"The soul of Islam is its declaration of the unity of God: its heart is the inculcation of an absolute resignation to His will. Not more sublime, in religious history appears the figure of Paul the tent-maker, proclaiming 'the
Unknown God' at Athens, than that of the camel-driver Muhammad, son of Abdullah and Amina, abolishing all the idols of the Arabian Pantheon, except their chief—Allahu ta 'Ala, God the Most High—and under that ancient and well-received appellation establishing the one-ness of the origin, government, and life of the Universe. Thereby that marvellous and gifted Teacher created a vast empire of new belief and new civilization, and prepared a sixth part of humanity for the developments and reconciliations which later times will bring. For Islam must be conciliated; it cannot be thrust scornfully aside or rooted out. It shares the task of the education of the world with its sister religions, and it will contribute its eventual portion to
—"that far-off divine event Towards which the whole creation moves."
The italics are mine. I shall have to refer to them in my subsequent Notes. Observe, the cosmopolitan poet uses only the word "Islam" and not "Muhammadanism".
2. It is not Islam or Eman ايمان to deify Muhammad or to represent him to be akin to God, as sometimes some Moulvies represent him and call him "the One (Ahad) in the guise of Ahmad[40]." Our Prophet himself never claimed that he was anything more than a mere man. Indeed, he taught us all to say اثهد ان لا اله الا الله و اثهد ان محمداً عبده و رسوله that he was but "a servant and messenger of God." The only thing he ever claimed for himself was that God had chosen him to be a messenger رسول to convey His messages to men. "That an immense mass of fable and silly legend," says Rodwell, "has been built up upon the basis of the Qur'an, is beyond a doubt; but for this Muhammad is not answerable,[41] any more than he is for the wild and bloodthirsty excesses of his followers in after ages."
3. God's messages which Muhammad delivered to men were all collected soon after his death and are preserved intact in a remarkable book called the Qur'an—a book which has lived through no less than thirteen centuries without undergoing the least alteration in a single word or even a dot! The difference in the messages contained in the Qur'an and the ordinary sayings of the Prophet reported in books on Hadis حديث is simply this:—that when delivering God's messages Muhammad himself felt, and those who were in his company witnessed, that he was inspired by some divine energy or power which impelled him to say what he said; whereas at other times, when he was talking like an ordinary man, no signs of divine energy or inspiration were visible. It will carry me too far if I endeavour to explain here the real nature of "the divine inspiration" under which he delivered what he and others believed to be "divine messages". You will understand it if you read such books as Professor James's Varieties of Religious Experience. Let us, like good Momins, take it as a fact, what our Prophet's intimate companions صحابة vouched, that he appeared to be quite a different man when he uttered such messages. Their style or matter itself even to this day proves to all unbiassed minds that they are no ordinary sayings of an ordinary man. There is something unique in them which we can only feel but cannot define or express in words. Even historians and biographers like Gibbon and Muir and translators like Rodwell, Palmer and Lane-Poole are obliged, in spite of themselves, to admit and admire, what some of them call, the rugged grandeur and eloquence of the Qur'an. Even Sale says that some passages are really sublime.
4. We call the Qur'an the word of God, chiefly because it contains messages of high spiritual value delivered by an illiterate man like Muhammad. It is neither a history like some of the books of the Old Testament, nor a biography like the four Gospels of the Bible. It is only a collection of sermons, commands, and instructions delivered and issued from time to time as occasions required. It contains, indeed, references to stories of older Prophets and previous events well known to the people of Arabia. But they are less by way of narration than by way of illustration. They are parables more or less [42] (تلك الامثال نضر بها لناس). Commentators like Zamakh-shari (تفسير كشاف) and Imam Razi (تفسير كبير) whose learning and authority cannot be questioned, have clearly proved that there is nothing in the Qur'an which is improbable or cannot be rationally explained to be quite in accordance with the laws of Nature قانون قدرت. If you read Sir Syed Ahmad's Commentary تفسير احمدى or his Essays خطبات you will find rational explanations of the ideas of Paradise and Hell, the Day of Judgment,[43] etc. I need not dwell on them here. I would however draw your attention to what is called the rule of "Parsimony in Thought" which is in vogue among men of Science. It is that if and when you can explain anything by what is well-known and understood by every one, you should not believe in the existence of "supermen" or assume the occurrence of supernatural events. When, for example, we can explain any action of Muhammad as an ordinary action of a reasonable man, we should not assume or believe that he performed a miracle. If we can explain the defeat and discomfiture of Abraham's Army by natural causes, such as an epidemic, we ought not to assume the occurrence of any supernatural event[44].
5. The Qur'an does not favour any particular system of Philosophy. It leaves Muslims free to adopt any system of thought that commends itself to them, provided that it is not inconsistent with the (توحيد) idea of the one eternal and absolute God. Thus the Qur'an confines itself to the sphere of religion—the sphere where man is brought face to face with his God.
(a) What, then, is the object or aim of the Qur'an?