What a noble religion would Islam have been, if Mohammed could have gone on as he began! He accepted all the essential truths of Judaism, he recognized Moses and Christ as true teachers. He taught that there was one universal religion, the substance of which was faith in one Supreme Being, submission to his will, trust in his providence, and good-will to his creatures. Prayer and alms were the only worship which God required. A marvellous and mighty work, says Mr. Muir, had been wrought by these few precepts. From time beyond memory Mecca and the whole peninsula had been steeped in spiritual torpor. The influences of Judaism, Christianity, and philosophy had been feeble and transient. Dark superstitions prevailed, the mothers of dark vices. And now, in thirteen years of preaching, a body of men and women had risen, who rejected idolatry; worshipped the one great God; lived lives of prayer; practised chastity, benevolence, and justice; and were ready to do and to bear everything for the truth. All this came from the depth of conviction in the soul of this one man.
To the great qualities which Mohammed had shown as a prophet and religious teacher were now added those of the captain and statesman. He had at last obtained a position at Medina whence he could act on the Arabs with other forces than those of eloquence and feeling. And now the man who for forty years had been a simple citizen and led a quiet family life—who afterward, for thirteen years, had been a patient but despised teacher of the unity of God—passed the last ten years of his strange career in building up a fanatical army of warriors, destined to conquer half the civilized world. From this period the old solution of the Mohammedan miracle is in order; from this time the sword leads, and the Koran follows. To this familiar explanation of Mohammedan success, Mr. Carlyle replies with the question: "Mohammedanism triumphed with the sword? But where did it get its sword?" We can now answer that pithy inquiry. The simple, earnest zeal of the original believers built up a power, which then took the sword, and conquered with it. The reward of patient, long-enduring faith is influence; with this influence ambition serves itself for its own purpose. Such is, more or less, the history of every religion, and, indeed, of every political party. Sects are founded, not by politicians, but by men of faith, by men to whom ideas are realities, by men who are willing to die for them. Such faith always triumphs at last; it makes a multitude of converts; it becomes a great power. The deep and strong convictions thus created are used by worldly men for their own purposes. That the Mohammedan impulse was thus taken possession of by worldly men is the judgment of M. Renan.[394] "From all sides," says he, "we come to this singular result: that the Mussulman movement was started almost without religious faith; that, setting aside a small number of faithful disciples, Mahomet really wrought very little conviction in Arabia." "The party of true Mussulmans had all their strength in Omar; but after his assassination, that is to say, twelve years after the death of the prophet, the opposite party triumphed by the election of Othman." "The first generation of the Hegira was completely occupied in exterminating the primitive Mussulmans, the true fathers of Islamism." Perhaps it is bold to question the opinions of a Semitic scholar of the force of M. Renan, but it seems to us that he goes too far in supposing that such a movement as that of Islam could be started without a tremendous depth of conviction. At all events, supported by such writers as Weil, Sprenger, and Muir, we will say that it was a powerful religious movement founded on sincerest conviction, but gradually turned aside, and used for worldly purposes and temporal triumphs. And, in thus diverting it from divine objects to purely human ones, Mohammed himself led the way. He adds another, and perhaps the greatest, illustration to the long list of noble souls whose natures have become subdued to that which they worked in; who have sought high ends by low means; who, talking of the noblest truths, descend into the meanest prevarications, and so throw a doubt on all sincerity, faith, and honor. Such was the judgment of a great thinker—Goethe—concerning Mohammed. He believes him to have been at first profoundly sincere, but he says of him that afterward "what in his character is earthly increases and develops itself; the divine retires and is obscured: his doctrine becomes a means rather than an end. All kinds of practices are employed, nor are horrors wanting." Goethe intended to write a drama upon Mohammed, to illustrate the sad fact that every man who attempts to realize a great idea comes in contact with the lower world, must place himself on its level in order to influence it, and thus often compromises his higher aims, and at last forfeits them[395]. Such a man, in modern times, was Lord Bacon in the political world; such a man, among conquerors, was Cromwell; and among Christian sects how often do we see the young enthusiast and saint end as the ambitious self-seeker and Jesuit! Then we call him a hypocrite, because he continues to use the familiar language of the time when his heart was true and simple, though indulging himself in luxury and sin. It is curious, when we are all so inconsistent, that we should find it so hard to understand inconsistency. We, all of us, often say what is right and do what is wrong; but are we deliberate hypocrites? No! we know that we are weak; we admit that we are inconsistent; we say amen to the "video meliora, proboque,—deteriora sequor," but we also know that we are not deliberate and intentional hypocrites. Let us use the same large judgment in speaking of the faults of Cromwell, Bacon, and Mohammed.
No one could have foreseen the cruelty of which Mohammed, hitherto always a kind-hearted and affectionate man, was capable toward those who resisted his purpose. This first showed itself in his treatment of the Jews. He hoped to form an alliance with them, against the idolaters. He had admitted the divine authority of their religion, and appealed to their Scriptures as evidence of the truth of his own mission. He conformed to their ritual and customs, and made Jerusalem his Kibla, toward which he turned in prayer five times a day. In return for this he expected them to receive him as a prophet; but this they refused to do. So he departed by degrees from their customs, changed his Kibla to Mecca, and at last denounced the Jews as stiff-necked unbelievers. The old quarrel between Esau and Jacob could not be appeased, nor an alliance formed between them.
M. Saint-Hilaire[396] does not think that the character of Mohammed changed when he became the founder of a state and head of a conquering party. He thinks "that he only yielded to the political necessities of his position." Granted; but yielding to those necessities was the cause of this gradual change in his character. The man who lies and murders from the necessity of his political position can hardly remain a saint. Plunder, cold-blooded execution of prisoners, self-indulgence, became the habit of the prophet henceforth, as we shall presently see.
The first battle against the Koreish, that of Badr, took place in January, A.D. 624. When Mohammed had drawn up his army, he prayed earnestly for the victory. After a desperate struggle, the Koreish fled. Mohammed claimed, by a special revelation, the fifth part of the booty. As the bodies of his old opponents were cast into a pit, he spoke to them bitterly. When the prisoners were brought before him he looked fiercely at one of them. "There is death in that glance," said the unhappy man, and presently the prophet ordered him to be beheaded. Two days after, another was ordered for execution. "Who will take care of my little girl?" said he. "Hell-fire," replied Mohammed, and ordered him to be cut down. Shortly after the battle, a Jewess who had written verses against Mohammed, was assassinated by one of his followers; and the prophet praised him for the deed in the public mosque. Another aged Jew, for the same offence, was murdered by his express command. A quarrel between some Jews and Moslems brought on an attack by Mohammed upon the Jewish tribe. They surrendered after a siege of fifteen days, and Mohammed ordered all the prisoners to be killed; but at last, at the urgent request of a powerful chief in Medina, allowed them to go into exile, cursing them and their intercessor. Mr. Muir mentions other cases of assassination of the Jews by the command of the prophet. All these facts are derived from contemporaneous Moslem historians, who glorify their prophet for this conduct. The worst action perhaps of this kind was the deliberate execution of seven or eight hundred Jewish prisoners, who had surrendered at discretion, and the sale of their wives and children into slavery. Mohammed selected from among these women one more beautiful than the rest, for his concubine. Whether M. Saint-Hilaire considers all this as "yielding to the political necessities of his position," we do not know. But this man, who could stand by and see hundreds of captives slaughtered in cold blood, and then retire to solace himself with the widow of one of his victims, seems to us to have retained little of his early purity of soul.
About this time Mohammed began to multiply wives, and to receive revelations allowing him to do so beyond the usual limit of his law. He added one after another to his harem, until he had ten wives, besides his slaves. His views on such subjects are illustrated by his presenting three beautiful female slaves, taken in war, one to his father-in-law, and the others to his two sons-in-law.
So, in a series of battles, with the Jewish tribes, the Koreish, the Syrians, passed the stormy and triumphant years of the Pontiff King. Mecca was conquered, and the Koreish submitted in A.D. 630. The tribes throughout Arabia acquiesced, one by one, in the prophet's authority. All paid tribute, or accepted Islam. His enemies were all under his feet; his doctrines accepted; the rival prophets, Aswad and Museilama, overcome. Then, in the sixty-third year of his age, death drew near. On the last day of his life, he went into the mosque to attend morning prayer, then back to the room of his favorite wife, Ayesha, and died in her arms. Wild with grief, Omar declared he was not dead, but in a trance. The grave Abu Bakr composed the excited multitude, and was chosen caliph, or successor to the prophet. Mohammed died on June 8, A.D. 632, and was buried the next day, amid the grief of his followers. Abu Bakr and Omar offered the prayer: "Peace be unto thee, O prophet of God; and the mercy of the Lord, and his blessing! We bear testimony that the prophet of God hath delivered the message revealed to him; hath fought in the ways of the Lord until God crowned his religion with victory; hath fulfilled his words commanding that he alone is to be worshipped in unity; hath drawn us to himself, and been kind and tender-hearted to believers; hath sought no recompense for delivering to us the faith, neither hath sold it for a price at any time." And all the people said, "Amen! Amen!"
Concerning the character of Mohammed, enough has been already said. He was a great man, one of the greatest ever sent upon earth. He was a man of the deepest convictions, and for many years of the purest purposes, and was only drawn down at last by using low means for a good end. Of his visions and revelations, the same explanation is to be given as of those received by Joan of Arc, and other seers of that order. How far they had an objective basis in reality, and how far they were the result of some abnormal activity of the imagination, it is difficult with our present knowledge to decide. But that these visionaries fully believed in their own inspiration, there can be little doubt.
§ 5. Religious Doctrines and Practices among the Mohammedans.
As to the religion of Mohammed, and its effects on the world, it is easier to come to an opinion than concerning his own character. Its essential doctrine, as before indicated, is the absolute unity and supremacy of God, as opposed to the old Arab Polytheism on the one hand and the Christian Trinity on the other. It however admits of angels and genii. Gabriel and Michael are the angels of power; Azriel, angel of death; Israfeel, angel of the resurrection. Eblis, or Satan, plays an important part in this mythology. The Koran also teaches the doctrine of Eternal Decrees, or absolute Predestination; of prophets before Mohammed, of whom he is the successor,—as Adam, Noah, Moses, and Jesus; of sacred books, of which all that remain are the Pentateuch, Psalms, Gospels, and Koran; of an intermediate state after death; of the resurrection and judgment. All non-believers in Islam go into eternal fire. There are separate hells for Christians, Jews, Sabians, Magians, idolaters, and the hypocrites of all religions. The Moslem is judged by his actions. A balance is held by Gabriel, one scale hanging over heaven and another over hell, and his good deeds are placed in one and his bad ones in the other. According as his scale inclines, he goes to heaven or hell. If he goes to heaven, he finds there seventy-two Houris, more beautiful than angels, awaiting him, with gardens, groves, marble palaces, and music. If women are true believers and righteous, they will also go to heaven, but nothing is said about husbands being provided for them. Stress is laid on prayer, ablution, fasting, almsgiving, and the pilgrimage to Mecca. Wine and gaming are forbidden. There is no recognition, in the Koran, of human brotherhood. It is a prime duty to hate infidels and make war on them. Mohammed made it a duty for Moslems to betray and kill their own brothers when they were infidels; and he was obeyed in more cases than one. The Moslem sects are as numerous as those of Christians. The Dabistan mentions seventy-three. The two main divisions are into Sunnites and Shyites. The Persians are mostly Shyites, and refuse to receive the Sunnite traditions. They accept Ali, and denounce Omar. Terrible wars and cruelties have taken place between these sects. Only a few of the Sunnite doctors acknowledge the Shyites to be Moslems. They have a saying, "to destroy a Shyite is more acceptable than to kill seventy other infidels of whatever sort."