Part 2

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.

“_O true believers, a fast is ordained you, as it was ordained to those before you, that ye may fear God. A certain number of days shall ye fast; but he among you who shall be sick, or on a journey, shall fast an equal number of other days. And those who can keep it and do not, must reckon their neglect by maintaining of a poor man. And he who voluntarily dealeth better with the poor man than he is obliged, this shall be better for him. But if ye fast it will be better for you, if ye knew it._”

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: Zakát]

“_Forget not liberality among you, for God seeth that which ye do._”

“_The Lord is surely in a watch-tower, whence he observeth the actions of men. Moreover man, when his Lord trieth him by prosperity, and honoureth him, and is bounteous to him, saith:—My Lord honoureth me; but when he proveth him by afflictions, and withholdeth His provisions from him, he saith:—My Lord despiseth me. By no means; but ye honour not the orphan, neither do ye excite one another to feed the poor; and ye devour the inheritance of the weak, with undistinguishing greediness; and ye love riches with much affection...._

“_O thou soul which art at rest, return unto thy Lord, well pleased with thy reward, and well pleasing unto our God; enter among my servants, and enter Paradise._”

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.

[Sidenote: Hajj]

“_They who shall disbelieve, and obstruct the way of God, and hinder men from visiting the holy temple at Mecca, which We have appointed for a place of worship unto all men: the inhabitant thereof and the stranger have an equal right to visit it._”

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.

[Sidenote: 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.

“_They seek to extinguish God’s light with their mouths; but God will perfect His light, though the infidels be averse thereto. It is He Who hath sent His Apostle with the direction, and the religion of truth, that He may exalt the same above every religion, although the idolators be averse thereto._”

There are two closely associated characteristics of Islam which impress every student:—[Sidenote: Rigidity] the 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; [Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.”

[Sidenote: Symbols of Solidarity:]

The study of the symbols of this bond of uniformity—not of union—is illuminating:—[Sidenote: 1. Creed] The _Creed_, binding to the God of Islam through the Apostle of that God; [Sidenote: 2. Prayer] the 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; [Sidenote: 3. Quran] the _Quran_ and [Sidenote: 4. Fast] _Ramadhán_, the Book, and the Fast which commemorates the gift of the Book; and above all, [Sidenote: 5. Pilgrimage] the _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.

II

ISLAM AND CHRISTIANITY

WHEN YE PRAY, SAY—

_Father, Hallowed be Thy Name. Thy Kingdom come. Give us day by day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins: for we ourselves also forgive every one that is indebted to us. And bring us not into temptation._

Amen.

The great Prayer of Christianity.

1. MUHAMMAD AND JESUS.

“_Jesus is no other than a servant, Whom We have favoured with the gift of prophecy; and We appointed Him for an example unto the children of Israel (if We pleased, verily We could from ourselves produce angels, to succeed you in the earth), and He shall be a sign of the approach of the last hour; wherefore doubt not thereof._”

“_O ye who have received the Scriptures, exceed not the just bounds of your religion, neither say of God other than the truth. Verily Jesus Christ the Son of Mary is the Apostle of God, and His Word Which He conveyed to Mary, and a Spirit proceeding from Him. Believe, therefore, in God and His apostles, and say not, There are three Gods. Forbear this. It will be better for you._”

“_The Christians say, Christ is the son of God. This is their saying in their mouths; they imitate the saying of those who were unbelievers in former times. May God resist them. How are they infatuated, they take their priests and their monks for their lords, besides God and Christ the son of Mary; although they are commanded to worship one God only: there is no God but He. Far be that from Him which they associate with Him. They seek to extinguish the light of God with their mouths; but God willeth no other than to perfect His light, although the infidels be averse thereto._”

There are in the Quran many references to our Lord Jesus Christ, but there is practically no historic knowledge. It must be remembered that in Muhammad’s time there was no Arabic version of the Bible; he was therefore dependent for information upon the Jews and Christians with whom he came into contact. That he formed conclusions upon very insufficient knowledge is the terrible blunder of his life, of which full use has been made by Christian writers. Enough has not been made of the responsibility of the church which had no better tales to tell, no truer account to give, of their Lord and their Faith. The Christianity presented to this Seeker after God was painfully inadequate to his need.

The little Muhammad discovered led to his acknowledgment of the Jewish and Christian books, which he had never read, with reservations. It led also to a far more important admission. The Jesus of the Quran is denied Divinity, but the character of Jesus did not fail of effect. All criticism is directed towards the professors of the Christian Faith, and their doctrines. This “son of Mary” is, in Muhammad’s view, that which he never dreamt of claiming for himself, a man unstained by sin. Not only so, but titles and honours are yielded to Him little short of Divine:—He is _Masih_, the Messiah; _Qaul-ul-Haqq_, the Word of Truth; _Kalima_, the word; He is “the Apostle of God to confirm the law, and to announce an Apostle who should come after Him, whose name should be Ahmad;” He had near access to God, and was “illustrious in this world and the next.”

Yet Muhammad supersedes Jesus Christ!

[Sidenote: The Death of Jesus]

There is another part of the problem of the rejection of our Lord; the attitude of the Quran towards the Death of Jesus. The death upon the Cross is indignantly denied.

“_They have not believed on Jesus, and have spoken against Mary a grievous calumny; and have said, Verily we have slain Christ Jesus the Son of Mary, the Apostle of God; yet they slew Him not, neither crucified Him, but He was represented by one in His likeness; ... They did not really kill Him; but God took Him up unto Himself; and God is mighty and wise ... on the day of resurrection He shall be witness against them._”

It is said that Muhammad so hated the sign of the Cross, that if any article, however valuable, came into his possession bearing the mark, it was destroyed at once. The horror of the thought that Jesus should have died the abhorred death, or that God Himself should have permitted it, seems to be the argument against its having occurred. In the Quran that which is symbolized by the Cross—the approach of God to sinful man in mercy and love—is entirely lacking. There is no hint that the Christian Message of Atonement through the Gift of the Saviour’s life to God in man’s name had ever reached the Prophet. There is therefore no assurance, save the Prophet’s word for it, that God upon His far Throne, hears, or hearing answers and forgives the sin of His creatures; there is no assurance of salvation in Islam.

It is a tragic story; the responsibility for which it has been the habit of Christian writers to cast largely upon Muhammad. The apportionment of guilt is not so lightly determined.

2. THE FATHER-GOD.

“_To me, I confess, it seems a very considerable thing, just to believe in God; difficult indeed to avoid honestly, and not easy to accomplish worthily; a thing not lightly to profess, but rather humbly to be sought; not to be found at the end of any syllogism, but in the inmost fountains of purity and affection; not the sudden gift of the intellect, but to be earned by a loving and brave life._”

“_I believe in God the Father Almighty._”

These simple, solemn, tender words contain the Christian Thought of God. In the one word “Almighty” is summed up Muhammad’s idea of supreme Will and Power; the Christian prefixes a Name to the attribute which so governs the sphere of the exercise of that will and power that it is difficult to conceive that the two teachings represent the same Being.

[Sidenote: Fatherhood]

In the view of Him to Whom we owe the Father Idea, the All of God and the All of His universe are summed up in the Fatherhood; that is, Jesus did not think of the al-might of God as exerted from without, the oneness of Creator and Created is in His view indissoluble. The birds could not maintain their little life, nor the lilies their delicate tints, without the Father; and words fail Him to tell of the closeness of the Fatherly interest in each member of His nearer offspring. “_The very hairs of your head are numbered._”

[Sidenote: The Parable of Jesus]

And when words have failed, He takes up His parable; “_My Father worketh, and I work_.” The lifework of Jesus is, He tells us, the Father’s work made visible.

Gentle, healing Hands were laid upon the suffering; sufficient food was provided for the hungry; Feet, never weary, travelled hither and thither on errands of pity; Arms were open to gather in the little children; Eyes spoke of love and understanding where words missed their object; happy human fellowship was offered: and all was a parable of the work of the Father-God.

[Sidenote: The Father-Gift]

It was not a new thought to His hearers that the profoundest attribute of God is holiness, and that distinctions between right and wrong become acute in His presence; but it was a revelation to which the world of men has not yet become accustomed that the Father is so set upon goodness in the children who had miserably failed of it, that no sacrifice was too great, _even for Him_, to secure it; and that this austerity towards evil and purpose to subdue it, was the Father love in its highest exercise. In the Cross, symbol at once of man’s sin and of His own grace, our Lord is still speaking the parable of the Father’s “work.” “The Father worketh, and I work.” “God so loved the world that He gave”—JESUS.

Muhammad felt after God, and attained the idea of His apartness, aloneness, immensity.

Jesus knew God, and revealed to us that man had never been, and never could be, outside of God; and that the only true home of man’s spirit is in His presence, under His gracious rule; for man and God are actually _akin_, first by nature, doubly so through His Revealer and our Brother, Jesus Christ. _Therefore, we “believe in God the Father Almighty, AND in Jesus Christ His only Son our Lord.”_

3. THE CHRISTIAN LIFE.

“_Christianity is the bearing in upon us of a character until we find the character irresistible._”

The study of the Muslim ideal of life throws into prominence several too-rarely considered peculiarities of Christ’s ideal life.

[Sidenote: At-one-ment of Life]

1. There is, in Christ’s view, no division between the secular and the religious life. The beginning of His revelation of the Father’s work was His meeting of a difficulty at a village wedding feast, which thereupon became a sacrament; and from that time onward we find no trace of any distinction in His own Life or in His teaching. To Him all life was sacred; and consisted in loyalty to the Father, and service of the brethren, one undivided duty. “Inasmuch,” He taught, “as ye did your unconscious daily brotherly task, _you did it to Me_;” and “_I and the Father are One_.”

[Sidenote: Freedom]

2. The Christian view of life is one of perfect freedom. We are not slaves, but sons, and free. Free, that is, as children are; free of the Father’s presence, gifts, love; free within the Family traditions; free, in sympathy with the Father to choose always the better and the best; without any suggestion of limit to the possibilities of the child nature. “_Perfect as the Father is perfect_” is Christ’s own amazing word.

[Sidenote: Progress]

3. Freedom, and therefore progress, for each son in his own life, for each generation of sons according to the situation and the call. Not uniformity within the Brotherhood, but individuality within the limits of the Family likeness, under the safe direction of the Spirit of the Father present with each one. The spaciousness of the Life-plan for every son of the Father cannot be exaggerated; there is no rigidity in Christianity.

[Sidenote: Brotherhood]

4. There is another Christian idea suggested by a study of Islam, which emerges from the last, the idea of the Brotherhood of the Father’s children. This is of the very essence of Christianity as it is of Islam; but has never been carried into effect in the same magnificent way. There are various illustrations of this. The absence of all caste distinction in Muslim society, the kindly relations which exist between master and servant, rich and poor, Mussulmans of various races. Christianity has much to learn in these directions. [Sidenote: The Missionary Impulse] Again, the desire to bring men within the Brotherhood is a passion with every true Muslim. “Every Mussulman is more or less of a missionary—that is, he intensely desires to secure converts from non-mussulman peoples.... All the emotions which impel a Christian to proselytize are in a Mussulman, strengthened by all the motives which impel a political leader, and all the motives which sway a recruiting sergeant, until proselytism has become a passion, which whenever success seems practicable and especially success on a large scale, develops in the quietest Mussulman a fury of ardour which induces him to break down every obstacle, his own strongest prejudices included, rather than stand for an instant in a neophyte’s way.”[1] Until the same imperialism—the word is hackneyed, but best conveys the idea—has seized the Christian imagination and conscience, the children of the Father will not have proved worthy of their name; for He loved and longed after the world of men, and His children should one and all do likewise.

[1] Meredith Townsend, in _Asia and Europe_.

4. THE FAILURE OF CHRISTIANITY.

“_We do not see God’s preparations._”

The lack of the Imperialist vision set before the Faithful by Christ has been the weakness of Christendom during long periods of her history. There have indeed been imperialisms—as in the great hierarchical systems—but they have been of the order of World-power visions which Christ definitely rejected, and they were foredoomed to failure, so far as He was concerned.

[Sidenote: The Kingdom Vision]

The Vision of Christ has nothing material in it, it relates itself at no point with the World. He compares it continually to the little seed fallen into the ground, dying to live, growing silently from within of the power of its own mysterious hidden life; observation hardly discloses its growth; but as surely as comes the harvest of the farmer, with its thirty—sixty—hundred-fold result, so surely shall come the Kingdom of the Father.

[Sidenote: The Church]

The Church, as the visible responsible organ of the mystic Brotherhood, to which it fell to carry out the Purpose of the Kingdom, and to present the idea of solidarity and continuity from age to age, has, as we acknowledge in thoughtful moods, pitifully failed of this mission. She is stately and impressive, but nineteen centuries have not been sufficient to win this little world for the Father.

There are many reasons for this failure. Notably, the Church is in the world, and has been greatly influenced by world methods.

“The world is still deceived by ornament,” and the Church has tended to concentrate her energies upon such details of her task as yield most rapid and visible results; results which too often have small relation to the object in view. She has also wasted much energy upon the mere machinery of her task. There is truth in the severe words of Dr. Martineau, “Christ came to bring fire upon earth; and His disciples after eighteen centuries are still discussing the best patent match to get it kindled.” “On furlough,” remarked a missionary, “one is overwhelmed by the complexity, and the labour, and the roar of Church machinery. I suppose it is all needful, but one dreads that the means may loom so large that the end shall be forgotten.”

[Sidenote: Comparison with Islam]