Mohammedanism Part 2

Powerless against the scepticism of his hearers, after twelve years of preaching followed only by a few dozen, most of them outcasts like himself, he hoped now and then that Allah would strike the recalcitrant mult.i.tude with an earthly doom, as he knew from revelations had happened before. This hope was also unfulfilled. As other messengers of G.o.d had done in similar circ.u.mstances, he sought for a more fruitful field than that of his birthplace; he set out on the Hijrah, _i.e._, emigration to Medina. Here circ.u.mstances were more favourable to him: in a short time he became the head of a considerable community.

Allah, who had given him power, soon allowed him to use it for the protection of the interests of the Faithful against the unbelievers.

Once become militant, Mohammed turned from the purely defensive to the aggressive att.i.tude, with such success that a great part of the Arab tribes were compelled to accept Islam, "obedience to Allah and His Messenger." The rule formerly insisted upon: "No compulsion in religion," was sacrificed, since experience taught him, that the truth was more easily forced upon men by violence than by threats which would be fulfilled only after the resurrection. Naturally, the religious value of the conversions sank in proportion as their number increased. The Prophet of world renouncement in Mecca wished to win souls for his faith; the Prophet-Prince in Medina needed subjects and fighters for his army. Yet he was still the same Mohammed.

Parallel with his altered position towards the heathen Arabs went a readjustment of his point of view towards the followers of Scripture.

Mohammed never pretended to preach a new religion; he demanded in the name of Allah the same Islam (submission) that Moses, Jesus, and former prophets had demanded of their nations. In his earlier revelations he always points out the ident.i.ty of his "Qorans" with the contents of the sacred books of Jews and Christians, in the sure conviction that these will confirm his a.s.sertion if asked. In Medina he was disillusioned by finding neither Jews nor Christians prepared to acknowledge an Arabian prophet, not even for the Arabs only; so he was led to distinguish between the _true_ contents of the Bible and that which had been made of it by the falsification of later Jews and Christians. He preferred now to connect his own revelations more immediately with those of Abraham, no books of whom could be cited against him, and who was acknowledged by Jews and Christians without being himself either a Jew or a Christian.

This turn, this particular connection of Islam with Abraham, made it possible for him, by means of an adaptation of the biblical legends concerning Abraham, Hagar, and Ishmael, to include in his religion a set of religious customs of the Meccans, especially the hajj.[1] Thus Islam became more Arabian, and at the same time more independent of the other revealed religions, whose degeneracy was demonstrated by their refusal to acknowledge Mohammed.

[Footnote 1: A complete explanation of the gradual development of the Abraham legend in the Qoran can be found in my book _Het Mekkaansche Feest_ (The Feast of Mecca), Leiden, 1880.]

All this is to be explained without the supposition of conscious trickery or dishonesty on the part of Mohammed. There was no other way for the unlettered Prophet, whose belief in his mission was unshaken, to overcome the difficulties entailed by his closer acquaintance with the tenets of other religions.

How, then, are we to explain the starting-point of it all--Mohammed's sense of vocation? Was it a disease of the spirit, a kind of madness? At all events, the data are insufficient upon which to form a serious diagnosis.

Some have called it epilepsy. Sprenger, with an exaggerated display of certainty based upon his former medical studies, gave Mohammed's disorder the name of hysteria. Others try to find a connection between Mohammed's extraordinary interest in the fair s.e.x and his prophetic consciousness.

But, after all, is it explaining the spiritual life of a man, who was certainly unique, if we put a label upon him, and thus cla.s.s him with others, who at the most shared with him certain abnormalities? A normal man Mohammed certainly was not. But as soon as we try to give a positive name to this negative quality, then we do the same as the heathens of Mecca, who were violently awakened by his thundering prophecies: "He is nothing but one possessed, a poet, a soothsayer, a sorcerer," they said. Whether we say with the old European biographers "impostor," or with the modern ones put "epileptic," or "hysteric" in its place, makes little difference. The Meccans ended by submitting to him, and conquering a world under the banner of his faith. We, with the diffidence which true science implies, feel obliged merely to call him Mohammed, and to seek in the Qoran, and with great cautiousness in the Tradition, a few princ.i.p.al points of his life and work, in order to see how in his mind the intense feeling of discontent during the misery of his youth, together with a great self-reliance, a feeling of spiritual superiority to his surroundings, developed into a call, the form of which was largely decided by Jewish and Christian influence.

While being struck by various weaknesses which disfigured this great personality and which he himself freely confessed, we must admire the perseverance with which he retained his faith in his divine mission, not discouraged by twelve years of humiliation, nor by the repudiation of the "People of Scripture," upon whom he had relied as his princ.i.p.al witnesses, nor yet by numbers of temporary rebuffs during his struggle for the dominion of Allah and His Messenger, which he carried on through the whole of Arabia.

Was Mohammed conscious of the universality of his mission? In the beginning he certainly conceived his work as merely the Arabian part of a universal task, which, for other parts of the world, was laid upon other messengers.

In the Medina period he ever more decidedly chose the direction of "forcing to comply." He was content only when the heathens perceived that further resistance to Allah's hosts was useless; their understanding of his "clear Arabic Qoran" was no longer the princ.i.p.al object of his striving. _Such_ an Islam could equally well be forced upon _non-Arabian_ heathens. And, as regards the "People of Scripture," since Mohammed's endeavour to be recognized by them had failed, he had taken up his position opposed to them, even above them. With the rise of his power he became hard and cruel to the Jews in North-Arabia, and from Jews and Christians alike in Arabia he demanded submission to his authority, since it had proved impossible to make them recognize his divine mission. This demand could quite logically be extended to all Christians; in the first place to those of the Byzantine Empire. But did Mohammed himself come to these conclusions in the last part of his life? Are the words in which Allah spoke to him: "We have sent thee to men in general,"[1] and a few expressions of the same sort, to be taken in that sense, or does "humanity" here, as in many other places in the Qoran, mean those with whom Mohammed had especially to do? Noldeke is strongly of opinion that the princ.i.p.al lines of the program of conquest carried out after Mohammed's death, had been drawn by the Prophet himself.

Lammens and others deny with equal vigour, that Mohammed ever looked upon the whole world as the field of his mission. This shows that the solution is not evident.[2]

[Footnote 1: _Qoran_, x.x.xiv., 27. The translation of this verse has always been a subject of great difference of opinion. At the time of its revelation--as fixed by Mohammedan as well as by western authorities--the universal conception of Mohammed's mission was quite out of question.]

[Footnote 2: Professor T.W. Arnold in the 2d edition (London, 1913) of his valuable work _The Preaching of Islam_ (especially pp. 28-31), warmly endeavours to prove that Mohammed from the beginning considered his mission as universal. He weakens his argument more than is necessary by placing the Tradition upon an almost equal footing with the Qoran as a source, and by ignoring the historical development which is obvious in the Qoran itself.

In this way he does not perceive the great importance of the history of the Abraham legend in Mohammed's conception. Moreover, the translation of the verses of the Qoran on p. 29 sometimes says more than the original.

_Lil-nas_ is not "_to mankind_" but "_to men_," in the sense of "_to everybody_." _Qoran_, xvi., 86, does not say: "One day we will raise up a witness out of every nation," but: "On the day (_i.e._, the day of resurrection) when we will raise up, etc.," which would seem to refer to the theme so constantly repeated in the Qoran, that each nation will be confronted on the Day of Judgment with the prophet sent to it. When the Qoran is called an "admonition to the world (_'alamin_)" and Mohammed's mission a "mercy to the world (_'alamin_)," then we must remember that 'alamin is one of the most misused rhymewords in the Qoran (e.g., _Qoran_, xv., 70); and we should not therefore translate it emphatically as "all created beings," unless the universality of Mohammed's mission is firmly established by other proofs. And this is far from being the case.]

In our valuation of Mohammed's sayings we cannot lay too much stress upon his incapability of looking far ahead. The final aims which Mohammed set himself were considered by sane persons as unattainable. His firm belief in the realization of the vague picture of the future which he had conceived, nay, which Allah held before him, drove him to the uttermost exertion of his mental power in order to surmount the innumerable unexpected obstacles which he encountered. Hence the variability of the practical directions contained in the Qoran; they are constantly altered according to circ.u.mstances. Allah's words during the last part of Mohammed's life: "This day have I perfected your religion for you, and have I filled up the measure of my favours towards you, and chosen Islam for you as your religion," have in no way the meaning of the exclamation: "It is finished,"

of the dying Christ. They are only a cry of jubilation over the degradation of the heathen Arabs by the triumph of Allah's weapons. At Mohammed's death everything was still unstable; and the vital questions for Islam were subjects of contention between the leaders even before the Prophet had been buried.

The expedient of new revelations completing, altering, or abrogating former ones had played an important part in the legislative work of Mohammed. Now, he had never considered that by his death the spring would be stopped, although completion was wanted in every respect. For, without doubt, Mohammed felt his weakness in systematizing and his absence of clearness of vision into the future, and therefore he postponed the promulgation of divine decrees as long as possible, and he solved only such questions of law as frequently recurred, when further hesitation would have been dangerous to his authority and to the peace of the community.

At Mohammed's death, all Arabs were not yet subdued to his authority.

The expeditions which he had undertaken or arranged beyond the northern boundaries of Arabia, were directed against Arabs, although they were likely to rouse conflict with the Byzantine and Persian empires. It would have been contrary to Mohammed's usual methods if this had led him to form a general definition of his att.i.tude towards the world outside Arabia.

As little as Mohammed, when he invoked the Meccans in wild poetic inspirations to array themselves behind him to seek the blessedness of future life, had dreamt of the possibility that twenty years later the whole of Arabia would acknowledge his authority in this world, as little, nay, much less, could he at the close of his life have had the faintest premonition of the fabulous development which his state would reach half a century later. The subjugation of the mighty Persia and of some of the richest provinces of the Byzantine Empire, only to mention these, was never a part of his program, although legend has it that he sent out written challenges to the six princes of the world best known to him. Yet we may say that Mohammed's successors in the guidance of his community, by continuing their expansion towards the north, after the suppression of the apostasy that followed his death, remained in Mohammed's line of action.

There is even more evident continuity in the development of the empire of the Omayyads out of the state of Mohammed, than in the series of events by which we see the dreaded Prince-Prophet of Medina grew out of the "possessed one" of Mecca. But if Mohammed had been able to foresee how the unity of Arabia, which he nearly accomplished, was to bring into being a formidable international empire, we should expect some indubitable traces of this in the Qoran; not a few verses of dubious interpretation, but some certain sign that the Revelation, which had repeatedly, and with the greatest emphasis, called itself a "plain Arabic Qoran" intended for those "to whom no warner had yet been sent," should in future be valid for the 'Ajam, the Barbarians, as well as for the Arabs.

Even if we ascribe to Mohammed something of the universal program, which the later tradition makes him to have drawn up, he certainly could not foresee the success of it. For this, in the first place, the economic and political factors to which some scholars of our day would attribute the entire explanation of the Islam movement, must be taken into consideration.

Mohammed did to some extent prepare the universality of his religion and make it possible. But that Islam, which came into the world as the Arabian form of the one, true religion, has actually become a universal religion, is due to circ.u.mstances which had little to do with its origin.[1] This extension of the domain to be subdued to its spiritual rule entailed upon Islam about three centuries of development and accommodation, of a different sort, to be sure, but not less drastic in character than that of the Christian Church.

[Footnote 1: Sir William Muir was not wrong when he said: "From first to last the summons was to Arabs and to none other... The seed of a universal creed had indeed been sown; but that it ever germinated was due to circ.u.mstances rather than design."]

II

THE RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT OF ISLaM

We can hardly imagine a poorer, more miserable population than that of the South-Arabian country Hadramaut. All moral and social progress is there impeded by the continuance of the worst elements of Jahiliyyah (Arabian paganism), side by side with those of Islam. A secular n.o.bility is formed by groups of people, who grudge each other their very lives and fight each other according to the rules of retaliation unmitigated by any more humane feelings. The religious n.o.bility is represented by descendants of the Prophet, arduous patrons of a most narrow-minded orthodoxy and of most bigoted fanaticism. In a well-ordered society, making the most of all the means offered by modern technical science, the dry barren soil might be made to yield sufficient harvests to satisfy the wants of its members; but among these inhabitants, paralysed by anarchy, chronic famine prevails.

Foreigners wisely avoid this miserable country, and if they did visit it, would not be hospitably received. Hunger forces many Hadramites to emigrate; throughout the centuries we find them in all the countries of Islam, in the sacred cities of Western-Arabia, in Syria, Egypt, India, Indonesia, where they often occupy important positions.

In the Dutch Indies, for instance, they live in the most important commercial towns, and though the Government has never favoured them, and though they have had to compete with Chinese and with Europeans, they have succeeded in making their position sufficiently strong. Before European influence prevailed, they even founded states in some of the larger islands or they obtained political influence in existing native states. Under a strong European government they are among the quietest, most industrious subjects, all earning their own living and saving something for their poor relations at home. They come penniless, and without any of that theoretical knowledge or practical skill which we are apt to consider as indispensable for a man who wishes to try his fortune in a complicated modern colonial world. Yet I have known some who in twenty years' time have become commercial potentates, and even millionaires.

The strange spectacle of these latent talents and of the suppressed energy of the people of Hadramaut that seem to be waiting only for transplantation into a more favourable soil to develop with amazing rapidity, helps us to understand the enormous consequences of the Arabian migration in the seventh century.

The spiritual goods, with which Islam set out into the world, were far from imposing. It preached a most simple monotheism: Allah, the Almighty Creator and Ruler of heaven and earth, entirely self-sufficient, so that it were ridiculous to suppose Him to have partners or sons and daughters to support Him; who has created the angels that they might form His retinue, and men and genii (jinn) that they might obediently serve Him; who decides everything according to His incalculable will and is responsible to n.o.body, as the Universe is His; of whom His creatures, if their minds be not led astray, must therefore stand in respectful fear and awe. He has made His will known to mankind, beginning at Adam, but the spreading of mankind over the surface of the earth, its seduction by Satan and his emissaries have caused most nations to become totally estranged from Him and His service.

Now and then, when He considered that the time was come, He caused a prophet to arise from among a nation to be His messenger to summon people to conversion, and to tell them what blessedness awaited them as a reward of obedience, what punishments would be inflicted if they did not believe his message.

Sometimes the disobedient had been struck by earthly judgment (the flood, the drowning of the Egyptians, etc.), and the faithful had been rescued in a miraculous way and led to victory; but such things merely served as indications of Allah's greatness. One day the whole world will be overthrown and destroyed. Then the dead will be awakened and led before Allah's tribunal. The faithful will have abodes appointed them in well-watered, shady gardens, with fruit-trees richly laden, with luxurious couches upon which they may lie and enjoy the delicious food, served by the ministrants of Paradise. They may also freely indulge in sparkling wine that does not intoxicate, and in intercourse with women, whose youth and virginity do not fade. The unbelievers end their lives in h.e.l.l-fire; or, rather, there is no end, for the punishment as well as the reward are everlasting.

Allah gives to each one his due. The actions of His creatures are all accurately written down, and when judgment comes, the book is opened; moreover, every creature carries the list of his own deeds and misdeeds; the debit and credit sides are carefully weighed against each other in the divine scales, and many witnesses are heard before judgment is p.r.o.nounced.

Allah, however, is clement and merciful; He gladly forgives those sinners who have believed in Him, who have sincerely accepted Islam, that is to say: who have acknowledged His absolute authority and have believed the message of the prophet sent to them. These prophets have the privilege of acting as mediators on behalf of their followers, not in the sense of redeemers, but as advocates who receive gracious hearing.

Naturally, Islam, submission to the Lord of the Universe, ought to express itself in deeds. Allah desires the homage of formal worship, which must be performed several times a day by every individual, and on special occasions by the a.s.sembled faithful, led by one of them. This. service, [s.]alat, acquired its strictly binding rules only after Mohammed's time, but already in his lifetime it consisted chiefly of the same elements as now: the recital of sacred texts, especially taken from the Revelation, certain postures of the body (standing, inclination, kneeling, prostration) with the face towards Mecca. This last particular and the language of the Revelation are the Arabian elements of the service, which is for the rest an imitation of Jewish and Christian rituals, so far as Mohammed knew them.

There was no sacrament, consequently no priest to administer it; Islam has always been the lay religion _par excellence_. Teaching and exhortation are the only spiritual help that the pious Mohammedan wants, and this simple care of souls is exercised without any ordination or consecration.

Fasting, for a month if possible, and longer if desired, was also an integral part of religious life and, by showing disregard of earthly joys, a proof of faith in Allah's promises for the world to come. Almsgiving, recommended above all other virtues, was not only to be practised in obedience to Allah's law and in faith in retribution, but it was to testify contempt of all earthly possessions which might impede the striving after eternal happiness. Later, Mohammed was compelled, by the need of a public fund and the waning zeal of the faithful as their numbers increased, to regulate the practice of this virtue and to exact certain minima as taxes (_zakat_).

When Mohammed, taking his stand as opposed to Judaism and Christianity, had accentuated the Arabian character of his religion, the Meccan rites of pagan origin were incorporated into Islam; but only after the purification required by monotheism. From that time forward the yearly celebration of the Hajj was among the ritual duties of the Moslim community.

In the first years of the strife yet another duty was most emphatically impressed on the Faithful; _jihad, i.e._, readiness to sacrifice life and possessions for the defence of Islam, understood, since the conquest of Mecca in 630, as the extension by force of arms of the authority of the Moslim state, first over the whole of Arabia, and soon after Mohammed's death over the whole world, so far as Allah granted His hosts the victory.

For the rest, the legislative revelations regulated only such points as had become subjects of argument or contest in Mohammed's lifetime, or such as were particularly suggested by that ant.i.thesis of paganism and revelation, which had determined Mohammed's prophetical career. Gambling and wine were forbidden, the latter after some hesitation between the inculcation of temperance and that of abstinence. Usury, taken in the sense of requiring any interest at all upon loans, was also forbidden. All tribal feuds with their consequences had henceforward to be considered as non-existent, and retaliation, provided that the offended party would not agree to accept compensation, was put under the control of the head of the community.

Polygamy and intercourse of master and female slave were restricted; the obligations arising from blood-relationship or ownership were regulated.

These points suffice to remind us of the nature of the Qoranic regulations.

Reference to certain subjects in this revealed law while others were ignored, did not depend on their respective importance to the life of the community, but rather on what happened to have been suggested by the events in Mohammed's lifetime. For Mohammed knew too well how little qualified he was for legislative work to undertake it unless absolutely necessary.

This rough sketch of what Islam meant when it set out to conquer the world, is not very likely to create the impression that its incredibly rapid extension was due to its superiority over the forms of civilization which it supplanted. Lammens's a.s.sertion, that Islam was the Jewish religion simplified according to Arabic wants and amplified by some Christian and Arabic traditions, contains a great deal of truth, if only we recognize the central importance for Mohammed's vocation and preaching of the Christian doctrine of Resurrection and judgment. This explains the large number of weak points that the book of Mohammed's revelations, written down by his first followers, offered to Jewish and Christian polemics. It was easy for the theologians of those religions to point out numberless mistakes in the work of the illiterate Arabian prophet, especially where he maintained that he was repeating and confirming the contents of their Bible. The Qoranic revelations about Allah's intercourse with men, taken from apocryphal sources, from profane legends like that of Alexander the Great, sometimes even created by Mohammed's own fancy--such as the story of the prophet Salih, said to have lived in the north of Arabia, and that of the prophet Hud, supposed to have lived in the south; all this could not but give them the impression of a clumsy caricature of true tradition. The princ.i.p.al doctrines of Synagogue and Church had apparently been misunderstood, or they were simply denied as corruptions.

The conversion to Islam, within a hundred years, of such nations as the Egyptian, the Syrian, and the Persian, can hardly be attributed to anything but the latent talents, the formerly suppressed energy of the Arabian race having found a favourable soil for its development; talents and energy, however, not of a missionary kind. If Islam is said to have been from its beginning down to the present day, a missionary religion,[1] then "mission"

is to be taken here in a quite peculiar sense, and special attention must be given to the preparation of the missionary field by the Moslim armies, related by history and considered as most important by the Mohammedans themselves.

[Footnote 1: With extraordinary talent this thesis has been defended by Professor T.W. Arnold in the above quoted work, _The Preaching of Islam_, which fully deserves the attention also of those who do not agree with the writer's argument. Among the many objections that may be raised against Prof. Arnold's conclusion, we point to the undeniable fact, that the Moslim scholars of all ages hardly speak of "mission" at all, and always treat the extension of the true faith by holy war as one of the princ.i.p.al duties of the Moslim community.]

Certainly, the nations conquered by the Arabs under the first khalifs were not obliged to choose between living as Moslims or dying as unbelievers.

The conquerors treated them as Mohammed had treated Jews and Christians in Arabia towards the end of his life, and only exacted from them submission to Moslim authority. They were allowed to adhere to their religion, provided they helped with their taxes to fill the Moslim exchequer. This rule was even extended to such religions as that of the Parsis, although they could not be considered as belonging to the "People of Scripture"

expressly recognized in the Qoran. But the social condition of these subjects was gradually made so oppressive by the Mohammedan masters, that rapid conversions in ma.s.ses were a natural consequence; the more natural because among the conquered nations intellectual culture was restricted to a small circle, so that after the conquest their spiritual leaders lacked freedom of movement. Besides, practically very little was required from the new converts, so that it was very tempting to take the step that led to full citizenship.

No, those who in a short time subjected millions of non-Arabs to the state founded by Mohammed, and thus prepared their conversion, were no apostles.

They were generals whose strategic talents would have remained hidden but for Mohammed, political geniuses, especially from Mecca and Taif, who, before Islam, would have excelled only in the organization of commercial operations or in establishing harmony between hostile families. Now they proved capable of uniting the Arabs commanded by Allah, a unity still many a time endangered during the first century by the old party spirit; and of devising a division of labour between the rulers and the conquered which made it possible for them to control the function of complicated machines of state without any technical knowledge.

Moreover, several circ.u.mstances favoured their work; both the large realms which extended north of Arabia, were in a state of political decline; the Christians inhabiting the provinces that were to be conquered first, belonged, for the larger part, to heretical sects and were treated by the orthodox Byzantines in such a way that other masters, if tolerant, might be welcome. The Arabian armies consisted of hardened Bedouins with few wants, whose longing for the treasures of the civilized world made them more ready to endure the pressure of a discipline hitherto unknown to them.

The use that the leaders made of the occasion commands our admiration; although their plan was formed in the course and under the influence of generally unforeseen events. Circ.u.mstances had changed Mohammed the Prophet into Mohammed the Conqueror; and the leaders, who continued the conqueror's work, though not driven by fanaticism or religious zeal, still prepared the conversion of millions of men to Islam.