Wahhabiism simply amounts to this, that while it denounces all other Musalmans as polytheists, it enforces the {112} Sunnat of the Prophet with all its energy.[97] It breaks down shrines, but insists on the necessity of a pilgrimage to a black stone at Mecca. It forbids the use of a rosary, but attaches great merit to counting the ninety-nine names of God on the fingers. It would make life unsocial. The study of the Fine Arts with the exception of Architecture can find no place in it. Isma'il quotes with approval the following Tradition. "'Ayesha said: 'I purchased a carpet on which were some figures. The Prophet stood in the doorway and looked displeased.' I said: 'O messenger of God, I repent to God and His Messenger; what fault have I committed that you do not enter?' His Highness then said: 'What is this carpet?' I replied; 'I have bought it for you to sit and rest upon.' Then the messenger of God replied: 'Verily, the maker of pictures will be punished on the day of resurrection, when God will desire them to bring them to life. A house which contains pictures is not visited by the angels.'" In a Tradition quoted by Ibn 'Abbas, the Prophet classes artists with murderers and parricides. Wahhabiism approves of all this, and thus by forbidding harmless enjoyments it would make society "an organised hypocrisy." It would spread abroad a spirit of contempt for all mankind except its own followers, and, where it had the power, it would force its convictions on others at the point of the sword. Wahhabiism was reform after a fashion, in one direction; in the history of Islam there have been attempts at reform in other directions; there will yet be such attempts, but so long as the Quran and the Sunnat (or, in the case of the Shia'h, its equivalent) are to form, as they have hitherto {113} done for every sect, the sole law to regulate all conditions and states of life, enlightened and continued progress is impossible. The deadening influence of Islam is the greatest obstacle the Church of God has to overcome in her onward march; its immobility is the bane of many lands; connection with it is the association of the living with the dead; to speak of it, as some do, as if it were a sort of sister religion to Christianity, is but to show deplorable ignorance where ignorance is inexcusable. Thus it is plain that Musalmans are not all of one heart and soul.[98] In the next chapter I hope to show that Islam is a very dogmatic and complex system in spite of the simple form of its creed. {114} NOTE TO CHAPTER III. WAHHABIISM.