[Sidenote:  Al Kindy’s challenge to produce a Christian convert to Islam apart from material inducements.] Now tell me, hast thou ever seen, my Friend, (the Lord be gracious unto thee!) or ever heard of a single person of sound mind—­any one of learning and experience, and acquainted with the Scriptures, renouncing Christianity otherwise than for some worldly object to be reached only through thy religion, or for some gratification withheld by the faith of Jesus?  Thou wilt find none.  For, excepting the tempted ones, all continue steadfast in their faith, secure under our most gracious sovereign, in the profession of their own religion.[70]

III.

LOW POSITION OF ISLAM IN THE SCALE OF CIVILIZATION.

[Sidenote:  Social and intellectual depression.] I pass on to consider why Mohammedan nations occupy so low a position, halting as almost every-where they do, in the march of social and intellectual development.

[Sidenote:  Islam intended for the Arabs.  Wants the faculty of adaptation.] The reason is not far to find.  Islam was meant for Arabia, not for the world; for the Arabs of the seventh century, not for the Arabs of all time; and being such, and nothing more, its claim of divine origin renders change or development impossible.  It has within itself neither the germ of natural growth nor the lively spring of adaptation.  Mohammed declared himself a prophet to the Arabs;[71] and however much in his later days he may have contemplated the reformation of other religions beyond the Peninsula, or the further spread of his own (which is doubtful), still the rites and ceremonies, the customs and the laws enjoined upon his people, were suitable (if suitable at all) for the Arabs of that day, and in many respects for them alone.  Again, the code containing these injunctions, social and ceremonial, as well as doctrinal and didactic, is embodied with every particularity of detail, as part of the divine law, in the Koran; and so defying, as sacrilege, all human touch, it stands unalterable forever.  From the stiff and rigid shroud in which it is thus swathed the religion of Mohammed cannot emerge.  It has no plastic power beyond that exercised in its earliest days.  Hardened now and inelastic, it can neither adapt itself nor yet shape its votaries, nor even suffer them to shape themselves to the varying circumstances, the wants and developments, of mankind.

[Sidenote:  Local ceremonies:  pilgrimage.  Fast of Ramzan.] We may judge of the local and inflexible character of the faith from one or two of its ceremonies.  To perform the pilgrimage to Mecca and Mount Arafat, with the slaying of victims at Mina, and the worship of the Kaaba, is an ordinance obligatory (with the condition only that they have the means) on all believers, who are bound to make the journey even from the furthest ends of the earth—­an ordinance intelligible enough in a local worship, but unmeaning and impracticable