that character to Islam also.
Hence there are no moral gradations in the Koran. All precepts proceed
from the will of God, and all are enforced with the same threatening
emphasis. A failure of performance in the meanest trivialities of civil
life involves the same tremendous penalties as apostacy and
idolatry."--_Islam under Khalifs_, p. 5. He further says: "In their
religious aspect, these traditions are remarkable for that strange
confusion of thought which caused the Prophet to place on one level of
wickedness serious moral crimes, breaches of sumptuary regulations, and
accidental omissions in ceremonial observations. Sin, throughout, is
regarded as an external pollution, which can, at once, be rectified by
the payment of a fine of some kind." _Ibid_, page 62.]

[Footnote 152: "Occasionally our author would seem to write what he
certainly does not mean; thus, in the middle of an excellent summary of
the causes of Islam's decadence, it is stated,--'Swathed in the rigid
bands of the Koran, _Islam is powerless like the Christian dispensation_
to adapt itself to the varying circumstances of time and place.'"--_The
Saturday Review_, June 23, 1883.]

[Footnote 153: _Vide_ Annals of the Early Caliphate, by Sir W. Muir,
K.C.S.I., LL.D., D.C.L., page 456, London, 1883.]

[Sidenote: The preceding objections not applicable to the Koran.]

38. All these objections more or less apply rather to the teachings of
the Mohammadan Common Law (canon and civil), called _Fiqah_ or _Shara_,
than to the Koran, the Mohammadan Revealed Law. Our Common Law, which
treats both ecclesiastical and the civil law, is by no means considered
to be a divine or unchangeable law. This subject has been treated by me
in a separate work[154] on the Legal, Political and Social Reforms to
which the reader is referred. The space allowed to me in this
Introduction, which has already exceeded its proper limit, does not
admit a full and lengthy discussion of the objections quoted above, but
I will review them here in as few words as possible.

[Footnote 154: Reforms, Political, Social and Legal, under the Moslem
Rule, Bombay Education Society's Press, 1883.]

[Sidenote: Finality of the social reforms of Mohammad.]

39. (1) Mohammad had to deal with barbarous nations around him, to be
gradually reformed, and besides this the subject of social reforms was a
secondary question. Yet it being necessary to transform the character of
the people and to reform