THE INFLUENCE OF ANIMISM ON ISLAM

CHAPTER I

ISLAM AND ANIMISM

That Islam, in its origin and popular character, is a composite faith containing pagan, Jewish, and Christian elements is known to all students of comparative religion. Rabbi Geiger, in his celebrated essay original: "Was hat Mohammed aus dem Judenthume aufgenommen" (Wiesbaden, 1833). [What has Mohammed adopted from Judaism?], has shown how much of the substance 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 Muslim faith to this day, which were adopted by Mohammed himself from the old Arabian idolatry. Christian teaching and life also influenced 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 also in the spirit of universalism, the focus on conquest, and, above all, 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