Volume 1 — CHAPTER II THE RISE, PROGRESS, AND INFLUENCE OF ISLAM 614–712 (continued 2)

The Koran commands relief of the oppressed, protection of the defenceless, mercy to the orphan, and kindness to animals. It enjoins the strict performance of engagements, even though entered into with members of a hostile creed; in humiliating contrast with the policy of Catholic Rome, whose children were perpetually absolved from the observance of contracts concluded with infidels. It denounces awful penalties against the murderer and the suicide. In its pages the profound deference that usually attaches to aristocratic birth and distinguished station is ignored; titled insolence is not permitted to assert superiority over the unpretending worshipper, and the monarch and the beggar meet as brethren before the throne of Almighty God. The right of private judgment is repeatedly and authoritatively declared to be the privilege of every believer; the humblest Moslem may place his own interpretation on the texts of the alleged revelation; and his conception of their meaning and application is entirely independent of the edicts of priests or the suspicious decisions of synods and councils.

Abstinence from swine’s flesh and from the blood of all animals is enforced through hygienic considerations arising from experience of the injurious effects of such food in tropical climates; and the requirement of personal cleanliness by frequent and regular lustration has its origin in the same vigilant solicitude for the public welfare.

A marked difference of ideas and phraseology is to be discerned in the Suras delivered at Mecca and Medina respectively; the former being more poetic, inspiring, and defiant than the latter. As Mohammed consolidated his power, the text of the Koran evinced more of the calmness and dignity of the ruler than of the fire of the enthusiast. The earnest desire to make converts of the Jews is disclosed by the appeal to a common ancestry, and by the politic incorporation of Talmudic legends into the holy book which was to replace the Bible; while the signal failure to secure this result is foreshadowed by threats of divine wrath soon to be realized by slavery, exile, and death. Though Arabia was full of infidels, and even a large proportion of the idolaters observed the rites of their religion merely as a matter of form and fashion, and were deeply infected with skepticism, it is singular that Mohammed, in his denunciations of hypocrisy and idolatry, did not utter a word in condemnation of atheistical ideas. The book, moreover, which was to be the guide of a sect whose adherents improved algebra, discovered chemical analysis, and brought agriculture to an unprecedented degree of perfection, contains no science, and only the most rudimentary notions of civil government. According to the Koran, the sun sets in a morass of black mud; water is the element whence all life is derived; and the conceptions of natural phenomena which are gravely set forth in its pages are only worthy of the vagrant fancies of children and barbarians.

Among Orientals the Koran is invariably published in Arabic, the sacred language of the Mussulmans, who are instructed in it during childhood, just as orthodox Jews are early familiarized with the Hebrew tongue. It is not known through the medium of translation in Mohammedan countries unless when the latter is interlined with the original; so that the reader, by comparing the different texts, may have an opportunity to judge of the qualifications and accuracy of the translator. Great luxury is usually exhibited in the embellishment of the sacred volume. Its leaves are blue or purple, odorous with costly perfumes, its letters of gold. Its covers are often studded with jewels. Amidst its interwoven arabesques the name of God appears, repeated thousands of times. No Mussulman handles it without every demonstration of reverence. It almost always bears upon the side an admonition not to touch it with unclean hands; an unnecessary precaution for the devout, whose respect for its contents is indeed not unreasonable, as we may perceive from a single invocation taken at random, and not conspicuous among the expressions of sublime piety to be found upon almost every page: “Architect of the heaven and the earth, thou art my support in this world and the next. Cause me to die faithful to the law. Introduce me into the assembly of the just.”

Islam means substantially the Religion of Peace. From this verbal form are derived the terms Mussulman and Moslem, indicating all who are submissive to the will of God. The commonly adopted appellation Mohammedan is not countenanced by followers of the Prophet, and is of European origin. The Islamitic confession of faith is the simplest known to any creed; it merely involves the repetition of the formula, “There is no God but God, and Mohammed is his Apostle.” By the acceptance and utterance of this phrase, any one may become a Mussulman; although the observance of the practical duties of prayer, fasting, alms-giving, and pilgrimage, urged with such eloquence in the Koran, are regarded as obligatory upon all professing that religion. Moslems pray five times daily, and before each prayer an ablution must be performed, as a token that the suppliant has cleansed his heart of every vestige of insincerity and impure desire. The Pagan Arabs, as often as they addressed their supplications to their ruling divinity, turned their faces to the rising sun, and when Mohammed instituted his form of prayer, he selected as the objective point, or Kiblah, the temple of Jerusalem, with the design of attracting the Jews; but after the conversion of the latter was seen to be impracticable, and no further reason for conciliation existed, the Kaaba was substituted; and thenceforth the holy shrine of Mecca became the Kiblah of the Moslem faith. During the month of Ramadhan—set apart because in it was communicated the first revelation—a fast is enjoined throughout the domain of Islam, and abstinence from food and drink is required from sunrise to sunset; an intolerable hardship in torrid lands, where the month often falls in summer on account of the constantly retrograding divisions of the lunar year.

The unostentatious bestowal of alms was a duty whose importance Mohammed constantly impressed upon his followers as a cardinal virtue; the Moslem is taxed to the tenth of his income for the benefit of the poor; and if his wealth has been increased through injustice or dishonesty, the penalty of a double contribution is exacted. Pilgrimage, the last of the religious obligations of Islamism, whenever possible, should be performed in person; its observance confers a life-long distinction, and its neglect implies a deplorable want of energy in the believer that may compromise his happiness hereafter.

When the pilgrim enters the sacred territory, which extends for several miles in every direction from Mecca, he lays aside his clothes, performs complete ablution, and dons the Ihram, or Garment of Holiness, which is composed of two long, seamless pieces of cotton cloth, one to be wrapped about the waist, and the other to be adjusted upon the upper part of the body so as to leave the right shoulder bare. All covering for the head is prohibited; a severe restriction under the blazing sun of the Hedjaz. He now approaches the Kaaba, kisses the Black Stone, and makes the circuit of the edifice seven times, repeating certain prayers prescribed for the occasion. Next he drinks of the waters of the holy well Zemzem, which tradition asserts burst forth spontaneously at the feet of Hagar when she and Ishmael were about to perish of thirst in the wilderness. Near at hand is the Station of Abraham, a large stone upon which the Patriarch is supposed to have stood when he built the Kaaba, whither the pilgrim must now resort and perform his devotions. Finally, he leaves the precincts of the shrine and runs seven times between Safa and Merwa, two elevations beyond the walls of the mosque; a ceremony commemorative of the despair of Hagar in her search for water to sustain the life of her suffering child before the fountains of Zemzem were miraculously opened. Upon the eighth day of the Pilgrimage, a mighty host, amounting not infrequently to the number of seventy-five thousand souls, with twenty-five thousand camels and countless other animals for sacrifice, sets out for Mount Arafat, ten miles distant, from whose summit a sermon is preached by the chief imam of the Mosque of Mecca. The sermon concluded, all hurry amidst great confusion to the Valley of Mina, where each pilgrim should cast seven pebbles at three pillars representing the devil, in commemoration of an incident in the life of Abraham. The animals, sheep and camels, are next slaughtered,—a ceremony symbolical of the sacrifice by the patriarch, whose victim, however, is stated by Arabian tradition to have been Ishmael instead of Isaac,—and the pilgrims are then at liberty to resume their ordinary garments, shave their heads, trim their beards, and pare their nails; acts considered illegal before the various rites of the Pilgrimage have been performed according to the prescribed routine.

The visit to the Prophet’s tomb at Medina is not compulsory, but is indispensable to secure the honorable title of Hadj, which confers the privilege of wearing a green turban, and excites the perpetual envy of those unfortunates whose physical incapacity or limited financial circumstances will not permit a journey to the Holy Cities of Arabia.

“Show me a people’s God,” said Euripides, “and I will tell you that people’s history.” To the history of Islam is this significant remark especially appropriate. The Moslem conception of the Deity is one of unapproachable grandeur and sublimity. While placed immeasurably above His creatures, their praise and their petitions are always tendered Him without the officious intervention of a privileged caste, and wherever the hour of prayer may find the worshipper, whether in the retirement of his home, in the noisy bazaar, upon the deck of a vessel in mid-ocean, or amidst the awful stillness and solitude of the Desert.

The practical value and consequent importance of a religion consist not so much by whom or under what circumstances it is alleged to have been founded, but in what it has effected for the happiness and permanent improvement of humanity.

Through the enthusiasm inspired by its exalted ideas of Almighty power, Islam extirpated idolatry so thoroughly, that in the second generation after it was promulgated men feared even to mention the names of the false gods of their fathers. It made cannibalism detestable, and swept away human sacrifices, with which the Arabs had been familiar for a period whose commencement was long anterior to the days of Abraham. It softened the asperities of warfare; extended to the vanquished the advantages of instant liberty and prospective distinction, upon the sole condition of conversion; it protected the unfortunate captive from violence, and abolished the shocking practice of mutilation of the dead. Its hostility to the spirit of feudalism insured the protection and freedom of every degree and profession of mankind. It elevated the position of woman; repressed the unblushing licentiousness prevalent in the Age of Ignorance; formulated an equitable law of divorce, where separation had been previously a matter of caprice; and shielded the wife from the cruelty, avarice, and injustice of the husband. It stamped out, at once and forever, the horrible crime of infanticide. It prohibited not merely the abuse of wine and other intoxicants, but even the slightest indulgence in them. It declared divination and all games of chance to be devices of Satan, whose practice would inevitably cause a forfeiture of Paradise. While countenancing slavery, it ameliorated the condition of the slave, who, under the patriarchal customs of the Orient, enjoyed the familiar intercourse and shared the paternal care of the master; declared his manumission to be the most commendable of acts and the most effective of penances; defined his rights, regulated the measure of his punishment and the amount of his ransom, and established the humane provision that, when sold, the slave-mother should never be separated from her child. It recommended as indispensable duties of the true believer the practice of humility, of resignation, of benevolence. By proclaiming the equality of all men and by the persistent inculcation of the virtues of charity and forgiveness, it gradually weakened, and ultimately abrogated, the law of blood-revenge, which the Bedouin had been accustomed to consider his most cherished privilege; a right whose violation, according to popular opinion, involved the honor of his tribe and the assertion of his manhood. It liberated property from the arbitrary impositions of a horde of petty chieftains, who levied excessive tribute to the infinite detriment of commerce, and imposed a single tax—the tenth of the increase—understood and acquiesced in by all. It punished mercilessly the abuses which arose from the unprincipled exactions of usury, and, by the enforcement of laws of unexampled rigor, guaranteed the safety of travellers in regions where successful robbery had been a mark of personal distinction, and where the outrage of private rights was still the unquestioned prerogative of every inhabitant whose arm was more powerful than that of his neighbor. Attaching the highest importance to habitual cleanliness, it commended its daily observance, and, to avoid a plausible excuse for neglect, it suggested the use of sand, as symbolical of water, in localities where the latter could not be obtained. It admitted into its ceremonial the wise and time-honored custom of circumcision; a purely sanitary regulation, whose important physiological significance every surgeon will readily comprehend. Islam is emphatically a religion of good works, and the believer is constantly reminded that upon the Day of Judgment his meritorious acts and deeds of benevolence will speak eloquently in his favor, although his lips have long been closed in the silence of the grave. No organized body of ecclesiastics, greedy of gain and notoriety and utterly unscrupulous as to the means of obtaining them, thronged its temples; for, in its original purity, it dispensed with a salaried priesthood, and all who read or expounded the Koran in public were expressly forbidden to receive for their services any remuneration whatever. The unseemly contests of sacerdotal ambition, the senseless privations of asceticism, the bloody and turbulent spirit of monastic bigotry, were, by the prudence and foresight of its founder, excluded from its system. Imposing a moderate contribution upon all those in its dominions who declined to abjure the faith of their ancestors, it, upon the other hand, refused to the ministers of other religions, its vassals, the privilege of taxing the members of their congregations without their consent. It impressed upon youth, of whatever rank or station, the obligations of polite and courteous behavior and the unremitting exercise of filial piety. It accorded to every seeker after truth the inestimable privilege of private interpretation and individual opinion,—an inherent right of man refused by Christianity until the time of Luther, who, on account of his advocacy of this innovation, was himself denounced as a Mohammedan; and in certain countries of Europe, not asserted until the seventeenth century, except in secret, and under the threatening shadows of the stake and the scaffold. Unlike other religions, it did not refuse salvation to those who rejected its dogmas. In the presence of the allurements of the seraglio, it still represented continence as the most precious jewel of a believer; but, perceiving the vices provoked by the unnatural restraints of monastic life, it prohibited celibacy, and, for two centuries after the death of the Prophet, the faquir, the santon, and the dervish were unknown. By adopting to a certain extent the primitive code of antiquity, eliminating the evil and retaining the good it contained, it appealed strongly to religious sentiment and national pride, rendered still more binding the virtues of public faith and private hospitality, and, by its repudiation of idolatry in all its forms, concentrated the mind of the devotee upon the compassion, the justice, the infinite grandeur and majesty of God.

A marked peculiarity of Islam is the absence of the female element from its ritual. Even now, in the days of its degeneracy, women have no place in the calendar of its saints; and yet we are aware that among all former, and many contemporaneous, religions the employment of priestesses was common, and female deities were favorite objects of adoration. The Virgin of the Koran—though her immaculate conception was conceded seven hundred and sixty-one years in advance of the decision of the Council of Basel—is, in all other respects, an ordinary mortal, and is far from possessing the dignity and importance of the famous Isis, that fascinating goddess who, banished from the banks of the Nile, was exalted, crowned with her starry emblems, in equal majesty and superior beauty, upon a more gorgeous throne in the imperial city of Catholic Rome.

Mohammed was not exempt from the prejudices entertained by his countrymen towards the sex. The sentimental gallantry and respectful homage tendered its members by Western nations is unknown to the suspicious and sarcastic Oriental. The Prophet declared that the majority of persons he saw in hell during his nocturnal journey were women. But if the power of woman to act directly upon the fortunes of Islam was disdained, her indirect influence in that direction was enormous and undeniable. The harems of the polygamous conquerors at once absorbed the noblest and fairest maidens of the households of the vanquished. The children of these mothers became, without exception, Moslems; and, after the lapse of a generation, the lingering traces of other beliefs disappeared, and nothing but a reconquest and a fresh immigration, or a miraculous interposition of Providence, could have restored the land, so recently subjugated, to its pristine faith.

In religion, as in politics, success is the generally recognized criterion of truth; of the multitude, few have time or inclination for the solution of abstruse theological questions; but substantial results are unmistakable, and even the most credulous are subject to the contagion of example. The successive and dazzling victories of Islam were, in the eyes of its superstitious adversaries, the most convincing argument of the divinity of its origin.

The doctrine of compulsion subsequently associated with Islam was, as already stated, not an original or essential part of its dogma. Mohammed did not advise recourse to the sword until all means of peaceable persuasion had been exhausted, and then only during the continuance of active hostilities. The moral impulse which Islam received as soon as its first victories were won was remarkable and suggestive. It was but the manifestation of the reverence for Force, a feeling which is never eradicated from human nature even in the mostly highly civilized communities. The Roman empire was founded upon this principle, of which it subsequently became the practical embodiment and representative. The successors of the Cæsars, the Khalifs, well aware of its power over the masses, retained and perpetuated its influence, and the scimetar and the Koran usurped the place and dignity of the deposed deities Mars and Hercules. And even in our day we see the evidence of the survival of this sentiment—as old as man himself—in the ceremonies relating to marriage by force among barbarous nations; in the proverbial, yet unconscious, admiration of both sexes—and especially of women—for the soldier; in the applause that greets the espada in the bull-ring; and in the homage and hero-worship accorded to the successful athlete and pugilist.

The mountain region of the Hedjaz, the rocky and barren valleys of Palestine, are insignificant in extent, destitute of natural resources, and without political importance in the eyes of the conquerors and rulers of nations. Yet within their contracted limits were promulgated the three religions which have exercised a predominant influence over the destinies of the most diverse and widely separated races of the globe. The unsocial and repellent character of the institutions of Moses which discouraged proselytism did not prevent the power of Hebrew genius from being felt in every country in which the detested sectaries of Israel established themselves. Christianity and Mohammedanism have by turns disputed the empire of the civilized world. The Khalifs, the spiritual heads of Islam, were long the exponents of intellectual culture, the masters of the fairest regions of Europe and Asia, the discerning patrons of art and letters. The most renowned of the Cæsars, the greatest of modern potentates, were alike inferior in rank and public consideration to the Supreme Pontiffs, who inherited the throne ennobled by the traditions of Roman glory, and whose dignity was confirmed by the omnipotent authority of God. No secular government, worthy of mention in history, has ever been instituted in a region so dreary and inhospitable as that from whence the most powerful and practical forms of faith that have ever enthralled humanity deduce their origin. The changes which all of the latter, in turn, have undergone, present a suggestive commentary on the perishable character of religious systems. The influence of the Babylonian captivity upon Judaism is apparent in every book of the Old Testament and in many of those of the New. We may safely conjecture that Christianity was something very different in the time of Tiberius from what it was in the time of Constantine, and we know what radical changes were made in its canons and ritual by Gregory the Great and Luther. The ancient manuscripts of the Gospels—perhaps destroyed for sinister reasons—have left no data for speculation as to their contents; but it is not unreasonable to at least surmise that the originals did not offer the glaring examples of inelegant diction and barbaric idioms that deform the modern versions. Nor has Islam escaped the fate of its predecessors, the result of the vicissitudes of time, and of the prejudices, weaknesses, and ambition of their votaries. Its distinctive peculiarity was its positive disclaimer of supernatural powers; yet the miracles attributed to Mohammed compose a considerable portion of its sacred literature, which is also oppressed and discredited by a vast mass of preposterous fables, treasured up for centuries in the voluminous body of Islamitic tradition. The simplicity of its creed would seem to effectually preclude all attempts at sectarian division; yet seventy-three sects exist, whose members lose no opportunity to persecute each other with acrimonious hostility. Mohammed execrated idolatry and the arts of the diviner, and denied the merit of works of supererogation; and now relics are suspended in the mosques; omens are sought in the Koran; intercession of saints is daily implored; the Persians worship the Imams; and the Omanites, instead of recognizing the Kaaba, render their obeisance to the Kiblah of their Sabean ancestors, the pole-star of the heavens.

In the Prophet’s attempts to secure the improvement of public morals, his attention was particularly drawn to Mecca as the central point of Islam, whither the believer turns in his daily devotions, and towards which his sightless eyes are directed when his body is deposited in the tomb. But the effects of his salutary admonitions died with him; and the Meccans, relieved from restraint, again became notorious for the excesses which had formerly made the Holy City a reproach even to heathen Arabia. It is a deplorable fact, and one which unhappily affords but too much excuse for the gibes of the profane, that those seats of piety which public opinion has invested with the sacred prestige of celestial influence are the very ones whose population is the most blasphemous, vile, and degraded. The worst Mussulmans of the world are the Arabs of the Hedjaz, as the Italian populace has ever been the scoffer at papal infallibility and the relentless enemy of the Vicar of God. The three cities of the world whose inhabitants early acquired, and have since maintained, the most unenviable reputation for depravity and licentiousness are Jerusalem, Mecca, and Rome.

Unlike most theological systems to which men, in all ages, have rendered their obedient and pious homage, no mystery obscures the origin and foundation of Islam. The purity and simplicity of its principles have undergone no change. Its history has been preserved by the diligence of innumerable writers. The life and characteristics of its Prophet, even to the smallest detail, are accessible to the curiosity of every enterprising scholar.

The austere character of a faith which, at its inception, exacts a rigid compliance with the minutest formalities of its ritual, naturally becomes relaxed and modified after that system has attained to worldly importance and imperial authority; or, in the language of one of the greatest of modern writers, “a dominant religion is never ascetic.” It is strange that Islam, which, in this respect, as in many others, has conformed to the general law of humanity, and now acknowledges tenets and allows practices that would have struck the subjects of Abu-Bekr and Omar with amazement, has been able to preserve in such perfection the observance of its ceremonial; especially when it had no organized sacerdotal power to sustain it. The absence of an ecclesiastical order which could dictate the policy of the throne, and humble the pride of the ermine and purple with the dust in the presence of some audacious zealot, also left untrammelled the way for scientific investigation and research, and, more than all else, contributed to dispel the darkness of mediæval times. The doctrine of toleration enunciated by Mohammed gave no encouragement to that system of repression whose activity has exhausted every means of checking the growth of philosophical knowledge, by imposing the most direful spiritual and temporal penalties upon every teacher who ventures to publicly explain its principles; and it is a matter of far deeper import to the civilization of the twentieth century, than is implied by the mere performance of an act of devotion, when the Temple of Mecca—the seat of a time-honored faith, from whose shrine emanated the spirit of learning that redeemed degraded Europe—is saluted five times every day by the reverent homage of concentric circles of believers, one hundred and fifty million in number, from Tangier to Pekin, from the borders of Siberia to the Equinoctial Line.

We may well consider with admiration the rapid progress and enduring effects of this extraordinary religion which everywhere brought order, wealth, and happiness in its train; which, in destroying the deities of the Kaaba, swept away the traditions of thirty centuries; which adopted those pagan rites that it could not abolish; which seized and retained the birthplace of Christianity; which dispersed over so wide a territory alike the theocracy of the Jews and the ritual of Rome; which drove the Magi from the blazing altars of Persia; which usurped the throne and sceptre of the Byzantine Church; which supplanted the fetichism of the African desert; which trampled upon the mysteries of Isis, Osiris, and Horus, and revealed to the wondering Egyptians the secret of the Most High God; which invaded the Councils of Catholicism, and suggested a fundamental article of its belief; which fashioned the graceful arches of our most famous cathedrals; which placed its seal upon the earth in the measurement of a degree, and inscribed its characters in living light amidst the glittering constellations of the heavens; which has left its traces in the most familiar terms of the languages of Europe; which affords daily proof of its beneficent offices in the garments that we wear, in the books that we read, in the grains of our harvests, in the fruits of our orchards, in the flowers of our gardens; and which gave rise to successive dynasties of sovereigns, whose supreme ambition seemed to be to exalt the character of their subjects, to transmit unimpaired to posterity the inestimable treasures of knowledge, and to extend and perpetuate the intellectual empire of man. These signal and unparallelled results were effected by the inflexible constancy, the lofty genius, the political sagacity, of an Arabian shepherd, deficient in the very rudiments of learning, reared among a barbarous people divided into tribes whose mutual hostility had been intensified by centuries of warfare, who had no organized system of government, who considered the mechanical and mercantile arts degrading, who recognized no law but that of force, and knew no gods but a herd of grotesque and monstrous idols. Robbery was their profession, murder their pastime. Except within the precincts of their camp, no friend, unless connected by the sacred ties of blood, was secure. They devoured the flesh of enemies slain in battle. Deceit always excepted, cruelty was their most prominent national characteristic. Their offensive arrogance, relentless enmity, and obstinate tenacity of purpose were, in a direct ratio to their ignorance and their brutalizing superstition, confirmed by the prodigies, the omens, and the legends of ages.

To undertake the radical amelioration of such political and social conditions was a task of appalling, of apparently insuperable difficulty. Its fortunate accomplishment may not indicate the active interposition of Divine authority. The glories which invest the history of Islam may be entirely derived from the valor, the virtue, the intelligence, the genius, of man. If this be conceded, the largest measure of credit is due to him who conceived its plan, promoted its impulse, and formulated the rules which insured its success. In any event, if the object of religion be the inculcation of morals, the diminution of evil, the promotion of human happiness, the expansion of the human intellect; if the performance of good works will avail in that great day when mankind shall be summoned to its final reckoning, it is neither irreverent nor unreasonable to admit that Mohammed was indeed an Apostle of God.