re to all time and to all his followers a divine rule of faith and
practice. "We should know that God Almighty has given commands and
prohibitions to his {11} servants, either by means of the Quran, or by the
mouth of His Prophet."[14] Al-Ghazali, a most distinguished theologian,
writes:--"Neither is the faith according to His will, complete by the
testimony to the Unity alone, that is, by simply saying, 'There is but one
God,' without the addition of the further testimony to the Apostle, that
is, the statement, 'Muhammad is the apostle of God.'" This belief in the
Prophet must extend to all that he has said concerning the present and the
future life, for, says the same author, "A man's faith is not accepted till
he is fully persuaded of those things which the Prophet hath affirmed shall
be after death."

It is often said that the Wahhabis reject Tradition. In the ordinary sense
of the word Tradition they may; but in Muslim Theology the term Hadis,
which we translate Tradition, has a special meaning. It is applied only to
the sayings of the Prophet, not to those of some uninspired divine or
teacher. The Wahhabis reject the Traditions handed down by men who lived
after the time of the Companions, but the Hadis, embodying the sayings of
the Prophet, they, in common with _all_ Muslim sects, hold to be an
inspired revelation of God's will to men. It would be as reasonable to say
that Protestants reject the four Gospels as to say that the Wahhabis reject
Tradition.[15] An orthodox Muslim places the Gospels in the same rank as
the Hadis, that is, he looks upon them as a record of what Jesus said and
did handed down to us by His Companions. "In the same way as other Prophets
received their books under the form of ideas, so our Prophet has in the
same way received a great number of communications which are found in the
collections of the {12} Traditions (Ahadis).[16] This shows that the Sunnat
must be placed on a level with the Jewish and Christian Scriptures; whilst
the Quran is a revelation superior to them all. To no sect of Musalmans is
the Quran alone the rule of faith. The Shia'hs, it is true, reject the
Sunnat, but they have in their own collection of Traditions an exact
equivalent.

The nature of the inspiration of the Sunnat and its authoritative value are
questions of the first importance, whether Islam is viewed from a
theological or a political stand-point.

"Muhammad said that seventy-three sects would arise, of w