I do not desire to explain the importance and significance of Islam among the religious systems of the world; nor am I to fix and ascertain the exact position of Mohamed as a religious teacher among the world’s great teachers of religions. My effort in this paper is simpler and yet not altogether free from bewildering perplexities. I desire to explain what Islam is and what its teachings are: Islam as preached and delivered by the prophet of Arabia; Islam stripped of the accretions of ages of theological disputes and controversies; in other words to sketch out, to the best of my light and leading, Islam of the prophet Mohamed. Difficult though this task is, it is not indeed a hopeless venture for one who has kept himself clear and free from narrow sectarianism.

To fully appreciate the message of Mohamed, it is essential that I should say something about the condition of Arabia before Islam. I must readily admit that so far as the Pagan Arabia is concerned, we are in great dearth of authorities. Our information is shadowy, fitful, and fragmentary and the industry of European scholars (such as Caussin De Perceval, Krehl, Wellhausen, Robertson Smith and Sir Charles Lyall) has succeeded but in lifting the veil merely at its fringe. But however partial and unsatisfactory as the account is, of the Pagan days; we can yet form an idea of the life that the Pagan Arabs led and the thoughts that swayed and animated their conduct and their deeds. I will, therefore, describe “The Pre-Islamic Arabia” as briefly as I can.

The Pre-Islamic Arabs were not a nation. Of the sense of nationality, indeed, they had not the vaguest conception, though they were linked by community of speech. Arabia was a sum-total of loose and disconnected congeries of tribes and the tribe was the source and the limit of social and political obligation. Beyond the tribe there lay no duty and no obligation either. Political relations were moral; for morality was confined within the limits of the tribe. Political organisation was represented by the corporate feeling which found expression in the exercise of the duties of brotherhood. Within the pale of the tribe obtained the prohibition to kill, to commit adultery, to steal, &c., &c. Beyond it there was no such prohibition. Fidelity to one’s kinsman was an imperative duty, apart from any question of the justness of the cause.[1] Outside the tribe there was nothing but constant plunder and unceasing warfare. “Certain large groups were, indeed, almost continually at war with one another. Ma`add, the people of the Hijaz and Al-yamamah generally looked upon Al-yaman as their natural prey and were constantly raiding on the herds of their southern neighbours. Between Tamim and Bakr, son of Wail, there was permanent bad blood, Ghatafan and Hawazin had a standing feud. In the north the kingdom of Al-Hirah, the representative of Persian predominance was the hereditary enemy of Ghassan, the representative of the might of Rome.” (Lyall, Ancient Arabian Poetry, p. xxiii.) Arabia, before Islam, was thus a theatre of internecine warfare, restrained, but partially, by the introduction of blood money. There was compensation for everything for which vengeance could be exacted. All crimes were assessed as economic damage. Every loss of honor, property, or life could be appraised by agreement; all having their price in camels. We thus see that the Arabs before Islam had scarcely emerged from barbaric conditions.[2] There was no social order, no organised government. The law of sheer brute force prevailed, untempered and unrestrained, by any civilizing or controlling influence. Nor did they attain any refined idea of religion. Their religion was nothing more or less than gross fetichism; the worship of tree and stone, the veneration of certain personified divine attributes, meaningless ritual and ceremonials. The true religious spirit they never succeeded in grasping and the fear of God never exercised any real, practical influence over their conduct and actions. It was reserved for Islam to instil into them the sense of responsibility to God and to make this idea of human responsibility the guiding and controlling principle of life. To all appearance the Arabs honoured the gods, went on pilgrimage to their sanctuaries, made sacrifices in the temples, anointed with the blood of the victims gods carved out of stone or made of wood, consulted the oracles, when in difficulty, and questioned them about the future. But all this was sham and counterfeit. Of real, genuine, religious feeling there was none. This empty show, however, was kept up for purposes of gain; the manifold sanctuaries yielding large incomes to certain noble families and clans.[3]

In a soil, apparently so uncongenial, how did Islam strike its root? This is an interesting and fascinating question and we must try to solve it here. The solution of this question is to be found in the existence of Judaism and Christianity, on the one hand, and in the commercial activity of the Arabs, on the other. By commerce the Arabs acquired an extended knowledge of foreign nations and their civilisation. Frequent contact with the outer world widened their intellectual horizon and awakened in them higher and more spiritual thoughts. They learnt new ideas, acquired new habits and, what was most valuable of all, they learnt to think for themselves. But not merely did travel in foreign countries and intercourse with foreign people exercise a disruptive influence, but there were forces, alike subversive and destructive, nearer home. In Arabia itself the two streams of Christianity and Judaism flowed, side by side, with the Arab Heathenism.

That Christianity had made a considerable advance among the Arabs is clear from the fact, that, at the time of Mohamed, it was considerably diffused not merely among the Rabia tribes but even among the Tamim. Nor did the Taiyy altogether escape its influence. Its growth, however, was not so favourable in Hijaz and central Arabia, but even here Christian ideas undoubtedly made their way through commerce and social intercourse. Similarly the Jewish influence was equally powerful. When the Jews came to Arabia we do not definitely know, but Dr. NÖldeke points out that a great Jewish immigration into Arabia cannot be fixed prior to the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus and Hadrian. At all events, it is clear that at the time of Mohamed there was a large colony of Jews at Taima, Khaibar, Yathrib, Fedak and Yaman. They did not live scattered amidst Arab population but kept together and, though despised by the Ara`sq they were yet indispensible to them as merchants, jewellers, and goldsmiths. It would, therefore, be not an error to suppose that they exerted no small spiritual influence over the Arabs.[4] That this is no unfounded theory or improbable supposition is evidenced by the fact that in the works of four of the most prominent Arabian poets of the Pre-Islamic time—An-Nabigah, Zuhair, Al-Asha and Labid—we find expressions which show that they, at least, if not the wild wanderers of the desert, knew very well what a spiritual religion meant.[5] Ibn Qutaibah enumerates drinking, joy, wrath and love among the “motive causes” which speed the poet but we cannot fail to detect in their poems an undercurrent of deep religious feelings. Individual minds felt a sense of uneasiness and sought to find some plausible solution of the mysteries of life and death and traces of such a frame of mind we notice frequently in ancient Arab poetry. On no other basis, indeed, can we explain away the lamentations of the royal poet Imra-ul-Qais over the worthlessness of the life of pleasure that he had led and the conversion to Christianity of Qais B. Zuhair, the leader of the Abs in the long fratricidal war against the Dhubian.[6] In considering the rise of Islam we cannot be unwatchful of the course of contemporary thought or unmindful of the religious forces which contributed to its success. Such, indeed, were the forces at work in Arabia before Mohamed; forces which could not have failed to stir higher thoughts in enlightened minds and to create a reaction against the Arab Heathenism. And a reaction, indeed, did set in. A band of distinguished men, whom we must recognise as the heralds and standard-bearers of Islam, no longer willing to tolerate idolatrous practices, definitely cut themselves adrift from the Arabian Paganism. They called themselves Hanifs; a word of doubtful meaning and the cause of much controversy. “The most acceptable conjecture seems to me”, says Sir Charles Lyall, “to be that of Sprenger that it is connected with the Hebrew HANEF heretic.” Hanifism had certain specific features: rejection of idolatory, abstention from certain kinds of food, and the worship of “the God of Abraham.” Ascetic practices, such as the wearing of sackcloth, are also ascribed to some of the Hanifs.[7] Islamic tradition has handed down to us the names of a number of religious thinkers before Mohamed, who are described as Hanifs and of whom the following is a list:—

1. Warakah b. Naufal of Kuraish.
2. Ubaidulla b. Jahsh.
3. Uthman b. Al Huwarith.
4. Zaid b. ´Amr b. Naufal.
   Ibn Kutaibah adds to the above:—
5. Urbab b. al Bara´ of Abdul Qais
6. Umayyah b. Abi-s-Salt.
7. Kuss b. Saidah of Iyad (Aghani XIV, 41-44) Mohamed heard him at Ukaidh but he died before the mission.
8. Abu Kais Simrah b. Abi Anas.
9. Khalid b. Sinan b. Ghaith of Abs.
   To these Sir Charles Lyall adds:—
10. Abu Kais Saifi, Ibn Al-Aslat of the Aus-allah of Yathrib.

It is impossible to misconceive the importance and significance of Hanifism in the origin of Islam. The path was already prepared for it and Islam offered to the Arabs what they were long in search for: a moral, ethical, and spiritual teaching; a higher form of worship and last but not least fraternity and union. The tribal cults were henceforward merged in a higher worship and the nobler energies of the Arab race obtained a religious consecration.

Islam became the starting point for the Arabs for conquests, alike spiritual and temporal. With Islam became the prerogative of the Arab race to be “an ensign to the nations;” to bear and to carry the banner of the true God to the remotest corner of the earth. Hence the unceasing campaigns and hence the far-extending conquests.