From the Scotsman.
The correspondence under this title which has appeared the Times is concerned with a subject that has more than speculative interest for the inhabitants of Great Britain. In India there are about fifty millions of Moslems the subjects of her Majesty; and our relations, political and commercial, with Moslems in other parts of the world are numerous and complex. And there can he no doubt that the many and costly blunders which this country has from time to time perpetrated in South-Eastern Europe, in Egypt, and Afghanistan were largely owing to an imperfect understanding of the Mohammodan character and religion. Apart, however, from these personal considerations, the religion of the Prophet has spread over so large a portion of the earth' s surface that its effects upon the minds of those who em brace it and its probable destiny in the future, must awaken the interest of every thoughtful man. The reason that it does not seem to do so is due to the obscurity of the subject, and the extreme difficulty of getting clear and trustworthy information. As is nearly always the case when a matter is in the exclusive possession of "specialists," a great deal of passion and prejudice has been imparted into the discussion. The disputants are concerned, not so much with the character and effects of Islam, as either to exalt, or depress it in relation to something else. This has notably been the case in the letters which have appeared in the Times. Here the method has been for each writer to select these phenomena political, social, or otherwise, in any part of the Mohammedan world which told in favour of his view, and assume that these, and these only, were the legitimate products of Islamism. Canon Isaac Taylor, fixing his eyes on what Islam is reported to have done for the savage tribes of Central Africa, dogmatically declares that "Islam has done more for civilisation than Christianity." His opponents, fixing their eyes on the Ottoman umpire and the Khanates of Central Asia, pronounce Islam to be the great—perhaps the greatest—enemy of civilisation at present existent in the world. Which is right ? Both parties adduce facts in support of their respective contentions. Is there no way of mediating between them—of showing what measure of truth there is in views which seem, at first sight to be destructive the one of the other? It is as an attempt in this direction that I would ask you to publish the following contribution to the controversy.
To appreciate the after effects of a religion we ought, I think, in the first place, to ascertain the element, or elements, in it which laid the strongest hold upon the spiritual life of its first converts—which had the profoundest influence in moulding their character and conduct. As regards Christianity, there can hardly be a question that this element is to be found in the preaching of the Resurrection of Christ. That determined for all the first Christians, the relation in which the visible world stood to the invisible, the relative importance and significance of each; and Christian controversy ever since has been occupied with the determination of this cardinal doctrine—the relations subsisting between man in the flesh and the powers of the invisible world. Popery, Protestantism, religious persecution, and religious toleration are all in different ways expressions of the form in which these relations have shaped themselves in the minds of men. Similarly, if we desire to ascertain, not the accidental but the enduring effects of Islam, we must ascertain those elements in the teaching of the Prophet which determined in the minds of his first followers their relation towards the invisible world. They were, in my mind, two. These have dominated the fortunes of Islam ever since and it is I think,easy to show how, as one or other comes chiefly into play.
Islam becomes a regenerating power in Central Africa —a destructive one in Mohammedan Asia. When Mohammed entered upon his career as a religious reformer he was impelled thereto by his abhorence of the idolatrous practices of the Arabs. At this early stage his zeal against idolatry was directed as much against the worship of the black stone and the annual pilgrimage of the Arabian tribes to Mekka as to the other parts of the national creed. His ambition was to wean the minds of his fellow-tribesmen from these practices altogether and to induce them to find a new centre of holiness and devotion in Jerusalem and the Jewish temple. In the earlier phases of his teaching there is little or no insistence upon his own personal dignity or authority, and he aimed at winning back his countrymen to the Monotheism of the Jews as being identical with the faith of their common father, Abraham, which faith he declared had been corrupted by the idolatory and superstition of the Arabs. So long however, as he held to this creed, his teaching met with no success. He was, on the contrary forced to fly from Mekka, and with his few followers find an asylum in the rival town of Medina. It was during his residence at this latter place that the conviction was gradually formed in the mind of the Prophet that to win the adherence of his countrymen he must make some sacrifice to the inordinate pride of race and ancestry what was the great governing characteristic of the Arab people. They could not and would not endure to be told by a mere camel driver, that they and their ancestors had been wallowing in the mire of ignorance, while the despised Jews, living among them, had been in possession of a higher and purer light.
In submission to this feeling, Mohammed, when at Medina, declared Mekka, and not Jerusalem, to be the sacred city in the new dispensation, and tacked on to his Monotheistic teaching the worship of the black stone, and the meaningless ceremonial of the annual pilgrimage to Mekka. This concession to idolatry has ever since been one of the great determining factors in the spiritual history of every Moslem people. As a chain is no stronger than its weakest link, so for the Mohammedan world the nature and character of the Deity has been determined by the nature and character of this annual pilgrimage. The due celebration of an unmeaning rite has constituted the highest obligation imposed upon the Faithful. The other determining factor has been, in my judgment, the doctrine of Fatalism. It is easy for the apologist of Islam to produce from the Koran many passages which are inconsistent with this doctrine. The Koran is not a reasoned system of philosophy and ethics evolved by a quiet thinker in the seclusion of his study. In order to be understood it must be interpreted, at every step by a reference to the varying fortunes which marked the career of the Prophet. In the earlier Suras there are few, if any, traces of the doctrine of Fatalism. Mohammed at that time was full of hope and onlooking thoughts. He summoned men to repent and believe, in the confident expectation that they would respond to his call. It is plain that, so long as he entertained this expectation the doctrine of man's free will would form a part of His teaching. But when the prophet found that his appeals knocked unavailingly at the stubborn hearts of his fellow tribesmen, he fell back upon the doctrine of Fatalism to explain his ill success. A new conception was put forth of the relations subsisting between God and man. God, now, was He "who creates in the soul its wickedness and piety." " No soul can believe but by the permission of God." " Whom God shall please to guide that man's breast will be open to Islam; but whom He shall please to mislead, straight and narrow will He make his way, as though he were mounting up into the very heavens." As his life drew to a close, the Prophet insisted with increasing vehemence on this doctrine of predestination. To those who murmured at the sanguinary defeat at Ohod, saying, "Were we to have gained aught in this affair, none of us had been slain at this place," Mohammed made answer, "Had ye remained in your homes, they who were decreed to be slain would have gone forth to the places where they lie." In the sayings of the Prophet handed down by tradition, this doctrine is repeatedly insisted upon "There is not one amongst you whose sitting place is not written by God whether in the fire or in Paradise," "Whatever happens to thee is from Fate and if thou shouldest die without believing in Fate, thou most certainly wouldest enter into hell-fire."
Now, it is a recognised principle of interpretation that where two passages in the Koran appear to contradict each other, the later revelation cancels the earlier. Accordingly the recognition of man's free will which is to be found in the earlier utterances of Mohammed, counted for absolutely nothing in the minds of his followers. It was annulled and obliterated by his later teaching, insomuch that the fatalistic view of life has ever since been the distinctive tenet and principle of conduct among the followers of the Prophet all the world over. The doctrine of Fatalism it is which gives to Islamism during its periods of expansion, its tremendous destructive force, the worship of the black stone, on the other hand is that which makes it absolutely destitute of the power of assimilation. Hence the seemingly contradictory character of its effects in Central Africa and in Central Asia. So long as Islamism is in a state of expansion the doctrine of Fatalism is transfigured, so to speak, into in emphatic oppression of the will of God. The barbarians of Central Africa, tormented as they are by the terror of supernatural powers for ever lying in wait to do them injury of one kind or another, are in precisely the same frame of mind to fit them to receive the Monotheism of Islam. The Moslem evangelist who appears among them believes as profoundly as they do in an unseen world peopled by demons, in the power of magicians, witches, charms, amulets, and the like, but he introduces some degree of order into this reign of chaos and old night by the revelation of One mightier far than all these secondary agencies, whose will it is that men should act thus and thus. Practically,however, the essence of this revelation is that if men desire to be saved from the torments of hell-fire, they must adopt and rigidly adhere to the manners and customs of the Arabian tribes. For here it is that the other great doctrine of Islam, which I have mentioned, comes into play. The sanctity affixed to the black stone by the Prophet practically consecrated, not merely that and the whole ceremonial of the pilgrimage, but with the single exception of infanticide, all the social and other customs of the Arabs as they existed in the time of Mohammed. We see this in the singular fact that as the Arabs were in the lifetime of the Prophet, so they remain to this day. And thus it is that when Islam penetrates to countries lower in the scale of humanity than even the Arabs of Mohammed's day, it suffices to elevate them to that level. That it is powerless to do more than this is evident from the effects which have followed in its wake elsewhere.
In Asia, in Europe, in Egypt, in Northern Africa, there no country where Islam has held undisputed sway for a length of time which has not been ruined and barbarised by it. It is a common but most erroneous notion that the ancient splendour and magnificence of Baghdad and Bokara are a proof of the civilising influences inherent in Islam. They are nothing of the kind. For many centuries after the first introduction of Islam, there was throughout Mohammedan Asia a struggle for supremacy between the ancient Persian civilisation and Arabian barbarism, consecrated and stereotyped by the authority of the Prophet. The magnificence of Baghdad and Bokhara is coeval with Persian supremacy. It perished as that decayed. Until now broad deserts, peopled only by a few Turcoman robbers, have taken the place of flourishing cities and richly cultivated lands. For that very doctrine of fatalism, so strong as an aggressive force, brings about a profound apathy of mind as soon as the period of expansion has been brought to a close. There is in Islam no power of assimilating new truth, because there is in it no logical continuity between the character of the Deity and the ceremonial code which He is supposed to have enjoined, upon men. No Moslem can reject the worship of the black stone without arrogating for himself a knowledge of the will of God superior to that possessed by the Prophet himself. The result is that the spiritual destinies of the Mohammedan world have always been determined by the most ignorant and fanatical of the population. A (so-called) Mohammedan revival has invariably been a revolt from liberality and toleration—a reaction to a narrower bigotry and a spirit of persecution. In no country has this been more strikingly illustrated than in India.
It is very generally supposed that the British are the successors of the old Moslem sovereigns of Delhi. This is a great mistake. It was as the friends, and not the supplanters, of Moslem sovereignty that we generally took the field in India, and such remains as still survive of that sovereignty are due to our aid and protection. The splendid period of the Emperors of Delhi was of very short duration, and was entirely due to the fact that the Emperors Akbar, Jehan gir, and Shah Jehan, being Moslems only in name, adopted a large and liberal policy towards the great body of their non-Moslem subjects. Aurungzebe, the son and successor of Shah Jehan, reversed this policy. He was determined to govern India according to the strictest tenets of the Mohammedan faith. His memory is, in consequence, still held in devout reverence by all pious Mohammedans in India; but beyond all question he brought the empire in a few years to ruin, and inaugurated that period of war and tumult which only terminated when the British troops under Lord Lake entered Delhi, and found a blind, half-starved, wretched, and poverty-stricken old man, the surviving relic of the power and magnificence of Akbar.
Shortly after the British capture of Delhi there began in India a propaganda for the reformation of the Mohammedan religion —the Wahabee movement, as it has been called—which has been carried on with little intermission to this day; and the radical antipathy which exists between a vigorous assertion of Islam and all that we Westerns understand by civilisation is seen in the teaching of these Wahabee missionaries. The duty of the Faithful, they declare, is to leave India altogether. That country, owing to the pernicious toleration extended by the British Government to all the creeds of its subjects, has become a dar-al-harb, or land of the infidel, in which no unbeliever can remain without the certainty of perdition to his soul. The following is a passage from one of their sermons:—" Now, you should know that it is incumbent on all Mahommedans to leave a country which is governed by an Infidel, in which, acting according to the Mahommedan laws, is forbidden by the ruling power. If they do not abandon it, then in the hour of death, when their souls will be separated from their bodies, they will suffer great torments. When the angel of death will come to separate their souls from their bodies, he will ask them the following question:—' Was not the kingdom of God sufficiently spacious to enable you to leave your homes and settle in another country?' And, saying, this, he will subject them to great pain in separating their souls from their bodies. Let all know this. In a country where the religion is other than Mohammedan, the religious precepts of Mohammed cannot be enforced. It is incumbent on Moslems to unite and wage war with Unbelievers. Those who are unable to partake in the war should depart to the country of Islam. At the present time —in this country (i.e., India)—flight is a stern duty."
Here speaks the true, unadulterated spirit of Islam. Civilisation is an offence to it, religious equality a blasphemy. Its mission is not to learn anything from the unbelieving world, but to make perpetual war against it, until its population has been reduced to its divinely-ordained condition, as the subjects and tributaries of the Faithful.
The Sydney Morning Herald 1888, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article13668796
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