Spiritist Review - Journal of Psychological Studies - 1866

Allan Kardec

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Muhammad and Islamism

(2nd Article – See August 1866)



It was in Medina that Muhammad had the first mosque built, on which he worked with his own hands, and that he organized a regular worship; he preached there for the first time in 623. All the measures taken by him bore witness to his solicitude and foresight: "A characteristic feature both of man and of his time," says Mr. Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire, is the choice that Muhammad had to make of three poets from Medina, officially charged with defending him against the satires of the poets of Mecca. It was probably not that self-esteem was more excitable in him than it should be, but in a witty and lively nation these attacks had a resonance analogous to that of the newspapers can have today, and they were very dangerous."

We have said that Muhammad was forced to become a warrior; indeed, he was by no means belligerent, as he had proved in the first fifty years of his life. However, barely two years had elapsed since his stay in Medina, when the Coraishites of Mecca, united with the other hostile tribes, came to besiege the city. Muhammad had to defend himself; since that time a war period began for him that lasted ten years, and during which he proved to be a skillful tactician. Among a people to whom war was the normal state, that only knew the right of force, the leader of the new religion needed the prestige of victory to establish his authority, even over his partisans. Persuasion had little sway over those ignorant and turbulent populations; too much leniency would have been taken for weakness. In their minds, a strong God could only be manifested through a strong man, and Christ with his unalterable gentleness would have failed in those regions.

Muhammad was therefore a warrior by force of circumstances, much more than by his character, and he will always have the merit of not having been the provocateur. Once the struggle had begun, he had to win or perish; on this condition alone, he could be accepted as the messenger of God; his enemies had to be struck down to be convinced of the superiority of his God over the idols they worshiped. Except for one of the first battles in which he was wounded, and the Muslims defeated, in 625, his arms were consistently victorious, and within a few years he brought the whole of Arabia under his rule. When he saw his authority seated and idolatry destroyed, he went triumphantly to Mecca, after ten years of exile, followed by nearly a hundred thousand pilgrims, and there made the famous pilgrimage called farewell, of which the rites are scrupulously preserved by the Muslims. He died the same year, two months after his return to Medina, on June 8, 632, at the age of sixty-two.



Muhammad must be judged by authentic and impartial history, not by the ridiculous legends that ignorance and fanaticism have spread about him, or by the paintings of him by those who had an interest in discrediting him by presenting him as a bloodthirsty and cruel ambitious man. Neither should he be held responsible for the excesses of his successors who wanted to conquer the world to the Muslim faith, saber in hand. No doubt there were great spots in the last period of his life; one can reproach him for having in some circumstances abused the right of the victor, and for not always having acted with all the desirable moderation. However, aside from a few acts that our civilization condemns, it must be said, in his defense, that he was much more often human and lenient towards his enemies than vindictive, and that he has repeatedly given proof of a true greatness of soul. It must also be recognized that in the midst of his successes, and when he had reached the highest point of his glory, he was, until his last day, withdrawn into his role of prophet, without ever usurping a despotic temporal authority; he made himself neither king nor potentate, and never, in his private life, he stained himself with any act of cold barbarism, nor of base greed; he has always lived with simplicity, without pomp and luxury, showing himself to be kind and benevolent to everyone. This is history.

If we look back to the time and the environment in which he lived, if we consider especially the persecutions of which he and his family were the object, the relentlessness of his enemies, and the acts of barbarism that they committed against his supporters, can we be surprised that in the intoxication of his victory he sometimes used reprisals? Can we reproach him for having established his religion by iron, among a barbarian people who fought him, when the Bible records, as glorious facts of faith, butcheries of such atrocity that we are tempted to take them for legends? When, a thousand years after him, in the civilized countries of the West, Christians, who had for guide the sublime law of Christ, charging onto peaceful victims, smothering heresies by the pyres, tortures, massacres, and in waves of blood?

If the warlike role of Mahomet was a necessity for him, and if this role can excuse him from certain political acts, it is not the same with respect to other aspects. Until the age of fifty, and as long as his first wife Khadidja lived, fifteen years older than himself, his morals were irreproachable; but from that moment his passions knew no restraint, and it was undoubtedly to justify the abuse he made of them that he consecrated polygamy in his religion. This was his gravest fault, for it was a barrier he raised between Islamism and the civilized world; his religion, therefore, has not been able, after twelve centuries, to cross the boundaries of certain races. It is also the side by which its founder belittles himself the most in our eyes; men of genius always lose their prestige when they allow themselves to be dominated by matter; on the contrary, they grow all the more as they rise above the weaknesses of humanity.

However, moral disruption was such at the time of Muhammad that a radical reform was very difficult among men used to indulge their passions with bestial brutality; we can therefore say that by regulating polygamy, he set limits to disorder and stopped much more serious abuses; but polygamy will nonetheless remain the gnawing worm of Islamism, because it is contrary to the laws of nature. Through the numerical equality of the sexes, nature itself has drawn the limit of unions. By allowing four legitimate women, Muhammad did not think that, for his law to reach the universality of men, the female sex would have to be at least four times more numerous than the male sex.

Despite its imperfections, Islamism was nonetheless a great blessing at the time when it appeared and for the country where it originated, for it founded the cult of the unity of God on the ruins of idolatry. It was the only religion possible for those barbarous peoples from whom one should not ask too great sacrifices to their ideas and their habits. They needed something as simple as the nature in the which they lived; the Christian religion had too many metaphysical subtleties; also all the attempts made during five centuries to implant it in these regions, had completely failed; Judaism itself, too argumentative, had made few proselytes among the Arabs, although the Jews themselves were quite numerous. Superior to those of his race, Muhammad understood the men of his time; to rescue them from the abasement in which they were kept by coarse beliefs descended to stupid fetishism, he gave them a religion appropriate to their needs and their character. This religion was the simplest of all: "Belief in a unique God, almighty, eternal, infinite, present everywhere, magnanimous and merciful, creator of heavens, of the angels and of the earth, Father of man, whom he watches over and fills with goods; rewarding and avenging in another life, where he awaits us to reward or punish us according to our merits; seeing our most secret actions, and presiding over the entire destiny of his creatures that he does not abandon for a single moment, neither in this world nor in the next; the most humble submission and absolute confidence in his holy will” - these are the dogmas.

A for worshiping, it consists of prayer repeated five times a day, fasting and mortifications in the month of Ramadan, and in certain practices, many of which had a hygienic purpose, but which Muhammad turned into a religious obligation, such as daily ablutions, abstention from wine, intoxicating liquors, from the flesh of certain animals, and which the faithful make it a matter of conscience to observe in the most minute details. Friday was adopted as the holy day of the week, and Mecca indicated as the point to which all Muslims should turn when praying. Public service in mosques consists of common prayers, sermons, reading and explanation of the Koran. Circumcision was not instituted by Muhammad but preserved by him; it was already practiced from immemorial times among the Arabs. The prohibition against reproducing by painting or sculpture any living being, men or animals, was made with a view to destroying idolatry and preventing it from being renewed. Finally, the pilgrimage to Mecca, which every believer must accomplish at least once in their life, is a religious act; but he had another goal at that time, a political goal, that of bringing together by a fraternal bond the various enemy tribes, by uniting them in a common feeling of piety in the same holy place.

From a historical point of view, the Muslim religion admits the Old Testament in its entirety up to and including Jesus Christ, whom it recognizes as a prophet. According to Muhammad, Moses and Jesus were messengers of God to teach the truth to men; the gospel, like the law of Sinai, is the word of God; but Christians have twisted its meaning. He declares, in explicit terms, that he brings neither new beliefs nor new worship, but that he comes to re-establish the worship of the one God professed by Abraham. He speaks only with respect for the patriarchs and prophets that preceded him: Moses, David, Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Jesus Christ; of the Pentateuch, the Psalms and the Gospel. These are the books which preceded and prepared the Koran. Far from hiding the borrowings he makes from them, he boasts of them, and their greatness is the basis of his. One can judge of his feelings and the character of his instructions by the following fragment of the last speech which he delivered in Mecca during the farewell pilgrimage, shortly before his death, and preserved in the work of Ibn- Ishâc and Ibn-Ishâm:

“O peoples! listen to my words; because I do not know if, in another year, I will be able to find myself again with you in this place. Be human and fair to each other. May the life and property of each be inviolable and sacred to others; let him who has received a deposit return it faithfully to who gave it to him. You will appear before your Lord, and he will hold you accountable for your actions. Treat women well, they are your helpers, they cannot do anything on their own. You have taken them as an asset which God has entrusted to you, and you have taken possession of them with divine words.

O peoples! listen to my words and fix them in your minds. I have revealed everything to you; I leave you a law which will preserve you forever from error, if you remain faithfully attached to it; a clear and positive law, the book of God and the example of his prophet.

O peoples! listen to my words and fix them in your minds. Know that every Muslim is the brother of the other; that all Muslims are brothers among themselves, that you are all equal among yourselves, and that you are but a family of brothers. Beware of injustice; no one should commit it to the detriment of his brother: it would entail your eternal loss.

O God! have I completed my message and completed my assignment? - The crowd surrounding him replied, "Yes, you did." And Muhammad exclaimed: O God, deign to receive this testimony! "

Here is now the judgment passed on Muhammad, and the influence of his doctrine, by one of his historiographers, Mr. G. Weil, in his German work entitled: Muhammad der Prophet, pages 400 and following:

The doctrine of God and of the holy destinies of man, preached by Muhammad in a country which was given to the most brutal idolatry, and that hardly had an idea of the immortality of the soul, all the more must reconcile us with him, in spite of his weaknesses and his faults, that his particular life could not exert on his followers any wicked influence. Far from ever giving himself as a model, he always wanted to be regarded as a privileged being, whom God allowed to be placed above the common law; and, indeed, he has been viewed more and more in this special role.

We would be unjust and blind if we did not recognize that his people owe him something yet more true and good. He united, in one great nation, the innumerable tribes of Arabs hitherto enemies among themselves, fraternally believing in God. Instead of the most violent arbitrariness, of the law of force, and of individual struggle, he established an unshakeable law, which, despite its imperfections, still forms the basis of all the laws of Islamism. He limited the vengeance of blood that before him extended to the most distant relatives, limiting it to the one alone whom the judges recognized as a murderer. He did relevant services, above all to the fair sex, not only by protecting girls against the atrocious custom which often allowed them to be immolated by their fathers, but also by protecting women against the parents of their husbands, who inherited them as a material thing, and by defending them against the mistreatment of men. He restricted polygamy, allowing believers only four legitimate wives, instead of ten, as was customary, especially in Medina. Without having fully emancipated the slaves, he served them good and useful in many ways. For the poor, he not only always recommended beneficence towards them, but he formally established a tax in their favor, and he gave them a special share in the booty and in the tribute. By prohibiting gambling, wine and all intoxicating drinks, he has prevented many vices, many excesses, many quarrels and many disorders.

Although we do not regard Muhammad as a true prophet, because he used violent and impure means to propagate his religion, because he was too weak to submit himself to the common law, and because he called himself the seal of the prophets, while declaring that God could always replace what He had given with something better, he has the merit, nevertheless, of having spread the most beautiful doctrines of the Old and of the New Testament onto a people not enlightened by any ray of faith, and as such he must appear, even to non-Mohammedan eyes, as an envoy of God.”

As a complement to this study, we will quote some textual passages from the Koran, borrowed from Savary's translation:

“In the name of the merciful and magnanimous God. - Praise the God, ruler of the worlds. - Mercy is his share. - He is the king on the day of judgment. - We adore you, Lord, and we implore your assistance. - Lead us in the path of salvation, - in the path of those whom you have filled with your bounties; - of those who did not deserve your anger and preserved themselves from error. (Introduction, Sura I)

O mortals, worship the Lord who created you and your fathers, so that you may fear him; who gave you the earth for a bed, and the sky for a roof; who sent down the rain from the heavens to produce all the fruits that you eat. Do not give an associate to the Highest; you know it. (Sura II, v. 19 and 20)

Why don't you believe in God? You were dead, he gave you life; he will extinguish your days, and he will rekindle the torch. You will return to him. - He created all that is on the earth for your refuge. Then looking up to the firmament, he formed the seven heavens. His science embraces the universe. (Sura II, v. 26, 27).

East and West belong to God; wherever you look you will recognize his face. He fills the universe with his vastness and his science. - He formed the earth and the heavens. Does he want to produce any work? He says: “Be done; And the work is done. - The ignorant say: "If God does not speak to us, or if you do not show us a miracle, we will not believe." Thus spoke their fathers; their hearts are alike. We have brought forth enough wonders for those who have faith. (Sura II, v. 109 to 112).

God will only demand of each of us according to their strength. Each will have their good works in their favor, and against them the evil they have done. Lord do not punish us for mistakes made by forgetting. Forgive us our sins; do not place on us the burden that our fathers carried. Do not charge us beyond our strength. Show forgiveness and indulgence for your servants. Have compassion on us; you are our help. Help us against the unfaithful nations. (Sura II, v. 296).

O God, supreme King, you give and take away the crowns and the power at your pleasure. You raise and you lower humans to your will; the good is in your hands: you are the Almighty. - You change day into night, and night into day. You bring out life from the bosom of death, and death from the bosom of life. You pour your infinite treasures on those you like. (Sura III, v. 25 and 26).

Do you not know how many peoples we have wiped out from the face of the earth? We gave them a more stable empire than yours. We sent the clouds to pour rain over their fields; we made rivers flow there. Their crimes alone caused their ruin. We replaced them with other nations. (Sura VI, v. 6).

It is to God that you owe the night's sleep and the morning awakening. He knows what you are doing during the day. He lets you fulfill the course of life. You will reappear before him, and he will show you your works. - He rules over his servants. He gives you, as guardians, angels charged with ending your days at the prescribed time. They carefully execute the order of heaven. - You will then return to the God of truth. Isn't it up to him to judge? He is the most accurate of judges. - Who delivers you from the tribulations of the earth and the seas, when, invoking him in public or in the secret of your hearts, you cry out: "Lord, if you remove these evils from us, we will be grateful? - It is God who delivers you from it. It is his kindness that relieves you from the pain that oppresses you; and then you go back to idolatry. (Sura VI, v. 60 to 64).

All the secrets are revealed to his eyes; great is the Almighty. - The one who speaks in secret, the one who speaks in public, the one who envelops himself in the shadows of the night and the one who appears in broad daylight, are also known to him. - It is he who makes lightning shine in your eyes, to inspire you with fear and hope. It is he who raises the rain-laden clouds. - Thunder celebrates his praises. The angels tremble in his presence. He launches lightning, and it strikes the marked victims. Men dispute with God, but he is the strong and the powerful. - He is the true invocation. Those who implore other gods will not be heard. They resemble the traveler who, pressed by thirst, stretches out his hand towards the water he cannot reach. The invocation of the infidels is lost in the night of error. (Sura XIII, v. 10-15).

Never say, “I'll do this tomorrow,” without adding, “If it's God's will. Raise your thoughts to him, when you have forgotten something, and say, "Perhaps he will enlighten me and make me know the truth." (Sura XVIII, v. 23).

If the waves of the sea turned into ink to describe the praises of the Lord, they would be exhausted before they had celebrated all His wonders. Another similar ocean would not suffice yet. (Sura XVIII, v. 109).

Whoever seeks true greatness finds it in God, the source of all perfections. Righteous speeches ascend to his throne. He exalts good works; he rigorously punishes the villain who plots perfidy.

No, Heaven never revokes the judgment he issued. - Have they not traveled the earth? Have they not seen the deplorable end of the peoples who before them walked in the ways of iniquity? These people were stronger and more powerful than they are. But nothing in the heavens and on the earth can oppose the will of the Highest. Science and strength are his attributes. - If God punished men from the moment they are guilty, it would not remain an animated being on earth. He differs the punishments until the marked term. - When the time is right, he distinguishes the actions of his servants. (Sura XXXV, v. 11, 41 to 45).

These quotes are enough to show the deep feeling of piety which animated Muhammad, and the great and sublime idea he had of God. Christianity could claim this image. Muhammad did not teach the dogma of absolute fatality, as is generally believed. Such belief, with which Muslims are imbued and which paralyzes their initiative in many circumstances, is only a false interpretation and a false application of the principle of submission to the will of God, pushed beyond its rational limits; they do not understand that this submission does not exclude the exercise of human faculties, and they lack the correction of the maxim: “help yourself, and heaven will help you.”

The following passages relate to specific points of doctrine.

God has a son, say Christians. Far from him this blasphemy! Everything in heavens and on earth belongs to Him. All beings obey his voice. (Sura II, v. 110).

O you who have received the scriptures, do not go beyond the bounds of faith; speak only the truth of God. Jesus is the son of Mary, the envoy of the Highest and his Word. He sent it down to Mary's womb; it is his breath. Believe in God and in his apostles; but do not say that there is a trinity in God. He is one: this belief will be more certain for you. Far from having a son, he alone rules heaven and earth; He is self-sufficient. - The Messiah will not be ashamed for being the servant of God, nor will the angels who surround his throne and obey him. (Sura IV, v. 169, 170).

Those who uphold the trinity of God are blasphemers; there is only one God. If they do not change their beliefs, a painful torment will be the price of their impiety. (Sura V, v. 77).

The Jews say that Ozai is the son of God. Christians say the same of the Messiah. They speak like the infidels who came before them. Heaven will punish their blasphemies. - They call lords their pontiffs, their monks, and the Messiah son of Mary. But it is recommended that they serve one God: there is no other. Anathema to those they associate with their cult. (Sura IX, v. 30, 31).

God has no children; he does not share the empire with another God. If this were so, each of them would want to appropriate their creation and rise above their rival. Praise be Highest! Far from him these blasphemies! (Sura XXII, v. 93).

Declare, O Muhammad, what heaven has revealed to you. - The assembly of geniuses, having listened to the reading of the Koran, exclaimed: "Here is a marvelous doctrine. - It leads to true faith. We believe in it, and we do not equalize God. - Glory to his Supreme Majesty! God has no wife; he did not give birth. (Sura LXXII, v. 1 to 4).





Say, “We believe in God, in the book that was sent to us, in what was revealed to Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, and to the twelve tribes. We believe in the doctrine of Moses, Jesus, and the prophets; we make no difference between them, and we are Muslims. (Sura II, v. 130).

There is no God except the living and eternal God. - He sent you the book which contains the truth, to confirm the truth of the Scriptures which preceded him. Before him, he sent down the Pentateuch and the Gospel to serve as guides for men; he sent the Quran from heaven. - Those who deny the divine doctrine should expect only torture; God is mighty, and vengeance is in his hands. (Sura III, v. 1, 2, 3).

There are those who say, "We swore to God that we will not believe in any prophet, unless his offering is confirmed by fire from heaven." - Answer them: "You had prophets before me; they worked miracles, and the very one you're talking about. Why then have you stained your hands with their blood, if you are telling the truth?” - If they deny your mission, they treated the apostles who preceded you in the same way, although they were endowed with the gift of miracles and they had brought the book that enlightens (the Gospel) and the book of psalms (Sura III, v. 179-181).

We inspired you, as we inspired Noah, the prophets, Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, the tribes, Jesus, Job, Jonah, Aaron, and Solomon. We gave the Psalms of David. (Sura IV, v. 161).”



In many other places, Muhammad speaks in the same way and with the same respect for the prophets, Jesus and the Gospel; but it is evident that he misunderstood the meaning attached to the Trinity, and to the quality of son of God which he takes literally. If this mystery is incomprehensible to so many Christians, and if it has raised so many comments and controversies among them, one should not be surprised that Muhammad did not understand it. In the three persons of the Trinity he saw three gods, and not one God in three distinct persons; in the son of God he saw procreation; now, the idea which he had of the Supreme Being was so great, that the slightest parity between God and any being, and the idea that he could share his power, seemed a blasphemy to him. Jesus has never called himself God, and never spoke of the Trinity, for these dogmas appeared to him to move away from the very words of Christ.

He saw in Jesus and the Gospel the confirmation of the principle of the unity of God, a goal which he himself pursued; this is why he held them in great esteem, while he accused the Christians of having strayed from this teaching, by splitting God and deifying his messiah. So, he said he was sent after Jesus to bring men back to the pure unity of the divinity. The whole dogmatic part of the Koran is based on this principle which it repeats at every step.

Having Islamism its roots in the Old and the New Testaments, it is a derivation from it; we can consider it as one of the many sects born out of the dissidences which arose from the origin of Christianity concerning the nature of Christ, with the difference that Islamism, formed outside Christianity, outlived most of these sects, and today has one hundred million followers.









Muhammad fought, at any price and in his own nation, the belief in several gods, to re-establish there the abandoned worship of the unique God of Abraham and Moses; The anathema which he launched against the infidels and the ungodly, had for object, above all, the gross idolatry professed by those of his race, but he struck the Christians in consequence. This is the cause of the contempt of Muslims for anything that bears the name of Christian, despite their respect for Jesus and the Gospel. This contempt has turned into hatred by the influence of fanaticism, maintained and overexcited by their priests. Let us also say that, for their part, Christians are not without reproach, and that they themselves have fueled this antagonism with their own aggressions.

While blaming the Christians, Muhammad did not have hostile feelings for them, and in the Koran itself he recommends to be careful with them, but fanaticism has included them in the general proscription of idolaters and infidels whose presence must not stain the sanctuaries of Islamism, which is why the entry of mosques, Mecca and holy places is forbidden to them. It was the same with the Jews, and if Muhammad severely punished them in Medina, it was because they had joined forces against him. In fact, nowhere in the Koran does one find the extermination of Jews and Christians set up as a duty, as it is generally believed. It would therefore be unjust to blame him for the evils caused by the unintelligent zeal and excesses of his successors.

We have inspired you to embrace the religion of Abraham, who recognizes the unity of God and who adores only his supreme majesty. - Use the voice of wisdom and the force of persuasion to call men to God. Fight with the weapons of eloquence. God knows perfectly well those who are astray and those who walk by the torch of faith. (Sura XVI, v. 124, 126).

If they accuse you of imposture, answer them: “I have my works on my side; let yours speak for you. You will not be responsible for what I do, and I am innocent of what you do. (Sura X, v. 42).

When will your threats be fulfilled? ask the infidels. Mark us a term if you are truthful. Answer them: “The heavenly treasures and vengeance are not in my hands; God alone is its dispenser. Each nation has its fixed term; she could neither hasten it nor delay it for a moment. (Sura X, v. 49, 50).

If your doctrine is denied, know that the prophets who came before you suffered the same fate, although miracles, tradition, and the enlightening book (the Gospel) attest to the truth of their mission. (Sura XXXV, v. 23).

The blindness of the infidels surprises you, and they laugh at your astonishment. - In vain do you want to instruct them: their hearts reject instruction. - If they saw miracles, they wouldn't care; - they would attribute them to magic. (Sura XXXVII, v. 12 to 15).

These are not the orders of a bloodthirsty God who orders extermination. Muhammad does not make himself the executor of His justice; its role is to instruct; to God alone belongs to punish or reward in this world and in the next. The last paragraph seems to be written for the Spiritists of today, since men are the same, always, and everywhere.

Pray, give alms; the good that you do, you will find with God, because he sees your actions. (Sura II, v. 104).

It is not enough, to be justified, to turn one's face towards the East and the West; one must also believe in God, in the last day, in the angels, in the Koran, in the prophets. For the love of God, one must help our loved ones, the orphans, the poor, travelers, captives, and those who ask. We must pray, keep our promises, patiently endure adversity and the evils of war. These are the duties of true believers. (Sura II, v. 172).

An honest word and the forgiveness of offenses are preferable to the alms given by injustice. God is rich and merciful. (Sura II, v. 265).

If your debtor is having trouble paying you, give them time; or, if you want to do better, forgive him the debt. If you knew! (Sura II, v. 280).

Revenge must be proportionate to the injury; but the generous man who forgives has his reward assured with God, who hates violence. (Sura XLII, v. 38).

Fight your enemies in the war of religion, but do not attack first; God hates aggressors. (Sura II, v. 186).

Certainly, the Muslims, Jews, Christians and Sabeans[1], who believe in God and the Last Judgment, and will do good, will receive the reward from his hands; they will be free from fear and punishment. (Sura V, v. 73).

Do not do violence to men because of their faith. The path of salvation is quite distinct from the path of error. Whoever abjures the worship of idols for the sake of the holy religion will have seized an unshakeable pillar. The Lord knows and hears everything. (Sura II, v. 257).

Argue with Jews and Christians only in honest and moderate terms. Confuse those of them who are ungodly. Say: We believe in the book that has been revealed to us and in your scriptures. Our God and yours are one. We are Muslims. (Sura XXIX, v. 45).

Christians will be judged according to the Gospel; those who judge them otherwise will be prevaricating. (Sura V, v. 51).

We gave the Pentateuch to Moses. It is in its light that the Hebrew people must walk. Do not hesitate to meet the guide of the Israelites in heaven. (Sura XXXII, v. 23).

If the Jews had faith and fear of the Lord, we would erase their sins; we would bring them into the garden of delights. The observance of the Pentateuch, the Gospel and the divine precepts would give them the enjoyment of all goods. There are some among them who walk in the right way, but most of them are ungodly. (Sura V, v. 70).

Say to Jews and Christians: “Let’s end our disputes; let us admit only one God and let us not give him an equal; that none of us have any other Lord than him. If they refuse to obey, tell them, "At least you will bear witness that we are believers." (Sura III, v. 57).

These are certainly maxims of charity and tolerance that we would like to see in all Christian hearts!

We sent you to a people that has been preceded by other peoples, to teach them our revelations. They do not believe in the merciful. Tell them, “He is my Lord; there is no God but him. I put my trust in his goodness. I will appear in court again. (Sura XIII, v. 29).



We have brought to men a book in which science shines, that should enlighten the faithful and provide them with divine mercy. - Are they waiting for the fulfillment of the Koran? On the day when it is fulfilled, those who will have lived in the forgetfulness of its maxims will say: "The ministers of the Lord preached the truth to us. Where will we find intercessors now? What hope do we have of returning to earth to correct ourselves? They have lost their souls, and their illusions have vanished. (Sour. VII, v. 50, 51).

The word return implies the idea of having already come; that is, to have lived before the present existence. Muhammad expresses this clearly when he says elsewhere: "You will reappear before him and he will show you your works." You will return to the God of truth. This is the basis of the doctrine of the pre-existence of the soul, whereas, according to the Church, the soul is created at the birth of each body. The plurality of earthly existences is not indicated in the Koran as explicitly as in the Gospel; however, the idea of reliving on earth entered the mind of Muhammad, since such would be, according to him, the desire of the guilty to correct themselves. He therefore understood that it would be useful to be able to start a new existence.

When asked: Do you believe what God has sent from heaven? They respond, “We believe the scriptures that we have received”; And they reject the true book, that came later to put the seal on their sacred books. Tell them, “Why did you kill the prophets if you had faith? (Sura II, v. 85).

Muhammad is not the father of any of you. He is the messenger of God and the seal of the prophets. The science of God is infinite. (Sura XXXIII, v. 40).



By making himself the seal of the prophets, Muhammad announces that he is the last, the conclusion, because he has spoken the whole truth; after him, there will not be others. This is an article of faith among Muslims. From an exclusively religious point of view, it has fallen into the error of all religions which believe themselves to be irremovable, even against the progress of the sciences; but for him it was almost a necessity in order to strengthen the authority of his word among a people whom he had had so much difficulty in converting to his faith. From a social point of view, it was a mistake, because the Koran being a civil law as much as a religious one, it posed a stopping point to progress. This is the cause that has made and will still make the Muslim peoples stationary for a long time to come, and refractory to innovations and reforms that are not in the Koran. This is an example of the downside of confusing what must be distinct. Muhammad did not take human progress into account; this is a fault common to almost all religious reformers. On the other hand, he had to reform not only the faith, but the character, the customs, the social habits of his peoples; he had to base his reforms on the authority of religion, as did all legislators of primitive peoples; the difficulty was great, no doubt; however, he leaves a door open for interpretation and modification, saying that “God can always replace what he has given with something better. "

It is forbidden for you to marry your mothers, your daughters, your sisters, your paternal and maternal aunts, your nieces, your nannies, your nursing sisters, the mothers of your wives, the daughters entrusted to your guardianship and the daughters from women with which you would have lived together. Do not marry the daughters of the children that you have fathered, nor two sisters. You are prohibited from marrying married women, except those who have fallen into your hands as slaves. (Sura IV, v. 27 et seq.).

These prescriptions can give an idea of the immorality of those peoples; to be obliged to prohibit such abuses, they had to exist.





Wives of the Prophet, stay in your homes. Do not adorn yourself lavishly, as in the days of idolatry. Pray and give alms. Obey God and his apostle. He wants to remove the vice from your hearts. You are of the Prophet's family, and you must be pure. - Zeid repudiated his wife. We have united you with her, so that the faithful have the freedom to marry the wives of their adopted sons, after repudiation. The divine precept must have its execution. - O prophet, it is permissible for you to marry the women whom you will have endowed, the slaves that God has made fall into your hands, the daughters of your uncles and aunts who fled with you, and any faithful woman that gives you her heart. It is a privilege that we grant you. - You shall not add to the present number of your wives; you will not be able to change them by others whose beauty would have struck you. But you are still allowed to hang out with your slave women. God is watching everything. (Sura XXXIII, v. 37, 49, 52).

It is here that Muhammad truly descends from the pedestal on which he was mounted. We regret to see him fall so low after having risen so high, and having God intervene to justify the privileges he granted himself for the satisfaction of his passions. He gave believers four legitimate wives, while he himself had thirteen. The legislator must be the first subject of the laws he makes. It is an indelible stain that he threw on himself and on Islamism.

Strive to earn the Lord's indulgence, and possession of paradise, the extent of which is equal to heaven and earth, a dwelling prepared for the righteous, - for those who give alms in prosperity and in adversity, and who, masters of the their anger, know how to forgive their fellows. God loves beneficence. (Sura III, v. 127, 128).

God has promised the faithful, who have practiced virtue, entrance to the gardens where rivers flow. They will stay there forever. The Lord's promises are true. What could be more infallible than his word? (Sura IV, v. 121).

They will inhabit eternally the dwelling that God has prepared for them, the gardens of delight watered by rivers, places where sovereign beatitude will reign. (Sura IX, v. 90).

The gardens and the fountains will be the share of those who fear the Lord. They will enter with peace and security. - We will remove envy from their hearts. They will rest on beds, and they will have brotherly benevolence for one another. - Fatigue will not approach the abode of delights. Their possession will not be taken from them. (Sura XV, v. 45 to 48).

The Gardens of Eden will be the house of the righteous. Gold bracelets adorned with pearls, and silk clothes will form their adornment. - Praise the God, they will cry; he removed the pain from us; he is merciful and compassionate. - He introduced us to the Eternal Palace, home of his magnificence. Neither fatigue nor pain approach this asylum. (Sura XXXV, v. 30, 31, 32).

The inhabitants of paradise will drink long drafts from the cup of happiness. - Lying on silk beds, they will rest near their wives, under delicious shade. - They'll find all the fruits. All their desires will be fulfilled. (Sura XXXVI, v. 55, 56, 57).

True servants of God will have chosen food - delicious fruits, and they will be served with honor. - The gardens of delights will be their refuge. - Full of mutual benevolence, they will rest on couches. - They will be offered cups filled with pure water, - limpid and delicious taste, - which will not cloud their reason, and will not intoxicate them. - Near them will be virgins with modest looks, large black eyes and whose complexion will be the color of ostrich eggs. (Sura XXXVII, v. 39 to 47).

We will say to believers who have professed Islamism: Enter the garden of delights, you and your wives; open your hearts to joy. – They will drink in gold cups. The heart will find in this stay all that it can desire, all that can enchant the eye, and these pleasures will be eternal. - Here is the paradise that your works have given you. - Feed on the fruits that grow there abundantly. (Sura XLIII, v. 69 to 72).



Such is this famous paradise of Muhammad that has been mocked so much, and that we will certainly not try to justify. We will only say that he was in harmony with the mores of those peoples, and that he should flatter them much more than the prospect of a purely spiritual state, however splendid it was, because they were too attached to matter to understand it and appreciate its value; they needed something more substantial, and we can say that they were served as desired. It will undoubtedly be noticed that the rivers, the fountains, the abundant fruits, and the shades played a great part there, because this is what is lacking especially among the inhabitants of the desert. Soft beds and silk clothes, for people accustomed to sleeping on the ground and dressed in coarse camel-skin blankets, must also have a great appeal. However ridiculous all this may seem to us, let us think of the environment where Muhammad lived, and do not blame him too much, since with the help of this bait, he was able to draw a people out of barbarism and make them a great nation.

In a future article we will examine how Islamism can join the great family of civilized humanity.



[1] Ancient Arabian people of South Arabia (Wikipedia, T.N.)


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