“Made in Germany”
More than ten years ago I had a conversation with a Turk of a highly
intellectual type about religious fanaticism and its bearing on
political situations. He concluded his considerations on this subject
about as follows: “In former times the inhabitants of the civilized
world used to destroy each other for being at variance about the
mysteries of the other world. Now, however, glory be to Allah, humanity
has overcome this barbarous custom and everybody is free to believe
what he likes. But what good is this to us, as long as wars continue to
be waged on account of economic and political interests, wars of which
the fanaticism is not to be outdone by that of the bitterest religious
strife, and of which the destructiveness is continuously being
increased by our immense technical progress? Under such circumstances
a quiet enjoyment of the hard-won freedom of thought is out of the
question.”
This utterance ever again obtrudes itself on my memory in connexion
with the events that are taking place at present. Large groups of men,
kept apart by varying political and economic interests, have for years
and years consumed an important part of their intellectual and material
resources in devising means by which, in the fulness of time, they
might destroy each other; and now, at last, the long-expected spark
has fallen on the accumulated fuel. Every one of the belligerents is
horrified by the idea of responsibility for the crimes against mankind
which they are perpetrating in common. The culture they shared with
each other has been shelved and finds its only expression in a dull
series of contentions where each one charges the other with the guilt
of what they have all carefully planned together. The sceptical irony
of my Turkish friend was not unjustified. Not that it teaches us
anything new. Only in this respect might his utterance be somewhat
surprising to those of us who are not familiar with the Mohammedan
world, that it shows a Turk recognizing without restriction general
religious peace and freedom of thought as an undisputed possession.
Considered from this point of view the words quoted here are the more
valuable, as they express with tolerable accuracy the opinion of all
Turkish intellectuals on the problem of religion.
This tolerance seems irreconcilable with the prescriptions of the
Mohammedan law concerning the attitude towards the adherents of other
religions. For, according to this law, which as a whole claims divine
authority, the whole world of man is to be subjected to the Mohammedan
community and is also, as far as possible, to be incorporated by it
in a spiritual sense. That this aim may be attained, the community of
the faithful is to do _jihâd_, _i. e._, carry on a _holy war_ against
all that are still living outside the circle of its authority. The
leadership in the _jihâd_, the determination of time, place, and means,
is one of the chief duties of the head of the community, the Caliph,
the successor of Mohammed as supreme governor, supreme judge, and
supreme commander of all the Moslims. As the interests of Islâm in
his opinion require it, he is to carry on this war with more or less
energy or even temporarily to desist from it. Under no circumstances
may he agree to a suspension of the offensive against a nation of
unbelievers for more than ten years. Provided they subject themselves
to the Mohammedan state-authority and are satisfied with the position
of subjects without civic rights, adherents of the Jewish and of the
Christian religion, and of such religions as obtain equal recognition
with those, are granted the exercise of their religion, though with
certain restrictions. In the case of real heathens subjection must be
accompanied by conversion.
The _jihâd_-program assumes that the Mohammedans, just as at their
first appearance in the world, continuously form a compact unity under
one man’s leadership. But this situation has in reality endured so
short a time, the realm of Islâm has so quickly disintegrated into
an increasingly large number of principalities, the supreme power
of the so-called Caliph, after flourishing for a short period, has
become so much a mere word, that even the _jihâd_-prescriptions have
had to be adapted to this state of crumbling authority. As in most
other respects so also concerning the waging of the holy war, the law
therefore transfers the authority and the duties of the one Caliph
to the various territorial heads, to each one for the extent of his
dominion. Now it is evident that this shifting of authority from one to
many is a great simplifying influence for the internal government; but
it is equally evident that by this disintegration the continuance of
the world-conquest, as it was started in the first century of Islâm, is
made impossible.
To be sure, there were a number of other causes which stemmed the
first wild rush of the Moslim legions. They met frontiers where
resistance could not be broken at once, and the enjoyment of what had
been conquered weakened their energy. The great deeds of the first
generations were idealized in the imagination of the later ones, the
stains removed from them, and the theory of their desirable continuance
elaborated in details, the more casuistical as their realization was
getting further outside the sphere of possibilities. Only where a
Mohammedan territory is attacked by a nation of unbelievers, there the
duty of defence is put upon the whole of the population. Offensive
action is justified only when it is ordered and regulated by a
recognized head of the state. Where unbelievers succeed in subjecting a
Moslim population, the latter must not resign itself to this state of
submission, but must grasp the first opportunity for either throwing
off the yoke or for emigrating to an independent Moslim country; and
this as much in order to ward off the danger with which their own
religion is threatened, as in order to strengthen the ranks of the
faithful for the struggle against the enemy, _i. e._, the non-subjected
unbelievers. Even if the impossibility of effective resistance or
emigration should endure for centuries, the relation of dependency upon
a non-Mohammedan state-authority created thereby is to be accepted only
as temporary and abnormal.
The whole set of laws which, according to Islâm, should regulate the
relations between believers and unbelievers, is the most consequent
elaboration imaginable of a mixture of religion and of politics in
their mediæval form. That he who possesses material power should also
dominate the mind is accepted as a matter of course; the possibility
that adherents of different religions could live together as citizens
of the same state and with equal rights is excluded. Such was the
situation in the Middle Ages not only with the Mohammedans: before
and even long after the Reformation our ancestors did not think very
differently on the matter. The difference is chiefly this, that Islâm
has fixed all these mediæval regulations in the form of eternal laws,
so that later generations, even if their views have changed, find it
hard to emancipate themselves from them. This emancipation became all
the more difficult because both the multitude and the scribes clung the
more tightly to this questionable legacy of their ancestors, the more
circumstances seemed to flout the realization of this mighty program.
It is a fact that in the countries of Islâm all through the centuries
little care has been given to the education of the masses, and the idea
of a future world-domination was too pleasing to their vanity to be
lightly discarded. The jurists, in their narrowness, did not partake
of the fulness of real life; they anxiously preserved the forms of the
ancient ideals without noticing that their contents had vanished. To
them the appreciation of religious freedom by intellectual Turks, such
as the friend quoted above, was and still is a frivolous concession to
the debased spirit of the times.
Nevertheless the minds went on their forward march, in the past
century often with surprising rapidity. Through the very harshness
of Mohammedan society and the inefficiency and corruption of the
Mohammedan governments the whole territory of Islâm, in contrast to
its conscious program of world-dominion, gradually came under European
influence. This has gone so far already that more than ninety per cent.
of all Mohammedans live in conquered territory or in protectorates
under the political rule of European powers, whereas the independence
of the remaining part, chiefly Turkey, is maintained in appearance
only by a certain cleverness in balancing between the large powers
which are vying for its tutelage.
This coming into contact of the territory of Islâm and the world
outside which has ended with the total loss of the former’s political
independence, was originally brought about by the necessity of Europe
to expand economically, that is, by the self-interest of the nations
which were able to shake off the dust of the Middle Ages and which
overtook the Mohammedans in a spiritual as well as in a material
sense. Later on only did the narrow idea of exploitation give way
to that of annexation and eventually to that of complete absorption
of the conquered territories, in the sense that the population was
to be educated into partaking, as far as they could and was deemed
expedient, of the culture of the conquerors. This was not done at
one stroke; the struggle between the egotism of the guardians and
their sense of duty to their wards is still in full swing. But the
European guardians, even those for whom the consequent application
of the newer principles is often too hard a task, would even now be
ashamed to profess any other principle of government but that of a pure
harmony between the interests of two nations, of which one has been
subordinated by history to the other. The Mohammedans under direct or
indirect European government have already derived considerable benefit
from this; and one may say that on the whole they are better off than
their co-religionists in the quasi-independent states, where they
suffer the disadvantages both of a corrupt administration and of the
struggle for economic gain between the great powers of the West. Still,
the oppression under which the population labours in such a country as
Turkey has also excited aspirations to intellectual development. The
Young-Turk movement of these late years loudly speaks for that.
In the more highly developed circles of all Mohammedan countries the
conviction has become general that the mediæval mixture of religion
and politics, which the system of Islâm wanted to uphold for ever, is
not of our times. The Mohammedans have become inferiors in this world,
politically and socially; so much so that the idea of a world-dominion
founded on their religion could not keep anything of its attraction for
all but the ignorant. The others are almost ashamed of the presumption
expressed by the teaching of the _jihâd_, and try hard to prove that
the law itself restricts its application to circumstances which do not
occur any more.
The lesson of tolerance was least easily impressed on the nations
which had stood in the front rank in the political heyday of Islâm,
least of all on the Turks who had played the leading part in the last
scene of glory. When in 1258 Bagdad was destroyed by the Mongols and
the Abasside Caliphate, dating more than five centuries back, was
wiped out, the Mohammedan world was not lifted from its hinges, as
would have happened if the Caliphate still had had anything to do with
the central government of the Mohammedans. In fact, this princely
house had already been living three centuries and a half on the faint
afterglow of its ephemeral splendour; and if during that time it was
not crowded out by one of the many powerful sultans, its very practical
insignificance was the main reason for that. So insignificant had these
caliphs in name become that certain European writers sometimes have
felt induced to represent them as a kind of religious princes of Islâm,
who voluntarily or not had transferred their secular power to the many
territorial princes in the wide dominion of Islâm. To them the total
lack of secular authority, coupled with the often-manifested reverence
of the Moslim for the Caliphate, appeared unintelligible except on
the assumption of a spiritual authority, a sort of Mohammedan papacy.
Still, such a thing there never was, and Islâm, which knows neither
priests nor sacraments, could not have had occasion for it. Here, as
elsewhere, the multitude preferred legend to fact: they imagined the
successor of the Prophet as still watching over the whole of the Moslim
community; as, according to historical tradition, he really did during
the first two centuries following the Hijrah, and this long after
the institution of the Caliphate had disappeared in the political
degeneration of Islâm. However, they did not imagine him as a pope, but
as a supreme ruler; above all as the _amîr-al-mu’-minîn_, commander of
the legions of Islâm, which sometime would make the whole world bend to
its power.
The Caliph, the lieutenant of Allah’s Messenger, and the _jihâd_, the
holy war against the whole world outside Islâm: with those two names
was indissolubly connected the remembrance of those two brilliant
centuries in which the course of circumstances seemed to justify the
Mohammedan ambition for world-dominion. Whatever disappeared in reality
survived in legend; the worship of the shadow-Caliphs of Bagdad made it
easier for many Mohammedans to forget the failure of their political
ideal.
When Bagdad had fallen and a large part of the Abasside family
had been exterminated, this political fetishism still had its
after-effects; the sultans of Egypt availed themselves of it by making
one of those who had escaped murder continue the tradition of the
dummy-Caliphate in their capital and thus creating the impression that
their territory had now become the centre of Islâm. But this shadow
of a shadow was to fade away entirely when the sun of the Ottomans
reached its zenith. Under their direction Islâm ventured its last
attempt, not to subdue the world, to be sure, but at least to become a
world-power of the first rank. They succeeded in taking Constantinople
(1452), a task at which the greatest Moslim princes of yore had vainly
tried their strength. When in 1517 they had conquered Egypt and
subsequently also the province of the holy cities of Arabia, Mecca
and Medina, they felt themselves strong enough to try resuscitating
the tradition of the real Caliphate; or, at least, to assume the part
of fetish themselves. They were not deterred from this even by the
express prescription of the law, which requires that he who shall
occupy the Caliphate shall be descended from the noble Arabian house
of Qoraish. The sophistry of complaisant jurists helped them to remove
this objection, and the multitude did not resist these tricks, seeing
that the dreams which they connected with the Caliphate now seemed to
turn into realities. The conqueror of Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt, Western
Arabia, Mesopotamia, and the empire of Byzantium, whom a large part of
Europe considered as a formidable foe, might confidently substitute his
sword as a fetish for the powerless pedigree of the Abassides.
This re-born Caliphate consequently lacked important traditional
characteristics; and in other respects also it could not be considered
as the regular continuation of its predecessor. Several of the oldest
Mohammedan countries remained entirely outside the Turkish sphere of
influence; and those were not only such where, as in Persia, a dynasty
opposed to the Turks raised the banner of heresy, but also perfectly
orthodox countries in Central Asia, in India, in North-Western Africa,
where the Turkish sword found no occasion to assert itself. In Morocco
the Turkish Caliphate was even directly ignored, as the local princes,
descendants of the Prophet, themselves assumed the highest title.
Elsewhere, simultaneously with the rise of the Ottomans or after, there
arose new Mohammedan dominions which have never come into contact with
any real or supposed political centre of Islâm; such as those in the
Far East of Asia and in Central Africa.
Indeed the usurpation of the Caliph-title by the Ottoman Sultans had
only this significance, that in their political period of splendour
they wished to have it established beyond dispute that no other Moslim
prince could compare with them in importance. This could in no wise
be more aptly done than by adding to all their high-sounding Persian
and Turkish titles the name of the most exalted office which had ever
existed in Islâm. To their power this nominal title of Caliph has never
added anything; they ruled only what their armies had conquered and
outside those limits they did not exert the slightest influence.
The Turkish sword soon lost its edge; long before the policy of the
great European powers gnawed off piece after piece from the realm of
the Ottomans, several provinces had developed into separate feudal
dominions under hereditary dynasties. Since Turkey, entirely dependent
in its policy upon non-Mohammedan powers, can only claim about five per
cent. of the Mohammedans of the world as its subjects, it would sound
highly ridiculous to have the Sultan of that realm called “Lieutenant
of God’s Messenger, Supreme Commander of the Faithful,” if also outside
Turkey one were not used to much traditional nonsense in princely
titles.
It is just in this last century that the Turks, through a concourse of
circumstances, have sometimes succeeded in coining some small advantage
out of this doubtfully legal, now meaningless title.
Means of communication increased a thousandfold have now brought
into contact Mohammedan nations which formerly knew nothing, or
hardly anything, about each other’s existence. The approximately
230,000,000 of Mohammedans living under non-Moslim rule mostly do
not possess sufficient historical remembrance to understand that the
change in administration has been an improvement for them. They see
the political past of Islâm only through the veil of legend, and when
the present gives occasion for grievances and objections--and where
are these lacking?--they are rather prone to believe that all their
complaints would be cured, if only the Commander of the Faithful
could take their interests in hand. Of the maladministration under
which the real subjects of the Sultan of Turkey are labouring, they
hear little and experience nothing. And the Sultan, who has been the
worst in this respect, until in 1909 he was deposed and exiled by his
subjects, has worked more zealously and more successfully than any of
his predecessors for the dissemination amongst the Mohammedans of the
false imaginations concerning the Caliphate. His wily but short-sighted
policy, which brought his own empire ever nearer to its fall, made
him seek solace for many a failure in Panislamic intrigues, staged
by unscrupulous but mostly ignorant and blundering confederates, who
showed the credulous the ideal picture of a Caliph, assuring them that
it was a good likeness of Abdulhamîd.
There has often been talk of an organization of Panislâm under the
direction of Abdulhamîd, but this is without foundation. In 1897, in
connexion with some foul, secretly circulated, pamphlets, which the
most intimate counsellors of the Sultan in vying for his favour had let
loose against each other, I tried to describe the atmosphere around
the despot,[1] and when, in 1908, I witnessed the first two months of
the revolution in Constantinople, I found a complete justification of
my description.[2] That gang of shallow intriguers was little qualified
to lead a serious international movement. They exploited the connexions
established with certain Mohammedans of consequence in non-Turkish
territory to increase their own advantage and prestige, without being
of any real use in the resuscitation of the dead Caliphate. The
establishment of a few Turkish consulates in Mohammedan countries under
European rule also failed of its aim. They usually forgot to pay the
consuls their salaries; the consuls did not even know the languages
of the populations amongst whom they lived, and took no pains to learn
them. Their mostly very “advanced” manner of living did not serve to
heighten respect for the man who sent them.
It is a fact that Panislâm cannot work with any program except with the
worn-out, flagrantly impracticable, program of world-conquest by Islâm;
and this has lost its hold on all sensible adherents of Islâm; whereas,
among the stupid multitude, which may still be tempted by the idea of
war against all _kâfirs_, it can stir up only confusion and unrest. At
most it may cause local disturbances; but it can never in any sense
have a constructive influence.
Probably without intention, some European statesmen and writers have
given a certain support to the Panislamic idea by their consideration,
based on an absolute misunderstanding, of the Caliphate as a kind
of Mohammedan papacy. Most of all did this conception find adherents
in England at the time when that country was still considered to be
the protector of the Turk against danger threatened by Russia. It was
thought useful to make the British-Indian Moslim believe that the
British Government was on terms of intimate friendship with the head
of their church. Turkish statesmen made clever use of this error. Of
course they could not admit before their European friends the real
theory of the Caliphate with its mission of uniting all the faithful
under its banner in order to make war on all _kâfirs_. They rejoiced
all the more to see that these had formed about that institution a
conception which, to be sure, was false, but for that very reason
plausible to non-Mohammedans. They took good care not to correct it,
for they were satisfied with being able, before their co-religionists,
to point to the fact that even among the great non-Mohammedan powers
the claim of the Ottomans to the Caliphate was recognized.
Although Panislâm was not organized, nevertheless in Mohammedan
countries under European rule it often would oppose the normal
development of a mutually desirable relation between the governing and
the governed. Speculating on dissatisfaction in every form, it secretly
worked as a disturbing element, without there being any hope that the
division caused or intensified might lead to improvements.
All European powers must have hailed as a welcome consequence of
the revolution of 1908 the fact that the Young Turks who forced the
re-establishment of the constitution wanted to put an end to the
mediæval mixture of religion and politics. The upholding of Islâm as a
state-religion was on their part a concession to the old tradition,
without prejudice to the complete equality of the adherents of all
religions as citizens of the Turkish Empire. Re-born Turkey was to be
a modern constitutional state in the full meaning of the word. For
Caliphate and _jihâd_ there was no room in such a state. Turks and
Arabs, Greeks, Armenians, and Jews, and whoever else lived together
under the Crescent, were to co-operate in liberty, equality, and
fraternity to make Young Turkey into a state respected in international
life. The empire of the Ottomans was not to presume on any interference
with co-religionists living under non-Mohammedan rule. At most the
government, in case such had reason to complain about the violation
of their rights, might permit representations to be made similar to
those which the Christian powers had so often addressed to Turkey in
connexion with alleged oppression of Christian nations under Turkish
rule.
Soon these ideals were shown to be too exalted for the time being.
The greed of the European powers did not grant Young Turkey the rest
necessary for internal reform. Upon the enthusiastic harmony of the
first days of deliverance from the claws of despotism, there speedily
followed the renascence of the old internal strife, now no longer held
in leash by the common fear of the despot. The Committee of Unity
and Progress, which before or behind the scenes had the direction of
things, found itself constrained on one side to resort again to the
hateful governing methods of despotism, on the other side to grant
many concessions to the detriment of its own program, even to Moslim
orthodoxy and to the beliefs and superstitions of the multitude. The
fetish of the Caliphate had to be exhumed again from the museum of
antiquities where it had temporarily been stored. As to the idea of
_jihâd_, which was so closely connected with it, the European powers
took care that it was not forgotten. Turkey was continually forced to a
_jihâd_.
When we translate the word _jihâd_ by “holy war” this is justified,
inasmuch as such a war has for the Mohammedans a holy, a religious
character. But it is a mistake to imagine that besides this there
exists a non-holy or secular war. Apart from using the army to repress
revolt against lawful authority, which must be considered as a police
measure, Islâm knows no war other than the _jihâd_, and no other aim to
the _jihâd_ than the defence of the interests of Islâm against attacks
by non-Mohammedans or the extension of the territory of Islâm to the
detriment of the Dâr al-Harb, the country of the unbelievers. The
wars which Turkey had to carry on under Abdulhamîd against Russia and
against Greece have never been called by Turks and Arabs by any other
name but _jihâd_, even if they were prudent enough not to use that
term of mediæval fanaticism in their intercourse with Europeans. This
holds true also of the war with Italy for the possession of Tripoli
and of that with the Balkan States. For the Mohammedans, who continue
in the old fashion mixing politics and religion, there is no other war
but religious war. That a special edict of the Sultan-Caliph should
be needed to stamp one of Turkey’s wars as a holy war, is one more of
those ridiculous misconceptions of things Mohammedan, of which so many
have become current in Europe. The Turks do not usually protest against
such nonsense; but in their dealings with Europeans they mostly
endorse it when their interest requires it. For no Moslim in the world,
however, when Turkey is involved in war, does the question whether
the Sultan has decreed the holy war possess a reasonable meaning. All
this ought to be well considered if one is to understand correctly the
political events of these days in so far as they involve Turkey.
* * * * *
About these events pamphlets have been published in Germany, which
in certain respects perhaps deserve some attention even outside that
country. _Deutschland, die Türkei und der Islam_ is the title of a
pamphlet by Hugo Grothe, who is considered as qualified in the field
of economics, and whose former writings contain the results of his
scientific journeys in European and Asiatic Turkey, in Persia and in
Tripolitania. This pamphlet is part of a series, _Zwischen Krieg
und Frieden_, edited by Irmer, Lamprecht, and von Liszt, containing
political articles for the public at large. Amongst its contributors
appears Prince von Bülow.
When Grothe departs from economic politics he at once shows himself
to be in unfamiliar surroundings. The political problem of Islâm, _e.
g._, is not clear in his mind. The Caliphate he calls the secular
representation of the religious community of the Mohammedans, a rather
vague expression of the idea that all Mohammedans in a political
sense are legally subjects of the Caliph; who to be sure is kept
from exercising his administrative rights over what now amounts to
ninety-five per cent. of these subjects by unbelieving princes whose
authority is necessarily illegal. But now Grothe on another page quotes
the following from a proclamation issued by the Imperial Governor of
Kamerun to the native population: “We are further given help by the
Sultan in Stambul, who in matters of religion is the Supreme Lord of
all Mohammedans,” and far from adding the necessary correction, he
calls this official nonsense “interesting.” Grothe’s assertion that at
the outset of the present war the “_jihâd_ of Germany” had been the
subject of debates and prayers in the mosques of Turkey is perhaps a
poetical phrase, for, even if we translate _jihâd_ about correctly as
“holy war,” still our “holy war,” as now every belligerent calls his
own struggle, is by no means rendered by the Arabic-Mohammedan _jihâd_.
When old-fashioned pious Mohammedans refer to this war in their prayer,
the prayer will sound about as follows: “We thank Thee, Allah, for
having divided the legions of the Devil against themselves and because
Thy almightiness forces some of them to support the defenders of Islâm
with their arms and their men. Arrange all this, O Lord, for a speedy
victory of the faithful and for the ruin of all who disobey Thee and
Thy Messenger.” Thus and thus only is the conception of those Moslims
who have not yet been sufficiently sobered by history to share the view
of the Turk whose words I quoted at the beginning of this article.
It is also poetical phrasing of Grothe’s when he makes an earthquake
perceived at Konia, Bundur, and Sparta contribute towards giving the
Turks real insight into the meaning of the catastrophe which has
befallen us; poetical phrasing, when in his travels he continually
hears Turks, Arabs, Kurds, and Anatolians professing their sympathy for
Germany and expressing views on contemporary politics which do not,
either, differ one jot from Grothe’s own. He hears them expressing
those in languages of which he understands nothing, for the two
Turkish expressions which Grothe uses are unidiomatic.[3]
We remain nearer to reality when we follow Grothe’s survey of the
politico-economic relations between Turkey and Germany, as they
developed in the last twenty years of the nineteenth century. Germany,
he says, through a concourse of unfavourable circumstances, has been
badly outdistanced in the race of the European powers for the economic
and commercial advantages which are to be had in Turkish territory. In
fact, a change for the better started only with the concession of the
Anatolian railway to a German syndicate (1888) which was followed later
on by that of the Bagdad railway. One gets an idea of the rapidity of
the movement by looking at the figures of imports and exports combined,
between Germany and Turkey: 14 million for 1888, but for 1913, 200-250
million marks. The competition with England, France, and Russia again
made it desirable for all parties that their spheres of interest
should be determined. Before the war the understanding had come so far
that they were expected in the present year to reach an agreement,
by which England would receive Southern Mesopotamia as its economic
territory, France Syria, Germany the part of Mesopotamia and Asia Minor
which is bounded on the one hand by the 34th and 41st degrees of east
longitude, and on the other by the 36th and 39th degrees of northern
latitude, whereas the northern part of Asia Minor was to be given to a
French-Russian combine for railway construction.
For this economic sphere of influence Germany would have felt slightly
grateful, but by no means satisfied. Since August she has started
pegging out quite different frontiers, on the assumption, of course,
that her expectations of a propitious result of the war will not be
disappointed. For this, according to Grothe, she has every right. For
it must be considered certain that in case Germany were to fail, Russia
would not hesitate to destroy the Turkish Empire. As Russia cannot
find in the Far East the ice-free waterway which she needs for her
development without getting into conflict with Japan, and not in the
Persian Gulf without getting into conflict with England, the Empire
of the Czars is more than ever determined to possess Constantinople.
England, who formerly has always opposed this, would now support it; in
return, she would be allowed to look upon Mesopotamia and Arabia as
her own.
Germany alone can save Turkey, and she has a huge interest in doing so
since only the preservation of the complete integrity of the Ottoman
Empire will make it possible for Germany to protect and to develop
the economic position which she has gained in it. Besides, Germany is
the only one among the large powers with which Turkey has to count
who would not wish to annex a single foot of the country, and could
not even if she wanted to. Germany’s geographical position would
prevent her from effectively protecting such possessions and deriving
profit from them. That is why during the twenty-five years of her
more intimate relations with Turkey, Germany has always been the only
trustworthy friend of the Empire of the Sultan-Caliph. There is between
the two countries, apart from all questions of sentiment, a natural
community of interests, whereas the interests of all the other large
powers can only be furthered at the cost of Turkey’s welfare, and
finally of her existence.
Turkey has not always looked at it quite in this light; a certain
distrust had to be overcome, fostered by the unfair competition of
those who envied Germany and also partly strengthened by Germany’s
often too feeble policy. But now the scales have fallen from the eyes
of the Young Turks, who hold the helm of state. It seems that in
Constantinople they are only waiting for German victories in Northern
France and in Galicia--Grothe wrote before the Turkish declaration of
war--before uniting with Germany and Austria against the Allied Powers.
The Turkish army, which in its organization owes so much already to
German teaching and direction, will have great need of German help
and support in order to accomplish its task, but then it will also
constitute a far from contemptible ally. This will be especially true
if the Caliph decrees the _great holy war_, the _jihâd_.
* * * * *
Here now Grothe finds himself quite at sea, as he does not know that
for Mohammedans of the old stamp, who have not taken part in the
intellectual movement of the Mohammedan East in the last few years,
every war waged by Turkey is a _jihâd_. For such as these the question
is not: “_jihâd_ or secular war?” but “against whom has Turkey declared
_jihâd_?” And then, supposing the answer is as Grothe imagines,
_i. e._, _jihâd_ “against all powers that have devoured Mohammedan
countries and thus have robbed Islâm of its splendour,” the question
remains whether, as Grothe hopes and expects, the Mohammedan nations
under European rule will really be so charmed by the call to arms
issued in the name of Sultan Mehmed Reshâd, that they will attack their
masters “_here with secrecy and ruse, there with fanatical courage_.”
Grothe already sees in his imagination how “_the thus developed
religious war_”--so he openly calls it--is to mean especially for
England “_the decline of her greatness_.”
We know that Turkey is at present engaged in an experiment with just
such a holy war, as suggested by Grothe and his intellectual kin. The
highest juridical authority in Constantinople, the Sheich-ul-Islâm,
who since the revolution of 1908 has ever been a creature and an
instrument of the Young Turk Committee, has answered affirmatively a
series of questions submitted to him by the insignificant successor
of Abdulhamîd, with whom the leaders of the Young Turk Committee can
do as they please. In reality those questions and answers together
form a proclamation of Enver and Taläat, the leading ministers on the
Committee, and both he who asks the questions (the Sultan) and he who
answers them (the Sheich-ul-Islâm) fill the office of puppets. This
proclamation of the men on the Committee of Unity and Progress (by
which--let it be noted!--was originally meant the union of the several
nations under the Crescent and their progress as a modern state) is to
the effect, that, when the Lord of all Mohammedans declares holy war
against the enemies of Islâm, who plunder the countries of Islâm and
slaughter their inhabitants or reduce them into slavery, it is the duty
of all Mohammedans in this world to take part in this war with life and
goods; that therefore especially the Mohammedan subjects of France,
Russia, and England are also obliged to participate in it; that those
who neglect this duty and avoid the struggle incur the anger of God;
that, however, Mohammedans who live under the rule of the said powers
or their allies and help them wage war against Germany and Austria, the
supporters of Turkey, commit a great sin that will certainly bring on
the wrath of God. This proclamation of the prescriptions of the Divine
Law as applied to the political situation of the moment, and according
to the pronouncement of its authoritative interpreter, served as the
basis of a manifesto of the Sultan to the army and navy, issued on
November 12, 1914.
This manifesto assumes that Russia, together with England and France,
has started the hostilities; that Turkey therefore was forced to take
up arms; that Russia anyway had not during three centuries let one
opportunity escape to harm Turkey; that millions of Mohammedans are
suffering under the tyrannical rule of the said powers; that therefore
the holy war has been declared, upon the issue of which not only the
welfare of the Turkish Empire but also the life and future of three
hundred million[4] of Mohammedans depend. The mercy of Allah and the
support of the Prophet will turn the struggle against the enemies of
Islâm, undertaken together with Germany and Austria, into victory.
* * * * *
Constantinople would not be Constantinople if these extravagant
utterances of the Committee[5] had not been followed by a
demonstration, a _numâyashi_. When in 1908 I was witnessing the first
two months of the revolution brought about by the military under the
direction of the Committee, no day passed without a number of those
_numâyashi_; masses of people who jostled behind a couple of flags with
the legend “Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity,” halted in front of
some public buildings or residences of persons in authority and there
applauded speeches of which nobody could understand anything. If one
asked the shouters what it was all about, one was told: “revolution,
liberty, hasn’t the police been abolished?” and the like. In a similar
manner the Committeemen on November 14th treated the inhabitants to a
_numâyashi_ lasting fully eight hours.
In the mosque of Mehmed the Conqueror, which commemorates the greatest
victory of the Turks over Christianity, the conquest of Constantinople
in 1452, the questions and answers outlined above were read aloud, the
_fetwa_, that is, of the holy war. Prayers were said, long speeches
were held, there was no end to the jubilation. The procession passed
through the main parts of the city, waited upon the Grand Vizier,
and--demonstrated in front of the German and the Austrian embassies.
Nazim-bey and Mukhtar-bey, faithful Committeemen, respectively
complimented the German and the Austrian ambassadors and their speeches
were answered by the ambassadors. The addresses exchanged at the German
embassy would not have been worded differently by Dr. Grothe himself.
For the German ambassador did not only speak of Germany and Turkey, but
of their common struggle for the real welfare of the Mohammedan world;
of Germany’s friendship for the Empire of the Ottomans, but especially
for the adherents of Islâm, before _all_ of whom, as soon as the German
and Turkish arms have achieved victory, there lies a glorious future.
The Austrian ambassador was a little more cautious and less Mohammedan
in his reply, and only mentioned the holy war which the Empire of
the Ottomans is waging together with Austria, and the sympathy which
unites Austria and Turkey. But the whole show must have made on the
Mohammedans, who would not, as we do, think first of all of a musical
comedy of Offenbach, this impression, if any: that Germany and Austria
have put themselves in the service of Turkey for waging a _jihâd_; for
naturally, of the three, Turkey is the only one that can be involved in
a _jihâd_. To call a war between _kâfirs_ (unbelievers) a _jihâd_ is
for a good Mohammedan either blasphemous or ridiculous.
Grothe has thus voiced the sentiments of the ruling classes in his
country, not only where he discussed the economic relations of Germany
in most recent times and in the future, but also where he treated of
the stirring up of the slumbering Mohammedan fanaticism in the interest
of Germany. This makes it somewhat less inexplicable to me that my
esteemed colleague, Professor C. H. Becker at Bonn, who until recently
honourably represented the science of Islâm in the Colonial Institute
at Hamburg, should also have been swept away by the incredible
_jihâd_-craze, which at present seems to possess German statesmen. His
pamphlet _Germany and Islam_[6] breathes the same spirit as Grothe’s,
although it is favourably distinguished from the latter by its more
moderate tone and, it goes without saying, by its knowledge of Islâm.
Becker materially supplements Grothe’s picture of the future relations
between Germany and Turkey, by including in his program of protection
of Turkey the military and political renascence of the Empire of
the Crescent, in order that it may be re-created into a modern
constitutional state with a respectable army. Not only German products
and German capital, but also German spirit must set to work in Turkey.
It must do so according to a better method than that used by France and
England in their colonies: “a sound common-school education according
to modern methods, but on the basis of the traditional oriental culture
and supported by the best powers of Islamic religion.” We shall revert
to this. First a few remarks in connexion with the picture, which may
be seen in the writings of both Grothe and Becker, of the growth of
political harmony between Germany and Turkey, temporarily leaving aside
that which may be achieved through the Caliphate and through Moslim
fanaticism.
* * * * *
It is easy to understand that Germany, in view of the rapidly increased
interests which she has gained in Turkey, would like to reduce to the
smallest proportions the dangers and difficulties that may be caused
by competitors. It is just as easy to see that Turkey would after all
prefer to deal with Germany, as through this contact loss of territory
was not so much to be feared. “After all,” so I said intentionally;
for there must have been moments when the Sultan or the Committee must
have thought: Where is that friendship? Under Abdulhamîd the German
affection was expressed only to him who had all power vested in him,
but who is now generally considered to have been the greatest enemy his
people ever knew. From 1888 to 1908 Germany ignored the Turkish people,
because it could not be of use to Germany. Any one knowing something
of the nature of European political friendship will not wonder at this
any more than at Emperor William’s small interest in the fate of the
once-beloved Abdulhamîd, when the latter was forced by the Committee
first to parade as a friend of liberty and later to disappear.
Whoever sought favour or advantage in Turkey after 1908, had to force
it or beg it from the Committee. The latter could not at once trust
Germany, as also our German writers remark, because the liberal Turks,
who had fled their country before the revolution, were given the cold
shoulder in Germany on account of the friendship with the despot. When
Austria availed herself of the general confusion after the revolution,
first to help in the complete detachment of Bulgaria from Turkey,
afterwards to annex a piece of Turkish territory herself, Germany did
not raise one finger to keep its ally from an amputation so painful to
Turkey. Later on Italy took Tripoli and Turkey found it difficult to
fully appreciate the fact that Germany was the only one in the Triple
Alliance who did not take anything, because Turkey knew, as well as
anybody else, what natural obstacles there were to such an undertaking.
Where no such natural obstacles existed, Germany took her part as
greedily as the others; and in Africa she even has subjected two
million Mohammedans to her authority, an authority which will not be
found by those concerned to be less tyrannical than the British-Indian
and North-African Mohammedans, according to Sultan Mehmed Reshâd and
according to Becker, find the British or French administration.
Now Becker may argue: those Mohammedans were already under our rule
before our great infatuation with Turkey and Islâm began, and, besides,
the coal-black Moslems do not count for much even in the eyes of
Turks and Arabs. But this is not a serious answer to the objection,
the more so since Islâm not only repudiates the contempt for negroes
theoretically, but because practically all ways have ever been much
more widely open to gifted negroes in Moslim than in Christian
countries. To be sure, Becker has estimated the number of _oppressed_
Mohammedans who must now be helped by Germany at only one hundred and
fifty million; so that only Russia, England, and France are counted
as oppressors. But the Sultan in his manifesto has mentioned the full
three hundred million, at which the Kaiser estimated the adherents of
Islâm, as victims to be set free, and has thus by mistake included
amongst them the two million German subjects and the Moslims under
Austrian and Italian rule, not to mention any others.
During the Balkan War, the independence of Turkey was certainly no less
seriously menaced than was now the case before the _jihâd_-declaration;
but even then it received little support from its German friend. Grothe
remarks that for the sake of Turkey alone it would have been difficult
to stir up in Germany sufficient enthusiasm for a war, whereas now,
against the rivals, England and Russia, it has been found so easy.
Still, it will have to be admitted that the effect of Emperor William’s
visits to the Sultan, with which according to Becker and Grothe, the
conscious Islâm-policy of Germany was inaugurated, has not developed
normally but that it has long remained exceedingly latent.
* * * * *
All this may emphasize the somewhat one-sided character of Germany’s
policy still more than the writings of Becker and Grothe, but it
does not do away with the fact that under the present political
constellation, Turkey herself may derive great advantage from the
alliance with Germany. But, if now we imagine the future as the German
writers desire it, the situation stripped of all accessories appears
like this: Turkey freed by Germany from all troublesome meddling of
England, France, and Russia, will fall under German guardianship, and,
though with careful avoidance of the name, it will become a _German
protectorate_. Its army, its administration, its finances, everything
will have to be thoroughly reorganized by Germany. The relation will
be different in form only from the protectorate of France in Morocco
and that of England in many a Mohammedan principality. In calmer
times eulogies on the method by which the English in India, the
French in Northern Africa, ruled their Mohammedans, have never been
lacking in Germany; although criticism and indignation were never
lacking either, when German interests were at stake. They talked of
the _pax Britannica_ and of the _pax Gallica_, which had replaced the
former insecurity, confusion, and corruption. Even England’s work
in Egypt was appreciated, and favourable opinions were heard about
the Islâm-policy of Russia in Central Asia. We have no reason to
expect less favourable results of a German protectorate in Turkey;
nay it would even be possible that they might avoid many mistakes of
their predecessors and that the end might prove a blessing to Turkish
countries. But the Germans would certainly find that the gratitude of
the Turks would end when the absolutely unavoidable interference would
start in earnest, even if the Turks did not fail to recognize the
advantage to themselves of some of the reforms determined upon.
Besides, the opinions of German experts about Turkey and about Islâm,
especially about their possibilities for reorganization, are not, at
any rate were not before this war, at all the same as those which are
now so warmly defended by Grothe and Becker. Professor Joh. Marquart,
at present Professor in the University of Berlin, derides in the
preface of his work, _The Benin-collection of the National Museum
of Ethnology in Leiden_ (1913), “the alleged function of Islâm as a
bearer of culture,” and he speaks with biting irony of the “blessings
of the _jihâd_, predatory murder on the path of Allah turned into
a religious duty,” _i. e._, that duty which Germany now has again
impressed on Turkey. It was not only in German missionary circles that
Islâm was considered as the enemy who was most of all to be fought,
but in a German colonial congress this resolution was adopted: “_As
the expansion of Islâm is a serious danger to the development of our
colonies, the colonial congress suggests for earnest consideration_,”
etc.
Professor Martin Hartmann, who teaches the science of Islâm at the
Seminary for Oriental Languages in Berlin, and whose pen has given us
a number of notable writings on Islâm and on Turkey, never tires of
pointing out that the Moslims are kept from participating in culture
mainly by the institutions of Islâm, which scorns woman and despises
non-believers.[7]
He calls the Caliphate of the Ottoman Sultans a usurpation which could
only have been committed through contempt for the holy tradition, a
“_means of agitation_,” an “_easy way to be considered by the world of
Islâm as a kind of fetish_”; he says that “_this double quality_ [of
the Sultan-Caliph] _has never been recognized by the civilized powers_”
and that the honest abandonment of this title would rather strengthen
Turkey than weaken her. Of course he also has a few things to say about
the holy war. About this he intentionally put his opinion on record
when the word _jihâd_ was brought up by the Turks in their war with
Italy over Tripoli, and he made use of this expression which has again
become topical: “... _the threat of holy war, i. e., of war against all
unbelievers, except against those who are expressly designated to the
community by the leaders of Islâm as friends of Islâm. This idea is
madness._” As the seat of the agitation was at that time in Berlin, he
adds to this: “_Let this be a warning against the creation of unrest
by the excitation of religious fanaticism. All civilized nations will
unanimously stand together against any such attempt._” I could quote
reams of print with similar contents; I content myself with one more:
“_Islâm is a religion of hate and of war. It must not be suffered to be
the ruling principle in a nation of the civilized world._”
I could quote at least as many utterances of the same author which give
the impression that the Turks are the nation least fitted in all the
Turkish Empire to do any good for the development of their country.
Everywhere, where the Turkish element had obtruded itself on other
Mohammedans at the point of the sword, it has “_destroyed cultural
possessions and has created nothing, absolutely nothing, in the way of
cultural values_.” Their religious conceit is even more intolerable
than their national conceit. The Turks of Constantinople are “_an awful
pack_” (“ein schauderhaftes Gesindel”) and the “_honest Anatolian_”
(who also appears in Grothe) is a product of legend. And such an
inferior nation “_wants to be the ruling element in the great empire
from Scutari and Prevesa to Van and Bassora_!”
Professor Hartmann has an exceedingly lively temperament, and I would
not dream of endorsing all his opinions or denying that his expressions
are exaggerated. But in knowledge of his subject he stands far higher
than Grothe; and as regards Turkey, also higher than Becker, together
with whom he is the chief representative of the science of Islâm in
Germany. Besides, Becker himself has formerly expressed himself about
the Islâm question in much the same way, although in a more moderate
form and in a different tone. Naturally, Becker himself has been the
first to feel the contrast between his joining in the flourish with
the words Caliph and _jihâd_ in his latest writings, and the opinions
expressed by him in former times of quiet scientific work. He himself
repeats the concluding sentence of a lecture delivered by him in Paris
in 1910: “_If the solidarity of Islâm is a phantom, the solidarity of
the white race is a reality_,” but now he does so in order to weaken
the impression of these words and to limit them to the Islâm of the
negroes in Africa, who were the main subject of his speech. Probably
none of the audience understood this limitation, as the words quoted
were immediately preceded by these: “the fear that one power might
unite with Islâm to thwart another, does not seem to me very well
founded.” Besides Becker had formerly, _e. g._, in 1904, in an article
on Panislamism represented the panislamistic idea as contrary to the
real interests of Turkey[8]: “_The Young Turks had hoped_ [after the
Russo-Turkish War of 1878] _to put an end by their reforms just to that
religious element, which made of the Sultan above everything else the
Caliph, the protagonist of Islâm, and thus_ =made impossible the normal
development of the Ottoman Empire, which after all is mainly made up of
Christians=.” And in the German translation[9] of the above-mentioned
lecture, which was delivered in Paris in 1910, the following additional
passage occurs: “_The Caliphate of the Sultan of Constantinople was,
up to the time of the Young-Turkish revolution, the basis of Turkey’s
Islâm-policy. To be sure Young Turkey has not abandoned the claim to
the Caliphate_; =but if she wishes at all to grow into a constitutional
state, she will have to make as little use of it as possible.... A
strong Turkey, it goes without saying, will never claim political
sovereignty over the Islamic subjects of other powers....=”
In his latest pamphlet, _Deutschland und der Islam_, Becker confesses
his recent conversion and argues that his long-cherished notions were
wrong. He, as well as Grothe, dwells at length on the two visits paid
by Emperor William to Sultan Abdulhamîd (1889 and 1898), the second
one combined with what Grothe calls “_a political pilgrimage to the
Holy Land_.” The world has considered these visits, the first of which
took place one year after the concession of the Anatolian railway,
that is to say in 1889, as overgorgeous demonstrations of Germany’s
industrial and commercial interest in Turkey. The way it was done made
many, even in Germany, shrug their shoulders. First of all Abdulhamîd,
the “blood-drinking” tyrant, in whose crimes the great powers after
all shared the guilt, on account of what Berard, and together with
him Hartmann, called “_the conspiracy of silence_,” seemed a strange
object for such a hearty expression of friendship, which left behind it
in Constantinople a lumbering commemorative fountain, which according
to experts is an insult to good taste. Furthermore, the impression
produced on the Moslim world was not at all such as was intended. To be
sure, it was thought remarkable that the monarch of a powerful European
empire should go twice to pay homage to the Sultan, the more as it
was known that no return-visits of the Sultan followed; _the caller_
therefore showed himself to the inhabitants as _the inferior_; and
simple Mohammedan souls, who draw their knowledge of the world’s map
and the world’s history more from legends than from reality, saw in
this a confirmation of their belief that the whole earth is subjected
to the mightiest Moslim sovereign, and that all princes are his
vassals, even if they are in parts very unruly. Those homages in no way
contributed to the glory of Germany in the East, whatever flatterers
may palm off about it on German travellers. The strangest impression of
all, however, was produced on all those who know Islâm by the Emperor’s
speech on his second journey (1898), at Damascus, at the grave of
Saladin, on which he also deposited a wreath.
Saladin (Salâh-ad-din) has become popular in Europe through the history
of the Crusades and especially through Lessing; in the Mohammedan
East his name has been long forgotten, except by the few students of
history and literature. These know him as an unscrupulous politician,
who by faithlessness and treason had risen to great power, and who is
forgiven much because he was a strictly orthodox _kâfir_-hater; and
not as the example of eighteenth-century tolerance which Lessing in
his _Nathan der Weise_ has made of him. On the grave of this hater of
Christianity, the Emperor of a world-empire, which, as Becker reminds
us, has Christianity as its state-religion, spoke these words: “_The
three hundred million Mohammedans that are scattered through the world
may rest assured that the German Emperor will eternally[10] be their
friend._”
This part of the display has made as little permanent impression in the
Moslim world as Saladin himself; and German scientists at that time
shook their heads when they heard of it. But now these words suddenly
are at a premium: Grothe and Becker give their interpretations of
them, and the Turks have been so energetically reminded of them that
Nazim-bey quoted them in his address to the German ambassador and that
the Sultan by mistake borrowed from them the oftentimes corrected, at
any rate very antiquated, census-figures of his manifesto.
Till recently Becker, “through ignorance,” as he now avers, has
“_considered this emphasizing of the Caliph-title by Germany as
a mistake_”; but now, after Prince von Bülow’s explanations in
_Deutschland unter Kaiser Wilhelm II._, he joyfully discovers in it
the first powerful expression of “_a conscious German Islâm-policy_”
and the proof “_that German policy has from the first taken Islâm into
account as an international factor_.” Becker’s scientific conscience,
in this conversion and in his defence of the adoption of the Caliphate
among the factors of international politics, is not so untroubled as
that of Grothe, who does not seem to feel at all the grotesqueness of
this Islâm-policy. At any rate, Becker says that he does not wish to
be considered as having expressed an opinion on the relation between
Turkey and Germany; that he restricts himself to stating the fact
that such a relation exists; that, as a matter of fact, millions of
dissatisfied Mohammedan subjects of European nations expect their
salvation from Turkey, and that the hour has struck for Germany to make
use of this mood.
* * * * *
Salvation from Turkey! The country of which Martin Hartmann quite
recently said that “_the exclusion of the Islamic-Turkish rule from
Europe is drawing near_”; and that “_she_ [Turkey] _should have been
already long ago threatened with being placed under guardianship_”;
or again: “_thus will only come more quickly that which will have to
come sometime, anyway: the lapsing of political power from the hands
of dying Turkdom_”; from Turkey, which, according to Becker, must be
re-created and under the energetic direction of Germany be transformed
into a modern civilized state, a thing which a few years ago he
declared to be feasible only if the Caliphate-idea were either entirely
abandoned or emphasized as little as possible!
How is it that Turkey suddenly is considered able to do that which
until recently had been put aside as nonsense; how is it that now
they recommend as useful to Turkey what, such a short time ago, was
considered a source of certain ruin? When, in his _Ultimatum des
Panislamismus_ Hartmann scourged the agitators who wished to give to
the Turkish-Italian conflict the character of a religious war, he
at the same time gave the sharpest criticism imaginable of Germany’s
present attempt to revive the dying mediæval fanaticism of the
Mohammedan world. “_Turkey can only exclaim: Heaven protect me against
my friends!_”--so he then justly said. What may not Turkey exclaim now
that her best friend is exciting her to religious war, and presently
turns over to her the Mohammedan prisoners who fought against Germany,
in order to submit them to a politico-religious conversion cure?
We can only attribute all this to the lamentable upsetting of the
balance, even in the intellectual atmosphere, of what we used to call
the civilized world. For in normal times we know that the Germans are
far too sensible and logical to digest the enormous nonsense that a
thing which in general would be considered as a shame for mankind and
a catastrophe for Turkey can become good and commendable as soon as
Germany places herself behind or beside the Crescent. We do not know
what will be the issue of many of the present terrible happenings; but
this, I think, I may already now foretell with certainty, that within a
not very long time a number of German writings will testify that also
in Germany indignation has been aroused by the despicable game that is
being played with the Caliphate and the holy war.
It would be risky, now that the facts will so speedily speak their
incontrovertible language, to try to foretell in how far the attempt
to light the blaze of a Mohammedan religious war on a large scale, and
thereby to cause endless confusion in international relations, has a
chance to succeed. Hartmann formerly denied the possibility with full
conviction: “... _as soon_,” said he, “_as the representatives of
the various Islamic groups confer together about common measures, the
enormous differences in ethnical, economic, and intellectual tendencies
among the two hundred million Mohammedans show themselves!_” Becker,
who formerly called “_the solidarity of Islâm a phantom_,” says now:
“_The great war which reveals and decides so much, will also bring the
proof as to whether the often-discussed international solidarity of
Islâm is a real factor or a delusion._”
It is certain that if Germany persists in her present “Islâm-policy”
there will be no lack of all sorts of measures destined to put before
the Mohammedan public the history of the origins of that policy and
the new relation of vassal in which the re-created Sultan-Caliph
finds himself with regard to Germany. But against a Commander of the
Faithful, himself under an unbelieving Commander, even Mohammedans of
the old stamp, who otherwise might have been duped by the comedy, will
have serious objections. The main basis of the claim of the Ottoman
sultans was _their_ sword; not a sword that would be drawn and sheathed
at the order of an unbelieving “ally.”
Fortunately, we need not worry with regard to our Dutch-Indian
Mohammedan population. They adopted Islâm when the Turkish Empire had
already come into existence, but without Turkey’s noticing it; and they
have never had any contact with the Crescent. The Sultan of Rûm, as
they call the Great Lord of Constantinople, has remained a legendary
creature for them. To be sure, the panislamistic idea has penetrated
into the East-Indian Archipelago, but it has found little favourable
ground. The large mass of the lower classes remains untouched, and
the majority of the higher classes is entirely immune against this
politico-religious mixture of deceit and nonsense. And we have good
reason to believe that this immunity will constantly spread. For if
Germany has quite recently inaugurated her “_conscious Islâm-policy_”
with the above-described displays, we have already had for a few years
longer our conscious _educational policy_ towards the native population
which history has entrusted to our care; and against that, Caliphate
and holy war and other mediæval iniquities are fortunately powerless.
If we only unshakably adhere to our centuries-old guarantee of complete
religious liberty for our Mohammedans, and at the same time continue to
pursue our educational policy at a constantly increased pace, we shall
never have to fear the peculiar sort of “intellectual weapons” which
now for the first time are put into circulation with the trade-mark
“made in Germany.” Still, we keep hoping in the interest of humanity
that Germany will before long withdraw the new product from the market.
* * * * *
The holy war of Islâm is, as we have remarked several times, a
thoroughly mediæval institution, which even the Mohammedan world
was outgrowing. One of the peculiarities of this institution we may
sincerely admire: holy war against co-members of the Mohammedan
community is absolutely excluded by the law of Islâm. The restriction
of the community to Mohammedans, to those who profess the same dogma
about what is beyond this life, is mediæval; but the consideration
of strife within the sphere of the community as impious, provides an
excellent foundation for the highest social civilization and is rather
humiliating for the modern world. Let us hear what Martin Hartmann in
his excited tone writes about it: “_In contrast to Islâm, where war
is on principle limited to war against those of different belief as
being ‘unbelievers,’ nobody in the Christian world takes exception to
war against adherents of the same faith, and here the servants of the
church of Love are not infrequently the most zealous in the urging,
that is, in denying the Gospel; they provide to order the patriotic
gesture, which in this case represents a violation of the fifth
commandment, not to mention that other commandment: Thou shalt love thy
neighbour as thyself._”
Indeed, in Islâm it is only necessary to remove the mediæval
restriction of the right to complete political existence, which was
limited to members of the same community, and to expand the idea of
the community to one embracing the whole world, in order to assure
absolute world-peace, an absolute command of the divine law. To modern
states which have Mohammedans as subjects, protégés, or allies, the
beautiful task is reserved of educating these and themselves at the
same time to this high conception of human society; rather than leading
them back, for their own selfish interests, into the ways of mediæval
religious hatred which they were just about to leave.