St. Alphonsus Liguori: The History of Heresies and Their Refutation

[Stone]

CHAPTER VII. – THE HERESIES OF THE SEVENTH CENTURY

ARTICLE I. – OF MAHOMETANISM

1. Birth of Mahomet, and Beginning of his False Religion.
2. The Alcoran filled with Blasphemy and Nonsense.

1. The impious sect of Mahometanism sprung up in this century. I have already written the history of Mahomet in my work on the “Truth of the Faith” (1), but I consider it necessary to give a short sketch of it here. Mahomet, the founder of this destroying sect, which has spread over the greater perhaps, the greatest part of the Christian world, was born in Arabia, in 568, according to Fleury (2), and his family was among the most illustrious of that Peninsula. His uncle put him to trade on the death of his father, and when twenty-eight years of age, he became, at first, the factor of, and, soon after, married, a rich and noble widow, called Cadijah(3). He was brought up an idolater; but, as he grew old, he determined, not alone to change his own religion, but that of his countrymen, who, for the greater part, were idolaters also, and to teach them, as he said, the ancient religion of Adam, of Abraham, of Noah, and of the Prophets, among whom he reckoned Jesus Christ. He pretended to have long conversations with the Archangel Gabriel, in the cave of Hera, three miles from Mecca, where he frequently retired. In the year 608, being then forty years of age (4), he began to give out that he was a Prophet inspired by God, and he persuaded his relatives and domestics of this first, and then began publicly to preach in Mecca, and attack idolatry. At first, the people did not very willingly listen to him, and asked him to prove his mission by a miracle; but he told them that God sent him to preach the truth, and not to work miracles.

The impostor, however, boasts of having wrought one, though ridiculous in the extreme : a piece, he says, fell off from the moon once into his sleeve, and he fixed it on again; and it is said, that this is the reason for the Mahometans adopting the half-moon as the device of their Empire. He gave out, in the commencement of his career, that God commanded him not to force any one to embrace his religion, but the people of Mecca having risen up against him, and driven him from their city, he then declared that God commanded him to pursue the infidels with arms, and thus propagate the Faith; and from that till his death he was always at war. Now Lord of Mecca, he made it the Metropolis of the Faithful, and before his death he saw almost all the tribes of the Arabian Peninsula subject to his spiritual and temporal sway.


2. He composed the Koran (Al Koran the book), assisted, as some think, by Sergius, a Monk. It is a collection of precepts, taken from the Mosaic and Christian Law, together with many of his own, and interspersed with fables and ridiculous revelations. He recognizes the Divine Mission of Moses and Jesus Christ, and admits many parts of the Scriptures; but his law, he says, is the perfection of the Jewish and Christian law, and he is the reformer of these codes, though, in truth, it is totally different from both one and the other. He professes that there is but one God; but in his Alcoran he relates many trivialities unworthy of the Supreme Being, and the whole work is, in fact, filled with contradictions, as I have shown in my book on the ” Truth of the Faith.” Jews or Christians, he says, may be saved by the observance of their respective laws, and it is indifferent if they exchange one for the other; but hell will be for ever the portion of the infidels; those who believe in one God alone will be sent there for a period not exceeding, at most, a thousand years, and then all will be received into the House of Peace, or Paradise. The Mahometan Paradise, however, is only fit for beasts; for filthy sensual pleasure is all the believer has to expect there. I pass over all the other extravagancies of the Koran, having already, in the ” Truth of the Faith,” treated the subject more fully.


3. The Mahometans shave the head, and leave only a lock of hair on the crown, by which they hope Mahomet will take them up to heaven, even out of hell itself. They are permitted to have four wives by their law, and they ought, at least, to have one; they may divorce each wife twice. It is prohibited to dispute on the Alcoran and the Scriptures; and the devil appears to have dictated this precept himself, for, by keeping those poor people in ignorance, he keeps them in darkness. Mahomet died in 631, in the sixty-third year of his age, and nine years after he was recognized as Sovereign of Arabia. He saw almost the whole Peninsula subject to his sway, and for four hundred leagues to the North and South of Medina no other Sovereign was known. He was succeeded by Aboubeker, one of his earliest disciples, and a great conqueror likewise. A long line of Caliphs united in their own persons the Spiritual and Royal power of the Arabian Empire. They destroyed the Empire of Persia; and Egypt, and Syria, and the rich provinces and kingdoms of the East yielded to their arms (5).



(1) Ver. del. Fede, part 3, c. 4, nota a.
(2) Fleury, t. 7, l. 38, n. 1.
(3) Nat. Alex. t. 12, c. 12, a. 2.
(4) Fleury, loco cit.
(5) Fleury, t. 6, l. 38, n. 4, 5.