A SHORT HISTORY OF THE WORLD BY H. G. WELLS43.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.