Faith beyond boundaries

He's been called an infidel by conservative sections of the Muslim community for re-building the Ganesh Dham Mandir in Rajasthan, but Ashiqali Mohibali Nathani, whose grandfathers migrated from Pakistan during Partition, says his faith is not misplaced.
A compulsive loner, Mahant Shri Prabhudasji Maharaj is not your everyday dharma guru. Unlike the countless "charismatic" babas who spout gyan, on and off, 95-year-old Maharaj is introverted, soft-spoken, and shy to a fault. But the frail, disheveled-looking Prabhudasji is transformed when he sees Ashiqali Mohibali Nathani, in his trademark white kurta-pyjama, walking up the steps of Ganesh Dham Mandir. Gone is the reluctant talker in the revered baba who mostly answers in monosyllables. Nathani, a Muslim devotee, is special to Prabhudasji and the Ganesh Dham Mandir Trust, and the baba chats with Nathani like he does with no one else.

And there is a valid reason for this bond between the mahant and his Muslim devotee. Nathani, a Mumbai-based industrialist, has rebuilt a Hindu temple - the Ganesh Dham Mandir, on the outskirts of the famous Ranthambore National Park. The temple, with lord Ganesha occupying its sanctum sanctorum, is neither lavishly decorated nor architecturally rich. Yet, ever since its inauguration on January 27 this year, it has become more than a pilgrimage centre. "It is a symbol of communal harmony. With this, I want to send a message that astha (belief) is beyond boundaries, " says 60-year-old Nathani who spent Rs 1. 5 crore to rebuild the temple and a spacious one-room flat for Prabhudasji which the latter rarely uses. "Maine isko mana kiya mere liye ghar mat banao, lekin nahin mana" (I asked him not to build a house for me, but he didn't listen to me), says the swami who prefers to stay at the old, decrepit ashram, sharing the courtyard with a cowshed, on the same premises.

Nathani says he first visited Prabhudasji's ashram in February 2009. Nitin Shirge, one of the directors in the company Nathani owns, would talk very highly of the mahant's miracles. "My company was in a financial crisis as a bank had blocked the release of funds we had deposited with it. When I told this to Baba, he looked heavenwards and said "sab theek hojayega" (everything will be fine). Within a few days of our return from Baba's ashram, the bank released the funds, " recalls Karachi-born Nathani, whose grandfathers, partition refugees, had left their successful leather business behind in Pakistan for an uncertain future in India.
His faith in the old baba strengthened, Nathani wanted to do something for the Ganesh Dham Temple and the ashram the baba had built 25 years ago. The temple was in bad shape, its walls un-plastered, roof leaking and floor unpaved. Many moneybags, before Nathani, had promised to rebuild the temple but they never kept the promise. Prabhudasji says he had laughed when Nathani promised to rebuild it. "I was surprised that, unlike others, Nathani kept his promise, " says Prabhudasji.

Predictably, Muslims, especially the residents of neighbouring Khiljipur village, are not happy with Nathani's gesture. Named after the 14th century ruler Alaudddin Khilji who besieged the Ranthambore Fort after defeating Raja Hamir Dev in 1301, Khiljipur has an old mosque. It is believed to have been built by Khilji who, along with his soldiers, had camped there for months.

"Idol worship is forbidden in Islam. A Muslim ceases to be a Muslim if he builds a structure which houses idols, " pronounces Mohammed Aslam, the medieval mosque's caretaker. Nathani, meanwhile, claims that he has done nothing wrong. "Idol-worship may be an un-Islamic act, but Allah never said that Muslims should not build places of worship of other religions. I don't care if they call me a kafir (infidel), " asserts Nathani who has received a few threatening calls ever since he funded the temple's reconstruction. "You will burn in hellfire; never get into paradise, " are some of the dire warnings Nathani has been handed out by some fellow Muslims. "One fellow even threatened to defame me and wanted my photograph. I told him I would send him a bunch of them if he provided me his address, " laughs Nathani, a widower who lives alone and is reconstructing another temple in Kanpur.

Nathani says he is grateful to his grandfathers who migrated to a secular India from Pakistan. "Perhaps they had envisioned that the scourge of fundamentalism would tear Pakistan apart one day," says Nathani


What is your opinion of Nathani?

Source: The Times Of India

Aborted foetuses: Genocide in our midst

Over six million Jews were killed during the holocaust. About 8, 00, 000 people were killed in the Rwandan genocide. Even today, these large-scale massacres evoke horror and condemnation across the world. But digest this: Over the last decade alone, an estimated 8 million girls have been eliminated in India. It is believed that most of them were aborted as foetuses for being the 'wrong gender'. Yet, this tragedy has not evoked the kind of outrage that a holocaust or the Rwandan genocide did.

Activists in India who have been working for decades on the issue of the girl child say that this large-scale murder of girls also qualifies as genocide - which is defined as the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group. "It fits the definition of genocide and ought to evoke the outrage reserved for something as horrific as genocide. However, the government has hardly done anything despite the women's movement in the country flagging this problem as far back as the mid-seventies. Even after an alarm was raised following the drastic fall in child sex ratio that became evident in the 1991 census, the government has shown little interest in putting an end to this ghastly crime, " says Sabu George, whose PIL in the Supreme Court in 2000 had forced the government to take some steps towards implementing the law (brought into force in 1994) to stop sex determination and sex selective abortion.

Only Vietnam and China are the only other large countries that share India's ignominy of having such an abnormally skewed sex ratio at birth. Demographers and sociologists are unequivocal in their conclusion that this kind of an imbalance could only happen through pre-natal sex selection or aborting female foetuses.

It is a known fact that boys are slightly more likely to die in infancy than girls. To compensate, more boys are born than girls, a trend seen worldwide and for hundreds of years, which is conjectured to be nature's mechanism to ensure that there will be equal numbers of young men and women at puberty. Worldwide, the normal sex ratio at birth (SRB) is about 950 female babies per 1, 000 male babies, a ratio that has been so stable over time that it appears to be the natural order. But in India, the SRB is around 890 and in China about 875.

With China and India accounting for one-third of the world's population, their poor SRB also skews the world's SRB. Almost 70 per cent of the countries including all the African countries record SRB that is well over normal. However, India and China, along with a few other heavily populated countries such as Russia and Japan, being in the poor SRB club ensure that the SRB for the world is pulled down to just 935.

Interestingly, it is beginning to be acknowledged that in a large number of highly industrialised countries like the US, Canada, Netherlands and the Scandinavian nations, there has been a definite fall in the number of boys being born. In fact, in the two decades between 1970 and 1990, the proportion of male births went down by one whole per cent worldwide. The change is small but real and no one quite knows why and different reasons such as pollution and delayed conception are offered as possible explanations. Even with this minor change, the global SRB continues to fall thanks to girlkiller nations like China and India.

GLOBAL SEX RATIOS AT BIRTH

BELOW 900 Vietnam, India, China

APPROX 940 Russia, Germany, Australia, Japan, Canada

OVER 950 UK, US, France, Mexico, Pakistan, Brazil, Egypt

OVER 960 Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh

OVER 970 South Africa, Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Ghana, Uganda 

Source: The Times Of  India

March Against Misogyny

"Avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized" 

 An outrageous comment made by a 'sick in the head' cop in Toronto, shot up the epic Slutwalk. Need I say I love it when women act bold? :)

On January 24, 2011 Constable Michael Sanguinetti was a speaker at a York University safety forum,where he was addressing the issue of crime prevention. It was in this context that he commented: "women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized."Co-founders Sonya Barnett and Heather Jarvis therefore decided to use the word slut in their demonstration. The organization's website observes that whilst historically, the term ‘slut’ has carried a predominantly negative connotation, the purpose of the SlutWalks is to redeem the name from its negative connotations. The organizers also write that women "are tired of being oppressed by slut-shaming; of being judged by our sexuality and feeling unsafe as a result." They continue:

"Being in charge of our sexual lives should not mean that we are opening ourselves to an expectation of violence, regardless if we participate in sex for pleasure or work."

This is turning into  global movement, and at a great speed that too. London, Sydney, Chicago, Glasgow and other major cities have already Slutwalks, with young women attending in great numbers.

You go girls!

Who Needs Life When There's Honor?

I came across this funny video on YouTube. It sums up the Muslim's 'precious' honor so well.

Forced To Live In The Closet

Pretense. It suffocates you, smothers you, takes away the very essence of who you are. Being forced to live a lie, for fear of your life, your marriage, your family, your children.

While I've been playing the "I'm still a devout Muslim" act solely for the purpose of my safety (if my safety wasn't the issue, I wouldn't bother to pretend, I believe if people really do love me they'd accept me for who I am) for a good while now, I've recently come across so many Ex-Muslim women, either Muslims since birth or converts, being forced to keep their apostasy a secret for reasons different than mine.

Its a sad sight to watch these women wanting to come out as non believers, but refrain from doing so, for they fear their husbands will divorce them, their children will be taken away from them and they will be scarred by the merciless society for life.

It makes you wonder what the reason is behind the Islamic double standards. For example, if you chose to convert to Islam, oh my god, you're the smartest, greatest, most amazing person in the eyes of a Muslim.
But what happens when you decide Islam doesn't make sense to you, if you converted, it was a mistake and if you were born to Muslim parents, well, Islam wasn't really your choice?
The hatred, the despise directed towards you is disturbing. People tell you how you've let them down, denied what Allah has chosen for you, how you're stupid and irrational and deserve to burn in hell. They want to break all relations with you, shun you and in some (sad) cases, even want to see you dead.

Why is apostasy such a taboo in Islam? Is it because it shakes the belief of the so called devout Muslims themselves, or is it that they fear it will probably make other less bigoted people in the community want to think and eventually, leave religion too? Why is an apostate treated like a disease, while a convert to the community will receive all the praise and approval you can dream of?

It is difficult to understand the mind of a devout Muslim, even for me, when I (sort of)used to be one too. What do you think is the reason, that apostates of Islam (mostly women that too, most of the time the men aren't given such a hard time) have to go through what they do? Your thoughts. Thank you :)

My Religious Mother

It breaks my heart to look into my mother eyes. Not that I feel guilty to look into them, no, I haven't done anything wrong to feel guilt of any sort. What breaks my heart is that I don't see an ounce of trust in them, and I fear I even see hatred.

You would think I hate her, I mean, she's threatened to kill me over religion, as if the God in her head is more precious than her own daughter. It made me upset and angry all I felt all the emotions in that category but I don't hate her, nothing near it.

Sometimes I wish I could talk to her and tell her about the things she doesn't see about her religion, but her delusion is too strong to penetrate. Anyone makes a statement that even remotely implies the deception of Islam her defenses flare up as if someone was after her life.

It is safe to say my decision has in fact affected her, making her violent towards me and my siblings, making her indoctrination more forceful than it was for me, making her cynical and distrusting.

Do I blame her for what she has become? Some people may say that she is an adult who should be able to think rationally and not lash out her frustration on her children; but in her defense, I think its the only way she knows, the only way she's seen and the only way she's learned.

I don't hate my mother, I feel like nothing could make me. I just feel sorry, for her and myself. It breaks me to think that she might hate me, I can ell by the way she looks at me. But that doesn't stop me from wanting the freedom I dream of, and I hope she will learn to come to terms with it.

Islam & Psychology of the Musalman

An excerpt from the essay by André Servier. Paris, 1923. Translated by A. S. Moss-Blundell.

Mind of the Musulman

From the point at which we have arrived in this essay, it is not impossible to understand and to explain the psychology of the Arab, and consequently of the Muslim. For the Muslim, whoever he may be, subjected for centuries to the religious law, in itself an expression of the Arab mind, has received so deep an impression from it as to have become totally Arabized. To understand the psychology of the Arab, the mechanism of his brain, is by the same token to account for the psychology of any given Muslim. The African Berber thinks on the same lines, and acts on the same lines as the Syrian, the Turk, the Persian, the Cossack, or the native of Java. All these people being Islamized think and behave as the Arab does.
The religious law, of Arab inspiration, that has been imposed upon the Muslim world, has had the effect of imparting to the very diverse individuals, of whom that world is composed, a unity of thought, of feeling, of conceptions, and of judgment. The scale that has served to measure this thought, these feelings, etc., is an Arab scale; and consequently the minds of all Muslims have been leveled to the stature of the Arab mind. 

The chief characteristic of the Arab, and therefore of the Muslim, is a fixed belief in his own intellectual superiority. Incapable as he is, through the barrenness of his mind and the poverty of his imagination, of conceiving any other condition than his own, any other mode of thought, he firmly believes that he has arrived at an unequaled pitch of perfection; that he is the sole possessor of the true faith, of the true doctrine, the true wisdom; that he alone is in possession of the truth, no relative truth subject to revision, but truth intangible, imperfect-able [which cannot be corrupted] — absolute Truth. 

As an example of this pretentious claim, we may quote one of the most influential members of the Committee of Union and Progress, Sheik Abd-ul-Hack, a civilized Young Turk; writing a few years ago in a Muslim review, published in Paris, he said:

"Yes! the Muslim religion is in open hostility to all your world of progress. Understand, you European observers, that a Christian, whatever his position may be, by the mere fact of his being a Christian is regarded by us as a blind man lost to all sense of human dignity. Our reasoning with regard to him is as simple as it is definitive. We say: the man whose judgment is so perverted as to deny the existence of a one and only God, and to make up gods of different sorts, can only be the meanest expression of human degradation; to speak to him would be a humiliation for our intelligence and an insult to the grandeur of the Master of the Universe. The presence of such miscreants among us is the bane of our existence; their doctrine is a direct insult to the purity of our faith; contact with them is a defilement of our bodies; any relation with them a torture to our souls. Though detesting you, we have condescended to study your political institutions and your military organization. Over and above the new weapons that Providence procures for us through your agency, you have yourselves rekindled the inextinguishable faith of our heroic martyrs. Our Young Turks, our Babis, our new Brotherhoods, all our sects, under various forms, are inspired by the same idea, the same necessity of moving forward. Towards what end? Christian civilization? Never! Islam is one great international family. All true believers are brothers. A community of feeling and of faith binds them in mutual affection. It is for the Caliph to facilitate these relations and to rally the Faithful under the sacerdotal standard."

Convinced that he is the elect of God (Moustafa), assured that his people is the one nation chosen among all others by the divinity, the Muslim has the certitude of being the only one called to enjoy the celestial rewards. And so, for those who do not think as he does, for the wanderers who do not follow the straight way, he feels a pity made up of contempt for their intellectual inferiority, of horror for their decadence, and of compassion for the frightful future of punishment that awaits them. 

This conviction, which nothing can weaken, inspires the Muslim with an inalienable attachment to his traditions. Outside Islam there can be no safety; outside its law, no truth, no happiness. The evolution of foreign nations, the increasing accumulations of their knowledge, scientific progress, the improvements effected by human effort in material well-being leave him indifferent. He is the Believer, par excellence, the superior, the perfect Being. 

This conception, as has been truly remarked, divides the world into two parts: Believers and Infidels. The Believer is in a state of perpetual war with the Infidel, and this right, this duty of eternal war can only be suspended: 

"Make war," says the Holy Book, "on those who believe neither in God nor in the last judgment, who do not regard as forbidden what God and his Prophet have forbidden, on those who do not profess the true religion, until they, humbled in spirit, shall pay tribute with their own hands.”

The Muslim, convinced of his own superiority, will not suffer any teaching. As typical of his mode of reasoning, we may quote the words of a Young Tunisian, Bechir Sfar: "The North of Africa is inhabited by an amalgam of peoples who claim descent from a celebrated race, the Arab race, and who profess a religion of unity, the Muslim religion. Now, this race and this religion conquered and colonized an empire more vast than the Roman Empire. The North Africans alone have to their credit sixty years of domination in the South of France, eight centuries in Spain, and three centuries in Sicily. . . . This slight digression is made with the object of recalling to those who might be tempted to forget it that we belong to a race, to a religion, and to a civilization equal in historical glory and in the force of assimilation to any other race whatever, to any other religion or civilization of ancient or modern peoples."

 
Intellectually, the Muslim is, nevertheless, a paralytic; his brain, subjected in the course of centuries to the rough discipline of Islam, is closed to all that has not been foreseen, announced and specified by the religious law. He is, therefore, systematically hostile to all novelty, to all modification, to all innovation. 


Whatever exists has been created by the will of the Almighty. It is not for man to modify His work. If God had wished that what exists should be different, he would have made it so, irrespective of all human volition. To act is thus, to some extent, to misunderstand the divine decisions, to wish to substitute human desires for them, to commit an act of insubordination. Such a conception puts all progress out of the question; and, in fact, immobility is the essential characteristic of every Muslim community. 


As has been remarked, 

"The Muslim, remaining faithful to his religion, has not progressed; he has remained stationary in a world of swiftly moving modern forces. It is, indeed, one of the salient features of Islamism that it immobilizes in their native barbarism the races whom it enslaves. It is fixed in a crystallization inert and impenetrable. It is unchangeable; and political, social or economic changes have no repercussion upon it.”

Renan has shown that the Semites were incapable of rising to the conception of a general idea. A Muslim would willingly associate with Europeans in Christian anti-clericalism, but he would never tolerate the least attempt against his own belief. One instance, among a hundred others, may be given of this assertion: Some years ago there met at Algiers an Oriental Congress, at which European, Egyptian and Turkish savants were present. They dealt first with biblical exegesis. Certain linguists sought to prove that several passages in the Old Testament were apochryphal and that they had consequently no historic value. Nobody protested. But, when these same savants wished to exercise their erudition and their critical powers upon the Koran, their Muslim colleagues protested with the most lively indignation against what they considered as sacrilege. The discussion became so heated that the Governor-General had to intervene. 


As has been seen, the Muslim escapes from all propaganda; he even escapes from violence, because Islam authorizes him to bow for the time before superior force, when circumstances require it. The religious law in no way imposes upon him an attitude which might expose him to danger or to reprisals. It even permits him, in case of extreme peril, to transgress the dogmas. The commentators on the Koran quote numerous examples of this liberty: Ammar Ben Yasir was excused by the Prophet himself for outwardly praising pagan gods and insulting Mohammed, at a time when in his heart he was firmly attached to the Muslim religion. This procedure was admitted by the earlier doctors of the Law. Afterwards, it was recommended to employ ambiguous expressions as far as possible, words of double meaning, to give less force to these denials. The practice was called taqiyyah, after a passage in the Koran. It was used by the Shiites in their constant propaganda against the Ommeyads. 


We even find taqiyyah used to satisfy private interests, in oaths for instance; it consists in the use of words with a double meaning or in mental reservation.The Muslim may, therefore, bend to foreign authority when he is not strong enough to resist; he may even make terms with it, and accept titles and favors; but, as soon as he feels himself in a position to revolt, he should immediately do so; it is an imperative duty. 


In the twelfth century, Averrhoës wanted to Islamize Greek knowledge, in order to incorporate it into Islam. He was looked upon as an ungodly man and was persecuted. In modern times, the same attempts have been made from time to time, and have ended in the same failure. It is not without profit to dwell upon these efforts, as they explain the poverty of the results attained by the efforts of European nations in Muslim countries: France in North Africa; England in India and Egypt; Holland in Sumatra; and Italy in Tripolitania. 


The various societies for social emancipation, Masonic Lodges, League of the Rights of Man, Educational League, the Positivist Society, etc., have, since the middle of the nineteenth century, multiplied their efforts to spread their liberal doctrines among Muslims. They have failed in their task because the neophytes to whom they addressed themselves were not sincere. Those who seemed completely emancipated showed, at the touch-stone of events, that they had preserved their prejudices, their hatreds, and their Oriental mentality entire. 


A curious example may be quoted: A member of all the Societies of free thinkers, and notably of the Positivist Committee, of which he was the delegate for Turkey, Ahmed Riza, in his newspaper Michveret, covered with obloquy the means of government employed by Abd-ul-Hamid; he demanded liberty of the Press; he proclaimed the equality of the races of the Empire, and the necessity of the existence of political parties; in this, he spoke as a free thinker, as a disciple of the French Revolution. But he changed his note as soon as he was in power. As president of the Ottoman Chamber, he had no word of pity for the victims, no word of indignation for the assassins, after the massacres of Adana, when more than twenty thousand Armenians were done to death; he allowed the new law against the Press to be voted, which suppressed all independence of thought in Turkey. In July, 1910, he silenced those liberals in the Chamber who demanded the abolition of the state of siege that had been in force since the revolution of the 18th April, he raised no protest against the executions of liberal politicians by court-martial. In Paris, he declared himself a free thinker, but at Constantinople, he regularly performed the namaz (prayer) in the Chamber, so as to assure the religious party of his profound faith. 


More recently, in 1922-1923, the government of Ankara furnished a fresh example of incurable Muslim fanaticism. This Government, which claims to be actuated by modern ideas, deposed the Sultan whom it accused of making terms with foreigners and of not showing himself sufficiently firm in defense of the interests of Islam. One of its members, Abeddin Bey, deputy for Logiztan, tore off his necktie in the tribune and made the assembly, before rising, vote the prohibition of the use of wearing apparel made abroad. Other deputies declared their determination to restore the faith to its primitive austerity. They demanded punishments for Turkish women of easy virtue who sold their favors to infidels. They made the wearing of the orthodox head-dress obligatory; they forbade the use of alcohol, and even of wine; they decreed the closing of the European schools. During the war against the Greeks, the Turkish journals called the Muslim soldiers: Moujahid (from Djihad, holy war), that is to say combatants for the faith, soldiers of the holy war; and those who fell on the field of battle, Chahid, i.e., martyrs. 


One might multiply examples to prove that the Muslim is beyond the reach of foreign influences; that, in spite of appearances, he preserves his peculiar mentality, his profound faith, his deep-rooted hatreds; that he is refractory to all civilization.
The Muslim community can neither be modified nor improved; it is crystallized in an unassailable formula; its ideal is exclusively religious, or rather, it is two-fold: one half religious, the other political — Mahdism and the Caliphate.

 
Mahdism is the realization on earth of religious aspirations, through the intervention of a personage chosen by the divinity — the Mahdi; it is the supremacy of the Islamic faith over all other religions.
The Caliphate is the ideal of the Islamic State, placed under the sceptre of a Caliph. It is the liberation of the Muslim peoples bowed beneath the infidel yoke; it is the restoration of the defunct splendor of the Muslim 

Empire, such as it was under the successors of the Prophet, under the Ommeyads and the Abbassids.
These two forms of the Muslim ideal are not always in perfect accord: they sometimes clash, although, after all, their aim is identical, namely, the triumph of Islam.
The hopes of the Caliphites center by preference upon the most powerful independent Sultan, who is the protector and the natural champion of Islam; at the present moment it is the Ottoman Sultan; but the office and the sentiments upon which it rests are always international. 


The Mahdist movements, on the contrary, are essentially the expression of local discontent. It is the Muslim form of that hatred which among all nations and at all times arrays the conquered against their conquerors. So long as Islam exists, the Mahdist doctrine will be the spark that may at any moment set ablaze the discontent of the natives. There is no colonial policy capable of indefinitely avoiding these fatal sentiments and the sudden troubles to which they may give rise. 


The doctrine of the Caliphate, on the other hand, is essentially political; it is of a higher, more complex order; its conception calls for a more developed intellectual culture; it is that of the Young Turks, of the Young Egyptians, of the Young Tunisians, of the Young Algerians; and tomorrow, it will be that of the Young Moroccans, as soon as the instruction now being given in the French schools shall have partially civilized the natives of Morocco. At the outset, the Caliphate idea was religious, like every other manifestation of the Muslim spirit; but it was not long in extending its borders to embrace politics, and to dream of a formidable Muslim power, which should present itself finally as a quasi-laic restoration of the vanished Oriental civilization, in opposition to the Christian civilization of Europe. In other words, it is Muslim nationalism; all the faithful of Islam forming part of one ideal country. 


The strangest part of it is that this doctrine of the Caliphate has borrowed its essential principles from Europe. At the time of the fall of Abdul-Hamid, the Young Turks firmly believed that they were reviving the French Revolution; a number of them were Freemasons. One of the masters to whom they appealed, Al Afghani Leijed-Djemmal-ed-Din al-Husseini, who died in 1897, belonged to an Egyptian Lodge; he was honored by the friendship of Renan, who has devoted a eulogistic note to him, reproduced in his Essays.
Ahmed Riza Bey and Dr. Nazim, two influential members of the C.U.P., used to belong to the Positivist Society of France; but both of them have kept their Muslim mentality, in spite of appearances.
Sawas Pasha, an Ottoman Christian and a liberal thinker, but who thinks as a Christian and not as a Muslim, says, in his Studies on the theory of Muslim Law: "One can render not only acceptable to, but even compulsory on the Muslim conscience all progress, all truth, every legal disposition, not hitherto accepted by the Mohammedan community or inscribed in its Law." 


Attempts to civilize the Muslims, inspired by this formula, ended in failure, because they came into collision with a religion fiercely conservative and an intransigent fanaticism. It may be admitted that, theoretically, fanaticism is not incurable; but it has to be recognized nevertheless that Muslim fanaticism is absolutely irreducible. That is why the Khairallah effort of the Young Turk party towards progress was, from the outset, checked by the mass of the faithful, hostile to all innovation. To maintain itself in power, this party was obliged to deny the principles it had in the first instance proclaimed. 


The revolutionary idea had germinated in the minds of the Jewish and Christian populations subject to Turkey; and it was they who prepared the movement of emancipation; but as soon as it became an accomplished fact and the Muslim Turks attempted to set up regular authority, they reverted to the narrow ideas of religious nationalism and fanaticism. The formidable insurrection in the Yemen, which tended to the dethronement of the Sultan of Turkey in favor of a Caliph of Arab race, was nothing but a movement of reaction against new ideas: against Western ideas. It may be compared to the Wahabite movement, and had the same object — the restoration of Islam to its original purity, by ridding it of European admixture.
More recently, the popular movement which committed the actual direction of the Ottoman Empire to the government of Ankara, was inspired by identical sentiments, and the first act of the government was to depose the Sultan on the ground of too great a complaisance towards foreigners.
One of the most eminent Orientalists of the present day, Snouck Hurgronje, whose works have thrown a startling light upon the psychology of Muslim nations, has proved irrefutably the falsity of the theories of Sawas Pasha. It will be useful to sum up his argument:
The Creed and the Law of Islam have become in the course of their evolution less and less flexible; the political and social happenings of modern times afford ample proof of this. The question is not what we, with our methods of reasoning, are going to do with the dogmas of Islam, but rather what Islam itself, following its own doctrine and its own history, wishes to deduce from them. 


Islam would have to deny in toto its historic past to enter upon the path traced for it by Sawas Pasha. Doubtless, whether they like it or not, the Muslims have to accommodate themselves gradually to the manners and institutions proceeding from modern Europe; but it is not to be imagined that the juridical theory, springing from the very heart of Mohammedan populations, which has maintained itself against all contrary influences, is going to yield today to any action coming from outside. Islam, as soon as it sees itself attacked, withdraws to its strongest positions. 


The Muslim certainly makes some concessions which do not affect any religious principle: for instance, he accepts the railway, the telegraph, the steamship; but the civilization which has produced these things, together with its legislative principles, is, for all the faithful, an abomination that they will only tolerate under compulsion. As for the young men educated in French schools, they calmly superimpose foreign science upon their traditional faith, without making any attempt to reconcile the two. 


Islam forms a block of intangible traditions, of prejudices, of bigoted faith. The Muslim, bound by his religion, cannot accept Western progress. The two civilizations are too different, too much opposed ever to admit of mutual inter-penetration.