On the other hand, the license allowed by the Koran between the sexes—at least in Indulgences allowed in the matter of wives and concubines.favor of the male sex—is so wide that for such as have the means and the desire to take advantage of it there need be no limit whatever to sexual indulgence. It is true that adultery is punishable by death and fornication with stripes. But then the Koran gives the believer permission to have four wives at a time. And he may exchange them—that is, he may divorce them at pleasure, taking others in their stead.[61] And, as if this were not license enough, the divine law permits the believer to consort with all female slaves whom he may be the master of—such, namely, as have been taken in war, or have been acquired by gift or purchase. These he may receive into his harem instead of wives, or in addition to them; and without any limit of number or restraint whatever he is at liberty to cohabit with them.
A few instances taken at random will enable the Polygamy, concubinage, and divorce. Practice at the rise of Islam.reader to judge how the indulgences thus allowed by the religion were taken advantage of in the early days of Islam. In the great plague which devastated Syria seven years after the prophet's death Khalid, the Sword of God, lost forty sons. Abdal Rahman, one of the "companions" of Mohammed, had issue by sixteen wives, not counting slave-girls.[62] Moghira ibn Shoba, another "companion," and governor of Kufa and Bussorah, had in his harem eighty consorts, free and servile. Coming closer to the Prophet's household, we find that Mohammed himself at one period had in his harem no fewer than nine wives and two slave-girls. Of his grandson Hasan we read that his vagrant passion gained for him the unenviable sobriquet of The Divorcer; for it was only by continually divorcing his consorts that he could harmonize his craving for fresh nuptials with the requirements of the divine law, which limited the number of his free wives to four. We are told that, as a matter of simple caprice, he exercised the power of divorce seventy (according to other traditions ninety) times. When the leading men complained to Aly of the licentious practice of his son his only reply was that the remedy lay in their own hands, of refusing Hasan their daughters altogether.[63] Such are the material inducements, the "works of the flesh," which Islam makes lawful to its votaries, and which promoted thus its early spread.
Descending now to modern times, we still find that this sexual license is taken advantage of more Practice in modern times.or less in different countries and conditions of society. The following examples are simply meant as showing to what excess it is possible for the believer to carry these indulgences, The Malays of Penang. under the sanction of his religion. Of the Malays in Penang it was written not very long ago: "Young men of thirty to thirty-five years of age may be met with who have had from fifteen to twenty wives, and children by several of them. These women have been divorced, married others, and had children by them." Regarding Lane's testimony concerning Egypt.Egypt, Lane tells us: "I have heard of men who have been in the habit of marrying a new wife almost every month."[64] Burkhardt speaks of an Arab forty-five years old who had had fifty wives, "so that he must have divorced two wives and married two fresh ones on the average every year." The princess of Bhopal's account of Mecca.And not to go further than the sacred city of Mecca, the late reigning princess of Bhopal, in central India, herself an orthodox follower of the Prophet, after making the pilgrimage of the holy places, writes thus:
Women frequently contract as many as ten marriages, and those who have only been married twice are few in number. If a woman sees her husband growing old, or if she happen to admire any one else, she goes to the Shereef (the spiritual and civil head of the holy city), and after having settled the matter with him she puts away her husband and takes to herself another, who is, perhaps, good-looking and rich. In this way a marriage seldom lasts more than a year or two.
And of slave-girls the same high and impartial authority, still writing of the holy city and of her fellow-Moslems, tells us:
Some of the women (African and Georgian girls) are taken in marriage; and after that, on being sold again, they receive from their masters a divorce, and are sold in their houses—that is to say, they are sent to the purchaser from their master's house on receipt of payment, and are not exposed for sale in the slave-market. They are only married when purchased for the first time.... When the poorer people buy (female) slaves they keep them for themselves, and change them every year as one would replace old things by new; but the women who have children are not sold.[65]
What I desire to make clear is the fact that Islam sanctions a license between the sexes which Christianity forbids.such things may be practiced with the sanction of the Scripture which the Moslem holds to be divine, and that these same indulgences have from the first existed as inducements which helped materially to forward the spread of the faith. I am very far, indeed, from implying that excessive indulgence in polygamy is the universal state of Moslem society. Happily this is not the case. There are not only individuals, but tribes and districts, which, either from custom or preference, voluntarily restrict the license given them in the Koran; while the natural influence of the family, even in Moslem countries, has an antiseptic tendency that often itself tends greatly to neutralize the evil.[66] Nor am I seeking to institute any contrast between the morals at large of Moslem countries and the rest of the world. If Christian nations are (as with shame it must be confessed) in some strata of society immoral, it is in the teeth of their divine law. And the restrictions of that law are calculated, and in The laws of Christianity deter men from carnal indulgences.the early days of Christianity did tend, in point of fact, to deter men devoted to the indulgences of the flesh from embracing the faith.[67] The religion of Mohammed, on the other hand, gives direct sanction to the sexual indulgences we have been speaking of. Thus it panders to the lower instincts of humanity and makes its spread the easier. In direct opposition to the precepts of Christianity it "makes provision for the flesh to fulfill the lusts thereof." Hence Islam the "Easy Way."Islam has been well called by its own votaries the Easy Way. Once more, to quote Al Kindy:
Thou invitest me (says our apologist to his friend) into the "Easy way of faith and practice." Alas, alas! for our Saviour in the Gospel telleth us, "When ye have done all that ye are commanded, say, We are unprofitable servants; we have but done that which was commanded us." Where then is our merit? The same Lord Jesus saith, "How strait is the road which leadeth unto life, and how few they be that walk therein! How wide the gate that leadeth to destruction, and how many there be that go in thereat!" Different this, my friend, from the comforts of thy wide and easy gate, and the facilities for enjoying, as thou wouldst have me, the pleasures offered by thy faith in wives and damsels![68]