ISLAM : What it is

By
Hassan S. Karmi

Islam - its philosophy

Islam was born at a time when in Arabia and in the surrounding areas, religious belief was mostly unformed, and suffered from lack of uniformity or uncertainty. Religious belief was multifarious, ranging from paganism, idolatory, hero worship, worship of man-god, to semi monotheism. Pure monotheism was still unknown.

In Arabia, the situation of religious belief was part and parcel of the general situation in the whole area around. Paganism was well-entrenched, and almost every tribe had its own idol. On the social side, the tribes were engaged in constant warfare which spread murder, destruction, deportation and the seizing of women and carrying them off into captivity. Judaism and Christianity, together with Persian and Indian beliefs, were marginal, and in conflict with one another.

The whole religious and social situation was in turmoil. People of various races and creeds were steeped in religious and social strife and perhaps there was a dire need for something fortuitous to happen to ameliorate the hardship.

At that juncture, Islam was born. Apparently, the birth of Islam was, by a divine dispensation, a response to that dire need, and, as such, it shouldered the task of improving the situation, by trying to think of a religion that would solve the conflict in belief and of a social order that would bring harmony among all.

This is the nucleus of the Islamic mission and it is a tall task, but it is well worth doing, and the Prophet of Islam was determined to do it. It is fair for anybody appraising Islam to bear this in mind, and to be careful not to be sloppy in his appraisal; for the subject is very grave.

The pivot of the whole system is unity. God is one. The universe is one and mankind is one just as this God of Islam is one: its prophet is one, and its holy book is one. Even things which are thought to be opposites or dichotomous in pairs are one. Night and day, life and death, good and evil, and  many other pairs of dichotomies are, in relation to God and in reality the same. For instance, life and death can interchange in the same way as life can grow out of a dead matter, and death can happen to a living matter. And so is the case way with dark and light, night and day, sleep and awakening, etc.

Moreover, Islam had to combat the dualistic and divisive tendencies around. Some of those tendencies were normal, such as, for example, the tendency in man to feel that a world of spirits exists apart from the world of matter or that life exists side by side with death. But the dualistic belief is fraught with danger. It is that which divides man against man. This discrimination which pervaded human history for thousands of years is responsible for the splits in almost every walk of life. If you deem yourself to belong to the chosen people you can take the law into your hands and do whatever you like, crimes included without turning a hair. Nay, you feel that you are doing the right thing, and even if you kill a gentile or exterminate a gentile people, as the Israelites did against the Amalekites, the Canaanites, the Edumians and the Ammonites, or as the European Christians did against the Red Indians, the Aztees, the Aborigines or the Maories. The gentiles have been persecuted, massacred, expelled or dispossessed of their property with impunity, and with no voice raised to protest . In recent history, this barbaric onslaught is exemplified glaringly by what the Jews have been doing to the Arabs of Palestine under the nose of the civilized nations and with the full knowledge of the so-called Security Council of the so-called United Nations.

This is what Islam has been trying to guard against. But this is not all.

This Islamic cyclic view of things is pervasive, and what underlies it is the assumption that man knows what is apparent and is ignorant of facts in the invisible or the occult reality. Man knows, or can know, the phenomenal world, but the numenal world is hidden from him. These two worlds are really one. Man, in his search for truth, is groping in the dark, labouring, in fact, under illusion, hoping to see the light bursting forth on him at the end of the never ending tunnel.

One of the main dichotomies is that of good and evil. What is good? What is evil? People ascribe evil to Satan, and good to God, thus placing Satan on par with God. This is anathema to Islam. They are the same. What is good for you may be evil for another. Shakespeare says for instance: “There is nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” God alone determines what is good and what is evil, and man must abide by this determination.

The dilemma of good and evil, when an attempt to resolve it is similar to the dilemma faced by the philosophers about the presence of evil in the world, who said that God wanted to remove evil but He could not, or He could remove it, but He did not want. It is also similar to the dilemma of Descartes about mind and body.

The rule of “balance” in Islam and that of “retribution” are related to this dilemma. The norm is the middle course, when the beam  of the balance is level, and the tongue of the balance is in the middle of it.

The norms are decided by God, and not by man. They are just, and binding. Any disregard of these norms is wrong, and is either aggression or injustice, both of which are condemned in the Qur’an in the strongest terms.

The problem of other pairs of opposites which Islam addressed itself to is that of rich and poor. Islam makes the society responsible for helping the poor, the needy, the cripple, the disabled, the handicapped, the blind and the wayfarer, if they can’t shift for themselves. It is laid down as a duty that the rich should cede a share of their wealth for those unfortunate human beings. This proportionate share should be exacted by law, and be paid into the public treasury. This payment by the rich is called Zakat, an obligatory rate (about one fortieth) on one’s property set apart as God’s due, and religiously dispensed to the poor. This is part of the social justice, or social security in Islam. The practice was maintained throughout, with periods of intermission, especially during the early centuries of the Islamic state. Al-Walid ben Abdul-Malik, an Omayyad Khalif, used to appoint guides to the blind and servants to the cripple and the handicapped. There were always shelters and poor-houses for the accommodation of the wayfarers, and soup-houses for the hungry. Religious endowments are originally instituted for the help of the poor and the needy. If one wants to label Islam, one would hit the bull’s eye if one calls it: the religion of social justice.

But all this needs a radical change in the society. Islam was born in the middle of a society that was marked by chaos in everything. It was a society of dissensions, tribal wars, tribal feuds, superstitions, promiscuity, and sunk in idolatory, with so many shamans, witch-doctors and religious charlatans. The society was bursting the seams and was an easy prey for freebooters, especially a prey for the Abyssinians, the Persians and the Byzantines who easily carved chunks of the Peninsula for themselves. The task for Islam, under these circumstances, was to regenerate the society, by reorientating it. The remedy consisted in creating a new infrastructure, a new loyalty, and a sense of nationalism.

The tribe had to be replaced by the family. The founding of the family is an exclusively Islamic innovation. Loyalty shifted from the tribe to the family. Then the creation of a feeling of nationhood was the next step, with the idea that the Arabs should have an identity of their own, quite distinct from the Abyssinians, the Persians and the Byzantines, not only in terms of nationality, but also in terms of religion. The tribal system was destroyed and the Arab national identity was established. The Arabs became one nation, with a distinct identity. They were thus able to free themselves from foreign rule to rise as one block to seek a place in the sun. Hence the Arab empire, the Islamic religion and the Arab-Islamic civilization.

Social justice, to be firmly established had to be based upon a solid foundation in addition. This new solid foundation is the principle of taqwa, pious fear of God. This is, in common parlance, similar in a way to self-restraint on pious grounds or to giving the benefit of the doubt conscientiously. It means especially, that  a man in power should always remember that the judge on earth does not have the last word, for the last word resides with the supreme judge in heaven. This consideration acts as a brake or a check against precipitous or high-handed measures, particularly when taken against the poor and the weak.

A ruler should always abide by this rule. He should follow the norms and piously fear God. Even if he happens to be a dictator he must fear God. By adhering to the norms and piosuly fearing God, he may not be regarded as a tyrant or, a despot. An illustration of this is, the verdict passed by a conference of the Muslim jurists and judges held in Baghdad following its conquest by the Tartars under Hulago (1258). The conference was convened to the question whether a Muslim should submit to a non-Muslim ruler, (Hulago was not a Muslim). The verdict was that a Muslim could submit to a non-Muslim ruler provided the ruler is just.

This obsession with justice, with taqwa, and with the rule of the balance has made a Muslim optimistic, but has made him, on the other hand, less self-reliant than a Christian or a Jew. He feels unafraid and trusts to chance. He takes it easy, and he is not in a hurry to plunge into the maelstrom and to be keen to join the caravan stampeding towards the abyss and certain self-destruction. This holding-back and the sticking fast to his roots have given the chance to his enemies to call him a stick-in-the mud or backward.

A Muslim is commanded not to leave his home, either willingly or unwillingly. If he leaves his home he is like killing himself. This extra sense of belonging is another plank in his fast adherence to his heritage. It may be considered a drawback, but a Muslim thinks that, drawback or no drawback, it is worth taking the risk when the outcome is the maintenance of one’s identity. It is against the tribal system.

Islam goes further. It commands Muslims not to make friends with those who forced them out of their homes and with those who were accessories before the act. This applies especially to the tragedy of the Palestinian refugees languishing as they are in camps for tens of years.

A Muslim is not a fatalist in his orthodox belief. He is called fatalist perhaps because he expects justice from all and because he has faith in the mercy of God. To be sure, this feeling of trust in God has worked against him in the worldly hectic rush for wealth and power, but who could tell that his uninvolvement attitude may not be better for him in the long run when the rush will certainly lead the world into ruin.

But this apparent trusting mood is different from the wrongly understood belief in fate. The question in this respect is the classic dilemma as to whether man is a free agent, or that his actions are predetermined. Islam tackled this problem and offered a solution of its own.

The idea that God is omnipotent would probably induce people to think that man cannot escape from the grip of God, and he cannot be free to do whatever he likes. On the other hand, if his actions are controlled by God, he should not be accountable for them on the Day of Judgement. This of course is unacceptable and hence the dilemma.

Islam does not deny that God is omnipotent, but gives an explanation to this omnipotence in this respect. God is omnipotent through the laws he laid in the universe. These laws are described as predetermined and are free from any outside influence, and man can only discover them, without altering them. This fixedness of the cosmic laws is denoted by the word qada in Islam. It refers to those original and predetermined laws. Man cannot escape through the net, and so he is not free. He is only free when he acts within these bounds. The word for this in Islam is qadar. In the end, man is free, but not really free, and his acts are within bounds, but yet he is free.

If we assume, as it is assumed in Islam, that man is born in a world hostile to him and that man is required to make the best of a bad job, then man’s life should be a life of toil, struggle and conflict. The Qur’an says in one of its verses that man is born in a world of travail (Surah Al-Balad, verse 4). If that is so, how is he to steer his course? Islam says that man is created with a course cut-out for him in advance. But how can he be rewarded or punished for what he is not responsible for? Here we have to differentiate between the act itself and the intention to the act. Man, in Islam, is sane and can reason things out and form intentions. Therefore, he is responsible, and if he does a good, or a bad act, he is rewarded or punished. This is the Islamic point of view.

There is a verse in the Qur’an to the effect that God does not change a nation unless its members change their minds (Surah Al-Ra‘d, verse 11), or what they have in their minds. This verse is very significant because stress is laid on the importance of what one has in one’s mind as the mainspring of action. Intentions are singled out.

What gives rise to intentions is belief based upon conviction, and the strongest conviction is the one rooted in religion. Therefore, to understand why a certain people behave in a peculiar way, we have to examine his religious beliefs. Let’s see, for example, what a Muslim believes in.

A Muslim, as is well-known, believes in one only God, the God of all, without discrimination. All are equal before this Only God, Muslims, Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus and others. He also believes that the universe is a unity.

A Muslim is commanded to do good and to resist evil. He is urged to be just and to refrain from aggression and to be merciful to the underdog. He must follow a middle course and always abide by the principles of balance and taqwa. Hegemony on the basis of wealth and power is rejected. Authenticity is insisted on, and no tradition, myth, legend, and apocryphal writing should be given any credence, including hearsay evidence. Islam has no discrimination on account of colour, race or religion. There is no exclusiveness or chosenness in Islam. Nothing in Islam is contrary to reason. There are no miracles.

The Old Testament is a narrative about the Jewish people, quite unlike the Qur’an which does not speak about the Arabs. Therefore, the Old Testament concerns the Jews alone. The Jews have a Sabbath; but not the Muslims. The idea of the Covenant is not fair to god, because it limits his freedom to act. He is made to serve the selfish interests of a single nation.

The Jewish notion of chosenness has set the Jews apart from the rest of mankind in all the world.The hands of the Jews have been against the nations and the hands of the nations have been against the Jews. This is a very peculiar situation and it calls for wonder. If what the Jews are like is wrong, where does the wrong lie? Or is it the fault of all nations throughout history?

Be that as it may. But the main thing is that a religion fails to do its duty, if it is divisive. For, if it is divisive and claims to be of divine origin, it blasphemes against God and is probably harmful to humanity.

Dualism actuated by divisiveness

A religious conviction is more effective than an instinct because it is of the mind, not of the body, and, as such, it is more terrible when it is misdirected. The commandment ‘do not kill’ does not mean ‘do not kill anybody’, but only ‘do not kill a Jew’. A Canaanite, an Egyptian, an Edumite, an Ammonite or an Amalekite can be killed by a Jew with impunity.

In the Jewish law, an adulterer is to be killed only if he commits adultery with a Jewish woman. But if he commits adultery with a gentile woman, the gentile woman is to be killed and not the Jew. On a Sabbath day, if a man falls ill and needs immediate help, a Jewish doctor is allowed to help if the patient is a Jew, but not if he is a gentile or a goy.

These are only a few examples of this spirit. The horror of it is that it has been carried over to Christianity. The Jews used to call Christians and Muslims ‘gentiles’. The Christians started to call Jews and Muslims ‘gentiles’. Muslims are doubly condemned, and this joint condemnation has been put into practice throughout history. The “New Testament” of Christianity is meant to replace the “Old Testament” of the Jews, the Christians have become the chosen people.

This notorious spirit of prejudice has persisted to mar human history. The Jews were in conflict with many ancient peoples with the Assyrians, the Chaldeans, the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Europeans and now with the Arabs.

The Christians took over this attitude, inherited from the Jews, and adopted the same hatred against the gentiles. They instituted the crusading campaigns against heresies, and then against infidels, notably Muslims. They also turned against the Jews, the infidel Muslims and the pagans, as they used to call them, in America, Africa, Asia and Australia. Under colonialism, the so-called “white man’s burden”, the natives of those lands had to suffer humiliation, despoilment, pauperization and in many cases, expulsion or genocide. Their lands were confiscated on the pretext of being terra nullius and their numbers were decimated in favour of the white man, who came to civilize them. The Red Indians, the Aztecs, the Maoris, the Aborigines in Australia, and many others then and before were the victims of this civilization. Later, in consistence with this savage onslaught, the South African negroes, the Turks in Cyprus, the Arabs in Palestine, the Algerians and many others were expelled, partially or totally, from their lands, to give room to the new settlers. The settlers were the “chosen’ people, and the natives were the “gentiles”, and, as such, they deserved the brutal treatment meted to them.

This divisive religious attitude gave rise to discrimination, bias, ambivalence, prejudice, apartheid, double standard, hysteria and schizophrenia. All these evils are symptomatic of Western civilization. This schizophrenic civilization is problematic. It is good and bad, cruel and kind, fair and unfair, democratic and tyrannical, destructive and constructive, capitalistic and socialistic, and so on. It is not consistent. It is in the work of a split personality. But why is the split?

Let us first give some examples from recent history. Marxism, after the American, the French, and the British revolutions, attempted to remove a form of injustice, though not the cause of it. It only sharpened the conflict, and was partly responsible for the arms race and the invention of the atomic and the nuclear bombs and the weapons of mass destruction. A wave of anti-communism developed and was about to unleash a nuclear world war which would have destroyed humanity. When the atom bomb was produced, its production stirred up the divisive trend, and the slogan was: those who are not with us are against us. The middle course of restraint was flung to the wind. Only the two extreme courses remained.

The atomic bomb was dropped on Naga Zaki and Hiroshima, and was about to be dropped on China and the major Soviet cities. The Japanese, the Chinese, who were not Christians, and the Soviets who were atheists and a threat to Judeo-Christianity had to be punished. The Zionists, who first supported the Russian revolution, later turned against it when it proved to be egalitarian in some way. They joined the “chosen” people camp, the Europeans first and then the Americans. The Europeans gave them the Balfour Declaration and arms and helped them to establish their state. The Americans later stepped in.

Now on what grounds the Balfour Declaration was given and on what grounds the Europeans were instrumental in creating Israel? The main plea by the Europeans was that the Jews should have a home of their own. This is acceptable. But then there were many other peoples crying for a home of their own and nobody cared for them. Nay, there were at the same time scores of peoples crying for freedom in their homes. They were neglected.

But let us suppose that the Europeans were right, why should the Jewish home be inflicted with force on the Palestinians who were in possession of the country? The first thing that comes to mind in answer, is that the Muslims and Arabs there are gentiles. The Jews are therefore preferable. When they go into Palestine they will find it a desert, terra nullius and sparsely populated by Bedouins. The Jews will be able easily to seize the land and settle on it and will be able to expel the wandering nomads there. But did the Europeans not know that all that was a tissue of lies? Yes, they knew, but a schizophrenic personality as every Judeo-Christian was, is prepared to believe that a fiction is a fact and that a fact is a fiction. The Jewish claim to Palestine is a fiction and yet it was believed, and the consequence was wars and eviction of the rightful owners of the land. Was not the same tragic drama being or had been enacted by Judeo-Christians in other parts of the world on the pretext that the peoples there were gentiles belonging to pagan races which are, as the Brobdinigingyan said, only fit to be trampled on. This is the double standard. It may be exemplified in recent history by the behaviour of certain countries, such as the United States and Israel. Both these two countries have the same origin. They invaded a country, took possession of it by force and expelled or exterminated its original inhabitants. In doing that, both of them acted under the influence of a deep-seated religious prejudice, under a misconception, and under an impulse of plunder. The religious prejudicial argument was that the Red Indians were gentiles and that the Founding Fathers’ slogan was, our god was not Jesus but the god of Israel. The misconception was that the land which the Immigrants captured from the Red Indians was terra nullius. These three things are a replica of the Israeli action in Palestine. The Americans, therefore, sympathise with Israel just as the other European colonial powers did. The case of the Arabs of Palestine is doomed in advance, and the judges have already made up their minds. From this flowed the Balfour Declaration, the British mandate, the help given to Israel. Financially, morally and militarily _ all against the Arabs for no fault of theirs. The reason for it all was that the Arabs were gentiles and like the Lilliputians, fit only to be trampled on. And so was the fate of the Aborigines in Australia and the Maoris in New Zealand. They were practically exterminated and their lands were seized. And so was the fate of the Aztecs and other peoples in South America.

One of the most puzzling phenomena in any cultural history is the gross indifference with which Islam in its essence has been treated in the West, and the deliberate disregard amounting to contempt. This attitude which is persisting till now in the West, reflects badly upon the West in the Middle Ages as well as in the modern times. In the Middle Ages, the West was plunged in darkness, and in the modern times is plunged in blindness. This may be an excuse, but an excuse which calls for an explanation.

Islam arose in the Arab peninsula early in the 7th century A.D. It soon spread in the whole peninsula in ten years’time, and in the surrounding countries in fifty years, sweeping before it, well-entrenched political and religious systems. The area that was conquered in an amazingly short time consisted of the centres of civilizations, and one could say that Islam did not spread in vacuum, nor did it spread where there were no long-established religions and civilizations to challenge. Therefore, its spread then which appeared to be a walk-through against formidable obstacles looks like a miracle.

In the early period of Arab conquests, one aspect stands out as significant, and that  is the fact that Islam was acceptable to peoples of ancient civilizations and in an area known to be a seat of learning. The second significant aspect is the fact that when the Arabs conquered the countries of the Middle East they were not barbarians. They were civilized, in the sense that they introduced a religion based upon strict monotheism, tolerance, and egalitarianism: a social system to regulate the family, property and morals, and a system of government based upon public suffrage, headed by a supreme ruler with religious and secular powers, neither a pope nor an emperor. The Qur’an was the source of all these systems.

But the aspect that is more significant, and amazing at that, is the fact that in spite of the conspicuous presence of Islam in the Middle East, further east, and in the West, particularly in Spain, Portugal and Sicily and during the Crusades, there seemed to be little knowledge of Islam among the Jewish and, the Christian minorities and gross misconceptions and misrepresentations of it, sometimes deliberately. The onslaught against Islam and the Prophet came mainly from Christians.

The Bible was regarded by Jews and Christians as the infallible book which contained an answer to every question. The Arabs who started the Islamic movement are described in that book as second-class humans by virtue of their descent from Ishmael and Hagar, and not from Isaac and Sarah, and as coarse and uncouth, and even savage. This damning image, not only of the Arabs but of the Muslims at large was indelibly carved upon the mind of every Christian and was responsible for the close-minded attitude to Islam. Muslims were dismissed as gentiles who were beneath contempt, and unworthy of being thought of, and anything they produced even their Qur’an was anathema. Islam was an upstart, a heresy, a threat which must be warded off. This view has always been uppermost in the mind of every Christian as a whole, even till today, Islam is now termed as a terrorist religion, just as it was termed as a religion of the sword. This is very unfair, and it springs only from ignorance, prejudice, passive self-defence. No Christian wants to know the truth about Islam. He is afraid to know it. Thus Islam remains sinned against than sinning.

Perhaps the first serious attempt to learn about Islam was made by Venerable Bede (673-735). He had no original and reliable sources to rely upon, and so he fell back upon Byzantine stories current at his time and upon the Bible. A specimen of the Byzantine stories, for instance, is the story that Muhammad was killed by pigs during one of his epileptic fits. Another story was that Muhammad was a magician and he managed to conquer many lands by magic. Such stories were current in Byzantium and Byzantium was close to the Muslim countries in the East, and one would expect the Byzantines to know better.

Another sort of false stories are those which originated in the West and were current roughly during the reign of Charlemagne (768-814). One of those stories, included in the Song of Roland, was that Muslims worshipped idols and believed in three gods: Termagant, Muhammad and Apollo. The Muslim trinity was the same as the Christian Trinity, but the Muslim one was believed to be absurd. The Muslim gods, one of the stories claimed, multiplied in time until they numbered 30, and included Lucifer, Jupiter, Diana and Plato. These funny stories were current in the West at a time when Muslims were ruling in Spain.

Bede who relied on such stories and on the Bible in his study of Islam did more harm than good, especially in his emphasis on the doctrine of Hagarism set out before.

 This state of utter confusion and falsification persisted throughout the centuries until the 12th century. There occurred a shift from fable to fact, thanks to the Crusades and to the influence of the Arabs in Spain. The first fact that dawned eventually upon the minds of the Christians was that Islam believed only in one God and that Muhammaed was a prophet, and by the middle of the 12th century there emerged among the Christians in the West a clear image of Islam and its prophet nearer to the truth than before. The Qur’an was translated, perhaps for the first time by Peter the Venerable of Cluny in 1143, and the translation provided a credible source for the study of Islam away from fanciful and false stories. But the aim of Peter the Venerable from translating the Qur’an soon appeared to be different from what was expected. His true aim was to find points of weakness in the Qur’an and to use them against Islam. The aim, however, was not attained, and there came over Europe a feeling of despondency because of their successive reverses in the Crusades and because of the Muslim Mohades in the West. The view that prevailed in the West towards the end of the 12th century was that Islam was an enemy inside Christendom, and Christendom was torn between this enemy and an unbelieving Pope.

The 13th century in Europe appears, in so far as Islam is concerned, to be somewhat objective, having been influenced by the new spirit of research and the acquaintance with the Greek learning passed on by the Arabs. The philosophy of Islam had reached Christian theologians and had left its marks on their beliefs. A typical example is Roger Bacon (1214-1294). He was aware of the Greek Aristotelian philosophy through the works of the Arab philosopher Averroes (1126-1198) and his philosophy of Averroeism. His emphasis was on the truth how to find it and how to show it to those who were in error. The Muslims, in his opinion were in error, but the Christians were unable to show them the truth because they did not know how, and they were misoriented. He wanted, by the new ways of philosophy and logic, to prove that Islam was wrong. He failed in that. His failure may have been due to his premiss that Christianity was the standard against which Islam should be measured.

Bacon’s successors on the whole adopted the same standard. William of Tripoli, for instance, wrote in 1272 to say about the Muslims of his day that their beliefs were couched in falsehoods and ornamented with tales, but they appear to be nearer to the Christian truth. He also thought that Islam was on the way out.

This optimistic frame of mind was to be found in the 14th century. But the opposite point of view began to show itself later on. The image of Muhammad, for instance, was improved a bit. He was a magician before, but then he was a cardinal. He wanted to be a pope, but he was frustrated and his frustration drove him to be an enemy of Christianity. On the whole, the 14th century was slightly less dependent on the Bible or Christianity in its judgement but more dependent on fictitious stories of travellers.

John Wycliffe (1320-84), like Roger Bacon, wanted to use reasoning to fight Islam or to defend Christianity against Islam. His knowledge of Islam was deficient and was based solely upon fanciful narratives of travellers and pilgrims. He, however, read the Qur’an in translation and used to quote from it when necessary. In his attitude to Islam, he complained that Islam favoured philosophy and intelligence rather than the revealed word of God, in the same way as the Western Church. Islam in his view was a worldly religion, advocating temporal power and wealth, like the Western Church, and the only way to defeat both is to go back to the life of poverty and hardship. But in following that line of thought, he seemed to be contradicting himself in saying that Muhammed prevented his people from inquiry and argument, like the Pope. Christianity had to fight two enemies, an external one represented by Islam, and an internal one represented by the corrupt Western Church. But this recipe for improving the chances of Christianity against Islam was judged to be ineffective by Thomas Gascogne of Oxford later in the middle of the 15th century, who wrote that he had heard it said that Muslims had no desire to convert to Christianity because 1) of the disagreement among Christians about several cardianl subjects and of the plurality of the Christian sects, 2) because of the sinful life of Christianity, 3) and because of the untenableness of the Christian creed.

In the turmoil of ideas how to stem the tide of Islam, among church leaders and theologians there was no agreed strategy. John of Segovia, for instance, in his search for a strategy, urged that the problem of Islam could be tackled with the help of a right method, and that was to tap the original sources and get the right conclusion. He therefore began his study by producing a new translation of the Qur’an which he thought to be nearer the original and free from misrepresentations often deliberately made. But he admitted that the absence of a correct translation of the Qur’an, which was a fact, would make the investigator come out with wrong impressions about Islam and would make him think that the Qur’an was not the word of God.

John of Segovia was of course interested in the first place in saving Christianity from danger and was casting about for ways and means to achieve that. He had no faith in the method for that purpose suggested by his predecessors, and he proposed that conferences with Muslims was the right procedure, as an alternative to war.

His supporter in this endeavour was Nicholas of Cusa (1401-64) a contemporary philosopher, mathematician, and a German Cardinal who anticipated Copernicus in asserting that the earth revolved around the sun, and who proved that the Donations of Constantine were a forgery. Nicholas approved of his friend’s idea of a conference which John of Segovia called “Contraferentia”, and gave instructions as to what kind of members should be called to it.

But his major work in this direction was his book “Cribratio Al-Choran, 1460, in which he studied the Qur’an in detail to sift out the main elements in it. His study resulted in that the Qur’an consisted of three chief elements: 1) Nestorian Christianity, 2) anti-Christian sentiments introduced into the Qur’an by a Jewish adviser to Muhammad, and 3) other insertions into the Qur’an by Jews after the death of Muhammad.

These conclusions were of course false. But how could a man of such a stature with his methodology could arrive after a long research at such ridiculous findings?

Jean Germain was the bishop of Châlons and was with John of Segovia and Nicholas of Cusa one of the clergymen who addressed themselves to the task of finding a solution to the problem of Islam. Contrary to many peaceful measures, he advocated a military solution, a holy Crusading war, especially against the Turks. At the same time, he turned his attention to the apathy prevailing in Christendom, and to the Christian unconcern about Christian traders who returned from Muslim countries with ideas antagonistic to Christianity. All those Christian measures under discussion centred around the year 1455. Constantinople had fallen to the Turks in 1453.

The other correspondent of John of Segovia on the question of Islam was Pole Pius II, who was known also by his literary name Aeneas Silvius (1458-64). He was famous among other things by his message to Muhammad II, the Turkish sultan, conqueror of Constantinople, sent in 1460, in which he advised the Sultan to change over to Christianity and thus become the mightiest monarch in the world. The whole message was a series of arguments put forward by the Pope with the aim of proving that Christianity was a better religion than Islam on the grounds of its being more reasonable and more authentic. The message fell on deaf ears, and in the end the efforts in the direction of solving the problem of Islam so far proved to be futile.

Even Luther’s attempt after the end of the 15th century met the same fate-failure. The reason is believed to be twofold. First, the charges laid against Islam were figments of fancy prompted by sheer prejudice. Secondly, those charges were not based upon true knowledge of Islam, acquired through direct acquaintance with its original sources. Lack of Christians who knew Arabic well enough to be able to translate the Qur’an and other standard sources was the main handicap, coupled with the stumbling block that the Muslims were ignorant of any foreign language for religious considerations.

Luther (1483-1546), like Jean Germain, used to believe that Muslims were dead against conversion to Christianity by any means, and therefore it was useless to make the attempt. He, however, in his old age, translated into German an anti-Islamic book of the 13th century, written by Ricoldo de Montecroce, called “Confutation Alchoran”. The title of the book reveals the nature of its contents.

Luther believed that the defence against Islam can be made through a regeneration of Christendom. Muhammad was not the Antichrist, but the Pope was. In his opinion, as Wycliffe thought before him, the external enemy could be overcome by first getting rid of the internal one, the Pope.

The net result was that Islam was not defeated intellectually, but physically, as from the beginning of the 16th century, by force. The real onslaught against Islam began in earnest, until now.