Islam’s Message to Christianity as Voiced by One of Her Sons
By Hajim, Son of Ibrahim
Pertinent Questions to Christians
By “Hajim, Son of Ibrahim” NOW, hear me further, O ye nations, so great, so good, and yet not greatly good; so Christian, and yet so sadly unchristian, if Christianity stands for peace on earth and good will to men—hear me, I say, for yet a fleeting moment: The palms in my native land lift their heads bathed in the sunshine and bring forth dates sweet to the taste and most nourishing for food. Along the hills the crimson grapes cluster, or on the plains the rustling grain or olive-trees give earthly blessing by heaven’s grace and miracle. But if those dates mean poison, if those grapes mean death, and if the rustle of the corn or the branches of the olive-tree sing the chorus of disease, what then? In a few short days your Christian world will celebrate its great Noel, the birthday of the Man ye revere and even deify. His message was: Peace on earth and good will to men. Does that message mean the poison of sham international brotherhood, the death of false international honor, the diseases of international hatreds, prejudice, intolerance, and injustice? Is your Christianity Christ-ianity, or is it a mockery—a deliberate, a dastardly, a deadly mockery of the message you pretend to revere? How can you sing your anthem of peace on earth and good will to men when your war-ships are ready to belch their death and your armies to sing their chorus of gun-crash and of shrieking shell? And why are they ready, and why must they be kept ready, if it is not that each Christian nation distrusts the other and believes that Christian honor, Christian reason, Christian love, Christian justice are but fancies, dreams, wisps of straw for fools to twist and wear, and cry, “O, look at my crown of glory!”—if this is Christianity, then why complain of Islam? One word more and I have done. I have traveled far and wide. I studied in the halls of learning that rise beside the Thames. I have walked where Berlin’s science and Paris’s thought lead mankind’s minds to higher things. With the ideals of Italia I have been in touch, and where the lowlands are defended from the Northern Sea, there also have I wandered. Yea, far beyond across the Atlantic have I lived and thought, where stretches snow-land to the north, the young giant of Canada, and where stretches the greater land to the south, where industry is throned amid the boundless glories of natural resources. And what have I learned? That there is not a single Christian country where the Founder of Christianity is not set aside and the honor and respect due to the God He worshiped denied. I mean the first-day Sabbath. As a son of Islam I have never understood why the Christian world does not keep the true Christian Sabbath—the Sabbath that was kept by the Founder of Christianity, the Sabbath which He ordered to be kept until the end of Time, the crack of doom, until the day when the heavens should vanish as smoke, until “earth grow old and the sun grow cold and the stars shall cease to be!” Who dared decree that the seventh day should no longer be the Sabbath? Was it Constantine, that infamous wretch who smothered his wife in a steam bath, who killed his own son, who slew his nephew, who fooled his people—pagan and pseudo-Christian alike? Was it the clerics who composed that Council of Nicea?—I have read of it! What is the reputation of the clerics of that age but a reputation for such ignorance that few could read and fewer still could write? What was the reputation of the clerics of that era but a reputation for crime and for immorality among the crimes, so that saintly men were few and holy men at times were moved by lust and passion most unholy? When in a few short days the Christian world will bend in homage to Him who kept the seventh-day Sabbath, to Him who never would have tolerated the insult to His divine Father of setting aside His command that the seventh day is the Sabbath, to Him who commanded that the law and the prophets should be obeyed to every jot or tittle—I say, when the Christian world bends its knee at next Noel, or Christmas, shall not all true Christian men and Christian women say: It is time that we vindicate the honor of Him whom we revere and keep the Sabbath which He Himself kept, follow His example and obey the lessons of His life as He lived it? Is it not time that we should go back to the original Sabbath, or shall we continue to respect more a Constantine or faulty clerics? Whom shall we respect—Jesus or Constantine? Whom shall we obey—the prophets of the Bible or the clerics of Nicea? Oft, as I have wandered in many lands, I have thought of these and other such developments of Christianity. When will men and women begin to think for themselves? When will men and women make Christianity Christ-ianity; or, a religion that shall mean respect for the life and example of Him who founded it, a religion that shall stand for peace on earth and good will to men? When will the Christian nations join us of Islam: “Come, let us meet and adjust our differences, where Right shall be Might and where Reason shall dethrone Treason”? The time is now. Far greater events impend than the seizure of a Tripoli or a war in the Balkans. The echo of Christendom girding for the fray is the one word “Jehad” from Islam’s throat. When that echo awakes the world, then we to the world from the banks of Meinam to the shores of Casa-Blanca. I say to you, make the Hague Court a reality. I say to you, make Christianity Christ-ianity. I say to you that Islam has the right to live as well as Christianity. The crimes of the one are the crimes of the other. The glories of the one are the glories of the other. Both were called into existence for some eternal purpose. The history of both is stained with7blood and blurred with tears, shame to us both! But if now we are awakened to a consciousness of better things, can we not unite to make the world better, holier, happier? What if our Crescent wanes? Shall it not again grow to a glory that shall help to shed peace on earth? What if the Cross is marred with the story of many a war, many a persecution, many an insult to the memory of Him who fainted upon it? Let us both cleanse away the past and be just and upright with each other. Comes the end for Islam! Not yet are the signs fulfilled which we are taught announce the death of Islam. For the sun riseth not in the west; Mecca’s earth not yet hath birthed the brute, and Stamboul’s walls not yet are breached by Cross and shattered by its thunder. Not yet Irak beholds Messiah ed Dajah, nor yet does the Nazarene, revered by Cross, preach from the minarets of Damascus. Not yet is Lydda’s gate red with blood of ed Dajal, or is Galilee drunk dry by Gog-u-Magog host. Doth not our Koran teach us these? Signs of the end—we see them not. When comes the end, smoke shall fill the earth and Phrat give up its treasures; then, holy Caaba, shattered by the son of Chanum, shall be destroyed; then, stones shall speak and tongues of fire shall be eloquent; the son of Kahton shall wield his rod, and ice-winds, sweeping from Damascus, shall carry the Koran to the heavens above—then, the sons of Islam shall know the end is come, that it is Yom ed Din! Then will we bow to Kismet! But then, and not till then. O, my brothers, for brothers are we all, let us think, let us pray, let us forgive, let us make peace on earth and good will to man a reality! Or shall your Noel, your Christmas, be a mockery to yourselves, an insult to Him you adore?—Selected.