Cherágh Ali

“ Our adversaries stick indiscriminately to these temporary measures or concessions only, and call them half measures and partial reforms made into an unchangeable law which exclude the highest reforms, and form a formidable obstacle to the dawn of a progressive and enlightened civilization. I have in view here the precepts of Mohammad for ameliorating the degraded condition of women for restricting the unlimited polygamy and the facility of divorce, together with servile concubinage and slavery. ”

“ The religion of Mohammed is as essentially a military system as the institution of chivalry in the west of Europe. The people of Arabia, a race of strong passions and sanguinary temper, inured to habits of pillage and murder, found in the law of their native prophet not a license, but a command, to desolate the world, and the promise of all that their glowing imaginations could anticipate of Paradise annexed to all in which they most delighted upon earth. ”

“ Therefore, strive to excel each other in good works; unto God shall ye all return, and then will He declare unto you that concerning which ye have disagreed.' But the intoxication of success had long ago stilled the voice of his better self. The aged Prophet standing on the brink of the grave, and leaving as his last legacy a mandate of universal war, irresistibly recalls, by force of contrast, the parting words to his disciples of another religious teacher that they should go forth and preach a gospel of peace to all nations. ”

“ It was not an easy task for Mohammad to have converted the Arabs from their national idolatry to a religion of pure and strict monotheism. The aspect of Arabia was strictly conservative, and there were no prospects of hopeful changes. The indigenous idolatry and deep-rooted superstition, the worship of visible and material objects of devotion,—idols and unshaped stones,—something that the eyes can see and the hands can handle,—and the dread of invisible genii and other evil spirits, held the Arab mind in a rigorous and undisputed thraldom. ”

“ Their intolerance was so strong and harsh that they tortured some of the professors of the new faith to renounce the same and to rejoin their former idolatry. "Taking away the lives, the fortune, the liberty, any of the rights of our brethren, merely for serving their Maker in such manner as they are persuaded they ought, when by so doing they hurt not human society, or any member of it, materially, is evidently inconsistent with all justice and humanity: for it is punishing those who have not injured us, and who, if they mistake, deserve only pity from us." ”

“ Prophet or a Revelation is not more than what we find in the case of Mohammad. [132]
The general office and main business of a prophet is to proclaim to mankind the Divine Perfection, to teach publicly purer theology and higher morality, to enjoin the people to do what is right and just, and to forbid what is wrong and bad. It is neither a part of the prophet to predict future events, nor to show supernatural miracles. And further, a prophet is neither immaculate nor infallible. The Revelation is a natural product of human faculties. ”

“ If the claim of Muhammad to have received a divine command to exterminate idolatry by the slaughter of all impenitent idolaters be admitted, I can see no objection to his practice. The question at issue is this. Did God command such slaughter of idolaters, as he commanded the destruction of the Canaanites or of the Amalekites? Taking the stand of the Muslim, that God did so command Muhammad and his followers, his morality in this respect may be defended on precisely the same ground [Pg 154] that the morality of Moses and Joshua is defended by the Christian. ”

“ The Koran divides the earth into parts: Dar-ul-Islam, or the House of Islam; and Dar-ul-Harb, or the House of the enemy. All who are not of Islam are thus against it, and it is accordingly the duty of the True Believers to fight against the infidels till they accept Islam, or are destroyed. This is called the Djihad or Holy War, which can only end with the conversion or death of the last infidel on earth. It is thus the sacred duty of the Commander of the Faithful to make war on the non-Mussulman world as occasion may offer. ”

“ Thus the system of religious and moral teaching of the Koran admirably suits the lower and the higher forms of humanity. The precepts which regulate some department of social life, moral conduct, and religious ceremonial are blessings to the barbarous; and that portion of the Koran which inculcates large principles, for the due application of which much must be left to the individual conscience, suits the same people when they begin to emerge from their barbarism under its influence into a higher condition, or to those already possessing the higher forms of civilization. ”

“ Mohammad on the surrender of Mecca had abolished all the idolatrous institutions which might have served as political or social inducements to the Pagan Arabs to embrace Islam. The intercalation of the year and commutation of the sacred months were cancelled for ever in the plain words of the Koran: "Verily, twelve months is the number of months with God, according to God's book, since the day when He created the Heavens and the earth, of these, four are sacred; this is the right usage." ... "To carry over a sacred month to another is an increase of unbelief only. ”

“ Hast thou not considered the assembly of the children of Israel after the death of Moses, when they said to a prophet of theirs,—'Raise up for us a king; we will do battle for the cause of God?' He said, 'May it not be that when fighting is ordained you, ye would not fight?' They said, 'And why should we not fight in the cause of God, since we are driven forth from our dwellings and our children?'.... ”

“ Among the Arabs the international law of estates in their hostile relations, and the military law and usage of former times, not forgetting to mention the European international law as late as the last century, maintained [Pg 70] the broad principle that "in war everything done against an enemy is lawful that he may be destroyed, though unarmed and defenceless; that fraud or even poison may be employed against him; that a most unlimited right is acquired to his person and property." ”

“ There was no pretence of former injuries on the part of the Moslems to make war on the Koreish. They were actually attacked by the Koreish and were several times threatened with inroads by them and their allies. So it was not until they were attacked by the enemy that they took up arms in their own defence, and sought to repel and prevent hostilities of their enemies. The defence set up for Mohammad is not equally availing of every sanguinary and revengeful tyrant. ”

“ The execution of the half-dozen marked Jews is generally called assassination, because a Muslim was sent secretly to kill each of the criminals. The reason is almost too obvious to need explanation. There were no police or law-courts, or even courts-martial, at Medina; some one of the followers of Mohammad must therefore be the executer of the sentence of death, and it was better it should be done quietly, as the executing of a man openly before his clan would have caused a brawl and more bloodshed and retaliation, till the whole city had become mixed up in the quarrel. ”

“ O Ye believers! take not my foe and your foe for friends: ye show them kindness although they believe not that truth which hath come to you: they drive forth the Apostle and yourself because ye believe in God your Lord! ”

“ Mohammad, in the interval of the holy months, used to go forth and mingle with the pilgrims to Mecca, and preached to them the abhorrence of idolatry and the worship of the One True God. The Sheb, or quarter of Abu Tálib, lies under the rocks of Abu Cobeis. A low gateway cut them off from the outer world, and within they had to suffer all privations of a beleaguered garrison. No one would venture forth except in the sacred months, when all hostile feelings and acts had to be laid aside. ”

“ They were only to repel force by right of self-defence. Had Mohammad and his Moslems invaded Mecca and fought battles against the Koreish there, he would have been justified for waging war to redress the injuries of person and property inflicted by the Meccans on the Moslems whom they were tormenting for their religion and had expelled them from their homes, [Pg viii] and had even barred their yearly visitation to the shrine of Kaába. A war which is undertaken for just causes, to repel or avert wrongful force, or to establish a right, is sanctioned by every law, religious, moral or political. ”

“ It is a law and requisite of civilized existence that men live in political continuous societies, forming organized units called states or nations, whose constituents bear, enjoy and suffer, advance and retrograde together, in peace and in war. The citizen or native of hostile country is thus an enemy, as one of the constituents of the hostile state or nation, and as such is subjected to the hardships of war. ”

“ Morality is with them not in the abstract but in the concrete, as consisting of a mass of religious observances, rather than of a certain disposition of heart towards God and man. The Koran deals with vice and virtue as a whole as well as in fragmentary details. It treats of inward motives as much as of outward practice, of exhortations equally with precepts and commands. It holds up before man the hatefulness and ugliness of vice as a whole. It does not enclose the whole of the practical morality and piety within the narrow compass of a fixed number of precepts. ”

“ Thus speedily without let or hindrance, force or compulsion, did Islam take firm root at Medina and attain to a full and mature growth. There remained not a single house among the Aws and Khazraj tribes [43] of Medina in which there were not believing men and women, excepting the branch of the Aws Allah, who were not converts till after the siege of Medina. At this time there were many Moslems in Mecca, Medina, and Abyssinia, and not a single one of them could be said to have been converted to Islam by compulsion: on the contrary, they were used to be forced to renounce Islam. ”

“ A band of several hundred persons had rejected idolatry, adopted the worship of one great God, and surrendered themselves implicitly to the guidance of what they believed a revelation from Him;—praying to the Almighty with frequency and fervour, looking for pardon through His mercy, and striving to follow after good works, almsgiving, chastity and justice. ”

“ For barbarous nations, then, especially—nations which were more or less in the condition of Arabia itself at the time of Mahomet—nations in the condition of Africa at the present day, with little or no civilisation, and without a reasonable religion—Islam certainly comes as a blessing, as a turning from darkness to light and from the power of satan unto God. ”

“ But supposing the modern morality does not approve of Mohammad what hardly "affected his character in Arab estimation," are there no diversities in moral judgments? The moral unity to be expected in different ages is not a unity of standard or of facts, but a unity of tendency. ”

“ I have shown in the book that the expedition of Mohammad against Khyber was purely in self-defence. A war undertaken to protect ourselves from the impending danger of an attack from the enemy and with the purpose of checking its advance, is a [Pg xix] defensive war under the Law. I am not going to treat of expedition of the Bani Koreizá separately, but this much is necessary to say here, that they had treacherously defected from the Moslem with whom they had entered into a defensive alliance, and had joined the confederate army against the Moslems. ”

“ The right of self-defence is a part of the law of nature, and it is the indispensable duty of civil society to protect its members. Even if a sanguinary and revengeful tyrant were to do so in his own behalf, he would be quite justified in this particular act. ”

“ He is subject to no punishment for being a public enemy, nor is any revenge wreaked upon him by the international infliction of any suffering or disgrace, by cruel imprisonment, want of food, by mutilation, death, or any other barbarity. But a prisoner of war remains answerable for his crimes committed against the captor's army or people before he was captured, and for which he has not been punished by his own authorities. ”

“ But, in fact, there are no unanimous and apparently independent traditions of the command of Mohammad to assassinate Abú Sofian; there is only one and but one, by Ibn Sád, which is wholly unreliable, and that too from the lips of the would-be assassin himself who before the introduction of Islam was a professional cutthroat, whose narration, therefore, deserves not our belief. ”

“ The cankerworm of polygamy, divorce, servile concubinage and veil lay at the root. They are bound up in the character of its existence. A reformed Islam which should part with the divine ordinances on which they rest, or attempt in the smallest degree to change them by a rationalistic selection, abetment or variation would be Islam no longer. ”

“ As Islam gradually extended its conquest beyond the boundaries of Arabia, many barbarous races whom it absorbed became in like manner participators in its benefits. The Turk, the Indian, the Negro, and the Moor were compelled to cast away their idols, to abandon their licentious rites and customs, to turn to the worship of one God, to a decent ceremonial and an orderly way of life. ”

“ The severe persecution which Mohammad and his early converts suffered at Mecca at the hands of their fellow-citizens, the Koreish, is a fact admitted by all historians.
The Koran, which may be regarded as a contemporary record of the ill-feeling manifested towards the Prophet and his followers, bears ample testimony to the fact. Not only were the early Moslems persecuted for renouncing the pagan religion and obtaining converts to the monotheistic religion of Mohammad, but they were also tortured and otherwise ill-treated to induce them to return to the religion which they had forsaken. ”

“ Now was the time for the Prophet [Pg 98] to show his bloodthirsty nature. His old persecutors are at his feet. Will he not trample on them, torture them, revenge himself after his own cruel manner? Now the man will come forward in his true colours: we may prepare our horror, and cry shame beforehand.
"But what is this? Is there no blood in the streets? Where are the bodies of the thousands that have been butchered? Facts are hard things; and it is a fact that the day of Mohammad's greatest triumph over his enemies was also the day of his grandest victory over himself. ”