Page:Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje - Mohammedanism (1916).djvu/84

 Rh of the noblest minds in Islâm restrict true religious life to an aristocracy, and accept the ignorance of the multitude as an irremediable evil.

Throughout the centuries pantheistic and animistic forms of mysticism have found many adherents among the Mohammedans; but the infallible Agreement has persisted in calling that heresy. Ethical mysticism, since Ghazâlî, has been fully recognized; and, with law and dogma, it forms the sacred trio of sciences of Islâm, to the study of which the Arabic humanistic arts serve as preparatory instruments. All other sciences, however useful and necessary, are of this world and have no value for the world to come. The unfaithful appreciate and study them as well as do the Mohammedans; but, on Mohammedan soil they must be coloured with a Mohammedan hue, and their results may never clash with the three religious sciences. Physics, astronomy, and philosophy have often found it difficult to observe this restriction, and therefore they used to be at least slightly suspected in pious circles.

Mysticism did not only owe to Ijmâʿ its place in the sacred trio, but it succeeded, better than dogmatics, in confirming its right with words of Allah and His Prophet. In Islâm mysticism and allegory are allied in the usual way; for the iluminati the words had quite a different meaning than for common, every-day people. So the Qorân was made to speak the language of