Review: D. S. Margoliouth, 'The Early Development of Mohammedanism', 1913.

Margoliouth was an Oxford Professor and well-known expert in Muslim and Arab history during the early part of the 20^th century. In May and June of 1913 he gave a series of lectures at the University of London, attempting to explain to undergraduate students, how Mohammedanism was developed. The student of Islam interested in real Islam, not the multi-cult piety and lies about the same, should notice immediately Margoliouth's use of the word 'Mohammedanism'. It is the appropriate word choice and sets the cultural and moral theme for his lectures. Mohammedanism rightly denotes Islam as being little more than the cult of its founder, Mohammed, as Margoliouth truthfully states; “Allah issues orders through the Prophet; that is the meaning of the Islamic creed.” Simple. Mohammed rules because Allah said so. Of course Mohammed invents Allah so this is a very convenient justification indeed. When reading the Koran one can't help but notice that both Allah and Mohammed seem interchangeable. This is an inescapable historical fact. As the Koran develops, Mohammed becomes Allah: “..that the theory of double personality, according to which the Prophet at times represented the Deity and at other times himself, yet was to be obeyed in the latter capacity no less than in the former, was making its appearance.”

Thus this word-choice of Mohammedanism, is a signal sea change in attitudes than the silliness prevailing in our world that Islam is a religion because people demand that it is. So too perhaps is Scientology. The concept which is real, valid and commonsensical of 'Mohammedanism', is precisely the right starting point to viewing and inquiring about Islam's history and development. Go back to the beginning. Dispense with the cultural-Marxist perfidy that Islam is a religion in the Christian and Western sense of that word; and prove that it contains religious ideals and aspirations, including natural law rights, humanism, immanent tolerance and the Golden Rule, and of course faith through reason, to quote an excellent title from one of Rodney Stark's library of important works. Screaming that Islam is a religion, does not make it one. You must prove that it is and none of the true believers can. No more pithy and accurate description of Islam can improve on the good Professor's observation:

“But that any of the gentler virtues were cultivated does not appear; and the vices which are associated with Asiatic despotisms seem to have displayed themselves from the time when the despotism of Medinah was founded.” [p. 59]

Islam which merges church and state must by definition, be infinitely despotic.

Margoliouth's lectures are dense. I don't recommend reading this book if you are just starting to enquire about Islam. It is better to use the good Professor's lectures on this topic once you are acquainted with the real history of Mohammed, the early stages of Islam, and the historicity of Koranic development. In other words you should only read this work once you have acquired some level of politically-incorrect fluency in Mohammedanism. Once a certain knowledge has been attained these lectures which are not easy to go through, will make more sense. In spite of their density the lectures an invaluable guide to what Islam truly means.

The first half of his lectures deal with the Koran and Mohammed's convenient revelations and Allah-generated 'laws'. The second half of Margoliouth's dictations concern themselves with the development of Mohammedan culture and 'ethics' and the historical development of the Koranic-Mohammed state. The lectures are thus a long unfolding covering some 250 pages of Mohammedanism's early development from an abstract pagan ideal of how society should be ordered and commanded, to what actually happened in practice. Margoliouth does a remarkable job, using primary source material, Arab and Muslim writings and historically based investigations, to reveal the true nature of Mohammed's cult. The following are some highlights.

Islam's ruthlessness and violence:

“It follows, then, that Islam has to be preached with the sword, for without going into the water one cannot learn to swim...If the convincing miracle of Islam be the Koran....they can quote the precedent of the Prophet, who in his imperious message to all peoples, nations, and languages, commanding them to adopt Islam if they wished for safety...”

“Twenty years of fighting effected more than a thousand years of pleading and arguing would effect. But just as the argument of reason is apt to be weakened if the sward be behind it, so the argument of the sword is not strengthened by the fact that the other form of reasoning has been tried in vain.”

The Koran's gibberish, imperfections, contradictions and poorly written decrees – entirely man-created:

“But in Surah ix., nearly at the end of the Prophet's career, verse 114 declares that neither the Prophet not the Believers have any business to ask forgiveness for the pagans, even though they were their relatives, when it has become clear that they aero to be damned; they are thus forbidden to do what Abraham clearly did in Surah xxvi.”

“The case which has been quoted, where the utterance of one Surah is confirmed by another, and apologised for in a third and a fourth, gives the very strongest presumption of genuineness.”

“Now, if on a matter which admits of such precision...the ruling of the Koran is inconsistent and self-contradictory, we cannot reasonably expect precision on those moral and metaphysical questions....”

“...it is clear that the legislation of the Koran is imperfect, and fails to deal with numerous subjects on which rules are required. Such a subject is constitutional law, the principle whereon the ruler or sovereign is appointed, and the limits of his power.”

The closing of the Muslim mind, since the Koran and Allah's cult purport to solve all of our problems and render to us, everything we need to know:

“...a Book wherein nothing is neglected, clearly renders all other literature superfluous or dangerous; and...Hence, it would seem, Moslems were precluded from composing books, and references to others than the Koran in the early generations of Islam are rare.”

The genetic animus against Jews and Christians, and the enforced racism and supremacism which is the bedrock of the Mohammedan cult:

“The doctrine that the Jewish and Christian scriptures had been willfully corrupted beyond recognition seems to have become a dogma of Islam at a very early date..”

“The fact of an independent Christian state existing – or indeed of such a state existing belonging to any other religious community-- is a sufficient ground for an attack.”

“And what we gather from the chronicles is that the Ordinance of Omar was at any time liable to be enforced, and the members of the tolerated communities were never safe from it....Owing to their being unarmed their prosperity was always hazardous; and though it is true that this was the case with all the subjects of a despotic state under an irresponsible rule, the non-Moslem population was at the mercy of the mob as well as of the sovereign.”

[note, the Contract of Omar dates from the 637 AD conquering of Jerusalem and dealt in great detail with how the subjugated Jews and Christians were to live under Muslim rule and coercive taxation, including sumptuary laws, codes on building, allowable forms of worship, and deference to Muslims and all things Islam in the public square. It was basically a contract enforcing tax and social slavery].

The Muslim-Mohammedan cult was simply an Oriental despotism in which the individual, free-will, rationality and humanistic tolerance were eradicated. Conformity, communalism, blind belief, ritualization and prostration became the standards of Mohammed's gang-rule. It logically follows from this historical fact, that the great advancements in Western social, economic, moral and political practice have no corollary within the Islamic world. Margoliouth's fact based lectures make this abundantly clear. The Koran, like Lenin's epistles and Hitler's Mein Kampf was entirely man-made. The lack of rationality and reason through faith is perhaps the most signal and obvious deformity of the Muslim cult. Due to this, Islam shares more in common with Asiatic despotisms and Oriental mysticisms than it does with Western precepts and norms. The Mohammed cult has nothing whatsoever in common with Judeo-Christian ideals.