Religious Problem in India

Author(s): Annie Besant
Publisher: Theosophist Office Adyar

Page 23

ISLAM
15
rough warriors, until their “tears ran down upon their beards," says the chronicler: “Yea, Prophet of God, we are well satisfied with onr share."*
O my Hindū brothers, who know nothing of the great Arabian Prophet, do yon not feel his fascination—the power in him that made men suffer tortures and face death for his sake, that has made the love for him last through the centuries; and yei —so much did he insist on his own imperfections, “I am only a man”—even that love has never deified him.
And so things went on for ten years, and then coines the end. And when pravers were over, they lift him up in the mosque, too weak to stand, Ali and Faz] on either side to hold him up, and he raises his feeble voice and cries: “Muslims! if I have wronged any one of yon, here I am to answer for it; if I owe aught to any one, all I may happen to possess belongs to yon." One man says that he owes him three dirhems, and the coins are paid, the last debt to be discharged on earth.† It is the last visit to the mosque, he is called home, his work accomplished. He lies praying, and his voice sinks to a feeble whisper; it is the 8th June, 632 A. D., and the Prophet leaves his worn-out body, to watch over, from a higher sphere, the religion he had founded and gnarded.
A noble life; a marvellons life; verily a Prophet of the Lord. And withal so simple, frugal, humble,
* Ibid, pp. 197, 198. + Ibid, p. 218.