Chapter 13

THE MOHAMMEDAN RELIGION.

The Koran is the Mohammedan's holy bible, creed, and code of laws. The holy Koran was delivered to Mohammed neither in graven tablets of stone, nor by cloven tongues of fire, but it was engraven on Mohammed's heart and was communicated by his tongue to the Arabs. His heart was the Sinai where he received his revelation and his tablets of stone were the hearts of believers. The Koran contains 114 chapters and 6225 verses. Each chapter begins with formula, "In the name of God the merciful and the compassionate." The chapter is named from the chief subject treated therein; as "praise," "the light," "the spider," "the woman," etc. Mohammed received all of his revelation at once but when occasion required he dictated new chapters to Zeid. Another notion is that the Koran was delivered orally and was scattered until after the prophet's death when it was collected by Ayesha, his youngest wife, and Zeid. All of it was written in the best classical poetry. It is sweet in the Arabic language but it looses its beauty when translated into other languages.

Mohammed did not invent a new religion but collected most of his doctrines from the Jewish, heathen and Christian religions and Christian tradition. Mohammed was greatly indebted to a Nestorian monk named Sargius Be-hi-ra, a man of rare ability, whom the prophet kept in his home for several years and learned all he knew about Christian doctrines and traditions. Many of the wise counsels, stories, teachings of our duties to God and brethren in the faith, that are related in the Old and New Testament are reproduced in the Koran, but the language is changed and the order of their occurrences is reversed. The Koran contains mistakes such as making the Virgin Mary the mother of our Lord the same person as Mary the sister of Moses and Aaron. But without question the Koran is one of the greatest books of the world in the number of adherents it has. It is a code of civil and religious law; 200,000,000 Mohammedans scattered all over the world to-day are following the teaching of the Koran. The book contains much that is good and wise but one of its most dangerous defects is the prominence and approval given to polygamy and sensualism.