Mohammedanism in its institution, and for many centuries after its
birth, was eminently a rationalistic creed; and it was through reason
as well as faith that it first achieved its spiritual triumphs. If we
examine its bases its early history, we must indeed admit this. The
Koran, which we are accustomed to speak of as the written code of
Mohammedan law, is in reality no legal text-book by which Mussulmans
live. At best it enunciates clearly certain religious truths, the unity
of God, the doctrine of rewards and punishments in a future life, and
the revelation of God's claims on man. Psalms, many of them sublime,
occupy the greater number of its chapters; promises of bliss to
believers and destruction to unbelievers come next; then the traditional
history of revelation as it was current among the Semitic race; and only
in the later chapters, and then obscurely, anything which can properly
be classed as law. Yet law is the essence of Islam, and was so from its
earliest foundation as a social and religious polity; and it is evident
that to it, and not to the Koran's dogmatic theology, Islam owed its
great and long career of triumph in the world.
Now this law was not, like the Koran, brought down full-fledged from
heaven.
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