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THE NEW WORLD OF ISLAM
BY
LATHROP STODDARD, A.M., PH.D. (Harv.)
AUTHOR OF: THE RISING TIDE OF COLOUR,
THE STAKES OF THE WAR,
PRESENT DAY EUROPE: ITS NATIONAL STATES OF MIND,
THE TRENCH REVOLUTION IN SAN DOMINGO, ETC.
WITH MAP
_SECOND IMPRESSION_
LONDON
CHAPMAN AND HALL, LTD.
1922
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY
RICHARD CLAY & SONS LIMITED.
BUNGAY, SUFFOLK
PREFACE
The entire world of Islam is to-day in profound ferment. From Morocco to
China and from Turkestan to the Congo, the 250,000,000 followers of the
Prophet Mohammed are stirring to new ideas, new impulses, new
aspirations. A gigantic transformation is taking place whose results
must affect all mankind.
This transformation was greatly stimulated by the late war. But it began
long before. More than a hundred years ago the seeds were sown, and ever
since then it has been evolving; at first slowly and obscurely; later
more rapidly and perceptibly; until to-day, under the stimulus of
Armageddon, it has burst into sudden and startling bloom.
The story of that strange and dramatic evolution I have endeavoured to
tell in the following pages. Considering in turn its various
aspects--religious, cultural, political, economic, social--I have tried
to portray their genesis and development, to analyse their character,
and to appraise their potency. While making due allowance for local
differentiations, the intimate correlation and underlying unity of the
various movements have ever been kept in view.
Although the book deals primarily with the Moslem world, it necessarily
includes the non-Moslem Hindu elements of India. The field covered is
thus virtually the entire Near and Middle East. The Far East has not
been directly considered, but parallel developments there have been
noted and should always be kept in mind.
LOTHROP STODDARD.
CONTENTS
CHAP PAGE
INTRODUCTION: THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE OLD ISLAMIC WORLD 1
I. THE MOHAMMEDAN REVIVAL 20
II. PAN-ISLAMISM 37
III. THE INFLUENCE OF THE WEST 75
IV. POLITICAL CHANGE 110
V. NATIONALISM 132
VI. NATIONALISM IN INDIA 201
VII. ECONOMIC CHANGE 226
VIII. SOCIAL CHANGE 250
IX. SOCIAL UNREST AND BOLSHEVISM 273
CONCLUSION 300
INDEX 301
MAP
THE WORLD OF ISLAM _at end of volume_
THE NEW WORLD OF ISLAM
"Das Alte stürzt, es ändert sich die Zeit,
Und neues Leben blüht aus den Ruinen."
SCHILLER, _Wilhelm Tell_.
INTRODUCTION
THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE OLD ISLAMIC WORLD
The rise of Islam is perhaps the most amazing event in human history.
Springing from a land and a people alike previously negligible, Islam
spread within a century over half the earth, shattering great empires,
overthrowing long-established religions, remoulding the souls of races,
and building up a whole new world--the world of Islam.
The closer we examine this development the more extraordinary does it
appear. The other great religions won their way slowly, by painful
struggle, and finally triumphed with the aid of powerful monarchs
converted to the new faith. Christianity had its Constantine, Buddhism
its Asoka, and Zoroastrianism its Cyrus, each lending to his chosen cult
the mighty force of secular authority. Not so Islam. Arising in a desert
land sparsely inhabited by a nomad race previously undistinguished in
human annals, Islam sallied forth on its great adventure with the
slenderest human backing and against the heaviest material odds. Yet
Islam triumphed with seemingly miraculous ease, and a couple of
generations saw the Fiery Crescent borne victorious from the Pyrenees
to the Himalayas and from the deserts of Central Asia to the deserts of
Central Africa.
This amazing success was due to a number of contributing factors, chief
among them being the character of the Arab race, the nature of
Mohammed's teaching, and the general state of the contemporary Eastern
world. Undistinguished though the Arabs had hitherto been, they were a
people of remarkable potentialities, which were at that moment patently
seeking self-realization. For several generations before Mohammed,
Arabia had been astir with exuberant vitality. The Arabs had outgrown
their ancestral paganism and were instinctively yearning for better
things. Athwart this seething ferment of mind and spirit Islam rang like
a trumpet-call. Mohammed, an Arab of the Arabs, was the very incarnation
of the soul of his race. Preaching a simple, austere monotheism, free
from priestcraft or elaborate doctrinal trappings, he tapped the
well-springs of religious zeal always present in the Semitic heart.
Forgetting the chronic rivalries and blood-feuds which had consumed
their energies in internecine strife, and welded into a glowing unity by
the fire of their new-found faith, the Arabs poured forth from their
deserts to conquer the earth for Allah, the One True God.
Thus Islam, like the resistless breath of the sirocco, the desert wind,
swept out of Arabia and encountered--a spiritual vacuum. Those
neighbouring Byzantine and Persian Empires, so imposing to the casual
eye, were mere dried husks, devoid of real vitality. Their religions
were a mockery and a sham. Persia's ancestral cult of Zoroaster had
degenerated into "Magism"--a pompous priestcraft, tyrannical and
persecuting, hated and secretly despised. As for Eastern Christianity,
bedizened with the gewgaws of paganism and bedevilled by the maddening
theological speculations of the decadent Greek mind, it had become a
repellent caricature of the teachings of Christ. Both Magism and
Byzantine Christendom were riven by great heresies which engendered
savage persecutions and furious hates. Furthermore, both the Byzantine
and Persian Empires were harsh despotisms which crushed their subjects
to the dust and killed out all love of country or loyalty to the state.
Lastly, the two empires had just fought a terrible war from which they
had emerged mutually bled white and utterly exhausted.
Such was the world compelled to face the lava-flood of Islam. The result
was inevitable. Once the disciplined strength of the East Roman legions
and the Persian cuirassiers had broken before the fiery onslaught of the
fanatic sons of the desert, it was all over. There was no patriotic
resistance. The down-trodden populations passively accepted new masters,
while the numerous heretics actually welcomed the overthrow of
persecuting co-religionists whom they hated far worse than their alien
conquerors. In a short time most of the subject peoples accepted the new
faith, so refreshingly simple compared with their own degenerate cults.
The Arabs, in their turn, knew how to consolidate their rule. They were
no bloodthirsty savages, bent solely on loot and destruction. On the
contrary, they were an innately gifted race, eager to learn and
appreciative of the cultural gifts which older civilizations had to
bestow. Intermarrying freely and professing a common belief, conquerors
and conquered rapidly fused, and from this fusion arose a new
civilization--the Saracenic civilization, in which the ancient cultures
of Greece, Rome, and Persia were revitalized by Arab vigour and
synthesized by the Arab genius and the Islamic spirit. For the first
three centuries of its existence (circ. A.D. 650-1000) the realm of
Islam was the most civilized and progressive portion of the world.
Studded with splendid cities, gracious mosques, and quiet universities
where the wisdom of the ancient world was preserved and appreciated, the
Moslem East offered a striking contrast to the Christian West, then sunk
in the night of the Dark Ages.
However, by the tenth century the Saracenic civilization began to
display unmistakable symptoms of decline. This decline was at first
gradual. Down to the terrible disasters of the thirteenth century it
still displayed vigour and remained ahead of the Christian West. Still,
by the year A.D. 1000 its golden age was over. For this there were
several reasons. In the first place, that inveterate spirit of faction
which has always been the bane of the Arab race soon reappeared once
more. Rival clans strove for the headship of Islam, and their quarrels
degenerated into bloody civil wars. In this fratricidal strife the
fervour of the first days cooled, and saintly men like Abu Bekr and
Omar, Islam's first standard-bearers, gave place to worldly minded
leaders who regarded their position of "Khalifa"[1] as a means to
despotic power and self-glorification. The seat of government was moved
to Damascus in Syria, and afterward to Bagdad in Mesopotamia. The reason
for this was obvious. In Mecca despotism was impossible. The fierce,
free-born Arabs of the desert would tolerate no master, and their innate
democracy had been sanctioned by the Prophet, who had explicitly
declared that all Believers were brothers. The Meccan caliphate was a
theocratic democracy. Abu Bekr and Omar were elected by the people, and
held themselves responsible to public opinion, subject to the divine law
as revealed by Mohammed in the Koran.
But in Damascus, and still more in Bagdad, things were different. There
the pure-blooded Arabs were only a handful among swarms of Syrian and
Persian converts and "Neo-Arab" mixed-bloods. These people were filled
with traditions of despotism and were quite ready to yield the caliphs
obsequious obedience. The caliphs, in their turn, leaned more and more
upon these complaisant subjects, drawing from their ranks courtiers,
officials, and ultimately soldiers. Shocked and angered, the proud Arabs
gradually returned to the desert, while the government fell into the
well-worn ruts of traditional Oriental despotism. When the caliphate was
moved to Bagdad after the founding of the Abbaside dynasty (A.D. 750),
Persian influence became preponderant. The famous Caliph
Haroun-al-Rashid, the hero of the _Arabian Nights_, was a typical
Persian monarch, a true successor of Xerxes and Chosroes, and as
different from Abu Bekr or Omar as it is possible to conceive. And, in
Bagdad, as elsewhere, despotic power was fatal to its possessors. Under
its blight the "successors" of Mohammed became capricious tyrants or
degenerate harem puppets, whose nerveless hands were wholly incapable of
guiding the great Moslem Empire.
The empire, in fact, gradually went to pieces. Shaken by the civil wars,
bereft of strong leaders, and deprived of the invigorating amalgam of
the unspoiled desert Arabs, political unity could not endure. Everywhere
there occurred revivals of suppressed racial or particularist
tendencies. The very rapidity of Islam's expansion turned against it,
now that the well-springs of that expansion were dried up. Islam had
made millions of converts, of many sects and races, but it had digested
them very imperfectly. Mohammed had really converted the Arabs, because
he merely voiced ideas which were obscurely germinating in Arab minds
and appealed to impulses innate in the Arab blood. When, however, Islam
was accepted by non-Arab peoples, they instinctively interpreted the
Prophet's message according to their particular racial tendencies and
cultural backgrounds, the result being that primitive Islam was
distorted or perverted. The most extreme example of this was in Persia,
where the austere monotheism of Mohammed was transmuted into the
elaborate mystical cult known as Shiism, which presently cut the
Persians off from full communion with the orthodox Moslem world. The
same transmutive tendency appears, in lesser degree, in the
saint-worship of the North African Berbers and in the pantheism of the
Hindu Moslems--both developments which Mohammed would have
unquestionably execrated.
These doctrinal fissures in Islam were paralleled by the disruption of
political unity. The first formal split occurred after the accession of
the Abbasides. A member of the deposed Ommeyyad family fled to Spain,
where he set up a rival caliphate at Cordova, recognized as lawful not
only by the Spanish Moslems, but by the Berbers of North Africa. Later
on another caliphate was set up in Egypt--the Fatimite caliphate,
resting its title on descent from Mohammed's daughter Fatima. As for the
Abbaside caliphs of Bagdad, they gradually declined in power, until they
became mere puppets in the hands of a new racial element, the Turks.
Before describing that shift of power from Neo-Arab to Turkish hands
which was so momentous for the history of the Islamic world, let us
first consider the decline in cultural and intellectual vigour that set
in concurrently with the disruption of political and religious unity
during the later stages of the Neo-Arab period.
The Arabs of Mohammed's day were a fresh, unspoiled people in the full
flush of pristine vigour, eager for adventure and inspired by a high
ideal. They had their full share of Semitic fanaticism, but, though
fanatical, they were not bigoted, that is to say, they possessed, not
closed, but open minds. They held firmly to the tenets of their
religion, but this religion was extremely simple. The core of Mohammed's
teaching was theism _plus_ certain practices. A strict belief in the
unity of God, an equally strict belief in the divine mission[2] of
Mohammed as set forth in the Koran, and certain clearly defined
duties--prayer, ablutions, fasting, almsgiving, and pilgrimage--these,
and these alone, constituted the Islam of the Arab conquerors of the
Eastern world.
So simple a theology could not seriously fetter the Arab mind, alert,
curious, eager to learn, and ready to adjust itself to conditions ampler
and more complex than those prevailing in the parched environment of the
desert. Now, not only did the Arabs relish the material advantages and
luxuries of the more developed societies which they had conquered; they
also appreciated the art, literature, science, and ideas of the older
civilizations. The effect of these novel stimuli was the remarkable
cultural and intellectual flowering which is the glory of Saracenic
civilization. For a time thought was relatively free and produced a
wealth of original ideas and daring speculations. These were the work
not only of Arabs but also of subject Christians, Jews, and Persians,
many of them being heretics previously depressed under the iron bands of
persecuting Byzantine orthodoxy and Magism.
Gradually, however, this enlightened era passed away. Reactionary forces
appeared and gained in strength. The liberals, who are usually known
under the general title of "Motazelites," not only clung to the
doctrinal simplicity of primitive Islam, but also contended that the
test of all things should be reason. On the other hand, the conservative
schools of thought asserted that the test should be precedent and
authority. These men, many of them converted Christians imbued with the
traditions of Byzantine orthodoxy, undertook an immense work of Koranic
exegesis, combined with an equally elaborate codification and
interpretation of the reputed sayings or "traditions" of Mohammed, as
handed down by his immediate disciples and followers. As the result of
these labours, there gradually arose a Moslem theology and scholastic
philosophy as rigid, elaborate, and dogmatic as that of the mediæval
Christian West.
Naturally, the struggle between the fundamentally opposed tendencies of
traditionalism and rationalism was long and bitter. Yet the ultimate
outcome was almost a foregone conclusion. Everything conspired to favour
the triumph of dogma over reason. The whole historic tradition of the
East (a tradition largely induced by racial and climatic factors[3]) was
toward absolutism. This tradition had been interrupted by the inrush of
the wild libertarianism of the desert. But the older tendency presently
reasserted itself, stimulated as it was by the political transformation
of the caliphate from theocratic, democracy to despotism.
This triumph of absolutism in the field of government in fact assured
its eventual triumph in all other fields as well. For, in the long run,
despotism can no more tolerate liberty of thought than it can liberty of
action. Some of the Damascus caliphs, to be sure, toyed with Motazelism,
the Ommeyyads being mainly secular-minded men to whom freethinking was
intellectually attractive. But presently the caliphs became aware of
liberalism's political implications. The Motazelites did not confine
themselves to the realm of pure philosophic speculation. They also
trespassed on more dangerous ground. Motazelite voices were heard
recalling the democratic days of the Meccan caliphate, when the
Commander of the Faithful, instead of being an hereditary monarch, was
elected by the people and responsible to public opinion. Some bold
spirits even entered into relations with the fierce fanatic sects of
inner Arabia, like the Kharijites, who, upholding the old desert
freedom, refused to recognize the caliphate and proclaimed theories of
advanced republicanism.
The upshot was that the caliphs turned more and more toward the
conservative theologians as against the liberals, just as they favoured
the monarchist Neo-Arabs in preference to the intractable pure-blooded
Arabs of the desert. Under the Abbasides the government came out frankly
for religious absolutism. Standards of dogmatic orthodoxy were
established, Motazelites were persecuted and put to death, and by the
twelfth century A.D. the last vestiges of Saracenic liberalism were
extirpated. The canons of Moslem thought were fixed. All creative
activity ceased. The very memory of the great Motazelite doctors faded
away. The Moslem mind was closed, not to be re-opened until our own day.
By the beginning of the eleventh century the decline of Saracenic
civilization had become so pronounced that change was clearly in the
air. Having lost their early vigour, the Neo-Arabs were to see their
political power pass into other hands. These political heirs of the
Neo-Arabs were the Turks. The Turks were a western branch of that
congeries of nomadic tribes which, from time immemorial, have roamed
over the limitless steppes of eastern and central Asia, and which are
known collectively under the titles of "Uralo-Altaic" or "Turanian"
peoples. The Arabs had been in contact with the Turkish nomads ever
since the Islamic conquest of Persia, when the Moslem generals found the
Turks beating restlessly against Persia's north-eastern frontiers. In
the caliphate's palmy days the Turks were not feared. In fact, they were
presently found to be very useful. A dull-witted folk with few ideas,
the Turks could do two things superlatively well--obey orders and fight
like devils. In other words, they made ideal mercenary soldiers. The
caliphs were delighted, and enlisted ever larger numbers of them for
their armies and their body-guards.
This was all very well while the caliphate was strong, but when it grew
weak the situation altered. Rising everywhere to positions of authority,
the Turkish mercenaries began to act like masters. Opening the eastern
frontiers, they let in fresh swarms of their countrymen, who now came,
not as individuals, but in tribes or "hordes" under their hereditary
chiefs, wandering about at their own sweet will, settling where they
pleased, and despoiling or evicting the local inhabitants.
The Turks soon renounced their ancestral paganism for Islam, but Islam
made little change in their natures. In judging these Turkish newcomers
we must not consider them the same as the present-day Ottoman Turks of
Constantinople and Asia Minor. The modern Osmanli are so saturated with
European and Near Eastern blood, and have been so leavened by Western
and Saracenic ideas, they that are a very different people from their
remote immigrant ancestors. Yet, even as it is, the modern Osmanli
display enough of those unlovely Turanian traits which characterize the
unmodified Turks of central Asia, often called "Turkomans," to
distinguish them from their Ottoman kinsfolk to the west.
Now, what was the primitive Turkish nature? First and foremost, it was
that of the professional soldier. Discipline was the Turk's watchword.
No originality of thought, and but little curiosity. Few ideas ever
penetrated the Turk's slow mind, and the few that did penetrate were
received as military orders, to be obeyed without question and adhered
to without reflection. Such was the being who took over the leadership
of Islam from the Saracen's failing grasp.
No greater misfortune could have occurred both for Islam and for the
world at large. For Islam it meant the rule of dull-witted bigots under
which enlightened progress was impossible. Of course Islam did gain a
great accession of warlike strength, but this new power was so wantonly
misused as to bring down disastrous repercussions upon Islam itself.
The first notable exploits of the immigrant Turkish hordes were their
conquest of Asia Minor and their capture of Jerusalem, both events
taking place toward the close of the eleventh century[4]. Up to this
time Asia Minor had remained part of the Christian world. The original
Arab flood of the seventh century, after overrunning Syria, had been
stopped by the barrier of the Taurus Mountains; the Byzantine Empire had
pulled itself together; and thenceforth, despite border bickerings, the
Byzantine-Saracen frontier had remained substantially unaltered. Now,
however, the Turks broke the Byzantine barrier, overran Asia Minor, and
threatened even Constantinople, the eastern bulwark of Christendom. As
for Jerusalem, it had, of course, been in Moslem hands since the Arab
conquest of A.D. 637, but the caliph Omar had carefully respected the
Christian "Holy Places," and his successors had neither persecuted the
local Christians nor maltreated the numerous pilgrims who flocked
perennially to Jerusalem from every part of the Christian world. But the
Turks changed all this. Avid for loot, and filled with bigoted hatred of
the "Misbelievers," they sacked the holy places, persecuted the
Christians, and rendered pilgrimage impossible.
The effect of these twin disasters upon Christendom, occurring as they
did almost simultaneously, was tremendous. The Christian West, then at
the height of its religious fervour, quivered with mingled fear and
wrath. Myriads of zealots, like Peter the Hermit, roused all Europe to
frenzy. Fanaticism begat fanaticism, and the Christian West poured upon
the Moslem East vast hosts of warriors in those extraordinary
expeditions, the Crusades.
The Turkish conquest of Islam and its counterblast, the Crusades, were
an immense misfortune for the world. They permanently worsened the
relations between East and West. In the year A.D. 1000 Christian-Moslem
relations were fairly good, and showed every prospect of becoming
better. The hatreds engendered by Islam's first irruption were dying
away. The frontiers of Islam and Christendom had become apparently
fixed, and neither side showed much desire to encroach upon the other.
The only serious debatable ground was Spain, where Moslem and Christian
were continually at hand-grips; but, after all, Spain was mutually
regarded as a frontier episode. Between Islam and Christendom, as a
whole, intercourse was becoming steadily more friendly and more
frequent. This friendly intercourse, if continued, might ultimately have
produced momentous results for human progress. The Moslem world was at
that time still well ahead of western Europe in knowledge and culture,
but Saracenic civilization was ossifying, whereas the Christian West,
despite its ignorance, rudeness, and barbarism, was bursting with lusty
life and patently aspiring to better things. Had the nascent amity of
East and West in the eleventh century continued to develop, both would
have greatly profited. In the West the influence of Saracenic culture,
containing, as it did, the ancient learning of Greece and Rome, might
have awakened our Renaissance much earlier, while in the East the
influence of the mediæval West, with its abounding vigour, might have
saved Moslem civilization from the creeping paralysis which was
overtaking it.
But it was not to be. In Islam the refined, easygoing Saracen gave place
to the bigoted, brutal Turk. Islam became once more aggressive--not, as
in its early days, for an ideal, but for sheer blood-lust, plunder, and
destruction. Henceforth it was war to the knife between the only
possible civilization and the most brutal and hopeless barbarism.
Furthermore, this war was destined to last for centuries. The Crusades
were merely Western counter-attacks against a Turkish assault on
Christendom which continued for six hundred years and was definitely
broken only under the walls of Vienna in 1683. Naturally, from these
centuries of unrelenting strife furious hatreds and fanaticisms were
engendered which still envenom the relations of Islam and Christendom.
The atrocities of Mustapha Kemal's Turkish "Nationalists" and the
atrocities of the Greek troops in Asia Minor, of which we read in our
morning papers, are in no small degree a "carrying on" of the mutual
atrocities of Turks and Crusaders in Palestine eight hundred years ago.
With the details of those old wars between Turks and Christians this
book has no direct concern. The wars themselves should simply be noted
as a chronic barrier between East and West. As for the Moslem East, with
its declining Saracenic civilization bowed beneath the brutal Turkish
yoke, it was presently exposed to even more terrible misfortunes. These
misfortunes were also of Turanian origin. Toward the close of the
twelfth century the eastern branches of the Turanian race were welded
into a temporary unity by the genius of a mighty chieftain named Jenghiz
Khan. Taking the sinister title of "The Inflexible Emperor," this
arch-savage started out to loot the world. He first overran northern
China, which he hideously ravaged, then turned his devastating course
toward the west. Such was the rise of the terrible "Mongols," whose name
still stinks in the nostrils of civilized mankind. Carrying with them
skilled Chinese engineers using gunpowder for the reduction of fortified
cities, Jenghiz Khan and his mounted hosts proved everywhere
irresistible. The Mongols were the most appalling barbarians whom the
world has ever seen. Their object was not conquest for settlement, not
even loot, but in great part a sheer satanic lust for blood and
destruction. They revelled in butchering whole populations, destroying
cities, laying waste countrysides--and then passing on to fresh fields.
Jenghiz Khan died after a few years of his westward progress, but his
successors continued his work with unabated zeal. Both Christendom and
Islam were smitten by the Mongol scourge. All eastern Europe was ravaged
and re-barbarized, the Russians showing ugly traces of the Mongol
imprint to this day. But the woes of Christendom were as nothing to the
woes of Islam. The Mongols never penetrated beyond Poland, and western
Europe, the seat of Western civilization, was left unscathed. Not so
Islam. Pouring down from the north-east, the Mongol hosts whirled like a
cyclone over the Moslem world from India to Egypt, pillaging, murdering,
and destroying. The nascent civilization of mediæval Persia, just
struggling into the light beneath the incubus of Turkish harryings, was
stamped flat under the Mongol hoofs, and the Mongols then proceeded to
deal with the Moslem culture-centre--Bagdad. Bagdad had declined
considerably from the gorgeous days of Haroun-al-Rashid, with its
legendary million souls. However, it was still a great city, the seat of
the caliphate and the unquestioned centre of Saracenic civilization. The
Mongols stormed it (A.D. 1258), butchered its entire population, and
literally wiped Bagdad off the face of the earth. And even this was not
the worst. Bagdad was the capital of Mesopotamia. This "Land between the
Rivers" had, in the very dawn of history, been reclaimed from swamp and
desert by the patient labours of half-forgotten peoples who, with
infinite toil, built up a marvellous system of irrigation that made
Mesopotamia the perennial garden and granary of the world. Ages had
passed and Mesopotamia had known many masters, but all these conquerors
had respected, even cherished, the irrigation works which were the
source of all prosperity. These works the Mongols wantonly, methodically
destroyed. The oldest civilization in the world, the cradle of human
culture, was hopelessly ruined; at least eight thousand years of
continuous human effort went for naught, and Mesopotamia became the
noisome land it still remains to-day, parched during the droughts of low
water, soaked to fever-stricken marsh in the season of river-floods,
tenanted only by a few mongrel fellahs inhabiting wretched mud villages,
and cowed by nomad Bedouin browsing their flocks on the sites of ancient
fields.
The destruction of Bagdad was a fatal blow to Saracenic civilization,
especially in the East. And even before that dreadful disaster it had
received a terrible blow in the West. Traversing North Africa in its
early days, Islam had taken firm root in Spain, and had so flourished
there that Spanish Moslem culture was fully abreast of that in the
Moslem East. The capital of Spanish Islam was Cordova, the seat of the
Western caliphate, a mighty city, perhaps more wonderful than Bagdad
itself. For centuries Spanish Islam lived secure, confining the
Christians to the mountainous regions of the north. As Saracen vigour
declined, however, the Christians pressed the Moslems southward. In 1213
Spanish Islam was hopelessly broken at the tremendous battle of Las
Navas de Tolosa. Thenceforth, for the victorious Christians it was a
case of picking up the pieces. Cordova itself soon fell, and with it the
glory of Spanish Islam, for the fanatical Christian Spaniards extirpated
Saracenic civilization as effectually as the pagan Mongols were at that
time doing. To be sure, a remnant of the Spanish Moslems held their
ground at Granada, in the extreme south, until the year Columbus
discovered America, but this was merely an episode. The Saracen
civilization of the West was virtually destroyed.
Meanwhile the Moslem East continued to bleed under the Mongol scourge.
Wave after wave of Mongol raiders passed over the land, the last notable
invasion being that headed by the famous (or rather infamous) Tamerlane,
early in the fifteenth century. By this time the western Mongols had
accepted Islam, but that made little difference in their conduct. To
show that Tamerlane was a true scion of his ancestor Jenghiz Khan, it
may be remarked that his foible was pyramids of human skulls, his prize
effort being one of 70,000 erected after the storming of the Persian
city of Ispahan. After the cessation of the Mongol incursions, the
ravaged and depopulated Moslem East fell under the sway of the Ottoman
Turks.
The Ottoman Turks, or "Osmanli," were originally merely one of the many
Turkish hordes which entered Asia Minor after the downfall of Byzantine
rule. They owed their greatness mainly to a long line of able sultans,
who gradually absorbed the neighbouring Turkish tribes and used this
consolidated strength for ambitious conquests both to east and west. In
1453 the Osmanli extinguished the old Byzantine Empire by taking
Constantinople, and within a century thereafter they had conquered the
Moslem East from Persia to Morocco, had subjugated the whole Balkan
Peninsula, and had advanced through Hungary to the walls of Vienna.
Unlike their Mongol cousins, the Ottoman Turks built up a durable
empire. It was a barbarous sort of empire, for the Turks understood very
little about culture. The only things they could appreciate were
military improvements. These, however, they thoroughly appreciated and
kept fully abreast of the times. In their palmy days the Turks had the
best artillery and the steadiest infantry in the world, and were the
terror of Europe.
Meantime Europe was awakening to true progress and higher civilization.
While the Moslem East was sinking under Mongol harryings and Turkish
militarism, the Christian West was thrilling to the Renaissance and the
discoveries of America and the water route to India. The effect of these
discoveries simply cannot be over-estimated. When Columbus and Vasco da
Gama made their memorable voyages at the end of the fifteenth century,
Western civilization was pent up closely within the restricted bounds of
west-central Europe, and was waging a defensive and none-too-hopeful
struggle with the forces of Turanian barbarism. Russia lay under the
heel of the Mongol Tartars, while the Turks, then in the full flush of
their martial vigour, were marching triumphantly up from the south-east
and threatening Europe's very heart. So strong were these Turanian
barbarians, with Asia, North Africa, and eastern Europe in their grasp,
that Western civilization was hard put to it to hold its own. Western
civilization was, in fact, fighting with its back to the wall--the wall
of a boundless ocean. We can hardly conceive how our mediæval
forefathers viewed the ocean. To them it was a numbing, constricting
presence; the abode of darkness and horror. No wonder mediæval Europe
was static, since it faced on ruthless, aggressive Asia, and backed on
nowhere. Then, in the twinkling of an eye, the sea-wall became a
highway, and dead-end Europe became mistress of the ocean--and thereby
mistress of the world.
The greatest strategic shift of fortune in all human history had taken
place. Instead of fronting hopelessly on the fiercest of Asiatics,
against whom victory by direct attack seemed impossible, the Europeans
could now flank them at will. Furthermore, the balance of resources
shifted in Europe's favour. Whole new worlds were unmasked whence Europe
could draw limitless wealth to quicken its home life and initiate a
progress that would soon place it immeasurably above its once-dreaded
Asiatic assailants. What were the resources of the stagnant Moslem East
compared with those of the Americas and the Indies? So Western
civilization, quickened, energized, progressed with giant strides, shook
off its mediæval fetters, grasped the talisman of science, and strode
into the light of modern times.
Yet all this left Islam unmoved. Wrapping itself in the tatters of
Saracenic civilization, the Moslem East continued to fall behind. Even
its military power presently vanished, for the Turk sank into lethargy
and ceased to cultivate the art of war. For a time the West, busied with
internal conflicts, hesitated to attack the East, so great was the
prestige of the Ottoman name. But the crushing defeat of the Turks in
their rash attack upon Vienna in 1683 showed the West that the Ottoman
Empire was far gone in decrepitude. Thenceforth, the empire was harried
mercilessly by Western assaults and was saved from collapse only by the
mutual jealousies of Western Powers, quarrelling over the Turkish
spoils.
However, not until the nineteenth century did the Moslem world, as a
whole, feel the weight of Western attack. Throughout the eighteenth
century the West assailed the ends of the Moslem battle-line in eastern
Europe and the Indies, but the bulk of Islam, from Morocco to Central
Asia, remained almost immune. The Moslem world failed to profit by this
respite. Plunged in lethargy, contemptuous of the European
"Misbelievers," and accepting defeats as the inscrutable will of Allah,
Islam continued to live its old life, neither knowing nor caring to know
anything about Western ideas or Western progress.
Such was the decrepit Moslem world which faced nineteenth-century
Europe, energized by the Industrial Revolution, armed as never before by
modern science and invention which had unlocked nature's secrets and
placed hitherto-undreamed-of weapons in its aggressive hands. The result
was a foregone conclusion. One by one, the decrepit Moslem states fell
before the Western attack, and the whole Islamic world was rapidly
partitioned among the European Powers. England took India and Egypt,
Russia crossed the Caucasus and mastered Central Asia, France conquered
North Africa, while other European nations grasped minor portions of the
Moslem heritage. The Great War witnessed the final stage in this process
of subjugation. By the terms of the treaties which marked its close,
Turkey was extinguished and not a single Mohammedan state retained
genuine independence. The subjection of the Moslem world was
complete--on paper.
On paper! For, in its very hour of apparent triumph, Western domination
was challenged as never before. During those hundred years of Western
conquest a mighty internal change had been coming over the Moslem
world. The swelling tide of Western aggression had at last moved the
"immovable" East. At last Islam became conscious of its decrepitude, and
with that consciousness a vast ferment, obscure yet profound, began to
leaven the 250,000,000 followers of the Prophet from Morocco to China
and from Turkestan to the Congo. The first spark was fittingly struck in
the Arabian desert, the cradle of Islam. Here at the opening of the
nineteenth century, arose the Wahabi movement for the reform of Islam,
which presently kindled the far-flung "Mohammedan Revival," which in its
turn begat the movement known as "Pan-Islamism." Furthermore, athwart
these essentially internal movements there came pouring a flood of
external stimuli from the West--ideas such as parliamentary government,
nationalism, scientific education, industrialism, and even ultra-modern
concepts like feminism, socialism, Bolshevism. Stirred by the
interaction of all these novel forces and spurred by the ceaseless
pressure of European aggression, the Moslem world roused more and more
to life and action. The Great War was a shock of terrific potency, and
to-day Islam is seething with mighty forces fashioning a new Moslem
world. What are those forces moulding the Islam of the future? To their
analysis and appraisal the body of this book is devoted.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] _I. e._ "Successor"; anglicized into the word "Caliph."
[2] To be carefully distinguished from divinity. Mohammed not only did
not make any pretensions to divinity, but specifically disclaimed any
such attributes. He regarded himself as the last of a series of divinely
inspired prophets, beginning with Adam and extending through Moses and
Jesus to himself, the mouthpiece of God's last and most perfect
revelation.
[3] The influence of environment and heredity on human evolution in
general and on the history of the East in particular, though of great
importance, cannot be treated in a summary such as this. The influence
of climatic and other environmental factors has been ably treated by
Prof. Ellsworth Huntington in his various works, such as _The Pulse of
Asia_ (Boston, 1907); _Civilization and Climate_ (Yale Univ. Press,
1915), and _World-Power and Evolution_ (Yale Univ. Press, 1919). See
also Chap. III. in Arminius Vambéry--_Der Islam im neunzehnten
Jahrhundert. Eine culturgeschichtliche Studie_ (Leipzig, 1875). For a
summary of racial influences in Eastern history, see Madison Grant--_The
Passing of the Great Race_ (N. Y., 1916).
[4] The Turkish overrunning of Asia Minor took place after the
destruction of the Byzantine army in the great battle of Manzikert, A.D.
1071. The Turks captured Jerusalem in 1076.
CHAPTER I
THE MOHAMMEDAN REVIVAL
By the eighteenth century the Moslem world had sunk to the lowest depth
of its decrepitude. Nowhere were there any signs of healthy vigour,
everywhere were stagnation and decay. Manners and morals were alike
execrable. The last vestiges of Saracenic culture had vanished in a
barbarous luxury of the few and an equally barbarous degradation of the
multitude. Learning was virtually dead, the few universities which
survived fallen into dreary decay and languishing in poverty and
neglect. Government had become despotism tempered by anarchy and
assassination. Here and there a major despot like the Sultan of Turkey
or the Indian "Great Mogul" maintained some semblance of state
authority, albeit provincial pashas were for ever striving to erect
independent governments based, like their masters', on tyranny and
extortion. The pashas, in turn, strove ceaselessly against unruly local
chiefs and swarms of brigands who infested the countryside. Beneath this
sinister hierarchy groaned the people, robbed, bullied, and ground into
the dust. Peasant and townsman had alike lost all incentive to labour or
initiative, and both agriculture and trade had fallen to the lowest
level compatible with bare survival.
As for religion, it was as decadent as everything else. The austere
monotheism of Mohammed had become overlaid with a rank growth of
superstition and puerile mysticism. The mosques stood unfrequented and
ruinous, deserted by the ignorant multitude, which, decked out in
amulets, charms, and rosaries, listened to squalid fakirs or ecstatic
dervishes, and went on pilgrimages to the tombs of "holy men,"
worshipped as saints and "intercessors" with that Allah who had become
too remote a being for the direct devotion of these benighted souls. As
for the moral precepts of the Koran, they were ignored or defied.
Wine-drinking and opium-eating were well-nigh universal, prostitution
was rampant, and the most degrading vices flaunted naked and unashamed.
Even the holy cities, Mecca and Medina, were sink-holes of iniquity,
while the "Hajj," or pilgrimage ordained by the Prophet, had become a
scandal through its abuses. In fine: the life had apparently gone out of
Islam, leaving naught but a dry husk of soulless ritual and degrading
superstition behind. Could Mohammed have returned to earth, he would
unquestionably have anathematized his followers as apostates and
idolaters.
Yet, in this darkest hour, a voice came crying out of the vast Arabian
desert, the cradle of Islam, calling the faithful back to the true path.
This puritan reformer, the famous Abd-el-Wahab, kindled a fire which
presently spread to the remotest corners of the Moslem world, purging
Islam of its sloth and reviving the fervour of olden days. The great
Mohammedan Revival had begun.
Mahommed ibn Abd-el-Wahab was born about the year A.D. 1700 in the heart
of the Arabian desert, the region known as the Nejd. The Nejd was the
one clean spot in the decadent Moslem world. We have already seen how,
with the transformation of the caliphate from a theocratic democracy to
an Oriental despotism, the free-spirited Arabs had returned scornfully
to their deserts. Here they had maintained their wild freedom. Neither
caliph nor sultan dared venture far into those vast solitudes of burning
sand and choking thirst, where the rash invader was lured to sudden
death in a whirl of stabbing spears. The Arabs recognized no master,
wandering at will with their flocks and camels, or settled here and
there in green oases hidden in the desert's heart. And in the desert
they retained their primitive political and religious virtues. The
nomad Bedouin lived under the sway of patriarchal "sheiks"; the settled
dwellers in the oases usually acknowledged the authority of some leading
family. But these rulers possessed the slenderest authority, narrowly
circumscribed by well-established custom and a jealous public opinion
which they transgressed at their peril. The Turks, to be sure, had
managed to acquire a precarious authority over the holy cities and the
Red Sea littoral, but the Nejd, the vast interior, was free. And, in
religion, as in politics, the desert Arabs kept the faith of their
fathers. Scornfully rejecting the corruptions of decadent Islam, they
held fast to the simple theology of primitive Islam, so congenial to
their Arab natures.
Into this atmosphere of an older and better age, Abd-el-Wahab was born.
Displaying from the first a studious and religious bent, he soon
acquired a reputation for learning and sanctity. Making the Meccan
pilgrimage while still a young man, he studied at Medina and travelled
as far as Persia, returning ultimately to the Nejd. He returned burning
with holy wrath at what he had seen, and determined to preach a puritan
reformation. For years he wandered up and down Arabia, and at last he
converted Mahommed, head of the great clan of Saud, the most powerful
chieftain in all the Nejd. This gave Abd-el-Wahab both moral prestige
and material strength, and he made the most of his opportunities.
Gradually, the desert Arabs were welded into a politico-religious unity
like that effected by the Prophet. Abd-el-Wahab was, in truth, a
faithful counterpart of the first caliphs, Abu Bekr and Omar. When he
died in 1787 his disciple, Saud, proved a worthy successor. The new
Wahabi state was a close counterpart of the Meccan caliphate. Though
possessing great military power, Saud always considered himself
responsible to public opinion and never encroached upon the legitimate
freedom of his subjects. Government, though stern, was able and just.
The Wahabi judges were competent and honest. Robbery, became almost
unknown, so well was the public peace maintained. Education was
sedulously fostered. Every oasis had its school, while teachers were
sent to the Bedouin tribes.
Having consolidated the Nejd, Saud was now ready to undertake the
greater task of subduing and purifying the Moslem world. His first
objective was of course the holy cities. This objective was attained in
the opening years of the nineteenth century. Nothing could stand against
the rush of the Wahabi hosts burning with fanatic hatred against the
Turks, who were loathed both as apostate Moslems and as usurpers of that
supremacy in Islam which all Arabs believed should rest in Arab hands.
When Saud died in 1814 he was preparing to invade Syria. It looked for a
moment as though the Wahabis were to sweep the East and puritanize all
Islam at a blow.
But it was not to be. Unable to stem the Wahabi flood, the Sultan of
Turkey called on his powerful vassal, the famous Mehemet Ali. This able
Albanian adventurer had by that time made himself master of Egypt.
Frankly recognizing the superiority of the West, he had called in
numerous European officers who rapidly fashioned a formidable army,
composed largely of hard-fighting Albanian highlanders, and disciplined
and equipped after European models. Mehemet Ali gladly answered the
Sultan's summons, and it soon became clear that even Wahabi fanaticism
was no match for European muskets and artillery handled by seasoned
veterans. In a short time the holy cities were recaptured and the
Wahabis were driven back into the desert. The nascent Wahabi empire had
vanished like a mirage. Wahabism's political rôle was ended.[5]
However, Wahabism's spiritual rôle had only just begun. The Nejd
remained a focus of puritan zeal whence the new spirit radiated in all
directions. Even in the holy cities Wahabism continued to set the
religious tone, and the numberless "Hajjis," or pilgrims, who came
annually from every part of the Moslem world returned to their homes
zealous reformers. Soon the Wahabi leaven began to produce profound
disturbances in the most distant quarters. For example, in northern
India a Wahabi fanatic, Seyid Ahmed,[6] so roused the Punjabi
Mohammedans that he actually built up a theocratic state, and only his
chance death prevented a possible Wahabi conquest of northern India.
This state was shattered by the Sikhs, about 1830, but when the English
conquered the country they had infinite trouble with the smouldering
embers of Wahabi feeling, which, in fact, lived on, contributed to the
Indian mutiny, and permanently fanaticized Afghanistan and the wild
tribes of the Indian North-West Frontier.[7] It was during these years
that the famous Seyid Mahommed ben Sennussi came from his Algerian home
to Mecca and there imbibed those Wahabi principles which led to the
founding of the great Pan-Islamic fraternity that bears his name. Even
the Babbist movement in Persia, far removed though it was doctrinally
from Wahabi teaching, was indubitably a secondary reflex of the Wahabi
urge.[8] In fact, within a generation, the strictly Wahabi movement had
broadened into the larger development known as the Mohammedan Revival,
and this in turn was developing numerous phases, chief among them being
the movement usually termed Pan-Islamism. That movement, particularly on
its political side, I shall treat in the next chapter. At present let
us examine the other aspects of the Mohammedan Revival, with special
reference to its religious and cultural phases.
The Wahabi movement was a strictly puritan reformation. Its aim was the
reform of abuses, the abolition of superstitious practices, and a return
to primitive Islam. All later accretions--the writings and
interpretations of the mediæval theologians, ceremonial or mystical
innovations, saint worship, in fact every sort of change, were
condemned. The austere monotheism of Mohammed was preached in all its
uncompromising simplicity, and the Koran, literally interpreted, was
taken as the sole guide for human action. This doctrinal simplification
was accompanied by a most rigid code of morals. The prayers, fastings,
and other practices enjoined by Mohammed were scrupulously observed. The
most austere manner of living was enforced. Silken clothing, rich food,
wine, opium, tobacco, coffee, and all other indulgences were sternly
proscribed. Even religious architecture was practically tabooed, the
Wahabis pulling down the Prophet's tomb at Medina and demolishing the
minarets of mosques as godless innovations. The Wahabis were thus,
despite their moral earnestness, excessively narrow-minded, and it was
very fortunate for Islam that they soon lost their political power and
were compelled thenceforth to confine their efforts to moral teaching.
Many critics of Islam point to the Wahabi movement as a proof that Islam
is essentially retrograde and innately incapable of evolutionary
development. These criticisms, however, appear to be unwarranted. The
initial stage of every religious reformation is an uncritical return to
the primitive cult. To the religious reformer the only way of salvation
is a denial of all subsequent innovations, regardless of their
character. Our own Protestant Reformation began in just this way, and
Humanists like Erasmus, repelled and disgusted by Protestantism's
puritanical narrowness, could see no good in the movement, declaring
that it menaced all true culture and merely replaced an infallible Pope
by an infallible Bible.
As a matter of fact, the puritan beginnings of the Mohammedan Revival
presently broadened along more constructive lines, some of these
becoming tinged with undoubted liberalism. The Moslem reformers of the
early nineteenth century had not dug very deeply into their religious
past before they discovered--Motazelism. We have already reviewed the
great struggle which had raged between reason and dogma in Islam's early
days, in which dogma had triumphed so completely that the very memory of
Motazelism had faded away. Now, however, those memories were revived,
and the liberal-minded reformers were delighted to find such striking
confirmation of their ideas, both in the writings of the Motazelite
doctors and in the sacred texts themselves. The principle that reason
and not blind prescription was to be the test opened the door to the
possibility of all those reforms which they had most at heart. For
example, the reformers found that in the traditional writings Mohammed
was reported to have said: "I am no more than a man; when I order you
anything respecting religion, receive it; when I order you about the
affairs of the world, then I am nothing more than man." And, again, as
though foreseeing the day when sweeping changes would be necessary. "Ye
are in an age in which, if ye abandon one-tenth of that which is
ordered, ye will be ruined. After this, a time will come when he who
shall observe one-tenth of what is now ordered will be redeemed."[9]
Before discussing the ideas and efforts of the modern Moslem reformers,
it might be well to examine the assertions made by numerous Western
critics, that Islam is by its very nature incapable of reform and
progressive adaptation to the expansion of human knowledge. Such is the
contention not only of Christian polemicists,[10] but also of
rationalists like Renan and European administrators of Moslem
populations like Lord Cromer. Lord Cromer, in fact, pithily summarizes
this critical attitude in his statement: "Islam cannot be reformed; that
is to say, reformed Islam is Islam no longer; it is something else."[11]
Now these criticisms, coming as they do from close students of Islam
often possessing intimate personal acquaintance with Moslems, deserve
respectful consideration. And yet an historical survey of religions, and
especially a survey of the thoughts and accomplishments of Moslem
reformers during the past century, seem to refute these pessimistic
charges.
In the first place, it should be remembered that Islam to-day stands
just about where Christendom stood in the fifteenth century, at the
beginning of the Reformation. There is the same supremacy of dogma over
reason, the same blind adherence to prescription and authority, the same
suspicion and hostility to freedom of thought or scientific knowledge.
There is no doubt that a study of the Mohammedan sacred texts,
particularly of the "sheriat" or canon law, together with a glance over
Moslem history for the last thousand years, reveal an attitude on the
whole quite incompatible with modern progress and civilization. But was
not precisely the same thing true of Christendom at the beginning of the
fifteenth century? Compare the sheriat with the Christian canon law. The
spirit is the same. Take, for example, the sheriat's prohibition on the
lending of money at interest; a prohibition which, if obeyed, renders
impossible anything like business or industry in the modern sense. This
is the example oftenest cited to prove Islam's innate incompatibility
with modern civilization. But the Christian canon law equally forbade
interest, and enforced that prohibition so strictly, that for centuries
the Jews had a monopoly of business in Europe, while the first
Christians who dared to lend money (the Lombards) were regarded almost
as heretics, were universally hated, and were frequently persecuted.
Again, take the matter of Moslem hostility to freedom of thought and
scientific investigation. Can Islam show anything more revolting than
that scene in Christian history when, less than three hundred years
ago,[12] the great Galileo was haled before the Papal Inquisition and
forced, under threat of torture, to recant the damnable heresy that the
earth went round the sun?
As a matter of fact, Mohammed reverenced knowledge. His own words are
eloquent testimony to that. Here are some of his sayings:
"Seek knowledge, even, if need be, on the borders of China."
"Seek knowledge from the cradle to the grave."
"One word of knowledge is of more value than the reciting of a hundred
prayers."
"The ink of sages is more precious than the blood of martyrs."
"One word of wisdom, learned and communicated to a Moslem brother,
outweighs the prayers of a whole year."
"Wise men are the successors of the Prophet."
"God has created nothing better than reason."
"In truth, a man may have prayed, fasted, given alms, made pilgrimage,
and all other good works; nevertheless, he shall be rewarded only in the
measure that he has used his common sense."
These citations (and there are others of the same tenor) prove that the
modern Moslem reformers have good scriptural backing for their liberal
attitude. Of course I do not imply that the reform movement in Islam,
just because it is liberal and progressive, is thereby _ipso facto_
assured of success. History reveals too many melancholy instances to the
contrary. Indeed, we have already seen how, in Islam itself, the
promising liberal movement of its early days passed utterly away. What
history does show, however, is that when the times favour progress,
religions are adapted to that progress by being reformed and
liberalized. No human society once fairly on the march was ever turned
back by a creed. Halted it may be, but if the progressive urge persists,
the doctrinal barrier is either surmounted, undermined, flanked, or
swept aside. Now there is no possibility that the Moslem world will
henceforth lack progressive influences. It is in close contact with
Western civilization, and is being increasingly permeated with Western
ideas. Islam cannot break away and isolate itself if it would.
Everything therefore portends its profound modification. Of course
critics like Lord Cromer contend that this modified Islam will be Islam
no longer. But why not? If the people continue to call themselves
Mohammedans and continue to draw spiritual sustenance from the message
of Mohammed, why should they be denied the name? Modern Christianity is
certainly vastly different from mediæval Christianity, while among the
various Christian churches there exist the widest doctrinal variations.
Yet all who consider themselves Christians are considered Christians by
all except bigots out of step with the times.
Let us now scrutinize the Moslem reformers, judging them, not by texts
and chronicles, but by their words and deeds; since, as one of their
number, an Algerian, very pertinently remarks, "men should be judged,
not by the letter of their sacred books, but by what they actually
do."[13]
Modern Moslem liberalism, as we have seen, received its first
encouragement from the discovery of the old Motazelite literature of
nearly a thousand years before. To be sure, Islam had never been quite
destitute of liberal minds. Even in its darkest days a few voices had
been raised against the prevailing obscurantism. For example, in the
sixteenth century the celebrated El-Gharani had written: "It is not at
all impossible that God may hold in reserve for men of the future
perceptions that have not been vouchsafed to the men of the past. Divine
munificence never ceases to pour benefits and enlightenment into the
hearts of wise men of every age."[14] These isolated voices from Islam's
Dark Time helped to encourage the modern reformers, and by the middle of
the nineteenth century every Moslem land had its group of
forward-looking men. At first their numbers were, of course,
insignificant, and of course they drew down upon themselves the
anathemas of the fanatic Mollahs[15] and the hatred of the ignorant
multitude. The first country where the reformers made their influence
definitely felt was in India. Here a group headed by the famous Sir Syed
Ahmed Khan started an important liberal movement, founding associations,
publishing books and newspapers, and establishing the well-known college
of Aligarh. Sir Syed Ahmed is a good type of the early liberal
reformers. Conservative in temperament and perfectly orthodox in his
theology, he yet denounced the current decadence of Islam with truly
Wahabi fervour. He also was frankly appreciative of Western ideas and
eager to assimilate the many good things which the West had to offer. As
he wrote in 1867: "We must study European scientific works, even though
they are not written by Moslems and though we may find in them things
contrary to the teachings of the Koran. We should imitate the Arabs of
olden days, who did not fear to shake their faith by studying
Pythagoras."[16]
This nucleus of Indian Moslem liberals rapidly grew in strength,
producing able leaders like Moulvie Cheragh Ali and Syed Amir Ali, whose
scholarly works in faultless English are known throughout the world.[17]
These men called themselves "Neo-Motazelites" and boldly advocated
reforms such as a thorough overhauling of the sheriat and a general
modernization of Islam. Their view-point is well set forth by another of
their leading figures, S. Khuda Bukhsh. "Nothing was more distant from
the Prophet's thought," he writes, "than to fetter the mind or to lay
down fixed, immutable, unchanging laws for his followers. The Quran is a
book of guidance to the faithful, and not an obstacle in the path, of
their social, moral, legal, and intellectual progress." He laments
Islam's present backwardness, for he continues: "Modern Islam, with its
hierarchy of priesthood, gross fanaticism, appalling ignorance, and
superstitious practices is, indeed, a discredit to the Islam of the
Prophet Mohammed." He concludes with the following liberal confession of
faith: "Is Islam hostile to progress? I will emphatically answer this
question in the negative. Islam, stripped of its theology, is a
perfectly simple religion. Its cardinal principle is belief in one God
and belief in Mohammed as his apostle. The rest is mere accretion,
superfluity."[18]
Meanwhile, the liberals were making themselves felt in other parts of
the Moslem world. In Turkey liberals actually headed the government
during much of the generation between the Crimean War and the despotism
of Abdul Hamid,[19] and Turkish liberal ministers like Reshid Pasha and
Midhat Pasha made earnest though unavailing efforts to liberalize and
modernize the Ottoman Empire. Even the dreadful Hamidian tyranny could
not kill Turkish liberalism. It went underground or into exile, and in
1908 put through the revolution which deposed the tyrant and brought the
"Young Turks" to power. In Egypt liberalism took firm root, represented
by men like Sheikh Mohammed Abdou, Rector of El Azhar University and
respected friend of Lord Cromer. Even outlying fragments of Islam like
the Russian Tartars awoke to the new spirit and produced liberal-minded,
forward-looking men.[20]
The liberal reformers, whom I have been describing, of course form the
part of evolutionary progress in Islam. They are in the best sense of
the word conservatives, receptive to healthy change, yet maintaining
their hereditary poise. Sincerely religious men, they have faith in
Islam as a living, moral force, and from it they continue to draw their
spiritual sustenance.
There are, however, other groups in the Moslem world who have so far
succumbed to Western influences that they have more or less lost touch
with both their spiritual and cultural pasts. In all the more civilized
portions of the Moslem world, especially in countries long under
European control like India, Egypt, and Algeria, there are many Moslems,
Western educated and Western culture-veneered, who have drifted into an
attitude varying from easygoing religious indifference to avowed
agnosticism. From their minds the old Moslem zeal has entirely departed.
The Algerian Ismael Hamet well describes the attitude of this class of
his fellow-countrymen when he writes: "European scepticism is not
without influence upon the Algerian Moslems, who, if they have kept
some attachment for the external forms of their religion, usually ignore
the unhealthy excesses of the religious sentiment. They do not give up
their religion, but they no longer dream of converting all those who do
not practise it; they want to hand it on to their children, but they do
not worry about other men's salvation. This is not belief; it is not
even free thought; but it is lukewarmness."[21]
Beyond these tepid latitudinarians are still other groups of a very
different character. Here we find combined the most contradictory
sentiments: young men whose brains are seething with radical Western
ideas--atheism, socialism, Bolshevism, and what not. Yet, curiously
enough, these fanatic radicals tend to join hands with the fanatic
reactionaries of Islam in a common hatred of the West. Considering
themselves the born leaders (and exploiters) of the ignorant masses, the
radicals hunger for political power and rage against that Western
domination which vetoes their ambitious pretensions. Hence, they are
mostly extreme "Nationalists," while they are also deep in Pan-Islamic
reactionary schemes. Indeed, we often witness the strange spectacle of
atheists posing as Moslem fanatics and affecting a truly dervish zeal.
Mr. Bukhsh well describes this type when he writes: "I know a gentleman,
a _Mohammedan by profession_, who owes his success in life to his faith.
Though, outwardly, he conforms to all the precepts of Islam and
occasionally stands up in public as the champion and spokesman of his
co-religionists; yet, to my utter horror, I found that he held opinions
about his religion and its founder which even Voltaire would have
rejected with indignation and Gibbon with commiserating contempt."[22]
Later on we shall examine more fully the activities of these gentry in
the chapters devoted to Pan-Islamism and Nationalism. What I desire to
emphasize here is their pernicious influence on the prospects of a
genuine Mohammedan reformation as visualized by the true reformers whom
I have described. Their malevolent desire to stir up the fanatic
passions of the ignorant masses and their equally malevolent hatred of
everything Western except military improvements are revealed by
outbursts like the following from the pen of a prominent "Young Turk."
"Yes, the Mohammedan religion is in open hostility to all your world of
progress. Learn, ye European observers, that a Christian, whatever his
position, by the mere fact that he is a Christian, is in our eyes a
being devoid of all human dignity. Our reasoning is simple and
definitive. We say: the man whose judgment is so perverted as to deny
the evidence of the One God and to fabricate gods of different kinds,
cannot be other than the most ignoble expression of human stupidity. To
speak to him would be a humiliation to our reason and an offence to the
grandeur of the Master of the Universe. The worshipper of false gods is
a monster of ingratitude; he is the execration of the universe; to
combat him, convert him, or annihilate him is the holiest task of the
Faithful. These are the eternal commands of our One God. For us there
are in this world only Believers and Misbelievers; love, charity,
fraternity to Believers; disgust, hatred, and war to Misbelievers. Among
Misbelievers, the most odious and criminal are those who, while
recognizing God, create Him of earthly parents, give Him a son, a
mother; so monstrous an aberration surpasses, in our eyes, all bounds of
iniquity; the presence of such miscreants among us is the bane of our
existence; their doctrine is a direct insult to the purity of our faith;
their contact a pollution for our bodies; any relation with them a
torture for our souls.
"While detesting you, we have been studying your political institutions
and your military organizations. Besides the new arms which Providence
procures for us by your own means, you yourselves have rekindled the
inextinguishable faith of our heroic martyrs. Our Young Turks, our
Babis, our new fraternities, all are sects in their varied forms, are
inspired by the same thought, the same purpose. Toward what end?
Christian civilization? Never!"[23]
Such harangues unfortunately find ready hearers among the Moslem masses.
Although the liberal reformers are a growing power in Islam, it must not
be forgotten that they are as yet only a minority, an élite, below whom
lie the ignorant masses, still suffering from the blight of age-long
obscurantism, wrapped in admiration of their own world, which they
regard as the highest ideal of human existence, and fanatically hating
everything outside as wicked, despicable, and deceptive. Even when
compelled to admit the superior power of the West, they hate it none the
less. They rebel blindly against the spirit of change which is forcing
them out of their old ruts, and their anger is still further heightened
by that ubiquitous Western domination which is pressing upon them from
all sides. Such persons are as clay in the hands of the Pan-Islamic and
Nationalist leaders who mould the multitude to their own sinister ends.
Islam is, in fact, to-day torn between the forces of liberal reform and
chauvinistic reaction. The liberals are not only the hope of an
evolutionary reformation, they are also favoured by the trend of the
times, since the Moslem world is being continually permeated by Western
progress and must continue to be thus permeated unless Western
civilization itself collapses in ruin. Yet, though the ultimate triumph
of the liberals appears probable, what delays, what setbacks, what fresh
barriers of warfare and fanaticism may not the chauvinist reactionaries
bring about! Neither the reform of Islam nor the relations between East
and West are free from perils whose ominous possibilities we shall later
discuss.
Meanwhile, there remains the hopeful fact that throughout the Moslem
world a numerous and powerful minority, composed not merely of
Westernized persons but also of orthodox conservatives, are aware of
Islam's decadence and are convinced that a thoroughgoing reformation
along liberal, progressive lines is at once a practical necessity and a
sacred duty. Exactly how this reformation shall be legally effected has
not yet been determined, nor is a detailed discussion of technical
machinery necessary for our consideration.[24] History teaches us that
where the will to reform is vitally present, reformation will somehow or
other be accomplished.
One thing is certain: the reforming spirit, in its various
manifestations, has already produced profound changes throughout Islam.
The Moslem world of to-day is vastly different from the Moslem world of
a century ago. The Wahabi leaven has destroyed abuses and has rekindled
a purer religious faith. Even its fanatical zeal has not been without
moral compensations. The spread of liberal principles and Western
progress goes on apace. If there is much to fear for the future, there
is also much to hope.
FOOTNOTES:
[5] On the Wahabi movement, see A. Le Chatelier, _L'Islam au
dix-neuvième Siècle_ (Paris, 1888); W. G. Palgrave, _Essays on Eastern
Questions_ (London, 1872); D. B. Macdonald, _Muslim Theology_ (London,
1903); J. L. Burckhardt, _Notes on the Bedouins and Wahabys_ (2 vols.,
London, 1831); A. Chodzko, "Le Déisme des Wahhabis," _Journal
Asiatique_, IV., Vol. II., pp. 168 _et seq._
[6] Not to be confused with Sir Syed Ahmed of Aligarh, the Indian Moslem
liberal of the mid-nineteenth century.
[7] For English alarm at the latent fanaticism of the North Indian
Moslems, down through the middle of the nineteenth century, see Sir W.
W. Hunter, _The Indian Musalmans_ (London, 1872).
[8] For the Babbist movement, see Clément Huart, _La Réligion de Bab_
(Paris, 1889); Comte Arthur de Gobineau, _Trois Ans en Perse_ (Paris,
1867). A good summary of all these early movements of the Mohammedan
revival is found in Le Chatelier, _op. cit._
[9] _Mishkat-el-Masabih_, I., 46, 51.
[10] The best recent examples of this polemical literature are the
writings of the Rev. S. M. Zwemer, the well known missionary to the
Arabs; especially his _Arabia, the Cradle of Islam_ (Edinburgh, 1900),
and _The Reproach of Islam_ (London, 1915). Also see volume entitled
_The Mohammedan World of To-day_, being a collection of the papers read
at the Protestant Missionary Conference held at Cairo, Egypt, in 1906.
[11] Cromer, _Modern Egypt_, Vol. II., p. 229 (London, 1908). For
Renan's attitude, see his _L'Islamisme et la Science_ (Paris, 1883).
[12] In the year 1633.
[13] Ismael Hamet, _Les Musulmans français du Nord de l'Afrique_ (Paris,
1906).
[14] Quoted by Dr. Perron in his work _L'Islamisme_ (Paris, 1877).
[15] The Mollahs are the Moslem clergy, though they do not exactly
correspond to the clergy of Christendom. Mohammed was averse to anything
like a priesthood, and Islam makes no legal provision for an ordained
priestly class or caste, as is the case in Christianity, Judaism,
Brahmanism, and other religions. Theoretically any Moslem can conduct
religious services. As time passed, however, a class of men developed
who were learned in Moslem theology and law. These ultimately became
practically priests, though theoretically they should be regarded as
theological lawyers. There also developed religious orders of dervishes,
etc.; but primitive Islam knew nothing of them.
[16] From the article by Léon Cahun in Lavisse et Rambeaud, _Histoire
Générale_, Vol. XII., p. 498. This article gives an excellent general
survey of the intellectual development of the Moslem world in the
nineteenth century.
[17] Especially his best-known book, _The Spirit of Islam_ (London,
1891).
[18] S. Khuda Bukhsh, _Essays: Indian and Islamic_, pp. 20, 24, 284.
(London, 1912).
[19] 1856 to 1878.
[20] For the liberal movement among the Russian Tartars, see Arminius
Vambéry, _Western Culture in Eastern Lands_ (London, 1906).
[21] Ismael Hamet, _Les Musulmans français du Nord de l'Afrique_, p. 268
(Paris, 1906).
[22] S. Khuda Bukhsh, _op. cit._, p. 241.
[23] Sheikh Abd-ul-Haak, in Sherif Pasha's organ, _Mecheroutiette_, of
August, 1921. Quoted from A. Servier, _Le Nationalisme musulman_,
Constantine, Algeria, 1913.
[24] For such discussion of legal methods, see W. S. Blunt, _The Future
of Islam_ (London, 1882); A. Le Chatelier, _L'Islam au dix-neuvième
Siècle_ (Paris, 1888); Dr. Perron, _L'Islamisme_ (Paris, 1877); H. N.
Brailsford "Modernism in Islam," _The Fortnightly Review_, September,
1908; Sir Theodore Morison, "Can Islam be Reformed?" _The Nineteenth
Century and After_, October, 1908; M. Pickthall, "La Morale islamique,"
_Revue Politique Internationale_, July, 1916; XX, "L'Islam après la
Guerre," _Revue de Paris_, 15 January, 1916.