MOHAMMEDANISM
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MOHAMMEDANISM
althougn Mohammed goes so far as to say that the birth of Christ was due to a miraculous divine opera- tion. But after all it is taught that, as the Koran super- seded the Gospel, so Mohammed supersedes Christ, and he is declared to be by far the most illustrious apostle (Sur. xxiii, 40). Of particular importance for Moham- metl is the annunciation of a Paraclete, which he applied to himself, either pretending or even actually believing it to be himself. Of equal significance for him, and there- fore treated by him with great predilection, is Abraham, first, because of his simple doctrines, to which Moham- med himself adhered in the early period of his prophetic mission ; and, secondly, on account of the sacred places and relics in Mecca of which he (Abraham) is called the founder; and, thirdly and finally, because he was the father of Ishmael, from whom iMoharamed and his race claim descent. The Sunnites look in quite a different light upon the prophets. They regard them, as a class, as the simple carriers of revelation, but in all other re- spects declare them to be common men, liable to human infirmities; while the Shiites pronounce them perfectly pure and sinless, like the angels, instruments of God, who only execute and always have executed his orders, except Iblis, who on account of his disobedience was rejected, and, as Satan, tries to seduce men. An impor- tant dogma with the Shiites is that of the Imamat, or hereditary succession of descendants of the Prophet by his daughter Fatima, consort of Ali — a doctrine which the Sunnites do not acknowledge. Many of them see in the caliphate merely a political institution, which ought to have the welfare of the nations for its foundation and supreme end.
A prominent dogma in Islam is the belief in angels, whom they thus picture : Created of fire, and endowed with a kind of uncorporeal body, they stand between God and man, adoring or waiting upon the former, or interceding for and guarding the latter. The four chief angels are " The Holy Spirit," or " Angel of Revelations" — Gabriel; the special protector and guardian of the Jews — Michael; the "Angel of Death" — Azrael (Ra- phael, in the apocryphal gospel of Barnabas), and Isra- fil — Uriel, whose oihce it will be to sound the trumpet at the resurrection. It will hardly be necessary, alter what we have said under Mohamjied, to point out, in every individual instance, how most of his " religious" notions were taken almost bodily from the Jewish le- gends ; this angelolog}', however, the Jews had them- selves borrowed from the Persians, only altering the names, and, in a few cases, the offices of the chief angelic dignitaries. Besides angels, there are good and evil genii, the chief of the latter being Iblis (Despair), once called Azazil, who, refusing to paj' homage to Adam, was rejected by God. These Jin are of a grosser fabric than angels, and subject to death. They, too, have different names and offices (Peri, Fairies ; Div, Giants ; Takvins, Fates, etc.), and are, in almost every respect, like the Shedim in the Talmud and Midrash. A further point of belief is that of certain God-given Scriptures, reveal- ed successively to the different prophets. Four only of the original one hundred and four sacred books, viz. the Pentateuch, the Psalms, the Gospel, and the Koran, are said to have survived; the three former, however, in a mutilated and falsified condition. Besides these, a certain apocryphal gospel, attributed to St. Barnabas, and the writings of Daniel, together with those of a few other prophets, are taken notice of by the Moslems, but not as canonical books. The number of prophets, sent at various times, is stated variously at between two and three hundred thousand, among whom 313 were apostles, and six were specially commissioned to proclaim new laws and dispensations, which abrogated the preceding ones. These were Adam, Noah, Abraham, jMoses, Je- sus, and Mohammed — the last the greatest of them all, and the propagator of the final dispensation.
The belief in the resurrection and the final judgment is another important article of faith. The dead are re- ceived iu their graves by an angel annoiuicing the com-
ing of the two examiners, Monker and Nakir, who put questions to the corpse respecting his belief in God and Mohammed, and who, in accordance with the answers, either torture or comfort him. This, again, is the Jew- ish " Chibbut hak-keber," the Beating of the Grave, a hyperbolical description of the sufferings during the in- termediate state after death. The soul, awaiting the general resurrection, enters according to its rank, either immediately into paradise (prophets), or partakes, in the . shape of a green bird, of the delights of the abode of bliss (martyrs), or — in the case of common believers — is supposed either to stay near the grave, or to be with Adam in the lowest heaven, or to remain either in the well of Zem-Zem, or in the trumpet of the resurrection. According to others, it rests in the shape of a white bird under the throne of God. The souls of the infidels dwell in a certain well in the province of Hadramaut (Heb. Courts of Death), or, being first offered to heav- en, then oifered to earth, and rejected by either, become subject to unspeakable tortures until the day of resur- rection.