The Reconciliation of Races and Religions

by T. K. Cheyne

INAYAT KHAN

The message of this noble company has been lately brought to the West. [Footnote: Message Soufi de la Liberté Spirituelle (Paris, 1913).] The bearer, who is in the fulness of youthful strength, is Inayat Khan, a member of the Ṣufi Order, a practised speaker, and also devoted to the traditional sacred music of India. His own teacher on his death-bed gave him this affecting charge: 'Goest thou abroad into the world, harmonize the East and the West with thy music; spread the knowledge of Ṣufism, for thou art gifted by Allah, the Most Merciful and Compassionate.' So, then, Vivekananda, Abdu'l Baha, and Inayat Khan, not to mention here several Buddhist monks, are all missionaries of Eastern religious culture to Western, and two of these specially represent Persia. We cannot do otherwise than thank God for the concordant voice of Bahaite and Ṣufite. Both announce the Evangel of the essential oneness of humanity which will one day—and sooner than non-religious politicians expect—be translated into fact, and, as the first step towards this 'desire of all nations,' they embrace every opportunity of teaching the essential unity of religions:

Pagodas, just as mosques, are homes of prayer,
'Tis prayer that church-bells chime unto the air;
Yea, Church and Ka'ba, Rosary and Cross,
Are all but divers tongues of world-wide prayer. [a]

[Footnote a: Whinfield's translation of the quatrains of Omar
Khayyám, No. 22 (34).]

So writes a poet (Omar Khayyám) whom Inayat Khan claims as a Ṣufi, and who at any rate seems to have had Ṣufi intervals. Unmixed spiritual prayer may indeed be uncommon, but we may hope that prayer with no spiritual elements at all is still more rare. It is the object of prophets to awaken the consciousness of the people to its spiritual needs. Of this class of men Inayat Khan speaks thus,—

'The prophetic mission was to bring into the world the Divine Wisdom, to apportion it to the world according to that world's comprehension, to adapt it to its degree of mental evolution as well as to dissimilar countries and periods. It is by this adaptability that the many religions which have emanated from the same moral principle differ the one from the other, and it is by this that they exist. In fact, each prophet had for his mission to prepare the world for the teaching of the prophet who was to succeed him, and each of them foretold the coming of his successor down to Mahomet, the last messenger of the divine Wisdom, and as it were the look-out point in which all the prophetic cycle was centred. For Mahomet resumed the divine Wisdom in this proclamation, "Nothing exists, God alone is,"—the final message whither the whole line of the prophets tended, and where the boundaries of religions and philosophies took their start. With this message prophetic interventions are henceforth useless.

'The Ṣufi has no prejudice against any prophet, and, contrary to those who only love one to hate the other, the Ṣufi regards them all as the highest attribute of God, as Wisdom herself, present under the appearance of names and forms. He loves them with all his worship, for the lover worships the Beloved in all Her garments…. It is thus that the Ṣufis contemplate their Well-beloved, Divine Wisdom, in all her robes, in her different ages, and under all the names that she bears,—Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Mahomet.' [Footnote: Message Soufi de la Liberté (Paris, 1913), pp. 34, 35.]

The idea of the equality of the members of the world-wide prophethood, the whole body of prophets being the unique personality of Divine Wisdom, is, in my judgment, far superior to the corresponding theory of the exclusive Muḥammadan orthodoxy. That theory is that each prophet represents an advance on his predecessor, whom he therefore supersedes. Now, that Muḥammad as a prophet was well adapted to the Arabians, I should be most unwilling to deny. I am also heartily of opinion that a Christian may well strengthen his own faith by the example of the fervour of many of the Muslims. But to say that the Ḳur'an is superior to either the Old Testament or the New is, surely, an error, only excusable on the ground of ignorance. It is true, neither of Judaism nor of Christianity were the representatives in Muḥammad's time such as we should have desired; ignorance on Muḥammad's part was unavoidable. But unavoidable also was the anti-Islamic reaction, as represented especially by the Order of the Ṣufis. One may hope that both action and reaction may one day become unnecessary. That will depend largely on the Bahais.

It is time, however, to pass on to those precursors of Bābism who were neither Ṣufites nor Zoroastrians, but who none the less continued the line of the national religious development. The majority of Persians were Shi'ites; they regarded Ali and the 'Imāms' as virtually divine manifestations. This at least was their point of union; otherwise they fell into two great divisions, known as the 'Sect of the Seven' and the 'Sect of the Twelve' respectively. Mirza Ali Muḥammad belonged by birth to the latter, which now forms the State-religion of Persia, but there are several points in his doctrine which he held in common with the former (i.e. the Ishma'ilis). These are—'the successive incarnations of the Universal Reason, the allegorical interpretation of Scripture, and the symbolism of every ritual form and every natural phenomenon. [Footnote: NH, introd. p. xiii.] The doctrine of the impermanence of all that is not God, and that love between two human hearts is but a type of the love between God and his human creatures, and the bliss of self-annihilation, had long been inculcated in the most winning manner by the Ṣufis.