Here I must comment on the extraordinary statement of Alexander Webb, at the Parliament of Religions in Chicago. Mr. Webb was an American consul in the East, and became a convert to Mohammedanism, or professes to have done so; it is not very hard to guess what part of that so-called religion attracted him. He said the religion of Mohammed teaches the Fatherhood of God, and the Brotherhood of Humanity. Now, as a fact, Mohammedans believe in neither one. As to God, they believe he is a monarch, and that no one can approach him; they have the same idea the Jews had. “Our Father who art in Heaven” is a purely Christian aspiration, not that of any other religion on earth; it is Christianity alone that teaches the Fatherhood of God. And Mohammedans directly ridicule the idea of God the Father, or of a Son of God. They say God is not married, and cannot be a father; and that when they go to heaven they will not be in his presence, nor wish to be, but will have a separate heaven, to enjoy their wives in. They look at everything from a sexual or sensual standpoint. As to brotherhood, there is no such thing in Mohammedanism; even sons of the same mother are not brothers in feeling. A Mohammedan has not confidence enough, even in his brother, to show his wives to him, and even in heaven they will have to live in different places on account of their wives. How can there be brotherhood without love or purity? And we have seen and know what the “brotherhood” of Mohammedans to other nations and religions is; there can be no relations whatever but of master and slave, or murderer and corpse, or violator and victim. The impudence of this talk of brotherhood is fathomless.
And then he said he was proud to be a convert to Islam, because that meant believing in purity! This is more outrageously impudent still. His ideal of purity must be a curious one if he finds more in Mohammedanism than in Christianity; in a religion with a heaven stuffed with concubines than in one where even earth is sprinkled with nuns; in one that makes Titanic lust its crowning reward, as if men were so feeble in sexual desires that they needed to be stimulated, than in one which makes chastity its key-note, and pronounces the very coveting of more than one wife a spiritual adultery; in one that prescribes polygamy (that is, keeping erotic turbulence stirred up much oftener and longer than it naturally would be), than in one that allows but one wife, and smiles on getting along without that; in one whose devotees are ashamed of foul language, and even of foul thoughts, than in one whose devotees are rank and rotten with lustful ideas and talk to correspond.
The whole Mohammedan system is designed to make the gratification of lust as easy and plentiful as possible short of a promiscuity that would lead to civil anarchy. A Mohammedan can divorce his wife any time he pleases by paying back her dower, and marry another and do likewise; every week, or day if he sees fit, and he can remarry and redivorce the first one as often as he pleases. It is like trading horses; as little sentiment or morality in one as the other; the slightest possible regulation of sheer animal desire. There is, however, one form or divorce which is complete, and does not allow of remarriage until another marriage has intervened; that is called the achden docuza (three to nine) divorce, from the terms the husband uses in doing it, “I divorce you three to nine.” Nobody knows what it means or meant. After this, if he wants his wife back, he must get somebody else to marry and divorce her regularly; and as this is perilous, because the second husband after marrying her may take a notion to keep her, or anyway keep her much longer than the first one relishes, or demand a large sum of money, the usual plan is to fix on a very poor man, or a blind beggar (preferably blind, so that he cannot see the wife, and be so charmed by her beauties that he will wish to keep her), get him to become the woman’s husband for a few days, and then pay him something to divorce her. Then the first can marry her again if he chooses.
There are many more specimens of Mohammedan “purity” too shameful to write, and too shameful to read; I cannot soil the paper with them. Doubtless they are part of Mr. Webb’s pride in being a Mohammedan. But I must mention one more engine of corruption which lies at the very root of Mohammedanism itself: the pilgrimage to Mecca, to the birthplace of Mohammed in Arabia. Once a year Mohammedan pilgrims from every quarter of the world go to Mecca to pay homage to their beloved prophet; averaging a million a year. It is their duty to sacrifice animals there, and about a million are so sacrificed. This is done on the hills which surround the great temple, the greatest mosque in the world. It is a square building, which covers several acres of land. Just in the cluster is the Holy Well, called Zemzem. Mohammedans believe that if they drink of that water, hell-fire cannot burn them, and every pilgrim does so; then they begin to die from cholera to the tune of fifty thousand a year or so, for the well is a mere cesspool. You see, after cutting the throats of the animals, they leave the filth and blood just as they are, for the Mohammedan religion does not allow the sacrifice to be touched. The sandy soil absorbs this putrid filth, which leaches into the well. But it is a great merit to die on the spot where Mohammed was born; one goes straight to heaven if he does. That is not the worst, however; they fill bottles with that water, and carry it to their families, and friends throughout the Turkish Empire, Persia, and India, from which cholera is spread abroad over the world.
The pilgrims do not take their wives as far as the birthplace of Mohammed, but leave them half-way, and on reaching Mecca they marry temporarily. About 20,000 prostitutes there make a business of being short-term wives of the pilgrims, getting $5 to $25 from each, and being his wife for anywhere from a day to a fortnight, so that each woman marries from fifty to a hundred pilgrims a year. This is not prostitution; it is religion—and Mohammedan “purity.” Mecca is considered the most holy spot on earth by Mohammedans; but it is the most corrupt spot. It is a hell. And the Mohammedan Paradise is worse than Mecca.
In one word, Mohammedans have no right to exist, politically, socially, or religiously. In the first they have wrought nothing but ruin; in the second nothing but corruption; in the third nothing but devilishness. They are working nothing else now in either of the three. They have never built up anything; they are pure destroyers. Anything which is built in any Mohammedan country is built both by Christian money and by Christian architects; Mohammedans have neither the money, the architects, nor the sense. The day one becomes a Mohammedan he loses his intellect, his skill, and his common sense. Mohammedanism is a poison fatal to any good gifts or graces; it cultivates in him falsehood, cruelty, and lust. It was sent by God for a curse to the Christians; as a punishment, just as the Philistines were sent to the people of Israel.
V.
THE GREAT POWERS AND THE ARMENIAN QUESTION.
There was no Armenian question till the time of the present Sultan; under Abdul Aziz, whatever his faults as a ruler or a man, the Armenians prospered well, and though the whole system of administration is bad, corrupt, and uncertain, they had no special grievance as a race to complain of. I have already referred to Abdul Hamid’s usurpation, his Bulgarian atrocities, his famous war against Russia, and the Congress in Berlin in which the powers ordered him to execute reforms in Armenia, and report to them, and the Sultan signed the treaty promising to do it. This was in 1878. The Sultan lost no time in violating the treaty, and not only so, but in acting grossly contrary to it. He called in Circassians and Kurds to settle in the midst of Armenians, and confiscated Armenian lands for them to settle on. The Armenians were far worse off than before the treaty; but foolishly depending on the powers, they did not try to arm themselves for the future. They have had plenty of chance to repent in blood and tears, agony and shame, their faith that Christian nations would not ignore a solemn obligation, voluntarily entered into, to save a whole people from being exterminated by fire and sword. England was the worst of these sinners, for she had taken on special obligations by a separate treaty, and forced those who would have taken the Sultan by the throat to let go.