While being struck by various weaknesses which disfigured this great personality and which he himself freely confessed, we must admire the perseverance with which he retained his faith in his divine mission, not discouraged by twelve years of humiliation, nor by the repudiation of the "People of Scripture," upon whom he had relied as his principal witnesses, nor yet by numbers of temporary rebuffs during his struggle for the dominion of Allah and His Messenger, which he carried on through the whole of Arabia.
Was Mohammed conscious of the universality of his mission? In the beginning he certainly conceived his work as merely the Arabian part of a universal task, which, for other parts of the world, was laid upon other messengers. In the Medina period he ever more decidedly chose the direction of "forcing to comply." He was content only when the heathens perceived that further resistance to Allah's hosts was useless; their understanding of his "clear Arabic Qorân" was no longer the principal object of his striving. Such an Islâm could equally well be forced upon non-Arabian heathens. And, as regards the "People of Scripture," since Mohammed's endeavour to be recognized by them had failed, he had taken up his position opposed to them, even above them. With the rise of his power he became hard and cruel to the Jews in North-Arabia, and from Jews and Christians alike in Arabia he demanded submission to his authority, since it had proved impossible to make them recognize his divine mission. This demand could quite logically be extended to all Christians; in the first place to those of the Byzantine Empire. But did Mohammed himself come to these conclusions in the last part of his life? Are the words in which Allah spoke to him: "We have sent thee to men in general,"[1] and a few expressions of the same sort, to be taken in that sense, or does "humanity" here, as in many other places in the Qorân, mean those with whom Mohammed had especially to do? Nôldeke is strongly of opinion that the principal lines of the program of conquest carried out after Mohammed's death, had been drawn by the Prophet himself. Lammens and others deny with equal vigour, that Mohammed ever looked upon the whole world as the field of his mission. This shows that the solution is not evident.[2]
[Footnote 1: Qorân, xxxiv., 27. The translation of this verse has always been a subject of great difference of opinion. At the time of its revelation—as fixed by Mohammedan as well as by western authorities—the universal conception of Mohammed's mission was quite out of question.]
[Footnote 2: Professor T.W. Arnold in the 2d edition (London, 1913) of his valuable work The Preaching of Islâm (especially pp. 28-31), warmly endeavours to prove that Mohammed from the beginning considered his mission as universal. He weakens his argument more than is necessary by placing the Tradition upon an almost equal footing with the Qorân as a source, and by ignoring the historical development which is obvious in the Qorân itself. In this way he does not perceive the great importance of the history of the Abraham legend in Mohammed's conception. Moreover, the translation of the verses of the Qorân on p. 29 sometimes says more than the original. Lil-nâs is not "to mankind" but "to men," in the sense of "to everybody." Qorân, xvi., 86, does not say: "One day we will raise up a witness out of every nation," but: "On the day (i.e., the day of resurrection) when we will raise up, etc.," which would seem to refer to the theme so constantly repeated in the Qorân, that each nation will be confronted on the Day of Judgment with the prophet sent to it. When the Qorân is called an "admonition to the world ('âlamîn)" and Mohammed's mission a "mercy to the world ('âlamîn)," then we must remember that 'âlamîn is one of the most misused rhymewords in the Qorân (e.g., Qorân, xv., 70); and we should not therefore translate it emphatically as "all created beings," unless the universality of Mohammed's mission is firmly established by other proofs. And this is far from being the case.]
In our valuation of Mohammed's sayings we cannot lay too much stress upon his incapability of looking far ahead. The final aims which Mohammed set himself were considered by sane persons as unattainable. His firm belief in the realization of the vague picture of the future which he had conceived, nay, which Allah held before him, drove him to the uttermost exertion of his mental power in order to surmount the innumerable unexpected obstacles which he encountered. Hence the variability of the practical directions contained in the Qorân; they are constantly altered according to circumstances. Allah's words during the last part of Mohammed's life: "This day have I perfected your religion for you, and have I filled up the measure of my favours towards you, and chosen Islâm for you as your religion," have in no way the meaning of the exclamation: "It is finished," of the dying Christ. They are only a cry of jubilation over the degradation of the heathen Arabs by the triumph of Allah's weapons. At Mohammed's death everything was still unstable; and the vital questions for Islâm were subjects of contention between the leaders even before the Prophet had been buried.
The expedient of new revelations completing, altering, or abrogating former ones had played an important part in the legislative work of Mohammed. Now, he had never considered that by his death the spring would be stopped, although completion was wanted in every respect. For, without doubt, Mohammed felt his weakness in systematizing and his absence of clearness of vision into the future, and therefore he postponed the promulgation of divine decrees as long as possible, and he solved only such questions of law as frequently recurred, when further hesitation would have been dangerous to his authority and to the peace of the community.
At Mohammed's death, all Arabs were not yet subdued to his authority. The expeditions which he had undertaken or arranged beyond the northern boundaries of Arabia, were directed against Arabs, although they were likely to rouse conflict with the Byzantine and Persian empires. It would have been contrary to Mohammed's usual methods if this had led him to form a general definition of his attitude towards the world outside Arabia.
As little as Mohammed, when he invoked the Meccans in wild poetic inspirations to array themselves behind him to seek the blessedness of future life, had dreamt of the possibility that twenty years later the whole of Arabia would acknowledge his authority in this world, as little, nay, much less, could he at the close of his life have had the faintest premonition of the fabulous development which his state would reach half a century later. The subjugation of the mighty Persia and of some of the richest provinces of the Byzantine Empire, only to mention these, was never a part of his program, although legend has it that he sent out written challenges to the six princes of the world best known to him. Yet we may say that Mohammed's successors in the guidance of his community, by continuing their expansion towards the north, after the suppression of the apostasy that followed his death, remained in Mohammed's line of action. There is even more evident continuity in the development of the empire of the Omayyads out of the state of Mohammed, than in the series of events by which we see the dreaded Prince-Prophet of Medina grew out of the "possessed one" of Mecca. But if Mohammed had been able to foresee how the unity of Arabia, which he nearly accomplished, was to bring into being a formidable international empire, we should expect some indubitable traces of this in the Qorân; not a few verses of dubious interpretation, but some certain sign that the Revelation, which had repeatedly, and with the greatest emphasis, called itself a "plain Arabic Qorân" intended for those "to whom no warner had yet been sent," should in future be valid for the 'Ajam, the Barbarians, as well as for the Arabs.
Even if we ascribe to Mohammed something of the universal program, which the later tradition makes him to have drawn up, he certainly could not foresee the success of it. For this, in the first place, the economic and political factors to which some scholars of our day would attribute the entire explanation of the Islâm movement, must be taken into consideration. Mohammed did to some extent prepare the universality of his religion and make it possible. But that Islâm, which came into the world as the Arabian form of the one, true religion, has actually become a universal religion, is due to circumstances which had little to do with its origin.[1] This extension of the domain to be subdued to its spiritual rule entailed upon Islâm about three centuries of development and accommodation, of a different sort, to be sure, but not less drastic in character than that of the Christian Church.
[Footnote 1: Sir William Muir was not wrong when he said: "From first to last the summons was to Arabs and to none other… The seed of a universal creed had indeed been sown; but that it ever germinated was due to circumstances rather than design.">[