Mahomet - Founder of Islam | Page 3

impossible, gave
free play to his separatist instinct, so that in this respect, and also in its

fundamental conception of the deity, as well as in its reliance upon
inspired Scriptures and oral traditions, Mahomedanism approximates to
the Jewish system. It misses the influence of an immemorial history,
and receives no help in its campaign of warfare from the traditional
glories of long lines of warrior kings. Chief of all, it lacks the
inspiration of the matchless Jewish Scriptures and Sacred Books,
depending for instruction upon a document confined to the revelation
of one man's personality and view of life.
Still the narrowness of the Mahomedan system provoked its power; its
rapid rush to the heights Of dominion was born of the straitening of its
impulse into the channel of conquest and the forcible imposition of its
faith.
Of Christianity Mahomet knew far less than of Judaism. He went to the
Christian doctrines as they were known in heterodox Syria, far off from
the main stream of Christian life and teaching. He went to them with a
prejudiced mind, full of anger against their exponents for declaring the
Messiah to be the Son of God. The whole idea of the Incarnation and
the dogma of the Trinity were thoroughly abhorrent to him, and the
only conception he entertains as to the personality of Jesus is that of a
Prophet even as he is himself, the receiver of divine inspiration, but
having no connection in essence with God, whom he conceived
pre-eminently as the one supreme Being, indivisible in nature.
Certainly he knew far less of the Christian than of the Jewish Scriptures,
and necessarily less of the inner meaning of the Christian faith, still in
fluid state, unconsidered of its profoundest future exponents. His mind
was assuredly not attuned to the reception of its more revolutionary
ideas. Very little compassion and no tenderness breathe from the pages
of the Kuran, and from a religion whose Founder had laboured to bring
just those two elements into the thorny ways of the world, Mahomet
could only turn away baffled and uncomprehending. The doctrine of
the non-resistance to evil, and indeed all the wisdom of the Sermon on
the Mount, he passed by unseeing.
It is useless and indeed unfair to attempt the comparison of
Mahomedanism with Christianity, seeing that without the preliminary
culture of Greece and Rome modern Christian doctrines would not
exist in their present form, and of the former Mahomet had no
cognisance. He stands altogether apart from the Christian system,

finding no affinity in its doctrines or practices, scorning its
monasticism no less than its conception of the Trinity. His position in
history lies between the warriors and the saints, at the head of the
Prophets, who went, flail in hand, to summon to repentance, but unlike
the generality, bearing also the sword and sceptre of a kingdom.
No other religious leader has ever bound his creed so closely to definite
political conceptions, Mahomet was not only the instrument of divine
revelation, but he was also at the end of his life the head of a temporal
state with minutest laws and regulations--chaotic it may be, but still
binding so that Islamic influence extended over the whole of the lives
of its adherents. This constitutes its strength. Its leader swayed not only
the convictions but the activities of his subjects.
His position with regard to the political institution of other countries is
unique. His temporal power grew almost in spite of himself, and he
unconsciously adopted ideas in connection with it which arose out of
the circumstances involved. Any form of government except despotism
was impossible among so heterogeneous and unruly a people;
despotism also bore out his own idea as to the nature of God's
governance. Political ideas were largely built upon religious
conceptions, sometimes outstripping, sometimes lagging behind them,
but always with some irrefragable connection. Despotism, therefore,
was the form best suited to Islam, and becomes its chief legacy to
posterity, since without the religious sanction Islam politically could
not exist.
Together with despotism and inextricably mingled with it is the second
great Islamic enthusiasm--the belief in the supremacy of force. With
violence the Muslim kingdom was to be attained. Mahomet gave to the
battle lust of Arabia the approval of his puissant deity, bidding his
followers put their supreme faith in the arbitrament of the sword. He
knew, too, the value of diplomacy and the use of well-calculated
treachery, but chief of all he bade his followers arm themselves to seize
by force what they could not obtain by cunning. In the insistence upon
these two factors, complete obedience to his will as the revelation of
Allah's decrees and the justification of violence to proclaim the merits
of his faith, we gain the nearest approach to his character