Part 1 — CHAPTER I. (continued 2)
Reading edition
The Koran is the sacred book of Islam; the successive “revelations” imparted to Mohammed, were diligently recorded by his disciples on palm-leaves, skins, and the shoulder-bones of mutton; and the fragments, or “pages,” were thrown into a domestic chest, in the custody of one of Mohammed’s wives. In 634, these fragments were collected and published by Abu Bekr; the sacred volume was revised by the Khalif Othman, in 651. It consists of 114 chapters (Surats, i.e. stages or degrees), of very unequal lengths, and jumbled together without chronological order, or systematic arrangement. The chapters are made up of plagiarisms from the Bible, rabbinical and apocryphal legends, religious and moral precepts, descriptions of the joys of paradise and the torments of hell, declamations and rhapsodies. The style is, for the most part, inflated, rarely poetical, never sublime; yet Mohammed had the cool audacity to rest the truth of his mission on the incomparable merit of the Koran, as an intellectual, linguistic, and poetical performance. He blasphemously asserted, that God alone could have penned, or dictated, its divine contents; as no human, nor even an angelic intelligence, could possibly have conceived anything like them!!!
The dogmatic part of the Koran (the Iman), comprises the two articles of faith, viz., the belief in one God, and in his prophet Mohammed; and the four practical duties of Islam, viz., prayer, ablutions, fasting, and alms-giving: these duties are reduced to the level of mere mechanical performances, without one atom of spontaneity about them, and are looked upon by most Mohammedans as irksome tasks, which must be accomplished, however, to secure the reward of paradise; the formal permission granted to supply with sand the scarcity of water, so that the prescribed lustration of the hands, the face, and the body may be practised even in the arid desert, shows how little capable the legislator must have been to conceive and comprehend the true spirit and intention of his own ordinances. The Koran pronounces—of course: is there a religion that does not?—sentence of eternal damnation against all unbelievers; it imagines a gradation of seven inconveniently hot places, of which the highest and least uncomfortable is, of course, appropriated for the exclusive use of Mohammedans who have been lacking in piety during their mortal career; according to the less or greater gravity of their respective offences, they are condemned to remain denizens of this the mildest of the seven hells, for periods varying from 900 to 9000 years, after which they are admitted to the joys of paradise. The place immediately beneath this purgatorial hell is assigned to the Christians; the hell next to this is allotted to the Jews, whom the prophet of Islam would indeed gladly have sent down lower, had he dared to treat monotheists worse than idolators; the Sabians inhabit the fourth, the Magians the fifth, the gross idolators the sixth hell; the deepest and hottest hell is destined to receive hypocrites in religion, and may therefore safely be assumed to be of larger dimensions and infinitely greater capacity than the other six together. The paradise of the Koran abounds in groves, fountains, and rivers; the blessed Moslems who are permitted to enter its gates will dwell in palaces of marble, eat artificial dainties and luscious fruits presented in dishes of gold, drink rich wines,[42] dress in robes of silk, adorned with pearls and diamonds, and have a numerous retinue of attendants; and above all, each Moslem will enjoy the society and possession of seventy-two Houris, or black-eyed girls, of resplendent beauty, blooming youth, virgin purity, and exquisite sensibility—rather a pleasant picture for a sensual people like the Arabians. To the female sex also the gates of paradise are open; but the privileges and enjoyments which may await the ladies of the Mohammedan faith, are not specified in the Koran. Still, we must not be unjust: above the vulgar joys and sensual pleasures borrowed from this world, Mohammed places the delights of familiar conversation with the sages, and he expressly declares that all meaner happiness will be forgotten and despised by the saints and martyrs who shall be permitted to behold the face of God.
Mohammed’s assertion that the Koran was the production of the highest intelligence, and comprised within it the knowledge of all times, has, ever since the establishment of his creed, proved a bar to the intellectual culture and progress of his people and of the other nations who were induced or compelled to adopt his faith; his interdiction to reproduce the human face and form on canvas or in marble, or any other material, and which with singular poverty of invention he had devised as the only possible check to idolatry, has had the natural effect to suppress and extinguish in the Moslem nations the love of the fine arts. True, when conquest had placed the wealth of empires at the disposal of the sons of the Desert, many of Mohammed’s followers could not resist the natural longing after the treasures and enjoyments of science, art, and literature; and indeed the republic of letters is vastly indebted to many of them for their labors and researches in various fields of human lore, more especially in geography, history, philosophy, medicine, natural philosophy, chemistry, mathematics, and above all, arithmetic, algebra, geometry, and astronomy. But then, as A. W. von Schlegel, says, “All this was done, as it were, behind the back of the prophet, and the votaries of art, science, and literature, among the Arabians must, from a Koranic point of view, be regarded in the light of free-thinkers.”
The ritual of the faith of Islam, and the interdictions decreed by the prophet, have been already incidentally touched upon in various parts of this chapter; we have therefore simply to add here that the Koran commands every faithful Moslem to visit, at feast once in his life, the holy city of Mecca, and the Kaaba.
One great redeeming feature of the religion of Islam was that it was originally destitute of a priesthood, and repudiated monachism; the Ulemas were simply intended to be the expounders and interpreters of the law.
On Friday, the appointed day of public worship, when the faithful are assembled in the mosque, any respectable elder may ascend the pulpit to begin the prayer and pronounce the sermon: there is no need of a duly appointed priest. But, unfortunately, the Ulemas and Imams of the present day act very much in the capacity of an actual clergy: and there is indeed no great difference between fakirs and dervishes and Roman Catholic monks.
The Koran contains also the civil and criminal code of the Mussulmans; the punishments decreed in it for injuries, offences, and crimes are mostly based upon the principle of retaliation.
Briefly to sum up: though it must be admitted that the religion of Islam, calmly and dispassionately examined by the light of reason, contains, by the side of the grossest absurdities, the most palpable falsehoods, and the veriest rubbish, much also that is true and of sterling worth; and that it has exercised a certain civilising influence over the barbarous nations to whom it was first preached, yet few only will venture to deny that it lacks altogether the higher and most essential qualities of a universal faith. Even the basis whereon it rests, the great eternal truth of a sole Deity, is tarnished and clouded in it by the companionship which it is forced to bear to a miserable fiction placed by the side of it, and with equal attributes. There are some few, strange though it may appear, who almost regret that the victorious career of the Moslems should have been checked by Leo the Isaurian and by Charles Martel. What would have become of Europe—what of civilisation, had the Moslems conquered? Let the admirers of Islam look at the state of the Mussulman nations of the present day: the fruit shows the quality of the tree. It is also a favorite argument with historians and others, to point to the numbers of believers in Islam, and to the twelve centuries that the Mohammedan faith has endured, as convincing proofs of the truth of that creed, or, at all events, of a preponderating amount of truth in it. If arguments of this kind are to apply, the Mormon faith also may claim admission among the “received” creeds; and the names of Joe Smith and Brigham Young may be expected, in the course of fifty years or so, to figure among the “prophets and apostles of religion.”