But we have only to compare this prayer—which has been called “the quintessence of the whole Koran”—with the “Our Father” to see the vast difference between the prayer of the Christian and that of the Mohammedan. It is manifest in the very first word of the Pater Noster, which shows that there is no comparison between the Christian and the Moslem conception of God. Mohammed believed in God, feared and obeyed Him according to his light, but, not recognizing His Fatherhood, he did not and, from his view of the Deity, could not love Him. It is so with his followers. Their God is a God of fear, not a God of love, because not known as God Our Father. How different is this from the relationship—sonship—of the Christian to his Creator, who enjoys the blessed privilege of calling God Abba—Father.
Denying the Fathership of God, Moslem theologians maintain that it is impossible for men to love Him. Man and God, they contend, are of different natures, and where there is a difference of genus there can be no love. The nearest approach to love, they contend, is man’s perseverance in obedience to Allah.
Again, according to the same theologians, there can be no love of God for man, for love, say they, implies change, which, as God is infinitely perfect, is impossible. When God therefore is said to love man, all that is meant, according to Al-Gazali, one of the most eminent of Moslem theologians and philosophers, is that “God so affects man that man comes to God.”[250]
But in this case, as in so many others, the common sense—or shall we call it a special divine illumination?—of many in Islam has enabled them to arrive at a truer conception of God and of their relations to Him than was ever attained by Moslem philosophers and casuists and incomparably superior to anything found in the Koran or in the traditional teachings of Mohammed.
As a proof of this assertion, I need only adduce the beautiful prayer of the Persian imam, El Kachiri, who, discarding the cold and formal acts of praise prescribed in Moslem worship, pours forth his soul to God in these touching and heart-felt words:
Thou, O Lord, threatenest me, with a bitter separation which will forever deprive me of Thy presence! O Lord, do with me as Thou wilt, provided that I be not forever separated from Thee! There is no more bitter nor fatal poison than this separation. For what can a soul separated from God do except be in a state of inquietude and agitation which will be a continual torment? One would rather suffer a hundred thousand deaths; for, after all, they would not offer anything so terrible as the privation of the vision of Thy divine face. All the evils of the world, all the most acute and painful diseases joined together, seem to me incomparably easier to bear than this removal from Thee. It is this transitory removal which renders our lands sterile; which dries up and infects our waters. What would it be if it were eternal? Without it, the fire of hell would not burn; it is through it that it becomes so hot. In a word, it is only Thy presence which sustains us and showers upon us all kinds of good things and Thy absence, it is, which causes all the evils of hell.[251]
This prayer is fully in keeping with the teaching of many other Moslem mystics of non-Semitic origin, who, contrary to the vulgar notions so widely entertained respecting the Mohammedan paradise, explicitly declare that the infinite happiness of the elect in heaven consists in the enjoyment of the beatific vision. This ineffable happiness, they aver, so far transcends all the other joys of paradise that they completely disappear before it. “Paradise, O Lord,” exclaims the Sheik el Alem, “is desirable only because one there sees Thee; because, without the light of Thy beauty, it would pall on us.”[252]
These two quotations are remarkable but no less so than the words of a Mussulman poet of Persia who, in addressing himself to Isa—Arabic for Jesus—says:
The heart of the afflicted man draws all his consolation from Thy words. The soul resumes life and vigor simply by hearing Thy name pronounced. If the mind of man is ever able to raise itself to the contemplation of the mysteries of the Divinity, it is from Thee that it draws the light to know them and it is Thou that givest him the attraction by which he is penetrated.[253]
How like the language of a Christian speaking of the grace of our Saviour, Jesus Christ!