Muhammad and IslamismPrayer for the Spirits
Parisian Society of Spiritist Studies, May 4
th, 1866 – medium Mr. V…
There are sometimes, opinions in which we believe and that move on to the state of accepted ideas, about people and things, however erroneous they may be, because we believe it to be more convenient to accept them ready and finished. That is the case with Muhammad and his religion, from which one knows almost only the legendary side. The antagonism of beliefs, be it by the spirit of party or ignorance, thought to be appropriate to point out to the points that are more susceptible to criticism, many times and on purpose leaving in the shadow the most favorable parts.
As for the impartial and disinterested public, one must say in their favor that they missed the necessary elements to judge by themselves. The books that could have enlightened them, written in a language only known to scientists, were inaccessible to them; and since the public had no direct interest, they took the word for what they were told, without asking. It resulted that many times people made a false or ridicule idea about the founder of Islamism, based on prejudices that found no contradiction in the discussion.
The perseverant and conscientious works of some wise modern orientalists, such as Caussin de Perceval, in France, Dr. W. Muir, in England, G. Weil and Sprenger, in Germany, today allow the question to be faced by its true prism.
[1] Thanks to them, Muhammad is shown completely different from the popular tales. The considerable place that his religion occupies today in humanity, and its political influence today, make this study a necessity. The diversity of religions was, for a long time, one of the main causes of antagonism among the peoples. At the moment when they have a manifest tendency to come together, making the barrier that separate them disappear, it is useful to know what, in their beliefs, can favor or delay the application of the great principle of universal fraternity. From all religions, Islamism is, at first glance, the one that seems to contain the greatest obstacles to the approximation. From that point of view, as it can be seen, this subject should not be indifferent to the Spiritists, and that is the reason why we believe it to be necessary to be treated here.
We always misjudge a religion when we take our personal beliefs as our exclusive starting point, because then it is difficult to keep ourselves away from a feeling of partiality in the appreciation of the principles. To understand its strong and weak points it is necessary to see it from a more elevated point of view, embracing all its causes and effects. If we refer to the environment where it originated, we will almost always find there, if not a complete justification, at least a reason for being. Above all, it is necessary to penetrate the first thought of the founder and the motives that guided him. Far from us the intention of absolving Muhammad from all his faults, as well as his religion that hurts the most vulgar common sense; but we owe it to the truth that it would also be as little logical to judge that religion based on what fanaticism made out of it, as it would be to judge Christianity for the way some Christians practice it. It is quite certain that if the Muslims followed in spirit the Koran that the Prophet gave them as a guide, they would be, in more than one aspect, quite different from what they are. However, this book, so sacred to them that they only touch it with respect, it is read and read again incessantly; enthusiasts even know it by heart. But how many understand it? The comment it, but from the point of view of preconceived ideas, from which they make it a matter of conscience to deviate; so, they only see what they want to see. In fact, the figurative language allows to find there all that one wants and the priests that, there as elsewhere, rule with a blind faith, do not seek what could bother them. It is not, therefore, the doctors of the law that must be inquired about the spirit of the law of Muhammad.
Christians also have the Gospel, much more explicit than the Koran, as a moral code, something that did not preclude them from torturing and burning thousands of victims, in the name of this very Gospel, converting a law full of charity into a weapon of intolerance and persecution. Can we demand that semi barbaric people make a healthier interpretation of sacred scriptures than civilized Christians do?
To appreciate the works of Muhammad it is necessary to go back to the source, get to know the man and the people he had assigned himself the mission of regenerating, and only then we will understand that for the environment where he lived, his religious code was a real progress.
Let us look at the region first.
In immemorial times, Arabia
[2] was inhabited by several tribes, almost all nomadic, eternally at war against each other, supplementing with plunder the little wealth provided by painful work in a scorching climate. The herds were their main resources; some dedicated to commerce made by caravans that originated in the South, going to Syria of Mesopotamia. Since the center of the peninsula was almost inaccessible, the caravans hardly moved away from the coast; the main ones went to Hijaz, a region that forms, in the shores of the Red Sea, a narrow strip of five hundred leagues long, separated from the center by a mountain chain, an extension of that of Palestine. The Arabic word “
hidjaz” means barrier, and it was said of the chain of mountains that separate this region from the rest of Arabia. Hijaz and Yemen, to the South, are the most fertile regions; the center is an almost vast desert.
Those tribes had established markets to which all parts of Arabia converged. Common businesses were regulated there; enemy tribes exchanged their war prisoners, and many times resolved their differences by arbitration. Strangely enough, these tribes barbarous as they were, loved poetry. In these meeting places, during their leisure time in the intervals between meetings, there were challenges between the most skillful poets of each tribe. The contest was judged by the crowds and it was a great honor for the tribe to conquer victory. The poetry of exceptional merit was transcribed in golden letters and fixated on the sacred walls of Kaaba, in Mecca, that originated the name “
Moudhahabat” or golden poems.
As it took some time to go to these markets and return safely, there was four months in the year when fighting was forbidden, and caravans and travelers could not be disturbed. Fighting in those reserved months was regarded as a sacrilege that resulted in the most terrible retaliations. The check points to the caravans, where there was water and trees, gradually became cities, and the main ones in Hedjaz are Mecca and Yathrib, today Medina.
Most of the tribes claimed to be descendent of Abraham. This patriarch, therefore, was highly considered among them. Their language, given the similarity with Hebrew, truly attested an identity of origin between the Arabic and the Jewish people. But it does no appear less certain that the south of Arabia had its indigenous inhabitants.
Among those populations there was a belief, held to be true, that the famous Zamzam well, in the Mecca valley, was the one that gushed out the angel Gabriel, when Hagar, lost in the desert, was about to die of thirsty with her son Ismael. Tradition also held that Abraham, coming to see his exiled son, had built with his own hands, not far from that well, the Kaaba, a nine-room squared house, nine cubits
[3] high, by thirty two cubits long and thirty two cubits wide. This house, that was religiously maintained, became a place of devotion and a duty to visit, and transformed into a temple. The caravans stopped there naturally, and the pilgrims took advantage of their company to travel more safely. Thus, pilgrimages to Mecca have existed since immemorial times. Muhammad just consecrated them and turned compulsory an already established custom. For that he had a political objective that we will see later.
In one of the external angles of the temple was encrusted the famous
black stone, brought from heavens by the angel Gabriel, as it is said, to mark the starting point of the seven turns that the pilgrims must make around the Kaaba. It is claimed that, originally, that stone was dazzlingly white, but it was blackened by the touch of the sinners. In the words of the travelers that saw it, it is not more than six inches high by eight inches long. It would appear that it is a simple piece of basalt, or perhaps an aerolite
[4], that would explain its celestial origin, according to popular beliefs.
Built by Abraham, the Kaaba had no closing door and was at the ground level. It was destroyed by the eruption of a torrent around the year 150 of the Christian era, and reconstructed and elevated above ground level, to have it sheltered from similar incidents. About fifty years later, a tribal chief from Yemen covered it with a precious fabric and had it fitted with a door and a lock, to keep safe the precious gifts constantly accumulated by the pity of the pilgrims.
The veneration of the Arabs for the Kaaba and the territory that surrounded it was so great that they had not dared building houses there. That much respected area, called the Haram, embraced the whole valley of Mecca, whose circumference is about fifteen leagues. The honor of keeping this revered temple was much envied; the tribes competed for it and frequently such attribution was a conquered right. In the fifth century, Cossayy, chief of the Coraychites tribe, fifth predecessor of Muhammad, then became the Lord of Haram, invested of religious and civil power, and had a palace built around the Kaala, allowing those of his tribe to establish there. That is how the city of Mecca was founded. It seems that he was the first one to place a wooden covering on top of the Kaaba. Today the Kaaba is in the area of a Mosque, and Mecca is a city of about forty thousand inhabitants, after having had a hundred thousand, as it is said.
In the beginning, the religion of the Arabs consisted on the adoration of a unique God, whose will man must thoroughly submit to. Such religion, that was that of Abraham, was called Islam, and those that professed it were called
Muslims, that is, submitted to the will of God. But, little by little pure Islam degenerated in pure idolatry; each tribe had their own gods and idols that were excessively defended with arms, to demonstrate the superiority of their power. These were frequently the causes or pretexts of long and bitter wars among them. The faith of Abraham had, therefore, disappeared among those peoples, despite the respect that they preserved of his memory, or at least, it had been disfigured so much that, in reality, it no longer existed.
The veneration towards the objects considered sacred had gone down to the most absurd fetishism; the worship of matter had replaced that of the spirit. Supernatural powers were attributed to the most vulgar objects, consecrated by superstition to an image, a statue; having thought abandoned the principle by its symbol, piety became only a serious of meticulous exterior practices, the slightest violation of which was regarded as a sacrilege.
Nonetheless, in certain tribes there were still some worshipers of the only God, men of piety that practiced the most complete submission to the supreme will and condemned the cult of the idols. They were called
Hanyfes. These were the true Muslims, that had preserved the pure faith of Islam. But they were in small numbers and had little influence upon the minds of the masses.
Long ago Jewish colonies had established in the Hejaz and had conquered a certain number of proselytes to Judaism, mainly among the Hanyfes. Christianity also had its representatives and propagators there in the first centuries of our era, but neither of these beliefs produced profound and lasting roots there. Idolatry had become the dominant religion. It suited better for its diversity, turbulent independence, and the infinite division of tribes, that practiced it with the most violent fanaticism. To triumph over this political and religious anarchy it was necessary a man of genius, capable of imposing himself by his energy and determination, skillful enough to take into account the social mores and character of those peoples, and whose mission was raised to their eyes by the prestige of his qualities of prophet. That man was Muhammad.
Muhammad was born in Mecca, on August 27
th, 570 of the Christian era, in the so called year of the elephant. He was not, as commonly thought, a man of obscure condition. On the contrary, he belonged to a powerful and considered family of the Coraychite tribe, one of the most important in Arabia and one that then dominated in Mecca. He comes down from a direct line of Ismael, son of Abraham and Agar. His last predecessors, Cossayy, Abd-Menab, Hachim and Abd-el-Moutalib, his grandfather, had distinguished themselves by excellent qualities and high functions that they had fulfilled. His mother, Amina, was from a noble Coraychite family, and also descended from Cossayy. His father, Abd-Allah, died two months before his birth; he was then raised with much love by his mother that left him orphan when he was six years old; then by his grandfather Abd-el-Moutalib who loved him very much and often liked to predict high destinies for him; he died two years later. Despite the position that his family had occupied, Muhammad spent his infancy and youth much close to misery; his mother had left him, as the only inheritance, a flock of sheep, five camels and a faithful black slave, that had taken care of him and to whom he maintained a strong attachment. After the death of his grandfather, he was taken in by his uncles whose flocks he shepherded until the age of twenty; he also followed them in their fighting expeditions against other tribes; however, being of a kind a pacific mood, he did not take an active part in them, without, however, fleeing or being afraid of danger, limiting himself to collect the arrows. When he reached to heights of his glory, he liked to remember that Moses and David, both prophets, had also been shepherds like him.
He had a meditative and dreamy spirit; his character was a premature strength and maturity, of extreme righteousness, of a perfect selflessness and irreproachable morals, that gave his comrades such a trust in him that he was nicknamed El-Amin, “the sure man, the faithful man”. Although young and poor, he was summoned to the assemblies of the tribe for the most important businesses. He took part of an association formed by the most important Coraychite families, to prevent disorders of war, protect the weak and making them do justice. He always prided himself for having contributed with that, and in the last years of his life he always saw himself bound by the oath he had taken on this subject in his youth. He used to say that he was always ready to respond to the appeal of the most obscure man in the name of that oath, and that he did not want, even for the most beautiful horses of Arabia, to fail in the faith that he had sworn. By this oath, the associates swore, before a vengeful deity, that they would take the defense of the oppressed, and that they would seek the punishment of the guilty, as long as there was a drop of water in the ocean.
Physically, Muhammad was a little above average height, of strong built; his head was large; his physiognomy was pleasant, but not beautiful; he had an air of calm and tranquility, marked by a smooth seriousness.
At the age of twenty-five he married his cousin Khadidja, a rich widow that was at least fifteen years older than him; he conquered her trust for the intelligence and integrity with which he had conducted in one of his caravans. She was a superior woman. It was a constantly happy marriage that only ended with her death at the age sixty-four. Muhammad was then forty-nine years old and that loss was the cause of profound pain to him. His habits changed after Khadida’s death. He married several women; he had twelve or thirteen legitimate marriages, leaving nine widows after his death. This was, incontestably, a capital mistake, whose consequences we will see later.
Until he was forty years old, nothing sticks out from his pacific life. There was only one single fact that brought him out of obscurity. He was then thirty fives years old. The Coraychites decided to rebuild the Kaaba that risked collapsing. It took a lot of work to appease the differences that arouse from family rivalries, through a division of work for their desired participation. Those conflicts reappeared with extreme violence when time had come to reinstall the famous black stone. Nobody wanted to yield to their rights. The works had been interrupted and they rushed to arms from all sides. They agreed on a proposal by the oldest man to rely on the decision of the first person that would come into the room of deliberations: it was Muhammad. When they saw him, everybody shouted: “El Amin”, “El Amin” – the firm and faithful man; they waited for his assessment. By his presence of mind, he resolved the issue. He spread his mantle on the ground and placed the stone on it, then asked the four main chiefs of tribes to each hold a corner of the mantle and raise it, all together, up to the height that the stone should occupy, that is four or five feet above ground. He then took it and placed it with his own hands. The assistants declared satisfied and peace was restored.
Muhammad liked to walk around Mecca, and every year, during the sacred months of truce, he used to retire to mount Hira, in a small cave, where he indulged in meditation. He was forty years old when in one of his retreats he had a vision in his sleep. The angel Gabriel appeared to him, showing him a book that he was advised to read. Muhammad resisted that order three times, only agreeing to read to escape the embarrassment that he felt. When he woke up, he felt, he said, that “
a book had been written in his heart.” The meaning of this expression is obvious. It means that he had received the inspiration of a book. Later, however, it was taken literally, as it often happens to things that are said in figurative language.
Another event demonstrates to what errors of interpretation ignorance and fanaticism may lead. Somewhere in the Koran, Muhammad says: “
Have we not opened your heart and lifted the burden from your shoulders?” These words, related to an accident that happened when Muhammad was still a boy, gave rise to a fable propagated among the believers and taught by the priests, as a miraculous fact, that two angels opened the belly of the child and removed a black spot from his heart, a sign of the original sin. Should Muhammad be accused for this absurd or those that did not understand him?
So, it is with a host of ridiculous tales on which he is accused of having based his religion. That is why we do not hesitate to say that an enlightened and impartial Christian is better able to give a sound interpretation of the Koran than a fanatic Muslim.
Be that as it may, Muhammad was profoundly disturbed by his vision, that he promptly told his wife. On returning to mount Hira, in a very agitated state, he thought to be possessed by evil Spirits and to avoid the danger he dreaded he would jump from the top of a rock, when he heard a voice that seemed to come from heavens, that said: “
O Muhammad, you are the messenger of God; I am the angel Gabriel!” Then, he raised his eyes and saw the angel, in a human form, that gradually disappeared in the horizon. That new sight only increased his confusion. He told Khadidja who tried to calm him down; but, unsure herself, she sought her cousin Varaka, an old man, famous for his wisdom and converted to Christianity who said to her: “If what you are telling me is true, your husband was visited by the great Nâmous, that once visited Moses, and he will be a prophet to this people. Announce it to him and calm him down.” Sometime later Varaka, having met Muhammad, had him telling his visions, and repeated the words he said to his wife, adding: “
They will treat you as an impostor and will chase you away; they will fight you violently. May I live up to that time so that I can assist you in that struggle!”
What results from this and many other facts is that Muhammad’s mission was not a premeditated calculation from his part; it was confirmed by others before it was confirmed by him. It took him a long time to be convinced, but from the time he was persuaded he took it very seriously. He wished for a new apparition o the angel to be convinced, and that took two years according to some, and six months, according to others. This interval of uncertainty and hesitation is called “
fitreh” by the Muslims. During that whole period his mind was taken by the liveliest perplexities and tremors. He thought he was about to lose his mind and that was also the opinion of some of those around him. He was subjected to lapses and syncop that modern writers, without other proofs beyond their personal opinion, attributed to epileptic attacks and that could rather be effect of an ecstatic, cataleptic or spontaneous somnambulistic state. In these moments of extracorporeal lucidity, as it is known, strange phenomena were frequently produced, phenomena that Spiritism perfectly accounts for.
To the eyes of certain persons, he would be crazy; others saw in those phenomena, singular to them, something of supernatural that placed man above humanity. When the action of the Providence is admitted in human affairs, says Mr. Barthelemy Sainte-Hilaire (page 102), one must not refuse to find it in these dominating intelligences that appear from time to time to enlighten and guide the rest of men.”
The Koran is not a book written by Muhammad with a cool head and in a continual manner, but the register made by his friends of the words he said when he was inspired. In those moments, in which he was not the master, he fell on an extraordinary and scary state; sweat flown from his forehead; hi eyes turned bloody red; he moaned and the crises often ended by a syncope that lasted more or less long, and that sometimes happened amidst the crowd, and even when riding his camel or at home. The inspiration was irregular and instantaneous, and he could not foresee when he would be seized.
From what we know today of this state, from a number of analogous examples, it is likely that, particularly in the beginning, he was not aware of what he said, and that if his word had not been collected, they would have been lost. Later, however, when he took the role of reformer seriously, it is obvious that he spoke with more knowledge of cause, and that he had mixed the product of his own thoughts with the inspirations, according to the places and circumstances, the passions or feelings that agitated him, given the objective that wanted to achieve, perhaps in good faith believing that he spoke in the name of God.
These detached fragments, collected at various times, adding up to 114, form in the Koran the chapters called “suratas”. They remained scattered during his life, and only after his death is that they were gathered in an official body of doctrine, by the care of Abu-Becr and Omar. From those sudden inspirations, collected as they occurred, resulted an absolute lack of order and method. The most diverse subject matters are treated there without any order, sometimes in the same surata, and present such a confusion and numerous repetitions that a sequential reading is painful and tedious, to whoever that is not a faithful.
According to the vulgar belief, which has become an article of faith, the pages of the Koran were written in heaven and brought ready-made to Muhammad by the angel Gabriel, because in a passage it is said: "
Your Lord is mighty and merciful, and the Koran is a revelation from the master of the universe. The faithful Spirit (the angel Gabriel) brought it from above, and placed it in your heart, O Muhammad, that you may become an apostle.” Muhammad expresses himself in the same way with regard to the book of Moses and the Gospel; he says (sura III, verse 2): “
He sent down the Pentateuch and the Gospel from above, to serve as guidance for men”; Meaning by that that these two books had been inspired by God to Moses and to Jesus, as He had inspired him the Koran.
His first sermons were secret for two years, and in that period he was associated to about fifty followers among family and friends. The first ones converted to the new faith were Khadidja, his wife, Ali, his adopted child for ten years, Zeid Varaka and Abu-Becr, his closest friend that should be his successor. He was forty-three years old when he started preaching publicly, and from that moment on the prediction made by Varaka came true. His religion, founded on the unity of God and the reform of certain abuses, and being the collapse of idolatry and of those that lived on that, the Corayshites, guardians of the Kaaba and the national cult, rose up against him. First, they treated him as deranged; then they accused him of sacrilege and stirred up the people. He was persecuted and the persecution became so violent that his followers had to seek refuge in the Abyssinia on two occasions. Nevertheless, he always opposed the attacks with calm, cold-blood, and moderation. His sect grew and his adversaries, seeing that they could not eliminate it by force, decided to discredit it by slander. He was not spared by mockery and ridicule. As it was seeing, there were many poets among the Arabs; they handled satire very well and their verses were read with eagerness. It was the means employed by malevolent criticism, and they did not fail to use it against him. Since he resisted it all, his enemies finally resourced to a plot to kill him, and he just escaped the danger that threatened him by fleeing. It was when he sought refuge in Yathrib, later called Medina (Medinet-en-Nabi, the city of the prophet), in 622, and the Hegira or the era of the Muslims dates from that time. He had sent all of his followers from Mecca to that city, in anticipation and in small groups to avoid suspicion, being the last one to leave with Abu-Becr and Ali, his most devoted disciples, when he learned that the others were safe.
At that time a new phase begins in the life of Muhammad. From a simple prophet that he was, he was forced to become a warrior.
(continues in the next issue)
[1] Mr. Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire, from the Institute, summarized these works in an interesting book entitled Muhammad and the Koran, I volume in-12, price 3.5 francs, Didier Bookstore.
[2] The name Saud Arabia was established in 1932 only (T.N.)
[3] One cubit is equivalent to about 45 cm. It is one of the oldest units of measurement, based on the distance between the elbow and the tip of the fingers. [4] A stony meteorite (Merriam-Webster Dictionary, T.N.)
