In the Land of Mosques & Minarets

CHAPTER V

THE RELIGION OF THE MUSSULMAN

NO one unless he be a Mohammedan can hope to experience the sentiments and emotions born of the Mussulman religion, or explain the fundamental principles of the Koran. It is a thing apart from all other religions, and though we may recognize many of its principles as being good and worthy, only one of the faithful can really absorb them as a part of his daily life.

The one underlying tenet which we all recognize as being something understood of all people, be they fanatics or not, is that of the purification by water. No Mussulman commences his devotions without first washing himself; he may take a conventional bath; he may wash his feet, face and hands; or he may go through a mere perfunctory sprinkling; but the form or ceremony has been complied with, and then, and then only, may he invoke Allah and his Prophet.

From the Atlantic to the Malay seas, from Turkestan to the Congo, more than two hundred millions of men proclaim that there is no God but Allah and that Mohammed is his Prophet. Besides these well-defined geographical limits, the Mohammedans are everywhere. You find them in China, in Japan, in India, in the Philippines, and scattered throughout Continental Europe. The strength of Islam is everywhere in evidence. And whether it is mere tribal warfare that brings it to our notice, or a “Holy War” against the infidels of Christians, as is really the case in Morocco at the present time, it is to be reckoned with as a power, as much so as the “yellow plague” of the Chinese and Japanese.

In all Islamic lands religion stands first. The Sultans – those of Constantinople and Fez – are religious heads even before they are accounted as chiefs of the state. And through its sub-heads and brotherhoods and secret societies, Islamism is spreading with a rapidity which most of the supposedly worldly-wise have hitherto ignored entirely.

In the African possessions of France alone there are in the neighbourhood of a hundred head-centres of Islamism which, until a very recent time, preached obstruction to the foreigner – and perhaps still does so in secret. France came to know and realize this very soon, and when she took over the civil and military charge of Algeria and Tunisia, she recognized the only successful policy as being one of coöperation and not of coercion. Three hundred organizations, then, – more religious sects or communities than political divisions of a people – were kept intact in most instances, and the Sheiks who formerly got obedience from their people as the sub-religious heads of this vast organization became practically mayors, councillors and justices of the peace. It was the only thing to do, and how well it has worked is best shown by the fact that Algeria has become the most flourishing and loyal of all French colonies.

These Sheiks of Algeria and Tunisia, to whom France has granted so much complimentary power, contributed in cash, in 1890, the sum of sixteen millions of francs which they had collected of their fellow Mussulmans. A gigantic sum when it is realized that it may originally have been paid to the Sheik in kind, a quintal of wheat, a half dozen sheep, or a few hundred kilos of dates. The Sheik doubtless makes something for himself as all this commodity passes through his hands, but what would you, official sinning is not confined to Mohammedans.

In return for his services the Arab Sheik, the emissary of the French civil control, gets a more modest salary than would his Gallic substitute, and he does his work more efficiently. His powers, with the backing of France, have been largely increased, even with his own people, and he is a part of a great political machine. He may even be a very learned person, an expert linguist in French, and the bearer of many decorations, even the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour. Is it any wonder that his country is peaceful and everybody satisfied! He breaks out once and again with some childish, petulant protest and compromises the whole thing; but then some French official at headquarters makes him a present of a gross of wax candles, a bird-cage or a phonograph, and again everything runs smoothly for a space.

Before the time of Mohammed the Arabs professed diverse religions; some were Christians; some were Jews; some were fire-worshippers; and some mere idol-worshippers. Among this latter were a sect who made great idols of dough which in time became baked or very nearly petrified, and thus served the tribe of the Beni Hafa as food in time of famine. A very practical religion this!

“There is no God but Allah
And Mohammed is his prophet.”

The faith of Islam is an obscure thing. It is supposedly a compound of the Christian and Hebrew religions – with variations. The sects of Islam are many, the two chief being the Shiites and the Sunnites. The former recognized Ali, the cousin of Mohammed, as the true successor of the Prophet, and collectively they form the major part of the Mussulman faith of India and Persia.

The orthodox followers of the Prophet, the faithful of Turkey, Arabia, Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco, have added to the precepts of the Koran the books of traditional sayings and maxims of the Prophet (a sort of Apocrypha, it would seem), and recognize as his successors the first four Kalifs – those of Bagdad, Cairo, Constantinople and Fez – as the legitimate successors of Mohammed.

This chief orthodox sect is further subdivided into Hanefites, Malikites, Shafiites and Hanabites, – foundations of various relations of the Prophet. They vary somewhat in their interpretations of the Koran and certain conclusions with regard to the “law” of the Prophet, but they are as one with regard to the precepts of purification, prayer, fasting, pilgrimage and charity towards their fellow men, and against the outside world of infidels.

The Arabs and Berbères Arabisés of North Africa are mostly Hanefites and Malikites.

Five times a day the Mussulman prays: (i) at fedjeur (daybreak – before sunrise); (ii) at eulam (after meridian); (iii) at dohar (midway between noon and nightfall); (iv) at aseur (just after sunset, when his day of labour is finished); and (v) at mogreb (when night actually falls). There is sometimes a sixth prayer at eucha (supper-time).

Not all professing Mussulmans pray five times a day. There are backsliders in the Mussulman religion as in other religions; but both in the cities and the countryside the truly devout, singly, or even in groups of a score or a hundred at a time, make their “sunset devotions” with regularity and impressiveness. The devout Arab will dismount from his horse, mule or camel, will come out of his tent or house, and will even alight from a railway train or diligence if opportunity offers, and say his sunset prayer in the open air. The Mussulman does not invariably need the stimulus of a temple to express himself towards his God. In that respect he is certainly far ahead of some of the other sects found throughout the world.

The spectacle of the Mussulman’s sunset prayer in the desert – standing barefooted on his little rug or carpet and facing the east and Mecca – is impressive beyond words; and not even the most skeptical would deny to the simple faith of Islam the virtues granted to many religions more ceremoniously complicated. The ceremonies in the mosques are less impressive than those in the open air.

The following résumé of the symbolism of the eight positions of the Mussulmans’ prayer explains the attitudes and postures that one remarks everywhere in the world of Islam.

I. Standing. “I offer my God, with sincere heart and with my face towards Mecca, two rakôh (prayers).

II. Still standing, but with open palms raised to each side of the face, the thumbs touching the ears – “God is Great!”

III. Still standing; with the right hand crossing the left over the chest, he repeats, “Holiness to Thee, oh, God! Praise be to

Thee! Great is Thy name!” – and other prayers from the Koran.

IV. Still standing; the body inclined forward and the hands, with fingers separated, placed upon the knees. “I extol the Sanctity of the Great God!”

V. Falling upon the knees – “God is Great!”

VI. Still on the knees he makes a bow (three times repeated), the forehead and nose touching the ground, “I extol the Sanctity of my God, the Most High!”

This practically finishes one rakôh, but there are usually added certain recitations from the first chapter of the Koran, with perhaps a repetition of the postures.

VII. Before finally leaving the place of prayer the act of witness, Tashabhud, is given. He raises the forefinger of his right hand and repeats: “I affirm that there is no God but God and that Mohammed is the Apostle of God.”

VIII. The last position is the Munjat, or supplication, when are repeated certain suitable verses of the Koran.

Christ enters into the Mussulman religion as one of the Prophets of God. They believe that Christ was, before the coming of Mohammed, the greatest of all Prophets.

All good Mussulmans recite the prayers of their beads, just as all good Catholics say their chaplets. The Mussulman has a string of ninety-nine beads, each standing for one of the ninety-nine perfections of Allah. This rosary is often elaborate and costly, interspersed here and there with jewels; but more often than not, even with wealthy Mussulmans, it is a string of crude wooden beads. The faith of Islam is a simple one, not a showy one.

The Friday prayer at the mosques is one of the events to see in a Mussulman country. Public prayer is a social event with Mohammedans, as it is with many Christians. Soon after the sun has marked high noon, and while the siesta is still the chief blessing with many, the throng follows the first zoual or call of the muezzin.

Everything is burning and brilliant under an ardent southern sun, and a scintillating, dazzling reflection comes from each whitewashed wall until one is almost blinded. After this the cool shadows of the mosque are most refreshing. Barefooted the Mussulman throng threads its way among the myriad pillars of the court and enters the sanctuary where daylight filters dimly through a sieve of iron-latticed windows.

Praying men are everywhere, – men of the town, and nomad Arabs from the desert whose business has brought them thither. The women are all at the cemetery talking scandal, for except on special occasions, the Mussulman women are not admitted to the Holy Day (Friday) prayers in the mosques. This is in accordance to the law of the Prophet. Under a great dome a ruddier, more brilliant light showers down on the students and professors who psalm the verses of the Koran in a monotonous wail; while still farther to the rear is the infants’ school, whose pupils repeat their lessons in crackling singsong voices all day long to a pair of bearded, turbaned elders. Here and there, backed up against a pillar, a taleb recites his litany to the Prophet. All these voices blend in a murmur undistinguishable from any other conglomerate sound, except that it is manifestly human.

Suddenly, from high above, on the gallery of the minaret, rings out the muezzin’s second call to prayer, and like the reverberant light, it seems to filter down from the unknown.

With face towards Mecca the imam reads the Khotba, a long, dreary prayer of exhortation, but no more monotonous than the cut and dried sermon which one mostly gets in Christian churches. The imam is not a priest as is known of Christendom; the religion of Islam has no regular clergy; he is simply the wisest elder among the personnel of the mosque.

All through the service, as indeed at all times, a great calm reigns throughout every Mohammedan mosque. At the end of the last exhorting couplet issuing from between the lips of the imam a naïve joy, as of a relief from a great oppression, spreads over the assembled faithful and all rush for the open, as do congregations of other faiths. One religion is not so very different from another after all. It is only a matter of belief, not of the mode of expressing one’s adherence to that belief.

“May peace be thine, O Mohammed, Prophet of God. Ruler of Mecca and Medina and Lord of all Mussulmans now and always.”

This finishes the service of the mosque.

From the opaque obscurity of the maze of the mosque’s interior one comes suddenly again into the light of day. To a burning African landscape from the humidity of a cloister.

Woman’s position in Islam is peculiar. It is not according to our notions of what is right and proper, and there is no looked-for or hoped-for emancipation to be thought of. The question is both a social and a religious one. Those few Europeans who have really studied the harem as an institution have found, however, that its establishment and continuance is a plan that works well, and that the majority of these supposedly unhappy wives really love their husbands, and their destiny. If this is so, what business is it of ours to criticize the conduct of the ménage of the Arab or the Turk. The Prophet himself said that woman was the jewel and the perfume of this world.

Theoretically the Mussulman idea is that man is the superior creature physically, and that it is his business alone to mingle and rub shoulders with the world, leaving his wives, members of the fragile sex, to raise his family, embellish his life and console him in time of grief. All other things apart, surely these are good enough principles for anybody to found domestic bliss upon. And these are the principal tenets of the domestic creed of the Moslem. He is often not the villain he is painted. To continue the words of the Prophet – Mohammed said one day to his companions: “Would you know the most valuable possession of man? It is, then, an honest woman. She charms the eye, and is obedient, and guards his reputation intact during his absence from home.” Really the Islamic faith goes a bit farther, for it counsels man to “cloister his wife as a prevention of jealousy and doubt, the mortal poisons, the terrible unpitying destroyers of conjugal quietude.” This, too, seems good advice, like many other of the precepts of the Koran.

Many of these Arab women were born within the harem’s walls, and know not any other modes of life as preferable to their own. They regard the daily round of liberty of the European woman as an unreal, undesirable state. The harem has been the theatre of their joys since infancy, and they have become so habituated to it that their life of seclusion becomes a second nature. They would not flee the sill of the great doorway into the outer world if they could, and their only change of locale is to pass from the harem of the husband of their mother to that of their spouse. In the harem the Arab woman is cared for with an unthought-of luxury. All the goods and chattels that their husband values most go to enrich the harem walls and floors. The harem is a sumptuous, glorious apartment compared to the simplicity with which the master of the house surrounds himself in his own quarters.

It is the opinion of that indefatigable traveller and student of exotic things, Edmond de Amicis, that the Arab concedes nothing to the European in his chivalrous treatment of woman. “No Arab dares lift an offending hand against a woman in public.” “No Arab soldier, even in the tumult of attack, would think of maltreating even the most insolent of womenkind.” And yet Europeans of most nationalities have been known to do both these things.

In her cloister, or to be more exact, in her boudoir, the Arab woman, and particularly the mother, receives the most respectful homage and solicitude from all the household. According to the Koran the children are admonished to respect the persons of those who bore them, and a verbal declaration of the Prophet is set down as: “A child may gain Paradise only by following in the footsteps of its mother.”

The educated and advanced Arabs of the towns have done much to disabuse the public of any false preconceived ideas concerning Arab womenfolk. Contrary to common belief the Arab woman is often the intellectual and social equal of her spouse. It was only the absurd jealousy of the old-school Mussulmans that annihilated for ever the faculties of their wives.

The portrait gallery of celebrated Mussulman women is not large, but one does not forget Zobeïdah, who inspired and aided the illustrious Haroun-Al-Rachid. Islam is not in its decadence, but its sponsors are awakening to the fact that they must keep abreast of the times.

The Friday promenade of the Mussulman woman of the towns to the cemetery is her only outing, the only day off allowed her. She makes as much of it as possible, but it is a sad proceeding at best.

The Arab tomb is, generally speaking, a thing of simplicity, a simple slab bearing the Arab words for the sentiment “Hic jacet.” The exception is in the marabout tombs or koubas, which are often monumental, though of comparatively small dimensions, well built, symmetrical, and surmounted by a dome or cupola.

The word marabout signifies first of all a holy man of the Mohammedan sect, a réligieux in fact, one whose vows, life and service is devoted to his God. Furthermore the same word is applied to the tiny mosque-like tombs distributed throughout the Arab peopled lands, which are served by a marabout. The two entities have become somehow indistinguishable as to name.