A Critical Exposition of the Popular 'Jihad' Part 10

[Footnote 143: Mohammed, Buddha and Christ, by Marcus Dods, D.D., pp. 24 & 25.]

[Footnote 144: _Vide_ pp. 48-61. This work is being printed at Education Society's Press, Byculla, Bombay. It appears that Dr. Dods, in the first instance, had in view Sura x.x.xIII, 51. This is by no means giving Mohammad conjugal allowances which he himself had proscribed as unlawful. As a preliminary measure to abolish polygamy and to accustom the people to monogamy, Mohammad, when reducing the unlimited polygamy practised in Arabia, had put a strong condition to treat their wives, when more than one, equitably in every sense of the word,--_i.e._, in the matter of social comfort, love and household establishment (Sura IV, 3). When the measure had given a monogamous tendency to the Arab society, it was declared that it was impossible practically to treat equitably in all respects the contemporary wives (Sura IV, 128), and those who had already contracted contemporaneous marriage before the measure referred to above was introduced were absolved from the condition laid down in Sura IV, 3, but were advised, regarding their then existing wives, not to yield wholly to disinclination. Similarly Mohammad was also relieved from that condition in Sura x.x.xIII, 51, without "giving him any conjugal allowance which he had himself p.r.o.nounced unlawful." The second instance is of Zeinab's case I suppose.

Zeinab was in no way, when divorced by Zeid, "a woman forbidden to him by his own laws."]

[Footnote 145: "The Apostle becomes a creature so exalted that even the easy drapery of Mohammadan morality becomes a garment too tight-fitting for him. 'A peculiar privilege is granted to him above the rest of the believers.' He may multiply his wives without stint; he may and he does marry within the prohibited degrees."--_Islam under the Arabs_, by R.D.

Osborn, London 1876, p. 91.]

[Footnote 146: Studies in a Mosque, by S.L. Poole, pp. 77 and 80, London, 1880.]

[Sidenote: Finality of the social reforms of Mohammad.]

[Sidenote: Positive precepts.]

[Sidenote: Ceremonial law.]

[Sidenote: Concrete morals of the Koran.]

[Sidenote: Want of adaptibility of the Koran to surrounding circ.u.mstances.]

37. It has been said with much stress regarding the teachings of Mohammad: (1) That although under the degraded condition of Arabia, they were a gift of great value, and succeeded in banis.h.i.+ng those fierce vices which naturally accompany ignorance and barbarism, but an imperfect code of ethics has been made a permanent standard of good and evil, and a final and irrevocable law, which is an insuperable barrier to the regeneration and progress of a nation. It has been also urged that his reforms were good and useful for his own time and place, but that by making them final he has prevented further progress and consecrated half measures. What were restrictions to his Arabs would have been license to other men.[147] (2) That Islam deals with positive precepts rather than with principles,[148] and the danger of a precise system of positive precepts regulating the minute detail, the ceremonial wors.h.i.+p, and the moral and social relations of life, is, that it should retain too tight a grip upon men when the circ.u.mstances which justified it have changed and vanished away, and therefore the imposition of a system good for barbarians upon people already possessing higher sort of civilization and the principles of a purer faith is not a blessing but a curse. Nay more, even the system which was good for people when they were in a barbarous state may become positively mischievous to those same people when they begin to emerge from their barbarism under its influence into a higher condition.[149] (3) That the exact ritual and formal observations of Islam have carried with them their own Nemesis, and thus we find that in the wors.h.i.+p of the faithful formalism and indifferences, pedantic scrupulosity and positive disbelief flourish side by side. The minutest change of posture in prayer, the displacement of a simple genuflexion, would call for much heavier censure than outward profligacy or absolute neglect.[150] (4) That morality is viewed not in the abstract, but in the concrete. That the Koran deals much more with sin and virtue in fragmentary details than as a whole. It deals with acts more than principles, with outward practice more than inward motives, with precepts and commands more than exhortation. It does not hold up before man the hatefulness and ugliness of _all_ sin _as a whole_.[151] (5) "That Islam is stationary; swathed in the rigid bands of the Coran, it is powerless, like the Christian dispensation,[152] to adapt itself to the varying circ.u.mstances of time and place, and to keep pace with, if not to lead and direct, the progress of society and the elevation of the race. In the body politic the spiritual and secular are hopelessly confounded, and we fail of perceiving any approach to free inst.i.tutions or any germ whatever of popular government."[153]

[Footnote 147: _Vide_ Islam and its Founder, by J.W.H. Stobart, B.A., page 229, London, 1878; and Mohammed, Buddha and Christ, by Marcus Dods, D.D., pp. 122-23, London, 1878. Major Osborn writes, "But to the polity erected on these rude lines was given the attribute of finality. In order to enforce obedience and eliminate the spirit of opposition, Mohammad a.s.serted that it was, down to the minutest details, the work of a Divine Legislature."--_Islam under the Arabs_, pp. 45 and 46.]

[Footnote 148: _Vide_ The Faith of Islam, by the Rev. Edward Sell, page 7, London, 1880.]

[Footnote 149: _Vide_ Christianity and Islam, the Bible, and the Koran, by the Rev. W.R.W. Stephens, pp. 95 and 131, London, 1877.]

[Footnote 150: _Vide_ Islam and its Founder, by J.W.H. Stobart, B.A., page 237; and Stephens' Christianity and Islam, page 121. Major Osborn writes: "From the hour of his birth the moslem becomes a member of a system in which every act of his life is governed by a minute ritual. He is beset on every side with a circle of inflexible formalities."--_Islam under the Khalifs of Baghdad_, pp. 78-9. He further writes in a footnote, p. 79: "Thus prayer is absolutely useless if any matter, legally considered impure, adheres to the person of the wors.h.i.+pper, even though he be unconscious of its presence. Prayer also is null and void unless the men and women praying are attired in a certain prescribed manner."]

[Footnote 151: _Vide_ Christianity and Islam, by W.R.W. Stephens, pp.

122-23. Major Osborn writes: "The Prophet knew of no religious life where the external rite was not deemed of greater importance than the inner state, and, in consequence, he gave that character to Islam also.

Hence there are no moral gradations in the Koran. All precepts proceed from the will of G.o.d, and all are enforced with the same threatening emphasis. A failure of performance in the meanest trivialities of civil life involves the same tremendous penalties as apostacy and idolatry."--_Islam under Khalifs_, p. 5. He further says: "In their religious aspect, these traditions are remarkable for that strange confusion of thought which caused the Prophet to place on one level of wickedness serious moral crimes, breaches of sumptuary regulations, and accidental omissions in ceremonial observations. Sin, throughout, is regarded as an external pollution, which can, at once, be rectified by the payment of a fine of some kind." _Ibid_, page 62.]

[Footnote 152: "Occasionally our author would seem to write what he certainly does not mean; thus, in the middle of an excellent summary of the causes of Islam's decadence, it is stated,--'Swathed in the rigid bands of the Koran, _Islam is powerless like the Christian dispensation_ to adapt itself to the varying circ.u.mstances of time and place.'"--_The Sat.u.r.day Review_, June 23, 1883.]

[Footnote 153: _Vide_ Annals of the Early Caliphate, by Sir W. Muir, K.C.S.I., LL.D., D.C.L., page 456, London, 1883.]

[Sidenote: The preceding objections not applicable to the Koran.]

38. All these objections more or less apply rather to the teachings of the Mohammadan Common Law (canon and civil), called _Fiqah_ or _Shara_, than to the Koran, the Mohammadan Revealed Law. Our Common Law, which treats both ecclesiastical and the civil law, is by no means considered to be a divine or unchangeable law. This subject has been treated by me in a separate work[154] on the Legal, Political and Social Reforms to which the reader is referred. The s.p.a.ce allowed to me in this Introduction, which has already exceeded its proper limit, does not admit a full and lengthy discussion of the objections quoted above, but I will review them here in as few words as possible.

[Footnote 154: Reforms, Political, Social and Legal, under the Moslem Rule, Bombay Education Society's Press, 1883.]

[Sidenote: Finality of the social reforms of Mohammad.]

39. (1) Mohammad had to deal with barbarous nations around him, to be gradually reformed, and besides this the subject of social reforms was a secondary question. Yet it being necessary to transform the character of the people and to reform the moral and social abuses prevailing among them, he gradually introduced his social reforms which proved immense blessings to the Arabs and other nations in the seventh century. Perhaps some temporary but judicious, reasonable and helpful accommodations had to be made to the weakness and immaturity of the people, as halting stages in the march of reforms only to be set aside at their adult strength, or to be abolished when they were to begin to emerge from their barbarism under its influence to a higher civilization.

Consequently gradual amelioration of social evils had necessarily to pa.s.s several trials during progress of reform. The intermediate stages are not to be taken as final and irrevocable standard of morality and an insuperable barrier to the regeneration of the Arabian nation. Our adversaries stick indiscriminately to these temporary measures or concessions only, and call them half measures and partial reforms made into an unchangeable law which exclude the highest reforms, and form a formidable obstacle to the dawn of a progressive and enlightened civilization. I have in view here the precepts of Mohammad for ameliorating the degraded condition of women for restricting the unlimited polygamy and the facility of divorce, together with servile concubinage and slavery.[155] Mohammad's injunctions and precepts, intermediary and ultimate, temporary and permanent, intended for the removal of these social evils, are interwoven with each other, interspersed in different Suras and not chronologically arranged, in consequence of which it is somewhat difficult for those who have no deep insight into the promiscuous literature of the Koran to find out which precept was only a halting stage, and which the latest. It was only from some oversight on the part of the compilers of the Common Law that, in the first place, the civil precepts of a transitory nature and as a mediate step leading to a higher reform were taken as final; and in the second place, the civil precepts adapted for the dwellers of the Arabian desert were pressed upon the neck of all ages and countries. A social system for barbarism ought not to be imposed on a people already possessing higher forms of civilizations.

[Footnote 155: "The cankerworm of polygamy, divorce, servile concubinage and veil lay at the root. They are bound up in the character of its existence. A reformed Islam which should part with the divine ordinances on which they rest, or attempt in the smallest degree to change them by a rationalistic selection, abetment or variation would be Islam no longer." Annals of the Early Caliphate by Sir W. Muir, page 458.]

[Sidenote: Positive precepts.]

[Sidenote: Ceremonial law.]

40. (2) In fact the Koran deals with positive precepts as well as with principles, but it never teaches a precise system of precepts regulating in minute details the social relations of life and the ceremonial of wors.h.i.+p. On the contrary, its aim has been to counteract the tendency to narrowness, formality, and severity which is the consequence of a living under a rigid system of positive precepts. Mohammad had to transform the character of the Arab barbarians who had no religious or moral teacher or a social reformer before his advent. It was therefore necessary to give them a few positive precepts, moulding and regulating their moral and social conduct, to make them 'new creatures' with new notions and new purposes, and to remodel the national life. (3) But lest they should confuse virtue as identical with obedience to the outward requirements of the ceremonial law,--the formal ablutions, the sacrifices in pilgrimages, the prescribed forms of prayers, the fixed amount of alms, and the strict fasts, the voice of the Koran has ever and anon been lifted up to declare that a rigid conformity to practical precepts, whether of conduct or ceremonial, would not extenuate, but rather increase in the eyes of G.o.d the guilt of an unprincipled heart and an unholy life.

[Sidenote: Pilgrimage.]

Regarding the pilgrimage[156] or the sacrifices (its chief ceremony), the Koran says:--

"By no means can their flesh reach unto G.o.d, neither their blood, but piety on your part reacheth him. Thus hath he subjected them to you, that ye might magnify G.o.d for his guidance: and announce glad tidings to the doers of good."--Sura XXII, 38.

[Sidenote: Kibla.]

Regarding the _Kibla_ in prayers it is said in the Koran:--

"The west and the east is G.o.d's: therefore whichever way ye turn there is the face of G.o.d."--Sura II, 109.

"All have a quarter of the Heavens to which they turn them; but wherever ye be, hasten emulously after good."--_Ibid_, 143.

"There is no piety in turning your faces toward the east or west, but he is pious who believeth in G.o.d and the last day, and the angels and the scripture, and the prophets; who for the love of G.o.d disburseth his wealth to his kindred; and to the orphans, and the needy, and the wayfarer, and those who ask, and for ransoming; who observeth the prayer, and payeth alms, and who is of those who are faithful to their engagements when they have engaged in them, and patient under ills and hards.h.i.+ps, and in time of trouble, these are they who are just, and these are they who fear the Lord."--_Ibid_, 172.

[Sidenote: Amount of alms.]

In the place of a fixed amount of alms the Koran only says to give what ye can spare.

"They will ask thee also what shall they bestow in alms:

"Say: What ye can spare."--_Ibid_, 216, 217.

[Sidenote: Fasts.]

Instead of imposing a very strict fast, which in the middle of summer is extremely mortifying, the Koran makes its observance optional.

"And as for those who are able to keep it and yet observe it not, the expiation of this shall be the maintenance of a poor man. And he who of his own accord performeth a good work, shall derive good from it: and good shall it be for you to fast, if ye knew it."--_Ibid_, 180.

[Sidenote: No prescribed forms of prayer.]

The Koran does not teach any prescribed forms of wors.h.i.+p and other ritualistic prayers. No att.i.tude is fixed, and no outward observance of posture is required. There is no scrupulosity and punctiliousness, neither the change of posture in prayer nor the displacement of a single genuflexion calls any censure on the devotee in the Koran. Simply reading the Koran (Suras LXXIII, 20; XXIX, 44), and bearing G.o.d in mind, standing and sitting; reclining (III, 188; IV, 104) or bowing down or prostrating (XXII, 76) is the only form and ritual, if it may be called so, of prayer and wors.h.i.+p taught in the Koran.

"Recite then as much of the Koran as may be easy to you."--Sura LXXIII, 20.

"Recite the portions of the Book which have been revealed to thee and discharge the duty of prayer; verily prayer restraineth from the filthy and the blameworthy. And a.s.suredly the gravest duty is the remembrance of G.o.d; and G.o.d knoweth what ye do."--Sura XXIX, 44.

"And when the Koran is rehea.r.s.ed, then listen ye to it and keep silence: haply ye may obtain mercy."