Large Incense Bowls in Mosque at Hankow, China. 26 Interior Court of the Mosque of Al Azhar, Cairo. 50 The Torba and Amulets Hand-shaped Amulets. Amulets and "Lucky" Rings used in Lower Egypt. 54 82 . 118 Women and children visiting a newly-made grave in the 240 THE INFLUENCE CHAPTER I ISLAM AND ANIMISM 1 THAT Islam in its origin and popular character is a composite faith, with Pagan, Jewish and Christian elements, is known to all students of comparative religion. Rabbi Geiger in his celebrated essay 1 has shown how much of the warp and woof of the Koran was taken from Talmudic Judaism and how the entire ritual is simply that of the Pharisees translated into Arabic. Tisdall in his "Sources of Islam" and other writers, especially Wellhausen, Goldziher and Robertson Smith, have indicated the pagan elements that persist in the Moslem faith to this day and were taken over by Mohammed himself from the old Arabian idolatry. Christian teaching and life too had their influence on Mohammed and his doctrine, as is evident not only in the acknowledged place of honor given to Jesus Christ, the Virgin Mary, John the Baptist, and other New Testament characters, but in the spirit of universalism, of conquest and above all in the mystic beliefs and ascetic practices of later Islam. "A three-fold cord is not easily broken." The strength of Islam is its composite character. It entrenches itself everywhere and always in animistic and pagan superstition. It fights with all the fanatic devotion of Semitic 1"Was hat Mohammed aus dem Judenthume aufgenommen " (Wiesbaden, 1833). |