Muhammad

"Muhammad" is a melody, not a word — so often has it passed caressingly over the lips of mankind! It seizes the ear before it seizes the mind, and yields the lightness of its letters and the sweetness of its utterance before it yields any bond with God! There is no Arab on the face of the earth whose breast it does not open, whose inmost soul it does not shake. Him whom it does not take hold of through Islam, it takes hold of through Arabism; and him whom it does not take through Arabism, it takes through the Arabic tongue!!

And in the love of Muhammad — and there is no harm in holding fast to nationality, or in a passion for a language, just as there is no harm in religion... — the two communities of the Arabs meet: the community of the "Quran" and the community of the "Gospel"; until it is as though Islam were two Islams, one of religion and one of nationality and language. Or as though the Arabs were all Muslims — when Islam is taken thus: as love of Muhammad, attachment to his nationality, and passion for his language.

And Muhammad — no one sect among the Arabs can claim for itself alone the glorying in him. For besides belonging to all creation, wherever men would model themselves upon the noblest of Adam's sons in keeping faith with self, with neighbor, and with God, he belongs by better right to the Arabs, all of them, wherever they model themselves — beyond that — upon his eloquence in the pure tongue and our pride in the field of glory, on the day when the scale's pan sank with Arabs and rose with foreigners!

The non-Muslim, in the land of the Arabs, is free not to profess the religion of (the son of Abdullah), and free to have his heart ravished, say, by a book of "the son of Mary," every letter of which drips gentleness, and by a cross with which one world sat down and another world rose up. But that there should be among us an Arab, of our flesh and of our blood, who then comes to be bound to Muhammad by no tie of kinship, nor to Muhammad's language and Muhammad's nationality — he is a burdensome guest upon us, a stranger's face among our houses...

And Muhammad made this world purely Arab! He brought down the Book (of the Message) in the tongue of our people and hedged their religion about with it — nay, he drew his very proof from it, on the day this bound miracle was borne in procession among mankind — and then the (Hadith) went its rounds and brushed over morals and noble customs, over the various walks of daily life, even over dress and food, an Arab color with no foreign dust upon it.

And the language's share — nay, the nationality's share — in the religion of Muhammad did not stop at this abundant measure, but passed beyond it to a measure more abundant still: behold, the tongue of our people joins this lower life to the life to come; behold, it is the language of the blessed amid the clamor of bliss — for "Arabic is the language of the people of Paradise."

That — and the promised Paradise itself is spread out, in the "Book" as in the (Hadith), only according to the desire of the Arabs, in keeping with their fancies and the yearning of their hearts: in it are trees and rivers, fruit-clusters hanging near, and green couches; no sun and no bitter cold, but everlasting clear weather, and bliss, and a great dominion... and so on to the end of that delightful tablet of Ridwan.

So Muhammad gave this world to the nationality of the Arabs, and gave the next world to their language. Then he feared a splitting, in the wake of the Message, into a party believing in it and a party believing in another; so he united, with "Whoso loves the Arabs loves me," where division was to be feared, and gathered together where dispersal was to be feared! As though the condition, with him, were love for the Arabs, tenderness toward them, and the taking up of their cause — not entry into their religion! Marvel, then, at a Messenger whose whole care on earth was God's command and the drawing of all creatures to Him, of every race — how he takes such pains for his nationality's sake, and pours forth such a message!

And behold our Arab peoples, in every horizon: whenever the muezzin releases his voice between heaven and earth — at the stirring of morning in the dark, or as the sun passes between its rising-place and its setting — they feel in that cry that "something" of their nationality is soaring in the air, pressing on its way from mountain pass to mountain pass... and they feel the pride of kinship for a religion sprung from among themselves, whose glad tidings are sounded in their language, in which their own kinsman is magnified, and which is entered through the gate of their history!

One of those who spent long years in "Paris" told me — a Christian of ours, from (the Mountain), who studied medicine there and filled himself with the people's language, their history, and their ways of give-and-take in every least detail of daily intercourse, far more than he knows of the things of this land — he told me that as he was once walking along the rue (Quatrefages), close by the "Paris Mosque," his thoughts far away from this Lebanese soil, suddenly a takbir rang out from the minaret and rose above the Parisian din. A sweet surprise seized our friend, and filled his heart. He said: "I could not help turning from my path and entering the courtyard of the mosque, where I passed the better part of an hour among those domes and arcades, as though, in my secret self, I were in Lebanon, gazing on their scenes and listening to their talk — though between me and them lay heavens and deserts."

Thus did Muhammad gather to himself, by grace of the Arabic in his message and the Arabism in his zeal, these Arab hearts of every religion — so that that friend of ours meets, under the minarets of the mosque in the land of exile — and he a son of Christianity, as you have seen — what he does not find under Christianity's own dome!! And this because language stands above religion, and the bond of nationality above the bond of sect, in the realm of the inclinations, when nature is given free rein.

Muhammad, then, belongs to the Arabs one and all: in the language of the "Book" and the "Hadith"; in the zeal of race and the fierce guarding of noble honors; in a history of the conquering of kingdoms and the opening of minds, glittering like the mantle of forenoon; and in morals upon which be God's peace! As for the Muslims, they have no advantage over us — in profiting by him, drawing from him, and boasting of his memory — except Islam itself. And it is an advantage whose lack you will see the Christians among the Arabs — I mean the pure-bred among them in lineage and in letters — making good in their own "Muhammadanism": they ask of their hearts ever more of the love of Muhammad, and of their tongues and their pens ever more championing of his cause, until the two portions come near to being equal!

Therefore the land of the Arabs today blazes with the glory of the one Arab and with his love, and the echoes of him answer one another, over the sands of the wastes and the growth of the mountains, on every shore and gulf, from the sun's rising in the eastern blue to its halting-place in the forenoon, at the borders of the clear sky... A love of "the son of Abdullah" in which white and black, settled and wandering, Muslim and Christian are alike; a pride in "the son of Abdullah," and a swaying of shoulders among the nations at his name!

O Muhammad! I swear by my religion — the religion of "the son of Mary" — and by the timbers of his cross: we, in this quarter of the Arabs, look out toward you from the windows of the church; our minds are in the "Gospel," and our eyes are on the "Quran"...