Mohammed, its distinguished founder, was born in Arabia,
toward the conclusion of the sixth century. Although he had been reduced
to poverty, he was descended from ancestors who had long been
conspicuous by rank and by influence; but having been shut out from the
advantages of education, which in his peculiar case might have rather
cramped than invigorated the astonishing powers of his mind, he had been
compelled to seek his subsistence by devoting himself to a menial
occupation. Yet although thus unfavourably situated, he was led, in
conducting the commercial transactions which, in the service of Cadijah,
a woman of great wealth, he was employed to arrange, to survey the state
of several of the neighbouring nations; became acquainted with the most
striking features in the characters of those by whom he was surrounded;
and he was enabled to profit by the information which he thus procured,
from his adding to the graces of personal elegance and beauty, the most
captivating manners, and the most winning address. Exalted by the
partiality of Cadijah, who conferred on him her hand and her extensive
possessions, he seems early to have formed the scheme of announcing
himself as the author of a new religion, and, in virtue of this sacred
office, of ascending to that supremacy of political influence which it
was his singular fortune, soon after he unfolded his pretensions, to
attain. Taking advantage of that insensibility into which, by the
attacks of epilepsy, he was occasionally thrown, he pretended that he
was wrapped in divine contemplation, or was actually holding
communication with higher orders of beings, who were committing to him
the divine instructions which he was to disseminate through the world.
When the time which he conceived to be favourable for the grand object
of his ambition had arrived, he openly declared that he was the prophet
of the most high God; but the magistrates of Mecca, despising his
pretensions, or dreading the evils which might result from religious
innovation, vigorously opposed him, and he found himself compelled, in
order to avoid the punishment which they were preparing to inflict on
him, to have recourse to flight. He did not, however, relinquish the
scheme upon which he had so long meditated, and which he was convinced
that he was qualified to carry into execution. After his departure from
Mecca, from which event the Mohammedan era of the hegira takes its
commencement, he was joined by a few followers determined to share his
fate; and having solemnly consecrated the banner under which he was to
extend his power and propagate his tenets, he commenced hostilities
against those by whom he had been opposed. His first efforts, however,
were not crowned with success, but he had infused into his attendants a
spirit which misfortune could not subdue: they renewed their enterprise,
and Mecca at length submitted to his arms. From this period his
exaltation was very rapid; he was venerated as the favoured messenger of
Heaven, and his countrymen bowed down before a sovereign protected, as
they believed, by the Omnipotent, and commissioned to reveal his will.
There were many causes which satisfactorily account for his success. The
Christian religion, in the corrupted form in which it existed in the
regions contiguous to the country of the prophet, was not interwoven
with the affections of its professors; they were split into factions,
contending about the most frivolous distinctions and the most ridiculous
tenets; and the sword of persecution was mutually wielded by them all,
to spread misery where there should have been the ties of charity and
love. Thus divided, they presented no steady resistance to the attempt
made to wrest from them their religion; and, indeed, as many of them had
adopted that religion, not from conviction, but from dread of the
tyranny by which it had been imposed on them, they only did what they
had previously done, when, shrinking from the ferocious zeal of the
emissaries of the prophet, they submitted to his doctrine. With
admirable address, too, he had framed his religious system, so as to
gratify those to whom it was announced. Laying down the sublime and
unquestionable doctrine of the unity of God, he professed to revere the
patriarchs, whose memory the Arabs held in veneration; he admitted that
Moses was a messenger from God; he acknowledged Jesus as an exalted
prophet; and he founded his own pretensions upon the intimation which
our Saviour had given that the Paraclete, or Comforter, was to be sent
to lead the world into all truth. Thus each party found in the Koran
much of what it had been accustomed to believe; and the transition was
in this way rendered more easy to the admission that a new revelation
had been vouchsafed.
This effect was facilitated by the ignorance which prevailed in Arabia.
Accustomed to a wandering life, the Arabs had devoted no time to the
acquisition of knowledge; most of them were even unable to read the
Koran, the sublimity and beauty of which were held forth to them as
incontestable proofs of the inspiration of its author. Had Mohammed,
indeed rested his doctrine upon miracles, it might have happened that
the imposture by some would have been detected; but, with his usual
policy, he avoided what he knew was so hazardous; and, with the
exception of his reference to the Koran, as surpassing the capacity of
man, he explicitly disclaimed having been authorized to do such mighty
works as had been wrought to establish the previous dispensations of the
Almighty. The fascinating representation that he gave of the joys of
paradise, which he accommodated to the conceptions and wishes of the
eastern nations, also made a deep and favourable impression; the
wantonness of imagination was gratified with the anticipation of a state
abounding with sensual gratification raised to the highest degree of
exquisiteness; while the dismal fate allotted through eternity to all
who rejected the message which he brought, alarmed the fears of the
credulous and superstitious multitude whom he was eager to allure. When
with these causes are combined the vigour of his administration, and the
certainty of suffering or of death in the event of withstanding his
doctrine, there is sufficient to account for the success of his
religion; and there is in that success nothing which can, with the
shadow of reason, be employed, as, with strange perversion of argument,
it has sometimes been, to invalidate the proof for the truth of
Christianity deduced from its rapid diffusion. That proof does not rest
upon the mere circumstance that the religion of Jesus was widely and
speedily propagated; there might, under particular circumstances, have
been in this nothing wonderful; but on the facts that it was so
propagated, when all the human means to which they who preached it could
have recourse, would have retarded rather than promoted what actually
took place; that it employed no force; that it held out no earthly
advantages; that it accommodated itself to no previous religious
prejudices; and that it opposed and reproved all, and did not gratify
any, of the corruptions and lusts of human nature.
But Mohammed did not limit his views to the sovereignty of Arabia: he
was elevated by the hope of universal empire; and he moulded his system
so as to promote what he was eager to attain. For this purpose he
promised to all who enrolled themselves under his banner full license to
plunder the nations against which they were led; and he made it a
fundamental tenet of his faith that they who fell in the warlike
enterprises destined to enlarge the number of believers were at once
delivered from the guilt and misery of their sins, and were admitted to
the happy scenes prepared for the faithful. He thus collected around him
an army thoroughly devoted, prepared for meeting every danger,
stimulated to the most laborious exertions by the hope of plunder, and
steeled against all which can weaken courage or exhaust resolution, by
the enthusiasm of hope; whatever was their fate, they had nothing to
dread; if they escaped the weapons of their enemies, they were loaded
with spoil, and invited to indulgence; and if they fell, they were
canonized by those who survived, and exchanged the vicissitudes and
troubles of this world for the delights of a sensual paradise. An army
thus constituted and thus impelled must, under any circumstances, have
been formidable; against them the usual methods to defeat invasion and
to prevent conquest would have failed; they could have been successfully
encountered only by men who had imbibed a similar spirit, and who
identified patience and courage in the field with the most sacred duty
required by religion. Of the advantages which, after Arabia had
acknowledged his sway, and hailed him as the prophet of the Lord, he
might confidently anticipate, Mohammed was abundantly sensible; but
while he was preparing to bring into action the mighty machine which he
had erected, his earthly career was terminated, and he left to others to
execute the schemes which he had fondly devised.
The energy of the system remained after the author of it was removed
from the world; and his successors lost no time in extending their
dominions far beyond the bounds of Arabia. The obstacles opposed to them
instantly yielded; a feeble and degenerate empire sinking under its own
weight, and unable to resist any power acting against it, at once
submitted to the host of fanatical plunderers, who spread desolation as
they advanced; the richest provinces soon were wrested from it; and the
most fertile regions of Asia fell under the conquering fury of the
caliphs. Persia, which had long persecuted Christianity, was added to
their increasing territories; Syria submitted to their yoke; and, what
filled with horror and with anguish the believers in the Gospel,
Palestine, that holy land from which the light of divine truth had
beamed upon the nations, which had been the scene of those awful or
interesting events recorded in the inspired Scriptures, which had
witnessed the life, the ministry, the death, the resurrection, and
ascension of the Redeemer of mankind, bent under the iron sceptre of an
infidel sovereign, nominally, indeed, revering the Founder of its
religion, but filled with bigoted and implacable hatred against the most
attached and conscientious of his disciples. But the caliphs did not
accomplish their principal object when they reduced to subjection the
countries which they ravaged: to them it was of infinitely more moment
to propagate the Musselman faith; and, accordingly, although in the
commencement of that faith some indulgence was, from political
considerations, granted to the Christians, there was soon no alternative
left to the trembling captives but to embrace the doctrine of the
prophet, or to submit to slavery or death. We cannot wonder that tenets
thus enforced rapidly spread; they supplanted, in many extensive
regions, the religion of Jesus; and, incorporating themselves with civil
governments, or rather founding all governments upon the Koran, they
continue, at the distance of eleven hundred years, to be believed
through a large proportion of the world.
The effect of this signal revolution was first experienced by those
Christians who inhabited the eastern parts of the empire; but the
account of it must have been speedily conveyed throughout Christendom,
and the gigantic enterprises of the Saracens soon threatened all nations
with slavery and superstition. The successors of the prophet, in the
eighth century, directed their steps toward Europe; and having at length
crossed the narrow sea which separates Africa from Spain, they dispersed
the troops of Roderick, king of the Goths, took possession of the
greater part of his dominions, subverted the empire of the Visigoths,
which had been established in Spain for upward of three centuries, and
planted themselves along the coast of Gaul, from the Pyrenean mountains
to the Rhine. Charlemagne, alarmed at their progress, made a great
effort to crush them; but he failed in accomplishing his object, and
they committed, in various parts of Europe which they visited, the most
shocking devastations.
When a great part of the life of Mohammed had been spent in preparatory
meditation on the system he was about to establish, the chapters of the
Alcoran or Koran, which was to contain the rule of the faith and
practice of his followers, were dealt out slowly and separately during
the long period of three-and-twenty years. He entrusted his beloved
wife, Raphsa, the daughter of Omar, with the keeping of the chest of his
apostleship, in which were laid up all the originals of the revelations
he pretended to have received by the ministration of the Angel Gabriel,
and out of which the Koran, consisting of one hundred and fourteen
_surats_, or chapters, of very unequal length, was composed after his
death. Yet, defective in its structure, and not less exceptionable in
its doctrines and precepts, was the work which he thus delivered to his
followers as the oracles of God. We will not detract from the real merit
of the Koran; we allow it to be generally elegant and often sublime; but
at the same time we reject with disdain its arrogant pretensions to any
thing supernatural. Nay, if, descending to a minute investigation of it,
we consider its perpetual inconsistency and absurdity, we shall indeed
have cause for astonishment at that weakness of humanity which could
ever have received such compositions as the work of the Deity, and which
could still hold it in such high admiration as it is held by the
followers of Mohammed to the present day. Far from supporting its
arrogant claim to a supernatural work, it sinks below the level of many
compositions confessedly of human original; and still lower does it fall
when compared with that pure and perfect pattern which we justly admire
in the Scriptures of truth. The first praise of all the productions of
genius is invention; but the Koran bears little impression of this
transcendent character. It does not contain one single doctrine which
may not fairly be derived either from the Jewish and Christian
Scriptures, from the spurious and apocryphal Gospels, then current in
the east, from the Talmudical legends, or from the traditions, customs,
and opinions of the Arabians. And the materials collected from these
several sources are here heaped together with perpetual and needless
repetitions, without any settled principle, or visible connection. The
most prominent feature of the Koran, that point of excellence in which
the partiality of its admirers has ever delighted to view it, is the
sublime notion it generally impresses of the nature and attributes of
God. But if its author had really derived these just conceptions from
the inspiration of that Being whom they attempt to describe, they would
not have been surrounded, as they now are, on every side with error and
absurdity. By attempting to explain what is inconceivable, to describe
what is ineffable, and to materialize what in itself is spiritual, he
absurdly and impiously aimed to sensualize the purity of the divine
essence. But it might easily be proved, that whatever the Koran justly
defines of the divine attributes, was borrowed from our Holy Scriptures;
which, even from their first promulgation, but especially from the
completion of the New Testament, have extended the views, and
enlightened the understandings, of mankind.
The Koran, indeed, every where inculcates that grand and fundamental
doctrine of the unity of the supreme Being, the establishment of which
was constantly alleged by the impostor as the primary object of his
pretended mission; but on the subject of the Christian trinity, its
author seems to have entertained very gross and mistaken ideas, and to
have been totally ignorant of the perfect consistency of that opinion
with the unity of the Deity. With respect to the great doctrine of a
future life, and the condition of the soul after its departure from the
body, it must indeed be acknowledged that the prophet of Arabia has
presented us with a nearer prospect of the invisible world, and
disclosed to us a thousand particulars concerning it, which the Holy
Scriptures had wrapped in the most profound and mysterious silence. But
in his various representations of another life, he generally descends to
an unnecessary minuteness and particularity, which excite disgust and
ridicule, instead of reverence. He constantly pretended to have received
these stupendous secrets by the ministry of the Angel Gabriel, from that
eternal book in which the divine decrees have been written by the finger
of the Almighty from the foundation of the world; but the learned
inquirer will discover a more accessible, and a far more probable,
source whence they might be derived, partly in the wild and fanciful
opinions of the ancient Arabs, and chiefly in those exhaustless stores
of marvellous and improbable fiction, the works of the rabbins. Hence,
that romantic fable of the angel of death, whose peculiar office it is,
at the destined hour, to dissolve the union between soul and body, and
to free the departing spirit from its prison of flesh. Hence, too, the
various descriptions of the general resurrection and final judgment with
which the Koran every where abounds; and hence the vast but ideal
balance in which the actions of all mankind shall then be impartially
weighed, and their eternal doom be assigned them, either in the regions
of bliss or misery, according as their good or evil deeds shall
preponderate. Here, too, may be traced the grand and original outlines
of that sensual paradise, and those luxurious enjoyments, which were so
successfully employed in the Koran, to gratify the ardent genius of the
Arabs, and allure them to the standard of the prophet.
The same observation which has been applied with respect to the sources
whence the doctrines were drawn, may, with some few limitations, be
likewise extended to the precepts which the Arabian legislator has
enjoined. That the Koran, amidst a various and confused heap of
ridiculous and even immoral precepts, contains many interesting and
instructive lessons of morality, cannot with truth be denied. Of these,
however, the merit is to be ascribed, not to the feeble imitation, but
to the great and perfect original from which they were manifestly drawn.
Instead of improving on the Christian precepts by a superior degree of
refinement; instead of exhibiting a purer and more perfect system of
morals than that of the Gospel; the prophet of Arabia has miserably
debased and weakened even what he has borrowed from that system. We are
told by our Saviour, that a man is to be the husband of one wife, and
that there is to be an inseparable union between them. By Mohammed’s
confession, Jesus Christ was a prophet of the true God, and the Holy
Spirit was with him. Yet in the Koran we find permission for any person
to have four wives, and as many concubines as he can maintain. Again:
our Saviour expressly tells us, that, at the resurrection, they will
neither marry nor be given in marriage; but be like the angels of God in
heaven.” We are informed also by St. Paul, that we shall be changed, and
have a spiritual and glorified body; for flesh and blood cannot inherit
the kingdom of heaven; neither can corruption inherit incorruption.” But
Mohammed gives a very different account: it is clear, from his own
confession, that the happiness promised in the Koran consists in base
and corporeal enjoyments. According to its author, there will not only
be marriage, but also servitude in the next world. The very meanest in
paradise will have eighty thousand servants, and seventy-two wives of
the girls of paradise, beside the wives he had in this world; he will
also have a tent erected for him of pearls, hyacinths, and emeralds. And
as marriage will take place, so a new race will be introduced in heaven;
for, says the Koran, If any of the faithful in paradise be desirous of
issue, it shall be conceived, born, and grown up in the space of an
hour.” But on the contradictions in point of doctrine, though sufficient
of themselves to confute the pretensions of Mohammed, we forbear to
insist.
The impure designs which gave birth to the whole system may be traced in
almost every subordinate part; even its sublimest descriptions of the
Deity, even its most exalted moral precepts, not unfrequently either
terminate in, or are interwoven with, some provision to gratify the
inordinate cravings of ambition, or some license for the indulgence of
the corrupt passions of the human heart. It has allowed private revenge,
in the case of murder; it has given a sanction to fornication; and, if
any weight be due to the example of its author, it has justified
adultery. It has made war, and rapine, and bloodshed, provided they be
exercised against unbelievers, not only meritorious acts, but even
essential duties to the good Musselman; duties by the performance of
which he may secure the constant favour and protection of God and his
prophet in this life, and in the next entitle himself to the boundless
joys of paradise. In the Koran are advanced the following assertions,
among others already noticed: That both Jews and Christians are
idolaters; that the patriarchs and Apostles were Mohammedans; that the
angels worshipped Adam, and that the fallen angels were driven from
heaven for not doing so; that our blessed Saviour was neither God, nor
the Son of God; and that he assured Mohammed of this in a conference
with the Almighty and him; yet that he was both the word and Spirit of
God: not to mention numberless absurdities concerning the creation, the
deluge, the end of the world, the resurrection, the day of judgment, too
gross to be received by any except the most debased understandings.
It was frequently the triumphant boast of St. Paul, that the Gospel of
Jesus Christ had for ever freed mankind from the intolerable burden of
ceremonial observances. But the Koran renews and perpetuates the
slavery, by prescribing to its votaries a ritual still more oppressive,
and entangling them again in a yoke of bondage yet more severe than that
of the law. Of this kind, amidst a variety of instances, is that great
and meritorious act of Mohammedan devotion, the pilgrimage to the holy
city of Mecca; an act which the Koran has enjoined, and the pious
Musselman implicitly performs, as necessary to the obtaining pardon of
his sins, and qualifying him to be a partaker of the alluring pleasures
and exquisite enjoyments of paradise. To the several articles of faith
to which all his followers were to adhere, Mohammed added four
fundamental points of religious practice; namely, prayer five times a
day, fasting, alms-giving, and the pilgrimage to Mecca. Under the first
of these are comprehended those frequent washings or purifications which
he prescribed as necessary preparations for the duty of prayer. So
necessary did he think them, that he is said to have declared, that the
practice of religion is founded upon cleanliness, which is one half of
faith, and the key of prayer. The second of these he conceived to be a
duty of so great moment, that he used to say it was the gate of
religion, and that the odour of the mouth of him who fasteth is more
grateful to God than that of musk. The third is looked upon as so
pleasing in the sight of God, that the Caliph Omar Ebn Abdalaziz used to
say, Prayer carries us half way to God; fasting brings us to the door of
his palace; and alms procure us admission.” The last of these practical
religious duties is deemed so necessary, that, according to a tradition
of Mohammed, he who dies without performing it, may as well die a Jew or
a Christian.” As to the negative precepts and institutions of this
religion, the Mohammedans are forbidden the use of wine, and are
prohibited from gaming, usury, and the eating of blood and swine’s
flesh, and whatever dies of itself, or is strangled, or killed by a
blow, or by another beast. They are said, however, to comply with the
prohibition of gaming, (from which chess seems to be excepted,) much
better than they do with that of wine, under which all strong and
inebriating liquors are included; for both the Persians and Turks are in
the habit of drinking freely.
However successful and triumphant from without, the progress of the
followers of Mohammed received a considerable check by the civil
dissensions which arose among themselves soon after his death. Abubeker
and Ali, the former the father-in-law, the latter the son-in-law, of
this pretended prophet, aspired both to succeed him in the empire which
he had erected. Upon this arose a cruel and tedious contest, whose
flames produced that schism which divided the Mohammedans into two great
factions; and this separation not only gave rise to a variety of
opinions and rites, but also excited the most implacable hatred, and the
most deadly animosities, which have been continued to the present day.
With such furious zeal is this contention still carried on between these
two factions, who are distinguished by the name of Sonnites and
Schiites, that each party detest and anathematize the other as
abominable heretics, and farther from the truth than either the
Christians or the Jews. The chief points in which they differ are: 1.
The Schiites reject Abubeker, Omar, and Othman, the first three caliphs,
as usurpers and intruders; but the Sonnites acknowledge and respect them
as rightful caliphs or imams. 2. The Schiites prefer Ali to Mohammed,
or, at least, esteem them both equal; but the Sonnites admit neither
Ali, nor any of the prophets, to be equal to Mohammed. 3. The Sonnites
charge the Schiites with corrupting the Koran, and neglecting its
precepts; and the Schiites retort the same charge on the Sonnites.
4. The Sonnites receive the _Sonna_, or book of traditions of their
prophet, as of canonical authority; but the Schiites reject it as
apocryphal, and unworthy of credit. The Sonnites are subdivided into
four chief sects, of which the first is that of the Hanefites, who
generally prevail among the Turks and Tartars; the second, that of the
Malecites, whose doctrine is chiefly followed in Barbary, and other
parts of Africa; the third, that of the Shafeites, who are chiefly
confined to Arabia and Persia; and the fourth orthodox sect is that of
the Hanbalites, who are not very numerous, and seldom to be met with out
of the limits of Arabia. The heretical sects among the Mohammedans are
those which are counted to hold heterodox opinions in fundamentals, or
matters of faith; and they are variously compounded and decompounded of
the opinions of four chief sects; the Motazalites, the Safatians, the
Kharejites, and the Schiites.
Ever since the valour of John Sobieski rolled back the hosts of Islamism
from eastern and central Europe, the civil dominion of the false prophet
has been rather retrograde than advancing. A free philosophy in many
places is destroying the influence of the system among the better
informed; and the barbarism and misery which a bad government inflicts
upon the people, weakens its power, and is preparing the way for great
changes. The throwing off the Turkish yoke by the Greeks, and the rising
greatness of Russia, are symptoms of the approaching subversion of
Mohammedanism as a power; and thus the fall of this eastern antichrist
cannot long be delayed. It is, indeed, even now supported only by the
rival interests of Christian powers; and a new combination among them
would suddenly withdraw its only support.
toward the conclusion of the sixth century. Although he had been reduced
to poverty, he was descended from ancestors who had long been
conspicuous by rank and by influence; but having been shut out from the
advantages of education, which in his peculiar case might have rather
cramped than invigorated the astonishing powers of his mind, he had been
compelled to seek his subsistence by devoting himself to a menial
occupation. Yet although thus unfavourably situated, he was led, in
conducting the commercial transactions which, in the service of Cadijah,
a woman of great wealth, he was employed to arrange, to survey the state
of several of the neighbouring nations; became acquainted with the most
striking features in the characters of those by whom he was surrounded;
and he was enabled to profit by the information which he thus procured,
from his adding to the graces of personal elegance and beauty, the most
captivating manners, and the most winning address. Exalted by the
partiality of Cadijah, who conferred on him her hand and her extensive
possessions, he seems early to have formed the scheme of announcing
himself as the author of a new religion, and, in virtue of this sacred
office, of ascending to that supremacy of political influence which it
was his singular fortune, soon after he unfolded his pretensions, to
attain. Taking advantage of that insensibility into which, by the
attacks of epilepsy, he was occasionally thrown, he pretended that he
was wrapped in divine contemplation, or was actually holding
communication with higher orders of beings, who were committing to him
the divine instructions which he was to disseminate through the world.
When the time which he conceived to be favourable for the grand object
of his ambition had arrived, he openly declared that he was the prophet
of the most high God; but the magistrates of Mecca, despising his
pretensions, or dreading the evils which might result from religious
innovation, vigorously opposed him, and he found himself compelled, in
order to avoid the punishment which they were preparing to inflict on
him, to have recourse to flight. He did not, however, relinquish the
scheme upon which he had so long meditated, and which he was convinced
that he was qualified to carry into execution. After his departure from
Mecca, from which event the Mohammedan era of the hegira takes its
commencement, he was joined by a few followers determined to share his
fate; and having solemnly consecrated the banner under which he was to
extend his power and propagate his tenets, he commenced hostilities
against those by whom he had been opposed. His first efforts, however,
were not crowned with success, but he had infused into his attendants a
spirit which misfortune could not subdue: they renewed their enterprise,
and Mecca at length submitted to his arms. From this period his
exaltation was very rapid; he was venerated as the favoured messenger of
Heaven, and his countrymen bowed down before a sovereign protected, as
they believed, by the Omnipotent, and commissioned to reveal his will.
There were many causes which satisfactorily account for his success. The
Christian religion, in the corrupted form in which it existed in the
regions contiguous to the country of the prophet, was not interwoven
with the affections of its professors; they were split into factions,
contending about the most frivolous distinctions and the most ridiculous
tenets; and the sword of persecution was mutually wielded by them all,
to spread misery where there should have been the ties of charity and
love. Thus divided, they presented no steady resistance to the attempt
made to wrest from them their religion; and, indeed, as many of them had
adopted that religion, not from conviction, but from dread of the
tyranny by which it had been imposed on them, they only did what they
had previously done, when, shrinking from the ferocious zeal of the
emissaries of the prophet, they submitted to his doctrine. With
admirable address, too, he had framed his religious system, so as to
gratify those to whom it was announced. Laying down the sublime and
unquestionable doctrine of the unity of God, he professed to revere the
patriarchs, whose memory the Arabs held in veneration; he admitted that
Moses was a messenger from God; he acknowledged Jesus as an exalted
prophet; and he founded his own pretensions upon the intimation which
our Saviour had given that the Paraclete, or Comforter, was to be sent
to lead the world into all truth. Thus each party found in the Koran
much of what it had been accustomed to believe; and the transition was
in this way rendered more easy to the admission that a new revelation
had been vouchsafed.
This effect was facilitated by the ignorance which prevailed in Arabia.
Accustomed to a wandering life, the Arabs had devoted no time to the
acquisition of knowledge; most of them were even unable to read the
Koran, the sublimity and beauty of which were held forth to them as
incontestable proofs of the inspiration of its author. Had Mohammed,
indeed rested his doctrine upon miracles, it might have happened that
the imposture by some would have been detected; but, with his usual
policy, he avoided what he knew was so hazardous; and, with the
exception of his reference to the Koran, as surpassing the capacity of
man, he explicitly disclaimed having been authorized to do such mighty
works as had been wrought to establish the previous dispensations of the
Almighty. The fascinating representation that he gave of the joys of
paradise, which he accommodated to the conceptions and wishes of the
eastern nations, also made a deep and favourable impression; the
wantonness of imagination was gratified with the anticipation of a state
abounding with sensual gratification raised to the highest degree of
exquisiteness; while the dismal fate allotted through eternity to all
who rejected the message which he brought, alarmed the fears of the
credulous and superstitious multitude whom he was eager to allure. When
with these causes are combined the vigour of his administration, and the
certainty of suffering or of death in the event of withstanding his
doctrine, there is sufficient to account for the success of his
religion; and there is in that success nothing which can, with the
shadow of reason, be employed, as, with strange perversion of argument,
it has sometimes been, to invalidate the proof for the truth of
Christianity deduced from its rapid diffusion. That proof does not rest
upon the mere circumstance that the religion of Jesus was widely and
speedily propagated; there might, under particular circumstances, have
been in this nothing wonderful; but on the facts that it was so
propagated, when all the human means to which they who preached it could
have recourse, would have retarded rather than promoted what actually
took place; that it employed no force; that it held out no earthly
advantages; that it accommodated itself to no previous religious
prejudices; and that it opposed and reproved all, and did not gratify
any, of the corruptions and lusts of human nature.
But Mohammed did not limit his views to the sovereignty of Arabia: he
was elevated by the hope of universal empire; and he moulded his system
so as to promote what he was eager to attain. For this purpose he
promised to all who enrolled themselves under his banner full license to
plunder the nations against which they were led; and he made it a
fundamental tenet of his faith that they who fell in the warlike
enterprises destined to enlarge the number of believers were at once
delivered from the guilt and misery of their sins, and were admitted to
the happy scenes prepared for the faithful. He thus collected around him
an army thoroughly devoted, prepared for meeting every danger,
stimulated to the most laborious exertions by the hope of plunder, and
steeled against all which can weaken courage or exhaust resolution, by
the enthusiasm of hope; whatever was their fate, they had nothing to
dread; if they escaped the weapons of their enemies, they were loaded
with spoil, and invited to indulgence; and if they fell, they were
canonized by those who survived, and exchanged the vicissitudes and
troubles of this world for the delights of a sensual paradise. An army
thus constituted and thus impelled must, under any circumstances, have
been formidable; against them the usual methods to defeat invasion and
to prevent conquest would have failed; they could have been successfully
encountered only by men who had imbibed a similar spirit, and who
identified patience and courage in the field with the most sacred duty
required by religion. Of the advantages which, after Arabia had
acknowledged his sway, and hailed him as the prophet of the Lord, he
might confidently anticipate, Mohammed was abundantly sensible; but
while he was preparing to bring into action the mighty machine which he
had erected, his earthly career was terminated, and he left to others to
execute the schemes which he had fondly devised.
The energy of the system remained after the author of it was removed
from the world; and his successors lost no time in extending their
dominions far beyond the bounds of Arabia. The obstacles opposed to them
instantly yielded; a feeble and degenerate empire sinking under its own
weight, and unable to resist any power acting against it, at once
submitted to the host of fanatical plunderers, who spread desolation as
they advanced; the richest provinces soon were wrested from it; and the
most fertile regions of Asia fell under the conquering fury of the
caliphs. Persia, which had long persecuted Christianity, was added to
their increasing territories; Syria submitted to their yoke; and, what
filled with horror and with anguish the believers in the Gospel,
Palestine, that holy land from which the light of divine truth had
beamed upon the nations, which had been the scene of those awful or
interesting events recorded in the inspired Scriptures, which had
witnessed the life, the ministry, the death, the resurrection, and
ascension of the Redeemer of mankind, bent under the iron sceptre of an
infidel sovereign, nominally, indeed, revering the Founder of its
religion, but filled with bigoted and implacable hatred against the most
attached and conscientious of his disciples. But the caliphs did not
accomplish their principal object when they reduced to subjection the
countries which they ravaged: to them it was of infinitely more moment
to propagate the Musselman faith; and, accordingly, although in the
commencement of that faith some indulgence was, from political
considerations, granted to the Christians, there was soon no alternative
left to the trembling captives but to embrace the doctrine of the
prophet, or to submit to slavery or death. We cannot wonder that tenets
thus enforced rapidly spread; they supplanted, in many extensive
regions, the religion of Jesus; and, incorporating themselves with civil
governments, or rather founding all governments upon the Koran, they
continue, at the distance of eleven hundred years, to be believed
through a large proportion of the world.
The effect of this signal revolution was first experienced by those
Christians who inhabited the eastern parts of the empire; but the
account of it must have been speedily conveyed throughout Christendom,
and the gigantic enterprises of the Saracens soon threatened all nations
with slavery and superstition. The successors of the prophet, in the
eighth century, directed their steps toward Europe; and having at length
crossed the narrow sea which separates Africa from Spain, they dispersed
the troops of Roderick, king of the Goths, took possession of the
greater part of his dominions, subverted the empire of the Visigoths,
which had been established in Spain for upward of three centuries, and
planted themselves along the coast of Gaul, from the Pyrenean mountains
to the Rhine. Charlemagne, alarmed at their progress, made a great
effort to crush them; but he failed in accomplishing his object, and
they committed, in various parts of Europe which they visited, the most
shocking devastations.
When a great part of the life of Mohammed had been spent in preparatory
meditation on the system he was about to establish, the chapters of the
Alcoran or Koran, which was to contain the rule of the faith and
practice of his followers, were dealt out slowly and separately during
the long period of three-and-twenty years. He entrusted his beloved
wife, Raphsa, the daughter of Omar, with the keeping of the chest of his
apostleship, in which were laid up all the originals of the revelations
he pretended to have received by the ministration of the Angel Gabriel,
and out of which the Koran, consisting of one hundred and fourteen
_surats_, or chapters, of very unequal length, was composed after his
death. Yet, defective in its structure, and not less exceptionable in
its doctrines and precepts, was the work which he thus delivered to his
followers as the oracles of God. We will not detract from the real merit
of the Koran; we allow it to be generally elegant and often sublime; but
at the same time we reject with disdain its arrogant pretensions to any
thing supernatural. Nay, if, descending to a minute investigation of it,
we consider its perpetual inconsistency and absurdity, we shall indeed
have cause for astonishment at that weakness of humanity which could
ever have received such compositions as the work of the Deity, and which
could still hold it in such high admiration as it is held by the
followers of Mohammed to the present day. Far from supporting its
arrogant claim to a supernatural work, it sinks below the level of many
compositions confessedly of human original; and still lower does it fall
when compared with that pure and perfect pattern which we justly admire
in the Scriptures of truth. The first praise of all the productions of
genius is invention; but the Koran bears little impression of this
transcendent character. It does not contain one single doctrine which
may not fairly be derived either from the Jewish and Christian
Scriptures, from the spurious and apocryphal Gospels, then current in
the east, from the Talmudical legends, or from the traditions, customs,
and opinions of the Arabians. And the materials collected from these
several sources are here heaped together with perpetual and needless
repetitions, without any settled principle, or visible connection. The
most prominent feature of the Koran, that point of excellence in which
the partiality of its admirers has ever delighted to view it, is the
sublime notion it generally impresses of the nature and attributes of
God. But if its author had really derived these just conceptions from
the inspiration of that Being whom they attempt to describe, they would
not have been surrounded, as they now are, on every side with error and
absurdity. By attempting to explain what is inconceivable, to describe
what is ineffable, and to materialize what in itself is spiritual, he
absurdly and impiously aimed to sensualize the purity of the divine
essence. But it might easily be proved, that whatever the Koran justly
defines of the divine attributes, was borrowed from our Holy Scriptures;
which, even from their first promulgation, but especially from the
completion of the New Testament, have extended the views, and
enlightened the understandings, of mankind.
The Koran, indeed, every where inculcates that grand and fundamental
doctrine of the unity of the supreme Being, the establishment of which
was constantly alleged by the impostor as the primary object of his
pretended mission; but on the subject of the Christian trinity, its
author seems to have entertained very gross and mistaken ideas, and to
have been totally ignorant of the perfect consistency of that opinion
with the unity of the Deity. With respect to the great doctrine of a
future life, and the condition of the soul after its departure from the
body, it must indeed be acknowledged that the prophet of Arabia has
presented us with a nearer prospect of the invisible world, and
disclosed to us a thousand particulars concerning it, which the Holy
Scriptures had wrapped in the most profound and mysterious silence. But
in his various representations of another life, he generally descends to
an unnecessary minuteness and particularity, which excite disgust and
ridicule, instead of reverence. He constantly pretended to have received
these stupendous secrets by the ministry of the Angel Gabriel, from that
eternal book in which the divine decrees have been written by the finger
of the Almighty from the foundation of the world; but the learned
inquirer will discover a more accessible, and a far more probable,
source whence they might be derived, partly in the wild and fanciful
opinions of the ancient Arabs, and chiefly in those exhaustless stores
of marvellous and improbable fiction, the works of the rabbins. Hence,
that romantic fable of the angel of death, whose peculiar office it is,
at the destined hour, to dissolve the union between soul and body, and
to free the departing spirit from its prison of flesh. Hence, too, the
various descriptions of the general resurrection and final judgment with
which the Koran every where abounds; and hence the vast but ideal
balance in which the actions of all mankind shall then be impartially
weighed, and their eternal doom be assigned them, either in the regions
of bliss or misery, according as their good or evil deeds shall
preponderate. Here, too, may be traced the grand and original outlines
of that sensual paradise, and those luxurious enjoyments, which were so
successfully employed in the Koran, to gratify the ardent genius of the
Arabs, and allure them to the standard of the prophet.
The same observation which has been applied with respect to the sources
whence the doctrines were drawn, may, with some few limitations, be
likewise extended to the precepts which the Arabian legislator has
enjoined. That the Koran, amidst a various and confused heap of
ridiculous and even immoral precepts, contains many interesting and
instructive lessons of morality, cannot with truth be denied. Of these,
however, the merit is to be ascribed, not to the feeble imitation, but
to the great and perfect original from which they were manifestly drawn.
Instead of improving on the Christian precepts by a superior degree of
refinement; instead of exhibiting a purer and more perfect system of
morals than that of the Gospel; the prophet of Arabia has miserably
debased and weakened even what he has borrowed from that system. We are
told by our Saviour, that a man is to be the husband of one wife, and
that there is to be an inseparable union between them. By Mohammed’s
confession, Jesus Christ was a prophet of the true God, and the Holy
Spirit was with him. Yet in the Koran we find permission for any person
to have four wives, and as many concubines as he can maintain. Again:
our Saviour expressly tells us, that, at the resurrection, they will
neither marry nor be given in marriage; but be like the angels of God in
heaven.” We are informed also by St. Paul, that we shall be changed, and
have a spiritual and glorified body; for flesh and blood cannot inherit
the kingdom of heaven; neither can corruption inherit incorruption.” But
Mohammed gives a very different account: it is clear, from his own
confession, that the happiness promised in the Koran consists in base
and corporeal enjoyments. According to its author, there will not only
be marriage, but also servitude in the next world. The very meanest in
paradise will have eighty thousand servants, and seventy-two wives of
the girls of paradise, beside the wives he had in this world; he will
also have a tent erected for him of pearls, hyacinths, and emeralds. And
as marriage will take place, so a new race will be introduced in heaven;
for, says the Koran, If any of the faithful in paradise be desirous of
issue, it shall be conceived, born, and grown up in the space of an
hour.” But on the contradictions in point of doctrine, though sufficient
of themselves to confute the pretensions of Mohammed, we forbear to
insist.
The impure designs which gave birth to the whole system may be traced in
almost every subordinate part; even its sublimest descriptions of the
Deity, even its most exalted moral precepts, not unfrequently either
terminate in, or are interwoven with, some provision to gratify the
inordinate cravings of ambition, or some license for the indulgence of
the corrupt passions of the human heart. It has allowed private revenge,
in the case of murder; it has given a sanction to fornication; and, if
any weight be due to the example of its author, it has justified
adultery. It has made war, and rapine, and bloodshed, provided they be
exercised against unbelievers, not only meritorious acts, but even
essential duties to the good Musselman; duties by the performance of
which he may secure the constant favour and protection of God and his
prophet in this life, and in the next entitle himself to the boundless
joys of paradise. In the Koran are advanced the following assertions,
among others already noticed: That both Jews and Christians are
idolaters; that the patriarchs and Apostles were Mohammedans; that the
angels worshipped Adam, and that the fallen angels were driven from
heaven for not doing so; that our blessed Saviour was neither God, nor
the Son of God; and that he assured Mohammed of this in a conference
with the Almighty and him; yet that he was both the word and Spirit of
God: not to mention numberless absurdities concerning the creation, the
deluge, the end of the world, the resurrection, the day of judgment, too
gross to be received by any except the most debased understandings.
It was frequently the triumphant boast of St. Paul, that the Gospel of
Jesus Christ had for ever freed mankind from the intolerable burden of
ceremonial observances. But the Koran renews and perpetuates the
slavery, by prescribing to its votaries a ritual still more oppressive,
and entangling them again in a yoke of bondage yet more severe than that
of the law. Of this kind, amidst a variety of instances, is that great
and meritorious act of Mohammedan devotion, the pilgrimage to the holy
city of Mecca; an act which the Koran has enjoined, and the pious
Musselman implicitly performs, as necessary to the obtaining pardon of
his sins, and qualifying him to be a partaker of the alluring pleasures
and exquisite enjoyments of paradise. To the several articles of faith
to which all his followers were to adhere, Mohammed added four
fundamental points of religious practice; namely, prayer five times a
day, fasting, alms-giving, and the pilgrimage to Mecca. Under the first
of these are comprehended those frequent washings or purifications which
he prescribed as necessary preparations for the duty of prayer. So
necessary did he think them, that he is said to have declared, that the
practice of religion is founded upon cleanliness, which is one half of
faith, and the key of prayer. The second of these he conceived to be a
duty of so great moment, that he used to say it was the gate of
religion, and that the odour of the mouth of him who fasteth is more
grateful to God than that of musk. The third is looked upon as so
pleasing in the sight of God, that the Caliph Omar Ebn Abdalaziz used to
say, Prayer carries us half way to God; fasting brings us to the door of
his palace; and alms procure us admission.” The last of these practical
religious duties is deemed so necessary, that, according to a tradition
of Mohammed, he who dies without performing it, may as well die a Jew or
a Christian.” As to the negative precepts and institutions of this
religion, the Mohammedans are forbidden the use of wine, and are
prohibited from gaming, usury, and the eating of blood and swine’s
flesh, and whatever dies of itself, or is strangled, or killed by a
blow, or by another beast. They are said, however, to comply with the
prohibition of gaming, (from which chess seems to be excepted,) much
better than they do with that of wine, under which all strong and
inebriating liquors are included; for both the Persians and Turks are in
the habit of drinking freely.
However successful and triumphant from without, the progress of the
followers of Mohammed received a considerable check by the civil
dissensions which arose among themselves soon after his death. Abubeker
and Ali, the former the father-in-law, the latter the son-in-law, of
this pretended prophet, aspired both to succeed him in the empire which
he had erected. Upon this arose a cruel and tedious contest, whose
flames produced that schism which divided the Mohammedans into two great
factions; and this separation not only gave rise to a variety of
opinions and rites, but also excited the most implacable hatred, and the
most deadly animosities, which have been continued to the present day.
With such furious zeal is this contention still carried on between these
two factions, who are distinguished by the name of Sonnites and
Schiites, that each party detest and anathematize the other as
abominable heretics, and farther from the truth than either the
Christians or the Jews. The chief points in which they differ are: 1.
The Schiites reject Abubeker, Omar, and Othman, the first three caliphs,
as usurpers and intruders; but the Sonnites acknowledge and respect them
as rightful caliphs or imams. 2. The Schiites prefer Ali to Mohammed,
or, at least, esteem them both equal; but the Sonnites admit neither
Ali, nor any of the prophets, to be equal to Mohammed. 3. The Sonnites
charge the Schiites with corrupting the Koran, and neglecting its
precepts; and the Schiites retort the same charge on the Sonnites.
4. The Sonnites receive the _Sonna_, or book of traditions of their
prophet, as of canonical authority; but the Schiites reject it as
apocryphal, and unworthy of credit. The Sonnites are subdivided into
four chief sects, of which the first is that of the Hanefites, who
generally prevail among the Turks and Tartars; the second, that of the
Malecites, whose doctrine is chiefly followed in Barbary, and other
parts of Africa; the third, that of the Shafeites, who are chiefly
confined to Arabia and Persia; and the fourth orthodox sect is that of
the Hanbalites, who are not very numerous, and seldom to be met with out
of the limits of Arabia. The heretical sects among the Mohammedans are
those which are counted to hold heterodox opinions in fundamentals, or
matters of faith; and they are variously compounded and decompounded of
the opinions of four chief sects; the Motazalites, the Safatians, the
Kharejites, and the Schiites.
Ever since the valour of John Sobieski rolled back the hosts of Islamism
from eastern and central Europe, the civil dominion of the false prophet
has been rather retrograde than advancing. A free philosophy in many
places is destroying the influence of the system among the better
informed; and the barbarism and misery which a bad government inflicts
upon the people, weakens its power, and is preparing the way for great
changes. The throwing off the Turkish yoke by the Greeks, and the rising
greatness of Russia, are symptoms of the approaching subversion of
Mohammedanism as a power; and thus the fall of this eastern antichrist
cannot long be delayed. It is, indeed, even now supported only by the
rival interests of Christian powers; and a new combination among them
would suddenly withdraw its only support.