In this righteous sense Mohammed was curious. As one of her own selection, Nature had specially endowed him with curiosity. He was one of her human, sensitive plants. As an observer, all his senses were developed and on the alert. He not only saw, but felt every vibration that thrilled, as it were, the very soul of the first great mother. In every flitting cloud, as in every fugitive thought, he was conscious of an unseen Power. A look-out man rather than a prophet, it was thus he groped or rather felt his way until he felt God. “I feel that there is a God,” said La Bruyère, “and I do not feel that there is none: that is enough for me; the reasoning of the world is useless to me: I conclude that God exists.” It was in much the same vein of self-argument that Mohammed communed to himself. Having felt God, God became for him a necessity: more so even, an essential—an absolutism which banished all else from his mind. The thought that there was no God did not occur to him. But the thought that other gods could exist in the same universe with the one omnipotence was to him as monstrous as it was unthinkable. Besides Him there was no room for any other. The very thought in his estimation perished from inanition and sheer inability of conception! The trinity of Christianity was to him as impossible and unacceptable as the antediluvian or later polytheism of his own countrymen.
All active minds are sceptical. Carlyle himself—although he appears to have been unconscious of the fact—was himself a sceptic. But it was peculiarly characteristic of the antagonistic dualism of his nature on the one hand to hurl innuendoes, anathemas (and every kind of mental brickbat that he could lay hold of) at what he called scepticism or unbelief. On the other hand, to hold up belief as absolutely essential to human existence. But like all theoretical crotchets, he carried his philosophical speculations too far. In other words, he sometimes overreached himself. According to his particular dogma, in his opinion, the life of man cannot subsist on doubt or denial, it subsists only on belief. But this is altogether beside the mark. Scepticism does not necessarily imply doubt or denial. Belief itself cannot exist without it. It is out of the ashes of scepticism that the immortal Phœnix of belief arises. It is out of the doubt and denial of accepted doctrines that all creeds (including Christianity and Islam) have grown into being. The doubt engendered by scepticism is after all only an investigation or leading into, an analysis of the nature of dogmas, doctrines or creeds. It is an investigation that may or may not have a result. It is but a search for or groping after the truth, as the consequence of moral, intellectual or spiritual dissatisfaction. It is also the desire to know, to find out the pros and cons of all the sides to a question. The spirit or element of doubt is the necessary, the essential precursor of improvement and progress. Hence the immense importance and significance of Scepticism. It is the very sum and substance of all human knowledge. As the acorn is to the oak, scepticism is to knowledge—the seed from which has sprung up all we know, and ever shall know. The ever fluent channel through which all the great intellectual giants and reformers of the world have poured out the glowing flash-lights of their intellect into the normal darkness of human minds. It is the moral effluvium out of which our modern civilization has constructed itself. Without it, the dense gloom and black obscurity of ignorance would have reigned supreme. Confused, chaotic, and enigmatic as the world now is—even in the full glare of its sunlight—without it (if it were possible to imagine such a state) the world would have been an enigma, a chaos and confusion worse confounded. For scepticism is, as it were, the sun in all its glory, as compared to the black oblivion of eternal night. If neither Luther nor Mohammed had been sceptics, there would have been no Reformation and no Islam. They did not take everything for granted. They were not satisfied with things as they were. They looked into the heart of them and found much room for improvement. They examined what they could, rejected that which was spiritually objectionable to them, but made use of what was most appropriate to their respective situations. It was only those features that best suited the exigencies of the case that they were prompt to lay hold of.
Yet Mohammed was not of vigorous intellectuality, nor in any sense an original thinker. The constant repetition of formulas and reiteration of the same ideas that occur throughout the Koran show this. It is extremely probable that his mentality was at times overshadowed either by neurasthenic tendencies, or a predisposition to melancholia, and this was more than likely heightened by a life of excessive mental concentration combined with asceticism.
But sincere as he was, Mohammed would not have been a true Arabian, had he not been diplomatic. Thus the commencement of the fourteenth surah is a clever but obvious device on his part; a meeting of his enemies with their own weapons, a flinging back to them of their own words and objections to the truth in their own teeth. It is clear too that here, for the time being, he has resolved on a change of tactics and of front. To prove to them that he is as of old the man to be trusted, he endeavours to disarm their incredulity by his own outspokenness and candour. As the sequel showed, he clearly demonstrates his own perspicacity and knowledge of human nature. He saw that by arguing with his countrymen, by always opposing their doubts with sophistry and argument, would be of little avail—useless, in fact. Such a course would but have encouraged and stimulated their opposition, on the ground that their beliefs, as worth refuting, were also based on truth or at least on strong evidence. Besides, Mohammed was painfully conscious of his own disability and helplessness to convince them by the performance of anything purporting to be miraculous. That on occasions he displayed artfulness and guile—duplicity, in fact—is not to be denied. The invention, e.g., of his night journey from Mecca to heaven viâ Jerusalem, was one of them. When he gave out that Gabriel had revealed to him the conspiracy that had been formed against him, which through ordinary means he had discovered, was another of these pious frauds. But after all, what are these trifles compared with those that in their myriads have been perpetrated by the great Church of Christendom? What are they as compared to a long life of strenuous sincerity, great nobility and earnest effort in the cause of humanity? It is impossible to lose sight of the fact that in working for God, he was all the time raising his countrymen from a lower to a higher level. Besides, the necessity of dissimulation, which is one of the heaviest taxes on a king, and the prerogative of a priest, is one of those idiosyncrasies that human flesh being heir to, even a prophet cannot at times escape from. We are reminded of the phrase: “Qui scit dissimulare, scit regnare”—He is a ruler who can conceal his thoughts—attributed to the Emperor Sigismund by that cultured and ambitious but false and subtle Pontiff Pius II, known as Æneas Sylvius (Pius Æneas): also the identical answer that Louis XI is said to have made to those who urged him to give his son Charles a better education, in order that the boy might in his day become a good king.
It was not only that Mohammed’s enemies were sceptical of his powers and his mission, but they mistrusted his intentions. This, indeed, to a sincere and earnest man like himself, was a bitter pill; a pill he found it hard to swallow. For he was conscious of his own sincerity, and as time went on, an increasing following gave him greater confidence in the reality of his mission. Indeed in proportion as his self-confidence developed, his conviction in the power and unity of God became an ever increasing quantity. This increasing consciousness of God’s power and his own sincerity had the gradual effect of making him bolder and more aggressive, so that this outspokenness was a direct outcome of it, until at last Mohammed felt that it was his duty not merely to announce “Islam”—“the true Faith,” but to enforce its acceptance on the people. This, of course, as we know, was after his flight to Medina. True his own people, the Koreish, had driven him out with scorn and violence, had cast contumely and dishonour on him, by rejecting the word, while strangers had hearkened unto him and accepted it. It is equally true that the sustained vindictiveness shown by the Koreish was sufficient in itself to excite the spirit of retaliation, even in a man of Mohammed’s patient and tenacious character. But suggestive as this may be, it is quite certain that he acted on conviction in assuming the offensive. It is obvious, too, that in doing so, he felt that he was acting under divine compulsion. In any case, we must allow that “a man is really of weight in the balance of Fate, only when he has the right on his own account to cause men to be slain.” In Mohammed’s case, however, if conviction counts for anything, his right was a divine right. According to Dumas: “In human nature there are antipathies to be overcome—sympathies which may be forced.” (The italics are mine.) “Iron is not the loadstone; but by rubbing it with a loadstone we make it, in its turn, attract iron.” This may be, but it is not in reality so. It is but a mere figure of speech that the great novelist makes use of, and which he puts into the mouth of René, the poisoner, in support of some theory or argument. It is, of course, possible that antipathies may be overcome by sympathy. This, however, depends entirely on the power of the one and the weakness of the other. But sympathy cannot be forced. To endeavour to force sympathy is to attempt the unnatural. The most that can be expected from such a cause is dissimulation. This certainly was Mohammed’s experience. Although ultimately he and his successors forced the word of God on these his inveterate enemies, he never succeeded in forcing his sympathies upon them. Death and Time alone accomplished what his own personality failed to do. Through the victory he gained by them, he now lives enshrined in the sanctified halo of a sympathy that, emanating from every Moslem heart, forms with his own the great and throbbing soul of Islam.
But Mohammed was not only spiritual. He, like every human being, had a material side to his character. Not only was he a preacher and a prophet; not only was he a lawgiver—a law and a light unto his people to this very day; but as one who himself rigidly practised self-denial and economy and condemned extravagance, who possessed the organizing ability to administer the estate of others, and who could command preferably in peace, but if necessary in war, he was a statesman and an economist. Unquestionably too he looked ahead—he made provision for the future. His whole apostolic life was one long and arduous preparation for coming events. As an instance of this, the ordering of the yearly pilgrimage to Mecca was as much a political as a religious ordinance. By this measure of policy—this master stroke of psychologic insight into human eventualities, Mohammed showed his natural genius. For without a doubt he aimed at preserving to Arabia the point and focus of a religious centre, that would make for national consolidation and unity, and serve as the sacred réduit and rallying ground for the world of Islam. So too he showed his capacity for system and organization in legalizing the fifth part of all booty and property confiscated to be paid into the public treasury. In the same way he insisted on the giving of Zakat or alms for charitable purposes, apart from those contributions he received from his followers for maintenance. In making these ordinances appear as divine injunctions, Mohammed showed no more insincerity or inconsistence than he did in claiming the whole Koran as a series of revelations. The political and economic factors were as much a radical part of his entire design, as the religious. The one could not exist without the other. Statesman as he was, he recognized that religious unity could only be firmly established through political co-operation, and that to secure national stability the sinews of war were essential.
It is all through quite obvious that he had the trading instinct of his people. In any case the training he received at the hands and in the employ of his uncle Abu Talib, as well as the subsequent management of Khadija’s business, had imbued him very powerfully with business principles and practical ideas. Abu Talib, like his father and grandfather before him, carried on a considerable trade with Syria and Yemen. He carried to Damascus, to Basra and other places in Syria, the dates of Hijaz and Hijr, and the perfumes of Yemen, bringing back with him in return the products of the Byzantine Empire. Mohammed, as is known, accompanied him, and without doubt laid the foundation of an economic experience, that subsequently proved valuable.
Commerce has always been the greatest of civilizing factors. According to Buckle: “Among the accessories of modern civilization there is none of greater moment than Trade.” So too Hallam says: “Under a second class of events that contributed to destroy the spirit of the Feudal system, we may reckon the abolition of villenage, the increase of commerce, and consequent opulence of merchants and artisans, and especially the institution of free cities and boroughs. This is one of the most important and interesting steps in the progress of society during the Middle Ages, and deserves particular consideration.” But this is all the more important as showing that trade was in reality a more powerful factor for civilization than Christianity, which after several centuries of hold on the people of Europe, had done little more than inflame them with a zeal and a zest for fighting. It is significant also that while Rome rose to her greatest eminence under the Ancestral worship of her founders, when she became Christian, Christianity did not prevent her from declining and falling into pieces. But it is equally significant that while the opulence conferred by commerce on Rome, eventually brought reaction and ruin upon her people, the effect it had upon the barbarians who overthrew the Eternal City, was sufficiently stimulating to encourage them to invade a degenerate empire. For the desire of wealth and plunder was but the first awakening of the spirit of commerce. To be sure the crusades gave a great stimulus to trade. But there was more of the militant spirit than Christianity about them. Besides, although commercial prosperity often accompanies war, reaction is certain to supervene. Obviously the essential importance of trade was a truth that the Merchant-Prophet soon recognized. Intuitively, and with the keenness of perception that marked him, he naturally utilized every lesson that it taught him and every advantage that it gave him. Nor has he been the only theologian who saw its utility in a religious light. The Jesuits long afterwards recognized the agency of commerce in promoting and diffusing religious belief, and became great merchants as well as great missionaries. So too it was through commerce, as Draper points out, “that the Papacy first learned to turn to art. The ensuing development of Europe” (in the Renaissance) “was really based on the commerce of upper Italy, and not on the Church. The statesmen of Florence were the inventors of the balance of power.”
Quoting from Syed Ameer Ali’s Spirit of Islam, Fihr, surnamed Koreish, a descendant of Maad—who flourished in the third century—was the ancestor of the tribe that gave to Arabia her prophet and legislator. This fact, trifling as it may appear, is, however, remarkable, if not significant. For this word “Koreish” is derived from “Karash,” to trade; and it appears that Fihr and his descendants were always devoted to commerce. From this it is safe to assume that trading was an inherent instinct in Mohammed.
This apart, to him personally Islam was a something more than a mere creed or belief. It was God’s own religion sealed and delivered to him by God. Not to deliver it to his people as commanded, not to carry it through—by persuasion first of all, by fire and sword if man’s obstinacy and rejection of it made it necessary—would mean that he had failed in his duty to the Most High. The sense and spirit of duty was stronger in Mohammed than in Nelson. In him it was not simply an active and vital principle. It was an impelling force. So inseparable from God, that to him it appeared as God Himself. But with him God always came first. His duty to his country was subordinate to his duty to his Maker. His duty to Him, therefore, was his duty to his country. So in surah xi. he says: “O my people, do ye work according to your condition; I will surely work according to my duty,” i.e. according to God. In numerous passages he points out that God was absolutely averse to profusion and extravagance, equally so to meanness. True liberality in his opinion consisted in the happy mean between the two extremes. “And waste not thy substance profusely; for the profuse are brethren of the devils: and the devil was ungrateful unto his Lord” (surah xvii.). Again in the sixth, “But be not profuse, for God loveth not those who are too profuse”; and in the following the economic instinct shows itself most significantly: “O true believers, consume not your wealth among yourselves in vanity; unless there be merchandizing among you by mutual consent.” Once more Mohammed demonstrates his great profundity and insight into the character, the customs and traditions of his countrymen. All Oriental and African nations from time immemorial have been notably extravagant, especially in regard to marriage ceremonials and funeral rites. Even to this day among the Hindus and most African tribes, it is a code of honour, a sacred injunction of their religion, to spend profusely on marriage and burial feasts. Indeed this is frequently done to the impoverishment, and, in the latter case, even to the ruination of whole families or households. The Arabs, it appears, were no exception to this. At the same time they were a curious blend of meanness and extravagance. To Mohammed, rigid economist as he was, and inspired to the core by the duty that had been intrusted to him, this prodigality was a great sin. Not only did his countrymen squander away their substance in folly and luxury, but they were particularly guilty of extravagance in killing camels, and distributing them by lot merely out of vanity and ostentation. Worse even than this, they were given to the destruction of their female children. Against this evil Mohammed sternly set his face. This in itself shows his great moral superiority over his countrymen. It shows also the possession of a higher and more refined yet practical intelligence, that was able to grasp the economic possibilities which were bound to ensue from the preservation of female children. Essentially an Arab patriarch at heart (which he in some measure proved by his marriages), Mohammed, however, was still more essentially a Humanist. With the moral greatness of a good man, and the mental perception of genius, he felt and recognized that it was against all the laws of God to destroy the fecundity of and the productive in nature. Thus it was that he placed the divine tabu on the abuse and destruction of all that was beneficial to humanity, but especially on men, animals and the produce of the earth.
Taken as a whole, the Koran is certainly not a work of literary art. Mohammed, in a literary sense, was neither a poet nor a writer. He was, as he says of himself, only an illiterate apostle. This, from an artistic point of view, is of course regrettable. In his mother tongue he had a rich and splendid medium. A language of high philosophical and poetical character, that “follows the mind,” as Burton says, and gives birth to its offspring: that is free from the “luggage of particles” which clogs our modern tongues—leaves a mysterious vagueness between the relation of word to word, which materially assists the sentiment, not the sense of the poet. A language too that luxuriates in “rich and varied synonyms, illustrating the finest shades of meaning,” that are artfully used—“now scattered to startle us by distinctness, now to form as it were a star about which dimly seen satellites revolve.” Finally which revels in a wealth of rhyme that leaves the poet almost unfettered to choose the desired or exact expression. Undoubtedly in a literary sense, here at hand, was a mighty and magnificent weapon. A quiverful of musical arrows, quivering as they waited for the poetic muse—the fine frenzy, the seething imagination, the running ready fire—to launch them forth into the humming haunts and hearts of men. But in no sense was this Merchant-Prophet a knight-errant. Kindly and tender as he was towards women and children, he was not addicted (as his countrymen were) to chivalry in any form. The race of heroines of Al Islam had no attraction for him. The “Hawa (or ‘Ishk’) uzri,” “pardonable love,” of the Bedawin, a certain species of platonic affection, did not exist for him. He had no room for such trivialities in his life. It was too serious and pre-occupied. Too much occupied with the affairs of his Master, and worldly business matters that had to be attended to. So that he had no time to waste on such pleasantries. Trifles that were as light as air in contrast to the stern and deadly realities of existence. Yet without doubt he must have attended the annual fairs that were held at various places, at “Zul Mejaz,” at Majna, and at Okadh. The latter, Syed Ameer Ali tells us, was a place famous in Arab tradition. It was the Olympia of Yemen. The fair held here in the sacred month of “Zu’lkada,” was a great national gathering. A sort of “God’s truce” was then proclaimed. War and the shedding of human blood was forbidden. To it came merchants with their wares from all parts of Arabia and other distant lands; also the poets and heroes of the desert. These (many of whom were disguised from the avengers of blood feuds in masks or veils) recited their poems, displayed their literary talents, and sang of their glory and their prowess. But Mohammed’s aims and inclinations did not lie in this direction. He was too much of a working philosopher to be a mere poetic dreamer or play actor. His genius lay in his profound earnestness, his great moral strength, his capacity for work, his political foresight and acumen, his iron will and his inexhaustible patience. It is certain that he believed (in the philosophic principle) that “everything comes to him who waits.” For he himself says: “Wait therefore the event, for I also will wait it with you.” Obviously he was imbued with the same tenacity, and many of the imperturbable characteristics of the camel of his own Arabian deserts. Unquestionably he knew how “to wait,” recognized that the essence of all human wisdom lies in this single feature, and that the greatest, the strongest and the most successful is he who waits and watches. It was thus that he waited with the unvarying purpose and pertinacity of a man who knew and appreciated his own value at its proper worth. For he felt in every nerve and fibre of his consciousness, that as God makes no man or no thing in vain, the future must have some (great) thing, some great prize, in reserve for him. We know what that prize was. We know also that it only came to him after a life of unwearied toil, and assiduous devotion to his great and noble purpose, and then only in reality through the moral and spiritual victory which death gave him.
Yet, in spite of its artistic defects, Mohammed’s work turned out, as we know, into a success that even he himself could never have anticipated. But in a spiritual sense, judging merely by results, the Koran has lost nothing because of its lack of literary art and beauty. Had it gushed all over with the eastern music of the Songs of Solomon, had it arrested the attention by the same aphoristic wisdom of the Proverbs, thrilled its readers by the recital of a tragedy so intensely powerful, so realistic and majestic as the drama of Job, and appealed to them through the joys, the sorrows and the grand poetry of the Psalms! Had it, in fact, sparkled all over with those beauties of language and metaphor that distinguish the Bible, the result that it might have attained could scarcely have been greater than that which it has accomplished without these trappings. It is, in fact, probable that it might have lost. It is just possible that what it would have gained as an ornate work, it would have lost in sincerity. The Koran, in fact, was essentially the offspring of Mohammed’s own unique personality. This, as I have tried to show, was the peculiar outcome of his dual environment—the frowning, rugged and arid aspect of stony mountains and sandy wastes, plus the commercial and political instincts that were inherent as well as developed on his trade journeys and at the various towns and marts which he visited. Nevertheless there was in this Semitic Puritan, as there is in almost every Arab, a certain rugged vein of poetry—the wild song of freedom—that bursts out here and there. But only now and then like the thunderstorm that is so great a rarity in the desert. For the gravity and over-concentration of his thoughts on the one definite object, oppressed him so weightily, that it left no time for others. Just as fast as rain is swallowed up by the parched and thirsty sand after a long spell of drought, so his soul, thirsting as it did after God, gulped and kept down the poetry and sentiment at bottom of him. All the same, if a book is to be gauged by its net results—by the effect it has produced on all that is deepest and best in human nature—then the Koran must necessarily take high rank as one of the world’s greatest works. In much the same way, only in another and more material direction, the Wealth of Nations has also left its impress on the shaping of human destinies.
Mohammed’s sincerity and fixity of purpose is a fact we cannot get away from. It is this which has chained his followers as with the sure cord of God to the Faith. Islam, in a word, is a creed of practice not theory. By practice it was formed. On practice it has lived. It was because Mohammed practised what he preached, that the small seed of his original idea blossomed at last into the mighty “Igdrasil” of the East—the great banyan tree of existence. Verily this sun-burnt son of Arabia Petræa was a tangible reality and no desert simulacrum. A reality that lives in the soul of Islam. A reality that will endure until the end of all things human. It is not manners that maketh the man. It is man that makes the manners. It is the nature that is around him, the nature that is in him, and that comes out of him as mental and moral energies, that makes the man. Town bred as he was, it was the desert in all its naked and silent grandeur that made Mohammed, that inspired him with all the might and majesty of God, and turned him into a prophet. Yet it was his career as a trader and the inherent tribal instinct that developed the political element in him. As Longfellow says: “Glorious indeed is the world of God around us; but more glorious is the world of God within us. There lies the land of song, there lies the poet’s native land.” But in Mohammed’s case, as in the case of all great workers and thinkers, the world that is around us, is the world of our inner consciousness. The two are synonymous if not one. Only with him the native earth was religion, and he was the Prophet, not the Poet of it. “It is Nature’s highest reward to a true, simple, great soul, that he gets thus to be a part of herself.” It was thus with Mohammed. Thought, though changeable, is eternal. It never dies. So the one idea that possessed Mohammed now possesses (differing only in merely superficial degrees) some two hundred and fifty millions.
Carlyle is mistaken, certainly much too premature, when he says: “Even in Arabia, as I compute, Mahommet will have exhausted himself and become obsolete, while this Shakespeare, this Dante may still be young; while this Shakespeare may still pretend to be a priest of mankind, of Arabia as of other places, for unlimited periods to come.” Religion is entirely an universal matter, Thought a question of environment. Roughly speaking, the world of Thought is divided into two camps of east and west. To the former belongs Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam; to the latter Christianity and the growing cult of Rationalism. It is impossible to predict or in any way to foreshadow any fusion of these hostile elements. The day when humanism—i.e. the religion of humanity, as the natural product of her highest intellectual effort—shall have fused and humanized all the nations of the Earth into one great civilized family, is too far distant and beyond the present scope of human speculation.
If men are to be regarded especially as to the weight and power with which they operate on the minds of their fellow-men, then this camel-driving trader must without question be estimated as a great man—a man a long way above his fellows. Assuredly too it is chiefly through the Koran that his great and God-like thoughts, crystallized into greater motives and actions, have filtered down through the events and developments of thirteen centuries, as a purifying, fertilizing, and elevating factor.
Looking at him and his work from every aspect, Mohammed was not merely a heroic prophet. He was much more. A king and a leader of men. A ruler and a judge over them. If we are to judge of him, to take him for what he is worth, by his work—the rich ripe fruit of his rare and strenuous effort—the Koran on the one hand, and, on the other, the mighty spiritual force he has left behind him in the Church of Islam, we must pronounce him to have been a great and remarkable man. A man who, when his true value is understood and appreciated, will stand out in history as a political and religious reformer of a virile and heroic type. A man who will be regarded in even a greater light than he now is, when humanity shall have become less denominational and more rationally humanitarian. In reality Mohammed was an ultra great man. The difference (as it appears to me) between other great men and himself was wide. The ordinary type of great man—a John Knox for example—is a patriot essentially. He is for his country first, then for God and humanity. As I have shown, with Mohammed it was just the reverse. An Arab by accident of birth, he put God and nature before everything. It was this that made him a humanist; this that placed him before his age. For Mohammed, without a shadow of a doubt, was centuries before his age. In his God concept, in his rejection of the ancient myth of immaculate conception, in his refusing to acknowledge Christ’s divinity, he was essentially a modern—a modern of the twentieth century. It was this catholicity therefore that made Islam blossom into a spiritual energy that embraces so many national units.
Mohammed fought with all his might and main. In exact proportion to his labour he has prevailed. Prevailed over the issues of life and death. Death had no terrors for him. Life alone was full of terror—i.e. of the fear of God. In death there was no sting. In the grave there was no victory. Death but killed the mortal part of him. The spiritual it has increased and multiplied out of all proportion. The present soul of Islam is the spirit of Mohammed. Only when this exhausts itself will Islam wither and die! To this day he is, and for many æons to come he will be in spirit, the ruler and judge over Islam. In spite of sects and theological speculators, as long as Islam lasts, his spirit will continue to preside over its destinies. His spirit lives in the spirit of the creed that he bequeathed as a divine legacy to humanity—i.e. to those sections of it which have been nurtured in the system and adoration of the Patriarch. For though the material part of him is dead, the spiritual still speaks with a voice that is myriad-tongued. As God’s word, there is a sanctity in the Koran for every Moslem that exceeds the reverence of the Christian for the Bible, as much as the fiery splendour of the sun surpasses the cold pale glamour of the moon—which is but a shadow, a pale reflection of the substance and reality. There is, in fact, on the part of the Moslem a veneration accorded to the Koran that practically equals the veneration of the African or the Irish for their land. Compatible with this, there is for the Moslem but one Prophet. As God’s chosen agent for the dissemination of His word, Mohammed stands alone and aloof on a pinnacle that is humanly unapproachable. Many faults have been imputed to him, many charges brought against him. To the average, indeed even to the educated Christian, Mohammed is nothing but the very strangest compound of right and wrong, of error and truth, the abolisher of superstition according to his own showing, yet a believer in charms, dreams, omens, and jinns. But what of all this? Does not reasoning such as this itself prove how very inconsequent and inconsistent is man, even though he be a European and a Christian? Is not superstition of the same kind as rife at this very moment in Europe, nay in the very centres and strongholds of Christendom? What about the ikons, the charms, the amulets, the sacred relics and the images of the Greek and Romish Churches? Is not this but a form of materialism which itself is a phase or part—a very large part—of Nature? Did not superstition (derived from “super,” above or beyond measure, and “sto,” to stand) originally imply excess of scruple, or of ceremonial observances in religion? Did it not describe a superfluity of worship that exceeded what was either enjoined or fitting? What does Cicero say of it in his treatise on The Nature of the Gods? (I quote from an old translation): “Not only Philosophers, but all our forefathers dydde ever separate superstition from true religion. For they whiche prayed all day that theyr children might overlyve (superstites essent), were called superstitious; which name after was larger extended.” Is not this thing we call superstition—this belief in the super or rather outside natural as distinguished from the vague and merely vulgar absurdities that are so common—but the result of inherent instincts that humanity, as simply one form of natural development, derives direct from Nature? Is not this Naturism more or less developed in us all—more in the ignorant, less in the educated, and least of all in the scientist; the sceptic who knows most, because he has looked and searched more into the truth and reality of things; because he has learnt by experience, fact, knowledge, therefore a greater intelligence to discriminate which from what and why from wherefore? In any case, does not the fact that Mohammed was superstitious all the more clearly prove that he was no mere vulgar designer who practised self-deception and pretensions with regard to his mission, but that he was thoroughly sincere in believing himself to be the specially selected Apostle of the Great Designer and Controller of the universe?
But it is not to Mohammed’s faults that we must look. All great men are moulded out of faults. It is in his virtues and greatnesses—and they are many—that we will find the true man. In this Carlyle was a right guide, and showed his own breadth of mind and greatness. These prove Mohammed to have been one of humanity’s greatest constructors. It is true that he destroyed, but on a small scale comparatively in proportion to the immensity of his constructive labour. As evidence of this, the physical, the moral and the spiritual wealth of Islam speaks in round numbers and solid realities. In another of his great romances, Dumas, speaking of John Knox, says: “He who had raised such a storm had need to be, and he was, a Titan; indeed John Knox was one of those men whom great religious and political revolutions invariably beget. Born in Scotland or England during the Presbyterian Reformation, they are called John Knox or Oliver Cromwell; born in France, in the time of political reform, they are called Mirabeau or Danton.” Mohammed was, in every sense of the word, more titanic than a Cromwell or a Mirabeau. He was not by nature or at heart a destroyer. When he destroyed it was only because his hand was forced by the crass and obstinate antagonism of those upon whom his sincerity and persuasiveness had aroused an envious and deadly hatred. The whole aim, end and object of his existence was to develop the adoration and religion of God. The storm he raised was conjured into being by the God that obsessed him. Hence the soul and constructiveness in it. Hence the mighty spirit of Islam, measurable only by a soul capacity which has never ceased to expand and develop. No sane man surely can deny that Islam was and is a great work? The moral figs and grapes that she has achieved are not such as could have been gathered from the thorn and thistle of human effort. Yet curiously enough, as I have shown, the environment in which it was born was strangely stern and sterile! This, however, is one of those natural anomalies that we would do well to leave alone. One of those paradoxes, those mysteries which Nature teems with, that are altogether beyond human comprehension.
Whether or not he had made a study of the Socratic precept “Γνῶθι σεαυτόν” “know thyself,” Mohammed knew himself as thoroughly as it is possible for a man to do. Early in life he took his own measure. Gauged his own strength and weakness. Estimated the breadth, the length, and the depth to which he could go. As a result of this moral estimate, he felt that his resources without God were as slender as a broken reed buffeted by storm winds. He knew that his real strength lay in the knowledge and power of God and of Nature. The temperament and character of the Psalmist—he who looked on God as the strong tower and rock of his defence, his refuge, not however in time of trouble alone, but at all times—was strongly developed in him. The genius of the whole Semitic race was centred in Mohammed. It was this, amounting as it does to the sublimest egotheism, that gave him confidence, then conviction. It was this righteous conviction that carried him as it were on the wings of the wind—immortal breath and soul, as he pictured it—of the living and eternal God. Through this feeling he converted the innate fear and veneration that inspired him into the hand and power of the Almighty. If genius implies a keen psychological insight into the nature and inner consciousness of life’s issues, added to inexhaustible energy, capacity for work and patience, then Mohammed was a genius. Certainly, if we accept Buffon’s definition of genius, as, “but a greater aptitude for perseverance,” he was without doubt a genius of the highest degree. The founder of a faith—one of the greatest the world has produced—spiritual commander of the faithful, his genius was essentially moral and religious. His whole life was one long labour of love and devotion to achieve his object, i.e. to proclaim God to the nations of the earth: the first half of it passed in secular work but in silent contemplation; the second half, itself divisible into two periods, twelve years of persuasion, followed to the close by active aggression and battle.
Impulsive, passionate, and spontaneous Mohammed may have been, for like all great leaders he was many-sided. But in no sense of the word can Islam be said to have been the outcome of spontaneity. On the contrary, it was in every way the result of calm and deliberate reflection, of long and continuous contact with the forces and phenomena of Nature; but above all of an unceasing concentration and communion with the unseen power that controls them. Stretching over some twenty years, it went on uninterrupted by domestic cares or trade transactions. All these were secondary matters and had to give way to the central idea that occupied his whole mind, that revolved around his work and his thoughts, as the earth gyrates about the sun. His centre of gravity was God. This gravity formed his character, gave him courage and endurance in all his trials and afflictions, counselled and guided him in his ordinary vocations. It was this gravity and concentration that commanded the respect and trust of all who knew him and came under his magnetic influence.
But Mohammed was not infallible. Dogma—everything human in fact—is open and liable to error. Even infallibility itself—as we speak of it—is fallible. As Draper so aptly remarks: “He who is infallible, must needs be immutable.” In many of the ordinary ways of life he was no doubt changeable and inconsistent. He was, after all, only human—but not with regard to the Faith. Here was he as firm as a rock, and showed a fixity of purpose that nothing could shake or alter. With him, “Life was but a means to an end, that end, beginning, mean and end to all things—God.” Only synchronous with this ruling principle was the idea of national unity. Never once did he falter or swerve from it. To this allegiance and fidelity of his to God and centralization it is possible to trace the devotion of Moslems to their Faith. “We are, as we often say, the creatures of circumstances. In that expression there is a higher philosophy than might at first sight appear. Our actions are not the pure and unmingled results of our desires. They are the offspring of many various and mixed conditions. In that which seems to be the most voluntary decision, there enters much that is altogether involuntary—more perhaps than we generally suppose.” This was very much the case with Mohammed. He was largely the creature of circumstances—the personification of his environment. It was the genius of this that entered into and obsessed him. That formed and swayed him as it willed. That made him as strong and inflexible as itself. That, combining with the commercial knowledge and experience he possessed and the political acumen he acquired, made him what he was. Here in a tiny nutshell lies the kernel and origin of the soul of Islam. The possibility that Mohammed was rather of Caucasian than Ishmaelitish descent, in reality makes little if any difference in the psychological analysis of his character. Fundamentally, human nature is human nature all the world over. In this respect racial and colour distinctions make no difference. Even moral and physical characteristics are merely superficial classifications. Inherent tendencies, strong and rooted as they are, may be amended or modified by environment. So that although it is vaguely possible that his moral courage and other mental features were of Caucasian origin, in the main he was essentially Semitic in character, patriarchal in principle, and humanistic in spirit. In Lecky’s opinion: “If we take a broad view of the course of history and examine the relations of great bodies of men, we find that religion and patriotism are the chief moral influences to which they have been subject, and that the separate modification and mutual interaction of these two agents may almost be said to constitute the moral history of mankind.” This most certainly has been the case with regard to Islam. Religion was the medium chosen by Mohammed for the furtherance of his truly imperial design. It was entirely through religion, or rather the interpretation he placed upon it, that he built up first of all a natural patriotism, then an international spirit, that expanded into the mighty creed of Islam. Prior to this, Arabia as he found it was narrow to an extreme. The only patriotism—if patriotism it can be called—was clannish and communal. Outside these stilted limits, every one was regarded with suspicion, contempt, indifference, and invariably with undisguised hostility. Yet the great and solid foundation of this splendid spiritual and temporal empire was laid by one man. But how great and how heroic! Indeed, “take him all in all, the history of humanity has seen few more earnest, noble and sincere ‘prophets,’ men irresistibly impelled by an inner power to admonish and to teach, and to utter austere and sublime truths, the full purport of which is often unknown to themselves.”
The better to gauge the present political aspect of the Moslem world, the statesmen of Europe—of France and Great Britain more particularly—should make an earnest study of the spirit of Islam. If we regard Islam as the work of Mohammed—as we are bound to—there are certain broad features we must also recognize. Right away from its very inception he worked not only as a prophet, but as a political reformer. Travelling as he did with his eyes, ears and all his senses open, the political state of the eastern portion of Europe and the western side of Asia must have been well known to him. To accomplish his religious ends was impossible without the political unity of Arabia. To him the political and religious unity of his country were synonymous. As a shrewd and practical trader, the material advantages of commerce were taken into consideration. He recognized that without a sound commercial basis and political unity there could be no national stability. He also saw that in a country like Arabia, split up into clans and communities, it was only possible to effect this through the spiritual potentialities of the one and only true God. If he did not himself accomplish this great project, we know at least that it was the magnificent legacy he bequeathed to his followers in the spirit of Islam, that eventually did so in reality. He or the spirit he evoked was clearly and unmistakably the cause of all subsequent Moslem triumphs, intellectual and political as well as religious. Thus it was that scarcely eighty years after his death, Islam reigned supreme over Arabia, Syria, Persia, all the northern coast of Africa, including Egypt, as well as Spain. So, too, notwithstanding the internal schisms and rifts that subsequently took place, it kept on growing with great strides, until at last in 1453, the Crescent gleamed from the spires of St. Sophia at Constantinople, and the soul-stirring war cry “La ilah illa Allah” resounded seventy-six years afterwards before the very gates of Vienna. Lecky is undoubtedly right in assuming that: “To trace in every great movement the part which belongs to the individual and the part which belongs to general causes without exaggerating either side is one of the most difficult tasks of the historian.” But in the case of Islam there can be no mistake. True, the Arabs in themselves were a great and virile people. But it was the genius of Mohammed, the spirit he breathed into them through the soul of Islam, that exalted them. That raised them out of the lethargy and low level of tribal stagnation, up to the high water mark of national unity and Empire. It was in the sublimity of Mohammed’s deism, the simplicity, the sobriety and purity it inculcated, the fidelity of its founder to his own tenets, that acted on their moral and intellectual fibre with all the magnetism of true inspiration. To them Islam was the Faith—the Faith God.
Just as Christianity stands for the faith of the great European family of nations, Islam stands for those countries whose political institutions are still based on the Patriarchal system. But Europe—however superior her peoples may think themselves—is not in the position, and certainly cannot afford, to look down upon Islam as an inferior product of an inferior section of the great human family. East may be East, and West, West—the system of one represented by polygamy, of the other by monogamy. But because Christianity is conformable to European ideals and notions, it does not in the least follow that it is compatible with those of the East. Because the civilized net result it has effected has eventually proved greater than that achieved by Islam, is no evidence whatever of Islam’s worthlessness or decadence. It is not the spirit of Islam that has failed, but the people who believe in it. They have fallen away from the high ideal that was set them by their master. In this respect, however, Christianity has also degenerated. It is a creed of profession more than of practice. It has never consistently practised what it has preached. A very wide gulf divides its practices from its ideals. “If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches and poor men’s cottages princes’ palaces. It is a good divine that follows his own instructions: I can easier teach twenty what were good to be done, than be one of the twenty to follow mine own teaching.” So Shakespeare. This holds as good now as when he wrote it. Human nature never alters fundamentally. It is the same to-day as it was yesterday, and as it will be unto all eternity. Christendom much more so than Islam, is split up into sects and denominations, and there can be no question about it that the chief obstacle to unity among these various bodies at the present moment is want of sincerity and earnestness!
Compared with the average Moslem, the average Christian too is certainly lukewarm. The nearest approach to Moslem perfervidness is in the piety of the Irish Catholics. But devotional as they are, even this falls far short of the rigid practice of the true Moslem. Not only, however, is he fervid and in downright earnest, but he is above all constant, faithful, and consistent to the principles of his creed. Thus, although there is no fatherhood about Allah, there is for all that a true and real brotherhood in Islam which contrasts very favourably with the professed brotherhood of Christendom. Colour or race, for instance, makes no difference to it. Islam, in fact, is above all such petty differences. She draws no hard and fast rules, has no such violent antipathies, bigotries and prejudices as Christendom. Professes little but practises much. Colour in her eyes is no disgrace, no bar to God, much less therefore to human fellowship and assimilation. This, as we know, is not the case with Christians. To them colour and race (as witness in the United States of America) is an impassable barrier, that is more insurmountable even than the great wall of China, over which they find it impossible to step.
There are in nature, as Novalis endeavours to explain in his philosophical romances, many realities and verities, the truth or essence of which cannot be grasped by the cold and critical intellect of man. Only by and through the sympathetic intuition of feeling can truths such as these be known or understood. This is indeed so. No matter how hard and material we may be, however thoroughly scientific; no matter how high we may place reason—even on the highest pinnacle of human attainment, there are times when the emotions overpower and dominate it. There are times when reason, even in its calmest and most calculating moments, is simply inundated and overwhelmed by the flood-tide of human feelings. In any case it is clear that although in the abstract it is impossible to detach or even insulate thought from feeling and feeling from volition, these three—feeling, thought and will—act, and often co-operate together, in every mental causation. But it is just as difficult for a system to free itself from its own peculiar idiosyncrasies and prejudices as it is for an individual to dissociate himself from his motives. It is exactly the same with regard to Islam and Christendom. The latter has allowed its prejudices and its feelings to obliterate or to stultify its reason. It does not know, it does not understand Islam. Merely because it does not want or makes no effort to know or to understand it. Because it has no sympathy with it. Because in place of sympathy it is in reality antipathetic. Yet while professing toleration, Christendom does not hesitate to despise and condemn Islam. To Christendom, Islam is a mere creed and abstraction—a creed beyond and outside its cold and autocratic pale. A creed belonging to another world and heaven than its own. A creed of colour and of sombre shades, nay even of gloom and darkness, blood, fire and sword, when the crescent and green flag of the Jihad is hoisted; a creed which is not to be thought of in the same breath as the snow-white fabric of the transcendent cross.
The fact of the matter is, that Christendom in the earlier days of Islam, jealous and fearful of her younger and more vigorous rival, always recoiled from Islam under the veil of a self-satisfied cant, as from a monstrous monstrosity of the most vicious and immoral type. A form of “Moloch horridus,” bristling all over with polygamous excrescences, and cruel sharp-pointed spines, ever ready to thrust their awful venom into the unoffending human species. Yet if only Christendom had long ago cultivated the virtue of patience, and the breadth and depth of mind, to look into the matter, she would have discovered—as those sceptics who have done so have discovered—the pure and unadulterated truth. She would have found, that as the Moloch horridus of Australia conceals an inoffensive character under a weird if repulsive exterior; so Islam, under an outward form which bigotry and prejudice have exaggerated out of all shape, possesses a moral and spiritual value beyond all cavil or question. Islam no doubt has its faults and many of them. The position of women is not perhaps as it should be. The law and the practice of divorce is a real blot on her system. Education is at a low ebb. The custom of the separation of sexes, of which polygamy and divorce are the necessary outcome, are undoubtedly pernicious. It cannot, of course, be expected that young men and women who have never met or associated, and whose marriages are arranged for them, can have any exalted ideas or feelings on the subject of love. It is not possible that young men who have never felt the refining influence and the moral restraint of female society, can possess either chivalry or a high ideal, with regard to an element unique in itself. Nevertheless, contrary to received European opinion, there exists for all that a very real and hearty affection and a warm sympathy between Moslem husbands and wives. What is more, this affection and sympathy will possibly contrast quite favourably with the family devotion of most European countries.
With regard to women, however, the social system, it must be admitted, is less successful. It leaves room for improvement. The institution of female slavery is distinctly a blot. The lot of the Moslem girl morally and socially is not so much unhappy as neglected. Her ordinary education is practically negative; the religious part of it is regarded as superfluous. But it is a popular fallacy, as I have already pointed out, to attribute to Islam the doctrine that women have no souls. Unfortunately, however, the idea prevails generally throughout Europe that these precious possessions are ignored by modern custom: that the fair sex is not encouraged to pray either in private or in public. It is believed, too, that the vigorous ritual prescribed for the male members is considered sufficient for both. So that Moslem women by ignoring the one neglect the other, with consequences that are morally and physically disastrous. But these are not by any means the real facts of the case. Personally, of course, I cannot speak of such matters from experience. Isolated and secluded as the women of Islam are, and their privacy so rigorously guarded by a ring fence of stringent rules, it is not possible for the European to give an adequate opinion thereon. But according to the reliable authority of so eminent a Moslem as Syed Ameer Ali, and others, the women among civilized Moslem communities know their prayers and religious duties just as well as the men—and are devout and pious—more so perhaps than the other sex. As to their cleanliness, it is beyond question. Yet in spite of so many obstacles—no education, seclusion, and a generally defective training—the women are not unhappy. They are on the whole as fully occupied (in their own way of course) and as well cared for as the women of Europe.
The fact of the matter is, Islam is suffering from mental stagnation, from the inevitable reaction that always succeeds a long period of active development. The Arabs, in a word, have had their day. With regard to education generally, the teaching is of a stereotyped pattern. There is no freshness or originality about it. Moslem studies have, in fact, lost all or most of their vitality. “The bloom of Arab culture has long been brushed away, and there now remains only a hollow kernel.” But it is after all by her virtues and not her defects that we must appraise the true value of Islam. Most unquestionably she has great and redeeming features. The throwing of stones or of mud is at best an injudicious proceeding. Apart from this it is undignified and unworthy of so high a civilization. It is not for Christendom to throw stones any more than it is for Islam. Indeed, in this respect, Europe could well take a leaf out of the book of Moslem self-restraint and dignity. Moslem society, too, may compare very favourably with European. Taken in the mass, the polygamous Moslem is every whit as moral—more so in fact—than his English, French, or German contemporary. In a great measure polygamy is much more a theoretical than a practical institution. Not one in twenty Moslems has even two wives. In any case it is not in the proper and legitimate practice of polygamy, but in the abuse of it, that the evil lies. On the whole there is no promiscuous immorality among the followers of Islam. Drunkenness and prostitution are practically non-existent. In towns where Europeans have made them a necessity, they are always worse. Abstinence and sobriety are not only professed but practised. In these respects the young Moslem certainly stands above his contemporary in Europe. Marrying early as he does, he knows nothing of “the wild oats” that are so promiscuously and so religiously sown by the youth of Europe. He sows no rank or noisome weeds for his children’s children to reap a gruesome harvest. As far, therefore, as the male sex are concerned, the social system of Islam is certainly more moral and wholesome than that of Christendom.
The cult of Mormonism, as it has existed and still exists in Utah State and Salt Lake City, is a problem that should set all statesmen thinking! As a psychological conundrum and from a rational standpoint, it is a most interesting question. It confronts us with a dual anomaly! First of all by the enforcement of a sociological system in distinct opposition to, and in defiance of all ethnic conditions. To make the anomaly all the greater, the religious part of this cult is founded on a palpable sham. There is not even about it the possibility of reality that always exists at the back of many ancient myths.
The so-called revelation of Joseph Smith, is the clumsy imposture of a man who in no sense of the word was either great or sincere. It is unquestionably the work of one or more persons who initiated the movement in their own self-interests, and to cloak principles that were at complete variance with Christian doctrine and European opinion. Mohammed, as we know, did not receive any revelation “on the eternity of the marriage covenant, or the plurality of wives.” This, according to Mormon statement, was reserved for Joseph Smith alone. As a great statesman and prophet, Mohammed recognized polygamy to be an ethnic condition, therefore wisely did not interfere with it. Any radical innovation in this direction would have been more than a political error. As a revolutionary measure, it would have completely upset the entire fabric of Arabian and Eastern society. A pandemoniac topsy-turveydom would have been the immediate consequence. The death-knell of Islam, the direct result. Yet the very personal god of Joseph Smith was so very short-sighted or painstaking that he sanctioned absolutely a mere matter of domestic arrangement and economy. Could any two extremes present a wider and more striking contrast? Is it possible even to compare the splendid sincerity of this sublime creed of self-surrender to God—the soul of which came direct from all that is great in nature—with the thin transparency of what at best was a poor attempt at fiction, which emanated from the mentality of a human mediocrity? Is it justifiable to mention them in the same breath?
Yet in spite of these startling contradictions, it is quite certain that the Mormon State, in an economic sense, is a prosperous, flourishing and thriving community. Its people too are orderly, well-behaved, law-abiding and industrious. From a moral and social standpoint, there is no fault to find with them. The anti-polygamic legislation of the United States Government, although it has recently been enforced with much greater severity than at first, has not stamped out polygamy. Does this or does this not demonstrate that polygamy—which in the eyes of Christendom constitutes one of the chief offences of Islam—is not the crime it is represented to be? Is it, in fact, a crime at all? Does it not prove that only the abuse of it, as the abuse of any, even a good thing, is wrong? But that the actual system itself as an ethnic condition peculiar to certain racial sections of mankind, is nothing but the outcome or evolution of sociologic customs and usages?
To contend as all the Mu’tazilite doctors do that Islam is not a polygamous system because it only tolerates a limited polygamy under stringent conditions which tends to monogamy is but a metaphysical quibble. It is but an attempt to split a hair. It does not alter the fact that when a system permits more than one wife, and its founder sanctioned four, it is certainly not monogamous. Such an argument will not hold water for even a moment. It is but a mere contention—“a bone,” as the Persian proverb says, “thrown to two dogs,” a palpable piece of sophistry. It is but the begging of an obvious fact, a reality that can neither be avoided nor eluded. As Burns so very happily puts it: