Muhammad and Islam.

— It was in Medina that Muhammad ordered the building of the first mosque, in which he worked with his own hands and organized a regular worship. There he preached for the first time in 623. All the measures he took bore witness to his solicitude and foresight.

Mr. Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire says that “A trait characteristic, at once, of the man and of his time, is Muhammad’s choice of three poets of Medina, officially charged with defending him against the satires of the poets of Mecca. Probably not because in him love was more excitable than was fitting; but, among a witty and lively nation, those attacks had a repercussion analogous to that which our newspapers may have today, and they were very dangerous.”

— We have said that Muhammad was compelled to make himself a warrior. Indeed, he was by no means of a warlike humor, as he had proved during the first fifty years of his life. Now, scarcely had two years of his stay in Medina passed when the Quraysh of Mecca, allied with other hostile tribes, came to besiege the city. Muhammad had to defend himself; from then on the warlike period began for him, which lasted ten years and during which he showed himself, above all, a skillful tactician. Among a people for whom war was a normal state, who knew only the right of force, the head of the new religion needed the prestige of victory to establish his authority, even over his own partisans. Persuasion had little hold over those ignorant and turbulent populations; too much mildness would have been taken for weakness. In his thought, the strong God could manifest himself only through a strong man, and the Christ, with his unalterable gentleness, would have failed in those regions. Muhammad was, then, a warrior by the force of circumstances, far more than by his character, and he will always have the merit of not having been the provoker. Once the struggle was begun, he had to conquer or die; only on this condition could he be accepted as the envoy of God; it was necessary that his enemies be cast down in order to convince them of the superiority of his God over the idols they worshiped. With the exception of one of the first battles, where he was wounded and the Muslims defeated in 625, his arms were constantly victorious, subjecting to his law, in the space of a few years, all of Arabia. When he saw his authority consolidated and idolatry destroyed, he entered triumphantly into Mecca, after ten years of exile, followed by nearly a hundred thousand pilgrims, performing there the famous pilgrimage called the farewell, whose rites the Muslims have scrupulously preserved. He died that same year, two months after his return to Medina, on June 8, 632, at sixty-two years of age.

— Muhammad must be judged by authentic and impartial history, and not according to the ridiculous legends that ignorance and fanaticism have spread on his account, nor according to the descriptions made by those who had an interest in discrediting him, presenting him as a bloodthirsty and cruel ambitious man. Neither should he be held responsible for the excesses of his successors, who wished to conquer the world for the Muslim faith with sword in hand. Without doubt there were great infamies in the last period of his life; he may be reproached for having abused, in some circumstances, the right of the victor and for not having always acted with the necessary moderation. However, alongside certain acts that our civilization reproves, it must be said, in his defense, that very often he showed himself far more humane and clement toward his enemies than vengeful, and that countless times he gave proofs of true greatness of soul. It must also be recognized that even amid his successes, and when he had reached the culminating point of his glory, he confined himself, until his last day, to his role of prophet, without ever usurping a despotic temporal authority. He did not make himself king or potentate, and never, in his private life, did he stain himself by any act of cold barbarity or base cupidity. He always lived simply, without pomp and without luxury, showing himself good and benevolent toward all. This is from History. If we carry ourselves back to the time and the milieu in which he lived; if we consider above all the persecutions of which he and his people were the target, the relentlessness of his enemies and the acts of barbarity that these committed against his partisans, is it to be wondered at that in the enthusiasm of victory he sometimes used reprisals? Should he be reproached for having established his religion by iron, among a barbarous people that fought him, when the Bible records, as glorious facts for the faith, slaughters of such atrocity that one is tempted to take them for legends? When, a thousand years after him, in the civilized countries of the West, Christians, who had for their guide the sublime law of the Christ, hurling themselves upon peaceful victims, stifled heresies in the flames, in tortures, in massacres and in waves of blood?

— If the warlike role of Muhammad was a necessity for him, and if that role can excuse him from certain political acts, the same does not hold with other aspects. Until the age of fifty, and while his first wife Khadija, fifteen years older than he, lived, his morals were irreproachable; but from that moment his passions knew no curb, and it was, incontestably, to justify the abuse he made of them that he consecrated polygamy in his religion. This was his gravest error, because it was the barrier he raised between Islam and the civilized world; for this reason his religion could not, after twelve centuries, cross the limits of certain races. It is also the side by which its founder most lowers himself in our eyes. Men of genius always lose their prestige when they let themselves be dominated by matter; on the contrary, they grow the more, the more they rise above the weaknesses of Humanity. Nevertheless, such were the disorders of morals in the time of Muhammad, that a radical reform was very difficult among men accustomed to give themselves over to their passions with a bestial brutality. It may, then, be said that, in regulating polygamy, he imposed limits on disorder and restrained far graver abuses; but polygamy will nonetheless be the gnawing worm of Islam, because it is contrary to the laws of Nature. By the numerical equality of the sexes, Nature herself has traced the limits of unions. In permitting four legitimate wives, Muhammad did not consider that, for his law to become that of the universality of men, it would be necessary that the feminine sex be at least four times more numerous than the masculine.

— In spite of its imperfections, Islam was nonetheless a great benefit for the epoch in which it arose and for the country where it was born, because it founded the worship of the unity of God upon the ruins of idolatry. It was the only religion possible for those barbarous peoples, of whom it was not necessary to ask great sacrifices of their ideas and customs. They needed something simple like the Nature in the midst of which they lived; the Christian religion had too many metaphysical subtleties; for this reason, all the attempts made over five centuries to implant it in those regions had failed completely; Judaism itself, very argumentative, had made few proselytes among the Arabs, although the Jews properly so called were quite numerous there. Superior to his race, Muhammad had understood the men of his time. In order to draw them out of the abasement in which they were kept by coarse beliefs, lowered to a stupid fetishism, he gave them a religion appropriate to their needs and their character. That religion was the simplest of all: “Belief in a single God, all-powerful, eternal, infinite, present everywhere, clement and merciful, creator of the heavens, of the angels and of the Earth, Father of man, over whom he watches and whom he heaps with goods; rewarder and avenger in another life, where he awaits us to recompense or punish us according to our merits; seeing our most secret actions and presiding over the entire destiny of his creatures, which he does not abandon for a single instant, neither in this world nor in the other; the most humble submission and absolute confidence in his holy will.” These are the dogmas. As for the worship, it consists of prayer, repeated five times a day, the fasts and mortifications of the month of Ramadan, and certain practices, of which several had a hygienic aim, such as the daily ablutions, abstention from wine, from intoxicating liquors, from the meat of certain animals, and which the faithful consider it a matter of conscience to observe scrupulously. Friday was adopted as the holy day of the week, and Mecca indicated as the point toward which every Muslim must turn when praying. The public service in the mosques consists of prayers in common, sermons, reading and explanation of the Koran. Circumcision was not instituted by Muhammad, but preserved by him; it had been practiced among the Arabs from time immemorial. The prohibition against reproducing by painting or by sculpture any living being, men and animals, was made with a view to destroying idolatry and preventing it from growing again. Finally, the pilgrimage to Mecca, which every faithful must perform at least once in his life, is a religious act; but it had another object in that epoch, a political object, that of bringing together, by a fraternal bond, the various enemy tribes, uniting them in a common sentiment of piety, in one same consecrated place.

— From the historical point of view, the Muslim religion admits the Old Testament in its entirety, up to Jesus Christ inclusively, whom it recognizes as a prophet. According to Muhammad, Moses and Jesus were envoys of God to teach the truth to men; the Gospel, as well as the law of Sinai, is the word of God; but the Christians altered its meaning. He declares, in explicit terms, that he brings neither new beliefs nor a new worship, but that he comes to reestablish the worship of the single God professed by Abraham. He speaks only with respect of the patriarchs and the prophets who preceded him: Moses, David, Isaiah, Ezekiel and Jesus Christ; of the Pentateuch, the Psalms and the Gospel. These are the books that preceded and prepared the Koran. Far from concealing the borrowings he makes from them, he boasts of it, and their greatness is the foundation of his. One may judge of his sentiments and of the character of his instructions by the following fragment of the last discourse he pronounced at Mecca, at the farewell pilgrimage, shortly before his death, and preserved in the work of Ibn-Ishaq and of Ibn-Hisham:

— “O peoples! hear my words, for I know not whether, in the coming year, I shall be able to find myself still among you in this place. Be humane and just among yourselves. May the life, the property of each one be inviolable and sacred for the others; may he who has received a deposit faithfully return it to him who entrusted it. You shall appear before the Lord and he will ask you an accounting of your actions. Treat women well; they are your helpers and can do nothing of themselves alone. You took them as a good that God entrusted to you, and you took possession of them by divine words.

“O peoples! hear my words and fix them in your spirits. I have revealed all to you; I leave you a law that will preserve you forever from error, if you keep yourselves faithfully bound to it; a clear and positive law, the book of God and the example of his prophet.

“O peoples! hear my words and fix them in your spirits. Know that every Muslim is the brother of the other; that all Muslims are brothers among themselves, that you are all equal among yourselves and that you are but one family of brothers. Guard yourselves against injustice; no one must commit it to the detriment of his brother: it will bring about your eternal perdition.

“O God! Have I delivered my message and finished my mission? — The multitude that surrounded him answered: “Yes, you have concluded it.” And Muhammad exclaimed: O God, deign to receive this testimony!”

— Here now is the judgment of Muhammad and of the influence of his doctrine, made by one of his historiographers, Mr. G. Weil, in his German work entitled: Mohammet der Prophet, [1] on pages 400 and following:

“The doctrine of God and of the holy destinies of man, preached by Muhammad in a country that was given over to the most brutal idolatry, and which had only an idea of the immortality of the soul, must reconcile us with him all the more, despite his weaknesses and his faults, in that his private life could exercise no harmful influence over his followers. Far from ever setting himself up as a model, he always wished to be regarded as a privileged being, to whom God permitted setting himself above the common law. And, in fact, he was more and more considered in that special light.

“We would be unjust and blind if we did not recognize that his people owe him still another thing, true and good. He united into a single great nation, fraternally believing in God, the innumerable Arab tribes, until then enemies among themselves. In place of the most violent arbitrariness, of the right of force and of individual struggle, he established an unbreakable right which, despite its imperfections, always forms the basis of all the laws of Islam. He limited the vengeance of blood which, before him, extended even to the most distant relatives, and limited it to him whom the judges should recognize as the murderer. He deserved well above all of the fair sex, not only by protecting girls against the atrocious custom that often immolated them at the hands of their fathers; but, moreover, by protecting women against the relatives of their husbands, who inherited them like material things, protecting them against the ill-treatment of men. He restricted polygamy, permitting believers only four legitimate wives, instead of ten, as was the custom, principally in Medina. Without having entirely emancipated the slaves, he was good and useful to them in various ways. For the poor, he not only always recommended beneficence toward them, but formally established a tax in their favor and granted them a special share in the spoils and the tribute. By prohibiting gambling, wine and all intoxicating drinks, he prevented many vices, many excesses, many quarrels and many disorders. “Although we do not consider Muhammad as a true prophet, because, to propagate his religion, he employed violent and impure means; because he himself was too weak to submit to the common law; and because he called himself the seal of the prophets, declaring that God could always replace what he had given with something better, he had, nonetheless, the merit of having made the most beautiful doctrines of the Old and the New Testament penetrate a people that was illuminated by no ray of faith; in this quality he must appear, even to non-Muhammadan eyes, as an envoy of God.”

— As a complement to this study, we shall cite some textual passages from the Koran, taken from the translation of Savary:

In the name of God, clement and merciful. — Praise be to God, sovereign of the worlds. — Mercy is his portion. — He is the king on the day of judgment. — We adore you, Lord, and implore your assistance. — Direct us in the path of salvation — in the path of those whom you have heaped with your benefits; — of those who have not merited your anger and have preserved themselves from error. (Introduction, Sura I).

O mortals, adore the Lord who created you, you and your fathers, that you may fear him; who gave you the earth for a bed and the sky for a roof; who made the rain descend from the heavens to produce all the fruits on which you feed. Do not give an associate to the Most High; you know this. (Sura II, v. 19 and 20).

Why do you not believe in God? You were dead, he gave you life; he will extinguish your days and will rekindle the torch for them. You will return to him. — He created for your refuge all that is upon the Earth. Then turning his gaze toward the firmament, he formed the seven heavens. It is he whose science embraces the Universe. (Sura II, v. 26, 27).

The East and the West belong to God; to whatever place your eyes turn, you will find his face. He fills the Universe with his immensity and with his science. — He formed the Earth and the heavens. Does he wish to produce some work? he says: “Let it be done”; and the work is done. — The ignorant say: “If God does not speak to us and if you do not make us see a miracle, we do not believe.” Thus spoke their fathers; their hearts are alike. We have made enough prodigies shine for those who have faith. (Sura II, v. 109 to 112).

God will not require of each of us except according to his strength. Each will have in his favor his good works and against himself the evil he may have done. Lord, do not chastise us for faults committed through forgetfulness. Forgive our sins; do not impose on us the burden that our fathers carried. Do not load us beyond our strength. Make forgiveness and indulgence shine for your servants. Have compassion on us; you are our succor. Help us against the infidel nations. (Sura II, v. 286).

O God, supreme king, you give and take away crowns and power at will. You elevate and abase humans at your will; good is in your hands: you are the All-Powerful. — You change day into night and night into day. You bring life out of the bosom of death and death out of the bosom of life. You pour out your infinite treasures upon whom it pleases you. (Sura III, v. 25 and 26).

Do you ignore how many peoples we have made disappear from the face of the Earth? We had given them an empire more stable than yours. We sent the clouds to pour rain upon their fields; there we made the rivers flow. Their crimes alone caused their ruin. We replaced them with other nations. (Sura VI, v. 6).

It is to God that you owe the sleep of night and the awakening of morning. He knows what you do during the day. He lets you accomplish the course of life. You will reappear before him and he will show you your works. — He dominates his servants. He gives you as guards angels charged with ending your days at the prescribed moment. They carefully execute the order of heaven. — You will then return before the God of truth. Is it not for him to judge? He is the most exact of judges. — Who delivers you from the tribulations of land and sea, when, invoking him in public or in the depths of your hearts, you exclaim: “Lord, if you turn these evils away from us, we will be grateful to you?” — It is God who delivers you from them. It is his goodness that relieves you of the pain that oppresses you; and then you return to idolatry. (Sura VI, v. 60 to 64). All secrets are unveiled to his eyes; great is the Most High. — He who speaks in secret, he who speaks in public, he who wraps himself in the shadows of night and he who appears in broad day, are equally known to him. — It is he who makes the lightning shine before your eyes to inspire in you fear and hope. It is he who raises the clouds laden with rain. — The thunder celebrates his praises. The angels tremble in his presence. He hurls the lightning bolt and it strikes the marked victims. Men rival God, but he is the strong and the powerful. — He is the true invocation. Those who implore other gods will not be heard. They resemble the traveler who, pressed by thirst, stretches out his hand toward the water he cannot reach. The invocation of the infidels is lost in the night of error. (Sura XIII, v. 10 to 15). Never say: “I will do this tomorrow,” without adding: “If it be the will of God.” Raise your thought to him, when you have forgotten something, and say: “Perhaps he will enlighten me and make me know the truth.” (Sura XVIII, v. 23).

If the waves of the sea were changed into ink to describe the praises of the Lord, they would be exhausted before having celebrated all his wonders. Another ocean like it would still not suffice. (Sura XVIII, v. 109).

He who seeks true greatness finds it in God, source of all perfections. Virtuous discourses rise to his throne. He exalts good works; he rigorously punishes the scoundrel who plots perfidies.

No, heaven never revokes the decree it has pronounced. — Have they not traversed the Earth? have they not seen that it was the deplorable end of the peoples who, before them, marched in the ways of iniquity? Those peoples were stronger and more powerful than they. But nothing in the heavens and on the Earth can oppose the wills of the Most High. Science and force are his attributes. — If God punished men from the instant they become guilty, there would not remain upon the Earth a single animate being. He defers the chastisements until the marked term. — When the time comes, he distinguishes the action of his servants. (Sura XXXV, v. 11, 41 to 45).

— These citations suffice to show the profound sentiment of piety that animated Muhammad and the great and sublime idea he formed of God. Christianity could lay claim to this picture.

Muhammad did not teach the dogma of absolute fatality, as is generally thought. This belief, with which the Muslims are imbued, and which paralyzes their initiative in many circumstances, is nothing but a false interpretation and false application of the principle of submission to the will of God, carried beyond rational limits; they do not understand that this submission does not exclude the exercise of the human faculties, and they lack as a corrective the maxim: Help yourself, and heaven will help you.

— The following passages treat particular points of the doctrine:

God has a son, say the Christians. Far from him this blasphemy! All that is in heaven and on Earth belongs to him. All beings obey his voice. (Sura II, v. 110).

O you who have received the Scriptures, do not overstep the limits of faith; say of God only the truth. Jesus is the son of Mary, the envoy of the Most High and his Word. He made him descend into the bosom of Mary; he is his breath. Believe in God and in his apostles; but do not say that there is a trinity in God. He is one: this belief will be safer for you. Far from having a son, he governs heaven and Earth alone; he is sufficient to himself. — The Messiah will not blush at being the servant of God, just as the angels who surround his throne and obey him. (Sura IV, v. 169, 170).

Those who maintain the trinity of God are blasphemers; there is but one single God. If they do not change their belief, a painful torment will be the reward of their impiety. (Sura V, v. 77).

The Jews say that Ezra is the son of God. The Christians say the same thing of the Messiah. They speak like the infidels who preceded them. Heaven will punish their blasphemies. They call their pontiffs, their monks, and the Messiah son of Mary lords. But they are enjoined to serve one single God: there is no other. Anathema upon those whom they associate with his worship. (Sura IX, v. 30, 31).

God has no children; he does not share the empire with another God. If it were so, each of them would wish to appropriate his creation and raise himself above his rival. Praise to the Most High. Far from him these blasphemies! (Sura XXII, v. 93).

Declare, O Muhammad, what heaven has revealed to you. — The assembly of the genii, having listened to the reading of the Koran, exclaimed: “Here is a marvelous doctrine. — It leads to the true faith and we give no equal to God. — Glory to his supreme Majesty! God has no spouse; he has not begotten. (Sura LXXII, v. 1 to 4).

Say: “We believe in God, in the book that he sent us, in what was revealed to Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob and the twelve tribes. We believe in the doctrine of Moses, of Jesus and of his prophets; we make no difference among them and we are Muslims.” (Sura II, v. 130).

There is but the living and eternal God. — He sent you the book that contains the truth, to confirm the truth of the Scriptures that preceded it. Before it, he made the Pentateuch and the Gospel descend, to serve as guides to men; he sent the Koran from the heavens. — Those who deny the divine doctrine should expect only torments; God is powerful and vengeance is in his hands. (Sura III, v. 1, 2, 3).

There are those who say: “We swear to God to believe in no other prophet, unless the offering he presents be confirmed by the fire of heaven.” — Answer them: “You had prophets before me; they worked miracles and that very one of which you speak. Why, then, did you stain your hands with their blood, if you speak the truth?” — If they deny your mission, they treated in the same way the apostles who preceded you, although they were endowed with the gift of miracles and had brought the book that enlightens (the Gospel) and the book of the psalms. (Sura III, v. 179 to 181).

We inspired you, as we inspired Noah, the prophets, Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, the tribes, Jesus, Job, Jonah, Aaron and Solomon. We gave the psalms of David. (Sura IV, v. 161).

— In many other passages Muhammad speaks in the same sense and with the same respect of the prophets, of Jesus and of the Gospel. But it is evident that he was mistaken as to the meaning attached to the Trinity and to the quality of Son of God, which he takes literally. If this mystery is incomprehensible for so many Christians, and if among these it has stirred up so many commentaries and controversies, it is not to be wondered at that Muhammad did not understand it. In the three persons of the Trinity he saw three gods and not a single one in three distinct persons; in the son of God he saw a procreation. Now, the idea he formed of the supreme being was so great that the least parity between God and any being whatsoever, and the idea that he could share his power, seemed to him a blasphemy. Since Jesus had never presented himself as God and had not spoken of the Trinity, those dogmas seemed to him a derogation from the very words of the Christ. He saw in Jesus and in the Gospel the confirmation of the principle of the unity of God, the object that he himself pursued. This is why he held them in great esteem, while he accused the Christians of having departed from this teaching, fractioning God and deifying his Messiah. For this reason he calls himself an envoy after Jesus, to lead men back to the pure unity of the divinity. The whole dogmatic part of the Koran rests on this principle, which he repeats at every turn. Having its roots in the Old and the New Testament, Islam is a derivation from them. It may be considered as one of the numerous sects born from the dissensions that arose from the origin of Christianity, with respect to the nature of the Christ, with the difference that Islam, formed outside of Christianity, survived the majority of those sects and counts today a hundred million sectarians.

Muhammad came to combat with all rigor, in his own nation, the belief in several gods, in order to reestablish there the abandoned worship of the single God of Abraham and of Moses; the anathema he hurled against the infidels and the impious had as its object, principally, the coarse idolatry professed by those of his race, but, in return, it also struck the Christians. Such is the cause of the contempt of the Muslims for all that bears the name of Christian, despite their respect for Jesus and for the Gospel. This contempt was transformed into hatred under the influence of fanaticism nourished and overexcited by their priests. Let us say, too, that, for their part, the Christians are not exempt from reproach and that they themselves nourished this antagonism by their own aggressions. Though he reproached the Christians, Muhammad had no hostile sentiments toward them, and in the Koran itself he recommends respect toward them, but fanaticism included them in the general proscription of the idolaters and the infidels, whose presence must not defile the sanctuaries of Islam, which is why entry into the mosques, in Mecca and in the holy places, is forbidden to them. [2] The same occurred with regard to the Jews, and if Muhammad chastised them harshly in Medina, it was because they had allied against him. Moreover, nowhere in the Koran is the extermination of the Jews and the Christians instituted as a duty, as is generally believed. It would be, then, unjust to impute to him the evils caused by an unintelligent zeal and by the excesses of his successors.

— We inspired you to embrace the religion of Abraham, who recognizes the unity of God and who adores only his supreme majesty. — Employ the voice of wisdom and the force of persuasion to call men to God. Combat with the weapons of eloquence. God knows perfectly those who are led astray and those who march in the light of faith. (Sura XVI, v. 124, 126).

If they accuse you of imposture, answer them: “I have my works for me; let yours speak in your favor. You will not be responsible for what I do and I am innocent of what you do.” (Sura X, v. 42).

When will your threats be fulfilled? ask the infidels. Mark us a term, if you are truthful. Answer them: “The celestial treasures and vengeances are not in my hands; God alone is their dispenser. Each nation has its term fixed; it could not hasten it or delay it by an instant.” (Sura X, v. 49, 50).

If they deny your doctrine, know that the prophets who came before you suffered the same fate, although the miracles, the tradition and the book that enlightens (the Gospel) attested the truth of their mission. (Sura XXXV, v. 23).

The blindness of the infidels surprises you and they laugh at your astonishment. — In vain you wish to instruct them: their heart rejects the teaching. — If they saw miracles, they would mock; — they would attribute it to magic. (Sura XXXVII, v. 12 to 15).

These are not the orders of a bloodthirsty God, who commands extermination. Muhammad does not make himself the executor of his justice; his role is to instruct. To God alone belongs the punishing or rewarding in this world and the other. The last paragraph seems written for the Spiritists of our days, so much are men the same, always and everywhere.

Make prayer, give alms; the good you do you will find with God, because he sees your actions. (Sura II, v. 104).

To be justified it is not enough to turn the face toward the east and toward the west; it is also necessary to believe in God, in the final judgment, in the angels, in the Koran, in the prophets. It is necessary, for the love of God, to succor one’s neighbor, the orphans, the poor, the travelers, the captives and those who entreat. It is necessary to make prayer, to keep one’s promise, to bear patiently adversity and the evils of war. Such are the duties of the true believers. (Sura II, v. 172).

An honest word and the pardon of offenses are preferable to alms that would result from injustice. God is rich and clement. (Sura II, v. 265).

If your debtor has difficulty in paying you, grant him time; or, if you wish to do better, forgive him the debt. If you only knew! (Sura II, v. 280).

Vengeance must be proportional to the injury; but the generous man who pardons has his recompense assured with God, who hates violence. (Sura XLII, v. 38).

Combat your enemies in the war undertaken for religion, but do not attack first; God hates the aggressors. (Sura II, v. 186). Certainly the Muslims, the Jews, the Christians and the Sabeans, who believe in God and in the final judgment, and who have done good, will receive the recompense from his hands; they will be exempt from fear and from torments. (Sura V, v. 73).

Do not do violence to men because of their faith. The road of salvation is quite distinct from the path of error. He who shall abjure the worship of idols for the holy religion will have grasped an unshakable column. The Lord knows and hears all. (Sura II, v. 257).

Do not dispute with the Jews and the Christians except in honest and moderate terms. Among them confound the impious. Say: We believe in the book that was revealed to us and in your scriptures. Our God and yours are but one. We are Muslims. (Sura XXIX, v. 45).

The Christians will be judged according to the Gospel; those who judge them otherwise will be prevaricators. (Sura V, v. 51).

We gave the Pentateuch to Moses. It is by its light that the Hebrew people must march. Do not doubt to find in heaven the guide of the Israelites. (Sura XXXII, v. 23).

If the Jews had faith and the fear of the Lord, we would efface their sins; we would introduce them into the garden of delights. The observance of the Pentateuch, of the Gospel and of the divine precepts would procure them the enjoyment of all goods. There are among them those who march in the good way, but the majority of them are impious. (Sura V, v. 70).

Say to the Jews and the Christians: “Let us end our differences; let us admit only one God and not give him an equal; let none of us have any other Lord but him.” If they refuse to obey, say to them: “At least you will bear witness that, as for us, we are believers.” (Sura III, v. 57).

Here are certain maxims of charity and tolerance, which we would like to see in all Christian hearts!

We sent you to a people, whom other peoples preceded, that you may teach them our revelations. They do not believe in the merciful. Say to them: “He is my Lord; there is no God but he. I have placed my confidence in his goodness. I will reappear before his tribunal. (Sura XIII, v. 29).

We brought to men a book in which shines the science that must enlighten the faithful and procure them the divine mercy. — Do they await the realization of the Koran? On the day when it is fulfilled, those who shall have lived in forgetfulness of its maxims will say: “The ministers of the Lord preached the truth to us. Where will we now find intercessors? What hope will we have of returning to Earth to correct ourselves?” They have lost their souls and their illusions have vanished. (Sura VII, v. 50, 51).

— The word return implies the idea of having already appeared, that is, of having lived before the present existence. Muhammad expresses it clearly when he says elsewhere: “You will reappear before him and he will show you your works. You will return before the God of truth.” It is the foundation of the doctrine of the preexistence of the soul, whereas, according to the Church, the soul is created at the birth of each body. The plurality of terrestrial existences is not indicated in the Koran as explicitly as in the Gospel; nevertheless, the idea of reliving on Earth entered into the thought of Muhammad, for such would be, according to him, the desire of the guilty to correct themselves. Thus he understood that it would be useful to be able to begin a new existence again.

— When one asks them: Do you believe in what God sent from heaven? They answer: “We believe in the scriptures we received.” And they repel the true book, come afterward, to set the seal on their sacred books. Say to them: “Why did you kill the prophets if you had faith?” (Sura II, v. 85).

Muhammad is not the father of any of you. He is the envoy of God and the seal of the prophets. The science of God is infinite. (Sura XXXIII, v. 40). In giving himself out as the seal of the prophets, Muhammad announces that he is the last, the conclusion, because he said all the truth; after him no others will come. It is an article of faith among the Muslims. From the purely religious point of view, he fell into the error of all religions that judge themselves immovable, even against the progress of the sciences; but for him it was almost a necessity, in order to affirm the authority of his word among a people that had given him so much difficulty to convert to his faith. From the social point of view it was an error, because the Koran, as much as civil legislation as religious, put a curb on progress. Such is the cause that has made, and will still long make, the Muslim peoples stationary and refractory to the innovations and the reforms that are not found in the Koran. It is an example of the inconvenience there is in confounding what ought to be distinct. Muhammad did not take account of human progress. It is an error common to almost all religious reformers. On the other hand, it was necessary not only to reform the faith, but the character, the usages, the social habits of his peoples; it was necessary for him to support his reforms on the authority of religion, as all the legislators of primitive peoples did. The difficulty was great, no doubt; nevertheless, he leaves a door open to interpretation and to modifications, saying that “God can always replace what he gave with something better.”

— It is not permitted you to wed your mothers, your daughters, your sisters, your paternal and maternal aunts, your nieces, your foster sisters, the mothers of your wives, the girls entrusted to your guardianship and the daughters of women with whom you have cohabited. Do not wed, either, the daughters of your sons whom you have begotten, nor two sisters. It is forbidden you to wed married women, except those who fall into your hands as slaves. (Sura IV, v. 27 et seq.).

These prescriptions can give an idea of the demoralization of these peoples. To be obliged to prohibit such abuses, it was necessary that they exist.

Wives of the Prophet, remain within your houses. Do not adorn yourselves sumptuously, as in the days of idolatry. Make prayer and give alms. Obey God and his apostle. He wishes to turn vice away from your hearts. You are of the family of the Prophet and must be pure. — Zaid repudiated his wife. We united you with her, so that the faithful may have the liberty of wedding the wives of their adopted sons, after repudiation. The divine precept must have its execution. — O Prophet, to you it is permitted to wed the women you have adopted, the captives whom God has made fall into your hands, the daughters of your uncles and of your aunts who fled with you, and every faithful woman who gives you her heart. It is a privilege that we grant you. — You will not increase the present number of your wives; you will not be able to exchange them for others whose beauty may have touched you. But cohabitation with your slave women is always permitted you. God observes all. (Sura XXXIII, v. 37, 49, 52). It is here that Muhammad truly descends from the pedestal upon which he had climbed. One is grieved to see him fall so low after having raised himself so high, and to make God intervene to justify the privileges he granted himself, for the satisfaction of his passions. He permitted believers four legitimate wives, while to himself he permitted thirteen. The legislator must be the first subject of the laws he makes. It is an ineffaceable stain, which he cast upon himself and upon Islam.

— Strive to merit the indulgence of the Lord and the possession of paradise, whose extent equals the heavens and the Earth, an abode prepared for the just — those who give alms in prosperity and in adversity, and who, masters of the movements of their anger, know how to pardon their fellows. God loves beneficence. (Sura III, v. 127, 128).

God promised the faithful who shall have practiced virtue the entrance of the gardens where the rivers flow. There they will dwell eternally. The promises of the Lord are true. What more infallible than his word? (Sura IV, v. 121).

They will dwell eternally in the abode that God has prepared for them, the gardens of delights watered by the rivers, places where sovereign beatitude will reign. (Sura IX, v. 90).

The gardens and the fountains will be the portion of those who fear the Lord. They will enter with peace and security. — We will take envy from their hearts. They will repose on beds and will have for one another a fraternal benevolence. — Fatigue will not approach the abode of delights. They will not be snatched from their possession. (Sura XV, v. 45 to 48).

The gardens of Eden will be the dwelling of the just. Bracelets of gold, ornamented with pearls, and garments of silk will form their attire. — Praises to God, they will exclaim; he has turned suffering away from us; he is merciful and compassionate. — He introduced us into the eternal palace, abode of his magnificence. Neither fatigue nor pain approaches this asylum. (Sura XXXV, v. 30, 31, 32).

The inhabitants of paradise will drink in long draughts from the cup of happiness. — Lying on beds of silk, they will repose beside their wives, in delicious shades. — They will find all fruits. All their desires will be satisfied. (Sura XXXVI, v. 55, 56, 57).

The true servants of God will have a choice nourishment — delicate fruits and will be served with honor. — The gardens of delights will be their asylum. — Full of mutual benevolence, they will repose on couches. — There will be offered to them cups of pure water — limpid and of delicious taste — which will neither obscure their reason nor intoxicate them. — Near them will be virgins of modest gaze, with great black eyes and whose complexion will have the color of ostrich eggs. (Sura XXXVII, v. 39 to 47).

It will be said to the believers who shall have professed Islam: Enter the garden of delights, you and your wives; open your hearts to joy. — They will be given to drink in cups of gold. The heart will find in that abode all that it can desire, the eye all that can enchant it, and the pleasures will be eternal. — This is the paradise whose possession your works will procure you. — Feed yourselves on the fruits that grow there in abundance. (Sura XLIII, v. 69 to 72).

Such is the famous paradise of Muhammad, with which there has been so much amusement and which, certainly, we shall not seek to justify. We shall only say that it was in harmony with the customs of those peoples and that it must have flattered them far more than the prospect of a purely spiritual state, however splendid it might be, because they were too material to comprehend it and to appreciate its value. They needed something more substantial, and it may be said that they were served as far as possible. No doubt it will be noticed that the rivers, the fountains, the abundant fruits and the shades play a great part there, because they are lacking above all to the inhabitants of the desert. The soft beds and the silk garments, for people accustomed to sleeping on the ground and clothed in coarse camel skins, must also have had a great attraction. However ridiculous all this may seem to us, let us think of the milieu in which Muhammad lived, and let us not reproach him too much, for, with the aid of this attraction, he knew how to draw a people out of barbarity and make of it a great nation. In a coming article we shall examine how Islam may attach itself to the great family of civilized humanity. [The mentioned article was not found]

[1]

[Mohammed der Prophet, sein Leben und seine Lehre: aus handschriftlichen …

- Google Books.]

[2] Translator’s note: This measure has already been liberalized, at least in Egypt. Some years ago, we ourselves had the opportunity to enter the great mosque of Cairo, without being molested, provided that we removed our shoes and kept there a respectful attitude, which we did without the least constraint.