41. "And whoso beareth wrongs with patience and forgiveth,—this verily is a bounden duty."—Sura XLII.
Adaptability of the Koran to surrounding circumstances.
42. (5) The Koran keeps pace with the most fully and rapidly-developing civilization, if it is rationally interpreted, not as expounded by the Ulema in the Common Law Book and enforced by the sentiment of a nation. It is only the Mohammadan Common Law, with all its traditions or oral sayings of the Prophet,—very few of which are genuine reports, and the supposed chimerical concurrence of the learned Moslem Doctors and mostly their analogical reasonings (called Hadees, Ijma, and Kias), passed under the name of Fiqah or Shariat, that has blended together the spiritual and the secular, and has become a barrier in some respects regarding certain social and political innovations for the higher civilization and progress of the nation. But the Koran is not responsible for this all.
Mr. Stanley Lane Poole writes:—
"The Korān does not contain, even in outline, the elaborate ritual and complicated law which now passes under the name of Islam. It contains merely those decisions which happened to be called for at Medina. Mohammad himself knew that it did not provide for every emergency, and recommended a principle of analogical deduction to guide his followers when they were in doubt. This analogical deduction has been the ruin of Islam. Commentators and Jurists have set their nimble wits to work to extract from the Korān legal decisions which an ordinary mind could never discover there; and the whole structure of modern Mohammadanism has been built upon the foundation of sand. The Koran is not responsible for it."[158]
I can only differ from the above in the allegation that Mohammad recommended a principle of analogical deduction.
Suitability of the Koran to all classes of humanity.
43. Thus the system of religious and moral teaching of the Koran admirably suits the lower and the higher forms of humanity. The precepts which regulate some department of social life, moral conduct, and religious ceremonial are blessings to the barbarous; and that portion of the Koran which inculcates large principles, for the due application of which much must be left to the individual conscience, suits the same people when they begin to emerge from their barbarism under its influence into a higher condition, or to those already possessing the higher forms of civilization. For instance, the command to give full measure, to weigh with just balance, to abstain from wine and gambling, and to treat persons with kindness are intended for men not reaching the high forms of civilization. The teachings of the Koran regarding the graces of truth, honesty and temperance and mercy, the virtues of meekness, and the stress laid upon thoughts and inclinations are fit to instruct persons who have attained the higher forms of civilization, and have outgrown the need of positive precepts of minute detail.
C. Ali.
Hyderabad,
Deccan,
March 1884.
FOOTNOTES