C. Snouck Hurgronje

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Every one of the belligerents is horrified by the idea of responsibility for the crimes against mankind which [5] 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.... ”

“ 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,” [63] 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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, [79] and the majority of the higher classes is entirely immune against this politico-religious mixture of deceit and nonsense. ”

“ 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 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 [33] unbelievers. ”

“ Grothe remarks that for the sake of Turkey alone it would [58] 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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 ”

“ But what good is this to us, as long as wars continue to be waged on account of economic and [4] 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 [76] catastrophe for Turkey can become good and commendable as soon as Germany places herself behind or beside the Crescent. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 [22] 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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 [44] 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.” ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Becker’s scientific conscience, in this conversion and in his defence of the adoption of the Caliphate among the factors of international [73] 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 ”

“ 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. ”