August 23, 2022

43.MUHAMMAD AND ISLAM | A SHORT HISTORY OF THE WORLD | H. G. WELLS

A SHORT HISTORY OF THE WORLD
BY
H. G. WELLS
43.MUHAMMAD AND ISLAM

A prophetic amateur of history surveying the world in the opening of the seventh century might have concluded very reasonably that it was only a question of a few centuries before the whole of Europe and Asia fell under Mongolian domination. There were no signs of order or union in Western Europe, and the Byzantine and Persian Empires were manifestly bent upon a mutual destruction. India also was divided and wasted. On the other hand China was a steadily expanding empire which probably at that time exceeded all Europe in population, and the Turkish people who were growing to power in Central Asia were disposed to work in accord with China. And such a prophecy would not have been an altogether vain one. A time was to come in the thirteenth century when a Mongolian overlord would rule from the Danube to the Pacific, and Turkish dynasties were destined to reign over the entire Byzantine and Persian Empires, over Egypt and most of India.

Where our prophet would have been most likely to have erred would have

been in under-estimating the recuperative power of the Latin end of

Europe and in ignoring the latent forces of the Arabian desert. Arabia

would have seemed what it had been for times immemorial, the refuge of

small and bickering nomadic tribes. No Semitic people had founded an

empire now for more than a thousand years.

Then suddenly the Bedouin flared out for a brief century of splendour.

They spread their rule and language from Spain to the boundaries of

China. They gave the world a new culture. They created a religion that

is still to this day one of the most vital forces in the world.

The man who fired this Arab flame appears first in history as the young

husband of the widow of a rich merchant of the town of Mecca, named

Muhammad. Until he was forty he did very little to distinguish himself

in the world. He seems to have taken considerable interest in

religious discussion. Mecca was a pagan city at that time worshipping

in particular a black stone, the Kaaba, of great repute throughout all

Arabia and a centre of pilgrimages; but there were great numbers of

Jews in the country—indeed all the southern portion of Arabia professed

the Jewish faith—and there were Christian churches in Syria.

About forty Muhammad began to develop prophetic characteristics like

those of the Hebrew prophets twelve hundred years before him. He

talked first to his wife of the One True God, and of the rewards and

punishments of virtue and wickedness. There can be no doubt that his

thoughts were very strongly influenced by Jewish and Christian ideas.

He gathered about him a small circle of believers and presently began

to preach in the town against the prevalent idolatry. This made him

extremely unpopular with his fellow townsmen because the pilgrimages to

the Kaaba were the chief source of such prosperity as Mecca enjoyed.

He became bolder and more definite in his teaching, declaring himself

to be the last chosen prophet of God entrusted with a mission to

perfect religion. Abraham, he declared, and Jesus Christ were his

forerunners. He had been chosen to complete and perfect the revelation

of God’s will.

He produced verses which he said had been communicated to him by an

angel, and he had a strange vision in which he was taken up through the

Heavens to God and instructed in his mission.

AT PRAYER IN THE DESERT

AT PRAYER IN THE DESERT

_Photo: Lehnert & Landrock_

As his teaching increased in force the hostility of his fellow townsmen

increased also. At last a plot was made to kill him; but he escaped

with his faithful friend and disciple, Abu Bekr, to the friendly town

of Medina which adopted his doctrine. Hostilities followed between

Mecca and Medina which ended at last in a treaty. Mecca was to adopt

the worship of the One True God and accept Muhammad as his prophet,

_but the adherents of the new faith were still to make the pilgrimage

to Mecca_ just as they had done when they were pagans. So Muhammad

established the One True God in Mecca without injuring its pilgrim

traffic. In 629 Muhammad returned to Mecca as its master, a year after

he had sent out these envoys of his to Heraclius, Tai-tsung, Kavadh and

all the rulers of the earth.

LOOKING ACROSS THE SEA OF SAND

LOOKING ACROSS THE SEA OF SAND

_Photo: Lehnert & Landrock_

Then for four years more until his death in 632, Muhammad spread his

power over the rest of Arabia. He married a number of wives in his

declining years, and his life on the whole was by modern standards

unedifying. He seems to have been a man compounded of very

considerable vanity, greed, cunning, self-deception and quite sincere

religious passion. He dictated a book of injunctions and expositions,

the Koran, which he declared was communicated to him from God.

Regarded as literature or philosophy the Koran is certainly unworthy of

its alleged Divine authorship.

Yet when the manifest defects of Muhammad’s life and writings have been

allowed for, there remains in Islam, this faith he imposed upon the

Arabs, much power and inspiration. One is its uncompromising

monotheism; its simple enthusiastic faith in the rule and fatherhood of

God and its freedom from theological complications. Another is its

complete detachment from the sacrificial priest and the temple. It is

an entirely prophetic religion, proof against any possibility of

relapse towards blood sacrifices. In the Koran the limited and

ceremonial nature of the pilgrimage to Mecca is stated beyond the

possibility of dispute, and every precaution was taken by Muhammad to

prevent the deification of himself after his death. And a third

element of strength lay in the insistence of Islam upon the perfect

brotherhood and equality before God of all believers, whatever their

colour, origin or status.

These are the things that made Islam a power in human affairs. It has

been said that the true founder of the Empire of Islam was not so much

Muhammad as his friend and helper, Abu Bekr. If Muhammad, with his

shifty character, was the mind and imagination of primitive Islam, Abu

Bekr was its conscience and its will. Whenever Muhammad wavered Abu

Bekr sustained him. And when Muhammad died, Abu Bekr became Caliph (=

successor), and with that faith that moves mountains, he set himself

simply and sanely to organize the subjugation of the whole world to

Allah—with little armies of 3,000 or 4,000 Arabs—according to those

letters the prophet had written from Medina in 628 to all the monarchs

of the world.