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from the Divine institution of religious warfare. The
same command would render war obligatory, whenever there is a chance of success,
against Jewish and Christian peoples not under treaty with the Moslems;1
and wherever a Christian power should so far forget the precept of its Master as
to oppress its Mussulman subjects, or to raise the sword in a so-called
Christian war, then all the conditions of a Jehâd, including slaughter,
tribute, and slavery, would afresh be justified by the Corân
Polygamy, with the barbarous institution of servile concubinage, is the worm
at the root of Islâm—the secret of its decadence. By it the purity and virtue
of the family tie are touched; the tone and vigour of the dominant classes are
sapped; the body politic becomes weak and languid, excepting for intrigue; and
the State itself too often crumbles to pieces, the prey of a doubtful and
contested succession. Offspring borne by the slave to her proper lord and master
is legitimate, and, as such, shares in the inheritance; but the provision,
praiseworthy in itself, affords but an additional ground for division in the
house. To all this must be added, in respect of the married wives, the fatal
facility of divorce and remarriage, which, even when not put in force, exercises
a potential influence to weaken the marriage bond, and lower woman in the social
scale.
It may seem a small thing, in connection with these
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THE TEACHING OF THE CORÂN.
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great evils, to mention the "veil"; but it
really is not so. This ordinance, with the corresponding restrictions on
domestic intercourse, and the liability of women to chastisement and restraint,1
cannot
but have a rigorous and depressing effect on the sex itself. The baneful
influence on society at large is not less manifest; for woman, with all her
bright and softening influences, being removed altogether from her position in
the outer world, Moslem life is made unreal and morose, and a permanent bar
placed to the advancement and refinement even of the other sex. And yet the
veil, and some degree of seclusion, were wisely ordained by Mahomet; for without
them polygamy, divorce, and servile concubinage would undermine the very
foundations of society; and the attempt to dispense with these would only
aggravate existing evils.
At the same time, the comparison of Christian with Mahometan ethics is not
altogether free from difficulty. The Moslem advocate will urge the precedent of
Jewish polygamy, and also the social evils which he will assert to be the
necessary result of inexorable monogamy. The Corân not only denounces any
illicit laxity between the sexes in the severest terms, but exposes the
transgressor to condign punishment. For this reason, and because the conditions
of what is licit are so accommodating and wide, a certain negative virtue (it
can hardly be called continence or chastity) pervades Mahometan society, in
contrast with which the gross and systematic immorality in certain parts of
every European
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