Mohammedanism: Lectures on Its Origin, Its Religious and Political Growth, and Its Present State by C. Snouck Hurgronje

Author:C. Snouck Hurgronje [Hurgronje, C. Snouck]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Religion, General, Spirituality, Islamic Studies, Islam, Mohammed- The Prophet
ISBN: 9781421973470
Google: KB3yPQAACAAJ
Amazon: 1421973472
Publisher: INDY PUB
Published: 2006-03-31T18:30:00+00:00

IV

ISLM AND MODERN THOUGHT

One of the most powerful factors of religious life in its higher forms is the need of man to find in this world of changing things an imperishable essence, to separate the eternal from the temporal and then to attach himself to the former. Where the possibility of this operation is despaired of, there may arise a pessimism, which finds no path of liberation from the painful vicissitudes of life other than the annihilation of individuality. A firm belief in a sphere of life freed from the category of time, together with the conviction that the poetic images of that superior world current among mankind are images and nothing else, is likely to give rise to definitions of the Absolute by purely negative attributes and to mental efforts having for their object the absorption of individual existence in the indescribable infinite. Generally speaking, a high development of intellectual life, especially an intimate acquaintance with different religious systems, is not favourable to the continuance of elaborate conceptions of things eternal; it will rather increase the tendency to deprive the idea of the Transcendent of all colour and definiteness.

The naïve ideas concerning the other world in the clear-cut form outlined for them by previous generations are most likely to remain unchanged in a religious community where intellectual intercourse is chiefly limited to that between members of the community. There the belief is fostered that things most appreciated and cherished in this fading world by mankind will have an enduring existence in a world to come, and that the best of the changing phenomena of life are eternal and will continue free from that change, which is the principal cause of human misery. Material death will be followed by awakening to a purer life, the idealized continuation of life on earth, and for this reason already during this life the faithful will find their delight in those things which they know to be everlasting.

The less faith is submitted to the control of intellect, the more numerous the objects will be to which durable value is attributed. This is true for different individuals as well as for one religious community as compared to another. There are Christians attached only to the spirit of the Gospel, Mohammedans attached only to the spirit of the Qorân. Others give a place in their world of imperishable things to a particular translation of the Bible in its old-fashioned orthography or to a written Qorân in preference to a printed one. Orthodox Judaism and orthodox Islâm have marked with the stamp of eternity codes of law, whose influence has worked as an impediment to the life of the adherents of those religions and to the free intercourse of other people with them as well. So the Roman Catholic and many Protestant Churches have in their organizations and in their dogmatic systems eternalized institutions and ideas whose unchangeableness has come to retard spiritual progress.

Among all conservative factors of human life religion must necessarily be the most conservative,

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