“ ‘There is no god but God,’ are words simply tantamount in English to the negation of any deity save one alone; and thus much they certainly mean in Arabic, but they imply much more also. Their full sense is, not only to deny absolutely and unreservedly all plurality, whether of nature or of person, in the Supreme Being, not only to establish the unity of the Unbegetting and Unbegot, in all its simple and uncommunicable Oneness; but besides this, the words in Arabic and among Arabs imply that this one Supreme Being is also the only Agent, the only Force, the only Act existing throughout the universe, and leave to all beings else, matter or spirit, instinct or intelligence, physical or moral, nothing but pure unconditional passiveness, alike in movement or in quiescence, in action or in capacity. The sole power, the sole motor, movement, energy, and deed, is God; the rest is downright inertia and mere instrumentality, from the highest archangel down to the simplest atom of creation. Hence, in this one sentence, is summed up a system which, for want of a better name, I may be permitted to call the Pantheism of Force, or of Act, thus exclusively assigned to God, Who absorbs it all, exercises it all, and to Whom alone it can be ascribed, whether for preserving or for destroying, for relative evil or for equally relative good. I say ‘relative,’ because it is clear that in such a theology no place is left for absolute good or evil, reason or extravagance, all is abridged in the autocratical will of the One great Agent: ‘sic volo, sic jubeo, stet pro ratione voluntas’; or, more significantly still, in Arabic Kema yeshao (ka-mā yashāʾu), ‘as He wills it,’ to quote the constantly recurring expression of the Coran.
“Thus immeasureably and eternally exalted above, and dissimilar from, all creatures, which lie levelled before Him on one common plane of instrumentality and inertness, God is One in the totality of omnipotent and omnipresent action, which acknowledges no rule, standard, or limit, save His own sole and absolute will. He communicates nothing to His creatures, for their seeming power and act ever remain His alone, and in return He receives nothing from them; for whatever they may be, that they are in Him, by Him, and from Him only. And, secondly, no superiority, no distinction, no pre-eminence, can be lawfully claimed by one creature over its fellow, in the utter equalisation of their unexceptional servitude and abasement; all are alike tools of the one solitary Force which employs them to crush or to benefit, to truth or to error, to honour or shame, to happiness or misery, quite independently of their individual fitness, deserts, or advantage, and simply because ‘He wills it,’ and ‘as He wills it.’
“One might at first sight think that this tremendous Autocrat, this uncontrolled and unsympathising Power, would be far above anything like passions, desires, or inclinations. Yet such is not the case, for He has with respect to His creatures one main feeling and source of action, namely, jealousy of them, lest they should perchance attribute to themselves something of what is His alone, and thus encroach on His all-engrossing kingdom. Hence He is ever more prone to punish than to reward, to inflict pain than to bestow pleasure, to ruin than to build. It is His singular satisfaction to let created beings continually feel that they are nothing else than His slaves, His tools, and contemptible tools also, that thus they may the better acknowledge His superiority, and know His power to be above their power, His cunning above their cunning, His will above their will, His pride above their pride; or rather, that there is no power, cunning, will, or pride, save His own.
“But He Himself, sterile in His inaccessible height, neither loving nor enjoying aught save His own and self-measured decree, without son, companion, or counsellor, is no less barren of Himself than for His creatures, and His own barrenness and lone egoism in Himself is the cause and rule of His indifferent and unregarding despotism around. The first note is the key of the whole tune, and the primal idea of God runs through and modifies the whole system and creed that centres in Him.
“That the notion here given of the Deity, monstrous and blasphemous as it may appear, is exactly and literally that which the Coran conveys or intends to convey, I at present take for granted. But that it indeed is so, no one who has attentively perused and thought over the Arabic text (for mere cursory reading, especially in a translation, will not suffice), can hesitate to allow. In fact, every phrase of the preceding sentences, every touch in this odious portrait, has been taken, to the best of my ability, word for word, or at least meaning for meaning, from the ‘Book,’ the truest mirror of the mind and scope of its writer.
“And that such was in reality Mahomet’s mind and idea, is fully confirmed by the witness-tongue of contemporary tradition. Of this we have many authentic samples: the Saheeh (Ṣaḥīḥ), the Commentary of Beydāwi (al-Baiẓāwī), the Mishkat ul Masabih, and fifty similar works, afford ample testimony on this point. But for the benefit of my readers in general, all of whom may not have drunk equally deep at the fountain-heads of Islamic dogma, I will subjoin a specimen, known perhaps to many Orientalists, yet too characteristic to be here omitted, a repetition of which I have endured times out of number from admiring and approving Wahhābīs in Nejed.
“ ‘Accordingly, when God’—so runs the tradition: I had better said, the blasphemy—‘resolved to create the human race, He took into His hands a mass of earth, the same whence all mankind were to be formed, and in which they after a manner pre-existed; and having then divided the clod into two equal portions, He threw the one half into hell, saying, “These to eternal fire, and I care not”; and projected the other half into heaven, adding, “and these to Paradise, I care not.” ’ (See Mishkātu ʾl-Maṣābīḥ, Bābu ʾl-Qadr.)
“Commentary would here be superfluous. But in this we have before us the adequate idea of predestination, or, to give it a truer name, pre-damnation, held and taught in the school of the Coran. Paradise and hell are at once totally independent of love or hatred on the part of the Deity, and of merits or demerits, of good or evil conduct, on the part of the creature; and, in the corresponding theory, rightly so, since the very actions which we call good or ill-deserving, right or wrong, wicked or virtuous, are in their essence all one and of one, and accordingly merit neither praise nor blame, punishment nor recompense, except and simply after the arbitrary value which the all-regulating will of the great despot may choose to assign or impute to them. In a word, He burns one individual through all eternity amid red-hot chains and seas of molten fire, and seats another in the plenary enjoyment of an everlasting brothel between forty celestial concubines, just and equally for His own good pleasure, and because He wills it.
“Men are thus all on one common level, here and hereafter, in their physical, social, and moral light—the level of slaves to one sole Master, of tools to one universal Agent. But the equalising process does not stop here: beasts, birds, fishes, insects, all participate of the same honour or debasement; all are, like man, the slaves of God, the tools and automata of His will; and hence Mahomet is simply logical and self-consistent when in the Coran he informs his followers, that birds, beasts, and the rest are ‘nations’ like themselves, nor does any intrinsic distinction exist between them and the human species, except what accidental diversity the ‘King, the Proud One, the Mighty, the Giant,’ &c., as he styles his God, may have been pleased to make, just as He willed it, and so long as He may will it.
“However, should any one think himself aggrieved by such association, he may console himself by reflecting that, on the other hand, angels, archangels, genii, devils, and whatever other spiritual beings may exist, are no less on his level also; and that if he himself be no better than a camel, he is, however, no worse than Gabriel or any seraph. And then, over all and above all, ‘There is no god but God.’ ”—(Central and Eastern Arabia, vol. i. p. 365.)