It will be asked, What are, to a Muslim, and especially to a Shi'ite
Muslim, infinitely precious things? I will try to answer this
question. First of all, in time of trouble, the Muslim certainly
values as a 'pearl of great price' the Mercifulness and Compassion of
God. Those who believingly read the Kur'an or recite the opening
prayer, and above all, those who pass through deep waters, cannot do
otherwise. No doubt the strict justice of God, corresponding to and
limited by His compassion, is also a true jewel. We may admit that the
judicial severity of Allah has received rather too much stress; still
there must be occasions on which, from earthly caricatures of justice
pious Muslims flee for refuge in their thoughts to the One Just
Judge. Indeed, the great final Judgment is, to a good Muslim, a much
stronger incentive to holiness than the sensuous descriptions of
Paradise, which indeed he will probably interpret symbolically.

The true Muslim will be charitable even to the lower animals.
[Footnote: Nicholson, _The Mystics of Islam_, p. 108.] Neither
poor-law nor Society for the Protection of Animals is required in
Muslim countries. How soon organizations arose for the care of the
sick, and, in war-time, of the wounded, it would be difficult to say;
for Buddhists and Hindus were of course earlier in the field than
Muslims, inheriting as they did an older moral culture. In the Muslim
world, however, the twelfth century saw the rise of the Kadirite
Order, with its philanthropic procedure. [Footnote: D. S.
Margoliouth, _Mohammedanism_, pp. 211-212.] Into the ideal of man, as
conceived by our Muslim brothers, there must therefore enter the
feature of mercifulness. We cannot help sympathizing with this, even
though we think Abdul Baha's ideal richer and nobler than any as yet
conceived by any Muslim saint.