Peter's Rock in Mohammed's Flood, from St. Gregory the Great to St. Leo III

by T. W. Allies

In the last days of Mohammed, when the religious capital of Arabia had been taken by him, and this new law of war had been published, embassies from all parts of Arabia streamed to him, for to the Arabians there remained no choice between the Koran and the sword. He may be considered as the lord by conquest of Arabia, and moreover as one who pretended to issue in [pg 189] the name of God and as His sole apostle a new world-religion. Scarcely more than a year after this proclamation of war against what he chose to consider idolatry he died on the 8th June 632, at the age of 63 lunar or 61 solar years.

When we review the ten years which elapsed from the Hegira to the death of Mohammed, the following points are salient.

The imposition of religious belief by force becomes more and more the main principle of Mohammed. As he increases in power the principle is set forth with greater distinctness. He began as a citizen of Mecca by trying to persuade his relations and friends. With some he succeeded. His kinsmen gave him a partial support rather of clanship than of faith. But he found it expedient to fly from his native city, and the flight marks to all future time the beginning of his assumption not only to be a prophet, but in that character to publish a new religion. The Flight is the Mohammedan era as the birth of Christ is the Christian. At the end of the ninth year the proclamation against idolatry in the ninth Sura, the last in time of the whole series, marks the completion of the parent idea. Mohammed declares himself the apostle of God, as such alone charged “with the direction and true religion,” while Christians, though they are commanded “to worship one God only, associate Christ the Son of Mary with Him”. Whereas Mohammed declares Christ to be indeed one in the series of prophets, the last before himself; but himself to be the prophet who completes the chain. Thus he enacts [pg 190] that Christians can be safe before his people only in one of two ways, either by forming part of them, that is, by taking Mohammed instead of Christ, or by submitting to pay tribute, and to the humiliations which accompany tribute. Thus the parent idea is the messiahship of force.

It may be noted that it comes out in a profession of faith drawn especially to exclude the association of the Son of Mary with God. Thus Mohammed crowns the work which Arius attempted three hundred years before. After the restless heresies in which the Greek mind had fluctuated during these three centuries, the greatest enemy to the Greek empire and faith was set up on that very negation of the godhead of Christ with which those heresies had begun. Fifty years of Arian success, in which the emperors, Constantius and Valens, take a large part, inspired and supported by Eusebius, Macedonius, Eudoxius, and Demophilus, four successive bishops of Byzantium, cause that disorganisation of the eastern Church which St. Basil described as its ruin. Fifty years of patronising the Monothelite heresy, in which the emperors Heraclius and Constans II. bear the largest part, supported by four Byzantine patriarchs, Sergius, Pyrrhus, Paulus, and Peter, beginning in 628, mark the rise and accompany the establishment of the Mohammedan empire and creed. Honorius dies before the heresy is presented for acceptance in Rome in the imperial Ecthesis. Ten Popes succeeding Honorius, in spite of the temporal distress which surrounds them, oppose to the utmost the Byzantine heresy and despotism [pg 191] in the midst of whom one gloriously lays down his life and is martyred by the eastern emperor as guilty of high treason. This is the connection between Arius and Mohammed, who appears as the divine punishment and remedy for Byzantine successors of Constantine who would confiscate the liberty of the church, and for state-made patriarchs who foster and formulate heresy.

Secondly, the revelations which Mohammed professes to receive from God he professes also to be brought to him by the Angel Gabriel. Nor is he ashamed to make this angel serve him in actions of the utmost turpitude. Thus when the governor of Egypt bestows on him the slave-girl Mariam, he falls so desperately in love with her that his proper wives, including his favourite, the girl-wife Aischa, the daughter of his chief adherent, Abu Bekr, revolt. The prophet is embarrassed and summons the Angel Gabriel to his aid. Forthwith a passage of the Koran preaches to the discontented wives obedience in the name of God, and the prophet threatens that if they continue to be insubordinate he will dismiss them and find others more obedient and submissive. Nor is even this the lowest depth of infamy. For when he violates even the customs of the Arabs around him, loose as they were, and favourable to the selfishness of the stronger sex, and takes the wife of his most faithful follower and adopted son, he calls in Gabriel to justify the adultery in the name of God, and to enlarge to any extent which the prophet may choose his exclusive privilege of taking wives. It would be difficult to say how the stamp of imposture could be fixed on the Koran [pg 192] with more convincing force than by this association of an angel and of God himself with acts which are contrary to the universal natural law.

Thirdly, it may be remarked that as to polygamy, since it was the custom of the Arabians in his time to practise it without restraint, Mohammed might be considered as neither better nor worse than his countrymen, who had so corrupted the purity of the original law of marriage. This might be allowed if we were considering Mohammed simply as a Saracen of that time. But we are considering him in the light in which he put himself forward as the apostle of God, the one apostle who was to set forth the one God: “there is but one God and Mohammed is his prophet”. It is in this character that he did what no one had ever done before. Polygamy had crept in, “through the hardness of men's hearts,” but Mohammed attempted to set by his appeal to God and his use of the Angel Gabriel a divine sanction upon this great corruption, and upon the unlimited concubinage which he practised himself, and authorised in others. Thus St. John Damascene a hundred years after his time used of him these indignant words: “This Mamed put together many foolish things. Thus in the writing entitled ‘Woman’ he lays down the law that a man may openly take four wives, and a thousand concubines if he can, as many as he can subject to himself[98] besides the four; and he may divorce when he pleases and take another. And he made this law for the following reason.” Then St. John narrates the case of Zeid and his [pg 193] wife in these words: “Zeid had a handsome wife; Mamed fell in love with her. As they sat together Mamed said, God has charged me to take thy wife. Zeid answered: Thou art the apostle, do as God told thee. Or to go further back, he said: God charged me that thou divorce thy wife. Zeid divorced her. After some days Mamed said: God also charged me to take her. So he took her and made her an adulteress, and then he enacted that every one who will may divorce his wife, and after the divorce, if she return to him, another must marry her first.”[99]

Patriarchs and prophets have sinned, as well as common men; but Mohammed is the only legislator who has called in God to sanction his sin, and propagate it among others in the name of God: and he did this under the title that he was the special apostle of God, sent to propagate the only true religion. The terrible sin of David stands out as contrary to all his previous life. He sought pardon for it, and after it became the great penitent, and humbly bowed his head beneath chastisements as awful as his own sin. Mohammed exulted in his sin, as deserving of praise and exceptional privilege.

Fourthly, throughout the ten years, from the Hegira to his death, Mohammed carried out his own principle of propagating religion by force in his utter disregard of human life. As soon as he had left Mecca he practised robbery upon its caravans and killed without scruple those who resisted the robbery. He tried to make [pg 194] friends with Jewish clans around him, and when they rejected him for their Messias, slew them by hundreds. He slew even for private revenge those who stood in his way: and women as well as men.

These alleged revelations become in Mohammed's hands the enactments of a sovereign legislator. He claims them to be words of God delivered to him by the angel Gabriel. The personal character of Mohammed as developed in them is, therefore, of the greatest importance. He speaks not only of his “brother Moses” in the Jewish legislation which he closes, but of the Son of Mary as the Word and Spirit of God, on whose work he sets the superior seal of his own mission; and as a matter of fact, those who took his name had his personal character and actions before them for a standard, as the Christians had the Son of God. From the moment of his death this fact is brought out by the conduct of his followers. His chief companions meet and elect a head whom they call the chalif or successor of the prophet. That title is the sole source of his authority, which is both religious and civil, supreme in each, but supreme because it is the transmitted authority of the Prophet who is not a prophet only, but the “Apostle of God”. The four points above noted, the propagation of religion by force, the imposture in the use of the name of Gabriel, the enacting of polygamy with the superadded license of unbounded concubinage, and the employment of murder as means of success, mark the intense antagonism between the character of Mohammed and the character of Him [pg 195] whom he charged the Christians with associating to God. Instead of the Man, meek and humble of heart, who said to His disciples that in following His meekness and humility they should find rest for their souls, we have the man who ordered the believers in him to beat down all idolaters that did not profess, “There is one God, and Mohammed is His prophet,” and made death in battle against them to be the martyrdom which he chose for his people. Instead of the Man who said, “If I had not done among them the works which no other man hath done, they would not have sin,” we have the man who answered the appeal made to him for miraculous works in testimony of his mission, by disclaiming the power to do them. Instead of the Virgin's Son who set up the virginal life, and propagated His faith by the teaching and example of those who followed it, we have the man who forged a divine permission for the grossest polygamy and an unlimited concubinage obtained by successful war. Instead of the Man who reverenced above all men the sanctuary of human life, we have the man who murdered without scruple those who did not accept his mission.

As to the nature of the kingdom which each of these two set up, the One in His last words to His disciples on the night of His sacrifice said, “The kings of the gentiles lord it over them, and they that have power over them are called beneficent, but you not so: but he that is the greatest among you let him become as the younger, and he that is the leader as he that serveth”. In accordance with this precept, just as Mohammed was [pg 196] preparing to appear as the prophet, the greatest among Christians took as the symbol of his spiritual rule for his title, Servant of the servants of God: and so Chalid, the chief fighter, under Mohammed, Abu Bekr, and Omar, was termed “the sword of the swords of God”. The prophet in the Sura proclaiming his religion pronounced force to be the instrument of spreading it, and in doing this blood was to be shed like water: and from his time his chalifs have practised the slaughter of as many as they chose. Nor is this confined to enemies, but his religion has considered his own subjects thus slaughtered as witnesses of the prophet's claim. To be killed by order of the chalif is to the believer a title of honour, and the sacrifice of so many a day to his order a sacrifice to his religion.