CHAPTER XIII.
CONCLUSION.
To the
modern Christian world, missionary work implies missionary societies, paid
agents, subscriptions, reports and journals; and missionary enterprise without
a regularly constituted and continuous organisation seems a misnomer. The
ecclesiastical constitution of the Christian Church has, from the very
beginning of its history, made provision for the propagation of Christian
teaching among unbelievers; its missionaries have been in most cases, regularly
ordained priests or monks; the monastic orders (from the Benedictines
downwards) and the missionary societies of more modern times have devoted
themselves with special and concentrated attention to the furthering of a
department of Christian work that, from the first, has been recognised to be
one of the prime duties of the Church. But in Islam the absence of any kind of
priesthood or any ecclesiastical organisation whatever has caused the
missionary energy of the Muslims to exhibit itself in forms very different to
those that appear in the history of Christian missions: there are no missionary
societies,[1]
no specially trained agents, very little continuity of effort. The only
exception appears to be found in the religious orders of Islam, whose
organisation resembles to some extent that of the monastic orders of
Christendom. But even here the absence of the priestly ideal, of any theory of
the separateness of the religious teacher from the common body of believers or
of the necessity of a special consecration and authorisation for the performance
of religious functions, makes the fundamental difference in the two systems
stand out as clearly as elsewhere.
Whatever
disadvantages may be entailed by this want of a priestly class, specially set
apart for the work of propagating the faith, are compensated for by the
consequent feeling of responsibility resting on the individual believer. There
being no intermediary between the Muslim and his God, the responsibility of his
personal salvation rests upon himself alone: consequently he becomes as a rule
much more strict and careful in the performance of his religious duties, he
takes more trouble to learn the doctrines and observances of his faith, and
thus becoming deeply impressed with the importance of them to himself, is more
likely to become an exponent of the missionary character of his creed in the
presence of the unbeliever. The would-be proselytiser has not to refer his
convert to some authorised religious teacher of his creed who may formally
receive the neophyte into the body of the Church, nor need he dread
ecclesiastical censure for committing the sin of Korah. Accordingly, however
great an exaggeration it may be to say, as has been said so often, [2]
that every Muhammadan is a missionary, still it is true that every Muhammadan
may be one, and few truly devout Muslims, living in daily contact with
unbelievers, neglect the precept of their Prophet: " Summon them to the
way of thy Lord with wisdom and with kindly warning."[3]
Thus it is that, side by side with the professional propagandists,—the
religious teachers who have devoted all their time and energies to missionary
work,—the annals of the propagation of the Muslim faith contain the record of
men and women of all ranks of society, from the sovereign[4]
to the peasant4 and of all trades and professions, who have laboured
for the spread of their faith,—the Muslim trader, unlike his Christian brother,
showing himself especially active in such work. In a list of Indian
missionaries published in the journal of a
religious and philanthropic society of Lahore[5]
we find the names of schoolmasters, Government clerks in the Canal and
Opium Departments, traders (including a dealer in camel-carts), an editor of a
newspaper, a bookbinder and a workman in a printing establishment. These men
devote the hours of leisure left them after the completion of the day's
labour, to the preaching of their religion in the streets and bazaars of Indian
cities, seeking to win converts both from among Christians and Hindus, whose
religious beliefs they controvert and attack.
It is interesting to note that the
propagation of Islam has not been the work of men only, but that Muslim women
have also taken their part in this pious task. Several of the Mongol princes
owed their conversion to the influence of a Muslim wife, and the same was
probably the case with many of the pagan Turks when they had carried their
raids into Muhammadan countries. The Sanūsiyyah missionaries who came to work
among the Tūbū, to the north of Lake Chad, opened schools for girls, and took
advantage of the powerful influence exercised by the women among these tribes
(as among their neighbours, the Berbers), in their efforts to win them over to
Islam. [6]
In German East Africa, the pagan natives who leave their homes for six months or
more, to work on the railways or plantations, are converted by the Muhammadan
women with whom they contract temporary alliances; these women refuse to have
anything to do with an uncircumcised kāfir, and to escape the disgrace
attaching to such an appellation, their husbands become circumcised and thus
receive an entry into Muslim society. [7]
The progress of Islam in Abyssinia during the first half of the last century
has been said to be in large measure due to the efforts of Muhammadan women,
especially the wives of Christian princes, who had to pretend a conversion to
Christianity on the occasion of their marriage, but brought up their children
in the tenets of Islam and worked in every possible way for the advancement of
that faith. [8]
On the western frontier of Abyssinia, there is a pagan tribe called the Boruns; some of these men who had enlisted in a
negro regiment, under the Anglo-Egyptian government of the Sudan, were
converted to Islam by the wives of the black soldiers while the battalon was
returning to Khartum.[9]
The Tatar women of Kazan are said to be especially zealous as
propagandists of Islam. [10]
The professed devotee, because she happens to be a woman, is not thereby
debarred from taking her place with the male saint in the company of the preachers
of the faith. The legend of the holy women, descended from 'Alī, who are said
to have flown through the air from Karbala to Lahore, and there by the
influence of their devout lives of prayer and fasting to have won the first
converts from Hinduism to Islam, [11]
could hardly have originated if the influence of such holy women were a thing
quite unknown. One of the most venerated tombs in Cairo is that of Nafīsah, the
great-granddaughter of Ḥasan (the martyred son of 'Alī), whose theological
learning excited the admiration even of her great contemporary, Imām al-Shāfi'ī,
and whose piety and austerities raised her to the dignity of a saint: it is
related of her that when she settled in Egypt, she happened to have as her
neighbours a family of dhimmīs whose daughter was so grievously
afflicted that she could not move her limbs but had to lie on her back all day.
The parents of the poor girl had to go one day to the market and asked their
pious Muslim neighbour to look .after their daughter during their absence. Nafīsah,
filled with love and pity, undertook this work of mercy; and when the parents
of the sick girl were gone, she lifted up her soul in prayer to God on behalf
of the helpless invalid. Scarcely was her prayer ended than the sick girl
regained the use of her limbs and was able to go to meet her parents on their
return. Filled with gratitude, the whole family became converts to the
religion of their benefactor. [12]
Even the Muslim prisoner will on
occasion embrace the opportunity of preaching his faith to his captors or to
his fellow-prisoners. The first introduction of Islam into Eastern Europe was the work of a. Muslim
jurisconsult who was taken prisoner, probably in one of the wars between the
Byzantine empire and its Muhammadan neighbours, and was brought to the country
of the Pechenegs[13]
in the beginning of the eleventh century. He set before many of them the
teachings of Islam and they embraced the faith with sincerity, so that it began
to be spread among this people. But the other Pechenegs who had not accepted
the Muslim religion, took umbrage at the conduct of their fellow-countrymen and
finally came to blows with them. The Muslims, who numbered about twelve
thousand, successfully withstood the attack of the unbelievers, though they
were more than double their number, and the remnant of the defeated party
embraced the religion of the victors. Before the close of the eleventh century
the whole nation had become Muhammadan and had among them men learned in Muslim
theology and jurisprudence. [14]
In the reign of the Emperor Jahāngīr (1605-1628) there was a certain Sunnī
theologian, named Shaykh Aḥmad Muiaddid, who especially distinguished
himself by the energy with which he controverted the doctrines of the Shī'ahs :
the latter, being at this time in favour at court, succeeded in having him
imprisoned on some frivolous charge; during the two years that he was kept in
prison he converted to Islam several hundred idolaters who were his companions
in the same prison. [15]
In more recent times, an Indian mawlavī, who had been sentenced to
transportation for life to the Andaman Islands by the British Government,
because he had taken an active part in the Wahhābī conspiracy of 1864,
converted many of the convicts before his death. In Central Africa, an Arab chief
condemned to death by the Belgians, spent his last hours in trying to convert
to Islam the Christian missionary who had been sent to bring him the
consolations of religion. [16]
Such
being the missionary zeal of the Muslims, that they are ready to speak in season and out of season,—as Doughty,
with fine insight, says, " Their talk is continually (without hypocrisy)
of religion, which is of genial devout remembrance to them,"[17]—let
us now consider some of the causes that have contributed to their success.
Foremost among these is the simplicity[18]
of the Muslim creed, There is no god but God; Muḥammad is the Apostle of God.
Assent to these two simple doctrines is all that is demanded of the convert,
and the whole history of Muslim dogmatics fails to present any attempt on the
part of ecclesiastical assemblies to force on the mass of believers any symbol
couched in more elaborate and complex terms. This simple creed demands no great
trial of faith, arouses as a rule no particular intellectual difficulties and is
within the compass of the meanest intelligence. Unencumbered with theological
subtleties, it may be expounded by any, even the most unversed in theological
expression. The first half of it enunciates a doctrine that is almost
universally accepted by men as a necessary postulate, while the second half is
based on a theory of man's relationship to God that is almost equally
wide-spread, viz. that at intervals in the world's history God grants some
revelation of Himself to men through the mouthpiece of inspired prophets. This,
the rationalistic character of the Muslim creed, and the advantage it reaps
therefrom in its missionary efforts, have nowhere been more admirably brought
out than in the following sentences of Professor Montet :—
Islam is a religion that is
essentially rationalistic in the widest sense of this term considered
etymologically and historically. The definition of rationalism as a system that
bases religious beliefs on principles furnished by the reason, applies to it
exactly. It is true that Muḥammad, who was an enthusiast and possessed, too,
the ardour of faith and the fire of conviction, that precious quality he
transmitted to so many of his disciples,—brought forward his reform as a revelation : but this kind of revelation is only one form
of exposition and his religion has all the marks of a collection of doctrines
founded on the data of reason. To believers, the Muhammadan creed is
summed up in belief in the unity of God and in the mission of His Prophet, and
to ourselves who coldly analyse his doctrines, to belief in God and a future
life; these two dogmas, the minimum of religious belief, statements that to the
religious man rest on the firm basis of reason, sum up the whole doctrinal
teaching of the Qur'ān. The simplicity and the clearness of this teaching are
certainly among the most obvious forces at work in the religion and the
missionary activity of Islam. It cannot be denied that many doctrines and
systems of theology and also many superstitions, from the worship of saints to
the use of rosaries and amulets, have become grafted on to the main trunk of
the Muslim creed. But in spite of the rich development, in every sense of the
term, of the teachings of the Prophet, the Qur'an has invariably kept its place
as the fundamental starting-point, and the dogma of the unity of God has always
been proclaimed therein with a grandeur, a majesty, an invariable purity and
with a note of sure conviction, which it is hard to find surpassed outside the
pale of Islam. This fidelity to the fundamental dogma of the religion, the
elemental simplicity of the formula in which it is enunciated, the proof that
it gains from the fervid conviction of the missionaries who propagate it, are
so many causes to explain the success of Muhammadan missionary efforts. A creed
so precise, so stripped of all theological complexities and consequently so
accessible to the ordinary understanding, might be expected to possess and does
indeed possess a marvellous power of winning its way into the consciences of
men."[19]
Bishop Lefroy considers that the
"secret of the extraordinary power for conquest and advance which Islam
has in its best ages evinced " is to be found in its recognition of the
Existence of God rather than the Unity of God. " Not so much that God is
one as that God IS—that His existence is the ultimate fact of the universe—that
His will is supreme —His sovereignty absolute—His
power limitless . . . the conviction that, amidst all the chaos and confusion
.and disorders of the world which so fearfully obscure it, there is
nevertheless, an ultimate Will, resistless, supreme, and that man is called to
"be a minister of that Will, to promulgate it, to compel—if necessary by
very simple and elementary means indeed—obedience to that Will—this it was
which welded the Mohammedan hosts into so invincible an engine of conquest,
which inspired them with a spirit of military subordination and discipline, as
well as with a contempt of death, such as has probably never been surpassed in
any system—this it is which, so far as it is still in any true sense operative
amongst Mohammadans, gives at once, that backbone of character, that firmness
of determination and strength of will, and also that uncomplaining patience
and submission in the presence of the bitterest misfortune, which characterise
and adorn the best adherents of the creed," [20]
When the convert has accepted and
learned this simple creed, he has then to be instructed in the five practical
duties of his religion : (1) recital of the creed, (2) observance of the five
appointed times of prayer,. (3) payment of the legal alms, (4) fasting during
the month of Ramadan, and (5) the pilgrimage to Mecca.
The observance of this last duty has
often been objected to as a strange survival of idolatry in the midst of the
monotheism of the Prophet's teaching, but it must be borne in mind that to him
it connected itself with Abraham, whose religion it was his mission to restore. [21]
But above all—and herein is its supreme importance in the missionary history of
Islam—it ordains a. yearly gathering of believers, of all nations and
languages, brought together from all parts of the world, to pray in that sacred
place towards which their faces are set in every hour of private worship in
their distant homes. No fetch of religious genius could have conceived a better
expedient for impressing on the minds of the faithful a sense of their common
life and of their brotherhood in the bonds of faith. Here, in a supreme act of
common worship, the Negro of the west coast of
Africa meets the Chinaman from the distant east; the courtly and polished
Ottoman recognises his brother Muslim in the wild islander from the farthest
end of the Malayan Sea. At the same time throughout the whole Muhammadan world
the hearts of believers are lifted up in sympathy with their more fortunate
brethren gathered together in the sacred city, as in their own homes they
celebrate the festival of 'Īd al-Aḍḥặ or (as it is called in Turkey and Egypt)
the feast of Bayrām. Their visit to the sacred city has been to many Muslims
the experience that has stirred them up to " strive in the path of
God," and in the preceding pages constant reference has been made to the
active part taken by the ḥājīs in missionary work.
Besides the institution of the
pilgrimage, the payment of the legal alms is another duty that continually
reminds the Muslim that " the faithful are brothers "[22]
—a religious theory that is very strikingly realised in Muhammadan society and
seldom fails to express itself in acts of kindness towards the new convert. Whatever
be his race, colour or antecedents he is received into the brotherhood of
believers and takes his place as an equal among equals.
It is not, however, true, as some
European writers have maintained, that if an unbeliever is the slave of a
Muslim his conversion to Islam procures for him his manumission, for, according
to Muhammadan law, the conversion of a slave does not affect the prior state of
bondage; [23]
and the condition of the Muslim slave has varied much according to the
character of his master. But freedom is in many instances the reward of
conversion, and devout minds have even recognised in enslavement God's guidance
to the true faith, as the negroes from the Upper Nile countries, whom Doughty
met in Arabia. " In those Africans there is no resentment that they have
been made slaves . . . even though cruel men-stealers rent them from their
parentage. The patrons who paid their price have adopted them into their
households, the males are circumcised and—that which enfranchises their souls,
even in the long passion of home-sickness—God has
visited them in their mishap; they can say 'it was His grace,' since
they be thereby entered into the saving religion. This, therefore, they think
is the better country, where they are the Lord's free men, a land of more civil
life, the soil of the two Sanctuaries, the land of Mohammed :—for such they do
give God thanks that their bodies were sometime sold into slavery ! "[24]
Very effective also, both in winning
and retaining, is the ordinance of the daily prayers five times a day. Montesquieu[25] has well said, Une religion chargée de beaucoup de
pratiques attache plus à elle qu'une autre qui l’est moins; on tient beaucoup
aux choses dont on est continuellement occupé. The
religion of the Muslim is continually present with him and in the daily prayer
manifests itself in a solemn and impressive ritual, which cannot leave either
the worshipper or the spectator unaffected. Sa'īd b. Ḥasan, an Alexandrian Jew,
who embraced Islam in the year 1298, speaks of the sight of the Friday prayer
in a mosque as a determining factor in his own conversion. During a severe
illness he had had a vision in which a voice bade him declare himself a Muslim,
" And when I entered the mosque " (he goes on) " and saw the Muslims
standing in rows like angels, I heard a voice speaking within me. ' This is the
community whose coming was announced by the prophets (on whom be blessings and
peace !) '; and when the preacher came forth clad in his black robe, a deep
feeling of awe fell upon me ... and when he closed his sermon with the words, '
Verily God enjoineth justice and kindness and the giving of gifts to kinsfolk,
and He forbiddeth wickedness and wrong and oppression. He warneth you; haply ye
will be mindful.[26]
And when the prayer began, I was mightily uplifted, for the rows of the Muslims
appeared to me like rows of angels, to whose prostrations and genuflections God
Almighty was revealing Himself, and I heard a voice within me saying, ' If God
spake twice unto the people of Israel throughout the ages, verily He speaketh
unto this community in every time of Prayer, and I was convinced in my mind
that I had been created to be a Muslim."[27]
If Renan could say, " Je ne suis
jamais entré dans une mosquée sans une vive émotion, le dirai-je ? sans un certain
regret de n'être pas
musulman,"[28]
it can be readily understood how the sight of the Muslim trader at prayer, his
frequent prostrations, his absorbed and silent worship of the Unseen, would
impress the heathen African, endued with that strong sense of the mysterious
such as generally accompanies a low stage of civilisation. Curiosity would
naturally prompt inquiry, and the knowledge of Islam thus imparted might
sometimes win over a convert who might have turned aside had it been offered
unsought, as a free gift. Of the fast during the month of Ramadan, it need only
be said that it is a piece of standing evidence against the theory that Islam
is a religious system that attracts by pandering to the self-indulgence of men.
As Carlyle has said, " His religion is not an easy one : with rigorous
fasts, lavations, strict complex formulas, prayers five times a day, and
abstinence from wine, it did not succeed by being an easy religion."
Bound up with these and other ritual
observances, but not encumbered or obscured by them, the articles of the Muslim
creed are incessantly finding outward manifestation in the life of the
believer, and thus, becoming inextricably interwoven with the routine of his
daily life, make the individual Musalman an exponent and teacher of his creed far more than is the case with the adherents of most other
religions.[29]
Couched in such short and simple language, his creed makes but little demand
upon the intellect, and the definiteness, positiveness, and minuteness of the
ritual leave the believer in no doubt as to what he has to do, and these duties
performed he has the satisfaction of feeling that he has fulfiled all the
precepts of the Law. In this union of rationalism and ritualism, we may find,
to a great extent, the secret of the power that Islam has exercised over
the minds of men. " If you would win the great masses give them the truth
in rounded form, neat and clear, in visible and tangible guise." [30]
Many other circumstances might be
adduced that have contributed towards the missionary success of Islam—circumstances
peculiar to particular times and countries. Among these may be mentioned the
advantage that Muhammadan missionary work derives from the fact of its being so
largely in the hands of traders, especially in Africa and other uncivilised
countries where the people are naturally suspicious of the foreigner. For, in
the case of the trader, his well-known and harmless avocation secures to him an
immunity from any such feelings of suspicion, while his knowledge of men and
manners, his commercial savoir-faire, gain for him a ready reception, and
remove that feeling of constraint which might naturally arise in the presence
of the stranger. He labours under no such disadvantages as hamper the professed
missionary, who is liable to be suspected of some sinister motive, not only by
people whose range of experience and mental horizon are limited and to whom the
idea of any man enduring the perils of a long journey and laying aside every
mundane occupation for the sole purpose of gaining proselytes, is inexplicable,
but also by more civilised men of the world who are very prone to doubt the
sincerity of the paid missionary agent.
The circumstances are very different
when Islam has not to appear as a suppliant in a foreign country, but stands
forth proudly as the religion of the ruling race. In the preceding pages it has been shown that the theory of the
Muslim faith enjoins toleration and freedom of religious life for all those
followers of other faiths who pay tribute in return for protection, and though
the pages of Muhammadan history are stained with the blood of many cruel
persecutions, still, on the whole, unbelievers have enjoyed under Muhammadan
rule a measure of toleration, the like of which is not to be found in Europe
until quite modern times. Forcible conversion was forbidden, in accordance with
the precepts of the Qur'ān :—" Let there be no compulsion in religion
" (ii. 257). " Wilt thou compel men to become believers ? No soul can
believe but by the permission of God " (x. 99, 100). ( The very existence
of so many Christian sects and communities in countries that have been for
centuries under Muhammadan rule is an abiding testimony to the toleration they
have enjoyed, and shows that the persecutions they have from time to time been
called upon to endure at the hands of bigots and fanatics, have been excited by
some special and local circumstances rather than inspired by a settled
principle of intolerance.[31])
At such times of persecution, the
pressure of circumstances has driven many unbelievers to become—outwardly at
least —Muhammadans, and many instances might be given of individuals who, on
particular occasions, have been harassed into submission to the religion of the
Qur'ān. But such oppression is wholly
without the sanction of Muhammadan law, either religious or civil. The passages in the Qur'an that forbid
forced conversion and enjoin preaching as the sole legitimate method of
spreading the faith have already been quoted above (Introduction, pp. 5-6), and
the same doctrine is upheld by the decisions of the Muhammadan doctors. When Moses Maimonides, who under the
fanatical rule of the Almohads had feigned conversion to Islam, fled to Egypt and
there openly declared himself to be a Jew, a Muslim jurisconsult
from Spain denounced
him for his apostasy and demanded that the extreme
penalty of the law should be inflicted on him for this offence; but the case
was quashed by al-Qāḍī al-Fāḍil, 'Abd al-Raḥīm b. 'Alī,[32]
one of the most famous of Muslim judges, and the prime minister of the
great Saladin, who authoritatively declared that a man who had been converted
to Islam by force could not be rightly considered to be a Muslim. [33] In the same spirit, when Ghāzān
(1295-1304) discovered that the Buddhist monks who had become Muhammadans at
the beginning of his reign (when their temples had been destroyed) only made a
pretence of being converted, he granted permission to all those who so wished
to return to Tibet, where among their Buddhist fellow-countrymen they would be
free once more to follow their own faith. [34]
Tavernier tells us a similar story of some Jews of Ispahan who were so
grievously persecuted by the governor " that either by force or cunning he
caused them to turn Mahometans; but the king (Shah 'Abbas II) (1642-1667),
understanding that only power and fear had constrained them to turn, suffer'd
them to resume their own religion and to live in quiet." [35] A story of a much earlier traveller[36]
in Persia, in 1478, shows how even in those turbulent times a Muhammadan
governor set himself to severely crush an outburst of
fanaticism of the same character. A rich Armenian merchant of the city of Tabrīz
was sitting in his shop one day when a Ḥajī,[37]
with a reputation for sanctity, coming up to him importuned him to become a
Musalman and abandon his Christian faith; when the merchant expressed his
intention of remaining steadfast in his religion and offered the fellow alms
with the hope of getting rid of him, he replied that what he wanted was not his
alms but his conversion; and at length, enraged at the persistent refusal of
the merchant, suddenly snatched a sword out of the hand of a bystander and
struck the merchant a mortal blow on the head and then ran away, When the
Governor of the city heard the news, he was very angry and ordered the murderer
to be pursued and captured; the culprit having been brought into his presence,
the governor stabbed him to death with his own hand and ordered his body to be
cast forth to be devoured by dogs, saying : " What! is this the way in
which the religion of Muhammad spreads ? " At nightfall, the common people
took up the body and buried it, whereupon the Governor, enraged at this
contempt of his order, gave up the place for three or four hours to be sacked
by his soldiers and afterwards imposed a fine as a further penalty; also he
called the son of the merchant to him and comforted him and caressed him with
good and kindly words. Even the mad al-Hakim (996-1020), whose
persecutions caused many Jews and Christians to abandon their own faith and
become Musalmans, afterwards allowed these unwilling converts to return again
to their own religion and rebuild their ruined places of worship. [38]
Neglected as the Eastern Christians have been by their Christian brethren
in the West, unarmed for the most part and utterly defenceless, it would have
been easy for any of the powerful rulers of Islam to have utterly rooted out
their Christian subjects or banished them from their
dominions, as the Spaniards did the Moors, or the English the Jews for nearly
four centuries. It would have been perfectly possible for Salim I (in 1514) or
Ibrahim (in 1646) to have put into execution the barbarous notion they
conceived of exterminating their Christian subjects, just as, the former had
massacred 40,000 Shi'ahs with the aim of establishing uniformity of religious
belief among his Muhammadan subjects. The muftis who turned the minds of their
masters from such a cruel purpose, did so as the exponents of Muslim law and Muslim
tolerance.[39]
Still, though the principle that found
so much favour in Germany in the seventeenth century[40]—Cuius
regio eius religio,—was never adopted by any Muhammadan potentate, it is
obvious that the fact of Islam being the state religion could not fail to have
had some influence in increasing the number of its adherents. Persons on whom
their religious faith sat lightly would be readily influenced by considerations
of worldly advantage, and ambition and self-interest would take the place of
more laudable motives for conversion. St. Augustine made a similar complaint in
the fifth century, that many entered the Christian Church merely because they
hoped to gain some temporal advantage thereby: " Quam multi non quaerunt
Iesum, nisi ut illis faciat bene secundum tempus ! Alius negotium habet,
quaerit intercessionem clericorum; alius premitur a potentiore, fugit ad
ecclesiam; alius pro se vult interveniri apud eum apud quern parum valet; ille
sic, ille sic; impletur quotidie talibus ecclesia." [41]
Moreover, to the barbarous and
uncivilised tribes that saw the glory and majesty of the empire of the Arabs in
the heyday of its power, Islam must have appeared as imposing and have
exercised as powerful a fascination as the Christian faith when presented to
the Barbarians of Northern Europe, when " They found Christianity in the
Empire—Christianity refined and complex, imperious and pompous—Christianity enthroned by the side of kings, and sometimes paramount
above them."[42]
Added to this must often have been the
slow, persistent influence of daily contact with Muslim life and thought, such
as led even a Nestorian writer of the twelfth century to add words of blessing
to the mention of the name of the Prophet and the early caliphs, [43]
and to pray for the mercy of God on the caliph 'Umar b. 'Abd al-'Aziz. [44]
In modern times Christian missionaries complain that the system of public
instruction in Egypt under the British occupation, according to which "
Christian boys are often compelled to sit and listen to the Koran and Din
(religious teaching) being taught to their Moslem companions when there is no
room where they can be separated," [45]
tends to give the Muhammadans a preponderating influence over their Christian
fellow-students. One of the most active of the followers of the late Mufti
Muhammad 'Abduh was originally a Coptic medical student, who had been won over
to Islam through the influence of the religious instruction he had heard given
in school hours. [46]
But the recital of such motives as
little accounts for all cases of conversion in the one religion as in the
other, and they should not make us Jose sight of other factors in the
missionary life of Islam, whose influence has been of a more distinctly
religious character. Foremost among these is the influence of the devout lives
of the followers of Islam. Strange as it may appear to a generation accustomed
to look upon Islam as a cloak for all kinds of vice, it is nevertheless true
that in earlier times many Christians who have come into contact with a living
Muslim society have been profoundly impressed by the virtues exhibited therein;
if these could so strike the traveller and the stranger, they would no doubt
have some influence of attraction on the unbeliever who
came in daily contact with them. Ricoldus de Monte Crucis, a Dominican
missionary who visited the East at the close of the thirteenth century, thus
breaks out in praise of the Muslims among whom he had laboured: "
Obstupuimus, quomodo in lege tante perfidie poterant opera tante perfectionis
inveniri. Referemus igitur hic breviter opera perfectionis Sarracenorum. . . .
Quis enim non obstupescat, si diligenter consideret, quanta in ipsis Sarracenis
sollicitudo ad studium, devocio in oratione, misericordia ad pauperes,
reverencia ad nomen Dei et prophetas et loca sancta, gravitas in moribus,
affabilitas ad extraneos, concordia et amor ad suos ? "[47] William Petit of Newburgh in similar manner,
towards the end of the twelfth century, praised the sobriety of the Saracens as
the outcome of the teaching of their Prophet and as inspiring them with a sense
of moral superiority over the Christians : " Gulosos vero atque ebriosos,
orbi terrarum graves abominatus, sobrietatem docuit, ciborum delicias
sugillavit, vini usum, praeterquam paucis certisque diebus solemnibus,
interdixit [Macometus]. Inde est,
quod cum Sarraceni in fluxu libidinum de sui, ut dictum est, seductoris indulgentia
probentur esse spurcissimi; nostris, proh dolor ! in frugalitate superiores
esse videntur, nobisque, proh pudor ! comessationum et ebrietatum sordes
improperant. Denique malleus Christiani nominis Saladinus ante annos aliquot,
cum nostrorum mores explorans, audisset quod pluribus in prandio ferculis
uterentur, dixisse fertur, 'tales Terra Sancta indignos esse.' Unde constat,
quod luxus nostrorum conspectus Agarenos, de frugalitate gloriantes, contra nos
incitet animetque tanquam dicentes; ' Deus dereliquit crapulatos istos,
persequamur et comprehendamus, quia non est qui eripiat.' "
[48]
The literature of the Crusades is rich
in such appreciations of Muslim virtues, while the Ottoman Turks in the early
days of their rule in Europe received many a tribute of praise from Christian
lips, as has already been shown in a former chapter.
At the present day there are two chief
factors (beyond such of the above-mentioned as still hold good) that make for missionary activity in the Muslim world. The first of these
is the revival of religious life which dates from the Wahhabi reformation at
the end of the eighteenth century; though this new departure has long lost all
political significance outside the confines of Najd, as a religious revival its
influence is felt throughout Africa, India and the Malay Archipelago even to
the present day, and has given birth to numerous movements which take rank
among the most powerful influences in the Islamic world. In the preceding pages
it has already been shown how closely connected many of the modern Muslim
missions are with this wide-spread revival: the fervid zea' it has stirred up,
the new life it has infused into existing religious institutions, the impetus
it has given to theological study and to the organisation of devotional
exercises, have all served to awake and keep alive the innate proselytising
spirit of Islam.
Side by side with this reform
movement, is another of an entirely different character—for, to mention one
point of difference only, while the former is strongly opposed to European
civilisation, the latter is rather in sympathy with modern thought and offers a
presentment of Islam in accordance therewith,—viz. the Pan-Islamic- movement,
which seeks to bind all the nations of the Muslim world in a common bond of
sympathy. Though in no way so significant as the other, still this trend of
thought gives a powerful stimulus to missionary labours; the effort to realise
in actual life the Muslim ideal of the brotherhood of all believers reacts on
collateral ideals of the faith, and the sense of a vast unity and of a common
life running through the nations inspirits the hearts of the faithful and makes
them bold to speak in the presence of the unbelievers.
What further influence these two
movements will have on the missionary life of Islam, the future only can show.
But their very activity at the present day is a proof that Islam is not dead.
The spiritual energy of Islam is not, as has been so often maintained,
commensurate with its political power.[49]
On the contrary, the loss of political power and worldly
prosperity has served to bring to the front the finer spiritual qualities which
are the truest incentives to missionary work. Islam has learned the uses of
adversity, and so far from a decline in worldly prosperity being a presage of
the decay of this faith, it is significant that those very Muslim countries
that have been longest under Christian rule show themselves most active in the
work of proselytising. The Indian and Malay Muhammadans display a zeal and enthusiasm
for the spread of the faith, which one looks for in vain in Turkey or Morocco.
[1]Organisations based on
the model of Christian missionary societies do not begin to make their appearance
until the twentieth century; some account of these is given in Appendix III.
[2]"À tout musulman, quelque mondoin qu'il
soit, le prosélytisme semblẹ être en quelque sorte inné." (Snouck
Huraronje, Revue de 1'Histoire des Religions, vol. Ivii. p. 66.) " Der
Muslim ist von Natur Miasionar . . . Er treibt Mission auf eigne Faust und
Kosten." (Mun-zinger, p. 411.) Snonck Hurgronje (i), p. 8; Liittke (2), p.
30; Julius Richter, p. 152; Merensky, p. 154.
[3] Qur'an, xvi. 126.
[4] See the interesting letter addressed by
Mawla'I Ismail, Sharif of Morocco, in 1698 to King James II, inviting him to
embrace Islam. (Revue de L'Histoire des Religions, vol. xlvii. p. 174 sqq.).
[6] Duveyrier, p. 17.
[7] Klamroth, p. 12.
[8] Massaja, vol. xi, pp.
124-5.
[12] Goldziher, vol. ii. pp. 303-4.
[13] The Pechenegs at that time occupied the country between the
lower Danube and the Don, to which they fad migrated from the banks of the Ural
at the end of the ninth century. (Karamsin, vol. i. pp. 180-1.)
[17] Doughty, vol. ii. p.
39.
[18] This was emphasised by Marracci in the seventeenth century,
" Si ethnicus mysteria humani! intellectus captum excedentia, vel naturali
conditioni et imbecillitati difficillima, si non impossibilia, cum Alcoranica
doctrina comparaverit, statim ab his refugiet, et ad illa obviis ulnis
accurret." )Alcorani
textus . . . translatus. p. 9. Patavii, 1698.)
[19] Edouard Montet: La
propagande chrétienne et ses adversaires musulmans, pp. 17-18. (Paris, 1890.)
[20] Mankind and the Church, p. 283-4. (London 1007.)
[21] Qur'ān, ii. 118-26.
[27] Goldziher, Sa'īd b. Ḥasan d'Alexandrie. (Revue des Etudes
Juives, tome xxx. pp. 17-18-) (Paris, 1895).
[28] Ernest JXenan: L'lslamisme et la Science, p. 19. (Paris,
1883.) This has been emphasised by many observers, but it will be enough here
to quote the words of an eminent Christian bishop. " No one who comes in
contact for the first time with Mohammedans can fail to be struck by this
aspect of their faith. . . . Wherever one may be, in open street, in railway
station, in the field, it is the most ordinary thing to see a man, without the
slightest touch of Pharisaism or parade, quietly and humbly leaving whatever
pursuit he may be at the moment engaged in, in order to say his prayers at the
appointed hour. On a larger scale, no one who has ever seen the courtyard of
the Great Mosque at Delhi on the last Friday in the fast-month (Ramazan) filled
to overflowing with, perhaps, 15.000 worshippers, all wholly absorbed in
prayer, ,and manifesting the profoundest reverence and humility in every
gesture, can fail to be deeply impressed by the sight, or to get a glimpse of
the power which underlies such a system; while the very regularity of the daily
call to prayer, as it rings out at earliest dawn, before light commences, or
amid all the noise and bustle of the business hours, or again as the evening
closes in, is fraught with the same message." (Dr. G. A. Lefroy: Mankind
and the Church, pp. 287-8. (London, 1907.)
[29] "One
may notice and admire the kind of chivalrous pride which the average Mohammedan
takes in his faith." (Bisbop Lefroy: Mankind and the Church, p. 289.)
[30] A. Kuenen: National Religions and Universal Religions, p.
35. (London, 1882.)
[31] e. g. The persecution, under al-Mutawakkil, by the orthodox
reaction against all forms of deviation from the popular creed : ic
Persia and other parts of Asia about the end of the thirteenth century in
revenge for the domineering and insulting behaviour of the Christians in the
hour of their advancement and power under the early Mongols. (Maqrīzī (2), Tome
i. Premiere Partie, pp. 98, 106.) Assemani (torn. iii. pars. ii. p.c.),
speaking of the causes that have excited the persecution ot the Christians
under Muhammadan rule, says :—" Non raro persecutions procellam excitarunt
mutuae Christianorum ipsorum simultates, sacerdotum licentia, praesulum fastus,
tyrannica magnatum potestas, et medicorum praesertim scriba-rumque de supremo
in gentem suam imperio altercationes." During the crusades the Christians
of the East frequently fell under the suspicion of favouring the invasions of
their co-religionists from the West, and in modern Turkey the movement for
Greek Independence and the religious sympathies it excited in Christian Europe
contributed to make the lot of the subject Christian races harder than it would
have been, had they not been suspected of disloyalty and disaffection towards
their Muhammadan ruler. De Gobineau has expressed himself very strongly on this
question of the toleration of Islam: " Si 1'on sépare la doctrine
religieuse de la nécessite politique qui souvent a parlé et agi en son nom, il
n'est pas de religion plus tolérante, on pourrait presque dire plus indifférente
sur la foi des hommes que 1'Islam. Cette disposition
organique est si forte qu'en dehors des cas ou la raison d'Etat mise en jeu a
porte les gouvernernents musulmans a se faire arme de tout pour tendre a
I'unite de foi, la tolerance la plus complete a ete la regie fournie par le
dogme. . . Qu'on ne s'arre'te pas
aux violences, aux cruautes commises dans une occasion ou dans une autre. Si on
y regarde de pres, on ne tardera pas a y decouvrir des causes toutes politiques
ou toutes de passion humaioe et de temperament chez le souverain ou dans les
populations. Le fait reh'gieux n'y est invoque quc comme pretexte et, en
realite, il reste en dehors." (A. de Gobineau (l), pp. 24-5)
[38] Makin, p. 260. Similarly, about a century before,
al-Muqtadir (a.d. 908-932) gave orders for the rebuilding of some churches at
Rarolah in Palestine which had been destroyed by Muhammadaas during a riot, the
cause of which Is not recorded. (Eutychius, ii. p. 82.) Abu Salih makes mention
of the rebuilding of a great many churches and monasteries in Egypt which had
either been destroyed in time of war (e. g. during the invasion of the Ghuzz
and the Kurds in 1164) {pp. 91, 96, 112, 120), been wrecked by fanatics (pp.
85-6, 182, and Maqrfzl quoted in the Appendix pp. 327-8), or fallen into decay
(pp. 5, 87, 103-4).
[43] Man b. Sulayman. p. 62 (11. 4, 6. 13). The learned Maronite, Yusuf Sim'an al-Sim'am,
in the eighteenth century, thus expressed his horror at such a concession to
Muslim sentiment: "Mahometi eiusque
sectariorum laudes persequitur, et
quod sine horrore
dici nequit. illius
pseudo-propbetae nomen es
adiuncto praeconio memorat,
quo Mahometan! solent, nimirum عليه السلام." (Assemani, torn, iii, pars. i. p. 585.)
[46] Id. pp. 61-4.
[48] Historia Kerum Anglicarurii Willelmi Parvi de Newburgh, ed.
Hans Claude Hamilton, vol. ii. p. 158. (London, 1856.)
[49] Frederick Denison Maurice was giving expression to one of
the most commonly received opinions regarding this faith when he said, "
It has been proved that Mahometanism can only thrive while it is aiming at
conquest." (The Religions of the World, p. 28.) (Cambridge, 1852.)
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