“_By the brightness of the morning,
and by the night when it groweth dark—
Thy Lord hath not forsaken thee,
Neither doth He hate thee.
Verily the life to come shall be better for thee
than this present life,
and thy Lord shall give thee a reward
with which thou shalt be well pleased._
“_Did He not find thee an orphan,
and hath He not taken care of thee?
Did He not find thee wandering in error,
and hath He not guided thee into the truth?
Did He not find thee needy,
and hath He not enriched thee?
Wherefore oppress not the orphan, neither
repulse the beggar,
but declare the goodness of the Lord._”
Sura XCVI.
There is in the story of Islam an interest quite unique; it is the work
of one unaided mind, the mind of a man unlettered and ignorant, who
came of an isolated people, and who gained such knowledge as he had of
the great world from hearsay as he travelled between Central Arabia
and Syria in charge of the merchant caravan of his mistress. This man,
morally very frail to our thinking, is all but divine to two hundred
millions of men and women. His word is final to them; it alone reveals
God, it alone guides life, it alone commands all Muslim rulers, and it
defies Christianity as no other power has done.
Muhammad lived six hundred years after Christ, his Faith came into
existence in full view of Christianity, it publicly claims to be a
higher revelation and to supersede Christianity; and the Christian
nations have not yet disproved the claim. The attempt has not indeed
been made, unless we reckon the chivalrous and ill-fated missions of
the Crusades to redeem the Holy Sepulchre from the hands of the Muslim.
Whether Christianity realizes the fact of her failure in this respect,
or not, Islam is fully conscious of it.
[Sidenote: Muhammad]
Muhammad—the Praised One—was born at Mecca on August 29th, 570 A.D.
He was left an orphan while still a little child, and was adopted by an
uncle. Later he became steward to a lady of Mecca, Khadija, who asked
him to become her husband, and was, until her death, his faithful and
loving wife. This marriage procured for Muhammad that which he coveted
above all things, leisure for the study of the things of God.
[Sidenote: The Call]
The time was past when the idolatrous worship of his tribe—the
religious tribe of Arabia—had any meaning for him. He had had glimpses
of a purer, a more satisfying Faith. Both Jews and Christians had
crossed his path, who had spoken of the one God: Creator, Ruler,
Provider; and the idea had seized and held his imagination. Upon this
idea he now meditated in his chosen retreat, a cave near Mecca, until
it possessed him; he dreamed dreams and saw visions, and at length came
forth to make them known, being assured that he had been called to
proclaim the reign of the one only God upon earth.
[Sidenote: Rejection]
But the people of Mecca, custodians of the religious traditions of
Arabia, would have none of this new doctrine; they fiercely opposed the
preacher, and very soon drove him and his little company of disciples
(of whom his wife had been the first) from the city.
[Sidenote: Flight]
The _Hajrat_, or Flight, from which dates the Muhammadan era, took
place on July 16th, 622 A.D.
A refuge was found in the rival city of Madina.
[Sidenote: Madina]
At Madina, Muhammad found leisure to mature and carry out the Idea
which had now possessed him that he should found a Reign of God upon
the earth. “Behind the quiet and unobtrusive exterior,” writes Sir
William Muir, “lay hid a resolve, a strength and fixedness of will,
a sublime determination, destined to achieve the marvellous work
of bowing towards himself the heart of all Arabia as the heart of
one man.” There is, to the sympathetic student of his life, nothing
wonderful in the hold which Muhammad took upon his followers. He
mastered men by the force of his iron will, and then won them by the
force of his noble and generous nature.
[Sidenote: Character]
Many words have been wasted upon the problems of the character of this
sixth-century Prophet, and it is not intended to enter upon them here.
It must be remembered that if the vision of Muhammad was world-wide
while his personal life remained at the limit of his time and his
isolated race, there are not lacking similar examples elsewhere of
great leaders whose private lives we explain by their generation and
surroundings; also, it is probably wise, that until we know and are
able to sympathize with the Arabic character, we of the West should say
little in way of condemnation, all the more that condemnation of the
Prophet is not the method to win men from his allegiance.
[Sidenote: Personal Claim]
There is a far more important question which may not be passed over.
Did Muhammad realize the _personal_ claim involved in his religious
message? Was his soul so pre-occupied with the grand Idea that his own
relation to it was not at first apparent? For, it cannot be forgotten
that from the beginning the second Article of the Muslim Creed was
inherent in the first. God is known as God to the Muslim only because
the Apostle of God has proclaimed Him to be God. Muhammad is the
Revealer of God, and God is God. This is the true and inevitable order.
This claim, as a foundation of belief, was the source of success of
the arms of Islam in the past, and is the living power of Islam to-day;
at the same time, it was and is the test of the man and of his message.
Is Muhammad the Revealer of God? There is possible one answer only to
the question, so far as the disciples of the Christ Whom he claimed to
supersede are concerned; but the answer does not end the story of the
relation between Christianity and the Arabian Prophet. Would that it
did!
[Sidenote: Death]
Muhammad died at Madina on June 9th, 632 A.D., in his sixty-second
year. His death was peace. His last words were, “The blessed
Companionship on high.”
[Sidenote: The dead hand]
Being dead this man still rules. In all human history there is no more
striking illustration of the might of the “dead hand” than is presented
in Islam.