Annie H. Small

In the Name of the Most Merciful God.

Praise be to God, Lord of the worlds—

The most merciful—

The King of the day of Judgment.

Thee only do we worship, and to Thee do we cry for help.

Guide Thou us in the straight way—

In the way of those to whom Thou hast been gracious—

With whom Thou art not angry—

And who go not astray. Amen.

The great Prayer of Islam.

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The Apostle of Islam.

“By the brightness of the morning,

and by the night when it groweth dark—

Thy Lord hath not forsaken thee,

Neither doth He hate thee.

Verily the life to come shall be better for thee

than this present life,

and thy Lord shall give thee a reward

with which thou shalt be well pleased.

“Did He not find thee an orphan,

and hath He not taken care of thee?

Did He not find thee wandering in error,

and hath He not guided thee into the truth?

Did He not find thee needy,

and hath He not enriched thee?

Wherefore oppress not the orphan, neither

repulse the beggar,

but declare the goodness of the Lord.”

Sura XCVI.

There is in the story of Islam an interest quite unique; it is the work of one unaided mind, the mind of a man unlettered and ignorant, who came of an isolated people, and who gained such knowledge as he had of the great world from hearsay as he travelled between Central Arabia and Syria in charge of the merchant caravan of his mistress. This man, morally very frail to our thinking, is all but divine to two hundred millions of men and women. His word is final to them; it alone reveals God, it alone guides life, it alone commands all Muslim rulers, and it defies Christianity as no other power has done.

Muhammad lived six hundred years after Christ, his Faith came into existence in full view of Christianity, it publicly claims to be a higher revelation and to supersede Christianity; and the Christian nations have not yet disproved the claim. The attempt has not indeed been made, unless we reckon the chivalrous and ill-fated missions of the Crusades to redeem the Holy Sepulchre from the hands of the Muslim. Whether Christianity realizes the fact of her failure in this respect, or not, Islam is fully conscious of it.

Muhammad Muhammad—the Praised One—was born at Mecca on August 29th, 570 A.D. He was left an orphan while still a little child, and was adopted by an uncle. Later he became steward to a lady of Mecca, Khadija, who asked him to become her husband, and was, until her death, his faithful and loving wife. This marriage procured for Muhammad that which he coveted above all things, leisure for the study of the things of God.

The Call The time was past when the idolatrous worship of his tribe—the religious tribe of Arabia—had any meaning for him. He had had glimpses of a purer, a more satisfying Faith. Both Jews and Christians had crossed his path, who had spoken of the one God: Creator, Ruler, Provider; and the idea had seized and held his imagination. Upon this idea he now meditated in his chosen retreat, a cave near Mecca, until it possessed him; he dreamed dreams and saw visions, and at length came forth to make them known, being assured that he had been called to proclaim the reign of the one only God upon earth.

Rejection But the people of Mecca, custodians of the religious traditions of Arabia, would have none of this new doctrine; they fiercely opposed the preacher, and very soon drove him and his little company of disciples (of whom his wife had been the first) from the city.

Flight The Hajrat, or Flight, from which dates the Muhammadan era, took place on July 16th, 622 A.D.

A refuge was found in the rival city of Madina.

Madina At Madina, Muhammad found leisure to mature and carry out the Idea which had now possessed him that he should found a Reign of God upon the earth. “Behind the quiet and unobtrusive exterior,” writes Sir William Muir, “lay hid a resolve, a strength and fixedness of will, a sublime determination, destined to achieve the marvellous work of bowing towards himself the heart of all Arabia as the heart of one man.” There is, to the sympathetic student of his life, nothing wonderful in the hold which Muhammad took upon his followers. He mastered men by the force of his iron will, and then won them by the force of his noble and generous nature.

Character Many words have been wasted upon the problems of the character of this sixth-century Prophet, and it is not intended to enter upon them here. It must be remembered that if the vision of Muhammad was world-wide while his personal life remained at the limit of his time and his isolated race, there are not lacking similar examples elsewhere of great leaders whose private lives we explain by their generation and surroundings; also, it is probably wise, that until we know and are able to sympathize with the Arabic character, we of the West should say little in way of condemnation, all the more that condemnation of the Prophet is not the method to win men from his allegiance.

Personal Claim There is a far more important question which may not be passed over. Did Muhammad realize the personal claim involved in his religious message? Was his soul so pre-occupied with the grand Idea that his own relation to it was not at first apparent? For, it cannot be forgotten that from the beginning the second Article of the Muslim Creed was inherent in the first. God is known as God to the Muslim only because the Apostle of God has proclaimed Him to be God. Muhammad is the Revealer of God, and God is God. This is the true and inevitable order.

This claim, as a foundation of belief, was the source of success of the arms of Islam in the past, and is the living power of Islam to-day; at the same time, it was and is the test of the man and of his message. Is Muhammad the Revealer of God? There is possible one answer only to the question, so far as the disciples of the Christ Whom he claimed to supersede are concerned; but the answer does not end the story of the relation between Christianity and the Arabian Prophet. Would that it did!

Death Muhammad died at Madina on June 9th, 632 A.D., in his sixty-second year. His death was peace. His last words were, “The blessed Companionship on high.”

The dead hand Being dead this man still rules. In all human history there is no more striking illustration of the might of the “dead hand” than is presented in Islam.

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The Great Thoughts of Islam.

1. GOD.

La-ilaha-Il-lal-laho. There is no God save God.

“Say, God is one God; the eternal God: He begetteth not, neither is begotten: There is not any one like unto Him.

“Dost thou not know that God is almighty? Dost thou not know that unto God belongeth the Kingdom of Heaven? neither have ye any protector or helper except God.

“To God belongeth the East and the West; therefore wheresoever ye turn yourselves to pray, there is the face of God; for God is omnipresent and omniscient.

“Your God is one God, there is no God but He, the most merciful.”

It was with a very simple message, apparently, that Muhammad came forth from his long meditation in his lonely cave. The message was not even original. Not only had Arab mystics already dreamt of the aloneness of God, but there were Jews and Christians, inheritors of the same supreme truth, settled here and there over the land; and Muhammad had come into contact with both during his early Syrian journeys. The Idea had become familiar to him long before.

The God of Muhammad But, the God of Muhammad’s contemplations was not the God of Judaism, nor the God of Christianity; he deliberately rejected both Faiths. True, God is Spirit, God is one, God is alone, God is Creator; He is the al-knowing, al-present, al-governing One. High attributes are ascribed to Him, as in the ninety-nine Names which the pious Mussulman reverently repeats with the aid of his string of beads; but neither these, nor the various attributes ascribed to Him in the Quran itself, largely affect the Muslim conception of God.

The God of Muhammad is a Being of two supreme characteristics. He is the supreme Will, and His Will is carried into effect by His supreme Power.

Will: absolute, eternal, unchanging; far above such human distinctions as right and wrong, justice and injustice. That which the Will of God ordains, that is right, just, and final.

Power: so unrestrained, so awful, carries that Will into effect, that there exists no will or power save God’s alone. That which is ordained, good or evil, righteous or unrighteous in man’s poor view, is of God. He is the only Doer. “In the creation of heaven and earth, and in the ship which sails on the sea ... All is God.” All creatures, even man, are in the awful grip of this great Spirit, helpless; they do that which He ordains, that and no other.

“Why are you so naughty?”

“God knows.”

The reply of the little child is the reply of Islam to all problems. It is the secret of the awful fatalism which paralyzes men’s emotions and will. Two countenances remain, after many years, vividly impressed upon my memory; that of a man, guilty of crime and under severe sentence, whom no appeal could move from his perfect serenity. He was not a hardened criminal; he was simply convinced that God was the Doer of the deed and he himself only the instrument for the carrying out of His will. The other was a father, carrying in his arms a dearly-loved little child to the grave. He moved rapidly down the crowded street at the head of the procession of mourners, unconscious either of curiosity or of sympathy around him. The set grim expression might have suggested the idea of Spartan endurance, save for the deep eyes which gazed into the far distance, and told unmistakably of the submission of a strong will to a Stronger, the will of his God.

This awful God has taken hold of the imagination of all Islam. He was very real to the Prophet, and the Prophet has communicated his faith to those who have followed him. Mussulmans may be, in our sense, bad men, but they are rarely irreligious men. There are no atheists in Islam. A man who, under the influence of English secular education, lightly declared that he had grown beyond so childish a superstition, which however he declared to be “good for women and children,” changed countenance while we discussed the religious education of his wife. He could not rid himself easily of the convictions of his childhood, as the grave face and reverent voice bore witness.

But, the Will of God is far more present in the thought of the Muslim than is God Himself. God touches his life through His Will only. God is apart; seeing, knowing and judging indeed, but apart in His absolute sovereignty, in the inexorable way in which He carries out His Purpose. We have, therefore, as a corollary to the teaching regarding the Will, the teaching of the pitiful helplessness of man in His Hand. God may crush me; He can do it; I can say nothing. In conversation with a woman on one occasion reference was made to the Christian doctrine of the assurance of the child relation with God. She exclaimed, “Surely that is blasphemy; it is almost like saying what the Will of God for you is. If saved, God is merciful; if cast into Jahannam (hell), God is just.”

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ISLAM means resignation, submission, homage, to this Will of God. The relation of the Muslim to his God is truly expressed in the word.

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Thus early do Christ and Muhammad part company.

2. THE WORD OF GOD.

“It is He Who hath sent down unto you the book of the Quran, distinguishing between good and evil; and they to whom We gave the scripture know that it is sent down from thy Lord, with truth; Be not therefore one of these who doubt thereof. The words of the Lord are perfect in truth and justice; there is none who can change His words; He both heareth and knoweth.”

Quran The Will of God is supreme in His universe; Islam tells in one word the relation of the Faithful to that Will; and the Will is revealed to men in its final form the Quran. The Quran descended from highest heaven complete, and was passed on by the Angel to the Prophet Sura by Sura, as its message was required. The Quran supersedes all other scriptures, it is the eternal Divine Word; there is no further truth to be revealed, for this is literally the last word of God to man. The human language medium is Arabic, and as each several word is an Act of God, the very words are sacred. There cannot, therefore, be any authorized translation of the Quran; and, as in its completeness it is one undivided message, to issue it in parts would be grievous sin. The book is published and used in many lands, and passes through many hands, but so great has been the care that it should be preserved perfect, that it is believed to be practically unchanged since the scattered leaves were gathered reverently together after the Prophet’s death. There is no doctrine of inspiration so high as this.

3. THE THOUGHT OF SIN.

“Man chooseth to be wicked for the time which is before him. He asketh, When shall the day of resurrection be? But when the night shall be dazzled, and the moon shall be eclipsed, and the sun and the moon shall be in conjunction, on that day man shall say, Where is a place of refuge? By no means; there shall be no place to fly unto. With thy Lord shall be a sure mansion of rest in that day; on that day shall man be told that which he hath done, first and last. Yea, a man shall be an evidence against himself; and though he offer his excuses, they shall not be received.”

“There shall every soul experience that which it shall have sent before it.”

Sin As is the God so are His worshippers; and the conception of the religious life in Islam follows naturally upon the conception of God. Thus, sin is terrible, but not first as a deviation from a standard of absolute righteousness; it is terrible because it is rebellion against an awful majesty. This is fundamental. Yet to say that Islam is non-moral, that sin is an arbitrary term, and that reward and punishment are in the hands of an arbitrary God, is not the whole truth. There are two kinds of sin (reminding us of the Roman Catholic doctrine), sin greater and lesser. Among the greater sins are

• Unfaithfulness to God.
• Despair of the mercy of God, or
• Too strong an assurance of God’s mercy.
• False witness when on oath.
• The practice of magic.
• Drunkenness.
• Theft.
• Usury.
• Murder.
• Disobedience to parents.
• Flight before unbelievers in battle.
• Seizing the property of the orphan.

And the constant repetition of lesser sins becomes a greater sin.

Lesser sins are very many, and are not enumerated; among them are gambling, the use of images in worship, and slander. Punishment awarded by the law is very severe; the punishment awarded by God is as He shall ordain. The future has a great share in the thought of the people of the East; they are less materialistic, less bound up in the present life than those of the West. Therefore the present life is more affected by the future possibilities, and in the case of a larger proportion of men and women than is the case with us.

4. THE JUDGMENT OF GOD.

“The striking. What is the striking? and what shall make thee to understand how terrible the striking will be? On that day men shall be like moths scattered abroad, and the mountains shall be like carded wool of various colours driven by the wind; moreover, he whose balance shall be heavy with good works shall lead a pleasing life; but as to him whose balance shall be light his dwelling shall be the pit of hell. What shall make thee to understand how frightful the pit of hell is? It is a burning fire.”

Judgment Much has been said and written about the Muslim Paradise, and there are indeed no parts of the Quran so weak as those which dwell upon the sweets of the future life of the Faithful. Serious Mussulmans, when on rare occasions I have heard them refer to this subject, have invariably explained these passages as symbolical. However that may be, the passages in the Quran which teach of the day of resurrection and of judgment are frequent and solemn. No doubt the judgment of God is used as a threat against unbelievers, but it is also continually addressed to the Faithful as a motive; and these teachings have, as I believe, far greater influence upon the life of the religious Muslim than all the promised joys of Paradise.

“What thinkest thou of him who denieth the future judgment as a falsehood? It is he who pusheth away the orphan, and stirreth not up others to feed the poor. Woe be unto those who pray and who are negligent at their prayer; who play the hypocrites, and deny necessaries to the needy.”

This was the message of the Arabian Apostle.

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The Religious Life in Islam.

1. THE REPETITION OF THE CREED.

Kalima The Creed must be repeated by the true Muslim once at the least during his lifetime. This is the confession of the lips, and must be made correctly and without hesitation; it is also the confession of the heart, and must be held till death.

2. THE DAILY DEVOTIONS.

SulÁt There are five services of prayer daily, observed with great regularity by all religious men and women. The form is liturgical; the word SulÁt has rather the meaning of devotional service than of hours of prayer. HoursThe first hour is at dawn of day. The second is at noon. The third is between four and five in the afternoon. The fourth service is held as the sun disappears beneath the horizon. The fifth is at the retiring hour at night.

Preparation Before prayer all Mussulmans cleanse face, ears and nostrils, hands and feet; that they may be free of all bodily pollution before entering the presence of God. Many change their garments each time they pray. The room is cleaned, and the worshipper who has cleaned the room changes his garments before engaging in the service.

Solemnity This service of prayer in the case of serious worshippers is very touching to the sympathetic witness; it is true, as so many critics of Islam have noted, that prayer is formal, and is repeated in an unknown tongue; but to those who know the heart hunger which constantly finds expression in that five-times-repeated daily liturgy, who would fain change the constant refrain “God is great” for the gladder “God is love,” the service, whether in the mosque, in the home, or on the wayside, is one of the most pathetic appeals addressed to the unknown God by any people.

There is no mediation; prayer is offered directly to God, the only reference to the Prophet being a prayer “for Muhammad and his descendants.”

Prayer is always offered in the sacred language.

3. RAMADHÁN, THE MONTH OF FASTING.

Roza It is probable that Muhammad ordained the month of fasting in imitation of the Christian Lent. RamadhÁn, the ninth month of the year, made sacred for ever by the descent of the Quran from highest heaven, to be revealed to the Angel Gabriel (who delivered it as required to the Prophet), is set apart for this religious sacrifice. Every Mussulman is on the look-out for the first appearance of the new moon, sign of the beginning of the fast (the lunar year is followed), and from that evening for thirty days, from dawn until sunset neither food nor water is touched. When RamadhÁn in the course of the years occurs in the hot season, the fast is terrible in its severity. Cloudless sky, scorching sun, burning winds, and not one drop of water to quench the awful thirst; and at the same time additional prayers, with the accompanying genuflections; this while the day’s task must still be accomplished; it is a terrible test of the obedience and devotion of the Faithful. It is true that travellers, invalids, women nursing little children, and the weak, are exempt; but the fasts are supposed to be made up, and we have known many who have struggled through the month, who were quite unfit for it. The early morning and evening meal—taken before dawn and after sunset—is not appetizing, for it is always composed of stale food.

I have never known any religious man or woman who regarded the fast as a hardship. “It is little we can do to serve God,” said one woman. Little children plead to be allowed to fast. Boys and girls become utterly exhausted, parched and fainting, in homes where religious observances are faithfully kept.

4. ALMSGIVING.

A fortieth part of the income belongs to the poor, and is, in Muslim lands, a compulsory tax. It is distinct from private almsgiving.

5. PILGRIMAGE.

Islam is scattered in many lands; but the idea of Muhammad was of a universal Kingdom. The idea was never realized, but the grip of the master hand is felt to this day. Each of the duties of the Faith is a symbol of its unity; but the constraining symbol is the centralization at Mecca. This is the sole remaining sign of the great vision. Islam is far scattered; it is broken into many sects; there are language separations, and deeper racial separations; but the whole unwieldy system and following is bound together by the Mecca pilgrimage, the least spiritual thing in the whole system. Muhammad made a brave battle for the unity and pure spirituality of God. But it was the deepest desire of his heart to win Mecca. He did so at the expense of his central belief. Mussulmans visit the idolatrous city to-day as they did in the long past idolatrous ages. The visible church of Islam is not a pure and beautiful and worthy mosque; it is the old idolatrous stone of Mecca.

Every true Muslim is bound to visit Mecca at the least once in his lifetime.

6. SOCIAL MORALITY.

Social Morality The social morality of Islam is—notwithstanding the marriage laws—very high, and is guided by such virtues as these: modesty, honesty, kindness and brotherliness. When Muhammad fled from Mecca with his followers, and settled in Madina, the little community was a commonwealth, and that ideal has been retained in wonderful manner throughout the centuries and the far wanderings. There is no caste in Islam, neither the Eastern nor the Western form of that system. Each man stands in the same relation to the God Who rules him, and the consequent brotherhood is a very real thing. Poor and rich are not divided, to be poor is in itself a claim, and if a poor man comes to a rich man for aid, the rich man regards it as a favour. The laws of hospitality are most noble; strangers are assured in any Muslim house of a welcome, a meal, a rest, and if need be, even of clothing. Hospitality is an act of worship.

The aged are held in a beautiful reverence; the poor, and especially the orphan, is cared for as a religious duty; in the home the patriarchal system still rules, the servant is a part of the family, and is treated with kindness.—Is he not a brother in the Faith?

The position of woman remains as it was left by Muhammad thirteen hundred years ago—for there is no growth in Islam—and it is not easy to define it. On the one hand is the marriage law, which gives to the husband full power over his wife or wives; on the other, the property law, which grants to a woman holding property in her own right, absolute control over it. In the latter respect, therefore, the law of Islam is in advance of the law of Great Britain. I have known the curious anomaly of a woman whose person was at the mercy of a brutal drunken wretch, whom she yet held in some degree in check through his dependence upon her for the means with which to live his chosen life.

The Solidarity of Islam.

There are two closely associated characteristics of Islam which impress every student:—Rigiditythe immovable rigidity which paralyzes individual action as well as social and religious progress and for ever holds its professors arrested at the stage and within the limit of Arab conditions as they were thirteen centuries ago;Solidarity and the solidarity of the world of Islam as it exists to-day.

It is at this point that the contrast between the methods of Jesus and of Muhammad is most sharply emphasized. The founder of Christianity neither wrote, nor left instructions for the preservation of His teachings; His method is best typified by His own favourite illustration; His message is a seed, growing of its own living life, mysteriously, silently, slowly, producing fruit after its kind indeed, but each several fruit during each several season drawing its own share of nourishment even as it drew its life directly from the root, original and distinct from any other. Muhammad spoke, in the most literal sense, the last word; the teaching has crystallized; principle and detail are alike unyielding.

Muhammad’s Vision Muhammad was a statesman as well as a poet; he had in view not only the conversion of the world to God and to himself, but also a world kingdom based upon the religious idea; and for the second end he worked possibly even “better than he knew.”

Symbols of Solidarity: The study of the symbols of this bond of uniformity—not of union—is illuminating:—1. CreedThe Creed, binding to the God of Islam through the Apostle of that God; 2. Prayerthe daily Prayer Ritual: it has been truly said that “each Muslim is a Church,” it is no less true that the Muslim world is a Church, bound indissolubly by this uniform service of devotion;3. Quran the Quran and 4. FastRamadhÁn, the Book, and the Fast which commemorates the gift of the Book; and above all, 5. Pilgrimagethe Pilgrimage to Mecca, the local habitation of Islam, sublime notwithstanding the apparent foolishness of the ceremonial. “Thither the tribes go up,” from Turkey, Syria, Persia, Afghanistan, India, China, Egypt and other North African lands, and Arabia herself. National distinctions are forgotten; slave and master travel as brother worshippers; Islam feels her solidarity through the far-seeing provision of the centralization of her religious life, in the city which is sacred to the memory of the Apostle.

The fact that Islam is broken up into as many sects as is Christianity, does not affect this solidarity so greatly as might be supposed from the experience of Christianity; in face of the Unbeliever the Faithful stand a solid army, the separations touch none of these symbols of unity. A solid army confronts the world. It has been asserted by one who knew Islam well, that the conversion to another Faith of an insignificant Muslim in an obscure village is known and mourned (or resented) over the whole Muslim world. However that may be, the solidarity of Islam is a grave and a suggestive fact; and the Faith which hopes one day to win it, would do well to oppose the statesmanship of Muhammad with a statesmanship and a wisdom equal with his.