MOSLEM MORALITY AND CHRISTENDOM’S ATTITUDE TOWARDS ISLAM
The better to gauge the present political aspect of the Moslem world,
the statesmen of Europe--of France and Great Britain more
particularly--should make an earnest study of the spirit of Islam. If we
regard Islam as the work of Mohammed--as we are bound to--there are
certain broad features we must also recognize. Right away from its very
inception he worked not only as a prophet, but as a political reformer.
Travelling as he did with his eyes, ears and all his senses open, the
political state of the eastern portion of Europe and the western side of
Asia must have been well known to him. To accomplish his religious ends
was impossible without the political unity of Arabia. To him the
political and religious unity of his country were synonymous. As a
shrewd and practical trader, the material advantages of commerce were
taken into consideration. He recognized that without a sound commercial
basis and political unity there could be no national stability. He also
saw that in a country like Arabia, split up into clans and communities,
it was only possible to effect this through the spiritual potentialities
of the one and only true God. If he did not himself accomplish this
great project, we know at least that it was the magnificent legacy he
bequeathed to his followers in the spirit of Islam, that eventually did
so in reality. He or the spirit he evoked was clearly and unmistakably
the cause of all subsequent Moslem triumphs, intellectual and political
as well as religious. Thus it was that scarcely eighty years after his
death, Islam reigned supreme over Arabia, Syria, Persia, all the
northern coast of Africa, including Egypt, as well as Spain. So, too,
notwithstanding the internal schisms and rifts that subsequently took
place, it kept on growing with great strides, until at last in 1453, the
Crescent gleamed from the spires of St. Sophia at Constantinople, and
the soul-stirring war cry “La ilah illa Allah” resounded seventy-six
years afterwards before the very gates of Vienna. Lecky is undoubtedly
right in assuming that: “To trace in every great movement the part which
belongs to the individual and the part which belongs to general causes
without exaggerating either side is one of the most difficult tasks of
the historian.” But in the case of Islam there can be no mistake. True,
the Arabs in themselves were a great and virile people. But it was the
genius of Mohammed, the spirit he breathed into them through the soul of
Islam, that exalted them. That raised them out of the lethargy and low
level of tribal stagnation, up to the high water mark of national unity
and Empire. It was in the sublimity of Mohammed’s deism, the simplicity,
the sobriety and purity it inculcated, the fidelity of its founder to
his own tenets, that acted on their moral and intellectual fibre with
all the magnetism of true inspiration. To them Islam was the Faith--the
Faith God.
Just as Christianity stands for the faith of the great European family
of nations, Islam stands for those countries whose political
institutions are still based on the Patriarchal system. But
Europe--however superior her peoples may think themselves--is not in the
position, and certainly cannot afford, to look down upon Islam as an
inferior product of an inferior section of the great human family. East
may be East, and West, West--the system of one represented by polygamy,
of the other by monogamy. But because Christianity is conformable to
European ideals and notions, it does not in the least follow that it is
compatible with those of the East. Because the civilized net result it
has effected has eventually proved greater than that achieved by Islam,
is no evidence whatever of Islam’s worthlessness or decadence. It is
not the spirit of Islam that has failed, but the people who believe in
it. They have fallen away from the high ideal that was set them by their
master. In this respect, however, Christianity has also degenerated. It
is a creed of profession more than of practice. It has never
consistently practised what it has preached. A very wide gulf divides
its practices from its ideals. “If to do were as easy as to know what
were good to do, chapels had been churches and poor men’s cottages
princes’ palaces. It is a good divine that follows his own instructions:
I can easier teach twenty what were good to be done, than be one of the
twenty to follow mine own teaching.” So Shakespeare. This holds as good
now as when he wrote it. Human nature never alters fundamentally. It is
the same to-day as it was yesterday, and as it will be unto all
eternity. Christendom much more so than Islam, is split up into sects
and denominations, and there can be no question about it that the chief
obstacle to unity among these various bodies at the present moment is
want of sincerity and earnestness!
Compared with the average Moslem, the average Christian too is certainly
lukewarm. The nearest approach to Moslem perfervidness is in the piety
of the Irish Catholics. But devotional as they are, even this falls far
short of the rigid practice of the true Moslem. Not only, however, is
he fervid and in downright earnest, but he is above all constant,
faithful, and consistent to the principles of his creed. Thus, although
there is no fatherhood about Allah, there is for all that a true and
real brotherhood in Islam which contrasts very favourably with the
professed brotherhood of Christendom. Colour or race, for instance,
makes no difference to it. Islam, in fact, is above all such petty
differences. She draws no hard and fast rules, has no such violent
antipathies, bigotries and prejudices as Christendom. Professes little
but practises much. Colour in her eyes is no disgrace, no bar to God,
much less therefore to human fellowship and assimilation. This, as we
know, is not the case with Christians. To them colour and race (as
witness in the United States of America) is an impassable barrier, that
is more insurmountable even than the great wall of China, over which
they find it impossible to step.
There are in nature, as Novalis endeavours to explain in his
philosophical romances, many realities and verities, the truth or
essence of which cannot be grasped by the cold and critical intellect of
man. Only by and through the sympathetic intuition of feeling can truths
such as these be known or understood. This is indeed so. No matter how
hard and material we may be, however thoroughly scientific; no matter
how high we may place reason--even on the highest pinnacle of human
attainment, there are times when the emotions overpower and dominate it.
There are times when reason, even in its calmest and most calculating
moments, is simply inundated and overwhelmed by the flood-tide of human
feelings. In any case it is clear that although in the abstract it is
impossible to detach or even insulate thought from feeling and feeling
from volition, these three--feeling, thought and will--act, and often
co-operate together, in every mental causation. But it is just as
difficult for a system to free itself from its own peculiar
idiosyncrasies and prejudices as it is for an individual to dissociate
himself from his motives. It is exactly the same with regard to Islam
and Christendom. The latter has allowed its prejudices and its feelings
to obliterate or to stultify its reason. It does not know, it does not
understand Islam. Merely because it does not want or makes no effort to
know or to understand it. Because it has no sympathy with it. Because in
place of sympathy it is in reality antipathetic. Yet while professing
toleration, Christendom does not hesitate to despise and condemn Islam.
To Christendom, Islam is a mere creed and abstraction--a creed beyond
and outside its cold and autocratic pale. A creed belonging to another
world and heaven than its own. A creed of colour and of sombre shades,
nay even of gloom and darkness, blood, fire and sword, when the crescent
and green flag of the Jihad is hoisted; a creed which is not to be
thought of in the same breath as the snow-white fabric of the
transcendent cross.
The fact of the matter is, that Christendom in the earlier days of
Islam, jealous and fearful of her younger and more vigorous rival,
always recoiled from Islam under the veil of a self-satisfied cant, as
from a monstrous monstrosity of the most vicious and immoral type. A
form of “Moloch horridus,” bristling all over with polygamous
excrescences, and cruel sharp-pointed spines, ever ready to thrust their
awful venom into the unoffending human species. Yet if only Christendom
had long ago cultivated the virtue of patience, and the breadth and
depth of mind, to look into the matter, she would have discovered--as
those sceptics who have done so have discovered--the pure and
unadulterated truth. She would have found, that as the Moloch horridus
of Australia conceals an inoffensive character under a weird if
repulsive exterior; so Islam, under an outward form which bigotry and
prejudice have exaggerated out of all shape, possesses a moral and
spiritual value beyond all cavil or question. Islam no doubt has its
faults and many of them. The position of women is not perhaps as it
should be. The law and the practice of divorce is a real blot on her
system. Education is at a low ebb. The custom of the separation of
sexes, of which polygamy and divorce are the necessary outcome, are
undoubtedly pernicious. It cannot, of course, be expected that young men
and women who have never met or associated, and whose marriages are
arranged for them, can have any exalted ideas or feelings on the subject
of love. It is not possible that young men who have never felt the
refining influence and the moral restraint of female society, can
possess either chivalry or a high ideal, with regard to an element
unique in itself. Nevertheless, contrary to received European opinion,
there exists for all that a very real and hearty affection and a warm
sympathy between Moslem husbands and wives. What is more, this affection
and sympathy will possibly contrast quite favourably with the family
devotion of most European countries.
With regard to women, however, the social system, it must be admitted,
is less successful. It leaves room for improvement. The institution of
female slavery is distinctly a blot. The lot of the Moslem girl morally
and socially is not so much unhappy as neglected. Her ordinary education
is practically negative; the religious part of it is regarded as
superfluous. But it is a popular fallacy, as I have already pointed
out, to attribute to Islam the doctrine that women have no souls.
Unfortunately, however, the idea prevails generally throughout Europe
that these precious possessions are ignored by modern custom: that the
fair sex is not encouraged to pray either in private or in public. It is
believed, too, that the vigorous ritual prescribed for the male members
is considered sufficient for both. So that Moslem women by ignoring the
one neglect the other, with consequences that are morally and physically
disastrous. But these are not by any means the real facts of the case.
Personally, of course, I cannot speak of such matters from experience.
Isolated and secluded as the women of Islam are, and their privacy so
rigorously guarded by a ring fence of stringent rules, it is not
possible for the European to give an adequate opinion thereon. But
according to the reliable authority of so eminent a Moslem as Syed Ameer
Ali, and others, the women among civilized Moslem communities know their
prayers and religious duties just as well as the men--and are devout and
pious--more so perhaps than the other sex. As to their cleanliness, it
is beyond question. Yet in spite of so many obstacles--no education,
seclusion, and a generally defective training--the women are not
unhappy. They are on the whole as fully occupied (in their own way of
course) and as well cared for as the women of Europe.
The fact of the matter is, Islam is suffering from mental stagnation,
from the inevitable reaction that always succeeds a long period of
active development. The Arabs, in a word, have had their day. With
regard to education generally, the teaching is of a stereotyped pattern.
There is no freshness or originality about it. Moslem studies have, in
fact, lost all or most of their vitality. “The bloom of Arab culture has
long been brushed away, and there now remains only a hollow kernel.” But
it is after all by her virtues and not her defects that we must appraise
the true value of Islam. Most unquestionably she has great and redeeming
features. The throwing of stones or of mud is at best an injudicious
proceeding. Apart from this it is undignified and unworthy of so high a
civilization. It is not for Christendom to throw stones any more than it
is for Islam. Indeed, in this respect, Europe could well take a leaf out
of the book of Moslem self-restraint and dignity. Moslem society, too,
may compare very favourably with European. Taken in the mass, the
polygamous Moslem is every whit as moral--more so in fact--than his
English, French, or German contemporary. In a great measure polygamy is
much more a theoretical than a practical institution. Not one in twenty
Moslems has even two wives. In any case it is not in the proper and
legitimate practice of polygamy, but in the abuse of it, that the evil
lies. On the whole there is no promiscuous immorality among the
followers of Islam. Drunkenness and prostitution are practically
non-existent. In towns where Europeans have made them a necessity, they
are always worse. Abstinence and sobriety are not only professed but
practised. In these respects the young Moslem certainly stands above his
contemporary in Europe. Marrying early as he does, he knows nothing of
“the wild oats” that are so promiscuously and so religiously sown by the
youth of Europe. He sows no rank or noisome weeds for his children’s
children to reap a gruesome harvest. As far, therefore, as the male sex
are concerned, the social system of Islam is certainly more moral and
wholesome than that of Christendom.
The cult of Mormonism, as it has existed and still exists in Utah State
and Salt Lake City, is a problem that should set all statesmen thinking!
As a psychological conundrum and from a rational standpoint, it is a
most interesting question. It confronts us with a dual anomaly! First of
all by the enforcement of a sociological system in distinct opposition
to, and in defiance of all ethnic conditions. To make the anomaly all
the greater, the religious part of this cult is founded on a palpable
sham. There is not even about it the possibility of reality that always
exists at the back of many ancient myths.
The so-called revelation of Joseph Smith, is the clumsy imposture of a
man who in no sense of the word was either great or sincere. It is
unquestionably the work of one or more persons who initiated the
movement in their own self-interests, and to cloak principles that were
at complete variance with Christian doctrine and European opinion.
Mohammed, as we know, did not receive any revelation “on the eternity of
the marriage covenant, or the plurality of wives.” This, according to
Mormon statement, was reserved for Joseph Smith alone. As a great
statesman and prophet, Mohammed recognized polygamy to be an ethnic
condition, therefore wisely did not interfere with it. Any radical
innovation in this direction would have been more than a political
error. As a revolutionary measure, it would have completely upset the
entire fabric of Arabian and Eastern society. A pandemoniac
topsy-turveydom would have been the immediate consequence. The
death-knell of Islam, the direct result. Yet the very personal god of
Joseph Smith was so very short-sighted or painstaking that he sanctioned
absolutely a mere matter of domestic arrangement and economy. Could any
two extremes present a wider and more striking contrast? Is it possible
even to compare the splendid sincerity of this sublime creed of
self-surrender to God--the soul of which came direct from all that is
great in nature--with the thin transparency of what at best was a poor
attempt at fiction, which emanated from the mentality of a human
mediocrity? Is it justifiable to mention them in the same breath?
Yet in spite of these startling contradictions, it is quite certain that
the Mormon State, in an economic sense, is a prosperous, flourishing and
thriving community. Its people too are orderly, well-behaved,
law-abiding and industrious. From a moral and social standpoint, there
is no fault to find with them. The anti-polygamic legislation of the
United States Government, although it has recently been enforced with
much greater severity than at first, has not stamped out polygamy. Does
this or does this not demonstrate that polygamy--which in the eyes of
Christendom constitutes one of the chief offences of Islam--is not the
crime it is represented to be? Is it, in fact, a crime at all? Does it
not prove that only the abuse of it, as the abuse of any, even a good
thing, is wrong? But that the actual system itself as an ethnic
condition peculiar to certain racial sections of mankind, is nothing but
the outcome or evolution of sociologic customs and usages?
To contend as all the Mu’tazilite doctors do that Islam is not a
polygamous system because it only tolerates a limited polygamy under
stringent conditions which tends to monogamy is but a metaphysical
quibble. It is but an attempt to split a hair. It does not alter the
fact that when a system permits more than one wife, and its founder
sanctioned four, it is certainly not monogamous. Such an argument will
not hold water for even a moment. It is but a mere contention--“a bone,”
as the Persian proverb says, “thrown to two dogs,” a palpable piece of
sophistry. It is but the begging of an obvious fact, a reality that can
neither be avoided nor eluded. As Burns so very happily puts it:
“But facts are cheels that winna ding
An downa be disputed.”
From theories such as this, Islam can derive no benefit. Just as in a
broad sense she can suffer no disparagement from the fact that she
countenances polygamy, she can afford to dispense with any such
apologies. It is always a sounder principle to look truth in the face,
even if that truth is unpalatable. However much civilization or the
march and progress of events may ultimately modify polygamy, the actual
custom itself was but an outcome of circumstances and conditions that
at the time were inevitable and did not (as they do not now) imply a
crime against or subversion of natural laws. To stigmatize a system that
time and usage have sanctified for thousands of years, merely because it
offends _the easily outraged feelings of a super-sensitive Christendom_,
or even on other grounds, is, to say the least of it, undignified. To
impute a crime to the thing itself is almost, but not quite, on a par
with the theology that pronounces a child to be the product of a sinful
act. If the cause is sinful, the effect must also be sinful? Such a
theory is certainly unnatural, if not monstrous! It is a perversion of
that Nature from which we ourselves have evolved, and of that God or
First Cause from which all causes and effects have proceeded.
Regarding this question from the broadest of standpoints, there is no
need of an apology. Contention such as that of the Mu’tazilite doctors,
casts too much of a reflection--an insult almost--on the great spirit
and the splendid traditions of Islam. It is altogether unworthy of her.
The fact of a polygamous system did not in one whit detract from the
splendour of the empire that was built upon Mohammed’s virile creed,
although the subsequent abuse of it may possibly have done so! Even
admitting that monogamy is an improvement on polygamy, the Christian
Faith was yet young when Mohammed first founded Islam. Thirteen hundred
years make a vast difference in the aspect of social progress and
development. And as I have already pointed out, even Mohammed, with all
his great power and influence, dared not have upset the corner-stone
upon which the entire social fabric of the Patriarchal system was based.
However great he was as a Prophet, he was much too great a statesman to
have even spent a thought on an innovation so startlingly radical and
revolutionary.
But Christendom in the mass has never rationally considered this
question from a broad-minded and liberal aspect! The attitude of its
missionaries towards the great Moslem Church is, to say the least of it,
uncalled for and unjustifiable. Their irrational arrogance and
aggressiveness is only exceeded by their psychological ignorance of
Islamic spirit and morality, added to an overweening egotism, blind
bigotry and narrow sectarian prejudices. In a dual sense their attitude
is offensive in the extreme. Offensive because it is hostile as well as
impertinent. To attempt the conversion of Islam is a liberty that
amounts to licence in face of its utter futility. This in itself
demonstrates an ignorance of ethnic conditions on the part of European
statesmen and missionaries that is as amazing and preposterous as it is
deplorable. So, too, to denounce Islam, as Christian missionaries do in
no unmeasured terms, in books, on platforms and in the pulpit, is surely
unpardonable--surely a reflection on civilization. Christianity will
never convert or supplant Islam. As long as the one lasts the other will
endure. From the most catholic of standpoints, from a religious, a
social, a political, and an economic sense, it would be sounder and more
politic to leave Islam alone. It would be more to the point if Christian
missionaries devoted their energies to the bottom dogs of the slums of
their own European cities, and to rescue the poor helpless infants who
in their thousands are being slowly done to death through vice and crime
that is worse than bestial. Unquestionably there is in our own European
system a moral cancer that is just as virulent as any that Islam can
produce. This indeed is a question that European statesmen should turn
their attention to. For more than anything, it is this onslaught on the
strongholds of Islam by Christendom, that explains the Moslem menace.
The one, if it exists, is but a counterblast to the other.
It is an indisputable fact that in China and in various parts of the
world, the high-handed interference and injudicious zeal of Christian
missionaries--outrunning all discretion, tact, and common sense--has
frequently been the cause of war and bloodshed. Is this, I ask,
compatible with Christian tenets and professions? Do not practices such
as these fall far short of the high ideals that are so consistently
flourished in the face of those who are outside its pale? Do they not
bring moral discredit on a great creed, and tend to reduce it to the low
level of mere and fulsome cant? But one small specimen of this open and
undisguised hostility will suffice. In the _X. Y. Z._ of July 24, 1908,
under the heading in large type of “ISLAM THE ENEMY,” appears the
following: “At the annual meeting held in connexion with the Church
Missionary Society at Harrogate recently, the Rev. W. Y. Potter said:
‘The calls which are most urgent are perhaps those to combat advancing
Mohammedanism in West Africa, to direct the new desire for learning in
China, to protect the Japanese nation from Agnosticism, by gathering in
the millions in these lands into the folds of the Christian Church.’”
A sentence like this speaks for itself. It is self-condemnatory. It
condemns the speaker and the whole system which advances and encourages
such narrow and vicious methods. It condemns, too, a journalism that
gives such poor and unworthy utterances a place, even as a mere “Fill
up.”
Islam is not an enemy. It is Christendom only that makes her so. It is
that craven conscience, which finding in her a teacher and a worker of
solid worth, has aroused the envy and malice of the ever jealous
theological spirit, which has invariably been responsible for so much
war and bloodshed. It is a relic of the same militant envy that, burning
with fury throughout the Dark Ages, fired the Crusades to a very great
extent. A cramped and dogmatic spirit such as this does not surely
represent the true spirit of modern Europe, which is presumably rational
and reasonable, and consistent with the genius of progress and
advancement. There is no real and spontaneous Moslem menace. Even,
however, if there is, it is but the re-echo of these aggressively
Christian sentiments. It is but the answer to a challenge, as
undignified and contemptuous as it is aggressive and defiant. Islam, I
repeat, is not an enemy, but a co-worker with us in the great and
glorious cause of uplifting humanity from a lower to a higher
civilization. Islam has neither intention nor design of encroaching upon
the spiritual preserves of Christendom. Further, she has no itching wish
to do so. Her leaders have the common sense to recognize that
Christendom is separated from her by ethnic laws and social customs that
are indivisible. She is only too willing; all, in fact, she asks, is to
be left alone to work in her own sphere of influence. Is it not
possible, then, for a Christendom professing so vast a moral and every
other kind of superiority, to meet her half way, to make a truce or
compromise to the effect that each should work in its own legitimate
sphere? A pugnacious method such as she pursues towards Islam is as bad,
worse in fact, than a thousand red rags to an infuriated bull. For like
the unfortunate victim in a Spanish bull-fight, tormented to its death
by matadors, piccadors, torreadors, and a host of other “dors,” Islam is
beset and heckled by the frothy vapourings of theocratic firebrands, and
the unbridled licence of Europe’s gutter press.
The origin of Islam, as I have described it, is in itself evidence of
Islam’s moral and spiritual stability--of that part of her which has not
deviated from, but clung to the spirit of her great Founder. But even
allowing for denominational deviations, Islam in the mass is truly
devout.
The two creeds represent two absolutely divergent sections of humanity.
Unquestionably in a social, moral and religious sense, Islam is Islam,
and Christendom, Christendom. To remedy this divergence, to bring the
two sections together, enters into the impossible.
A natural arrangement such as this cannot be interfered with or altered.
Defective as it is from a human aspect, it is all the same
irremediable--a hiatus as wide apart as the suns in space, beyond the
power of human effort to bring together. It is only possible for the
rational gospel of humanism, the great religion of natural sympathy, to
heal the breach. This it can only do by turning humanity into one great
human family. This alone would sweep away the disturbing factors of
creeds, denominations, and sects. But is such a thing possible?
Scarcely! Certainly not so long as the egotism and egotheism of man is
so predominant a force in human sociology, or so long as the present
physical and mental environments of the two sections remain the same.