524 MOHAMMEDISM 



come into contact with the students of Buddhism and of the mysticism 

 of India generally; when the connection is fully made with the other 

 great root in neo-Platonism and with the other great development 

 in the idealistic, quietistic, and pantheistic schemes of Europe, the 

 way will be paved for the great history of the whole development 

 of mystical thought and aspiration, which is perhaps still the ob- 

 scurest side in the whole history of religion. 



But that is enough of such details. Gigantic and weighty as they 

 are, they must not make us lose sight of the fact that at the very 

 centre of Islam there lies a single problem, as yet untouched but 

 vital for our view and for our understanding of that faith. To put 

 it in a word, it is the fact of Islam itself how we are to understand 

 it, rationalize it, explain it. This problem, though it is really one, 

 may be divided, for clearness of statement, into three. (1) How 

 and why did the Muslim civilization arise? (2) Why had it no 

 permanence? (3) In what ways and to what extent did it affect the 

 civilization of Christendom? 



One of these questions may, perhaps, seem so simple as to be 

 absurd; another may seem a case of question-begging; the third may 

 seem not worth asking. The Muslim civilization arose, I may be 

 told, through the genius and victories of the Arabs. Again, there is 

 no question of lack of permanence; it is there now. Lastly, its 

 effect on the civilization of Europe is well known, and according 

 to the answerer was infinitesimal or almost infinite. 



Let us get down to the facts in the case. In the year A.D. 622, 

 Muhammad, who claimed to be a prophet like the prophets of the 

 Old Testament, migrated through fear of his fellow townsmen from 

 Mecca to Madina, then called Yathrib, and there founded a theo- 

 cratic state with himself as absolute head and interpreter of the will 

 of God. His mission, he proclaimed, was to reduce the world to the 

 faith of Islam, the one eternally true religion, which he had been 

 sent to revive. His commission gave him the right to enforce his claim 

 to the obedience and faith of all the peoples of the earth. At the 

 same time Arabia was more or less in a state of ferment. The tribes 

 were restless; the time had come for them to burst the bands of the 

 desert and make one of their great raids on the adjoining lands. 

 They had done this before, time and again; it is part of the history 

 of Arabia. On this occasion, Muhammad and his successors drew 

 them together with infinite labor and skill, inspired them partly with 

 a belief in themselves, in their nation, and in their national prophet 

 and his faith, partly with a vision of an immensity of booty, and 

 launched them on the world. It was such a raid as Arabia had never 

 known before, but still it was a raid. It lasted for years; it swept to 

 Samarcand, to Spain, to the passes of the Taurus, to the cataracts 

 of the Nile. It changed the map of half the world, and when the 



