little in his efforts to defame it Samuel M. Zwemer ?
(The defiling of the Cross was first mentioned in Islam :
a Challenge to Faith.) Speaking generally, Moslems are
as little affected by any dislike of the sign of the Cross
as Christians are by that of the Crescent."
I can speak from personal knowledge of the fact
that in Tunisia the special tattoo mark on the face is a
small cross on one of the temples, and by this a Tunisian
can be invariably recognised in any part of the world.
Some of the nomad tribes of the Sahara use the cross
as a decoration for their stuffs and their weapons. Leo
Africanus recorded that in his day all the mountaineers
of Algeria and Bougia, though Moslems, painted black
crosses on their cheeks and the palms of the hands
(Ramusio, p. 61).
General Gordon knew the Moslem people perhaps
as well as any man has ever done not the people of the
city merely, but of the almost inaccessible parts of the
Sudan as well as of China. When he was writing his
last diary at Khartoum he was surrounded by men who
could by no means have shown their religion at its best ;
he was there to oppose one of the most fanatical and
successful risings of barbarian tribes of recent times, led
by a man who claimed to be the Madhi expected of
Islam. But the following passage should be pondered
by all those who honestly desire to understand the
people of this faith, and who might by virtue of their
office be concerned to encourage and stimulate them,
rather than to criticise and condemn. This is what
Gordon wrote :
THE GREAT QUESTIONS OF ISLAM 325
" I am sure it is unknown to the generality of our
missionaries in Moslem countries, that, in the Koran,
no imputation of sin is made to our Lord ; neither is
it hinted that He had need of pardon ; and, further, no
Moslem can deny that the Father of our Lord was
God (vide chapter of the Koran) and that He was in-
carnated by a miracle. Our bishops content themselves
with its being a false religion, but it is a false religion
possessed by millions on millions of our fellow-creatures.
The Moslems do not say that Mohammed was without
sin ; the Koran often acknowledged that he erred, but
no Moslem will say ' Jesus sinned.' As far as self-sacrifice
of the body, they are far above the Roman Catholics, and
consequently above Protestants . . . the God of the
Moslems is our God." (Entry made in the diary on
1 2th September 1884.)
How different a temper is this from that exhibited
in the writings of such a man as the Rev. W. St. Clair-
Tisdall, in his anxiety to miss no opportunity of con-
firming the unsympathetic and antagonistic views of
Islam which seem to be so acceptable to English readers.
This missionary gentleman immediately wrote not only
to partly confirm the Bishop of London's original
statement, but to produce a mass of the absurd legends
and traditions which gathered round this subject in
the earlier days of Islam. Puerilities which, it might
be allowed, are no more to be laid at the door of true
Moslems, than Protestant Christians are to be held
accountable for the fabulous legends of the " Fathers
of the Church " and of the Christian mystics, which
gathered about the pure faith of Christ.
It was in the same number of the Church Missionary
Review (November 1911) which contained the Bishop's
326 VEILED MYSTERIES OF EGYPT
speech, and his explanation, that this writer gathered
a mass of this nonsense with apparently no object but
to prove that the Moslems have no true knowledge of
Jesus, but are irrevocably committed to a hideous
travesty of Him. And in drawing the caricature which
he presents, he considers himself justified in quoting
from the mass of Moslem traditions, good and bad,
with little or no regard to the degree of credence they
obtain from intelligent Moslems themselves. He forgets
entirely that these fables concerning the life and miracles
of our Lord are seldom or never of Mohammedan
invention, but may generally be traced to the Apocryphal
Gospels and other spurious remains of Christian anti-
quity. And he seems quite oblivious to the considera-
tion that such treatment on the part of a Christian,
instead of opening the way for a more exalted teaching
of the mission of our Lord's life and death, has the
effect of exciting an antagonism in the Moslem mind
which diminishes if it does not entirely close the door
to the appeal which might be founded on a mutual
reverence for Him.
The enlightened Moslem rejects the greater part of
these fables and traditions, being so far in agreement
with Mr. Tisdall as to call them " a mass of rubbish."
As a matter of fact, every impartial historian should bring
to these traditional records of the Prophet's sayings
and doings the patient care with which all such docu-
ments are treated if they are to yield the precious
information they hold, and not to be made mere vulgar
weapons of offence.
His article was translated and submitted to several
learned sheikhs for there is a large committee in Cairo
which regularly considers the criticisms of Islam in
THE GREAT QUESTIONS OF ISLAM 327
the European and American press. Almost every
tradition on which Mr. Tisdall has drawn for his picture
of the Moslem Jesus is in the category of those regarded
as doubtful. The late Grand Mufti (chief religious
judge) of Egypt, pronounced them to be " untrue."
Bitter indignation was expressed that such writers as
this leave out all the more spiritual details of the Moslem
beliefs, in which they agree with the Christians, while
they exaggerate every mean detail which has crept into
the Oriental imaginative writing, and that they always
seek to engender prejudice in the Western mind by
the statement (made by Mr. St. Clair-Tisdall even in
this article on Jesus) that Moslems are still " bound
(when strong enough) to oppose the followers of Jesus
with the sword, fighting in the Way of God (the Jihad)
until all Christians are slain, or have been compelled
to accept Islam, or have paid tribute out of hand and
are brought low." Which statement of the Jihad
many Moslems declared to me to be perverse and
misleading, in the face of the facts which have often
been explained. I deal with the Jihad in another
place.
One of the Al Azar sheikhs expressed the greatest
indignation at the tone of all the writings on Islam by
Mr. Tisdall. He asked me what could be said of a man
who, in dealing with the early sufferings of Mohammed
before he was convinced of his mission, sneers at what
even Muir admits were the genuine strivings after
Truth. The Prophet used to retire to the hills to a
spot described to me by a pilgrim who had visited it as
one of awful bareness and loneliness " to seek relief
in meditation and prayer," which this critic takes
upon himself, for the first time, to say was but taking
328 VEILED MYSTERIES OF EGYPT
himself to the mountains for a month's change of air
and scene (Religion of the Crescent, p. 146).
As I was desirous of finding what is the authoritative
rule in the acceptance of these traditions of Islam, I took
the opportunity of discussing it with all the ulema of
Al Azar University, and other authorities. The kernel
of the question is the saying of the Prophet himself to
Moaz ibn Gebel, who was sent to Yemen by Mohammed
as a religious judge.
" By what rules are you going to judge amongst
the people ? " asked the Prophet, to test him.
" First, by the Book of God ; second, by the Tradi-
tions of the Prophet," he replied.
" But," questioned the Prophet, " if the matter is
not found in the Book of God, or in the Traditions ? "
" Then," he said, " I will try to make a just judgment
according to reason."
An answer which pleased the Prophet. It was thus
early settled that the first rule is to consult the Koran ;
the second, Tradition ; then those decisions on which
the great Imams are agreed ; and then Precedent. The
Prophet said that no one was obliged to regard a Tradi-
tion which did not agree with the Koran.
One of the four great Imams of Islam, Abu Hanifa
(767 A.D.), laid down this law, to which the other chief
Imams agreed. " We select first from the Koran, then
from the Traditions, then from the decrees of the
companions of the Prophet. What the companions
agreed upon has great weight with us ; and where they
doubt, we doubt." The Grand Mufti still considers
this a good rule.
As the modern reformers say, the religion of Islam
began by being very simple, for in the first century of
THE GREAT QUESTIONS OF ISLAM 329
the Hijrah all the religious knowledge the believers
possessed consisted of the Koran, and the necessary
explanations which had been given by Mohammed.
One seems to see an exact counterpart of the course of
early Christianity in the fact that when theological
schools were developed at one time one hundred and
twenty learned professors were lecturing at Bagdad on
dogmatical and legal subjects the teaching of a spiritual
religion and an inward piety was almost forgotten.
In one of the latest books on Islam, written by an
educated Moslem, the author, Mohammed Badr, says,
" When in any case tradition and the intellectual
appreciation of a matter clash, then is tradition to be
put aside and the individual opinion followed." I
referred his passage to some of the ulema, however, and
they thougjit the freedom claimed was too great for
safety. When there is such a conflict between
reason and tradition, they agreed, the Moslem should
seek the advice of some learned man who is versed in
the teachings of the great Imams, before finally judging ;
otherwise every man would be a law unto himself, and
the ignorant would do much harm. In this as in every
other matter, however, they are forbidden by the Holy
Koran to interfere with the consciences of men.; or
to put any obstacle in the way of reasonable private
judgment.
There is in Cairo a school allied to Al Azar for
the training of Cadis or religious judges ; to my mind,
one of the most interesting institutions in Egypt, where
the best modern methods of education are being added
to the religious teaching first gained at Al Azar itself,
under an educated and enlightened sheikh who was
trained in England. A general rule of interpretation
330 VEILED MYSTERIES OF EGYPT
for these students is that, while the Koran is the funda-
mental part of the law, the tribunals must study to
reconcile equity and reason, rather than follow a pedantic
or patristic line.
Such is the affection and reverence for our Lord
Jesus, that I think it should be the desire of every man
who goes to the Moslems with the Christian message,
to encourage it, and, while refraining from saying a
single word which can wound them in relation to a
matter so sacred to them, seek quiet ways of developing
their knowledge of that one Perfect Life.
Of all men we Christians are the last who should
seek to stereotype for them the mass of tradition, when-
ever we see a disposition on their part to free themselves
from it; or to sneer at the reformers as "unorthodox "
who so ardently desire to bring about a moral revival.
What does not Protestant England and America owe to
reformers whom the Church would have suppressed
for their unorthodoxy ?
It is a deeply significant thing that one of the old
Deys of Algiers, in an audience he gave to a Jesuit
priest who was seeking the redemption of slaves,
showed him a copy of The Imitation of Christ printed
in the Turkish language, adding that " he valued it
more than the Koran." In the reign of Solyman i.
a chief of the ulemas, Sheikh Cabiz, suffered martyr-
dom rather than renounce his predilection for the
Gospel.
In Egypt, my wife and I, in calling one day on an
enlightened Moslem friend, whose family we knew
quite well, were both admitted to the hareem, by the
mother's permission, as a special mark of confidence in
me. One of the daughters was engaged on some remark-
THE GREAT QUESTIONS OF ISLAM 331
able embroidery. Our surprise and pleasure may be
imagined, when we found that the subject of one
beautiful piece of work was a picture of the Good
Shepherd, drawn by herself after reading the story in
the New Testament, which had greatly impressed her.
The incident brought to my mind an anecdote,
related by Hottinger, of a Bohemian Jew who actually
became a convert to Christianity in consequence of
convictions awakened in his mind by Moslem teachers,
during a long captivity with the Turks.
CHAPTER VI
BELIEFS AS TO THE EQUALITY AND BROTHERHOOD OF MAN
" Islam taught the people sobriety, temperance, charity, justice and
equality as the commandments of God. Its affirmation of the principle
of equality of man and man and its almost socialistic tendency repre-
sented the same phase of thought that had found expression on the
shores of Galilee."
Ameer Ali Syed, M.A., The Spirit of Islam, p. 160.
" TAKE away that black man ! " exclaimed the Christian
Archbishop Cyrus, " I can have no discussion with
him ! " when the Arab conquerors had sent a deputation
of their ablest men to discuss terms of surrender of the
capital of Egypt, headed by the negro Ubadah, as the
ablest of them all.
To the scared archbishop's astonishment, he was
told that this man was commissioned by the General
Amr ; that the Moslems held negroes and white men
in equal respect judging a man by his character and
not by his colour.
" Well, if the negro must lead, he must speak gently,"
ordered the prelate, so as not to frighten his white
auditors.
The reply of the negro shows the spirit of those
early conquerors.
" There are a thousand blacks, as black as myself,
amongst our companions. I and they would be ready
each to meet and fight a hundred enemies together.
We live only to fight for God, and to follow His will.
We care naught for wealth, so long as we have where-
332
THE GREAT QUESTIONS OF ISLAM 333
withal to stay our hunger and to clothe our bodies. This
world is naught to us, the next world is all ! "
The spirit of the Christian Cyrus prevails to this day.
Quite recently I heard an English officer dismiss a Cairo
cabman who had responded to the Turf Club call, saying
indignantly to his friend and to the porter, " Why, he's
a black beggar." A very few years since a number of
students of Edinburgh University refused the regular
invitation of a Professor to tea on Sunday afternoon, if
another student were included merely because he was
a Negro. It is pleasant to record that the Professor
stood by his dusky friend, gaining for him, eventually,
equality of social treatment. The fact should not be
lost sight of that only one in eight of the people of the
British Empire are white.
It is certainly to the East that one must come to
understand absolute equality a principle, however,
which I fear the English people are especially incapable
of understanding, under any circumstances. The
nature of the gulf which is made to separate the people
of the Orient from Europeans is never realised or under-
stood by Moslems, and I believe that to this cause is
due the greater part of the personal misunderstanding
which makes our rule so difficult in Egypt. As for the
gulf which snobbery and class distinction make to separ-
ate English people from each other, this is still more
incomprehensible to the Oriental mind.
I have talked with a sheikh of pure Arab descent,
now holding a very dignified position in Cairo, a man
of great learning in the history and religion of Islam,
who has with much gentleness asked me to explain our
Christian principles in the matter of brotherhood, as
he could in no way understand them from what he
334 VEILED MYSTERIES OF EGYPT
saw of the Englishmen in Egypt and the Sudan, as com-
pared with the teaching of the New Testament.
This story was told me of this very gentleman he
did not tell it himself, or refer to it but it came from
a mutual friend. When the sheikh was occupying a
chief position in the Sudan, as a Cadi, he had occasion
to travel from Khartoum to Cairo by rail. Having a
first-class ticket, he was sitting in one of the open saloons
which are the rule of the Sudan State Railway, when
an Englishman of the monocled type entered. After
staring rudely, he rang the bell, and informed the guard
that he objected to travelling with " a native."
Gentlemen of the sheikh class, it should be explained,
always wear the turban and long robes of the East.
The sheikh, when asked to leave the saloon for his private
apartment (set apart for sleeping and useable by day),
refused ; he had a ticket entitling him to travel in this
part of the train. The Englishman now became angry,
and doggedly insistent, and after much argument, in
which he was insulting to the sheikh, he found that the
only way to enjoy the car free from this person to whom
he objected, was to pay for most of the seats and so
reserve the whole car. Can it be believed that this
man actually paid 20 for the purpose of driving an
Egyptian out of the general saloon !
The mischief of that one insolent act will never be
measured. It is things like this that rankle, and breed
obstacles to our rule which those who have to face
them are at a loss sometimes to understand.
Such a spirit of class distinction is certainly the
greatest hindrance to missionary work in the East, as
every impartial observer has noted. How, for instance,
can any other appeal stand against that of the Moslem
Photo\ {Lekegian, Cairo.
ONE OF THE SPLENDID FOUNTAINS WHICH ARE FOUND AT ALMOST EVERY TURN
IN THE STREETS OF CAIRO.
THE GREAT QUESTIONS OF ISLAM 335
who, in approaching the pagan, says to him, however
obscure or degraded he may be, " embrace the faith,
and you are at once an equal and a brother." Islam
knows no " colour line." There is great reluctance or
racial incapacity almost in Western missionary advo-
cates to acknowledge class distinction as the almost
insurmountable obstacle to Christian advance in vast
regions where Islam is conquering. This is shown by
the fact that Mr. Tisdall can even go so far as to claim
for Christianity, as a superior merit, the sole propaga-
tion of the doctrine of the Brotherhood of Mankind,
ignoring that it was under Islam that so much was
done to break up the feudal system of Europe by
admitting no privilege or caste in the regions which
it conquered (Note 12).
In pagan Arabia the people took a pertinacious
delight in endless genealogies, and boasted provokingly
to each other of nothing so much as noble ancestors.
" We disregarded every feeling of humanity, and the
duties of hospitality and neighbourhood," was their
own description of their state before " God raised
among them a man who called them to better things."
There can be no question of the teaching of the
Koran on the subject of equality, a teaching which
dictates the conduct, as I have found, of the humblest
Moslem in the desert to the Governor of a province ;
equality is as naturally taken for granted by the one as
by the other. In the Egyptian village the fellah is not
my inferior, but a poor brother ; there is an actual
equality strong and real enough to override the greatest
inequality of position. As in the earliest days, priority
in the faith and spiritual eminence in the brotherhood
of Islam are the only real claims to distinction ; martial
336 VEILED MYSTERIES OF EGYPT
prowess, and descent, being of course a great claim in
the days of conquest.
" The most worthy of honour in the sight of God is
he who feareth Him most," says the Koran ; the first
words Mohammed spoke to the people of Mecca, after
that tremendous act of his in destroying all the idols
in the Kaaba, were upon the natural equality and
brotherhood of mankind, from this very text. The sheikh
el-Islam at Constantinople in a letter to a Western
convert, a few years since, in defining Moslem doctrine,
said, " Believers are all brothers."
It was, perhaps, impossible to maintain over the
whole world the original arrangement devised by
the Prophet, by which all men in Islam were to
join in a brotherhood of the faith, which was to
be closer even than the ties of family; but that
is still the ideal, and many primitive communities
go a long way towards realising it. The brotherhood
of Medina, when each helper of the Prophet was allied
to one of the exiles, to share each other's joys and
sorrows, was a fine conception, and is still talked of by
pious Moslems in a way that shows how the influence
of it lives on. In this and a thousand similar ways the
religious education of Islam, which dwells so largely
on the history of the Prophet, creates a standard of
conduct where rash critics have said there is none.
Every Moslem knows of the Prophet's self-reproach,
that he could once have been so engrossed in talk with
a group of leading citizens of Mecca, as to frown on a
poor blind man who sought his advice. They know, too,
that all through his life he referred to the incident,
and proclaimed God's disapprobation of his conduct.
That ringing verse of self-denunciation is in the Koran
THE GREAT QUESTIONS OF ISLAM 337
itself, and has haunted the imagination of Moslems for
all time ; leading to a most tender consideration of the
blind as their universal rule.
" The Prophet frowned and turned aside,
Because the blind man came to him.
And how knowest thou whether he might not have been cleansed
from his sins,
Or whether he might have been admonished and profited thereby ?
As for the man that is rich,
Him thou receivest graciously ;
And thou carest not that he is not cleansed.
But as for him that cometh unto thee, earnestly seeking his salvation,
And trembling anxiously, him dost thou neglect.
By no means shouldst thou act thus" (Sura Ixxx. i-io).
As an instance of perversity of judgment, coming
from want of sympathy, it may be remarked that Sir
Wm. Muir who accounts for Mohammed by a theory
of demoniacal possession can read of this incident, and
so miss its grandeur as to say that it merely signifies
the Prophet's readiness, when the rich rejected him, to
turn to the poor. As Mr. Bosworth Smith remarked,
" Was ever moral sublimity so marred, or heroism so
vulgarised ? How Mohammed towers above his best
historians ! "
Ever after this the Prophet went out of his way to
do this blind man honour ; his greeting to him was,
" The man is thrice welcome on whose account my
Lord hath reprimanded me," and he made him twice
governor of Medina.
In the days of Omar, an incident occurred which
showed how deep-rooted the principle had become of
the absolute equality of all men in Islam. Jabala, King
of the Ghassandies, having become a Moslem, went in
great pomp and ceremony to perform the pilgrimage.
While circumambulating the Kaaba, the robe of a poor
pilgrim was accidentally flicked across the king's neck,
22
338 VEILED MYSTERIES OF EGYPT
when the king turned, and, in a fury, struck him violently,
knocking out his teeth. This is how Omar, the Caliph,
wrote of what followed. " The poor man came to me,
and prayed for redress. I sent for Jabala, and when
he came before me, I asked him why he had so ill-
treated a brother Moslem. He answered that the man
had insulted him, and that were it not for the sanctity
of the place he would have killed him on the spot. I
answered that his words added greatly to the gravity
of his offence, and that unless he obtained the pardon
of the injured man he would have to submit to the
usual penalty of the law. Jabala replied, c I am a king,
and the other is only a common man.' ' King or no
king, both of you are Moslems, and both of you are
equal in the eye of the law.' ' The king escaped in
the night, and became a Christian, rather than apologise !
The ancient history of the East teems with instances
of men of lowliest birth and of negro blood rising to
the highest posts. And modern history tells much the
same story, or, if it halts at all, it is because of the
prejudices of the West. Slave origin is no disgrace to
this day in Egypt ; a chief lady at the present Court
was herself a slave, and the respect in which she is held
is in no way diminished by the fact. The wife of a
very high Egyptian official, whom I have met, was a
negress, and when she died, no wife was more sincerely
mourned or her children more tenderly cared for.
Indeed, it is only to the Western mind that these facts
would call for the slightest comment, on one side or the
other ; for there is a snobbery of the poor, towards
" their betters " too. It is a touching picture of the
simple affection of her little negro charge which Lady
Duff Gordon gives : " He is very ugly, with his black
THE GREAT QUESTIONS OF ISLAM 339