Christianity and Islam | Page 7

inhabitants of a

subjugated state. It is true that the distinction is often difficult to
observe, as religion and nationality were one and the same thing to
Muhammedans. In any case religious animosity was a very subordinate
phenomenon. It was a gradual development and seems to me to have
made a spasmodic beginning in the first century under the influence of
ideas adopted from Christianity. It may seem paradoxical to assert that
it was Christian influence which first stirred Islam to religious
animosity and armed it with the sword against Christianity, but the
hypothesis becomes highly probable when we have realised the
indifferentism of the Muhammedan conquerors.
We shall constantly see hereafter how much they owed in every
department of intellectual life to the teaching of the races which they
subjugated. Their attitude towards other beliefs was never so intolerant
as was that of Christendom at that period. Christianity may well have
been the teaching influence in this department of life as in others.
Moreover at all times and especially in the first century the position of
Christians has been very tolerable, even though the Muslims regarded
them as an inferior class, Christians were able to rise to the highest
offices of state, even to the post of vizier, without any compulsion to
renounce their faith. Even during the period of the crusades when the
religious opposition was greatly intensified, again through Christian
policy, Christian officials cannot have been uncommon: otherwise
Muslim theorists would never have uttered their constant invectives
against the employment of Christians in administrative duties.
Naturally zealots appeared at all times on the Muhammedan as well as
on the Christian side and occasionally isolated acts of oppression took
place: these were, however, exceptional. So late as the eleventh century,
church funeral processions were able to pass through the streets of
Bagdad with all the emblems of Christianity and disturbances were
recorded by the chroniclers as exceptional. In Egypt, Christian festivals
were also regarded to some extent as holidays by the Muhammedan
population. We have but to imagine these conditions reversed in a
Christian kingdom of the early middle ages and the probability of my
theory will become obvious.
The Christians of the East, who had broken for the most part with the
orthodox Church, also regarded Islam as a lesser evil than the
Byzantine established Church. Moreover Islam, as being both a

political and ecclesiastical organisation, regarded the Christian church
as a state within a state and permitted it to preserve its own juridical
and at first its own governmental rights. Application was made to the
bishops when anything was required from the community and the
churches were used as taxation offices. This was all in the interests of
the clergy who thus found their traditional claims realised. These
relations were naturally modified in the course of centuries; the
crusades, the Turkish wars and the great expansion of Europe widened
the breach between Christianity and Islam, while as the East was
gradually brought under ecclesiastical influence, the contrast grew
deeper: the theory, however, that the Muhammedan conquerors and
their successors were inspired by a fanatical hatred of Christianity is a
fiction invented by Christians.
We have now to examine this early development of Islam in somewhat
greater detail: indeed, to secure a more general appreciation of this
point is the object of the present work.
The relationship of the Qoran to Christianity has been already noted: it
was a book which preached rather than taught and enounced isolated
laws but no connected system. Islam was a clear and simple war-cry
betokening merely a recognition of Arab supremacy, of the unity of
God and of Muhammed's prophetic mission. But in a few centuries
Islam became a complex religious structure, a confusion of Greek
philosophy and Roman law, accurately regulating every department of
human life from the deepest problems of morality to the daily use of
the toothpick, and the fashions of dress and hair. This change from the
simplicity of the founder's religious teaching to a system of practical
morality often wholly divergent from primitive doctrine, is a
transformation which all the great religions of the world have
undergone. Religious founders have succeeded in rousing the sense of
true religion in the human heart. Religious systems result from the
interaction of this impulse with pre-existing capacities for civilisation.
The highest attainments of human life are dependent upon
circumstances of time and place, and environment often exerts a more
powerful influence than creative power. The teaching of Jesus was
almost overpowered by the Graeco-Oriental culture of later Hellenism.
Dissensions persist even now because millions of people are unable to
distinguish pure religion from the forms of expression belonging to an

extinct civilisation. Islam went through a similar course of development
and assumed the spiritual panoply which was ready to hand. Here, as