Dutiful and obedient to his uncle who had been a father to him, he was a faithful servant, an exemplary husband, a kind father, a good master. The very name of Faithful, by which he was always distinguished, proves beyond a doubt what manner of man he was. An orphan himself in childhood, early inured to poverty, his heart went out to all those who had the misfortune to be similarly situated. For the poor, the weak, the helpless, he had a fellow-feeling. The degraded or at least dependent and unprotected position of women, their moral and legal helplessness most of all, appealed to him. But in no sense because he was sensual. Sensuality was not one of his many failings. A man from top to bottom, by birth, breeding and environment Mohammed was an Arab and a Patriarch. As such he only naturally liked women and children. To men and for the Faith a strong hard man, to the weak and helpless he was tender and affectionate. As he was strong, so he was merciful and full of human sympathies. His long and happy union with Khadija shows not only that he was faithful to a degree, but a man of high moral fibre. A man too full of the gravity of life to squander his substance in mere sensuality. But in all eastern and African countries where polygamy prevails, marriage is a pure matter of political convenience. Mohammed knew this. He recognized that marriage was a very important factor in securing influence and power. It threw out octopean feelers at various tangents and established certain associations and connexions to which it clung, as a limpet to a rock or a devil-fish to its victim. The same principle down almost to our own day has been a powerful factor in European statecraft. Even the earlier practice of keeping mistresses, so much indulged in by the sovereign holders of so-called “divine rights,” had much in common with this custom. It was undoubtedly this motive more than any other which influenced Mohammed. It was an essential feature in his great design. For in spite of his overwhelming devotion to God, notwithstanding God’s obsession of him, Mohammed was essentially human. There was room and sorrow in his heart for human frailties. His desire was strong to remedy them. He too like Luther was a Protestant, and a Reformer.
As to the soulless theory regarding the fair sex, which has been literally thrust upon the Moslem world by an antipathetic if not inimical Christendom, I quite agree with Burton. “The Moslems never went so far.” At all events if some of them have done so, “Certain ‘Fathers of the Church,’ it must be remembered, did not believe that women have souls.” Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, in one of that inimitable series of letters which she wrote, admits as much. In this particular letter written from Constantinople on May 29, 1717 (O.S.), to the Abbé Conti, she says: “Our vulgar notion that they (the Turks) do not own women to have any souls is a mistake.” And then she continues, but in not so accurate a vein: “’Tis true, they say they are not of so elevated a kind, and therefore must not hope to be admitted into the paradise appointed for the men, who are to be entertained by celestial beauties. But there is a place of happiness destined for souls of the inferior order, where all good women are to be in eternal bliss.” It is in no sense surprising, therefore, that to Mohammed Allah was the merciful. So in the sixth surah, he writes: “We (as if identifying himself with God) will not impose a task on any soul beyond its ability. For this self-same reason, God is minded to make his religion light unto you: for man was created weak.” Strong and enduring as sincerity and conviction made him, Mohammed knew his own weakness. Hence with a clemency that was divine he made concessions such as these. In these he acknowledged that, “to err is human, to forgive divine.” All the more, however, we cannot but admire his candour. Even as regards himself, his shortcomings and inadequacies, he speaks with an openness and straightforwardness that disarms suspicion—that forces the inquirer to respect him with all the greater reverence as a great leader of men. “So say I not unto you, the treasures of God are in my power; neither do I say, I know the [secrets of God, neither do I say] unto you, Verily I am an angel: I follow only that which is revealed unto me.” Indeed the more closely and carefully I look into his words in comparison with his life and acts, the more obvious do his candour and sincerity become. The more obvious is it to me that although essentially the product of a grim and petrified environment, he himself was unique. A man in advance of his time and people. For deep down in the soul of him, the rich milk of human kindness welled up out of the same eternal source from which he derived his fear and veneration for the Supreme! Truly the Prophet and spiritual ruler of the East and polygamy, as Christ stands for the West and monogamy!
It was with these weapons, combined with the tenacity of an elastic and imperishable patience, that Mohammed fought the Koreish and other tribes, and it was with them he finally conquered. Had he been insincere, there would have been no Islam. Had there been no spirit of a divine moral conception such as he infused into the creed (which came through him from the great fountain head of God and Nature), Islam would have withered and perished from sheer exhaustion and debility. From the standpoint of physical and moral purity, Mohammed was in every sense an Essene. Not only therefore was cleanliness of the body an absolute essential, but cleanliness of mind. Filthy immoral actions and depravities that he knew existed, unjust violence and iniquities, whether openly done or in concealment, were condemned and forbidden in scathing terms as a violation of God’s express command. The sophistry that would make an evil to be no crime unless found out, he denounced with all the fiery ardour of his fervent nature. From God there was no concealment. In his eyes it was a crime all the same—greater, in fact, because of attempted concealment.
[ CHAPTER V ]
THE MATERIAL AND OTHER SIDES OF THE PROPHET’S CHARACTER
In refuting those sceptics who have doubted the truth and sincerity of Islam, Carlyle condemns scepticism (rather too hastily it seems to me) as an indication of spiritual paralysis. Most unquestionably he was right in denouncing the former as an idiotic and godless theory. But scepticism itself in a general sense is not necessarily an evil. On the contrary, it is a natural tendency that arises out of the instinct of curiosity. Knowledge is not an inert and passive principle, but an active and dynamic force. Buckle in his history speaks of scepticism as stimulating curiosity. But he has put the cart before the horse. It is curiosity that excites scepticism. Curiosity is an animal instinct—the basis of all science. It exists in the lower animal creation—scepticism only in the upper human section. It is a higher or further development, a tendency that is certainly strengthened, if not acquired through education.
According to Lecky, “The first stage to toleration in England was due to the spirit of scepticism encroaching upon the doctrine of exclusive salvation”; and “the extinction of the spirit of intolerance both in Catholic and Protestant countries—due to the spirit of rationalism—was the noblest of all the conquests of civilization.” But as rationalism itself is chiefly the consequence of scepticism and the result of inquiry, it is obvious that in a deeply fundamental sense, the world is very considerably indebted to science or the spirit of scepticism. Indeed all knowledge has arisen from experience, and the desire to search into the root of things—to know what is what. Without curiosity and scepticism, human thought would have long since stagnated and the world remained sunk in ignorance. As Ghazali says, “No knowledge without assurance deserves the name of knowledge.” Seeing is not always devouring. Curiosity is not necessarily gluttony, or “scepticism, that curse of the intellect,” as Victor Hugo calls it. Gluttony is unnatural, unwholesome, and bestial. It is not so much overdoing, as a flagrant abuse and outrage of a natural appetite. It is a kicking against the pricks—a flying in the face of Providence. But curiosity as an instinct direct from Nature is healthy, therefore the use of it as also wholesome stands in need of stimulus and encouragement.
So Tennyson said of Shelley:—
“There lives more faith in honest doubt,
Believe me, than in half the creeds.”
In this righteous sense Mohammed was curious. As one of her own selection, Nature had specially endowed him with curiosity. He was one of her human, sensitive plants. As an observer, all his senses were developed and on the alert. He not only saw, but felt every vibration that thrilled, as it were, the very soul of the first great mother. In every flitting cloud, as in every fugitive thought, he was conscious of an unseen Power. A look-out man rather than a prophet, it was thus he groped or rather felt his way until he felt God. “I feel that there is a God,” said La Bruyère, “and I do not feel that there is none: that is enough for me; the reasoning of the world is useless to me: I conclude that God exists.” It was in much the same vein of self-argument that Mohammed communed to himself. Having felt God, God became for him a necessity: more so even, an essential—an absolutism which banished all else from his mind. The thought that there was no God did not occur to him. But the thought that other gods could exist in the same universe with the one omnipotence was to him as monstrous as it was unthinkable. Besides Him there was no room for any other. The very thought in his estimation perished from inanition and sheer inability of conception! The trinity of Christianity was to him as impossible and unacceptable as the antediluvian or later polytheism of his own countrymen.