Islam versus Christianity and Its Missionary Activities in Muslim Lands

198 It is told of Edwin, the King of England, that when he was uncertain if he should become a Christian he gathered together the wise men of his kingdom and asked them whether or not they should adopt the religion of Christ.

“The life of a man,” said an aged nobleman, “seems like the flight of a sparrow through the hall where men are feasting in the winter with a warm fire blazing on the hearth. But outside there is cold, rain and storm is raging. A bird flies in at the door. It tarries for a moment amidst the warmth and the light and then again, it vanishes into the cold and darkness outside. So it is with the life of a man. We tarry a moment on this earth, but whence we came and whither we go, we know not. If the new faith can teach us truly about these things, let us all follow it.”

This wise advice pleased the King and his other nobles and so Northumbria became a Christian land. The converion of King Edwin took place in 627 A.D.

Thus the saintly scholar Bede (673–735), in his History of the English Church and People, most beautifully relates the reason why religious faith is indispensable to man. The advice given to King Edward is as relevant and sound to man today at the end of twentieth century as it was nearly 199fourteen hundred years ago. All the revolutionary marvels of science and technology have not changed this instinctual need of man in his quest for the meaning and purpose of life which shall continue so long as the human race endures.

King Edward could not know that just at the time he embraced Christianity, the Holy Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) was establishing and consolidating Islam at the city-state of Medina throughout the Arabian peninsula. He embraced Christianity because no better alternative was available to him.

Although until the age of twenty-eight, when I migrated to Pakistan, I had spent my entire life in New York among Christians, I have never been attracted to Christianity. Despite my fondness for reading the stories about Jesus (peace be upon him) in the New Testament as a child, I always found utterly repugnant the following characteristics of this religion:

1. Almost from the outset, Christianity has proved itself unfaithful to its founder. Christian theology has no relevance or relation to the teachings of Jesus Christ (peace be upon him) even as recorded in the present versions of the New Testament. Even before I embraced Islam having been reared as a Jew, I could not but regard the Christian religion as hopelessly corrupted by Greek, Roman and Persian paganism from the very beginning. These pagan influences were never regarded by the Christian leaders as extraneous innovations to be condemned, resisted and combated but were all incorporated into the religion as essential dogma and practice. Christian 200history is devoid of any counterparts to our great Mujaddids to resist innovation and preserve the purity of the faith intact.
2. The acceptance of Greek pagan philosophy has resulted in the incomprehensible and meaningless theology of Christianity. The Christian dogmas of the Triune God as Father, Son and Holy Ghost, the Incarnation of God into man, the doctrine of Original Sin which can only be erased by implicit faith in Christ as Redeemer and the entire ecclesiastical organization of the Church, both Protestant and Catholic, were as unpalatable to the Jewish mentality of my childhood as they are to the Muslim. In fact, very few Jews have become converted to Christianity because of sincere conviction as hardly any Jew could possibly reconcile himself to these dogmas. Most Jewish conversions to Christianity in the past have been motivated by an eagerness to escape discrimination and persecution or for a hunger for social acceptance among the “gentiles.”
3. In Jewish and Muslim eyes, the most irredeemable defect in Christianity is its lack of Divine authority. The Gospels were merely four of the many apocryphical biographies written about Jesus (peace be upon him) in a language utterly foreign to him (Greek) which were not canonized until centuries after his alleged crucifixion. As for the Epistles, I could never understand why St. Paul’s letters which were merely his own instructions to the various churches in the Roman Empire, should be canonized as “divinely inspired.” The Muslim and Jew cannot but frown upon Christianity’s astonishing readiness to accept 201fallible human authority as infallible even on those questions which concern fundamental doctrine. Hence the priestly hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church, and the prevailing view among liberal Protestants that since every man is his own priest, we are absolutely free to believe and to do as we please! Even the most casual study of the history of Christianity reveals this religion to have evolved through the dictates of popes, saints, worldly kings and synods—thus a purely man-made Religion!
4. Because of St. Paul’s rejection of the “Law” to be replaced by faith in Christ as redeemer of the sins of all mankind to make the religion acceptable to the Greek and Roman world, Christianity is devoid of any complete code of Guidance as a determining factor in social and political affairs. The Jew and Muslim are convinced that faith in God can have no effect on human life unless God is not only accepted as Creator and Redeemer but as an infallible Guide and Ruler. The laws of Judaism and Islam, so vehemently rejected by Christianity, are based on the premise that God has revealed through the Prophets an explicit Guidance as to how we should behave collectively as well as individually, and only by living as God wants us to live, can we hope to attain eternal salvation. Divine Law, especially relating to social affairs and politics, is regarded by the Christian as mere empty formality and ritualism while this comprehensive code governing all aspects of life in reality serves as the strongest bond of solidarity among us so that if Muslims from Indonesia visit Morocco, they are at once most 202warmly welcomed with open arms as brethren-in-faith. Despite all its corruption with nationalism, Judaism fosters a similar group solidarity so that if Jews from any part of the world are afflicted with calamity, more fortunate Jews, though they may be from the other end of the earth, will immediately rush to their assistance. The Christian does not enjoy any such sense of belonging. If a Christian from Germany visits the Philippines, the most powerful Christian country in Asia, he is a complete foreigner. There is nothing to bind the Protestant in America to the Copt in Ethiopia.
5. Above all, what most repelled me emotionally was the complete historical identification of Christianity with Europe and Western civilization. As a child at the mere mention of the word “Christianity”, I could only conjure up in my mind the horrors of the Spanish inquisition, the Crusades, the “pogroms” in Russia and Poland and the genocide of the Jews under Nazism which the Christian authorities did not attempt to resist or even protest. During my adolescence I found Christendom actively cooperating with Zionism, supposedly as a reaction to belated guilt-feelings on account of its past sins against the Jews. At this juncture I learned that Christendom in alliance with European imperialism, was the greatest enemy of the Arabs and the Muslims from the days of the Crusades onwards. Christian missionaries always preceded European conquest and domination in America, Asia and Africa, and with their educational and philanthropic organizations, did their best to sever the ties of the rising genera203tions from their indigenous culture and wean them over to Western ways. I soon learned that Christian missionary activity was an integral part of the conspiracy for the westernization of the non-Western world. However obediently the “pagans” and “heathens” may westernize themselves in Christian missionary institutions, even if they accepted Christianity, the white Christians of European origin would never accept them as equals! Thus black Christians are subjected to the cruelest racial discrimination and persecution in such countries as South Africa and Rhodesia and even in America. Christians of African slave-origin very seldom pray in the same churches alongside their “white” brethren. In Christian churches, racial segregation has always been the rule. To make the hypocrisy of the Christian missionary activity in Asia and Africa complete, it is no secret that the overwhelming majority of Christians in Europe and America are thus only nominally. “Liberal” Christian sects like Quakers and Unitarians have long denied the concepts of prophecy, Divine revelation and reward or punishment in Hereafter on principle and now prominent theologians in America are debating the question as to whether or not God is dead! If the Christian missionaries were sincere, they would find more than enough work to do at home.

How far historical Christianity has strayed from the original teachings of its founder may be gauged by the following account by a well-known English historian:

A large proportion of the Christian world believes that Jesus was an incarnation of that God of all the earth whom 204the Jews first recognized. The historian, if he is to remain historian, can neither accept nor deny that interpretation. Materially Jesus appeared in the likeness of a man and it is as a man that the historian must deal with him.

He appeared in Judea in the reign of Tiberius Caesar. All four Gospels agree in giving us a picture of a Prophet. He preached after the fashion of the preceding Jewish prophets. He was a man of about thirty and we are in the profoundest ignorance of his manner of life before his preaching began. Our only direct sources of information about the life and teaching of Jesus are the four Gospels. One is obliged to say: “Here is a man of a very definite personality. This could not have been invented.” But just as the personality of Gautama Buddha has been distorted and obscured by the stiff squatting figure, the gilded idol of later Buddhism, so one feels that the lean and strenuous personality of Jesus is much wronged by the unreality and conventionality that a mistaken reverence has imposed upon his figure in modern Christian art. Jesus was a penniless teacher who wandered about the dusty, sunlit country of Judea living upon casual gifts of food; yet he is always represented clean, combed, and sleek in spotless raiment, erect and with something motionless about him as though he were gliding through the air. This alone has made him unreal and incredible to many people who cannot distinguish the core of the story from the ornamental and unwise additions of the unintelligently devout.

We are left, if we strip this record of these difficult accessories with the figure of a being, very human, very earnest and passionate, capable of swift anger and teaching a new and simple and profound doctrine—namely, the universal loving Fatherhood of God and the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven. He was clearly a person—to use a common phrase—of intense personal magnetism. He attracted followers and filled them with love and courage. Weak and ailing people were heartened and healed by his presence….

205For the kingdom of Heaven, as Jesus seems to have preached it, was no less than a bold and uncompromising demand for a complete change and cleansing of the life of our struggling race, an utter cleansing from without and from within. The Jews were persuaded that God, the only God of the whole world, was a righteous God but they also thought of Him as a trading god who had made a bargain with their Father Abraham to bring them to predominance in the earth. With dismay and anger they heard Jesus teaching that God was no bargainer; there was no chosen people and no favourites in the Kingdom of Heaven. God was the loving Father of all life, as incapable of showing favour as the universal sun. And all men were brothers—sinners and virtuous alike. All whom God take into the kingdom, he taught, God serves alike. There is no distinction in His treatment because there is no measure to His bounty. There are no privileges, no rebates, and excuses in the Kingdom of Heaven. And not only did Jesus strike at patriotism and the bonds of family loyalty in the name of God’s universal fatherhood and brotherhood of all mankind but it is clear that his teaching condemned all the gradations of the economic system, all private wealth, and personal advantages. All men belonged to the same kingdom; all their possessions belonged to the kingdom, the righteous life for all men. The only righteous life was to serve God’s will with all that we had with all that we were. It was not merely a moral and social revolution that Jews proclaimed; it is clear from a score of indications that his teaching had a political bent of the plainest sort. It is true that he said his kingdom was not of this world, that it was in the hearts of men and not upon a throne but it is equally clear that wherever and in whatever measure his kingdom was set up in the hearts of men, the outer world would be revolutionized and made new.¹

206Let us now quote excerpts from the Gospels to examine the teachings and personality of Jesus Christ, (peace be upon him) in greater detail:

And Jesus went about all Galilee teaching in their synagogues and preaching the gospel of the Kingdom of Heaven and healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people. And his fame went throughout Syria and they brought unto him all sick people that were taken with diverse diseases and torments and those who were possessed by devils and those who were lunatics and those who had the palsy and he healed them. And there followed him great multitudes of people from Galilee….and from Jerusalem and from Judea and from beyond Jordan…. And seeing the multitudes, he went up unto a mountain and when he was still, his disciples came unto him. And he opened his mouth and taught them saying:

Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven

Blessed are they that mourn for they shall be comforted.

Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth.

Blessed are they who hunger and thirst after righteousness for they shall be filled.

Blessed are the merciful for they obtain mercy.

Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the children of God.

Blessed are they who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are ye when men shall revile you and persecute you and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely for my sake.

Rejoice and be exceedingly glad for great is your reward in heaven for so persecuted they the Prophets who came before you….

Think not that I have come to destroy the Law of the Prophets; I have not come to destroy but to fulfil for 207verily I say unto you till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle shall in nowise pass from the Law till all be fulfiled. Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of Heaven but whosoever shall do and teach them the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven….²

In order, however, to make Christianity compatible to the Greek and Roman world, St. Paul, on his personal authority alone, took the fatal step of rendering almost the entire body of the Law of Moses nullified on the sophistry that “the letter of the law killeth but the spirit giveth life.”

Behold, thou art called a Jew and resteth in the Law and makest thy boast of God. Thou that makest thy boast of the Law though breaking the Law dishonorest thou God? For the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles through you as it is written. For circumcision verily profiteth if thou keep the law but if thou be a breaker of the law, thy circumcision is made uncircumcision. Therefore if the uncircumcision keep not the righteousness of the law, shall not his uncircumcision be counted for circumcision? What advantage then hath the Jew or what profit is there in circumcision? For Christ is the end of the Law for righteousness to everyone that believeth. For there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call unto Him.³

St. Paul thus preached that men are not saved by their works but by their faith in Jesus Christ as having shed on the Cross his redeeming blood for the sins of all mankind. Thus, he argued, whoever believes in Jesus Christ as his Saviour, shall attain 208eternal salvation. Henceforth the prescriptions of the Law of Moses are annulled except, of course, the basic moral commandments. St. Paul never realized that although laws in themselves cannot compel men to be virtuous, as roads to that end by encouraging the right way of life, combined with a strong social backing, they certainly are indispensable for reducing the evils to a minimum. True enough, Jesus had most vehemently condemned an arrogant adherence to the letter of the Law while at the same time violating its spirit but he never on that premise assumed, as Paul did that the entire body of the Law was useless! Paul abolished circumcision and declared the consumption of swine-flesh, blood, carrion and the drinking of wine permissible for believers! On what authority, except his own personal convictions, did Paul have the right to declare the forbidden permissible? Even Jesus Christ (peace be upon him), whom Paul preached as the Incarnation of God, never claimed such pretensions. The result of Paul’s decision to discard the Law of Moses made Christianity what it is today—a religion**aboutJesus bearing little relevance to the actual teachingsofJesus. In other words, Christians since St. Paul’s time have forgotten the message and instead taken to worshipping the Messenger!**

The mission of the Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) was no less than to restore the true faith of the Prophets in its pristine purity. As much as Jesus (peace be upon him) before him, Muhammad (peace and blessings of Allah be upon 209him) denounced in the most vehement terms the arrogance, false pride and narrow-mindedness of the Jews. The Holy Quran and Hadith condemn the empty formalism and ritualism so characteristic among Jews in very explicit terms and the teachings of Islam declare its faith as a universal faith for all mankind as Christianity had done centuries before. But Islam parts company with Christianity in restoring the concept of ethical monotheism as Abraham and Moses had taught in its pure and unadulterated form. Jesus Christ (peace be upon him) is declared by the Holy Quran as true Prophet of God but rejected as part of the Trinity. The Quran declares that whoever believes in the Trinity instead of the Oneness of God cannot hope to attain salvation. But most important of all, Islam came to restore the Law of Moses (with certain modifications) that the Christians had rejected as useless and obsolete. Islam preaches that God is not only Creator, Sustainer and Redeemer but the Ruler and the only true Sovereign over the universe. God could not be Ruler unless He had revealed to the Prophets a complete Guidance as to how mankind should conduct life individually and collectively to obtain happiness and prosperity in this world and eternal salvation in the world to come. It is just this explicit guidance, so essential in Judaism and Islam, that Paul and his successors in the Christian church rejected, leaving the religion a mere matter of complicated theology, sacramental rituals combined, like Buddhism, with a strong streak of asceticism and monasticism. Since this religion, stripped of the Divine Law, was left so restricted and 210fragmentary, the vacuum could be filled only by opening the flood-gates to paganism. Thus most of what is known as Christian theology, dogma, ritual, feasts and even the so-called “Christian calendar” is almost entirely of pagan origin:

Sun-worship was, at the time of the appearance of Jesus, the universally prevalent religion of the Roman Empire, though the names given to the sun-gods in various countries were different. The well-known sun-gods whose worship had been popular in the Mediterranean countries at one time or the other are: Attis of Phygia, Adonis of Syria, Dionysius or Bacchus of Greece, Mithra of Persia, and Osiris and Hours of Egypt. Brief sketches of the legends of these sun-gods will reveal the sources of Christianity.

Attis

He was born of a virgin named Nana and was regarded as the “Only Begotten Son and Saviour”. He was bled to death on March 24th at the foot of a pine tree and his votaries believed that his blood and renewed the fertility of the earth and thus brought a new life to humanity. He, however, rose from the dead, and his resurrection along with his death was celebrated by his votaries. Every year on the 24th day of March, they would first fasten his image to a pine tree and then lay it in a tomb with wailing and mourning. On the next day, they would find the tomb empty and celebrate the resurrection with great rejoicing. Scramental meals and baptism by blood were special features of his Church.

Adonis or Tammuz

He was the virgin-born “Saviour” of Syria. He suffered death for the redemption of mankind but rose again in the spring. His resurrection was commemorated by a great annual festival.

Dionysius or Bacchus

He was the “Only Begotten Son” of Jupiter and was born of a virgin named Demeter on December 25th. He 211was a Redeemer, Liberator and Saviour. “It is I,” so says Bacchus to makind, “who guide you; it is I who protect you and who save you. I am the Alpha and Omega.” Wine had an important place in the festivals of his cult. He was slain for redeeming humanity and was called “The Slain One,” “The Sin-Bearer,” “The Redeemer.” His passion play was celebrated every year representing his death, descent ito hell and resurrection.

Bel or Baal

He was the sun-god of Babylon and the story of his life is extremely astonishing in so far as a passion play has a very close resemblance with the Christian passion story even in details. The Jews had passed a long time in captivity in Babylon during the reign of Nebuchednazzar and this accounts for the close resemblance.

Osiris

He was born on December 29th of a virgin called by the Egyptians, “The Virgin of the World.” He preached the gospel of gentleness and peace. Wine and corn were regarded as his celebrated discoveries. He was betrayed by Typhen, slain and dismembered. He was interred but came again to life after remaining in hell for two or three days and three nights. After his death, it was the custom of his votaries to keep his image in a box and bring out the image at the time of worship with the cries, “Osiris has risen!” Belief in the god-man in the form of Osiris became the chief element in Egyptian religion and remained for thousands of years the faith of the people through the tangled skein of religious life in Egypt until Osiris passed into the form of the god-man, Jesus Christ.

Mithras or Mithra

He was the virgin born sun-god of the Persians, the perfect prototype of Jesus Christ and the founder of an international Church in which Christmas and Easter were the two most important festivals. This divine saviour came into the world as an Infant. His first worshippers 212were shepherds and the day of his nativity was December 25th. His followers preached a severe and rigid morality, chief among their virtues being temperance, chastity, renunciation and self-control. They kept the seventh day holy and the middle day of each month was a special feast of Mithra which symbolized the function of the Mediator. They had seven sacraments of which the most important were baptism, confirmation and Eucharistic supper at which the communicants partook of the divine nature of Mithra under the species of bread and wine. (pp. 58–61).

“Each of the major festivals of the Christian calendar,” says a liberal Christian scholar of religion (Sir Richard Gregory in his Religion in Science and Civilization, p. 111) “carries on the tradition of the earlier pagan beliefs which the early Church, with a wisdom which still persists in Roman Catholic missionary efforts in its relations with primitive peoples, had adopted and transformed in the service of the Christian faith.”

Christmas

A passing reference has been already made to the birth date of Jesus which is believed by Christians to be the 25th of December. But there are two well-established facts in this connection which demand a serious consideration. Firstly, this is the date of the Nativity of the Sun in the Julian Calendar. This and the neighbouring dates are connected with winter solstice which is accompanied by what was termed by the votaries of the sun-worship cults as the “birth” of the sun. Many a sun-god of the ancient world was born on this or neighbouring dates. Secondly, there are no proofs to locate the birth of Jesus on this date as admitted even by such a conservative Christian scholar as Dean Farrar. In fact it was not until the year 530 A.C. that Dionysius Exigus, a Schythian monk, abbot and astronomer, fixed the date of the birth of Jesus as December 25th but he has not informed us on what authority he did so. The fact that even today, 213the Greek church observes Christmas on January 7th and not on December 25th is significant. Christmas, says Richard Gregory, is a pagan festival, which was adopted for the celebration of the Nativity about the middle of the fourth century in order to wean converts from pagan ceremonials taking place at that season. In Northern Europe it is the midwinter festival of Yule which the associations of the Yule log and Christmas fir tree would assign to a derivation from sun-worship. In Southern Europe it is mainly, though not solely, a festival of the mother-son worship (with a shadowy father, Joseph, in the background) as seen in the mangers of the Christmas celebrations of the Mediterranean people today which can be traced back through the ages as the dominant cult of the Mediterranean. An interesting point arises out of the celebration of Christmas as popularly observed in Britain. A double strain is to be observed. While the feastings and rejoicings of the Yule ceremony predominate, the manger, which is the most conspicuous feature of the popular celebration in Mediterranean countries, also appears in England with other associated customs. The two forms of celebration belong to entirely different systems of belief and it is evident that in Britain, a double strain of tradition deriving from north and south has survived.

Easter

The festival of Easter (Anglo-Saxon, Eostre) derived its significance from the goddess of Light and Spring in the ancient world. Her festival, which fell after the vernal equinox (i.e. at the commencement of the spring season) was celebrated in Ireland and Egypt by distributing and eating eggs much in the same way as the Christians do today in commemoration of the resurrection of him whom they believe to have brought new life to humanity by giving his blood. Sir Richard Gregory remarks: “Use of the position of the celestial bodies to determine the dates of religious festivals 214is represented by the celebrations of Passover and Easter.” The Passover was celebrated by the Jews as a spring festival commemorating their exodus from Egypt and is regarded as the festival of freedom. According to Robertson Smith in the 14th edition of Encyclopedia Britannica, the Israelites, being a pastoral people, sacrificed the firstlings of their flocks in the spring as a thank-offering and when they settled in Palestine, they found there an agricultural festival connected with the beginning of the barley harvest which coincided in point of date with the Passover and was accordingly associated with it. This suggests a connection with the Pascal lamb on the fourteenth of the month. The first Christian observed the Jewish festivals but in a new spirit and the Passover with a new conception added to it of Christ as the true Pascal lamb. Easter, as shown by a number of customs and beliefs, is in the main, a festival of sun-worship as the sun begins to regain strength and the resurrection of Jesus coincides with the rejuvenation in the character of the young and vigorous spring.

Sabbath

That Jesus had come “not to destroy but to fulfil” the Judaic Law cannot be denied. How, according to that law, the day of Sabbath is Saturday and not Sunday which as Dies Soli was the holy day of the sun-god Apollo, the patron deity of the Roman Empire during Constantine’s regime. Evidently Sunday was substituted only to perfect the resemblance between Christianity and paganism.

Monks and Nuns

The institution of monks and nuns has been similarly borrowed from Paganism. Buddhism had its monks and nuns and among the sun-worshipping cults, it had a very important institution in the cult of Mithra. The Mithrai monks used to have a distinctive symbol on the head, namely the tonsure—a bare circular space formed by shaving off the 215hair and meant to represent the disc of the sun, their deity. The monks in the Roman Catholic Church of Christianity also observe this rite and this only proves Christianity to be derived from one of the many sun worshipping cults.

The Cross

Now we come to Christian symbols. The Cross did not originate with Christianity. It was not included in the early lists of Christian symbols as, for instance, the one prepared by St. Clement. It was first of all adopted as a symbol by Constantine who is alleged to have seen it in a vision. Among the sun worshippers in the Roman Empire, it was esteemed as the symbol of life and so it is with the Christians. There is an Egyptian cross in the Municipal Museum of Alexandria. Another non-Christian cross has been unearthed in Ireland. It belongs to the cult of Mithra and bears a crucified effigy (pp. 92–100).⁴

Even the so-called “Christian” calendar—nay, the very months of the year and the names of the days of the week—all in honour of Greek and Roman deities—is entirely pagan. The Christian weekly day of rest and worship is none other than Sun-day which is just as its name signifies. Monday is named after the moon: Tuesday was named after Tiu who was the Anglo-Saxon counterpart of the Nordic Tyre, son of Ordin, the God of War, Wednesday after Woden, the Nordic god of victory: Thursday after Thor who was the Nordic god of thunder; Friday was named after Frigg, the wife of Woden, a goddess of love in Nordic mythology: and Saturday after the Roman god, 216Saturnalia. Similarly, the Church fathers sanctioned the naming of the months after the old Roman deities. January was named after Janus, the two-faced Roman god of doorways; March after Mars, the Roman god of war; May after Maia, an obscure goddess of Roman mythology; June after Juno, another Roman goddess; July after Julius Caesar while August was named after Augustus Caesar, the first Roman emperor. September is named after Septem which means in Latin, seven; October named after octo, which means in Latin, eighth; ninth, novo for November; the December after decem meaning tenth. Thus every time we use the so-called “Christian” calendar, we are commemorating and perpetuating the pagan legacy of ancient Greece and Rome!

What do the chief Christian festivals mean to the average Christian in the West today? In a London school, a teacher asked each of his fourth-grade pupils to write a short composition on how they would like to celebrate Christmas. The answers he received were most revealing. One nine-year-old girl wrote:

I would like to spend Christmas day how I usually spend it, this is how I spend it. When I get up, I go down into the living room with my brothers and open my presents, then I have my breakfast and then have a wash and then get dressed and then watch television and then have my dinner which consists of baked potatoes, Garden peas, Turkey, Gravy, Mint Sauce, Greens and for my afters, I have Mrs. Peek’s Christmas pudding and custard, then I watch television and then have my tea, then watch television and go to bed when I want to.

A boy said:

….I go to the movie pictures all morning, then I will 217come back home, get my presents and then have my Christmas dinner and after that, sit in the sitting room and watch television and then go to bed.

Another girl in the class did not want to take any chances about her presents:

….for my Christmas presents I would like a hair-brush and comb set and some Make-up for my face like a Powder thing and some Red, Orange or Pink lipstick.

still another girl with a touch of innocent realism adds:

….then I watch telly, then about twelve o’clock at midnight I get ready for bed with a shifting headache and a gums ache.

That was an unsampled selection; unedited and uniform. Apart from Mrs. Peek’s Christmas pudding, it is only food, presents, television and headache; nothing in the least to associate the occasion with the person or message of Christ. Christmas in Europe and America is no more than a neo-pagan ritual of permissive affluence. But, is this surprising?”⁵

Christian clergymen provide only the most unconvincing apologies for the saturation of their religion with paganism and secularism:

Canon C. H. Robinson admits the debt of pagan thought but regards it as a unique merit of Christianity. He says: “If Greek and Roman thought were needed for a full appreciation of the meaning of the Incarnation, why may we not say the same of Indian and Chinese thought? Surely we are justified in believing that every country and every people have something to contribute to Christianity and that the completion of the Christian revelation (?) awaits the con218tribution of each. ‘We believe that there are many important aspects of the Christian truth which have never been understood simply because Christianity has not yet been reflected in the experience of those nations of the world which are still heathen.⁶

This is a frank admission that historical Christianity was never a self-sufficient, explicit way of life but merely adopted the coloration of the peoples who became its nominal converts!

St. Augustine (354–430 A.D.), bishop of Hippo in what is now Algeria, one of the leading Church Fathers and a prolific author, in his framed City of God, inspired by the fall of Rome in 410 A.D. surprisingly has only the mildest reproof for Roman paganism. He looks forward to the salvation of the individual by the implicit acceptance of Christ as the Redeemer for the original sin of Adam in the life Hereafter. Any social or political reform had no place in his Christian programme:

St. Augustine believed in a universal church comparable to the moon; he believed in particular churches as comparable to the stars. He held that a special authority resided in the particular churches founded by the apostles and among these, he recognized a primary or a still more special authority in the Roman Church. The Roman Church might therefore be particularly consulted for an authoritative pronouncement on disputed questions, though at the same time St. Augustine speaks of an appeal to a plenary council of the Church Universal. Roughly, we may say that he believes in a universal church as a single unit of Christian society; he believes in particular churches as units of organization; he allows a special authority to 219some and a still more special authority to one of these but he has no single church which is at one and the same time a unit of faith, of organization and of authority. What then shall we say of the relation between Church and State? The Church is a pilgrim society, living by faith and looking to the Hereafter. It lives on earth by the side of the State; it uses the terrena pax of the State; it acknowledges the divine institution and relative righteousness of the State. But it simply moves as a pilgrim past the grandeurs and dignities of this world, always looking beyond and always with eyes fixed elsewhere. What has a pilgrim to do with a king except to acknowledge that he is king, to render to him due obedience in matters of worldly peace and to pass on? The actual State as it really exists is not absolutely unrighteous. On the contrary, it has a sort of justitia of its own and not only so, but the citizens of the heavenly city of God avail themselves of the aid of this justitia in the course of their pilgrimage so that State, is thus in its way a coadjutor of the city of God. In order to understand this view of the state, we must recognise a distinction between absolute and relative righteousness. Absolute righteousness is a system of right relation to God—relation which are at once religious, moral and legal; relations which are in a word, total. Relative righteousness is a system of right relations mainly in the legal sphere and it is a system of right relations reckoning with and adjusted to the sinfulness of human nature. All the institutions of the State—government, property, domination of government over subjects, owners over property and masters over slaves are a form of public order and to that extent good; but the order is one conditioned by and relative to the sinfulness of the people which makes absolute righteousness of the State and society impossible.⁷

Although from its historical origins, the Christian 220Church has accepted secularism on principle, the steadfast adherence to the principle that God is the supreme authority over and above the secular state, has earned for it many martyrs. When the power of Rome ruled over the known world, thousands of Christians were martyred at the stake, on the cross or thrown to be eaten by the lions in the arena because of their determined refusal not to worship the Roman Emperor as a god or prostrate themselves in adoration before him. Among these martyrs may have been true believers. (God knows best). The early Christians must also be given the credit for their stiff opposition to the Roman “games” where hundreds of thousands of wretched human beings and beasts were slaughtered in the arena for the amusement of the bloodthirsty mobs. These “games”—which came to be the mainstay of the Roman economy—were the most spectacular sadistic orgies of all times. In 404 A.D. a monk named Telemachus leaped into the arena and appealed to the people to stop the fights. He was promptly stoned by the angry mob but his death ended the cruel spectacles. The Emperor Honorious was so enraged by the lynching that he closed the arenas. They were never reopened. This monk may have been a true believer. (God knows best).

What man is more concerned about the Emperor than we are? Who loves him more honestly than we? For we pray incessantly for him that he may be granted long life and that he may rule the nations with a just sword and know an age of peace and plenty for his Empire. Then we pray for the welfare of the army and for the blessing of mankind and of the world. But we cannot sacrifice to the Emperor in the temple for who may pay Divine honours 221to a man of flesh and blood?

“Spoken around the year A.D. 250, on behalf of a Christian community by one of its leaders, these words state with typical forthrightness the attitude of the Church of the first three Christian centuries to the Empire. They embody the classic Christian concept of the relation of faith to citizenship, of Church to State, of the spiritual to the political—a ready obedience in all things lawful and honest, together with a fierce, uncompromising hostility to any State demands which flouted the rights of God. The primitive Church had no desire either to subvert or disobey the imperial, civil power, even though identified as that power was with such monsters as Nero and Domitian. But with that docility and acknowledgement of citizenship went a quite heroic defence of what had to do with faith and worship.”⁸

Dr. Wilfred Cantwell Smith is even more explicit in his following explanation of Christianity’s acceptance of secularism. In comparing the political programme of Islam with the secularism of Christianity, he writes:

Christianity was launched upon a world already organized and the Christian Church’s formative centuries were spent under somebody else’s rule. Although Christianity served for a time in significant measure as the faith of the proletariat of the Roman Empire, the Christian religion was started in world that was already a going concern with its own secular laws and its languages, its government and economic structure. While Christians concerned themselves with their personal moral lives, the task of organizing a social order had long since been accomplished and the task of carrying it on rested on other people’s shoulders.

222In practice, the social community of the Church had for three centuries little to say as to how history should proceed. The ordering of the historical process was no part of the Christian program. Even when the persecution ended and the Christians themselves came to constitute society rather than a minority on the defensive against it, and when in the historical flux, they themselves reached positions of responsibility and power, they took over the existing social order as they found it. They retained it, yet as something extrinsic to their faith. As Christians they might see their duty at most to improve it but not to replace it with something new.⁹

What was the result of the Christian church’s permissive attitude towards political and social evils? Let us glimpse in brief the history of the medieval papacy which reigned supreme over Europe for more than a thousand years:

On the death of Pope Paul I, who had attained the pontificate A.D. 757, the Duke of Nepi compelled some bishops to consecrate Constantine, one of his bastard brothers as pope, but more legitimate electors, subsequently, A.D. 768, choosing Stephen IV, the usurper and his adherents were severely punished; the eyes of Constantine were put out, the tongue of Bishop Theodorus was amputated and he was left in a dungeon to expire in agonies of thirst. The nephews of Pope Adrian seized the successor, Pope Leo III, A.D. 795 in the street and forcing him into a neighbouring church, brutally put out his eyes and cut out his tongue; at a later period when this pontiff was trying to suppress a conspiracy to depose him, Rome became the scene of rebellion, murder and conflagration. His successor, Stephen V, A.D. 816, was ignominously driven out from the city; his successor, Paschal I, was accused of blinding and 223murdering two ecclesiastics in the Lateran palace; it was necessary that the imperial commissioner should investigate the matter but the pope died, after having exculpated himself by oath before thirty bishops. John III, A.D. 872, unable to resist the Saracens, was compelled to pay them tribute; the Bishop of Naples maintained a secret alliance with them. John, now excommunicated, would not give him absolution unless he would betray the chief Muslims and assassinate others himself. There was an ecclesiastical conspiracy to murder the pope; some of the treasures of the Church were seized and the gates of St. Pencrazia were open with false keys to admit the Saracens into the city. Formosus, who had been engaged in these transactions and excommunicated as a conspirator for the murder of John, was subsequently elected Pope, A D. 891. He was succeeded by Boniface VI, A.D. 896 who had been deposed by diaconate and again from the priesthood for his immoral and lewd life. After Stephen VII who followed, the dead body of Formosus was taken from the grave, clothed in the papal habiliment, propped up in a chair, tried before a council and the preposterous and indecent scene completed by cutting off three of the fingers and the genital organ of the corpse and casting it into the River Tiber; but Stephen himself was destined to exemplify how low the papacy had fallen when he was thrown into prison and strangled. In the course of five years from A.D, 896 to A.D. 900, five popes were consecrated and deposed. Leo V, who succeeded in A.D. 904, was in less than two months thrown into prison by Christopher, one of his chaplains who usurped his place and who in turn was shortly expelled from Rome by Surgius III who by the aid of military force, seized the pontificate in A.D. 905. This man, according to the testimony of the times, lived in open incest with his niece and then the infamous prostitute, Theodora, who with her daughters, Marozia and Theodora, also prostitutes, exercised an extraordinary control over him. The love of Theodora was also shared by John 224X; she gave him first the archbishop of Ravenna and then tranferred him to Rome A.D. 915 as pope. John was not unsuited to the times. By the love of Theodora, he had maintained himself in the papacy for fourteen years; by the intrigues and hatred of her daughter, Marozia, he was overthrown. She surprised him in the Lateran palace in shameful relation with his niece; killed his brother, Peter, before his face; threw him into prison where he soon died, smothered with a pillow. After a short interval, Marozia made her own bastard son Pope John XI, A.D. 931. Another of her sons, Alberic so called from his supposed father, jealous of his brother John, cast him and their mother, Marozia into prison. After a time, Alberic’s bastard son was elected pope, A.D., 956. He assumed the title of John XII; the amorous Marozia thus having given two bastard sons and a bastard grandson to the papacy. John was only thirteen years old when he became head of Christendom. His reign was characterised by so many shocking immoralities that the holy Roman Emperor, Otto I, was compelled by the Germans to interfere. A synod was summoned for his trial in the Church of St. Peter before which it appeared that John received bribes for the consecration of bishops, that he had ordinated one who was but ten years old and had performed the ceremony over another in a stable. He was charged with incest with one of his father’s concubines and with so many adulteries that the Lateran Palace had become a veritable latrine! He put out the eyes of one ecclesiastic and castrated another; he was given to drunkenness, gambling, sodomy and the invocation of Jupiter and Venus. When cited to appear before the council, he sent word that “he had gone out hunting” and to the fathers who remonstrated with him, he threateningly remarked that “Judas as well as the other disciples received from his master the power of binding and loosening but that as soon as he proved traitor to the common cause, the only power he retained was that of binding his own neck.” Hereupon he was deposed and Leo VIII 225elected in his stead A.D. 963 but subsequently getting the upper hand, he seized his antagonists, cut off the hands of one, the nose, finger, tongue and genitals of others. His life was eventually brought to an end by the vengeance of a man whose wife he had seduced. After such details, it is almost needless to allude to the annals of the succeeding popes; to relate that John XIII was strangled in prison, that Boniface VII imprisoned Benedict VII and killed him by starvation; that John XIV was secretly put to death in the dungeons of the castle of St. Angelo; that the corpse of Boniface was dragged by the populace in the streets and outraged. Benedict IX, a boy of less than ten years, was raised to the apostolic throne in A.D. 1038. Of this pontiff, one of his successors, Victor III, declared that his life was so shameful, so foul, so excretable that he shuddered to describe it. He ruled like a captain of the banditti rather than a prelate. The people, at last unable to bear his adulteries, homicides and abominations any longer, rose against him. In despair of maintaining his position, he put the papacy to auction. It was bought by a presbyster named John who became Gregory VI in A.D. 1045. The Council of Pisa held in 1409 deposed two popes, rivals—Gregory and Benedict—that is to say, the actual Vicar of Christ and the pretender. This action was taken because a council, “enlightened by the Holy Ghost”, could not distinguish the genuine from the counterfeit. The Council then elected another Vicar whose authority was afterwards denied. Alexander VI died and John XXIII took his place. When Gregory XII insisted that he was the lawful pope, John resigned. He was deposed and afterwards imprisoned. Then Gregory XIII resigned and Martin V was elected. Were these popes the vicegerents of God on earth—those who had truly reached the goal beyond which the last limits of human wickedness cannot pass?¹⁰

226But to present the history of the Church fairly, it must be stated that this is not the whole story. Medieval Christiarity also had its brighter side. However wicked and corrupt some of the popes, cardinals and bishops may have been, the humble village priest, who had most intimate contacts with the comon people, was usually a kindly, self-denying and dedicated man. The majority of the monks and nuns in the early monasteries also set a worthy spiritual example for people. One of the most attractive books on Christianity I have ever come across: A History of the English Church and People by Bede, the eminent British priest and historian who lived from 673 to 735 A.D. His book covers the period from the Roman occupation of Britain to 731. Bede passed his entire life in the monastery, occupying nearly all his time with reading, writing and studying. Far from living in the “Dark Ages,” Bede’s writings depict a peaceful, tranquil, serene and thoroughly civilized society which we moderns today might well envy. Unselfconsciously he presents a vivid, appealing Golden Age of Faith where the dogmas and doctrines of Christianity required no apologetic defense or elaborate arguments in their favour for they were regarded by these people as facts of life and to believe in religion was as natural as to breathe.

Here is Bede’s story from the life of Caedmon, the 7th century poet, the first to compose verses in the English language.

In this monastery of Streanaeshalch lived a brother singularly gifted by God’s grace. So skilful was he in composing religious and devotional songs that when any 227passage of the Scripture was explained to him by interpreters, he could quickly turn it into delightful and moving poetry in his own English tongue. These verses of his have stirred the hearts of many folk to despise the world and aspire to heavenly things. Others after him tried to compose religious poems in English but none could compare with him; for he did not acquire the art of poetry from men or through any human teacher but received it as a free gift from God. For this reason he could never compose any frivolous or profane verses but only such as had a religious theme fell fittingly from his devout lips. He had followed a secular occupation until well advanced in years without ever learning anything about poetry. Indeed, it sometimes happened at a feast that all the guests in turn would be invited to sing and entertain the company; then when he saw the harp coming his way, he would get up from the table and go home.

On one such occasion he had left the house in which the entertainment was being held and went out to the stable where it was his duty to look after the beasts. Then when the time came, he settled down to sleep. Suddenly in a dream he saw a man standing behind him who called him by name. “Caedmon!” he said, “sing me a song.” ‘I don’t know how to sing,’ he replied, ‘It is because I cannot sing that I left the feast and came here.’ The man who addressed him then said ‘But you shall sing to me.’ ‘What should I sing about?’ he replied. ‘Sing about the Creation of the World.’ the other answered. And Caedmon immediately began to sing verses in praise of God, the Creator that he had never heard before and their theme ran thus:

Praise we the Fashioner now of Heaven’s fabric,
The Majesty of His might and His mind’s wisdom,
Work of the world-warden, worker of all wonders,
How He, the Lord of Glory everlasting,
Wrought first for the race of men, Heaven as a rooftree,
Then made He Middle Earth to be their mansion.

228This is the general sense, but not the actual words that Caedmon sang in his dream; for verses, however masterly, cannot be translated literally from one language into another without losing much of their beauty and dignity. When Caedmon awoke, he remembered everything that he had sung in his dream and soon added more verses in the same style to a song truly worthy of God.

Early in the morning he went to his superior in the monastery and told him about this gift that he had received. The monk took him before the abbess who ordered him to give an account of his dream and respeat the verses in the presence of many learned men so that a decision might be reached by common consent as to their quality and origin. All of them agreed that Caedmon’s gift had been given to him by our Lord. And they explained a passage of scriptural history or doctrine and asked him to render it into such verse as he could. He promised to do this and returned next morning with excellent verses as they had ordered him. The abbess was delighted that God had given such grace to the man and advised him to abandon secular life and adopt the monastic state. And when she had admitted him into the Community as a brother, she ordered him to be instructed in the events of sacred history. So Caedmon stored up in his memory all that he had learned and turned it all into such melodious verse that his delightful renderings turned his instructors into his admirers. He sang of the creation of the world, the origin of the human race and the whole story of Genesis in the Bible. He sang of Israel’s exodus from Egypt, the entry of the Hebrews into the Promised Land, and many other events of scriptural history. He sang of the Lord’s Incarnation, Passion, Ressurection and Ascension into Heaven, the coming of the Holy Spirit and the teachings of the Apostles. He also composed many poems on the terrors of the Last Judgement, the horrible pains of Hell and the joys of the Kingdom of Heaven. In addition to 229these, he composed several others on the blessings and judgements of God by which he sought to turn his hearers from delight in wickedness and to inspire them to love and to do good. For Caedmon was a deeply religious man who humbly submitted to regular discipline and hotly rebuked all who wanted to follow another course. And so he crowned his life with a happy End.

For when the time of his death drew near, he felt the onset of physical weakness for fourteen days, but not seriously enough to prevent his walking or talking the whole time. Close by there was a house to which all who were sick or likely to die were taken. Towards nightfall on the day when he was to depart from this life, Caedmon asked his attendant to prepare for him a resting-place in this house. The attendant was surprised at this request from a man who did not appear likely to die yet; nevertheless, he did as he was asked. So Caedmon went to the house and conversed and jested cheerfully with those who were already there; and when it was past midnight, he asked. ‘Is the Eucharist in the house”?

‘Why do you want Eucharist?’ they enquired, ‘you you are not likely to die yet when you are talking so cheerfully to us and seem to be in perfect health.’ ‘Nevertheless,’ he said, ‘bring me the Eucharist.’ And taking it in his hands, Caedmon asked whether they were all charitably disposed towards him and whether they had any complaints of ill-feeling against him. They insisted that they were all most kindly disposed towards him and free from all bitterness. Then in turn they asked him to clear his heart of bitterness towards them. At once he answered, ‘Dear sons, my heart is at peace with all the servants of God.’ Then when he had fortified himself with the heavenly Sacrament, he prepared to enter the other life and asked how long it would be before the brothers roused to sing God’s praises in the Night Office. ‘Not long,’ they replied. ‘God, then let us 230wait until then’, he answered and signing himself with the holy Cross, he laid his head on the pillow and passed away quietly in his sleep. So, having served God all his life with a simple and pure mind, and with tranquil devotion, he left the world and departed to God by a tranquil death.¹¹

This is medieval European Christendom at its best. Now let us again glimpse the dark side which prevailed before St. Benedict (480–547 A. D.) removed the excesses from the monastic movement.

Simeon Stylites’ life of extraordinary austerity is guaranteed by the testimony of his friends and disciples. A Cilician shephard lad, born about 390 A. D., Simeon entered a monastery at the age of thirteen. Ten years later, he moved to another remarkable for its austerity, where he outfasted monks who ate only once a day by eating only once a week. A rope of palm leaves which he wore twisted around his body was betrayed by a stinking sore. It could be removed only by excisions which left him unconscious. The abbot expelled him, Living now in a hermitage below a mountain, he began a custom, continued for at least twenty-six years, of passing Lent without food or drink. At the end of three years, he returned to the summit where he built an enclosure open to the sky.

To remove himself from the throng of visitors by whom he was increasingly beset, for he had become a miracle-worker, Simeon decided to live on top of a Pillar raised progressively in height from about ten to sixty-seven feet. Its diameter did not exceed six feet and as it was without a seat, his sole relaxation from standing upright was to stoop or lean. He made constant bows of reverence and wore an iron collar.

231The neighbouring abbots and bishops suspected that he had adopted such mortifications from pride but when he prepared to obey an order to descend, they encouraged him to remain on his pillar. Far from being an uncouth fanatic, he showed unruffled patience, gentleness and kindness to all. Yet in his last years, he suffered from a secret ulcer in his foot. Friends and disciples attest to his miracles and virtues. He died on July 22, or September 2, 459 A. D.

Though the first, Simeon was by no means the last Stylite, from the word, “stylos” which in Greek, meant a pillar. He was followed in oriental Christendom by a long succession of pillar saints extending over many centuries.

To us moderns, such a life of self-torture is repellent. But it suited the mentality of its environment and made Simeon a successful and far-reaching evangelist of Christian faith and morality. He preached daily to crowds. The Arabian bedouin from the surrounding deserts flocked to hear him. Persians, Armenians, Georgians thronged around him. A delegation of peasant-farmers arrived from an Egyptian village. He bade the fellaheen to share the irrigation waters justly. Emperors consulted him and asked his prayers. The Byzantine emperor, Marcian visited him incognito. He persuaded the Empress Eudoxia to abandon the Monophysite heresy. To St. Genevieve, remote in the far west, he sent greetings and a request for prayers. Thus the Stylite proved himself God’s messenger for Christianity to the people in an age so different from our own.¹²

The annals of the medieval Roman Church are filled with the tortures the Saints and mystics inflicted upon themselves in the name of Christ. Here is an 232extreme example taken from the autobiography of the fourteenth-century German mystic, Suso as he himself described his experiences in the third person:

He was in his youth of a temperamemt full of fire and life and when this began to make itself felt, it was very grievous to him and he sought by many devices how he might bring his body into subjection. He wore for a long time a hair shirt and an iron chain until the blood ran from him so that he was obliged to leave them off. He secretly caused an undergarment to be made for him and in it, he had strips of leather fixed into which a hundred and fifty brass nails pointed and filed sharp were driven and the points of the nails were always turned towards the flesh. He had this garment made very tight and so arranged as to go round him and fasten in front in order that it might fit closer to his body and the pointed nails driven into his flesh. In this he used to sleep at night. To emulate the sorrows of his crucified Lord, he made himself a cross with thirty protruding iron needles and nails. This he bore on his bare back between his shoulders day and night. The first time that he stretched out this cross upon his his back, his tender frame was struck with terror at it and he blunted the sharp nails slightly against a stone. But soon, repenting of this womanly cowardice, he pointed them all again with a file and placed once more the cross upon him. He did his penance by striking this cross and forcing the nails deep into the flesh and thus he scourged his body. At the same time, he procured an old castaway door and he used to lie upon it at night without any bedclothes to make himself comfortable. He thus procured for himself a most miserable bed for the hard pea-stalks lay in humps under his head, the cross with the sharp nails struck into his back, his arms were locked fast in bonds, the horsehair undergarment was around his loins. His feet were full of sores, his legs dropsical, his knees bloody and his loins covered with scars from the horsehair, 233his body wasted and mouth parched with intense thirst and his hands tremulous from weakness. Amidst these tortures he spent his nights and days and he endured them all out of the greatness of the love which he bore in his heart to the Divine and eternal wisdom, our Lord Jesus Christ whose agonizing suffering, he sought to imitate.¹³

It may come as a relief to the reader that after his fortieth year, God showed poor Suso in a series of visions that he had sufficiently broken down the “natural” man that he might leave these exercises off.

In the Roman Church every monk or nun must take solemn vows of poverty, chastity and unquestioning obedience. The Benedictine Rule deems it essential that the monk or nun be totally dispossessed, convinced that private property is the root of Evil. Says St. Benedict whose Rule is followed in most Roman Catholic convents to this day:

For their bedding, let a mattress, a blanket, a coverlet and a pillow suffice. These beds must be frequently inspected by the Abbot because of private property which may be found therein. If anyone be discovered to have what he has not received from the Abbot, let him be most severely punished. And in order that this vice of private property may be completely rooted out, let all things that are necessary be supplied by the Abbot: that is, cowl, tunic, stockings, shoes, girdle, knife, pen, needle, handerchief and tablets so that all plea of necessity may be taken away. And let the Abbot always consider that passage in the Act of the Apostles, “Distribution was made to each according as anyone had need.”

234The life of the monk or nun in the Roman convent requires total self-renunciation. St. John of the Cross, a Spanish mystic who flourished or rather who existed for there was little that suggested flourishing about him—in the sixteenth century will supply an apt passage from his spiritual autobiography to elaborate on this subject:

First of all, carefully excite in yourself an habitual affectionate will in all things to imitate Jesus Christ. If anything agreeable offers itself to your senses, yet does not at the same time tend purely to the honour and glory of God, renounce it and separate yourself from it for the love of Christ who all his life long had no other taste or wish than to do the will of his Father whom he called his meat and nourishment. For example, you take satisfaction in hearing of things in which the glory of God bears no part. Deny yourself this satisfaction, mortify your wish to listen. You take plessure in seeing objects which do not raise your mind to God; refuse yourself this pleasure and turn away your eyes. The same with conversations, and all other things. Act similarly so far as you are able with all the operations of the senses striving to make yourself free from their yokes.

The radical remedy lies in the mortification of the four great natural passions—joy, hope, fear and grief. You must seek to deprive these of every satisfaction and leave them as it were in darkness and the void. Let your soul therefore turn always:

Not to what is most easy but to what is hardest;
Not to what tastes best but to what is most distasteful:
Not to what most pleases but to what disgusts;
Not to matter of consolation but to matter for desolation.
Not to rest but to labor;
Not to desire more but less; 235Not to aspire to what is highest and most precious but what is lowest and most contemptable;
Not to will anything but to will nothing;
Not to seek the best in everything but to seek the worst so that you may enter for the love of Christ into a complete destitution, a perfect poverty of spirit and an absolute renunciation of everything in this world.

Embrace these practices with all the energy of your soul and you will find in a short time great delights and unspeakable consolations.

Despise yourself and wish that others should despise you.
Speak to your own disadvantage and desire others to do the same.
Conceive of a low opinion of yourself and find it good when others are told of the same;
To enjoy the taste of all things, have no taste for anything;
To know all things, learn to know nothing.
To possess all things, resolve to possess nothing.
To get to where you have no taste for anything, go through whatever experience you have no taste for,
To learn to know nothing go wither you are ignorant.
To reach what you posess not, go whitersoever you own nothing.
To be what you are not, experience what you are not.¹⁴

This is how life in the convent interprets the Beatitude, “Blessed are the poor in spirit for they shall see God:”

If any of you will know whether or not he is really poor in spirit, let him consider whether he loves the ordinary consequences and effects of poverty which are hunger, thirst, cold, fatigue and the denudation of all conveniences. 236See if you are glad to wear a worn-out habit full of patches. See if you are glad when something is lacking to your meal, when you are passed by in serving it, when what you receive is distasteful to you, when your cell is out of repair. If you are not glad of these things, if instead of loving them, you avoid them, then that is proof that you have not attained the perfection of poverty of spirit. The first point is that which St. Ignatius Loyola proposes in his Spiritual Exercises when he says: ‘Let no one use anything as if it were his private possession. A religious person ought in respect to all the things that he uses to be like a statue which one may drape which clothing but which feels no grief and makes no resistance when one strips it again. It is in this way that you should feel toward your clothes, your books, your cell and everything else that you make use of; if ordered to quit them or exchange them for others, have no more sorrow than if you were a statue being uncovered. In this way, you will avoid using them as if they were your private possession. But if when you give up your cell or yeild possession of this or that object or exchange it for another, you feel repugnance and are not like a statue, that shows that you view these things as if they were your private property. And that is why our holy founder wished the superiors to test their monks and put their poverty and their obedience to trial and by this means they may become acquainted with the degree of their virtue and gain a chance to make ever farther progress in perfection. Making the one move out of his room when he finds it comfortable and is attached to it, taking away from another a book of which he is fond or obligating a third to exchange his garment for a worse one. The ancient fathers of the desert used often thus to test their companions.¹⁵

237Said St. Ignatius Loyola in his Spiritual Exercises in emphasizing the necessity for absolute, blind and unquestioning obedience of the novice to his superiors advised:

I ought on entering the religious life to place myself entirely in the hands of God and of Him who takes His place by His authority. I ought to desire that my Superior should oblige me to give up my own judgment and conquer my own mind. I ought to set up no difference between one Superior and other but recognize them all as equal before God whose place they fill. For if I distinguish persons, I weaken the spirit of obedience. In the hands of my Superior I must be a soft wax, a thing from which he is to require whatever pleases him, be it to write or receive letters, to speak or not to speak to such a person or the like; and I must put all my fervor in executing zealously and exactly what I am ordered. I must consider myself as a corpse which has neither intelligence nor will; be like a mass of matter which without resistance lets itself be placed wherever it pleases any one; like a stick in the hand of an old man who uses it according to his needs and places it where it suits him. I must never ask of the Superior to be sent to a particular place, to be employed in a particular duty. I must consider nothing as belonging to me personally and as regards the things I use, be like a statue which lets itself be stripped and never opposes resistance.¹⁶

The Holy Rule of St. Benedict recommends the following penance for an erring monk:

As punnishment, ‘let the refractory monk lie prostrate at the door of the oratory in silence and thus with his face to the ground and his body prone, let him cast himself at the feet of all others as they go forth.

238In her book, A Nun’s Story, (London, 1957) Katherine Hulme, an ex-nun, has poignantly described the degrading ceremonies which a novice must endure:

For the penance of “begging soup” on the left of the Mother Superior, she placed her pottery bowl, knelt, clasped her hands and waited until two spoonfuls of soup had been put into her beggar’s bowl, then on to the next eldest and the next until the bowl was filled. When at last her bowl was filled, she returned to her place and swallowed the soup, as she knew she must, to the last drop. She tried not to think how it had been tossed into her bowl from a dozen other bowls that had already been eaten from. She blanked out from her facial expression the revulsion that rose up in her fastidious soul as she drank the dregs. One look of rebellion she knew would be enough to invite a repetition of the awful abasement which she was sure she could never go through again, not even for the sake of the Blessed Lord Himself. (pp. 52–53).

Here is how human relationships are nullified in the nunnery as described by Katherine Hulme:

The bravest of the emotionally vulnerable were the sisters who stood up together in the culpa and denounced each other for having gone out of their way to be near to one another, or perhaps for having talked together in recreation in a way that excluded others. Their tormented but clearly confessed disclosures of a nascent affinity gave it the coup de grace which they themselves might not have been able to do unless the entire convent would henceforth see to it that these two would be kept far apart. The pair would be helped to detach themselves from one of these spontaneous personal attachments which often spring to life in the body of the community as unexpectedly as wild flowers appeared now and then in the formal geometric patterns of the cloister gardens. (pp. 50–51).

239Thus it is that the cloistered nun and monk, denied all normal expression of their sexual needs through marriage, envision themselves as married to Christ or married even to God, the Father Himself. St. Teresa of Avila (1515–1582) and St. Gertrude (d. 1298) fill their autobiographies of detailed descriptions of their erotic visions in mystical communion with the Divine. They imagined themselves as the bride betrothed to Christ, the Bridegroom and told of their marital union with the Sacred Heart of Jesus. One day when suffering from a headache, St. Gertrude sought for the glory of God, to relieve herself by holding certain odoriferous substances in her mouth when the Lord appeared to her to lean over towards her lovingly and to find comfort Himself in these odours. After having gently breathed them in, He arose and said with a gratified air to the Saints, as if contented with what He had done; “See the new present which my betrothed hath given Me!”¹⁷

What is the purpose of these mortifications? Thomas Merton, a convert who became a Trappist monk, writes in his autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain (Harcourt, Brace & Co., New York, 1948):

The meaning of the contemplative life and the sense of all the apparently meaningless rules and observances and fasts and obediences and penances and humilations and labours that go to make up the routine of existence in a monastery all serve to remind us of what we are and Who God is—that we may get sick of the sight of ourselves and turn to Him and in the end, we find Him in ourselves, in our own 240purified natures which have become the mirror of His tremendous goodness and of His endless love. (p. 372.)

The extremes of morification by these Christian hermits bear a striking similarity to the self-tortures of the Hindu anchorites in India. The possibility of the example of the latter influencing the former cannot be entirely ruled out. Like Hinduism and Buddhism, Christianity regarded asceticism, monasticism and celibacy as the highest ideals: St. Paul wrote:

Now concerning the things whereof ye wrote unto me, it is good for a man not to touch a woman. Nevertheless to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife and let every woman have her own husband. Defraud ye not one another except it be with consent for a time and that ye may give yourselves to fasting and prayer and come together again that Satan tempt you not for your incontinency. But I speak this by permission and not of Commandmant. For I would that all men were unmarried even as myself. I say therefore to the unmarried and widows. It is good for them if they abide single even as I. But if they cannot contain, let them marry for it is better to marry than to burn. (First Corinthians 7:1–9)

In Islam, as in Judaism, marriage is regarded as the Divinely ordained state for every normal man and woman after puberty. Our Holy Prophet said that “marriage is the practice of my Sunnah and whoever does not follow my Sunnah does not follow me.” Another Hadith praises marriage as perfecting half the Muslim’s faith. As for the practice of asceticism, our Holy Quran says:

Then We caused Our messengers to follow in their footsteps and We caused Jesus, the son of Mary, to follow and gave him the Gospel and placed compassion and mercy 241in the hearts of those who followed him. But monasticism they invented. We ordained it not for them—only seeking Allah’s pleasure and they observed it not with right observance. So We give those of them who believe their reward but many of them are evil-livers. (LVII; 27).

Let us now examine how the ideals of celibacy, asceticism and monasticism have been exemplified in the lives of the most important saints of the Roman Catholic Church:

St. Augustine: (354–430)

St. Augustine was born in Numidia (now Algeria). His parents were probably both native Berbers. His father, Patricios, a small landowner and town counselor, was a pagan though he became a Christian at the end of his life. His mother, St. Monica, was a Christian and it was she who by her prayers and her unwearing patience and affection was responsible more than any other human being for her son’s conversion. St. Augustine was in fact baptised by St. Ambrose only after his conversion when he was thirty-two. He went through the usual educational course of Latin and Greek literary studies of his time and eventually began to practise as a rhetorician at Carthage. At this period he became a Manichee, attracted by the intellectual pretensions of Manichaeism. In 383 he went to Rome as a teacher of rhetoric and in 384 obtained a post at Milan. At Milan he came into contact with the city’s Bishop, St. Ambrose and he became intellectually convinced of the truth of Christianity but held back from any decisive step till in September 386, when he underwent the great experience of instantaneous conversion which he describes unsurpassably in the eighth book of his Confessions. It was a conversion both to Christianity and to the pursuit of Christian perfection by an ascetic life. After he gave up his profession of rhetorician, he retired near Milan with his mother, Monica where he was baptised by St. Ambrose 242on Easter 387 and started back with his mother and friends to Africa when his mother died on the way. In Africa he was persuaded by Bishop Valerious to become a priest and was ordained in 391. He spent the remaining thirty-five years of his life as a hard-working diocesian bishop, somehow finding the time to write his Confessions and his main theological work. The City of God. He lived a monastic common life with his clergy and did all he could to encourage the formation of religious communities. He wrote two sermons on ascetic communal life and a long letter on its principles to a community of nuns he had founded, from the so-called ‘Rule of St. Augustine’ which is the basis of the rules of a great many communities of priests, friars and nuns. He always had wine at common meals as a respect for the good gifts of God; perhaps he remembered the perverted puritanism of his Manichaean days. St. Augustine lived to see the savage Vandal invasion of Africa which began in 429 and died on August 28, 430 at the age of seventy-six while the Vandals were besieging his episcopal city of Hippo. (pp. 88–91)

St. Benedict: (480–547)

St. Benedict, patriarach of Western monasticism, was born during the turbulent period when the Goths, who were Arian heretics, had established a kingdom in Italy and were striving to defend it against the Emperor’s great general Belisarius. In 546 the Gothic king, Totila who figures in St. Benedict’s life story, captured the city of Rome, left it in ruins and deserted it for forty days. Justinian’s armies finally won a victory so costly that the historian Gibbon wrote that the deliverance of Rome was the last calamity for the Roman people. Such was the setting where St. Benedict established the monastic system which was to preserve religion, art, science and agriculture for Europe throughout the Dark Ages. The decadence of Rome horrified the young Benedict who had been sent there to complete his education. He fled the city two or three years later knowing 243only that God was calling him to the life of a monk or a hermit. After a brief stay with some holy men about thirty-five miles distant from Rome, he set off once more, this time quite alone to adopt the life of a solitary anchorite. Having received the monastic habit, which in those days was nothing but a sheepskin, he buried himself in a cave and there endured a three-year probation of silence, penance and prayer. This was the type of monasticism which had arisen in the East in the third century. The accent was laid heavily on penance which often reached exaggerated and unbalanced extremes. It was St. Benedict’s achievement to modify this system and to evolve a form suitable to the West. At some date between 520 and 530, St. Benedict set out from Subiaco with a few companions, reached Cassinum, destroyed the pagan temples he found there and established the world-famous abbey of Monte Cassino. Here he settled down for the remainder of his life and wrote the Rule of monasticism which was to dominate Western religious life for 600 years. St. Benedict laid his emphasis upon communal, celibate life. He divided the monk’s day between prayer, studies and manual labor. He mitigated the austerities of the Egyptian desert, urging the abbot of the monastery, whose rule was absolute, to “temper all things so that the strong may still have something to long after and the weak may not draw back in alarm.” If no detail of monastic life was too trivial to interest him—from the clothes and shoes of the brethern to their portions of food and drink—the virtues he specially enjoined were those of obedience and humility. He knew how to govern and if necessary how to punish, but love was the principle of the community life of the monastery. For St. Benedict, God is to be found everywhere and in all things—in the abbot and his brethren, in the guests and pilgrims, in the divine office which is the monk’s principal duty and even in the spades and hoes which he uses for his field work. His sister, St. Scholastica, founded a separate order for nuns. (pp. 110–113).

244St. Dominic: (1170–1221)

St. Dominic Guzman, founder of the Dominican Order of friar preachers, was born in Castile, Spain. Until he was thirty-five, he led a cloistered and studious life. He studied first under his uncle, arch-priest of Gumiel, then for ten years at the University of Valencia. Pope Innocent III had long been looking for men to carry out the work of preaching in the south of France to counteract the influence there of the Albigensian heretics who taught that everything material was evil and of the devil, including the institution of marriage. Pope Innocent III sent Dominic and his friend, Diego to the south of France where they tried by preaching to convert the heretics. After one of their preachers was assassinated, the Catholic lords launched a civil war of rebellion against the Albigensians, and Dominic was left preaching where he could, matching the austere example of those who assisted him by his own exacting mortifications. ‘A man who governs his passions is master of the world,’ he said. ‘He must either rule them or be ruled by them. It is better to be the hammer than the anvil.” At Pouille, France, he founded a religious community of nuns—all converts from heresy, now almost his sole support. Although he had only six companions, yet he proposed to Pope Innocent III that they should form a world-wide order of preachers. St. Dominic immediately dispersed his followers, now sixteen in number, throughout Europe and he himself travelled the whole of the continent on foot organizing the order. (pp. 234–237).

St. Francis of Assisi: (1181–1226)

He was born in France but spent most most of his life in Italy. His father was a prosperous merchant but a greater influence in his childhood and boyhood came from his devout and loving mother. He was gay, adventurous, generous and popular and though prepared to follow his father’s trade, he dreamt also of a knight’s career. In 2451201 he took part in a war where he was taken prisoner and remained a hostage for a year. This experience and a severe illness began the process of his conversion. Halted from further military service by a dream in which Christ called him to preach, he returned and gave himself up to the care of the sick. On April 26, 1206 he heard again the voice of Christ in a vision calling him to rebuild the Church of San Damiano. Always impetuous and whole-hearted, he renounced his old life and adopted that of a hermit and when his father first imprisoned him and then brought him before the local bishop as a disobedient son, he abandoned all his rights and possessions even to his clothes. Two years later, he heard at a mass, Christ calling him to the preaching of penance. When his companions numbered eleven, he wrote for them a Rule of monastic life and in 1209, led them to Rome to seek approval from the Pope. Innocent III, after a short hesitation, had the insight to see in this single-minded, ardent layman, a true apostle and gave a verbal permission in June 1210. The brotherhood returned to Assisi and preached penance throughout cental Italy. It was the golden age of simplicity when the friars turned their hands to every kind of work or lived on gifts of food; they had as example and guide the spiritual wisdom and angelic simplicity of Francis who in 1212 encouraged Clare, a girl of noble family in the city, to found a sisterhood of nuns living in poverty and prayer; they became “The Poor Ladies,” now “The Poor Clares.” In 1219 his brotherhood of monks and nuns, fast growing unwieldly, was divided into provinces and the first great missions were sent across the Alps. With a complete disregard of any prudential considerations, Francis left Italy to join the Crusades against the Muslims in Palestine and win his way into the presence of the Sultan. Having failed, Francis, broken in health, retired into the mountains and on September 14, 1224 experienced the mysterious visitation that left upon his body the marks of the sacred wounds (or Stigmata) of Christ which remained with him as an acute 246physical suffering for the rest of his life. Henceforward his maladies increased and he became almost blind. He was borne from place to place by his disciples. In 1224 he wrote The Canticle of the Sun, wherein he repeated with solemn emphasis his teaching of absolute poverty, literal obedience to the monastic Rule and the refusal of all privileges. Francis was a man of extreme simplicity. He had only one aim—to love Christ and to imitate him and his life perfectly, even literally. (pp. 296–300).

St. Thomas Aquinas: (1225–1274)

St. Thomas Aquinas was born in Naples. He was educated at the near-by monastery of Monte Cassino and then at the University of Naples and while still an undergraduate, he decided to become a Dominican. Henceforth all his energies were directed to teaching, explaining and defending the Catholic faith. St. Thomas lacked the universal interests of his master, St. Albert. He was, for instance, not much concerned with the thirteenth century revival of experimental science that Albert fostered but in philosophy and theology, he achieved a depth of understanding and an ease of exposition unequalled even in that century of genius. From his early studies in Naples and later from St. Albert, he quickly realized the importance of the knowledge of Aristotle that came through the new translations made first from Arabic versions and later (largely on Thomas’ insistence) from the original Greek. On the one hand, St. Thomas had to persuade those followers of Averroes (Ibn Rushd) that better reasoning could show where Aristotle was mistaken and on the other hand, he had to persuade the over-cautious that much of Aristotle was sound and invaluable for the theological task of seeking to understand the truths of faith. His masterpiece the Summa Theologica, is an unsurpassed synthesis of the Latin and Greek church traditions illuminated by the use of philosophical reasoning drawn from Aristotle and Plato. His sanctity was achieved in and through the main work of his life—his intellectual activity. (pp. 722–725).

247Ignatius Loyola: (1491–1556)

He was born in the Basque hill country in Spain, the youngest of eleven children of an ancient noble family. He received only a superficial education in youth. His interests at that time were in gaming, in affairs of gallantry and, above all, in feats of military prowess. During the war between Spain and France, his thigh was fractured by a cannon-ball. He bore the pain with fortitude and it was during his long subsequent convalescence that finding no other literature, he passed his time reading the lives of the saints. Their example fired him to emulate them. “Supposing,” he said, “I were to do what St. Francis and St. Dominic have done?” He then resolved to become a knight in the service of God. In 1522 when he recovered, he found his way to the shrine of Our Lady of Monstserrat where he made a three-day confession, gave his knightly apparel to a beggar and hung his sword upon an altar of Our Lady. He composed The Spiritual Exercises in which he wrote down the principles by which a Catholic should regulate his life to attain his goal which is to praise the Lord so that he shall be saved. The following year, he made a pilgrimage to Palestine, stopping on the way at Rome. After he had venerated the Holy Places in Palestine, he returned to Barcelona. There, though now over thirty, he went to school, sitting on the same bench beside little children in order to repair the gaps in his education until he was fit to proceed to the University of Salamanca. On the Feast of Assumption 1534, he and six disciples solemnly dedicated themselves to the service of God, taking vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. Their intention was to go to Jerusalem and devote themselves to the salvation of souls in infidel countries. When circumstances made this impossible, Ignatius concluded that it was not the will of God that they should make that journey. Instead, he put his Order under the title of The Society of Jesus (now known as the Jesuits) at the disposal of the Holy See (papacy). The Jesuit Order added to the three customary vows of poverty, 248chastity and obedience, a fourth of special obedience to the Pope. Ignatius hardly left Rome for the rest of his life but the expansion of the Jesuit Order under his leadership was little short of miraculous and by the time of his death in 1556, it numbered twelve provinces, a hundred and one houses and nearly a thousand members. (pp. 370–373).¹⁸

These men have long been considered by Roman Catholics, which comprise more than half of the nominal Christians throughout the world, as exemplifying the highest ideals of spirituality as well as being the most decisive personalities who shaped the course of the history of Christianity in Europe. Note that all were celibate; all were bishops, priests or monks, regarding asceticism as the noblest kind of life. Had they been born in India instead of Europe, these saints might have found a congenial atmosphere among the Hindus or the Buddhists in neighboring lands.

And here is a modern example of the Roman Catholic ideals of spirituality:

In Mexico, sorrow is not considered heartbreaking, pitiful or disfiguring. It is considered to be a mark of God’s favor by which one is enobled and purified. Pain must be borne as a mark of God’s love since only through pain may we share any part of the Passion of His crucifixion. The man or woman wracked with pain or borne down by sorrow stands close to the Man of Sorrows and spiritually at least, is to be envied by those of us who are safe and and soft in our comfort and happiness. I cannot pretend that I learned this attitude at once. And it was years after I had come to understand it that I took it for my own. Indeed, the first 249argument I had with my mother-in-law was on the same subject. I had cried wildly that I would never suffer some dreadful, incurable disease; that I would kill myself first. But she turned on me with great severity and said in words I have never forgotten, “No, Elizabeth! You will accept your debts to life when and as God sends them and you will pay them, every one!”’

One of our dearest friends was a wealthy, gay and cultured lawyer, Don Eleazar. He had enjoyed a wonderful life. He had traveled the world over. He knew every part of his own Mexico and he was at home in the great cities of Europe and the United States. He frequently took as many as ten or twelve relatives with him on long tours abroad. He entertained lavishly and set his table with delicate foods and fine wines.

When he was in his early sixties, he had a series of digestive upsets. He grew worse. An exploratory operation was recommended. It was learned that he had inoperable cancer of the liver.

He had been a devoted Catholic all his life, a member of the lay order of the Franciscans. Now his faith became all his life to him. He ordered his wife, relatives and doctors to give him no opiates to dull his senses or kill his consciousness. “God has been good to me, lavish with His gifts. Now He awards me the greatest gift of all. I am to be permitted to share, in small measure, His pain. I who have adored Him in every way I know, am to be allowed to approach Him. It is as if I were offered the glory of the Stigmata. Blessed be God.”

And so it was.

I recount this because I feel that no amount of study of the Indian races, careful cataloging of handicrafts and music and research into the language and history of Mexico can give a true picture of the soul of Mexico until a man like Don Eleazar is understood in his deeply proud and valiant mysticism. This type of character was sent to Mexico by 250Catholic Spain and is still part of the country in every stoical and spiritual Mexican. And there are millions of them who, against this measure of their faith, judge every action of their lives and weigh every custom, tradition and activity.¹⁹

The teachings of Islam do inculcate into the hearts of the pious Muslim, exemplary patience under affliction and courage to face every kind of adversity that is beyond our personal control to avoid, but in contrast to the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, Islam does not regard suffering or calamity necessarily as a virtue in itself.

The intimate relationship between the monastic ideals of Christianity and its implicit acceptance of secularism on principle is eloquently illustrated by one of the leading Christian missionaries to the Muslims—Dr. Kenneth Cragg:

Many Muslim writers, past and present, upbraid Christianity for its failure to discipline and control Western civilization. It has not checked imperialism or prevented exploitation. It is, on the contrary, implicated as aiding and abetting Western dominance in the world. The Church in the New Testament is conceived as a society within a society. It is never properly thought of as coterminous within history with the whole of human society. It is built upon the idea of redemption. It therefore involves an analysis of human nature as wayward and sinful. There is the “natural man” in his recalcitrance and the “spiritual man” in regneration and pardon. The Christian understanding of how man is perfected is that it happens personally and through faith. Goodness, truth 251and love are not actualized in terms of the natural man but of new-made man. These conditions of the transition, being personal, are not social. Christianity belongs to and inheres in pepole who believe. It is never coterminous with any given society or culture. Things are not the final locus of Christianity. People are. The gospel of grace does not suppose that man is perfectable by law. The Christian mind believes that the society of the redeemed will always stand within the community—never identical with the whole. That whole, the secular world, must be free to organize itself. We cannot by legislations or assertion identify it with Christ. This fundamentally is the reason why the Christian faith recognizes an ultimate distinction and in that sense, a separation between Church and State. Christianity agrees with Islam that the claims of God are total and that nothing is exempt from their relevance. It does not agree that they can be met in a religio-political order externally established. Thus the Christian fellowship of people discipled to Christ as Master and Savior is not identical with a total population. In regenerating its fellows as far as it can and resisting the un-Christian as far as it may, it does not expect to identify itself with the whole, because true faith cannot be compelled. A community which confronts men with decision cannot at the same time be a community that recruits them all. Christianity is not a political expression. Realist Muslims have recognized that the Islamic law has not at any prolonged time in history evoked a true Islamic society. There has always been disparity between what was and what might have been. Does the “totalitarian” religion aim to dominate society and insure obedience by state authority and enforcement or does it seek to permeate opinion and rely solely on persuasion? Is there any sense, not harmful to religion in which the political order should be free from religious dominance? If religion sets the criteria of the state and of society, what is its true function in relation to these being actualized? Some Muslims today are by no means 252as confident as their forebearers that the right way to serve the unlimited demands of the religious law is by the unlimited enforcement of religious sanctions. To belong to Christ is to take up the Cross, to undertake costly responsibility for the world, to bear witness against social evil and strive for economic justice on all sides. To recognize that changing social conditions do not change man is not to be indifferent about changing them.²⁰

This is the kind of sophistry whereby the learned Christian doctor tries to apologize for secularism. Christianity has had almost 2,000 years to “regenerate” the world and convert the “natural man” into the “new-made” man, but what has been it result? Christianity reigned unchallenged over Europe for more than a thousand years, but the Church proved itself more intolerant and bigoted them any other institution in history. Wherever the Church ruled, every effort was made to exterminate Jews, Muslims, Protestants and other “heretics” whose legal rights to to exist were not even recognized.

The problem of power—national, independent, and Islamic—is the heart of contemporary history in most of the areas of the world of Islam. It is a problem inherent in filling the vacuum left by a retreating political west. It searches the intellectual resources of Islam in the most radical manner. As any observer can see, it is all accentuated by the vast, exacting questions that attach to modern society. Almost everywhere Islam is revising the classical legal framework of its fourteen centuries. This has all kinds of attendant consequences. It bring a new type of lawyer to the fore and relegates many of the old niceties and their exponents to unimportance. It brings about a 253silent transformation in the whole idea of Ijtihad or legal innovation and who is fitted to exercise it. It remodels the structure of courts and alters the mentality of litigants. It revises the concept of women and invades the innermost sanctuaries of personal status and family. Alongside it are the far-reaching economic transformations of daily life and commerce, the passing of barter economies, the emergence of the hitherto unknown phenomenon of leisure, the rise of collective bargaining and trade unions, the growth of mass-media and thus of communal opinion, new attitudes to time, to wealth, to privilege, new criteria of status, new dimensions of citizenship, new vistas of opportunity and wide new problems of adminstration of public welfare. In the vacuum left by the lapses of the Caliphate is the recession of imperialism. The current suspension of democratic forms in the Muslim world not only arises from the fact that government in these days of high dams, flooding populations and industrialization must be direct and efficient; it springs also from the fact that democratic processes to be secure, require standards of general education and traditions of citizenship that often do not obtain and for lack of which more democratic processes play into the hands of exploiters and vested interests. Moreover, viable and valid democracy demands a vigorous party system and the concept of the dignity of opposition—elements still wanting, for a variety of reasons in the structure of most Islamic communities. There is the bewildering newness of the political situation itself. The old Caliphate has departed. It is now four decades extinct and shows no sign of being resuscitated. The sundered national entities which replaced it or, as in Africa east and west, have developed outside of it, are launched upon their own careers when governing involves so much more than Caliphs ever knew.²¹

254The blackest page of the history of the Roman Catholic Church was the Inquisition whose shadow cast a virtual reign of terror over Europe for centries.

It is one of the bitter ironies of history that the Church, which had abolished torture as a legal device in the fifth century was the institution to revive it almost, a thousand years later. Although the Church regarded heresy as the most terrible of crimes—“treason against God”—it doubted that force was the best way to deal with it. When the Spanish heretic, Priscillian, was sentenced to death in 385 A.D. by the Emperor Maximus, St. Martin, St. Ambrose and St. Leo protested. St. John Chrysostom felt that to “put a heretic to death would be to introduce upon earth an inexcusable crime.”

In the 13th century, heresies began springing up all over Europe like mushrooms in a garbage heap. The most prominent of these sects was the Albigences in the south of France who attempted to return to what they considered the purity of early Christian doctrines. Pope Innocent III ordered a crusade against them, Arnaud, the papal legate told the crusaders: “Kill everyone! God will recognize His own!” Although the crusaders did their best to follow these instructions, this sort of wholesale butchery was plainly impractical and so St. Dominic, the founder of the Dominican Order and an expert theologian, was sent to France to examine prisoners and determine their religious beliefs.

From a strictly theological point of view, St. Dominic was not unreasonable. He first made sure that the individual being questioned was really a heretic—many of the Albigenses were really protesting more against the corruption of the local clergy than against the basic doctrines of the Church. But if the prisoner was definitely denying basic Catholic doctrines, Dominic would spend days if necessary arguing obscure theological points in an effort to convert the sinner. If the prisoner remained obdurate—well, as Dominic himself 255said, “When kind words fail, blows may avail.” Dominic argued that one heretic would corrupt others. Such a man, could not therefore be allowed to adhere to his false doctrines any more than a man afflicted with the plague should be allowed to infect others. Torture until the heretic recanted or died, was the only solution.

The Alibigenses were soon virtually exterminated, 200 being burned at Montsegur in one day. But other sects continued to appear and so in 1233, a perpetual board of inquiry was established to investigate cases of suspected heresy. As heresy was considered the most terrible of all crimes, the board was permitted to use torture as a standard procedure to discover the truth, a custom that was gradually adopted by the secular courts as well. The Church court become known as the Inquisition and was put under the supervision of the Dominican Order.

The Inquisition made torture more than merely a method of inflicting pain; they transformed it into an art and science. Great emphasis was put on the psychological approach preceding the actual torture. The accused was arrested at night, pulled out of bed by the black-robed, masked familars and taken to the dungeons in utter silence. Here he was left for several days in solitary confinement and complete darkness. When he was judged to have reached the breaking point, the same masked figures suddenly seized him and dragged him to the torture chamber.

Here, behind a long table sat other mysterious figures with the accused’s records spread out before them. The floor of the room was covered with sand or sawdust to soak up the blood and around the wall were arranged the torture instruments painted red or black. The torturers, naked to the waist and wearing black masks stood among the terrible tools of their trade with folded hands. The only light came from flickering candles. On the walls were inscribed mottoes such as “Say nothing but good of the dead.” or “Dark theatres are suitable for dark deeds.”

256The prisoner was not told what charges were laid against him. He was only told to confess. If he did not or could not, the, Inquisitor-General warned him. “Remember that you do not pass into our hands for an hour or a week or even a year but until the day you die and even then you will spend eternity suffering the pains of Hell.” If the prisoners still proved obdurate, he was handed over to the executioner who usually began by telling him: “We will torture you until you are so thin that the light will shine though you!” Then the torture commenced.

The first torture was the garrote. The prisoner was stripped naked, for the executioners required access to every portion of the body. A belt was then fastened around his waist and he was suspended from the ceiling. Cords were twisted around various parts of his body and slowly tightened in the manner of a tourniquet. As one part of his body began to grow numb, he was turned by means of the belt into another position so new cords could be applied.

If the garrote failed, the Inquisitors then had recourse to the strappado. The victim’s hands were tied behind him and he was then hoisted up by his wrists to a pulley on the ceiling. For maximum effect the prisoner was raised slowly and allowed to stand on tiptoe for the length of time it required to say a psalm Miserere three times slowly. He was then lowered, circulation allowed to return and hoisted up against with weights attached to his feet for two Miseres. If this failed, he was raised almost to the ceilling and suddenly allowed to drop but brought up with a sharp jerk that dislocated his arms at the shoulders. Should he still refuse to confess, weights were tied to his legs and he was pulled up to be dropped again.

The water torture was considered the most terrible and used when other means had failed. The prisoner was tied to a ladder with his head lower than his feet. An iron prong was used to force his mouth open and a strip of linen was pushed down his throat. Water was slowly dropped on the linen until the prisoner, in his efforts to avoid being 257strangled, swallowed the strip. The strip was gradually withdrawn, covered with blood and mucus. The process was then repeated. The amount of water used was carefully measured and could never exceed eight quarts at any one time; otherwise the prisoner might suffocate.²²

The Inquisitors were ruthless as they were convinced that they were fighting with the powers of darkness for the prisoner’s soul. For the victim to die unrepentant was a victory for the devil. It is astonishing that the Inquisitors, many of whom were sincere and intelligent men, never seemed to realize that the accused would usually admit to anything under torture. As the accused had no conception of what crime he was supposed to have committed, he would often beg the Inquisitors to tell him so he could confess. This was never done because the Inquisitors wished the confession to be “voluntary.” A clerk was always employed to take down a transcript of the accused’s testimony during the torture.

The Inquisitors frequently claimed that the confessions extracted by torture must be genuine because the prisoners seldom retracted afterwards and legally, torture could not be repeated, so the prisoner had nothing more to fear. They neglected to point out that torture could be “interrupted” and then “reversed.” The torture was never officially ended even when a confession had been secured. It was merely interrupted and in case of a retraction, could be continued. The Inquisition was full of legal quibbles of this nature.

In 1488, Pope Innocent VIII issued his famous bull against witchcraft, ordering the Inquisitors to stamp it out at all costs. Jacob Spregner was appointed Inquistor-General of Germany. He accepted the appointment eagerly. His famous book, the Malleus Malaficarum (Hammer of 258Witches) is said to have caused the deaths of more human beings than any other book in history. As did most of people of his time, Sprenger considered virtually all mental aberrations as being the work of the devil or of his agents, the witches. In his Malleus Malificarum, Sprenger described literally every kind of neurosis or psychosis which we find today in modern psychiatric practice. Victims of schizophrenia typically rebell against authority and frequently launched wild attacks against God. To Sprenger, such people were clearly witches. He describes how the “witches” hear voices, have dreams and illusions and how some were actually cured by torture. Hysterical anesthesias and pathological mutism could be cured by his “shock treatment” and the witches who responded to Sprenger’s drastic therapies were clearly of these types.

Sprenger’s famous Hammer of Witches was used for centuries after his death as the definitive text on witchcraft and how to secure confessions. As it provided unshakable legal grounds for convicting anyone arrested, it was invaluable to a witch-hunter.

The Inqusitors had scriptual authority for their actions. The Biblical order: Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” (Exodus 22:18) has probably been responsible for the death of more persons than any other eight words in history. W. F. Poole in Salem Witchcraft believes that hundreds of thousands of people were killed for this “crime” during the 16th and 17th centuries. Witchcraft executions continued into the 18th century.

The greatest of all inquistors—the man whose name has become virtually synonomous with torture as a fine art—was Frey Tomas de Torquemada. Torquemada created the Spanish Inquisition and made it one of the most terrible institutions in all history. In so doing, he virtually exterminated the Spanish middle class and so crippled Spanish trade and commerce that it never completely recovered. He burned 10,220 and tortured 97,321 during his eighteen years 259of office, yet this fearful man lived a life of self-sacrifice and humility. He never ate meat, wore only his monk’s robe of coarse cloth and slept on a plank. As Inquisitor-General he acquired great wealth but used it only to establish churches and convents.

As a young man Torquemada was subjected to two psychological blows. Although of noble birth, his grandfather had married a wealthy Jewess to recoup the dwindling family fortunes. As a child Torquemada was taunted by his schoolmates for not having “clean” blood, so that even the meanest of his class-fellows considered himself to be superior to the “polluted” boy. Torquemada grew up with a pathological hatred for Jews who had inflicted this disgrace upon him. Then he fell in love with a beautiful girl named Cazilida. As Cazilda was of Spanish-Christian ancestry, the brilliant student was able to forget the shame of his mixed blood. But then Cazilda ran away with a handsome Moor, the descendant of one of the ancient Moorish families who had ruled Spain since the 8th century.

Torquemada never recovered from this second shock. Twice he had been disgraced; first, by the Jews and then by the Moors. Half mad, he went to his confessor, Father Lopez, a Dominican. Father Lopez urged the crazed youth to enter the Church. “There alone you can find solace, my son. Retreat from this world full of unreason and carnal desires, and devote your great talents to God.”

“I will do as you say, Father, and dedicate myself to the abolition of heresy.” he promised.

Hitherto the Inquisition in Spain had been merely an investigating group but in 1481, Torquemada burned 800 heretics—mainly Muslims and Jews. Torquemada travelled about the land, protected by a bodyguard of forty armed familiars on horseback and 200 on foot. These familiars were secular monks, usually the younger sons of wealthy noble families who by joining the Inquisition, became exempt from all taxes and enjoyed almost unlimited powers.

260On arriving in a new community, Torquemada would invite the populace to report anyone suspected of being a heretic. Suspects could be identified if there was no smoke rising from their chimneys on a Saturday (thus implying that they were observing the Jewish Sabbath) or if they ate meat during Lent, changed their sheets or underwear on a Saturday, cut the fat off meat or if any of their relations when dying, had turned their faces to the wall. Informers were reminded that they received one third of the accused’s estates and property. The accused were tortured until they confessed and gave the names of other heretics. It was admitted that this method involved the danger of convicting innocent persons but as Friar Francesco Pregna, a noted Inquisitor pointed out: “After all, should an innocent person be unjustly condemned, he should not complain of the sentence which was founded on sufficient proof and we cannot judge on what is hidden. He should accept the sentence with resignation and rejoice in dying for the Truth.”²³

The Protestants were just as cruel and superstitious as the Catholics. It is an historical fact that the greatest leaders of the Reformation—Martin Luther and John Calvin—wholeheartedly supported the witchcraft mania. John Calvin actually presided over the execution in Geneva of many victims accused of this “crime.”

Hitler, Mussolini, Lenin and Stalin could find in a careful study of the Inqusition and its methods to exterminate “heretics,” and the methods of the Jesuits to indoctrinate the young, all they needed to know about secret police, spies, purges, terror, propaganda and “brain-washing”—all indispensable equipment in 261the contemporary totalitarian state. No wonder religion was equated in most decent European minds with ignorance, superstition, and fanaticism and an obstacle barring all hope of moral and material progress.

Since the Quran categorically declares that faith is a gift from God which He bestows upon whom He chooses and thus cannot be compelled even by persuasion, much less force, and forbids spying and backbiting as among the most serious sins, it is noteworthy that nowhere in the annals of Islamic history in any Muslim land do we find torture and terror institutionalized and officially sanctioned as a major legal weapon in pre-European colonial times.

Here we can most clearly understand how Christendom combined with Jewry is the most implacable enemy of an Islamic revival. Christian missionaries applaud all innovations which are conducive to the disintegration of the Islamic way of life andthe Westernization of the Muslim world. Note how such totalitarian dictatorships, like the Kemalist regime in Turkey, are justified on Christian grounds! And this is no concidence since the Christian missionary endeavour has not only sanctioned but actively participated alongside all the other forces destructive to Islam and favourable to Westernization in every Muslim land. Their sinister hands were behind the murder of Ahmadu Bello and Abu Bakr Tawafa Belawa in Nigeria which put an end to Islamic rule in that country and brought in its wake the chaos of endless civil war. The same hands were behind the overthrow of Muslim rule in Zanzibar and the wholesale 262massacre and expulsion of the Arabs there. They gave whole-hearted support to the Emperor Haile Selassie’s brutal attempt to exterminate the entire Muslim population of Ethiopia even though the Muslims constitute the majority in that country. They applaud every illicit territorial gain of the Zionists in retrieving the Arab world for Western civilization and destroying the Muslim character of Palestine. They make no efforts to restrain their glee over the colonization of Palestine by European Jews and the expulsion of the Arabs, including even the Christian Arabs! And the most unpardonable sin of all is that Christian missionaries refuse to admit any responsibility for these atrocities but attempt merely to explain them away as purely spontaneous, local developments. From the moment the Emperor Constantine decided to institute Christianity as the official religion to unify the decaying Roman Empire until the present, the Church has consistently been the greatest ally of political tyranny, oppression and the forces of corruption.

European Christendom’s hostility towards Islam is deeply embedded in its history and classical literature from the early medieval period onwards. Two of the best known works of European literature of that period which have become folklore are the epic poems, THE SONG OF ROLAND and EL-CID both revolving around the struggle of the Christans against the Muslims for Spain and southern France.

The most dramatic episode of this protracted conflict were the Crusades. The following is the 263official text of the summons of Pope Eugene III for the second crusade on December 1, 1145:

How much our predecessors, the Roman pontiffs did labour for the deliverance of the oriental church, we have learned from the accounts of the ancients and have found it written in their acts. For our predecessor of blessed memory, Pope Urban did sound as it were, a celestial trump and did take care to arouse for its deliverance the sons of the holy Roman church from the different parts of the earth. At his voice, indeed, those beyond the mountain and especially the bravest and strongest warriors if the French kingdom of also those of Italy, inflamed by the ardour of love, did come together and congregating a very great army, not without such shedding of their own blood, the divine aid being with them, did free from the filth of the pagans, that city (Jerusalem) where our Saviour willed to suffer for us and where He left His glorious sepulchre to us as a memorial of His passion which by the grace of God and the zeal of your fathers who at intervals of time have striven to the extent of their power to defend them and to spread the name of Christ in those parts have been retained by the Christians up to this day; and other cities of the infidels have by them been manfully conquered. But now a thing we cannot relate without great grief and wailing, the city of Edessa has been taken and many of the castles of the Christians have been occupied by them (the Muslims). The archbishop moreover of this same city together with his clergy and many other Christians have there been slain and the relics of the saints have been trampled under the feet of the infidels and dispersed. Whereby how great a danger threatens the church of God and the whole of Christianity, we both know and do not believe it to be hid from your prudence. For it is known that it will be the greatest proof of nobility and probity if those things which the bravery of 264your fathers acquired be defended by you, the sons. But if it should happen otherwise, which God forbid, the valour of the fathers will be found to have diminished in the case of the sons.

We exhort therefore all of you in God; we ask and command and for the remission of sins enjoin; that those who are of God and above all, the greater men and the nobles, do manfully gird themselves; and that you strive so to oppose the multitude of the infidels who rejoice at the time in a victory gained over us, and so to defend the oriental church, that the dignity of the Christian name may increased in your time and that your valour which is praised throughout the whole world, may remain intact and unshaken. We moreover providing with paternal solicitude for your tranquility do grant and confirm by the authority conceded to us of God to those who by the promptings of devotion do decide to undertake and to carry through so holy and so necessary a work that remission of sins which our aforesaid predecessor, Pope Urban did institute and do decree that their wives and sons and their goods also and possessions shall remain under the protection of ourselves and of the archbishops, bishops and other prelates of the church of God. Those who are opressed with debt and begin so holy a journey with a pure heart shall not pay interest for the time past and if they, or others for them, are bound by an oath or pledge in the matter of interests, we absolve them by apostolic authority. It is allowed to to them also when their relations, being warned or the lords to whose fee they belong, are either unable or unwilling to advance them the money; freely to pledge without any reclamation of their lands or other possessions to churches or to eccesiastical persons or to any other of the faithful. According to the institution of our aforesaid predecessor by the authority of almighty God and that of St. Peter, the chief of apostles conceded to us by God, we grant such remission and absolution of sins that he 265who shall devoutly begin so sacred a journey and shall accomplish it or die during it, shall obtain absolution for all his sins which with a humble and contrite heart he shall confess and shall receive the fruit of eternal reward from the Renumerator of all.²⁴

The results of this exhortation are known to even the most casual students of history. The crusaders formed much more of a wild unruly mob than anything which could be described as an army, including in their ranks some of the most notorious criminals, rabble-rousers and convicts from the prisons. As they surged through Europe at intervals throughout the 11th and 12th centuries, the chief victims were the Jews whom they massacred wholesale without mercy, especially in Germany. The solicitude of the Crusaders for the oriental church was demonstrated when instead of uniting all Christendom against the “infidel Turk,” they plundered Constantinople in 1204, a blow from which Byzantium never recovered, the motive for this atrocity being that the crusaders from Venice were determined to destroy their principle commercial rival, all of this with the official sanction of the Roman papacy.

It is no historical coincidence that as a reaction against the injustice perpetuated by the Church, the atheism of Karl Marx, was born in Christian Germany and first took root in Christian Russia 266for in Christianity monasticism, secularism, materialism and paganism all join hands.

This compromise with paganism are most clearly revealed by a study of those aspects of Christian theology which conflict most acutely with Islam. To quote the official Baltimore Catholic Catechism, here is The Apostles’ Creed which is to Christians what our Kalimah or profession of faith is to us:

I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried. He descended into Hell; the third day He arose again from the dead. He ascended into Heaven, sitteth at the right hand of God, the Father Almighty. From thence He shall come to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and life everlasting. Amen.

Is there only one God?

Yes, there is only one God.

How many persons are there in God?

In God there are three divine Persons, the Father, the Son and Holy Ghost. Unaided by divine revelation, the human mind cannot know of the existence of the blessed Trinity because it is a supernatural mystery. Even after God has revealed the existence of the blessed Trinity, we cannot understand it. When we believe on the word of God that there are three Persons in one God, we do not believe that three persons are one person or that three gods are one God, for that would be a contradiction.

Is the Father God?

The Father is God and the first Person of the blessed Trinity. The first Person of the blessed Trinity is called 267the Father because from all enternity, He begets the second Person, His only Begotten Son. God, the Father is called the first Person, not because He is greater than the other two Persons but because He is unbegotten.

Is the Son God?

The Son is God and the second Person of the blessed Trinity. The second Person of the blessed Trinity is called the Son because from all eternity, He is the only begotten of the Father. Proceeding from the Father, the Son is called the Divine Word or the wisdom of the Father.

Is the Holy Ghost God?

The Holy Gost is God and the third Person of the blessed Trinity. The third Person of the blessed Trinity is called the Holy Ghost because from all eternity He is breathed forth, as it were, by the Father and the Son. Proceeding from the Father and the Son, He is called the Gift of Love of the Father and the Son. The word “Ghost” means “Spirit.”

What do we mean by the Blessed Trinity?

By the blessed Trinity we mean one and the same God in three divine Persons.

Are the three divine Persons really distinct from one another?

The three divine Persons are entirely distinct from one another. Although the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost are distinct Persons, they are not distinct in nature. The nature of the Father is entirely the nature of the Son and the nature of the Father and the Son is entirely the nature of the Holy Ghost.

Are the three divine Persons perfectly equal to one another?

The three divine Persons are perfectly equal to one another because all are one and the same God. No one of the 268three Persons precedes the others in time or in power but all are equally eternal and all-powerful because they have the same divine nature.

How are the three divine Persons, though really distinct from one another, one and the same God?

Because the three divine Persons have one and the same Divine nature, they have the same perfections and the same external works are produced by them. But in order that we may better know the three divine Persons, for example, omnipotence and the works of omnipotence such as creation are ascribed to the Father; wisdom and the works of wisdom such as enlightenment to the Son; love and the works of love, such as sanctification to the Holy Ghost.

Can we fully understand how the three divine Persons, though entirely distinct from one another, are one and the same God?

We cannot fully understand because this is a supernatural mystery. A supernatural mystery is a truth which we cannot fully understand but which we firmly believe because we have God’s word for it. In Heaven, there will be a fuller understanding of these mysteries but never an infinite comprehension of them.²⁵

Here is how a Christian missionary attempts to make this incomprehensible theology palatable to the Muslim mind:

It is important to make clear that the Christian doctrine of God is not intricate for intricacy’s sake or that the issues implicit in its formulation are artificial and unnecessary. It is also important to consider that the criterion of simplicity here is not assumed. “Simple solutions,” A. N. Whitehead once declared, “are bogus solutions.” Be that as it may, the 269higher the theme, the less likelihood there is that it can be adequately formulated in simple terms. We insist that doctrines of God are not properly to be evaluated by the criterion of simplicity. The Trinity is a way of understanding God’s unity. For the Muslim, faith in God, as Father, Son and Holy Spirit does violence to the Divine Unity. For the Christian, it expresses and illuminates that Unity. The Muslim sees the doctrine of the Trinity as incompatible with belief in the unity of God. The Christian finds these not merely compatible but interdependent. The issue Christianity understands is not Trinity and Unity but Trinity and atheism. We are not discussing monotheism and polytheism. Muslims who debate polytheism are not discussing Christianity. Where we differ is how to define and understand the Divine Unity. What lies outside that issue is irrelevant to Christianity. (pp. 306–308). There is absolutely no reason to insist, as some Muslim do, that the term “Father” necessarily implies paternity in the physical sense. It goes without saying that God does not have children as His creatures do. This, however, does not invalidate the use of the deepest analogy known to human life, the more so since all fatherhood and family is the idea of God and takes its name, according to St. Paul, from Him.

Is the doctrine of the Trinity against reason? It may transcend our complete rational comprehension and also elude philosophical discovery. But it is certainly open to the fullest exploration the mind can reach. If mystery remains beyond the thinker’s reach, this is not to say his ambitions have no place. The theist has no need to be ashamed of the intellectual bearing of his faith. It illuminates many of the otherwise unanswered questions of philosophy. Moreover, it is well to remember that rejection of this doctrine on grounds of mystery does not rid the unbeliever of the mysterious. The Christian doctrine lies precisely where the supreme mysteries belong. Reflection makes it clear that the idea of the Divine Unity cannot be enforced in a mathe270matical sense, and that enforcements in such a context is the ground of most Muslim antipathy to the Christian Trinity. The higher we proceed in the scale of being, the more rich and varied are the unities we encounter. Mathematical units are low in the scale of values such as stones or a unicellular organism. Human personalities are the richest and most diversified unities within our experience. William Shakespeare and Abraham Lincoln were single persons but what a wealth of diversity lay within them! If the order of ascending unity reveals increasing richness, who shall say that the Unity of God is not the richest and greatest of all? Certainly, we cannot disallow the doctrine of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit on the ground that these add up to three. Was not Muhammad a Prophet, a leader and an example? He was no less than one Muhammad. (pp. 316–317)²⁶

Christian leaders vehemently assert that the doctrine of Trinity in no way violates the concept of monotheism but, as Dr. Cragg argues, is indispensable to it! But it must be remembered that Islam does not only prohibit the evil of polytheism itself but all the roads that lead to it. Hindu philosophers will also argue that their concept of God is not contrary to monotheism. The Hindus also, have their Trinity—Brahman, the Creator, Vishnu, the Preserver and Shiva, the Destroyer. Sophisticated Hindus assert that their millions of lesser gods are only various aspects and manifestations of the One true God. What a rich variety of idols can be found in any Hindu temple, all manifestations of the unity Dr. Cragg would certainly applaud! The pagan Arabs of Mecca were also sophisticated enough to adopt this same fallacy. 271When the Holy Prophet began to preach the doctrine of pure and uncompromising monotheism, the Quraish in Mecca assured him that they accepted Allah as the chief of the gods and that their acceptance of all the other gods did not constitute polytheism but merely the varied manifestations of one and the same God. This the Holy Prophet vehemently rejected and Tauhid or pure and unadulterated monotheism is the most essential of all Islamic teachings from which our entire way of life is derived.

The Christian anthropomorphization of their concept of God is expressed in the crudest materialistic manner in the last chapter of the New Testament, the Revelation of St. John, the Divine:

After this I looked and behold, a door was opened in heaven and the first voice which I heard was as it were of a trumpet talking with me which said: Come up hither and I will show the things which must be Hereafter. And immediately I was in the spirit and behold, a Throne was set in heaven and One (God) sat on the Throne. And He (God) Who sat there looked like a jasper and a sardine stone; and there was a rainbow round the Throne in sight like unto an emerald. And round the throne were four and twenty seats and upon the seats I saw four and twenty elders sitting, clothed in white rainment and they had on their heads crowns of gold. And out of the Throne proceeding lightnings and thunderings and voices and there were seven lamps of fire burning before the throne which are the seven Spirits of God. And before the Throne there was a sea of glass like unto crystal; and in the midst of the Throne and round about the Throne, were four beasts full of eyes before and behind. And the first beast was like a lion, and the second beast like a calf. and the third beast had a face as a man and 272the fourth beast was like a flying eagle. And the four beasts had each of them six wings about him and they were full of eyes within and they rest not day and night, saying Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty which was and is to come. And when these beasts give glory and honour and thanks to Him that sat on the Throne who liveth forever and ever, the four and twenty elders fall down before Him that sat on the Throne and worship Him that liveth forever and ever and cast their crowns before the Throne saying, Thou art worthy O Lord to receive glory and honour and power; for Thou hast created all things and for Thy pleasure they are and were created. Revelation: 4.

Now contrast this with the sublime description of God in the Holy Quran:

Allah! There is no God save Him, the Alive, the Eternal. Neither slumber nor sleep overtaketh Him. Unto Him belongeth whatsoever is in the heavens and whatsoever is in the earth. Who is he that intercedeth with Him save by His permission? He knoweth that which is in front of them (the future) and that which is behind them (the past) while they encompass nothing of His knowledge save what He will. His throne includeth the heavens and the earth and He is never weary of preserving them. He is the Sublime, the Tremendous. (11–255)

The doctrine of the Trinity has certainly led many Christians, especially among the simple and illiterate poor, straight to polytheism. This corruption from monotheism to polytheism is most glaringly illustrated in the saint-worship of the Roman Catholic Church.

A saint in the strict sense of the word is a person who is declared officially by the Church to be in Heaven and who may be publicly venerated. The veneration paid to the saints in Heaven differs essentially from the adoration of God. The saints are creatures and not to be given the supreme worship 273due to the Creator alone. The supreme honour must be given only to God in the full and strict sense of the word. The veneration given to the Blessed Mother and to the saints is an act of respect and honour of an entirely different nature. The veneration given to the Blessed Mother of God (the virgin Mary) surpasses that given to the saints and angels.

Why do we honour the saints in Heaven?

We honour the saints in Heaven because they practiced great virtue when they were on earth and because in honoring those who are the chosen friends of God, we honour God himself.

How can we honour the saints?

We can honour the saints first by imitating their holy lives, second by praying to them, and third, by showing respect to their relics and images. When we pray to the saints, we ask them to offer their prayers to God for us.

Why do we honour relics?

We honour relics because they are the bodies of the saints or objects connected with the saints or with our Lord. The honour given to a relic does not stop at the sacred object itself, but is directed to the person whose relic is venerated.

Is it right to show respect to the statues and pictures of Christ and of the saints?

It is right to show respect to the statues and pictures of Christ and of the saints just as it is right to show respect to the images of those whom we honour and love on earth. Making or use of pictures and statues is forbidden only when they promote false worship.

Do we honour Christ and the saints when we pray before the Crucifix, relics and sacred images?

We honour Christ and the saints when we pray before the Crucifix, relics and sacred images because we honour the persons they represent. We adore Christ, and venerate 274the saints. We place our trust in God and the intercessory power of the saints.²⁷

The result of these teachings is that the unsophisticated simple folk of the Roman Catholic countries, and even many of the more educated, are much more preoccupied with praying to the saints than praying to God. With the multitude of saints in the Roman Catholic Church, God is obscured and almost forgotten!

When I came to Mexico, I had no idea that I was going to become so intimately involved with the Saints. I had always known that there were saints. I longed passionately for Joan of Arc to be canonized. I realized that a lot of my future happiness would depend on St. Peter. But I didn’t know that the saints, hosts of them, were going to be in and out of my life like neighbors. Some of them came to be as close as friends who phoned daily; others were to be turned to in time of tribulation and some became trusted confidants who never let me down. I loved them through thick and thin, though often they were capricious and childish with me, refusing me the simplest favours.

I took up with San Antonio (St. Anthony) in a hasty, opportunistic way. I confess he never held it against me. It is a relationship that has deepened with the years. I ring him up, via urgent ejaculations and sudden prayers, several times a day, and I believe I may say that we are devoted friends, Many are the miracles he has performed for me as proof of his power and his kindness.

We met in the following manner. I had been home to visit my mother in California and had taken a bus to Los Angeles where I was to board a train for Mexico. But on arrival to Los Angeles, I learned that the bus company had lost my luggage somewhere on route. Now I had jewelry, 275presents and other treasures in the suitcase besides my clothes. I was distressed. But when I told this sad tale to a friend, she said to me, “Have you tried San Antonio? He is the patron of lost objects.”

“No, tell me what to do,” I implored.

“You must take an exercise in humility, do an act of contrition for your sins and say a novena—that is, a prayer for nine consecutive days. Then if there is no reason why you should not have your luggage back, San Antonio will give it to you.”

I faithfully performed the rites and I am here to remark that when I got home, I found a letter from my mother. In it she said, “An odd thing happened. A few minutes ago the bus company drove up and delivered your lost suitcase. I checked rightaway and everything was in it. It had been to Alaska and back. To make certain, I myself will bring it to you.”

Thus San Antonio, bless and love him, got me back my suitcase and brought my mother for a visit as well. And many are the lost objects he has found for me, from my passport to a silver thimble. In fact, he so overwhelms me with his favours that I am shamed and will not often ask for myself but every time I ask with a full heart for something for anyone I love, San Antonio’s generosity is immediately forthcoming.²⁸

I myself have had experience with the same saint. Once when I was ten years old, I lost one of my school books and ran to my teacher to tell her of my plight. My teacher, who happened to be a Roman Catholic, advised me to make a novena and pray to St. Anthony who would then surely retrieve it for me!

Manufacturing images of Catholic saints is a big business in America. When I was eighteen years 276old, I worked for a summer in a factory which manufactured crucifixes by mass-production. All July and August of 1952, in order to earn enough money to buy my clothes for college, I stood at a machine which turned out several hundred crucifixes an hour. I filled many huge crates with plastic images of Jesus dying on the Cross which my fellow-workers sitting at tables nearby would coat with gold or silver leaf and glue the images to the crosses which came in assorted colours and sizes. When completed, the crucifixes would be sold for the equivalent of a rupee or two at the local stores. The profits on the sale which poured into pockets of the owner of the factory where I worked, must have been considerable. Once when my father was out of work, the only job he could find was for a local factory in the same community which specialized in manufacturing images of every Roman Catholic saint from tiny statues in plastic or ivory two or three inches long to life-sized ones of marble or wood five and six feet high, some of which could be illuminated by electricity at night. The illustrated catalogue published by this prosperous company was most impressive—hundreds of images to be prayed to by millions of credulous worshippers. In the suburban community in New York where I lived, it was a common practice among the Roman Catholics to hang a little plastic statue of St. Christopher about four inches high in the front window of their luxurious cars in order to insure them protection against accidents. Is this not idolatry? How can that kind of polytheism sanctioned and encouraged in the Roman Catholic Church be differentiated from 277paganism?

Shirk (associating partners with God) is characteristic of all Christian prayers and worship. Here is a sample from some of the most commonly used prayers of the Roman Catholic Church:

The Lord’s Prayer: (This prayer is used among Protestants as well.)

Our Father, Who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil for Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory. Amen.

The Hail Mary

Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen.

Hail Holy Queen

Hail Holy Queen, Mother of Mercy our life, our sweetness and our hope! To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve. To thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this vale of tears! Turn then, most gracious Advocate, thine eyes of mercy towards us and after this, our exile, show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus. O clement, O loving, sweet Virgin Mary!

Memorare

Remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary, that never was it known that anyone who fled to thy protection, implored thy help and sought thy intercession was left unaided. Inspired by this confidence, I fly to thee, O Virgin of virgins, my mother! To thee I come. Before thee 278I stand, sinful and sorrowful. O Mother of the Word Incarnate, despise not my petitions but in thy mercy, hear and answer me! Amen.

Glory be to the Father

Glory be to the Father and the Son and to the Holy Ghost as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

Act of Hope

O my God, relying on Thy infinite goodness and promises, I hope to obtain pardon for my sins, the help of Thy grace and life everlasting through the merits of Jesus Christ, my Lord and Redeemer. Amen.

And here are some Protestant prayers as taken from their hymns, all of which have been composed by English poets and musicians:

I think when I read that sweet story of old
When Jesus was here among men,
How he called little children as lambs to His fold.
I should like to have been with Him then….

Jesus, tender Shephard, hear me;
Bless thy little lamb tonight;
Through the darkness be thou near me;
Keep me safe till morning light.
All this day Thy hand has led me
And I thank thee for Thy care;
Thou hast clothed me, warmed and fed me;
Listen to my evening prayer! ….

For food and rest and loving care
And all that makes the world so fair
We thank Thee, Lord ….

How strong and sweet my Father’s care
That round me like the air
Is with me always everywhere.
He cares for me ….

Praise God from all blessings flow. 279Praise Him all creatures here below.
Praise Him above ye heavenly host.
Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost ….

Holy, holy, holy! Lord God Almighty!
Early in the morning your song shall rise to Thee,
Only Thou art holy. There is none beside Thee,
Perfect in love, faith and purity ….

Onward Christian solidiers
Marching as to war
With the Cross of Jesus
Going on before!

So unlike the throughly man-made composition of Christian worship, Islamic supplications are all from Holy Quran and Hadith and are thus direct from God as revealed to the Holy Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings of God be upod him). For this reason there is no compromise with the strictest and purest montheism. The virile language of the Salat is a sharp contrast to the mawkish sentimentality so characteristic of Christian worship,

In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful:
Praise be unto Allah, the Lord of Universe,
Most merciful, most compassionate.
Master of the Day of Judgement.
Thee alone do we serve and of Thee we beg for help,
Show us the straight path,
The path of those whom Thou hast favoured.
Not those whose portion is wrath and who go astray ….

In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful.
Say He, Allah is One.
Allah upon Whom all depend.
He begets not nor is He begotten
And there is none comparable to Him ….

Surely I have turned myself being upright wholly to Him Who orginated the heavens and the earth and I am 280not of the polytheists. Surely my prayer and my sacrifice, my life and my death belong to Allah, the Lord of the Worlds. No associate has He and this I am commanded and I am one of those who submit ….

(O Allah!) Give us the good of this world and the good of the Hereafter and save us from the doom of Hell-fire! ….

O Allah! Thou art the Author of peace and from Thee comes peace. O our Creator and Cherisher, keep us alive with peace and let us enter the Home of Peace (Paradise). O Lord, possessor of glory and honour!

Here is how the Christian missionary attacks the Islamic conception of God as represented by the English poet, Alfred Austin who wrote at the turn of the century:

Now vesper brings the sunset hour,
Where the crusading knight once trod,
Muezzin from his minaret tower
Proclaims, ‘There is no God but God!’
Male God who shares His godhead with
No virgin’s mother’s sacred tear,
But finds on earth congenial with
Weddings of the sword and spear!²⁹

There can be no doubt that the encouragement of picture and statute-making by the Christian church has been responsible more than any other factor for the corruption of monotheism into what is tantamount to polytheism. Yet the Chrittian missionary dares attack the Islamic ban on picture and statue-making with the following curious arguments:

Many are the examples of calligraphy for the non Arab visitor who finds himself in a house of Muslim prayer. 281Whether it is in Cairo, Istanbul or Lahore, he will be at once fascinated and perplexed by the long “rivers” of Quranic script that adorn the walls and domes and minarets. Letters and words superimposed upon each other defeat his desire to disentangle and translate them. But they express in the most characteristic from the devotion and dogma of Islam. Words without pictures—such is the uncompromising law of Islam in the mosque. The central affirmation of Muslim dogma—Tauhid or Unity—lays its firm veto on representational art. The image, the ikon, the statue, the painting—these are banished. The new faith from Arabia was passionately iconoclastic. Expanding into lands with a rich Christian heritage of pictorial art and splendid iconography, Islam dismissed the whole as a dangerous temptation and rejected it contemptuously as a menace to its own mission. If photography has to be admitted, then why not painting and the other arts? After the manner of the bewildered or the dubious, conservatives steer a rear-guard action. When, in 1955, statues in New York of great legislators of history were being repaired and it was found that one represented Muhammad, strong Muslim pressure dissuaded the authorities from re-erecting it. There have been similar incidents in which, for example, encyclopedias have been precluded by Muslim intervention from illustrating any of their articles on Islam. But these instances should be seen as substantiating by contrast a much stronger current running the other way. It is insisted by modernists increasingly in many quarters that artists and the arts should be liberated from theological vetoes and that creative painting should not be tarred with the brush of Shirk. Even supposing, as the argument runs, the prohibitions in the Quran and Hadith are valid as they have always been interpreted, times obviously change: they change indeed because of the very success of Islam. A society like that in the Hijaz in the Prophet’s day, was so prone to idolary that only the most ruthless prohibitions would suffice. It would, however, be folly to treat a Muslim society today after 282centuries of Islamic Tauhid with the same stupid severity. Such a policy would be equivalent to saying that Islam had failed and that no Muslim could be trusted not to take a picture for an idol. A ban, once necessary, can surely be safely lifted. To dispute it would seem to disqualify Islam itself. If anti-idolatry is the most magnificent thing about Islam, the limited sense in which idolatry is taken is most unsatisfying. Are the worst idols material at all? Can anti-idolatry properly be equipped merely with hammers ond brooms? Now that time and change are helping Muslims to break loose from the idea that the idol is an image: that Shirk has to do with craftsmen; that the danger lies with things, may it not become plain to Muslims that there is and can be no veto on idolatry? Idolatry can be inwardly forsaken but it cannot be outwardly forbidden. Men will invent idols of the state, of the market-place, of the nation, of their own perversity whether or not artists paint amd chisellers carve. There is a deep likeness between what happens in a great work of art and what the Christian faith believes God is doing in Christ. May not the true meaning of the Trinity be more truly comprehended by the likeness to a true work of art. The tangible and the visible are the home and residence of the spiritual and eternal. Can we not see the Incarnation in these terms as the self-revelation of God dwelling in the fashion of the living and crucified Christ? Is not this what the Gospel means when it proclaims that “the Word became flesh?” The Muslim fear of idolatry is always sound but the security against it is not in banning the artists any more than God’s unity is safeguarded by vetoing the Incarnation of God in Christ. It is a true recognition of Him in undivided love. That love may include unashamedly the help and benediction of the senses and the arts.³⁰

283The question here is not theoretical but practical. True, it is possible for idolatry to exist without tangible idols, but while the ban on representative art may not by itself ensure a pure and unadulterated monotheism, the manufacture of pictures and statues certainly sanctions, encourages and increases the evil to gigantic proportions. The mere passage of time does not render such an injunction obsolete because human nature in every generation, regardless of technical and scientific progress, is unchanged and always subject to the same temptations. In the arts encouraged by the Christian Church, paganism and atheism join hands.

The great beauty of so many religious works of art only serves to aggregate the harm they do. Believe it or not, when I was a child, I really thought God was an old man with a long, white beard! All the famous religious paintings by medieval European artists I had seen in the Metropolitan Museum in New York convinced me that this was true. Every time I thought of God, I saw in my mind Michalangelo’s “Creation” scene on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome. During adolescence as I matured intellectually, the concept of God as old man with long white beard, depicted in every religious painting I ever saw, began to seem so ridiculous that I rejected belief in God altogether. I am sure that many other young people growing up in the West have experienced the same as I did.

Perhaps the most important intellectual factor which prevented Europe’s religious regeneration was the current conception of Jesus Christ as the Son of God. Philosophically-minded Christians, of course, never took this idea of sonship in its literal sense; they understood it as a manifesta284tion of God’s mercy in human form. But, unfortunately, not everyone has a philosophical mind. For the overwhelming majority of Christians, the expression “son” had and has a very direct meaning, although there was always a mystical flavour attached to it. For them, Christ’s sonship of God quite naturally led to an anthropomorphisation of God Himself, who assumed the shape of a bengin old man with white flowing beard, and this shape, perpetuated by innumerable paintings of high artistic value, remained impressed upon the European’s subconscious mind. During the time when the dogma of the Church reigned supreme in Europe, there was not much inclination to question this strange conception. But once the intellectual shackles of the Middle Ages were broken, the thoughtful among the Europeans could not reconcile themselves to a humanised God-Father; on the other hand, this anthropomorphisation had become a standing factor in the popular conception of God. After a period of enlightenment, European thinkers instinctively shrank back from the conception of God as presented by the teachings of the Church and, as this was the only conception they knew, they began to reject the very idea of God altogether and, with it, of every religion.³¹

Next to the doctrine of the Trinity, one of the most acute theological conflicts between Christianity and Islam is concerning the nature of sin. In the Holy Quran, God reveals to us that He not only forgave Adam and Eve for their sin but raised Adam to the status of a genuine Prophet. In the Bible, however, God does not forgive Adam and Eve and this is the basis for the dogma that every men is born in sin and can only be forgiven by God through baptism into the Christian faith!

285What commandment did God give Adam and Eve?

God gave Adam and Eve the commandment not to eat the fruit of a certain tree that grew in the Garden of Paradise.

“And He commanded him (Adam), saying: Of every tree of Paradise thou shalt eat but the tree of knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat. For whosoever shalt eat of it thou shalt be doomed…. (Genesis 2:16–17)

What happened to Adam and Eve on account of their sin?

On account of their sin, Adam and Eve lost sanctifying grace, the right of Heaven and their special gifts: they became subject to death, to suffering and to a strong inclination to evil and they were driven from the garden of Paradise.

What has happened to us on account of the sin of Adam?

On account of the sin of Adam, we, his descendants, come into the world deprived of sanctifying grace and inherit his punishment as we would have inherited his gifts had he been obedient to God.

What in this sin called?

This sin in us is called Original Sin.

Why is this sin called original?

This sin is called original because it comes down to us through our origin or descent from Adam.³²

The dogma of Original Sin where human nature is conceived as innately evil, is accepted by Protestants as much as by Catholics. Now compare the Biblical story of Adam and Eve with the Quranic version:

And verily We made a convenant of old with Adam but he forgot and We found no constancy in him. And when We said unto the angels; Fall prostrate before Adam, all fell prostrate save Iblis who refused. Therefore We said: 286Oh Adam! This is an enemy unto thee and unto thy wife so let him not drive you both out of the Garden lest thou come to toil.. And the Devil whispereth to him saying; Oh Adam! Shall I show thee the tree of immortality and power that wasteth not away? Then they twain ate thereof so that their shame became apparent unto them and they began to hide by heaping on themselves some of the leaves of the Garden. And Adam disobeyed his Lord, so went astray. Then his Lord chose him and relented toward him and guided him. He said: Go down hence both of you; one of you a foe unto the other. But if there come unto you from Me a guidance, then whoso followeth My guidance, he will not go astray nor come to grief. (XX; 115–123).

Thus it can be seen that the Christian doctrine of Original Sin has no place in Islam. Islam teaches that every baby is born with a pure and innocent nature; only after puberty is he corrupted if he falls prey to the temptations of Satan and becomes so involved in this worldly life that he forgets the Hereafter.

Surely We created man in the best of stature. Then We reduced him to the lowest of the low save those who believe and do good works and this is a reward unfailing. (XCV: 4–6)

The Islamic concept of the nature of sin and evil differs very sharply from Judaism and Christianity. Man commits sin because, in contrast to the animals and the angels, he has been endowed by God with Free Will. If man did not posses the freedom to commit sin, virtue would be meaningless. The nobility of human character comes from successfully resisting temptations to commit evil. Islam teaches that this life is an examination for the Hereafter. Those who submit themselves to the Divine Law of Allah as revealed in Quran and Hadith and subordinate the 287considerations of this world in order to attain salvation in the Hereafter, have achieved the ultimate success while those who deny God as their Sovereign or revere other powers instead of God and reject Divine Law for their own man-made laws and feel that they possess the independence and right to do as they please as expediency dictates, will be condemmed by God on Judgment Day as guilty of Kufr and be doomed forever. Thus man has been given the freedom by God to commit evil as well as to do good because the examination would have no meaning unless is there is as strong possibility of failure as for success. Islam teaches that a man or woman becomes fully responsible for his or her actions only after puberty. Therefore those individuals who die in infancy or childhood, regardless of the faith of their parents, will, without exception, be made happy in Paradise. A man cannot be held responsible by God for any wrong-doing committed during the unconsciousness of sleep, delerium or insanity. Islam teaches that the infant, the feeble-minded and the insane will receive no punishment in the Hereafter. In order to be held responsible for one’s actions, a man must possess his full mental faculties. Contrast this with what Christianisy has to teach on the subject:

What is Baptism?

Baptism is the sacrament that gives our souls the new life of sanctifying grace by which we become children of God and heirs of heaven.

What sin does Baptism take away?

Baptism takes away Original Sin and also actual sins and all the punishment due to them if the person baptized be guilty of any actual sins and truly sorry for them:

288Who can administer Baptism?

The priest is the usual minister of Baptism but if there is danger that someone will die without Baptism, anyone else may and should baptize.

How would you give Baptism?

I would give Baptism by pouring ordinary water on the forehead of the person to be baptized saying, “I baptize thee in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.” In solemn baptism, baptismal water from the Church blessed by the priest for the purpose must be used under penalty of grave sin.

Why is Baptism necessary for the salvation of all men?

Baptism is necessary for the salvation of all men because Christ has said; “Unless a man be born again of water and the Spirit of Me, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.”

When should children be baptized?

Children should be baptized as soon as possible after birth because baptism is necessary for salvation. Infants who die without baptism of any kind do not suffer the punishments of those who die in mortal sin. They may enjoy a certain natural happiness but they cannot enjoy the supernatural happiness of Heaven.

What sin do Catholic parents commit who put off for a long time or entirely neglect the baptism of their children? They commit a mortal sin.³³

In his Confessions, St. Augustine laments the “sinfulness” of his infancy:

Hear O God! Alas for man’s sin! So saith man and Thou pitiest him for thou madest him and sin in him Thou madest not. Who remindeth me of the sin of my infancy? For in Thy sight none is pure from sin, even the infant whose life is but a day upon this earth. Was 289it that I hung upon the breast and cried? For should I now do so for food suitable to my age, justly should I be laughed at and reproved. What I then did was worthy of reproof but since I could not understand reproof, custom and reason forbade me to be reproved. For those habits when grown we root out and cast away. Was it good to bitterly resent that its own elders, the very authors of its birth, served it not? That many besides wiser than it obeyed not its demands? To do its best to strike and hurt because its whims were not obeyed which had they been obeyed, would have been to its harm? The weakness of infant limbs, not its will, is its innocence. Myself have seen and known even a baby envious. It could not speak, yet it turned pale and looked bitterly on its foster-brother. Who knows not this? Mothers and nurses tell you that they allay these things by I know not what remedies. Is that too innocence when the fountain of milk is flowing in rich abundance not to endure one to share it though in extremest need and whose very life depends thereon? We bear gently with all this not as being slight evils because they will disappear as the years increase, for though tolerated now, the very same tempers are utterly intolerable when found in riper years. But if I was born in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me, where I beseech thee, O my God, where Lord or when was I, Thy servant guiltless?³⁴

Islam teaches that if one is truly sorry for one’s sins, resolves to do one’s best to overcome evil temptations and begs God for forgiveness any time of the day or night, God will almost certainly grant him pardon, particularly for sins committed in ignorance. Christianity teaches that this forgiveness from God is not possible without implicit faith in Jesus Christ as His only begotten Son and the Redeemer of the sins of all 290mankind. To this dogma, John Calvin, one of the most important leaders of the Protestant reformation, added the doctrine of predestination. This led to the Calvinist obsession with sin to a point which is definitely morbid. As a Calvinist minister, Reverend T. Stebbing, stated; “The Christian God knew before He created man that he would sin and so He condemined the human race to Hell and endless suffering.” What dreadful demon could rival such a Creator? John Calvin pretended that he could hear unborn babes in the wombs of their mothers crying, “Oh why hast thou sinned, oh Adam?” The dogma of Original Sin and the Calvinist doctrine of predestination, instead of bringing hope and joy to Christians, filled their minds with sorrow and gloom:

“Let us examine Reverend Michael Wigglesworth’s ‘The Day of Doom’³⁵ where he spares no ultimate cruelty in his sulphurous picture of the hatefulness of an angry God:

For at midnight breaks forth a light which turns the night to day.
And speedily in hideous cry doth all the world dismay,
Sinners awake, their hearts to ache, trembling their loins surpriseth;
Amazed with fear by what they hear, each one of them ariseth.
They rush from their beds with giddy heads and to the windows run.
Viewing the light which shines more bright than doth the noon-day sun. 291Straightway appears they see with tears the Son of God most dread,
Who with his train comes on amain to judge the quick and the Dead.
Before His face the heavens give place, the skies are rent asunder.
With mighty voice and hideous noise more terrible than the thunder,
His brightness damps heavens’ glorious lamps and makes them hide their heads,
As if afraid and quite dismayed, they quit their wonted steads.

“And as soon as the Trumpet is sounded, the dead rise from the graves, the living are hunted out of their hiding places and dragged shrieking before the awful Throne. Then the tremendous court scene is described vividly and unflinchingly. The sheep are separated from the goats and after a brief explanation of the dogma of election and grace, the Lord seats the elect on thrones to help Him judge the others. Here is where the author gets in all his exposition of Calvinist doctrine when every group pleads its case before the Lord refutes each and condemns it to the infernal concourse.

“And at last appears the most pitiful crowd of all—the babes who had died in infancy and who were reprobates solely by the doctrine of Original Sin. They plead:

If for our own transgression or disobedience
We did stand at thy left hand, just were the recompense,
But Adam’s guilt our souls hath spilt;
His fault is charged upon us.
That alone hath overthrown and utterly undone us

292“And there sits Adam on his throne, one of the elect, while the babes point to him and say, ‘Not we, but he ate of the tree.’ The Lord thereupon explains to them patiently this knotty point of Christian creed; yet when He comes to pronounce sentence, He suddenly and surprisingly relents a little—but just a little—for He concludes:

Therefore in bliss you may not hope to dwell
But unto you I shall allow the easiest room in Hell!

Then the Fire is lighted, the sulphurous fumes ascend and the doomed are dragged away to the Pit, the great multitudes of them. The Judge grows impatient:

But get away without delay,
Christ pities not your cries.
Depart to Hell where you may yell and roar enternally!

“The Practice of Piety, a masterpiece of Lewis Bayly, Bishop of Bangor, is an extraordinary book. Let us take some quotations from the second chapter, entitled ‘Meditations on the Misery of a Man not Reconciled to God.’ Oh wreched man!’ it begins, ‘Where shall I begin to describe thine endless misery who art condemned as soon as conceived and doomed to eternal Death before thou wast born to a temporal life?’ Follows a concise and lurid exposition of Original Sin and the subsequent fate of the sinner. He invites us ‘to take a view of the miseries which accompany thy body according to ‘the four stages of thy life’ and he begins with infancy:

What wast thou, being an infant but a brute having the shape of man? Was not thy body conceived in the heat of 293lust, the seed of shame and the stain of Original Sin? And thus wast thou not cast naked upon the earth, all covered with the blood of filthiress so that thy mother was ashamed to let thee know the manner thereof? What cause then hast thou to boast of thy birth which was a cursed pain to thy mother and to thyself the entrance into a troublesome life?

“But the infant reprobate survives and reaches youth though ‘what is youth but an untamed beast, all of whose actions are rash and rude, not capable of good counsel and delighting in nothing but toys?’ This passage ends with the declaration that the youth, in a servile bondage to his elders, is not worthy of description and passes on to manhood:

What is man’s estate but a sea whether, like waves, one trouble ariseth on the neck of another, the latter worse than the former? Now adversity on the left hand frets thee; anon prosperity on the right hand flatters thee; over thy head God’s vengeance due to thy sin is ready to fall upon thee and under thy feet Hell’s mouth is ready to swallow thee up. And in this miserable estate where wilt thou go for rest and comfort? The house is full of cares, the fields of toil, the country of rudeness, the city of factions, the court of envy, the church of sects, the sea of pirates and the land of robbers.

“After such a dizzying volley of denunciations, he comes to old age. This meditation is worth quoting entirely:

What is old age but the receptacle of all maladies? For if it be thy lot to draw thy days to a long date, comes old-headed age, stooping under dotage, with his wrinkled face, rotten teeth and stinking breath, testy of choler, dimmed with blindness, withered with dryness, absurded with deafness, overwhelmed with sickness and bowed down altogether with weakness having no use of any sense but 294the sense of pain which so wracketh every member of his body that it never easeth him of grief till he is thrown down into his grave.

“But the miseries of his old age are but a foretaste of what is in store for the sinner now he must die:

After that, the old man has been afflicted with long sickness and having endured the brunt of pain, should expect some ease. In comes Death, nature’s slaughterman, God’s curse and Hell’s purveyor and look the old man grim and black in the face. And as thinking that the old man will not die fast enough, Lord, how many darts of calamities are shot through him—stitches, aches, cramps, fevers, obstructions, rheums, flegmes, collic, stone, wind? And oh, what ghastly sight it is to see him in his bed when Death has given him his mortal wound!

“After the long drawn-out agony, the soul is dragged off to the bottomless lake burning endlessly with fire and brimstone while the ‘loathsome carcase is laid in the grave.’ And finally we come to a picturesque description of the infernal goal of the reprobate:

Into the bottomless Lake after thou art once plunged, thou shalt be ever failling down and never meet a bottom. Thou shall aways weep for pain of the Fire and yet gnash thy teeth for the extremity of cold. There thy lascivious eyes shall be afflicted with sight of ghastly spirits; thy curious ears shall be affrighted with the hideous noise of howling devils and the gnashing teeth of dammed reprobates; thy dainty nose shall be cloyed with the stench of of sulphur; thy delicate taste shall be tormented with intolerable hunger and thy drunken throat shall be parched with unquenchable thirst.

“Thus winds up Bayly with his gruesome description of a man’s life from conception to death. Finally 295we come to Dr. Isaac Watts in his Divine and Moral Songs for Children. Dr. Watts too, reminds children of early death and gaping Hell:

“Tis dangerous to offend a God
Whose power and vengeance none can tell.
One stroke of His Almighty rod
Will send young sinners straight to Hell!

“While I am writing these lines, Herbert Asbury’s book Up From Methodism is lying before me on the table and I cannot resist the temptation of quoting a few paragraphs to illustrate the Calvinist concept of God. It represents a terrifying experience generated by the prayerful rites of childhood. He says:

My uncle was an extraordinarily pious man—an official of our church and Sunday school and a leader to entice the sinner from his wicked ways and lead him to the true religion of Methodism. He frowned on laughter! There was little joy in his home. A laugh seemed to make him uncomfortable and start a train of dismal religious thought. Every night after supper, his living room was given over to family prayer. I frequently spent the evening with his youngest son, my cousin, who was also my best friend and playmate, and was compelled to absorb the nightly doses of religion and listen to the dreadful things God would do to us if we strayed from the path of righteousness. The whole atmosphere turned gray and gloomily oppressive as my uncle rose from his seat and announced: “We will now have prayers.” We sat for a moment in silence, myself seeing goblins leering at me from every shaded corner of the room and my mind raced madly over the day to discover what sin I had done. We might have been at a funeral! Here was a fine home built for human happiness turned into a forbidding mausoleum by the mere mention of God. My uncle waited in silence a moment; then he laid reverent 296hands on the Bible. I was in an agony of fright. I felt that something was crushing me and that something was my uncle’s God—an avenging monster ready to devour me for my sins. God was in the house and I was afraid. Then my uncle read from the Bible. He read without joy. He read it as if it were a sentence of death, slowly and solemnly, dwelling with horrible emphasis upon those verses which promised damnation. And at the end of the reading, he closed the Bible. I had a devilish itch which afflicts the youngsters but I was afraid to scratch because God was in the room and we know how He would punish us if we moved. Then my uncle would say, “Let us pray!” We knelt on the hard carpet while his voice soared in an appeal to the Lord to give “some of this and some of that”, to bless us and make us prosperous and in effect, to hell with such infidels as Jews and Catholics. Then he rose slowly to his feet and passed into the room, without speaking. Nearly always afterwards I awoke in my bed in the throes of a nightmare, pursued by devils, shrieking. I was to be cooked in the fires of Hell. Every night year after year this sort of thing went in most homes in my native town and in many homes throughout America. It was a long time before I could shake off the effect of this religious indoctrination. It stole the years of my youth from me.³⁶

And here are the childhood experiences of one of the leading American writers of African origin, Richard Wright (1908–1960) as related in his autobiography:

Granny was ardent member of the Seventh-day Adventist Church and I was compelled to make a pretence of worshipping her God which was her exaction for my keep. The elders of her church expounded 297a gospel clogged with images of vast lakes of eternal fire, of seas vanishing, of valleys of dry bones, of the sun burning to ashes, of the moon turning to blood, of stars falling to the earth, of a wooden staff being transformed into a serpent, of voices speaking out of clouds, of men walking upon water, of God riding whirlwinds, of water changing into wine, of the dead rising and living, of the blind seeing, of the lame walking; a salvation that teemed with fantastic beasts having multiple heads and horns and eyes and feet; sermons of statues possessing heads of gold, shoulders of silver, legs of brass and feet of clay; a cosmic tale that began before time and ended with the clouds of the sky rolling away at the Second Coming of Christ; chronicles that concluded with the Armageddon: dramas thronged with all the billions of human beings who had ever lived or died as God judged the quick and the dead.

While listening to the vivid language of the sermons, I was pulled with emotional belief but as soon as I went out of the church and saw the bright sunshine and felt the throbbing life of the people in the city streets, I knew that none of it was true and that nothing would happen. (p. 89)

Most of my schoolmates worked mornings, evenings and Saturdays; they earned enough to buy their clothes and books and they had money in their pockets at school. To see a boy go into a grocery store at noon recess and let his eyes roam over filled shelves and pick out what he wanted—even a dime’s worth—was a hair-breadth short of a miracle to me. But when I broached the idea of my working to Granny, she would have none of it; she laid down the injunction that I could not work on Saturdays while I slept under her roof. Whenever I argued that Saturdays were the only days on which I could earn any worth-while sum, Granny looked me straight in the eyes and quoted Scripture:

“BUT THE SEVENTH DAY IS THE SABBATH OF THE LORD THY GOD; IN IT THOU SHALT NOT DO 298ANY WORK, THOU NOR THY SON NOR THY DAUGHTER, NOR THY MANSERVANT NOR THY MAID SERVANT NOR THINE OX NOR THINE ASS NOR ANY OF THY CATTLE NOR THY STRANGER THAT IS WITHIN THY GATES: THAT THY MANSERVANT AND THY MAID SERVANT MAY REST AS WELL AS THOU.”

And that was the final word. Though we lived on the borderline of actual starvation, I could not bribe Granny with a promise of half or two thirds of my salary: her answer was no and never. I told Granny that she was not responsible for my soul and she replied that I was a minor, that my soul’s fate rested in her hands and that I had no word to say in the matter. (p. 110).

There were more violent quarrels in our deeply religious home than in the home of a gangster, a burglar or a postitute, a fact which I used to hint gently to Granny and which did my cause no good. Granny bore the standard for God but she was always fighting. The peace that passes understanding never dwelt with us. I too fought; but I fought because I felt I had to keep from being crushed to fend off continuous attack. But Granny and Aunt Addie quarrelled and fought not only with me but with each other over minor points of religious doctrine or over some imagined infraction of what they chose to call their moral code. Whenever I found religion in my life, I found strife; the attempt of one individual or group to rule another in the name of God. The naked will to power always seemed to walk in the wake of a hymn. (p. 119).³⁷

How could such a boy grow up with anything but the deepest hatred of the only religion he knew? As soon as he was old enough, he ran away from home to live a life of utter poverty in Chicago where he 299joined the Communist Party. Although he soon grew disillusioned with Communism and broke with the Party in 1940, he remained staunchly leftist, materialist and atheist.

The Christian doctrine of Original Sin is directly responsible for the theological inferiority of women in the Church. According to the Creation story in the present versions of Genesis in the Bible, since it was Eve who allegedly tempted Adam to eat of the forbidden fruit, the woman is condemned by the Church Fathers as the most potent source of sin and temptation. Thus some Greek Orthodox monasteries to this day not only prohibit any women from entering the premises but even female domestic animals! In the Holy Quran, there is no theological basis for women’s inferiority. Adam and Eve were EQUALLY guilty of disobedience to God’s command. The Quran asserts that Satan—not Eve—tempted Adam. The slight superiority of man over woman is taught by Quran and Hadith, rests upon natural physical and psychological factors. The Holy Quran promises the virtuous woman a reward in the Hereafter equal to the pious man:

Lo! men who surrender unto Allah and women who surrender, and men who believe and women who believe and men who obey and women who obey and men who speak the truth and women who speak the truth and men who presevere in righteousness and women who persevere and men who are humble and women who are humble and men who give alms and women who give alms and men who fast and women who fast, and men who guard their modesty and women who guard their modesty and men who remember Allah much and women who remember— 300Allah hath prepared for them forgiveness and a vast reward. [XXXIII; 35]

The inferiority of woman in Christianity is argued on the same theological basis as in Judaism. St. Paul says:

For Eve ate first of the forbidden fruit and then gave it to Adam, so the man was not deceived but the woman was thoroughly deceived and came to be in sin and transgression.

Christian missionaries who never cease harping on the allegedly inferior role of the woman in Islam ought to read what St. Paul has to say on the subject in their own Scriptures:

I would have you know that the head of every man is Christ and the head of the woman is the man and the head of Christ is God. Every man praying or prophesying, having his head covered, dishonoureth his head. But every woman that prayeth or prophesieth with her head uncovered, dishonoureth her head for that is as if she were shaven. For if the woman be not covered, let her also be shorn but if it be a shame for a woman to be shorn or shaven, let her be covered. For a man indeed ought not to cover his head for as much as he is the image and glory of God but the woman is the glory of the man. For the man is not of the woman but the woman is from the man. Neither was the man created for the woman but the woman for the man. For this cause ought the woman to have power on her head because of the angels. (First Corinthians 11; 3–10)

In other words, the woman ought to cover her head as a sign of her inferiority. This is contrary to Judaism and Islam, where it is the practice for both men and women to keep their heads covered, especially 301while engaged in formal worship. St. Paul demands that women’s inferiority be expressed inside the Church as well:

Let your women keep silence in the churches for it is not permitted unto them to speak but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the Law. And if they will learn anything, let them ask their husbands at home for it is disgraceful for women to speak in the church. (First Corinthians 14:34–35)

The Christian ideal of marriage is expressed in the following verses cf their Scriptures where St. Paul commands:

Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the Church and he is the saviour of the body. Therefore as the Church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives subordinate themselves to their own husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the Church and gave himself for it for we are members of his body, of his flesh and his bones. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother and shall be joined unto his wife and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery but I speak concerning Christ and the Church. (Ephesians 5:22–32)

Thus, contrary to the propaganda of Christian missionaries in Muslim lands, the modern concept of female freedom and equality could not possibly have been derived from the original teaching of Christianity but rather has been the result of the capitulation of the Church to the socialist precepts of Karl Marx. According to the teachings of St. Paul in the Christian scriptures, divorce is absolutely prohibited. The official 302Baltimore Catholic Catechism says:

Once a man and woman are united in the sacrament of Matrimony, they remain husband and wife until the death of either of them. A separation, a divorce or an attempted marriage with another person does not destroy the marriage bond. It is for the good of husband and wife. for the bodily and spiritual welfare of their children and the good of society that God has decreed that the marriage bond can be broken only by death because Christ has said, “what therefore God has joined together let no man put asunder.”

“Do you not know, brethren, (for I speak to those who know law) that the Law has dominion over a man as long as he lives? For the married woman is bound by the law while her husband is alive but if her husband dies, she is set free from the law of her husband. Therefore, while her husband is alive, she will be called an adulteress if she be with another man but if her husband dies, she is set free from the law of the husband so that she is not an adulteress if she has been with another man. (Romans 7:1–3)

Although widows are permitted to remarry, St. Paul insists that it is better if they do not:

A woman is bound as long as her husband is alive but if her husband dies, she is free. Let her marry whom she pleases, only let it be in the Lord. But she will be more blessed, in my judgment. if she remains as she is. And I think that I also have the spirit of God. (First Corinthians 7:39–40)

The Hindu religion goes even further and prohibits widow remarriage altogether. The law of Manu says that the widow should burn herself on the pyre of her husband in order to quickly join her beloved. As in Hinduism, Buddhism and all other monastic creeds, in sharp contrast to Judaism and Islam, 303Christianity regards celibacy as the ideal:

He that is unmarried careth for the things that belong to the Lord but he that is married careth for the things that are of the world, how he may please his wife. There is a difference also between a wife and a virgin. The unmarried woman careth for the things of the Lord that she may be holy both in body and in spirit but she that is married careth for the things of the world, how she may please her husband. And this I speak for your own profit, not that I may cast a snare upon you but for that which is comely and that ye may attend upon the Lord without distraction. (First Corinthians 7:32–35)

The Baltimore Catholic Catechism adds that parents commit a great sin if they attempt to compel their sons or daughters to marry when they prefer to remain single. In contrast, the Holy Prophet is reported in the Hadith to command parents to marry all their children as soon after puberty as possible; and if they fail to do so, they will be responsible for their sins!

In Christianity, marriage is a sacrament as taught by the present versions of the Gospels:

And some of the Pharisees coming up asked him, testing him, “Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife?” But he answered and said to them, “What did Moses command you?” They said, “Moses permitted us to write a notice of dismissal and to put her away”. But Jesus said to them, “By reason of the hardness of your heart, he wrote you that Commandment but from the beginning of Creation, God made them male and female. For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife and the two shall become one flesh. Therefore now they are no longer two but one flesh. What God has joined together, let no man put asunder.” And in the house his disciples again asked him concerning this. And he said to them, “Whoever puts away his wife and marries another. commits 304adultery against her and if the wife puts away her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”

That is why the Christian is apt to look upon Islam’s permission of divorce and polygamy as sexual promiscuity! As one Christian missionary writes:

Islam’s whole concept of a democratic society is rendered practically valueless by the fact that the female half of the population holds almost the status of pariahs with practically no rights at all. The criterion of any institution of human society concerns the sex relationship that it fosters. Socially, Mohammedanism’s worst failure is at this point. The Mohammedan system is nothing more or less than unchecked promiscuity. Consequently, women have almost no rights. A little girl may be married to a man of sixty. Her place is an inferior one and she is frequently beaten. A few indulgent fathers have their daughters taught to read the Quran but it would be fatal to a woman’s reputation to know how to write. She might write a letter to someone other than her own husband. Infraction of the moral code is for her a capital crime. For the man it is a minor offense. Taken as a whole, family life in Arabia is a very unlovely thing to see. The husband dominates over his wife. She is his plaything, almost his slave. She is divorced at her husband’s whim and there is no doubt at all the Arab women dread divorce and that if they had their way, nine out of ten divorces would not take place. The relations of the sexes are reduced to the level of eating and drinking. As a man enjoys a new sort of potatoes every day, why should he not enjoy a new wife every day? This attitude is the blight which Mohammedanism has carried with it everywhere.³⁸

This is the sort of malicious propaganda that the Christian missionary has propagated against family 305life among the Muslims for generations and as a Muslim convert, a co-wife and mother in strict Purdah who has lived in a traditional sector in Lahore for more than fifteen years and en route to Pakistan by sea, visited families in Egypt, Sudan and Saudi Arabia, I can confidently assert that everything mentioned in the quote is a vicious lie. Among the traditional families of observant orthodox Muslims I have seen, kinship ties are extremely close. The family is very strong, much more so than anything that could be imagined in Europe or America. The relationship between those husbands and wives respected by the community is characterized by loyalty and faithfulness. Divorce, at least among Pakistani Muslims, is very rare. Most of the arranged marriages I have seen take place within my husband’s family between cousins, have been successful, happy and enduring. While the Muslim husband is the master of the house, I have never seen wives treated like slaves, even among the poor. There is as much affection and loyalty between husbands and wives among the Muslims as any other people.

Why are Christians so horrified by Islam’s permission of polygamy? Dr. Kenneth Cragg answers this question when he writes:

A bond between plural marriage and plural worship may seem at first an odd notion. Yet it is real. Is not idolatry really the attempt to take the part for the whole? Yet such is also the error of the setting of sexuality in any other context than a full self-giving. Must not the inner love of husband and wife be as securely undivided as their love for God? Pluralism in worship diversifies an allegiance that should be unique; so also do concurrent and consecutive marriages. A man’s whole heart cannot be wholly in two 306places either Godward or wifeward. Plural marriage is a sort of polytheism of the self. In Islam, only marriage legitimatizes sexual relations but in doing so, it does not require them to be uniquely directed. Or phrasing it negatively, while legally a couple, they are not spiritually a single flesh. Being spiritually of a single flesh is the whole meaning of the Christian sacrament of marriage where potential two-fleshness (i.e. the physical feasibility of divorce) is constantly transcended in the achievement within mutual commitment of married unity under God. Any marriage pragmatically is dissoluble but not essentially one that God has joined together since it is daily accomplishing the meaning of its perpetual nature. It is this which Islamic concepts do not allow. If it is true that although monogamy is the only secure foundation of sexual equality, it may be fostered by factors which do not either admit or derive from this source. This is happening widely with the growth of female education, the sense of economic need for family limitation, the abolition of the veil and female seclusion as incompatible with the dignities of womanhood and the self-respect of men.³⁹

In Islam marriage is a contract which aims to legitimatize sexual relations and create the foundation of a healthy family atmosphere for the rearing of the children. In Christianity, it is a sacrament. The teachings of Islam, in forbidding sexual relations outside of marriage, put this prohibition into practical effect by making marriage, divorce, and remarriage as easy as possible so that there can be no excuse for illicit relations.

It has been said that the Islamic view of woman is a man’s view while the Christian view of woman is a woman’s 307view. Devotees of a sentimental ideal of womanhood are apt to underestimate the human value of the Muslim standpoint and to talk as if Islam had lowered the social and moral position of Eastern women and caused their personal degradation, omitting altogether to take into account the fact that a considerable minority of the womanhood of Christendom (due to the prohibition of legal polygamy) has been degraded (because of being barred from marriage) to a depth which every good Muslim surveys with horror while a larger number are debarred from all fulfilment of their natural functions which the Muslim regards as a great wrong. Fault is found with our faith by most Western writers because it does not enjoin strict monogamy and the very mission of Muhammad (may God bless and keep him) has been questioned merely because he had more wives than one. I would point out that there is no more bright example of monogamic marriage in all history than the twenty-six years’ happy union of our Holy Prophet with Khadijah. Therefore he furnished an example of perfect monogamic marriage and he also furnished an example of perfect polygamic marriage. Strict monogamy has never been really observed in Western lands, but for the sake of the fetish of monogamy, a countless multitude of women and their children have been sacrificed and made to suffer cruelly. Islam destroys all fetishes which always tend to outcast numbers of God’s creatures. In Europe side by side with woman-worship, we see the degradation and despair of women. The Islamic system, when completely practiced, holds every man responsible for his behaviour towards every woman and for the consequences of his behaviour. It likewise does away with much of the romance which has been woven round the facts of sexual intercourse by Western writers. Romance is an illusion and we need never mourn the loss of an illusion. Take modern European literature—the most widely read—and you will find the object of man’s life on earth depicted as the love of woman—in the ideal form as the love of one woman—the elect, whom he discovers 308after trying more than one! When that one woman is discovered, the reader is led to suppose that a union of souls takes place between the two. And that is the goal of life. It is not commonsense. It is rubbish. But it is traceably a product of the teaching of the Christian Church regarding marriage. Woman is an alluring but fordidden creature, by nature sinful except when a mystical union typifying that of Christ and his Church occurs, thanks to priestly benediction. The teaching of Islam is altogether different. There is no such thing as union of two human souls and those who spend their lives in seeking it, go far astray. Sympathy more or less and love there may be. But every human soul is solitary from the cradle to the grave unless and until it finds its way of approach to Allah. It is free and independent of every other human soul; it has its full responsibility and must bear its own burden and finds its own way of approach through the duties and amid the cares of life. There is no difference between the woman and the man in this respect. In marriage there is no merging of personalities. Each remains distinct and independent. They have simply entered into an engagement for the performance of certain duties toward each other, an engagement which can be hallowed and made permanent by mutual regard and love. If that regard and love be not forthcoming, the engagement had best be terminated by divorce. Marriage in Islam is not a sacrament—i.e. of mystic value in itself—still less is it a bondage. It is a civil contract between one free servant of Allah and another free servant of Allah. Allah has ordained between them mutual love, has clearly defined their rights over one another and has prescribed for their observance certain rules of honour and decency. If they cannot feel the love and fear they may transgress the rules, the contract should be ended. The woman retains her own complete personality, her own opinion and initiative, her own property and her own name in the case of polygamic as of monogamic marriage and in the case of polygamic marriage, she can claim her own establishment. It there309fore does not very greatly matter from her point of view, whether monogamy or polygamy be the prevailing order of society. In practice, strict monogamy is a cause of much unhappiness and also some serious social evils, The facility of divorce, which was not in the original Western code of monogamy, has now been introduced into most Western countries but there it involves so much publicity and scandal as to be almost itself another social evil that is certainly not the case with the Islamic method of divorce which is executed in private and not in the public courts. Polygamy is little practised in the Muslim world today but the permission is there to witness to the truth that marriage was made for man and woman—not man and woman for marriage.⁴⁰

The man-made character of Christianity is amply revealed even by the most cursory study of its history. Here is a chronology of the development of the Trinity:

A.D. 32, About this time the Gospels recorded, “I ascend unto my Father and your Father and to my God and your God.”

A.D. 57, About this time Paul wrote, “There is no other God but One. To us there is but One God and Father and Son, Jesus Christ”

A.D. 96. About this time Clement wrote, “Christ was sent by God and the Apostles were sent by Christ.”

A.D. 120, The Apostle’s Creed begins to be known to the Church. It says, “I believe in God, the Father Almighty.”

A.D. 150. Justin Martyr about this time began with Platonic philosophy to corrupt Christian simplicity. 310A.D. 170. The word “Trias” first occurs in Christian literature,

A.D. 200. The word “Trinitas” is first used by Tertullian.

A.D. 230. Origen writes against prayers being offered to Christ.

A.D. 260. Sabellius taught that Father, Son and Holy Spirit are three names for the same God.

A.D. 300. No trinitarian form of prayer is yet known to the Church.

A.D. 310. Lactanius writes that “Christ never called himself God!”

A.D. 320. Eusebius writes; “Christ teaches us to call his Father, the true God and to worship Him.”

A.D. 325. The Council of Nicea agrees to call Christ God of God, very God of very God.

A.D. 350 Great conflicts in the church about the doctrine of Trinity.

A.D. 370. The doxology, “Glory be to the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost” composed and objected to as a novelty.

A.D. 381. The Council of Constantinople gives the finishing touch to the doctrine of “three Persons in One God.”

A.D. 383. The Emperor Theodosius threatened to punish all who would not believe in and worship the Trinity.⁴¹

Therefore, the doctrine of Trinity, imposed by imperial decree, did not become Christian dogma until nealy four centuries after the birth of Christ! Orthodoxy was then established by force.

No vital interest of the Christian faith justified the extravagant denunciations in which the theological partisan311ship so recklessly and ruthlessly indulged in the post-Nicene period. So far the Church had managed to survive both neglect and persecution and had grown into an imperium that attracted Constantine. He sought to strengthen his empire and stabilize his power with the help of Christianity through which he hoped to secure the unity of his subjects. What Constantine failed to see, however, was the almost inevitable effect of the interaction of State and Church which, in spite of theocracy of the Old Testament and the insistence of Jesus himself on the Kingdom of Heaven, came to be conceieved by his followers, as he became a more and more remote figure with the passage of time, as separate entities with undefined jurisdictions and unlimited ambitions. The Church imperium was already engaged in the process of formulating creeds and confessions that would confine the wandering imaginations of its members within the limits of Orthodoxy. The Christian Emperor on the throne was not so desirous perhaps as the Church for the success of its doctrine, but all the same, he was anxious in his own interests for uniformity and willing to lend to the Church the support of the civil arm. In the ante-Nicene period, only ecclesiastical penalties such as reproof, deposition or excommunication could be imposed. In the post-Nicene period, the union of Church and State transformed theological error into legal offence.⁴²

As a result, even the most humble Christian became obsessed with intricate theological questions. In describing Constantinople, the capital of Byzantium in the fourth century, Gregory of Nyassa wrote:

This city is full of mechanics and slaves who are all profound theologians and preach in the shops and streets. If you desire a man to change a piece of silver, he informs 312you wherein the Son differs from the Father. If you ask the price of a loaf of bread, you are told by way of reply that the Son is inferior to the Father and if you inquire whether the bath is ready, the answer is that the Son was made out of nothing!⁴³

Early Christian fanatics were the most vehement enemies of science and learning which they condemned as dangerous heresy:

The libraries of Alexandria were the most important as well as the most celebrated in the ancient world. Under the enlightened rule of the Ptolemies, a society of scholars and men of science was attracted to their capital but in 389 or 391 A,D., an edict of the Emperor Theodosius ordered the destruction of the Serapeum, and this library was pillaged and destroyed by zealous Christians under the rule of their Bishop Theophilus. That this destruction of pagan lore was quite characteristic of the zealots who executed the decree of Theodosius is amply evidenced by their destruction of Christian lore itself that was tainted by “heresy.” Every modern scholar of Christian theology warns us to handle with caution the sources of information that are now available for a study of the various “heresies” because they are almost always the polemical writings of their successful adversaries who not only crushed the minorities but also destroyed all their religious literature.⁴⁴

What was Western society like in contrast to the Muslim world when Christianity reigned unchallenged over Europe?

Western Christendom and Islam not only represented two distinct systems of religion; they were societies extraordinarily unlike from almost every point of view. For the 313greater part of the Middle Ages and over most of its area, the West formed a society primarily agrarian, feudal and monastic at a time when the strength of the Muslim world lay in its great cities, wealthy courts and long lines of communication. The Western ideals were essentially celibate, sacerdotal and hierarchical.. Islam was in principal egalitarian, enjoying a remarkable freedom of speculation with no priests and no monasteries built into the basic structure of society as they were in the West. It is certain that the Islamic countries produced in the ninth, tenth and eleventh centuries a greater bulk and variety of learned and scientific works than medieval Christendom in any similar length of time, A comparison of the literary catalogues of the West with the lists of books available to Muslim scholars makes a painful impression on a Western mind and the contrast came as a bombshell to the Latin scholars of the twelth century who first had their eyes opened to the difference. During this medieval period two figures stand out as embodiments of two cultures. They are almost exact contemporaries: in the West, Gerbert, who was born about 940 and died as Pope in 1003; in the East, Ibn Sina who was born in 986 and died in 1037. The courts Gerbert knew were those of Hugh Capet and Otto III—rulers living from hand to mouth with ideas of splendour contrasting sharply with their practical impotence. The schools he knew were those of monasteries and cathedrals, certainly small and ill-equipped with books. From these scanty sources, Gerbert composed his own jejune works—a chart showing the various branches of rhetoric, a text-book of arithmetic, a small specimen of dialectic and, on those foundations, he built a model of the planetary system, an abacus and a complicated clock. Ibn Sina was born at Bukhara about forty years later than Gerbert. In contrast to Gerbert, the priest, monk, prelate, Pope and political intriguer among laymen, powerless to fulfil his grandiose plans. Ibn Sina was a layman, an official, a physician and a court philosopher, Ibn Sina has left us a description of the library of the Sultan of Bukhara. It was 314contained in many rooms, each piled with chests of books and each devoted to a single subject—language and poetry, law, logic, medicine and so on—with a catalogue from which it was possible to get a general view of the ancient writers on each science. There is no need to pursue the contrast any further. Ibn Sina’s own works were in bulk and importance a product worthy of the mine from which they were dug when the works of Gerbert were soon forgotten.⁴⁵

Yet the favourite polemic of the Christian missionary is that Islam in responsible for the material backwardness and poverty of the present-day Muslims. So successfully has Christian missionary propaganda dinned into the minds of the rising generations in every Muslim country that Islam is the enemy of scientific and economic progress, that our ruling classes, who have been carefully trained in their missionary schools, take this for granted as axiomatic!

The globe-trotter sees the Arab as a hopelessly dirty individual and his community as a hopelessly primitive, stagnant society in which even the desire for improvement is lacking. The man who has lived in Arabia long enough to see things as they are has a very different viewpoint. The society in which he is immersed and has come to love is made up of men and women of abilities equal to his own. In some ways they are his superiors. Nothing should be impossible for such men and for a society made up of them, But on prolonged acquaintance, nothing is more obvious than the fact that many things are impossible for them. In the days of Abraham, the inhabitants of Arabia lived the same lives, ate presumably the same food, wore the same clothes and thought the same 315thoughts as they do today. It is not that progress has been slow. There has been no progress (p. 275). In the days of Abraham, the Arabs understood the world fully as well as they understand it now. Their bitter poverty has not been softened. In the past two thousand years, the Arabs have gained no new appreciation of truth nor have they advanced a whit in their appreciation and love of beauty. Probably not a race in the world has remained more completely stagnant during this time than they. And that stagnation has not been, due to any lack of those happenings which, in our ignorance, we term accidents of history. In the days of the early Abbasid caliphs, the most advanced philosophy, science and medicine in the world were to be found in Bagdad. These developments were the culmination of a beginning that dated back to the Damascus caliphate and even to the days of Mohammad himself. There was no need to pray for favorable accidents of history with such a start. But whether we think of the Abbasid caliphate in Bagdad or the empire of the Moguls in India or the Omayyad dynasty in Spain, the great civilizations of the Muslims seem always to come out at the same door as they went in and the military conquest, religious propaganda and intellectual activity remain sterile. The student of history can find no more melancholy spots in the world than Medina, Damascus, Bagdad, Delhi or Cairo, each the seat of a former Muslim civilization which promised to be the beginning of real progress and each now sunk to the dead level of hopless Muhammadan stagnation, its only hope some stimulus from the outside (pp. (333–334). Mohammedanism is not simply sterlic of itself. It has so developed prejudice and pride in its devotees that no such determined enemies of progress are to be found anywhere but Mohammedan states and Mohammedan communities There is no religion in the world that has so developed self-sufficiency, intolerance and pride in its followers and so walled them off from everything that could enter from 316outside and contribute to their material, social and spiritual progress. (p. 253).⁴⁶

Is it Islam or the departure from Islam that is responsible for the present-day decadence of the Muslims? Is Christianity really the hand-maiden of “progress”? Ethiopia has been a “Christian” country for nearly two thousand years but what is the result? An English explorer describes his childhood experiences in Ethiopia as follows:

My father was British Minister in Addis Adaba and I was born there in 1910 in one of the mud huts which in those days housed the Legation. When I returned to England I had already witnessed sights such as few people had ever seen. I had watched the priests dancing at Timkat before the Ark of the Covenant to the muffled throbbing of the silver drums. I had watched the hierarchy of the Ethiopian Church, magnificent in their many coloured garments, blessing the waters. I had seen the armies going forth to fight in the Great Rebellion of 1916. For days they passed across the plain in front of the Legation. I had heard the wailing when Ras Lul Seged’s army was wiped out trying to check Negus Michail’s advance and had witnessed the wild rejoicing which proclaimed the final victory. Nothing could have appeared more barbaric than this frenzied tide of men which surged past the royal pavilion throughout the day to the thunder of war drums and the blare of war horns. This was no ceremonial review. These men had just returned after fighting desperately for their lives and they were still wild with the excitement of those frantic hours. The blood on the clothes which they had stripped from the dead and draped round their horses was barely dry. They came past in waves—horsemen half concealed in dust and a great horde of footmen. Screaming 317out their deeds of valour and brandishing their weapons, they came right up to the steps of the throne whence the court chamberlains beat them back with long wands. The most moving moment of that widly exciting day was when the drums suddenly stopped and, in utter silence, a few hundred men in torn, white everyday clothes came slowly down the long avenue of waiting troops led by a young boy. It was Ras Lul Seged’s son bringing in the remnants of his father’s army which had gone into battle five thousand strong.⁴⁷

These men are all Christians and yet they represent a far more barbaric society than anything known in Arabia or other Muslim countries. From the fifth to the thirteenth century, Christian Europe was scarcely any more “progressive.” Only the resurgence of the paganism, atheism and scular humanism of ancient Greece and Rome during the “Renaissance”, stimulated by the intellectual activity of the Muslim scientists and philosophers and the violent rebellion against the Church, brought about the social, economic and scientific revolution which has brought the West to its present world domination. Yet the missionary is so hypocritical and intellectually dishonest that he applauds the defeat of Christian temporal power and finally its strange marriage with secularism and imperialism which he boasts with the most intense pride as his chief accomplishment!

The Protestant or Roman Catholic missionary is never simply a Christian; he is always a Western Christian carrying with him the fresh and modern outlook of the Western world as well as the Gospel. Often the Muslim 318community was willing to run the risk of misisionary religious influence in order to avail itself of the medicine, schools, orphanages, science and social welfare that the missionary brought. More than that, in bringing these things, the missionary identified his kind of Christianity with progress and social concern—two things that Eastern religions, both Christian and Muslim, seldom included.⁴⁸

Christian missionary propaganda never fails to emphasize the poverty and social and material backwardness of the Muslim world as if the Muslims had a virtual monopoly on poverty, disease and illiteracy. They even try to infer that Islam is responsible for the present-day misery of the Muslims! But is it Islam that is really responsible? If so, why can these same deplorable conditions be found in the most staunchly “Christian” lands of Southern Europe and Latin America which are certainly no more highly “developed” than the Muslim East!

To demonsrate that conditions some “Christian” lands are certainly not any better than Muslim Asia or Africa, here is an except from the biography of the most celebrated bull-fighter in Spain—Manuel Benitez Cordobes—as described by his elder sister:

“I cried for my brother, Manolo, the day he was born and I haven’t finished crying for him yet.” says Angelita Benitez. “It was a warm afternoon in May 1936 just before the war. I was fourteen years old then but I knew what was happening. I could hear my mother screaming. Then I heard the baby’s cry. I started to cry too. I didn’t want him. He was another mouth to eat our food. Our house was on the Calle Ancha and we lived on the second 319floor. We went up on an outside staircase. There was one room and one window. We were five children and we had a table, a chest of drawers, four chairs and two beds. My mother and father slept in one bed; we slept in the other. The one important day in Palma every year was September 8th, a feast day. In the morning, everyone went to Mass and in the evening, there was the procession. The men carried the statue of the Virgin out of the church on their shoulders and in the centre of Palma where the procession passed, it was the custom to hang an embroidered bed-cover from the balcony when the statue went by. But that was only once a year. The rest of the time it was work. Like everyone else, my father worked in the fields of the rich landowners. We worked from dawn until dark when we couldn’t see anymore. By the time I was nine, I had forgotten how to laugh.” With the end of the war came the years of hunger. Drought and famine gripped the villages of Andalusia and Father Carlos Anchez, Palma’s priest, remembers the hungry children who came to him for food. Among them, Manuel Benitez was brought to the priest by Angelita. “He can’t eat, Don Carlos,” she explained. ‘Maybe, you can do something for him.” Father Sanchez did what he could, but the reason Manuel couldn’t eat was because he was already half-starved. The hunger pains gave him stomach cramps and eating was a torture, Soon a new staple appeared on the Benitez supper table—grass boiled in a pot “But sometimes we went for three days with nothing to eat,” says Angelita. “Then one morning my mother got sick. She couldn’t get up from the bed. On the sixth day she was much worse. She had the fever and was so weak, she couldn’t raise her arms. That night we all lighted candles and stood around her bed. Manolo was so small that his head hardly came up over the edge of the bed. He was crying. After a while she whispered to me, ‘Angelita, I give you your brothers and sisters. You will have to be their mother now.’ A few minutes later she was dead. She was 36. In the morning they brought a 320coffin from the carpenter’s shop. Then my uncles closed the box and took it away.”⁴⁹

Actually there is hardly any more reactionary and oppressive institution in history than the priest-dominated Christian Church.

The effect of the Muslim conquests on what was left of the Roman Empire was to divide it more seriously than ever. The Emperor Leo III at Constantinople incurred the displeasure of Pope Gregory II by his efforts to obtain reform in the fact of the onrushing Muslim “peril.” Recoiling from Arab and Christian quarters concerning the idolatrous veneration of images and pictures in the Christian churches, the Emperor forbade in 726 A.D. their further use, thus fathering the first iconoclastic movement in Christian history. There was immediate remonstrance both in the East and the West. In the East, Leo used his army to enforce his decrees. But Rome was far enough away to make good its disobedience.

What was more, the Pope called a Roman synod and obtained an action excommunicating those who opposed the use of pictures, namely, the emperor and those who sided with him. The emperor retaliated by removing Sicily and southern Italy from the Pope’s spiritual jurisdiction. This left the Pope in a precarious situation, for northern Italy was occupied by Lombards and they had set their hearts on the conquest of Rome. So the Pope called for help from Charles Martel whose success against the Muslims made his aid worth-seeking. Both Gregory and Charles were to die before that help was forthcoming but Charles’ son, Pippin the Short, invaded Italy, brought the Lombard king to terms and made a present of the province of Ravenna to the Pope. He thus caused the Pope to fix the orientation of the papacy towards the trans-Alpine lands rather than towards the East 321and without knowing it, laid the foundations of a huge, unstable western empire. The Pope gained much; he was now not only the largest landowner in Italy with an annual income of over a million dollars but a temporal sovereign, the ruler of the “States of the Church”, as they came to be called, and very important these were to him. The Popes were to cling tenaciously to their temporal sovereignty. From the first, it was possible for them to hope that they might replace the Byzantine emperor throughout the West. The fact that the province of Ravenna until the Lombard invasion had been directly under the emperor’s jurisdiction placed the Popes in the position of taking the emperor’s lands away from him. In this, their minds were apparently set at rest by an extraordinary forgery. Known as the “Donation of Constantine”, this forgery represents the Emperor Constantine granting to the Popes not only spiritual supremacy over the whole church but also “temporal domain over Rome, Italy, and the provinces, places and cities of the Western regions.” Not until the middle of the 15th century was the forgery successfully discredited. Meanwhile the Popes made good use of it. All in all, from 740 to 1870 the Popes firmly held to their states of the Church and when bereft of them by King Victor Emmanuel, were outraged. In 1929 Mussolini restored the Pope’s temporal sovereignty over the Vatican and the grounds immediately around it. Meanwhile a serious doctrinal split between East and West was brewing. In 589 A.D. a Western council met in Spain in support of the “Athanasian Creed”. The rift of opinion between East and West hung fire for several centuries. Finally in 876 A.D., a synod at Constantinople condemned the Pope for his political activities. The action was part of the East’s entire rejection of the Pope’s claim to universal jurisdiction over the Church. The final and complete break came in 1054 A.D. when the long-standing schism led the Pope to excommunicate the Patriarch of Constantinople and the Patriarch to hurl back anathemas at the Pope. Since then the two branches of the Christian Church—the Roman Catholic and the Greek 322Orthodox—have gone their separate ways.⁵⁰

As it can clearly be seen from here, the rule of the Popes in Rome versus the Patriarch in Constantinople was as much a power-struggle as between any worldly monarchs.

The corruption of the Papacy is not limited to the past.

The wealth of the Vatican is one of its most closely guarded secrets. Leading financiers give 2,000 million pounds as a conservative estimate of its world-wide business holdings. That makes Pope Paul easily the world’s largest stock-holder and until now, all his Italian investments have been exempt from tax under the terms of the Lateran Pacts. These agreements were negotiated with Mussolini in the twenties when—as indemnity for papal possessions seized by the Italian State in 1860—the dictator paid over 18 million pounds. Now the Italian Government—a coalition of Christian Democrats, Socialists and Republicans—has declared that the pacts must be revised and the church must pay tax on its earnings, at least in Italy. Even though the total amount—perhaps less than 1 million pounds a year, after a 5 million backlog is paid off—seems modest compared with the size of the Church’s wealth, Pope Paul VI and his financial advisers are fighting the move with all their strength. “The Vatican is no ordinary stock holder,” a highiy placed cleric from Pope Paul’s Secretariat of State told me. “If we are obliged to pay tax, our charitable works around the world will suffer. The Holy See must oppose this move on grounds of principle.” Today the Vatican has interests in an extraordinarily wide range of business firms. Airways, shipping, radio, television, electric power, chemicals, sugar, spaghetti, bathroom fixtures—the portfolio is estimated to contain 323between a tenth and fifth of Italy’s total stocks. But the great bulk of investment lies outside Italy, most of it in North America. These Vatican holdings are of course quite separate from those of the Roman Catholic hierarchies in Canada and the U.S.A. “We are in real estate, industry, hotels, and television,” a U.S. prelate told me. “We are at least as big Ford Motors, Shell Oil and Bethlehem Steel together. When Pope Paul said Mass in Yankee Stadium, he did it on Church property.” From the U.S.A. comes the biggest share of “Peter’s Pence”, the fund which the Vatican collects annually from countries all round the world. Here again, the sums are secret. Probably more vital to the Holy See is the excellent financial counsel it receives on the state of the world market through bishops everywhere. Over all this, Pope Paul has absolute control. If he wished to keep a few millions in his mattress or to give them away, there would be nothing to prevent him. Indeed, Pope Benedict XV, who died soon after World War I, kept a desk drawer stuffed with banknotes for needy callers. His generousity once came near to emptying some papal coffers. More and more Catholics are becoming aware of these vast financial resources for which no balance sheets are ever published.⁵¹

Yet the devotees of the Roman Catholic Church are obliged to revere the Pope as the “Vicar of Christ on Earth,” his pronouncements on doctrines of faith and dogma as infallible, and submit to the authority of the whole complicated ecclesiastical hierarchy. To quote the official Baltimore Catholic Catechism:

What is Holy Orders?

Holy Orders is the sacrament through which men receive the power and grace to perform the sacred duties of bishops, priests and other ministers of the Church. The distinction 324between clergy and laity is of divine origin, for first, Christ chose the twelve Apostles from among His disciples and in a special way deputed them for the exercise of spiritual ministrations and second, the Apostles who could not mistake the will of Christ, administered the sacraments of Holy Orders by consecrating bishops and by ordaining priests and deacons. A bishop is a priest who has the power of administering the sacrament of Holy Orders and makes him the ordinary minister of the sacrament of Confirmation. The other orders of ministers of the Church below those of priest and the major orders of deacon and subdeacon, are the four minor orders of acolyte, exorcist, lector or reader and porter. Before a man receives Holy Orders, he is constituted a member of the clerical state through the ceremony of tonsure in which hair is cut from his head in the form of a cross while he recites a verse from the Psalms to signify that he has dedicated himself to the service of God. A cardinal is a priest or bishop belonging to the group that has been especially selected to advise and assist the Pope in the government of the Church. Cardinals have the right of electing a new Pope after the death of the reigning Pontiff. An abbot is a priest who exercises over a religious community (monastery) jurisdiction which is similar in some respects to that exercised by a bishop over his diocese. A vicar-general is a priest appointed by a bishop to help him in the government of the diocese and for this purpose, he shares the bishop’s power of jurisdiction.⁵²

The administration of the Roman Catholic Church is modeled directly after the reforms of the pagan Roman emperor, Diocletcian, who thereby attempted to arrest the swift decay of the Roman Empire in the third century A.D.

325What are the effects of ordination to the priesthood?

The effects of ordination to the priesthood are: first, an increase of sanctifying grace; second, sacramental grace, through which the priest has God’s special help in his sacred ministry and third, a character, lasting forever which is a special sharing in the priesthood of Christ that gives the priest special supernatural powers.

What are the chief supernatural powers of the priest?

The chief supernatural powers of the priest are to change the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ in the holy sacrifice of the Mass and to forgive sins in the sacrament of Penance.

Why should Catholics show reverence and honour to the priest?

Catholics should show reverence and honour to the priest because he is the representative of Christ Himself and the dispenser of His mysteries.⁵³

Islam rejects all forms of priesthood not only in practice but also on principle. While Judaism has had no priests since the destruction of the second temple in Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 A. D., Jews still hope some day to restore their priesthood after their Temple is rebuilt. Islam rejects the theory that man cannot worship God without priestly intermediaries and preaches that the spiritual equality of all men who have direct access to God at all times is essential to the doctrine of Tauhid or God’s unity. In contrast to the complicated and mysterious rituals of the Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox church which require special priests to perform them for the laity, the practices of Islam are so simple that anybody 326can do them anywhere and at any place. The institution of the priesthood opens the door wide for unlimited moral corruption, social tyranny and exploitation, thus establishing a reactionary order of the most intense magnitude.

What is an indulgence?

An indulgence is the remission granted by the Church of the temporal punishment due to sins already forgiven. An indulgence does not take away sin. Neither does it take away the enternal punishment due to mortal sins. By an indulgence, the Church merely wipes out or lessens the temporal punishment due to sins already forgiven. The sufferings of the martyrs together with those of Christ, constitute a great treasury of satisfaction for sin and this treasury is at the disposal of the Church. She draws upon it for the remission of the temporal punishment of its members much the same way as a man draws on his bank account to pay his debts!

How many kinds of indulgences are there?

There are two kinds of indulgences—plenary and partial.

What is a plenary indulgence?

A plenary indulgence is understood to be so granted that if a person should be unable to gain it fully, he will nevertheless gain it partially in keeping with the disposition that he has. A plenary indulgenee, unless it be otherwise expressly stated, can be gained only once a day even though the prescribed worship be performed several times. The conditions ordinarily prescribed for gaining the plenary indulgence and designated by the familiar phrase, “under the usual conditions” are the following: Confession, Communion, visit to a church or public oratory and even a semi-public oratory in certain cases and a prayer for the Supreme Pontiff. The following are several examples of plenary indulgences that can be gained by all faithful:

327Those who piously recite a third part of the Rosary and in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament, may gain a plenary indulgence on condition of Confession and Communion.

The faithful who with at least a contrite heart whether singly or in company, perform the pious exercise of the Way of the Cross when the latter has been legitimately erected according to the prescription of the Holy See (Pope), may gain a plenary indulgence as they perform the same. The faithful who devoutly recite the prayer, “Behold O good and sweetest Jesus,” before an image of Jesus Christ crucified may gain a plenary indulgence under the usual conditions.

What is a partial indulgence?

A partial indulgence is the remission of part of the temporal punishment due to our sins. God alone knows exactly how much of the temporal punishment is actually taken away by an indulgence. The following are some ejaculations and invocations to which partial indulgences are attached;

An indulgence of 300 days for saying the ejaculation: “Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of hosts; the heavens and earth are full of Thy glory!”

An indulgence of 300 days for saying the ejaculation: “My God and my All!”

Indulgence of 500 days for saying the ejaculation: “Oh God be merciful to me, a sinner.”

An indulgence of 300 days, a plenary indulgence under the usual conditions if this invocation is devoutly recited every day for a month: “My Jesus, mercy!”

An indulgence of 300 days, a plenary indulgence once a month, on the usual conditions if this invocation is devoutly repeated daily: “O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee!”.

328What is the superabundant satisfaction of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the saints?

The superabundant satisfaction of the Blessed Virgin Mary and of the saints is that which they gained during their lifetimes but did not need and which the Church applies to their fellow members of the communion of saints.⁵⁴

Thus the stage is set for limitless moral corruption and association of other men with God to the point which practically results in polytheism. The association of partners with God (Shirk) is the most reprehensible of all sins in the eyes of God. In the Holy Quran and Hadith, God promises to forgive all sins expect Shirk, because this is open rebellion against the absolute sovereignty and unity of God. Islam teaches that only God can forgive our sins; each sinner must repent before God individually and beg pardon directly from Him; no priest and no saint, however holy, has the power to forgive a man’s sins. The Holy Quran tells us that each is individually responsible for his deeds for which we each shall have to render a complete account before God on Judgment Day. The Holy Quran teaches that no laden one can bear another’s burden. This is the most eloquent refutation of the Roman Catholic sacrament of confession of one’s sins before a priest and the doctrine of indulgences.

The Protestant Reformation in Europe was the inevitable reaction against the corruption and tyranny of the Roman Catholic Church:

It was held that the Pope possessed a treasury of 329superfluous merits accumulated by the saints and that he had unlimited dispensation of these credits. “Indulgences” were sold in the form of documents transferring these credits to the purchaser’s spiritual debit. The English priest, John Wycliff, condemned papal taxation as greed and the doctrine of transubstantiation as unscriptural. Wyclif influenced John Huss in Bohemia to lead a popular religious revolt of such proportions that the Council of Constance in 1415 condemned Huss to be burned at the stake. A quite unrelated reform later in the 15th century was led by the Dominican monk, Savonarola, in the city of Florence which procured for him finally only his own death by hanging. In vain, the Church at large attempted through the cooperation of bishops, kings, emperors and by the councils called at Constance and at Basle in the first half of the 15th century to introduce needed reforms in church life and administration. The Protestant Reformation split western Christianity into two irreconcilable groups. The Church seemed to the layman corrupt. The Church had been identified in his mind with a vast system of financial exactions, rapaciously, draining gold from every corner of Europe to Rome where luxury, materialism, irreverence and even harlotry seemed to reign unchecked among the clergy. All that was lacking was a leader who should precipitate the needed reforms. In Germany such a man appeared. He was Martin Luther (1488–1546), an honest, impetuous heavy-set German. When the members of his Wittenberg congregation (he preached in the castle church besides teaching at the university) went to buy these indulgences, he spoke out against their doing so. Urged by his friends who felt as he did, on October 31, 1517 he posted on the door of the castle church the famous “Ninety-Five Thesis”—a detailed attack on the selling of indulgences drawn up in the form of propositions for public discussion. Luther’s examination of the Bible convinced him that the Catholic Church had departed so far from its scriptural basis that many of its practices were actually anti-Christian. The Pope issued a 330bull of condemnation against Luther. The Emperor, Charles V, being called upon to act, Luther was summoned in 1521 to appear before the imperial diet meeting at Worms. The elector of Saxony consented to this only if Luther were promised safe conduct which, being assured, Luther appeared. He readily acknowledged that the writings issued under his name were his, but would not retract, he said, unless he should be convinced from Scripture that he was in error. The edict therefore put him under a ban, ordered him to surrender and forbade anyone to shelter him or read his books. But Luther could not be found; his prince, the elector Frederick of Saxony, had him seized on the way home and he was hidden away in the Wartburg Castle. Luther used his enforced leisure to good purpose. He translated the Bible into German—an ephocal achievement in more than one sense. It carried out the Reformation principle that the Bible must be put into the national language through which national unity could be achieved. “The Edict of Worms” was never enforced. When Luther emerged from hiding, the emperor was busy with wars and quarrels and, moreover, it was apparent that the German people were largely on Luther’s side. Whole provinces became Protestant at one stroke when their princes renounced allegiance to the Pope and turned Lutheran. By the time of Luther’s death in 1546, his reforms had spread from central Germany into much of southern and all northern Germany and beyond into Denmark, Norway, Sweden and the Baltic States. Luther disappointed many by siding with the princes during the peasant revolt in 1524. In fact, he laid the basis of German statism by commanding submissive obedience to government authorities on the part of all Lutherans.

A more radical Reformation came in Switzerland when Ulrich Zwingli (1484–1531), a highly educated parish priest whose sympathies lay from youth with the Humanists, especially in their war on superstition and irrationalism, advocated a return to the New Testament as the basic 331source of Christian truth. In Zurich, therefore, he began a systematic public exposition of the books of the Bible beginning with the Gospels. By 1522, he reached the conviction that Christians are bound by and should practice only what is commanded in the Bible—a far more radical position than that of Luther who held that Christians need not give up the elements in Catholic practice which are not forbidden in the Bible. The Zwinglian Reformation spread in his lifetime to Basle, Berne, Glarus, Mulhausen and Strassburg. Ultimately it produced civil war between Catholic and Reformed forces and Zwingli fell in one of the battles in 1531.

In Switzerland, an intense young preacher called Farel, won Geneva over to the Reformation. The task of producing a thoroughgoing religious reform proved so difficult that he prevailed upon a young French scholar, John Calvin (1509–1564), to stay and help him. Calvin was at the time (1536) in flight from France where he published at the age of 26 the first edition of the Reformation classic—“The Institutes of the Christian Religion”—a crystal clear definition of the Protestant position which was destined to lay the foundations of Presbyterianism.

The uninhibited Henry VIII, in the grip of a personal desire for a change in his marital status, vowed that if the Roman Curia would not annull his marriage to Catherine of Aragon in order that he might marry Ann Boleyn, he would break with the Pope. The Roman Curia turned him down and Henry did not hesitate to act. But Henry VIII was theologically conservative; he did not intend that there should be a doctrinal break with the past to match his jurisdictional break with the Pope. The only concession Henry made to liberal views, aside from his break with Rome, was having a copy of the Bible in English placed in all the churches.⁵⁵

332The Protestant Reformation led to an unprecedented bloody conflict with the monarchs who still remained loyal to Roman Catholicism. Meanwhile the Catholic Inquisition was kept busy torturing “heretics” to death and the burning of “forbidden books.” The conflict between the Protestants and Catholics convulsed Europe in bloodshed for more than a century and a half. What was its result?

The rebellion of the leaders of the Reformation against the authority of the Pope, the elimination of the priestly hierarchy, saint-worship, the use of images for worship, some of the sacraments and the abolition of monasticism have tempted some modernist Muslim thinkers to regard Protestanism as proof that Christianity is evolving closer to Islam. A more careful examination, however, will show how unjustified such optimism is. The substitution of the authority of the Church for the authoriy of the scriptures gave every individual the license to interpret the Bible exactly as he wished, choosing and discarding according to whim, convenience and circumstance. Rejecting Latin as the universal language of the Church, Protestant leaders translated the Bible into the local vernaculars, thus subjecting it to even more corruption. The rejection of the authority of the Pope and the Latin language greatly strengthened the cause of secular nationalism. In all Protestant countries a separate national church was organized under the complete control of the government until everywhere in Europe, the spiritual power of religion was compelled to submit to the expediency of secular politics.

333The Church of England is perhaps the most obvious example of a religion which is not a religion in any real sense of the word. Partly that applies to all organized Protestantism but the Church of England has probably gone further because it has long been a State political department. In British India, for example, the Church of England was almost indistinguishable from the Government. The officially paid (out of State revenues) priests and chaplains were the symbols of British imperial power just as the other civil services.

From the highest ethical standards, the Church of England has sought to justify British predatory policy in Asia and Africa and given that extraordinary feeling of being always in the right to the English. The brand of “religion” which the Church of England has adopted has certainly blunted British moral susceptibilities where their own interests were concerned. Other peoples and nations have often behaved far worse than the British have done but they have never succeeded quite to the same extent in making a virtue of what profited them.

Protestantism tried to adapt itself to new conditions and wanted to have the best of both worlds. It suceeded remarkably so far as the world was concerned but from the spiritual point of view, religion gradually gave place to sentimentality and big business.⁵⁶

From the point of view of doctrine, the Protestant Reformation does not show any signs that Christianity is moving closer to Islamic teachings. Protestants (except for a few sects like Quakerism and Unitarianism) accept, as uncritically as Catholics, the dogma of the Trinity, the Incarnation of God into Christ, Original Sin and the vicarious atonement of the sins of mankind by his alleged crucifixion.

334All of these unfortunate developments, fostered and encouraged by the Reformation, were merely a foretaste of the age of atheism and materialism that has characterized modern Western civilization ever since.

Western culture had its origin among a people who were were not blessed with any clear and pure source of divine wisdom. They had their leaders of religion, no doubt, but these divines were not endowed with wisdom or knowledge or armed with any law of divine origin. They had no assets or equipment except a fallacious religious concept which was inherently incapable of guiding them along the right lines. On the other hand, it could not but act as an obstacle to the progress of science and Philosophy. This is precisely what it did with the result that those who were eager to progress threw religion overboard and adopted a different course where they had no guide except observation, experience, speculation and deduction. With the help of these guides they no doubt made appreciable endeavours in the spheres of thought, research and organization but in every one of the field in which they worked, they made a wrong start and set out in the wrong direction. The partial policies as well as the theory of this culture are based upon perverse and unstable foundations. Its philosophy and science, its ethical values and social system, its law and politics, in short, every feature of this culture started from the premise of atheism and materialism, and consequently looked upon the universe as an object without a Creator or Master. Similarly, they studied the phenomena of nature and the living creatures with the presumption that there was no reality beyond what could be directly perceived or experienced. With the help of experience and speculation, they studied and comprehended the law of nature but they could not perceive its Maker. They found the world of matter at their feet and they began to press its forces into their service. But they had no idea 335that they were not the masters or rulers of this world in their own right but only the vicegerents of the real sovereign. This ignorance of and indifference to the divine Creator and Master of the Universe made the concept of responsibility alien to their minds. And, consequently, they raised the whole edifice of their civilization and culture on unsound and insecure foundations.⁵⁷

What was the effect of this materialistic philosophy upon the Christian Church itself? We will now see that even the most outstanding Christian theologians have succumed to modernism with no effective resistance to combat it, for the Church never had any weapons save persecution and repression of “heretics” to fight with. When its temporal power was vanquished by the Protestant Reformation and the French Revolution, even its leading exponents became the champions of modernism. The first and foremost attack was on the Bible to prove by means of careful historical research and deductive reasoning that it was not Divine revelation but merely a man-made composite work by various authors written by the scribes centuries after the deaths of the prophets and patriarchs. This kind of historical and literary research to prove that the Bible is not divine but man-made and only a product of its peculiar time and place is known as “Higher Criticism.” These Christian modernists went further to deny the validity of the miracles and supernaturalism in the Bible as no better than irrational superstition unacceptable to the modern mind.

336Professor Loisy, formerly Abbe Alfred Loisy, is the most outstanding representative of Modernism in France. Second to none in the authority derived from learning, he had been ranked for the greater part of his life as one of the foremost theologians of the Catholic Church. He devoted nearly thirty years of his life to the problems connected with Biblical criticism and his work in that field is a masterpiece of erudiction and scholarship. The research was undertaken in a spirit of defending the Orthodox position against the adversely disposed Biblical critics but ended in a total rejection of Orthodoxy. The Vatican subsequently turned him out of the Roman communion and he became a lay professor. Loisy’s final conclusions regarding Christianity which he bases on the textual criticism of the Bible are both Interesting and instructive. He regards the Biblical Jesus as ‘the last of a series of Jewish Messianic agitators as, for instance, Judas the Galilean and the prophet Theudas. Somewhere between the years 26 and 36 of the Christian era, Jesus began to proclaim the coming of God. After preaching for a while in Galilee where he enlisted only a few followers, he came to Jerusalem for Easter and there all he succeeded in accomplishing was to get condemend to death on the cross like any common criminal by the prosecutor, Pontius Pilate. For Loisy, the greater part of the Passion story on which the superstructure of Christianity has been built is mythological. “The Gospels do not relate the death of Jesus. They relate the myth of salvation realized by his death, perpetuated in a way by the Christian Eucharist, emphatically commemorated and renewed by the Easter festival. The Christian myth was without doubt related to the other salvation myths. It is by no mere chance that the resurrection of Christ on the third day after his death concides with the ritual of the Feast of Adonis. As regards the Jesus legend taken as a whole, “There is no actual consistency in the Gospel story save the crucifixion of Jesus condemned by Pontius Pilate as a Messianic agitator.” He thus sums up the final results of his Bibical researches;

337“These fragments of biography of Jesus in the Gospels create no impression of reality. Direct criticism of Gospel legend shows the gradual growth of that naive, incoherent epic so frankly bold in its inventions which we know as the four Gospels. In the beginning, as few rather meagre recollections, arranged in the traditional manner and made to accord with the stlye of the Old Testament and then miracles of which the best that can be said is that they are in the taste of the age and that they probably resemble those attributed to Jesus in his lifetime or better still, that the majority, if not all, were understood as concrete symbols of the spiritual work of Jesus—many incidents intending to relieve the narrative, or more especially to fulfil prophecies or merely inserted with an apologetic intent; the whole more or less coordinate with the ritual commemorating the Messianic Epiphany and salvation through Christ.”⁵⁸

“Whether the new interpretations of the articles of faith and dogmas of religion are true or not, one fact emerges clearly from the foregoing discussions, namely that traditional Christianity—the Christianity of the Bible, of St. Paul and other Apostles, of the early Fathers of the Church and of the vast majority of Christians from the earliest times to the present day—cannot prove its bona fides and cannot therefore survive the scientific and historical criticism. The Christian leaders are not conscious of it, but their inherited emotional attachment to the Church makes it impossible for them to see straight and solve the enigma directly. They catch hold of one subterfuge and when that fails, they manufacture another. The latest and probably the best attempt is that in which, while admitting the Pagan 338antecedents of Christianity and the untrustworthy character of the Bible, a case is made out for Christianity by presenting it as the natural development and synthesis of the ancient mystery cults and philosophical creeds of Europe, particularly Hellenism, and thus appealing to the ‘national’ or ‘racial’ instinct of the European peoples. Christianity is thus made to appear as a purely European religion and is virtually alienated from its Judaic and Semitic background. The fallacy of such a course is apparent but its authors attempt to overcome this inconsistency with the force of rhetoric. Reverend W. R. Inge has developed the theory fully and it will do well to quote him in detail. He says:

The Christian Church was the last creative achievement of the classical culture. It is neither Asiatic nor medieval in its essential character. It is not Asiatic; Christianity is the least Oriental of all the great religions. As a great historical institution, Christianity can be characterised as the religion of the white race. The Semites either shook it off and reverted to a Judaism purged of its Hellenic elements or enrolled themselves with fervour under the banner of Islam. Christian missions have had no success in any Asiatic country. Nor is there anything specifically medieval about Catholicism. It preserved the idea of Roman imperialism after the secular empire of the West had disappeared and they kept the tradition of the secular empire alive. Nor were the early Christians so anxious, as is often supposed, to disclaim continuity with Hellenism. At first, it is true, their apologetic was directed to proving their continuity with Judaism but Judaism ceased to count for much after the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 and the second-century apologists’ appeal for toleration on the ground that the best Greek philosophers taught very much the same as the Christians believe. ‘We teach the same as the Greeks,’ says Justin Martyr, ‘though we alone are hated 339for what we teach. The teachings of Plato, says Justin again, ‘are not alien to those of Christ and the same is true of the Stoics.’ St. Augustine says that only a few words and phrases need to be changed to bring Platonism into complete accord with Christianity. There are few other examples in history of so great a difference between appearance and reality. Outwardly the continuity with Judaism seems to be unbroken and that with paganism to be broken. In reality, the opposite is the fact. The truth is that the Church was half-Greek from the first, though I shall say presently, the original Gospel was not. St. Paul was a Jew of the dispersion, not of Palestine, and the Christianity to which he was converted was the Christianity of Stephen—not of James, the Lord’s brother. His later epistles are steeped in the phraseology of the Greek mysteries. The Epistles to the Hebrews and the Fourth Gospel are unintelligible without some knowledge of Philo whose theology is more Greek than Jewish. Judaic Christianity was a local affair and had a very short life. Christianity at first sought its credentials in Judaism though the Jews saw very quickly that it destroyed their Law. The belief of the Protestant reformers was plausible for they rejected just those parts of Catholicism which had nothing to do with Palestine but were taken over from the old Hellenic culture. But the residium was less Jewish than Teutonic. On one side, indeed, the Reformation was a return to Hellenism from Romanism. The revolt was against Latin theocracy and the hereditary paganism of the Mediterranean peoples. It was not really a return to pre-Hellenic Christianity. In conclusion, what has the religion of the Greeks to teach us that we are most in danger of forgetting? In other words it is a faith that truth is our friend and that the knowledge of truth is not beyond our reach. Faith in honest seeking of Truth is at the heart of the Greek view of life. It is the belief of the present writer that the unflinching eye and the open mind will bring us again to the feet of Christ whom Greece, with her long tradition of free and fearless inquiry, became a speedy and willing captive, bringing her manifold treasures to Him in the well-340grounded confidence that he had not come to destroy but to fulfil. Organized religion is not in modern times one of the strongest forces in human affairs. The strength of Christianity is, like Platonic mysticism, in transforming the lives of a small minority of individuals. To rescue a little flock here and there from materialism, selfishness and hatred is the task of the Church of Christ in all ages alike and there is no likelihood that it will ever be otherwise.⁵⁹

What a reduced and emasculated faith the Christian modernists preach which can scarcely appeal to anybody, much less the non-European peoples. This modernism inevitably leads to the following conclusion:

Is God dead? It is a question that fascinates both believers who perhaps secretly fear that He is and atheists who suspect that the answer is no. Even within Christianity, now confidently renewing itself in spirit as well as form, a small band of radical theologians has seriously argued that the churches must accept the fact of God’s death and get along without Him. Nietzsche’s thesis was that striving self-centered man had killed God and that settled that. The current death of God group believes that God is indeed absolutely dead, but proposes to carry on and write a theology without Him. Less radical Christian thinkers hold that at the very least God is in the image of man; God sitting in Heaven is dead and in the central task of religion today, they seek to imagine and define a God who can touch men’s emotions and engage men’s minds. Princeton’s theologian, Paul Ramsey, observes that “ours is the first attempt in recorded history to build a culture upon the premise that God is dead.”⁶⁰

341In the Protestant Church the services consist mostly of responsive readings from the Bible followed by the singing of hymns both by the choir and the congregation. There is almost always an organist and sometimes a violinist to accompany them.

The organist plays while the congregation makes its monetary offering. This continues the very old custom of bringing gifts to the altar as part of the worship of God. The sermon is more important in Protestant churches than in others. This is true because each person has greater freedom and more responsibility. There is no priest to tell him what he should think or do: there are no fixed religious customs to control his behaviour. So he needs more help so that he may understand the meaning of the Bible and of Christ’s life and work and that he may want to share in all that is right and beautiful. After the sermon, a prayer and another hymn the minister pronounces the benediction—the beautiful words of Paul:

“The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all.”

A moment of silent prayer and the service is over. Friendly chatting begins as the people leave their seats in the pews. The minister stands at the door to greet them. There is a general air of informality that is typically Protestant.⁶¹

Except possibly for the responsive readings from the Bible, one can see that the Protestant church service is entirely man-made and therefore nothing can stand as an obstacle, except perhaps personal taste, to change and innovation. In contrast, the Salat at the mosque follows the infallible and unchangeable Sunnah of the Prophet who condemned all innovation in matters of faith as tantamount to apostasy. Were the 342Holy Prophet to come back to earth, he would find the Salat at the mosque today exactly as it was during his lifetime. A Muslim from Indonesia could join in his Salat at a mosque in Morocco and feel thoroughly at home. Protestant churches conform their services to the national languages and customs of their particular environment; therefore no such bond of unity exists between them. Recently the movement for Christian unity has accelerated the modernization of all churches and compelled the Roman Catholic Church to abandon the use of Latin and radically changed its service to conform more and more closely to that of the Protestant churches. For some decades the vulgarity of modernism has been invading the precincts of the Church. In recent years this tendency has been greatly accelerated:

“I don’t know what has happened to the church I knew as a child,” someone recently complained to me. “Everything has turned so modern—so jazzy.” Surprisingly, this remark was not made by an elderly set-in-his-ways parishioner but by an attractive young girl who had just emerged from a student-led interfaith service. And while she was intrigued by the guitars, the informality and the activist exhortation, she also felt a bit threatened by it all. Many applaud these changes, calling them long overdue. But a considerable number are disturbed over such situations as the following:

*In New York City, a clergyman is appointed spiritual advisor to jazz musicians. His involvement leads him from one night club to another. In San Francisco an Episcopal priest concentrates his ministry among the Hippies of the Haight-Ashbury district. Most members of his diocese are unperturbed, remembering other clerical innovations, such as the group of younger clergy who established pastoral counselling in the area’s homosexual community and the 343bishop who declared the doctrine of the Trinity to be a “heavy piece of luggage.”

*In Cambridge Mass. a theologian recommends that the word “God” be given a moratorium. A Dallas professor of theology argues that the Christian faith today must be understood within the context of an evolutionary picture of the world.

*In Washington D.C. jazz music resounds from the sanctuary of the prestigious National Cathedral while in a staid old Boston church, teen-agers dance the frug in the aisles during a service of worship.⁶²

The tidal-wave of modernism is destroying at an unprecedented rate the entire foundation of the Roman Catholic Church as can be demonstrated in the alarming decline in the appeal of the priesthood and the monastery for the younger generation:

The stereotype is familiar: the traditional nun in starched cuff, black veil and long robe, hands piously holding the crucifix at her bosom, eyes downcast humbly as she walks the austere corridor of her convent. That nun—if indeed she ever existed outside of Hollywood’s imagination—is gone. Today’s sister is likely to wear a dark dress set off with a religious symbol such as a cross—or clothes that do not distinguish her in any way from a laywoman. Some still wear short veils; many do not. Today’s nun may live in an ordinary flat rather than a parish convent. She may be a teacher, nurse, or social worker but she is more mobile, freer to participate in secular activities, more likely to use spare time for Apostalic work outside the parochial school or Catholic hospital. Emphasis on inviduality seems to vary with each community of Sisters but it appears to have flowered since Vatican II’s call for renewal.

344Bishop John J. Ward, Vicar for the Los Angeles Archdioceses, thinks dissatisfaction with the rate of change is a principal reason for sisters leaving the convent. They say, “My community is not moving ahead fast enough.” he said. Greater freedom—to think, to speak, to do—may result in women playing a greater role. The changes have brought varying reactions from the laity. One Catholic laywoman described herself as being “thoroughly disappointed.” “I feel something traditional has been lost. There was something about the long robes and the rosary beads that clattered when they walked down the hall that meant something—a kind of respect. At our parochial school I was always in awe of the Sisters until they started wearing a short dress and half-veil. I no longer feel the difference between us—the nun and the lay person.”

To some Sisters that is the point: to be accepted as a Christian by virtue of deeds, not apparel.

In 1966, 1,800 Roman Catholic sisters left the religious life in America, five times as many as in 1950. Three years later the official Catholic Directory showed a loss of more than 9,000 during 1969 alone!

Asked if she were still a Catholic, one ex-nun replied: “Yeah—on my own terms. If you mean, do I go to Mass on Sunday, no. I haven’t been to Mass since Christmas.”⁶³

One intelligent Australian who was so disgusted with what he found in his Church that he embraced Islam writes:

The majority of Australians only pay lip-service to their religion. The churches on a Sunday are half-empty and therefore gymmics are sought and adopted to attract larger crowds. Special church services for Surfies, Rockers and Beatniks, pop music in church and the combination of two or more denominations. We even have a full-time beach 345parson spreading the Gospel on the bathing beaches on a Sunday.⁶⁴

“As the formidable and devastating anti-Christian flood rolls ahead, sweeping off Christianity in all countries, uneasiness, alarm and consternation spreads in Christian ranks. Official Christianity is throwing in its last reserves in an attempt to turn the tide. Desperate and exasperated, she is trying every means she can lay her hands upon, however disparaging they may otherwise be to the genuine spirit and teaching of the Bible. One group, consisting of the best brains among the clergy, is attempting to rationalise Christinity by weeding out all that is objectionable to the modern scientific view, which, though it may temporarily succeed in deceiving people, actually ends in the virtual negation of Christian verities and consequently meets with the condemnation of the more consistent and less enlightened section of priesthood. The other group resorts to reforming the techniques of church life and seems to think that by pandering to the tastes of the common mass, by transforming the churches into cinema halls and social clubs and by making the whole church business more business-like, they can arrest the progress of the anti-Christian forces. The editor of The Boston Herald, while expressing his nervousness at the inefficiency of the clergy, appealed to them to study the art of advertising so as to enable themselves to ‘sell’ Christianity better to the public. He said;

346We do know that the advertising business is attracting many able young men because it is a growing business and increasingly influential. We hear that everything must be ‘sold’ these days. The President has to ‘sell’ his policies; the colleges have to ‘sell’ their instruction, art has to ‘sell’ its creations; not only do merchants have to sell their wares but some of the finest and cleanest philanthropic enterprises in the world are experts at advertising. Why not apply the same idea to the church sermon? Preaches must ‘sweat blood’ for the production of good sermons and sell them to the public.

The Reverend Griffin went a step further.

Griffin, Pastor of the Rogers Park Baptist Church, Hilldale and Greenleaf Avenues, exhibited five types of girls to his audience, His subject: ‘The Kind of Girl to Marry.’ Each of the young women stepped into a framework of flowers and tissue-paper lattice-paper which had been arranged in front of the Church over the Baptistry while a spotlight was turned on.

The Reverend Karl A. Glackman, Associate Minister of the Linwood Christian Church, Kansas City, Missouri reported:

I’ve got to get them some way and my way seems to be right for they come in thousands to my Happy Sundays. At three in the afternoon we let down a screen across the top of the church and have moving pictures—the best moving pictures we can have for young children. Waifs and strays come into the church in hundreds. They make an awful mess in the church. Two bushel baskets of rubbish, popcorn, peanut husks, chewing gum and all sorts of things are carried away after these children have been there. And you have to get hold of those young people with your first sentence or they would soon leave the Church contented with having seen a good film. The lights are subdued a little so that boys and girls can behave as is natural to boys 347and girls but I keep a fatherly eye on all of them. I have a quiet little room with a soft light and there I receive young people who have troubles to get off their chests and want advice. Some are girls who are a little faded and want to know why it is that men don’t keep running after them like they do other girls. I cheer them up and tell them to put their clothes on better or advise of something that will bring their personality more to the front. Yes, sir, my methods are popular!⁶⁵

The cheapness and vulgarity which characterizes the church services of some radical Protestant sects is fully revealed in a frank confession of none else than the famous Rock’n Roll entertainer, Elvis Presley (1935–1977). When questioned by a journalist about his early life, the late pop-singer replied:

“We were a religious family, constantly going around together to sing at camp revival meetings in the South. Since I was two years old, all I knew was the jazzy gospel songs. That music became such a part of my life that it was as natural to me as dancing. A perfect way to escape from the problems of daily life. It was in the church where I first got the idea for the pelvic wriggle that was later to become my controversial trade-mark during all my musical shows. During the singings of the gospel hymns at those revivalist meetings, the preachers would dance all over the place, even jumping up on the piano, swaying their hips every which way. The audience liked that. And I guess I learned a lot from them.⁶⁶

Likewise the church councils in America and England go even so far as to condone the practice of pre-martial sex; college authorities in America and 348Europe now take the most premissive attitude towards the promiscuous intermingling of young male and female students fully sanctioned by the church while a recent pronouncement states that “homosexuality can be more fulfilling than matriage,”⁶⁷ As a reaction to a television programme on the B.B.C. showing a man and woman having intercourse in bed, the British Quakers declared: “As Christians we have felt impelled to state without reservation that sexuality is a glorious gift from God!”⁶⁸

More than 900 clergymen and students gathered last week at Harvard Divinity School to ponder over the “new morality” and its significance for the Christian Church. They generally agreed that the “new morality” is a healthy advance as a genuine effort to take literally St. Paul’s teaching ‘that through Christ we are liberated from the Law.’ ‘Lists of can’s and cannot’s are meaningless’, says Princeton’s Paul Ramsey. Joseph Fletcher of the Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge asserted that no sexual relationship should be absolutely condemned by the church. The ‘new morality’ he said, would certainly approve of an Episcopal priest in New York City who provides contraceptives for a gang of delinquents he attempts to serve. The core proposition of the ‘new morality’ which is always good regardless of circumstances and that is neighborly concern and social responsibility which is a divine imperative. In the “new morality” the ultimate criterion for right and wrong is not divine command but the individual’s subjective perception of what is good for himself and his neighbor in each given situation.⁶⁹

349A highly intelligent seventeen-year-old American girl interviewed for a Saturday Evening Post article, “Youth: the Cool Generation,” for December 23, 1961, when asked why she never attended church, replied: “The Christian Church today does not lead society but merely reflects its debased values.” Thus in this single sentence has she so eloquently summarized all the hypocrisy inherent in religious modernism.

Not all Christians have succumbed to modernism. Some of its leaders are still honest enough to recognize its inherent fallacies:

Thus Reverend Dr. Mansell, formerly Dean of St. Paul’s Church observes:

Many who would shrink with horror from the idea of rejecting Christ altogether will yet speak and act as if they were at liberty to set up for themselves an eclectic Christianity, separating the essential from the superfluous portion’s of Christ teaching and deciding for themselves how much is temporary and designed only for a particular age and people. Yet if Christ means God manifest in the flesh, it is surely not less impious to attempt to improve His teachings than to reject them altogether. Nay, in one respect it is more so, for it is to acknowledge a doctrine as the revelation from God and at the same time to proclaim that it is inferior to the wisdom of man.⁷⁰

This argument is irrefutable. However, the learned clergyman overlooks the fact that Christianity from St. Paul onwards has been purely a man-made religion from its inception. In rejecting 350the Law on principle, Christianity has no place for the sacred Shariah and therefore in contrast to Islam, it gives no comprehensive Divine Guidance for life in all its aspects. As Christianity accepted the innovations from the pagan past, so must it now tolerate with utmost permissiveness the inroads of present-day atheism.

The first to lose interest and even faith in Christian dogmas were the Protestants, who were never as fervently orthodox as the Roman Catholics. But now it seems that even the Roman Catholics are losing faith. This is shown in the internationally famous weekly, TIME MAGAZINE, dated May 24, 1976. Its cover announces in bold letters “U. S. Catholicism—A Church Divided” And amazingly, the Cross is shown split into two! The cover story opens with the remarks of an ederly lady: “I hope to die soon so that I can die a Catholic.” A few other excerpts are given below:

Roman Catholic! The very words themselves are redolent of rich and solemn rituals chanted amid clouds of incense and in an ancient tongue. Many American Catholics over 30 remember living in that history—the Church was a living spiritual fortress, comforting at times, inhibiting and even terrifying at others. But it was a safe and ordered universe with eternal guarantees for these who lived by its rules. The fortress has crumbled. Before the Second Vatican Council in 1962, the U. S. Catholic Church had seemed at least to outsiders to be a monolith of faith, not only the church’s richest province but arguably, its most pious. When the Council ended in 1965, American Catholicism had been swept by a turbulent new mood, a mood of opened windows, tumbled walls, broken chains. It 351became a painful experience for many, and over the next decade, the casualties were heavy; nuns leaving their convents, priests their ministries, lay Catholics simply walking away from worship and belief. The annual Official Catholic Directories have been carrying the statistics of decline throughout the decade. The figures show that about 3,100 Catholic elementary and high schools out of 13,340 have closed in the past ten years and enrolment has dropped from 5.6 million in 1965 to 3.5 million in 1975. Some 35,000 American nuns and 10,000 priests, including a brilliant bishop, left their ministries and sometimes even the Church in a great exodus. There are fewer new priests to replace those who left. Seminary enrolment at a high of nearly 49,000 in 1954 fell to a low of 17,200 in 1975.

What is the future of the U. S. Roman Catholic Church? Jesuit sociologist, John Thomas, is pessimistic about an end to the drift from away from it. “Some like to call this a “Second Spring,” he observes. “But I see it as an Indian summer which comes just before winter.” Biblical scholar John A. Miles writing in Theology Today, sees the Catholics caught in a dilemna. He says; “If the church does try to exert some kind of authority, chances are it will only cause rebellion, further turmoil and shrinkage. If it does not, it may remain officially large but steadily weaker and more diffuse.”

Christianity and Western civilization have been inseparable from each other ever since the time of St. Paul. Says Dean Inge in his essay. “Modernism in Religion”.

The greatest of all crises through which Christianity passed was its transplantation into the soil of European culture which was the work of St. Paul’s life. The Church then made its choice: it gained Europe and lost Asia. Compared with this momentous development, even the 352Protestant Reformation was of secondary importance⁷¹

The Christians of the Western Asia and North Africa very quickly embraced Islam and never presented any serious opposition. Almost all the hostility and resistance to the spread of Islam emanated from Europe, for Western civilization has never encountered any other significant rival. Since the interests of Islam and Western civilization have always conflicted with each other, Orientalists criticize Islam much more harshly than religions like Hinduism or Buddhism which the Westerner can safely regard as merely exotic cults of the mystic East. We must now understand in detail the reasons for the hostility of the Christian West towards Islam and the Muslims.

The existence of Islam made the West profoundly uneasy. On the practical plane, it caused permanent unease not only because it was a danger but because the danger was unpredictable and immeasurable; the West had no access to the counsels or motives of Islam. But this factor was only an indication of a deeper incomprehension of the nature of the problem itself. In understanding Islam, the West could get no help ftom antiquity and no comfort from the present. Intellectually the nearest parallel to Islam was the position of the Jews. They shared many of the same tenets and brought foward many of the same objections to Christianity. But Christian thinkers had at their disposal an embarassing wealth of material for answering the Jewish case and the economic and social inferiority of the Jews encouraged the view that their case could be treated with disdain. Nothing is easier than to brush aside the 353asguments of the socially unsuccessful, and we can see this verified in the melancholy history of the Jewish controversy in the Middle Ages. The same mixture of social superiority with a long tradition of authoritative refutation was responsible for the confidence with which the medieval Church faced the many heresies which arose in Europe from the eleventh century onwards. Even the schism with the Greek Orthodox Church could be pressed into this mold; worldly decline and priestly authority combined to lend each other mutual support. But Islam obstinately resisted that treatment. It was immensely successful. Every period of incipient breakdown was succeeded by a period of astonishing and menacing growth. Islam resisted both conquest and conversion and it refused to wither away. There were times when it seemed plausible to write off the whole scheme as the fantastic product of an evil imagination. No doubt this type of explanation would have gained wide currency if Islam had shown permanent signs of decline. Moreover, the Muslim system of thought had the adherence of men whom the West learned increasingly and sometimes extravagantly to admire—scholars, philosophers and scientists like al-Farabi, Ibn Sina and Ibn Rushd and heroes like Salah-ud-din Ayubi.. It was hard to believe in the simple-minded delusion of such men.⁷²

As the only other vigorous, dynamic and missionory faith which seeks to convert all mankind, there is no religion that presents itself as a serious rival to Christian missionary activity except Islam. Hence the Christian missionary naturally regards Islam as a unique problem:

“Islam is the only one of the great religions to come after Christianity; the only one that definitely claims to correct, complete and supersede Christianity; the only one that categorically denies the truth of Christianity; the only one 354that has in the past signally defeated Christianity; the only one that seriously disputes the world with Christianity; the only one which, in several parts of the world, is today forestalling and gaining on Christianity.” These words, taken from a recent summary of the problem and the reproach of Islam, sum up the main reason why Islam is a unique problem to the Christian Church—unique in its urgency, unique in its difficulty. It cannot be treated like any other. It baffles more than any other for it is more difficult to concede to it what is gladly conceded to other religions appearing before Christ; that they in some sort prepared the way for Him. How can that which denies the whole content of His message be said to prepare for Him or to be a half-way house to His Kingdom? For that is what Islam does. Other religions know nothing of Christianity; one and all they came before it and speak of it neither good nor evil. But the whole theory of Islam is that it is the latest sent of all religions, does not so much abrogate Christianity with its Book as specifically and categorically deny it both as wilful corruption and lies. Point by point each truth of Christianity, steeped through and through with the tenderness of the love of God, is negated with abhorrence by Islam—the Fatherhood of God, the Sonship and Incarnation of Jesus Christ, the Holy Ghost, the death of Christ and all that it means whether ethically of love, infinite tenderness, infinite self-sacrifice or spiritually, of sin condemned and sin forgiven, the Resurrection of Christ on the third day and His glorification with the Father—each of these truths is a blasphemy in the eyes of every Muslim, a lie which Islam came expressly to blast, taught by a Book which the Quran came expressly to replace. It is easier to convince a man that of which he knows nothing in particular than that which he firmly believes to be definitely false. Add to this that Islam actually succeeded in displacing, humbling and destroying that which bore the name of Christianity in many lands and so Muslims became yet further convinced of the weakness and ignorance of Christians and of their disfavour with God. The rise of 355the Christian nations has done nothing to dispel this for Islam credits that to anything but their religion. It therefore burns with a two-fold desire to revenge its own humiliation on the unbelieving nations whose yoke is on its neck and to vindicate its own still unfulfilled claims to universality and supreme victory. With the possible exception of Buddhism, no other great non-Christian religion seriously cares whether it becomes universal or not. Some, indeed, like Judaism and Hinduism, expressly repudiate universality. Islam alone claims it and actively and ceaselessly works to make good its claim. Back to that church-mosque at Damascus whence we took our start! See where a Cross once stood and where there stands a Crescent today! That sight stands for and typifies what every Muslim sees inwardly and believes he has the right to see actually when he looks at the Cross on every continental cathedral spire, every English minister rising from the pulpit, every village church from whose belfry tower chimes come like a benediction over the hamlet nesting at its feet and the meadow-lands smiling in the sunlight beyond. We have to remember that the Muslim knows his religion arose in the full light of day and rests on the undoubted historic fact of Muhammad, the Arabian Prophet who was given a Book from Heaven, the authenticity of which none denies. Nor is that all or nearly all. Add to this, the simplicity of the creed to which the Muslim invites the world’s adherence. Islam simplifies with a vengeance! “There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is the Apostle of Allah”—a child can learn it in a moment and to its vigorous, negative exclusion and simple universal assertion, it seems to require no explaining, no elaboration; it can never be forgotten. The Muslim has little demand made on his intellect as on his moral faculty; his is the ideal religion for the “plain-man.”⁷³

356Whatever success the Christian missionary has enjoyed in the de-Islamizing of Muslims both in lands where they constitute the majority such as Indonesia and Pakistan and where they are in the minority as in the Philippines, has been due to the political, military, economic and cultural domination of the West over the non-Western world. If anybody doubts the intimate relationship between the Christian missionary enterprise and Western imperialisms, he need only read the following testimony from one of its leading spokesmen at the beginning of this century:

The Muslim world has been penetrated by Western travellers to its innermost recesses. Mecca and Medina as well as Kerbela and Meshed have laid bare their secrets. Arabia is being influenced as never before by the forces of Western commerce and trade. The twentieth country with rail and steamer, is piercing and crossing the last remaining banks and soon Arabia, that great eddy in the stream of the world’s progress, will find itself being rapidly carried along to the consummation of God’s purpose. Socially the forces at work are those acting on all the world. We have here only space to note the growing tendency to approve, and without doubt soon to use, customs of distinctively Christian origin. Monogamy, equality of the sexes, schools for girls and various so-called handmaids of Christianity are beginning to be pressed into the service of Islam. Many of us think that it will result in a house divided against itself but only time will tell. Since these lines were written, Great Britain has occupied Basra and is about to make the Euphrates-Tigris valley another Egypt under some new Lord Cromer. Tripoli has seen more changes in the last five years than in the previous two hundred years. Whether we consider Italy’s action in Libya brigandage on a national scale or legitimate colonial expansion, the fact remains that they have already estab357lished communications, roads, telegraphs, railways, motor services; they are presently preparing the people for taking a share in their own development by instituting technical colleges; they have improved the water supply and the drainage and by these means the hospitals and medical service which they have introduced, they have already done much towards the stamping out or, at any rate, reducing certain diseases which have devastated the Arabs. The editor of The Mussalman, Calcutta, in speaking of the entrance of Russia and Great Britain into Persia, said that the loss of Persia would be a great calamity for the Muslim world. Afghanistan would be exposed to foreign invasion; Arabia and the regions west of Persia would be similarly exposed; thus the one loss may be the forerunner of many other great losses and the cause of utter annihilation of Islamic civilization. His words are finding fulfilment even as we write these lines, and it is doubtful whether after the Great European War, any Muslim land will retain even nominal independence. In addition to this political upheaval and parallel with it, a remarkable modernist movement has arisen and is gaining strength in Muslim lands all the way from Morocco to China. The introduction of Western customs, the multiplication of machinery and other devices of Western civilization, the increase of educational opportunities and especially the rise and enormous expansion of the Muslim press in imitation of its Western models have utterly changed many old standards and developed new social and intellectual ideals. European fashions of dress are being copied and Muslim boys in Turkey, Algeria and Java are gradually abandoning their national dress and adopting that of Europeans. The question of ceremonial washing before prayer is greatly complicated when children and grown ups use Western footwear and when watches and almanacs keep Western time and even children are asking what is the sigificance of A.D. 1915? Where European governments are establishing a school system, the missionary finds therein his vantage ground 358for familiarizing the intelligent and influential section of the people with the doctrines and ideals of the Christian religion and that of the Government which, indifferent alike to the motives of the misssionary and the opposition of the mullahs, requires educated young men for administrative posts and believes that education eclipses fanaticism. (pp. 240–246), If the evangelization of Moslem childhood is part of the plan of God—and no thoughtful Christian man or woman can for a moment doubt this—there was never a time when this task was more urgent and more possible than it is today. As the Quran itself says: “Every nation has its appointed term and when that appointed times comes, they cannot hold it back an hour.” There is no part of the whole world that has seen more stupendous changes—political and social—within the last two years than has South-East Europe, North Africa and Western Asia. Politically, Islam has lost its power throughout the whole of Africa, the whole of Europe, and is losing its grip even on Asia. Where formerly all evangelistic effort carried on directly for Moslems was interdicted or suppressed by the jealousy of Moslem governors and rulers, today Islam has lost its sword and the very disasters which have overtaken its rulers, have chastened and subdued the hearts of Moslems everywhere. The Great European War (1914–1918) with all its horrors have nevertheless helped to this end. The whole of North Africa has passed under European Government. This means settled administration, modern education and the inevitable breakdown of Moslem opposition. All the conditions emphasize that this is the best time for large effort. It was the conviction of a representative gathering of missionaries recently held in Egypt that “God is calling us to special effort on behalf of the Moslems by doors of opportunity which His providence has opened up, and by an era of responsiveness which has been ushered in through the manifest operations of His Holy Spirit. Today, as never before, there is manifest among Muslims, an interest in Christianity and its teaching.” 359(pp. 266–267).⁷⁴

Here the policy of the Christian missionaries is laid bare, which proves that their enterprise aims for nothing less than:

1. The expansion of Western political, military, economic and cultural imperialism.
2. The total westernization of the Muslim countries.
3. The loss of the political, economic and cultural independence of all Muslim territories.
4. The utter annihilation of Islam and the Islamic way of life from the world.

In view of these subversive activities, how can any self-respecting Muslim country allow the missionaries to work unhampered as they are now given free reign under the guise of “liberalism” and “tolerance” in such vital areas as Indonesia, Nigeria and Pakistan? Under what amounts to Government patronage, the Christian missionaries through their schools, colleges and hospitals are reaping striking success.

What is the. policy of the Christian missionary? How does he work and what are his methods? Let one of them speak for himself:

“I beg to lay before you the following proposals with regard to an organised effort to combat the advance of Islam in West Africa and in Nigeria especially. As ignorance is the greatest stronghold of Mohammedanism, so education is the Church’s greatest weapon in meeting it.

3601. Beginning with literature, efforts should be made to produce vernacular books dealing with the Mohammedan controversy. There is a large amount of such material already published in India and in Egypt. Gradually these could be transtated into the different vernaculars and thus the weapons already forged in warfare against Islam elsewhere would at once become available in West Africa.

2. In all Christian missionary schools, definite instruction should be given on the errors of Islam and the pupils forearmed. As Mohammedanism claims to be a larger revelation and to supersede Christianity, it is imperative that this bold challenge should be met and not passed over in silence and that every mission pupil should learn not only the Christian truths but also their position with regared to the Islamic attack on those truths.

3. Every effort should be made to encourage the systematic study of this question by all workers, both clergy and layman, as too often they are not well-equipped to meet the current objections to Christianity put into the minds of their hearers who may at any time become convinced.

4. Evangelistic effort ought to be more used among Mohammedans. Special meetings ought to be held for Mohammedans and every means tried to find out what sort of address or what form of gathering apeals to them. Preachers will need to be well trained for this work.

5. Special efforts should be made to occupy strong Mohammedan centres as it is for these places that the Mohammedan influence on the pagan districts is exercised.

6. An itinerant order of native preachers should go about, much the same way as Mohammedan malams travel from village to village, as a great means for extending the Kingdom. The men would need to be specially trained, and would then be given as free a hand as possible, travelling in a certain district and staying in the villages for a week or a month and endeavouring to get some place or building set apart for Christian worship. The 361ordinary visit of the missionary too soon is forgotten while the itinerant missionary, free to stay in the place for a month if need be, would be able to reap some of the fruit and leave a permanent instead of a transient impression. We should aim at placing a well-educated native teacher, catechist or minister wherever there is a Mohammedan village.

7. An attempt to plant colleges of trained Christian scholars in Mohammedanism in all great centres of population.

8. A series of books, the work of trained theologians and experts from the Mohammedan field, containing the best and soundest answers to all the usual Mohammedan objections and free from all unsound and defective arguments. These could be translated ad lib.

9. An appeal to men at home, the very best our universities have to give, to devote themselves to this work and to offer themselves where the battle is keenest and the call most urgent.⁷⁵

Why has the missionary enterprise, despite the virtual monopoly it has held for nearly a century on educational and medical services in places like black Africa, not succeeded in these aims? The Christian apologist tries to argues as follows:

One must pause for a moment to consider the magnitude of the work the missionaries were undertaking. It was not only paganism they were attempting to displace but the Muslim faith as well and Islam was entrenched in Central Africa by this time (1870). It had strong attractions for the primitive tribesmen since it could be understood and practiced by the simplest mind. There was no complicated initiation, no elaborate ritual, not even priests or a church were required; one could worship alone or with the rest of the tribe. Already the Africans comprehended in a vague 362way the concept of God and Islam merely demanded of them that they should acknowledge the authority of the Prophet Muhammad. It was enough to declare “There is no God but God and Muhammad is His Prophet,” and the pagan illiterate was accepted into a faith that offered him all kinds of advantages; he became a socially superior person inside his tribe; he was provided with a new code of living which did not greatly disturb his habits and which offered him the most dazzling pleasures after death. It is true that men had to undergo the operation of circumcision but that was not regarded as any great hardship; in fact, it was rather intriguing to the primitive mind and the other obligations of Islam were nothing very strange to a tribesman who was already living in a world of taboos and prohibitions. Compared to these easy-going doctrines, Christianity presented a hard and uncompromising front. Its emphasis upon Original Sin and its dogmas were difficult for a sluggish mind to master and its prohibition of slavery and polygamy seemed to the tribesman to be against nature. The ethereal Christian heaven had very little appeal when contrasted with the sensuous Muslim paradise and even the outward forms of Christianity were somewhat incongruous in this hot climate. The mosque had its graceful minarets and its great space beneath the rounded dome, its pleasant carpets to kneel on and it harmonized with the landscape. But the severe lines of Christian architecture were alien to Africa. Even the western (and therefore Christian) clothes the missionaries wore—the tight jackets and trousers—must have seemed absurd to the Africans when compared to their own seminudity or the cool and comfortable Arab gown.⁷⁶

In other words, Christianity cannot appeal to the African or the Asian because it has always been identi363fied in his mind (and rightly so) as the white man’s religion. Christianity, the notion of the superiority of the white race and its inseparability from the aims of European imperialisms are irrefutable when taken in the context of history. Some Christian missionaries have tried to argue that Christianity is a religion of Asia and not of Europe; that Jesus Christ lived all his life in Asia except as an infant when his mother took him to Egypt to escape the tyranny of King Herod. This apologetic ignores the fact that ever since St. Paul, the most powerful institutions of Christianity have always been in Europe and long before the historical onset of Islam, Christianity in what is now the Arab world and Turkey had grown very much enfeebled and never again regained its vigour. Thus Christianity has gone hand in hand with other aspects of European history, its missionary activities inseparable from the dominance of its imperialism over the non-Western world. It is rather late in the day to proclaim Christianity as a religion of Asia and Africa or attempt to disentangle it from the development of Western civilization.

In the passage on Christian missionary work in Africa just quoted, its propaganda tries to convince its audience that Islam is the champion of slavery and that the Christian missionary was responsible for stopping this reprehensible practice. This is the sort of propaganda the Christian missionary ceaselessly spreads all over Africa and elsewhere. Actually, the Christian scriptures contain hardly any explicit teachings regarding slavery except in the Epistles of St. Paul where it is commanded that the 364slave be obedient and submissive to his master. Although the Gospel and the Epistles do grant the slave-convert to Christianity the right to enter the “Kingdom of Heaven” on an equal basis as his master, nothing is mentioned regarding his treatment during his earthly life. The attitude of the Church as late as two and a half centuries ago was well exemplified in a letter dated 1727 written by the Bishop of London to the slave owners of the southern colonies of America. He declared:

Christianity and the embracing of the Gospel of Christ does not make the least alteration in Civil property or in any of the duties which belong to civil relation; but in all these respects, it continues persons in the same state as it found them. The freedom which Christianity gives is freedom from the bondage of sin and Satan and from the dominion of man’s lusts and passions and inordinate desires; but as to their outward condition; whatever that was before, whether bond or free, their being baptised and becoming Christian makes no manner of change in them,⁷⁷

Of course today, no organized Church will express itself in this frank manner but essentially its attitude to property and the existing social order is the same.

In the Muslim countries, slavery did not necessarily mean the human degradation that it did in the “Christian” New World. Writes an English explorer visiting Arabia:

Arabs have little, if any sense of colour bar. Socially they treat a slave, however black, as one of themselves. In the Hijaz, I was sitting in the audience chamber of an Amir who was a relative of King Ibn Saud when an expensively 365dressed old Negro belonging to the King entered the room. After rising to greet him, the Amir seated the slave beside him and served him his food with his own hands. Arabs raise slaves to positions of great power, often trusting them more than they do their own relations.⁷⁸

The Holy Prophet told the master that his slave was his brother who must eat the same food he eats, wear the same quality of clothing that he wears and that he must not under any circumstances be beaten, or mistreated, or made to do any work beyond his strength. The Quran regards the liberation of slaves as one of the highest virtues, so much so that the freeing of a slave is the best expiation for many sins. The sacred Shariah gives the slave a definite legal status and specifically spells out his rights to humane treatment and the terms by which he can be freed. In the annals of Islamic history, we find slaves holding the highest positions of prestige and honor, including commander-in-chief of armies, slave-kings and indeed whole slave dynasties.

Muslim contributions to the development of Africa and African culture are many. Muslims refused to treat the African as an inferior but following the example of the Prophet (peace be upon him) extended to him the hand of brotherhood and equality. The poor example of a small number of Muslim slave-traders does not invalidate this. They were obviously following other than an Islamic example and were led by other than Islamic principles or motives. The overwhelming majority of Muslims refrained from such practices and in the true Islamic spirit, continued to emancipate people from slavery and to liberate colonized people 366from colonization. Africans mastered Arabic and some native African languages adopted Arabic terms and expressions, such as Hausa, Yoruba and Swahili. In providing a written language, a literate and learned administrative class and above all, a bond of union that cut across ethnic considerations, Islam was a powerful factor in nation-building in West Africa. Northern Nigeria had a well established system of government with laws and law courts and a financial administration based on Islamic law. African Muslims established international relations with the Islamic world, set up Islamic schools and colleges which gained wide fame. Youth from all over the Muslim world came to Timbuktu (Mali, West Africa) to study law and surgery at the University of Sankore; scholars came from North Africa and Europe to confer with the learned historians and writers of the black empire. Abd al Rahman al-Sa’adi, a Timbuktu intellectual who wrote a history of the Sudan in 1655, had a private library of 1,600 volumes. The University of Sankore and other intellectual centers in Timbuktu had a large and valuable collection of manuscripts in several languages. Scholars traveled to Songhay to check their Greek and Latin manuscripts. Ahmad Baba, born in Mali in 1556 composed many works on Islamic law and at least 13 of these are still in use by the ulama of West Africa. Another history of the western Sudan had been composed in Arabic by the Malian, Mahmud Kati who was born in 1468. This vigorous activity of Muslim scholarship and writing has never ceased in West Africa but has grown and spread with the passing of the years. The history of Islam in North Africa teems with examples of black rulers who achieved greatness in the opinion of contemporaries irrespective of colour or race. The history of Africa is full of examples of Sudanese jurists who attained the position of Imams, Qadis, and Muftis and whose books were known in the whole Muslim world.

Even in the issue where Islam is much maligned by Western writers—that of slavery—Islam played a positive role, 367Because the goal of Islam is the emancipation of all men from the yokes of every type of servitude to other men, the Prophet and his companions liberated slaves and the Quran commends the emancipation of slaves in six separate verses. The abuses which are characteristic of slavery did not exist even when circumstances called for Muslims to take captives of war. Whether the slaves of Muslims were white or black, the condition of servitude carried no racial stigma. Slavery was never rationalized in the Muslim world on the basis of innate biological inferiority and the laws of Islamic states made emancipation easy. Among the Muslims slavery never became a big business enterprise or the basis of the economy as in ancient Greece and Rome and the trade in slaves has always been held to be contrary to Islamic teaching. By contrast, the**official documentsand pronouncements of the Church supported the slave trade.** Jesuits, Dominicans and Franciscans were heavily involved. The Moravian missionaries held slaves without hesitation; the Baptists would not allow their earlier missionaries to deprecate ownership of slaves. Slave dealing was one of the most lucrative investments of English as well as of American Quakers. It was not until the advent of European imperialism when the African slave trade reached massive proportions, decimating whole tribes. Also, the Europeans were quick to formulate racial theories to justify the traffic, classifying Africans as “natural slaves” foredoomed to such a lowly state by their inborn backwardness.

The British abolished slavery in 1807 after it had become due to the industrial revolution, less profitable and less vital to England. Prior to 1783, however, all classes in English society presented a united front in favour of the slave trade. The monarchy, the church and public opinion in general supported it. Benjamin Disraeli, the Jewish-English Prime Minister elected in 1868, condemned the emancipation of slaves as “the greatest blunder ever committed by the English people.”

Long before the emancipation of slaves in America in 3681863, the Muslim governments of Futa Toro in Senegal West Africa abolished slavery by law in 1788 despite the fierce opposition of French slave traders. The French complained to the Imam, asking him to change his mind and do away with the law but the Imam refused and followed his refusal with a return to the slave agents of a number of presents they had given him, adding that all the riches of that company would not make him change his mind.

In fact, contrary to Christian missionary propaganda, Muslim Africans had for long participated in the suppression of the slave trade. The Sharif of Mecca had sent a letter to the king of the Fulahs for circulation through all the Mandingo tribes, strictly prohibiting the selling of slaves—and which letter was also promulgated among the Yorubas, Fulanis and other neighboring tribes. It declared the slave trade contrary to the teachings of Muhammad which pronounce “the most fearful denunciations of Allah’s wrath in the world hereafter against those who persist in the traffic with European nations.”⁷⁹

One of the darkest chapters in the history of Christianity in Europe and America is the question of race-relations. Most Christian churches—both Catholic and Protestant, are rigidly segregated, and even when non-whites and whites attend the same church, they generally go to separate religious services. The worst feature of Christian missionary activity in Asia and Africa is that even when the “coloured native”, having been educated in missionary schools, becomes thoroughly westernized and Christianized, he is never accepted by the European on equal social terms. This racism is seen at its very worst in countries like South Africa:

The Dutch Reformed Church took the initiative in 369December 1954 in calling a conference of Christian bodies to meet together to discuss the racial problems of South Africa. The hall in which the meeting took place was “zoned” so that the white and black delegates could not sit together. One African minister getting up to speak, prefaced his remarks by asking a question: “If our Lord Jesus Christ came into the room this morning, on which side would he sit?” That question not is a bad way of stating the dilemma in which Christians find themselves in South Africa. Rather an over-simplified statement of the problem, perhaps, but the basically the problem all the same. And it is certainly not too soon for Christians the world over to know what is involved in it and why it is so vitally important to have some answer to it. In the first place, South Africa claims to be a Christian state. The leaders of the three branches of the Dutch Reformed Church have spent a great deal of time on debating whether apartheid is or is not consonant with Biblical teachings and authority. The average citizen who attends church knows that somehow by rationalisation or escape he has to answer the same question posed by St. Paul in another context: “Is Christ divided?” It is my considered opinion that unless the Christian Church in South Africa really faces this issue honestly within the next generation or less, it may well lose—and deservedly, the allegiance of the African people. And it is also my opinion, and one which is not only unpopular with those outside the Anglican Church but also with those in authority within it, that the issue is not being honestly faced or properly presented to the conscience of the Christian world. The white Christian and the black profess the same allegiance to the same Lord. They recite the same creeds, receive the same sacraments and have the same worship. They no doubt use every day that prayer common to all Christians whose first words are “Our Father.” But what of their relationship to one another in the city of Johannesburg where they live out their lives? They can, it is true, pass one another in the street, and so share the 370same air, the same shadows, the same blue sky. They can also meet together—master and servant—in a thousand different contexts; in kitchen, in factory, in office and in police court. This is contact. It is not relationship. It can never be love—the thing which Christianity is about. “Who is my neighbour? He is the man who makes my tea at ten o’clock and four and who brings it to me every day of my life in the office but he cannot sit at table and drink it with me. Who is my neighbour? He is the child who comes to collect the washing on Mondays and to return it on Fridays; the child who passes a recreation ground with swings and seesaws and cool green grass but who may not enter it because it labelled “For European Children Only.” (pp. 59–61). The Episcopal synod of the Church of the Province of South Africa meeting in 1954 put forward a statement in which the bishops said, “It has been stated that because normally Europeans and Africans worship in different Church buildings is itself an acknowledgement of the principle of segregation. That is not so. Both linguistic and geographical reasons make it natural that normally Africans and European should worship in different places.” In other words, there is no colour bar in the Church. Let us look at the facts. It is true, of course, that in any of the towns or cities, the African people will live in locations apart from their European masters. But it is also true that in every large town, there are thousands of African domestic servants who live where they work—in the back-yard rooms built on to every European house. These are also Christians. But it is rare indeed for them to attend church at the same time as their employers. Special services at an early hour in the morning are sometimes provided for them. They can meet together to worship the same God, to receive the same sacraments as the master and “missus” but not in the same service! And even this custom can sometimes cause difficulty as it did when a young priest I know recently suggested to his church council that an “African” mass might be allowed at 5:30 A.M. once a month in his 371church. Half the council resigned in protest. (pp. 75–76)

The most disheartening thing about the Christian situation in this country is the absence of any deep sense of urgency. It is not that white Christians are bad; very far from it. It is simply that they fail to see the relevance of their faith to social problems. Just as in the England of Wilberforce, there were Christians who defended slavery from the highest motives, so in South Africa there is an apathy and a patience within the Church towards the evil of racialism which is harder to bear and more difficult to break than any deliberate malice and wickedness. (p. 78). The Church is conniving at a policy which openly proclaims itself one of racial domination, of white supremacy, of “basskap” because it fears that any effective or determined opposition will lose it the allegiance of its white members. “Like a mighty army moves the Church of God!” we sing with gusto and emotion. We do not believe a word of it. And because we do not believe a word of it, African Christians will find it very hard indeed to justify their allegiance. (pp. 157–158)⁸⁰

What is true in South Africa is the case (although perhaps to a less extreme degree) in regard to the churches in Europe and America. Now contrast the practice taken for granted in every mosque throughout the world:

Here on the floor of this mosque is a demonstration of the simplicity and the equality which run through the whole Islamic system inspite of any of its glaring contradictions and exceptions. Close by me is a group of fellaheen in their blue gowns and brown felt skull caps; near these, a well-to-do young man in brown silk robe with fez and white turban, probably a native teacher in one of the primary schools; here is a serving man from one of the 372neighbouring hotels in the white and scarlet waistband with his scarlet leather shoes by his side. This is no mosque, by the way, for the tourists and sightseers who leave their shoes with a guardian at the door and paddle about in slippers. We carry our shoes in with us and place them sole to sole beside us—to place mine with the soles on the carpet would have betrayed me as a non-Muslim. A young effendi comes in European dress except, of course, for the tarboosh, with his old-fashioned father in the black robe and turban. On the other side of me stands a poor labourer, fresh from the ablutions in the fountian court of the mosque, the water still dripping on the carpet from his head, hands and feet while his wet brown flesh shines in the lamplight. A rich man, whose silk robe is not kind to his portliness, enters with his servants and they make prayer side by side. Here is a poor old man to whom the attitudes and movements of the prayer have become difficult but who yet goes through his devotions with intense fervour and then sits with his hands as a cup upon his breast for a long time, muttering his private devotions, the “Amen” being to stroke the face downwards with the inside of the hands.⁸¹

Even the Western critic of Islam has to admit its success in solving the racial problem in contrast to Christianity:

The extinction of race consciousness between Muslims is the outstanding achievement of Islam and in the contemporary world, there is a crying need for the propagation of this Islamic virtue.⁸²

What kind of person is the typical Christian missionary from England or America?

There was Miss Morphew (Isobel) but we never 373dropped the “Miss” with her home in Ramleh since the turn of the century. War came in 1914 and found her on forlough until she left England for Cairo to gather enough furniture for her Ramleh home which she knew would have but little left. It was all packed into a railway van and as soon as she could, she wrote to Lord Allenby asking that the wagon should be attached to one of the nightly trains running from Kantara into Palestine. Ramleh was already one of the stations on the old Jaffa-Jerusalem line, Lydda being the junction. Miss Morphew wanted to resume the work to which she had been called. It was said that General Allenby made enquiries via his staff and was advised to accede to Miss Morphew’s request. She built another home in Ramleh, living with a Palestinian lady. They ran a school and the church was built through their endeavours. Though she never attended the Christian Mission School conference and but rarely visited Jerusalem, there was always a welcome in Ramleh alike for the unexpected and the casual. Miss Morphew gave the impression of knowing what she was going to do next. We never remember seeing her without a hat. Always an early riser, she would go round her garden soon after sunrise to gather the figs or other fruits in season. Then came work so she kept the hat on nearly all the day. The American and English army chaplains loved the little church; it was possible for the soldiers to get out from Jaffa and even the window sills were occupied. Miss Morphew had her own Evangelist for the Arabic services. She knew whom or what she wanted. She loved Ramleh and its people and they her. It was well that she was taken before the tragedy of the 1948 Palestinian War that enveloped the plain of Sharron. It was well before the last war that a whole string of cars was waylaid on the Jericho road and robbed. In the case of the men, the robbers wanted footgear—awkward for them on reaching Jerusalem. The ladies were required to open their vanity bags for inspection and extrusion. Among the latter was Winifred Coate who acted with the poise of the Headmistress she was. It so 374happened that just about the time of his incident, the Mission had published in picture from the story of the Good Samaritan and the cover picture showed the traveller who had fallen among thieves. The following week, Miss Coate was at tea at the Newman School of Missions and the opportunity was taken of presenting her with a copy of the booklet in fitting commemoration of the recent incident. She glanced at the cover and looked up with the words, “What impudence!” The incident is not mentioned for its own sake as being out of the ordinary experiences of missionary life, but as an introduction to the career of someone quite obviously destined to be a Headmistress—and was both in Cairo and Jerusalem—but never anticipated being called upon to organise one of the most remarkable voluntary agencies which have worked for the benefit and uplift of Palestine’s refugee population. The industrial centre at Zerka and the reclamation of the desert in what is now the growing village of Abdelliyeh will remain as the memorial to one missionary who transferred both talents and affection from education to the practical rehabilitation of human families. It is just this sort of enterprise which has justified the validity of Christian witness in the Islamic world. “You can tell Miss Coate,” said King Husain, “that she has the King’s support!”⁸³

Here it can be seen how inseparable is the mission of Christian workers like these from the manners and mores of the West, for Christianization and westernization virtually amount to the same thing.

Mr. H. P. Elson, who founded the Raymund Lull Home for Moslem boys in Tangier, Morocco writes: “For nine years we have been working among children in the face of great opposition. What has been accomplished has 375been through prayer. Inch by inch the ground has been taken. We began by taking one boy and now we have twenty-seven in our home. Our chief aim is to bring them to Christ.” A lad from the Riff country who was in this Home to learn the printing trade was too restless to remain for long. He joined the French army and was eventually sent to the front. Afterwards he wrote from the military hospital; “I have not forgotten what I learned. Only the Lord Jesus Christ can cleanse my heart from sin. I now believe in Him.”⁸⁴

What cheap and debased spirituality the Christian misssonaries teach can be gauged from the following incident related enthusiastically by Dr. Samuel Zwemer as proof of the educational and religious success of his work:

At the Bannu Mission in India once at a cricket match with a rival school when the issue of the game was hanging in the balance and depended on the last man who had just gone in making four runs, a Muhammadan Afghan, one of the eleven, retired to a corner of the field and repeated the Lord’s Prayer, closing with a petition for the victory of the school and returned to find the winning run just made!⁸⁵

What sort of cultural and spiritual values do the Christian missionaries preach? The answer can be found in the biography of one Muslim convert to Evangelical Christianity as enthusiastically related by Dr. Wysner, Secretary of the International Missionary Council of America and an ordained minister of the Methodist Church:

Hassan came from a fine Muslim family in the very 376fanatical city of Damascus. His father was a mujtahid so respected by all the community that when he died, the entire bazar was closed in his honour. The boy, although brought up in a strict Muslim home, during his school days became a disciple of science and an unbeliever in religion. He met a school friend named Yusuf who was a Christian. Yusuf helped Hassan through his period of doubt and Hassan in time became a Christian. As was to be expected, consternation reigned in his wealthy and influential family. Disinherited, he left the city of his birth and found work at a bank in another city. Although Hassan earns his living through his work at the bank, he finds his real life in the church. As a Muslim living in a fanatical environment, he was taught that music was sinful, yet he was a lover of good music. Since becoming a Christian, he has learned to play the violin. One of his greatest delights is being a member of the youth choir and he constantly marvels at the wounderful heritage in Christian hymnody into which he has entered. Hassan loved drawing but he had been taught that whoever draws a picture of a living thing will be asked to give it a soul on the resurrection day, so he was never encouraged to develop his talent for art. Now he is using this ability and is looked upon as an unusually fine amateur artist. One Easter morning at the church breakfast, he put at every place a water colour representing some flower, each one different. Whenever scenery is needed by the young people for a dramatic program, Hassan paints it. When Hassan learned that new leaflets were needed for evangelistic work, he wrote one entitled, “How I Found My Purpose in Life”. This is now a very popular piece of literature.⁸⁶

The Christian missionary can rightly claim to be the foremost champion of feminism in the Muslim 377world. As a result of the work of their missionaries, Muslims educated in their schools have for more than a half century, vehemently denounced the whole institution of Purdah so successfully that the Governments have made the slogan of women’s “emancipation” their own. For several decades in the upper-class Arab families, the veiling and seclusion of women in the privacy of their homes has been only a memory. Here is how the wife of one of the leading Christian missionaries in Iraq—Mrs. John Van-Ess—describes the changes, since opening a mission school for girls in 1909 in Basra, she has worked so hard to bring about. Although from a casual reading of her book it may appear that she is describing the traditional mode of life with sympathy, the enthusiasm with which she lauds the westernization of her former pupils, leaves no doubt that she does not in the slightest regret its disappearance.

When I went to see Fatima’s granddaughter soon after her marriage in 1957, I found her living in a pleasant modern house in a newly developed residential part of town. Acres of date gardens had been cut through and laid out in broad open avenues and rows of comfortable one or two storied houses had been built, each with its own plot of ground. Hollyhocks were already in bloom, a grape arbor was started and so was a rose garden. After I had congratulated Soheila, she showed me her new home. She was especially proud of her kitchen with its electric refrigerator and gleaming latest-model oil cooking range. The bathroom was also of the most modern type and there was an air-conditioner in the bedroom. Then we went back to her living room, settled ourselves on the sofa and I looked around with great interest. The room was furnished in simple, modernistic furniture with handsome 378lamps and vases, a well-filled bookcase and her wedding photograph with her husband on a small table. Across from it was her graduating picture in cap and gown with her diploma from the American Beirut College for Women in her hand. She had just married a cousin who, after graduating from the American University of Beirut, had gone to Scotland to study medicine. He was now one of the doctors on the staff of the Port Directorate of Basrah and had specialized in public health.

“What did you major in at college?” I asked Soheila.

“Euthenics!” she answered. “It’s old-fashioned to call it Home Economics. Euthenics means the science and art of controllable environment or the science and art of right living. We each had a turn living in the model home and sharing all the housework but I liked my work in the nursery school best of all. I wrote my thesis on child care in Iraq and I am so lucky I am going to have a job next year in the new government kindergarten. These days we have our jobs as well as our homes. At first it was hard on those girls to come back to Iraq from Lebanon or Egypt where social life was so much more free. Even though they were unveiled, they couldn’t go about in mixed company with their husbands and it was even harder for unmarried, girls, especially the ones with jobs: they had to be so very circumspect. It’s a lot better now. In Bagdad, even more than in Basrah, more and more women are going to the social clubs and enjoying the swimming pools and the tennis courts along with their husbands and children. They all go to musical concerts, lectures and the cinema together too.”

“What tremendous strides have been made in women’s freedom in only two years!” I exclaimed. I had retired officially from my mission school in 1955 and had spent more time in Kuwait and in Jerusalem than in Iraq since then. It was of deep interest to me on this visit to Basrah to hear of the activities of my friends’ daughters and my old pupils.

379Next day I went to spend with Hajjia. We had long arrears of personal news to catch up on. My mouth was watering for one of her delicious Arab meals and I was particularly anxious to have a good talk with the two young women in the family, her niece and the young half sister who was brought up by Hajjia after her parents had both died.

I had paid them a short preliminary call when I first came back to Basrah and I had been electrified to meet the two young ladies later in one of the large dry goods shops on a modern shopping street in a new part of town. They were unveiled and greeted me as unconcernedly as though they had been going about in that fashion all their lives.

“Hajjia, I could hardly believe my eyes!” I exclaimed to her when I saw her at her home. “How did you ever give them permission?”

Hajjia laughed ruefully. “They’ve been doing it for months. What else could I do but allow them to go about like everyone else?”

“Hajjia,” I asked her curiously, “tell me, does your belief in Fate cover this situation too? In other words, do you feel that God wills that women shall now have their personal freedom?”

“We are all in God’s hands,” she replied solemnly. “Nothing can happen to true believers unless it is ordained by Him.”

“Remember Hafsa,” she went on. “She had never been outside Basrah before when he went to join her husband in Scotland where he was studying medicine. After she got into the plane at the airport here in Basrah, she took off her abba and veil and threw them down to the people who were seeing her off and she never wore them again.”

“I met her at a party in England that autumn,” I said, “and she was just as much at ease there as any of the English girls.”

380“You’ll come to it yet, my sister!” said Alia gleefully.

“God is great!” remarked Hajjia darkly and we passed on to other subjects.⁸⁷

Although none of her former pupils about whom she writes formally converted to Christianity, Mrs. Van-Ess seems to be satisfied that her mission has found fulfillment in weaning them from Islamic to Western ways. This Christian missionary activity has borne its luxuriant fruit at such institutions as the American University of Beirut, the American College in Cairo and Robert’s College in Istanbul.

Since most of the countries with Muslim majorities have attained nominal independence, Christian missionary endeavour, with the tacit approval of anti-Islamic governments, enjoyed spectacular success undreamt of while under colonial rule. One of the countries where Christian missionaries are most active is Indonesia. The report published in Time Magazine of June 16, 1967 has this to say:

During the long, unhappy dictatorship of Sukarno, Christian missionaries in Indonesia were plagued by Communist troublemakers and Moslem terrorists and subjected to periodic harassment by a capricious government. Today this predominantly Moslem nation—in which Christians number less than 10% of the 110 million population—is the scene of such an explosive evangelical revival that the U. S. journal, Presbysterian Life, calls one of largest movements towards Christianity in modern decades. In the twenty months since the anti-communist revolution, Roman 381Catholic and Protestant Churches have won an estimated 250,000 concerts. In East and Central Java alone, 65,000 persons have been converted. In North Sumatra, 16,000 have joined Christian churches. Thirty new congregations with a membership of 5,000 have been founded in one section of West Borneo. In Djakarta 50 new Bible student groups have sprung up and so great is the demand for Bibles that a shortage has developed. The U.S. National Council of Churches has launched a drive for $300,000 to help Indonesian Protestants assimilate their new members. For the most part, missionaries are accepting the conversion as a genuine response to the message of Christ. The Reverend Addison J. Eastman, mission director of the National Council of Churches for Asia, believes that many of the converts are inspired with a personal faith and really hope that the Christian church can provide a base from which to work for humane social progress.

This situation is most appalling and intolerable. It certainly reflects grave discredit upon the Muslims that they have not been able to present the teachings of Islam in an effective manner to the local non-Muslim population, thereby permitting Christian missionaries from the West to fill this spiritual void. The politicians in power in major Muslim states also are partially responsible. Since they have adopted the creed of secularism, they are completely indifferent to what is happening. According to Islam, the Muslim ruler is responsible for the spiritual as well as material welfare of his subjects. It is his duty to see that Islam is extensively propagated. Christian missionary propaganda is backed both by governments and individuals. Equipped with huge funds, they are using every means, including persuasion, temptation and compulsion, to convert ignorant people in non-382Christian areas. Libraries, seminar halls, schools, clubs, colleges, orphanages, hospitals and social welfare centres are extensively utilized by them to serve as missionary platforms. In poverty-stricken areas they supply living quarters, agricultural land and foreign scholarships to attract converts in large numbers. In Asian and African countries the people, who are the victims of poverty and all kinds of social injustice, are attracted by these missionary tactics and village after village turns hostile to Islam within a few years. This campaign for conversion also yields political gains and in some of the Islamic states, these missionaries have grown in power to such an extent that they even over-rule the authority of the state. This is an extremely grave and shocking situation and those in power in Muslim-majority states must reverse their attitudes both for the sake of Allah and their own welfare. The situation in some of the Muslim countries, particularly Africa and Indonesia, is extremely grave. Only a short time ago, Muslims constituted an overwhelming majority in most of the African countries but today the non-Muslims are almost equal to the Muslims and if present trends continue, the proportion may even be reversed! In the January 1970 issue of The International Review of Missions, D. B. Barrett, joyfully predicts that by A.D. 2,000, there will be 350 million Christians in Africa.

The Christian church in Kenya is perhaps the best organized Christian missionary movement on the continent of Africa. The unity of the Church is so strong here that one can see widely divergent Christian groups such as the Catholics and Protestant churches make a common 383cause, by particulating in the same organization; the National Christian Council of Kenya. This organization has the unstinted support of the government and the local press and has emerged today as the greatest challenge to Islamic organizations in that country. The success of the N.C.C.K. lies in the fact that it has departed from the traditional strategy of Christian missionary work on this continent. While during the colonial days the Church was identified with the white rulers and had a policy of the dog’s collar and the Bible, it has today emerged with radical policies which enable it to identify itself with the national needs of a developing country. Some of the various projects in which the N.C.C.K. is engaged are: refugee service, religious syllabuses and other educational matters, communication, relief, medical services, vocational training, leadership training at the national level, agricultural and self-help projects all over the land. The Church, having won the support of the Government authorities, through its involvement in nation-building, the propagation of the Bible is de facto an assured success. The philosophy of the role of the Church in the national development of the emergent African nations can be summed up by the following extract from the SODEPAX (The Committee on Society, Development and Peace of the World Council of Churches and the Pontifical Commission of Justice and Peace) report of the Limuru conference held in Kenya in February 1971 on the present role of the Church. “The call to the Churches in Africa as elsewhere is to proclaim the redeeming love of Christ. That proclamation is made in preaching the sacrificial life of the Church and in the caring service of the helpless and hopeless whether rich or poor. The redeeming love of God which sets us free is a challenge to share our freedom by liberating those who are oppressed by injustice, by despair, ignorance and resignation. This liberation from oppression is the process of encouraging men as individuals and as members of a 384community to realize their fullest potential as the created sons of God. It is this that we mean by development. Thus understood, we believe there is no contradiction between the biblical call to the Churches to preach the Gospel and the modern emphasis on the Churches’ role in development. Throughout the region, the great mass of the people living in the villages will continue to be the victims of drought or flood, disease and isolation. The desire to see an end to the suffering implied in these facts is the desire for development. The desire to see them change according to the demands of the humanity of man is the desire for a strategy of development that does justice to the activity of God in our society.”

It should be remembered that Christian missionary organizations in Kenya as elsewhere in Africa do not only operate with lavish financial resources but are also supported by well-trained man-power. Its new character is so broad-based that social workers, engineers, teachers, architects, doctors and experts of various disciplines have joined hands to intensify the silent Christain campaign against Islam. The Peace Corps from America and the Voluntary Service Overeas (V. S.) from Britain every year send large numbers of University graduates who engage in useful projects in return for only a modest subsistance fee as their renumeration. Supported by inexhaustible financial aid from the Church of Rome as well as the Church of England, the N.C.C.K. is in the forefront of development. To the African for whom Christianity was formerly an alien culture identified with white supremacist and racist rule, the modern development work of the Church has today made Christianity appear synonymous with social progress and material well-being.⁸⁸

385The three most effective methods of the Christian missionaries here in Pakistan are: (1) hospitals; (2) bookshops; (3) schools. Christian hospitals offer free treatment or charge only nominal fees but along with the treatment, the patient is heavily indoctrinated and the credulousness of the ignorant and illiterate are exploited to such an extent that Christian doctors do not hesitate to adopt such gimmics as the giving to the patient plain, coloured water and asking him to drink the “medicine” with the name of Holy Prophet Muhammad on his lips. When this quite naturally fails to effect any improvement, the patient is then told to drink the genuine medicine in the name of Jesus Christ and thus cured, he learns to lose faith in Islam.

Here are some other novel methods which Christian missionaries adopt to gain the confidence of the simple-minded:

Harris spent over a year studying Chinese but as he travelled, he realized that it was equally important for him to be able to use the Quran and the Arabic version of the Bible. He painted verses from the Arabic Bible on a six-foot long banner and went out to preach in the Muslim quarter of Lanchow. The Muslims were attracted by the novelty of a Chinese evangelist and an American missionary preaching from texts written in Chinese and Arabic. They would seldom refuse and never destroy a Chinese Christian tract if the cover was printed in attractive Arabic script. In order to achieve greater effectiveness, Harris learned the art of Arabic calligraphy. He produced a special calendar with Chinese, Muslim and Christian dates with quotes from the Scripture. The posters were modified to exclude the sign of the cross lest it shied away the Muslims. But as all that would not take things beyond the street corners, 386a novel way to the doors of the Muslim homes had to be found. Since the Muslims could not resist the appeal of little children and loved to touch their skin and stroke their fine hair, smiling in friendly amusement, the white children of the missionaries came in handy as a decoy for reaching the women and girls in the semi-seclusion behind barred courtyard doors. The best way to gain entrance was first to take the children to the mountain stream that runs through most villages, ostensibly for a picnic. This invariably drew a crowd. The women were curious to see them and as the day wore on, Winifred (his wife) found the doors of the homes open for her. Meanwhile George made friends with men on the streets by writing their names on the cover of the evangelical tracts in Arabic. Another project that gave him contact with educated Chinese Muslims was ordering Arabic dictionaries for them by mail from Beirut.⁸⁹

The political consequences of Christian missionary activity are seen at their worst in Nigeria. Under the enlightened and capable leadership of men like Premier Ahmadu Bello and Abu Bakr Tawafa Belawa, hundreds of mosques were being constructed in every corner of the land and converts by the thousands won over to Islam from Christianity and paganism. This was not to be endured by the Christian West or the Zionists who joined hands to make sure that the country would be rid of them. Consequently, in January 1966, both were murdered in the most brutal manner and Nigeria was engulfed in the chaos of endless civil war for many years afterwards.

Two years earlier in 1964, the legitimate Arab ruler of Zanzibar, Sultan Jamshid, was overthrown by 387another coup d’etat led by an African Christian and Marxist militarist clique. During those terrible days, countless Muslims were massacred and most of the remaining Arabs compelled to flee the island for their lives. Thus Zanzibar, for centuries a staunch outpost of Islamic civilization, is now finished as a Muslim country.

Is Pakistan next?

In 1958 the Christians claimed to total nearly three hundred thousand in Pakistan and to have achieved here their greatest success in the conversion of Muslims. In 1951 the Christians recorded an overall increase of 30% over the 1941 figures: about 45% in East Bengal and about 15% in West Pakistan—much more than the increase recorded for the decade 1931–1941. In the Lahore district, the increase recorded between 1941–1951 is over 50%. For Karachi it was about 100% increase during the period. The increase has, however, been phenomenal for the period 1951–1958. The figures are available only in respect of the increase by conversion to the Roman Catholic sect and their population has recorded more than 300% increase over the 1941 figures.

At the time of Partition, while the Muslims were busy with their refugee problems and other troubles, the Christian missionaries in the Indo-Pak sub-continent saw through this position and sent out word for large-scale action. Christian missionary journals, published in countries like U.S.A., U.K. and Canada, claimed that there was a great scope for the spread of Christianity in India and Pakistan. It was specifically stated in the January 1958 issue of the well-known Christian missionary journal, The Muslim World, published from Hartford (U.S.A.) that “one fact stands out clearly and that is this; In the year 1947 the equanimity of the Muslim community had been shaken as never before. Missionaries are finding individual Muslims more receptive to Christian friendship. They have been disillu388sioned and thrown into confusion and are ready to acknowledge their needs. Never has there been greater opportunity for Christian assistance, sympathy and guidance. The Christian Committee for Relief to West Pakistan has been established in Lahore. The Government of Pakistan in providing relief, is making every effort to assist the Church World Service. Our representatives in Pakistan write of the many courtesies and instances of cooperation on the part of Government authorities.” In this background, therefore, enormous expansion of missionary activities took place until now there are about 40 missionary organizations in both wings of Pakistan which hail from the U.S.A., U, K., France, Italy, Sweden and other European countries, with innumerable educational and other proselytising agencies spread throughout the length and breadth of the country.⁹⁰

Here in Lahore, the most important Christian missionary institutions are: The United Christian Hospital, The Convent of Jesus and Mary for English-medium education for children, the Forman Christian College for men and the Kinnaird College for women. Christian missionary schools and college set the criteria for the entire educational system in Pakistan, as the Urdu medium Government schools try their best in their curricula and educational philosophy to imitate them. Consequently, English is emphasized from the first class until graduation and the facilities for teaching Arabic and Persian are most poor and meagre. Children are taught English history from the earliest grades and therefore are totally alienated from their indigenous heritage. They learn very little of Islamic history or about the historical background of Islam in their own land. Everything 389is done to make English subjects at school as alluring as possible while the one course of “Islamiyat” is taught in such a repugnant matter, so unrelated and irrelevant to the rest of the curriculum, that the children naturally hate it. Islamic and Arabic studies in the colleges and universities are are intentionally made as unattractive to the students as possible. In courses on Arabic literature, the most vulgar and obscene examples are deliberately chosen while the students are stranded in the dark concerning the literary gems so that they will nurse a lifelong prejudice against Arabic. In Pakistani colleges, Islamic studies are taught from the point of view of Orientalism. Consequently, in order to learn about Islam, students are compelled to depend upon Western authorities. English readers, published in London and used by convent schools, are saturated with Greek and Roman pagan myths and tales from medieval England in archaic English which are utterly meaningless to the child living in a Pakistani environment. In these fashionable places, the children are made to dress in Western clothing. Boys are compelled by school regulations to wear neckties even during the hottest season. English food is served and pupils must eat in the English manner with knife and fork. By the time these convent pupils are ready to graduate, they are indistinguishable from Englishmen in their tastes, mode of life and mentality. From their ranks, come our rulers and leaders in all fields of national endeavour. The consequences of this disastrous policy require no further comment.

What should be done to counteract these nefarious 390activities? Naturally, far more stringent restrictions must be placed upon attempts to evangelise and de-Islamize the Muslims and, ultimately, foreign Christian missions should be banned altogether for their subversive activities. It must, however, be remembered that we cannot depend upon purely negative and repressive measures alone. They will prove entirely ineffective unless simultaneously the Muslims arise to their duty of Tabligh. At first this Tabligh must be on an individual basis before any organization can be undertaken. Individuals must take upon themselves the responsibility of propagating Islam and not depend upon the Government to do everything. The greatest weakness of Tabligh in the modern world is that there does not exist anywhere today, a sizeable vigorous and dynamic community which is actually translating the ideals of Islam into practice. All our preaching about Islam will have little effect upon non-Muslims so long as we cannot show them any actual and living example. A genuine Islamic state, or even a sizeable Muslim community practicing Islam in its entirety, would be our best advertisement worth infinitely more than a hundred thousand preachers or books. Once a genuine Islamic society emerges in the teeth of opposition against it, we need not send out so many preachers or books. An authentic Islamic community—vigorous, dynamic and expanding—would publicize to the world what Islam means and its contrast to the rotteness of Western hedonism would be plain for all to see. In droves non-Muslims would flock to embrace Islam just as they did to the Holy Prophet in Medina during the Year of Deputations.

391We must realize that the Christian missionary institutions enjoy such immense success primarily because they fill unmet needs. In other words, missionary schools, hospitals, orphanages and other philanthropic and social welfare work flourish because they do not encounter any rivals. We cannot possibly close them down or transfer their management into Muslim hands until we first establish an Islamic alternative for all these facilities which must be superior to anything they can provide.

In Pakistan there are a significant number of pagan tribesmen in Kaffiristan in the west and in the Chittagong hills in Bengal. What sort of Tabligh are we providing for them? To our shame and disgrace, we must admit that none of the Pakistani Muslims are doing anything to propagate Islam among these primitive people in their own land! Consequently, the Christian missionaries multiply there without any rivals to resist them. If we fail to act now, I predict that in less than a decade, most of these tribes will be Christian.

As Judaism is not a missionary faith and therefore does not present any ideological menace, it is sufficient to defeat the Jews in a Jihad on the battlefield in Palestine but the measures essential to combat Christian missionary activities in Muslim lands are far more complex. Here we need the pen much more than the sword. Some of our ulema must acquire profound and detailed learning about Christianity and its precise relationship to the history of Western culture in Europe and America.

392What are the weaknesses of Christianity with will invevitably prove fatal for its missionary activities once effective Tabligh is organized?

A major weakness of Christianity lies in the lack of brotherhood and fraternity among Christian nations. Since the Bible taught the Christians the Christianity was meant for the Bani Israil, Christian imbibed racial pride, The result was that even in its heyday, Christianity could not forge a central political authority embodying Christian unity. On the contrary, Christianity has been responsible for encouraging racial and geographical nationalisms. Christians have assimilated the notion of racial superiority to such an extent that wherever the colonised people embraced Christiainity, they were promised entrance into the Kingdom of God but were refused admittance into the kingdom of this world. They were never accorded a place of equality in the society of white Christians.

The existence of separate spheres of the church and the state undoubtedly facilitated the consolidation of nation states in Europe during the Renaissance period. In turn, this development also helped them to implement their plans of world domination. At the same time, it is this phenomenon—the separation—of church and state—which afflicted the Christian body politic with evils whose effects are becoming evident at the present time. True, the secuarist attitude of reformed Protestantism was a reaction against the tyranny and exploitation of the Catholic Church. Nevertheless, it gave birth to a number of evils and eventually released catastropic forces like Nazism, Fascism and Communism.

Another weakness of Christianity lies in the complexity which characterizes its creed including the fundamental article of Christian faith—the Trinity. One God in Three and Three in One is a concept which, to say the least, cannot be comprehended by ordinary minds. This sort of confounding complexity is characteristic of the entire body of 393metaphysical doctrines propounded by Christians. It is the complexity of the Christian creed which compelled the Protestant reformers to revolt agaist this jigsaw puzzle of dogmas and philosophical doctrines. Moreover, the same fact encouraged and lent weight to the view that Christianity should be divested of its domineering position in the realms of social and political life. This gave birth to a religion (or a set of religions?) all based on false and erronous notions. The so called reformed Christianity totally destroyed religious faith and devotion. In their present form, the Christian churches fail to be understood, much less to carry conviction with men of average intellect. Enthusiastic exponents of Christianity proudly claim that Christian doctrine can only have an appeal for the civilized mind and it is for this reason that, in contrast with Islam, Christianity is receiving no response from the uncivilized Africans. Such a claim implies that the complicated dogmas of Christianity are not in harmony with the natural temperament of man and that Christianity is rather an unsuccessful attempt to make a religion out of philosophy.

The most serious shortcoming of Christianity, however, lies in the fact that it has no vigorous and comprehensive social philosophy. Primitive Christianity, however, attached no value to the preservation of the state, law, organization, or production. It simply does not reflect on the conditions of human society. Hence it must either aim at being without a state or it can decide to possess a state alongside of its religious creed as a political creed as well. Such a thing should appear inconceivable in respect to Christianity as a revealed religion but what actually happened was that due to the impact of close contact with neighbouring civilizations during the first two centuries of Christian history, particularly with the Hellenistic civilization, the idea of “The Kingdom of Heaven” in its narrower connotation was stressed while the earth was left to the tender mercies of the Ceasars. This duality ultimately led to the emergence 394of Protestantism which dealt a crushing blow to the power of the Christian Church.

Communist nihilism is a natural reaction against the unsatisfying Weltenschauung (world out-look) of Christianity. Christianity has failed to resist Communism. About one third of the Christian population of the world (about 260 million) has already fallen under Communist rule. Out of the other two thirds, a considerable section of it is under Communist influence. Such a tremendous loss within less than half a century constitutes a danger of the highest magnitude. The attempt to keep religion confined to the private sector of human life is doomed to fail because life refuses to keep itself confined within any such artificial boundaries. Unfortunately, Christianity is adamant on the issue and stubbornly insists that politics be treated as a forbidden tree. Christianity as a political force is facing a bleak future.

Although Christians are the largest single religious community in the world, it has now become quite obvious that Christianity has failed in its missionary endeavours. Hence the Christian population is concentrated in Europe and the New World (i.e. North and South America, Australia and New Zealand). Outside these areas, the number of Christians is negligible. This is astonishing in view of the very earnest and powerful drive of Christians under the shadow of their dominance in large parts of the world, to win converts to their faith. In the New World, Christianity was confronted by none of the great and civilized religions of the world. The native population consisted of wild tribes who were pagans. Hence it is not in the least surprising that by dint of a superior culture and greater political power, Christianity vanquished native paganism. Even this it could not do without physically exterminating most of the red Indians. It is noteworthy that wherever in Europe and in the New World Christianity came across paganism, it did succeed to a great extent in its missionary endeavours. But in the East where it encountered organized 395religions like Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism and Shintoism, its missionary endeavours proved of no avail despite the absolute political dominance of Christian nations over Eastern lands.⁹¹

Here is a confession of the failure of Christianity by a poor and uneducated, but intelligent youth who lives in Mexico City:

I always had an enormous curiousity about the Bible but had been afraid to read it for fear of being excommunicated from the Church. When I was about fourteen, I read the Old Testament because of my passion for history. I don’t know how I got hold of it because my father would never permit it in the house. A friend of mine had told me that it was all right to read the Old Testament but that I shouldn’t under any circumstances, read the New Testament. One afternoon in Mexicali, I had nothing to read so I began to leaf through the Bible. As I read it I was overcome with fear, not because it was different from what I had been taught but because I realized that by reading the scriptures and the Commandments and learning the laws myself, I would be like a graduate lawyer who knew the punishment for every offence. I wouldn’t need to place my faith in lawyers and secretaries when I myself could speak directly to the President! The saints were only idols of stone or plaster made by the hands of men so why should I pray to them? I realized that because of the saints, we had as many gods as the Aztec Indians; the only difference was that we modernized the images. I began analyzing things. Jesus said, “Like this fig tree, by their fruits you shall know them.” In the Mexican jails, out of one hundred prisoners, ninety-nine are Catholics. And if my friends, who are thieves, can light a candle to a little saint before going out to rob; if prostitutes keep a saint in 396their rooms and burn sanctified candles and pray for more clients; if there are such perversions within Catholicism, can that be the true religion? And the priests! I was disillusioned about them too, because they do not obey God’s law. I knew a priest who drank whiskey and played poker right inside the church. And by coincidence, priests always seemed to have a sister and couple of nephews living in their house. After reading about the humble life of Jesus, I asked; Does the Pope sleep on the floor? Does he live the life of the Nazarene, begging alms, deprived of food, suffering rain and cold to go out and preach love for God and for one’s neighbours? No, the Pope lives in portentious opulance and is fantastically wealthy because the churches all over the world send him the money they collect. Just the money collected on one Sunday at the Basilica of Guadalupe here would support me and my family all our lives! In what kind of poverty does the Pope live? And where is his charity if there is so much misery in Rome itself?⁹²

In December 1967, Maulana Abul Ala Maudoodi received from Pope Paul VI, a special plea to observe January 1, 1968 as a “Day of Peace.” He wrote:

We address ourselves to all men of good will to exhort them to celebrate “The Day of Peace” throughout the world, on the first day of the year January 1, 1968. We think that this proposal interprets the aspirations of people, of their governments, of international organizations which strive to preserve peace in the world, of those religious institutions so interested in the promotion of peace, of cultural, political, and social movements which makes Peace their ideal: or youth whose perspicacity regarding the new paths of civilization, dutifully oriented towards its peaceful developments is more lively; of wise men who see how much 397today, peace is both necessary and threatened. The proposal to dedicate to peace the first day of the new year is not intended therefore as exclusively Roman Catholic. It would hope to have the adherence of all the true friends of peace as if it were their own initiative to be expressed in a free manner, congenial to the particular character of those who are aware of how beautiful and how important is the harmony of all voices in the world for the examination of his primary good, which is peace, in the varied concert of modern humanity. The Catholic Church will call the attention of its children to the duty of observing “The Day of Peace” with the religious and moral expressions of the Christian faith but it considers it its duty to remind all those who agree on the opportuneness of such a “Day”, some points which ought to characterize it. First among these is: the necessity of defending peace in the face of dangers which always threaten it: the danger of the survival of selfishness in the relations among nations; the danger of violence into which some populations can allow themselves to be drawn by desperation at not having their rights to life and human dignity recognized and respected; the danger today tremendously increased or recourse to frightful weapons of extermination which some nations possess, spending enormous financial means, the expenditure of which is reason for painful reflection in the presence of the grave needs which hinder the development of so many other people; the danger of believing that international controversies cannot be resolved by the ways of reason, that is, by negotiations founded on law, justice, and equity but only by means of deterrent and murderous force. The subjective foundation of peace is a new spirit which must animate co-existence between peoples, a new outlook on man, his duties and his destiny. Much progress must still be made to render this outlook universal and effective; a new training must educate the new generations to reciprocal respect between nations, to brotherhood between peoples, to collaboration between races with a view also to their progress 398and development. The international organizations which have been set set up for this purpose must be supported by all, become better known and be provided with the authority and means fit for their great mission. A warning must be kept in mind. Peace cannot be based on a false rhetoric of words which are welcomed because they answer to the deep, genine aspirations of humanity but which can also serve and unfortunately have sometimes served to hide the lack of true spirit and of real intentions for peace, if not indeed to mask sentiments and actions of oppression and party interests. Peace is not pacificism; it does not mask a base and slothful concept of life, but it proclaims the highest and most universal values of life: truth, justice, freedom, love.⁹³

Beautiful words indeed! But I would answer the message of the pope with this blunt reply: “I take no heed to what you say! I pay attention only to what you do!”

When Jesus Christ returns to earth, where will he go—to the church or to the mosque? We are quite confident that he would scorn the church as having nothing whatever to do with him; he would surely smash the images of the Crucifixion as a malicious lie and destroy all the paintings and statutes representing him, his mother and the saints as idolatry. I am certain that when Jesus Christ returns to earth, he will go straight to the Bait ul Muqaddas in Jerusalem and lead the Juma Salat as our Imam! He will surely find those most receptive to his teachings among the Arab refugees from the small farming 399villages in Palestine. He would sleep on the ground with them, share their meagre, miserable meals and find them the first to follow him! Who but among these simple Arab-Muslim fellaheen from Palestine and adjacent lands would Jesus find his most enthusiastic supporters? Nowhere could he feel more out of place than in the Vatican! He would be the last man ever to seek an audience with the Pope! And to the sleek, sophisticated, complacent, smug and arrogant church and synagogue-goers in Europe and America, he would tell them as he did the stiff-necked Pharisees two thousand years before:

Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets and stonest them who are sent unto thee, how often I would have gathered thy children under her wing and ye would not! I send unto you prophets and wise men and scribes and some of them ye kill and crucify and some of them ye scourge in your synagogues and drive them from city to city. Even as ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity. Behold, your house is left unto you desolate. For nation shall rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom and there shall be famines and pestilences and earthquakes in diverse places. And many false prophets shall rise and deceive you and because iniquity will abound, the love of man shall wax cold. Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of Hell?⁹⁴