But Mohammed was not infallible. Dogma—everything human in fact—is open and liable to error. Even infallibility itself—as we speak of it—is fallible. As Draper so aptly remarks: “He who is infallible, must needs be immutable.” In many of the ordinary ways of life he was no doubt changeable and inconsistent. He was, after all, only human—but not with regard to the Faith. Here was he as firm as a rock, and showed a fixity of purpose that nothing could shake or alter. With him, “Life was but a means to an end, that end, beginning, mean and end to all things—God.” Only synchronous with this ruling principle was the idea of national unity. Never once did he falter or swerve from it. To this allegiance and fidelity of his to God and centralization it is possible to trace the devotion of Moslems to their Faith. “We are, as we often say, the creatures of circumstances. In that expression there is a higher philosophy than might at first sight appear. Our actions are not the pure and unmingled results of our desires. They are the offspring of many various and mixed conditions. In that which seems to be the most voluntary decision, there enters much that is altogether involuntary—more perhaps than we generally suppose.” This was very much the case with Mohammed. He was largely the creature of circumstances—the personification of his environment. It was the genius of this that entered into and obsessed him. That formed and swayed him as it willed. That made him as strong and inflexible as itself. That, combining with the commercial knowledge and experience he possessed and the political acumen he acquired, made him what he was. Here in a tiny nutshell lies the kernel and origin of the soul of Islam. The possibility that Mohammed was rather of Caucasian than Ishmaelitish descent, in reality makes little if any difference in the psychological analysis of his character. Fundamentally, human nature is human nature all the world over. In this respect racial and colour distinctions make no difference. Even moral and physical characteristics are merely superficial classifications. Inherent tendencies, strong and rooted as they are, may be amended or modified by environment. So that although it is vaguely possible that his moral courage and other mental features were of Caucasian origin, in the main he was essentially Semitic in character, patriarchal in principle, and humanistic in spirit. In Lecky’s opinion: “If we take a broad view of the course of history and examine the relations of great bodies of men, we find that religion and patriotism are the chief moral influences to which they have been subject, and that the separate modification and mutual interaction of these two agents may almost be said to constitute the moral history of mankind.” This most certainly has been the case with regard to Islam. Religion was the medium chosen by Mohammed for the furtherance of his truly imperial design. It was entirely through religion, or rather the interpretation he placed upon it, that he built up first of all a natural patriotism, then an international spirit, that expanded into the mighty creed of Islam. Prior to this, Arabia as he found it was narrow to an extreme. The only patriotism—if patriotism it can be called—was clannish and communal. Outside these stilted limits, every one was regarded with suspicion, contempt, indifference, and invariably with undisguised hostility. Yet the great and solid foundation of this splendid spiritual and temporal empire was laid by one man. But how great and how heroic! Indeed, “take him all in all, the history of humanity has seen few more earnest, noble and sincere ‘prophets,’ men irresistibly impelled by an inner power to admonish and to teach, and to utter austere and sublime truths, the full purport of which is often unknown to themselves.”
[ CHAPTER VII ]
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.