of
> emperors, kings, princes and so forth. For several ages these had been
> vanquished by the Pope. Then God had come upon the scene, and chosen the
> “ace,” the very smallest card in the pack--himself, in a word--and
> overthrown this conqueror of worldly powers and principalities.
> Mohammed, as much as Luther, was one of “God’s Aces.” Seldom, indeed, in
> the history of the world, has so great a human river flowed from a
> source so puny. Never did the divine manifest itself in a single pip, so
> seemingly small and insignificant as a cause, yet so pre-eminently and
> consistently great as an effect!
> 
> “Men,” says Dumas in one of his historico-romantic masterpieces, “are
> visible, palpable, moral. You can meet, attack, subdue them; and when
> they are subdued you can subject them to trial and hang them. But ideas
> you cannot oppose in that way. They glide unseen; they penetrate; they
> hide themselves especially from the sight of those who would destroy
> them. Hidden in the depths of the soul, they there throw out deep roots.
> The more you cut off the branches which imprudently appear, the more
> powerful and inextirpable become the roots below.
> 
> “An idea is a young giant which must be watched night and day; for the
> idea which yesterday crawled at your feet, to-morrow will dispose of
> your head. An idea is a spark falling upon straw.” ... “For the mind of
> man is no inert receptacle of knowledge, but absorbs and incorporates
> into its own constitution the ideas which it receives.” Thus it was with
> Mohammed. God was the spark, the vital spark of spiritual flame, and
> this humble but honest Arab trader was the straw, that after twenty
> years of silent but tenacious smouldering God had set a light to.
> 
> The better, however, to understand his character and purpose, we must
> divide his life into two sections. The first when, as trader from the
> age of thirteen up to forty, first for his uncle and then for Khadija,
> he was the man of business. Yet synchronous with this the man of ideas
> and ideals that he kept to himself however; that he divulged to no one.
> For not until the time was ripe and the hour had come, not until he felt
> the call--felt, that is, that he was ready and able to begin--did he
> confide even in Khadija. The second section when, as the apostle of God,
> he worked with all the fiery fervour yet steady zeal of a true prophet,
> to put his ideas into practice. But there was this difference with
> regard to Mohammed as a theorist. He was not a man of many ideas. In
> reality one central idea alone inspired him. But great and magnificent
> as that was, it was equal to a multitude. It was a growing and a
> spreading giant which, like the prolific banyan tree, threw out branch
> and root with such extravagant luxuriance, that it completely
> overshadowed and predominated the entire expanse of his mental area. We
> know what this idea was. We know that round and out of the central stem
> of God’s overmastering unity Mohammed had determined to construct an
> Arabian nation--possibly something even greater. We know, too, that the
> one was but the offspring of the other. Or it may be that they were the
> twin offspring of all this profound and concentrated contemplation. But
> we do not know how this great idea first took root. Let us, however, try
> and trace it to its source as nearly as we can.
> 
> With still greater emphasis than Chrysostom, who asserted that “the true
> Shekinah is man,” Carlyle says: “the essence of our being, the mystery
> in us that calls itself ‘I,’ is a breath of heaven; the highest Being
> reveals Himself in man.” An idea such as this would never have occurred
> to Mohammed. The fatherhood of God in its accepted human sense was
> repugnant to him. The mere thought was sacrilege!
> 
> His conception of God was much too exalted, much too divine for this.
> God and humanity could have no possible connexion. God was the
> Creator--the Potter, who out of the clay or matter in chaos had made
> the world and all therein. Humanity was but a small part only of His
> creation. Men were but as clay in His hands--mere creatures of His.
> Beyond this hard and fast line there could be no relationship between
> God and man. Association was as impossible as comparison was
> objectionable. God, as supreme Creator and Director of the universe, was
> a Being altogether distinct and apart from His own creation. Yet as such
> He was the soul or spirit of it, the breath of life to all that lived,
> and of death to all that died. Man was as evil, as puny, and as weak as
> God was great and good and strong. God was too exalted and glorious for
> words. Incomprehensible and inscrutable, He was beyond the power of
> language, outside the narrow limitations of thought to imagine. Just as
> the heavens were divided from the earth by boundless space, so far apart
> was God from man. The endless immensity of everything was insufficient
> to express His omnipotence--fell far short of the unthinkable reality.
> Even the heavens and earth as His handiwork did not convey as completely
> as it might appear to do the capacity of the power that belonged to Him.
> To Mohammed, in every vibrating star an all-seeing eye and glory of the
> great Creator, God, was visible; in every tiny blade of grass, in every
> spring of water, He was manifest and tangible. So some eleven centuries
> after Mohammed was laid to rest, a poor, struggling, but undaunted
> artist-poet, looking from his mean London garret with the eyes of a
> dreamer-mystic into the great invisible above and beyond him (just as
> Amin the faithful one had done), yearned:
> 
>     “To see the world in a grain of sand,
>     And a heaven in a wild flower;
>     Hold Infinity in the palm of “his” hand,
>     And eternity in an hour.”
> 
> And in the middle of the late departed century--which rushed across the
> great void of Time like a hissing meteor--thus Tennyson:
> 
>     “Flower in the crannied wall,
>     I pluck you out of the crannies,
>     I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
>     Little flower; but if I could understand
>     What you are, root and all, and all in all,
>     I should know what God and man is.”
> 
> While to Wordsworth, with a faith in Nature and Nature’s God as deep as
> Mohammed, the meanest flower that blows, gave thoughts that often lay
> too deep for words.
> 
> Society is only too apt to judge or condemn facts and men; also to
> ridicule the age and its spirit. This drastic method saves the trouble
> of comprehending them. The society of keen Arab traders and wily
> Bedouins which environed Mohammed did not comprehend him. To them he
> was not so much like a fish out of water, as a land quadruped at sea,
> altogether out of his element as well as out of his depth--a flotsam
> struggling to get to dry land as a jetsam.
> 
> Immeasurably above and beyond his social contemporaries either morally
> or spiritually, to them Mohammed was an enigma and a mystery. “Scenting
> a mystery is like the first bite at a piece of scandal, and holy souls
> do not detest it. In the secret compartments of bigotry there is some
> curiosity for scandal.” But among Mohammed’s opponents--the Koreish more
> particularly--it was not merely scandal that moved them: it was
> jealousy, envy, malice, and in the end sheer diabolical hatred. In
> describing the state of a mind that is advancing, we must remember that
> all progress is not made in one march or even series of marches.
> Mohammed’s march was entirely uphill, dead against the collar, the whole
> way and all the time, except, perhaps, just towards the end. Yet each
> day’s march brought him nearer to the goal of his desires. Slowly but
> surely he made progress, and with it reputation. The slowness of his
> movement, his advance, made progress and reputation all the more not a
> dead, but a living certainty. But there is always anarchy in reputation.
> It was this reputation--this individuality that dared to insolently
> assert itself in the overthrow of their ancestral gods--which explained
> Koreish hostility.
> 
> Mohammed was a calm, yet by no means an unprogressive agent of
> Providence. Brains that are absorbed either in mania or wisdom, or, as
> often happens, in both at once, are permeated very very slowly by the
> things of this world. But even admitting that there was melancholia,
> there was no mania about Mohammed. If ever a man was sane and healthy,
> he was. “You grant a devout man, you grant a wise man: no man has a
> seeing eye without first having had a seeing heart.” This fits his case
> to a nicety. A more devout man than Mohammed never lived. He was as
> pre-eminently wise as he was devout. He utilized his wisdom to the
> fullest extent of his capacity, and he proved his devoutness by putting
> his beliefs to the infallible test of stern and rigid practice. A trader
> to his finger tips, a clear-sighted man of business, and a statesman
> with prophetic instincts, who profited by the past, utilized the
> present, and prepared for the future, in this sense he was a
> contradiction. The being absorbed in wisdom did not prevent him from
> carrying on his worldly duties in the most conscientious and thorough
> manner. _Per contra_, his worldly duties did not prevent him from
> philosophical absorption. The one was his duty, the other the breath of
> life to him. His veneration of God gradually crystallized the religion
> in him into a creed. This is generally the result of concentration. His
> absorption of God ended in God’s absorption of him. It was a long and
> gradual process which occupied twenty years. During this period of
> embryonic development he withdrew, as it were, into himself. Then when
> the crisis arrived, it came out of him, as a river flows out of a
> spring, and was called Islam. “Our chimeras,” says Victor Hugo, “are the
> things which most resemble ourselves, and each man dreams of the
> unknown, and the impossible according to his nature.” Mohammed’s
> chimera, as we know, was God and Arabian unity. But there was nothing
> chimerical about the former, and with this invincible lever, the latter
> too was a distinct probability. For although he was doubtless
> superstitious--that is natural--and wrestled with shadows and visions,
> Mohammed dealt in realities. To him God was the most real thing, the
> sternest reality of all in the universe. God, in fact, was the Universe.
> These, which to another would have been the unknown and the impossible,
> were to him the possible and the inevitable. The nature that was in him
> was the nature of God and the universe. There is a point where
> profundity is oblivion, when light becomes extinguished. Though from a
> literary aspect Mohammed was not profound, in a religious sense his
> profundity, centring as it did in God, burst forth into the Cimmerian
> darkness which enveloped his country with the brilliancy of a meteor
> that illumines the blackest night.
> 
> There is too a way of encountering error by going all the way to meet
> the truth, also by a sort of violent good faith which accepts everything
> unconditionally. There was nothing violent (certainly not for a long
> period), but there was everything that stands for goodness and stability
> in Mohammed’s faith. It was thus--in the spirit of a hero and the valour
> of a Paladin--he encountered the error and opposition of his enemies by
> first of all going out of his way to meet the truth; then, in spite of
> themselves and their hostility, by enforcing it upon those who would not
> be persuaded. According to Fontenelle, “there is only truth that
> persuades, and even without requiring to appear with all its proofs. It
> makes its way so naturally into the mind, that when it is heard for the
> first time, it seems as if one were only remembering.” This was very
> much the case with Mohammed. This was why he tried at first to lead and
> not to drive his countrymen to the truth. To him who saw the truth of
> God’s existence, His mercy written as plainly in the falling raindrop as
> His power of retribution is in the lightning that flashes across the sky
> as if it would rend it, their stubbornness in rejecting God was utterly
> incomprehensible. His mind had two attitudes. The one was turned to God,
> the other to man. In contemplating God, he but studied man’s interests
> and his own. But contemplation with Mohammed did not end by becoming a
> form of indolence. Imaginative--visionary, in fact--as he was, he did
> not allow his imagination to play tricks with him. He did not fancy that
> he wanted for nothing. Even when married to Khadija, and in tolerable
> affluence, there was obviously a great void in his life. This want of
> course was spiritual. Exact and punctilious as he was in his temporal
> duties, his whole bent and inclination was towards the former. As a
> younger and poorer man, he had looked so much at the humanity around him
> that he saw right down into its very soul. With the same fervent
> intensity he had looked into nature until he saw or rather felt the
> creator and controller thereof. “There are times when the unknown
> reveals itself in a mysterious way to the spirit of man. A sudden rent
> in the veil of darkness will make manifest things hitherto unseen, and
> then close again upon the mysteries within. Such visions have
> occasionally the power to effect a transfiguration in those whom they
> visit. They convert a poor camel-driver into a Mahomet; a peasant girl
> tending her goats into a Joan of Arc.” A conscientious and faithful
> worker, Mohammed was at the same time a dreamer. But his dreams were but
> the reflex of his work and of his ideas. These came to him like
> mountainous waves, or the swell of an angry surf as it thunders on the
> beach with a threatening roar, a mass of water that would submerge the
> very earth. His ideas did not, however, submerge him. Nor did they
> destroy or bury him. Out of their unknown and bosky depths Mohammed
> invariably rose to the surface with the buoyancy of a life-belt, calm
> and unmoved, for his spiritual centre of gravity always held him up. He
> dreamt of man, but chiefly of God--of God’s goodness and greatness, of
> man’s impotence and frailty. He looked at the solid earth on which he
> stood, with its stones and its sand, its wheat and its tares, its joys
> and sorrows, but particularly its suffering children and helpless women.
> Then he looked at the vast void above, with its star-spangled sky, its
> sun and moon, and the God that made all and was in all. This led him to
> think of the void that was in himself, and to compare the one with the
> other. Then he pondered and compared. The greatness of it all passed
> into him and he dreamt again. There was no void above, for God filled
> it. So too his own emptiness gave place to the Supreme. All at once a
> great feeling of tenderness was aroused within him. From the egotism of
> the _genus vir_, he passed to the contemplation of the _genus homo_, the
> man who contemplates and feels. God had touched his heart. In
> forgetfulness of self was born a great compassion for all. For years and
> years Mohammed lived with his neck in a noose of obstacles composed of
> human thorns and millstones. He was, so to speak, an outcast, thrown on
> the dung heap, and into the brambles; at times even in the mud. Yet no
> mud clung to him, not even to his feet. His head at all events was
> always in the light, his hand always resting on the omnipotence of the
> Almighty. Invariably gentle, attentive, serious, benevolent, easily
> satisfied, he remained serene and peaceful. It was only in the last
> extremity, when all his persuasive earnestness failed him, that his
> enemies stirred him to wrath. But it was a just and dispassionate wrath;
> it was the wrath of God. For whether they liked or no, Mohammed in his
> dual capacity as God’s agent and Arabian patriot had made up his mind
> that they should have God. On this point he was inexorable. Feeling that
> there is an eternity in justice, he felt that in justice to God, and to
> themselves, and in spite of themselves, it was his duty to proclaim the
> truth. Many a less tenaciously sincere man, many a real hero, would have
> shrunk from and have succumbed before an ordeal so terrific, a contest
> so supremely Titanic. But Mohammed was made of sterner stuff, of the
> spirit that gods are made of. Failure was a word that he did not
> recognize. With God at his back, success was an absolute certainty--a
> foregone conclusion.
> 
> Whatever might be his desire to remain where he was and cling to it, he
> was impelled to advance, to continue, to go on further and still
> further. Yet to think and to ask himself where it was all going to lead
> him to? But although he thought, he never hesitated, never turned back.
> His hand was to the plough--the plough God. God was the goal, the end,
> the summit of human existence and ambition. Humanity was the soil, and
> to get there he must furrow his way through its enmities and affections.
> Firm and exceptional natures are thus moulded out of miseries,
> misfortunes and afflictions. As a result of his work history shows us
> more and more that Mohammed was firm and exceptional to the very highest
> degree. Yet there was nothing of that hypocrisy which Victor Hugo calls
> supreme cynicism about him. He was too human, too much in earnest, to be
> anything but Amin the Faithful. There is, after all, more in a name than
> meets the eye. In some names there is history and the tragedy of
> history. In others there is the might and majesty of a commanding
> magnetism, which recognizes the sublimity of truth. In Mohammed’s case,
> even to this day over two hundred and fifty million human beings bow the
> knee through him to God. Yes, there is much--a world of meaning--that is
> inexpressible in a name--a magic and a _je ne sais quoi_ which under the
> label of Napoleon led men to the Kingdom Come of glory--in other words,
> to destruction and the devil--but that with Mohammed was the open sesame
> to the glory and power of God. A rose by any other name may smell as
> sweet. But Islam without the halo of time-honoured sanctity that
> attaches to the name of Mohammed, would sound as but a hollow brass or a
> tinkling cymbal. Just, in fact, as the man himself was sincere and
> faithful, there is, and there will continue to be, a magic in his
> name--more so even than that of Christ has for the Christian--drawing
> men to God, as he in person drew them not alone by sheer force of will
> and character, but by a force which was even stronger, the force of
> sincerity and truth.
> 
> CHAPTER III
> 
> THE ENVIRONMENT THAT MOULDED MOHAMMED
> 
> A true son of the desert, it is impossible to understand the powerful
> and complex personality of Mohammed, unless we can appreciate the
> peculiar character and genius of the desert. More so in some ways even
> than the seaman, the dweller or sojourner in the desert is distinct and
> unique in himself. Possessing the courage of the Fatalist, and as free
> as the roving winds of heaven, he is all the same of a shrinking and
> timorous nature, confronted as he often is by certain aspects and
> phenomena that imperil his life and strike down to the very roots of his
> moral consciousness.
> 
> In the desert there is, comparatively speaking, little life. Unlike the
> forest region, it is naked and almost destitute. There, as at sea, man
> is face to face not only with the great elements, but with the greater
> Infinite and Invisible. He is nearer to God and the immensity of Nature.
> There is nothing--or little at least--to distract his attention--nothing
> between him and the ever watchful Inscrutable. There is no shade from
> the sun by day, no protection from the moon and stars at night. They
> look down on him as from the pinnacle of the sublimest elevation. The
> fiercer glory of the sun by day burns into his very soul, consumes his
> very marrow. The milder effulgence of the moon by night throws its
> silvery glamour over all his senses. The lesser and more distant
> splendour of the stars--those watch-fires of angelic spirits--in their
> countless myriads awe and bewilder him. In the choking breath of the
> simoom he feels the potentialities of God, and his own helpless
> impotence. Struck all of a heap by its stifling blast, he is filled with
> fear and trembling in the presence of a Power invisible yet tangible and
> deadly. Whether he wills or not, the fear of God--of the Inexorable and
> Inevitable--enters into his heart and takes possession of his inmost
> soul. Call it the fear of God or not, it is practically one and the same
> feature--the mere human label makes no difference to this awful and
> unseen reality--the same fear of the Unknown, the Unexpected and the
> Inevitable: the Inevitable that is always with us, the agnostic and the
> sophist no less than with the theologian, yet unseen, incomprehensible
> and omnipotent. But more than anything, it is the awful and impenetrable
> silence that impresses and appals the silent and dignified nomad of the
> desert.
> 
> To those who have never been outside the confines of civilization, it is
> not logically possible even to guess at the extraordinary influence--a
> fascination amounting to witchery--that the silence and solitude of the
> desert exercises over one. Yet if I were asked to define the essence and
> subtlety of this influence, I could but answer that it is indefinable;
> all the same a glamour that, like the force of gravity, is irresistible.
> Free and open like the sea (but fresh only at night), it is not the
> witchery of the soft blue sky, for the sky of the desert is hard and
> steely; it is not the fierce white heat of the fervid sun that melts
> into the very marrow of one’s bones; but rather is it the soothing magic
> of the moon at night, under the brilliant canopy of the heavens, when
> the earth, cooling rapidly, is lulled into eternal silence, that one
> falls under the magic spell of its wondrous influence. But even the
> glamour of the moon is out-glamoured by the darkness of the night under
> whose funereal pall even the great suns and planets hide their
> diminished heads. There is in the darkness and the silence of the night
> a mystery and a profundity that arouses the sluggish, even the stagnant
> consciousness of the dullard--that much more so attracts the quickening
> soul of the mystic and visionary, which springs to it with the same
> eager avidity that a lean and hungry trout leaps at the first fly which
> he sees after a long and enforced abstinence. It is in this darkness and
> silence of the night, rather than in the fierce glare of the midday sun,
> that the fear of the great Infinite comes to man. For if we but think of
> it, what a spectre-teeming spectacle is night. We hear strange, weird
> sounds. We know not whence they come or whither they go. Or it may be
> that all around us is as the silence of the grave--of eternal death. We
> see the evening star looming large like a great world on fire. The blue
> of the sky looms black. The stars seem to speak to us; the whole scene
> is impressive--a sight for the gods. In the desert, however, and to the
> earnest thinker whose centre of gravity is God, night is something more
> than a mere spectacle--a something greater, grander and more terrifying
> than a simple impression--a feeling deeper and sublimer even than a
> conviction: a revelation of the Unseen Unknown which is all the time
> behind that which he sees and knows.
> 
> Full as night is of phantoms, shades, sounds and silence, it is no
> illusive mirage, no mere empty simulacrum. But in every way it is a
> reality and a substance which is tangible, that touches one not only on
> the spot, on the raw, but everywhere; that fills one with vague fears,
> and brings even the proudest and the sternest to their knees before the
> power of the great Omnipotence. The very stars which hang out in the
> great firmament appear as God’s sign-posts--great all-seeing eyes that
> are ever upon us--or like eternal watch-fires which contrast the
> eternity of God with the momentary mortality of man; they enhance the
> blackness of the blue. Peering as they do into the awesome watcher’s
> inmost soul, they either drive him headlong into the blackness and
> terrors of evil, or lead him by their kindly light into the glory of the
> Almighty Presence. Unquestionably the night is either diabolical or
> sacred. Not only this, she is the brooder and breeder of all primitive
> doctrines, the conceiver and the mother of all human creeds. In her
> immense womb there is a latent light, a smouldering volcano full of
> ashes, cinders, and dead men’s bones; yet full also of fire-sparks that
> are capable of flashing into luminosity, even of bursting into hissing,
> leaping and devouring flames. It was thus that Christianity and Islam
> came into being. It was thus out of the primeval sacrifices, the shadows
> and silence of death and darkness, that all creeds have crept into and
> out of the minds of men. Tortuous human ant-heaps bored and tunnelled
> through and through by human ideas, human hopes, and human aspirations;
> worlds in the low-lying limbo of the fœtus stage, fecundating in all
> directions into beliefs, faiths, creeds, sects, denominations,
> quackeries, dissimulations and charlatanism. Labyrinthine, subterranean,
> and full of subtleties as all these creeds appear to be, they are easy
> enough to comprehend. They have all sprung from the same simple seed if
> we would but recognize it. If we but looked at this vista of the past as
> through a mental telescope, if we but grasped the substance and not the
> shadow, went straight to the simple root instead of to the theological
> and metaphysical subtleties of it all, we would find it absolutely
> simple. If we would but for a moment drop from our eyes the dense scales
> of dogma, bigotry and prejudice, there would be no difficulty in tracing
> back all these enigmatic ramifications and gloomy obscurities of
> pristine darkness and chaos to the one central germ idea, the one
> vitalizing spark that inspires and illumines them all.
> 
> It is obvious that Wordsworth, when he speaks of only “two voices,” the
> one “of the sea,” the other “of the mountains”--“each a mighty voice,”
> quite overlooked the bleakness and silence of the desert. This
> overpowering blackness that pervades the very soul, creeps through every
> vent into the bones and chills one to the very marrow. This sublime
> silence, that speaks to one as the still small voice of God spoke to
> Moses, and that fills the thinker with even greater awe and veneration
> than the crashing and rolling thunder. This silence which is of
> eternity, therefore golden, while speech is of to-day and only silvern,
> for as Carlyle reminds us: “After speech has done its best, silence has
> to include all that speech has forgotten or cannot express.”
> 
> Speaking for myself, who have passed many days of my existence at sea,
> and many more still in the desert, there is that in the latter which
> always reminds me of the former. To be sure, the ever restless sea with
> its almost myriad moods--its calm, its motion, its rippling smiles, its
> wavy undulations, its heights and depths, its fickleness and treachery,
> its dazzling beauties, its fierce turbulence--is as unlike the desert,
> with its grim stiff grandeur and appalling sameness as it well could be:
> still--
> 
>     “Tho’ inland far we be,
>     Our souls have sight of that immortal sea
>     Which brought us thither.”
> 
> There is no music in it by day or by night, only the dead still hush of
> silence. Yet the desert has its aspects, if it has not its moods and
> contrasts--as singular as they are striking. See, or rather feel it
> under the fierce and scorching glare of the fiery sun, that almost
> shrivels you into a mummy; see it also under the softer spell of the
> silvery orb, when the air is balmy, if not fresh, and you will at once
> imagine yourself to be in an altogether different and enchanted world.
> Then again, lose yourself in the desert on a dark night when for once in
> a way the stars are dim or obscured by clouds, and you will realize as
> you never before have done, the awesome reality of the sense of
> loneliness--a feeling which can only be compared to that felt by the
> hunted criminal hiding in a city, and against whom every man’s hand is
> raised.
> 
> But there is besides in the desert the fateful mirage that, like the
> ocean sirens, has lured so many to their doom. Finally there is the
> oasis which stands out of the sea of shimmering sand, like an island
> paradise that towers over the waste of seething waters which encircle
> it. The desert too, like the sea, has its ships and its men. Ships that
> pass by day as well as by night. Ships that stride across the great
> sandy wastes, grunting and gawky, with unwearying patience, unyielding
> tenacity, and unerring instinct. As are the ships, so are the men. But
> in place of gawkiness and grunts, the golden virtue of silence, and the
> conscious pride of natural dignity. Men who in their very port and
> carriage are the very spirit and personification of the desert. Men who
> represent not the genii, but the genius of the great dry sea of sand
> and silence. Indeed, if ever men on this planet of ours were
> patriarchal, if ever men bore themselves with the gait and the simple
> dignity of free men, the Bedawins of Arabia and the North African
> deserts do. With the lynx-like, yet enigmatic expression that calls to
> mind a combination of eagle keenness and owl-like solemnity, there is
> about them a freedom of manner and bearing, a dignity of carriage, an
> independence of character, that are the peculiarly glorious and
> distinctive heirlooms of the air, expanse and grandeur of these inland
> seas. In every sense, moral and physical, they are the products of an
> unrestricted environment that has made them what they are--wanderers on
> the face of the earth. But wanderers from choice. Untrammelled even to
> licence; giving an unbridled rein to their spirit of independence.
> Regarding with supreme contempt the luxuries and even necessaries of
> civilization. Yet with it all slaves to the spiritual fears that haunt
> them. Relics of a primitive and old-world civilization, there is about
> these Bedawins a flavour of antiquity, of a past that is hoary with the
> hoariness of eternal age, so distant that we cannot conjecture about it,
> even in the vaguest of terms. In addition to this everlasting antiquity
> and conservatism, there is about these patriarchs a naturally dignified
> reticence, and an air of calm, quiet assurance and authority, that are
> peculiarly their own personal property. But there is even more than
> this. There is that same universal concept--common to all primitive
> people who have not outlived it--of belief in the fear of a supreme
> power. That same awe and reverence for the patriarchal authority
> connected with that of the ancestors which has preceded it; that calm
> and philosophical acceptation of Karma or Fatalism; that same dread of
> consequences; that identical terror of malignant demons; that same
> shrinking from the inevitable, which is the heritage of all natural
> people. Inherent instincts that even twelve centuries of Islam have
> scarcely modified. When we get underneath the surface of human nature as
> represented by the Arab, whether he came from the east, the west, the
> south, or the centre, it is obvious that the underlying motive for most,
> if not all, of his social customs is inspired by that personal or
> religious instinct which is so closely allied to the primary instincts
> of all. Out of such fundamental material did Mohammed emerge!
> 
> Nevertheless, with all its drawbacks, there is about the desert, only in
> a different degree, the pleasure of the pathless woods, the rapture of
> the lonely shore. Just as by the deep and rolling sea whose very roar is
> music, there is a society where none intrudes, so with the desert.
> Right in the very core and centre of its silence and solitude, the man
> whose ears and eyes are open to receive impressions, finds himself in
> the presence of that invisible but omniscient power of Nature. The power
> that, while it causes the earnest thinker to pause and reflect, makes
> the average human being yearn for the companionship of his own kind. But
> it was not so with Mohammed. Mohammed was not as other men are. He was a
> thought leader. Not a deep thinker by any means; but profoundly in
> earnest. Few men in the world’s history--judging at least by
> results--have been more in earnest than he was. In Hannibal there is the
> same earnest fixity of purpose, only different in kind, the same
> unquenchable ardour, and the same iron will that kept him faithful to
> the sacred vow of undying vengeance against the Romans, that his father
> exacted from him on the altar of their ancestral gods. In William the
> Silent too, but also in another direction, we find the same relentless
> purpose and the same inflexible sincerity to attain the independence and
> autonomy of the United Provinces. Cromwell likewise gave his life and
> his services--all that was best in him in fact--in the firm and sincere
> conviction that he was God’s chosen instrument. But in none of these
> men, not even in the great and heroic Ironside, was there the same
> fervent godliness, i.e. the fear and veneration of God. It was Luther
> most of all who approached Mohammed in the sincerity of his purpose,
> i.e. of his religion. For although Luther was essentially a priest, and
> did not found a new creed, his sincerity showed itself as a Protestant
> and Reformer. In his whole life the fear and veneration of God as the
> motive factor of his existence was manifest.
> 
> It is, of course, just possible, as Tennyson surmises, that:
> 
>     “... Through the ages one increasing purpose runs,
>     And the thoughts of men are widen’d with the process of the suns.”
> 
> This, however, is vague and brings us no nearer to an exact
> comprehension of the matter. The better to understand this feeling of
> fear that so dominated men of the Numa, Buddha, Luther, John Knox,
> Cromwell and Mohammed type, it is essential that the student grasps and
> measures the actual measure of difference that divides religion from
> creed. It is but meet that we should accept the rational axiom, that
> religion is natural, and creed the egotistical and personal
> interpretation placed upon religion by human beings. As Draper says:
> “When natural causes suffice, it is needless to look for supernatural.”
> So Bacon, looking with the insight of true genius into the Book of
> Nature, up to Nature’s God, said in that immortal aphorism which opens
> the _Novum Organum_, “Homo Naturæ minister et interpres”--man is the
> servant and interpreter of Nature. This will make it easier to get at
> the root of this dual feeling of fear and veneration. But to do so it is
> necessary for the student to look as far back into the past as he can.
> In every ancient cult that has ever existed, in the Chaldæan, the
> Egyptian, the Aryan, the various (so-called Pagan) African, for example,
> the same overmastering element predominates. In Grecian annals and
> literature--in the _Iliad_, the _Odyssey_, Hesiod’s _Theogony_, in the
> great tragedies of Æschylus, in Plutarch and other writers--Fear is not
> merely reverenced as “_Holy_,” but in Greece, as elsewhere, altars were
> erected and worship offered to her as a goddess.
> 
> It is in its definition and conception of religion that humanity has
> gone astray. By general acceptation religion and creed have always been
> confounded. Natural religion is spoken of as a something different and
> widely apart from Christianity, as a religion revealed. This is not so.
> There is no difference between them. Christianity is but the development
> of natural religion on the lines and ideas of certain individuals. There
> is no such thing as revelation. Religion is an evolution. It is natural.
> It comes to us from Nature, i.e. from the God out of which Nature has
> evolved. Hence its constructive and destructive dualism. It is a living
> and vital force that is innate in man as being one with Nature.
> Obviously this veneration, this fear of the Unseen, the Unexpected and
> the Inevitable (which I have spoken of), is one of the root instincts
> out of which it unfolds itself. Most unquestionably it is the outward
> and visible expression of the inner consciousness or spirit that moves
> man to the adoration of veneration in the constructive direction, and of
> fear in the destructive. This varies in the individual. Thus on the one
> hand we have a Mohammed; on the other a Napoleon. From the very
> beginning of human existence right down until now this fear of God has
> predominated. It still exists. It will go on existing. Religion is as
> much a part of the human constitution as the primal instincts. Creed is
> acquired. It is environment and education that makes or forms creed. The
> child becomes what his teacher makes him, as he can neither distinguish,
> discriminate nor judge for himself. But to make him Jew, Gentile or
> Christian, the religion must be in him. Creed, in a word, is but the
> view that is taken of natural religion by the ego. But a matter so
> important as this, however, cannot here be entered into.
> 
> As it has been with all the great religious leaders of history, so too
> it was with Mohammed. Fearing, yet venerating, the might, the majesty
> and the goodness of God, the companionship that he most wanted was not
> human but divine. Communion with Him, through his own thought and
> through the great Infinity around him, was what his heart most desired.
> A town Arab by birth and breeding, a Bedawin by feeling and instinct, he
> was something more than a mere native of Arabia. Rather a son of men, an
> apostle chosen out specially from among men, that he might bear to them
> the message and truth of God.
> 
> “Men,” says Victor Hugo, “talk to themselves, speak to themselves, but
> the external silence is not interrupted. There is a grand tumult;
> everything speaks within us, excepting the mouth. The realities of the
> soul, for all they are not visible and palpable, are not the less
> realities.” The great reality, as I have shown, that obsessed Mohammed
> was God. Though invisible in person or even in spirit, God was none the
> less visible and palpable to him as much in the finest speck of sand as
> in the consuming glory of the sun. In the mocking spectres of the night,
> as well as in the shifting shadows of the morning, the might and majesty
> of Allah was supreme. In the dead silence of human solitude, the grand
> tumult within him was only grand and tumultuous because God talked to
> him and he to God in the suppressed sibilance of hushed and awesome
> whisperings. “Diamonds are only found in the darkness of the earth;
> truths are only found in the depths of the thought.” As it seemed to
> Father Madeline, the ex-convict Jean Valjean, so it appeared to
> Mohammed, “that after descending into these depths, after groping for
> some time in the densest of this darkness, he had found one of these
> diamonds, one of these truths, which he held in his hand, and which
> dazzled his eyes when he looked at it.” The brilliant which Mohammed
> searched for was the truth--the greatest brilliant of all! The truth
> that he found as it appeared to him was God. Thus he immolated his whole
> being to the will of God, as to the truth which resides in Him alone.
> Like Pascal, Mohammed believed that “one can be quite sure that there is
> a God without knowing what He is.” Or in the words of Hobbes: “Forasmuch
> as God Almighty is incomprehensible, it follows that we can have no
> conception or image of the Deity, except only this, that _there is a
> God_.” This in sense if not in word was Mohammed’s idea of God as he
> tried to conceive Him. For him it was sufficient that God was the only
> God--the Creator and the Controller of the universe! “There are touching
> illusions which are perhaps sublime realities.” But to Mohammed, God was
> not even “the Great Illusion,” but a stern as well as a sublime reality!
> To him the desert and lone places were God’s dwelling-place--as far
> away from the busy hum and haunts of men as He could get. But only
> because of the delightful charm of golden silence and solitude--only
> because in the midst thereof, as in the heavenly paradise, God dwelt
> there. The one fair spirit that he dwelt and communed with--not in close
> proximity however, but with a great gulf fixed between--was the one and
> only God, who had at last constituted him His minister and apostle,
> because of his great love and devotion to Him. It was for this that
> Mohammed sought the desert. It was there under the stars--the flashing
> forget-me-nots of God’s great power--that alone with Nature and his own
> thoughts, he sought God. Who is there of us can say that he did or did
> not find Him? Can we, or can we not, by searching find God? Whether we
> can or no, however, is not the question--is not for us to decide! But
> one fact is certain--one fact is obvious. It was in the core and centre
> of the eternal silence and solitude of mountain fastnesses and desert
> expanses that the spirit of Islam had its origin. It was there, as it
> were under the myriad eyes of the great and infinite God, under the
> fiery blaze of the burning sun, under the cooler and more clinging
> glamour of the mellow moon, under the dimmer gloom and mystery of
> darkness, there with his face to the red-hot furnace blasts and
> suffocation of the simoom, that the message came to him. Alone with his
> thoughts:
> 
>     “Alone, alone, all all alone,
>     Alone on a wide wide sea!”
> 
> No mere saint, but God Himself, “took pity on” his “soul in agony.” He
> was not alone, for God was with him. This self-communion of Mohammed
> with his thoughts, was to him none other than communion with God,
> because his thoughts were concentrated on Him with all the soul and
> strength he was humanly capable of.
> 
> The power of persuasion does not always lie in the flow and eloquence of
> speech. The strongest are often the most silent. God never speaks but in
> the still small voice of consciousness, that comes to every man in the
> dark watches of the night, when the hum and movement of life is hushed
> into the silence of sleep!
> 
> Solitude, too, that twin-sister of Silence, “though,” as De Quincey
> says, “it may be silent as light, is, like light, the mightiest of
> agencies; for solitude is essential to man.” But if essential to the
> ordinary man, it is as the breath of life to men of God and prophets.
> Solitude, in fact, sinks deep into a pure and simple nature, and changes
> him in a great measure. Unconsciously it intensifies him to a
> superlative degree, and inspires him with an awe of itself that becomes
> sacred to him. Within himself the recluse feels weak, unstable and
> inconsistent. Without he is strong in the consciousness of the
> omnipotence and supremacy of the Infinite. “Solitude generates a certain
> amount of sublime exaltation. It is like the smoke arising from the
> burning bush. A mysterious lucidity of mind results, which converts the
> student into the seer, and the poet into a prophet.” In a word, there is
> an enthusiasm, an influence, and a power in solitude that the civilized
> man, or the man who has never been subjected to it, cannot form the
> slightest or faintest conception of. For the silence of solitude and the
> solitude of silence is a state (common to all primitive people) in which
> the being believes himself to be not only “πλήρης θεοῦ,” i.e.
> full of God, but that the God predominates. Hence the enthusiasm, the
> rapture, and the power to divine and speak in divers tongues.
> 
> Surely, if ever man was in deadly earnest, this faithful son of Arabia
> was. If ever man opened his heart and soul to the Father and Mother of
> all things, this Mohammed, the merchant, did. Truly if ever the great
> Author of our being responded to a soul in silent agony, i.e. in
> conflict, in a struggle for victory, it was to this great descendant of
> the bond-woman Hagar! For in Islam, and the soul of Islam, such as he
> inculcated, the victory was greater than any Marathon or Thermopylæ.
> 
> CHAPTER IV
> 
> MOHAMMED’S PRINCIPLES AND BELIEFS
> 
> Mohammed, as I have more than once said, was all for unity and cohesion,
> therefore against division and disintegration of any kind. Concentration
> was as the breath of life to him. Dissension a deadly evil. In his
> scheme of religion and politics there was no place for schism. Schism
> meant discord, and discord the devil. To him discord was as Ate, the
> mother of dissension. He recognized, as Spenser evidently did, that
> “discord harder is to end than to begin”:
> 
>     “For all her studie was, and all her thought,
>     How she might overthrow the things that concord wrought.”
> 
> And above all things, this Statesman Prophet was the essence and
> personification of centralization and concord. For unity alone rendered
> Islam feasible. Thus in the second Surah he insists that mankind was of
> one faith from the beginning. Thus too as a just, faithful and
> consistent man, he is opposed to violence and taking the offensive, even
> in the name and under the cloak of religion; he constantly advocates
> and authorizes (that is, has God’s authority for) the defensive. He even
> recommends, at the same time that he excuses, war and retaliation on the
> unbeliever and infidel. On the whole, however, I am bound to admit that
> Mohammed disapproves of and discountenances violence in religion. He, in
> fact, distinctly forbids his followers from enforcing it. Their own
> persecution was to be met by patience. Apostates and unbelievers were to
> be given time meet for repentance. Yet to him, fanatic as he was with
> regard to religion, Islam was the only true Faith, the covenant, the
> sure ark of God that alone could secure salvation. Of this and of God he
> was no more than an Apostle--i.e. a messenger; also an expounder--but as
> such he obviously tried to live up to his name of Faithful. This speaks
> volumes for his toleration and humanity in an age when neither one nor
> the other of these attributes were much in repute; when both, in fact,
> were at a low ebb. Yet it shows us how intensely human the Prophet was.
> A man of great patience, prudence and trustworthiness, of retentive
> memory, strong character, and with the disposition of a judge--a very
> commander of men. Thus he acknowledges the divinity of God in forgiving,
> and the humanity of man in demanding reparation and restitution. Here
> the moral excellence of Mohammed shines out as a brilliant. In Surah
> xiv., “a grievous punishment is _prepared_ for the unjust. But they who
> shall have believed and wrought righteousness, shall be introduced into
> gardens, wherein rivers flow; they shall remain therein _for ever_ by
> the permission of their Lord, and their salutation therein _shall be_
> Peace.” From this and many other similar passages, it would seem that
> Mohammed, by his constant reiteration of _Promises_ and _Threats_, by
> his determined insistence thereon, hoped ultimately to convince even his
> enemies of his sincerity also of the fact that Islam, as the creed of
> the one and only God, was the true Faith. Again in this passage (Surah
> vi.), “God causeth the grain and the date-stone to put forth, He
> bringeth forth the living from the dead, and He bringeth forth the dead
> from the living. This is God,” etc., etc.; we get a clear insight into
> the intensity and comprehensiveness of the divine conception as it
> appeared to him. A little further on in the same passage he speaks of
> God as “He who hath produced you from one soul; and hath provided for
> you a sure receptacle and a repository,” namely in the loins of your
> fathers, and the womb of your mothers--one of those gleams of pantheism
> that I have already alluded to.
> 
> But of all the passages in the Koran, the following is, in many ways,
> one of the most significant: “Whatever good befalleth thee, O man, it is
> from God; and whatever evil befalleth thee, it is from thyself.” It is
> obvious from this that the prophet believed evil to be a human weakness
> with man as an active and self-willed agent. Sale in a note thereon
> says: “These words are not to be understood as contradicting the
> preceding verse, that all is from God, since the evil that befalls
> mankind, though ordered by God, is yet the consequence of their own
> wicked actions.” But as Mohammed regarded the sublime divinity of God,
> it would be more accurate to interpret the _evil_ not as being ordained
> or even sanctioned by God, but as being permitted, or rather not
> prevented by Him as a thing inevitable. To him the purity, sanctity and
> inviolability of God was of such vast moment, that it was unjust--a
> mortal sin--to devise even a lie against Him. “And who is more unjust
> than he who deviseth a lie against God, that he may seduce men without
> understanding?” The frequent repetition of this and other like passages
> is significant of Mohammed’s sincerity, also of his moral persistence
> and tenacity. It was from his point of view bad enough to have doubt
> thrown on the authenticity of his mission. This he could to some extent
> put up with. But it was as naught compared to the reflection, the crime
> of perjury committed against the Almighty. To cast a slur on His
> holiness in this audacious way, was nothing short of blasphemy, a crime
> worthy of eternal hell fire and damnation. Few men in the world’s
> history were as loyal to their God as this grim but faithful product of
> Arabia the Stony. In this respect, and particularly with regard to the
> depth and intensity of their religious zeal and fervour, there was a
> strong resemblance between Cromwell and Mohammed. To both of these moral
> ironsides, those who did not believe as they believed were unbelievers,
> and as such outside the pale of God’s mercy. For believers, however,
> nothing was too good. To such an extent did these principles influence
> the latter, that he even went so far as to promise that all grudges
> should be removed from the minds of the faithful. Here again we have
> evidence of Mohammed’s unquestionable humanity; also of civilization to
> a marked degree. For a grudge, although fundamentally and
> characteristically human, was at the same time, and still is among the
> Bedawins, a peculiarly Arabian idiosyncrasy; associated as it was, and
> often culminating as it did, in acts of vengeance identical to the
> Corsican vendetta, “the terrible blood feud which even the most reckless
> fear for their posterity.”
> 
> In spite, however, of his eagerness and zeal for conversion, consistent
> as this was with his idea of national autonomy, in nothing did Mohammed
> show his sincerity so much as in his thoroughness and honesty. He was
> nothing if not thorough. The long and arduous probation he passed
> through in preparing and fitting himself for his mission--the mental
> concentration, the wrestlings with all that is evil and inexorable in
> man’s nature, the night watches, the agonies, the communings with
> God--all go to prove this. And if to be outspoken and candid is honesty,
> then indeed no one has surpassed him in that respect. In his eyes a true
> disciple of Islam meant a man who lived and acted up to the tenets and
> principles of its faith. For instance, with him there was no such fiasco
> as a death-bed repentance. “But no repentance _shall be accepted_ from
> those who do evil until _the time_ when death presenteth itself unto one
> of them, _and he_ saith verily I repent now; nor unto those who die
> unbelievers: for them have we prepared a grievous punishment.” Such an
> act was wholly repugnant to the fine sense of equity and justice that he
> possessed, advocating as he so strenuously did the use of “a full
> measure and just balance.” As one who had given practically his whole
> life to the service and adoration of God, his soul rose in revolt and
> abhorred so vile a subterfuge. It was adding insult to injury. A mere
> sneaking stratagem of priestly artifice, held out as an alluring but
> offensive bait. A despicable and devilish cunning on the part of the
> unbeliever, who would endeavour to throw dust into the sun-piercing
> vision of the Most High, all unconscious of the thinness and
> transparency of his device and of God’s searching penetration, that
> could pierce through all eternity even unto the uttermost ends of His
> mighty universe! To serve mammon a lifetime, and then at the last
> moment, when on the brink of death’s unending precipice, to turn to God
> and expect to reap the same reward of eternal bliss as the whole-hearted
> believer who has given all or a great part of his life to God’s service,
> was impossible. The very thought of it was monstrous. The choice lay
> with the ego himself! Evil was his own doing! Good also lay within his
> reach. It was in a great measure a matter of choice. Every man was more
> or less responsible for his own undoing. To a life of evil, a death-bed
> repentance was not capable of producing more than its own equivalent of
> happiness, i.e. the merest possible fragment. This was in accordance
> with God’s principle of the scales of justice and an even balance. Yet
> Mohammed was not against repentance and contrition when sincere and made
> in due and proper time. Over and over again he holds out the olive
> branch, and reiterates the forgiveness and mercy of God, as attributes
> that belonged to Him alone. Mercy, indeed, was not so much an
> _attribute_ as a _monopoly_. “He hath prescribed unto Himself mercy,” as
> compatible with the fact that He was the final Court of Appeal. However
> adversely the theologian may criticize this from the modern Christian
> standpoint, it is clear and direct proof of Mohammed’s whole-hearted
> sincerity. Further it is equally direct and tangible evidence of the
> ardour and zeal that was in him as a prophet and reformer.
> 
> God, with all His sternness and inflexibility, as He appeared to
> Mohammed, was just and merciful. A strict comparison between Yahveh and
> Allah certainly inclines the balance in favour of the latter. Jehovah at
> His best was a God of blood and vengeance, at His worst a voracious
> monster. In Allah, stern and avenging God as He was, there was at least
> compassion and mercy and forgiveness. He was not inexorable. He would
> listen to reason. Mohammed himself was a distinct advance on the founder
> of the ancient Jewish faith. He was more humane, a man of broader and
> deeper sympathies. Stern and hard to a degree where God and the Faith
> was concerned; where men, but especially women and children, were
> concerned, he was all tenderness and pity.
> 
> Dutiful and obedient to his uncle who had been a father to him, he was a
> faithful servant, an exemplary husband, a kind father, a good master.
> The very name of Faithful, by which he was always distinguished, proves
> beyond a doubt what manner of man he was. An orphan himself in
> childhood, early inured to poverty, his heart went out to all those who
> had the misfortune to be similarly situated. For the poor, the weak, the
> helpless, he had a fellow-feeling. The degraded or at least dependent
> and unprotected position of women, their moral and legal helplessness
> most of all, appealed to him. But in no sense because he was sensual.
> Sensuality was not one of his many failings. A man from top to bottom,
> by birth, breeding and environment Mohammed was an Arab and a Patriarch.
> As such he only naturally liked women and children. To men and for the
> Faith a strong hard man, to the weak and helpless he was tender and
> affectionate. As he was strong, so he was merciful and full of human
> sympathies. His long and happy union with Khadija shows not only that he
> was faithful to a degree, but a man of high moral fibre. A man too full
> of the gravity of life to squander his substance in mere sensuality. But
> in all eastern and African countries where polygamy prevails, marriage
> is a pure matter of political convenience. Mohammed knew this. He
> recognized that marriage was a very important factor in securing
> influence and power. It threw out octopean feelers at various tangents
> and established certain associations and connexions to which it clung,
> as a limpet to a rock or a devil-fish to its victim. The same principle
> down almost to our own day has been a powerful factor in European
> statecraft. Even the earlier practice of keeping mistresses, so much
> indulged in by the sovereign holders of so-called “divine rights,” had
> much in common with this custom. It was undoubtedly this motive more
> than any other which influenced Mohammed. It was an essential feature in
> his great design. For in spite of his overwhelming devotion to God,
> notwithstanding God’s obsession of him, Mohammed was essentially human.
> There was room and sorrow in his heart for human frailties. His desire
> was strong to remedy them. He too like Luther was a Protestant, and a
> Reformer.
> 
> As to the soulless theory regarding the fair sex, which has been
> literally thrust upon the Moslem world by an antipathetic if not
> inimical Christendom, I quite agree with Burton. “The Moslems never went
> so far.” At all events if some of them have done so, “Certain ‘_Fathers
> of the Church_,’ it must be remembered, did not believe that women have
> souls.” Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, in one of that inimitable series of
> letters which she wrote, admits as much. In this particular letter
> written from Constantinople on May 29, 1717 (O.S.), to the Abbé Conti,
> she says: “Our vulgar notion that they (the Turks) do not own women to
> have any souls is a mistake.” And then she continues, but in not so
> accurate a vein: “’Tis true, they say they are not of so elevated a
> kind, and therefore must not hope to be admitted into the paradise
> appointed for the men, who are to be entertained by celestial beauties.
> But there is a place of happiness destined for souls of the inferior
> order, where all good women are to be in eternal bliss.” It is in no
> sense surprising, therefore, that to Mohammed Allah was the merciful. So
> in the sixth surah, he writes: “We (as if identifying himself with God)
> will not impose a task on any soul beyond its ability. For this
> self-same reason, God is minded to make _his religion_ light unto you:
> for man was created weak.” Strong and enduring as sincerity and
> conviction made him, Mohammed knew his own weakness. Hence with a
> clemency that was divine he made concessions such as these. In these he
> acknowledged that, “to err is human, to forgive divine.” All the more,
> however, we cannot but admire his candour. Even as regards himself, his
> shortcomings and inadequacies, he speaks with an openness and
> straightforwardness that disarms suspicion--that forces the inquirer to
> respect him with all the greater reverence as a great leader of men. “So
> say I not unto you, the treasures of God are in my power; neither _do I
> say_, I know the secrets _of God_, neither do I say unto you, Verily I am
> an angel: I follow only that which is revealed unto me.” Indeed the more
> closely and carefully I look into his words in comparison with his life
> and acts, the more obvious do his candour and sincerity become. The more
> obvious is it to me that although essentially the product of a grim and
> petrified environment, he himself was unique. A man in advance of his
> time and people. For deep down in the soul of him, the rich milk of
> human kindness welled up out of the same eternal source from which he
> derived his fear and veneration for the Supreme! Truly the Prophet and
> spiritual ruler of the East and polygamy, as Christ stands for the West
> and monogamy!
> 
> It was with these weapons, combined with the tenacity of an elastic and
> imperishable patience, that Mohammed fought the Koreish and other
> tribes, and it was with them he finally conquered. Had he been
> insincere, there would have been no Islam. Had there been no spirit of a
> divine moral conception such as he infused into the creed (which came
> through him from the great fountain head of God and Nature), Islam
> would have withered and perished from sheer exhaustion and debility.
> From the standpoint of physical and moral purity, Mohammed was in every
> sense an Essene. Not only therefore was cleanliness of the body an
> absolute essential, but cleanliness of mind. Filthy immoral actions and
> depravities that he knew existed, unjust violence and iniquities,
> whether openly done or in concealment, were condemned and forbidden in
> scathing terms as a violation of God’s express command. The sophistry
> that would make an evil to be no crime unless found out, he denounced
> with all the fiery ardour of his fervent nature. From God there was no
> concealment. In his eyes it was a crime all the same--greater, in fact,
> because of attempted concealment.
> 
> CHAPTER V
> 
> THE MATERIAL AND OTHER SIDES OF THE PROPHET’S CHARACTER
> 
> In refuting those sceptics who have doubted the truth and sincerity of
> Islam, Carlyle condemns scepticism (rather too hastily it seems to me)
> as an indication of spiritual paralysis. Most unquestionably he was
> right in denouncing the former as an idiotic and godless theory. But
> scepticism itself in a general sense is not necessarily an evil. On the
> contrary, it is a natural tendency that arises out of the instinct of
> curiosity. Knowledge is not an inert and passive principle, but an
> active and dynamic force. Buckle in his history speaks of scepticism as
> stimulating curiosity. But he has put the cart before the horse. It is
> curiosity that excites scepticism. Curiosity is an animal instinct--the
> basis of all science. It exists in the lower animal creation--scepticism
> only in the upper human section. It is a higher or further development,
> a tendency that is certainly strengthened, if not acquired through
> education.
> 
> According to Lecky, “The first stage to toleration in England was due to
> the spirit of scepticism encroaching upon the doctrine of exclusive
> salvation”; and “the extinction of the spirit of intolerance both in
> Catholic and Protestant countries--due to the spirit of rationalism--was
> the noblest of all the conquests of civilization.” But as rationalism
> itself is chiefly the consequence of scepticism and the result of
> inquiry, it is obvious that in a deeply fundamental sense, the world is
> very considerably indebted to science or the spirit of scepticism.
> Indeed all knowledge has arisen from experience, and the desire to
> search into the root of things--to know what is what. Without curiosity
> and scepticism, human thought would have long since stagnated and the
> world remained sunk in ignorance. As Ghazali says, “No knowledge without
> assurance deserves the name of knowledge.” Seeing is not always
> devouring. Curiosity is not necessarily gluttony, or “scepticism, that
> curse of the intellect,” as Victor Hugo calls it. Gluttony is unnatural,
> unwholesome, and bestial. It is not so much overdoing, as a flagrant
> abuse and outrage of a natural appetite. It is a kicking against the
> pricks--a flying in the face of Providence. But curiosity as an instinct
> direct from Nature is healthy, therefore the use of it as also wholesome
> stands in need of stimulus and encouragement.
> 
> So Tennyson said of Shelley:--
> 
>     “There lives more faith in honest doubt,
>     Believe me, than in half the creeds.”
> 
> In this righteous sense Mohammed was curious. As one of her own
> selection, Nature had specially endowed him with curiosity. He was one
> of her human, sensitive plants. As an observer, all his senses were
> developed and on the alert. He not only saw, but felt every vibration
> that thrilled, as it were, the very soul of the first great mother. In
> every flitting cloud, as in every fugitive thought, he was conscious of
> an unseen Power. A look-out man rather than a prophet, it was thus he
> groped or rather felt his way until he felt God. “I feel that there is a
> God,” said La Bruyère, “and I do not feel that there is none: that is
> enough for me; the reasoning of the world is useless to me: I conclude
> that God exists.” It was in much the same vein of self-argument that
> Mohammed communed to himself. Having felt God, God became for him a
> necessity: more so even, an essential--an absolutism which banished all
> else from his mind. The thought that there was no God did not occur to
> him. But the thought that other gods could exist in the same universe
> with the one omnipotence was to him as monstrous as it was unthinkable.
> Besides Him there was no room for any other. The very thought in his
> estimation perished from inanition and sheer inability of conception!
> The trinity of Christianity was to him as impossible and unacceptable
> as the antediluvian or later polytheism of his own countrymen.
> 
> All active minds are sceptical. Carlyle himself--although he appears to
> have been unconscious of the fact--was himself a sceptic. But it was
> peculiarly characteristic of the antagonistic dualism of his nature on
> the one hand to hurl innuendoes, anathemas (and every kind of mental
> brickbat that he could lay hold of) at what he called scepticism or
> unbelief. On the other hand, to hold up belief as absolutely essential
> to human existence. But like all theoretical crotchets, he carried his
> philosophical speculations too far. In other words, he sometimes
> overreached himself. According to his particular dogma, in his opinion,
> the life of man cannot subsist on doubt or denial, it subsists only on
> belief. But this is altogether beside the mark. Scepticism does not
> necessarily imply doubt or denial. Belief itself cannot exist without
> it. It is out of the ashes of scepticism that the immortal Phœnix of
> belief arises. It is out of the doubt and denial of accepted doctrines
> that all creeds (including Christianity and Islam) have grown into
> being. The doubt engendered by scepticism is after all only an
> investigation or leading into, an analysis of the nature of dogmas,
> doctrines or creeds. It is an investigation that may or may not have a
> result. It is but a search for or groping after the truth, as the
> consequence of moral, intellectual or spiritual dissatisfaction. It is
> also the desire to know, to find out the pros and cons of all the sides
> to a question. The spirit or element of doubt is the necessary, the
> essential precursor of improvement and progress. Hence the immense
> importance and significance of Scepticism. It is the very sum and
> substance of all human knowledge. As the acorn is to the oak, scepticism
> is to knowledge--the seed from which has sprung up all we know, and ever
> shall know. The ever fluent channel through which all the great
> intellectual giants and reformers of the world have poured out the
> glowing flash-lights of their intellect into the normal darkness of
> human minds. It is the moral effluvium out of which our modern
> civilization has constructed itself. Without it, the dense gloom and
> black obscurity of ignorance would have reigned supreme. Confused,
> chaotic, and enigmatic as the world now is--even in the full glare of
> its sunlight--without it (if it were possible to imagine such a state)
> the world would have been an enigma, a chaos and confusion worse
> confounded. For scepticism is, as it were, the sun in all its glory, as
> compared to the black oblivion of eternal night. If neither Luther nor
> Mohammed had been sceptics, there would have been no Reformation and no
> Islam. They did not take everything for granted. They were not satisfied
> with things as they were. They looked into the heart of them and found
> much room for improvement. They examined what they could, rejected that
> which was spiritually objectionable to them, but made use of what was
> most appropriate to their respective situations. It was only those
> features that best suited the exigencies of the case that they were
> prompt to lay hold of.
> 
> Yet Mohammed was not of vigorous intellectuality, nor in any sense an
> original thinker. The constant repetition of formulas and reiteration of
> the same ideas that occur throughout the Koran show this. It is
> extremely probable that his mentality was at times overshadowed either
> by neurasthenic tendencies, or a predisposition to melancholia, and this
> was more than likely heightened by a life of excessive mental
> concentration combined with asceticism.
> 
> But sincere as he was, Mohammed would not have been a true Arabian, had
> he not been diplomatic. Thus the commencement of the fourteenth surah is
> a clever but obvious device on his part; a meeting of his enemies with
> their own weapons, a flinging back to them of their own words and
> objections to the truth in their own teeth. It is clear too that here,
> for the time being, he has resolved on a change of tactics and of front.
> To prove to them that he is as of old the man to be trusted, he
> endeavours to disarm their incredulity by his own outspokenness and
> candour. As the sequel showed, he clearly demonstrates his own
> perspicacity and knowledge of human nature. He saw that by arguing with
> his countrymen, by always opposing their doubts with sophistry and
> argument, would be of little avail--useless, in fact. Such a course
> would but have encouraged and stimulated their opposition, on the ground
> that their beliefs, as worth refuting, were also based on truth or at
> least on strong evidence. Besides, Mohammed was painfully conscious of
> his own disability and helplessness to convince them by the performance
> of anything purporting to be miraculous. That on occasions he displayed
> artfulness and guile--duplicity, in fact--is not to be denied. The
> invention, e.g., of his night journey from Mecca to heaven viâ
> Jerusalem, was one of them. When he gave out that Gabriel had revealed
> to him the conspiracy that had been formed against him, which through
> ordinary means he had discovered, was another of these pious frauds. But
> after all, what are these trifles compared with those that in their
> myriads have been perpetrated by the great Church of Christendom? What
> are they as compared to a long life of strenuous sincerity, great
> nobility and earnest effort in the cause of humanity? It is impossible
> to lose sight of the fact that in working for God, he was all the time
> raising his countrymen from a lower to a higher level. Besides, the
> necessity of dissimulation, which is one of the heaviest taxes on a
> king, and the prerogative of a priest, is one of those idiosyncrasies
> that human flesh being heir to, even a prophet cannot at times escape
> from. We are reminded of the phrase: “Qui scit dissimulare, scit
> regnare”--He is a ruler who can conceal his thoughts--attributed to the
> Emperor Sigismund by that cultured and ambitious but false and subtle
> Pontiff Pius II, known as Æneas Sylvius (Pius Æneas): also the identical
> answer that Louis XI is said to have made to those who urged him to give
> his son Charles a better education, in order that the boy might in his
> day become a good king.
> 
> It was not only that Mohammed’s enemies were sceptical of his powers and
> his mission, but they mistrusted his intentions. This, indeed, to a
> sincere and earnest man like himself, was a bitter pill; a pill he found
> it hard to swallow. For he was conscious of his own sincerity, and as
> time went on, an increasing following gave him greater confidence in the
> reality of his mission. Indeed in proportion as his self-confidence
> developed, his conviction in the power and unity of God became an ever
> increasing quantity. This increasing consciousness of God’s power and
> his own sincerity had the gradual effect of making him bolder and more
> aggressive, so that this outspokenness was a direct outcome of it, until
> at last Mohammed felt that it was his duty not merely to announce
> “Islam”--“_the true Faith_,” but to enforce its acceptance on the
> people. This, of course, as we know, was after his flight to Medina.
> True his own people, the Koreish, had driven him out with scorn and
> violence, had cast contumely and dishonour on him, by rejecting the
> word, while strangers had hearkened unto him and accepted it. It is
> equally true that the sustained vindictiveness shown by the Koreish was
> sufficient in itself to excite the spirit of retaliation, even in a man
> of Mohammed’s patient and tenacious character. But suggestive as this
> may be, it is quite certain that he acted on conviction in assuming the
> offensive. It is obvious, too, that in doing so, he felt that he was
> acting under divine compulsion. In any case, we must allow that “a man
> is really of weight in the balance of Fate, only when he has the right
> on his own account to cause men to be slain.” In Mohammed’s case,
> however, if conviction counts for anything, his right was a divine
> right. According to Dumas: “In human nature there are antipathies to be
> overcome--_sympathies which may be forced_.” (The italics are mine.)
> “Iron is not the loadstone; but by rubbing it with a loadstone we make
> it, in its turn, attract iron.” This may be, but it is not in reality
> so. It is but a mere figure of speech that the great novelist makes use
> of, and which he puts into the mouth of René, the poisoner, in support
> of some theory or argument. It is, of course, possible that antipathies
> may be overcome by sympathy. This, however, depends entirely on the
> power of the one and the weakness of the other. But sympathy cannot be
> forced. To endeavour to force sympathy is to attempt the unnatural. The
> most that can be expected from such a cause is dissimulation. This
> certainly was Mohammed’s experience. Although ultimately he and his
> successors forced the word of God on these his inveterate enemies, he
> never succeeded in forcing his sympathies upon them. Death and Time
> alone accomplished what his own personality failed to do. Through the
> victory he gained by them, he now lives enshrined in the sanctified halo
> of a sympathy that, emanating from every Moslem heart, forms with his
> own the great and throbbing soul of Islam.
> 
> But Mohammed was not only spiritual. He, like every human being, had a
> material side to his character. Not only was he a preacher and a
> prophet; not only was he a lawgiver--a law and a light unto his people
> to this very day; but as one who himself rigidly practised self-denial
> and economy and condemned extravagance, who possessed the organizing
> ability to administer the estate of others, and who could command
> preferably in peace, but if necessary in war, he was a statesman and an
> economist. Unquestionably too he looked ahead--he made provision for the
> future. His whole apostolic life was one long and arduous preparation
> for coming events. As an instance of this, the ordering of the yearly
> pilgrimage to Mecca was as much a political as a religious ordinance. By
> this measure of policy--this master stroke of psychologic insight into
> human eventualities, Mohammed showed his natural genius. For without a
> doubt he aimed at preserving to Arabia the point and focus of a
> religious centre, that would make for national consolidation and unity,
> and serve as the sacred réduit and rallying ground for the world of
> Islam. So too he showed his capacity for system and organization in
> legalizing the fifth part of all booty and property confiscated to be
> paid into the public treasury. In the same way he insisted on the giving
> of Zakat or alms for charitable purposes, apart from those contributions
> he received from his followers for maintenance. In making these
> ordinances appear as divine injunctions, Mohammed showed no more
> insincerity or inconsistence than he did in claiming the whole Koran as
> a series of revelations. The political and economic factors were as much
> a radical part of his entire design, as the religious. The one could not
> exist without the other. Statesman as he was, he recognized that
> religious unity could only be firmly established through political
> co-operation, and that to secure national stability the sinews of war
> were essential.
> 
> It is all through quite obvious that he had the trading instinct of his
> people. In any case the training he received at the hands and in the
> employ of his uncle Abu Talib, as well as the subsequent management of
> Khadija’s business, had imbued him very powerfully with business
> principles and practical ideas. Abu Talib, like his father and
> grandfather before him, carried on a considerable trade with Syria and
> Yemen. He carried to Damascus, to Basra and other places in Syria, the
> dates of Hijaz and Hijr, and the perfumes of Yemen, bringing back with
> him in return the products of the Byzantine Empire. Mohammed, as is
> known, accompanied him, and without doubt laid the foundation of an
> economic experience, that subsequently proved valuable.
> 
> Commerce has always been the greatest of civilizing factors. According
> to Buckle: “Among the accessories of modern civilization there is none
> of greater moment than Trade.” So too Hallam says: “Under a second
> class of events that contributed to destroy the spirit of the Feudal
> system, we may reckon the abolition of villenage, the increase of
> commerce, and consequent opulence of merchants and artisans, and
> especially the institution of free cities and boroughs. This is one of
> the most important and interesting steps in the progress of society
> during the Middle Ages, and deserves particular consideration.” But this
> is all the more important as showing that trade was in reality a more
> powerful factor for civilization than Christianity, which after several
> centuries of hold on the people of Europe, had done little more than
> inflame them with a zeal and a zest for fighting. It is significant also
> that while Rome rose to her greatest eminence under the Ancestral
> worship of her founders, when she became Christian, Christianity did not
> prevent her from declining and falling into pieces. But it is equally
> significant that while the opulence conferred by commerce on Rome,
> eventually brought reaction and ruin upon her people, the effect it had
> upon the barbarians who overthrew the Eternal City, was sufficiently
> stimulating to encourage them to invade a degenerate empire. For the
> desire of wealth and plunder was but the first awakening of the spirit
> of commerce. To be sure the crusades gave a great stimulus to trade.
> But there was more of the militant spirit than Christianity about them.
> Besides, although commercial prosperity often accompanies war, reaction
> is certain to supervene. Obviously the essential importance of trade was
> a truth that the Merchant-Prophet soon recognized. Intuitively, and with
> the keenness of perception that marked him, he naturally utilized every
> lesson that it taught him and every advantage that it gave him. Nor has
> he been the only theologian who saw its utility in a religious light.
> The Jesuits long afterwards recognized the agency of commerce in
> promoting and diffusing religious belief, and became great merchants as
> well as great missionaries. So too it was through commerce, as Draper
> points out, “that the Papacy first learned to turn to art. The ensuing
> development of Europe” (in the Renaissance) “was really based on the
> commerce of _upper_ Italy, and not on the Church. The statesmen of
> Florence were the inventors of the balance of power.”
> 
> Quoting from Syed Ameer Ali’s _Spirit of Islam_, Fihr, surnamed Koreish,
> a descendant of Maad--who flourished in the third century--was the
> ancestor of the tribe that gave to Arabia her prophet and legislator.
> This fact, trifling as it may appear, is, however, remarkable, if not
> significant. For this word “Koreish” is derived from “Karash,” to
> trade; and it appears that Fihr and his descendants were always devoted
> to commerce. From this it is safe to assume that trading was an inherent
> instinct in Mohammed.
> 
> This apart, to him personally Islam was a something more than a mere
> creed or belief. It was God’s own religion sealed and delivered to him
> by God. Not to deliver it to his people as commanded, not to carry it
> through--by persuasion first of all, by fire and sword if man’s
> obstinacy and rejection of it made it necessary--would mean that he had
> failed in his duty to the Most High. The sense and spirit of duty was
> stronger in Mohammed than in Nelson. In him it was not simply an active
> and vital principle. It was an impelling force. So inseparable from God,
> that to him it appeared as God Himself. But with him God always came
> first. His duty to his country was subordinate to his duty to his Maker.
> His duty to Him, therefore, was his duty to his country. So in surah xi.
> he says: “O my people, do ye work according to your condition; I will
> surely work according to my duty,” i.e. according to God. In numerous
> passages he points out that God was absolutely averse to profusion and
> extravagance, equally so to meanness. True liberality in his opinion
> consisted in the happy mean between the two extremes. “And waste not
> thy substance profusely; for the profuse are brethren of the devils: and
> the devil was ungrateful unto his Lord” (surah xvii.). Again in the
> sixth, “But be not profuse, for God loveth not those who are too
> profuse”; and in the following the economic instinct shows itself most
> significantly: “O true believers, consume not your wealth among
> yourselves in vanity; unless there be merchandizing among you by mutual
> consent.” Once more Mohammed demonstrates his great profundity and
> insight into the character, the customs and traditions of his
> countrymen. All Oriental and African nations from time immemorial have
> been notably extravagant, especially in regard to marriage ceremonials
> and funeral rites. Even to this day among the Hindus and most African
> tribes, it is a code of honour, a sacred injunction of their religion,
> to spend profusely on marriage and burial feasts. Indeed this is
> frequently done to the impoverishment, and, in the latter case, even to
> the ruination of whole families or households. The Arabs, it appears,
> were no exception to this. At the same time they were a curious blend of
> meanness and extravagance. To Mohammed, rigid economist as he was, and
> inspired to the core by the duty that had been intrusted to him, this
> prodigality was a great sin. Not only did his countrymen squander away
> their substance in folly and luxury, but they were particularly guilty
> of extravagance in killing camels, and distributing them by lot merely
> out of vanity and ostentation. Worse even than this, they were given to
> the destruction of their female children. Against this evil Mohammed
> sternly set his face. This in itself shows his great moral superiority
> over his countrymen. It shows also the possession of a higher and more
> refined yet practical intelligence, that was able to grasp the economic
> possibilities which were bound to ensue from the preservation of female
> children. Essentially an Arab patriarch at heart (which he in some
> measure proved by his marriages), Mohammed, however, was still more
> essentially a Humanist. With the moral greatness of a good man, and the
> mental perception of genius, he felt and recognized that it was against
> all the laws of God to destroy the fecundity of and the productive in
> nature. Thus it was that he placed the divine tabu on the abuse and
> destruction of all that was beneficial to humanity, but especially on
> men, animals and the produce of the earth.
> 
> CHAPTER VI
> 
> A BRIEF SUMMARY OF MOHAMMED’S WORK AND WORTH
> 
> Taken as a whole, the Koran is certainly not a work of literary art.
> Mohammed, in a literary sense, was neither a poet nor a writer. He was,
> as he says of himself, only an illiterate apostle. This, from an
> artistic point of view, is of course regrettable. In his mother tongue
> he had a rich and splendid medium. A language of high philosophical and
> poetical character, that “follows the mind,” as Burton says, and gives
> birth to its offspring: that is free from the “luggage of particles”
> which clogs our modern tongues--leaves a mysterious vagueness between
> the relation of word to word, which materially assists the sentiment,
> not the sense of the poet. A language too that luxuriates in “rich and
> varied synonyms, illustrating the finest shades of meaning,” that are
> artfully used--“now scattered to startle us by distinctness, now to form
> as it were a star about which dimly seen satellites revolve.” Finally
> which revels in a wealth of rhyme that leaves the poet almost
> unfettered to choose the desired or exact expression. Undoubtedly in a
> literary sense, here at hand, was a mighty and magnificent weapon. A
> quiverful of musical arrows, quivering as they waited for the poetic
> muse--the fine frenzy, the seething imagination, the running ready
> fire--to launch them forth into the humming haunts and hearts of men.
> But in no sense was this Merchant-Prophet a knight-errant. Kindly and
> tender as he was towards women and children, he was not addicted (as his
> countrymen were) to chivalry in any form. The race of heroines of Al
> Islam had no attraction for him. The “Hawa (or ‘Ishk’) uzri,”
> “pardonable love,” of the Bedawin, a certain species of platonic
> affection, did not exist for him. He had no room for such trivialities
> in his life. It was too serious and pre-occupied. Too much occupied with
> the affairs of his Master, and worldly business matters that had to be
> attended to. So that he had no time to waste on such pleasantries.
> Trifles that were as light as air in contrast to the stern and deadly
> realities of existence. Yet without doubt he must have attended the
> annual fairs that were held at various places, at “Zul Mejaz,” at Majna,
> and at Okadh. The latter, Syed Ameer Ali tells us, was a place famous in
> Arab tradition. It was the Olympia of Yemen. The fair held here in the
> sacred month of “Zu’lkada,” was a great national gathering. A sort of
> “God’s truce” was then proclaimed. War and the shedding of human blood
> was forbidden. To it came merchants with their wares from all parts of
> Arabia and other distant lands; also the poets and heroes of the desert.
> These (many of whom were disguised from the avengers of blood feuds in
> masks or veils) recited their poems, displayed their literary talents,
> and sang of their glory and their prowess. But Mohammed’s aims and
> inclinations did not lie in this direction. He was too much of a working
> philosopher to be a mere poetic dreamer or play actor. His genius lay in
> his profound earnestness, his great moral strength, his capacity for
> work, his political foresight and acumen, his iron will and his
> inexhaustible patience. It is certain that he believed (in the
> philosophic principle) that “everything comes to him who waits.” For he
> himself says: “Wait therefore the event, for I also will wait it with
> you.” Obviously he was imbued with the same tenacity, and many of the
> imperturbable characteristics of the camel of his own Arabian deserts.
> Unquestionably he knew how “_to wait_,” recognized that the essence of
> all human wisdom lies in this single feature, and that the greatest, the
> strongest and the most successful is he who waits and watches. It was
> thus that he waited with the unvarying purpose and pertinacity of a man
> who knew and appreciated his own value at its proper worth. For he felt
> in every nerve and fibre of his consciousness, that as God makes no man
> or no thing in vain, the future must have some (great) thing, some great
> prize, in reserve for him. We know what that prize was. We know also
> that it only came to him after a life of unwearied toil, and assiduous
> devotion to his great and noble purpose, and then only in reality
> through the moral and spiritual victory which death gave him.
> 
> Yet, in spite of its artistic defects, Mohammed’s work turned out, as we
> know, into a success that even he himself could never have anticipated.
> But in a spiritual sense, judging merely by results, the Koran has lost
> nothing because of its lack of literary art and beauty. Had it gushed
> all over with the eastern music of the Songs of Solomon, had it arrested
> the attention by the same aphoristic wisdom of the Proverbs, thrilled
> its readers by the recital of a tragedy so intensely powerful, so
> realistic and majestic as the drama of Job, and appealed to them through
> the joys, the sorrows and the grand poetry of the Psalms! Had it, in
> fact, sparkled all over with those beauties of language and metaphor
> that distinguish the Bible, the result that it might have attained could
> scarcely have been greater than that which it has accomplished without
> these trappings. It is, in fact, probable that it might have lost. It is
> just possible that what it would have gained as an ornate work, it would
> have lost in sincerity. The Koran, in fact, was essentially the
> offspring of Mohammed’s own unique personality. This, as I have tried to
> show, was the peculiar outcome of his dual environment--the frowning,
> rugged and arid aspect of stony mountains and sandy wastes, plus the
> commercial and political instincts that were inherent as well as
> developed on his trade journeys and at the various towns and marts which
> he visited. Nevertheless there was in this Semitic Puritan, as there is
> in almost every Arab, a certain rugged vein of poetry--the wild song of
> freedom--that bursts out here and there. But only now and then like the
> thunderstorm that is so great a rarity in the desert. For the gravity
> and over-concentration of his thoughts on the one definite object,
> oppressed him so weightily, that it left no time for others. Just as
> fast as rain is swallowed up by the parched and thirsty sand after a
> long spell of drought, so his soul, thirsting as it did after God,
> gulped and kept down the poetry and sentiment at bottom of him. All the
> same, if a book is to be gauged by its net results--by the effect it has
> produced on all that is deepest and best in human nature--then the
> Koran must necessarily take high rank as one of the world’s greatest
> works. In much the same way, only in another and more material
> direction, the _Wealth of Nations_ has also left its impress on the
> shaping of human destinies.
> 
> Mohammed’s sincerity and fixity of purpose is a fact we cannot get away
> from. It is this which has chained his followers as with the sure cord
> of God to the Faith. Islam, in a word, is a creed of practice not
> theory. By practice it was formed. On practice it has lived. It was
> because Mohammed practised what he preached, that the small seed of his
> original idea blossomed at last into the mighty “Igdrasil” of the
> East--the great banyan tree of existence. Verily this sun-burnt son of
> Arabia Petræa was a tangible reality and no desert simulacrum. A reality
> that lives in the soul of Islam. A reality that will endure until the
> end of all things human. It is not manners that maketh the man. It is
> man that makes the manners. It is the nature that is around him, the
> nature that is in him, and that comes out of him as mental and moral
> energies, that makes the man. Town bred as he was, it was the desert in
> all its naked and silent grandeur that made Mohammed, that inspired him
> with all the might and majesty of God, and turned him into a prophet.
> Yet it was his career as a trader and the inherent tribal instinct that
> developed the political element in him. As Longfellow says: “Glorious
> indeed is the world of God around us; but more glorious is the world of
> God within us. There lies the land of song, there lies the poet’s native
> land.” But in Mohammed’s case, as in the case of all great workers and
> thinkers, the world that is around us, is the world of our inner
> consciousness. The two are synonymous if not one. Only with him the
> native earth was religion, and he was the Prophet, not the Poet of it.
> “It is Nature’s highest reward to a true, simple, great soul, that he
> gets thus to be _a part of herself_.” It was thus with Mohammed.
> Thought, though changeable, is eternal. It never dies. So the one idea
> that possessed Mohammed now possesses (differing only in merely
> superficial degrees) some two hundred and fifty millions.
> 
> Carlyle is mistaken, certainly much too premature, when he says: “Even
> in Arabia, as I compute, Mahommet will have exhausted himself and become
> obsolete, while this Shakespeare, this Dante may still be young; while
> this Shakespeare may still pretend to be a priest of mankind, of Arabia
> as of other places, for unlimited periods to come.” Religion is
> entirely an universal matter, Thought a question of environment. Roughly
> speaking, the world of Thought is divided into two camps of east and
> west. To the former belongs Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam; to the latter
> Christianity and the growing cult of Rationalism. It is impossible to
> predict or in any way to foreshadow any fusion of these hostile
> elements. The day when humanism--i.e. the religion of humanity, as the
> natural product of her highest intellectual effort--shall have fused and
> humanized all the nations of the Earth into one great civilized family,
> is too far distant and beyond the present scope of human speculation.
> 
> If men are to be regarded especially as to the weight and power with
> which they operate on the minds of their fellow-men, then this
> camel-driving trader must without question be estimated as a great
> man--a man a long way above his fellows. Assuredly too it is chiefly
> through the Koran that his great and God-like thoughts, crystallized
> into greater motives and actions, have filtered down through the events
> and developments of thirteen centuries, as a purifying, fertilizing, and
> elevating factor.
> 
> Looking at him and his work from every aspect, Mohammed was not merely a
> heroic prophet. He was much more. A king and a leader of men. A ruler
> and a judge over them. If we are to judge of him, to take him for what
> he is worth, by his work--the rich ripe fruit of his rare and strenuous
> effort--the Koran on the one hand, and, on the other, the mighty
> spiritual force he has left behind him in the Church of Islam, we must
> pronounce him to have been a great and remarkable man. A man who, when
> his true value is understood and appreciated, will stand out in history
> as a political and religious reformer of a virile and heroic type. A man
> who will be regarded in even a greater light than he now is, when
> humanity shall have become less denominational and more rationally
> humanitarian. In reality Mohammed was an ultra great man. The difference
> (as it appears to me) between other great men and himself was wide. The
> ordinary type of great man--a John Knox for example--is a patriot
> essentially. He is for his country first, then for God and humanity. As
> I have shown, with Mohammed it was just the reverse. An Arab by accident
> of birth, he put God and nature before everything. It was this that made
> him a humanist; this that placed him before his age. For Mohammed,
> without a shadow of a doubt, was centuries before his age. In his God
> concept, in his rejection of the ancient myth of immaculate conception,
> in his refusing to acknowledge Christ’s divinity, he was essentially a
> modern--a modern of the twentieth century. It was this catholicity
> therefore that made Islam blossom into a spiritual energy that embraces
> so many national units.
> 
> Mohammed fought with all his might and main. In exact proportion to his
> labour he has prevailed. Prevailed over the issues of life and death.
> Death had no terrors for him. Life alone was full of terror--i.e. of the
> fear of God. In death there was no sting. In the grave there was no
> victory. Death but killed the mortal part of him. The spiritual it has
> increased and multiplied out of all proportion. The present soul of
> Islam is the spirit of Mohammed. Only when this exhausts itself will
> Islam wither and die! To this day he is, and for many æons to come he
> will be in spirit, the ruler and judge over Islam. In spite of sects and
> theological speculators, as long as Islam lasts, his spirit will
> continue to preside over its destinies. His spirit lives in the spirit
> of the creed that he bequeathed as a divine legacy to humanity--i.e. to
> those sections of it which have been nurtured in the system and
> adoration of the Patriarch. For though the material part of him is dead,
> the spiritual still speaks with a voice that is myriad-tongued. As God’s
> word, there is a sanctity in the Koran for every Moslem that exceeds
> the reverence of the Christian for the Bible, as much as the fiery
> splendour of the sun surpasses the cold pale glamour of the moon--which
> is but a shadow, a pale reflection of the substance and reality. There
> is, in fact, on the part of the Moslem a veneration accorded to the
> Koran that practically equals the veneration of the African or the Irish
> for their land. Compatible with this, there is for the Moslem but one
> Prophet. As God’s chosen agent for the dissemination of His word,
> Mohammed stands alone and aloof on a pinnacle that is humanly
> unapproachable. Many faults have been imputed to him, many charges
> brought against him. To the average, indeed even to the educated
> Christian, Mohammed is nothing but the very strangest compound of right
> and wrong, of error and truth, the abolisher of superstition according
> to his own showing, yet a believer in charms, dreams, omens, and jinns.
> But what of all this? Does not reasoning such as this itself prove how
> very inconsequent and inconsistent is man, even though he be a European
> and a Christian? Is not superstition of the same kind as rife at this
> very moment in Europe, nay in the very centres and strongholds of
> Christendom? What about the ikons, the charms, the amulets, the sacred
> relics and the images of the Greek and Romish Churches? Is not this but
> a form of materialism which itself is a phase or part--a very large
> part--of Nature? Did not superstition (derived from “super,” above or
> beyond measure, and “sto,” to stand) originally imply excess of scruple,
> or of ceremonial observances in religion? Did it not describe a
> superfluity of worship that exceeded what was either enjoined or
> fitting? What does Cicero say of it in his treatise on _The Nature of
> the Gods_? (I quote from an old translation): “Not only Philosophers,
> but all our forefathers dydde ever separate _superstition_ from true
> religion. For they whiche prayed all day that theyr children might
> overlyve (superstites essent), were called _superstitious_; which name
> after was larger extended.” Is not this thing we call superstition--this
> belief in the super or rather outside natural as distinguished from the
> vague and merely vulgar absurdities that are so common--but the result
> of inherent instincts that humanity, as simply one form of natural
> development, derives direct from Nature? Is not this Naturism more or
> less developed in us all--more in the ignorant, less in the educated,
> and least of all in the scientist; the sceptic who knows most, because
> he has looked and searched more into the truth and reality of things;
> because he has learnt by experience, fact, knowledge, therefore a
> greater intelligence to discriminate which from what and why from
> wherefore? In any case, does not the fact that Mohammed was
> superstitious all the more clearly prove that he was no mere vulgar
> designer who practised self-deception and pretensions with regard to his
> mission, but that he was thoroughly sincere in believing himself to be
> the specially selected Apostle of the Great Designer and Controller of
> the universe?
> 
> But it is not to Mohammed’s faults that we must look. All great men are
> moulded out of faults. It is in his virtues and greatnesses--and they
> are many--that we will find the true man. In this Carlyle was a right
> guide, and showed his own breadth of mind and greatness. These prove
> Mohammed to have been one of humanity’s greatest constructors. It is
> true that he destroyed, but on a small scale comparatively in proportion
> to the immensity of his constructive labour. As evidence of this, the
> physical, the moral and the spiritual wealth of Islam speaks in round
> numbers and solid realities. In another of his great romances, Dumas,
> speaking of John Knox, says: “He who had raised such a storm had need to
> be, and he was, a Titan; indeed John Knox was one of those men whom
> great religious and political revolutions invariably beget. Born in
> Scotland or England during the Presbyterian Reformation, they are
> called John Knox or Oliver Cromwell; born in France, in the time of
> political reform, they are called Mirabeau or Danton.” Mohammed was, in
> every sense of the word, more titanic than a Cromwell or a Mirabeau. He
> was not by nature or at heart a destroyer. When he destroyed it was only
> because his hand was forced by the crass and obstinate antagonism of
> those upon whom his sincerity and persuasiveness had aroused an envious
> and deadly hatred. The whole aim, end and object of his existence was to
> develop the adoration and religion of God. The storm he raised was
> conjured into being by the God that obsessed him. Hence the soul and
> constructiveness in it. Hence the mighty spirit of Islam, measurable
> only by a soul capacity which has never ceased to expand and develop. No
> sane man surely can deny that Islam was and is a great work? The moral
> figs and grapes that she has achieved are not such as could have been
> gathered from the thorn and thistle of human effort. Yet curiously
> enough, as I have shown, the environment in which it was born was
> strangely stern and sterile! This, however, is one of those natural
> anomalies that we would do well to leave alone. One of those paradoxes,
> those mysteries which Nature teems with, that are altogether beyond
> human comprehension.
> 
> Whether or not he had made a study of the Socratic precept “Γνῶθι σεαυτόν”
> “know thyself,” Mohammed knew himself as thoroughly as it is possible for
> a man to do. Early in life he took his own measure. Gauged his own strength
> and weakness. Estimated the breadth, the length, and the depth to which he
> could go. As a result of this moral estimate, he felt that his resources
> without God were as slender as a broken reed buffeted by storm winds. He
> knew that his real strength lay in the knowledge and power of God and of
> Nature. The temperament and character of the Psalmist--he who looked on
> God as the strong tower and rock of his defence, his refuge, not however
> in time of trouble alone, but at all times--was strongly developed in him.
> The genius of the whole Semitic race was centred in Mohammed. It was this,
> amounting as it does to the sublimest egotheism, that gave him confidence,
> then conviction. It was this righteous conviction that carried him as it
> were on the wings of the wind--immortal breath and soul, as he pictured
> it--of the living and eternal God. Through this feeling he converted the
> innate fear and veneration that inspired him into the hand and power of
> the Almighty. If genius implies a keen psychological insight into the
> nature and inner consciousness of life’s issues, added to inexhaustible
> energy, capacity for work and patience, then Mohammed was a genius.
> Certainly, if we accept Buffon’s definition of genius, as, “but a greater
> aptitude for perseverance,” he was without doubt a genius of the highest
> degree. The founder of a faith--one of the greatest the world has
> produced--spiritual commander of the faithful, his genius was
> essentially moral and religious. His whole life was one long labour of
> love and devotion to achieve his object, i.e. to proclaim God to the
> nations of the earth: the first half of it passed in secular work but in
> silent contemplation; the second half, itself divisible into two
> periods, twelve years of persuasion, followed to the close by active
> aggression and battle.
> 
> Impulsive, passionate, and spontaneous Mohammed may have been, for like
> all great leaders he was many-sided. But in no sense of the word can
> Islam be said to have been the outcome of spontaneity. On the contrary,
> it was in every way the result of calm and deliberate reflection, of
> long and continuous contact with the forces and phenomena of Nature; but
> above all of an unceasing concentration and communion with the unseen
> power that controls them. Stretching over some twenty years, it went on
> uninterrupted by domestic cares or trade transactions. All these were
> secondary matters and had to give way to the central idea that occupied
> his whole mind, that revolved around his work and his thoughts, as the
> earth gyrates about the sun. His centre of gravity was God. This gravity
> formed his character, gave him courage and endurance in all his trials
> and afflictions, counselled and guided him in his ordinary vocations. It
> was this gravity and concentration that commanded the respect and trust
> of all who knew him and came under his magnetic influence.
> 
> But Mohammed was not infallible. Dogma--everything human in fact--is
> open and liable to error. Even infallibility itself--as we speak of
> it--is fallible. As Draper so aptly remarks: “He who is infallible, must
> needs be immutable.” In many of the ordinary ways of life he was no
> doubt changeable and inconsistent. He was, after all, only human--but
> not with regard to the Faith. Here was he as firm as a rock, and showed
> a fixity of purpose that nothing could shake or alter. With him, “Life
> was but a means to an end, that end, beginning, mean and end to all
> things--God.” Only synchronous with this ruling principle was the idea
> of national unity. Never once did he falter or swerve from it. To this
> allegiance and fidelity of his to God and centralization it is possible
> to trace the devotion of Moslems to their Faith. “We are, as we often
> say, the creatures of circumstances. In that expression there is a higher
> philosophy than might at first sight appear. Our actions are not the pure
> and unmingled results of our desires. They are the offspring of many
> various and mixed conditions. In that which seems to be the most voluntary
> decision, there enters much that is altogether involuntary--more perhaps
> than we generally suppose.” This was very much the case with Mohammed.
> He was largely the creature of circumstances--the personification of his
> environment. It was the genius of this that entered into and obsessed
> him. That formed and swayed him as it willed. That made him as strong
> and inflexible as itself. That, combining with the commercial knowledge
> and experience he possessed and the political acumen he acquired, made
> him what he was. Here in a tiny nutshell lies the kernel and origin of
> the soul of Islam. The possibility that Mohammed was rather of Caucasian
> than Ishmaelitish descent, in reality makes little if any difference in
> the psychological analysis of his character. Fundamentally, human nature
> is human nature all the world over. In this respect racial and colour
> distinctions make no difference. Even moral and physical characteristics
> are merely superficial classifications. Inherent tendencies, strong and
> rooted as they are, may be amended or modified by environment. So that
> although it is vaguely possible that his moral courage and other mental
> features were of Caucasian origin, in the main he was essentially
> Semitic in character, patriarchal in principle, and humanistic in
> spirit. In Lecky’s opinion: “If we take a broad view of the course of
> history and examine the relations of great bodies of men, we find that
> religion and patriotism are the chief moral influences to which they
> have been subject, and that the separate modification and mutual
> interaction of these two agents may almost be said to constitute the
> moral history of mankind.” This most certainly has been the case with
> regard to Islam. Religion was the medium chosen by Mohammed for the
> furtherance of his truly imperial design. It was entirely through
> religion, or rather the interpretation he placed upon it, that he built
> up first of all a natural patriotism, then an international spirit, that
> expanded into the mighty creed of Islam. Prior to this, Arabia as he
> found it was narrow to an extreme. The only patriotism--if patriotism it
> can be called--was clannish and communal. Outside these stilted limits,
> every one was regarded with suspicion, contempt, indifference, and
> invariably with undisguised hostility. Yet the great and solid
> foundation of this splendid spiritual and temporal empire was laid by
> one man. But how great and how heroic! Indeed, “take him all in all, the
> history of humanity has seen few more earnest, noble and sincere
> ‘prophets,’ men irresistibly impelled by an inner power to admonish and
> to teach, and to utter austere and sublime truths, the full purport of
> which is often unknown to themselves.”
> 
> CHAPTER VII
> 
> MOSLEM MORALITY AND CHRISTENDOM’S ATTITUDE TOWARDS ISLAM
> 
> The better to gauge the present political aspect of the Moslem world,
> the statesmen of Europe--of France and Great Britain more
> particularly--should make an earnest study of the spirit of Islam. If we
> regard Islam as the work of Mohammed--as we are bound to--there are
> certain broad features we must also recognize. Right away from its very
> inception he worked not only as a prophet, but as a political reformer.
> Travelling as he did with his eyes, ears and all his senses open, the
> political state of the eastern portion of Europe and the western side of
> Asia must have been well known to him. To accomplish his religious ends
> was impossible without the political unity of Arabia. To him the
> political and religious unity of his country were synonymous. As a
> shrewd and practical trader, the material advantages of commerce were
> taken into consideration. He recognized that without a sound commercial
> basis and political unity there could be no national stability. He also
> saw that in a country like Arabia, split up into clans and communities,
> it was only possible to effect this through the spiritual potentialities
> of the one and only true God. If he did not himself accomplish this
> great project, we know at least that it was the magnificent legacy he
> bequeathed to his followers in the spirit of Islam, that eventually did
> so in reality. He or the spirit he evoked was clearly and unmistakably
> the cause of all subsequent Moslem triumphs, intellectual and political
> as well as religious. Thus it was that scarcely eighty years after his
> death, Islam reigned supreme over Arabia, Syria, Persia, all the
> northern coast of Africa, including Egypt, as well as Spain. So, too,
> notwithstanding the internal schisms and rifts that subsequently took
> place, it kept on growing with great strides, until at last in 1453, the
> Crescent gleamed from the spires of St. Sophia at Constantinople, and
> the soul-stirring war cry “La ilah illa Allah” resounded seventy-six
> years afterwards before the very gates of Vienna. Lecky is undoubtedly
> right in assuming that: “To trace in every great movement the part which
> belongs to the individual and the part which belongs to general causes
> without exaggerating either side is one of the most difficult tasks of
> the historian.” But in the case of Islam there can be no mistake. True,
> the Arabs in themselves were a great and virile people. But it was the
> genius of Mohammed, the spirit he breathed into them through the soul of
> Islam, that exalted them. That raised them out of the lethargy and low
> level of tribal stagnation, up to the high water mark of national unity
> and Empire. It was in the sublimity of Mohammed’s deism, the simplicity,
> the sobriety and purity it inculcated, the fidelity of its founder to
> his own tenets, that acted on their moral and intellectual fibre with
> all the magnetism of true inspiration. To them Islam was the Faith--the
> Faith God.
> 
> Just as Christianity stands for the faith of the great European family
> of nations, Islam stands for those countries whose political
> institutions are still based on the Patriarchal system. But
> Europe--however superior her peoples may think themselves--is not in the
> position, and certainly cannot afford, to look down upon Islam as an
> inferior product of an inferior section of the great human family. East
> may be East, and West, West--the system of one represented by polygamy,
> of the other by monogamy. But because Christianity is conformable to
> European ideals and notions, it does not in the least follow that it is
> compatible with those of the East. Because the civilized net result it
> has effected has eventually proved greater than that achieved by Islam,
> is no evidence whatever of Islam’s worthlessness or decadence. It is
> not the spirit of Islam that has failed, but the people who believe in
> it. They have fallen away from the high ideal that was set them by their
> master. In this respect, however, Christianity has also degenerated. It
> is a creed of profession more than of practice. It has never
> consistently practised what it has preached. A very wide gulf divides
> its practices from its ideals. “If to do were as easy as to know what
> were good to do, chapels had been churches and poor men’s cottages
> princes’ palaces. It is a good divine that follows his own instructions:
> I can easier teach twenty what were good to be done, than be one of the
> twenty to follow mine own teaching.” So Shakespeare. This holds as good
> now as when he wrote it. Human nature never alters fundamentally. It is
> the same to-day as it was yesterday, and as it will be unto all
> eternity. Christendom much more so than Islam, is split up into sects
> and denominations, and there can be no question about it that the chief
> obstacle to unity among these various bodies at the present moment is
> want of sincerity and earnestness!
> 
> Compared with the average Moslem, the average Christian too is certainly
> lukewarm. The nearest approach to Moslem perfervidness is in the piety
> of the Irish Catholics. But devotional as they are, even this falls far
> short of the rigid practice of the true Moslem. Not only, however, is
> he fervid and in downright earnest, but he is above all constant,
> faithful, and consistent to the principles of his creed. Thus, although
> there is no fatherhood about Allah, there is for all that a true and
> real brotherhood in Islam which contrasts very favourably with the
> professed brotherhood of Christendom. Colour or race, for instance,
> makes no difference to it. Islam, in fact, is above all such petty
> differences. She draws no hard and fast rules, has no such violent
> antipathies, bigotries and prejudices as Christendom. Professes little
> but practises much. Colour in her eyes is no disgrace, no bar to God,
> much less therefore to human fellowship and assimilation. This, as we
> know, is not the case with Christians. To them colour and race (as
> witness in the United States of America) is an impassable barrier, that
> is more insurmountable even than the great wall of China, over which
> they find it impossible to step.
> 
> There are in nature, as Novalis endeavours to explain in his
> philosophical romances, many realities and verities, the truth or
> essence of which cannot be grasped by the cold and critical intellect of
> man. Only by and through the sympathetic intuition of feeling can truths
> such as these be known or understood. This is indeed so. No matter how
> hard and material we may be, however thoroughly scientific; no matter
> how high we may place reason--even on the highest pinnacle of human
> attainment, there are times when the emotions overpower and dominate it.
> There are times when reason, even in its calmest and most calculating
> moments, is simply inundated and overwhelmed by the flood-tide of human
> feelings. In any case it is clear that although in the abstract it is
> impossible to detach or even insulate thought from feeling and feeling
> from volition, these three--feeling, thought and will--act, and often
> co-operate together, in every mental causation. But it is just as
> difficult for a system to free itself from its own peculiar
> idiosyncrasies and prejudices as it is for an individual to dissociate
> himself from his motives. It is exactly the same with regard to Islam
> and Christendom. The latter has allowed its prejudices and its feelings
> to obliterate or to stultify its reason. It does not know, it does not
> understand Islam. Merely because it does not want or makes no effort to
> know or to understand it. Because it has no sympathy with it. Because in
> place of sympathy it is in reality antipathetic. Yet while professing
> toleration, Christendom does not hesitate to despise and condemn Islam.
> To Christendom, Islam is a mere creed and abstraction--a creed beyond
> and outside its cold and autocratic pale. A creed belonging to another
> world and heaven than its own. A creed of colour and of sombre shades,
> nay even of gloom and darkness, blood, fire and sword, when the crescent
> and green flag of the Jihad is hoisted; a creed which is not to be
> thought of in the same breath as the snow-white fabric of the
> transcendent cross.
> 
> The fact of the matter is, that Christendom in the earlier days of
> Islam, jealous and fearful of her younger and more vigorous rival,
> always recoiled from Islam under the veil of a self-satisfied cant, as
> from a monstrous monstrosity of the most vicious and immoral type. A
> form of “Moloch horridus,” bristling all over with polygamous
> excrescences, and cruel sharp-pointed spines, ever ready to thrust their
> awful venom into the unoffending human species. Yet if only Christendom
> had long ago cultivated the virtue of patience, and the breadth and
> depth of mind, to look into the matter, she would have discovered--as
> those sceptics who have done so have discovered--the pure and
> unadulterated truth. She would have found, that as the Moloch horridus
> of Australia conceals an inoffensive character under a weird if
> repulsive exterior; so Islam, under an outward form which bigotry and
> prejudice have exaggerated out of all shape, possesses a moral and
> spiritual value beyond all cavil or question. Islam no doubt has its
> faults and many of them. The position of women is not perhaps as it
> should be. The law and the practice of divorce is a real blot on her
> system. Education is at a low ebb. The custom of the separation of
> sexes, of which polygamy and divorce are the necessary outcome, are
> undoubtedly pernicious. It cannot, of course, be expected that young men
> and women who have never met or associated, and whose marriages are
> arranged for them, can have any exalted ideas or feelings on the subject
> of love. It is not possible that young men who have never felt the
> refining influence and the moral restraint of female society, can
> possess either chivalry or a high ideal, with regard to an element
> unique in itself. Nevertheless, contrary to received European opinion,
> there exists for all that a very real and hearty affection and a warm
> sympathy between Moslem husbands and wives. What is more, this affection
> and sympathy will possibly contrast quite favourably with the family
> devotion of most European countries.
> 
> With regard to women, however, the social system, it must be admitted,
> is less successful. It leaves room for improvement. The institution of
> female slavery is distinctly a blot. The lot of the Moslem girl morally
> and socially is not so much unhappy as neglected. Her ordinary education
> is practically negative; the religious part of it is regarded as
> superfluous. But it is a popular fallacy, as I have already pointed
> out, to attribute to Islam the doctrine that women have no souls.
> Unfortunately, however, the idea prevails generally throughout Europe
> that these precious possessions are ignored by modern custom: that the
> fair sex is not encouraged to pray either in private or in public. It is
> believed, too, that the vigorous ritual prescribed for the male members
> is considered sufficient for both. So that Moslem women by ignoring the
> one neglect the other, with consequences that are morally and physically
> disastrous. But these are not by any means the real facts of the case.
> Personally, of course, I cannot speak of such matters from experience.
> Isolated and secluded as the women of Islam are, and their privacy so
> rigorously guarded by a ring fence of stringent rules, it is not
> possible for the European to give an adequate opinion thereon. But
> according to the reliable authority of so eminent a Moslem as Syed Ameer
> Ali, and others, the women among civilized Moslem communities know their
> prayers and religious duties just as well as the men--and are devout and
> pious--more so perhaps than the other sex. As to their cleanliness, it
> is beyond question. Yet in spite of so many obstacles--no education,
> seclusion, and a generally defective training--the women are not
> unhappy. They are on the whole as fully occupied (in their own way of
> course) and as well cared for as the women of Europe.
> 
> The fact of the matter is, Islam is suffering from mental stagnation,
> from the inevitable reaction that always succeeds a long period of
> active development. The Arabs, in a word, have had their day. With
> regard to education generally, the teaching is of a stereotyped pattern.
> There is no freshness or originality about it. Moslem studies have, in
> fact, lost all or most of their vitality. “The bloom of Arab culture has
> long been brushed away, and there now remains only a hollow kernel.” But
> it is after all by her virtues and not her defects that we must appraise
> the true value of Islam. Most unquestionably she has great and redeeming
> features. The throwing of stones or of mud is at best an injudicious
> proceeding. Apart from this it is undignified and unworthy of so high a
> civilization. It is not for Christendom to throw stones any more than it
> is for Islam. Indeed, in this respect, Europe could well take a leaf out
> of the book of Moslem self-restraint and dignity. Moslem society, too,
> may compare very favourably with European. Taken in the mass, the
> polygamous Moslem is every whit as moral--more so in fact--than his
> English, French, or German contemporary. In a great measure polygamy is
> much more a theoretical than a practical institution. Not one in twenty
> Moslems has even two wives. In any case it is not in the proper and
> legitimate practice of polygamy, but in the abuse of it, that the evil
> lies. On the whole there is no promiscuous immorality among the
> followers of Islam. Drunkenness and prostitution are practically
> non-existent. In towns where Europeans have made them a necessity, they
> are always worse. Abstinence and sobriety are not only professed but
> practised. In these respects the young Moslem certainly stands above his
> contemporary in Europe. Marrying early as he does, he knows nothing of
> “the wild oats” that are so promiscuously and so religiously sown by the
> youth of Europe. He sows no rank or noisome weeds for his children’s
> children to reap a gruesome harvest. As far, therefore, as the male sex
> are concerned, the social system of Islam is certainly more moral and
> wholesome than that of Christendom.
> 
> The cult of Mormonism, as it has existed and still exists in Utah State
> and Salt Lake City, is a problem that should set all statesmen thinking!
> As a psychological conundrum and from a rational standpoint, it is a
> most interesting question. It confronts us with a dual anomaly! First of
> all by the enforcement of a sociological system in distinct opposition
> to, and in defiance of all ethnic conditions. To make the anomaly all
> the greater, the religious part of this cult is founded on a palpable
> sham. There is not even about it the possibility of reality that always
> exists at the back of many ancient myths.
> 
> The so-called revelation of Joseph Smith, is the clumsy imposture of a
> man who in no sense of the word was either great or sincere. It is
> unquestionably the work of one or more persons who initiated the
> movement in their own self-interests, and to cloak principles that were
> at complete variance with Christian doctrine and European opinion.
> Mohammed, as we know, did not receive any revelation “on the eternity of
> the marriage covenant, or the plurality of wives.” This, according to
> Mormon statement, was reserved for Joseph Smith alone. As a great
> statesman and prophet, Mohammed recognized polygamy to be an ethnic
> condition, therefore wisely did not interfere with it. Any radical
> innovation in this direction would have been more than a political
> error. As a revolutionary measure, it would have completely upset the
> entire fabric of Arabian and Eastern society. A pandemoniac
> topsy-turveydom would have been the immediate consequence. The
> death-knell of Islam, the direct result. Yet the very personal god of
> Joseph Smith was so very short-sighted or painstaking that he sanctioned
> absolutely a mere matter of domestic arrangement and economy. Could any
> two extremes present a wider and more striking contrast? Is it possible
> even to compare the splendid sincerity of this sublime creed of
> self-surrender to God--the soul of which came direct from all that is
> great in nature--with the thin transparency of what at best was a poor
> attempt at fiction, which emanated from the mentality of a human
> mediocrity? Is it justifiable to mention them in the same breath?
> 
> Yet in spite of these startling contradictions, it is quite certain that
> the Mormon State, in an economic sense, is a prosperous, flourishing and
> thriving community. Its people too are orderly, well-behaved,
> law-abiding and industrious. From a moral and social standpoint, there
> is no fault to find with them. The anti-polygamic legislation of the
> United States Government, although it has recently been enforced with
> much greater severity than at first, has not stamped out polygamy. Does
> this or does this not demonstrate that polygamy--which in the eyes of
> Christendom constitutes one of the chief offences of Islam--is not the
> crime it is represented to be? Is it, in fact, a crime at all? Does it
> not prove that only the abuse of it, as the abuse of any, even a good
> thing, is wrong? But that the actual system itself as an ethnic
> condition peculiar to certain racial sections of mankind, is nothing but
> the outcome or evolution of sociologic customs and usages?
> 
> To contend as all the Mu’tazilite doctors do that Islam is not a
> polygamous system because it only tolerates a limited polygamy under
> stringent conditions which tends to monogamy is but a metaphysical
> quibble. It is but an attempt to split a hair. It does not alter the
> fact that when a system permits more than one wife, and its founder
> sanctioned four, it is certainly not monogamous. Such an argument will
> not hold water for even a moment. It is but a mere contention--“a bone,”
> as the Persian proverb says, “thrown to two dogs,” a palpable piece of
> sophistry. It is but the begging of an obvious fact, a reality that can
> neither be avoided nor eluded. As Burns so very happily puts it:
> 
>     “But facts are cheels that winna ding
>     An downa be disputed.”
> 
> From theories such as this, Islam can derive no benefit. Just as in a
> broad sense she can suffer no disparagement from the fact that she
> countenances polygamy, she can afford to dispense with any such
> apologies. It is always a sounder principle to look truth in the face,
> even if that truth is unpalatable. However much civilization or the
> march and progress of events may ultimately modify polygamy, the actual
> custom itself was but an outcome of circumstances and conditions that
> at the time were inevitable and did not (as they do not now) imply a
> crime against or subversion of natural laws. To stigmatize a system that
> time and usage have sanctified for thousands of years, merely because it
> offends _the easily outraged feelings of a super-sensitive Christendom_,
> or even on other grounds, is, to say the least of it, undignified. To
> impute a crime to the thing itself is almost, but not quite, on a par
> with the theology that pronounces a child to be the product of a sinful
> act. If the cause is sinful, the effect must also be sinful? Such a
> theory is certainly unnatural, if not monstrous! It is a perversion of
> that Nature from which we ourselves have evolved, and of that God or
> First Cause from which all causes and effects have proceeded.
> 
> Regarding this question from the broadest of standpoints, there is no
> need of an apology. Contention such as that of the Mu’tazilite doctors,
> casts too much of a reflection--an insult almost--on the great spirit
> and the splendid traditions of Islam. It is altogether unworthy of her.
> The fact of a polygamous system did not in one whit detract from the
> splendour of the empire that was built upon Mohammed’s virile creed,
> although the subsequent abuse of it may possibly have done so! Even
> admitting that monogamy is an improvement on polygamy, the Christian
> Faith was yet young when Mohammed first founded Islam. Thirteen hundred
> years make a vast difference in the aspect of social progress and
> development. And as I have already pointed out, even Mohammed, with all
> his great power and influence, dared not have upset the corner-stone
> upon which the entire social fabric of the Patriarchal system was based.
> However great he was as a Prophet, he was much too great a statesman to
> have even spent a thought on an innovation so startlingly radical and
> revolutionary.
> 
> But Christendom in the mass has never rationally considered this
> question from a broad-minded and liberal aspect! The attitude of its
> missionaries towards the great Moslem Church is, to say the least of it,
> uncalled for and unjustifiable. Their irrational arrogance and
> aggressiveness is only exceeded by their psychological ignorance of
> Islamic spirit and morality, added to an overweening egotism, blind
> bigotry and narrow sectarian prejudices. In a dual sense their attitude
> is offensive in the extreme. Offensive because it is hostile as well as
> impertinent. To attempt the conversion of Islam is a liberty that
> amounts to licence in face of its utter futility. This in itself
> demonstrates an ignorance of ethnic conditions on the part of European
> statesmen and missionaries that is as amazing and preposterous as it is
> deplorable. So, too, to denounce Islam, as Christian missionaries do in
> no unmeasured terms, in books, on platforms and in the pulpit, is surely
> unpardonable--surely a reflection on civilization. Christianity will
> never convert or supplant Islam. As long as the one lasts the other will
> endure. From the most catholic of standpoints, from a religious, a
> social, a political, and an economic sense, it would be sounder and more
> politic to leave Islam alone. It would be more to the point if Christian
> missionaries devoted their energies to the bottom dogs of the slums of
> their own European cities, and to rescue the poor helpless infants who
> in their thousands are being slowly done to death through vice and crime
> that is worse than bestial. Unquestionably there is in our own European
> system a moral cancer that is just as virulent as any that Islam can
> produce. This indeed is a question that European statesmen should turn
> their attention to. For more than anything, it is this onslaught on the
> strongholds of Islam by Christendom, that explains the Moslem menace.
> The one, if it exists, is but a counterblast to the other.
> 
> It is an indisputable fact that in China and in various parts of the
> world, the high-handed interference and injudicious zeal of Christian
> missionaries--outrunning all discretion, tact, and common sense--has
> frequently been the cause of war and bloodshed. Is this, I ask,
> compatible with Christian tenets and professions? Do not practices such
> as these fall far short of the high ideals that are so consistently
> flourished in the face of those who are outside its pale? Do they not
> bring moral discredit on a great creed, and tend to reduce it to the low
> level of mere and fulsome cant? But one small specimen of this open and
> undisguised hostility will suffice. In the _X. Y. Z._ of July 24, 1908,
> under the heading in large type of “ISLAM THE ENEMY,” appears the
> following: “At the annual meeting held in connexion with the Church
> Missionary Society at Harrogate recently, the Rev. W. Y. Potter said:
> ‘The calls which are most urgent are perhaps those to combat advancing
> Mohammedanism in West Africa, to direct the new desire for learning in
> China, to protect the Japanese nation from Agnosticism, by gathering in
> the millions in these lands into the folds of the Christian Church.’”
> 
> A sentence like this speaks for itself. It is self-condemnatory. It
> condemns the speaker and the whole system which advances and encourages
> such narrow and vicious methods. It condemns, too, a journalism that
> gives such poor and unworthy utterances a place, even as a mere “Fill
> up.”
> 
> Islam is not an enemy. It is Christendom only that makes her so. It is
> that craven conscience, which finding in her a teacher and a worker of
> solid worth, has aroused the envy and malice of the ever jealous
> theological spirit, which has invariably been responsible for so much
> war and bloodshed. It is a relic of the same militant envy that, burning
> with fury throughout the Dark Ages, fired the Crusades to a very great
> extent. A cramped and dogmatic spirit such as this does not surely
> represent the true spirit of modern Europe, which is presumably rational
> and reasonable, and consistent with the genius of progress and
> advancement. There is no real and spontaneous Moslem menace. Even,
> however, if there is, it is but the re-echo of these aggressively
> Christian sentiments. It is but the answer to a challenge, as
> undignified and contemptuous as it is aggressive and defiant. Islam, I
> repeat, is not an enemy, but a co-worker with us in the great and
> glorious cause of uplifting humanity from a lower to a higher
> civilization. Islam has neither intention nor design of encroaching upon
> the spiritual preserves of Christendom. Further, she has no itching wish
> to do so. Her leaders have the common sense to recognize that
> Christendom is separated from her by ethnic laws and social customs that
> are indivisible. She is only too willing; all, in fact, she asks, is to
> be left alone to work in her own sphere of influence. Is it not
> possible, then, for a Christendom professing so vast a moral and every
> other kind of superiority, to meet her half way, to make a truce or
> compromise to the effect that each should work in its own legitimate
> sphere? A pugnacious method such as she pursues towards Islam is as bad,
> worse in fact, than a thousand red rags to an infuriated bull. For like
> the unfortunate victim in a Spanish bull-fight, tormented to its death
> by matadors, piccadors, torreadors, and a host of other “dors,” Islam is
> beset and heckled by the frothy vapourings of theocratic firebrands, and
> the unbridled licence of Europe’s gutter press.
> 
> The origin of Islam, as I have described it, is in itself evidence of
> Islam’s moral and spiritual stability--of that part of her which has not
> deviated from, but clung to the spirit of her great Founder. But even
> allowing for denominational deviations, Islam in the mass is truly
> devout.
> 
> The two creeds represent two absolutely divergent sections of humanity.
> Unquestionably in a social, moral and religious sense, Islam is Islam,
> and Christendom, Christendom. To remedy this divergence, to bring the
> two sections together, enters into the impossible.
> 
> A natural arrangement such as this cannot be interfered with or altered.
> Defective as it is from a human aspect, it is all the same
> irremediable--a hiatus as wide apart as the suns in space, beyond the
> power of human effort to bring together. It is only possible for the
> rational gospel of humanism, the great religion of natural sympathy, to
> heal the breach. This it can only do by turning humanity into one great
> human family. This alone would sweep away the disturbing factors of
> creeds, denominations, and sects. But is such a thing possible?
> Scarcely! Certainly not so long as the egotism and egotheism of man is
> so predominant a force in human sociology, or so long as the present
> physical and mental environments of the two sections remain the same.
> 
> CHAPTER VIII
> 
> EUROPE’S DEBT TO ISLAM: ETHNIC SPHERES OF INFLUENCE
> 
> But apart from all these weighty considerations, the attitude of Europe
> towards Islam should be one of eternal gratitude, instead of base
> ingratitude and forgetfulness. Never to this day has Europe acknowledged
> in an honest and whole-hearted manner the great and everlasting debt she
> owes to Islamic culture and civilization. Only in a lukewarm and
> perfunctory way has she recognized that when, during the Dark Ages, her
> people were sunk in feudalism and ignorance, Moslem civilization under
> the Arabs reached a high standard of social and scientific splendour,
> that kept alive the flickering embers of European society from utter
> decadence.
> 
> Do not we, who now consider ourselves on the topmost pinnacle ever
> reached by culture and civilization, recognize that had it not been for
> the high culture, the civilization and intellectual as well as social
> splendour of the Arabs, and to the soundness of their school system,
> Europe would to this day have remained sunk in the darkness of
> ignorance? Have we forgotten that the Mohammedan maxim was that, “the
> real learning of a man is of more public importance than any particular
> religious opinions he may entertain”--that Moslem liberality was in
> striking contrast with the then intolerant state of Europe? Have we
> forgotten that the Khalifate arose in the most degenerate period of Rome
> and Persia, also that the greater part of Europe lay under the dark
> cloud of barbarism? Does the magnificent valour of the Arabs, inspired
> as it was by a theism as lofty as it was pure, not appeal to us? Does
> not the moderation and comparative toleration shown by them to the
> conquered, notwithstanding the fierce and burning ardour to regenerate
> mankind that impelled them onwards to conquest, also appeal to us? Does
> it not all the more appeal to us, when we contrast this with the
> bitterness of the attitude of the Christian sects towards one another?
> Especially when we consider that in Christendom as it was then
> constituted, extortion, tyranny and imperial centralization, combining
> with ecclesiastical despotism and persecution, had practically
> extinguished patriotism, by substituting in its place a schismatic and
> degenerate church.
> 
> Is it not obvious that in her outlook on Islam, Europe has overlooked
> her own Dark Ages--that awful period of intellectual oblivion which
> commenced with the decline of classical learning subsequent to the
> establishment of the barbarians in Europe in the fifth century, and
> continued down to the Renaissance, i.e. towards the end of the
> fourteenth century? Is it too not evident that she has lost all
> recollection of the torn and disturbed state of Christendom even in the
> middle of the fifteenth century when the Renaissance was in full swing,
> or had at least run half its course? How few Europeans there are who
> know the name of Æneas Sylvius--fewer still who can remember the
> striking and vivid picture he has drawn of the state of Europe in those
> days of dawning intelligence! Yet this prelate, afterward Pope Pius II,
> sums up the then European situation in a curious but concise and
> explicit document--a species of state paper dated 1454. Possessing as he
> did a personal knowledge of Europe, and being a man of great natural
> shrewdness and power of observation, Æneas Sylvius was of all men then
> living the best qualified to describe the state of affairs at this
> period. So that his observations are not only significant, but entitled
> to weight and consideration.
> 
> Discussing the prospects of the projected crusade, he praises warmly
> Philip of Burgundy for his readiness in the matter, then gives his
> reason for concluding that the Diet at Frankfort must be a failure. For
> there is no real unity in Christendom; neither Pope nor Cæsar is duly
> reverenced or believed in; they are but feigned names or painted
> effigies--each state has its own king: there is a prince to every house.
> Italy is disturbed, Genoa being at feud with Aragon; nay, worse, Venice
> has actually a treaty with the Turk. In Spain are many kings, all
> differing in power, government, aims and opinions. There is even war too
> there about Granada. France is still looking uneasily across the Channel
> at England, her old foe, and England watches France. The Germans are
> divided, without coherence; their cities quarrel with their princes;
> their princes fight among themselves. Luxemburg is a cause of dispute
> between the King of Bohemia and the Duke of Burgundy.
> 
> Is it possible that Europe is unmindful of, and has the ingratitude to
> ignore, the splendid services of the scientists and philosophers of
> Arabia? Are the names of Assamh, Abu Othman, Alberuni, Albeithar, Abu
> Ali Ibn Sina (Avicenna), the great physician and philosopher, Ibn Rushd
> (Averroes) of Cordova, the chief commentator on Aristotle, Ibn Bajja
> (Avempace) besides a host of others, but dead letters? Is the great work
> that they have done, and the fame they have left behind them in their
> books, to be consigned to the limbo of oblivion, by an ungrateful
> because antipathetic Europe? Does the work of Alhazen, author of optical
> treatises, who understood the weight of air, corrected the Greek
> misconception or theory of vision, and determined the function of the
> retina, count for nothing? Do we owe no tribute to a great thinker such
> as Ghazali, who in speaking of his attempts to detach himself from his
> youthful opinions says: “I said to myself, my aim is simply to know the
> truth of things, consequently it is indispensable for me to ascertain
> what is knowledge”? It cannot be that already we have lost sight of the
> amazing intellectual activity of the Moslem world, during the earlier
> part of the “Abbasid” period more especially? It cannot be that we have
> quite forgotten the irrecoverable loss that was inflicted on Arabian
> literature and on the world at large by the wanton destruction of
> thousands of books that was prompted by Christian bigotry and
> fanaticism? It cannot surely be said of Christian Europe that for
> centuries now she has done her best to hide her obligation to the Arabs?
> Yet most assuredly obligations such as these are far too sacred to lie
> much longer hidden! Let Europe--Christendom rather--confess and
> acknowledge her fault. Let her proclaim aloud to her own ignorant
> masses, and to the world at large, the ingratitude she has displayed,
> and the eternal debt she owes to the Islam she no longer despises. Open
> confession is good for the soul, and only a confession such as this can
> wipe off the black stain which has for so long besmirched her fair fame.
> Let Christendom once and for all recognize that the greatest of all
> faults is to be conscious of none--that acknowledging a fault is saying,
> only in other words, we are wiser to-day than we were yesterday. Only
> through magnanimity such as this can she claim redemption. For she must
> surely know that “injustice founded on religious rancour and national
> conceit cannot be perpetrated for ever.”
> 
> Let me endeavour to make my meaning somewhat clearer, by means of two
> simple illustrations--the one belonging to the eighteenth century, the
> other to the twentieth. “How many great men do you reckon?” Buffon was
> asked one day. “Five,” answered he at once; “Newton, Bacon, Leibnitz,
> Montesquieu, and myself.”
> 
> Some five to six years ago, the present German Emperor, in giving his
> views on divine revelation and manifestation, is said to have expressed
> himself as follows: “To promote man’s development God has revealed
> Himself in man, whether he be priest or king, whether heathen, Jew, or
> Christian. So in Moses, Abraham, Homer, Charlemagne, Luther,
> Shakespeare, Goethe, Kant, and the Emperor William the Great, whom God
> thus sought out to achieve imperishable results. His grandfather often
> said that he was an instrument in God’s hands.”
> 
> Comment on my part of any kind would be but an insult to the intelligent
> or sympathetic reader. But the way in which Islam is studiously ignored
> in both cases is surely significant and luminous. These are but two mere
> examples taken at random, but they are typical of European arrogance,
> egotism, and her general attitude of supercilious apathy towards the
> Moslem world. After all--even when an enlightened emperor is
> concerned--it is but a step, and a short quick step, from the sublime to
> the ridiculous.
> 
> In Europe’s own interest it would in the end repay her statesmen to
> treat the world of Islam with greater sympathy and toleration, also with
> but ordinary justice. These remarks apply more forcibly of course to
> Great Britain and France. From the standpoint of the highest
> statesmanship, these two states should utilize the power they possess
> towards the attainment of this wise and politic object. Instead of
> permitting any such impolitic measures (as e.g. those made by Christian
> missionaries to proselytize) they should, by every means that lies
> within their power, advance, encourage, and stimulate the work of Islam
> in its own proper and legitimate sphere of influence. Reflection will
> remind them that intolerance or persecution in any form, as the history
> of Christianity itself proves, always aided, but never deterred, the
> development of any creed. These facts alone ought to recommend the study
> of Islam to all British statesman. But in addition, I would point out to
> them one feature that is worth looking into. This is, that the same
> blend of materialism and spirit, the same desire for unity, cohesion and
> construction, which characterized Mohammed’s efforts, have operated also
> in the building up of the British Empire. It is practically out of these
> forces, but under different aspects and conditions of social and
> physical environment, that England has expanded into Greater Britain.
> Given the same conditions and environment, and the same vigorous people,
> and there is no knowing what the true spirit and fervour of Islam might
> not have effected. Remember that the soul of Islam, as the Prophet left
> it, did not lack in spiritual stamina. The lack of it has been in her
> disciples, who have found it difficult to live up to the rigid standard
> that was set them by their Lord and Master. In a great international or
> rather intercreedal question such as this, it is highly impolitic to
> make comparisons, more especially when the creeds in question represent
> a sphere of thought and a sociological system so widely divergent as
> Islam and Christendom. All the same, there are facts that the latter
> should be reminded of. Throughout its great and growing history,
> particularly its earlier career when fanaticism was excusable, militant
> and violent as she has been, Islam never descended to so hateful a
> system as the diabolical Inquisition, never stained the great soul of
> her Faith by ruthless and bloody massacres such as those of the
> Albigenses, Waldenses, and St. Bartholomew. On the contrary, she showed
> a spirit of religious toleration that was as rational as it was
> remarkable. Indeed under the Ommiades of Spain (755-1031) this was in
> every sense greater, higher and wider than that which prevails at
> present in modern Spain. It is true of course that Ma’mun, one of the
> Abbasid Caliphs, established in 833 A.D. a mihna or Inquisition, in
> order to uphold the rationalism of the Mu’tazilite doctrine against
> orthodoxy. But it was shortlived. For soon after his successor W’athik
> is said to have officially abandoned rationalism; and in fourteen years
> from its initiation, the cruel and bigoted Mutawakkil sternly put his
> foot on it, and with it the Inquisition. This, however, was not an
> Inquisition such as that of the Romish Church. In reality it was but a
> council established with the object only of introducing rationalism
> into the empire and to keep out reactionaries from the State Service. In
> other words, it was but a “Test,” which was promulgated and administered
> on the same lines and principles as the Test Act in England. Is it wise
> then for the statesmen of Europe to ignore such weighty facts? Would it
> not be more politic on their part to take cognizance of them? It is on
> facts such as these that European policy in its relationship to Islam
> should be based. It is only by making the study of universal history a
> science that the politician can ever hope to become a statesman. This
> means a thorough and comprehensive grasp of ancient as well as modern
> history. Such a grasp alone will enable him to look into the future and
> shape his policy. But to do so without a complete knowledge of Islam’s
> history in the past, and the manifest part she has yet to play in the
> history of the future, is to show an utter ignorance of statecraft, but
> especially of that wider sphere of “welt politik” which bears the same
> analogy to the former as, in military parlance, strategy does to
> tactics. These shapers of the destinies of their various nations must
> remember that Islam has done for the East, or rather for the world of
> polygamy, what Christendom has done for the West or world of monogamy.
> She has uplifted millions upon millions of human beings from a much
> lower to a far higher scale of civilization. In Africa and in Asia she
> has purified the primitive cults of their sacrificial abominations, has
> introduced a better and humaner legislation, has encouraged commerce and
> industries and established a more stable form of government. Finally,
> she has exalted the supreme God, whose worship had practically fallen
> into abeyance, to a pinnacle of solitary grandeur, and in this way
> uplifted the people into a far higher moral and spiritual atmosphere. To
> quote Stanley Lane Poole, she has given them “a form of pure theism,
> simpler and more austere than the theism of most forms of Christianity,
> lofty in its conception of the relation of man to God, and noble in its
> doctrine of the duty of man to man, and of man to the lower creation.”
> Islam, in fact, has done a great work. She has left a mark on the pages
> of human history which is indelible, that can never be effaced--that
> only when the world grows wiser will be acknowledged in full--in other
> words, when the sun of knowledge shall have dispelled the black clouds
> of ignorance. But Islam is still doing, and will continue to do, the
> great work that her founder initiated. This is a work that Christianity
> can never do. Islam too has a mission. But her mission is in quite
> another sphere to that of Christendom. It is (and has for some time
> been) the preconceived opinion in Europe that the power and influence
> of Islam since the waning of her conquests have come to a standstill.
> That morally and spiritually her influence is demoralizing and
> corruptive--the bane, in a word, of those nations that she is
> proselytizing. But this is not so. Never was a greater and more
> unpardonable mistake made than this. An error rather than a mistake. The
> wish but prompts the thought. There is still much moral and spiritual
> vitality in Islam, therefore elasticity and power of expansion. In
> Africa especially, among all the Bantu and negroid tribes whose
> sociology is patriarchal, there is a great work for her to do. These
> peoples by their whole social system and in every moral sense belong to
> the sphere of Islam and not of Christendom.
> 
> To judge or even criticize Islam from a European standpoint is uneven.
> To get her proper measure, Islam must be weighed from the aspect of the
> ethnic basis upon which she rests. To compare one system by the standard
> of another, it is only possible to arrive at a distorted or unequal
> result. Islam can no more be judged by modern commonplace methods than
> Europe can be judged on the same lines by Islam, or than Mohammed
> himself whose splendid concept it was. The manners and morals of his own
> time must also be taken into consideration. The two creeds of Islam and
> Christendom have been built on different bases, and constructed out of
> different material. The God of one is the God of universal nature. The
> God of the other is a triform Being--a metaphysical trinity in unity.
> Socially the Moslem is a polygamist, religiously he is an unitarian. The
> European is just the opposite to this. Socially he is a monogamist,
> religiously he is a trinitarian. In a word, the system of these two
> great human divisions differ as much from each other as their foot gear.
> That of the Moslem again conforms to nature. That is, his shoe is made
> to fit the foot, which narrows at the heel, and splays out at the toes.
> In Europe, on the contrary, the foot is made to fit the shoe, which,
> wide at the heel, narrows into a point at the toes. How is it possible
> then for two such widely divergent systems to agree?
> 
> But at least they can agree to differ. At least there is one broad base
> upon which they can meet. On the grounds of a common humanity, on the
> grounds of a common sympathy, by a common birth and a common death they
> are equal. It is not for Christendom to hang back. Islam is quite ready
> to meet her more than half-way. From the superior vantage ground of her
> position, it is for her to hold out the right hand of fellowship. It is
> for her to recognize the real worth of Islam. It is for her to respect
> not to contemn her great coadjutor. For her to regard Islam, not as a
> foe or even a rival, so much as a great and worthy co-partner with her,
> in the work of civilization. From this reasonable and rational
> standpoint the sphere of Islam’s influence should be wisely left alone.
> For the enforcement of Christianity on races such as those of Africa,
> for instance, whose system is patriarchal, can only end, as it has
> already done, in their utter denationalization and hybridization. To
> Europeanize and turn into Christians these sons of nature merely for the
> motive of gaining converts is impolitic, if not immoral. It but makes
> human mules of them. Wiser far to let them remain as they are. As well
> try to turn camelopards into crocodiles or pythons into hippos, as
> convert Africans into Europeans. Islam attempts nothing unnatural of
> this kind--nothing that is opposed to ethnic conditions and sociological
> usages. In her case she but develops the lama into the camel.
> 
> It is impossible, fatuous in fact, to ignore or even overlook the basic
> importance of physical environment. Even science in this respect has
> been backward, and very slowly recognized that geography is obviously
> and essentially the basis of all history--i.e. of all human action and
> development. The importance of climate and climatic changes on the
> habits, customs, temperament and character of races, has never been
> clearly and thoroughly realized. Not until this has been estimated and
> appreciated at its true value, will it be possible for reason to
> override the dogmas and bigotries of short-sighted and prejudiced
> theology. But the day is fast approaching when this fact must be
> acknowledged as a universal truth. Then only will Islam and other creeds
> be appraised from an even and rational standpoint.
> 
> Even admitting that Islam has receded from Mohammed’s moral and
> spiritual high water mark, this is all the more reason why the statesmen
> of Europe should stretch out a helping hand to assist in raising her to
> her former level. All the more reason why they should encourage and
> stimulate her to higher aims and endeavours. This assuredly would be a
> more dignified and statesmanlike proceeding than that which, if it does
> not sanction, at all events permits the good name and fame of Islam to
> be smirched with contumely, and to be held up before the world as a
> standing menace to civilization. A course such as I have suggested, is
> much more likely to bring about a better understanding and preparation
> towards any possible fusion. On the other hand, the present propaganda
> of active theological aggression and political indifference, is bound to
> make the breach wider than ever with the ultimate certainty of
> disruption. In face of such a climax there is but this one remedy. As a
> moral and spiritual factor in the regeneration of humanity, Islam is
> indispensable. In her own sphere she must not be interfered with. The
> good of humanity is a higher cause to work for than the mere
> glorification of creed and sect. The cause of humanity strikes wider,
> deeper and higher than that of any creed or denomination. By working
> towards this end, by sinking denominational differences in the common
> stock-pot of humanity, the world at large and civilization in particular
> will in the end gain ever so much more.
> 
> In speaking of Islam and of Moslems as I have done, I have spoken of
> them as I have found them. Apart from a careful study of the Koran, my
> knowledge of both is based on personal facts and experiences as varied
> as they are extensive. In every clime and under a variety of conditions,
> I have been in touch with Moslems of all classes and shades, and have
> always found them animated by the same spirit--for race or colour makes
> no difference to the spirit of Islam. Always consistent and devout,
> always God-fearing and sincere as regards their Faith. Before all things
> religious, their cult, the creed of Mohammed--i.e. El Islam or
> self-surrender. Afghan, Arab, Baluchi, Hindustani, Somali, Turk,
> Egyptian, Hadendowa, Berber, Senegalese, Fulani, Hausa, Yoruba,
> Mandingo, Malay, I have found them in the main Islamic to the very
> core. In peace or war, in camp and cantonment, working and fighting with
> or against them, my experience of their moral consistency and spiritual
> stamina has been the same. Brave to a fault, endowed with the reckless
> courage of the Fatalist, fearless and contemptuous of death, their
> fidelity to their Faith, their belief in the greatness of Mohammed, and
> their veneration of God, is a something that once it is rightly
> understood, can only be respected and appreciated at its true value. For
> my part, seeing as I have their splendid heroism in their own cause, and
> their touching devotion to those whose salt they have eaten, my feelings
> towards them is not only one of unmixed admiration and respect, but also
> of deep esteem and regard. Such men are worthy of Islam, as Islam indeed
> is worthy of them. Only the soul--the moral and spiritual essence--of
> Islam could have made them what they are, could have turned out of the
> dregs of barbarism a human material so truly splendid.
> 
> With experience and facts such as these before me, I for one find it
> impossible to forget, and only natural to acknowledge with candour, the
> great and magnificent part that Islam has occupied in the history of the
> world. In the intellectual strife of heroes who have wrestled and fought
> for the truth and who for many centuries led the world, in the arena of
> battle and of conquest where warriors have led the van, the sons of
> Islam stand on a pedestal of their own making, that as the world grows
> older and more enlightened, will stand out in all the greater
> prominence. Stand out as men who have taken as great and heroic though
> not so sustained a part on the stage of universal history as the giants
> and heroes of Christendom.
> 
> Even in a study of this length it is in reality impossible to deal
> exhaustively with a question so wide and extensive as this, which
> requires a large volume to itself. But I have said enough, I trust, to
> show that the value of Islam as a moral and spiritual factor in the
> civilization of the world is very considerable. I hope too that to all
> who are reasonable and rational in their views, I have shown, as clearly
> and as concisely as it is possible to do within such narrow limits, that
> the so-called “_Moslem menace_” is but the wraith of an over-heated
> imagination--the bogie conjured up by a hectoring and arrogant
> theocracy, backed up, unfortunately, by an indiscreet and tactless
> Press, ever ready to exaggerate any piece of cheap claptrap into the
> sensation of the moment. Always eager to lift up even garbage such as
> this to the higher level of dramatic denouements, by giving undue
> prominence to the unreliable froth and effervescence of irresponsible
> and excitable cranks. In a word, by a process of moral aggravation that
> is unworthy a great and liberal Press.
> 
> Finally, I have endeavoured to make it clear, that apart from motives of
> honour and high principles and consistent with the dignity of the great
> Aryan family, Europe should adopt towards Islam a policy of conciliation
> and co-operation: if for nothing else, to avoid being hoisted by her own
> overcharged and explosive petard. If I have done but this, then at least
> my labour shall not have been in vain.
> 
> [Decoration]
> 
> ISLAM--CORRIGENDA.
> 
> P. 8, Foreword. In lines 3 and 2 from bottom, _united_ should read
> _suited_.
> 
> On p. 57, line just above quotation, _could be still:_ should read
> _could be: still--_
> 
> P. 87. In line 3 from bottom, _an an alysis of_ should read _an analysis
>
> — *Islam: Her Moral and Spiritual Value (Public Domain)*