ISLAM AND MODERN THOUGHT

One of the most powerful factors of religious life in its higher forms is the need of man to find in this world of changing things an imperishable essence, to separate the eternal from the temporal and then to attach himself to the former. Where the possibility of this operation is despaired of, there may arise a pessimism, which finds no path of liberation from the painful vicissitudes of life other than the annihilation of individuality. A firm belief in a sphere of life freed from the category of time, together with the conviction that the poetic images of that superior world current among mankind are images and nothing else, is likely to give rise to definitions of the Absolute by purely negative attributes and to mental efforts having for their object the absorption of individual existence in the indescribable infinite. Generally speaking, a high development of intellectual life, especially an intimate acquaintance with different religious systems, is not favourable to the continuance of elaborate conceptions of things eternal; it will rather increase the tendency to deprive the idea of the Transcendent of all colour and definiteness.

The naïve ideas concerning the other world in the clear-cut form outlined for them by previous generations are most likely to remain unchanged in a religious community where intellectual intercourse is chiefly limited to that between members of the community. There the belief is fostered that things most appreciated and cherished in this fading world by mankind will have an enduring existence in a world to come, and that the best of the changing phenomena of life are eternal and will continue free from that change, which is the principal cause of human misery. Material death will be followed by awakening to a purer life, the idealized continuation of life on earth, and for this reason already during this life the faithful will find their delight in those things which they know to be everlasting.

The less faith is submitted to the control of intellect, the more numerous the objects will be to which durable value is attributed. This is true for different individuals as well as for one religious community as compared to another. There are Christians attached only to the spirit of the Gospel, Mohammedans attached only to the spirit of the Qoran. Others give a place in their world of imperishable things to a particular translation of the Bible in its old-fashioned orthography or to a written Qoran in preference to a printed one. Orthodox Judaism and orthodox Islam have marked with the stamp of eternity codes of law, whose influence has worked as an impediment to the life of the adherents of those religions and to the free intercourse of other people with them as well. So the Roman Catholic and many Protestant Churches have in their organizations and in their dogmatic systems eternalized institutions and ideas whose unchangeableness has come to retard spiritual progress.

Among all conservative factors of human life religion must necessarily be the most conservative, were it only because its aim is precisely to store up and keep under its guardianship the treasures destined for eternity to which we have alluded. Now, every new period in the history of civilization obliges a religious community to undertake a general revision of the contents of its treasury. It is unavoidable that the guardians on such occasions should be in a certain measure disappointed, for they find that some of, the goods under their care have given way to the wasting influence of time, whilst others are in a state which gives rise to serious doubt as to their right of being classified with lasting treasures. In reality the loss is only an apparent one; far from impoverishing the community, it enhances the solidity of its possessions. What remains after the sifting process may be less imposing to the inexperienced mind; gradually the consideration gains ground that what has been rejected was nothing but useless rubbish which had been wrongly valued.

Sometimes it may happen that the general movement of spiritual progress goes almost too fast, so that one revision of the stores of religion is immediately followed by another. Then dissension is likely to arise among the adherents of a religion; some of them come to the conclusion that there must be an end of sifting and think it better to lock up the treasuries once for all and to stop the dangerous enquiries; whereas others begin to entertain doubt concerning the value even of such goods as do not yet show any trace of decay.

The treasuries of Islam are excessively full of rubbish that has become entirely useless; and for nine or ten centuries they have not been submitted to a revision deserving that name. If we wish to understand the whole or any important part of the system of Islam, we must always begin by transporting ourselves into the third or fourth century of the Hijrah, and we must constantly bear in mind that from the Medina period downwards Islam has always been considered by its adherents as bound to regulate all the details of their life by means of prescriptions emanating directly or indirectly from God, and therefore incapable of being reformed. At the time when these prescriptions acquired their definite form, Islam ruled an important portion of the world; it considered the conquest of the rest as being only a question of time; and, therefore, felt itself quite independent in the development of its law. There was little reason indeed for the Moslim canonists to take into serious account the interests of men not subject to Mohammedan authority or to care for the opinion of devotees of other religions. Islam might act, and did almost act, as if it were the only power in the world; it did so in the way of a grand seigneur, showing a great amount of generosity towards its subjugated enemies. The adherents of other religions were or would become subjects of the Commander of the Faithful; those subjects were given a full claim on Mohammedan protection and justice; while the independent unbelievers were in general to be treated as enemies until in submission. Their spiritual life deserved not even so much attention as that of Islam received from Abbe Maracci or Doctor Prideaux. The false doctrines of other peoples were of no interest whatever in themselves; and, since there was no fear of Mohammedans being tainted by them, polemics against the abrogated religions were more of a pastime than an indispensable part of theology. The Mohammedan community being in a sense Allah’s army, with the conquest of the world as its object, apostasy deserved the punishment of death in no lesser degree than desertion in the holy war, nay more so; for the latter might be the effect of cowardice, whereas the former was an act of inexcusable treachery.

In the attitude of Islam towards other religions there is hardly one feature that has not its counterpart in the practice of Christian states during the Middle Ages. The great difference is that the Mohammedan community erected this medieval custom into a system unalterable like all prescriptions based on its infallible “Agreement” (Ijma’). Here lay the great difficulty when the nineteenth and twentieth centuries placed the Moslim world face to face with a civilization that had sprung up outside its borders and without its collaboration, that was from a spiritual point of view by far its superior and at the same time possessed of sufficient material power to thrust the Mohammedans aside wherever they seemed to be an impediment in its way. A long series of the most painful experiences, meaning as many encroachments upon the political independence of Mohammedan territories, ended by teaching Islam that it had definitely to change its lines of conduct. The times were gone when relations with the non-Musulmán world quite different from those foreseen by the mediaeval theory might be considered as exceptions to the rule, as temporary concessions to transitory necessities. In ever wider circles a thorough revision of the system came to be considered as a requirement of the time. The fact that the number of Mohammedans subject to foreign rule increased enormously, and by far surpassed those of the citizens of independent Mohammedan states, made the problem almost as interesting to Western nations as to the Mohammedans themselves. Both parties are almost equally concerned in the question, whether a way will be found to associate the Moslim world to modern civilization, without obliging it to empty its spiritual treasury altogether. Nobody can in earnest advocate the idea of leaving the solution of the problem to rude force. The Moslim of yore, going through the world with the Qoran in one hand, the sword in the other, giving unbelievers the choice between conversion or death, is a creation of legendary fancy. We can but hope that modern civilization will not be so fanatical against Moslims, as the latter were unjustly said to have been during the period of their power. If the modern world were only to offer the Mohammedans the choice between giving up at once the traditions of their ancestors or being treated as barbarians, there would be sure to ensue a struggle as bloody as has ever been witnessed in the world. It is worth while indeed to examine the system of Islam from this special point of view, and to try to find the terms on which a durable modus vivendi might be established between Islam and modern thought.

The purely dogmatic part is not of great importance. Some of us may admire the tenets of the Mohammedan doctrine, others may as heartily despise them; to the participation of Mohammedans in the civilized life of our days they are as innoxious as any other mediaeval dogmatic system that counts its millions of adherents among ourselves. The details of Mohammedan dogmatics have long ceased to interest other circles than those of professional theologians; the chief points arouse no discussion and the deviations in popular superstition as well as in philosophical thought which in practice meet with toleration are almost unlimited. The Mohammedan Hell claims the souls of all heterodox people, it is true; but this does not prevent benevolent intercourse in this world, and more enlightened Moslims are inclined to enlarge their definition of the word “faithful” so as to include their non-Mohammedan friends. The faith in a Mahdi, who will come to regenerate the world, is apt to give rise to revolutionary movements led by skilful demagogues pretending to act as the “Guided One,” or, at least, to prepare the way for his coming. Most of the European powers having Mohammedan subjects have had their disagreeable experiences in this respect. But Moslim chiefs of states have their obvious good reasons for not liking such movements either; and even the majority of ordinary Moslims look upon candidates for Mahdi-ship with suspicion. A contented prosperous population offers such candidates little chance of success.

The ritual laws of Islam are a heavy burden to those who strictly observe them; a man who has to perform worship five times a day in a state of ritual purity and during a whole month in a year has to abstain from food and drink and other enjoyments from daybreak until sunset, is at a disadvantage when he has to enter into competition with non-Musulmans for getting work of any kind. But since most of the Moslims have become subjects of foreign powers and religious police has been practically abolished in Mohammedan states, there is no external compulsion. The ever smaller minority of strict practisers make use of a right which nobody can contest.

Drinking wine or other intoxicating drinks, taking interest on money, gambling including even insurance contracts according to the stricter interpretation are things which a Moslim may abstain from without hindering non-Mohammedans; or which in our days he may do, notwithstanding the prohibition of divine law, even without losing his good name.

Those who want to accentuate the antithesis between Islam and modern civilization point rightly to the personal law; here is indeed a great stumbling-block. The allowance of polygamy up to a maximum of four wives is represented by Mohammedan authors as a progress if compared with the irregularity of pagan Arabia and even with the acknowledgment of unlimited polygamy during certain periods of Biblical history. The following subtle argument is to be found in some schoolbooks on Mohammedan law: The law of Moses was exceedingly benevolent to males by permitting them to have an unlimited number of wives; then came the law of Jesus, extreme on the other side by prescribing monogamy; at last Mohammed restored the equilibrium by conceding one wife to each of the four humours which make up the male’s constitution. This theory, which leaves the question what the woman is to do with three of her four humours undecided, will hardly find fervent advocates among the present canonists. At the same time, very few of them would venture to pronounce their preference for monogamy in a general way, polygamy forming a part of the law that is to prevail, according to the infallible Agreement of the Community, until the Day of Resurrection.

On the other side polygamy, although allowed, is far from being recommended by the majority of theologians. Many of them even dissuade men capable of mastering their passion from marriage in general, and censure a man who takes two wives if he can live honestly with one. In some Mohammedan countries social circumstances enforce practical monogamy. The whole question lies in the education of women; when this has been raised to a higher level, polygamy will necessarily come to an end. It is therefore most satisfactory that among male Mohammedans the persuasion of the necessity of a solid education for girls is daily gaining ground. This year (1913), a young Egyptian took his doctor’s degree at the Paris University by sustaining a dissertation on the position of women in the Moslim world, in which he told his co-religionists the full truth concerning this rather delicate subject. If social evolution takes the right course, the practice of polygamy will be abolished; and the maintenance of its lawfulness in canonical works will mainly be a survival of a bygone phase of development.

The facility with which a man can divorce his wife at his pleasure, contrasted with her rights against him, is a still more serious impediment to the development of family life than the institution of polygamy; more serious, also, than veiling and seclusion of women. Where the general opinion is favourable to the improvement of the position of women in society, there is always found a way to secure it to them without conflicting with the divine law; but a radical reform will remain most difficult so long as that law which allows the man to repudiate his wife without any reason, whereas it delivers the woman almost unarmed into the power of her husband, is considered to be one of the permanent treasures of Islam.

It is a pity indeed that thus far women vigorously striving for liberation from those mediaeval institutions are rare exceptions in Mohammedan countries. Were Mohammedan women capable of the violent tactics of suffragettes, they would rather try to blow up the houses of feminists than those of the patrons of the old regime. The ordinary Mohammedan woman looks upon the endeavour of her husband to induce her to partake freely in public life as a want of consideration; it makes on her about the same impression as that which a respectable woman in our society would receive from her husband encouraging her to visit places generally frequented by people of bad reputation. It is the girls’ school that will awaken those sleeping ones and so, slowly and gradually, prepare a better future, when the Moslim woman will be the worthy companion of her husband and the intelligent educator of her children. This will be due, then, neither to the Prophet’s Sunnah nor to the infallible Agreement of the Community of the first centuries of Islam, but to the irresistible power of the evolution of human society, which is merciless to laws even of divine origin and transfers them, when their time is come, from the treasury of everlasting goods to a museum of antiquities.

Slavery, and in its consequence free intercourse of a man with his own female slaves without any limitation as to their number, has also been incorporated into the sacred law, and therefore has been placed on the wrong side of the border that is to divide eternal things from temporal ones. This should not be called a mediaeval institution; the most civilized nations not having given it up before the middle of the nineteenth century. The law of Islam regulated the position of slaves with much equity, and there is a great body of testimony from people who have spent a part of their lives among Mohammedan nations which does justice to the benevolent treatment which bondmen generally receive from their masters there. Besides that, we are bound to state that in many Western countries or countries under Western domination whole groups of the population live under circumstances with which those of Mohammedan slavery may be compared to advantage.

The only legal cause of slavery in Islam is prisonership of war or birth from slave parents. The captivity of enemies of Islam has not at all necessarily the effect of enslaving them; for the competent authorities may dispose of them in any other way, also in the way prescribed by modern international law or custom. In proportion to the realization of the political ideal of Islam the number of its enemies must diminish and the possibilities of enslaving men must consequently decrease. Setting slaves free is one of the most meritorious pious works, and, at the same time, the regular atonement for certain transgressions of the sacred law. So, according to Mohammedan principles, slavery is an institution destined to disappear. When, in the last century, Mohammedan princes signed international treaties for the suppression of slavery, from their point of view this was a premature anticipation of a future political and social development a step which they felt obliged to take out of consideration for the great powers. In Arabia, every effort of the Turkish Government to put such international agreements into execution has thus far given rise to popular sedition against the Ottoman authority. Therefore, the promulgation of decrees of abolition was stopped; and slavery continued to exist. The import of slaves from Africa has, in fact, considerably diminished; but I am not quite sure of the proportional increase of the liberty which the natives of that continent enjoy at home.

Slavery as well as polygamy is in a certain sense to Mohammedans a sacred institution, being incorporated in their Holy Law; but the practice of neither of the two institutions is indispensable to the integrity of Islam.

All those antiquated institutions, if considered from the point of view of modern international intercourse, are only a trifle in comparison with the legal prescriptions of Islam concerning the attitude of the Mohammedan community against the parts of the world not yet subject to its authority, “the Abode of War” as they are technically called. It is a principal duty of the Khalif, or of the chiefs considered as his substitutes in different countries, to avail themselves of every opportunity to extend by force the dominion of Allah and His Messenger. With unsubdued unbelievers peace is not allowed; a truce for a period not exceeding ten years may be concluded if the interest of Islam requires it.

The chapters of the Mohammedan law on holy war and on the conditions on which the submission of the adherents of tolerated religions is to be accepted seem to be a foolish pretension if we consider them by the light of the actual division of political power in the world. But here, too, to understand is better than to ridicule. In the centuries in which the system of Islam acquired its maturity, such an aspiration after universal dominion was not at all ridiculous; and many Christian states of the time were far from reaching the Mohammedan standard of tolerance against heterodox creeds. The delicate point is this, that the petrification or at least the process of stiffening that has attacked the whole spiritual life of Islam since about 1000 A.D. makes its accommodation to the requirements of modern intercourse a most difficult problem.

But it is not only the Mohammedan community that needed misfortune and humiliation before it was able to appreciate liberty of conscience; or that took a long time to digest those painful lessons of history. There are still Christian Churches which accept religious liberty only in circumstances that make supreme authority unattainable to them; and which, elsewhere, would not disdain the use of material means to subdue spirits to what they consider the absolute truth.

To judge such things with equity, we must remember that every man possessed of a firm conviction of any kind is more or less a missionary; and the belief in the possibility of winning souls by violence has many adherents everywhere. One of my friends among the young-Turkish state officials, who wished to persuade me of the perfect religious tolerance of Turkey of today, concluded his argument by the following reflection: “Formerly men used to behead each other for difference of opinion about the Hereafter. Nowadays, praise be to Allah, we are permitted to believe what we like; but people continue to kill each other for political or social dissension. That is most pitiful indeed; for the weapons in use being more terrible and more costly than before, mankind lacks the peace necessary to enjoy the liberty of conscience it has acquired.”

The truthful irony of these words need not prevent us from considering the independence of spiritual life and the liberation of its development from material compulsion as one of the greatest blessings of our civilization. We feel urged by missionary zeal of the better kind to make the Mohammedan world partake in its enjoyment. In the Turkish Empire, in Egypt, in many Mohammedan countries under Western control, the progressive elements of Moslim society spontaneously meet us half-way. But behind them are the millions who firmly adhere to the old superstition and are supported by the canonists, those faithful guardians of what the infallible Community declared almost one thousand years ago to be the doctrine and rule of life for all centuries to come. Will it ever prove possible to move in one direction a body composed of such different elements, or will this body be torn in pieces when the movement has become irresistible?

We have more than once pointed to the catholic character of orthodox Islam. In fact, the diversity of spiritual tendencies is not less in the Moslim world than within the sphere of Christian influence; but in Islam, apart from the political schisms of the first centuries, that diversity has not given rise to anything like the division of Christianity into sects. There is a prophetic saying, related by Tradition, which later generations have generally misunderstood to mean that the Mohammedan community would be split into seventy-three different sects. Moslim heresiologists have been induced by this prediction to fill up their lists of seventy-three numbers with all sorts of names, many of which represent nothing but individual opinions of more or less famous scholars on subordinate points of doctrine or law. Almost ninety-five per cent. of all Mohammedans are indeed bound together by a spiritual unity that may be compared with that of the Roman Catholic Church, within whose walls there is also room for religious and intellectual life of very different origin and tendency. In the sense of broadness, Islam has this advantage, that there is no generally recognized palpable authority able to stop now and then the progress of modernism or similar deviations from the trodden path with an imperative “Halt!” There is no lack indeed of mutual accusation of heresy; but this remains without serious consequences because of the absence of a high ecclesiastical council competent to decide once for all. The political authorities, who might be induced by fanatical theologians to settle disputes by violent inquisitorial means, have been prevented for a long time from such interference by more pressing affairs.

A knowledge alone of the orthodox system of Islam, however complete, would give us an even more inadequate idea of the actual world of catholic Islam than the notion we should acquire of the spiritual currents moving the Roman Catholic world by merely studying the dogma and the canonical law of the Church of Rome.

Nevertheless, the unity of Islamic thought is by no means a word void of sense. The ideas of Mohammedan philosophers, borrowed for a great part from Neoplatonism, the pantheism and the emanation theory of Mohammedan mystics are certainly still further distant from the simplicity of Qoranic religion than the orthodox dogmatics; but all those conceptions alike show indubitable marks of having grown up on Mohammedan soil. In the works even of those mystics who efface the limits between things human and divine, who put Judaism, Christianity, and Paganism on the same line with the revelation of Mohammed, and who are therefore duly anathematized by the whole orthodox world, almost every page testifies to the relation of the ideas enounced with Mohammedan civilization. Most of the treatises on science, arts, or law written by Egyptian students for their doctor’s degree at European universities make no exception to this rule; the manner in which these authors conceive the problems and strive for their solution is, in a certain sense, in the broadest sense of course, Mohammedan. Thus, if we speak of Mohammedan thought, civilization, spirit, we have to bear in mind the great importance of the system which, almost unchanged, has been delivered for about one thousand years by one generation of doctors of Islam to the other, although it has become ever more unfit to meet the needs of the Community, on whose infallible Agreement it rests. But, at the same time, we ought to consider that beside the agreement of canonists, of dogmatists, and of mystics, there are a dozen more agreements, social, political, popular, philosophical, and so on, and that however great may be the influence of the doctors, who pretend to monopolize infallibility for the opinions on which they agree, the real Agreement of Islam is the least common measure of all the agreements of the groups which make up the Community.

It would require a large volume to review the principal currents of thought pervading the Moslim world in our day; but a general notion may be acquired by a rapid glance at two centres, geographically not far distant from each other, but situated at the opposite poles of spiritual life: Mecca and Cairo.

In Mecca yearly two or three hundred thousand Moslims from all parts of the world come together to celebrate the hajj, that curious set of ceremonies of pagan Arabian origin which Mohammed has incorporated into his religion, a durable survival that in Islam makes an impression as singular as that of jumping processions in Christianity. Mohammed never could have foreseen that the consequence of his concession to deeply rooted Arabic custom would be that in future centuries Chinese, Malays, Indians, Tatars, Turks, Egyptians, Berbers, and negroes would meet on this barren desert soil and carry home profound impressions of the international significance of Islam. Still more important is the fact that from all those countries young people settle here for years to devote themselves to the study of the sacred science. From the second to the tenth month of the Mohammedan lunar year, the Haram, i.e., the mosque, which is an open place with the Ka’bah in its midst and surrounded by large roofed galleries, has free room enough between the hours of public service to allow of a dozen or more circles of students sitting down around their professors to listen to as many lectures on different subjects, generally delivered in a very loud voice. Arabic grammar and style, prosody, logic, and other preparatory branches, the sacred trivium; canonic law, dogmatics, and mysticism, and, for the more advanced, exegesis of Qoran and Tradition and some other branches of supererogation, are taught here in the mediaeval way from mediaeval text-books or from more modern compilations reproducing their contents and completing them more or less by treating modern questions according to the same methods.

It is now almost thirty years since I lived the life of a Meccan student during one university year, after having become familiar with the matter taught by the professors of the temple of Mecca, the Haram, by privately studying it, so that I could freely use all my time in observing the mentality of people learning those things not for curiosity, but in order to acquire the only true direction for their life in this world and the salvation of their souls in the world to come. For a modern man there could hardly be a better opportunity imagined for getting a true vision of the Middle Ages than is offered to the Orientalist by a few months’ stay in the Holy City of Islam. In countries like China, Tibet, or India there are spheres of spiritual life which present to us still more interesting material for comparative study of religions than that of Mecca, because they are so much more distant from our own; but, just on that account, the Western student would not be able to adapt his mind to their mental atmospheres as he may do in Mecca. No one would think for one moment of considering Confucianism, Hinduism, or Buddhism as specially akin to Christianity, whereas Islam has been treated by some historians of the Christian Church as belonging to the heretical offspring of the Christian religion. In fact, if we are able to abstract ourselves for a moment from all dogmatic prejudice and to become a Meccan with the Meccans, one of the “neighbours of Allah,” as they call themselves, we feel in their temple, the Haram, as if we were conversing with our ancestors of five or six centuries ago. Here scholasticism with a rabbinical tint forms the great attraction to the minds of thousands of intellectually highly gifted men of all ages.

The most important lectures are delivered during the forenoon and in the evening. A walk, at one of those hours, through the square and under the colonnades of the mosque, with ears opened to all sides, will enable you to get a general idea of the objects of mental exercise of this international assembly. Here you may find a sheikh of pure Arab descent explaining to his audience, composed of white Syrians or Circassians, of brown and yellow Abyssinians and Egyptians, of negroes, Chinese, and Malays, the probable and improbable legal consequences of marriage contracts, not excepting those between men and genii; there a negro scholar is explaining the ontological evidence of the existence of a Creator and the logical necessity of His having twenty qualities, inseparable from, but not identical with, His essence; in the midst of another circle a learned mufti of indeterminably mixed extraction demonstrates to his pupils from the standard work of al-Ghazali the absolute vanity of law and doctrine to those whose hearts are not purified from every attachment to the world. Most of the branches of Mohammedan learning are represented within the walls of this temple by more or less famous scholars; and still there are a great number of private lectures delivered at home by professors who do not like to be disturbed by the unavoidable noise in the mosque, which during the whole day serves as a meeting place for friends or business men, as an exercise hall for Qoran reciters, and even as a passage for people going from one part of the town to the other.

In order to complete your mediaeval dream with a scene from daily life, you have only to leave the mosque by the Bab Dereybah, one of its twenty-two gates, where you may see human merchandise exhibited for sale by the slave-brokers, and then to have a glance, outside the wall, at a camel caravan, bringing firewood and vegetables into the town, led by Beduins whose outward appearance has as little changed as their minds since the day when Mohammed began here to preach the Word of Allah.

To the greater part of the world represented by this international exhibition of Islam, as a modern Musulmán writer calls it, our modern world, with all its problems, its emotions, its learning and science, hardly exists. On the other hand, the average modern man does not understand much more of the mental life of the two hundred millions to whom the barren Mecca has become the great centre. In former days, other centres were much more important, although Mecca has always been the goal of pilgrimage and the cherished abode of many learned men. Many capitals of Islam offered the students an easier life and better accommodations for their studies; while in Mecca four months of the year are devoted to the foreign guests of Allah, by attending to whose various needs all Meccans gain their livelihood. For centuries Cairo has stood unrivalled as a seat of Mohammedan learning of every kind; and even now the Uaram of Mecca is not to be compared to the Azhar-mosque as regards the number and the fame of its professors and the variety of branches cultivated.

In the last half-century, however, the ancient repute of the Egyptian metropolis has suffered a good deal from the enormous increase of European influence in the land of the Pharaohs; the effects of which have made themselves felt even in the Azhar. Modern programs and methods of instruction have been adopted; and, what is still worse, modernism itself, favoured by the late Mufti Muhammed Abduh, has made its entrance into the sacred lecture-halls, which until a few years ago seemed inaccessible to the slightest deviation from the decrees of the Infallible Agreement of the Community. Strenuous efforts have been made by eminent scholars to liberate Islam from the chains of the authority of the past ages on the basis of independent interpretation of the Qoran; not in the way of the Wahhabi reformers, who tried a century before to restore the institutions of Mohammed’s time in their original purity, but on the contrary with the object of adapting Islam by all means in their power to the requirements of modern life.

Official protection of the bold innovators prevented their conservative opponents from casting them out of the Azhar, but the assent to their doctrines was more enthusiastic outside its walls than inside. The ever more numerous adherents of modern thought in Egypt do not generally proceed from the ranks of the Azhar students, nor do they generally care very much in their later life for reforming the methods prevailing there, although they may be inclined to applaud the efforts of the modernists. To the intellectuals of the higher classes the Azhar has ceased to offer great attraction; if it were not for the important funds (wagf) for the benefit of professors and students, the numbers of both classes would have diminished much more than is already the case, and the faithful cultivators of mediaeval Mohammedan science would prefer to live in Mecca, free from Western influence and control. Even as it is, the predilection of foreign students of law and theology is turning more and more towards Mecca.

As one of the numerous interesting specimens of the mental development effected in Egypt in the last years, I may mention a book that appeared in Cairo two years ago, containing a description of the present Khedive’s pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina, performed two years before. The author evidently possesses a good deal of the scholastic learning to be gathered in the Azhar and no European erudition in the stricter sense of the word. In an introductory chapter he gives a summary of the geography and history of the Arabian peninsula, describes the Hijaz in a more detailed manner, and in his very elaborate account of the journey, on which he accompanied his princely master, the topography of the holy cities, the peculiarities of their inhabitants and of the foreign visitors, the political institutions, and the social conditions are treated almost as fully and accurately as we could desire from the hand of the most accomplished European scholar. The work is illustrated by good maps and plans and by a great number of excellent photographs expressly taken for this purpose by the Khedive’s order. The author intersperses his account with many witty remarks as well as serious reflections on religious and political topics, thus making it very readable to those of us who are familiar with the Arabic language. He adorns his description of the holy places and of the pilgrimage-rites with the unctuous phrases used in handbooks for the hajji, and he does not disturb the mind of the pious reader by any historical criticism of the traditions connected with the House of Allah, the Black Stone, and the other sanctuaries, but he loses no opportunity to show his dislike of all superstition; sometimes, as if to prevent Western readers from indulging in mockery, he compares Meccan rites or customs with superstitious practices current amongst Jews or Christians of today.

This book, at whose contents many a Meccan scholar of the old style will shake his head and exclaim: “We seek refuge near Allah from Satan, the cursed!” has been adopted by the Egyptian Department of Public Instruction as a reading-book for the schools.

What surprised me more than anything else was the author’s quoting as his predecessors in the description of Mecca and Medina, Burckhardt, Burton, and myself, and his sending me, although personally unacquainted with him, a presentation copy with a flattering dedication. This author and his book would have been impossible in the Moslim world not more than thirty years ago. In Egypt such a man is nowadays already considered as one of those more conservative moderns, who prefer the rationalistic explanation of the Azhar lore to putting it aside altogether. Within the Azhar, his book is sure to meet with hearty approval from the followers of Muhammed Abduh, but not less hearty disapproval from the opponents of modernism who make up the majority of the professors as well as of the students.

In these very last years a new progress of modern thought has manifested itself in Cairo in the foundation, under the auspices of Fu’ad Pasha, an uncle of the present Khedive, of the Egyptian University. Cairo has had for a long time its schools of medicine and law, which could be turned easily into university faculties; therefore, the founders of the university thought it urgent to establish a faculty of arts, and, if this proved a success, to add a faculty of science. In the meantime, gifted young men were granted subsidies to learn at European universities what they needed to know to be the professors of a coming generation, and, for the present, Christian as well as Mohammedan natives of Egypt and European scholars living in the country were appointed as lecturers; professors being borrowed from the universities of Europe to deliver lectures in Arabic on different subjects chosen more or less at random before an audience little prepared to digest the lessons offered to them.

The rather hasty start and the lack of a well-defined scheme have made the Egyptian University a subject of severe criticism. Nevertheless, its foundation is an unmistakable expression of the desire of intellectual Egypt to translate modern thought into its own language, to adapt modern higher instruction to its own needs. This same aim is pursued in a perhaps more efficacious manner by the hundreds of Egyptian students of law, science, and medicine at French, English, and some other European universities. The Turks could not freely follow such examples before the revolution of 1908; but they have shown since that time that their abstention was not voluntary. England, France, Holland, and other countries governing Mohammedan populations are all endeavouring to find the right way to incorporate their Mohammedan subjects into their own civilization. Fully recognizing that it was the material covetousness of past generations that submitted those nations to their rule, the so-called colonial powers consider it their duty now to secure for them in international intercourse the place which their natural talent enables them to occupy. The question whether it is better simply to leave the Moslims to Islam as it was for centuries is no longer an object of serious discussion, the reforming process being at work everywhere in some parts with surprising rapidity. We can only try to prognosticate the solution which the near future reserves for the problem, how the Moslim world is to be associated with modern thought.

In this problem the whole civilized world and the whole world of Islam are concerned. The ethnic difference between Indians, North-Africans, Malays, etc., may necessitate a difference of method in detail; the Islam problem lies at the basis of the question for all of them. On the other hand, the future development of Islam does not only interest countries with Mohammedan dominions, it claims as well the attention of all the nations partaking in the international exchange of material and spiritual goods. This would be more generally recognized if some knowledge of Islam were more widely spread amongst ourselves; if it were better realized that Islam is next akin to Christianity.

It is the Christian mission that shows the deepest consciousness of this state of things, and the greatest activity in promoting an association of Mohammedan thought with that of Western nations. The solid mass of experience due to the efforts of numerous missionaries is not of an encouraging nature. There is no reasonable hope of the conversion of important numbers of Mohammedans to any Christian denomination. Broad-minded missionary societies have therefore given up the old fruitless proselytizing methods and have turned to social improvement in the way of education, medical treatment, and the like. It cannot be denied, that what they want above all to bring to Mohammedans is just what these most energetically decline to accept. On the other hand the advocates of a purely civilizing mission are bound to acknowledge that, but for rare exceptions, the desire of incorporating Mohammedan nations into our world of thought does not rouse the devoted, self-denying enthusiasm inspired by the vocation of propagating a religious belief. The ardour displayed by some missionaries in establishing in the Dar al-Islam Christian centres from which they distribute to the Mohammedans those elements of our civilization which are acceptable to them deserves cordial praise; the more so because they themselves entertain but little hope of attaining their ultimate aim of conversion. Mohammedans who take any interest in Christianity are taught by their own teachers that the revelation of Jesus, after having suffered serious corruption by the Christians themselves, has been purified and restored to its original simplicity by Mohammed, and are therefore inaccessible to missionary arguments; nay, amongst uncivilized pagans the lay mission of Islam is the most formidable competitor of clerical propagation of the Christian faith.

People who take no active part in missionary work are not competent to dissuade Christian missionaries from continuing their seemingly hopeless labour among Mohammedans, nor to prescribe to them the methods they are to adopt; their full autonomy is to be respected. But all agree that Mohammedans, disinclined as they are to reject their own traditions of thirteen centuries and to adopt a new religious faith, become ever better disposed to associate their intellectual, social, and political life with that of the modern world. Here lies the starting point for two divisions of mankind which for centuries have lived their own lives separately in mutual misunderstanding, from which to pursue their way arm in arm to the greater advantage of both. We must leave it to the Mohammedans themselves to reconcile the new ideas which they want with the old ones with which they cannot dispense; but we can help them in adapting their educational system to modern requirements and give them a good example by rejecting the detestable identification of power and right in politics which lies at the basis of their own canonical law on holy war as well as at the basis of the political practice of modern Western states. This is a work in which we all may collaborate, whatever our own religious conviction may be. The principal condition for a fruitful friendly intercourse of this kind is that we make the Moslim world an object of continual serious investigation in our intellectual centres.

Having spent a good deal of my life in seeking for the right method of associating with modern thought the thirty-five millions of Mohammedans whom history has placed under the guardianship of my own country, I could not help drawing some practical conclusions from the lessons of history which I have tried to reduce to their most abridged form. There is no lack of pessimists, whose wisdom has found its poetic form in the words of Kipling:

East is East and West is West,
And never the twain shall meet.

To me, with regard to the Moslim world, these words seem almost a blasphemy. The experience acquired by adapting myself to the peculiarities of Mohammedans, and by daily conversation with them for about twenty years, has impressed me with the firm conviction that between Islam and the modern world an understanding is to be attained, and that no period has offered a better chance of furthering it than the time in which we are living. To Kipling’s poetical despair I think we have a right to prefer the words of a broad-minded modern Hindu writer: “The pity is that men, led astray by adventitious differences, miss the essential resemblances.”