Peter's Rock in Mohammed's Flood, from St. Gregory the Great to St. Leo III

But this marriage also led to further revelations in the Koran, which entirely severed the wives of Mohammed from the male world: and also separated the other believing women by a thick veil from the eyes of strangers. Mohammed's jealousy stretched even beyond the grave, and he forbade second marriage to his wives even after his death. The object was to restrict them from all life in public to their own homes, and even there, to intercourse with their own sex, or only their nearest male relations. In spite of their polygamy, the wife had hitherto among the Arabians been the companion of their life: Mohammed reduced her to be a house-slave. She became in Islam a holy thing, indeed: but a holy thing kept under veil and bolt, and guarded not by her own virtue, but by eunuchs, from desecration.

Mohammed's invitation to the governor of Egypt, followed by the gift of the slave woman to Mohammed, led to disastrous consequences in Islam to woman's position. The prophet called in God to sanction man's lordship over woman: the first time in history that such a corruption claimed a divine sanction.

In the eighth year of the Hegira, January, 630, Mohammed obtained possession of Mecca. To avenge a rupture of the existing truce, he broke with 10,000 men into the neighbourhood of the city, which admitted him both as its temporal lord and as the prophet of God, without a fight. He received the homage of its inhabitants on one of the city's hills, and their oath to follow him in all wars against unbelievers. At the same time, he declared Mecca to be again a holy city, in which God had allowed him alone to shed blood, which, for the future, was never to be.

After gaining this possession of Mecca, Mohammed issued in the ninth Sura of the Koran what amounted to a new law of nations, and a new practice of war. From that time forward none but Mohammedans were to enter the holy city of Mecca and its circle: but likewise, outside of this, idolaters were to be exterminated, Jews and Christians were only to be suffered, when they paid tribute, and humbled themselves. “O true believers, verily the idolaters are unclean: let them not therefore, come near unto the holy temple after this year. And if ye fear want by the cutting off trade and communication with them, God will enrich you with His abundance, if He pleaseth, for God is knowing and wise. Fight against them who believe not in God, nor in the Last Day, and who forbid not that which God and His Apostle have forbidden, and profess not the true religion of those to whom the Scriptures have been delivered, until they pay tribute by right of subjection, and they be reduced low. The Jews say Ezra is the son of God, and the Christians say Christ is the Son of God. This is their saying in their mouths: they imitate the saying of those who were unbelievers in former times. May God resist them. How are they infatuated! Besides God, they take their priests and their monks for their lords, and Christ, the Son of Mary; only they are commanded to worship one God only. There is no God but He. Far be that from Him which they associate with Him. They seek to extinguish the light of God with their mouths: but God willeth no other than to perfect His light, although the infidels be averse thereto. It is He who hath sent His Apostle with the direction and true religion, that He may cause it to appear superior to every other religion, although the idolaters be averse thereto.”

This Sura was the last in time of those issued. “It bears the stamp of much reflection and careful execution.” In March, 631, Mohammed had sent the greater pilgrimage to Mecca, under guidance of Abu Bekr. This Sura was published on the chief day of the pilgrimage, and “its promulgation committed to Ali, who rode for that purpose on the prophet's slit-eared camel from Medina to Mecca, and, standing up before the whole assembly at Al Akaba, told them that he was the messenger of the Apostle of God unto them”. Thus it establishes the definitive position of Mohammed in regard to all other religions, and the exclusiveness of his own claim.

In the last days of Mohammed, when the religious capital of Arabia had been taken by him, and this new law of war had been published, embassies from all parts of Arabia streamed to him, for to the Arabians there remained no choice between the Koran and the sword. He may be considered as the lord by conquest of Arabia, and moreover as one who pretended to issue in the name of God and as His sole apostle a new world-religion. Scarcely more than a year after this proclamation of war against what he chose to consider idolatry he died on the 8th June 632, at the age of 63 lunar or 61 solar years.

When we review the ten years which elapsed from the Hegira to the death of Mohammed, the following points are salient.

The imposition of religious belief by force becomes more and more the main principle of Mohammed. As he increases in power the principle is set forth with greater distinctness. He began as a citizen of Mecca by trying to persuade his relations and friends. With some he succeeded. His kinsmen gave him a partial support rather of clanship than of faith. But he found it expedient to fly from his native city, and the flight marks to all future time the beginning of his assumption not only to be a prophet, but in that character to publish a new religion. The Flight is the Mohammedan era as the birth of Christ is the Christian. At the end of the ninth year the proclamation against idolatry in the ninth Sura, the last in time of the whole series, marks the completion of the parent idea. Mohammed declares himself the apostle of God, as such alone charged “with the direction and true religion,” while Christians, though they are commanded “to worship one God only, associate Christ the Son of Mary with Him”. Whereas Mohammed declares Christ to be indeed one in the series of prophets, the last before himself; but himself to be the prophet who completes the chain. Thus he enacts that Christians can be safe before his people only in one of two ways, either by forming part of them, that is, by taking Mohammed instead of Christ, or by submitting to pay tribute, and to the humiliations which accompany tribute. Thus the parent idea is the messiahship of force.

It may be noted that it comes out in a profession of faith drawn especially to exclude the association of the Son of Mary with God. Thus Mohammed crowns the work which Arius attempted three hundred years before. After the restless heresies in which the Greek mind had fluctuated during these three centuries, the greatest enemy to the Greek empire and faith was set up on that very negation of the godhead of Christ with which those heresies had begun. Fifty years of Arian success, in which the emperors, Constantius and Valens, take a large part, inspired and supported by Eusebius, Macedonius, Eudoxius, and Demophilus, four successive bishops of Byzantium, cause that disorganisation of the eastern Church which St. Basil described as its ruin. Fifty years of patronising the Monothelite heresy, in which the emperors Heraclius and Constans II. bear the largest part, supported by four Byzantine patriarchs, Sergius, Pyrrhus, Paulus, and Peter, beginning in 628, mark the rise and accompany the establishment of the Mohammedan empire and creed. Honorius dies before the heresy is presented for acceptance in Rome in the imperial Ecthesis. Ten Popes succeeding Honorius, in spite of the temporal distress which surrounds them, oppose to the utmost the Byzantine heresy and despotism in the midst of whom one gloriously lays down his life and is martyred by the eastern emperor as guilty of high treason. This is the connection between Arius and Mohammed, who appears as the divine punishment and remedy for Byzantine successors of Constantine who would confiscate the liberty of the church, and for state-made patriarchs who foster and formulate heresy.

Secondly, the revelations which Mohammed professes to receive from God he professes also to be brought to him by the Angel Gabriel. Nor is he ashamed to make this angel serve him in actions of the utmost turpitude. Thus when the governor of Egypt bestows on him the slave-girl Mariam, he falls so desperately in love with her that his proper wives, including his favourite, the girl-wife Aischa, the daughter of his chief adherent, Abu Bekr, revolt. The prophet is embarrassed and summons the Angel Gabriel to his aid. Forthwith a passage of the Koran preaches to the discontented wives obedience in the name of God, and the prophet threatens that if they continue to be insubordinate he will dismiss them and find others more obedient and submissive. Nor is even this the lowest depth of infamy. For when he violates even the customs of the Arabs around him, loose as they were, and favourable to the selfishness of the stronger sex, and takes the wife of his most faithful follower and adopted son, he calls in Gabriel to justify the adultery in the name of God, and to enlarge to any extent which the prophet may choose his exclusive privilege of taking wives. It would be difficult to say how the stamp of imposture could be fixed on the Koran with more convincing force than by this association of an angel and of God himself with acts which are contrary to the universal natural law.

Thirdly, it may be remarked that as to polygamy, since it was the custom of the Arabians in his time to practise it without restraint, Mohammed might be considered as neither better nor worse than his countrymen, who had so corrupted the purity of the original law of marriage. This might be allowed if we were considering Mohammed simply as a Saracen of that time. But we are considering him in the light in which he put himself forward as the apostle of God, the one apostle who was to set forth the one God: “there is but one God and Mohammed is his prophet”. It is in this character that he did what no one had ever done before. Polygamy had crept in, “through the hardness of men's hearts,” but Mohammed attempted to set by his appeal to God and his use of the Angel Gabriel a divine sanction upon this great corruption, and upon the unlimited concubinage which he practised himself, and authorised in others. Thus St. John Damascene a hundred years after his time used of him these indignant words: “This Mamed put together many foolish things. Thus in the writing entitled ‘Woman’ he lays down the law that a man may openly take four wives, and a thousand concubines if he can, as many as he can subject to himself besides the four; and he may divorce when he pleases and take another. And he made this law for the following reason.” Then St. John narrates the case of Zeid and his wife in these words: “Zeid had a handsome wife; Mamed fell in love with her. As they sat together Mamed said, God has charged me to take thy wife. Zeid answered: Thou art the apostle, do as God told thee. Or to go further back, he said: God charged me that thou divorce thy wife. Zeid divorced her. After some days Mamed said: God also charged me to take her. So he took her and made her an adulteress, and then he enacted that every one who will may divorce his wife, and after the divorce, if she return to him, another must marry her first.”

Patriarchs and prophets have sinned, as well as common men; but Mohammed is the only legislator who has called in God to sanction his sin, and propagate it among others in the name of God: and he did this under the title that he was the special apostle of God, sent to propagate the only true religion. The terrible sin of David stands out as contrary to all his previous life. He sought pardon for it, and after it became the great penitent, and humbly bowed his head beneath chastisements as awful as his own sin. Mohammed exulted in his sin, as deserving of praise and exceptional privilege.

Fourthly, throughout the ten years, from the Hegira to his death, Mohammed carried out his own principle of propagating religion by force in his utter disregard of human life. As soon as he had left Mecca he practised robbery upon its caravans and killed without scruple those who resisted the robbery. He tried to make friends with Jewish clans around him, and when they rejected him for their Messias, slew them by hundreds. He slew even for private revenge those who stood in his way: and women as well as men.

These alleged revelations become in Mohammed's hands the enactments of a sovereign legislator. He claims them to be words of God delivered to him by the angel Gabriel. The personal character of Mohammed as developed in them is, therefore, of the greatest importance. He speaks not only of his “brother Moses” in the Jewish legislation which he closes, but of the Son of Mary as the Word and Spirit of God, on whose work he sets the superior seal of his own mission; and as a matter of fact, those who took his name had his personal character and actions before them for a standard, as the Christians had the Son of God. From the moment of his death this fact is brought out by the conduct of his followers. His chief companions meet and elect a head whom they call the chalif or successor of the prophet. That title is the sole source of his authority, which is both religious and civil, supreme in each, but supreme because it is the transmitted authority of the Prophet who is not a prophet only, but the “Apostle of God”. The four points above noted, the propagation of religion by force, the imposture in the use of the name of Gabriel, the enacting of polygamy with the superadded license of unbounded concubinage, and the employment of murder as means of success, mark the intense antagonism between the character of Mohammed and the character of Him whom he charged the Christians with associating to God. Instead of the Man, meek and humble of heart, who said to His disciples that in following His meekness and humility they should find rest for their souls, we have the man who ordered the believers in him to beat down all idolaters that did not profess, “There is one God, and Mohammed is His prophet,” and made death in battle against them to be the martyrdom which he chose for his people. Instead of the Man who said, “If I had not done among them the works which no other man hath done, they would not have sin,” we have the man who answered the appeal made to him for miraculous works in testimony of his mission, by disclaiming the power to do them. Instead of the Virgin's Son who set up the virginal life, and propagated His faith by the teaching and example of those who followed it, we have the man who forged a divine permission for the grossest polygamy and an unlimited concubinage obtained by successful war. Instead of the Man who reverenced above all men the sanctuary of human life, we have the man who murdered without scruple those who did not accept his mission.

As to the nature of the kingdom which each of these two set up, the One in His last words to His disciples on the night of His sacrifice said, “The kings of the gentiles lord it over them, and they that have power over them are called beneficent, but you not so: but he that is the greatest among you let him become as the younger, and he that is the leader as he that serveth”. In accordance with this precept, just as Mohammed was preparing to appear as the prophet, the greatest among Christians took as the symbol of his spiritual rule for his title, Servant of the servants of God: and so Chalid, the chief fighter, under Mohammed, Abu Bekr, and Omar, was termed “the sword of the swords of God”. The prophet in the Sura proclaiming his religion pronounced force to be the instrument of spreading it, and in doing this blood was to be shed like water: and from his time his chalifs have practised the slaughter of as many as they chose. Nor is this confined to enemies, but his religion has considered his own subjects thus slaughtered as witnesses of the prophet's claim. To be killed by order of the chalif is to the believer a title of honour, and the sacrifice of so many a day to his order a sacrifice to his religion.

The pretension put forward by Mohammed in the ninth Sura has been fully accepted by his people from the beginning. He is their apostle, and accordingly from his life they have taken and woven into their own in every age the employment of force, the imposture of a man's invention put in an angel's name, the right to take away life at the pleasure of the ruler, but above all, polygamy and concubinage. The sensual life of Mohammed began exactly at the time when, discarding persuasion as the instrument of converting unbelievers, he began to propagate by force his pretended mission as a prophet. The deterioration in the moral life coincides with the time when he passed from the character of one who sought to restore the religion of Abraham to the very different character of one who sought to introduce a new and universal religion. Moreover, this sensual life of the founder has likewise infected with a moral pestilence all those parts of Asia, Africa and Europe, wherein his followers have prevailed. The man who from fifty to sixty years of age was multiplying young wives, moving them to jealousy with a slave concubine, seizing the wife of an adopted son, in virtue of a feigned divine decree, and making a special license to himself as the prophet of God to marry as many wives as he pleased, and whose wives he pleased, has corrupted all the generations of those who profess his religion. But more than in any others this corruption is apparent in those who rule in the prophet's name. Omar, Osman, and Ali, the second, third, and fourth chalifs, followed Mohammed closely in this corruption of domestic life. Ali, the husband of his favourite daughter, equalled her father in his wives, as likewise Osman, the husband of another daughter. Every Mohammedan prince, as a rule, follows the founder of his dynasty and creed, and thus, as the race of the Virgin Mother reproduces in every age the example of her whom all generations call blessed, and her Divine Son has planted in her the tree of chastity, of which He is Himself the first fruit, and which takes root in an honourable people, and as every work of superhuman charity grows upon that tree, and the sex lost in Eve is glorified by Mary, so the Mohammedan line is equally true to its origin. To the very end of the long night of heathenism, on which the coming of our Lord dawned, monogamy still survived in the noblest descendants of Eve. The German had it and the Roman, and there were ages in which those races, heathen though they were, honoured woman, and maintained the sanctity of marriage, before it was exalted into a sacrament, and before the foundation of human society was consecrated by the blessing of the Redeemer, given in the touch of His Blood. The degradation of woman in every age and every people during the 1250 years of Mohammedan domination, is the special stamp of the various peoples who have borne his name. I take the example highest in position and worst in character. To the precept of Mohammed, enforced by his own conduct, we owe it that in Constantine's own city the very chalif who represents him continues without marriage to practise an unbounded concubinage. Thus from generation to generation the race of Othman – which can scarcely be called a family – has been continued, and enabled to reign over the fairest countries of the globe, Christian during many hundred years, for a period almost as long as the long descended lines of Capet and Hapsburg have subsisted in honourable marriage. Concubinage has provided it with children, and fratricide has prevented rivals down to the time of Sultan Mahmoud. When he succeeded to the throne, stained in every generation with such crimes, he was the only survivor of his race. Out of the previous history a Turkish annalist records without astonishment, for it was an ordinary incident, that in a tumult which had taken place at the funeral of Sultan Murad III., nineteen brothers of the Sultan Mohammed III., all innocent and guiltless, were strangled and added to the company of martyrs. From the life of Mohammed himself has sprung a despotism without limit, a cruelty which scorns natural affection, and a sensuality without example.

As the personal life on earth of the Son of God is seen in the religion which He planted, and in the history of the people which He formed and maintains, so the personal life of the man Mohammed is seen in the religion which bears his name, and in the people which have carried it on. It is only to elucidate this thought that I have selected these particulars of the Arabian's life, and as a prelude to the contrast which the religions themselves present.

A few months after his return from the great pilgrimage to Mecca in 632, Mohammed was preparing a third campaign against the Byzantines, which however could only be executed after his death. A word must be said as to his exact position at the moment of his death. In the ten years which follow immediately the Hegira, the original camel driver, who became husband of Chadidja, and lived with her virtuously to her death, pursued the life of a freebooter, which had many alternations of failure and success. In his character of prophet, “the apostle of God,” he aimed at material power, and scrupled not to pursue it by deceit, robbery, and murder, all exercised as means of converting men to the worship of one God, the almighty and “most merciful”. He had fifteen months before his death so far prevailed as to obtain mastery over the city which he had left as a fugitive. It was in a certain sense the capital of Arabia, and he was claiming and in a great degree receiving the homage of all Arabians. But other men who also called themselves prophets, such as Moseilama, were his rivals. The subjection of Arabia was by no means complete at the time of his death. The German historian – himself of the Jewish race and religion – from whose careful study of Mohammedan writers I have taken many of the incidents above recorded, says that with the exception of his weakness in his relations to the female sex, in regard to which he claimed the privileges allowed to him as a special favour from God, he gave a fair example to his people. There was the greatest simplicity as to his dwelling, his clothing, and his food. He was so unassuming that he not only refused every external mark of honour from his companions, but declined every service even from his slaves which he could perform himself. He was often seen in the market place buying food, mending his clothes in a miserable little room, or milking a goat in his court. Every one could approach him at all hours, whether in the street or in his dwelling. He visited all the sick, and showed sympathy to every sufferer, and was also magnanimous and indulgent where policy did not otherwise require. His generosity and benevolence, and also his care for the common good were boundless, so that in spite of the many presents which he received from all sides, and the rich plunder which came to him from his wars, he left little property behind him, and treated even this as belonging to the State. After his death it was not given to his daughter Fatima, his only heiress, the wife of Ali. He had other sons and daughters besides Fatima, on the number of whom tradition varies. They all died before him. We may name only Rukejja and Umm Kolthum, whom the future Chalif Osman successively espoused, both by his first wife Chadidja; and also Ibrahim son of the Coptic slave Mariam, whose early death the prophet sorely lamented. But this historian treats the bringing in the Angel Gabriel as the bearer of his revelations to have been a deceit throughout.

The power which Mohammed claimed rested entirely on the truth of his assertion that God had committed to him a prophetical office, carrying with it the promulgation of a new and universal religion. The absolute falsehood of this assertion is contained in the invention of the Angel Gabriel. The Jewish historian whom I have quoted fully admits this imposture, just as St. John Damascene made it a reproach a hundred years after Mohammed's time. The virtues above mentioned, what are they but the beautiful spots of the tiger's skin veiling the ferocity of the beast? Mohammed by the confession of his friends would appear to have had two intense passions, one for sweet odours, the other for women. Thalebi commenting on the 5th Sura records how ten zealous disciples used often to meet and pray in the house of Osman. They watched through the night and had resolved to prepare themselves for paradise by chastity and mortification. Mohammed did not approve of it, and preached to the people that it was no way his mind that those who professed Islam should abstain, like Christian priests and religious, from women and from eating flesh, and from sweet odours; should debar themselves from sleep, and practice hardships. Fighting was his monkhood. Abulfeda says he openly confessed as to himself, “Two things attract me and carry me away: women and sweet odours. My joy is in these two pleasures, and they make me more prayerful.” In fact Mohammed was never so pious as when he took a new wife; while he deserted them all for the Coptic slave-girl Mariam. And the Koran told him that he was right.