The Future of Islam Part 5

But I must not lose myself in generalities or forget that it is for practical Englishmen that I am writing. To be precise, I see two ways in which it is probable that Islam will attempt to renew her spiritual life, and two distinct lines of thought which according to external circ.u.mstances she may be expected to follow--the first a violent and hardly a permanent one, the second the true solution of her destiny.

Among the popular beliefs of Islam--and it is one common to every sect, Shiite and Abadite, as well as Sunite--is this one, that in the latter days of the world, when the power of G.o.d's worshippers shall have grown weak and their faith corrupted, a leader shall arise who shall restore the fortunes of the true believers. He shall begin by purging the earth of injustice, fighting against oppressors wherever he shall find them, Mohammedan as well as Infidel, and he shall teach the people a perfect law which they shall have forgotten, and he shall reign over Islam in place of their Khalifeh, being called the Mohdy, or guide. To this some add that he will arise of a sudden in some distant corner of the earth, and that he will march towards Mecca, and that everywhere the blood of Moslems shall be shed like water, and that he shall enter Mecca when the streets shall run with blood. In support of this coming of the Mohdy many traditions exist which are held to be authentic by the Ulema. Thus it is related on the authority of Abdallah ibn Messaoud that he heard the Prophet say, "When there shall remain but one day of the days of the earth, G.o.d shall prolong that day, and shall send forth from my house a man bearing my name and the name of my father (Mohammed ibn Abdallah), and he shall purify the earth from injustice and fill it with that which is right." The same was heard also by Ali Ibn Abu Taleb, the Prophet's son-in-law, and by Hadhifat Ibn el Yaman, who relates that this prophecy was delivered by Mohammed one Friday at the Khotbah, or sermon, in Medina. Salman el Faris, another witness, declares that he afterwards approached the Prophet and stood before him and asked him, "From which of thy descendants, O Apostle of G.o.d, shall the Mohdy be?" And the Prophet answered, stretching his hand towards his grandson Huseyn, "From this child shall he come."

Besides this general belief, which, though not a positive dogma of their faith, is common to all Mussulmans, the Shiites, always p.r.o.ne to exaggerate and embellish, maintain that the Mohdy's duty is not limited to teaching, guiding, and purifying the law, but also that he shall revenge the blood unjustly shed of the Imams; and they cite in support of this a tradition of Ali ibn Abu Taleb, who thus addressed his son, Huseyn, the same who was afterwards martyred at Kerbela, "I swear to thee, O my son," he said, "I swear by my soul, and by my offspring, and by Kerbela, and by its temple, that the day shall come in which our beards shall be dyed with blood. And I swear that afterwards G.o.d shall raise up a man, the Mohdy, who shall stand in our place, the lord of mankind. He it is who shall avenge us, nay, he shall avenge thy blood also, O Huseyn. Therefore have patience. For the blood of one man he shall shed the blood of a thousand; and he will not spare them who have helped our enemies."

The Shiites say also that this Mohdy will be no new personage, but that he lives already in the flesh, being no other than the twelfth and last of their recognized Imams, who was born in the year 260 of the Hejira, and whose name was Mohammed ibn El Ha.s.san, Abul Ka.s.sem, El Mohdy, Lord of the Command and Lord of Time; and who, while yet a child, disappeared from the world, retaining nevertheless his authority. This Mohdy they expect _when the Turkish rule is in decay_. After accomplishing his vengeance and re-establishing justice he shall rule for an undetermined period, when Jesus the Son of Mary also shall come, and the Apostle Mohammed, an apparition which will announce the end of the world.[16]

It would seem, therefore, exceedingly probable that out of the religious ferment which we now see agitating Africa some enthusiast will arise who will announce himself as this Mohdy, and head an active movement of reform. Already, indeed, two such personages have made their appearance, one in Tripoli, of whom I heard much talk a year ago, and who is now said to be marching to join the defenders of Keruan; and a second quite recently in Soudan. It is not difficult to imagine the kind of reformation such an inspired Guide would preach. Indeed his role is marked out for him in the prophecies just quoted. He would purge the earth of injustice with the sword, and, breaking with all authority but that of the Koran he would seek to renew a kingdom of heaven on the model of Islam militant. It would be a repet.i.tion, but on a grander scale, of the Wahhabite movement of the eighteenth century, and, having a wider base of operations in the vast fanatical ma.s.ses of North Africa, might achieve far more important results.

Even without pretending to the rank of an inspired guide, it is certain that a man of zeal and character might in the present crisis easily persuade the Malekite Arabs to reform their moral practice, if necessary to asceticism, by proving to them that they would thus regain their ascendancy in arms. On this basis a reformation would be easy; but it would be a.n.a.logous to that of the Hussites and Anabaptists in Europe, rather than of the true Church reformation which succeeded these, and would hardly be universal or permanent.

I once heard a most distinguished Alem describe the qualifications of one who should preach a reform of this kind:--"The man," said he, "who would persuade us to reform must come, in the first place, of a well-recognized family. He must be either a prince, or a Sherif, or an hereditary saint. This would secure him from a first personal attack on the ground of seeming impiety. He must secondly be an Arab, gifted with the pure language of the Koran, for the Arabian Ulema would not listen to a barbarian; and he must possess commanding eloquence. A reformer must before all else be a preacher. Thirdly, he must be profoundly learned, that is to say, versed in all the subtleties of the law and in all that has been written in commentary on the Koran; and he must have a ready wit, so that in argument he may be able constantly to oppose authority with authority, quotation with quotation. Granted these three qualifications and courage and G.o.d's blessing, he may lead us where he will."

The chief obstacles, however, to a reformation of this sort would not be in the beginning, nor would they be wholly moral ones. The full programme of the Mohdy needs that he should conquer Mecca; and the land road thither of an African reformer lies blocked by Egypt and the Suez Ca.n.a.l. So that, unless he should succeed in crossing the Red Sea through Abyssinia (an invasion which, by the way, would fulfil another ancient prophecy, which states that the "Companions of the Elephant," the Abyssinians, shall one day conquer Hejaz), he could not carry out his mission. Nor, except as an ally against the Turk, would a fanatical reformer now find much sympathy in Arabia proper. The Peninsular Arabs have had their Puritan reformation already, and a strong reaction has set in amongst them in favour of liberal thought. They are in favour still of reform, but it is of another kind from that preached by Abd el Wahhab; and it is doubtful whether a new militant Islam would find many adherents amongst them.

The only strong advocate of such views at the present day among true Arabs in Arabia is the aged Sherif, Abd el Mutalleb, the Sultan's nominee, who indeed has spared no pains, since he was installed at Mecca, to fan the zeal of the North Africans. A Wahhabi in his youth, he is still a fierce Puritan; and it is possible that, should he live long enough (he is said to be ninety years old), he may be able to produce a corresponding zeal in Arabia. But at present the ma.s.s of the Arabs in Hejaz, no less than in Nejd and Yemen, are occupied with more humane ideas. Abd el Mutalleb's chief supporters in Mecca are not his own countrymen, but the Indian colony, descendants many of them of the Sepoy refugees who fled thither in 1857, and who have the reputation of being the most fanatical of all its residents. The true Arabs are in revolt against his authority.

Again, it is improbable that any enunciation of Puritan reform would find support among the northern races of Asia, which are uniformly sunk in gross sensuality and superst.i.tion; while Constantinople may be trusted to oppose all reform whatever. Wahhabism, when it overspread Southern Asia, never gained a foothold further north than Syria, and broke itself to pieces at last against the corrupt orthodoxy of Constantinople. And so too it would happen now. Abd el Hamid, in spite of his zeal for Islam, would see in the preaching of a moral reform only a new heresy; and, as we have seen, the Mohdy's mission is against all evil rule, the Sultan's and Caliph's not excepted. So that, unless Abd el Hamid places himself openly at the head of the warlike movement in Africa and so forestalls a rival, he is not likely long to give it his loyal support. Already there are symptoms of his regarding events in Tunis with suspicion, and on the first announcement of an inspired reformer he would, I believe, not hesitate to p.r.o.nounce against him. I understand the Turkish military reinforcements at Tripoli quite as much in the light of a precaution against Arab reform as against infidel France.

Puritanism, then, on a militant basis, even if preached by the Mohdy himself, could hardly be either general or lasting, and its best result would probably be, that after a transient burst of energy, which would rouse the thought of Islam and renew her spiritual life, a humaner spirit, as in Arabia would take its place, and lead to a more lasting, because a more rational, reform.

But it was not to such a Puritan reformation that I was pointing when I expressed my conviction that Islam would in the end work out her salvation, nor do I hold it necessary that she should find any such _deus ex machina_ as an inspired guide to point her out her road. Her reformation is indeed already begun, and may be gradually carried to its full results, by no violent means, and in a progressive, not a reactionary spirit. This only can be the true one, for it is a law of nations and of faiths, no less than of individuals, that they cannot really return upon their years, and that all beneficial changes for them must be to new conditions of life, not to old ones--to greater knowledge, not to less--to freedom of thought, not to its enslavement.

Nor is there anything in the true principles of Islam to make such progress an unnatural solution of her destiny.

Mohammedanism in its inst.i.tution, and for many centuries after its birth, was eminently a rationalistic creed; and it was through reason as well as faith that it first achieved its spiritual triumphs. If we examine its bases its early history, we must indeed admit this. The Koran, which we are accustomed to speak of as the written code of Mohammedan law, is in reality no legal text-book by which Mussulmans live. At best it enunciates clearly certain religious truths, the unity of G.o.d, the doctrine of rewards and punishments in a future life, and the revelation of G.o.d's claims on man. Psalms, many of them sublime, occupy the greater number of its chapters; promises of bliss to believers and destruction to unbelievers come next; then the traditional history of revelation as it was current among the Semitic race; and only in the later chapters, and then obscurely, anything which can properly be cla.s.sed as law. Yet law is the essence of Islam, and was so from its earliest foundation as a social and religious polity; and it is evident that to it, and not to the Koran's dogmatic theology, Islam owed its great and long career of triumph in the world.

Now this law was not, like the Koran, brought down full-fledged from heaven. At first it was little more than a confirmation of the common custom of Arabia, supplemented indeed and corrected by revelation, but based upon existing rules of right and wrong. When, however, Islam emerged from Arabia in the first decade of her existence, and embracing a foreign civilization found herself face to face with new conditions of life, mere custom ceased to be a sufficient guide; and, the voice of direct revelation having ceased, the faithful were thrown upon their reason to direct them how they were to act. Revelation continued, nevertheless, to be the groundwork of their reasoning, and the teaching of their great leader the justification of each new development of law as the cases requiring it arose. The Koran was cited wherever it was possible to find a citation, and where these failed tradition was called in. The companions of the Prophet were in the first instance consulted, and their recollections of his sayings and doings quoted freely; while afterwards, when these too were gone, the companions of the companions took their place, and became in their turn cited.

Thus by a subtle process of comparison and reasoning, worked out through many generations, the Mohammedan law as we see it was gradually built up, until in the third century of Islam it was embodied by order of the Caliph into a written code. The Fakh ed Din and the Fakh esh Sheriat of Abu Hanifeh, the doctor intrusted with this duty, was a first attempt to put into reasoned form the floating tradition of the faithful, and to make a digest of existing legal practice. He and his contemporaries examined into and put in order the acc.u.mulated wealth of authority on which the law rested, and, taking this and rejecting that saying of the Fathers of Islam, founded on them a school of teaching which has ever since been the basis of Mohammedan jurisprudence.

Abu Hanifeh's code, however, does not appear to have been intended, at the time it was drawn up, to be the absolute and final expression of all lawful practice for the faithful. It included a vast amount of tradition of which either no use was made by its compiler, or which stood in such contradiction with itself that a contrary interpretation of it to his could with equal logic be deduced. Abu Hanifeh quoted and argued rather than determined; and as long as the Arabian mind continued to be supreme in Islam the process of reasoning development continued.

The Hanefite code was supplemented by later doctors, Malek, Esh Shafy, and Ibn Hanbal, and even by others whose teaching has been since repudiated, all in the avowed intention of suiting the law still further to the progressive needs of the faithful, and all following the received process of selecting and interpreting and reasoning from tradition. These codes were, for the then existing conditions of life, admirable; and even now, wherever those conditions have remained unaltered, are amply sufficient for the purposes of good government and the regulation of social conduct. They would, nevertheless, have been but halting places in the march of Mohammedan legislation, had the destinies of Islam remained permanently in the hands of its first founders.

Unfortunately, about the eleventh century of our era, a new and unfortunate influence began to make itself felt in the counsels of the Arabian Ulema, which little by little gaining ground, succeeded at last in stopping the flow of intellectual progress at the fountain head. The Tartar, who then first makes his appearance in Mohammedan politics, though strong in arms, was slow to understand. He had no habit of thought, and, having embraced Islam, he saw no necessity for further argument concerning it. The language of the Koran and the traditions was a science sealed to him; and the reasoning intelligence of the Arab whose dominion he had invaded was a constant reproof to him. He dared not venture his barbarian dignity in the war of wit which occupied the schools; and so fortified his unintelligence behind a rampart of dogmatic faith. Impotent to develop law himself, he clutched blindly at that which he found written to his hand. The code of Abu Hanifeh seemed to him a perfect thing, and he made it the resting place of his legal reason. Then, as he gradually possessed himself of all authority, he declared further learning profane, and virtually closed the schools. His military triumphs in the sixteenth century sealed the intellectual fate of Islam, and from that day to our own no light of discussion has illumined Moslem thought, in any of the old centres of her intelligence.

Reason, the eye of her faith in early times, has been fast shut--by many, it has been argued, blind.

It is only in the present generation, and in the face of those dangers and misfortunes to which Islam finds herself exposed, that recourse has once more been had to intellectual methods; and it is precisely in those regions of Islam where Arab thought is strongest that we now find the surest symptoms of returning mental life. Modern Arabia, wherever she has come in contact with what we call the civilization of the world, has shown herself ready and able to look it in the face; and she is now setting herself seriously to solve the problem of her own position and that of her creed towards it.

In North Africa, indeed, civilization for the moment presents itself to her only as an enemy; but where her intelligence has remained unclouded by the sense of political wrong she has proved herself capable, not only of understanding the better thought of Europe, but of sympathizing with it as akin to her own. Thus at Cairo, now that the influence of Constantinople has been partially removed, we find the Arabian Ulema rapidly a.s.similating to their own the higher principles of our European thought, and engrafting on their lax moral practice some of the better features of our morality. It is at no sacrifice of imagined dignity, as with the Turks, that Egypt is seeking a legal means for universal religious toleration, or from any pressure but that of their own intelligence that her chief people are beginning to reform their domestic life, and even, in some instances, to adopt the practice of monogamy. The truth would seem to be that the same process is being effected to-day in their minds as was formerly the case with their ancestors. In the eighth century, the Arabs, brought into contact with Greek philosophy, a.s.similated it by a natural process of their reasoning into the body of their own beliefs; and now in the nineteenth they are a.s.similating a foreign morality into their own system of morals.

Not only in Egypt,--in Oman and Peninsular Arabia, generally there is a real feeling of cordiality between the Mohammedan and his Christian "guest." The abolition of slavery in Zanzibar was a concession to European opinion at least as much as to European force; and a moral sympathy is acknowledged between a Moslem and a Christian State which has its base in a common sense of right and justice. I have good reason to believe that, were the people of Yemen to effect their deliverance from Constantinople, the same humane feeling would be found to exist among them; and I know that it exists in Nejd; while even in Hejaz, which is commonly looked upon as the hot-bed of religious intolerance, I found all that was truly Arabian in the population as truly liberal.

Under the late Grand Sherif, Abd el Hamid's reputed victim, these ideas were rapidly gaining ground; and had it not been for his untimely end, I have high authority for stating that the Mohammedan Holy Land would now be open to European intercourse, and slavery, or at least the slave trade, be there abolished.

There is, therefore, some reason to hope that, were Arabian thought once more supreme in Islam, its tendency would be in the direction of a wider and more liberal reading of the law, and that in time a true reconciliation might be effected with Christendom, perhaps with Christianity. The great difficulty which, as things now stand, besets reform is this: the Sheriat, or written code of law, still stands in orthodox Islam as an _unimpeachable_ authority. The law in itself is an excellent law, and as such commends itself to the loyalty of honest and G.o.d-fearing men; but on certain points it is irreconcilable with the modern needs of Islam, and it cannot legally be altered.

When it was framed it was not suspected that Mohammedans would ever be subjects of a Christian power, or that the Mohammedan State would ever need to accommodate itself to Christian demands in its internal policy.

It contemplated, too, mainly a state of war, and it accepted slavery and concubinage as war's natural concomitants. It did not understand that some day Islam would have to live at peace with its neighbours, if it would live at all, or that the general moral sense of the world would be brought to bear upon it with such force that the higher instincts of Moslems themselves should feel the necessity of restricting its old and rather barbarous licence as to marriage and divorce. Yet these things have come to pa.s.s, or are rapidly coming; and the best thinkers in Islam now admit that changes in the direction indicated must sooner or later be made. Only they insist that these should be legally effected, not forced on them by an overriding of the law.

What they want is _a legal authority to change_. Now, no such authority exists, either in the Ottoman Sultan, or in the Sherif, or in any Sheykh el Islam, Mufti, or body of Ulema in the world. None of these dare seriously meddle with the law. There is not even one universally recognized tribunal to which all Moslems may refer their doubts about the law's proper reading, and have their disputes resolved. A fetwa, or opinion, is all that can be given, and it applies only to the land where it is issued. The fetwa of this great Alem in one Moslem state may be reversed by the fetwa of another in that. The Sheykh el Islam at Constantinople may be appealed against to the Mufti at Mecca or Cairo, or these again, it may be, to Bokhara. None absolutely overrides the rest. Thus while I was at Jeddah there came a deputation of Mussulmans from Bengal, being on their way to Mecca to ask a fetwa on the disputed point whether believers were permitted or not to use European dress. A previous fetwa had been asked at Constantinople, but the deputation was dissatisfied, alleging that the Sheykh el Islam there could not be trusted and that they preferred the Meccan Mufti. Thus legal-minded Moslems who would see their way to improvement are constantly faced with a legal bar, the want of authority. _As things stand_ there is no remedy for this.

An opinion, however, seems now to be gaining ground among the learned, that a legal issue may one day be found in the restoration to the Caliphate of what is called by them the _Saut el Ha_, the living voice of Islam, which in its first period, and indeed till the destruction of the Abbaside dynasty by Holagu, belonged to the successors of the Prophet. It is certain that in the first four reigns of Abu Bekr, Omar, Othman, and Ali, such a living power to legislate was accorded to the Caliphs; and that on their own authority they modified at will the yet unwritten law.

Thus it is related of Abu Bekr that in one instance he set aside a law called the Mota, though based directly on some sentences of the Koran, declaring it not conformable to the better tradition; and that Ali again reversed this ruling, which has, nevertheless, been adhered to by the Sunites. Later, too, the Ommiad and Abbaside Caliphs exercised this right of legislation by deputy; it was in their names that the Mujtaheddin, Abu Hanifeh and the rest, framed their first codes of law; and to the last the words of their mouth were listened to, as in some measure inspired utterances, by the faithful.

It was only when the sacred office pa.s.sed from the sacred and legitimate House that this feeling of reverence ceased, and the living voice of the Caliph was disregarded in Islam. The Ottoman conqueror, when he took upon him the t.i.tle of Emir el Mumenin, did not venture to claim for himself the power to teach, nor would Moslems have listened to any such pretension. The House of Othman was from the first sunk in degrading vices, and was too untaught to teach. The account given us by Bertrandon de la Brocquiere in the fifteenth century of the court and habits of the "Grand Turk" is evidently no exaggeration; and it is easy to conceive by the light of it how impossible it must have been for the Arabian Ulema to connect the notion of inspiration in any way with such personages as the Sultans then were. As a fact the Saut el Ha was not claimed by Selim, nor has it ever been accorded to his descendants.

The want of some voice of authority is, nevertheless, becoming daily more generally felt by orthodox Mohammedans; and it seems to me certain that, in some shape or other, it will before long be restored to general recognition. Abd el Hamid, whose spiritual ambition I have described, has, quite recently, caused a legal statement of his Caliphal rights to be formally drawn up, and it includes this right of the _Saut el Ha_;[17] and, though it is improbable that the faithful will, at the eleventh hour of its rule, invest the House of Othman with so sublime a prerogative, it is extremely likely that, when a more legitimate holder of the t.i.tle shall have been found, he will be conceded all the rights of the sacred office. Then the legal difficulty will at last be overcome. The dead hand of the law will be no longer dead, but will be inspired by a living voice and will.

Since we are imagining many things we may imagine this one too,--that our Caliph of the Koreysh, chosen by the faithful and installed at Mecca, should invite the Ulema of every land to a council at the time of the pilgrimage, and there, appointing a new Mujtahed, should propound to them certain modifications of the Sheriat, as things necessary to the welfare of Islam, and deducible from tradition. No point of doctrine need in any way be touched, only the law. The Fakh ed din would need hardly a modification. The Fakh esh Sheriat would, in certain chapters, have to be rewritten. Who can doubt that an Omar or an Haroun, were they living at the present day, would authorize such changes, or that the faithful of their day would have accepted them as necessary and legitimate developments of Koranic teaching?

It would be an interesting study to pursue this inquiry further, and to see how it might be worked out in detail. The crying necessity of civilized Islam is a legal _modus vivendi_ with Europe, and such an adaptation of its law on points where Europe insists as shall suffice to stave off conflict. It is evident that legal equality must now be accorded to Christians living under Mohammedan law, and that conformity, on the other hand, in certain points to foreign law must be allowed to Moslems living under Christian rule.

Again, slavery must, by some means, be made illegal; and a stricter interpretation of the Koranic permission be put on marriage, concubinage, and divorce. That all these changes might be logically effected by a process of reasoning from the traditions, and expanding or minimising the interpretation of the Koran, no one need doubt who remembers what fetwas have already been given on these very points by some of the Azhar Ulema. At present these decisions are unsatisfactory to the faithful at large, because those issuing them have no recognized authority to strain the law, but with authority the same decisions would meet with general approval. At least such is the impression of modern Mohammedan opinion made on me by my conversation with Mohammedans. It would be interesting to work out these points; and I hope some day to have an opportunity of doing so, but for the present I have neither the time nor the knowledge sufficient for the purpose. I must be content with having suggested the method; I cannot work out the details of a reformation.

It may, however, give an idea of the kind of material in tradition which reformers are looking for, if I quote a doc.u.ment which was being circulated last spring among the Ulema of the Azhar. It purports to be the text of the Prophet's first treaty with the Christians of Arabia, though I do not vouch for its authenticity, and runs as follows:--

"Covenant of G.o.d's Apostle, Mohammed, with the Christian people, their monks and their bishops."--(A.D. 625.)

"Mohammed, the Apostle of G.o.d, sent with a message of peace to all mankind, dictateth the words of this covenant that the cause of G.o.d may be a written doc.u.ment between him and the people of Christ.

"He who keepeth this covenant, let him be called a true Moslem worthy of the religion of G.o.d, and he who departeth from it let him be called an enemy, be he king or subject, great or small.

"To this have I pledged myself: I will fence in their lands with my hors.e.m.e.n, and my footmen, and my allies, throughout the world; and I will care for their safety and the safety of their temples, their churches, their oratories, and their convents, and the places of their pilgrimage, wheresoever I shall find them, whether by the land or by the sea, in the east or in the west, on the mountain or in the plain, in the desert or in the city. There will I stand behind them that no harm shall reach them, and my followers shall keep them from evil. This is my covenant with them. I will exempt them in all matters wherein the Moslems are exempt. I command also that no one of their bishops be expelled from his see, nor shall any Christian be forced from his religion, nor shall a monk be forced from his convent, nor a hermit from his cell. It is my will that none of their holy buildings be destroyed or taken from them for Mosques by my people or for their dwellings. Whosoever despiseth this command is guilty before G.o.d and despiseth the pledge of His Apostle. All monks and bishops, and the dependents of these, I declare exempt from tribute, except such as they shall of their free will bring. Nor shall Christian merchants, doing business by sea, or diving for pearls, or working in the mines for gold, or silver, or jewels, even the wealthy and the mighty, pay more than twelve drachmas of yearly tribute. This, for such Christian merchants as shall live in Arabia; but for travellers and strangers in the land, they are exempt. Likewise such as have lands and gardens bearing fruit, and fields for corn, shall pay no more than it is in their power to bring.

"And the people to whom I have pledged my word shall not be required to fight for themselves. But the Moslems shall protect them, asking them neither for arms, nor rations, nor horses for the war, except such as each shall choose to bring. But if any shall bring money, or help the Moslems in war, it must be acknowledged them with thanks.

"And this is my command. No Moslem shall molest a follower of Christ; and if he dispute with him it shall be with good manners.

And if a Christian do any man wrong it shall be a duty with Moslems to stay the avenger and make peace between them, paying the ransom if the wrong demand a ransom. And it is my wish that Christians should not be disregarded by my followers, for I have pledged my word unto them before G.o.d that they shall be as Moslems in my sight, sharing and partaking of all things with the rest. And in their marriages they shall not be troubled No Moslem shall say to a Christian, 'Give me thy daughter,' nor take her unless he be willing. And if a Christian woman become a slave to a Moslem he shall be bound by this covenant to leave her her religion, nor shall he compel her to disobey her religious chiefs. This is the command of G.o.d, and whosoever shall deny it and disobey G.o.d shall hold him for a liar.

"Moreover it shall be a duty with my followers to repair the churches of the Christians, rendering them the service not as a debt, but for G.o.d's sake and for the keeping of the covenant, made to them by the Apostle of G.o.d.

"No Christian shall be compelled to go forth in time of war as an envoy or spy against his people.

"These are the privileges which Mohammed, the Apostle of G.o.d, hath granted to the followers of Christ. In return he requested them to deal with him and with the Moslems as follows:--

"1. None of them in time of war shall give a.s.sistance, either openly or in secret, to the enemies of Islam.

"2. They shall not give asylum in their churches or in their houses to the enemies of Islam.

"3. They shall not help them with arms, or rations, or horses, or men.

"4. They shall not keep counsel with the declared enemies of Islam, nor receive them in their houses, nor deposit money with them.

"5. They shall grant to all Moslems seeking their hospitality entertainment for at least three days. But no Moslem shall require of them to make special cooking for him, and he shall eat of the common food with his host.

"6. If a Moslem seek asylum with a Christian, the Christian shall not refuse to shelter him, and shall not deliver him to his enemies.