The Nature of Muhammadanism: Its dogmas are simple, without mysteries, easy to grasp; its morality imposes almost no sacrifice and favors man's strongest passions.
The fatalism it preaches, by removing moral responsibility, takes remorse from the conscience and gives free rein to vice.
The Religious, Intellectual, and Political State of Arabia: This country was then inhabited by Jews, Nestorian Christians, followers of the religion of Zoroaster, and idolaters. Muhammad formed his religion from a mixture of the general beliefs of these diverse sects; he even yielded to idolatry by preserving the worship of the Kaaba stone. The Muslim doctrine was thus of a nature to bring minds together, to unite them in a single worship.
Furthermore, ignorance was extreme among the Arabs; superstition and enthusiasm characterize this people, which explains Muhammad's ease in submitting them to his doctrine; a military success was enough for a very large part of this people to believe in the prophet's divine mission. And he, to prevent any defection from the belief he imposed, forbade all discussion, all examination of his doctrine.
Finally, politically, Arabia was divided into several independent tribes, which were in continual warfare with each other, and among whom a lack of organization perpetuated poverty and disposed them to subjugation by neighboring peoples. Muhammad made these diverse tribes into a single nation, imprinting upon it a strong unity through a system in which the religious and political orders were merged, and by proclaiming to this people that it was chosen by heaven to spread the true worship, he exalted its pride and ambition, and promised to natural cupidity the treasures of foreign nations. Nothing could have contributed more powerfully to submitting Arabia to the doctrine of Islam.
The Material Force Exercised by War: The preaching of the Quran was done by the sword; a large part of Arabia was subdued by this means. And the sword is what subsequently subjected so many diverse peoples to this nation. This exalted, enthusiastic people, already stirred by cupidity, believed itself called by heaven to war and conquest. Muhammad had said that those who died with weapons in hand would go to Paradise. This explains the ardor, the courage with which they attacked neighboring nations.
Their initial successes animated them more and more, and gave them that confidence, that assurance of victory which is often enough to obtain it. But the state of weakness, division, and anarchy of the countries they conquered, and the special causes that favored their invasion, also greatly contributed to the rapidity of their conquests. Moreover, they imposed fear and terror on those they attacked through their threats.
Khalid, entering Syria, said to the inhabitants:
"You must become Muhammadans or pass under the edge of our swords."
The Greek Empire was weakened by long wars with the Persians and the Arabs; this people was debased by a great moral decay; there was no public spirit, it had a taste only for miserable controversies. It had for leaders cowardly and cruel emperors who let the Muslims do as they pleased so they could slaughter each other more freely. Heraclius, after the initial successes of the Arabs in Syria, abandoned the country to them, releasing the subjects from their oath of fidelity. Jerusalem alone had defended itself honorably under the direction of Patriarch Sophronius.
Egypt fell into the power of the Arabs, thanks to the treachery of the Jacobite Copts, who, out of hatred for the Orthodox Greeks, accepted the Arabs and delivered a large part of the country to them. The Greeks, however, defended Alexandria for fourteen months. Finally, this city fell into the power of Amr, who, by order of Umar, burned the famous library, the most beautiful in the world. Persia was exhausted by a long and bloody war with the Greeks and by an uninterrupted series of bitter civil wars; it offered easy prey to Arab ambition.
Africa, since the Vandals, was a ruined country, almost abandoned by the Greek emperors; the various governments were largely independent and had little connection with each other for the common defense of the country; horrible exactions weighed upon these unfortunate lands. Thus the Arabs were initially called, yet they still needed six major expeditions to become masters of it. Nowhere did Muhammadanism take more vigorous root; the Donatist schism and the Arian heresy had for centuries weakened the Christian faith in these regions.
Spain was divided by civil dissensions and softened by a long peace and by the debauchery set as an example by its kings. Roderic had violated the daughter of Count Julian, governor of Mauritania. The latter, united with many malcontents, to take revenge, called the Arabs into Spain and facilitated their entry into the country. The enervated Visigoths upheld the honor of the country in only one battle, that of Xérès or Xérez or Jerez, a town near Cadiz; afterwards, they easily submitted to the victors, except for Pelagius, who, withdrawing to the Asturias, resisted their attacks and preserved a remnant of the nation, which, developing more and more, was destined, centuries later, to drive the Moors from Spain.
Masters of Asia, Egypt, Africa, and Spain, the Muhammadans had invaded Gaul; the prodigious victory of Charles Martel put an end to their conquest and saved the West. When one considers the causes of the propagation of Muhammadanism, whether in Arabia or in the countries conquered by the Muslims, one sees nothing but human, material factors in this propagation. It is not so with the diffusion of Christian doctrine, which had against it its mysterious dogmas, its morality contrary to the most ingrained tendencies of society, and which had to struggle against three centuries of horrible persecutions to which it never opposed violence.
Pascal said:
"Instead of concluding that since Muhammad succeeded, Jesus Christ could well have succeeded, one must say that since Muhammad succeeded, Christianity ought to have perished, had it not been sustained by a divine force."
From the Christian point of view, the successes of Muhammadanism are explained as a punishment of the peoples whom Arab arms subdued. The Persians, for more than three centuries, had resisted efforts made among them to introduce Christianity; they had horribly persecuted this religion; they were to be chastised like pagan Rome. All the heresies, all the divisions of the Church came from the empire of Constantinople; as this empire loosened the ties that united it to Rome, it saw itself invaded by some new conquest of the Saracens or the Turks.
Africa was the wound of the Church through its disorders, its divisions; schism and heresy dominated there. Spain offered a frightful scandal through the morals of its princes, people, and even clergy; it needed an exemplary punishment; but as the faith had remained intact there, it did not perish entirely: Catholicism saved it, and gradually increasing in strength, it ended by driving out its invaders.
If a doctrine is judged by its fruits, one can regard Muhammadanism as containing one of the most pernicious doctrines ever spread upon the earth. One can judge this by its effects in the moral, political, and literary order.
Muhammadans are given over to sensuality and all its fatal consequences: morals are enervated among them, and one often sees decrepitude at an age still not very advanced. Women, debased and captive, enjoy no freedom, no consideration: they exist only for the passions of men. Another general defect noted among Muslims is the spirit of rapacity, of pillage, at least towards other peoples. Fear alone prevents them from committing the most glaring injustices against foreigners to their race and worship.
The confusion of temporal power with spiritual power has produced a frightful despotism. The sovereign's whim is the only law: the peoples are slaves; no political freedom, no force of public opinion, no sense of right among them. They have never risen up to shake off the yoke of oppression: the bitter civil wars that have arisen in Muslim countries have only been struggles for succession to the throne. A change of reign often brings the most odious murders in the interest of jealous ambition.
Ignorance spread everywhere with Muhammadanism, and the lands most flourishing in letters and sciences before the Muslim invasion fell into coarseness and barbarism. The brilliance cast by Arab civilization for a few centuries has been praised, but it must be observed that the Arabs borrowed a great part of their knowledge from the monks of Syria and Egypt. The Arabs have been credited with the discovery of Algebra; they are attributed with the use of gunpowder, the compass, and even printing.
Even if that were so, how is it that all this made so little progress among them, that these instruments led them to no great result, whereas immense progress has been made with the aid of these things as soon as they were in the hands of Christian Europe.
Religious science was non-existent among the Arabs, because Islam did not permit discussion. The moral, philosophical, legislative, and governmental sciences have nothing, in the finest period of the Arabs, that can sustain comparison with the worst epochs of Christian Europe. And yet, the latter was at every moment prey to the successive ravages of the Barbarians.
The highest degree of Arab civilization coincided with the time of the greatest prosperity of the Muslim states, when a long peace and the treasures of conquered peoples favored their progress. Still, the Arabs owed to Christianity the first elements of philosophy. St. John Damascene was the initiator of this science at the court of the Umayyad Caliphs: Aboulféda, Ibn-Alatir, Abdallatif. It is recognized, moreover, that the best Arab historians, critics, and philosophers are posterior to the era of the Crusades.
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The Arabs, in the sciences, had success only in mathematics and medicine, because the nature of their mind, under the influence of Islam, sought only tangible truths and discoveries that could improve the physical state of man. As for their literature, it relates to the character of the people: long before Muhammad, Arabic literature had graceful productions, superior to the Quran. In short, grace, elegance, a sensual imagination, that is what distinguishes the literary and artistic productions of Muslim civilization. One finds there no strength, no grandeur, never the inspiration of genius. Finally, this society did not know how to preserve the products of its own literature, despite the prosperity it enjoyed.
Christian Europe, amid troubles, wars, and ravages, preserved ancient literature; even a part of that of the Arabs, and its progress in the sciences and arts it created only increased. Casting a glance today on Christian and Muhammadan countries, one perceives that Christianity is civilization, Muhammadanism, barbarism. That alone decides the social influence of the two doctrines.
Source: *Histoire apologétique de l'Église* – Bishop J. S. Raymond