Islam and Race Distinctions
IF the divinity of a religion may be inferred from the variety of races among whom it has been diffused, and the strength of its hold upon them, then there is no religion that can prefer greater claims than Islam. Of the three missionary religions— we adopt the classification of Max Müller[1]—none has in so marked a degree overstepped the limits of race as the religion of Mohammed.
Christianity is more widespread than either Buddhism or Mohammedanism, having made its way across oceans and over continents to distant islands of the sea; but it has followed chiefly the migrations and settlements of members of the Aryan race. In no case has it taken possession of whole races or communities belonging to non-Aryan races, if we except the Sandwich Islands, the inhabitants of which, we now learn, are fast passing away under the influence of the new civilisation they have received.
It is remarkable that the eight distinct religions of which history gives account all had their, origin in Asia, and the three highest religions—the Jewish, the Christian, the Mohammedan— took their rise among Semitic peoples. And it is equally remarkable that since Christianity left the place of its birth it has seemed to be the property exclusively of the European branch of the human family. And, so far as it has become the possession of the Western Aryans, it has shared the fate of that other great religion which arose among the Eastern branch of the Indo-European family, viz., Buddhism, as being for the most part confined to one or two races.
It would be interesting to inquire why the religions of the Indo-Europeans—whether we take those which arose among themselves, Brahminism, Buddhism and Zoroastrianism; on the one, incomparable and Divine, which they derived from the Shemites—seem, under their administration, to transcend with difficulty the limits of race; why the grand Semitic idea of the conversion to Divine truth of all the races of mankind, and their incorporation into one spiritual family, seems, under European propagandism, to make such slow progress. If Judaism, as Professor Max Müller holds, was, in its practice, non-missionary, yet it contained the germs of which Christianity is an outgrowth and development, and the missionary idea must be regarded as, after all, a Semitic conception.
Can we refer the want of Aryan success among foreign races to the original idiosyncracy impressed upon the races in their cradles, and fitting each for a specific work? It would seem that the tendency of West Aryan genius is ever to divorce God from His works, and to lay great stress upon human capability and achievement. Man is an end, not a means. The highest man is the highest end to which all things else must bow. The aggregate must bend to the individual if he is superior to other individuals in intellectual or pecuniary might. The more favoured race must dominate and control the less favoured race. Religion is to be cherished as a means of subserving temporal and material purposes. Those of the Aryans, therefore, who have received the Semitic religion look upon it as complete, perfect and final, given to mankind, ages ago, through chosen and exceptional instrumentalities, and once for all. There is now no more direct communion with or inspiration from God necessary or possible. Everything now depends upon man.
Everything else is within his grasp. He may even by searching find out God. Material progress is the end of the human race. The speculation of those intellects who are in one direction pre-eminent in their generation—the Darwins, Tyndalls and Huxleys—are typical of the spirit and tendencies of the Indo-European mind. What their ancient relatives, the Greeks, strove to express in material forms, they strive now to indicate by scientific theories; we have “atoms” and “protoplasms,” “evolution” and “ natural selection,” instead of exquisite statues and paintings.
And as far back as we know anything of the great Indo-European race we find the same underlying principles, unlike as the surface may be. The Hindoo sees God in all material things, and is content with a dreamy Pantheism which centres in no clear conceptions of Eight and Truth, and prompts to no effort to realise them objectively, while the growth of society is arrested by the blighting spirit of caste—and what the Brahmins are to the other tribes of India that the Anglo-Saxons hold themselves with respect to other nations and races. The Greeks materialised their Gods, clothing them in human bodies, and with human feelings and attributes. With them the divine and æsthetic were identical: Kalos might be taken to mean the physically beautiful or the morally good. The Romans, who, in certain respects, might be regarded as the ancient representatives of the Anglo-Saxon race, directed their attention to government and law, politics and jurisprudence. Their constant effort was to secure power and supremacy. And the deities whom they invented were striking exemplifications of their materia aims and tendencies. Their highest achievements, therefore, were individual and Roman.
Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento;
Hæ tibi erunt artes; pacisque imponere morem,
Parcere subjectis, et debellare superbos.[2]
Christianity is more widespread than either Buddhism or Mohammedanism, having made its way across oceans and over continents to distant islands of the sea; but it has followed chiefly the migrations and settlements of members of the Aryan race. In no case has it taken possession of whole races or communities belonging to non-Aryan races, if we except the Sandwich Islands, the inhabitants of which, we now learn, are fast passing away under the influence of the new civilisation they have received.
It is remarkable that the eight distinct religions of which history gives account all had their, origin in Asia, and the three highest religions—the Jewish, the Christian, the Mohammedan— took their rise among Semitic peoples. And it is equally remarkable that since Christianity left the place of its birth it has seemed to be the property exclusively of the European branch of the human family. And, so far as it has become the possession of the Western Aryans, it has shared the fate of that other great religion which arose among the Eastern branch of the Indo-European family, viz., Buddhism, as being for the most part confined to one or two races.
It would be interesting to inquire why the religions of the Indo-Europeans—whether we take those which arose among themselves, Brahminism, Buddhism and Zoroastrianism; on the one, incomparable and Divine, which they derived from the Shemites—seem, under their administration, to transcend with difficulty the limits of race; why the grand Semitic idea of the conversion to Divine truth of all the races of mankind, and their incorporation into one spiritual family, seems, under European propagandism, to make such slow progress. If Judaism, as Professor Max Müller holds, was, in its practice, non-missionary, yet it contained the germs of which Christianity is an outgrowth and development, and the missionary idea must be regarded as, after all, a Semitic conception.
Can we refer the want of Aryan success among foreign races to the original idiosyncracy impressed upon the races in their cradles, and fitting each for a specific work? It would seem that the tendency of West Aryan genius is ever to divorce God from His works, and to lay great stress upon human capability and achievement. Man is an end, not a means. The highest man is the highest end to which all things else must bow. The aggregate must bend to the individual if he is superior to other individuals in intellectual or pecuniary might. The more favoured race must dominate and control the less favoured race. Religion is to be cherished as a means of subserving temporal and material purposes. Those of the Aryans, therefore, who have received the Semitic religion look upon it as complete, perfect and final, given to mankind, ages ago, through chosen and exceptional instrumentalities, and once for all. There is now no more direct communion with or inspiration from God necessary or possible. Everything now depends upon man.
Everything else is within his grasp. He may even by searching find out God. Material progress is the end of the human race. The speculation of those intellects who are in one direction pre-eminent in their generation—the Darwins, Tyndalls and Huxleys—are typical of the spirit and tendencies of the Indo-European mind. What their ancient relatives, the Greeks, strove to express in material forms, they strive now to indicate by scientific theories; we have “atoms” and “protoplasms,” “evolution” and “ natural selection,” instead of exquisite statues and paintings.
And as far back as we know anything of the great Indo-European race we find the same underlying principles, unlike as the surface may be. The Hindoo sees God in all material things, and is content with a dreamy Pantheism which centres in no clear conceptions of Eight and Truth, and prompts to no effort to realise them objectively, while the growth of society is arrested by the blighting spirit of caste—and what the Brahmins are to the other tribes of India that the Anglo-Saxons hold themselves with respect to other nations and races. The Greeks materialised their Gods, clothing them in human bodies, and with human feelings and attributes. With them the divine and æsthetic were identical: Kalos might be taken to mean the physically beautiful or the morally good. The Romans, who, in certain respects, might be regarded as the ancient representatives of the Anglo-Saxon race, directed their attention to government and law, politics and jurisprudence. Their constant effort was to secure power and supremacy. And the deities whom they invented were striking exemplifications of their materia aims and tendencies. Their highest achievements, therefore, were individual and Roman.
Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento;
Hæ tibi erunt artes; pacisque imponere morem,
Parcere subjectis, et debellare superbos.[2]
Footnotes:
1 Lecture on Missions, delivered in Westminster Abbey on December 3, 1878.'
2 Virgil’s Æneid, vi, 851-53.
1 Lecture on Missions, delivered in Westminster Abbey on December 3, 1878.'
2 Virgil’s Æneid, vi, 851-53.
When a people possessing the peculiarities described above received the Semitic religion they gave it, in a great degree, the colouring of their own minds. The first and most striking departure from the original simplicity of Christianity in deference to national or race instincts may be seen in the mediæval Church, which bore a striking resemblance, in its worship and organisation, to Buddhism. The religion became a great objective mass of rites and dogmas, more stress being laid upon the material and visible than upon the unseen and spiritual. But even after the Reformation, brought about by men of cold Northern temperaments, who protested against the peculiarities which Greeks and Italians had imported into the Church, Aryan genius still asserted itself. Wherever these Protestants went, their aim was to realise a kingdom of God in the civil constitutions of men, and to confine it by a system of caste almost Brahminical to their own people. Presbyterians from Scotland, Episcopalians from England, Puritans who supported Cromwell, all went to foreign shores with high and earnest purpose, but they were hampered in the attainment of any philanthropic result by their race- intolerance and impracticable narrowness. They aimed at securing material aggrandisement at any cost. Indian and Negro must be made, willing or unwilling, tools in the prosecution of their design. The human soul—the immaterial—was of secondary and subordinate importance.
The Semitic mind, on the other hand, destitute, it has been alleged, of the scientific instinct,[3] looks upon man—every man—as standing in direct relation to God, who has not ceased His communications with His creatures, still speaking to them at times in dreams and visions, and at other times by the ordinary events of life. Nature is regarded as inanimate; her powers proceed from and are moved by the will of God. “Pantheism, in the Greek sense, is utterly unknown to the Shemites.”[4] By its very nature, the Semitic mind will ever throw itself confidently upon those primal intuitions which, if they do not admit of scientific or logical proof, are yet superior to scientific or logical disproof. Its inquiries, in spite of Tyndallism or Darwinism, will never go beyond the simple truth, that “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” The government of the world offers to the Shemite an infinite problem which man can never solve; and hence the greatest aim of man should be the cultivation of those qualities in which he may most resemble God. The Shemite lays most stress, in religion, upon prayer; the Aryan upon preaching. Among the Hebrews there were no adepts in science or art; no architects; no city builders; no sculptors; no painters. Development among them was not in material, but in moral and intellectual, forms. Hence, while the Greek or Indo-European paid more attention to physical than to moral excellence, to the Shemite, the spirit, the mind of man, was the great object of development and culture—the inward character rather than the outward form. And this devotion to external forms—this respect for appearances—is the great drawback to the Aryan in disseminating a religion which was meant for, and is adapted to, all mankind.
The Mohammedan religion, on the other hand, an offshoot from the Semitic mind, disregarding all adventitious circumstances, seeks for the real man, neglects the accidental for the essential, the adventitious for the integral. Hence it extinguishes all distinctions founded upon race, colour, or nationality. “I admonish you to fear God,” said Mohammed to his followers, “and yield obedience to my successor, although he may be a black slave.”[5] And, therefore, throughout the history of Islam, in all countries, race or “previous condition” has been no barrier to elevation. Frequent are the instances in which proud Arabs have submitted to the rule of aliens, even if those aliens were Negro slaves. Mr. Talboys Wheeler, in his History of India, speaks in the highest terms of Kutb-ud-din, the first of the “Slave Kings” in the Mohammedan dynasty in that country, and classes him among the four Sultans whom he thinks the only ones deserving of: remembrance in the course of three centuries. One of the most distinguished of the Mohammedan rulers of Egypt was Kafur, “a Negro of deep black colour, with a smooth, shining skin,” who rose to be Governor of Egypt, from the position of a slave. He had shown himself equally great as a soldier and a statesman. His dominion extended not only over Egypt, but Syria also; and public prayers were offered up for him, as sovereign, from the pulpits of Mekka, Hijaz, Egypt and the cities of Syria, Damascus, Aleppo, Antioch, Tarsus, &c.[6]
An American missionary, resident in Egypt, calls attention to the entire absence of all colour or race-prejudice in that country, which seems to have struck him the more from his experience of the unreasonable and superstitious caste-prejudices in the land of his birth.[7] This liberality, so far as the Negro is concerned, may be chiefly the result of Muslim rule, but it is partly also the result of the traditional respect for the race which has never disappeared from that country since the days of its ancient glory, in which it is now certain that the Negro took a leading part.[8]
In noticing the absorbing influence which, in consequence of its democratic spirit, Islam has exercised over foreign races, Ibn Khaldun, a celebrated Mohammedan author, makes the following observations:--
It is a curious circumstance that the majority of the learned amongst the Muslims belonged to a foreign race; very few persons of Arabian descent having obtained distinction in the sciences connected with the law, or in those based upon human reason; and yet the promulgator of the law was an Arab, and the Koran—that source of so many sciences—an Arabic book.
The above remarks have been suggested by the title and scope of Major Osborn’s Islam under the Arabs. This book is, as the author informs us, to be followed by two other volumes which will deal with Islam under the Persian and Indian races. Works might be written also on Islam under the Mongolians, and Islam under the Negroes; for the religion, originating at Mekka, has extended west, across Africa, to the Atlantic, and east to Northwestern China, north to Constantinople, and south to Mozambique, embracing men of all the known races; and embracing them not as occasional and individual converts, but as entire communities—whole nations and tribes—weaving itself into the national life, and giving colour to their political and social, as well as ecclesiastical existence.
The religion of Jesus, after eighteen hundred years, nowhere furnishes such practical evidence of cosmopolitan adaptation and power. “Christianity is not to blame for this,” to use the suggestive words of Mr. Bosworth Smith, “but Christian nations are.”[9]
The Semitic mind, on the other hand, destitute, it has been alleged, of the scientific instinct,[3] looks upon man—every man—as standing in direct relation to God, who has not ceased His communications with His creatures, still speaking to them at times in dreams and visions, and at other times by the ordinary events of life. Nature is regarded as inanimate; her powers proceed from and are moved by the will of God. “Pantheism, in the Greek sense, is utterly unknown to the Shemites.”[4] By its very nature, the Semitic mind will ever throw itself confidently upon those primal intuitions which, if they do not admit of scientific or logical proof, are yet superior to scientific or logical disproof. Its inquiries, in spite of Tyndallism or Darwinism, will never go beyond the simple truth, that “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” The government of the world offers to the Shemite an infinite problem which man can never solve; and hence the greatest aim of man should be the cultivation of those qualities in which he may most resemble God. The Shemite lays most stress, in religion, upon prayer; the Aryan upon preaching. Among the Hebrews there were no adepts in science or art; no architects; no city builders; no sculptors; no painters. Development among them was not in material, but in moral and intellectual, forms. Hence, while the Greek or Indo-European paid more attention to physical than to moral excellence, to the Shemite, the spirit, the mind of man, was the great object of development and culture—the inward character rather than the outward form. And this devotion to external forms—this respect for appearances—is the great drawback to the Aryan in disseminating a religion which was meant for, and is adapted to, all mankind.
The Mohammedan religion, on the other hand, an offshoot from the Semitic mind, disregarding all adventitious circumstances, seeks for the real man, neglects the accidental for the essential, the adventitious for the integral. Hence it extinguishes all distinctions founded upon race, colour, or nationality. “I admonish you to fear God,” said Mohammed to his followers, “and yield obedience to my successor, although he may be a black slave.”[5] And, therefore, throughout the history of Islam, in all countries, race or “previous condition” has been no barrier to elevation. Frequent are the instances in which proud Arabs have submitted to the rule of aliens, even if those aliens were Negro slaves. Mr. Talboys Wheeler, in his History of India, speaks in the highest terms of Kutb-ud-din, the first of the “Slave Kings” in the Mohammedan dynasty in that country, and classes him among the four Sultans whom he thinks the only ones deserving of: remembrance in the course of three centuries. One of the most distinguished of the Mohammedan rulers of Egypt was Kafur, “a Negro of deep black colour, with a smooth, shining skin,” who rose to be Governor of Egypt, from the position of a slave. He had shown himself equally great as a soldier and a statesman. His dominion extended not only over Egypt, but Syria also; and public prayers were offered up for him, as sovereign, from the pulpits of Mekka, Hijaz, Egypt and the cities of Syria, Damascus, Aleppo, Antioch, Tarsus, &c.[6]
An American missionary, resident in Egypt, calls attention to the entire absence of all colour or race-prejudice in that country, which seems to have struck him the more from his experience of the unreasonable and superstitious caste-prejudices in the land of his birth.[7] This liberality, so far as the Negro is concerned, may be chiefly the result of Muslim rule, but it is partly also the result of the traditional respect for the race which has never disappeared from that country since the days of its ancient glory, in which it is now certain that the Negro took a leading part.[8]
In noticing the absorbing influence which, in consequence of its democratic spirit, Islam has exercised over foreign races, Ibn Khaldun, a celebrated Mohammedan author, makes the following observations:--
It is a curious circumstance that the majority of the learned amongst the Muslims belonged to a foreign race; very few persons of Arabian descent having obtained distinction in the sciences connected with the law, or in those based upon human reason; and yet the promulgator of the law was an Arab, and the Koran—that source of so many sciences—an Arabic book.
The above remarks have been suggested by the title and scope of Major Osborn’s Islam under the Arabs. This book is, as the author informs us, to be followed by two other volumes which will deal with Islam under the Persian and Indian races. Works might be written also on Islam under the Mongolians, and Islam under the Negroes; for the religion, originating at Mekka, has extended west, across Africa, to the Atlantic, and east to Northwestern China, north to Constantinople, and south to Mozambique, embracing men of all the known races; and embracing them not as occasional and individual converts, but as entire communities—whole nations and tribes—weaving itself into the national life, and giving colour to their political and social, as well as ecclesiastical existence.
The religion of Jesus, after eighteen hundred years, nowhere furnishes such practical evidence of cosmopolitan adaptation and power. “Christianity is not to blame for this,” to use the suggestive words of Mr. Bosworth Smith, “but Christian nations are.”[9]
Footnotes:
3 A part la supériorité de son culto, le peuple juif n’en a aucune autre; c’est un des peuples les moms doués pour la science et laphilosophie parmi les peuples de l’antiquité.— M. Renan, quoted by Max Müuller, in Chips from a German Workshop ; vol. i, p. 350.
4 Deutsch, Literary Remains.
5 Mischat-al-Masabih.
6 Biographies of Ibn Khallikan; translated by Baron de Slane, vol. ii, p. 524.
7 Lansing’s Egypt’s Princes,
8 Gatafago in his Arabic and English Dictionary, under the word “Kusur” (palaces), says: “The ruins of Thebes, that ancient and celebrated town, deserve to be visited, as just these heaps of ruins, laved by the Nile, are all that remain of the opulent cities that gave lustre to Ethiopia. It was there that a people, since forgotten, discovered the elements of science and art, at a time when all other men were barbarous, and when a race, now regarded as the refuse of society, explored among the phenomena of Nature those civil and roligious systems which have since held mankind in awe.” A more recent investigator, Dr. Hartmann, in an’ Encyclopædic work on Nigritia’ (Saturday Review, Juno 17, 1876), contends for the strictly African extraction of the Egyptians, who he seems to consider, may have dwelt upon the shores of the inner African sea, whose desiccation has formed the existing Sahara. See a remarkable passage bearing upon this subject in Volney’s Travels, vol. i, chap, iii.
9 It will be understood, of course, that we are not here instituting a comparison between the two systems of religion, but only between the methods and proceedings of their respective professors and propagators.
3 A part la supériorité de son culto, le peuple juif n’en a aucune autre; c’est un des peuples les moms doués pour la science et laphilosophie parmi les peuples de l’antiquité.— M. Renan, quoted by Max Müuller, in Chips from a German Workshop ; vol. i, p. 350.
4 Deutsch, Literary Remains.
5 Mischat-al-Masabih.
6 Biographies of Ibn Khallikan; translated by Baron de Slane, vol. ii, p. 524.
7 Lansing’s Egypt’s Princes,
8 Gatafago in his Arabic and English Dictionary, under the word “Kusur” (palaces), says: “The ruins of Thebes, that ancient and celebrated town, deserve to be visited, as just these heaps of ruins, laved by the Nile, are all that remain of the opulent cities that gave lustre to Ethiopia. It was there that a people, since forgotten, discovered the elements of science and art, at a time when all other men were barbarous, and when a race, now regarded as the refuse of society, explored among the phenomena of Nature those civil and roligious systems which have since held mankind in awe.” A more recent investigator, Dr. Hartmann, in an’ Encyclopædic work on Nigritia’ (Saturday Review, Juno 17, 1876), contends for the strictly African extraction of the Egyptians, who he seems to consider, may have dwelt upon the shores of the inner African sea, whose desiccation has formed the existing Sahara. See a remarkable passage bearing upon this subject in Volney’s Travels, vol. i, chap, iii.
9 It will be understood, of course, that we are not here instituting a comparison between the two systems of religion, but only between the methods and proceedings of their respective professors and propagators.
One of the most signal and melancholy instances of the failure of Aryans, in possession of the highest religion, to convert or save a foreign race, is that presented by the history of the Europeans in America, who, for more than three hundred years, have been in contact with large portions of the Mongolian race with very meagre beneficial result. Within the last few months, the military disaster suffered in an attack upon the Indians has sent a thrill of horror through the United States. Theodore Parker, in his Thoughts on America, unveils the reasons of the difficulty in his characteristic and incisive style. He says:--
The Anglo-Saxon disdains to mingle his proud blood in wedlock with the “inferior races of men.” He puts away the savage—black, yellow, red. In New England, the Puritan converted the Indians to Christianity, as far as they could accept the theology of John Calvin; but made a careful separation between white and red, “my people and thy people.” They must dwell in separate villages, worship in separate houses; they must not intermarry. The General Court of Massachusetts once forbade all extra- matrimonial connection of white and red, on pain of death! The Anglo-Saxon has carefully sought to exterminate the savages from his territory. The Briton does so in Africa, in Van Diemen’s Land, in New Zealand, in New Holland—wherever he meets them. The American does the same in the Western world. In New England the Puritan found the wild woods, the wild beasts, and the wild men; he undertook to eradicate them all, and he has succeeded best with the wild men—thereare more bears than Indians in New England. The United States pursues the same destructive policy. In two hundred years more there will be few Indians loft between the Lake of the Woods and the Gulf of Mexico, between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.[10]
Whatever may be the exaggerations in the above paragraph, no one can deny that, on the whole, there is too much truth in it; yet, in the face of this heartrending truth, some American writers on the Indian question talk flippantly and unfeelingly of a “law of decay,” and console themselves with the superficial theory of the inferior race vanishing before the superior.” But a thoughtful writer in a recent number of one of the leading American quarterlies takes a far more serious view of the subject:--
Those who give but little attention (he says) to Indian affairs, take it for granted that the race is doomed to utter extermination, without thinking of the fact that until they came in contact with white civilisation, they were rapidly increasing in numbers. . . . The story of the Creeks, Cherokees, Choctaws, and Chickasaws has been often told, and only one conclusion has ever been reached by any Christian giving it serious attention, and that is, that the United States Government committed a grievous wrong and crime in removing these tribes from their old home “ by force,” and placing them on a “ reservation” in the far south-west . . . The great error we commit toward the Indian is failing to recognise in him that common humanity which should lead us to call all men brothers and citizens. They are men and women like ourselves; they have the same hearts to touch by kindness and warm by friendship, and the same love for home that is common to all mankind, in a greater or less degree.[11]
We venture to express the belief that no such appeal would have been necessary had that interesting race of men been in contact with thirty millions of Mohammedans, instead of thirty millions of Christians. The wars fought against them would have been wars not of extermination but of proselytising. They would have been repetitions, probably in their manner, but certainly in their results, of the Syrian wars of Omar and Ali, the African wars of Amru and Akbah, and the Spanish wars of Musa and Tarik. The millions who were found on the continent would now be alive in their descendants, and absorbed in the national life. The “bears in New England” would have been extirpated, and the Indians would have been saved.[12]
But let us turn more particularly to the works before us.
Mr. Grant-Duff enumerates ten ways in which British influence is leavening India. Major Osborn proposes an eleventh way, namely, that the dominant race should familiarise themselves with the history and traditions of the various peoples whom they govern. And the object which he set before himself in the important work he has undertaken is to put within the reach of his countrymen, and especially of his fellow-officers, “ historical sketches of the races from which the native army in India is chiefly recruited.”
Islam under the Arabs, the first instalment of Major Osborn’s work, is written in a remarkably clear and lively style. There is very little danger of misunderstanding the author’s meaning. He has brought together in a small compass some of the most important facts in the early history of Islam, not a few of which will, no doubt, be entirely new to a large majority of readers. It is evident that he has given considerable attention to the external history of Islam; and had he confined himself to a narrative of events, for which his qualifications seem eminently adapted, his book would have taken its place among those valuable works on Oriental subjects for which the world is largely indebted to the literary tastes and industry of British soldiers, and, as a repertory of facts, would have always been referred to with confidence; but his reflections and comments on the theological aspects of the subject are so far behind the enlightened and tolerant spirit of the age, and, in many instances, so contrary to the view taken by Christian writers acquainted with Mohammedan history and literature, and of course by enlightened Mohammedans, that his book will not only be read, even in its most accurate parts, with a constantly hesitating, if not dissenting spirit, by those who are even partially acquainted with the facts, but will mislead those wholly ignorant of the subject, for whose benefit it is professedly written, by inciting them to a contemptuous intolerance; and thus the lofty and praiseworthy object of the writer will fail to be secured.
As the contribution, however, of an industrious and skilful delineator of the course of Mohammedan history in its earlier periods, the work will repay careful perusal; and, in spite of its laboured effort to place the theology of Islam in an unfavourable, and often ridiculous light, it will add its quota to the general enlightenment on that irrepressible faith which, after all that may be said, has attained a majestic stability and permanence in the history of India. When the series is finished, the general reader, anxious to get a clear and connected account of the leading facts of early Mohammedan history, without referring to original and not always accessible sources, will have at his disposal a convenient little library of the annals of Islam. But unless the two volumes to follow are written with a clearer insight into the system of which the author treats, unless, by further research, he becomes imbued with a more thorough appreciation of the facts which he collects, and a more liberal spirit in dealing with them, we need expect no fresh views respecting the secret of the power of Islam, and no livelier prospect as to the conciliatory and harmonising influence of the work.
The Anglo-Saxon disdains to mingle his proud blood in wedlock with the “inferior races of men.” He puts away the savage—black, yellow, red. In New England, the Puritan converted the Indians to Christianity, as far as they could accept the theology of John Calvin; but made a careful separation between white and red, “my people and thy people.” They must dwell in separate villages, worship in separate houses; they must not intermarry. The General Court of Massachusetts once forbade all extra- matrimonial connection of white and red, on pain of death! The Anglo-Saxon has carefully sought to exterminate the savages from his territory. The Briton does so in Africa, in Van Diemen’s Land, in New Zealand, in New Holland—wherever he meets them. The American does the same in the Western world. In New England the Puritan found the wild woods, the wild beasts, and the wild men; he undertook to eradicate them all, and he has succeeded best with the wild men—thereare more bears than Indians in New England. The United States pursues the same destructive policy. In two hundred years more there will be few Indians loft between the Lake of the Woods and the Gulf of Mexico, between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.[10]
Whatever may be the exaggerations in the above paragraph, no one can deny that, on the whole, there is too much truth in it; yet, in the face of this heartrending truth, some American writers on the Indian question talk flippantly and unfeelingly of a “law of decay,” and console themselves with the superficial theory of the inferior race vanishing before the superior.” But a thoughtful writer in a recent number of one of the leading American quarterlies takes a far more serious view of the subject:--
Those who give but little attention (he says) to Indian affairs, take it for granted that the race is doomed to utter extermination, without thinking of the fact that until they came in contact with white civilisation, they were rapidly increasing in numbers. . . . The story of the Creeks, Cherokees, Choctaws, and Chickasaws has been often told, and only one conclusion has ever been reached by any Christian giving it serious attention, and that is, that the United States Government committed a grievous wrong and crime in removing these tribes from their old home “ by force,” and placing them on a “ reservation” in the far south-west . . . The great error we commit toward the Indian is failing to recognise in him that common humanity which should lead us to call all men brothers and citizens. They are men and women like ourselves; they have the same hearts to touch by kindness and warm by friendship, and the same love for home that is common to all mankind, in a greater or less degree.[11]
We venture to express the belief that no such appeal would have been necessary had that interesting race of men been in contact with thirty millions of Mohammedans, instead of thirty millions of Christians. The wars fought against them would have been wars not of extermination but of proselytising. They would have been repetitions, probably in their manner, but certainly in their results, of the Syrian wars of Omar and Ali, the African wars of Amru and Akbah, and the Spanish wars of Musa and Tarik. The millions who were found on the continent would now be alive in their descendants, and absorbed in the national life. The “bears in New England” would have been extirpated, and the Indians would have been saved.[12]
But let us turn more particularly to the works before us.
Mr. Grant-Duff enumerates ten ways in which British influence is leavening India. Major Osborn proposes an eleventh way, namely, that the dominant race should familiarise themselves with the history and traditions of the various peoples whom they govern. And the object which he set before himself in the important work he has undertaken is to put within the reach of his countrymen, and especially of his fellow-officers, “ historical sketches of the races from which the native army in India is chiefly recruited.”
Islam under the Arabs, the first instalment of Major Osborn’s work, is written in a remarkably clear and lively style. There is very little danger of misunderstanding the author’s meaning. He has brought together in a small compass some of the most important facts in the early history of Islam, not a few of which will, no doubt, be entirely new to a large majority of readers. It is evident that he has given considerable attention to the external history of Islam; and had he confined himself to a narrative of events, for which his qualifications seem eminently adapted, his book would have taken its place among those valuable works on Oriental subjects for which the world is largely indebted to the literary tastes and industry of British soldiers, and, as a repertory of facts, would have always been referred to with confidence; but his reflections and comments on the theological aspects of the subject are so far behind the enlightened and tolerant spirit of the age, and, in many instances, so contrary to the view taken by Christian writers acquainted with Mohammedan history and literature, and of course by enlightened Mohammedans, that his book will not only be read, even in its most accurate parts, with a constantly hesitating, if not dissenting spirit, by those who are even partially acquainted with the facts, but will mislead those wholly ignorant of the subject, for whose benefit it is professedly written, by inciting them to a contemptuous intolerance; and thus the lofty and praiseworthy object of the writer will fail to be secured.
As the contribution, however, of an industrious and skilful delineator of the course of Mohammedan history in its earlier periods, the work will repay careful perusal; and, in spite of its laboured effort to place the theology of Islam in an unfavourable, and often ridiculous light, it will add its quota to the general enlightenment on that irrepressible faith which, after all that may be said, has attained a majestic stability and permanence in the history of India. When the series is finished, the general reader, anxious to get a clear and connected account of the leading facts of early Mohammedan history, without referring to original and not always accessible sources, will have at his disposal a convenient little library of the annals of Islam. But unless the two volumes to follow are written with a clearer insight into the system of which the author treats, unless, by further research, he becomes imbued with a more thorough appreciation of the facts which he collects, and a more liberal spirit in dealing with them, we need expect no fresh views respecting the secret of the power of Islam, and no livelier prospect as to the conciliatory and harmonising influence of the work.
Footnotes:
10 Additional Speeches, vol. ii.
11 Presbyterian Quarterly and Princeton Review, January, 1876.
12 A portion of another race—the Negro—carried to that land by force, has grown and multiplied in spite of repressive laws and regulations in Church and State.
10 Additional Speeches, vol. ii.
11 Presbyterian Quarterly and Princeton Review, January, 1876.
12 A portion of another race—the Negro—carried to that land by force, has grown and multiplied in spite of repressive laws and regulations in Church and State.
Dr. Badger, in the Contemporary Review for June, 1875, gives us the following information:--
The first English translation of the Kurân was made from the French of André du Ryer, by one Alexander Ross, and published in London in 1649. It is accompanied by an introduction styled ‘A needful Caveat or Admonition,’ which runs thus: “Good reader, the great Arabian impostor, now at last, after a thousand years, is, by the way of Prance, arrived in England, and his Alcoran, or Gallimaufry of Errors (a Brat as deformed as the Parent, and as full of heresies as his scald head was of scurf), hath learned to speak English.”
The education of two centuries (adds Dr. Badger) has chastened the style of our national literature, and added much to our knowledge of Eastern subjects generally; nevertheless, there is good ground for presuming that the foregoing description of the Kurân and of its reputed author is in accordance substantially with the views still held by the great majority of Englishmen.
Aye, and of Englishmen who have lived in Mohammedan countries, and who profess to have an acquaintance with the literature of Islam. Major Osborn does not seem to have come within the influence of “the education of two centuries.” He repeats, with the credulity and confidence of those who have gathered their information mainly from Gibbon and Prideaux, the opinions entertained of Islam in the Middle Ages. So far as he is concerned, the labours of Sprenger, Muir, Deutsch, and the host of recent investigators, seem to have been in vain. This, however, he warns us in his preface, is no fault of his, but a “misfortune inseparable from writing history in a remote country like India.” The following summary may be given of the system of Islam as it is described in Major Osborn’s pages: Its creed is a bald monotheism, absolute and unchanging decrees, introduced by a prophet who felt it to be his Divine mission to exterminate all professors of a religion different from his; a Hell of material fire depicted with Dantesque realism; a Heaven of sensual indulgences and delights. The ideal man of Islam—the saint of the religion—is he who can say, “There is no God but God, and Mohammed is his Prophet,” and who for this creed is ready to sacrifice relatives, friends, country—even life itself. He may be ignorant, treacherous, cruel, sensual, anything, so far as character is concerned, and yet look forward to the highest reward of the faithful. Any and every true and noble element of manhood may be left out, and yet, if faithful to his creed and system, the beautiful houris await him in his paradise above.
Such will be the impressions of the system of Islam which will be gathered from Major Osborn’s pages by the majority of uninformed readers; and this is, no doubt, the view entertained of that religion by the generality of Christians. We cannot refrain from pronouncing Islam under the Arabs, so far as its theological aspects are concerned, a retrogression in Oriental literature. It does not come up to the standard which the critical and historical power of the age—the extension of thought and information on Oriental subjects—now require. Major Osborn surely cannot believe that the representations which he makes of Islam will further the objects he has in view. The natives of India are, no doubt, gratified by seeing foreigners—especially the foreigners who rule over them—take a lively interest in their religion, literature, and antiquities, in “the memories which still thrill them with pleasure or pride.” But to treat these subjects profitably, to make the knowledge of them “a potent magnet for winning the hearts of the native soldiers,” a little more is needed than mere reading and superficial observation; the writer must possess, in no small degree, that quality which Mr. Gifford Palgrave, in the dedication of his Essays on Eastern Questions to the Earl of Derby, recognised as marking the foreign policy of that distinguished statesman, namely, “a statesmanlike insight into character and race,” a quality which both by experience and observation, Mr. Palgrave must have found to be very rare among his countrymen.
We will now give a few specimens of the results of Major Osborn’s reading and observation. He tells us on pp. 26 and 301:
Fatalism is the central tenet of Islam. In the Koran, the root conception is the idea of God as an immovable fatality. This is the tenet that has been burned indelibly into the heart and brain of the Mohammedan world. And, under its withering shadow, the idea of “order” has been unable to strike root downwards or bear fruit upwards.
And yet Major Osborn, on p. 70, mentions prayer as one of the “five pillars” on which the religion of Islam is sustained. What where the utility of prayer in a system which regarded the object of it as inflexible and inexorable—“an immovable fatality”? But how do the following passages from the Koran agree with Major Osborn’s idea of the Mohammedan’s God?
Whoever shall turn him to God after his wickedness, and amend, God truly will be turned to him; for God is “forgiving and merciful.”—(Sura v, v. 43) Rodwell’s Translation, p. 638.
Your Lord hath laid down for Himself a law of mercy; so that if any one of you commit a fault through ignorance, and afterwards turn and amend, He will surely be gracious, merciful.—(Sura vi, v. 54) Rodwell, p. 406.
Then was He turned to them, that they might bo turned to Him, for God is He that turneth, the Merciful.—Rodwell, p. 629.
Know they not that when His servants turn to Him with repentance, God accepteth it, and that He accepteth alms, and that God is He who turneth, the Merciful?—Rodwell, p. 626.
God turned to him, for Ho loveth to turn, the Merciful.—Rodwell, p. 433.
But as for those who turn to Me, and amend and make known the truth, even unto them will I turn Me, for I am He who turnoth, the Merciful.—Rodwell, p. 451.
The first English translation of the Kurân was made from the French of André du Ryer, by one Alexander Ross, and published in London in 1649. It is accompanied by an introduction styled ‘A needful Caveat or Admonition,’ which runs thus: “Good reader, the great Arabian impostor, now at last, after a thousand years, is, by the way of Prance, arrived in England, and his Alcoran, or Gallimaufry of Errors (a Brat as deformed as the Parent, and as full of heresies as his scald head was of scurf), hath learned to speak English.”
The education of two centuries (adds Dr. Badger) has chastened the style of our national literature, and added much to our knowledge of Eastern subjects generally; nevertheless, there is good ground for presuming that the foregoing description of the Kurân and of its reputed author is in accordance substantially with the views still held by the great majority of Englishmen.
Aye, and of Englishmen who have lived in Mohammedan countries, and who profess to have an acquaintance with the literature of Islam. Major Osborn does not seem to have come within the influence of “the education of two centuries.” He repeats, with the credulity and confidence of those who have gathered their information mainly from Gibbon and Prideaux, the opinions entertained of Islam in the Middle Ages. So far as he is concerned, the labours of Sprenger, Muir, Deutsch, and the host of recent investigators, seem to have been in vain. This, however, he warns us in his preface, is no fault of his, but a “misfortune inseparable from writing history in a remote country like India.” The following summary may be given of the system of Islam as it is described in Major Osborn’s pages: Its creed is a bald monotheism, absolute and unchanging decrees, introduced by a prophet who felt it to be his Divine mission to exterminate all professors of a religion different from his; a Hell of material fire depicted with Dantesque realism; a Heaven of sensual indulgences and delights. The ideal man of Islam—the saint of the religion—is he who can say, “There is no God but God, and Mohammed is his Prophet,” and who for this creed is ready to sacrifice relatives, friends, country—even life itself. He may be ignorant, treacherous, cruel, sensual, anything, so far as character is concerned, and yet look forward to the highest reward of the faithful. Any and every true and noble element of manhood may be left out, and yet, if faithful to his creed and system, the beautiful houris await him in his paradise above.
Such will be the impressions of the system of Islam which will be gathered from Major Osborn’s pages by the majority of uninformed readers; and this is, no doubt, the view entertained of that religion by the generality of Christians. We cannot refrain from pronouncing Islam under the Arabs, so far as its theological aspects are concerned, a retrogression in Oriental literature. It does not come up to the standard which the critical and historical power of the age—the extension of thought and information on Oriental subjects—now require. Major Osborn surely cannot believe that the representations which he makes of Islam will further the objects he has in view. The natives of India are, no doubt, gratified by seeing foreigners—especially the foreigners who rule over them—take a lively interest in their religion, literature, and antiquities, in “the memories which still thrill them with pleasure or pride.” But to treat these subjects profitably, to make the knowledge of them “a potent magnet for winning the hearts of the native soldiers,” a little more is needed than mere reading and superficial observation; the writer must possess, in no small degree, that quality which Mr. Gifford Palgrave, in the dedication of his Essays on Eastern Questions to the Earl of Derby, recognised as marking the foreign policy of that distinguished statesman, namely, “a statesmanlike insight into character and race,” a quality which both by experience and observation, Mr. Palgrave must have found to be very rare among his countrymen.
We will now give a few specimens of the results of Major Osborn’s reading and observation. He tells us on pp. 26 and 301:
Fatalism is the central tenet of Islam. In the Koran, the root conception is the idea of God as an immovable fatality. This is the tenet that has been burned indelibly into the heart and brain of the Mohammedan world. And, under its withering shadow, the idea of “order” has been unable to strike root downwards or bear fruit upwards.
And yet Major Osborn, on p. 70, mentions prayer as one of the “five pillars” on which the religion of Islam is sustained. What where the utility of prayer in a system which regarded the object of it as inflexible and inexorable—“an immovable fatality”? But how do the following passages from the Koran agree with Major Osborn’s idea of the Mohammedan’s God?
Whoever shall turn him to God after his wickedness, and amend, God truly will be turned to him; for God is “forgiving and merciful.”—(Sura v, v. 43) Rodwell’s Translation, p. 638.
Your Lord hath laid down for Himself a law of mercy; so that if any one of you commit a fault through ignorance, and afterwards turn and amend, He will surely be gracious, merciful.—(Sura vi, v. 54) Rodwell, p. 406.
Then was He turned to them, that they might bo turned to Him, for God is He that turneth, the Merciful.—Rodwell, p. 629.
Know they not that when His servants turn to Him with repentance, God accepteth it, and that He accepteth alms, and that God is He who turneth, the Merciful?—Rodwell, p. 626.
God turned to him, for Ho loveth to turn, the Merciful.—Rodwell, p. 433.
But as for those who turn to Me, and amend and make known the truth, even unto them will I turn Me, for I am He who turnoth, the Merciful.—Rodwell, p. 451.
We might adduce numerous other passages which prove the absolute fallacy of the notion that Fatalism is a doctrine of the Koran; it teaches the very contrary doctrine. “Mohammed’s whole system,” says Mr. Deutsch, “is one of faith built on hope and fear.”
The following is the estimate which Major Osborn has formed of the founder of Islam (p. 91):--
At Medina, the religious teacher is superseded by the ambitious politician, and the idols of the Kaaba fall before the mandate of the successful chieftain, not under the transforming influences of a spiritual regenerator. To achieve worldly dominion, he has recourse to assassination; he perpetrates massacre; he makes a Heathen superstition the keystone of his faith; and delivers to his followers, as a revelation from God, a mandate of universal War. With every advance in wordly power he disencumbers himself of that spiritual humility which was a part of his earlier faith. He associates himself with God on a footing approaching to equality.
The italics are ours. We have emphasised the passage because of the shocking impiety which such a notion would convey to the most undevout Muslim; and we cannot conceive it possible that Major Osborn could be ignorant of this. We would commend to him the following philosophical and accurate view of M. Barthélemy St. Hilaire:--
On n’a point remarqué suffisamment cette circonstance dans la carrière de Mahomet. Oui, personnellement il s’est cru prophète; il a cru de toute l’im- Pétuosité de son âme à sa mission, et il a eu raison de se prendre parmi ces peuples barbares pour un instrument de Dieu. Mais ce n’est pas sa volonté propre, ce n’est pas la convoitise de son ambition qui en a fait un général et un conquérant. Des événements extérieurs plus forts que lui, et qu’il ne pouvait prévoir, l’ont précipité. Il s’est trouvé sans le savoir, sans le vouloir, le plus grand homme de guerre de son pays, le politique le plus habile, et il a fondé un empire presque malgré lui. . . . Le Coran, qui révéle toute la pensée morale de Mahomet, ne porte pas trace, pour ainsi dire, d’une pensée politique. . . . Et il faut Pimagination d’un poëte tel que Voltaire pour lui prêter, a mille ans de distance, des desseins qu’il n’a concus.[13]
But we can refer to Mohammed’s own utterances, as recorded in the authorised traditions. The Prophet said:--
I am no more than a man; when I order you anything respecting religion receive it; and when I order you about the affairs of this world, then I am nothing more than a man.[14]
Again, Major Osborn gives us the following dissertation on the Jihâad:--
The one common duty laid upon the faithful is to bo the agents of God’s vengeance on those who believe not. These are to be slaughtered till they pay tribute, when they are to bo allowed to go to hell in their own way without further molestation. . . . When Mohammed interdicted the faithful to prey upon each other, he was compelled to find occupation for their swords elsewhere. Out of this necessity sprang the command to inherit heaven by fighting on the path of God. This is the doctrine which has rendered Islam so fascinating a faith to savage and barbarous races. It exacts from them no endeavours after a higher life. It tolls them that they can win an immortality of sensual bliss by merely giving free scope to their most imperious passions. . . . The Mohammedan still conceives himself to be the elect of God. He regards not with compassion—that word is too humane—but with contempt unspeakable, as “logs” reserved for “ hell fire,” the votaries of all other creeds. Wherever ho has the power, he holds it to be his mission to trample upon and persecute them.
The ninth sura is that which contains the Prophet’s proclamation of war against the votaries of all creeds other than that of Islam.—Pp. 27, 52, 290, 380.
The ninth sura of the Koran contains no such proclamation. Even Mr. Rodwell’s translation, upon which Major Osborn relies, does not justify such inference. Those against whom war is declared in that chapter are described in the original as Mushrikun —a term in which the radical idea is that of association—the associating one thing with another—and it cannot in strictness be. rendered by the comprehensive phrase of “ Polytheists,” employed by Rodwell, or of “Idolaters,” as used by Sale. The sura is addressed to Arabs who believed in and worshipped only the true God, and refers to the treatment to be accorded by them to those Arabs who joined the worship of idols with that of the true God, as Mr. Rodwell explains in a parenthesis in the first verse. In the opening sentences of his book Major Osborn truly says:--
There is one remarkable assumption that runs through all the warnings, denunciations and appeals of the Koran. The God of whom the Prophet speaks is not an unknown God. The guilt of his fellow- tribesmen, the justification of their impending doom, are deduced from the fact that they did know this God, while they honoured dumb idols.
It is strange that, with knowledge so clear and accurate, Major Osborn should have failed to catch the real drift of the ninth sura of the Koran. Nowhere in the Koran are Muslims enjoined to-make indiscriminate war upon Christians or Jews. On the contrary, there are numerous passages that inculcate an enlightened tolerance, which writers of the temper of Major Osborn would do well to emulate. The following are among the Koranic utterances on this important subject:--
Dispute not, unless in kindly sort, with the people of the Book; save with such of them as have dealt wrongfully with you: And say ye, “We believe in what hath been sent down to us, and hath been sent down to you. Our God and your God is one.”—Rodwell, p. 328.
God is your Lord and our Lord; we have our works and you have your works; between us and you let there be no strife; God will make us all one; and to Him shall we return.—Rodwell, p. 337.
Among the people of the Book are those who believe in God, and in what He hath sent down to you, and in what He hath sent down to them, humbling themselves before God— Rodwell, p. 521.
Verily Muslims and they who follow the Jewish religion, and the Christians,, and Sabeites[15]—- whoever of these believeth in God, and the Last Day, and doeth that which is right, shall have their reward with their Lord; fear shall not come upon them, neither shall they be grieved.—1b., p. 437.
The following is the estimate which Major Osborn has formed of the founder of Islam (p. 91):--
At Medina, the religious teacher is superseded by the ambitious politician, and the idols of the Kaaba fall before the mandate of the successful chieftain, not under the transforming influences of a spiritual regenerator. To achieve worldly dominion, he has recourse to assassination; he perpetrates massacre; he makes a Heathen superstition the keystone of his faith; and delivers to his followers, as a revelation from God, a mandate of universal War. With every advance in wordly power he disencumbers himself of that spiritual humility which was a part of his earlier faith. He associates himself with God on a footing approaching to equality.
The italics are ours. We have emphasised the passage because of the shocking impiety which such a notion would convey to the most undevout Muslim; and we cannot conceive it possible that Major Osborn could be ignorant of this. We would commend to him the following philosophical and accurate view of M. Barthélemy St. Hilaire:--
On n’a point remarqué suffisamment cette circonstance dans la carrière de Mahomet. Oui, personnellement il s’est cru prophète; il a cru de toute l’im- Pétuosité de son âme à sa mission, et il a eu raison de se prendre parmi ces peuples barbares pour un instrument de Dieu. Mais ce n’est pas sa volonté propre, ce n’est pas la convoitise de son ambition qui en a fait un général et un conquérant. Des événements extérieurs plus forts que lui, et qu’il ne pouvait prévoir, l’ont précipité. Il s’est trouvé sans le savoir, sans le vouloir, le plus grand homme de guerre de son pays, le politique le plus habile, et il a fondé un empire presque malgré lui. . . . Le Coran, qui révéle toute la pensée morale de Mahomet, ne porte pas trace, pour ainsi dire, d’une pensée politique. . . . Et il faut Pimagination d’un poëte tel que Voltaire pour lui prêter, a mille ans de distance, des desseins qu’il n’a concus.[13]
But we can refer to Mohammed’s own utterances, as recorded in the authorised traditions. The Prophet said:--
I am no more than a man; when I order you anything respecting religion receive it; and when I order you about the affairs of this world, then I am nothing more than a man.[14]
Again, Major Osborn gives us the following dissertation on the Jihâad:--
The one common duty laid upon the faithful is to bo the agents of God’s vengeance on those who believe not. These are to be slaughtered till they pay tribute, when they are to bo allowed to go to hell in their own way without further molestation. . . . When Mohammed interdicted the faithful to prey upon each other, he was compelled to find occupation for their swords elsewhere. Out of this necessity sprang the command to inherit heaven by fighting on the path of God. This is the doctrine which has rendered Islam so fascinating a faith to savage and barbarous races. It exacts from them no endeavours after a higher life. It tolls them that they can win an immortality of sensual bliss by merely giving free scope to their most imperious passions. . . . The Mohammedan still conceives himself to be the elect of God. He regards not with compassion—that word is too humane—but with contempt unspeakable, as “logs” reserved for “ hell fire,” the votaries of all other creeds. Wherever ho has the power, he holds it to be his mission to trample upon and persecute them.
The ninth sura is that which contains the Prophet’s proclamation of war against the votaries of all creeds other than that of Islam.—Pp. 27, 52, 290, 380.
The ninth sura of the Koran contains no such proclamation. Even Mr. Rodwell’s translation, upon which Major Osborn relies, does not justify such inference. Those against whom war is declared in that chapter are described in the original as Mushrikun —a term in which the radical idea is that of association—the associating one thing with another—and it cannot in strictness be. rendered by the comprehensive phrase of “ Polytheists,” employed by Rodwell, or of “Idolaters,” as used by Sale. The sura is addressed to Arabs who believed in and worshipped only the true God, and refers to the treatment to be accorded by them to those Arabs who joined the worship of idols with that of the true God, as Mr. Rodwell explains in a parenthesis in the first verse. In the opening sentences of his book Major Osborn truly says:--
There is one remarkable assumption that runs through all the warnings, denunciations and appeals of the Koran. The God of whom the Prophet speaks is not an unknown God. The guilt of his fellow- tribesmen, the justification of their impending doom, are deduced from the fact that they did know this God, while they honoured dumb idols.
It is strange that, with knowledge so clear and accurate, Major Osborn should have failed to catch the real drift of the ninth sura of the Koran. Nowhere in the Koran are Muslims enjoined to-make indiscriminate war upon Christians or Jews. On the contrary, there are numerous passages that inculcate an enlightened tolerance, which writers of the temper of Major Osborn would do well to emulate. The following are among the Koranic utterances on this important subject:--
Dispute not, unless in kindly sort, with the people of the Book; save with such of them as have dealt wrongfully with you: And say ye, “We believe in what hath been sent down to us, and hath been sent down to you. Our God and your God is one.”—Rodwell, p. 328.
God is your Lord and our Lord; we have our works and you have your works; between us and you let there be no strife; God will make us all one; and to Him shall we return.—Rodwell, p. 337.
Among the people of the Book are those who believe in God, and in what He hath sent down to you, and in what He hath sent down to them, humbling themselves before God— Rodwell, p. 521.
Verily Muslims and they who follow the Jewish religion, and the Christians,, and Sabeites[15]—- whoever of these believeth in God, and the Last Day, and doeth that which is right, shall have their reward with their Lord; fear shall not come upon them, neither shall they be grieved.—1b., p. 437.
Footnotes:
13 Mahomet et le Goran; preface.
14 Mishhat-al-Masabih, vol. i, p. 46.
15 The Sabeites are identical with the Mendaites, or so-called Christians of St. John, residing in the marshy district at the mouth of the Euphrates, but are not the same with star-worshipping Sabians of Harran, in Mesopotamia.—Rodwell (Note).
13 Mahomet et le Goran; preface.
14 Mishhat-al-Masabih, vol. i, p. 46.
15 The Sabeites are identical with the Mendaites, or so-called Christians of St. John, residing in the marshy district at the mouth of the Euphrates, but are not the same with star-worshipping Sabians of Harran, in Mesopotamia.—Rodwell (Note).
There is nothing in the original teachings of the Mohammedan religion that requires hostility to Christians. There are, no doubt, bigots and fanatics among Muslims, as there have been and are now, bigots and fanatics among Christians; but the spirit of the religion, as taught in its original records, is tolerant. And here we cannot but protest against the unwarrantable emphasis with which Christians generally persist in calling themselves “Infidels” when professing to represent the light in which they are held by Muslims. No such term is ever applied to Christians either in the Koran or by intelligent Mohammedans. And for Christian controversialists to insist upon such a use of it is only to foster prejudices which, in this enlightened age, ought to be entirely eliminated from the popular instincts of Christian countries.
Under the Moorish Governments of Spain, when Islam enjoyed political ascendency, the large masses of native Christians were protected by a wide toleration, not as a political expedient, but according to the laws of Islam. The Christians were permitted to have their bishops, churches and monasteries, and to be judged by their own laws and tribunals, whenever the question at issue was one that related only to themselves.[16]
But we can refer to modern instances of more immediate interest to the British public, and bearing directly upon the objects which Major Osborn has in view. During the startling crisis through which the British Indian Empire passed about twenty years ago, many and touching were the illustrations of Mohammedan toleration and friendship towards Christians, which it is singular that a man of Major Osborn’s profession should so soon have forgotten.
From the outbreak to the suppression of the Mutiny, and from one end of India to the other, thousands upon thousands of Mohammedans, high and low, rich and poor, princes and servants, soldiers and civilians, not only refrained from lifting a finger against the British Government or any Christian individual, but rendered active and most useful service—at the hazard often of their lives and fortunes—to both it and them. Of native princes, the Nawab of Rampore—a Mohammedan of the Mohammedans—and the Begum of Bhopal, were not merely faithful but signally helpful. The Nawab of Tonk, son of the celebrated Ameer Khan, a formidable leader in the Pindaree war, who probably ruled over more Mohammedan fanatics than any prince in India, stood by the British Government with exemplary firmness.[17]
“In a word,” says the Saturday Review, at the close of an interesting article on Sir Salar Jung (May 27, 1876), “our new guest is the man who, when Delhi had fallen and our power was for the moment tottering in the balance, saved Southern India for England. Sir Salar Jung spared us the expenditure of countless lives and countless millions;” and furnishes in himself, the reviewer might have added, the practical evidence that a Mohammedan may become an effective reformer without abdicating his faith.
In the face of these facts, and with his knowledge of the teachings and spirit of his religion, what must be the feelings of Sir Salar Jung when he reads a work of the temper of Islam under the Arabs, in which the author, a British officer of some experience in Mohammedan countries, shows that he not only shares, but is willing to reproduce in elaborate pages, the vulgar estimate held in Christian lands of the Mohammedan religion.
We had marked several other passages in Major Osborn’s book for remark, but the want of space compels us to turn to the deeply-interesting and valuable work which, we are happy to say, furnishes a full and complete reply to the principal charges, and gives ample correction to all the erroneous statements and inferences of Islam under the Arabs.
Mohammed and Mohammedanism is the second enlarged and revised edition of a course of lectures delivered at the Royal Institution in 1874. The following remarks in the preface to the second edition reveal the lofty aim and eminently catholic spirit of the writer, but can give no adequate clue to the charming style of the composition—the transparent clearness, the vigour, the glowing enthusiasm, with which the subject is handled:--
To denounce fundamental conditions of Oriental society; to ignore the law of dissolution, to which Eastern no less than Western dynasties arc subject; to confuse the decadence of a race with that of a creed; to be blind to the distinction between progressive and unprogressive, between civilised and uncivilised peoples; to judge of a religion mainly or exclusively by the lives of its professors, often of its most unworthy professors; to forget what of good there has been in the past, and to refuse to hope for something better in the future, in despair or indignation for what is—all this may occasionally bo excusable, or possibly even necessary; but it cannot be done by me so long as I think it neither excusable nor necessary.
Under the Moorish Governments of Spain, when Islam enjoyed political ascendency, the large masses of native Christians were protected by a wide toleration, not as a political expedient, but according to the laws of Islam. The Christians were permitted to have their bishops, churches and monasteries, and to be judged by their own laws and tribunals, whenever the question at issue was one that related only to themselves.[16]
But we can refer to modern instances of more immediate interest to the British public, and bearing directly upon the objects which Major Osborn has in view. During the startling crisis through which the British Indian Empire passed about twenty years ago, many and touching were the illustrations of Mohammedan toleration and friendship towards Christians, which it is singular that a man of Major Osborn’s profession should so soon have forgotten.
From the outbreak to the suppression of the Mutiny, and from one end of India to the other, thousands upon thousands of Mohammedans, high and low, rich and poor, princes and servants, soldiers and civilians, not only refrained from lifting a finger against the British Government or any Christian individual, but rendered active and most useful service—at the hazard often of their lives and fortunes—to both it and them. Of native princes, the Nawab of Rampore—a Mohammedan of the Mohammedans—and the Begum of Bhopal, were not merely faithful but signally helpful. The Nawab of Tonk, son of the celebrated Ameer Khan, a formidable leader in the Pindaree war, who probably ruled over more Mohammedan fanatics than any prince in India, stood by the British Government with exemplary firmness.[17]
“In a word,” says the Saturday Review, at the close of an interesting article on Sir Salar Jung (May 27, 1876), “our new guest is the man who, when Delhi had fallen and our power was for the moment tottering in the balance, saved Southern India for England. Sir Salar Jung spared us the expenditure of countless lives and countless millions;” and furnishes in himself, the reviewer might have added, the practical evidence that a Mohammedan may become an effective reformer without abdicating his faith.
In the face of these facts, and with his knowledge of the teachings and spirit of his religion, what must be the feelings of Sir Salar Jung when he reads a work of the temper of Islam under the Arabs, in which the author, a British officer of some experience in Mohammedan countries, shows that he not only shares, but is willing to reproduce in elaborate pages, the vulgar estimate held in Christian lands of the Mohammedan religion.
We had marked several other passages in Major Osborn’s book for remark, but the want of space compels us to turn to the deeply-interesting and valuable work which, we are happy to say, furnishes a full and complete reply to the principal charges, and gives ample correction to all the erroneous statements and inferences of Islam under the Arabs.
Mohammed and Mohammedanism is the second enlarged and revised edition of a course of lectures delivered at the Royal Institution in 1874. The following remarks in the preface to the second edition reveal the lofty aim and eminently catholic spirit of the writer, but can give no adequate clue to the charming style of the composition—the transparent clearness, the vigour, the glowing enthusiasm, with which the subject is handled:--
To denounce fundamental conditions of Oriental society; to ignore the law of dissolution, to which Eastern no less than Western dynasties arc subject; to confuse the decadence of a race with that of a creed; to be blind to the distinction between progressive and unprogressive, between civilised and uncivilised peoples; to judge of a religion mainly or exclusively by the lives of its professors, often of its most unworthy professors; to forget what of good there has been in the past, and to refuse to hope for something better in the future, in despair or indignation for what is—all this may occasionally bo excusable, or possibly even necessary; but it cannot be done by me so long as I think it neither excusable nor necessary.
Footnotes:
16 Ticknor's History of Spanish Literature, vol. iii, p. 460.
17 Edinburgh Review, October, 1866, p. 306.
16 Ticknor's History of Spanish Literature, vol. iii, p. 460.
17 Edinburgh Review, October, 1866, p. 306.
It is a very easy task, and, no doubt, in entire keeping with the feelings of the dominant race, to show the faults committed at different times and in different countries by Mohammedan rulers, in entire obliviousness of the parallel which might, in almost every instance, be adduced from Christian history. But the careful and philosophical historian performs a far more agreeable task to himself, and possibly more profitable to his readers, when he dwells on the acts of philanthropy and heroism, the achievements in literature and science, which, for five hundred years, attended the progress of Islam; and this pleasant task Mr. Bosworth Smith has not only taken upon himself, but has executed in the most admirable manner. If we had any control in the matter we should arrange that an earnest inquirer into the history and principles of Islam should first give to Major Osborn’s work, when the series is completed, a careful perusal, and then take up Mr. Smith’s book, both as the complement and expounder of the facts collected by Major Osborn.
The influence of race in the matter of religion does not seem to be taken into consideration by the generality of writers on such subjects. To this important element in the development of religious systems Mr. Bosworth Smith frequently calls attention. While it is known that the Christian system has received large modifications as to outward form and expression, and even as to some of its dogmas, from the influence of country and race, it is too generally taken for granted that Islam is a rigidly uniform system; that Mohammedans are all alike, and that the Turk is the type and representative of the whole Muslim world. But nothing could be more erroneous. Says Mr. Smith:--
The Persians are of a race and genius widely different from the Arabs; but the surroundings and general mode of life are the same in each, and the exception—so far as it is an exception—to the rule I have laid down, tends rather, in its results, to prove its general truth, for the hold of Mohammedanism on them has been much modified by the difference of race. . . . . It cannot be said that the religion proved itself altogether suited to the people. In other countries the scymitar had no sooner been drawn from its scabbard than it was sheathed again. But in Persia the scymitar had not only to clear the way, but for some time afterwards, to maintain the new religion. The Persians corrupted its simplicity with fables and miracles; they actually imported into it something of saint-worship, and something of sacerdotalism; and, consequently, in no nation in the Mohammedan world has the religion less hold on the people as a restraining power. The most stringent principles of the Koran are set at nought.
Mr. Matthew Arnold, following Gobineau, has suggested that the division of the Muslim world into the two great sects of Shiahs and Sunis has its true cause in a division of races rather than in a difference of religious belief.[18] Islam, among the Indo-Europeanraces, as in Turkey, Persia and India, is quite different from what it is among the Semitic and semi-Semitic races in Arabia and Africa.
Mr. Gladstone, in his recent pamphlet on the Turkish Question, puts forward the following thoughtful and suggestive paragraph:--
It is not a question of Mohammedanism simply, but of Mohammedanism compounded with the peculiar character of a race. They are not the mild Mohammedans of India, nor the chivalrous Saladins of Syria, nor the cultured Moors of Spain. They were, upon the whole, from the black day when they first entered Europe, the one great anti-human specimen of humanity. Wherever they went, a broad line of blood marked the tract behind them; and, as far as their dominion reached, civilisation disappeared from view. They represented everywhere government by force, as opposed to government by law.
So far as India! is concerned—the country which Major Osborn hopes will be favourably affected by the work he has written— there seems to be very little probability that Christianity, as disseminated by Europeans, will ever secure the ascendency over tribal or national life which either Buddhism or Mohammedanism has attained. The achievements of the Christian religion thus far have been chiefly among the lower classes, who, as in all other countries, having nothing to lose, readily accept revolutionary changes in their politics or religion.
One of the most thoughtful and appreciative observers of the results of Christian Missions in India, in a most elaborate article, which has attracted considerable attention on both sides of the Atlantic, refers to the present status of Christian converts in the following terms;--
We regard with special interest, but also with special anxiety, the progress which the native Church that has been planted in some districts in India is making towards maturity. It is already distinguished for docility and liberality; but we should wish to see it, on the one hand, freer from inherited faults and failings, and, on the other, more self-reliant, more progressive, more comprehensive, extending with equal zeal and rapidity anongst the higher and the lower classes. At present too large a proportion of the native converts belong to the lower classes and the aboriginal tribes. . . . . When Hindus have become Christians, they have not at the same time become English people, and that means a great deal. It means they have not ceased to be timid, and they have not become self-reliant, high spirited, and manly.[19]
The rationale of this state of things is given by Mr. Bosworth Smith as follows:--
In India Mohammedans make converts by hundreds from among the Hindus, while Christians with difficulty make ten; and this, partly at least, because they receive their converts on terms of entire social equality, while Europeans, in spite of all the efforts of missionaries to the contrary, seem either unwilling or unable to treat their converts as other than inferiors. The Hindu who becomes a Christian loses, therefore, his own cherished caste without being admitted into that of his rulers. The Hindu who turns Mohammedan loses his narrow caste, but he becomes a member of the brotherhood of Islam.
If a pariah becomes a Muslim he may rise to the throne. The pariah who turns Christian is a pariah still.
The influence of race in the matter of religion does not seem to be taken into consideration by the generality of writers on such subjects. To this important element in the development of religious systems Mr. Bosworth Smith frequently calls attention. While it is known that the Christian system has received large modifications as to outward form and expression, and even as to some of its dogmas, from the influence of country and race, it is too generally taken for granted that Islam is a rigidly uniform system; that Mohammedans are all alike, and that the Turk is the type and representative of the whole Muslim world. But nothing could be more erroneous. Says Mr. Smith:--
The Persians are of a race and genius widely different from the Arabs; but the surroundings and general mode of life are the same in each, and the exception—so far as it is an exception—to the rule I have laid down, tends rather, in its results, to prove its general truth, for the hold of Mohammedanism on them has been much modified by the difference of race. . . . . It cannot be said that the religion proved itself altogether suited to the people. In other countries the scymitar had no sooner been drawn from its scabbard than it was sheathed again. But in Persia the scymitar had not only to clear the way, but for some time afterwards, to maintain the new religion. The Persians corrupted its simplicity with fables and miracles; they actually imported into it something of saint-worship, and something of sacerdotalism; and, consequently, in no nation in the Mohammedan world has the religion less hold on the people as a restraining power. The most stringent principles of the Koran are set at nought.
Mr. Matthew Arnold, following Gobineau, has suggested that the division of the Muslim world into the two great sects of Shiahs and Sunis has its true cause in a division of races rather than in a difference of religious belief.[18] Islam, among the Indo-Europeanraces, as in Turkey, Persia and India, is quite different from what it is among the Semitic and semi-Semitic races in Arabia and Africa.
Mr. Gladstone, in his recent pamphlet on the Turkish Question, puts forward the following thoughtful and suggestive paragraph:--
It is not a question of Mohammedanism simply, but of Mohammedanism compounded with the peculiar character of a race. They are not the mild Mohammedans of India, nor the chivalrous Saladins of Syria, nor the cultured Moors of Spain. They were, upon the whole, from the black day when they first entered Europe, the one great anti-human specimen of humanity. Wherever they went, a broad line of blood marked the tract behind them; and, as far as their dominion reached, civilisation disappeared from view. They represented everywhere government by force, as opposed to government by law.
So far as India! is concerned—the country which Major Osborn hopes will be favourably affected by the work he has written— there seems to be very little probability that Christianity, as disseminated by Europeans, will ever secure the ascendency over tribal or national life which either Buddhism or Mohammedanism has attained. The achievements of the Christian religion thus far have been chiefly among the lower classes, who, as in all other countries, having nothing to lose, readily accept revolutionary changes in their politics or religion.
One of the most thoughtful and appreciative observers of the results of Christian Missions in India, in a most elaborate article, which has attracted considerable attention on both sides of the Atlantic, refers to the present status of Christian converts in the following terms;--
We regard with special interest, but also with special anxiety, the progress which the native Church that has been planted in some districts in India is making towards maturity. It is already distinguished for docility and liberality; but we should wish to see it, on the one hand, freer from inherited faults and failings, and, on the other, more self-reliant, more progressive, more comprehensive, extending with equal zeal and rapidity anongst the higher and the lower classes. At present too large a proportion of the native converts belong to the lower classes and the aboriginal tribes. . . . . When Hindus have become Christians, they have not at the same time become English people, and that means a great deal. It means they have not ceased to be timid, and they have not become self-reliant, high spirited, and manly.[19]
The rationale of this state of things is given by Mr. Bosworth Smith as follows:--
In India Mohammedans make converts by hundreds from among the Hindus, while Christians with difficulty make ten; and this, partly at least, because they receive their converts on terms of entire social equality, while Europeans, in spite of all the efforts of missionaries to the contrary, seem either unwilling or unable to treat their converts as other than inferiors. The Hindu who becomes a Christian loses, therefore, his own cherished caste without being admitted into that of his rulers. The Hindu who turns Mohammedan loses his narrow caste, but he becomes a member of the brotherhood of Islam.
If a pariah becomes a Muslim he may rise to the throne. The pariah who turns Christian is a pariah still.
Footnotes:
18 Essays on Criticism, p. 298.
19 Quarterly Review, April, 1875.
18 Essays on Criticism, p. 298.
19 Quarterly Review, April, 1875.
An able and liberal writer in the Quarterly endorses this sad view of things. He says:--
A considerable portion of the prejudice with which native Christians are often regarded is owing, we believe, to pride of race. If caste pride prevails largely amongst natives, pride of race prevails quite as largely amongst Europeans. Many of the English in India regard all natives with indiscriminate aversion.
The only Christian effort or quasi-Christian effort which seems to make any way among the higher classes is that inaugurated by Keshub Chunder Sen, but it would seem that his efforts do not find much favour in the eyes of the missionaries, who “feel towards him as Athanasius might have felt towards Ulfilas, the Arian Bishop of the Goths.” [20]
Major Osborn no doubt gives a correct account of the results thus far achieved by British rule in India in the following vigorous passage:--
What we have done for India is to convert it into a gigantic model prison. The discipline we have established is admirable, but the people know they are prisoners, and they hate us their jailers. And until a prison is found to be an effective school for the inculcation of virtue, and a jailer a successful evangelist, it is folly to expect the regeneration of India. Reports on her material and moral progress will, of course, continue to be written; but if wo estimate the effects of British rule, not by trade statistics, but by its results on the spirits of men, we shall find that the races of India have declined in courage and manliness, and all those qualities which produce a vigorous nation, in proportion to the period they have been subjected to the blighting influence of an alien despotism. There is no human power which can avail to arrest the progress of decay in a people bereft of political freedom, except the restitution of that freedom. This sentence of doom glares forth from the records of all past history, like the writing of fire on the wall of Belshazzar’s palace. It is an hallucination to suppose that British rule in India is a reversal of the inexorable decree.
Strange that one thus capable of appreciating the situation did not strive, by making more adequate preparation for the work he undertook, to do justice to the creed of so large a portion of his fellow-subjects, and thus, as far as in him lay, to diminish by literary tact and fairness the bitterness of grievances, which he admits to be real, but which he alleges can never be removed by the present social and political agencies!
We think we can understand, however, how difficult it must be for a member of the conquering race, especially one of Major Osborn’s calling, to entertain any practical sympathy with the feelings and aspirations of the subject race. It would seem that the very qualities which render Anglo- Saxons irresistible as conquerors—that unrelenting sternness and uncompromising hardness —disqualify them for the subtle and delicate task of assimilating subject races and winning their confidence and affection.
Such a work as Major Osborn has proposed to write is no doubt greatly needed; but, until either he himself, or someone else of similar literary aspirations, and at his point of influence, conceives the proper spirit and method which should be brought to the execution of - so important a task, we must recommend British officers and intelligent Mohammedans in India to study the valuable work of Mr. Bosworth Smith as a natural and genuine product of the advancing civilisation of the age, supplying at once an interesting illustration of the liberal and tolerant spirit of Christianity, and a most effective agency in the noble work of bringing about that mutual understanding and goodwill, which it would appear is more needed in India than in any other country in the world, between the comparatively small numbers who govern and the millions over whom it is their lot to bear rule.
A considerable portion of the prejudice with which native Christians are often regarded is owing, we believe, to pride of race. If caste pride prevails largely amongst natives, pride of race prevails quite as largely amongst Europeans. Many of the English in India regard all natives with indiscriminate aversion.
The only Christian effort or quasi-Christian effort which seems to make any way among the higher classes is that inaugurated by Keshub Chunder Sen, but it would seem that his efforts do not find much favour in the eyes of the missionaries, who “feel towards him as Athanasius might have felt towards Ulfilas, the Arian Bishop of the Goths.” [20]
Major Osborn no doubt gives a correct account of the results thus far achieved by British rule in India in the following vigorous passage:--
What we have done for India is to convert it into a gigantic model prison. The discipline we have established is admirable, but the people know they are prisoners, and they hate us their jailers. And until a prison is found to be an effective school for the inculcation of virtue, and a jailer a successful evangelist, it is folly to expect the regeneration of India. Reports on her material and moral progress will, of course, continue to be written; but if wo estimate the effects of British rule, not by trade statistics, but by its results on the spirits of men, we shall find that the races of India have declined in courage and manliness, and all those qualities which produce a vigorous nation, in proportion to the period they have been subjected to the blighting influence of an alien despotism. There is no human power which can avail to arrest the progress of decay in a people bereft of political freedom, except the restitution of that freedom. This sentence of doom glares forth from the records of all past history, like the writing of fire on the wall of Belshazzar’s palace. It is an hallucination to suppose that British rule in India is a reversal of the inexorable decree.
Strange that one thus capable of appreciating the situation did not strive, by making more adequate preparation for the work he undertook, to do justice to the creed of so large a portion of his fellow-subjects, and thus, as far as in him lay, to diminish by literary tact and fairness the bitterness of grievances, which he admits to be real, but which he alleges can never be removed by the present social and political agencies!
We think we can understand, however, how difficult it must be for a member of the conquering race, especially one of Major Osborn’s calling, to entertain any practical sympathy with the feelings and aspirations of the subject race. It would seem that the very qualities which render Anglo- Saxons irresistible as conquerors—that unrelenting sternness and uncompromising hardness —disqualify them for the subtle and delicate task of assimilating subject races and winning their confidence and affection.
Such a work as Major Osborn has proposed to write is no doubt greatly needed; but, until either he himself, or someone else of similar literary aspirations, and at his point of influence, conceives the proper spirit and method which should be brought to the execution of - so important a task, we must recommend British officers and intelligent Mohammedans in India to study the valuable work of Mr. Bosworth Smith as a natural and genuine product of the advancing civilisation of the age, supplying at once an interesting illustration of the liberal and tolerant spirit of Christianity, and a most effective agency in the noble work of bringing about that mutual understanding and goodwill, which it would appear is more needed in India than in any other country in the world, between the comparatively small numbers who govern and the millions over whom it is their lot to bear rule.
Footnotes:
20 Müller's Chips, vol. iv, p. 274.
20 Müller's Chips, vol. iv, p. 274.
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