CHAPTER III.
RELIGION AND LAWS.
As the most important branch of their education, and the main foundation of their manners and customs, the religion and laws of the people who are the subject of these pages must be well understood—not only in their general principles, but in many minor points—before we can proceed to consider their social condition and habits in the state of manhood.
A difference of opinion among Muslims, respecting some points of religion and law, has given rise to four sects, which consider each other orthodox as to fundamental matters, and call themselves “Sunnees,” or followers of the traditions; while they designate all other Muslims by the term “Shiya’ees,” signifying, according to their acceptation, “heretics.” The Sunnees alone are the class which we have to consider. The four sects into which they are divided are the “Hanafees,” “Sháfe’ees,” “Málikees,” and “Hambel′ees,”—so called from the names of the respective doctors whose tenets they have adopted. The Turks are of the first sect, which is the most reasonable. The inhabitants of Cairo, a small proportion excepted (who are Hanafees), are either Sháfe’ees or Málikees; and it is generally said that they are mostly of the former of these sects, as are also the people of Arabia; those of the Sharkeeyeh, on the east of the Delta, Sháfe’ees; those of the Gharbeeyeh, or Delta, Sháfe’ees, with a few Málikees; those of the Boheyreh, on the west of the Delta, Málikees. The inhabitants of the Sa’eed, or the valley of Upper Egypt, are likewise, with few exceptions, Málikees; so also are the Nubians, and the Western Arabs. To the fourth sect very few persons in the present day belong. All these sects agree in deriving their code of religion and law from four sources; namely, the Kur-án, the traditions of the Prophet, the concordance of his early disciples, and analogy.
The religion which Mohammad taught is generally called by the Arabs “El-Islám.”[“El-Islám.”] “Eemán” and “Deen” are the particular terms applied, respectively, to faith and practical religion.
The grand principles of the faith are expressed in two articles, the first of which is this—
“There is no deity but God.”
God, who created all things in heaven and in earth, who preserveth all things, and decreeth all things, who is without beginning, and without end, omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent, is one. His unity is thus declared in a short chapter of the Kur-án[[96]]: “Say, He is God; one [God]. God is the Eternal. He begetteth not, nor is He begotten; and there is none equal unto Him.” He hath no partner, nor any offspring, in the creed of the Muslim. Though Jesus Christ (whose name should not be mentioned without adding, “on whom be peace”) is believed to have been born of a pure virgin, by the miraculous operation of God,[[97]] without any natural father, to be the Messiah, and “the Word of God, which He transmitted unto Mary, and a Spirit [proceeding] from Him,”[[98]] yet he is not called the Son of God; and no higher titles are given to him than those of a Prophet and Apostle; he is even considered as of inferior dignity to Mohammad, inasmuch as the Gospel is held to be superseded by the Kurán. The Muslim believes that Seyyidna ’Eesa[[99]] (or “our Lord Jesus”), after He had fulfilled the object of His mission, was taken up unto God from the Jews, who sought to slay Him; and that another person, on whom God had stamped the likeness of Christ, was crucified in His stead.[[100]] He also believes that Christ is to come again upon the earth, to establish the Muslim religion, and perfect peace and security, after having killed Antichrist, and to be a sign of the approach of the last day.
The other grand article of the faith, which cannot be believed without the former, is this—
“Mohammad is God’s Apostle.”
Mohammad is believed by his followers to have been the last and greatest of Prophets and Apostles.[[101]] Six of these—namely, Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and Mohammad—are believed each to have received a revealed law, or system of religion and morality. That, however, which was revealed to Adam was abrogated by the next; and each succeeding law, or code of laws, abrogated the preceding, though all are believed to have been the same in every essential point; therefore, those who professed the Jewish religion from the time of Moses to that of Jesus were true believers, and those who professed the Christian religion (uncorrupted, as the Muslims say, by the tenet that Christ was the son of God) until the time of Mohammad are held, in like manner, to have been true believers. But the copies of the Pentateuch, the Psalms of David (which the Muslims also hold to be of divine origin), and the Gospels now existing, are believed to have been so much altered as to contain very little of the true word of God. The Kur-án is believed to have suffered no alteration whatever.