[Sidenote:  Islam sanctions a license between the sexes which Christianity forbids.  The laws of Christianity deter men from carnal indulgences.  Islam the “Easy Way.”] What I desire to make clear is the fact that such things may be practiced with the sanction of the Scripture which the Moslem holds to be divine, and that these same indulgences have from the first existed as inducements which helped materially to forward the spread of the faith.  I am very far, indeed, from implying that excessive indulgence in polygamy is the universal state of Moslem society.  Happily this is not the case.  There are not only individuals, but tribes and districts, which, either from custom or preference, voluntarily restrict the license given them in the Koran; while the natural influence of the family, even in Moslem countries, has an antiseptic tendency that often itself tends greatly to neutralize the evil.[66] Nor am I seeking to institute any contrast between the morals at large of Moslem countries and the rest of the world.  If Christian nations are (as with shame it must be confessed) in some strata of society immoral, it is in the teeth of their divine law.  And the restrictions of that law are calculated, and in the early days of Christianity did tend, in point of fact, to deter men devoted to the indulgences of the flesh from embracing the faith.[67] The religion of Mohammed, on the other hand, gives direct sanction to the sexual indulgences we have been speaking of.  Thus it panders to the lower instincts of humanity and makes its spread the easier.  In direct opposition to the precepts of Christianity it “makes provision for the flesh to fulfill the lusts thereof.”  Hence Islam has been well called by its own votaries the Easy Way.  Once more, to quote Al Kindy: 

Thou invitest me (says our apologist to his friend) into the “Easy way of faith and practice.”  Alas, alas! for our Saviour in the Gospel telleth us, “When ye have done all that ye are commanded, say, We are unprofitable servants; we have but done that which was commanded us.”  Where then is our merit?  The same Lord Jesus saith, “How strait is the road which leadeth unto life, and how few they be that walk therein!  How wide the gate that leadeth to destruction, and how many there be that go in thereat!” Different this, my friend, from the comforts of thy wide and easy gate, and the facilities for enjoying, as thou wouldst have me, the pleasures offered by thy faith in wives and damsels![68]

FOOTNOTES: 

[a] A.D. 623.

[b] A.D. 630.

[c] A.D. 632.

[d] A.D. 635.

II.

WHY THE SPREAD OF ISLAM WAS STAYED.

[Sidenote:  Islam stationary in area, and in civilization retrograde.] Having thus traced the rapid early spread of Islam to its proper source, I proceed to the remaining topics, namely, the causes which have checked its further extension, and those likewise which have depressed the followers of this religion in the scale of civilization.  I shall take the former first—­just remarking here, in respect of the latter, that the depression of Islam is itself one of the causes which retard the expansion of the faith.