History of Religion / A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems

by Allan Menzies

The new religion thus became the cement by which a strong commonwealth was formed out of elements formerly at variance. Mahomet's first care on reaching Medina was to organise the service of the faith. A place was built where the congregation could meet for prayer and exhortation; the prophet's house beside it, or rather the apartments of his wives, for he now had two, and was soon to have more. The mosque, which all over the world is the local habitation of Islam, may have been derived from the synagogue or the Christian church. The service which takes place in it is not a sacrifice, but consists of intellectual exercises which nourish in the hearers the spirit of the religion. In the Mosque of Medina Mahomet taught his converts the practices and duties which were required of them. He taught this with great precision, and himself set an example how each exercise was to be done; so that, as Wellhausen says, the mosque became the exercise ground where the people were drilled in the requirements of the new faith. "There the Moslems acquired the esprit de corps and the rigid discipline which distinguish their armies."

New Religious Union.—A new bond of union thus took the place of the old tie of blood, which had been by far the strongest in Arabia. Every Moslem regarded every other Moslem as his brother, even though belonging to a different tribe. The claims of religion came to supersede all others; all natural tastes, all family affections, were taught to yield to them. Within a few years of his coming to Medina Mahomet had forbidden the use of wine and the pursuit of art, and had imposed on all women who adhered to him the use of the veil. In every way the community was taught to regard itself as separated from the former life of the country and from all who did not share the new faith. It was represented as the duty of believers to fight against all unbelievers: in this way the universal prevalence of the religion was to be brought about. The courage of the faithful was stimulated by the promise of rich booty and by the assurance that those who fell in battle would go straight to the joys of Paradise; and the wars they waged acquired in consequence a relentless character which was new in Arabia. They were allowed to fight in the sacred month, in which ancient custom ordained a universal truce. They fought with a gloomy determination, and used their victories with a relentless cruelty, which excited the consternation and horror of all witnesses. They did not scruple, as other Arabs did, to fight against their kinsmen. "Islam has rent all bonds asunder, Islam has blotted out all treaties," they said, when reproached with their disregard of old understandings. The prophet himself was foremost in this unrelenting policy. Captives taken in battle were slaughtered; a whole tribe was massacred which had joined the enemy, and had surrendered after a siege in the hope of merciful treatment.

Breach with Judaism and Christianity.—As Mahomet thus freed himself, in spreading the faith of "the most merciful God," from all considerations of mercy and of honour, he also shook off, as his position grew strong, relations which might have proved embarrassing with other religions. In his earlier teaching he speaks of his own religion as being substantially the same as Judaism and Christianity. All three have "the Book"; the Koran is a continuation and supplement of the Jewish and Christian revelations, and he is only the last figure in the great line of prophets who had appeared in these religions. Like other founders, he did not at first intend to found a new religion, but only to bring to light again and restore to authority the original truths of these faiths, which had become obscured. His attitude at first, therefore, was friendly to both Jews and Christians, and his friendly feelings for the former were likely to be strengthened by the circumstances of his coming to Medina. Not long after his arrival, however, his attitude towards the Jews was changed. His followers had at first prayed with their faces turned in the direction of Jerusalem; but the prophet ordained that this should be altered, and that they should pray with their faces turned not towards Jerusalem but towards Mecca. This setting of a new "kiblah" as it is called, declared that Islam was a different religion from Judaism, and had an Arab not a Jewish centre. The hostility to the Jews, of which this was a symptom, grew more intense; quarrels were sought with them which ended in the utter annihilation of the Jewish power at Medina. From Christianity also Mahomet was careful to distinguish his religion. The Christians of Arabia were less tenacious of their faith than were the Jews, and easily accepted Islam, so that the hostility was not in this case so intense. The doctrines of the Trinity and of the Incarnation were of course denounced as intolerable blasphemies against the sole deity of Allah.

Domestic.—The history of Mahomet during the Medina period is taken up to some extent with the various marriages into which he entered, and with the scandals of his household. On several occasions he produced revelations to warrant a step in this connection which he felt to require justification, and the modern reader is forced to wonder how his credit survived some of those proceedings. While it is undoubtedly the case that he did much to improve the position of women in Arabia, the absence of any high ideal in this matter is very apparent.

Conquest of Mecca.—In giving his followers a new kiblah and bidding them turn their faces towards Mecca at their prayers, Mahomet declared that city to be the religious capital of Arabia. Though he had left Mecca in anger, he could not forget or ignore the city which held this place in his eyes. At first his thoughts of Mecca were those of vengeance; he had a score to settle with the Coreish, who had scorned and persecuted him, and had driven him forth. For several years there was war between Medina and the Coreish; the Moslems plundered the rich caravans of Mecca; in the great battle of Bedr (A.D. 623) Mahomet defeated his enemies and compelled them to respect and fear him; and they afterwards attacked and besieged him at Medina, with no decisive result. The next step was that Mahomet made use of the sacred month to attempt a pilgrimage to Mecca, from which he had been absent for six years (628); and though he was prevented from performing his devotions at the Caaba on this occasion, the Coreish found it good to make a treaty with him, thus recognising him as a potentate, and to promise that he should be allowed to make the pilgrimage on a future occasion. That pilgrimage took place; and so quickly was Mahomet's power increasing in the rest of Arabia that the Meccans began to feel that they could not long resist him. In the year 630 he moved against Mecca with a large army, and met with but faint opposition. Mecca fell into his hands. He used his victory nobly: only four persons were put to death. It was at once shown that no injury was to be done to the city. The old worship and its various ceremonies were preserved. All idols, of course, were destroyed, both those about the Caaba, of which there are said to have been one for each day in the year, and those in private houses.

Mecca made the Capital of Islam.—In fact Mecca gained new importance from this conquest. It was constituted by the irresistible power of Mahomet the central sanctuary of the true religion. A year after the victory Mahomet again visited Mecca, and performed the pilgrimage with all its rites in his own person, setting the correct pattern in every detail, which all pilgrims were to observe in all time coming. Those who wish to know what the rites of Mecca are, will find them graphically and minutely described in Captain Burton's Pilgrimage to El-Medinah and Mecca; that gallant officer was one of the three Europeans who, during the nineteenth century, assumed the disguise of pilgrims and took part in the observances. The kissing of the sacred black stone in the wall of the Caaba, the sevenfold circuit of the building, the drinking of the water of the well Zem-zem, the race from one hill-top to another in the neighbourhood of Mecca, the throwing of seven stones at a certain spot, and the sacrifice of an animal in a certain valley—these form a collection of rites each of which had probably a separate origin, and of some of which the original meaning can scarcely be made out.⁴ This "block of heathenism" Mahomet made part of his religion. He could not have abolished it, and by adopting it in an improved form as a part of his own system he served himself heir to the national religious traditions, and acquired for his own religion the authority of a national faith. "This day have I appointed your religion unto you," are his words after fixing the forms of the pilgrimage, "and applied Islam for you to be your religion." Islam adopts the Mecca rites, and thereby becomes the national religion of Arabia. Hubal, the chief god of the Caaba, disappears; Allah becomes the sole god of the shrine. The legend that Abraham founded it is put in circulation, and it is thus connected with the supposed earliest Arabian religion, the religion before idolatry, the Islam before Islam. As Paul appeals to the faith of Abraham as being a Christianity before Christ, so Mahomet claims the Caaba for the pure worship of Allah in primeval times. It is sacred henceforth to him alone. The rule was set up that no idolater should be admitted to the pilgrimage, and it thus lost its character as a heathen, and became instead a Moslem, institution.

⁴ See for this Wellhausen's Reste arabischen Heidenthums, pp. 64-98.

Spread of Islam.—Mecca once converted, the rest of Arabia could not long remain outside. There was reluctance in various places to make the change which Mahomet now required of all his countrymen. But the penalty of refusing it was the prophet's wrath, with its terrible attendants, war and rapine, and none of the Arabs cared enough for their old gods to brave such terrors for their sake. The inhabitants of Taif endeavoured to make terms, so that the change might be less abrupt. Their ambassadors urged that fornication, usury, and the use of wine might be allowed them, but this could not be granted; the Taifites must accept the deprivations to which all the Moslems had agreed. Then they asked that their Rabba, their goddess, might be spared to them for three years, and as this was refused, for two years, a year, a month. But the only concession they could obtain was that they should not be obliged to destroy their goddess with their own hands. The ancient paganism, it will be seen, fell easily and without any tragedy.

Mahomet did not long survive the national acceptance of his religion; he died on 8th June 632. But he did not die without having opened up to his followers very wide views for the future of his cause, and started them on a career of religious war and conquest which was not soon to be arrested. From a comparatively early period of his career he had considered that Islam was destined to prevail not only in Arabia but in other lands. Starting with the idea that his revelation was only a later stage of that which had taken place in Judaism and Christianity, he had advanced to the position that these were false religions, and his own the only true one. Wherever he looked in the world he could see no true religion but his own; it must therefore take the place of all others. Accordingly he sent embassies from Medina to Heraclius the emperor of the East, to the king of Persia, to the governor of Egypt, and to other potentates, announcing himself to be the "Prophet of God," and calling upon them to give up their idolatrous worships and return to the religion of the one true God. These embassies had small effect; but Mahomet was prepared to take much more forcible measures in order to spread the faith. War against infidels being one of the standing duties of the faithful, various regulations were laid down for the treatment of captives and the disposal of booty in such wars. God, who is said in every verse to be forgiving and merciful, encourages the faithful in such passages to slay and rob, and to make concubines of women taken in sacred wars. At the moment of his death an expedition, not the first, was ready to start against the Greek power. It is in this guise that Islam assumes the rôle of a universal religion.

The Duties of the Moslem.—The missionary of Islam requires of his converts nothing very difficult either in the way of belief or in the way of action. His demands are brief and precise. They consist of the following five points:—1. The profession of belief in the unity of God and the mission of Mahomet. The formula runs: "There is no God but Allah, and Mahomet is the prophet of Allah." 2. Prayer. This consists of the repetition of a certain form of words at five separate times each day, the worshipper standing up with his face towards Mecca. The mosques are always open for prayer, and there is a special service on Friday, the day of the week chosen by Mahomet in contradistinction to the Jewish Sabbath and the Christian Sunday. 3. Almsgiving. This is done on a fixed scale, and the contributions were, in Mahomet's time, devoted to the support of war against infidels. 4. Fasting. This takes place during the month of Ramadan, and the fast is very strictly observed. 5. The Hagg or pilgrimage to Mecca.