The power of persuasion does not always lie in the flow and eloquence of speech. The strongest are often the most silent. God never speaks but in the still small voice of consciousness, that comes to every man in the dark watches of the night, when the hum and movement of life is hushed into the silence of sleep!
Solitude, too, that twin-sister of Silence, “though,” as De Quincey says, “it may be silent as light, is, like light, the mightiest of agencies; for solitude is essential to man.” But if essential to the ordinary man, it is as the breath of life to men of God and prophets. Solitude, in fact, sinks deep into a pure and simple nature, and changes him in a great measure. Unconsciously it intensifies him to a superlative degree, and inspires him with an awe of itself that becomes sacred to him. Within himself the recluse feels weak, unstable and inconsistent. Without he is strong in the consciousness of the omnipotence and supremacy of the Infinite. “Solitude generates a certain amount of sublime exaltation. It is like the smoke arising from the burning bush. A mysterious lucidity of mind results, which converts the student into the seer, and the poet into a prophet.” In a word, there is an enthusiasm, an influence, and a power in solitude that the civilized man, or the man who has never been subjected to it, cannot form the slightest or faintest conception of. For the silence of solitude and the solitude of silence is a state (common to all primitive people) in which the being believes himself to be not only “πλήρης θεοῦ,” i.e. full of God, but that the God predominates. Hence the enthusiasm, the rapture, and the power to divine and speak in divers tongues.
Surely, if ever man was in deadly earnest, this faithful son of Arabia was. If ever man opened his heart and soul to the Father and Mother of all things, this Mohammed, the merchant, did. Truly if ever the great Author of our being responded to a soul in silent agony, i.e. in conflict, in a struggle for victory, it was to this great descendant of the bond-woman Hagar! For in Islam, and the soul of Islam, such as he inculcated, the victory was greater than any Marathon or Thermopylæ.
[ CHAPTER IV ]
MOHAMMED’S PRINCIPLES AND BELIEFS
Mohammed, as I have more than once said, was all for unity and cohesion, therefore against division and disintegration of any kind. Concentration was as the breath of life to him. Dissension a deadly evil. In his scheme of religion and politics there was no place for schism. Schism meant discord, and discord the devil. To him discord was as Ate, the mother of dissension. He recognized, as Spenser evidently did, that “discord harder is to end than to begin”:
“For all her studie was, and all her thought,
How she might overthrow the things that concord wrought.”
And above all things, this Statesman Prophet was the essence and personification of centralization and concord. For unity alone rendered Islam feasible. Thus in the second Surah he insists that mankind was of one faith from the beginning. Thus too as a just, faithful and consistent man, he is opposed to violence and taking the offensive, even in the name and under the cloak of religion; he constantly advocates and authorizes (that is, has God’s authority for) the defensive. He even recommends, at the same time that he excuses, war and retaliation on the unbeliever and infidel. On the whole, however, I am bound to admit that Mohammed disapproves of and discountenances violence in religion. He, in fact, distinctly forbids his followers from enforcing it. Their own persecution was to be met by patience. Apostates and unbelievers were to be given time meet for repentance. Yet to him, fanatic as he was with regard to religion, Islam was the only true Faith, the covenant, the sure ark of God that alone could secure salvation. Of this and of God he was no more than an Apostle—i.e. a messenger; also an expounder—but as such he obviously tried to live up to his name of Faithful. This speaks volumes for his toleration and humanity in an age when neither one nor the other of these attributes [were much in repute; when both,] in fact, were at a low ebb. Yet it shows us how intensely human the Prophet was. A man of great patience, prudence and trustworthiness, of retentive memory, strong character, and with the disposition of a judge—a very commander of men. Thus he acknowledges the divinity of God in forgiving, and the humanity of man in demanding reparation and restitution. Here the moral excellence of Mohammed shines out as a brilliant. In Surah xiv., “a grievous punishment is prepared for the unjust. But they who shall have believed and wrought righteousness, shall be introduced into gardens, wherein rivers flow; they shall remain therein for ever by the permission of their Lord, and their salutation therein shall be Peace.” From this and many other similar passages, it would seem that Mohammed, by his constant reiteration of Promises and Threats, by his determined insistence thereon, hoped ultimately to convince even his enemies of his sincerity also of the fact that Islam, as the creed of the one and only God, was the true Faith. Again in this passage (Surah vi.), “God causeth the grain and the date-stone to put forth, He bringeth forth the living from the dead, and He bringeth forth the dead from the living. This is God,” etc., etc.; we get a clear insight into the intensity and comprehensiveness of the divine conception as it appeared to him. A little further on in the same passage he speaks of God as “He who hath produced you from one soul; and hath provided for you a sure receptacle and a repository,” namely in the loins of your fathers, and the womb of your mothers—one of those gleams of pantheism that I have already alluded to.
But of all the passages in the Koran, the following is, in many ways, one of the most significant: “Whatever good befalleth thee, O man, it is from God; and whatever evil befalleth thee, it is from thyself.” It is obvious from this that the prophet believed evil to be a human weakness with man as an active and self-willed agent. Sale in a note thereon says: “These words are not to be understood as contradicting the preceding verse, that all is from God, since the evil that befalls mankind, though ordered by God, is yet the consequence of their own wicked actions.” But as Mohammed regarded the sublime divinity of God, it would be more accurate to interpret the evil not as being ordained or even sanctioned by God, but as being permitted, or rather not prevented by Him as a thing inevitable. To him the purity, sanctity and inviolability of God was of such vast moment, that it was unjust—a mortal sin—to devise even a lie against Him. “And who is more unjust than he who deviseth a lie against God, that he may seduce men without understanding?” The frequent repetition of this and other like passages is significant of Mohammed’s sincerity, also of his moral persistence and tenacity. It was from his point of view bad enough to have doubt thrown on the authenticity of his mission. This he could to some extent put up with. But it was as naught compared to the reflection, the crime of perjury committed against the Almighty. To cast a slur on His holiness in this audacious way, was nothing short of blasphemy, a crime worthy of eternal hell fire and damnation. Few men in the world’s history were as loyal to their God as this grim but faithful product of Arabia the Stony. In this respect, and particularly with regard to the depth and intensity of their religious zeal and fervour, there was a strong resemblance between Cromwell and Mohammed. To both of these moral ironsides, those who did not believe as they believed were unbelievers, and as such outside the pale of God’s mercy. For believers, however, nothing was too good. To such an extent did these principles influence the latter, that he even went so far as to promise that all grudges should be removed from the minds of the faithful. Here again we have evidence of Mohammed’s unquestionable humanity; also of civilization to a marked degree. For a grudge, although fundamentally and characteristically human, was at the same time, and still is among the Bedawins, a peculiarly Arabian idiosyncrasy; associated as it was, and often culminating as it did, in acts of vengeance identical to the Corsican vendetta, “the terrible blood feud which even the most reckless fear for their posterity.”
In spite, however, of his eagerness and zeal for conversion, consistent as this was with his idea of national autonomy, in nothing did Mohammed show his sincerity so much as in his thoroughness and honesty. He was nothing if not thorough. The long and arduous probation he passed through in preparing and fitting himself for his mission—the mental concentration, the wrestlings with all that is evil and inexorable in man’s nature, the night watches, the agonies, the communings with God—all go to prove this. And if to be outspoken and candid is honesty, then indeed no one has surpassed him in that respect. In his eyes a true disciple of Islam meant a man who lived and acted up to the tenets and principles of its faith. For instance, with him there was no such fiasco as a death-bed repentance. “But no repentance shall be accepted from those who do evil until the time when death presenteth itself unto one of them, and he saith verily I repent now; nor unto those who die unbelievers: for them have we prepared a grievous punishment.” Such an act was wholly repugnant to the fine sense of equity and justice that he possessed, advocating as he so strenuously did the use of “a full measure and just balance.” As one who had given practically his whole life to the service and adoration of God, his soul rose in revolt and abhorred so vile a subterfuge. It was adding insult to injury. A mere sneaking stratagem of priestly artifice, held out as an alluring but offensive bait. A despicable and devilish cunning on the part of the unbeliever, who would endeavour to throw dust into the sun-piercing vision of the Most High, all unconscious of the thinness and transparency of his device and of God’s searching penetration, that could pierce through all eternity even unto the uttermost ends of His mighty universe! To serve mammon a lifetime, and then at the last moment, when on the brink of death’s unending precipice, to turn to God and expect to reap the same reward of eternal bliss as the whole-hearted believer who has given all or a great part of his life to God’s service, was impossible. The very thought of it was monstrous. The choice lay with the ego himself! Evil was his own doing! Good also lay within his reach. It was in a great measure a matter of choice. Every man was more or less responsible for his own undoing. To a life of evil, a death-bed repentance was not capable of producing more than its own equivalent of happiness, i.e. the merest possible fragment. This was in accordance with God’s principle of the scales of justice and an even balance. Yet Mohammed was not against repentance and contrition when sincere and made in due and proper time. Over and over again he holds out the olive branch, and reiterates the forgiveness and mercy of God, as attributes that belonged to Him alone. Mercy, indeed, was not so much an attribute as a monopoly. “He hath prescribed unto Himself mercy,” as compatible with the fact that He was the final Court of Appeal. However adversely the theologian may criticize this from the modern Christian standpoint, it is clear and direct proof of Mohammed’s whole-hearted sincerity. Further it is equally direct and tangible evidence of the ardour and zeal that was in him as a prophet and reformer.
God, with all His sternness and inflexibility, as He appeared to Mohammed, was just and merciful. A strict comparison between Yahveh and Allah certainly inclines the balance in favour of the latter. Jehovah at His best was a God of blood and vengeance, at His worst a voracious monster. In Allah, stern and avenging God as He was, there was at least compassion and mercy and forgiveness. He was not inexorable. He would listen to reason. Mohammed himself was a distinct advance on the founder of the ancient Jewish faith. He was more humane, a man of broader and deeper sympathies. Stern and hard to a degree where God and the Faith was concerned; where men, but especially women and children, were concerned, he was all tenderness and pity.