Islam

87:5.5The Ko­ran con­tains a whole chap­ter de­voted to the evil eye and magic spells, and the Jews fully be­lieved in them. The whole phal­lic cult grew up as a de­fense against the evil eye. The or­gans of re­pro­duc­tion were thought to be the only fe­tish which could ren­der it pow­er­less. The evil eye gave ori­gin to the first su­per­sti­tions re­spect­ing pre­na­tal mark­ing of chil­dren, ma­ter­nal im­pres­sions, and the cult was at one time well-nigh uni­ver­sal.

94:2.8It was dur­ing the times of the writ­ing of the Up­an­ishads that Bud­dhism arose in In­dia. But de­spite its suc­cesses of a thou­sand years, it could not com­pete with later Hin­duism; de­spite a higher moral­ity, its early por­trayal of God was even less well-de­fined than was that of Hin­duism, which pro­vided for lesser and per­sonal de­i­ties. Bud­dhism fi­nally gave way in north­ern In­dia be­fore the on­slaught of a mil­i­tant Is­lam with its clear-cut con­cept of Al­lah as the su­preme God of the uni­verse.

95:7.6The strength of Is­lam has been its clear-cut and well-de­fined pre­sen­ta­tion of Al­lah as the one and only De­ity; its weak­ness, the as­so­ci­a­tion of mil­i­tary force with its pro­mul­ga­tion, to­gether with its degra­da­tion of woman. But it has stead­fastly held to its pre­sen­ta­tion of the One Uni­ver­sal De­ity of all, “who knows the in­vis­i­ble and the vis­i­ble. He is the mer­ci­ful and the com­pas­sion­ate.” “Truly God is plen­teous in good­ness to all men.” “And when I am sick, it is he who heals me.” “For when­ever as many as three speak to­gether, God is pres­ent as a fourth,” for is he not “the first and the last, also the seen and the hid­den”?

92:6.19Is­lam is the re­li­gio-cul­tural con­nec­tive of North Africa, the Lev­ant, and south­east­ern Asia. It was Jew­ish the­ol­ogy in con­nec­tion with the later Chris­tian teach­ings that made Is­lam mono­the­is­tic. The fol­low­ers of Mo­hammed stum­bled at the ad­vanced teach­ings of the Trin­ity; they could not com­pre­hend the doc­trine of three di­vine per­son­al­i­ties and one De­ity. It is al­ways dif­fi­cult to in­duce evo­lu­tion­ary minds sud­denly to ac­cept ad­vanced re­vealed truth. Man is an evo­lu­tion­ary crea­ture and in the main must get his re­li­gion by evo­lu­tion­ary tech­niques.

104:1.9The fol­low­ers of the Is­lamic faith like­wise failed to grasp the idea of the Trin­ity. It is al­ways dif­fi­cult for an emerg­ing mono­the­ism to tol­er­ate trini­tar­i­an­ism when con­fronted by poly­the­ism. The trin­ity idea takes best hold of those re­li­gions which have a firm mono­the­is­tic tra­di­tion cou­pled with doc­tri­nal elas­tic­ity. The great mono­the­ists, the He­brews and Mo­hammedans, found it dif­fi­cult to dis­tin­guish be­tween wor­ship­ing three gods, poly­the­ism, and trini­tar­i­an­ism, the wor­ship of one De­ity ex­ist­ing in a tri­une man­i­fes­ta­tion of di­vin­ity and per­son­al­ity.

92:6.1210. Is­lam.

92:6.16The great in­ter­na­tional, in­ter­ra­cial faiths are the He­braic, Bud­dhist, Chris­tian, and Is­lamic. Bud­dhism stretches from Cey­lon and Burma through Ti­bet and China to Japan. It has shown an adapt­abil­ity to the mores of many peo­ples that has been equaled only by Chris­tian­ity.

• on India, Hinduism

79:4.8The spir­i­tual awak­en­ing of the sixth cen­tury be­fore Christ did not per­sist in In­dia, hav­ing died out even be­fore the Mo­hammedan in­va­sion. But some­day a greater Gau­tama may arise to lead all In­dia in the search for the liv­ing God, and then the world will ob­serve the fruition of the cul­tural po­ten­tial­i­ties of a ver­sa­tile peo­ple so long co­matose un­der the be­numb­ing in­flu­ence of an un­pro­gress­ing spir­i­tual vi­sion.

• Nanak incorporated I. into Sikhism

92:5.157. The fif­teenth cen­tury af­ter Christ. This pe­riod wit­nessed two re­li­gious move­ments: the dis­rup­tion of the unity of Chris­tian­ity in the Oc­ci­dent and the syn­the­sis of a new re­li­gion in the Ori­ent. In Eu­rope in­sti­tu­tion­al­ized Chris­tian­ity had at­tained that de­gree of in­elas­tic­ity which ren­dered fur­ther growth in­com­pat­i­ble with unity. In the Ori­ent the com­bined teach­ings of Is­lam, Hin­duism, and Bud­dhism were syn­the­sized by Nanak and his fol­low­ers into Sikhism, one of the most ad­vanced re­li­gions of Asia.

• Nanak incorporated I. into Sikhism

92:7.2New re­li­gions can­not be in­vented; they are ei­ther evolved, or else they are sud­denly re­vealed. All new evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gions are merely ad­vanc­ing ex­pres­sions of the old be­liefs, new adap­ta­tions and ad­just­ments. The old does not cease to ex­ist; it is merged with the new, even as Sikhism bud­ded and blos­somed out of the soil and forms of Hin­duism, Bud­dhism, Is­lam, and other con­tem­po­rary cults. Prim­i­tive re­li­gion was very demo­cratic; the sav­age was quick to bor­row or lend. Only with re­vealed re­li­gion did au­to­cratic and in­tol­er­ant the­o­logic ego­tism ap­pear.

• on India, Hinduism

94:4.1With the pass­ing of the cen­turies in In­dia, the pop­u­lace re­turned in mea­sure to the an­cient rit­u­als of the Vedas as they had been mod­i­fied by the teach­ings of the Mel­chiz­e­dek mis­sion­ar­ies and crys­tal­lized by the later Brah­man priest­hood. This, the old­est and most cos­mopoli­tan of the world’s re­li­gions, has un­der­gone fur­ther changes in re­sponse to Bud­dhism and Jain­ism and to the later ap­pear­ing in­flu­ences of Mo­hammedanism and Chris­tian­ity. But by the time the teach­ings of Je­sus ar­rived, they had al­ready be­come so Oc­ci­den­tal­ized as to be a “white man’s re­li­gion,” hence strange and for­eign to the Hindu mind.

• I. conquered Buddhism in northern India

94:9.3Bud­dhism, later on, was much af­fected by Tao­ism in China, Shinto in Japan, and Chris­tian­ity in Ti­bet. Af­ter a thou­sand years, in In­dia Bud­dhism sim­ply with­ered and ex­pired. It be­came Brah­man­ized and later ab­jectly sur­ren­dered to Is­lam, while through­out much of the rest of the Ori­ent it de­gen­er­ated into a rit­ual which Gau­tama Sid­dhartha would never have rec­og­nized.

• I. overwhelmed eastern Christianity

171:1.6Within a short time af­ter the de­struc­tion of Je­ru­sa­lem, An­ti­och be­came the head­quar­ters of Pauline Chris­tian­ity, while Phil­a­del­phia re­mained the cen­ter of the Ab­ne­r­ian king­dom of heaven. From An­ti­och the Pauline ver­sion of the teach­ings of Je­sus and about Je­sus spread to all the West­ern world; from Phil­a­del­phia the mis­sion­ar­ies of the Ab­ne­r­ian ver­sion of the king­dom of heaven spread through­out Mes­o­po­ta­mia and Ara­bia un­til the later times when these un­com­pro­mis­ing emis­saries of the teach­ings of Je­sus were over­whelmed by the sud­den rise of Is­lam.

• I. overwhelmed eastern Christianity

195:1.11The East­ern ver­sion of the mes­sage of Je­sus, not­with­stand­ing that it re­mained more true to his teach­ings, con­tin­ued to fol­low the un­com­pro­mis­ing at­ti­tude of Ab­ner. It never pro­gressed as did the Hel­le­nized ver­sion and was even­tu­ally lost in the Is­lamic move­ment.

• Zoroastrianism

95:6.7Even the re­li­gion which suc­ceeded Zoroas­tri­an­ism in Per­sia was markedly in­flu­enced by it. When the Ira­nian priests sought to over­throw the teach­ings of Zoroaster, they res­ur­rected the an­cient wor­ship of Mithra. And Mith­ra­ism spread through­out the Lev­ant and Med­i­ter­ra­nean re­gions, be­ing for some time a con­tem­po­rary of both Ju­daism and Chris­tian­ity. The teach­ings of Zoroaster thus came suc­ces­sively to im­press three great re­li­gions: Ju­daism and Chris­tian­ity and, through them, Mo­hammedanism.

• Judaism

97:10.6The Jews loved jus­tice, wis­dom, truth, and righ­teous­ness as have few peo­ples, but they con­tributed least of all peo­ples to the in­tel­lec­tual com­pre­hen­sion and to the spir­i­tual un­der­stand­ing of these di­vine qual­i­ties. Though He­brew the­ol­ogy re­fused to ex­pand, it played an im­por­tant part in the de­vel­op­ment of two other world re­li­gions, Chris­tian­ity and Mo­hammedanism.

92:5.146. The sixth cen­tury af­ter Christ. Mo­hammed founded a re­li­gion which was su­pe­rior to many of the creeds of his time. His was a protest against the so­cial de­mands of the faiths of for­eign­ers and against the in­co­her­ence of the re­li­gious life of his own peo­ple.

5:4.5All re­li­gions teach the wor­ship of De­ity and some doc­trine of hu­man sal­va­tion. The Bud­dhist re­li­gion promises sal­va­tion from suf­fer­ing, un­end­ing peace; the Jew­ish re­li­gion promises sal­va­tion from dif­fi­cul­ties, pros­per­ity pred­i­cated on righ­teous­ness; the Greek re­li­gion prom­ised sal­va­tion from dishar­mony, ug­li­ness, by the re­al­iza­tion of beauty; Chris­tian­ity promises sal­va­tion from sin, sanc­tity; Mo­hammedanism pro­vides de­liv­er­ance from the rig­or­ous moral stan­dards of Ju­daism and Chris­tian­ity. The re­li­gion of Je­sus is sal­va­tion from self, de­liv­er­ance from the evils of crea­ture iso­la­tion in time and in eter­nity.

89:1.5The early food taboos orig­i­nated in fet­ish­ism and to­tem­ism. The swine was sa­cred to the Phoeni­cians, the cow to the Hin­dus. The Egyp­tian taboo on pork has been per­pet­u­ated by the He­braic and Is­lamic faiths. A vari­ant of the food taboo was the be­lief that a preg­nant woman could think so much about a cer­tain food that the child, when born, would be the echo of that food. Such viands would be taboo to the child.

82:4.3As civ­i­liza­tion ad­vanced and pri­vate prop­erty gained fur­ther rec­og­ni­tion in the mores, steal­ing be­came the great crime. Adul­tery was rec­og­nized as a form of steal­ing, an in­fringe­ment of the hus­band’s prop­erty rights; it is not there­fore specif­i­cally men­tioned in the ear­lier codes and mores. Woman started out as the prop­erty of her fa­ther, who trans­ferred his ti­tle to her hus­band, and all le­gal­ized sex re­la­tions grew out of these pre-ex­is­tent prop­erty rights. The Old Tes­ta­ment deals with women as a form of prop­erty; the Ko­ran teaches their in­fe­ri­or­ity. Man had the right to lend his wife to a friend or guest, and this cus­tom still ob­tains among cer­tain peo­ples.

84:5.6The early Chi­nese and the Greeks treated women bet­ter than did most sur­round­ing peo­ples. But the He­brews were ex­ceed­ingly dis­trust­ful of them. In the Oc­ci­dent woman has had a dif­fi­cult climb un­der the Pauline doc­trines which be­came at­tached to Chris­tian­ity, al­though Chris­tian­ity did ad­vance the mores by im­pos­ing more strin­gent sex obli­ga­tions upon man. Woman’s es­tate is lit­tle short of hope­less un­der the pe­cu­liar degra­da­tion which at­taches to her in Mo­hammedanism, and she fares even worse un­der the teach­ings of sev­eral other Ori­en­tal re­li­gions.