Mohammed’s assertion that the Koran was the production of the highest intelligence, and comprised within it the knowledge of all times, has, ever since the establishment of his creed, proved a bar to the intellectual culture and progress of his people and of the other nations who were induced or compelled to adopt his faith; his interdiction to reproduce the human face and form on canvas or in marble, or any other material, and which with singular poverty of invention he had devised as the only possible check to idolatry, has had the natural effect to suppress and extinguish in the Moslem nations the love of the fine arts. True, when conquest had placed the wealth of empires at the disposal of the sons of the Desert, many of Mohammed’s followers could not resist the natural longing after the treasures and enjoyments of science, art, and literature; and indeed the republic of letters is vastly indebted to many of them for their labors and researches in various fields of human lore, more especially in geography, history, philosophy, medicine, natural philosophy, chemistry, mathematics, and above all, arithmetic, algebra, geometry, and astronomy. But then, as A. W. von Schlegel, says, “All this was done, as it were, behind the back of the prophet, and the votaries of art, science, and literature, among the Arabians must, from a Koranic point of view, be regarded in the light of free-thinkers.”
The ritual of the faith of Islam, and the interdictions decreed by the prophet, have been already incidentally touched upon in various parts of this chapter; we have therefore simply to add here that the Koran commands every faithful Moslem to visit, at feast once in his life, the holy city of Mecca, and the Kaaba.
One great redeeming feature of the religion of Islam was that it was originally destitute of a priesthood, and repudiated monachism; the Ulemas were simply intended to be the expounders and interpreters of the law.
On Friday, the appointed day of public worship, when the faithful are assembled in the mosque, any respectable elder may ascend the pulpit to begin the prayer and pronounce the sermon: there is no need of a duly appointed priest. But, unfortunately, the Ulemas and Imams of the present day act very much in the capacity of an actual clergy: and there is indeed no great difference between fakirs and dervishes and Roman Catholic monks.
The Koran contains also the civil and criminal code of the Mussulmans; the punishments decreed in it for injuries, offences, and crimes are mostly based upon the principle of retaliation.
Briefly to sum up: though it must be admitted that the religion of Islam, calmly and dispassionately examined by the light of reason, contains, by the side of the grossest absurdities, the most palpable falsehoods, and the veriest rubbish, much also that is true and of sterling worth; and that it has exercised a certain civilising influence over the barbarous nations to whom it was first preached, yet few only will venture to deny that it lacks altogether the higher and most essential qualities of a universal faith. Even the basis whereon it rests, the great eternal truth of a sole Deity, is tarnished and clouded in it by the companionship which it is forced to bear to a miserable fiction placed by the side of it, and with equal attributes. There are some few, strange though it may appear, who almost regret that the victorious career of the Moslems should have been checked by Leo the Isaurian and by Charles Martel. What would have become of Europe—what of civilisation, had the Moslems conquered? Let the admirers of Islam look at the state of the Mussulman nations of the present day: the fruit shows the quality of the tree. It is also a favorite argument with historians and others, to point to the numbers of believers in Islam, and to the twelve centuries that the Mohammedan faith has endured, as convincing proofs of the truth of that creed, or, at all events, of a preponderating amount of truth in it. If arguments of this kind are to apply, the Mormon faith also may claim admission among the “received” creeds; and the names of Joe Smith and Brigham Young may be expected, in the course of fifty years or so, to figure among the “prophets and apostles of religion.”
FOOTNOTES:
[1] See Genesis, x. 25. Eber signifies a nomadic shepherd, one leading a roving pastoral life; it signifies, also, in Hebrew, beyond, yon-side, the other side: hence the name Hebrew, or Ebrew, has been supposed also to be intended to designate immigrants into Canaan or Palestine from beyond the Euphrates.
[2] A species of millet, which compensates to some extent the scarcity of European grains.
[3] “The Arabian tribes are equally addicted to commerce and rapine,” as Pliny has it.