The Future of Islam | Page 5

are not | | | easily distinguishable from each other | 6,000 | ... | 18,000,000 | | | Arabs from Yemen | 3,000 | ... | 2,500,000 | | | " " Oman and Hadramaut | 3,000 | ... | 3,000,000 | | | " " Nejd, Assir, and Hasa, most | | | of them Wahhabites | ... | 5,000 | 4,000,000 | | | " " Hejaz, of these perhaps | | | 10,000 Meccans | ... | 22,000 | 2,000,000 | | | Negroes from Soudan | 2,000 | ... | 10,000,000(?) | | | " " Zanzibar | 1,000 | ... | 1,500,000 | | | Malabari from the Cape of Good Hope | 150 | ... | | | | Persians | 6,000 | 2,500 | 8,000,000 | | | Indians (British subjects) | 15,000 | ... | 40,000,000 | | | Malays, chiefly from Java and Dutch | | | subjects | 12,000 | ... | 30,000,000 | | | Chinese | 100 | ... | 15,000,000 | | | Mongols from the Khanates, included in | | | the Ottoman Haj | ... | ... | 6,000,000 | | | Lazis, Circassians, Tartars, etc. | | | (Russian subjects), included in the | | | Ottoman Haj | ... | ... | 5,000,000 | | | Independent Afghans and Beluchis, | | | included in the Indian and Persian | | | Hajs | ... | ... | 3,000,000 |-----------------|------------ Total of Pilgrims present at Arafat | 93,250 | Total Census of Islam |175,000,000
The figures thus roundly given require explanation in order to be of their full value as a bird's-eye view of Islam. I will take them as nearly as possible in the order in which they stand, grouping them, however, for further convenience sake under their various sectarian heads, for it must be remembered that Islam, which in its institution was intended to be one community, political and religious, is now divided not only into many nations, but into many sects. All, however, hold certain fundamental beliefs, and all perform the pilgrimage to Mecca, where they meet on common ground, and it is to this latter fact that the importance attached to the Haj is mainly owing.
The main beliefs common to all Mussulmans are--
1. A belief in one true God, the creator and ordainer of all things.
2. A belief in a future life of reward or punishment.
3. A belief in a divine revelation imparted first to Adam and renewed at intervals to Noah, to Abraham, to Moses, and to Jesus Christ, and last of all in its perfect form to Mohammed. This revelation is not only one of dogma, but of practice. It claims to have taught an universal rule of life for all mankind in politics and legislation as well as in doctrine and in morals. This is called Islam.
4. A belief in the Koran as the literal word of God, and of its inspired interpretation by the Prophet and his companions, preserved through tradition (Hadith).[1]
These summed up in the well-known "Kelemat" or act of faith, "There is no God but God, and Mohammed is the apostle of God," form a common doctrinal basis for every sect of Islam--and also common to all are the four religious acts, prayer, fasting, almsgiving and pilgrimage, ordained by the Koran itself. On other points, however, both of belief and practice, they differ widely; so widely that the sects must be considered as not only distinct from, but hostile to, each other. They are nevertheless, it must be admitted, less absolutely irreconcileable than are the corresponding sects of Christianity, for all allow the rest to be distinctly within the pale of Islam, and they pray on occasion in each other's mosques and kneel at the same shrines on pilgrimage. Neither do they condemn each other's errors as altogether damnable--except, I believe, in the case of the Wahhabites, who accuse other Moslems of polytheism and idolatry. The census of the four great sects may be thus roughly given--
1. The Sunites or Orthodox Mohammedans 145,000,000 2. The Shiites or Sect of Ali 15,000,000 3. The Abadites (Abadhiyeh) 7,000,000 4. The Wahhabites 8,000,000
The Sunites, or People of the Path, are of course by far the most important of these. They stand in that relation to the other sects in which the Catholic Church stands to the various Christian heresies, and claim alone to represent that continuous body of tradition political and religious, which is the sign of a living church. In addition to the dogmas already mentioned, they hold that, after the Prophet and his companions, other authorised channels of tradition exist of hardly less authority with these. The sayings of the four first Caliphs, as collected in the first century of the Mohammedan era, they