Shia Islam

“ The sahib will be accused of being a Persian, and will be insulted accordingly, for none loves a Persian in this land, Islam having two chief sects, of which the Persians chose to adopt the Shia faith, which is not in favor with the Sunni, who are most numerous and most fanatic. The less the Sunni knows of his religion the more he despises a Shia; and when these people despise they steal, strike, abuse, and act otherwise unseemly. ”

“ In studying the Muhammadan religious sys tem it must be well understood that Islam is not simply the religion of the Quran, but that all Muhammadans, whether Sunni, Shia h, or Wahhabi, receive the Traditions as an authority in matters of faith and practice. The Sunni Muhammadans arrogate to themselves the title of traditionists ; but the Shia hs also receive the Hadis as binding upon them, although they do not acknowledge the same collection of traditions as those received by their opponents. ”

“ Shiahism.—The Shiah Church traces its foundation to the Caliph Ali and the immediate descendants of the Prophet, regarded as the rightful expounders of his teachings. Some twenty millions of Indian Mussulmans are Shiahs; Shiahism is also the State religion of Persia. There are large numbers of Shiahs in the Hijaz, in Egypt and other [76] parts of the world, but always in a minority. The question of the title to the spiritual and temporal headship of Islâm forms the chief point of difference between the two churches. The Sunnis are the advocates of the principle of election ”

“ By Allah except Whom none has the right to be worshipped, you people know for certain, that I am Apostle of Allah and that I have come to you with the Truth, so embrace Islam." The Jews replied, "We do not know this." So they said this to the Prophet and he repeated it thrice. Then he said, "What sort of a man is 'Abdullah bin Salam amongst you?" They said, "He is our chief and the son of our chief and the most learned man, and the son of the most learned amongst us." He said, "What would you think if he should embrace Islam?" They said, "Allah forbid! He can not embrace Islam." ”

“ With the homage due to God, is the respect due to His revealed will. Moslems claim for the Koran what many Christians do not claim for the Bible—a literal and verbal inspiration. Every word is Divine.
And not only is the unity of God the cardinal truth, but it is vital to salvation. In this respect Islam is a Religion. It is not a mere philosophy, the acceptance or rejection of which is a matter of indifference. It is not merely a system of good morals—it is a Divine code for the government of mankind, whose acceptance is a matter of life and death—of salvation or damnation. ”

“ A learned Arab, by name Shayk͟h ʻAbd Allāh, having come to Queda, visited the Raja and inquired what was the religion of the country. “My religion,” replied the Raja, “and that of all my subjects is that which has been handed down to us by the people of old. We all worship idols.” “Then has your highness never heard of Islam, and of the Qurʼān which descended from God to Muḥammad, and has superseded all other religions, leaving them in the possession of the devil?” ”

“ The essence of that belief is, that the system as taught by Prophet, Khalífs and Imáms is absolutely perfect. [30] Innovation is worse than a mistake. It is a crime, a sin. This completeness, this finality of his system of religion and polity, is the very pride and glory of a true Muslim. To look for an increase of light in the knowledge of his relation to God and the unseen world, in the laws which regulate Islám on earth is to admit that Muhammad's revelation was incomplete, and that admission no Muslim will make. ”

“ When now the apostle of God was speaking with these men and calling on them to believe in God, they said one to another: “Know surely that this is the Prophet, of whom the Jews have warned us; come let us now make haste and be the first to join him.” So they embraced Islam, and said to him, “Our countrymen have long been engaged in a most bitter and deadly feud with one another; but now perhaps God will unite them together through thee and thy teaching. Therefore we will preach to them and make known to them this religion, that we have received from thee.” ”

“ If we could close our eyes, our memories, our knowledge, and open them on the Mediterranean sea-board in those days—no more history written, no more history {114} made—looking out upon the elaborate administration of the empire and upon its splendid pomp, what a future we should have predicted! Islam had a fair field before it, if ever religion had. How in the slow march of the centuries strongly and progressively it could work out its faith! To what sublime heights could it not lead a civilized world in six centuries of time! ”

“ The tenets of the Shiahs are not derogatory to the mission of Mohammed, or to the position of the Quran, but they make the solitary figure of the prophet stand out much less prominently. For instance, if a Persian is told that his religion possesses nothing corresponding to the vicarious [75] sacrifice of Christ, he will invariably reply by pointing to the martyrdom of the Imam Husain. Also the Mehdi, or occult Imam, is not the future, but the present ruler of Islam ”

“ Because in place of sympathy it is in reality antipathetic. Yet while professing toleration, Christendom does not hesitate to despise and condemn Islam. To Christendom, Islam is a mere creed and abstraction—a creed beyond and outside its cold and autocratic pale. A creed belonging to another world and heaven than its own. A creed of colour and of sombre shades, nay even of gloom and darkness, blood, fire and sword, when the crescent and green flag of the Jihad is hoisted; a creed which is not to be thought of in the same breath as the snow-white fabric of the transcendent cross. ”

“ One after another the Arabian spokesmen told him of the Prophet who had wrought a mighty change in their land, and they explained to him the nature of Islam, its blessings and its obligations. ‘Embrace the Faith,’ they said, ‘and thou shalt be even as one of us; or, if thou wilt, pay tribute, and come under our protection; which things if thou shalt refuse, the days of thy kingdom are numbered.’ The king replied contemptuously: ‘Ye are naught, ye are naught! hungry adventurers from a naked land ”

“ With the Shīʻah, the Ismāʻīlian missionary was to put himself forward as the zealous partisan of all the Shīʻah doctrine, was to dwell upon the cruelty and injustice of the Sunnīs towards ʻAlī and his sons, and liberally abuse the Sunnī K͟halīfahs; having thus prepared the way, he was to insinuate, as the necessary completion of the Shīʻah system of faith, the more esoteric doctrines of the Ismāʻīlian sect. ”

“ This strange passion for self-immolation displayed itself mainly among priests, monks and nuns between the years 850 and 860. It would seem that brooding, in the silence of their cloisters, over the decline of Christian influence and the decay of religious zeal, they went forth to win the martyr’s crown—of which the toleration of their infidel rulers was robbing them—by means of fierce attacks on Islam and its founder. Thus, for example, a certain monk, by name Isaac, came before the Qāḍī and pretended that he wished to be instructed in the faith of Islam ”

“ If a Christian said Salam to him, he would not reply by the same salutation, displaying thereby the haughty fanaticism of the most bigoted Shi’a; yet, as every sincere Musulman must, he deplored the decadence of Islam and cursed more violently the backsliders of his own religion than the reprobates among Christians, “for,” said he, “these have the law and the book, and the light of the131 saints before them; while those have ever been in a mistaken path, and know no better.” ”

“ It was a time when the Eastern and Western halves of mankind agreed in regarding the conversion, or, at least, the extermination of each other as their divinely appointed task. If the followers of Mohammed considered it an article of faith that the propagation of Islam at all costs was the supreme duty of every true believer, the propagation of the belief in the divinity of Christ, or the annihilation of those who denied it, was not less firmly held by all good Christians as a sacred obligation. ”

“ Yāsīn the fit person, bold enough to undertake so difficult a mission, pious and austere in his life, and learned in theology, law and other sciences. So far back as the ninth century the preachers of Islam had made their way among the Berbers of the Sahara and established among them the religion of the Prophet, but this faith had found very little acceptance there, and ʻAbd Allāh b. Yāsīn found even the professed Muslims to be very lax in their religious observances and given up to all kinds of vicious practices. ”

“ Seid, the Christian prince of Nadjran, with the patriarch Jesujabus, procured by their valuable gifts a favourable audience of Muhammed himself; they demanded a written document of alliance between the Christians and the Arabs who had embraced the predatory faith of Islam, and the diploma of the prophet stipulated that his subjects should defend them from their enemies; that they should never be compelled to go to fight, or to change their religion ”

“ We stand upon a pinnacle of 1200 years, looking out upon the world, and looking back upon the history of twelve centuries of Islam. Can we not find some features, so common that we may call them characteristic features, of Mohammedanism, which will help us in forming an estimate of the influence of Islam upon mankind?
Fruits of Islam.
Let us then try to bring Islam to the test, as we are able to examine its influence in this twentieth century. For after all the ultimate test of a religion must be its continuous fitness to elevate the faith and character of man. ”

“ The Koran was the immediate consequence of his concentration and communion with Nature and Nature’s God: Islam the natural result. In other words, Islam is the devotion of Moslems to Mohammed and the Koran—his work, plus their patient resignation and entire submission to God, His will and His service! The man of fixed and unchanging purpose has a supreme contempt for obstacles. But when, as in Mohammed’s case, that purpose is the glorification of God, he has at hand a lever that can move the world. In this peculiar sense the great Prophet of Arabia was self-contained. ”

“ The shah is thus only the temporary substitute for the hidden imām; and authoritative decisions in religious matters are pronounced by Mujtahids, i.e. theologians who can form their own opinions and require obedience to their decisions.
Other points in which Shiites differ from Sunnites depend on their legitimistic opinions, or are accommodations of the rites of Shiite tenets. Islam to the Persian nationality, or else are petty matters affecting ceremonial. ”

“ He too observed the law of Muḥammad (peace be upon him!) in all the countries under his rule, and throughout his reign the followers of the faith of Islam enjoyed complete prosperity. Now that by the goodness and favour of God this Kingdom of K͟hurāsān, ʻIrāq, Mā-warāʼ-al-nahr, etc., has passed into my hands, the administration is carried on throughout the whole kingdom in accordance with the pure law of the Prophet; righteousness is enjoined and wrong forbidden, and the Yarg͟hū and the institutes of Chingīz K͟hān have been abolished. ”

“ Islam, as it was forced on Persia, was the faith of foreign conquerors and oppressors, so it never has had the same considerable influence on the people as elsewhere. This, taken with their habits of freedom of thought and love of romance and poetry, inclined them to champion the Shiah schism, which, on the fall of the Arab power, they adopted for their National Church. ”

“ Especially at the stage when the world is given up to idolatry, Islam may well rank as a universal religion; when each place has its idol, each nation its greater idols, religion divides instead of uniting, and the frivolous and senseless service of such petty deities prevents men from realising their solemn obligations to the great God before whom they are all alike, since he is the Governor and Judge of all. Islam is an admirable corrective of heathenism; it brings the scattered and bewildered worshippers of idols together in one lofty faith and one simple rule. ”

“ And above all things, this Statesman Prophet was the essence and personification of centralization and concord. For unity alone rendered Islam feasible. Thus in the second Surah he insists that mankind was of one faith from the beginning. Thus too as a just, faithful and consistent man, he is opposed to violence and taking the offensive, even in the name and under the cloak of religion; he constantly advocates and authorizes (that is, has God’s authority for) the defensive. He even recommends, at the same time that he excuses, war and retaliation on the unbeliever and infidel. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Peter viewed them when he said (Acts x. 34-5) : "Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons, but in every nation he that feareth Him and worketh righteousness is accepted with Him." The same is the spirit of the oft-repeated definition of 'Muslims' in the Qur'an: الذين آمتواوعملوا الصلحت "those who believe and work righteousness." "Trust in the Lord and do good," as the Psalm says.
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Note 3.
I.—What is Religion?
have said that true Islam is the best religion in the world. I must prove my assertion. In order to do so I have to explain:—
I.—Religion, God and Nature. ”

“ In the middle of the seventh century an immense schism was created in Islam by the rival advocates of successors to the Prophet, the orthodox Islamites known by the name of Sunnis adhering to the elected Khalifas Abu Bakr, Omar, and Othman, whilst the party of revolt, known as the Shiahs, claimed the Khalifate for the descendants of Mohammed through Ali, son of Abu-Talib and husband of Fatima, the Prophet's daughter. ”