“So I have advised you and paid the debt of friendship and sincere love, for I have desired to take you to myself, that you and I may be of the same opinion and the same faith, for I have found my Lord saying in his perfect Book: [[434]]‘Verily the unbelievers among the people of the Book and among the polytheists, shall go into the fire of Hell to abide therein for ever. Of all creatures they are the worst. But they verily who believe and do the things that are right—these of all creatures are the best. Their recompense with their Lord shall be gardens of Eden, ’neath which the rivers flow, in which they shall abide for evermore. God is well pleased with them, and they with Him. This, for him who feareth his Lord.’ (xcviii. 5–8.) ‘Ye are the best folk that hath been raised up for mankind. Ye enjoin what is just, and ye forbid what is evil, and ye believe in God: and if the people of the book had believed, it had surely been better for them. Believers there are among them, but most of them are disobedient.’ (iii. 106.) So I have had compassion upon you lest you might be among the people of Hell who are the worst of all creatures, and I have hoped that by the grace of God you may become one of the true believers with whom God is well pleased and they with Him, and they are the best of all creatures, and I have hoped that you will join yourself to that religion which is the best of the religions raised up for men. But if you refuse and persist in your obstinacy, contentiousness and ignorance, your infidelity and error, and if you reject my words and refuse the sincere advice I have offered you (without looking for any thanks or reward)—then write whatever you wish to say about your religion, all that you hold to be true and established by strong proof, without any fear or apprehension, without curtailment of your proofs or concealment of your beliefs; for I purpose only to listen patiently to your arguments and to yield to and acknowledge all that is convincing therein, submitting willingly without refusing or rejecting or fear, in order that I may compare your account and mine. You are free to set forth your case; bring forward no plea that fear prevented you from making your arguments complete and that you had to put a bridle on your tongue, so that you could not freely express your arguments. So now you are free to bring forward all your arguments, that you may not accuse me of pride, injustice or partiality: for that is far from me.
“Therefore bring forward all the arguments you wish and [[435]]say whatever you please and speak your mind freely. Now that you are safe and free to say whatever you please, appoint some arbitrator who will impartially judge between us and lean only towards the truth and be free from the empery of passion: and that arbitrator shall be Reason, whereby God makes us responsible for our own rewards and punishments. Herein I have dealt justly with you and have given you full security and am ready to accept whatever decision Reason may give for me or against me. For ‘there is no compulsion in religion’ (ii. 257) and I have only invited you to accept our faith willingly and of your own accord and have pointed out the hideousness of your present belief. Peace be with you and the mercy and blessings of God!”
There can be very little doubt but that this document has come down to us in an imperfect condition and has suffered mutilation at the hands of Christian copyists: the almost entire absence of any refutation of such distinctively Christian doctrines as that of the Blessed Trinity, and the references to such attacks to be found in al-Kindī’s reply, certainly indicate the excision of such passages as might have given offence to Christian readers.[1] [[436]]
[1] Similarly, the Spanish editor of the controversial letters that passed between Alvar and “the transgressor” (a Christian convert to Judaism), adds the following note after Epist. xv.: “Quatuordecim in hac pagina ita abrasae sunt liniae, ut nec verbum unum legi possit. Folium subsequens exsecuit possessor codicis, ne transgressoris deliramenta legerentur.” (Migne, Patr. Lat., tom. cxxi. p. 483.) [↑]
APPENDIX II.
CONTROVERSIAL LITERATURE BETWEEN MUSLIMS AND THE FOLLOWERS OF OTHER FAITHS.
Although Islam has had no organised system of propaganda, no tract societies or similar agencies of missionary work, there has been no lack of reasoned presentments of the faith to unbelievers, particularly to Christians and Jews. Of these it is not proposed to give a detailed account here, but it is of importance to draw attention to their existence if only to remove the wide-spread misconception that mass conversion is the prevailing characteristic of the spread of Islam and that individual conviction has formed no part of the propagandist schemes of the Muslim missionary. The beginnings of Muhammadan controversy against unbelievers are to be found in the Qurʼān itself, but from the ninth century of the Christian era begins a long series of systematic treatises of Muhammadan Apologetics, which has been actively continued to the present day. The number of such works directed against the Christian faith has been far more numerous than the Christian refutations of Islam, and some of the ablest of Muslim thinkers have employed their pens in their composition, e.g. Abū Yūsuf b. Isḥāq al-Kindī (A.D. 813–873), al-Masʻūdī (ob. A.D. 958), Ibn Ḥazm (A.D. 994–1064), al-G͟hazālī (ob. A.D. 1111), etc. It is interesting also to note that several renegades have written apologies for their change of faith and in defence of the Muslim creed, e.g. Ibn Jazlah in the eleventh century, Yūsuf al-Lubnānī and Shayk͟h Ziyādah b. Yaḥyạ̄ in the thirteenth, ʻAbd Allāh b. ʻAbd Allāh in the fifteenth, Darwesh ʻAlī in the sixteenth, Aḥmad b. ʻAbd Allāh, an Englishman born at Cambridge, in the seventeenth century, etc. These latter were all Christians before their conversion, [[437]]but Jewish renegades also, though fewer in number, have been among the apologists of Islam. In India, besides many Muhammadan books written against the Christian religion, there is an enormous number of controversial works against Hinduism: as to whether the Muhammadans have been equally active in other heathen countries, I have no information.
The reader will find a vast store of information on Muslim controversial literature in the following writings: Moritz Steinschneider: Polemische und apologetische Litteratur in arabischer Sprache, zwischen Muslimen, Christen und Juden. (Leipzig, 1877); Ignaz Goldziher: Über Muhammedanische Polemik gegen Ahl al-kitâb (Z.D.M.G., vol. 32, p. 341 ff. 1878); Martin Schreiner: Zur Geschichte der Polemik zwischen Juden und Muhammedanern (Z.D.M.G., vol. 42, p. 591 ff. 1888); W. A. Shedd: Islam and the Oriental Churches, pp. 252–3; Carl Güterbock: Der Islam in Lichte der byzantinischen Polemik. (Berlin, 1912.) [[438]]