Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 13.djvu/741

* MOHAMMEDANISM. G63 MOHAMMEDANISM. iiicc of llie la.-li ui imiyfl. Tho Kiiran orders small llnfl to III' imiiislic'il liv cuUiny oil' the chief uUeiidinj; liiiilj, llie rij"ht hand; the tseeond theft is punishable by the loss of the left foot ; the third, of the left hand; the fourth, of the right foot, etc.; but the ordinary punishments of imprisonment, hard labor, and the bastinaiUi have been substituted in later times. The prop- erty stolen nuist not, however, liave been of easy access to the thief, nor must it have consi-sted of food, since he may have taken this to satisfy the craving of his hunger. Unchustity on the part of a woman was in the eommencemetit of Islam pun- ished by imprisonment for life, for which after- wards, however, stoning was substituted in the case of a married woman, and a hundred stripes and a year's e.vile in the case of an uiunarriei' free woman, a slave to undergo only half of that punishment. He who accuses a 'woman of rc])U- tation" of adultery or fornication uuist produce four (male) witnesses, and if he be not able to do so, he is to receive fourscore stripes, nor is his testimony ever after to be received unless he swear four times that he speaks the truth, and the tifth time impiecate God's vengeance if he speak false. Even this testimony may be over- thrown by the wife's swearing four times that her accuser is a liar, and imprecating the fifth time the wrath of God upon herself if he speak the truth. In the latter case she is free from punishment; the marriage, however, is to be dis- solved. Fornication in either sex is, b}' the law of the Koran, to be visited with a hundred stripes. IiifideJiti/, or oposlanii from Islam, is a crime to be visited by the death of the offender, if he have been warned thrice without recanting. Severer still, that is. not to be axerted by repent- ance or revocation of any kind, is the punish- ment inflicted for blasphemy — against God, !Mo- hanimed. Jesus, Moses, or any other prophet. Inuuediate death is the doom of the offender. A further injunction of the Koran is that of making war against the infidels {jlhud) . He who is slain while fighting in defense of Islam or for its propagation is reckoned a martyr; while a deserter from the holy war is held up as an object of execration, and has forfeited his life in this world as well as in the world to come. At first all the enemies taken in battle were ruth- lessly slain; later, however, it became the law to give the people of a different faith against whom war was declared the choice of three things — either to embrace Islam, in which case they became Moslems at once, free in their per- sons and fortunes, and entitled to all the priv- ileges of -Moslems; or to submit to pay tribute, in which case they were allowed to continue in their religion, if it did not imply gross idolatry <M' otherwise offend against the moral law; or to decide the quarrel by the fortune of war — in which ease the captive women and children were made slaves, and the men either slain if they did not become converts at the last moment, or otherwise disposed of by the prince. The fifth part of the spoil belongs 'to God,' that is, must be devoted to a sanctuary, to the Prophet and his kindred, to the orphans, the poor, and the trav- eler. It must not be overlooked that the Islam of history and of the present time is not the pure and vuiniodified teaching of its founder. The Koran was not intended to be a systematically arranged code of laws. 8uch laws and regula- tions as it contains were called foith by some occurrence during the Prophet's life, and were, properly, supplement; y to existing liiws and customs, which tuey abrogated, confirmed, or modified according to the occasion. In course of time cases arose for which no written rules could be found laid down by Mohammed. Kecourse was then had to traditional oral dicta or to the Sunna (q.v. ); in time precedents were estab- lished and laws came into force by the concur- rence of the learned {ijmO'), or by a process of reasoning (kiyas) . In this way the peculiar system which is called Mohammedan jurispru- dence came into being, theoretically founded on the Koran, but often strangely at variance with the principles and spirit of its autluu-. In like maimer the reprehensible features of the doci rine and daily life of Islam must not be charged in- discriminately again-st jMohammed. That part of Jie system which most distinctly reveals the mind of its founder, and which also has under- gone least change in the course of time and con- stitutes its most complete and brightest part, is its ethics. Injustice, falsehood, pride, vindictive- iiess. calumny, mockery, avarice, prodigality, de- bauchci-y, mistrust, and suspicion are inveighed against as ungodly and wicked ; while benevo- lence, liberality, modesty, forbearance, patience and endurance, frugality, sincerity, straightfor- wardness, decency, love of peace and truth, and above all trust in God and submission to His will, are considered as the pillars of true piety and the principal signs of a true believer. Mo- hammed never expressly laid down that doctrine of absolute predestination and "fatality" which destroys all human will and freedom, and which by the influence of Mohammedan theologians became a fixed element in the orthodox creed. A glance at his system of faith (so far as he had a system), built on hope and fear, rewards and punishments, paradise and hell, both to be man's portion according to his acts in this life, and the incessant exhortations to virtue, and denunciations of vice, are suflicient to prove that aboriginal predestination is not in the Koran, where only submission to Allah's will, hope during misfortune, modesty- in prosperity, and entire confidence in the divine jilans. are sup- ])orted by the argument that everything is in the hands of the highest being, and that there is no appeal against his absolute decrees. This is but one instance of the w'ay in which Mohammed's dicta have been developed and explained — in such a manner that he has often been made to teach doctrines which he really did not teach; and thus many elements now found in the Mos- lem creed, if carefully traced back to their original source, will be seen to be the growth of later generations. In a general estimate of Mohammedanism it should not be forgotten what Islam has done for the cau.se of humanity and more particularly the share it had in the development of science and art in Europe. Broadly sjieaking. the Mo- hammedans may be said to have been the teachers of barbarous Europe from the ninth to the thir- teenth century. It is from the days of the Ab- basside rulers that the real renaissance of the. Greek spirit and Greek culture is to be dated. Classical literature would have been irredeem- ably lost had it not been for the home it found in the schools of the "unbelievers" of the "dark ages." Arabic philosophy, medicine, natural