Again, pictures or representations of living creatures are unlawful; and so, when British rupees were first circulated in India, good Muslims doubted whether they could use them, but after a long consultation the 'Ulamá declared that, as the eye of His Majesty was so small as not to be clearly visible, the use of such coins was legal. This kind of casuistry is very common and very demoralizing; but it shows how rigid the law is.
[30] "Authority becomes sacred because sanctioned by heaven. Despotism, being the first form of consolidated political authority, is thus rendered unchangeable and identical in fact with Government at large." "Supreme Government has four stages: (1) where the absolute Prince (Muhammad) is among them concentrating in his own person the four cardinal virtues, and this we call the reign of wisdom; (2) where the Prince appears no longer, neither do these virtues centre in any single person: but are found in four (Abu Bakr, Omar, Osmán and 'Alí), who govern in concert with each other, as if they were one, and this we call the reign of the pious; (3) where none of these is to be found any longer, but a chief (Khalíf) arises with a knowledge of the rules propounded by the previous ones, and with judgment enough to apply and explain them, and this we call the reign of the Sunnat; (4) Where these latter qualities, again, are not to be met with in a single person, but only in a variety who govern in concert; and this we call the reign of the Sunnat-followers.—Akhlák-i-Jalálí, pp. 374. 378.
[31] Life of Muhammad, by Syed Amír 'Alí, p. 289.
[32] The Muslim 'Ulamá are certainly much fettered by their religion in the pursuit of some of the paths of learning; and superstition sometimes decides a point which has been controverted for centuries. Lane's Modern Egyptians, vol. i. p. 269.
[33] The Goth might ravage Italy, but the Goth came forth purified from the flames which he himself had kindled. The Saxon swept Britain, but the music of the Celtic heart softened his rough nature, and wooed him into less churlish habits. Visigoth and Frank, Heruli and Vandal, blotted out their ferocity in the very light of the civilisation they had striven to extinguish. Even the Hun, wildest Tartar from the Scythian waste, was touched and softened in his wicker encampment amid Pannonian plains; but the Turk—wherever his scymitar reached—degraded, defiled, and defamed; blasting into eternal decay Greek, Roman and Latin civilisation, until, when all had gone, he sat down, satiated with savagery, to doze for two hundred years into hopeless decrepitude. Lieut.-Col. W. F. Butler, C.B., in Good Words for September 1880.
[34] "The Muslim everywhere, after a brilliant passage of prosperity, seems to stagnate and wither, because there is nothing in his system or his belief which lifts him above the level of a servant, and on that level man's life in the long run must not only stagnate but decay. The Christian, on the other hand, seems everywhere in the last extremity to bid disorganization and decay defiance, and to find, Antæus-like, in the earth which he touches, the spring of a new and fruitful progress. For there is that in his belief, his traditions, and in the silent influences which pervade the very atmosphere around him, which is ever moving him, often in ways that he knows not, to rise to the dignity and to clothe himself with the power which the Gospel proposes as the prize of his Christian calling. The submissive servant of Allah is the highest type of Moslem perfection; the Christian ideal is the Christ-like son."—British Quarterly, No. cxxx.
[35] A Mukallif is one who is subject to the Law. A Ghair-i-Mukallif is one not so subject, such as a minor, an idiot, &c. The term Mukallif is thus equivalent to a consistent Muslim, one who takes trouble (taklíf) in his religious duties.
[36] Commentators on the Qurán.
[37] The Traditionists.
[38] Plural of Faqíh, a theologian.