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.