Abu ’l-‘Alá is a firm monotheist, but his belief in God amounted, as it would seem, to little beyond a conviction that all things are governed by inexorable Fate, whose mysteries none may fathom and from whose omnipotence there is no escape. He denies the Resurrection of the dead, e.g.:—

"We laugh, but inept is our laughter;We should weep and weep sore,Who are shattered like glass, and thereafterRe-moulded no more!"588

Since Death is the ultimate goal of mankind, the sage will pray to be delivered as speedily as possible from the miseries of life and refuse to inflict upon others what, by no fault of his own, he is doomed to suffer:—

"Amends are richly due from sire to son:What if thy children rule o'er cities great?That eminence estranges them the moreFrom thee, and causes them to wax in hate,Beholding one who cast them into Life'sDark labyrinth whence no wit can extricate."589

There are many passages to the same effect, showing that Abu ’l-‘Alá regarded procreation as a sin and universal annihilation as the best hope for humanity. He acted in accordance with his opinions, for he never married, and he is said to have desired that the following verse should be inscribed on his grave:—

"This wrong was by my father doneTo me, but ne'er by me to one."590

Hating the present life and weary of its burdens, yet seeing no happier prospect than that of return to non-existence, Abu ’l-‘Alá can scarcely have disguised from himself what he might shrink openly to avow—that he was at heart, not indeed an atheist, but wholly incredulous of any Divine revelation. Religion, as he conceives it, is a product of the human mind, in which men believe through force of habit and education, never stopping to consider whether it is true.

"Sometimes you may find a man skilful in his trade, perfect in sagacity and in the use of arguments, but when he comes to religion he is found obstinate, so does he follow the old groove. Piety is implanted in human nature; it is deemed a sure refuge. To the growing child that which falls from his elders' lips is a lesson that abides with him all his life. Monks in their cloisters and devotees in the mosques accept their creed just as a story is handed down from him who tells it, without distinguishing between a true interpreter and a false. If one of these had found his kin among the Magians, he would have declared himself a Magian, or among the Ṣábians, he would have become nearly or quite like them."591

Religion, then, is "a fable invented by the ancients," worthless except to those unscrupulous persons who prey upon human folly and superstition. Islam is neither better nor worse than any other creed:—

"Ḥanífs are stumbling,592 Christians all astray,Jews wildered, Magians far on error's way.We mortals are composed of two great schools—Enlightened knaves or else religious fools."593

Not only does the poet emphatically reject the proud claim of Islam to possess a monopoly of truth, but he attacks most of its dogmas in detail. As to the Koran, Abu ’l-‘Alá could not altogether refrain from doubting if it was really the Word of God, but he thought so well of the style that he accepted the challenge flung down by Muḥammad and produced a rival work ( al-Fuṣúl wa-’l-Gháyát), which appears to have been a somewhat frivolous parody of the sacred volume, though in the author's judgment its inferiority was simply due to the fact that it was not yet polished by the tongues of four centuries of readers. Another work which must have sorely offended orthodox Muḥammadans is the Risálatu ’l-Ghufrán(Epistle of Forgiveness).594 Here the Paradise of the Faithful becomes a glorified salon tenanted by various heathen poets who have been forgiven—hence the title—and received among the Blest. This idea is carried out with much ingenuity and in a spirit of audacious burlesque that reminds us of Lucian. The poets are presented in a series of imaginary conversations with a certain Shaykh ‘Alí b. Manṣúr, to whom the work is addressed, reciting and explaining their verses, quarrelling with one another, and generally behaving as literary Bohemians. The second part contains a number of anecdotes relating to the zindíqsor freethinkers of Islam interspersed with quotations from their poetry and reflections on the nature of their belief, which Abu ’l-‘Alá condemns while expressing a pious hope that they are not so black as they paint themselves. At this time it may have suited him—he was over sixty—to assume the attitude of charitable orthodoxy. Like so many wise men of the East, he practised dissimulation as a fine art—

"I lift my voice to utter lies absurd,But when I speak the truth, my hushed tones scarce are heard."595

In the Luzúmiyyát, however, he often unmasks. Thus he describes as idolatrous relics the two Pillars of the Ka‘ba and the Black Stone, venerated by every Moslem, and calls the Pilgrimage itself 'a heathen's journey' ( riḥlatu jáhiliyy ⁱⁿ). The following sentiments do him honour, but they would have been rank heresy at Mecca:—

"Praise God and pray,Walk seventy times, not seven, the Temple round—And impious remain!Devout is he alone who, when he mayFeast his desires, is foundWith courage to abstain."596

It is needless to give further instances of the poet's contempt for the Muḥammadan articles of faith. Considering that he assailed persons as well as principles, and lashed with bitter invective the powerful class of the ‘Ulamá, the clerical and legal representatives of Islam, we may wonder that the accusation of heresy brought against him was never pushed home and had no serious consequences. The question was warmly argued on both sides, and though Abu ’l-‘Alá was pronounced by the majority to be a freethinker and materialist, he did not lack defenders who quoted chapter and verse to prove that he was nothing of the kind. It must be remembered that his works contain no philosophical system; that his opinions have to be gathered from the ideas which he scatters incoherently, and for the most part in guarded language, through a long succession of rhymes; and that this task, already arduous enough, is complicated by the not infrequent occurrence of sentiments which are blamelessly orthodox and entirely contradictory to the rest. A brilliant writer, familiar with Eastern ways of thinking, has observed that in general the conscience of an Asiatic is composed of the following ingredients: (1) an almost bare religious designation; (2) a more or less lively belief in certain doctrines of the creed which he professes; (3) a resolute opposition to many of its doctrines, even if they should be the most essential; (4) a fund of ideas relating to completely alien theories, which occupies more or less room; (5) a constant tendency to get rid of these ideas and theories and to replace the old by new.597 Such phenomena will account for a great deal of logical inconsistency, but we should beware of invoking them too confidently in this case. Abu ’l-‘Alá with his keen intellect and unfanatical temperament was not the man to let himself be mystified. Still lamer is the explanation offered by some Muḥammadan critics, that his thoughts were decided by the necessities of the difficult metre in which he wrote. It is conceivable that he may sometimes have doubted his own doubts and given Islam the benefit, but Von Kremer's conclusion is probably near the truth, namely, that where the poet speaks as a good Moslem, his phrases if they are not purely conventional are introduced of set purpose to foil his pious antagonists or to throw them off the scent. Although he was not without religion in the larger sense of the word, unprejudiced students of the later poems must recognise that from the orthodox standpoint he was justly branded as an infidel. The following translations will serve to illustrate the negative side of his philosophy:—