These same forces, operating in a collateral field, have effected a still
more remarkable, and a more radical, revolution, culminating in the
collapse and fall of the Muslim Caliphate, the most powerful institution
of the whole Islamic world. This event of portentous significance has,
moreover, been followed by a formal and definite separation of what was
left of the Sunni faith in Turkey from the state, and by the complete
secularization of the Republic that has arisen on the ruins of the Ottoman
theocratic empire. This catastrophic fall, that stunned the Islamic world,
and the avowed, the unqualified, and formal divorce between the spiritual
and temporal powers, which distinguished the revolution in Turkey from
that which occurred in Persia, I now proceed to consider.
Sunni Islam has sustained, not through the action of a foreign and
invading Power, but at the hands of a dictator, avowedly professing the
Faith of Muhammad, a blow more grievous than that which fell, almost
simultaneously, upon its sister-sect in Persia. This retributive act,
directed against the archenemy of the Faith of Baha'u'llah, recalls a
similar disaster precipitated through the action of a Roman emperor,
during the latter part of the first century of the Christian era--a
disaster that razed to its foundations the Temple of Solomon, destroyed
the Holy of Holies, laid waste the city of David, uprooted the Jewish
hierarchy in Jerusalem, massacred thousands of the Jewish people--the
persecutors of the religion of Jesus Christ--dispersed the remainder over
the surface of the earth, and reared a pagan colony on Zion.
The Caliph, the self-styled vicar of the Prophet of Islam, exercised a
spiritual sovereignty, and was invested with a sacred character, which the
_Sh_ah of Persia neither claimed nor possessed. Nor should it be forgotten
that the sphere of his spiritual jurisdiction extended to countries far
beyond the confines of his own empire, and embraced the overwhelming
majority of Muslims throughout the world. He was, moreover, in his
capacity as the Prophet's representative on earth, regarded as the
protector of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, the defender and
propagator of Islam, and the commander of its followers in any holy war
they might be called upon to wage.
So potent, so august, so sacred a personage was at first by virtue of the
abolition of the Sultanate in Turkey, divested of that temporal authority
which the exponents of the Sunni school have regarded as a necessary
concomitant to his high office. The sword, emblem of temporal sovereignty,
was thus wrested out of the hands of the commander who, for a brief
period, was permitted to occupy such an anomalous and precarious position.
It was soon, however, trumpeted to the Sunni world, which had not
previously been in the least consulted, that the Caliphate itself had been
extinguished, and that the country which had accepted it as an appanage to
its Sultanate, for more than four hundred years, had now permanently
disowned it. The Turks who had been the militant leaders of the Muhammadan
world, since the Arab decline, and who had carried the standard of Islam
as far as the gates of Vienna, the seat of government of Europe's premier
Power, had resigned their leadership. The ex-caliph, shorn of his royal
pomp, stripped of the symbols of his vicarship, and deserted by friend and
foe alike, was forced to flee from Constantinople, the proud seat of a
dual sovereignty, to the land of the infidels, resigning himself to that
same life of exile to which a number of his fellow-sovereigns had been and
were still condemned.
Nor has the Sunni world, despite determined efforts, succeeded in
designating anyone in his stead who, though deprived of the sword of a
commander, would still act as the custodian of the cloak and standard of
the Apostle of God--the twin holy symbols of the Caliphate. Conferences
were held, discussions ensued, a Congress of the Caliphate was convened in
the Egyptian capital, the City of the Fatimites, only to result in the
widely advertised and public confession of its failure: "They have agreed
to disagree!"
Strange, incredibly strange, must appear the position of this most
powerful branch of the Islamic Faith, with no outward and visible head to
voice its sentiments and convictions, its unity irretrievably shattered,
its radiance obscured, its law undermined, its institutions thrown into
hopeless confusion. This institution that had challenged the inalienable,
divinely appointed rights of the Imams of the Faith of Muhammad, had,
after the revolution of thirteen centuries, vanished like a smoke, an
institution which had dealt such merciless blows to a Faith Whose Herald
was Himself a descendant of the Imams, the lawful successors of the
Apostle of God.
To what else could this remarkable prophecy, enshrined in the
Lawh-i-Burhan, allude if not to the downfall of this crowned overlord of
Sunni Muslims? "O concourse of Muslim Divines! Because of you the people
were abased, and the banner of Islam was hauled down, and its mighty
throne subverted." What of the indubitably clear and amazing prophecy
recorded in the Qayyum-i-Asma? "Erelong We will, in very truth, torment
such as waged war against Husayn [Imam Husayn], in the Land of the
Euphrates, with the most afflictive torment, and the direst and most
exemplary punishment." What other interpretation can this Muhammadan
tradition be given? "In the latter days a grievous calamity shall befall
My people at the hands of their ruler, a calamity such as no man ever
heard to surpass it."
This was not all, however. The disappearance of the Caliph, the spiritual
head of above two hundred million Muhammadans, brought in its wake, in the
land that had dealt Islam such a heavy blow, the annulment of the
_sh_ari'ah canonical Law, the disendowment of Sunni institutions, the
promulgation of a civil Code, the suppression of religious orders, the
abrogation of ceremonials and traditions inculcated by the religion of
Muhammad. The _Sh_ay_kh_u'l-Islam and his satellites, including muftis,
qadis, hujahs, _sh_ay_kh_s, sufis, hajis, mawlavis, dervishes, and others,
vanished at a stroke more determined, more open, and drastic than the one
dealt the _Sh_i'ihs by the _Sh_ah and his government. The mosques of the
capital, the pride and glory of the Islamic world, were deserted, and the
fairest and most famous of them all, the peerless St. Sophia, "the Second
Firmament," "the Vehicle of the Cherubim," converted by the blatant
creators of a secular regime into a museum. The Arabic tongue, the
language of the Prophet of God, was banished from the land, its alphabet
was superseded by Latin characters, and the Qur'an itself translated into
Turkish for the few who still cared to read it. The constitution of the
new Turkey not only proclaimed formally the disestablishment and
disendowment of Islam, with all its attendant and, in the view of some,
atheistic enactments, but also heralded various measures that aimed at its
further humiliation and weakening. Even the city of Constantinople, "the
Dome of Islam," apostrophized in such condemnatory terms by Baha'u'llah,
which, after the fall of Byzantium, had been hailed by the great
Constantine as "the New Rome," and exalted to the rank of the metropolis
of both the Roman Empire and of Christendom, and subsequently revered as
the seat of the Caliphs, was relegated to the position of a provincial
city and stripped of all its pomp and glory, its soaring and slender
minarets standing sentinel at the grave of so much vanished splendor and
power.
"O Spot that art situate on the shores of the two seas!" Baha'u'llah has
thus apostrophized the Imperial City, in terms that call to mind the
prophetic words addressed by Jesus Christ to Jerusalem, "The throne of
tyranny hath, verily, been stablished upon thee, and the flame of hatred
hath been kindled within thy bosom, in such wise that the Concourse on
high, and they who circle around the Exalted Throne, have wailed and
lamented. We behold in thee the foolish ruling over the wise, and darkness
vaunting itself against the light. Thou art indeed filled with manifest
pride. Hath thine outward splendor made thee vainglorious? By Him Who is
the Lord of mankind! It shall soon perish, and thy daughters, and thy
widows, and all the kindreds that dwell within thee shall lament. Thus
informeth thee the All-Knowing, the All-Wise."
Such was the fate that overtook both _Sh_i'ih and Sunni Islam, in the two
countries where they had planted their banners and reared their most
powerful and far-famed institutions. Such was their fate in these two
countries, in one of which Baha'u'llah died an exile, and in the other the
Bab suffered a martyr's death. Such was the fate of the self-styled Vicar
of the Prophet of God, and of the favorite ministers of the still awaited
Imam. "The people of the Qur'an," Baha'u'llah testifies, "have risen
against Us, and tormented Us with such a torment that the Holy Spirit
lamented, and the thunder roared out, and the clouds wept over Us....
Muhammad, the Apostle of God, bewaileth, in the all-highest Paradise,
their acts." "A day shall be witnessed by My people," their own traditions
condemn them, "whereon there will have remained of Islam naught but a
name, and of the Qur'an naught but a mere appearance. The doctors of that
age shall be the most evil the world hath ever seen. Mischief hath
proceeded from them, and on them it will recoil." And again: "Most of His
enemies will be the divines. His bidding they will not obey, but will
protest saying: 'This is contrary to that which hath been handed down unto
us by the Imams of the Faith.'" And still again: "At that hour His
malediction shall descend upon you, and your curse shall afflict you, and
your religion shall remain an empty word on your tongues. And when these
signs appear amongst you, anticipate the day when the red-hot wind will
have swept over you, or the day when ye will have been disfigured, or when
stones will have rained upon you."