THE ETHICS OF ISLAM: A MARTIAL IDEAL
I. RELIGIOUS BASIS OF THE MORAL SYSTEM
[Sidenote: Introduction: Islam
creates a new conscience in the
Arab race]
The great revolution which in the seventh century of the Christian
era agitated all Arabia and gave a new trend to vast currents of
world history was essentially a moral revolution. It was the moral
degradation of the Arab tribes, still clinging to an outgrown,
idolatrous worship incapable longer of giving moral guidance to its
followers, that stirred the soul and inspired the message of Mohammed.
The Prophet’s real appeal was to the conscience of the Arab race. The
chief aim and purpose of his preaching was to effect a moral reform.
He gave the Arabs, it is true, a new religion, but the religion was to
give impulse and sanction to the new morality. The transformation which
the new faith wrought in the moral consciousness of the Arabian nation
was probably not less profound than that effected by Christianity in
the moral consciousness of the European peoples. It is this which
makes the rise of Islam a matter as important in the moral as in the
religious history of mankind.
[Sidenote: The doctrine of the
unity of God]
Islam may, with strict historical accuracy, be said to be essentially a
republication of Judaism. Its morality, like the old Hebrew morality,
is largely derived from its conception of deity. It teaches that God
is one, and that he is all-powerful, compassionate, forgiving, and
righteous. Allah is great and merciful and just, is the burden of the
Prophet’s message respecting deity. This ethical monotheism has been a
governing force in the moral life of the Mohammedan world, just as a
like ethical monotheism has been a molding influence in the moral life
of the Jews and of all those nations that have received their religion
from them.
[Sidenote: The dogma of salvation
by belief]
Another religious doctrine which has contributed largely to shape
the morality of Islam is that of salvation by belief. Only the true
believer can be saved. The tendency, indeed the logical and inevitable
consequence of this doctrine, has been to make Islam one of the most
intolerant of the great religions. It has tended to restrict the moral
sympathies of Moslems to coreligionists and to make propagandism by
violence seem a virtue.
[Sidenote: An unchangeable moral
law]
Islam claims to be a divine revelation to man. This doctrine of the
supernatural origin of the religion makes the moral code, which is
bound up with it, a rigid, unchangeable law, for it is only a human
code that can be changed without irreverence and sacrilege. The
blighting effects upon Mohammedan morality of this dogma of a moral law
supernaturally given for all time will be noted a little later, when we
come to speak of the actual moral life in Mohammedan lands.
II. THE MORAL CODE
[Sidenote: General nature of the
code]
Like all the other ethical systems of Asia, save those of genuine
Christianity and Buddhism, the Islamic system lays special emphasis
upon the performance of particular prescribed acts. It is by no means
silent respecting the necessity of right states and dispositions
of mind. But instead of relying upon general principles for the
guidance of the moral life, it lays its emphasis upon specific outer
observances, such as almsgiving, fasting, pilgrimages, and stated
prayers.[659] The tendency of such a code of precise rules and
commands, as was pointed out in connection with Chinese morality and
again in connection with the postexilic morality of the Jews, is
to externalize morality and render the moral life conventional and
mechanical.
[Sidenote: The duty and virtue of
right belief]
In correspondence with the dogma of salvation through belief, the
paramount duty and virtue in the ethical-religious code of Islam is
unquestioning belief in Allah as the only true God and in Mohammed
as his prophet. Without this virtue of correct belief there can be,
according to the teachings of Islam, no salvation.
[Sidenote: Fighting for the true
religion a cardinal duty]
One effect of thus making right belief an indispensable virtue was to
make intolerance practically a virtuous disposition of mind, and the
conquest of infidels a paramount duty. It is here that we find one of
the fundamental differences between the ethical teachings of Christ and
those of Mohammed. The Founder of Christianity, through his teaching
of nonresistance, condemned war. He commanded his followers to put
up the sword. The founder of Islam, on the other hand, frankly and
without scruple adopted the war system of his time and consecrated it
to a religious end and purpose. His followers were commanded to fight
for the extension of the religion of Allah.[660] Those who fell in
battle for the faith were promised immediate entrance into the joys of
Paradise.[661]
Never was there a more fateful provision given a place in a code of
morals. It determined in large measure the character of Islam and
foreshadowed its history. It made it a martial religion. This martial
religion, through reaction upon Christianity, helped to make it like
unto itself. Thus was prepared the way for the Holy Wars.
[Sidenote: Provisions of the code
respecting slavery]
Just as Mohammed adopted the war system he found in existence, so did
he adopt that of slavery. But while accepting the system, he did much
to improve the status of the bondsman. The legislation of the Koran
in this department of ethics follows the humane regulations of the old
Hebrew code. In its specific provisions favorable to the slave it goes
beyond the requirements of the New Testament. It not only enjoins the
kind treatment of slaves but provides that converts to Islam shall be
set free, and in general encourages manumission.[662]
[Sidenote: Family morals: polygamy
recognized as ethical]
In no department of ethics is the contrast between Christian and
Mohammedan morals sharper than in the sphere of domestic morality.
Sex relations which the Christian Church condemns as sin, and which
the Christian civil law makes a crime, are by the Mohammedan moral
consciousness pronounced natural and right, or at least ethically
indifferent. The New Testament absolutely prohibited polygamy, although
from primitive times the moralists of the East had had in general no
condemnation for the custom; but the Koran accepted the system without
scruple. In doing so, however, it placed salutary restraints upon the
unregulated license which had hitherto characterized the institution.
It limited the number of wives of the faithful to four,[663] and
surrounded divorce with wholesome restrictions.
Family ethics were further lifted to a higher level by the positive
prohibition of infanticide,[664] a practice which constituted
one of the worst evils of Arab society in pre-Islamic times. The
positive enactments of the Koranic code in this department of morals
accomplished what was effected indirectly in the same domain by
Christianity through its teachings of the sanctity of human life.
[Sidenote: The prohibition
of gambling and the use of
intoxicating liquors]
Among the other prohibitions of the moral code of Islam are two worthy
of special notice for the reason that, being made largely effective
by the sanctions of religion, they have exercised an incalculable
influence upon the Mohammedan world. These are the provisions of the
Koran forbidding in the most positive terms gambling and the use
of alcoholic drinks.[665] These prohibitions have had a great and
undeniable influence in preserving Mohammedan civilization, in the
extended reach of lands over which it has spread, from those inveterate
twin evils of gambling and drunkenness which constitute one of the
deepest stains on Christian civilization.
[Sidenote: Animal ethics]
It has been maintained that the place given duties to lower animals is
a crucial test of a moral code.[666] Tried by this standard, the code
of Islam must be accorded a high place among the ethical systems of the
world. In the department of animal ethics it is on a level with that of
the old Hebrew Testament. Indeed, the tender solicitude of the code for
dumb animals is one of its most admirable features. The whole animal
creation is here brought within the pale of ethics. Thus at the outset
Islam took up a position respecting man’s duty toward the animal world
which Christianity is only just now tardily assuming.
[Sidenote: A concrete and
practical morality]
Taken as a whole the ethical rules and commands of the Koran constitute
an admirable code, one which has been an efficient force in the moral
improvement and uplift of the peoples of vast regions of the earth. The
morality inculcated has been succinctly characterized as a concrete and
practical one. It is particularly well adapted to races in a low stage
of culture. The very fact that, notwithstanding some serious defects
and limitations, the code has been accepted by so large a part of the
human race, and has, for over a thousand years, given moral guidance
and inspiration to such vast multitudes, goes to prove that the great
body of its rules and prescriptions of conduct are in general in line
with the elemental laws of the moral world.
III. THE MORAL LIFE
[Sidenote: Mohammedan morality
depressed by racial influences]
In any comparison instituted between Christianity and Islam as moral
regenerators of society there is need that the difference in the
fields entered by these rival creeds be kept carefully in mind.
Islam was placed at a disadvantage in that it went among the morally
degenerate and dissolute peoples of the Orient, while Christianity had
for its field the classical peoples and particularly the fresh German
race. In those same Eastern lands and among those same Oriental or
semi-Hellenized races Christianity had not only signally failed morally
to reform and uplift society, but in that unfavorable environment had
itself become lamentably degenerate and corrupt. In pointing out this
disadvantage to which Islam has been subjected, a discerning Moslem
writer says, “Like rivers flowing through varied tracts, both these
creeds have produced results in accordance with the nature of the soil
through which they have found their course.”[667] There is here the
necessary recognition of the influence which the historical environment
exercises upon the moral standard. The prerequisite of a good harvest
in the field of morals, as in the physical world, is not only good seed
but also a good soil.
[Sidenote: Consequence of giving a
religious sanction to war]
The whole history of Islam, as already remarked, has been molded by
the fact that fighting for the extension of the true religion was made
by Mohammed a chief duty of the faithful. Islam’s wonderful career of
conquest during the first century after its rise was in large measure
the result of the Prophet having made war against infidels a pious
duty. Hitherto war among the Arabs had been for the most part merely
a raid or hunt. Now it was given an ethical-religious motive and thus
made a crusade. In the space of a single century a large part of the
countries which had formed the historic lands of antiquity had been
brought by the Arabian warriors under the sway of Islam.
But this was not all. These conquests brought Islam in contact with
Christendom along all its extended frontier from the Straits of
Gibraltar to the Bosporus, and thus created the conditions which led to
the Holy Wars between Moslem and Christian, which filled the eleventh
and twelfth centuries. Such were the momentous and far-reaching
consequences of the giving by the Arabian Prophet of a religious
sanction to war, and the reënforcing of the war spirit among a martial
race by making warfare a duty and death in battle a sure passport to
the bliss of paradise.
[Sidenote: Mitigation of Oriental
barbarities in war]
While adopting and sanctifying the war system, Islam did something in
the way of mitigating its savagery. Up to this time the war code of
the Asian peoples had lost little or none of its primitive barbarity.
The indiscriminate slaughter of the vanquished, without regard to
age or sex, had been a common practice. But when the second Arabian
caliph, Omar, sent out his warriors to effect the conquest of the world
for the true religion, he strictly enjoined them to spare the women
and children and the old men. This injunction became a part of the
Mohammedan war code, and, though not always observed, it did much to
make the earlier wars waged for the spread of Islam, compared with most
of the recorded wars among the Oriental races, merciful and humane.
[Sidenote: Intolerance as a
corollary of religious principles]
Intimately related to the subject of the Mohammedan ethics of war is
the subject of toleration. As we have seen, the natural tendency of the
teaching that right religious belief is necessary to salvation, and
that fighting for the spread of the true religion is a paramount duty,
is to foster intolerance, indeed, is to make intolerance a virtue.
These doctrines of Islam have in the main restricted to the faithful
the outgoings of the moral sympathies. To the moral consciousness of
the Moslem masses tolerance has not presented itself as a virtue
at all, but rather as a reprehensible disposition of mind, since it
argues lack of zeal for the true faith. There is to-day more religious
intolerance in Moslem lands than in any other regions of the earth. In
this respect the Mohammedan world is about at the standpoint held by
Christendom in the Middle Ages.
But fortunately it is the same with a bad principle as with a good
one--it never produces its full logical consequences. There is that in
the constitution of things and in human nature which prevents this.
Hence there has been in Mohammedan lands a larger measure of toleration
than, in view of the teachings of Islam, we should have looked for.
But the toleration enjoyed by non-Moslems under Mohammedan rule has
been at best precarious. With lamentable frequency, in lands where
large sections of the population are ignorant and debased, outbursts of
fanaticism have resulted in terrible massacres of “unbelievers.”
Not until Moslem civilization has felt the broadening effect of those
material, intellectual, and moral revolutions which have finally
brought in toleration in a once intolerant Christendom, will this
virtue, without which a true and progressive moral life is impossible,
find a place in the ethical code of Islam.
[Sidenote: The slave trade under
Islam]
The slave trade in Mohammedan lands has been fostered through the
consecration of the war system by Mohammed and his recognition of
slavery as a part of the established social order. Throughout the first
century of the career of Islam the propaganda of the faith by the sword
provided an unfailing source of slaves, such as had not been opened
up since the completion of the conquest of the world by the Roman
legions.[668] This religious legitimatizing of the slave trade filled
Moslem lands with slave markets, and, when the wars of the religious
propaganda had ceased, tended to give a fresh impulse to the African
slave traffic, which had been in existence from time immemorial. This
trade by Mohammedans has been just such a curse to eastern and central
Africa as the European Christian slave traffic--which, beginning in
the fifteenth century, continued till its final suppression in the
nineteenth--was to the west African coast and the hinterland. The
Moslem trade is still carried on clandestinely,[669] since there has as
yet been little or no moral disapprobation of the traffic awakened in
Mohammedan lands.
[Sidenote: Drunkenness in
Mohammedan countries]
The absolute prohibition in the Koran of the use of all intoxicating
liquors has been wonderfully effective in preserving Mohammedan lands
from the great evil of drunkenness. This vice, so common in Christian
lands, is almost unknown in countries where the faith of the Koran is
really dominant and the influence of Europeans has not been felt.
In Afghanistan the penalty inflicted for drunkenness is death. So
rigorously is the law of Islam in this matter enforced that persons in
a state of intoxication are almost never seen. Nor is the evil simply
driven under cover; there is practically very little drinking going on
in the privacy of the home.
[Sidenote: Moslem charity]
Islam has been only less effective than Buddhism and Christianity in
fostering the attractive virtue of charity. The precepts of the Koran
respecting almsgiving and other deeds of benevolence have greatly
promoted the habit of giving among the followers of the Prophet. The
giving of direct relief to the poor in the form of alms is probably
quite as general as among Christians, though much of this charity is
indiscriminate and tends to foster that mendicity which is such an
ever-present evil in Mohammedan lands. The building of caravansaries,
the construction of aqueducts, the opening of fountains along the
routes of travel, and the founding of asylums are forms of benevolence
which recall similar works of philanthropy in the later period of the
pagan Roman Empire.
Respecting this charity, however, it must be said that much of it has
the taint of self-interest. Many of these good works are performed not
so much from genuine philanthropy as from self-regarding motives, the
dominant thought of the doer being to gain religious merit for himself.
[Sidenote: Moral influence of
Islam on races low in civilization]
The spread of Islam has been almost from the first largely among
tribes and peoples low in the scale of civilization. In the earlier
centuries of its career, besides its conquests among the peoples of
ancient culture, it won over a great part of the uncivilized clans
and tribes of Asia, and to-day is making constant and rapid progress
among the negro tribes of central Africa. What renders this fact of
significance to the historian of morals is that Islam has shown itself
to be one of the most potent forces at work in the world to-day for
the moral elevation of peoples still on or near the level of savagery.
Canon Isaac Taylor affirms that it “causes the negro tribes of Africa
to renounce paganism, devil worship, fetishism, cannibalism, human
sacrifices, infanticide, witchcraft, gambling, drunkenness, unchastity,
cruelty, and personal uncleanliness.”[670]
That the moral code of Islam should be even more effective than the
Christian in lifting savages to a higher moral level is attributed by
Canon Taylor to the fact that the moral standard of Christianity is so
high that “its virtues are only vaguely understood and not generally
practiced, while the lower virtues which Islam enforces are understood
and generally practiced.”
In a word, it is with Islam’s morality the same as with its theology.
Its doctrine of one God is simple, concrete, and easily understood,
and for this reason Islam is admittedly more readily accepted by races
low in culture than Christianity with its metaphysical doctrine of the
Trinity. As the simplicity and concreteness of its teachings respecting
deity adapt its creed to the savage mind, so do the lower concrete
practical virtues of its moral code adapt it to the rudimentary moral
sense of the primitive man.
[Sidenote: Effects upon Mohammedan
morality of an unpliant law]
One of the most striking and instructive phenomena of universal history
is the contrasted fortunes of Mohammedan and Christian civilization. In
the eighth century of our era Mohammedan culture was in many respects
superior to that of Christendom. It held forth great promises for the
future. But these promises were not kept. Stagnation quickly followed
the period of brilliant achievement, and a blight fell upon the Moslem
world, while the history of Christendom has been a record of wonderful
development and progress, until to-day the two worlds cannot be placed
in comparison with one another, but only in contrast.
Beyond question many agencies, such as race, religion, and government,
have concurred to produce this contrast in history and fortune,
but equally certain is it that a potent contributory cause is
the difference in the moral systems which the two civilizations
respectively inherited. The moral life of the Christian world,
happily freed from the bondage of the rigid Mosaic law, an outer law
of positive minute commands, has expatiated under the comprehensive,
flexible law of the Gospel, a law of love and liberty. As a result
the moral life of Christendom has been, on the whole, notwithstanding
certain Mohammedanizing tendencies, an expansive growth under the
guidance of a moral consciousness gradually purified and refined by
experience and advancing culture. On the other hand, the moral life
of the Mohammedan world has been subjected to the authority of an
external, unchanging law, a law conceived to have been given for all
time, a republication practically of that rigid Mosaic law from the
bondage of which the Christian world had fortunately escaped. But the
moral life cannot be thus subjected to a rigid external authority
without resulting inanition and death. “The blight that has fallen on
the Moslem nations,” declares a well-informed and thoughtful Mohammedan
writer, “is due to the patristic doctrine which has prohibited
the exercise of individual judgment.”[671] The ethical code of a
people, like its civil code, must be elastic and responsive to the
ever-changing needs and demands of the growing moral life.