MUḤAMMAD (محمد). The title of the XLVIIth Sūrah of the Qurʾān, in the second verse of which the word occurs: “Believe in what hath been revealed to Muḥammad.”
The name Muḥammad occurs only in three more places in the Qurʾān:—
Sūrah iii. 138: “Muḥammad is but an apostle of God.”
Sūrah xxxiii. 40: “Muḥammad is not the father of any of your men, but the Apostle of God, and the Seal of the Prophets.”
Sūrah xlviii. 29: “Muḥammad is the Apostle of God.”
MUḤAMMAD, The Wives of. Arabic al-azwāju ʾl-mut̤ahharāt (الازواج المطهرات), i.e. “The pure wives.” According to the Traditions, Muḥammad took to himself eleven lawful wives, and two concubines. (See Majmaʿu ʾl-Biḥār, p. 528.)
(1) K͟hadījah (خديجة), a Quraish lady, the daughter of K͟huwailid ibn Asad. She was a rich widow lady, who had been twice married. She was married to Muḥammad when he was 25 years old, and she was 40 years, and remained his only wife for twenty-five years, until she died (A.D. 619), aged 65, Muḥammad being 50 years old. She bore Muḥammad two sons, al-Qāṣim and ʿAbdu ʾllāh, surnamed at̤-T̤āhir and at̤-T̤aiyib, and four daughters, Zainab, Ruqaiyah, Fāt̤imah, and Ummu Kuls̤ūm. Of these children, only Fāt̤imah (the wife of ʿAlī) survived Muḥammad.
(2) Saudah (سودة), daughter of Zamaʿah, the widow of as-Sakrān (a Quraish and one of the Companions). Married about two months after the death of K͟hadījah.
(3) ʿĀyishah (عائشة), the daughter of Abū Bakr. She was betrothed when she was only 7 years old, and was married at 10, about the ninth month after the flight to al-Madīnah.
(4) Juwairīyah (جويرية), a widow, the daughter of al-Ḥāris̤ ibn Abī Ẓirār, the chief of the Banū Muṣt̤aliq. Muḥammad ransomed her from a citizen who had fixed her ransom at nine ounces of gold. It is related that ʿĀyishah said, “No woman was ever a greater blessing to her people than this Juwairīyah.”
(5) Ḥafṣah (حفصة), the daughter of ʿUmar. She was the widow of K͟hunais, an early convert to Islām. Muḥammad married her about six months after her former husband’s death.
(6) Zainab, the daughter of K͟huzaimah (زينب بنت خزيمة), the widow of Muḥammad’s cousin ʿUbaidah, who was killed at the battle of Badr. She was called the “Mother of the Poor,” Ummu ʾl-Masākīn, on account of her care of destitute converts. She died before Muḥammad.
(7) Ummu Salimah (ام سلمة), the widow of Abū Salimah, one of the Refugees, who was wounded at the battle of Uḥud, and afterwards died of his wounds.
(8) Zainab the daughter of Jaḥsh (زينب بنت جحش), the wife of Muḥammad’s adopted son Zaid. Zaid divorced her to please the Prophet. She was (being the wife of an adopted son) unlawful to him, but Sūrah xxxiii. 36 was produced to settle the difficulty.
(9) Ṣafīyah (صفية), daughter of Ḥayī ibn Ak͟ht̤ab, the widow of Kinānah, the K͟haibar chief, who was cruelly put to death. It was said that Muḥammad wished to divorce her, but she begged that her turn might be given to ʿĀyishah.
(10) Ummu Ḥabībah (ام حبيبة), the daughter of Abū Sufyān and the widow of ʿUbaidu ʾllāh, one of the “Four Enquirers,” who, after emigrating as a Muslim to Abyssinia, had embraced Christianity there, and died in the profession of that faith.
(11) Maimūnah (ميمونة), the daughter of al-Ḥāris̤ and widowed kinswoman of Muḥammad, and the sister-in-law of al-ʿAbbās. She is said to have been 51 years of age when she married Muḥammad.
Muḥammad’s concubines were:—
(1) Mary the Copt (مارية القبطية). A Christian slave-girl sent to Muḥammad by al-Muqauqis, the Roman Governor in Egypt. She became the mother of a son by Muḥammad, named Ibrāhīm, who died young.
(2) Rīḥānah (ريحانة), a Jewess, whose husband had perished in the massacre of the Banū Quraiz̤ah. She declined the summons to conversion, and continued a Jew; but it is said she embraced Islām before her death.
At the time of Muḥammad’s death, he had nine wives and two concubines living, (Ṣaḥīḥu ʾl-Buk͟hārī, p. 798), K͟hadījah and Zainab bint K͟huzaimah having died before him.
According to the Shīʿahs, Muḥammad had, in all, twenty-two wives. Eight of these never consummated the marriage. Their names are ʿAlīyah bint Zabyān, Fatīlah bint Qais, Fāt̤imah bint Ẓaḥḥāf, Asmāʾ bint Kanaʿān, Mulaikah bint Suwaid, Lailah bint K͟hāt̤ib, and Shabah bint Ṣīlah. Twelve were duly married. Their names are K͟hadījah, Saudah, Hind (or Ummu Salimah), ʿĀyishah, Ḥafṣah, Zainab bint Jaḥsh, Ramalah bint Abī Sufyān (or Ummu Ḥabībah), Maimūnah, Zainab bint ʿUmais, Juwairīyah bint al-Ḥāris̤ of the Banū Muṣt̤aliq, Ṣafīyah, K͟haulah bint Ḥakīm, and Ummiāni, a sister to ʿAlī. Two were bondwomen: Māriyatu ʾl-Qibt̤īyah and Rīḥānah. (See Jannātu ʾl-K͟hulūd, p. 14.)
MUḤAMMAD, The Children of. According to the Majmaʿu ʾl-Biḥār, p. 538, Muḥammad had seven children. Two sons and four daughters by K͟hadījah, and one son by Mary, his Coptic slave.
The two sons by K͟hadījah were al-Qāsim and ʿAbdu ʾllāh (called also at̤-T̤āhir and at̤-T̤aiyib); and the four daughters were Zainab, Ruqaiyah, Fāt̤imah, and Ummu Kuls̤ūm. The son by his bondwoman Mary was Ibrāhīm. All these children died before Muḥammad, with the exception of Fāt̤imah, who married ʿAlī, the fourth K͟halīfah, and from whom are descended the Saiyids. [SAIYID.]
Zainab married Abū ʾl-ʿĀṣ bnu ʾr-Rabīʿ. Ruqaiyah married ʿUtbah ibn Abū Lahab, by whom she was divorced. She afterwards married ʿUs̤mān, the third K͟halīfah.
MUḤAMMAD’S GRAVE. [HUJRAH.]
MUḤAMMADAN. Arabic Muḥammadī (محمدى). A name seldom used in Muḥammadan works for the followers of Muḥammad, who call themselves either Muʾmins, Muslims, or Musalmāns. It is, however, sometimes used in Indian papers and other popular publications, and it is not, as many European scholars suppose, an offensive term to Muslims.
MUḤAMMADANISM. The religion of Muḥammad is called by its followers al-Islām (الاسلام), a word which implies the entire surrender of the will of man to God. [ISLAM.] Its adherents speak of themselves as Muslims, pl. Muslimūn, or Muʾmin, pl. Muʾminūn; a Muʾmin being a “believer.” In Persian these terms are rendered by the word Musalmān, pl. Musalmānān.
The principles of Islām were first enunciated in portions of the Qurʾān, as they were revealed piecemeal by Muḥammad, together with such verbal explanations as were given by him to his followers; but when the final recension of the Qurʾān was produced by the K͟halīfah ʿUs̤mān, about twenty-two years after Muḥammad’s death, the Muslims possessed a complete book, which they regarded as the inspired and infallible word of God. [QURʾAN.] But as an interpretation of its precepts, and as a supplement to its teachings, there also existed, side by side with the Qurʾān, the sayings, and practice of Muḥammad, called the Aḥādīs̤ and Sunnah. These traditions of what the Prophet “did and said,” gradually laid the foundations of what is now called Islām. For whilst it is a canon in Islām that nothing can be received or taught which is contrary to the literal injunctions of the Qurʾān, it is to the Traditions rather than to the Qurʾān that we must refer for Muḥammadan law on the subject of faith, knowledge, purification, prayer, almsgiving, fasting, marriage, barter, inheritance, punishments, fate, duties of magistrates, religious warfare, lawful food, death, Day of Judgment, &c., and each collection of traditions has sections devoted to these subjects; so that it is upon these traditional sayings, quite as much as upon the Qurʾān itself, that the religious and civil law of the Muslims is based, both Shīʿah and Sunnī appealing alike to Tradition in support of their views.
When the Prophet was alive, men could go direct to him with their doubts and difficulties; and an infallible authority was always present to give “inspired” directions. But after the deaths of all those who knew Muḥammad personally, it became absolutely necessary to systematise the great mass of traditional sayings then afloat amongst Muslims, and thus various schools of jurisprudence were formed; the concurrent opinion of those learned regarding matters of dispute in Muslim law being called Ijmāʿ [IJMAʿ]. Upon this naturally followed the system of analogical reasoning called Qiyās [QIYAS]; thus constituting the four “pillars” or foundations of Islām, known as the Qurʾān, Ḥadīs̤, Ijmāʿ, and Qiyās.
Islām, whether it be Shīʿah, Sunnī, or Wahhābī, is founded upon these four authorities, and it is not true, as is so frequently asserted, that the Shīʿahs reject the Traditions. They merely accept different collections of Aḥādīs̤ to those received by the Sunnīs and Wahhābīs. Nor do the Wahhābīs reject Ijmāʿ and Qiyās, but they assert that Ijmāʿ was only possible in the earliest stages of Islām.
A study of the present work will show what an elaborate system of dogma Muḥammadanism is. This system of dogma, together with the liturgical form of worship, has been formulated from the traditional sayings of Muḥammad rather than from the Qurʾān itself. For example, the daily ritual, with its purifications, which are such a prominent feature in Islām, is entirely founded on the Traditions. [PRAYER.] Circumcision is not once mentioned in the Qurʾān.
The Dīn, or religion of the Muslim, is divided into Imān, or “Faith,” and ʿAmal, or “Practice.”
Faith consists in the acceptance of six articles of belief:—
1. The Unity of God.
2. The Angels.
4. The Inspired Prophets.
5. The Day of Judgment.
6. The Decrees of God.
Practical Religion consists in the observance of—
1. The recital of the Creed—“There is no deity but God, and Muḥammad is the Prophet of God.”
2. The five stated periods of prayer.
3. The thirty days fast in the month Ramaẓān.
4. The payment of Zakāt, or the legal alms.
5. The Ḥajj, or Pilgrimage to Makkah.
A belief in these six articles of faith, and the observance of these five practical duties, constitute Islām. He who thus believes and acts is called a Muʾmin, or “believer”; but he who rejects any article of faith or practice is a Kāfir, or “infidel.”
Muḥammadan theology, which is very extensive, is divided into—
1. The Qurʾān and its commentaries.
2. The Traditions and their commentaries.
3. Uṣūl, or expositions on the principles of exegesis.
4. ʿAqāʾid, or expositions of scholastic theology founded on the six articles of faith.
5. Fiqh, or works on both civil and religious law. [THEOLOGY.]
Muḥammadanism is, therefore, a system which affords a large field for patient study and research, and much of its present energy and vitality is to be attributed to the fact that, in all parts of Islām, there are in the various mosques students who devote their whole lives to the study of Muslim divinity.
The two leading principles of Islām are those expressed in its well-known creed, or kalimah, namely, a belief in the absolute unity of the Divine Being, and in the mission of Muḥammad as the Messenger of the Almighty. [KALIMAH.]
“The faith,” says Gibbon, “which he (Muḥammad) preached to his family and nation, is compounded of an eternal truth and a necessary fiction: That there is only one God, and that Muḥammad is the Apostle of God.” (Roman Empire, vol. vi. p. 222.)
“Moḥammad’s conception of God,” says Mr. Stanley Lane-Poole, “has, I think, been misunderstood, and its effect upon the people consequently under-estimated. The God of Islám is commonly represented as a pitiless tyrant, who plays with humanity as on a chessboard, and works out his game without regard to the sacrifice of the pieces; and there is a certain truth in the figure. There is more in Islám of the potter who shapes the clay than of the father pitying his children. Moḥammad conceived of God as the Semitic mind has always preferred to think of Him: his God is the All-Mighty, the All-Knowing, the All-Just. Irresistible Power is the first attribute he thinks of: the Lord of the Worlds, the Author of the Heavens and the Earth, who hath created Life and Death, in whose hand is Dominion, who maketh the Dawn to appear and causeth the Night to cover the Day, the Great, All-Powerful Lord of the Glorious Throne; the thunder proclaimeth His perfection, the whole earth is His handful, and the heavens shall be folded together in His right hand. And with the Power He conceives the Knowledge that directs it to right ends. God is the Wise, the Just, the True, the Swift in reckoning, who knoweth every ant’s weight of good and of ill that each man hath done, and who suffereth not the reward of the faithful to perish.
“ ‘God! There is no God but He, the Ever-Living, the Ever-Subsisting. Slumber seizeth Him not nor sleep. To Him belongeth whatsoever is in the Heavens and whatsoever is in the Earth. Who is he that shall intercede with Him, save by his permission? He knoweth the things that have gone before and the things that follow after, and men shall not compass aught of His knowledge, save what He willeth. His throne comprehendeth the Heavens and the Earth, and the care of them burdeneth Him not. And He is the High, the Great.’—Ḳur-án, ii. 256.
“But with this Power there is also the gentleness that belongs only to great strength. God is the Guardian over His servants, the Shelterer of the orphan, the Guider of the erring, the Deliverer from every affliction; in His hand is Good, and He is the Generous Lord, the Gracious, the Hearer, the Near-at-Hand. Every soorah of the Ḳur-án begins with the words, ‘In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful,’ and Moḥammad was never tired of telling the people how God was Very-Forgiving, that His love for man was more tender than the mother-bird for her young.
“It is too often forgotten how much there is in the Ḳur-án of the loving-kindness of God, but it must be allowed that these are not the main thoughts in Moḥammad’s teaching. It is the doctrine of the Might of God that most held his imagination, and that has impressed itself most strongly upon Muslims of all ages. The fear rather than the love of God is the spur of Islám. There can be no question which is the higher incentive to good; but it is nearly certain that the love of God is an idea absolutely foreign to most of the races that have accepted Islám, and to preach such a doctrine would have been to mistake the leaning of the Semitic mind.
“The leading doctrine of Moḥammad, then, is the belief in One All-Powerful God. Islám is the self-surrender of every man to the will of God. Its danger lies in the stress laid on the power of God, which has brought about the stifling effects of fatalism. Moḥammad taught the foreknowledge of God, but he did not lay down precisely the doctrine of Predestination. He found it, as all have found it, a stumbling-block in the way of man’s progress. It perplexed him, and he spoke of it, but often contradicted himself; and he would become angry if the subject were mooted in his presence: ‘Sit not with a disputer about fate,’ he said, ‘nor begin a conversation with him.’ Moḥammad vaguely recognised that little margin of Free Will which makes life not wholly mechanical.
“This doctrine of one Supreme God, to whose will it is the duty of every man to surrender himself, is the kernel of Islám, the truth for which Moḥammad lived and suffered and triumphed. But it was no new teaching, as he himself was constantly saying. His was only the last of revelations. Many prophets—Abraham, Moses, and Christ—had taught the same faith before; but people had hearkened little to their words. So Moḥammad was sent, not different from them, only a messenger, yet the last and greatest of them, the ‘seal of prophecy,’ the ‘most excellent of the creation of God.’ This is the second dogma of Islám: Moḥammad is the Apostle of God. It is well worthy of notice that it is not said, ‘Moḥammad is the only apostle of God.’ Islám is more tolerant in this matter than other religions. Its prophet is not the sole commissioner of the Most High, nor is his teaching the only true teaching the world has ever received. Many other messengers had been sent by God to guide men to the right, and these taught the same religion that was in the mouth of the preacher of Islám. Hence Muslims reverence Moses and Christ only next to Moḥammad. All they claim for their founder is that he was the last and best of the messengers of the one God.” (Introduction to Lane’s Selections, 2nd ed., p. lxxix. et seqq.)
Islām does not profess to be a new religion, formulated by Muḥammad (nor indeed is it), but a continuation of the religious principles established by Adam, by Noah, by Abraham, by Moses, and by Jesus, as well as by other inspired teachers, for it is said that God sent not fewer than 313 apostles into the world to reclaim it from superstition and infidelity. The revelations of these great prophets are generally supposed to have been lost, but God, it is asserted, had retained all that is necessary for man’s guidance in the Qurʾān, although, as a matter of fact, a very large proportion of the ethical, devotional, and dogmatic teaching in Islām, comes from the traditional sayings of Muḥammad and not from the Qurʾān itself. [TRADITIONS.]
In reading the different articles in the present work, the reader cannot fail to be struck with the great indebtedness of Muḥammad to the Jewish religion for the chief elements of his system. Mr. Emanuel Deutsch has truly remarked “that Muḥammadanism owes more to Judaism than either to Heathenism or to Christianity. It is not merely parallelisms, reminiscences, allusions, technical terms, and the like of Judaism, its lore and dogma and ceremony, its Halacha, and its Haggadah, its Law and Legend, which we find in the Qurʾān; but we think Islām neither more nor less than Judaism—as adapted to Arabia—plus the Apostleship of Jesus and Muḥammad. Nay, we verily believe that a great deal of such Christianity as has found its way into the Qurʾān, has found it through Jewish channels.” (Literary Remains, p. 64.)
Its conception of God, its prophets, its seven heavens and seven hells, its law of marriage and divorce, its law of oaths, its purifications and ritual, its festivals, are all of marked Jewish origin, and prove that Talmudic Judaism forms the kernel of Muḥammadanism, which even according to the words of the founder, professed to be the “religion of Abraham.” See Sūrah iii. 60: “Abraham was neither a Jew nor Christian, but he was a Ḥanīf, a Muslim.” Nevertheless, Muḥammad, although he professed to take his legislation from Abraham, incorporated into his system a vast amount of the law of Moses.
The sects of Islām have become numerous; indeed, the Prophet is related to have predicted that his followers would be divided into seventy-three. They have far exceeded the limits of that prophecy, for, according to ʿAbdu ʾl-Qādir al-Jīlānī, there are at least 150. The chief sect is the Sunnī, which is divided into four schools of interpretation, known after their respective founders, Ḥanafī, Shāfiʿī, Malakī, Ḥanbalī. The Shīʿahs, who separated from the so-called orthodox Sunnīs on the question of the K͟halīfate, maintaining that ʿAlī and not Abū Bakr was the rightful successor to Muḥammad, are divided also into numerous sects. [SHIʿAH.] The Wahhābīs are a comparatively modern sect, who are the Puritans of Islām, maintaining that Islām has very far departed from the original teaching of Muḥammad, as expressed in the Traditions. They consequently reject very many of the so-called Ijtihād of the Sunnīs, and take the literal meaning of the Traditional sayings of the Prophet as the best exposition of the Qurʾān.
The Shīʿah sect is almost entirely confined to Persia, although there are a few thousand in Lucknow and other parts of India. Of the Sunnīs, the Ḥanafīs are found chiefly in Turkey, Arabia, India, and Central Asia, the Shāfiʿīs in Egypt, and the Malakīs in Morocco and Tunis. The Ḥanbalī are a small sect found in Arabia. Wahhābīism, as will be seen upon reference to the article on the subject, is a principle of reform which has extended itself to all parts of Islām. It is scarcely to be called a sect, but a school of thought in Sunnī Islām.
One hundred and seventy millions of the human race are said to profess the religion of Muḥammad; and, according to the late Mr. Keith Johnstone’s computations, they are distributed as follows:—In Europe, 5,974,000; in Africa, 50,416,000; in Asia, 112,739,000.
Mr. W. S. Blunt divides 175 millions as follows:—Turkey, Syria, and ʿIrāq, 22 millions; Egypt, 5 millions; North Africa, 18 millions; Arabia, 11½ millions; Central Africa, 11½ millions; Persia, 8 millions; India, 40 millions; Malays (Java), 30 millions; China, 15 millions; Central Asia, 11 millions; Afghanistan, 3 millions. No census having been taken of any of these countries, except India, the numbers are merely an approximation. Out of this supposed population of Islām, 93,250 pilgrims were present at Makkah in the year 1880. (Blunt’s Future of Islam, p. 10.)
In some parts of the world—in Africa for example—Muḥammadanism is spreading; and even in Borneo, and in other islands of the Indian Archipelago, we are told that it has supplanted Hinduism. In Central Asia, within the last twenty years, numerous villages of Shiaposh Kafirs have been forcibly converted to Islām, and in Santalia and other parts of India, the converts to Islām from the aboriginal tribes are not inconsiderable.
But, although Muḥammadanism has, perhaps, gained in numerical strength within the last few years, no candid Muslim will deny that it has lost, and is still losing, its vital power. Indeed, “this want of faith and decline in vitality” are regarded as the signs of the last days by many a devout Muslim.
In no Muḥammadan state is Muslim law administered in its strict integrity, and even in the Sultan’s own dominion, some of the most sacred principles of the Prophet’s religion are set at naught by the civil power; and, as far as we can ascertain (and we speak after a good deal of personal research), the prevalence of downright infidelity amongst educated Muslims is unmistakable. “No intelligent man believes in the teaching of the Muslim divines,” said a highly educated Muḥammadan Egyptian not long ago; “for our religion is not in keeping with the progress of thought.” The truth is, the Arabian Prophet over-legislated, and, as we now see in Turkey, it is impossible for civilised Muḥammadans to be tied hand and foot by laws and social customs which were intended for Arabian society as it existed 1,200 years ago; whilst, on the contrary, Christianity legislates in spirit, and can therefore be adapted to the spiritual and social necessities of mankind in the various stages of human thought and civilisation.
Mr. Palgrave, in his Central and Eastern Arabia, remarks:—
“Islam is in its essence stationary, and was framed thus to remain. Sterile like its God, lifeless like its first principle and supreme original in all that constitutes true life—for life is love, participation, and progress, and of these, the Coranic Deity has none—it justly repudiates all change, all advance, all development. To borrow the forcible words of Lord Houghton, the ‘written book’ is there, the ‘dead man’s hand,’ stiff and motionless; whatever savours of vitality is by that alone convicted of heresy and defection.
“But Christianity with its living and loving God, Begetter and Begotten, Spirit and Movement, nay more, a Creator made creature, the Maker and the made existing in One, a Divinity communicating itself by uninterrupted gradation and degree, from the most intimate union far off to the faintest irradiation, through all that it has made for love and governs in love; One who calls His creatures not slaves, not servants, but friends, nay sons, nay gods—to sum up, a religion in whose seal and secret ‘God in man is one with man in God,’ must also be necessarily a religion of vitality, of progress, of advancement. The contrast between it and Islam is that of movement with fixedness, of participation with sterility, of development with barrenness, of life with petrifaction. The first vital principle and the animating spirit of its birth must indeed abide ever the same, but the outer form must change with the changing days, and new offshoots of fresh sap and greenness be continually thrown out as witnesses to the vitality within, else were the vine withered and the branches dead.
“I have no intention here—it would be extremely out of place—of entering on the maze of controversy, or discussing whether any dogmatic attempt to reproduce the religious phase of a former age is likely to succeed. I only say that life supposes movement and growth, and both imply change; that to censure a living thing for growing and changing is absurd; and that to attempt to hinder it from so doing, by pinning it down on a written label, or nailing it to a Procrustean framework, is tantamount to killing it altogether.
“Now Christianity is living, and because living must grow, must advance, must change, and was meant to do so; onwards and forwards is a condition of its very existence; and I cannot but think that those who do not recognize this, show themselves so far ignorant of its true nature and essence. On the other hand, Islam is lifeless, and because lifeless cannot grow, cannot advance, cannot change, and was never intended so to do; ‘Stand still’ is its motto and its most essential condition.” (Central and Eastern Arabia, vol. i. p. 372.)
Mr. Stanley Lane Poole, in his Introduction to Lane’s Selections, says:—
“Islám is unfortunately a social system as well as a religion; and herein lies the great difficulty of fairly estimating its good and its bad influence on the world. It is but in the nature of things that the teacher who lays down the law of the relation of man to God should also endeavour to appoint the proper relation between man and his neighbour.
* * *
“Moḥammad not only promulgated a religion; he laid down a complete social system, containing minute regulations for a man’s conduct in all circumstances of life, with due rewards or penalties according to his fulfilment of these rules. As a religion, Islám is great: it has taught men to worship one God with a pure worship who formerly worshipped many gods impurely. As a social system, Islám is a complete failure: it has misunderstood the relations of the sexes, upon which the whole character of a nation’s life hangs, and, by degrading women, has degraded each successive generation of their children down an increasing scale of infamy and corruption, until it seems almost impossible to reach a lower level of vice.”
Mr. W. E. H. Lecky remarks:—
“In the first place, then, it must be observed that the enthusiasm by which Mahometanism conquered the world, was mainly a military enthusiasm. Men were drawn to it at once, and without conditions, by the splendour of the achievements of its disciples, and it declared an absolute war against all the religions it encountered. Its history, therefore, exhibits nothing of the process of gradual absorption, persuasion, compromise, and assimilation, that are exhibited in the dealings of Christianity with the barbarians. In the next place, one of the great characteristics of the Koran is the extreme care and skill with which it labours to assist men in realising the unseen. Descriptions, the most minutely detailed, and at the same time the most vivid, are mingled with powerful appeals to those sensual passions by which the imagination in all countries, but especially in those in which Mahometanism has taken root, is most forcibly influenced. In no other religion that prohibits idols is the strain upon the imagination so slight.” (History of the Rise and Influence of Rationalism, vol. i. p. 223.)
“This great religion, which so long rivalled the influence of Christianity, had indeed spread the deepest and most justifiable panic through Christendom. Without any of those aids to the imagination which pictures and images can furnish, without any elaborate sacerdotal organization, preaching the purest Monotheism among ignorant and barbarous men, and inculcating, on the whole, an extremely high and noble system of morals, it spread with a rapidity, and it acquired a hold over the minds of its votaries, which it is probable that no other religion has altogether equalled. It borrowed from Christianity that doctrine of salvation by belief, which is perhaps the most powerful impulse that can be applied to the characters of masses of men, and it elaborated so minutely the charms of its sensual heavens and the terrors of its material hell, as to cause the alternative to appeal with unrivalled force to the gross imaginations of the people. It possessed a book which, however inferior to that of the opposing religion, has nevertheless been the consolation and the support of millions in many ages. It taught a fatalism which, in its first age, nerved its adherents with a matchless military courage, and which, though in later days it has often paralysed their active energies, has also rarely failed to support them under the pressure of inevitable calamity. But, above all, it discovered the great though fatal secret, of uniting indissolubly the passion of the soldier with the passion of the devotee. Making the conquest of the infidel the first of duties, and proposing heaven as the certain reward of the valiant soldier, it created a blended enthusiasm that soon overpowered the divided counsels and the voluptuous governments of the East, and within a century of the death of Muḥammad, his followers had almost extirpated Christianity from its original home, founded great monarchies in Asia and Africa, planted a noble, though transient and exotic, civilisation in Spain, menaced the capital of the Eastern empire, and but for the issue of a single battle, they would probably have extended their sceptre over the energetic and progressive races of Central Europe. The wave was broken by Charles Martel, at the battle of Poictiers, and it is now useless to speculate what might have been the consequences, had Muḥammadanism unfurled its triumphant banner among those Teutonic tribes, who have so often changed their creed, and on whom the course of civilisation has so largely depended.” (Hist. of European Morals, vol. ii. p. 266.)
“The influence of Catholicism was seconded by Muḥammadanism, which on this (suicide), as on many other points, borrowed its teaching from the Christian Church, and even intensified it; for suicide, which is never expressly condemned in the Bible, is more than once forbidden in the Qurʾān, and the Christian duty of resignation was exaggerated by the Moslem into a complete fatalism. Under the empire of Catholicism and Muḥammadanism, suicide, during many centuries, almost absolutely ceased in all the civilised, active and progressive part of mankind. When we recollect how warmly it was applauded, or how faintly it was condemned in the civilisations of Greece and Rome, when we remember, too, that there was scarcely a barbarous tribe from Denmark to Spain who did not habitually practise it, we may realise the complete revolution which was effected in this sphere by the influence of Christianity.” (Hist. of European Morals, vol. ii. p. 56.)
Major Durie Osborn says:—
“When Islam penetrates to countries lower in the scale of humanity than were the Arabs of Muhammad’s day, it suffices to elevate them to that level. But it does so at a tremendous cost. It reproduces in its new converts the characteristics of its first—their impenetrable self-esteem, their unintelligent scorn, and blind hatred of all other creeds. And thus the capacity for all further advance is destroyed; the mind is obdurately shut to the entrance of any purer light. But it is a grievous error to confound that transient gleam of culture which illuminated Baghdad under the first Abbaside khalifs with the legitimate fruits of Islam. When the Arabs conquered Syria and Persia, they brought with them no new knowledge to take the place of that which had preceded them. Mere Bedouins of the desert, they found themselves all at once the masters of vast countries, with everything to learn. They were compelled to put themselves to school under the very people they had vanquished. Thus the Persians and Syrians, conquered though they were and tributary, from the ignorance of their masters, retained in their hands the control of the administrative machinery. The Abbaside khalifs were borne into power by means of a Persian revolution, headed by a Persian slave. Then began the endeavour to root the old Greek philosophy, and the deep and beautiful thoughts of Zoroaster, on the hard and barren soil of Muhammadanism. It was an impossible attempt to make a frail exotic flourish on uncongenial soil. It has imparted, indeed, a deceptive lustre to this period of Muhammadan history; but the orthodox Muhammadans knew that their faith and the wisdom of the Greeks could not amalgamate, and they fought fiercely against the innovators. Successive storms of barbarians sweeping down from the north of Asia, tore up the fragile plant by the roots, and scattered its blossoms to the winds. The new comers embraced the creed of the Koran in its primitive simplicity; they hated and repudiated the refinements which the Persians would fain have engrafted on it. And they won the day. The present condition of Central Asia is the legitimate fruit of Islam; not the glories of Baghdad, which were but the afterglow of the thought and culture which sank with the fall of the Sassanides, and the expulsion of the Byzantine emperors. So also in Moorish Spain. The blossom and the fruitage which Muhammadanism seemed to put forth there were, in fact, due to influences alien to Islam—to the intimate contact, namely, with Jewish and Christian thought; for when the Moors were driven back into northern Africa, all that blossom and fruitage withered away, and Northern Africa sank into the intellectual darkness and political anarchy in which it lies at the present time. There are to be found in Muhammadan history all the elements of greatness—faith, courage, endurance, self-sacrifice; but, closed within the narrow walls of a rude theology and barbarous polity, from which the capacity to grow and the liberty to modify have been sternly cut off, they work no deliverance upon the earth. They are strong only for destruction. When that work is over, they either prey upon each other, or beat themselves to death against the bars of their prison-house. No permanent dwelling-place can be erected on a foundation of sand; and no durable or humanising polity upon a foundation of fatalism, despotism, polygamy and slavery. When Muhammadan states cease to be racked by revolutions, they succumb to the poison diffused by a corrupt moral atmosphere. A Darwesh, ejaculating ‘Allah!’ and revolving in a series of rapid gyrations until he drops senseless, is an exact image of the course of their history.” (Islam under the Arabs, p. 93.)
Lieutenant-Colonel W. F. Butler, C.B., remarks:—
“The Goth might ravage Italy, but the Goth came forth purified from the flames which he himself had kindled. The Saxon swept Britain, but the music of the Celtic heart softened his rough nature, and wooed him into less churlish habits. Visigoth and Frank, Heruli and Vandal, blotted out their voracity in the very light of the civilisation they had striven to extinguish. Even the Hun, wildest Tartar from the Scythian waste, was touched and softened in his wicker encampment amid Pannonian plains; but the Turk—wherever his scymitar reached—degraded, defiled, and defamed; blasting into eternal decay Greek, Roman and Latin civilisation, until, when all had gone, he sat down, satiated with savagery, to doze for two hundred years into hopeless decrepitude.” (Good Words for September 1880.)
Literature on the subject of Muḥammadanism:—