every Moslem country at least two systems of courts, the one administering this canon law, and taking cognisance of private and family affairs, such as marriage, divorce, inheritance, its officials also giving rulings on purely personal religious questions, such as details of the ritual law, the law of oaths and vows, &c.; the other, the true law courts of the land, administering codes based on local custom and the decrees of the local rulers.
A rift almost as important entered the legal life of the Moslem lands on another side. Non-Moslem communities, settled in Moslem territory, have been uniformly permitted to administer and judge themselves according to their own customs and laws. Save when they come into direct contact and conflict with Moslems, they are left to themselves with a contemptuous tolerance. The origin of this attitude in Islam appears to be threefold: (i) The Islam of theory cannot conceive of a mixed state; it takes account, only, of a state containing none but Moslems, and its ideal is that the whole world will, in the end, form such a state. In practice, then, Moslems try to shut their eyes to the existence of non-Moslems in their midst and make no provision for them until compelled. That a non-Moslem should have the same civil position as a Moslem is unthinkable. (ii) This, of course, produces an attitude of extreme contempt. The only citizens are Moslems and all others are to be looked down upon and left to themselves. What they do or think among themselves does not matter; they are outside the ring-fence of Islam. (iii) A different, but equally important, cause is the Moslem indolence. When the Arabs conquered, they knew that they must administer the conquered lands, and they, very wisely, sought help from the machinery which they found in operation. But besides the ordinary organization of the state, they found also various ecclesiastical organizations, Christian and Jewish, and to these they gave over the administration of the non-Moslem sections of the community, making their rabbis and bishops their responsible heads and the links of contact with the Moslem rulers. They, unquestionably, found the same method in use by the Byzantine government; but in Moslem hands it went so far as to make a number of little states (millet, milal) within the state and effectually to preclude the possibility of ever welding all the inhabitants of the land into one corporate life.
But this indolence, when applied to resident aliens, had consequences still more serious, because external as well as internal. Following the same method of leaving the unbeliever to settle his affairs for himself, the European merchant, living and trading in the East, was put first by usage and finally by treaty under the jurisdiction and control of his own consul. Thus there grew up the extra-territorial law of the capitulations and conventions, by which the sanctity of the person and household of an ambassador is extended to every European. And this in turn, has reacted on the status of the non-Moslem subject races, and has come to be the indirect but chief support on which they lean. Through it, an element has developed which makes it practically impossible for a Moslem state to introduce legal changes even remotely affecting its non-Moslem population, alien or subject, without the consent of the European embassies. Any change may be upset by their refusal to accept it as incompatible with the capitulations and conventions. The embassies have thus, as interpreters of a part, at least, of the constitution, come to hold a position remarkably, if absurdly, like that of the Supreme Court of the United States (see Young, Corps de droit Ottoman, passim).
There may be said, then, in short, to be three elements in the legal life of a Moslem state: the sacred and fixed canon law of Islam; the civil law, based on the usages of the different peoples, Moslem and non-Moslem, and on statutes going back to the will of rulers; the international law of the capitulations, with a contractual sanction of its own. The hope for the future in Islam, there can be little doubt, lies in the principle of the agreement of the Moslem people, with its conception of catholic unity, and its ability, through that unity, to make and abrogate laws. As the Moslem peoples advance, their law can, thus, advance with them, and the grasp of the dead hand of the canon law be gradually and legally released.
See I. Goldziher, Muhammedanische Studien, I. and II. (Halle a.S., 1889–1890); Zahiriten (Leipzig, 1884); E. Sachau, Zur ältesten Geschichte des muhammedanischen Rechts (Vienna Akad., 1870) and Muhammedanisches Recht (Stuttgart and Berlin, 1897); Snouck Hurgronje, review of preceding in Z.D.M.G. liii. 125 seq. and “Le droit musulman” (Rev. de l’hist. des religions, xxxvii. 1 seq. and 174 seq.); Juynboll, Handleiding tot de Kennis von de mohammedaansche Wet (Leiden, 1903); Von Kremer, Culturgeschichte des Orients unter den Chalifen, i. 470 seq. (Vienna, 1875–1877); Hughes, Dictionary of Islam, pp. 285 seq. (London, 1896); D. B. Macdonald, Development of Muslim Theology, &c., pp. 65 seq. (New York, 1903); Bukhari, Les Traditions islamiques traduites . . . par O. Houdas et W. Marcel (Paris, 1906); N. B. E. Bailie, Digest of Moohummadan Law (2 vols., London, 1875–1887). A good bibliography appeared in the Bulletin of the New York Public Library for January 1907. (D. B. Ma.)
MAHOMMEDAN RELIGION. The Mahommedan religion is
generally known as Islam—the name given to it by Mahomet
himself—and meaning the resigning or submitting oneself to
God. The participle of the same Arabic verb, Muslim (in
English usually spelt Moslem), is used for one who professes this
religion. The expression “Mahommedan religion” has arisen
in the West probably from analogy with “Christian religion,”
but is not recognized as a proper one by Moslem writers. Islam
claims to be a divinely revealed religion given to the world by
Mahomet, who was the last of a succession of inspired prophets.
Its doctrine and practices are to be found in (i) the Book of
God—the Koran—which was sent down from the highest heaven
to Gabriel in the lowest, who in turn revealed it in sections to
Mahomet; (2) the collections of tradition (ḥadīth) containing the
sayings and manner of life (sunna) of the Prophet; (3) the use
of analogy (qiyās) as applied to (i) and (2); and (4) the universal
consent (ijmāʽ) of the believers. The worship of Islam consists
in (1) the recital of the creed; (2) the recital of the ordained
prayers; (3) the fast during the month of Ramadhān; (4) alms-giving;
(5) the hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca. The theology of
Islam finds its first public expression among the orthodox in
the teaching of al-Ashʽarī (d. after 932), but had its real beginning
among the sects that arose soon after the death of Mahomet.
Islam is the latest of the so-called world-religions, and as several of the others were practised in Arabia at the time of Mahomet, and the Prophet undoubtedly borrowed some of his doctrines and some of his practices from these, it is necessary to enumerate them and to indicate the extent to which they prevailed in the Arabian world.
Relations with Other Religions.—The religions practised in Arabia at the time of Mahomet were heathenism, Judaism, Christianity, and Zoroastrianism.
1. Heathenism was the religion of the majority of the Arabs. In the cities of south Arabia it was a survival from the forms represented in the Sabaean, Minaean and Himyaritic inscriptions of south Arabia (see Arabia: Antiquities). The more popular form current among the nomads is known very imperfectly from the remains of pre-Islamic poetry and such works as the Kitāb ul-Aṣnām contained in Yaqūt’s geography, from Shahrastānī’s work on the sects, and from the few references in classical writers. From these we have mostly names of local deities (cf. J. Wellhausen, Reste arabischen Heidentums, 2nd ed., Berlin, 1897) and ancient religious customs, which remained in part after the introduction of Islam (cf. W. Robertson Smith, The Religion of the Semites, Edinburgh, 1889, and Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia, Cambridge, 1885). From these sources we learn that Arabian religion was a nature-worship associated with fetishism. Sun, moon and stars were worshipped, some tribes being devoted to the worship of special constellations. Certain stones, wells and trees were regarded as sacred and as containing a deity. Many (perhaps most) tribes had their own idols. Hobal was the chief god of the Kaʽba in Mecca with its sacred stone, but round him were grouped a number of other tribal idols. It was against this association (shirk) of gods that Mahomet inveighed in his attempt to unify the religion and polity of the Arabs. But there were features in this heathenism favourable to unity, and these Mahomet either simply took over into Islam or adapted for his purpose. The popularity of the Kaʽba in Mecca as a place of resort for worshippers from all parts of Arabia led Mahomet not only to institute the hajj as a duty, but also to take over the customs connected with the heathen worship of these visits, and later to make Mecca the qibla, i.e. the place to which his followers turned when they prayed. The name of Allah, who seems to have been the god of the Koreish (cf. D. S. Margoliouth, Mohammed, p. 19, London, 1905), was accepted by Mahomet as the name of the one God, though he abandoned the corresponding female deity Al-lāt.
