ISLAM, PAST AND PRESENT
Properly to appreciate Mohammed we must discard our religious
and national prejudices and see in his work only what he has put
in it, independently of the consequences which this work has
entailed and which may more or less wound us even to-day.
J. BARTHÉLEMY ST. HILAIRÉ.[227]
No one can travel through the Near East with an intelligent
appreciation of the manners and customs of its people without an
accurate knowledge of the religion professed by the majority of them
and an adequate familiarity with the life and times of the one whom
they revere as their Founder and Prophet. The reason is obvious. The
inhabitants--Osmanlis, Arabs, Turkomans--of this part of the once great
Ottoman Empire have so long lived under the theocracy established by
Mohammed and his successors that every detail of their religion and
civil life is regulated for them with a thoroughness that, outside
of Islam, is quite unknown. The Sultan as well as the Mollah is
both a religious and a civil functionary, and theocratic government
prevails everywhere from the palace of the Padishah on the Bosphorus
to the tent of the Bedouin in the Syrian and Arabian Deserts. What is
not prescribed by the Koran is ordered by the Hadith, that body of
legislative traditions which is based on the reputed sayings or acts
of the Prophet of Mecca, and which, in the eyes of loyal adherents of
Islam, has the force of prescriptions emanating directly or indirectly
from Allah, and which are, consequently, immutable.
It is evident, therefore, that one who is ignorant of the history of
Islam will not only seriously misunderstand the people of Moslem
countries but will also be compelled, before he shall be long in their
midst, greatly to revise his previous notions respecting them. For he
will soon discover, as have many others before him, that while he knew
all about their defects, he had little or no knowledge of their many
and very great virtues.
As his sojourn among the Moslems is prolonged and he becomes better
acquainted with them, he will find that most of his views concerning
them were based on ungrounded prejudice or age-old stories that had no
other basis than crass ignorance or un-Christian hatred. Not only this;
he will gradually learn to admire those whom he had been taught to
despise and, if he be of a deeply religious nature, he may find himself
endorsing the statement of the late General Gordon: “I love the Moslems
because they are not ashamed of God.”
To the student of history it seems incredible that so many and so
egregious errors regarding Islam should have so long prevailed among
men who are otherwise well informed and disposed to be fair in their
judgments of all peoples, regardless of creed or color. For “although
Islam has been described in so many books, there are yet educated
people who,” in the words of the learned Padre Marracci,[228] “believe
that Moslems are idolaters who adore Mohammed and the moon,”[229] and
who, as the scholarly Sprenger writes, “have not gotten much further in
the knowledge of Islam than that the Turks allow polygamy.”
If it were a question of the inhabitants of Central Africa, who were
practically unknown until the explorations of Speke, Stanley, and
Livingstone, we should not be surprised that even geographers should
know next to nothing about them. But it seems difficult to explain the
widespread ignorance which has everywhere obtained regarding a people
who have played so important a rôle in history as the Moslems, and who
during more than twelve centuries have been in constant relations with
the Christian nations of Europe.
But, although the contact between the East and the West has been
uninterrupted since the time Moslemism essayed
_To plant the Crescent o’er the Cross_,
the misrepresentations of Mohammed and his followers have continued
without intermission from the days of the Crusaders to the present
time. And the strangest thing is that the most extravagant tales about
Mohammedans and their religion were put in circulation when their
originators must have known that they had no foundation in fact.
Many of the stories--as false as they were ridiculous--that were long
current respecting the Arabian Prophet and the religion which he
founded were due to the _Trouvères_ and the _Troubadours_.
A great majority of the _Chansons de Geste_ exhibit a pitiful
ignorance of the tenets of the Saracens, and not a few of them
contributed to give vogue to the most revolting fables respecting
Mohammed and Islam. Although neither Leo the Isaurian nor Oliver
Cromwell, both the sworn enemies of images, were more opposed to
idolatry or to the worship of images than Mohammed, nevertheless, in
_La Chanson de Roland_,[230] the Franks are represented under
the walls of Saragossa as avenging their defeat at Roncesvelles by
mutilating and destroying the idols of their enemies.
In the _Chanson d’Antioche_--declared to be “a very beautiful
_chanson_ which does not contain any fables but only the
unadulterated truth”--the author, Richard le Pelerin, in the beginning
of his poem, asks God to put to dire confusion the followers of
Mohammed--especially those
_Qui croient et adorent la figure Mahom._
In the _Roman de Beaudouin de Sebourc_, the author goes to still
greater lengths. By a strange aberration he makes the idol of Mohammed
the emblem of Islam, as the Cross is the emblem of Christianity. For,
in this _chanson_ the Comtesse de Porthieu is represented as
wishing to abjure her faith before the Sultan Saladin and expressing
her readiness to adore the effigy of the Prophet:
_Mahom voel aourer; aportez-le-moi-cha._
And Saladin, on his part, is pictured as ordering the idol to be
brought for the adoration of the newly made convert to Mohammedanism:
_Qu’ on aportast Mahom, et celle l’aoura._
When it is remembered that Mohammed was all his life the relentless
enemy of images of all kinds and that he absolutely proscribed the
representation of animated creatures; when it is recalled that images
of all kinds have been studiously excluded from every mosque in the
world from the time of the Prophet until the present, one would
think that such misrepresentations as those spread broadcast by the
_trouvères_ would have found little acceptance, or have been as
short-lived as they were false. Had the object of the _trouvères_
been to perpetuate animosity among Christians toward Moslems they could
not have devised a more effective method of achieving their purpose.
But Mohammed and his followers had to be discredited and recourse was
had to foul means as well as fair. Not satisfied with making them
favor what they always consistently denounced, _trouvères_ and
chroniclers invented a most cruel legend regarding the death of the
Prophet. Notwithstanding the concordant and unquestioned verdict of
history respecting the demise of Mohammed, the pilgrim Richard, author
of the chanson _La Conquête de Jerusalem_, fabricates the odious
fable that the founder of Islam was devoured by swine while helplessly
inebriated.[231] And this, despite the well-known fact that Mohammed
was during his entire reforming career as much opposed to the use of
intoxicating drinks as he was to the use of images! Nevertheless this
alleged disgraceful end of the Prophet is assigned by the pilgrim
Richard and by Guibert de Nogent in his “_Dei Gesta per Francos_”
as the reason why Mohammedans never eat pork![232]
I call special attention to the erroneous notions regarding Mohammed
and Islam which pervade the pages of the _chansons de geste_,
as they are samples of other errors equally preposterous regarding
a people who should have been better understood, and as they
help to explain the origin of many similar misconceptions which,
notwithstanding all that has been said and written to the contrary,
still persist, among large masses of people, in all their original
force and crudeness.
Even long after the time of the _trouvères_ there were not wanting
historians and divines who were willing to repeat the silly legends
of the _chansons de geste_ whenever they thought they would
thereby give point to their attacks on the Koran or the Prophet. Thus,
among the leaders of the Reformation, the distinguished Orientalist,
Bibliander, seriously institutes a comparison between Mohammed and the
Devil. Melancthon declared him to be either Gog or Magog, if not both
together.[233]
Voltaire, in writing of the Koran, of which he had as superficial an
acquaintance as of many other things which engaged his flippant and
caustic pen, declared it to be “_Ce livre unintelligible qui fait
fremir le sens commun à chaque page_”--that unintelligible book
which makes common sense shudder at every page. And, like many writers
before and since his time, he was fully aware that his fictions were
totally at variance with history. But, as has been well expressed by
Hurgronje, “he wanted to put before the public an armed Tartuffe and
thought he might lay the part upon Mohammed.”[234]
Others again, like many writers of our own day, had a political as
well as a religious object in their attacks upon Islam. For, under
pretense of waging war against the nefarious tenets and practices of
Moslemism, they secretly had in view an assault on the Turkish Empire,
or, as a noted Swiss Orientalist long ago declared, all their efforts
were really directed _in oppugnationem Mahometanæ perfidiæ et Turcici
regni_.[235]
From the days of the Crusaders until the present there has been no
cessation of the campaign of vilification of everything Mohammedan as
there has for long been no abatement in political hostility on the part
of certain nations of Europe against everything Ottoman. Centuries
ago the cry was “_Pestem hanc ferro et flamma ab orbe depellendam
esse_”--the pest of Islam must be driven from the earth by fire and
sword. To-day the war cry is in Gladstonian phrase, “The Turk must,
bag and baggage, get out of Europe.” How much of truth and how much
of falsehood there have been in the most recent outcries against the
Moslems, especially against those living in the Ottoman Empire, will
be determined only when the historian shall be free from the violent
passions and the selfish interests and the age-long antipathies which
blind the writers of the present as they have blinded those of the past.
In the preface to his monumental work on the Koran, the erudite
Padre Lodovico Marracci laments the prevailing ignorance of his time
regarding everything Mohammedan and the paucity of books of value
respecting the religion and practices of so large a part of mankind as
the adherents of Islam.
Although [he writes] some have written learnedly and solidly on
these subjects, there is nevertheless no concealing the fact
that others, through ignorance of things Saracen, often omit the
truth and publish fictitious and fabulous things, which excite
the laughter of the Mohammedans and cause them to become more
obstinate in their error.[236]
But, notwithstanding Marracci’s eloquent plea for a more thorough study
of Islam, his words fell, for the most part, on deaf ears.[237] It was
not until our own epoch that a critical investigation of the Koran was
begun and that a really impartial inquiry into the life of Mohammed was
seriously undertaken. Men were still in doubt as to the true character
of the Arabian reformer and were still undecided as to whether he was
_Hero, impostor, fanatic, priest or sage._
All, however, were forced to admit that he must have been a man of
extraordinary power and influence to set in motion that mighty human
current which only a little more than a century after his death had
founded an empire which extended from the Tigris to the Gaudilquivir
and from the burning sands of Yemen to the chilly steppes of Turkestan.
Yet, although the scholarly works of Sprenger, Margoliouth, Prince
Caetani, and Noldeke-Schwally have thrown a flood of light on many
formerly obscure points in the life of the Prophet and elucidated
many previously disputed passages of the Koran, there is still as
much discussion as ever regarding the nature of Mohammed’s religious
vocation. Some contend that it was the result of hallucination,
others of epilepsy, others of psychopathic abnormality, others of
auto-hypnosis, while, as a result of long researches, Aloys Sprenger is
quite sure that the Prophet was a victim of muscular hysteria.[238]
But however much controversy there may be respecting the origin of
Mohammed’s self-styled mission or the nature of the mental disease from
which he is said to have suffered, there can be no doubt whatever about
the essence of his teaching as incorporated in the Koran. For the creed
of Islam is so simple that, as has been said, “it can be written on a
fingernail.”
The five duties of Islam, which means resignation to the will of God,
as declared by Mohammed, are as follows:
1. Bearing witness that there is but one God;
2. Reciting the daily prayers;
3. Giving the legal alms;
4. Observing the Ramazan or the month’s fast;
5. Making the pilgrimage to Mecca once in a lifetime.
In view of the clearness and simplicity of this creed, it is
difficult to understand how the Western World has so signally failed
to comprehend the real nature of Mohammed’s teaching. It is equally
difficult to conceive how the authors of the countless books on the
Prophet and his religion could have been honest and sincere when they
penned their diatribes against Mohammed or pronounced their bitter and
ludicrous invectives against his followers and the religion to which
they were so ardently attached. Had they been actuated by a spirit of
fairness and Christian charity they could so easily have ascertained
the truth about the doctrine which they so strangely misrepresented and
the people whom they so pitilessly maligned. For there never was a time
since the day Saladin entered the Holy City of Jerusalem accompanied
by its bishop, who had gone out to greet the humane conqueror; never a
time since the Poverello of Assisi went as a missionary to the Sultan
of Egypt, when men of good will, seeking the truth and nothing but
the truth, might not have had all the information desired both about
the doctrines of Islam and the practices of the millions who looked
upon Mohammed as directly commissioned by God to teach them the way to
Heaven.
Those who always exhibited such readiness to defame Islam and its
followers should have recalled the words of St. Augustine when he
declares that “there is no false doctrine which does not contain
something of truth.”[239] They should have given heed to the counsels
of the learned and zealous Father Marracci, who, guided by the
experiences among the Mohammedans of his brothers in religion, taught
them how they might bring the followers of Islam to a knowledge of the
Gospel and to a love of the Crucified. Had they done so there would
not be that inveterate hatred that now exists between the Cross and
the Crescent, and there would not be that separation into two hostile
camps of so many hundred millions of people who normally should be in
the same fold and under the same Shepherd.
For, contrary to what has been so often said and written during the
last thousand years and more, there is much, very much good in Islam.
No less an authority than the illustrious Cardinal Hergenrœther
declares:
Islamism ought to prepare for civilization the peoples most
advanced in barbarism, notably those of Africa. Those peoples
whom it is necessary to lead from fetishism to monotheism
are in their low degree of culture and brutal sensualism
materially aided by such a stepping-stone in their transition to
Christianity.[240]
When Mohammed began his marvelous career of religious reform his
countrymen in Arabia were, in many respects, as deeply sunk in vice
as the most debased tribes of Central Africa. They were idolaters
who were addicted to the grossest and most absurd fetishism. Trees,
stones, shapeless masses of dough and the most trivial things in nature
were objects of adoration. There was a special divinity for each of
the countless tribes of the peninsula. In Beit-Alia--House of God--in
Mecca, there was a different idol for each day of the year. Here also
was the most jealously guarded object of worship--a black stone that
was reputed to have fallen from heaven in the days of Adam--a stone
which, it was averred, was originally of immaculate whiteness, but
which was subsequently blackened by the myriad osculations of its
sinful worshipers.
Nor was this all. Not only were the Arabians noted for their loathsome
idolatry but also for their inhuman practice of disposing of female
children at their birth by burying them alive. And so great was their
superstition that it was not an infrequent occurrence for a father to
sacrifice his child to appease the fancied anger of an offended deity.
Besides this, blood feuds, sensuality of the vilest kind, drunkenness,
and utter disregard of even the natural rights of women were as rampant
as their general results were widespread and fatal.
When Mohammed set out to preach monotheism to these people who were
so steeped in every vice--people who had heard the Gospel but had
long abandoned its sublime teachings for the abominable practices of
idolatry, he encountered the strongest opposition from all quarters.
So relentless was the hostility displayed by friend and foe that his
projected reform seemed foredoomed. But, notwithstanding the jeers
which greeted him on every side and the persecutions which he endured
for years, he was eventually successful beyond his most sanguine
expectations.
Here we have the spectacle of a man that could neither read nor
write who, after twenty years of incessant struggle, had succeeded
in extirpating a system of idolatry which, by fostering morals the
most depraved and practices the most hideous, had for centuries made
the fairest parts of Arabia reeking sinks of iniquity. In place of a
blighting and debasing fetishism he substituted the worship of one God,
the Greater of heaven and earth--a God who is eternal, omnipotent,
merciful; who presides over the destinies of all His creatures; who
sees all their actions, even the most secret; who punishes the wicked
in another world and rewards the good, and who never abandons them for
a single instant either in this life or in the one to come. He preaches
submission, the most humble and the most confiding submission, to the
holy will of Him who is not only the Author of their existence but also
their unfailing support and their just and omniscient judge. And the
sole worship which the Mussulman is required to give to this one God is
prayer at stated periods of the day and an annual fast during the month
of Ramadan--a fast which is designed to direct his thoughts to Him who
has created him, who sustains him during life and who, for weal or for
woe, will be his Sovereign Lord after death.
Such essentially is Islam in all its simplicity as preached to the
Arabian world by the unlettered camel driver of Mecca; such the
doctrine which was destined to be adopted by many races and nations
in every clime. There is nothing new in it. Mohammed never pretended
to introduce anything new. He simply proclaimed to his benighted
countrymen not a new revelation, but, as he always insisted, the
long-forgotten faith of Abraham and Moses and Christ, as he understood
it.
With the exception, therefore, of Christianity, based on the
Old and New Testaments, with all its marvelous and beneficent
consequences, there is no religion in the world which can justly
be compared with Islam or which even remotely deserves to be
placed in the same category.[241]
And, with the exception of Christianity and Judaism, it is the only
religion in the world which has recognized and consecrated monotheism.
It is, therefore, far superior to the debasing paganism of Greece and
Rome. It is loftier and nobler than the repugnant dualism of Zoroaster
and the selfish and materialistic utilitarianism of Confucius. It is
incomparably more elevating than the fantastic metempsychosis and the
atheistic Nirvana of Gautama Buddha, which, with Confucianism, holds in
spiritual bondage a great majority of the teeming millions of Central
and Eastern Asia.
The eminent doctor of the Church, St. John of Damascus, shows how near
he considers Islam to Christianity when, in his account of the creed
of Mohammed, he treats it as a heresy analogous to Arianism.[242]
Peter the Venerable, the illustrious Abbot of Cluny, the first one to
have a translation made of the Koran, was of a similar opinion, as is
evinced in his work against Mohammedanism--a work which treats not of
the paganism but of the heresy of the Saracens, as its title--_Adversus
Nefandam Hæresim sive Sectam Saracenorum_--conclusively indicates.[243]
In like manner Dante, who was almost as distinguished as a theologian
as he was as a poet, places Mohammed in hell not as a heathen but as a
sower of “scandal and schism.”[244]
Arius, by denying the divinity of Christ, had prepared the way for
Islam, which saw in the Son of God only a prophet who, as Moslems
subsequently claimed, was but the precursor of Mohammed. St. Jerome,
in his memorable words--_Igemuit totus orbis et Arianum se esse
miratus est_--the world uttered a sigh and was astonished to find
itself Arian--expressed the one-time prevalence of the errors of the
Alexandrine heresiarch. The grave dissensions in the churches of Asia
and Africa that followed close upon dissemination of the heresy of
Arius immensely assisted Islam in its lightning career of conquest.
For the divided and degenerate Christians of these two continents were
easily persuaded that Moslemism was but one of the various Christian
sects and not a new religion.
The followers of Mohammed were formerly the victims of calumny
on account of their alleged beliefs and practices. Now it is the
organization of Islam and the character of its religious services that
seem to give rise to the most misunderstandings.
Thus, according to many modern writers, the Sultan of Turkey is to
Islam what the Pope is to Christendom. Nothing, however, could be
farther from the truth. That the caliphate, whether of the Ottoman,
Ommiad, or Abbassid dynasties, is in no way comparable with the Papacy
is clearly evidenced by the fact that Islam has never in all its
history regarded the Caliph as its spiritual head.[245]
Again the same writers, as well as many modern travelers, constantly
refer to the priests and the clergy of Mohammedanism. The fact is
that Islam has not and never has had anything like a clerical body as
it is understood in the Christian world. There is no ordination, no
priesthood with powers to bind and loose, no confessional, no baptismal
font, no altar, no sacrifice, no mediator between man and God. There
is in fact no one possessing any special powers through ordination to
perform any act that any adherent of Islam could not as rightfully
perform. For, Islam, as has been well said, is and has always been
“the lay religion _par excellence_.” There are, it is true, the
Khatib--preacher--and the imam--leader in prayer--but neither the one
nor the other possesses anything whatever of the sacerdotal character
of the Christian priesthood or of the hereditary Levites of ancient
Judaism.[246] They are usually selected on account of their grave
deportment and their knowledge of the Koran and of the traditions of
Islam, but otherwise they might be replaced by a mufti or kadi whose
occupations are analogous to our lawyer or judge. The chief purpose of
the imam, whose function closely resembles that of a precentor, is to
preserve order in public worship. But whether the religious functions
of the Moslems be performed by imams, khatibs, mollas, or any of that
large class of functionaries known as ulema, there are no gradational
distinctions among the worshipers themselves. The ulema may act like
priests and may sometimes be considered as priests by uninformed
people, but the ulema themselves, who ought to know, strongly and
consistently insist on their non-priestly character. So alien, indeed,
is all classification to Moslemism, so abhorrent to Islam is the very
idea of an ecclesiastical organization as distinct from the laity, that
Palgrave, whose long and intimate intercourse with the Mohammedans
made him thoroughly familiar with all the details of their creed,
did not hesitate when referring to their religious organization, to
declare, “‘Each one for himself and God for us all’ is an almost
literal translation of what the Koran sums up and a hundred traditions
confirm.”[247]
The erroneous notions that so generally prevail respecting the real
object of mosques are as numerous as those respecting its khatibs
and imams. The primary use of a mosque is to indicate the direction
of Mecca. Originally it was a simple platform with a wall at the
end facing Mecca. In facing this wall the worshiper looked towards
what was to him the holiest city in the world. In southern climates
this primitive type of mosque[248] sufficiently answered the chief
purpose contemplated. But the more rigorous climates of the north
required roofed places of worship, which eventually developed
into the magnificent structures which one now finds in Brusa, and
Constantinople, as well as in cities much farther south, such as
Damascus and Cairo and Jerusalem.
But the reverence which a Mussulman entertains for his mosque and that
which a Roman Catholic feels for his church are entirely different in
character. There is, in the eyes of a Catholic, a sanctity attaching to
a church that does not and cannot attach to a mosque. This is shown by
the names given to the two places of worship. A common name for mosque
is _Jami_, which means a meeting house, while the word church,
derived from the Greek, signifies the house of God--Τὸ κνριακὸν. In a
Moslem’s view God is present in the _jami_ or mosque, but only as
he is present everywhere else--in the field, on the mountain. But in
the church, according to Catholic teaching, God is really and truly
present under the veil of the Blessed Sacrament. Hence all the pomp and
ceremony of the Catholic ritual, all the gorgeousness of decoration
which so distinguishes the Catholic house of God from the Mussulman
meeting house. Because of the Sacramental Presence every Catholic
church is called the house of God. But among Mohammedans there is
only one specifically recognized _Beith Allah_--house of God.
This is the Kaaba at Mecca, which contains the Black Stone which was
for ages an object of idolatrous worship and which is even to-day the
chiefest object of Mohammedan veneration, if not also of downright
superstition. It is because of the presence of this old pagan fetish in
the Kaaba,[249] as well as on account of the fantastic legends which
are associated with the Kaaba itself, that the Moslem, when praying,
always turns toward Mecca. It is this Kebla--the direction of the Kaaba
in Mecca--that is carefully indicated by the niche or mihrab in the
interior wall of every mosque. For a time the Kebla was changed from
Mecca to the rock in Jerusalem, on which Solomon’s temple was erected,
but, whether from policy or atavism, Mohammed changed it back again
to its original location. By so doing he virtually reduced Islam to a
national religion--the religion of Arabia--instead of making it, as he
had dreamed, the religion of the world.
Again, the mosque, unlike the church, is never the center of that
kind of religious organization which we know as a parish. There is no
congregation comprising those who worship in a particular mosque. Nor
have the imams and khatibs any jurisdiction, like that of a Catholic
pastor, over those who assemble in the mosque for prayer. Worship in
the mosque may be called congregational only in so far as certain
individuals, who happen to gather there, unite in prayer to Allah
under the direction of the imam, but it is nevertheless individual, as
no Moslem has closer affiliations with one mosque than with another.
Wherever he happens to be when the muezzin calls for prayer, there is
his mosque and there he joins with his fellows in worship.
In the Ottoman Empire the imam, so far as he is charged with special
functions, is no more than a paid servant. Outside of acting as
precentor, or fugleman, at prayer his chief duties are to officiate at
marriages and funerals. There is none of that spiritual relationship
which exists between the Catholic priest and his parishioners; none of
that love of a father for his children, and none of that affection of
children for their father, which exists in every Catholic parish; no
one who is in any sense the shepherd of his flock--to assist the weak,
to direct the erring, to admonish the remiss, to upbraid the sinner,
and lead those aspiring to holiness to higher degrees of perfection
in the spiritual life. Far from feeling the need of such a guide and
superior, the Moslem prides himself on his ability to dispense with
such aids which he would regard as curtailing his religious liberty and
circumscribing his independence of action. He prefers to lead his own
life, without let or hindrance, without monitors or directors, and to
be free, if so disposed, to follow those votaries of pleasure in other
parts of the world, who
_Compound for sins that they’re inclined to_
_By damning those they have no mind to._
But one cannot fully understand the religious spirit of the Mussulman
without knowing something of the prayers which he is wont to address to
the Deity. No class of men, probably, have the name of God--Allah--more
frequently on their lips than the Moslems. This is particularly true of
those devotees--and their number is legion--known as dervishes.
Prayer five times a day is the second of the five pillars of Islam.
At dawn, at midday, in the afternoon, evening and night the Muezzin
ascends the minaret and repeats in a loud voice:
God is great. I bear witness that there is no god but God.
I bear witness that Mohammed is the apostle of God. Come to
prayers! Come to salvation!
But prayer may be said only when the clothes and body of the worshiper
as well as the place of prayer are free from all impurity. Moreover,
the prayers, whether said privately or in common, must be recited
according to a prescribed form and in specified postures from which
there can be no deviation. There are constant repetitions of the words
“God is great,” “I extol the holiness of my Lord, the Most High.”
_Holiness to Thee, O God!_
_And praise be to Thee!_
_Great is Thy name!_
_Great is Thy greatness!_
_There is no deity but Thee!_
A devout Mussulman will recite these and similar forms of prayer no
less than seventy-five times a day. But these words, which admit of
no variety or change, become, after ceaseless repetition, rather a
mechanical than a mental act and are frequently more in the nature of
lip service than the prayer of the Christian, which consists not only
in acts of praise, as in the above words of the Moslem worshiper, but
also in acts of impetration and thanksgiving. The Moslem’s nearest
approach to a Christian prayer is the first sura of the Koran, called
the Fatihah, which reads:
_Praise be to God, Lord of all the worlds,_
_The compassionate, the merciful._
_King of the day of reckoning!_
_Thee only do we worship, and to Thee only do we cry for help._
_Guide thou us in the straight path,_
_The path of those to whom Thou hast been gracious,_
_With whom Thou art not angry,_
_And who go not astray, Amen._
But we have only to compare this prayer--which has been called “the
quintessence of the whole Koran”--with the “Our Father” to see the
vast difference between the prayer of the Christian and that of the
Mohammedan. It is manifest in the very first word of the _Pater
Noster_, which shows that there is no comparison between the
Christian and the Moslem conception of God. Mohammed believed in God,
feared and obeyed Him according to his light, but, not recognizing His
Fatherhood, he did not and, from his view of the Deity, could not love
Him. It is so with his followers. Their God is a God of fear, not a God
of love, because not known as _God Our Father_. How different is
this from the relationship--sonship--of the Christian to his Creator,
who enjoys the blessed privilege of calling God _Abba_--Father.
Denying the Fathership of God, Moslem theologians maintain that it
is impossible for men to love Him. Man and God, they contend, are of
different natures, and where there is a difference of genus there
can be no love. The nearest approach to love, they contend, is man’s
perseverance in obedience to Allah.
Again, according to the same theologians, there can be no love of
God for man, for love, say they, implies change, which, as God is
infinitely perfect, is impossible. When God therefore is said to love
man, all that is meant, according to Al-Gazali, one of the most eminent
of Moslem theologians and philosophers, is that “God so affects man
that man comes to God.”[250]
But in this case, as in so many others, the common sense--or shall we
call it a special divine illumination?--of many in Islam has enabled
them to arrive at a truer conception of God and of their relations
to Him than was ever attained by Moslem philosophers and casuists
and incomparably superior to anything found in the Koran or in the
traditional teachings of Mohammed.
As a proof of this assertion, I need only adduce the beautiful prayer
of the Persian imam, El Kachiri, who, discarding the cold and formal
acts of praise prescribed in Moslem worship, pours forth his soul to
God in these touching and heart-felt words:
Thou, O Lord, threatenest me, with a bitter separation which
will forever deprive me of Thy presence! O Lord, do with me as
Thou wilt, provided that I be not forever separated from Thee!
There is no more bitter nor fatal poison than this separation.
For what can a soul separated from God do except be in a state
of inquietude and agitation which will be a continual torment?
One would rather suffer a hundred thousand deaths; for, after
all, they would not offer anything so terrible as the privation
of the vision of Thy divine face. All the evils of the world,
all the most acute and painful diseases joined together, seem
to me incomparably easier to bear than this removal from Thee.
It is this transitory removal which renders our lands sterile;
which dries up and infects our waters. What would it be if it
were eternal? Without it, the fire of hell would not burn; it
is through it that it becomes so hot. In a word, it is only Thy
presence which sustains us and showers upon us all kinds of good
things and Thy absence, it is, which causes all the evils of
hell.[251]
This prayer is fully in keeping with the teaching of many other Moslem
mystics of non-Semitic origin, who, contrary to the vulgar notions
so widely entertained respecting the Mohammedan paradise, explicitly
declare that the infinite happiness of the elect in heaven consists
in the enjoyment of the beatific vision. This ineffable happiness,
they aver, so far transcends all the other joys of paradise that they
completely disappear before it. “Paradise, O Lord,” exclaims the Sheik
el Alem, “is desirable only because one there sees Thee; because,
without the light of Thy beauty, it would pall on us.”[252]
These two quotations are remarkable but no less so than the words of a
Mussulman poet of Persia who, in addressing himself to Isa--Arabic for
Jesus--says:
The heart of the afflicted man draws all his consolation from
Thy words. The soul resumes life and vigor simply by hearing Thy
name pronounced. If the mind of man is ever able to raise itself
to the contemplation of the mysteries of the Divinity, it is
from Thee that it draws the light to know them and it is Thou
that givest him the attraction by which he is penetrated.[253]
How like the language of a Christian speaking of the grace of our
Saviour, Jesus Christ!
Far less excusable than ignorance of Moslem doctrine and practices, is
the disposition everywhere manifested in Europe and America to regard
Islam not only as a disintegrating organization but also as a decaying
power. Those who thus minimize the ever-growing strength of one of
the largest religious bodies in the world exhibit the fatuity of the
ostrich which imagines danger does not exist because it is unseen.
For generations past the western world has been periodically informed
that Mohammedanism as a religion is moribund and that Christendom
has nothing more to apprehend from it. It has been assured that
the mosques are unfrequented and crumbling into ruins; that schools
and colleges of Moslem law are neglected or languishing for lack
of financial support; that the precepts of the Koran are generally
disregarded and frequently openly flouted; and that Islam is under an
eclipse which portends disaster and extinction.
But what are the facts? I can best answer them in the words of Palgrave
whose sixteen years of investigations of Mohammedan conditions from the
shores of the Euxine to the interior of Arabia makes his words on the
question authoritative. Writing in 1872, he declares:
Were I to attempt the catalogue of mosques, colleges, schools,
chapels and the like, repaired or wholly fresh--built within
the circle of my own personal inspection alone--several pages
would hardly suffice to contain it. Trebizond, Batoom, Samsoon,
Sivas, Keysareeyah, Chorum, Amasia, and fifty other towns of
names unknown, or barely known in Europe, each can boast its
new and renovated places of Mahometan worship; new schools,
some of law, others of grammar, others primary, have sprung up
on every side; new works of charity and public bequest adorn
the highways.... Meanwhile, year after year sees a steady
increase in the number of pilgrims to the holy places of Islam;
and, although the greater facilitation consequent on steam has
undoubtedly contributed not a little to this result, much must
also be put down to the growing eagerness manifested by all,
high and low, to visit the sacred soil, the birthplace of their
religion and Prophet; while the pride that each village takes
in its “hajjees” is manifested in the all-engrossing sympathy
that accompanies their departure, and the triumphant exultation
of the entire populace that welcomes them home. It may not have
been less a thousand years ago: it certainly could not have been
more.[254]
Although it is nearly half a century since the noted author of
the _Narrative of a Year’s Journey through Central and Eastern
Arabia_ penned the paragraph just quoted, there is no evidence, so
far as I have been able to gather in my travels in Asia and Africa,
that the current of Moslem revival is running lower than it was fifty
years ago, nor is the rejuvenescence of Islam less marked nor its power
less resistant or less persistent.
Not only has Mohammedanism long been declared to be moribund but it
has also, from time immemorial, been represented as changeless in
doctrine as are the agricultural implements of the East--which are the
same to-day as “when Proserpine went a-Maying through Enna”--and “the
difficulty of bringing Islam and its ways into harmony with modern
society as comparable to squaring the circle.”
Again, what are the facts? So far is Moslemism from being what it
was when it came from the hands of the Prophet, or from what it is
as exhibited in the Koran, that it has been constantly undergoing
modification in religious doctrine and practice since the days of
the first caliphs. Not to speak of the countless changes which
have insensibly been effected by the quiet but continuous action
of Christianity, innumerable others have been brought about by the
teachings of Plato and Aristotle, by Roman law, Neo-Platonism, and
other similar but persistent and irresistible influences. This
is practically manifest in the hadith as modified and developed
by canonists, dogmatists, and mystics to enable Islam “to shape
religious ordinances of old customs” or “to adapt itself to the
peculiar characteristics and stages of development of the people whose
allegiance it wishes to win.”
For not only have law and custom, religious teachings and
political doctrines clothed themselves in Hadith form [writes
one of the most eminent authorities on Mohammedanism], but
everything in Islam, both that which has worked itself out
through its own strength, as well as that which has been
appropriated from without. In this work foreign elements have
been so assimilated that one has lost sight of their origin.
Sentences from the Old and New Testaments, rabbinical sayings
as well as those from the apochryphal gospels, the teaching of
Greek philosophers, sayings of Persian and Indian wisdom have
found room in this garb among the sayings of the prophet of
Islam. Even the Lord’s prayer is not lacking in well confirmed
Hadith-form.[255]
To say, then, that Islam has always been inflexibly opposed to the
influence of foreign science, or law, or philosophy, or theology
when these elements enabled it “to mould its intellectual heritage”
and adjust itself to an alien spirit or a new environment is not in
consonance with the facts of history. So far, indeed, is this from
the truth that “it may safely be said that there is nothing more
extraordinary in the whole history of Islam than the way in which
the theory of the verbal inspiration of the Koran and the consequent
stereotyped and unalterable nature of its precepts have, by ingenuity,
by legal fictions, by the ‘Sunna,’ or traditional sayings of Mohammed
or by _responsa prudentum_ been accommodated to the changing
circumstances and the various degrees of civilization of the nations
which profess it.”[256] Such being the case, one is not surprised in
finding so distinguished a writer as Stanley Lane-Poole making the
categorical assertion that “the faith of Islam has passed through more
phases and experienced greater revolutions than perhaps any other of
the religions of the world.”[257]
No less misleading and mischievous are the continuously repeated
statements that the days of Mussulman missionary activity have long
since passed; that Mussulman zeal for propagating the teachings of
the Koran and the Prophet no longer exists; that Pan-Islamism, as a
religious force with which Christianity must reckon, was long ago
dealt its death blow in the Gulf of Lepanto by Don Juan of Austria and
under the walls of Vienna by the immortal Sobieski.
But still, again, what are the facts? It is true that Moslem canon law
still divides the world into _Dar al-Islam_--Abode of Islam--and
_Dar al-harb_--Abode of war, according as these two parts are
in the possession of Mohammedanism or are yet to be won to it by the
sword, yet it is, nevertheless, equally true that this distinction
is now practically a dead letter and that the Christian Powers of
the world are now able to curtail Islam’s schemes of territorial
expansion and render forever impossible all hopes of world conquest.
But, although Islam as a political and military power is no longer
to be apprehended--at least for the present--it is not true that she
has discontinued her missionary activities or that her propaganda in
behalf of the religion of the Prophet is less determined than it was
in the days of Saladin or Solyman the Magnificent. We have only to
scan the authentic tokens that come to us from every quarter of the
globe to be convinced that Pan-Islamism is to-day a greater missionary
force--peacefully aggressive but fanatically persistent--than it has
perhaps ever been in any period of her history.[258]
Let us see. According to the most reliable statistics there are now
about two hundred and fifty million Mohammedans in the world,[259] and
this number, stupendous as it is, is rapidly increasing. The strongest
agency in their phenomenal development is the annual _hadj_ or
pilgrimage to Mecca which every free Mussulman is required to make
at least once in his lifetime. During the period of the _hadj_,
the Sacred City of Moslemism sees gathered around and within its
walls a vast, surging throng of devotees, which ranges from two to
three hundred thousand strong. They come from every part of Asia and
Africa--from the snow-swept steppes of Siberia, from the coral-fringed
islands of the Indian Archipelago, and from the tangled jungles of
Senegambia and Abyssinia. Turks, Kurds, Persians, Tartars, Chinese,
Malays, Egyptians, Berbers, Nubians--men of all colors and of countless
tribes and tongues--they all foregather in the Sacred City of Arabia to
get inspiration and strength to win proselytes to the creed of Mohammed.
From Mecca where every one is thrilled by the peculiar half-pagan
ceremonies which Mohammed incorporated into his religion, every hadji
returns to his home, imbued with the surpassing greatness of Moslemism
and exulting in the thought that his is the blessed privilege of
being numbered among the followers of the Prophet. Each one is a
zealous agent of Moslemism and is prepared, if need be, to give his
life, in disseminating its principles and in contributing, so far
as in him lies, towards the realization of the hopes of every true
Mohammedan--the final world triumph of Pan-Islamism.
Such a determined army of missionaries, stirred to a frenzy of
enthusiasm by their experience in what is to them the holiest spot
on earth, has during the last few decades achieved results that are
positively startling. Not in centuries has Islam so defiantly thrown
the gauntlet down to Christendom. And never before was it so incumbent,
as at present, on the followers of Christ to use every effort to
counteract their well-directed campaign of Mohammedan proselytism.
No agency is overlooked by the Moslems that will contribute towards
their success in their world-wide propaganda--traders, shepherds,
soldiers, husbandmen, shop-keepers, mollahs, muftis, marabouts--all are
engaged in the same ubiquitous, unceasing work of winning converts to
the religion of Mohammed.
But more active and persistent--were that possible--than the
proselytizers just mentioned, are the legions of zealots known as
dervishes who now count nearly a hundred different orders and millions
of members. Among them are all classes of people from the humblest
hamal to the proudest shah and sultan. They count untold thousands of
such ardent reformers as the Wahabis and Sanusiyahs who are undoubtedly
the most powerful propagators of Islam that the world has yet known.
The last named order has _zawivas_ or lodges with six million
oath-bound members in northern Africa alone. These are all sworn
to labor unceasingly for the extension of Pan-Islamism and for the
propagation of the revelation of Allah as contained in the Koran. So
unexampled has been their proselyting activity between Egypt and Cape
Colony during the last few decades that millions have been brought
under the banner of the prophet. Frequently in equatorial Africa whole
tribes have, in a short period of time, been won to Moslemism by the
unflagging zeal and resistless enthusiasm of its missionaries.
Every instrumentality that promises success is unhesitatingly brought
into requisition. With the view of confirming the wavering in their
own ranks and continuously increasing the number of converts, they
have everywhere established schools, orphan asylums, and printing
presses, and in Christian countries they have erected mosques. Only
lately a great mosque was completed at Petrograd. Converts to Islam
are found in Japan, Jamaica, British Guiana, and Brazil. The number of
immigrant Moslems in the New World was recently estimated at more than
one hundred and fifty thousand, most, if not all, of them fired with
the same zeal for the propagation of Mohammedanism as their brethren
in Asia and Africa. In the various parts of India, where according
to the most available statistics, there are more than sixty million
adherents of the Prophet, the annual number of converts to Moslemism
is variously estimated from ten thousand to six hundred thousand.
These facts prove conclusively that Islam is very far from being either
tottering or moribund. In the vigorous prosecution of the campaign
which is to make Pan-Islamism not only a dominant religious power but
a dominant political power as well, it exhibits all the pertinacious
activity of its palmiest days. It is everywhere winning victories and
ceaselessly planning new and greater victories. It is the most vigorous
and the most resolute anti-Christian force that confronts the Church
to-day. Those who think that Islam is approaching dissolution or
extinction should ponder the words of the Arab poet:
_Dead and buried had they seen me, so their ready tale they spread;_
_Yet I lived to see the tellers buried all themselves and dead._
In the preceding pages I have endeavored in the limited space available
to give an honest statement regarding the actual tenets and status of
Moslemism in the past as well as in the present. While, on the one
hand, I have studiously eschewed everything like detraction, I have,
on the other, as carefully avoided anything that could reasonably be
construed as an apology either for Mohammed or for Mohammedanism.
It has never entered my mind, God forbid! to compare Moslemism with
Christianity as a means for attaining to a true knowledge of our
Creator or for realizing the highest spiritual ideals of which our
race is capable. No, Christianity, especially that form of it which
has sanctified and crowned the lives of a St. Jerome, a St. Francis of
Assisi, a St. Theresa, a Joan of Arc; which presided at the sublime
meditations of an Augustine of Hippo, or a Thomas of Aquin, of a Dante
Alighieri, of a Christopher Columbus; which has given to the world such
matchless heroes and heroines of charity and self-sacrifice as a St.
Vincent de Paul, a Father Damien, a Sister of Charity, or a Little
Sister of the Poor; that for us is the truest, the holiest, the most
beneficent of all religions; the one that contains in all its fullness
the revealed word of God, the one which must be our guide to a world of
happiness eternal in the life beyond the tomb.
Truth and justice, however, compel us to admit that there are many,
very many, things in Islam to extort our admiration. Nor can there be
any doubt that Mohammed achieved many things for the improvement of his
idolatrous, drink-sodden, vice-steeped, feud-wrecked countrymen. The
Koran, we must confess, contains many beautiful things regarding one’s
duties towards God and one’s neighbor; but all of them are directly
or indirectly derived from the New or the Old Testament, or from the
doctrines of the early Church. Notwithstanding all this, however, the
teachings of Islam are as far beneath the saving and incomparable
truths of Christianity as is the gross and sensual Prophet of Mecca
beneath the all-pure and all-perfect Son of God.
But, to recur again to the previously quoted opinion of Cardinal
Hergenrœther, Islam can serve as a stepping-stone from fetishism
to Christianity and as such is worthy of our sympathetic study and
appreciation.
Among the countless amiable, honest, hospitable, deeply religious
Mussulmans that every traveler finds in Moslem lands there is a large
number who yearn for union with God and who would make any sacrifice
to conform with His holy will were it but clearly and unmistakably
made known to them. They are but awaiting the arrival of the Savior’s
messenger and will receive the word of salvation with joy and
thanksgiving. The spiritual unrest among Moslems; the ever-increasing
attempts at social and doctrinal reform; even the very zeal which loyal
Moslems exhibit in extending the creed of the Prophet--the only form of
religion with which they are really acquainted--attest their eagerness
in seeking the truth and explain their ardor in propagating what they
deem to be the only revelation of the Most High.
Add to all this a widespread feeling among Mussulman leaders as well
as among Christian missionaries that the time has finally come when
a serious effort should be made towards effecting some kind of a
_rapprochement_ between the Cross and the Crescent; when the vast
organizations of Islam and Christianity should endeavor to arrive
at a better understanding of one another’s doctrines and practices;
when, rising superior to that age-long antipathy and that mischievous
_odium theologicum_ which has so long kept them in a state of
implacable hostility, they should strive to meet one another as
brothers in one Lord and as children of the same Father.
More than sixty years ago Abd-el-Kader, the gifted Algerian ruler and
patriot, wrote: “If the Mussulmans and Christians would give ear to
me, I should cause their divergence to cease and they would become
brothers.”[260]
The number of Moslems who entertain a view similar to that of the
distinguished emir is daily increasing. They feel that the moral
and religious ideas of the various races of mankind are not so
irreconcilable as they are ordinarily supposed to be. The greatest
barrier towards a nearer communion of sentiments between Christians and
Mohammedans has been erected by ignorance and prejudice. Remove this
barrier and the way, they contend, will be prepared for intellectual
sympathy and, eventually, for religious union.
Notwithstanding the long centuries of wars between the Cross and the
Crescent, Mohammedans are so far from regarding our Savior, as is
commonly supposed, with the hatred and contempt which Christians have
usually entertained for the Prophet of Mecca, that they have for Him
a reverence which is inferior only to that with which He is regarded
by Christians themselves. They believe that He will again return to
earth and, having slain Antichrist, will establish a reign of peace and
justice among men. They believe that truth will at last be triumphant
and the sword will be sheathed forevermore. According to the Shiahs
of India there will then be an amalgamation of Islam and Christianity
and then, finally, will be realized in its truest and highest sense
something of Tennyson’s dream of universal peace and charity
_In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world._
The spiritual agitation now existing among Moslems, the aspirations
of so many of them for a purer and more elevating creed than that
of Mohammed would seem to offer a peculiarly favorable opportunity
for preaching to them the Gospel of the world’s Redeemer. But there
are, unfortunately, almost insuperable difficulties in the way. There
are, first and foremost, the selfish diplomacy and the unprincipled
aggressions of the European Powers, which nullify in advance all
projects of Christian propaganda. The frequent exhibitions of very
questionable morality on the part of certain European diplomatists
who have manifested a total disregard of the most solemn covenants;
the ruthless conquests of Christian nations which have at times
displayed an utter disregard of the most elementary rights of humanity
and have often had recourse to the most cruel and barbarous methods
of warfare--these things have not helped to commend to Moslems the
religion of their conquerors. The recent campaigns of Italy in Tripoli,
of England on the Gold Coast,[261] of Russia in the Transcaucasia
have but intensified the bitterness of Islam toward Christendom and
fanned the flame of fanaticism among millions who sullenly await an
opportunity for making reprisal.
Then, too, there is among many the pessimistic feeling which is
expressed in Kipling’s couplet:
_Oh, East is East, and West is West,_
_And never the twain shall meet_--
a feeling that has been engendered among them by a vague notion that
there is an impassable chasm between the peoples of Asia and Europe
and that any attempt to reconcile them will prove not only illusory
but impossible. Starting with such an assumption they still cling to
the detestable theory in politics of identifying power and right and
of enforcing the inexorable demands of an iniquitous diplomacy by the
satanic instrumentality of machine guns and trinitrotoluol.
_Non tali auxilio nec defensoribus istis_
_Tempus egit_....
Christian nations, if actuated by the altruism which they are
constantly preaching, if guided by the same law of charity which is
binding on individuals, need not such help or such defenders of their
prestige or national honor.
No, what is now needed more than ever before is a complete change
of attitude of the West towards the East. If we are to make the
brotherhood of man anything more than an idle phrase; if we are to
bring together in amity and comity the peoples of the Orient and the
Occident; if we are to heal the wounds which the followers of Mohammed
have suffered from centuries of cruel calumny and still crueler wars;
if we are to lead Islam to a knowledge of Christianity and to an
eventual acceptance of the Gospel of peace and love; we, the followers
of the Crucified, cannot too soon abjure our accursed theory that
might makes right nor can we too soon control that abiding lust of
conquest which has plunged the weak and the innocent into such untold
suffering and which has tended to perpetuate the deep hostility and the
fatal misunderstandings which for long centuries have separated the
God-created souls of the East from the God-created souls of the West.
The time has come for a new Crusade but a Crusade in which fire and
sword shall, in the words of good old Padre Marracci, be replaced by
_lingua et calamo_--by the voice of the evangelist and the pen of
the expositor of Christian teaching. It must be a Crusade which shall
be inspired by the ardent love of a Francis of Assisi; by the flaming
intelligence of a Raymond Lully; by the wisely tempered zeal of a Peter
the Venerable.[262] It must be a Crusade to win souls for Christ, our
Savior, and to make all men children of the same heavenly Father. And
that which in the Crusades of old was the war cry should, in the new
Crusade, be the peace cry--_Deus lo volt_--God wills it.