The Puzzle of Islam
118 THE COMMONWEAL June 5, 1929 THE PUZZLE OF ISLAM ISLAM continues to be of extraordinary interest. The reasons are many: England's position in Asia, which reposes upon the fulcrum of...
...The Moslem idea of God, we are told, is rooted in a primitive Arabian nearmonotheism...
...Indeed, he sent his earliest followers, harassed by persecution, to a Christian bishop in Abyssinia...
...Having set out to examine the contacts between Islam and the Occident as established in the new Angora, he arrived at conclusions which are basically of two kinds...
...The reasons are many: England's position in Asia, which reposes upon the fulcrum of Palestine...
...Nevertheless all that the Saviour had told His disciples regarding the goodness and mercy of God was easily accepted by Mohammed...
...This he upholds by analyzing the idea of God, the ethical purpose and the ascetic forms of the Islamic religion...
...The missionary problem is always to build upon the basis of spiritual facts already given...
...These findings possess, it seems to us, far more than an academic importance...
...Allah, on the other hand, is the God of light, who dispenses good...
...M. Lacoste is a shrewd student of details, but he is also a delver, a seeker after fundamentals...
...This the Pere de Foucauld understood very well...
...In years gone by—quite recently, in fact—it was possible to dismiss Islam with a shrug of the shoulders as a weird sect born out of Arab stupidity...
...Finally the Moslem mystics remain the kindred of Christian seers to an extent which one can only term veritably remarkable...
...For this generous endeavor to save and heal we are all deeply grateful and permissibly proud, but it has not brought us closer to a knowledge of a vast and fascinating section of humanity...
...Though they seem destined to effect a complete change in our attitude toward the history and religion of Islam, they may eventually express themselves effectively in practice...
...Naturally we cannot outline here even the essential points of view outlined in Dr...
...efforts to promote reunion between the oriental Christian churches and the great communions of the West...
...Now several scholars have come with entirely new light on the matter...
...One may, however, venture to make a few observations based upon them, with the hope of inducing some to investigate a vast subject...
...and it was only after these met with no welcome that he turned to the Jews...
...Pere Mareschal recently dealt with one of them in his Studies in Mysticism...
...Furthermore, the ethical ideal of unselfishness in mutual human relations did not originate with Mohammed, but had been preached vigorously by dozens of religious communities and hermit monks...
...Later on the fundamentally Christian character of the Islamic creed was made still plainer, because a series of ascetic leaders emphasized more and more of New Testament doctrine...
...Horten's most important contention is that the elements of the "Prophet's" creed are derived from Christianity and owe their virility to this fact...
...The Reverend John A. Zahm, famous traveler and scholar, had turned his attention to the problem of Mohammed...
...and it is even rumored that Mustapha Kemal has declared "the doctrine of Islam incompatible with reform...
...These have, instead, approached it by an entirely different route through the work of near East relief...
...Strangely enough, only one American seems to have been deeply impressed by the situation...
...and if his life had been spared, he might have succeeded in getting a hearing for this theme from his countrymen...
...Indeed a French observer is always likely to be impressed with the glowing faith of the desert and even to be reminded, as a result, of his own...
...The desert demands what it had in the early days—monastic foundations which by their very existence and nature set the example of a faith expressed in terms of life...
...Strangely enough one sees that precisely in the creed bequeathed by Mohammed there are Christian fundamentals which no other world religion posssesses...
...By the time of Mohammed the two ideas had all but merged, so that the "Prophet" considered monotheism self-evident...
...and perhaps the old Arabs had reached this imperfect knowledge of Divinity through their study of the daytime heavens...
...It could naturally enough not be carried on today by itinerant preachers and catechists...
...Some day others will follow him...
...On the other hand, M. Lacoste wonders if the Turks have "lost their faith...
...Whence comes this strange affinity which has often existed between Catholic and Mohammedan souls...
...Accordingly one feels indebted to the British Observer for publishing during the past weeks a series of lucid articles by Raymond Lacoste, the London correspondent of l'Echo de Paris...
...The mosques of Constantinople and other cities are nearly empty...
...The Arab does not speak of "the Father," but only because his monotheism is held to be incompatible with the Trinity...
...The most important is probably the German historian Max Horten, whose books are devoted to study and interpretation of Mohammedan writings...
...Nevertheless, our author opines, the percentage of Moslem agnosticism is probably not larger than the similar percentage in the Christian West...
...Horten also believes that forms of worship which have perennially attracted the notice of the traveler to the desert—the prostrations, the prayer five times daily, and the readings from the Koran—were borrowed directly from Christian monastic practices...
...How appealingly this point of view is expressed in some Moslem writings is evident to all who have read the texts...
...Saint Francis's mission to the Saladin was, therefore, by no means impractical...
...Though the Turks June 5, 1929 THE COMMONWEAL 119 have been commanded to adopt western customs (the calendar is Gregorian and the penalty for wearing a fez is "fifty strokes of the stick") one cannot be sure that these legislated reforms are destined to last or even that they imply definitive abandonment of the ideal of Moslem unity...
...The most significant fact seems to be, however, the continued insistence of Mohammedan mystics upon the "personality" of the soul...
...Our attitude of mind was determined by the historic conflicts which raged round the vital circlet of the Mediterranean...
...Though the near East was influenced not a little by the Buddhistic Orient, it never conceded to this last the Tightness of Nirvana, but clung firmly to the doctrine of individuality and separate immortality...
...and we are told that in a new book by Monsignor d'Herbigny, director of the Papal Institute for Ethnology, there are fine pages on the same theme...
...But when he suffused new life into this, it was simply by reading the attributes of the Father revealed by Christ into the notion of Allah...
...Certain "magical" aspects attach to it, and it is probably a definitely "astral" conception which arose out of contemplation of the night...
...Who can forget, if he has read them, the reflections of Ernest Psichari on the "mysticism of the desert," which still conserves the doctrine of the mediaeval Abd el Kader, pious recipe for ascending the ladder of perfection...
...Horten's books...
...And of course there is the still more instructive history of that "saint of the Sahara," the Abbe Foucauld, who traveled through African mountains then unknown to any European and found, at the end of his journey, the star of a faith that guided him through a holy and charitable career...
...and the apparent break-up of "Pan-Islam" into a number of strongly centralized local reorganizations, notably in the Turkey of Mustapha Kemal...
...On the one hand, fate ("dhar") is the power which holds absolute sway over men...
...Nor can one forget the dream of missionary work to be accomplished—a purpose beloved of many Catholic souls in the modern time...
Vol. 10 • June 1929 • No. 5
