C. Snouck Hurgronje

“ All this they have done, being led away by shameful appetites, which are not for me to set forth, but which are public and a cause for sorrow to the Moslems of the whole world, who have seen this greatest and most noble Moslem Power broken in pieces and led down to ruin and utter destruction. Our lament is also for so many of its subjects, Moslems and others alike, whose lives have been sacrificed without any fault of their own. Some have been treacherously put to death, others cruelly driven from their homes, as though the calamities of war were not enough. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ The most independent scholars made no attempt to disguise the fact that the course which political affairs had taken was the clearest proof of the moral degeneration which had set in, and they pronounced an equally bold and merciless criticism upon the government in all its departments. It became a matter of course that a pious scholar must keep himself free from all intercourse with state officials, on pain of losing his reputation. ”

“ An energetic Shereef would always be on the alert to reduce the governor's authority to the smallest measure. A weak Shereef might be submissive, but then he was powerless to control the ill-disposed elements in his family and make them innocuous, and often he would be sacrificed to the wiles of the opposition. Coöperation between the two authorities for the maintenance of peace was not dreamed of. The roads from Mecca to Medina, to Jidda, to Ta'if, were in a chronic state of insecurity, and it was not seldom that the rapacious Bedouins rejoiced in the secret support of the Shereef. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 Islâm, 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. ”

“ What stronger proof can we desire of the faithlessness of their inmost hearts to the Religion, and of their feelings towards the Arabs, than their bombardment of that ancient House, which God has chosen for His House, saying, "Keep my House pure for all who come to it,"—a House so venerated by all Moslems? ”

“ Is it to be supposed, he asks, that a religion as ridiculous as the Islâm described by Christian authors should have found millions of devotees? Let the Moslims themselves describe their own religion for us; just as the Jewish and Christian religions are falsely represented by the heathen and Protestantism by Catholics, so every religion is misrepresented by its antagonists. "We are mortals, subject to error; especially where religious matters are concerned, we often allow ourselves to be grossly misled by passion." ”

“ 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 [82] 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 ”

“ To destroy so many, even of cattle, at one time would be hard for men void of all natural affection or mercy. And if we suppose they had some excuse for this evil deed, by what right did they carry away to strange countries the innocent and most miserable families of those ill-fated men? Children, old men, and delicate women bereft of their natural protectors were subjected in exile to all foul usage and even to tortures, as though the woes they had already suffered were not chastisement enough. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I SOME POINTS CONCERNING THE ORIGIN OF ISLÂM There are more than two hundred million people who call themselves after the name of Mohammed, would not relinquish that name at any price, and cannot imagine a greater blessing for the remainder of humanity than to be incorporated into their communion. Their ideal is no less than that the whole earth should join in the faith that there is no god but Allah and that Mohammed is Allah's last and most perfect messenger, who brought the latest and final revelation of Allah to humanity in Allah's own words. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They find that every political change, in these terrible times, is to the prejudice of Islâm, one Moslim people after another losing its independent existence; and they regard it as equally dangerous that Moslim princes are induced to accommodate their policy and government to new international ideas of individual freedom, which threaten the very life of Islâm. They see the antagonism to all foreign ideas, formerly considered as a virtue by every true Moslim, daily losing ground, and they are filled with consternation by observing in their own ranks the contamination of modernist ideas. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 [50] 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. ”

“ Mecca was far too remote from the then existing centres of civilisation to be a convenient vantage point for the world conquest considered by Islam as its appointed task, and as a capital from which to administer the empire which the first Caliphs were able to establish by force of arms. Even Medina seemed unsuited for the purpose, permanently. Then, when the Persian Empire, Syria, Egypt, North Africa, and Spain were subjected to Islam, Arabia, regarded politically, became a remote territory with a steadily decreasing significance. ”

“ Islâm has always looked at the world in a pessimistic way, a view expressed in numberless prophetic sayings. The world is bad and will become worse and worse. Religion and morality will have to wage an ever more hopeless war against unbelief, against heresy and ungodly ways of living. While this is surely no reason for entering into any compromise with doctrines which depart but a hair's breadth from Qorân and Sunnah, it necessitates methods of defence against heresy as unknown in Mohammed's time as heresy itself. "Necessity knows no law" is a principle fully accepted in Islam ”

“ 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 [54] 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. ”

“ A knowledge alone of the orthodox system of Islâm, however complete, would give us an even more inadequate idea of the actual world of catholic Islâm 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. ”

“ 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 Islâm makes an impression as singular as that of jumping processions in Christianity. ”

“ And the common people are willingly taught by the canonists and feed their hope of better days upon the innumerable legends of the olden time and the equally innumerable apocalyptic prophecies about the future. The political blows that fall upon Islâm make less impression upon their simple minds than the senseless stories about the power of the Sultan of Stambul, that would instantly be revealed if he were not surrounded by treacherous servants, and the fantastic tidings of the miracles that Allah works in the Holy Cities of Arabia which are inaccessible to the unfaithful. ”