THE NEW MAHOMEDANS
[Sidenote: The national anti-British feeling not manifested among
Mahomedans.]
[Sidenote: Mahomedan religious movements.]
The Mahomedans, the other great religious community of India,[59] have
been far less stirred by the new era than the Hindus, whom hitherto we
have been chiefly considering. Only a small number of Mahomedans belong
to the professional class, so that modern education and the awakening
have not reached Mahomedans in the same degree as Hindus. Quite
outnumbered also by Hindus, they identify themselves politically with
the British rather than with the Hindus, so that as a body they do not
support the Congress, the great Indian Political Association, and have
no anti-British consciousness. Mahomedan solidarity is strong enough,
but it is religious not national, and so it is only in the religious
sphere that we find the new era telling upon Mahomedans. Two small
religious movements may be noted curiously parallel to the [=A]rya and
Br[=a]hma movements among Hindus, and suggesting the operation of like
influences.
[Sidenote: The Wahabbi movement analogous to [=A]ryaism.]
As the [=A]ryas preach a return to the pure original Hinduism of the
Vedas, the first Mahomedan movement inculcates a return to the pure
original Mahomedanism of the Koran. In particular, it urges a casting
off of the Hindu customs and superstitions that the Indian converts to
Mahomedanism have frequently retained,--the offerings to the dead, for
example. In the first instance, the movement came from a seventeenth
century Arabian sect, the Wahabbis, but the movement reached India only
about the year 1820, and therefore is a feature of the period we are
surveying. The movement belongs specially to Bengal and the United
Provinces north-west of Bengal, and is known by a variety of local
names, Wahabbi and other. Significant, as supporting what has been said
regarding the absence of anti-British feeling among present-day
Mahomedans, is the fact that in the first stages of the Wahabbi
movement, both in Eastern and Western Bengal, the duty of war upon
infidels--on the British and the Hindus in this case--was a prominent
doctrine of the crusade. In Mahomedan language, India was _Daru-l-harb_
or a Mansion of War. In these later years, on the contrary, it is
generally recognised by Mahomedans that India under the British rule is
not _Daru-l-harb_, but _Daru-l-Islam_, or a Mansion of Islamism, in
which war on infidels is not incumbent.[60] It may be noted that the
decree, recently issued from Mecca, that British territory is
Daru-l-Islam, can only refer to India.
[Sidenote: The Aligarh movement analogous to Brahmaism.]
Exactly like the Brahmas, the other new Mahomedan sect, in the modern
rational spirit, have refined away their faith to a theism or deism
purged of the supernatural. Mahomed's inspiration and miracles are
rejected. These represent the modern rationalising spirit in religion;
reason is their standard, and "reason alone is a sufficient guide."
According to Sir Syed Ahmad, founder of the movement, "Islam is Nature,
and Nature Islam." Hence the sect is sometimes called the Naturis,[61]
or followers of _Natural_ Religion, the adoption of the English word
identifying them again with the Br[=a]hmas, who are essentially the
outcome of English education and Christian influence among Hindus. The
Naturis, the modernised Mahomedans, have as their headquarters the
Mahomedan Anglo-Oriental College at Aligarh in the United Provinces. It
ought to be said that they also claim to be going back to pure original
Mahomedanism before it was corrupted by the "Fathers" of Islam.