170 =THE REV. W. ST. CLAIR TISDALL, M.A., ON ISLAM: 
Qur'an and the Traditions prove that Muhammad held that 
good deeds, and even the due observance of the prescribed 
ritual, would suffice to do away* with sin. “If there be at 
the gate of any one of you,’ he saidf one day to his companions, 
“a river in which he bathes five times every day, will any 
pollution remain upon him?” They answered in the negative. 
“Then that is what the Five Prayers are like,” said he; “by 
means of them GOD wipes out sin.” 
The true character of Isl4m and the divorce which it, in 
common with all other false faiths, makes between Religion 
and Morality, cannot be better exemplified than in the 
picture which it presents to its professors of the bliss reserved 
for the saved in Paradise. The verses in which these sensual 
gratifications are again and again enumerated in the Qur’ant 
are unfit to be read aloud to a Christian audience. How 
very attractive Muhammad’s followers found these things 
may be inferred not only from history, but also from the 
eager care with which some of their most learned doctors 
have treasured up every  tradition§ which represents 
Muhammad as describing these pleasures in what they 
doubtless regarded as still more glowing colours. <A single 
sentence from these Traditions will here suffice :—* And 
verily every man among the people of Paradise shall surely 
wed 500 Houries, and 4,000 virgins, and 8,000 divorced 
women.” In one place in the Qur'an “a more abundant 
reward ” is promised to the best among Muslims, but it is not 
stated what this reward is. Those Muhammadan doctors who 
have felt how degrading{ such descriptions of Paradise as 
those we have referred to are, have endeavoured to introduce 
a higher element in virtue of this phrase. They** quote a 
* Of. Strah IL, 273; Mishkat, Avtdbw’s Saldt, Sect. III. 
+ Mishkat, cbed., Sect. I, p. 49, where see many more such Traditions. 
{ £g.,Strah LVI, 11-40; LV, 46 sqq., etc. 
§ Vide the accounts in Al Bukhari’s “ As Sahih,” etc., also (Summarised) 
in Mishkat under such headings as brad!) cerlac (“Descriptions of the 
Garden,” ¢.e., of Paradise). 
|| Sarah X, 27 :— 
Ne ce REC ee Set ORE 
| E.g., Al BeidhAwi endeavours to prove that the friendship between 
the Houries and the pious in Paradise is merely Platonic. We leave those 
who can reconcile this idea with such descriptions to do so. . 
** Al Ghazzali, for instance, supports the text (quoted by Pocock in 
‘Not. ad Port. Mosis,” p. 305). 
