Page:Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje - Mohammedanism (1916).djvu/66

 Rh which might impede the striving after eternal happiness. Later, Mohammed was compelled, by the need of a public fund and the waning zeal of the faithful as their numbers increased, to regulate the practice of this virtue and to exact certain minima as taxes (zakât).

When Mohammed, taking his stand as opposed to Judaism and Christianity, had accentuated the Arabian character of his religion, the Meccan rites of pagan origin were incorporated into Islâm; but only after the purification required by monotheism. From that time forward the yearly celebration of the Hajj was among the ritual duties of the Moslim community.

In the first years of the strife yet another duty was most emphatically impressed on the Faithful; jihâd, i. e., readiness to sacrifice life and possessions for the defence of Islâm, understood, since the conquest of Mecca in 630, as the extension by force of arms of the authority of the Moslim state, first over the whole of Arabia, and soon after Mohammed's death over the whole world, so far as Allah granted His hosts for the victory.

For the rest, the legislative revelations regulated only such points as had become subjects of argument or contest in Mohammed's lifetime, or such as were particularly suggested by that antithesis of paganism and revelation, which had determined Mohammed's prophetical career. Gambling and wine were forbidden, the latter after some hesitation between the inculcation of