Islam, Her Moral And Spiritual Value: A Rational And Pyschological Study

by Arthur Glyn Leonard

It is, of course, possible that Mohammed was what in Arabia is called a “Saudawi,” or person of melancholy temperament—what nowadays would be called a hypochondriacal dyspeptic. Melancholia is a complaint that the Arabs are subject to, students, philosophers and literary men more especially. A distaste for society, a longing for solitude, an unsettled habit of mind, and a neglect of worldly affairs are always attributed to it. It is very probably—to some extent at least—as Burton suggests, the effect of overworking the brain in a hot, dry atmosphere; also due in some measure to the highly nervous and bilious temperament constitutional to the Arabs: a temperament that in Mohammed’s case was aggravated by excessive emotionalism.

It is clear that once Mohammed got hold of, or was obsessed by, the idea that he was God’s chosen messenger, and that his sayings were inspired by God (a very old and primitive belief remember): or rather as soon as ever Khadija and others of his household were imbued with the idea, then he never relaxed his hold of it for a moment. The confidence of those about him, his faithful spouse more especially, gave him confidence in himself. Confidence engendered conviction, and conviction led to the Koran and the ultimate triumph of his cause. That he was sincere in all this, there is not the slightest doubt, but in taking the measure of his sincerity we must be guided entirely by the fact that he was essentially a man who had long before made up his mind to bring about the unity of his country. Indeed the whole history of Khadija’s association with the matter shows this. To be a prophet in his own country or household, a man must inspire respect, or the still greater feeling of veneration. No man, unless he is earnest and devout, could possibly impress the members of his family. They are bound to find him out. This applies all the more forcibly to an eastern household in which polygamy prevails, and that is made up of so many opposing elements and conflicting interests, the atmosphere of which is only too often one necessarily of envies, jealousies, rivalries, suspicions, intrigues, and even conspiracies. If Mohammed had been insincere, if instead of convictions, his belief had been a mere profession or a sham; if it had not been one of austere, rigid practice and self-denial, then those about him would neither have been impressed, nor would they have espoused his cause as warmly and valiantly as they did. Not only were they impressed, however, but convinced, and it was their convictions that strengthened and confirmed his own faith. But once he had gained their confidence, his mission was assured. There was no doubt whatever then in his own mind that he was God’s chosen apostle, to whom God had revealed His word—the words of truth and life. From this out, his own vigour, his own extraordinary individuality and inflexibility carried him through from beginning to end. Once others believed in and relied on him, his own latent self-reliance grew into a living and active factor that carried all before it. But as he looked at it, all his strength was from God. God was at his elbow and in his heart, therefore he could not fail. Nothing, in fact, shows better than this aspect of the matter how very wise and all-knowing (his constant refrain about God in the Koran) Mohammed himself was. How tactful and diplomatic, but above all, how deep his knowledge of human nature. Had Khadija and his household not believed in him, it is safe to assume that then there would have been no Prophet and no Islam. As Novalis says: “My conviction gains infinitely the moment another soul will believe in it.” So it was with Mohammed. So it is with us all. So Carlyle pithily observes: “A false man found a religion? Why a false man cannot build a brick house!” I have already shown that Mohammed was not false. But neither did he found a religion. Apart from the fact that he was a reality, and as true as any of the world’s great prophets, Mohammed was unable to perform the impossible. Religion as a natural product was beyond his comprehension and potentialities. Islam like Christianity was a creed—a human or artificial development—the healthy and vigorous offspring of a noble and sublime, yet in no sense original conception. But there was no demerit in this want of originality. Because as Carlyle says: “The merit of originality is not novelty; it is sincerity”: and with regard to Mohammed, this has been more than once acknowledged.

Launched upon the world of Arabia in no false and unreal spirit, but with the spirit of grim sincerity and earnestness, Islam has proved its stability spiritually and materially, the present result of which speaks for itself. It is enough to say that a creed whose followers now number over 250,000,000, or some 15 per cent. of the human race [(an under- rather than an over-estimate)], could have sprung from a healthy and vigorous seed only—a seed that has been nourished and kept alive by the vital spark of human sympathies, hopes and aspirations.

What appears to me as so remarkable and so significant, so truly characteristic of the man, is the way in which he never lets go his grip of the central idea and purpose, but follows it up step by step. And as he follows, he makes every point that he can, seizes every opportunity, takes every advantage of every ordinary event and occurrence that is going on around him, makes the best of every reverse, turns even his set-backs and reverses into moral victories; and accepts it all as inevitable with the calmness of a philosophy that emanated from his own wondrous egoism and that inexhaustible fund of patience and reserve of courage which so distinguishes his character. In this respect alone Mohammed truly was a remarkable man—a man infinitely above, not only his surroundings, but his age. With Mohammed, not only was the great fact of his own existence great to him, but in almost every page of the Koran it is obvious that [God’s omnipresence and omnipotence had made] a profound and lasting impression on him. Everywhere and in everything—in natural objects more especially—he saw and felt the hand and the power of God. And to him it was a power so overwhelmingly terrific and transcendent in all its aspects, that it defied description and demonstrated the insignificance and impotence of man. In more senses than one he was a pantheist. To him, either God was Nature and Nature God, or God was in Nature and Nature was in God. At bottom of him the old primitive belief was there, but in unity and concentration he saw strength. In his mind there was no room, no place, for lesser deities. The power and the splendour of the one creative God—who lived and moved and had His being throughout the universe, overshadowed, or, rather, had absorbed, them all. In the grim silence of the desert, in the vastness of the heavens, in the great infinity of space, in the scintillation of the stars, in every fibre of his own consciousness, God was with him. To Mohammed God was not a personal being but the God and Maker of the universe and all mankind. With him the entire theme and volume of his stream of thought was God and his religion. Coming from the core and centre of him as it did, even through the long vista of thirteen centuries, one can picture this overmastering element in every line of his stern-set and yet gentle face: a face reflective and speaking, that not only had a history stamped upon every feature, but a great, a strenuous, and a commanding history. In vino veritas is as true to-day as when first it was uttered. So too the saw, that “mastership like wine unmasks the man.” But Mohammed needed no unmasking. God and the truth—the truth about God as it dominated him—was the rich, strong wine which coursed through every vein and fibre of his mental organism, stimulating and spurring him onwards to a sustained and continuous effort that ended only in death. A sincere and earnest man, a natural, therefore a deeply religious man, to him God was also a Dayyan (one of the ninety-nine epithets of God), i.e. “A weigher of good and evil”; One who computed and settled accounts; the holder of the even balance and scales of justice, the Judge and Arbiter of all mankind.

But apart from these functions, the power and sublimity of the Supreme Being, as he saw it expressed in the silent grandeur of the desert, the death-like stillness of the sandy sea, the frowning ruggedness and majesty of the mountains, the immense universality of Nature, was always before his eyes and in all his thoughts. Full of this feeling, of the awe and veneration innate in man and co-existent with the eternal ages, he bursts out in the second surah: “God! there is no God but He; the living, the self-subsisting: neither slumber nor sleep seizeth Him; to Him belongeth whatsoever is in heaven, and on earth. Who is he that can intercede with Him, but through His good pleasure? He knoweth that which is past, and that which is to come unto them, and they shall not comprehend anything of His knowledge, but so far as He pleaseth. His throne is extended over heaven and earth, and the preservation of both is no burden unto Him. He is the high and mighty.”

As a natural outburst of emotions and convictions that had been pent up within his own inner consciousness, that were the offspring of some twenty years of journeyings to and fro across the deserts where “Amin” the faithful one was in direct and constant contact with Nature, and often in silent communion with the Infinite, these few words are truly magnificent and sublime; magnificent not only for the boldness and sublimity of their imagery and conception, but magnificent also with the intensity and profundity of true sincerity. Few, but all the more pithy for that, these words are from the heart and soul of the man—a man who speaks not unadvisedly with his lips, but who feels with every nerve and fibre of his intensely emotional being. They are (as he himself feels) the outpouring of an insignificant and impotent atom, yet of a sincere and earnest man approaching in all humility and veneration, and with the loyalty and allegiance of a true believer and servant, the great, invisible He, who holds him and all creatures in the hollow of His mighty hand.

In a conversation that Luther had one day with some friends at table, he spoke of the world as a vast and magnificent pack of cards composed of emperors, kings, princes and so forth. For several ages these had been vanquished by the Pope. Then God had come upon the scene, and chosen the “ace,” the very smallest card in the pack—himself, in a word—and overthrown this conqueror of worldly powers and principalities. Mohammed, as much as Luther, was one of “God’s Aces.” Seldom, indeed, in the history of the world, has so great a human river flowed from a source so puny. Never did the divine manifest itself in a single pip, so seemingly small and insignificant as a cause, yet so pre-eminently and consistently great as an effect!

“Men,” says Dumas in one of his historico-romantic masterpieces, “are visible, palpable, moral. You can meet, attack, subdue them; and when they are subdued you can subject them to trial and hang them. But ideas you cannot oppose in that way. They glide unseen; they penetrate; they hide themselves especially from the sight of those who would destroy them. Hidden in the depths of the soul, they there throw out deep roots. The more you cut off the branches which imprudently appear, the more powerful and inextirpable become the roots below.

“An idea is a young giant which must be watched night and day; for the idea which yesterday crawled at your feet, to-morrow will dispose of your head. An idea is a spark falling upon straw.” ... “For the mind of man is no inert receptacle of knowledge, but absorbs and incorporates into its own constitution the ideas which it receives.” Thus it was with Mohammed. God was the spark, the vital spark of spiritual flame, and this humble but honest Arab trader was the straw, that after twenty years of silent but tenacious smouldering God had set a light to.

The better, however, to understand his character and purpose, we must divide his life into two sections. The first when, as trader from the age of thirteen up to forty, first for his uncle and then for Khadija, he was the man of business. [ Yet synchronous with this the man of ideas and ideals that he kept to himself however; that he divulged to no one. ] For not until the time was ripe and the hour had come, not until he felt the call—felt, that is, that he was ready and able to begin—did he confide even in Khadija. The second section when, as the apostle of God, he worked with all the fiery fervour yet steady zeal of a true prophet, to put his ideas into practice. But there was this difference with regard to Mohammed as a theorist. He was not a man of many ideas. In reality one central idea alone inspired him. But great and magnificent as that was, it was equal to a multitude. It was a growing and a spreading giant which, like the prolific banyan tree, threw out branch and root with such extravagant luxuriance, that it completely overshadowed and predominated the entire expanse of his mental area. We know what this idea was. We know that round and out of the central stem of God’s overmastering unity Mohammed had determined to construct an Arabian nation—possibly something even greater. We know, too, that the one was but the offspring of the other. Or it may be that they were the twin offspring of all this profound and concentrated contemplation. But we do not know how this great idea first took root. Let us, however, try and trace it to its source as nearly as we can.