Again, the fearful loss caused by the absence of love, with its concomitant immorality and suffering, is largely due to the levelling down which results from the tyranny of public opinion. The partnership of man and woman which, in our ideal, is closer than any other, is impossible under their conditions of life, which make privacy and individuality so difficult, and men are not the more eager to marry, where that involves coming even further under the fetters of custom, and the giving of all the wife’s relatives, as well as those of blood, a voice in their private affairs.
One symptom of this state of things is the fact that a married woman is often more loyal to her brothers than to her husband, and it is a common complaint that she is supporting able-bodied brothers in idleness, on her husband’s earnings, without his leave and, so far as possible, without his knowledge.
I believe that in this all powerful patriarchal rule we touch upon a cause of much of the difference, for good or evil, between East and West, the stagnation of the East generally as well as the all powerful solidarity of Japan.
Of the Mohammedan religion the same may be said. It is attractive to most of those who approach it with any sympathy, to whom a religion for men, the ideal of proud yet ready submission to Almighty God, set forth by a ritual hardly surpassed in dignity by any, must appeal strongly. Yet here again is the tyranny of dead customs, the awful, blinding influence of Bibliolatry. Everything that was knowable was spoken to the Prophet by the messenger of God Himself, and to add to, or subtract from that knowledge, is sin. The customs and ideas of a provincial town, in the middle of desert Arabia, thus become unalterable laws for all the world, and those who will not acknowledge this are infidels, damned to the wrath of God.
In this atmosphere all advance in knowledge, all testing of theories by experiment, is mere foolishness, and though the infidel, whom the mysterious will of God has placed over them, may be their Friend and Father when all is well, let but some trifling incident pit his knowledge against theirs, and he will find that he is no longer the light shining in a dark place that he fondly imagined, but a mere ignorant meddler in matters that are too high for him; his poor “savage” children are the elect, the possessors of light and infallible guidance, he is in the darkness, groping among the beggarly elements, and occupying himself with ridiculous trifles. Very annoying indeed, and very trying to the temper of His Excellency, the British Magistrate, is it to have this fact rubbed in by personal experience, but it has a fine educative value. Even when he comes home, and studies the social problems of Britain, he will soon meet and be thwarted by members of his own nation who have all the essential characteristics of the typical Eastern, though clothed in different ideas, and will find that East and West not only meet, but inextricably intermingle.
In theory the often ridiculous miracle stories of Mohammedanism are non-essentials, in practice they impress the average believer far more than do the high religious moral ideals which are set forth with, and by, them. We must guard against thinking that our dark friends’ morality and actions are much influenced by his formal religion, it is only the general tendency, falling in as it does with his social ideas, which has any influence.
CHAPTER III
RELIGIOUS OBSERVANCES AND SUPERSTITIONS
The forms of religion are inextricably interwoven with every event of the people’s lives. As the sailors pull at a heavy rope there are cries upon God and the Prophet for help, and as the rope begins to give to the strain, the long-drawn “Pray,” “Pray,” “Oh, God, Oh Prophet” gives place to a quicker chant, “God gives it, God gives it.” To the enquiry “Are you well?” the reply is “Praise be to God”; and if two travellers meet and one asks the other “Where are you going?” he receives the reply “To the Gate of Bountiful God,” after which the real errand may be discussed.
Just as “Inshaallah,” literally meaning “If God wills,” is really to be translated by a plain “Perhaps,” so this habitual use of the phraseology and ordinances of religion, instead of indicating a living ever present influence, is here, as everywhere, the mark of easy formalism[20].