Muhammedan mysticism is certainly not exclusively Christian: its origins, like those of Christian mysticism, are to be found in the pantheistic writings of the Neoplatonist school of Dionysius the Areopagite: but Islam apparently derived its mysticism from Christian sources. In it originated the idea, with all its capacity for development, of the mystical love of God: to this was added the theory and practice of asceticism which was especially developed by Christianity, and, in later times, the influence of Indian philosophy, which is unmistakable. Such are the fundamental elements of this tendency. When the idea of the Nirwana, the Arab _fan[=a]_, is attained, Muhammedanism proper comes to an end.
But orthodoxy controls the divergent elements: it opposes any open avowal of the logical conclusion, which would identify "God" and the "ego," but in practice this group of ideas, pantheistic in all but name, has been received and given a place side by side with the strict monotheism of the Qoran and with the dogmatic theology. Any form of mysticism which is pushed to its logical consequences must overthrow positive religion. By incorporating this dangerous tendency within itself, Islam has averted the peril which it threatens. Creed is no longer endangered, and this purpose being secured, thought is free.
Union with God is gained by ecstasy and leads to enthusiasm. These terms will therefore show us in what quarter we must seek the strongest impulses to mysticism. The concepts, if not the actual terms, are to be found in Islam: they were undoubtedly transmitted by Christianity and undergo the wide extension which results in the dervish and fakir developments. _Dervish_ and _fakir_ are the Persian and Arabic words for "beggar": the word _sufi_, a man in a woollen shirt, is also used in the same sense. The terms show that asceticism is a fundamental element in mysticism; asceticism was itself an importation to Islam. Dervishes are divided into different classes or orders, according to the methods by which they severally prefer to attain ecstasy: dancing and recitation are practised by the dancing and howling dervishes and other methods are in vogue. It is an institution very different from monasticism but the result of a course of development undoubtedly similar to that which produced the monk: dervishism and monasticism are independent developments of the same original idea.
Among these Muhammedan companies attempts to reach the point of ecstasy have developed to a rigid discipline of the soul; the believer must subject himself to his master, resigning all power of will, and so gradually reaches higher stages of knowledge until he is eventually led to the consciousness of his absolute identity with God. It seems to me beyond question that this method is reflected in the _exercitiis spiritualibus_ of Ignatius Loyola, the chief instrument by which the Jesuits secured dominion over souls. Any one who has realised the enormous influence which Arab thought exerted upon Spanish Christianity so late as the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, will not regard the conjecture as unfounded.
When a man's profession or position prevented him from practising these mystical exercises, he satisfied his religious needs by venerating persons who were nearer to the deity and whose intercession was effectual even after their death and sometimes not until they were dead: hence arose the veneration of saints, a practice as alien as pantheistic dogma to primitive Islam. The adoption of Christian saint
worship was not possible until the person of Muhammed himself had been exalted above the ordinary level of humanity. Early Muhammedans observed that the founder of Christianity was regarded by popular opinion as a miracle worker of unrivalled power: it was impossible for the founder of Islam to remain inferior in this respect. Thus the early biographies of the prophet, which appeared in the first century of Muhammedanism, recount the typical miracles of the Gospels, the feeding of multitudes, healing the sick, raising the dead and so forth.
Two methods of adoption may be distinguished. Special features are directly borrowed, or the line of advance is followed which had introduced the worship of saints and relics to Christianity a short time before. The religious emotions natural to any people produced a series of ideas which pass from one religion to another. Outward form and purport may be changed, but the essential points remain unaltered and are the living expression of that relation to God in which a people conceives itself to stand. Higher forms of religion--a fact as sad as it is true--require a certain degree not only of moral but of intellectual capacity.
Thus we have traversed practically the whole circle of religious life and have everywhere found Islam following in the path of Christian thought. One department remains to be examined, which might be expected to offer but scanty opportunity for borrowings of this kind; this is dogma. Here, if anywhere, the contrast between the two religions should be obvious. The initial divergencies were so pronounced, that any adoption of Christian ideas would seem impossible. Yet in those centuries, Christianity was chiefly agitated by dogmatic questions, which occupied men's minds as greatly as social problems at the present day. Here we can observe most distinctly, how the problems at least were taken over by Islam.
Muhammedan dogmatic theology is concerned only with three main questions, the problem of free-will, the being and attributes of God, and the eternal uncreated nature of God's word. The mere mention of these problems will recall the great dogmatic struggles of early Christianity. At no time have the problems of free-will and the nature of God, been subjects of fiercer dispute than during the Christological and subsequent discussions.
Upholders of freedom or of determinism could alike find much to support their theories in the Qoran: Muhammed was no dogmatist and for him the ideas of man's responsibility and of God's almighty and universal power were not mutually exclusive. The statement of the problem was adopted from Christianity as also was the dialectical subtlety by which a solution was reached, and which, while admitting the almighty power of God, left man responsible for his deeds by regarding him as free to accept or refuse the admonitions of God. Thus the thinkers and their demands for justice and righteous dealing were reconciled to the blind fatalism of the masses, which again was not a native Muhammedan product, but is the outcome of the religious spirit of the East.
The problem of reconciling the attributes of God with the dogma of His unity was solved with no less subtlety. The mere idea that a multiplicity of attributes was incompatible with absolute unity was only possible in a school which had spent centuries in the desperate attempt to reconcile the inference of a divine Trinity with the conception of absolute divine unity.
Finally, the third question, "Was the Qoran, the word of God, created or not?" is an obvious counterpart of the Logos problem, of the struggle to secure recognition of the Logos as eternal and uncreated together with God. Islam solved the question by distinguishing the eternal and uncreated Qoran from the revealed and created. The eternal nature of the Qoran was a dogma entirely alien to the strict monotheism of Islam: but this fact was never realised, any more than the fact that the acceptance of the dogma was a triumph for Graeco-Christian dialectic. There can be no more striking proof of the strength of Christian influence: it was able to undermine the fundamental dogma of Islam, and the Muhammedans never realised the fact.
In our review of these dogmatic questions, we have met with a novel tendency, that to metaphysical speculation and dialectic. It was from Christendom, not directly from the Greek world, that this spirit reached Islam: the first attitude of Muhammedanism towards it was that which Christianity adopted towards all non-religious systems of thought. Islam took it up as a useful weapon for the struggle against heresy.
But it soon became a favourite and trusted implement and eventually its influence upon Muhammedan philosophy became paramount. Here we meet with a further Christian influence, which, when once accepted, very largely contributed to secure a similar development of mediaeval Christian and Muhammedan thought. This was Scholasticism, which was the natural and inevitable consequence of the study of Greek dialectic and philosophy. It is not necessary to sketch the growth of scholasticism, with its barrenness of results in spite of its keen intellectual power, upon ground already fertilised by ecclesiastical pioneers. It will suffice to state the fact that these developments of the Greek spirit were predominant here as in the West: in either case important philosophies rise upon this basis, for the most part professedly ecclesiastical, even when they occasionally struck at the roots of the religious system to which they belonged. In this department, Islam repaid part of its debt to Christianity, for the Arabs became the intellectual leaders of the middle ages.
Thus we come to the concluding section of this treatise; before we enter upon it, two preliminary questions remain for consideration. If Islam was ready to learn from Christianity in every department of religious life, what was the cause of the sudden superiority of Muhammedanism to the rising force of Christianity a few centuries later? And secondly, in view of the traditional antagonism between the Christian and Muhammedan worlds, how was Christianity able to adopt so large and essential a portion of Muhammedan thought?
The answer in the second case will be clear to any one who has followed our argument with attention. The intellectual and religious outlook was so similar in both religions and the problem requiring solution so far identical that nothing existed to impede the adoption of ideas originally Christian which had been developed in the East. The fact that the West could accept philosophical and theological ideas from Islam and that an actual interchange of thought could proceed in this direction, is the best of proofs for the soundness of our argument that the roots of Muhammedanism are to be sought in Christianity.
Islam was able to borrow from Christianity for the reason that Muhammed's ideas were derived from that source: similarly Christianity was able to turn Arab thought to its own purposes because that thought was founded upon Christian principles. The sources of both religions lie in the East and in Oriental thought.
No less is true of Judaism, a scholastic system which was excellently adapted by its international character, to become a medium of communication between Christianity and Muhammedanism during those centuries. In this connection special mention must be made of the Spanish Jews; to their work, not only as transmitting but also as originating ideas a bare reference must here suffice. But of greater importance was the direct exchange of thought, which proceeded through literary channels, by means of translations, especially by word of mouth among the Christians and Muhammedans who were living together in Southern Italy, Sicily, and Spain, and by commercial intercourse.
The other question concerns the fundamental problem of European medievalism. We see that the problems with which the middle ages in Europe were confronted and also that European ethics and metaphysics were identical with the Muhammedan system: we are moreover assured that the acceptance of Christian ideas by Islam can only have taken place in the East: and the conclusion is obvious that mediaeval Christianity was also primarily rooted in the East. The transmission of this religious philosophy to the non-Oriental peoples of the West at first produced a cessation of progress but opened a new intellectual world when these peoples awoke to life in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
But throughout the intermediate period between the seventh and thirteenth centuries the East was gaining political strength and was naturally superior to the West where political organisation and culture had been shattered by the Germanic invasions; in the East again there was an organic unity of national strength and intellectual ideals, as the course of development had not been interrupted. Though special dogmatic points had been changed, the general religious theory remained unaltered throughout the nearer East. Thus the rising power of Islam, which had high faculties of self-accommodation to environment, was able to enter upon the heritage of the mixed Graeco-Oriental civilisation existing in the East; in consequence it gained an immediate advantage over the West, where Eastern ideas were acclimatised with difficulty.
The preponderance of Muhammedan influence was increased by the fact that Islam became the point of amalgamation for ancient Eastern cultures, in particular for those of Greece and Persia: in previous centuries preparation had been made for this process by the steady transformation of Hellenism to Orientalism. Persia, however, had been the main source of Eastern civilisation, at any rate since the Sassanid period: the debt of Byzantine culture to Persia is well known. Unfortunately no thorough investigation has been made of these various and important changes, but it is clear that Persian civilisation sent its influence far westward, at first directly and later through the medium of Muhammedanism.
The same facts hold good with regard to the diffusion of intellectual culture from Persia. How far Persian ideas may have influenced the development of Muhammedan and even of Christian eschatology, we need not here discuss: but the influence of the great Graeco-Christian schools of Persia was enormous: they made the Arabs acquainted with the most important works in Greek and Persian literature. To this fact was due the wide influence of Islam upon Christian civilisation, which is evidenced even to-day by the numerous words of Arab origin to be found in modern European languages; it is in fact an influence the strength of which can hardly be exaggerated. Not only the commercial products of the East, but important economic methods, the ideals of our so-called European chivalry and of its love poetry, the foundations of our natural sciences, even theological and philosophical ideas of high value were then sent to us from the East.
The consequences of the crusades are the best proof of the enormous superiority of the Muhammedan world, a fact which is daily becoming more obvious. Here we are concerned only with the influence exerted by Muhammedan philosophy. It would be more correct to speak of post-classical than of Muhammedan philosophy. But as above, the influence of Christianity upon Islam was considered, so now the reverse process must be outlined. In either case it was the heir to the late classical age, to the mixed Graeco-Oriental culture, which influenced Islam at first in Christian guise. Islam is often able to supplement its borrowings from Christianity at the original sources, and when they have thus been deepened and purified, these adaptations are returned to Christianity in Muhammedan form.