From Egypt to Japan. Field Henry Martyn

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СКАЧАТЬ – they uttered only the truth, and truth which was fundamental. The unity of God is the foundation of religion. It is not only a truth, but the greatest of truths, the first condition of any right religious worship. In declaring this, Mohammed only proclaimed to the Arabs what Moses had proclaimed to the Hebrews: "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord." But he repeated it with great vehemence and effect, wielding it as a battle-axe to break in pieces the idols of the heathen. And so far – as against idolatry – Islam has served a great purpose in history. But there its utility ends. It teaches indeed that there is but one God. But what a God is that which it presents to our worship! "This God is not our God." The Mohammedan idea of God is very different from the Christian idea of a Father in heaven. It is the idea of the Awful, the Invisible – grand indeed, yet cold and distant and far away, like the stars on the desert, or in the Arctic night, "wildly, spiritually bright," shining with a glittering splendor, but lofty and inaccessible, beyond the cries of human agony or despair. This view of God is so limited and partial as to produce the effect of positive error. In a just religious system there must be included the two ideas of God and man; and these in their proper relation to each other. Exclusive contemplation of either leads astray. When man fastens on the idea of one God, he plants himself on a rock. But he must not bow himself upon the rock, and clasp it so as to forget his own separate individuality, lest the mighty stone roll over upon him and crush him. This the Mussulman does. He dwells so on the idea of God, that his own existence is not only lost sight of, but annihilated. The mind, subdued in awe, is at length overpowered by what it beholds. Man is nothing in that awful presence, as his life is but a point in the Divine eternity.

      It cannot be denied that the idea of God, and God alone, may produce some grand effects on human character. It inspires courage. If God be for us, who can be against us? That God is for him, the Mussulman never doubts; and this confidence inspires him in danger, and on the field of battle, so that he fights with desperation. But if the fortune of war be against him, who so well as the devout Mussulman knows how to suffer and to die? He murmurs not; but bows his head, saying "God is great," and submits to his fate. Thus his creed carried out to its logical consequence ends in fatalism. He believes so absolutely in God, that the decrees of the Almighty become a fixed fate, which the will of man is impotent to resist. All this comes from an imperfect idea of God. Here Islam is defective, just where Christianity is complete.

      There is nothing in Mohammedanism that brings God down to earth, within the range of human sympathy or even of human conception. There is no incarnation, no Son of God coming to dwell among men, hungry and weary, bearing our griefs and carrying our sorrows, suffering in the garden, and dying on the cross.

      The Mussulman does not feel his need of such help. In his prayers there is no acknowledgment of sin, no feeling of penitence, no confession of unworthiness. He knows not how poor and weak he is, with a religion in which there is no Saviour and Redeemer, no Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world, no Holy Spirit to help our infirmities, to strengthen our weaknesses.

      So with Moslem morality; if we scan it closely, we find it wanting in many virtues. Some writers give the most elevated ideas of it. Says Chambers' Cyclopædia: "Aside from the domestic relations, the ethics of the Mohammedan religion are of the highest order. Pride, calumny, revenge, avarice, prodigality, and debauchery, are condemned throughout the Koran; while trust in God, submission to His will, patience, modesty, forbearance, love of peace, sincerity, frugality, benevolence, liberality, are everywhere insisted upon."

      This is very high praise. But mark the exception: "Aside from the domestic relations." That exception takes out of the system a whole class of virtues, and puts a class of vices in their place. Here is the great crime of Islam against humanity – its treatment of woman. We will not charge against it more than belongs to it. The seclusion of woman is not a Mohammedan custom so much as an Oriental one, and one of a very ancient date. When Abraham sent a servant to find a wife for Isaac, and he returned bringing Rebekah, as the caravan drew near home, and Isaac went out to meditate at eventide, as soon as Rebekah saw him in the distance, she lighted off from her camel and "veiled herself." Polygamy too existed before Mohammed: it existed among the patriarchs. It is claimed that Mohammed repressed it, limiting a man to four wives, although he far exceeded the number himself. Gibbon, who never misses an opportunity of making a point against the Bible, says: "If we remember the seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines of the wise Solomon, we shall applaud the modesty of the Arabian who espoused no more than seventeen or fifteen wives." But this pretence of self-restraint is a mockery. It is notorious that Mohammed was a man of the grossest licentiousness; and the horrible and disgusting thing about it is that he grew more wicked as he grew older; and while trying to put restraint upon others put none upon himself. He punished licentiousness with a hundred stripes, and adultery with death, and yet he was a man of unbounded profligacy, and to make it worse, pleaded a Divine revelation to justify it!

      This example of the prophet has had its influence on all the generations of his followers. It has trailed the slime of the serpent over them all. Any one who has been in a Mohammedan country must have felt that the position of woman is a degradation. One cannot see them gliding through the streets of Cairo or Constantinople, with their faces veiled as if it were a shame to look on them, and passing swiftly as if indeed it were a sin for them to be seen abroad, without a feeling of pity and indignation.

      And in what a position are such women at home, if it can be called a home, where there is no family, no true domestic life! The wife of a Mohammedan – the mother of his children – is little better than a slave. She is never presented to his friends – indeed you could not offer a greater insult to a Turk than to ask after his wife! Of course there is no such thing as society where women are not allowed to appear. Such a society as that of London or Paris, composed of men eminent in government, in science and literature – a society refined and elevated by the presence of women of such education and manners and knowledge of the world as to be the fit companions of such men – could not possibly exist in Constantinople.

      But the degradation of woman is not the only crime to be charged to Islam. In fit companionship with it is cruelty. Mohammed had many virtues, but he had no mercy. He was implacable toward his enemies. He massacred his prisoners, not from hard necessity, but with a fierce delight. Fanaticism extinguished natural compassion, and he put his enemies to death with savage joy. In this his followers have "bettered his instructions." The Turks are cruel, perhaps partly by nature, but partly also because any tender sympathies of nature are kept down by a fiery zeal. Their religion does not make them merciful. When a people have become possessed with the idea that they are the people of God, and that others are outcasts, they become insensible to the sufferings of those outside of the consecrated pale.

      In the Greek Revolution the people of Scio joined in the rebellion. A Turkish army landed on the island, and in two months put 23,000 of the inhabitants to the sword, without distinction of age or sex; 47,000 were sold into slavery, and 5,000 escaped to Greece. In four months the Christian population was reduced from 104,000 to 2,000.

      What the Turks are in Europe and Asia, the Arabs are in Africa. The spread of Mohammedanism is a partial civilization of some heathen tribes. But, alas, the poor natives come in contact with "civilization" and "religion" in another way – in the Arab slave-hunters, who, though they are Mohammedans, and devoutly pray toward Mecca, are the most merciless of human beings. One cannot read the pages of Livingstone without a shudder at the barbarities practised on defenceless natives, which have spread terror and desolation over a large part of the interior of Africa.

      These cruel memories rise up to spoil the poetry and romance which some modern writers have thrown about the religion of the prophet. They disturb my musings, when awed or touched by some features of Moslem faith; when I listen to the worship in St. Sophia, or witness the departure of pilgrims for Mecca. Whatever Oriental pomp or splendor may still survive in its ancient worship, at its heart the system is cold, and hard, and cruel; it does not acknowledge the brotherhood of man, but exalts the followers of the prophet into a caste, who can look down on the rest of mankind with ineffable scorn. Outside of that pale, man is not a brother, but an enemy – an enemy not to be won by love, but to be conquered СКАЧАТЬ