A MOHAMMEDAN REFORMATION.
It is with considerable doubt of my ability to do justice to so very
difficult a subject that I now approach the most important point of all
in this inquiry, namely, the question on which in reality every other
depends: "Is there a possibility of anything like general reform for
Islam in her political and moral life?"
It is obvious that, unless we can answer this in the affirmative, none
of the changes I have been prefiguring will very much affect her
ultimate fortunes--neither the solution of her legal deadlock with the
Ottoman Caliphate, nor the transfer of her metropolis to a new centre,
nor even the triumph of her arms, if such were possible, in Africa or
India. These by themselves could, at best, only delay her decline. They
might even precipitate her ruin. Islam, if she relies only on the sword,
must in the end perish by it, for her forces, vast as they are, are
without physical cohesion, being scattered widely over the surface of
three continents and divided by insuperable accidents of seas and
deserts; and the enemy she would have to face is intelligent as well as
strong, and would not let her rest. Already what is called the "Progress
of the World" envelopes her with its ships and its commerce, and, above
all, with its printed thought, which she is beginning to read. Nor is it
likely in the future to affect her less. Every year as it goes by
carries her farther from the possibility of isolation, and forces on her
new acquaintances, not only her old foes, the Frank and Muscovite, but
the German, the Chinaman, and the American, with all of whom she may
have in turn to count. If she would not be strangled by these influences
she must use other arms than those of the flesh, and meet the
intellectual invasion of her frontiers with a corresponding
intelligence. Otherwise she has nothing to look forward to but a gradual
decay, spiritual as well as political. Her law must become little by
little a dead letter, her Caliphate an obsolete survival, and her creed
a mere opinion. Islam as a living and controlling moral force in the
world would then gradually cease.
In expressing my conviction that Islam is not thus destined yet awhile
to perish I believe that I am running counter to much high authority
among my countrymen. I know that it is a received opinion with those
best qualified to instruct the public that Islam is in its constitution
unamenable to change, and by consequence to progressive life, or even,
in the face of hostile elements, to prolonged life at all. Students of
the Sheriat have not inaptly compared the Koranic law to a dead man's
hand, rigid and cold, and only to be loosened when the hand itself shall
have been cut away. It has been asserted that the first rule of
Mohammedan thought has been that change was inadmissible, and
development of religious practice, either to right or left of the narrow
path of mediæval scholasticism, absolutely precluded. I know this, and I
know, too, that a vast array of learned Mohammedan opinion can be cited
to prove this to be the case, and that very few of the modern Ulema of
any school of divinity would venture openly to impugn its truth. Nor
have I forgotten the repeated failure of attempts made in Turkey within
the last fifty years to gain religious assent to the various legal
innovations decreed by Sultan after Sultan in deference to the will of
Europe, nor the fate which has sometimes overtaken those who were the
advocates of change. I know, according to all rule written and spoken by
the orthodox, that Islam cannot move, and yet in spite of it I answer
with some confidence in the fashion of Galileo, "E pur si muove."
The fact is, Islam does move. A vast change has come upon Mohammedan
thought since its last legal Mujtahed wrote his last legal opinion; and
what was true of orthodox Islam fifty and even twenty years ago is no
longer true now. When Urquhart, the first exponent of Mohammedanism to
Englishmen, began his writing, the Hanefite teaching of Constantinople
had not begun to be questioned, and he was perfectly justified in citing
it as the only rule recognized by the mass of the orthodox. No such
thing as a liberal religious party then existed anywhere, and those who
broke the law in the name of political reform were breakers of the law
and nothing more. Every good man was their enemy, and if any spoke of
liberty he was understood as meaning licence. It was not even conceived
then that the Sheriat might be legally remodelled. Now, however, and
especially within the last ten years, a large section of godly and
legal-minded men have ranged themselves on the side of liberal opinion,
and serious attempts have been made to reconcile a desire of improvement
with unabated loyalty to Islam.
A true liberal party has thus been formed, which includes in its ranks
not merely political intriguers of the type familiar to Europe in Midhat
Pasha, but men of sincere piety, who would introduce moral as well as
political reforms into the practice of Mohammedans. These have it in
their programme to make the practice of religion more austere while
widening its basis, to free the intelligence of believers from
scholastic trammels, and at the same time to enforce more strictly the
higher moral law of the Koran, which has been so long and so strangely
violated. In this they stand in close resemblance to the "Reformers" of
Christianity; and some of the circumstances which have given them birth
are so analogous to those which Europe encountered in the fifteenth
century that it is impossible not to draw in one's own mind a parallel,
leading to the conviction that Islam, too, will work out for itself a
Reformation.
The two chief agents of religious reform in Europe were the misery of
the poor and the general spread of knowledge. It is difficult at this
distance of time to conceive how abject was the general state of the
European peasantry in the days of Louis XI. of France and Frederick III.
of Germany. The constant wars and almost as constant famines, the
general insecurity of the conditions of life, the dependence of a vast
majority of the poor on capricious patrons, the hideous growth of
corruption and licentiousness in the ruling classes, and the impotence
of the ruled to obtain justice, above all, the servile acquiescence of
religion, which should have protected them, in the political
illegalities daily witnessed--all these things, stirring the hearts of
men, caused them to cry out against the existing order of Church
discipline, and inclined them to Reform. On the other hand, as we all
know, the invention of printing had caused men to read and the invention
of the New World to travel. Moreover, in the fifteenth century the
Ottoman Turks, then an irresistible power, were invading Europe, and a
new element of contact with an outside world was created, and a new
fear. Christendom certainly at that time was in danger of political
annihilation, or fancied itself to be so, and the apprehensions of
devout persons in Central Europe were roused to a vivid consciousness of
impending evil by the thought that this was perhaps another authorized
scourge of God.
I will not strain the parallel further than it will bear, but I would
suggest that causes somewhat analogous to these are now at work among
the Mussulmans of the still independent states of Islam, and that they
are operating somewhat in the same direction. The Mussulman peasantry,
especially of the Ottoman Empire, are miserable, and they know that they
are so, and they look in vain to their religion to protect them, as in
former days, against their rulers. They find that all their world now is
corrupt--that the law is broken daily by those who should enforce the
law; that the illegalities of those who ruin them are constantly
condoned by a conniving body of the Ulema; that for all practical
purposes of justice and mercy religion has abdicated its claim to direct
and govern. They have learned, too, by their intercourse with strangers,
and in the towns by the newspapers which they now eagerly read, that
this has not been always so, and that servitude is not the natural state
of man or acquiescence in evil the true position of religion, and they
see in all they suffer an outrage inflicted on the better law of Islam.
I was much struck by hearing the Egyptian peasantry last year attribute
the lighter taxes they were then enjoying to the fact that their new
ruler was "a man who feared God."
At the same time the learned classes are shocked and alarmed at the
political decline of Islam and the still greater dangers which stare her
in the face, and they attribute them to the unchecked wickedness and
corruption with which the long rule of Constantinople has pervaded every
class of society, even beyond its own territorial borders. They complain
now that they have been led astray, and believe that the vengeance of
Heaven will overtake them if they do not amend their ways. In all this,
I say, there is something of the spirit which once goaded Christians
into an examination of the bases on which their belief rested, and of
the true nature of the law which tolerated such great corruption.
Nor must we suppose that any part of this dissatisfaction is
attributable as yet to a decay of faith, such as we now witness among
ourselves. Islam as yet shows hardly a taint of infidelity. The
Mussulman of the present day, whatever his rank in life, believes with
as absolute a faith as did the Christian of the period just referred to.
With the exception of here and there a false convert or, as a very rare
case, an Europeanized infidel of the modern type, there is no such
thing as a Mohammedan sceptic, that is to say, a Moslem who does not
believe in the divine mission of Mohammed. He may neglect every duty of
his profession, be guilty of every crime, have broken every law--he may
be the worst and the most depraved of men--or, on the other hand, he may
have adopted the language and to a certain extent the tone of thought of
Europe, and, a thing far more rare, he may be even a scoffer and
blasphemer;--still I do not imagine that in his heart he any the less
firmly believes that the Koran is the book of truth, or that at the day
of judgment he shall be found with those who have escaped Jehannem
through their professed acknowledgment of God and of His apostle.
I have heard strange stories in corroboration of this from persons whom
I could not doubt, and about persons whom all the world knew. Thus, one
who was with Fuad Pasha, the most European of Ottoman diplomatists, in
his last days at Nice, assures me that his whole time was spent in a
recitation of the Koran, learning it by heart. Another, who was called
the Voltaire of Islam, performed his prayers and prostrations with
scrupulous regularity whenever he found himself in private; and a
third, equally notorious as a sceptic, died of religious mania. All,
too, who have mingled much with Mussulmans, must have been struck with
the profound resignation with which even thoughtless and irreligious men
bear the ills of life, and the fortitude with which they usually meet
their end--with the large proportion that they see of men who habitually
pray and fast, and who on occasion, at great risk and sacrifice, make
the pilgrimage, and with the general absence of profanity, and the fact
that an avowal of religion is never proffered apologetically as with us,
nor met in any society with derision. These things are, perhaps, not in
themselves evidence of belief, for hypocrites have everywhere their
reward, but the fact even of hypocrisy proves the general spirit to be
one of avowed belief.
The truly devout are doubtless rare, but where we find them it is
evident that their belief pervades their lives in as strict a sense as
it does devout persons among ourselves. It would probably be difficult
to point out in Europe men who in the world--I do not speak of
ecclesiastics or persons in religious orders--lead more transparently
religious lives than do the pious Moslems of the better class whom one
may find in almost any oriental town, or men who more closely follow
the ideal which their creed sets before them. To doubt the sincerity and
even, in a certain sense, the sanctity of such persons, would be to
doubt all religion. In any case it is notorious that the faith of Mecca
is still the living belief of a vast number of the human race, the rule
of their lives, and the explanation to them of their whole existence.
There is no sign as yet that it has ceased to be a living faith.
Neither in considering its future is it easy for a candid English mind
to escape the admission that, for all purposes of argument, the
Mohammedan creed must be treated as no vain superstition but a true
religion, true inasmuch as it is a form of the worship of that one true
God in whom Europe, in spite of her modern reason, still believes. As
such it is entitled to whatever credit we may give true religions of
prolonged vitality; and while admitting the eternal truth of
Christianity for ourselves, we may be tempted to believe that in the
Arabian mind, if in no other, Islam too will prove eternal.
In its simplest form Islam was but an emphatic renewal of the immemorial
creed of the Semites, and as long as a pure Semitic race is left in the
world, the revelation of Mecca may be expected to remain a necessary
link in their tradition. No modern arguments of science are ever likely
to affect the belief of Arabia that God has at sundry times and in
sundry places spoken to man by the mouth of his prophets; and among
these prophets Mohammed will always be the most conspicuous because the
most distinctly national. Also the law of Islam--I am not speaking
merely of the Sheriat as we now see it--will always remain their law
because it is the codification of their custom, and its political
organization their political organization because it is founded on a
practice coeval with their history.
Lastly, Semitic thought is a strong leaven which everywhere pervades the
minds of nations, aliens though they be, who have once admitted it; and
it will not easily be cast out. We have seen in Europe, even in England,
a land never brought physically into contact with Arabia, how long
Arabian thought, filtered as it was through France and Spain to our
shores, has dominated our ideas. Chivalry, a notion purely Bedouin, is
hardly yet extinct among us. Romance, the offspring of pre-Islamic
Arabia, is still a common motive of our action, and our poets express it
still, to the neglect of classic models, in the rhymed verse of Yemen.
The mass of our people still pray to the God of Abraham, and turn
eastwards towards that land which is Arabia's half-sister, the Holy Land
of the Jews.
If then we, who are mere aliens, find it impossible to escape this
subtle influence, what must it be for those races wholly or half Arabian
who have for centuries been impregnated with Islam, the quintessence of
Arabian thought? Who shall fix the term of its power, and say that it
cannot renew itself and live? "Send forth," says a famous English
writer, who was also a famous English statesman, "a great thought, as
you have done before, from Mount Sinai, from the villages of Galilee,
from the deserts of Arabia, and you may again remodel all men's
institutions, change their principles of action, and breathe a new
spirit into the scope of their existence."
But I must not lose myself in generalities or forget that it is for
practical Englishmen that I am writing. To be precise, I see two ways in
which it is probable that Islam will attempt to renew her spiritual
life, and two distinct lines of thought which according to external
circumstances she may be expected to follow--the first a violent and
hardly a permanent one, the second the true solution of her destiny.
Among the popular beliefs of Islam--and it is one common to every sect,
Shiite and Abadite, as well as Sunite--is this one, that in the latter
days of the world, when the power of God's worshippers shall have grown
weak and their faith corrupted, a leader shall arise who shall restore
the fortunes of the true believers. He shall begin by purging the earth
of injustice, fighting against oppressors wherever he shall find them,
Mohammedan as well as Infidel, and he shall teach the people a perfect
law which they shall have forgotten, and he shall reign over Islam in
place of their Khalifeh, being called the Móhdy, or guide. To this some
add that he will arise of a sudden in some distant corner of the earth,
and that he will march towards Mecca, and that everywhere the blood of
Moslems shall be shed like water, and that he shall enter Mecca when the
streets shall run with blood. In support of this coming of the Móhdy
many traditions exist which are held to be authentic by the Ulema. Thus
it is related on the authority of Abdallah ibn Messaoud that he heard
the Prophet say, "When there shall remain but one day of the days of the
earth, God shall prolong that day, and shall send forth from my house a
man bearing my name and the name of my father (Mohammed ibn Abdallah),
and he shall purify the earth from injustice and fill it with that which
is right." The same was heard also by Ali Ibn Abu Taleb, the Prophet's
son-in-law, and by Hadhifat Ibn el Yaman, who relates that this prophecy
was delivered by Mohammed one Friday at the Khotbah, or sermon, in
Medina. Salman el Faris, another witness, declares that he afterwards
approached the Prophet and stood before him and asked him, "From which
of thy descendants, O Apostle of God, shall the Móhdy be?" And the
Prophet answered, stretching his hand towards his grandson Huseyn, "From
this child shall he come."
Besides this general belief, which, though not a positive dogma of their
faith, is common to all Mussulmans, the Shiites, always prone to
exaggerate and embellish, maintain that the Móhdy's duty is not limited
to teaching, guiding, and purifying the law, but also that he shall
revenge the blood unjustly shed of the Imams; and they cite in support
of this a tradition of Ali ibn Abu Taleb, who thus addressed his son,
Huseyn, the same who was afterwards martyred at Kerbela, "I swear to
thee, O my son," he said, "I swear by my soul, and by my offspring, and
by Kerbela, and by its temple, that the day shall come in which our
beards shall be dyed with blood. And I swear that afterwards God shall
raise up a man, the Móhdy, who shall stand in our place, the lord of
mankind. He it is who shall avenge us, nay, he shall avenge thy blood
also, O Huseyn. Therefore have patience. For the blood of one man he
shall shed the blood of a thousand; and he will not spare them who have
helped our enemies."
The Shiites say also that this Móhdy will be no new personage, but that
he lives already in the flesh, being no other than the twelfth and last
of their recognized Imams, who was born in the year 260 of the Hejira,
and whose name was Mohammed ibn El Hassan, Abul Kassem, El Móhdy, Lord
of the Command and Lord of Time; and who, while yet a child, disappeared
from the world, retaining nevertheless his authority. This Móhdy they
expect _when the Turkish rule is in decay_. After accomplishing his
vengeance and re-establishing justice he shall rule for an undetermined
period, when Jesus the Son of Mary also shall come, and the Apostle
Mohammed, an apparition which will announce the end of the world.[16]
It would seem, therefore, exceedingly probable that out of the religious
ferment which we now see agitating Africa some enthusiast will arise who
will announce himself as this Móhdy, and head an active movement of
reform. Already, indeed, two such personages have made their appearance,
one in Tripoli, of whom I heard much talk a year ago, and who is now
said to be marching to join the defenders of Keruan; and a second quite
recently in Soudan. It is not difficult to imagine the kind of
reformation such an inspired Guide would preach. Indeed his rôle is
marked out for him in the prophecies just quoted. He would purge the
earth of injustice with the sword, and, breaking with all authority but
that of the Koran he would seek to renew a kingdom of heaven on the
model of Islam militant. It would be a repetition, but on a grander
scale, of the Wahhabite movement of the eighteenth century, and, having
a wider base of operations in the vast fanatical masses of North Africa,
might achieve far more important results.
Even without pretending to the rank of an inspired guide, it is certain
that a man of zeal and character might in the present crisis easily
persuade the Malekite Arabs to reform their moral practice, if necessary
to asceticism, by proving to them that they would thus regain their
ascendancy in arms. On this basis a reformation would be easy; but it
would be analogous to that of the Hussites and Anabaptists in Europe,
rather than of the true Church reformation which succeeded these, and
would hardly be universal or permanent.
I once heard a most distinguished Alem describe the qualifications of
one who should preach a reform of this kind:--"The man," said he, "who
would persuade us to reform must come, in the first place, of a
well-recognized family. He must be either a prince, or a Sherif, or an
hereditary saint. This would secure him from a first personal attack on
the ground of seeming impiety. He must secondly be an Arab, gifted with
the pure language of the Koran, for the Arabian Ulema would not listen
to a barbarian; and he must possess commanding eloquence. A reformer
must before all else be a preacher. Thirdly, he must be profoundly
learned, that is to say, versed in all the subtleties of the law and in
all that has been written in commentary on the Koran; and he must have a
ready wit, so that in argument he may be able constantly to oppose
authority with authority, quotation with quotation. Granted these three
qualifications and courage and God's blessing, he may lead us where he
will."
The chief obstacles, however, to a reformation of this sort would not be
in the beginning, nor would they be wholly moral ones. The full
programme of the Móhdy needs that he should conquer Mecca; and the land
road thither of an African reformer lies blocked by Egypt and the Suez
Canal. So that, unless he should succeed in crossing the Red Sea through
Abyssinia (an invasion which, by the way, would fulfil another ancient
prophecy, which states that the "Companions of the Elephant," the
Abyssinians, shall one day conquer Hejaz), he could not carry out his
mission. Nor, except as an ally against the Turk, would a fanatical
reformer now find much sympathy in Arabia proper. The Peninsular Arabs
have had their Puritan reformation already, and a strong reaction has
set in amongst them in favour of liberal thought. They are in favour
still of reform, but it is of another kind from that preached by Abd el
Wahhab; and it is doubtful whether a new militant Islam would find many
adherents amongst them.
The only strong advocate of such views at the present day among true
Arabs in Arabia is the aged Sherif, Abd el Mutalleb, the Sultan's
nominee, who indeed has spared no pains, since he was installed at
Mecca, to fan the zeal of the North Africans. A Wahhabi in his youth, he
is still a fierce Puritan; and it is possible that, should he live long
enough (he is said to be ninety years old), he may be able to produce a
corresponding zeal in Arabia. But at present the mass of the Arabs in
Hejaz, no less than in Nejd and Yemen, are occupied with more humane
ideas. Abd el Mutalleb's chief supporters in Mecca are not his own
countrymen, but the Indian colony, descendants many of them of the Sepoy
refugees who fled thither in 1857, and who have the reputation of being
the most fanatical of all its residents. The true Arabs are in revolt
against his authority.
Again, it is improbable that any enunciation of Puritan reform would
find support among the northern races of Asia, which are uniformly sunk
in gross sensuality and superstition; while Constantinople may be
trusted to oppose all reform whatever. Wahhabism, when it overspread
Southern Asia, never gained a foothold further north than Syria, and
broke itself to pieces at last against the corrupt orthodoxy of
Constantinople. And so too it would happen now. Abd el Hamid, in spite
of his zeal for Islam, would see in the preaching of a moral reform only
a new heresy; and, as we have seen, the Móhdy's mission is against all
evil rule, the Sultan's and Caliph's not excepted. So that, unless Abd
el Hamid places himself openly at the head of the warlike movement in
Africa and so forestalls a rival, he is not likely long to give it his
loyal support. Already there are symptoms of his regarding events in
Tunis with suspicion, and on the first announcement of an inspired
reformer he would, I believe, not hesitate to pronounce against him. I
understand the Turkish military reinforcements at Tripoli quite as much
in the light of a precaution against Arab reform as against infidel
France.
Puritanism, then, on a militant basis, even if preached by the Móhdy
himself, could hardly be either general or lasting, and its best result
would probably be, that after a transient burst of energy, which would
rouse the thought of Islam and renew her spiritual life, a humaner
spirit, as in Arabia would take its place, and lead to a more lasting,
because a more rational, reform.
But it was not to such a Puritan reformation that I was pointing when I
expressed my conviction that Islam would in the end work out her
salvation, nor do I hold it necessary that she should find any such
_deus ex machinâ_ as an inspired guide to point her out her road. Her
reformation is indeed already begun, and may be gradually carried to its
full results, by no violent means, and in a progressive, not a
reactionary spirit. This only can be the true one, for it is a law of
nations and of faiths, no less than of individuals, that they cannot
really return upon their years, and that all beneficial changes for them
must be to new conditions of life, not to old ones--to greater
knowledge, not to less--to freedom of thought, not to its enslavement.
Nor is there anything in the true principles of Islam to make such
progress an unnatural solution of her destiny.
Mohammedanism in its institution, and for many centuries after its
birth, was eminently a rationalistic creed; and it was through reason
as well as faith that it first achieved its spiritual triumphs. If we
examine its bases its early history, we must indeed admit this. The
Koran, which we are accustomed to speak of as the written code of
Mohammedan law, is in reality no legal text-book by which Mussulmans
live. At best it enunciates clearly certain religious truths, the unity
of God, the doctrine of rewards and punishments in a future life, and
the revelation of God's claims on man. Psalms, many of them sublime,
occupy the greater number of its chapters; promises of bliss to
believers and destruction to unbelievers come next; then the traditional
history of revelation as it was current among the Semitic race; and only
in the later chapters, and then obscurely, anything which can properly
be classed as law. Yet law is the essence of Islam, and was so from its
earliest foundation as a social and religious polity; and it is evident
that to it, and not to the Koran's dogmatic theology, Islam owed its
great and long career of triumph in the world.
Now this law was not, like the Koran, brought down full-fledged from
heaven. At first it was little more than a confirmation of the common
custom of Arabia, supplemented indeed and corrected by revelation, but
based upon existing rules of right and wrong. When, however, Islam
emerged from Arabia in the first decade of her existence, and embracing
a foreign civilization found herself face to face with new conditions of
life, mere custom ceased to be a sufficient guide; and, the voice of
direct revelation having ceased, the faithful were thrown upon their
reason to direct them how they were to act. Revelation continued,
nevertheless, to be the groundwork of their reasoning, and the teaching
of their great leader the justification of each new development of law
as the cases requiring it arose. The Koran was cited wherever it was
possible to find a citation, and where these failed tradition was called
in. The companions of the Prophet were in the first instance consulted,
and their recollections of his sayings and doings quoted freely; while
afterwards, when these too were gone, the companions of the companions
took their place, and became in their turn cited.
Thus by a subtle process of comparison and reasoning, worked out through
many generations, the Mohammedan law as we see it was gradually built
up, until in the third century of Islam it was embodied by order of the
Caliph into a written code. The Fakh ed Din and the Fakh esh Sheriat of
Abu Hanifeh, the doctor intrusted with this duty, was a first attempt to
put into reasoned form the floating tradition of the faithful, and to
make a digest of existing legal practice. He and his contemporaries
examined into and put in order the accumulated wealth of authority on
which the law rested, and, taking this and rejecting that saying of the
Fathers of Islam, founded on them a school of teaching which has ever
since been the basis of Mohammedan jurisprudence.
Abu Hanifeh's code, however, does not appear to have been intended, at
the time it was drawn up, to be the absolute and final expression of all
lawful practice for the faithful. It included a vast amount of tradition
of which either no use was made by its compiler, or which stood in such
contradiction with itself that a contrary interpretation of it to his
could with equal logic be deduced. Abu Hanifeh quoted and argued rather
than determined; and as long as the Arabian mind continued to be supreme
in Islam the process of reasoning development continued.
The Hanefite code was supplemented by later doctors, Malek, Esh Shafy,
and Ibn Hanbal, and even by others whose teaching has been since
repudiated, all in the avowed intention of suiting the law still
further to the progressive needs of the faithful, and all following the
received process of selecting and interpreting and reasoning from
tradition. These codes were, for the then existing conditions of life,
admirable; and even now, wherever those conditions have remained
unaltered, are amply sufficient for the purposes of good government and
the regulation of social conduct. They would, nevertheless, have been
but halting places in the march of Mohammedan legislation, had the
destinies of Islam remained permanently in the hands of its first
founders.
Unfortunately, about the eleventh century of our era, a new and
unfortunate influence began to make itself felt in the counsels of the
Arabian Ulema, which little by little gaining ground, succeeded at last
in stopping the flow of intellectual progress at the fountain head. The
Tartar, who then first makes his appearance in Mohammedan politics,
though strong in arms, was slow to understand. He had no habit of
thought, and, having embraced Islam, he saw no necessity for further
argument concerning it. The language of the Koran and the traditions was
a science sealed to him; and the reasoning intelligence of the Arab
whose dominion he had invaded was a constant reproof to him. He dared
not venture his barbarian dignity in the war of wit which occupied the
schools; and so fortified his unintelligence behind a rampart of
dogmatic faith. Impotent to develop law himself, he clutched blindly at
that which he found written to his hand. The code of Abu Hanifeh seemed
to him a perfect thing, and he made it the resting place of his legal
reason. Then, as he gradually possessed himself of all authority, he
declared further learning profane, and virtually closed the schools. His
military triumphs in the sixteenth century sealed the intellectual fate
of Islam, and from that day to our own no light of discussion has
illumined Moslem thought, in any of the old centres of her intelligence.
Reason, the eye of her faith in early times, has been fast shut--by
many, it has been argued, blind.
It is only in the present generation, and in the face of those dangers
and misfortunes to which Islam finds herself exposed, that recourse has
once more been had to intellectual methods; and it is precisely in those
regions of Islam where Arab thought is strongest that we now find the
surest symptoms of returning mental life. Modern Arabia, wherever she
has come in contact with what we call the civilization of the world, has
shown herself ready and able to look it in the face; and she is now
setting herself seriously to solve the problem of her own position and
that of her creed towards it.
In North Africa, indeed, civilization for the moment presents itself to
her only as an enemy; but where her intelligence has remained unclouded
by the sense of political wrong she has proved herself capable, not only
of understanding the better thought of Europe, but of sympathizing with
it as akin to her own. Thus at Cairo, now that the influence of
Constantinople has been partially removed, we find the Arabian Ulema
rapidly assimilating to their own the higher principles of our European
thought, and engrafting on their lax moral practice some of the better
features of our morality. It is at no sacrifice of imagined dignity, as
with the Turks, that Egypt is seeking a legal means for universal
religious toleration, or from any pressure but that of their own
intelligence that her chief people are beginning to reform their
domestic life, and even, in some instances, to adopt the practice of
monogamy. The truth would seem to be that the same process is being
effected to-day in their minds as was formerly the case with their
ancestors. In the eighth century, the Arabs, brought into contact with
Greek philosophy, assimilated it by a natural process of their reasoning
into the body of their own beliefs; and now in the nineteenth they are
assimilating a foreign morality into their own system of morals.
Not only in Egypt,--in Oman and Peninsular Arabia, generally there is a
real feeling of cordiality between the Mohammedan and his Christian
"guest." The abolition of slavery in Zanzibar was a concession to
European opinion at least as much as to European force; and a moral
sympathy is acknowledged between a Moslem and a Christian State which
has its base in a common sense of right and justice. I have good reason
to believe that, were the people of Yemen to effect their deliverance
from Constantinople, the same humane feeling would be found to exist
among them; and I know that it exists in Nejd; while even in Hejaz,
which is commonly looked upon as the hot-bed of religious intolerance, I
found all that was truly Arabian in the population as truly liberal.
Under the late Grand Sherif, Abd el Hamid's reputed victim, these ideas
were rapidly gaining ground; and had it not been for his untimely end, I
have high authority for stating that the Mohammedan Holy Land would now
be open to European intercourse, and slavery, or at least the slave
trade, be there abolished.
There is, therefore, some reason to hope that, were Arabian thought once
more supreme in Islam, its tendency would be in the direction of a wider
and more liberal reading of the law, and that in time a true
reconciliation might be effected with Christendom, perhaps with
Christianity. The great difficulty which, as things now stand, besets
reform is this: the Sheriat, or written code of law, still stands in
orthodox Islam as an _unimpeachable_ authority. The law in itself is an
excellent law, and as such commends itself to the loyalty of honest and
God-fearing men; but on certain points it is irreconcilable with the
modern needs of Islam, and it cannot legally be altered.
When it was framed it was not suspected that Mohammedans would ever be
subjects of a Christian power, or that the Mohammedan State would ever
need to accommodate itself to Christian demands in its internal policy.
It contemplated, too, mainly a state of war, and it accepted slavery and
concubinage as war's natural concomitants. It did not understand that
some day Islam would have to live at peace with its neighbours, if it
would live at all, or that the general moral sense of the world would
be brought to bear upon it with such force that the higher instincts of
Moslems themselves should feel the necessity of restricting its old and
rather barbarous licence as to marriage and divorce. Yet these things
have come to pass, or are rapidly coming; and the best thinkers in Islam
now admit that changes in the direction indicated must sooner or later
be made. Only they insist that these should be legally effected, not
forced on them by an overriding of the law.
What they want is _a legal authority to change_. Now, no such authority
exists, either in the Ottoman Sultan, or in the Sherif, or in any Sheykh
el Islam, Mufti, or body of Ulema in the world. None of these dare
seriously meddle with the law. There is not even one universally
recognized tribunal to which all Moslems may refer their doubts about
the law's proper reading, and have their disputes resolved. A fetwa, or
opinion, is all that can be given, and it applies only to the land where
it is issued. The fetwa of this great Alem in one Moslem state may be
reversed by the fetwa of another in that. The Sheykh el Islam at
Constantinople may be appealed against to the Mufti at Mecca or Cairo,
or these again, it may be, to Bokhara. None absolutely overrides the
rest. Thus while I was at Jeddah there came a deputation of Mussulmans
from Bengal, being on their way to Mecca to ask a fetwa on the disputed
point whether believers were permitted or not to use European dress. A
previous fetwa had been asked at Constantinople, but the deputation was
dissatisfied, alleging that the Sheykh el Islam there could not be
trusted and that they preferred the Meccan Mufti. Thus legal-minded
Moslems who would see their way to improvement are constantly faced with
a legal bar, the want of authority. _As things stand_ there is no remedy
for this.
An opinion, however, seems now to be gaining ground among the learned,
that a legal issue may one day be found in the restoration to the
Caliphate of what is called by them the _Saut el Haï_, the living voice
of Islam, which in its first period, and indeed till the destruction of
the Abbaside dynasty by Holagu, belonged to the successors of the
Prophet. It is certain that in the first four reigns of Abu Bekr, Omar,
Othman, and Ali, such a living power to legislate was accorded to the
Caliphs; and that on their own authority they modified at will the yet
unwritten law.
Thus it is related of Abu Bekr that in one instance he set aside a law
called the Mota, though based directly on some sentences of the Koran,
declaring it not conformable to the better tradition; and that Ali again
reversed this ruling, which has, nevertheless, been adhered to by the
Sunites. Later, too, the Ommiad and Abbaside Caliphs exercised this
right of legislation by deputy; it was in their names that the
Mujtaheddin, Abu Hanifeh and the rest, framed their first codes of law;
and to the last the words of their mouth were listened to, as in some
measure inspired utterances, by the faithful.
It was only when the sacred office passed from the sacred and legitimate
House that this feeling of reverence ceased, and the living voice of the
Caliph was disregarded in Islam. The Ottoman conqueror, when he took
upon him the title of Emir el Mumenin, did not venture to claim for
himself the power to teach, nor would Moslems have listened to any such
pretension. The House of Othman was from the first sunk in degrading
vices, and was too untaught to teach. The account given us by Bertrandon
de la Brocquière in the fifteenth century of the court and habits of the
"Grand Turk" is evidently no exaggeration; and it is easy to conceive by
the light of it how impossible it must have been for the Arabian Ulema
to connect the notion of inspiration in any way with such personages as
the Sultans then were. As a fact the Saut el Haï was not claimed by
Selim, nor has it ever been accorded to his descendants.
The want of some voice of authority is, nevertheless, becoming daily
more generally felt by orthodox Mohammedans; and it seems to me certain
that, in some shape or other, it will before long be restored to general
recognition. Abd el Hamid, whose spiritual ambition I have described,
has, quite recently, caused a legal statement of his Caliphal rights to
be formally drawn up, and it includes this right of the _Saut el
Haï_;[17] and, though it is improbable that the faithful will, at the
eleventh hour of its rule, invest the House of Othman with so sublime a
prerogative, it is extremely likely that, when a more legitimate holder
of the title shall have been found, he will be conceded all the rights
of the sacred office. Then the legal difficulty will at last be
overcome. The dead hand of the law will be no longer dead, but will be
inspired by a living voice and will.
Since we are imagining many things we may imagine this one too,--that
our Caliph of the Koreysh, chosen by the faithful and installed at
Mecca, should invite the Ulema of every land to a council at the time of
the pilgrimage, and there, appointing a new Mujtahed, should propound to
them certain modifications of the Sheriat, as things necessary to the
welfare of Islam, and deducible from tradition. No point of doctrine
need in any way be touched, only the law. The Fakh ed din would need
hardly a modification. The Fakh esh Sheriat would, in certain chapters,
have to be rewritten. Who can doubt that an Omar or an Haroun, were they
living at the present day, would authorize such changes, or that the
faithful of their day would have accepted them as necessary and
legitimate developments of Koranic teaching?
It would be an interesting study to pursue this inquiry further, and to
see how it might be worked out in detail. The crying necessity of
civilized Islam is a legal _modus vivendi_ with Europe, and such an
adaptation of its law on points where Europe insists as shall suffice to
stave off conflict. It is evident that legal equality must now be
accorded to Christians living under Mohammedan law, and that conformity,
on the other hand, in certain points to foreign law must be allowed to
Moslems living under Christian rule.
Again, slavery must, by some means, be made illegal; and a stricter
interpretation of the Koranic permission be put on marriage,
concubinage, and divorce. That all these changes might be logically
effected by a process of reasoning from the traditions, and expanding or
minimising the interpretation of the Koran, no one need doubt who
remembers what fetwas have already been given on these very points by
some of the Azhar Ulema. At present these decisions are unsatisfactory
to the faithful at large, because those issuing them have no recognized
authority to strain the law, but with authority the same decisions would
meet with general approval. At least such is the impression of modern
Mohammedan opinion made on me by my conversation with Mohammedans. It
would be interesting to work out these points; and I hope some day to
have an opportunity of doing so, but for the present I have neither the
time nor the knowledge sufficient for the purpose. I must be content
with having suggested the method; I cannot work out the details of a
reformation.
It may, however, give an idea of the kind of material in tradition which
reformers are looking for, if I quote a document which was being
circulated last spring among the Ulema of the Azhar. It purports to be
the text of the Prophet's first treaty with the Christians of Arabia,
though I do not vouch for its authenticity, and runs as follows:--
"Covenant of God's Apostle, Mohammed, with the Christian people,
their monks and their bishops."--(A.D. 625.)
"Mohammed, the Apostle of God, sent with a message of peace to all
mankind, dictateth the words of this covenant that the cause of God
may be a written document between him and the people of Christ.
"He who keepeth this covenant, let him be called a true Moslem
worthy of the religion of God, and he who departeth from it let him
be called an enemy, be he king or subject, great or small.
"To this have I pledged myself: I will fence in their lands with my
horsemen, and my footmen, and my allies, throughout the world; and
I will care for their safety and the safety of their temples, their
churches, their oratories, and their convents, and the places of
their pilgrimage, wheresoever I shall find them, whether by the
land or by the sea, in the east or in the west, on the mountain or
in the plain, in the desert or in the city. There will I stand
behind them that no harm shall reach them, and my followers shall
keep them from evil. This is my covenant with them. I will exempt
them in all matters wherein the Moslems are exempt. I command also
that no one of their bishops be expelled from his see, nor shall
any Christian be forced from his religion, nor shall a monk be
forced from his convent, nor a hermit from his cell. It is my will
that none of their holy buildings be destroyed or taken from them
for Mosques by my people or for their dwellings. Whosoever
despiseth this command is guilty before God and despiseth the
pledge of His Apostle. All monks and bishops, and the dependents of
these, I declare exempt from tribute, except such as they shall of
their free will bring. Nor shall Christian merchants, doing
business by sea, or diving for pearls, or working in the mines for
gold, or silver, or jewels, even the wealthy and the mighty, pay
more than twelve drachmas of yearly tribute. This, for such
Christian merchants as shall live in Arabia; but for travellers and
strangers in the land, they are exempt. Likewise such as have lands
and gardens bearing fruit, and fields for corn, shall pay no more
than it is in their power to bring.
"And the people to whom I have pledged my word shall not be
required to fight for themselves. But the Moslems shall protect
them, asking them neither for arms, nor rations, nor horses for the
war, except such as each shall choose to bring. But if any shall
bring money, or help the Moslems in war, it must be acknowledged
them with thanks.
"And this is my command. No Moslem shall molest a follower of
Christ; and if he dispute with him it shall be with good manners.
And if a Christian do any man wrong it shall be a duty with Moslems
to stay the avenger and make peace between them, paying the ransom
if the wrong demand a ransom. And it is my wish that Christians
should not be disregarded by my followers, for I have pledged my
word unto them before God that they shall be as Moslems in my
sight, sharing and partaking of all things with the rest. And in
their marriages they shall not be troubled No Moslem shall say to a
Christian, 'Give me thy daughter,' nor take her unless he be
willing. And if a Christian woman become a slave to a Moslem he
shall be bound by this covenant to leave her her religion, nor
shall he compel her to disobey her religious chiefs. This is the
command of God, and whosoever shall deny it and disobey God shall
hold him for a liar.
"Moreover it shall be a duty with my followers to repair the
churches of the Christians, rendering them the service not as a
debt, but for God's sake and for the keeping of the covenant, made
to them by the Apostle of God.
"No Christian shall be compelled to go forth in time of war as an
envoy or spy against his people.
"These are the privileges which Mohammed, the Apostle of God, hath
granted to the followers of Christ. In return he requested them to
deal with him and with the Moslems as follows:--
"1. None of them in time of war shall give assistance, either
openly or in secret, to the enemies of Islam.
"2. They shall not give asylum in their churches or in their houses
to the enemies of Islam.
"3. They shall not help them with arms, or rations, or horses, or
men.
"4. They shall not keep counsel with the declared enemies of Islam,
nor receive them in their houses, nor deposit money with them.
"5. They shall grant to all Moslems seeking their hospitality
entertainment for at least three days. But no Moslem shall require
of them to make special cooking for him, and he shall eat of the
common food with his host.
"6. If a Moslem seek asylum with a Christian, the Christian shall
not refuse to shelter him, and shall not deliver him to his
enemies.
"What Christian soever shall refuse these my requests, he shall not
partake of the privileges of this covenant which I have made with
the bishops, monks, and the rest, the followers of Christ. And I
call God to witness with my followers and command them to keep
faithful to this my precept, now and till the day of judgment.
"The above was written in the presence of the under-signed persons,
dictated by the Apostle of God, and written down by Mawiyeh Ibn Abu
Sofian, on Monday, at the end of the fourth month, of the fourth
year, of the Hejira, in Medina, peace be upon its Lord.
(Signed) "ABU BEKR ES SADIK.
"OMAR IBN EL KHOTTUB.
"OTHMAN IBN AFFAN.
"ALI IBN ABU TALEB.
And thirty-one other signatures.
"God be witness of what hath been said in this treaty. Praised be
God the Lord of the Earth."
In conclusion, I would urge that while it is to Mohammedans themselves
that we must look to work out their ultimate regeneration according to
the rules of their own law and conscience, Christendom can still do much
to influence immediate results. The day of religious hatred between
Moslem and Christian as such is, I hope, nearly at an end; and though
political strife is unfortunately renewing the old quarrel in North
Africa, there is no danger now of its becoming on Europe's part a
crusade. Christendom has pretty well abandoned her hopeless task of
converting Islam, as Islam has abandoned hers of conquering Europe; and
it is surely time that moral sympathy should unite the two great bodies
of men who believe in and worship the same God.
England, at least, may afford now to acknowledge Mohammedanism as
something not to be merely combated and destroyed, but to be accepted by
her and encouraged--accepted as a fact which for good or evil will exist
in the world whether she will or no--encouraged because it has in it
possibilities of good which she cannot replace by any creed or
philosophy of her own. She can do much to help these possibilities, for
they depend for the moment on her political action. There is a good
cause and a bad in Islam as elsewhere in the world, and though hitherto
England's physical help has been given all to evil, it has been through
ignorance of the issues at stake; and I am confident that as she learns
these, she will acknowledge the wrong she has unconsciously been doing,
and repair while there is yet time her error.
In my next and concluding chapter I propose to sketch a policy towards
Islam worthy of England's high sense of duty, and conformable to her
true interests.
FOOTNOTES:
[16] A remarkable coincidence of prediction, Christian and Mohammedan,
has been pointed out to me in Rohrbacher's History of the Church,
published in 1845, where by an elaborate calculation based on the Old
Testament prophecies he arrives at the conclusion that the Turkish
Empire will fall in 1882, the date assigned it also by the Mohammedan
prediction quoted in my last chapter--that is to say A.H. 1300.
[17] This claim has been endorsed by Abd el Mutalleb, who is issuing a
_Resalat rayiyeh_, or pastoral letter, this year to the pilgrims in
support of Abd el Hamid's Caliphate.