J. F. Campbell Collection > Koran: or, Alcoran of Mohammed

102 PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE. sect. vi.
shall be bound up in the bundle of life with the Lord his God."* More
passages of this kind might be produced from the Jewish writers; and
the Christians come not far behind them. " We are desirous of knowing,"
eays one,* writing to the Franks engaged in the holy war, " the charity
of you all ; for that every one (which we speak not because we wish it)
who shall faithfully lose his life in tliis warfare shall be by no means
denied the kingdom of heaven." And another® gives the following ex-
hortation; " Laying aside all fear and dread, endeavour to act eliectaaliy
against the enemies of the holy faith, and the adversaries of all religions •
for the Almightly knoweth, if any of you die, that he dieth forthetrutli
of the faith, and the salvation of his country, and the defence of Christians .
and therefore he shall obtain of him a celestial reward." The Jews, in-
deed, had a divine commission, extensive and explicit enough, to attack,
subdue, and destroy the enemies of their religion : and Mohammed pre-
tended to have received one in favour of himself and his Lloslems, in
terms equally plain and full ; and therefore it is no wonder that they
should act consistently with their avoweil principles: but that Christians
should teach and practise a doctrine so opposite to the temper and whole
tenor of the gospel, seems veiy strange ; and yet the latter have carried
matters farther, and shown a more violent spirit of intolerance than
either of the former.
The laws of war according to the Mohammedans have been already so
exactly set down by the learned Reland/ that I need say very little of them.
I shall therefore only observe some conformity between their military laws
and those of the Jews.
While Mohammetlism was in its infancy, the opposers thereof taken in
battle were doomed to death without mercy ; but this was judged too
severe to be put into practice when that religicm came to be sufficiently
established, and past the danger of being subverted by its enemies.^ The
same sentence was pronounced not only against the seven Canaanitish
nations,^ whose possessions were given to the Israelites, and without whose
destruction, in a manner, they could not have settled themselves in the
country designed them, but against the Amalekites' and Midianites,'' who
had done their utmost to cut them off in their passage thither. When the
Mohammedans declare war against people of a different faith, they give
them their choice of three offers, viz. either to embrace Moharamedism, in
which case they become not only secure in their persons, families, and
fortunes, but entitled to all the privileges of other Moslems; or to submit
and pay tribute,' by doing which they are allowed to profess their own
religion, provided it be not gross idolatry, or against the moral law ; or else
to decide the quarrel by the sword ; in which last case, if the JNloslems
prevail, the women and children which are made captives become absolute
slaves, and the men taken in the battle may either be slain, unless they
Uiuii Mohammedans, or otherwise disposed of at the pleasure of the prince.*
Herewith agiee the laws of war given to the Jews, which relate to the
nations not devoted to destruction ;* and Joshua is said to have sent even
to the inhabitants of Canaan, before he entered the land, three schedules,
in one of which was written, Let himflij, who will; in the second, Let him
surrender, wlio will ; and in the third, Let him JlglU, who will; ^ though
* 1 Sam. XXV. 28, 29. * Nicolaus, in Jure Canon, c. Omnium, 23. qnaest. 6. ' Leo
IV. ib. quaest. 8. ' In his treatise De Jure Militari Mohammedanor. in the third toL
of his Dissertattones Miscellaneae. * See Kor. c. 47, and the notes there; and c. 4, p.
71, c. 5. p. 86. » Deut. xx. 16—18. i Ib. c. xxv. 17—19. ' Nnmb. xxxi. 17. * See c.
9, and the notes there. * See the notes to c. 47. * Dtut. xx. 10—15. « Talir.iu!.