Amid such diverse elements, there was need of unity in the domain of religion, a need for which Mohammed, after the example of others of his family, sought to provide.
He was born at Mecca (571) of an honorable family, belonging to the Koreish tribe. Finding no satisfaction for his restless spirit in the trade to which after his parents' death he had at first devoted himself, he gave himself up, in solitary retirement, to quiet meditation, and became more and more convinced of his calling to put an end, by means of a better religion, to the confusion existing among his countrymen with regard to religion. The religious idea which overmastered him presented itself to his powerful Oriental imagination in the form of a vision as a revelation of Allah taala, made to him in the fortieth year of his life by mediation of the angel Gabriel. His conviction, thus acquired, was confirmed by revelations afterwards received; and, shared at first with a small circle of trusted friends, gradually spread wider, until at last Mohammed came forward in the ancient sanctuary, the Kaaba, at Mecca, as prophet of Allah. For this he was pursued by his countrymen, and fled from thence to Medina, in the year 622, the beginning of the Moslem era. The number of his followers increasing, he had recourse to arms. He conquered Mecca in 630, and made the Kaaba, after destroying the idols in it, the sanctuary of the new religion.
The doctrine of Mohammed (Islam, submission to God, whence his followers take the name of Moslems), is contained in the Koran. The various Suras, or divisions, originally the revelations received by the prophet at different periods of his life reduced to writing, were, soon after his death, united by Abu Bekr into one holy book, under the name of the Koran (al Kitab, the book), which, like the Bible among the later Jews and Christians, was clothed with divine authority. The central doctrine of Mohammed is the belief in one God, Allah, who, as the Creator and Lord of all things, in strictest isolation from the world, is throned in heaven. All that takes place upon the earth befalls according to the eternal decree of God, a conception in which, at least among the Orthodox Moslems, the Sunnites, who are distinguished in this respect, as in others, from the dissenting Shiites, there is no place left for human freedom. This God has from the earliest times revealed himself to some privileged men, Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus (Isa). To the last is due the honor of having been the reformer of degenerate Judaism. He is not, as the Christians of Mohammed's time taught, the Son of God in a metaphysical sense, much less God himself,—Allah is one, he neither begets nor is begotten,—but a prophet of human descent. The greatest and last prophet is Mohammed himself, in whom prophetism reached its fulfillment. Along with the doctrine regarding God and his relation to the world, prayer, hospitality, and benevolence occupy a prominent place in the teaching of Mohammed, looked at from its practical side, and also the belief in a future life, in the Jewish-Parsee form of the resurrection of the dead, the judgment of the world, future reward and punishment, paradise and hell. The truth of this divine revelation rests upon the very fact of its having been revealed, and, according to Mohammed, it no more needs scientific proof than confirmation by miracles, to which Islamism did not appeal until later.
The opinion which formerly prevailed among Christians that Mohammed was an impostor, a false prophet, was bound up with the conception that God, to the exclusion of other nations, had revealed himself immediately and supernaturally first to Israel, and afterwards through Christ to all mankind. Hence it followed that Christianity was not prized as the highest religion, existing along with less developed forms of religion, but was opposed as the only true religion to all others, which were regarded as the fruit of imposture and error, an opinion to which the religious and political struggles in which Islam and Christendom have been involved also richly contributed. Mohammed was seer and prophet, filled with fiery zeal for religion, and, while he stands indeed in this respect, both personally and with regard to the contents of his preaching and the means by which he sought to gain admission for his doctrine, below the seers of Israel, and far below the founder of Christianity, yet, on the other hand, his monotheism, abstract as it is, must be regarded as a wholesome reaction against the ever-increasing polytheistical superstition to which in his time the Christian church of the East especially had sunk. Islamism stands, however, below original Christianity, the religion of Jesus and the Apostles, in that, by separating God, as the abstract one Supreme Being, from the world, it leaves no place for the doctrine of God's immanence, or the indwelling of the Spirit of God in man. Hence in Islamism the divine revelation remains purely mechanical, with no natural point of connection in man, and therefore there is no possibility of an enduring prophetism, which is the fundamental principle of Christianity. From this separation of God and man, the Mohammedan doctrine of predestination, in distinction from the Christian, acquires its abstract and fatalistic character, whereby man, instead of being regarded as a being in whose free activity God's power and life are glorified, is conceived as a passive instrument of a higher power. To true moral independence, therefore, the Moslem does not attain. His religion is legal and external, and therefore intolerant and exclusive; and when Islamism, led by excited passion and a heated imagination, disregarded the sanctity of marriage, and held up as a reward before the faithful Moslem a paradise characterized by sensual enjoyment, it missed at once the deep moral and spiritual character of Christianity. To these defects must be ascribed the fact that Islamism, adapted to the need of the East, and therefore spread over a large part of Asia and Africa, has not, with the exception of the empire of Turkey, and for a time also of Spain, penetrated Europe; and, overshadowed by a higher development of humanity, has reached its highest bloom, while Christianity, brought back to its original purity, remains the religion of the civilized world.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Translated from the Dutch of Prof. J. H. Scholten, by F.T. Washburn. This constitutes the first part of Prof. Scholten's History of Religion and Philosophy. (Geschiedenis der Godsdienst en Wijsbegeerte.) Third edition. Leyden, 1863. Of this work there is a translation in French by M. Albert Réville (Paris, 1861); but this translation, which was made from an earlier edition, is very defective in the first part, Prof. Scholten having added a great deal in his last edition. There is also a translation of it in German, by D.E.R. Redepenning (Elberfeld, 1868). This German translation has been revised and enlarged by Prof. Scholten, and is therefore superior in some respects to the original Dutch. The present translation has been revised upon it.
[2] According to Buusen 3000 or 2500 B.C., Haug 2000 B.C., Max Müller 1200 B.C., Max Duncker 1300 or 1250 B.C., and according to Rœth. I. p. 348, who still puts Vistaspa before Darius Hystaspes, between 589 and 512 B.C.
[3] The doctrine of the Zervana akarana (infinite time) as the original One, from which the opposition between Ormuzd and Ahriman was held to spring, dates from a later period.
[4] Ζευς κελαινεφης, αιδερι ναιων, νεφληγερετα Ζευς, Ηρη βυωπις, γλαυκωπις Αδηυη.
[5] Of the Germans Tacitus writes, Germ., c. 9, "Eos nec cohibere parietibus Deos neque in ullam humanioris speciem assimilare, ex magnitudine cœlestium arbitrantur. Lucos ac nemora consecrant deorumque nominibus appellant secretum illud, quod sola reverentia vident."