CHAPTER IV.

THE INFLUENCES OF ISLAM IN THE YEMEN.

Before entering upon any account of the various religious influences that have since the time of Mahammed disturbed the Yemen, it may be as well to put aside a few pages for some general remarks upon the religion of Islam, the tenets of which are well known enough to those who have made any study of the subject, but are to the general world almost a closed book. It is this disregard of religions other than our own which so weakens the constant cry of their inferiority. Rather it should be the desire of such as wish to uphold Christianity to carefully study and compare its doctrines with those of the beliefs they are so ready to cry down. The world has arrived at a stage when people are not satisfied with a mere assertion, but demand to hear both sides of the question and to reason for themselves; and to those who have taken up or made even a small study of Islam it is a pain, or perhaps at times an amusement, to listen to the rabid cries as to its inferiority, issuing from the throats of men who base their action upon a few what they call “practical results.” It is not the author’s purpose here to enter into a long discussion upon the subject, or to point out at any length the many fallacies which are believed to be doctrines of Islam by a large proportion of the British public.

But of all the arguments used to show the inferiority of the Mahammedan religion, there is none so loved and so often brought into use as the present condition of countries practising its belief. How little real value this argument possesses it will not take long to prove; and it may be generally stated that the backward condition of Mahammedan states is not owing to their form of religion to nearly so great an extent as it is owing to the nature of the people who profess it; in other words, the low standpoint of most Islamic countries can be traced to the origin of its inhabitants rather than to their beliefs. Strong as is this statement, there is at least one very good example to prove its truth—namely, that under similar circumstances of breed and climate we find Christian nations sunk deeper in degradation and vice than their Moslem neighbours. Take, for example, Abyssinia, into which Christianity was introduced between the years 300 and 320 A.D. Why then, since from that period they have been pursuing the Christian belief, do we not find them to-day in a state infinitely superior to the surrounding Moslem countries—in fact, living in a state of civilisation equalling that of the European nations, or even of the Yemenite Arabs or the Turks? Why do we find Abyssinia to-day a country given over to drink and debauchery, when they are regular attendants at church? Why do we find them living in the circular thatch-huts and wearing the same apparel that they did probably when Christianity first made its appearance amongst them? Because, I say, their nature is such that it is untouchable by any religion, no matter how lofty be its aims and aspirations. “Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots?” Certainly not, no matter how much he may be painted over with gaudy colours. Again, why in Egypt do we not find the Kopts in a far higher state of civilisation and intellectual superiority than their neighbours? It may be argued that their Christianity is not an example of true Christianity, just as it may be argued that the Islam of to-day is not the true Islam. Yet it strikes one that Islam is very much nearer its original ideal than we are to ours, who have turned our religion round and round and inside out to make it fit the requirements of modern progress and personal comforts. Before, Christian reader, you turn to smite your neighbour the Moslem, look round you. Before you begin to pull the mote out of his eye, pay a little attention to the beam that is in your own. Look at the great armies of Europe ready to tear one another to pieces! Look at the streets of the great cities flocked with prostitutes! Look at the swarming drunken population of our towns! Look at the financial robberies and the uncharitableness of our own lands,—and when you have mended that, then you may turn to show your brotherly love, which is so engrafted in the Christian’s heart, and rend your neighbour.

Justice, I say! If it be one’s desire to take up the cudgels against what millions hold most dear, then let it not be done until the cudgels can be taken up and victory assured by making a careful study of what one is going to fight against. Religious tolerance is one of the boasts of Englishmen; let it be their care that the boast is not a vain one.

Again, it is often said that by its so carefully laying down the laws, Islam has prevented any material change from taking place in the condition of those that profess it. How about Judaism? The laws are as equally, if not more specifically, laid down in their books than even they are in the Koran, and yet we find to-day the Jews in all material matters almost the leaders of the world.

There can be no doubt that Christianity is a far finer religion than Islam. Christianity is beautiful in its simplicity—beautiful in that it touches so little upon affairs of worldly importance; but it is doubtless a religion founded for Western and Northern people. There is no doubt that, coming from Palestine, it chose its natural course when it proceeded to Europe. Why was it not embraced by the Arabs and peoples of the south, who at that time, with the exception of such as were Jews, were professing the foul rites of idolatry? The southerner, wild turbulent son of the desert, is unsuited to Christianity; he must have some belief that touches him deeper, that inspires his ardour by teaching something he can understand,—some religion that regulates his course of life, as well as offers him hereafter a future existence. Mentally and bodily, he is different to us northern people. His mind runs in an entirely different channel. He exists, he thinks, in a different sphere, and it was this sphere that Islam touched.

He was tempted by earthly spoil, by the love of persecution, and promised licentiousness hereafter, it is often said. Perhaps; but has not the same over and over again tempted Christian Powers?—has not love of persecution found sufficient examples in the history of Christianity to deter us from looking for it abroad? Is not our heaven, painted by St John in the Revelation, tended to increase our desire to share in it by picturing its beauties? The Revelation, it may be answered, is an allegory; yet he who argues thus would have been burned at the stake for his pernicious views not many centuries ago. To those who are capable, though generally unwilling, to understand Christianity, it is a religion at once perfect and superlative. It is an ideal seldom if ever reached. It is a goal to be striven after, with but little hopes of doing more than one’s feeble best to reach; and more, far more than all, it is the truth. But so is Islam to the Mahammedan. It is a goal which many reach, because its ideals are tangible and comprehensible. It is a religion founded by a man of vast intellect to enforce a belief in the existence of one God, which the intricacies of Christianity had failed to prove to the Arab races. To them, materialists to the very backbone, the Trinity is impossible. To us it is incomprehensible, but acknowledged. Christ was the Son of God! This alone is sufficient to drive to a distance the Arab, who acknowledges the Messiah’s origin as divine and supernatural, but to whom the idea of filial relationship with the Deity is revolting and incredible.

An example of the power that Islam asserted over the minds of the inhabitants of the Yemen is near at hand. There were many Christians in that country at the moment when they received the tidings of the Prophet’s mission. Nejrán, a large province, was governed by a Christian family, and boasted a bishop, by name Kos, who died during the earlier half of the seventh century A.D., probably during the lifetime of Mahammed; yet but a comparatively few years later we find all traces of Christianity disappeared. Not so in Abyssinia, where it exists to-day amongst a people given up to one vice at least, drunkenness, from which were they Moslems they would be free. Were Europe a Mahammedan Power, there is no reason to doubt that we should not be in the same state of civilisation as we enjoy to-day. The Turks are an oriental race, and cannot be taken as a fair example; yet they have so far followed upon the lines of Christian Powers that we find them to-day squeezing their people to obtain the means wherewithal to purchase the destructive implements of war, and existing in a very tolerable state of civilisation and drunkenness.

No! the Ethiopian cannot change his skin; and just as Christianity is the religion best suited, apart from its inestimable truth, to Northern people, so is Islam to the Arabs and the children of the south. Each has sorted itself and taken root where best it will flourish. Any attempt to influence one by the introduction of the other must, by the laws of nature which have thus sorted them, be prejudicial to the world at large.

A few words as to the general tenets of the Mahammedan religion.

It must not be forgotten that it was in A.H. 12, a year after the Prophet’s death, that the Koran was collected by Zaid, and that therefore there can be little doubt that in its arrangement and sequence it is far from the order in which the words were uttered. The fragments of which it is composed were collected from every source, but although it may be said in its present form to follow no particular chronological order, at the same time there can be little doubt that, apart from this weakness, it contains the words of the Prophet himself. However, in the building up of a new religion, it was impossible to ordain for every class of society likely to embrace it; and on this account the Moslems, especially the Sunnis, hold that, after the sacred book, the “traditions” are next in sanctity. These “traditions” are the teaching, verbal or in example, of the Prophet himself, not absolutely inculcated in the Koran, but handed down upon the authority of “his companions.” On these traditions many schools of theology and law have been built up, referring to them in cases in which the Koran does not sufficiently render clear, or perhaps omits altogether some point. Needless to say these “traditions,” being almost innumerable and often disputed, have caused more dissension amongst the world of Islam than any passages in the Koran itself.

The central idea of Islam is the unity of God, and the association of any other with the Deity is the one mortal sin.[26] There is no priesthood; the religion is a religion of the people, explained to them by doctors, such as the Sheikh el-Islam, the Moulas, and the Cadis, whose authority is acknowledged, but solely as exponents of religion and law, which it is in no one’s power to revise or alter. Idolatry is to be rooted out and trampled under foot. “There is no God but God, and Mahammed is the prophet of God.” Soundless, rhythmless, as are the words to us, their very repetition stirs the Moslem heart; their very mention is sufficient for an infidel to become a Moslem. They are the only bond that binds Sunnis and Sheiyas together, the common birthright of all Islam.

[Illustration: _A Yemeni._]

The principal and best known of the Mahammedan tenets, as well as being those on which the religion is most founded, are the immortality of the soul; the resurrection of the body; the judgment of good and evil; heaven and hell; predestination, about which, however, contradictory remarks are found in the Koran; the ministry of good angels, and the evil influence of the bad. To none of these precepts can exception be found, for, after all, they resemble to a great extent our own. But at this point the Koran steps ahead of us by the prohibition of wine, games of chance, usurious dealings, the flesh of swine, or of things strangled or which have died a natural death, all of which are strictly forbidden. How beneficial this has proved and is proving to the Mahammedan races is very clear; and it may be said that it is only when Moslems have come into contact with Jews or Christians that they have broken through these ordinances.

As to other restrictions laid by Mahammed upon his followers, and other privileges allowed to them, a few words must be said. Polygamy is legal, and it is this more than anything, perhaps, that raises indignation amongst Christians. Every Moslem is allowed four wives and as many slaves as he likes. Shocking! yet do we not decorate our church windows with pictures of David and Solomon? do we not read their words in our places of worship? and I doubt if either would have been satisfied with this small allowance. Were not the patriarchs, who after Christ we are taught most to reverence, polygamists? They at least, like the Arabs, have an excuse, which Solomon and David certainly had not—namely, the constant wars in which they were engaged killed off so large a population of the men that the women were greatly in excess. Yet to-day in many Moslem countries it is unusual to find amongst the respectable classes more than one wife. We are by law restricted to one, they are by law and by religion allowed four. After all, they have just as much right to swear that their custom is the best one as we have to put forward our own.

That divorce is lax amongst the Arab races is true; so are the morals of both men and women. But let us look again at the Kopts in Egypt, or the Christian race of Abyssinians,—are they any better? Certainly not. Again, in Moslem countries, these laws of divorce are appealed to more by the poorest classes than by the rich. In England the fact that a wretched couple of paupers do not agree has no remedy, until one day the husband jumps on his wife and kills her. In Moslem countries he divorces her, and probably both are married again in the course of a month.

The fact of the case is simply this. To attempt to judge Islam from a Christian standpoint is as ridiculous as to attempt to judge Christianity from a Moslem one. We shudder at the civil codes and conditions of the Mahammedans; they are horrified at our Trinity, at the decoration of our churches, at lax laws as to purification, at our drunken habits, at the Pope, at our paid clergy, and at a hundred other details. To criticise Islam one must have seen it in its own lands, and that with unprejudiced eyes.

There is but one more question that must be touched upon here—namely, slavery. Never have there been more exaggerated reports as to slavery in oriental countries than are from time to time cropping up to-day. It must be understood what slavery really is in the East; it must be remembered that it is not agricultural slavery—that it is entirely domestic slavery. Stories are from time to time appearing of atrocious cruelties to slaves: they are true, no doubt, but they are exceptional—just as, happily, the cruel treatment of children is exceptional in England. It is not after the slaves have passed through the market that they suffer, it is on the long desert-marches in which they are brought from the interior. Another point is scarcely understood in England—namely, that probably ninety-nine hundredths of the slaves in servitude in oriental countries have been born in servitude, and never were brought from the Soudan at all. In this case they have been often reared in the houses of their masters, and as often as not treated as his children.

That slavery is contrary to law and nature all will acknowledge; that it ought and must be put down is equally true; but as to the means of doing it? The slave-trade must be stopped from the interior of Africa, not by the freeing of the slaves already arrived at their journey’s end. For instance, the emancipation of slaves in Morocco would mean thousands of men thrown out of doors to gain a livelihood by murder and robbery, or starve; and thousands of women driven to be prostitutes. And this is what we are attempting to do in the name of progress and religion!

[Illustration: _Jew of the Yemen._]

How vastly Islam was in advance of the pagan religions, which for the most part it replaced in Arabia, need not be mentioned here. From practising horrible rites of “fetich,” from the offering even of human sacrifices, from dissensions and religious tribal wars, the mission of Mahammed called the Arabs to something far higher—far above anything they had known before. Christianity had failed, in spite of repeated efforts, to attract them to anything more than the smallest extent; Judaism was out of date, and unsuited to the epoch they had reached. They were ready, were yearning, for a new religion, and Mahammed took the opportunity to found one. In place of hideous pagan rites, in place of a few converts to an unappreciated Christianity, in place of Judaic laws of which the people were weary, he brought amongst them a new inspiriting religion, lofty in its recognition of monotheism, higher than anything they had as yet known in its moral code.

But from this simple form of monotheism numerous branches were destined to sprout; and just as Christianity is split up into innumerable sects, so is Islam divided into many differences and brotherhoods. It is with comparatively few, however, of these that we have to deal in regard to the Yemen,—for although in early times changes had begun to be apparent in the course of the religion, it is only comparatively lately that the enormous quantity of sectarian differences now existing sprang into life; and these, with few exceptions, have but to a very slight extent influenced the political aspect of the country.

The first important dissension in the course of Islam occurred about the year 37 A.H., when the theocratic party, recognising that the existence of the Caliphs was likely to become, and was even at that time becoming, an excuse for power and a cause of strife, and that the religious influence was lapsing into an autocratic supremacy, stood aside and cried for an oath of allegiance to God alone, and an elected Council of State to regulate affairs. Revolting first against Ali, the nephew and son-in-law of the Prophet, we find them again and again all through the history of Islam bursting forth, egged on by such wild fanaticism as only men of those countries can know. High though, perhaps, the original motives of the Kharejites were, they were too often in after-times fanned by the aspirations of pretenders to power, and it needed all the force of temporal and spiritual rulers to check these outbursts of fanaticism. The Kharejites were again split up into many divisions, all more or less founded upon the idea of treating sin as infidelity, which it would be straying from the objects of this book to specially mention here, except that of the Obadites, who from time to time recur in the history of the Yemen.

Although the Kharejites formed the first absolute split in Islam, there had been gradually growing up what have always formed, and to-day form, the two great divisions of the Mahammedan belief—namely, the sects of the Sunnis and the Sheiyas. To mention some of the standpoints of both. The Sunni tenets are held by Turkey and the greater part of Mahammedan-professing India, while Southern Arabia and Persia and portions of North Africa profess Sheiyism. The differences of the two, briefly stated, are as follows. While the Sunnis acknowledge the election of the Caliphs from the general professors of Islam, the Sheiyas assert that Ali, the fourth Caliph, was the natural successor of the Prophet, ignoring Abou Bekr, Omar, and Othman. But here again the Sheiya sect becomes split up; for one division, which continued under the name of Sheiyas, contend that Ali held his right to succeed the Prophet in office in virtue of his personality; while the other side, the Zaidis, contend that Ali was the legitimate successor and heir of the Prophet, not by reason of his personality, but through his merits. Consequently they assert that the successors in the Caliphate, or Imams, as they were called in the Yemen, must necessarily be of the Prophet’s family, but were to be chosen to fill the holy office on account of merit and character, in place of succession by birthright alone, but that in the veins of those elected to the post must flow the Prophet’s blood. Amongst those of the former persuasion was the sect of Imamites, and its sub-sects, the Dodekites and Ismailites, the latter of which was founded and flourished in the third century A.H. It was from this branch that the Fatimide dynasty sprang, and their descendants are to be found in the mountains of Lebanon under the name of Druses, who are still awaiting the return of their prophet Hakim. The point on which the Zaidis separated from the sects of the Dodekites and Ismailites is as to the lawful holders of the Imamate or Caliphate after the death of the grandson of Ali.

But the Zaidis were destined also to divide, and at a subsequent period we find the Arab and Persian Zaidis submitting to the allegiance of two separate Imams, one of whom reigned in Arabia and one in Persia.

Even to-day intense hatred exists between the followers of Sunni and Sheiya doctrines. No better example of this is to be found than the fact that when Russia was engaged in a war with Turkey that threatened to be a death-blow to Islam in Europe, not one sword was raised by the Sheiya-professing Mahammedans for her assistance; and Persia and other parts who do not acknowledge the Sultan Abdul Hamid as the rightful Caliph—for the Prophet’s blood does not flow in his veins—sat impassively and watched, with but comparatively little interest, the struggle.

The Sunnis derive their name from the Arabic word _sunnat_, a precedent; and their faith is built up, apart from the differences already specified, upon the example established by the Prophet himself, as handed down to them by history and tradition. Their belief can be justly called, perhaps, the orthodox one, for Mahammed himself chose as his successor in office Abou Bekr, who was not of his family. Therefore to them it is no prejudice that the present holder of the Caliphate, or successor in the religious supremacy of Islam, is the Sultan of Turkey, who, it will be seen, fails to be acknowledged by any of the branches of the Sheiya faith on account of his descent.

These few words may prove sufficient to throw as much light as is necessary in the question of the Yemen upon the two great divisions of Islam. It need only be added to how great an extent the Turks, though co-religionists in as far as they profess Mahammedanism, would be separated from the Yemeni people in religious ideas; and it is this fact, more than even the extortion they practised, that gave rise to the Yemen rebellion.

About 280 A.H. there appeared a new sect in the Yemen, that of the Karmathians, who sprang from the Dodekites and Ismailites, though far exceeding them in fanaticism and excesses. They arose in the Yemen under the leadership of two powerful men, Ali ibn Fadl and Mansur ibn Hasan, of whom the former appears to have been most implicated in promulgating the extraordinary and often revolting tenets of the new belief. Beginning as a hermit, he collected round him a little band of devoted followers, and setting forth, he commenced a series of victories. At length, overpowered with success, he acknowledged himself a prophet, and preached from the pulpit of Janad the rightful use of wine and permission of incest. Continuing his march, his cause grew, and both Dhamar and Sanaa fell before him. At the latter place his excesses were beyond recording.[27] Seventeen years after having gained his enormous power, Ibn Fadl died at the hands of an assassin, who, taking advantage of the common Eastern habit of the drawing of blood, secreted poison in his long hair, and after having sucked the lancet to prove it was clean, dried it in his poisoned locks. The historian, El-Janadi, states that there were great rejoicings at his death. The remnants of this sect, inoffensive now and law-abiding, still exist in Bombay.

The next great secession from the direct Islam was that of the Nizarites or Assassins, a name derived from _Hashishiyin_—in other words, the eaters of _hashish_, a narcotic much resorted to in the East. This word was the origin of our present “assassin,” but in the East to-day has no deeper meaning than that given above. The brotherhood arose about 400 A.H., a few years after the death of Nizar, son of the Khalifa el-Mustansir, whom they asserted had been wrongfully withheld from succeeding his father. Thus they gained their first title, that of “Nizarites.” They swore an oath to devote their energies to the propagation of their faith, and many perils they undertook for this purpose, often sacrificing their lives in the fulfilment of their vows. The remains of this once dreaded sect are to-day to be found in Bombay, in Zanzibar, and in the Lebanon.

The later sect of the Wahabis shows a tendency on the part of orthodox Arabs to the ancient tenets of Kharejite theocracy. With the Sheiyas the contrary is the case, and they incline rather toward transcendental doctrines, bursting out into such mystical rites as those of the sects of Mutazelites and Sufis, or, in the Yemen, in their devotion for a divine Imamate.

How important have been these sects in forming the history, not only of the Yemen but of all Arabia, cannot be exaggerated. Whole dynasties have been built up or overthrown by their fanatical devotees. From the very earliest years of Islam we are constantly coming across the turbulent risings of one or the other; and while the Sunnis have more or less strictly upheld until to-day their original orthodoxy, with any variation of which they are intolerant, we see the other great division, the Sheiyas, split up again and again into sects and sub-sects, struggling for a theocracy that was impossible, or used by unscrupulous pretenders as a road to power.

Looking at Islam to-day, we find the Sunnis in very much the same religious position as they have always held, even from the very first. Their key-note, so to speak, has been unswerving allegiance to the _sunnat_, or precedent of the Prophet. On the other hand, we find the Sheiyas split up into hundreds of sects and brotherhoods, each following some particular instruction or belief of their several founders, who for the most part have been descendants of the Prophet himself.

One of these sects, now making itself felt in the Yemen, as it is doing all over the Moslem world, is a modern one. I refer to the followers of El-Mehdi Senussi, about which, as one of the coming powers of Islam, a few words may not be out of place. The idea of Sheikh Senussi was to bring Islam back to its original purity—to revive its great social laws, moral and religious, as instituted by the Prophet, and to defend and propagate the same.[28] In this it will be seen that the tenets of Senussism resemble both those of the Sheiyas and the Sunnis—the former in the desire for a theocracy, the latter in the punctilious observance of precedent. Its sole distinctive feature is in its transcendentalism and in the repetition of certain prayers. Like the Wahabis, too, music, dancing, singing, and coffee are forbidden. In fact, the Sheikh Senussi seems to have introduced into his new revival of Islam the doctrines of many of the former sects. The Sheikh himself is dead, being followed in office by his son, who is still living near Siwah, in the desert between Egypt and Tripoli. But what makes this sect so vastly important is its political power, and it may safely be prophesied that the next great revolt of Islam against the Christians in Africa, no matter what form it may take, will owe its origin to this movement. The author, within a few months, heard Senussism preached in Somali-land and in Morocco, in both of which countries, not to speak of the more central Tunis, Tripoli, and the state of Fezzan, it is deeply rooted. If, then, a new movement in Islam is able in the lifetime of two men to gain converts, and many converts, in countries so distantly removed from one another and from the headquarters of its founder, it can clearly be understood the immense power it must hold over the minds of the people; and one of the greatest drawbacks to European venture in Africa is the undoubted fact that this smouldering fanaticism will one day burst into flame.