TURKISH MISRULE AND RELIGION.
[To TEE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR:1
you allow me to make one criticism on your admirable article on the Armenian question, in the Spectator of August 10th? You deprecate any attempt to make the religion of the Turkish Government responsible either for the maladministration of the Porte or for the cruelty of the Turkish people ; and you add- that Anglo-India.ns would resent an assertion which their experience had taught them to be untrue. But the experience of Anglo-Indians is more likely to mislead than to enlighten them on this subject, for their experience is confined to the purely devotional and ceremonial aspect of Islam. They know nothing of it as a political system wielding independent rule. As one who has studied Islam not only in history, not only in the reports of our own Consuls and Ambassadors in Turkey during the last fifty years, but also by personal examination of its working in Europe, Asia, and Africa, will you give me leave to say that a recognition of the religious factor is, in my humble opinion, the key to the whole situation ? By an unchangeable dogma of the Mahommedan religion, the non-Mussulman subjects of a Mussulman Power are deprived of the ordinary rights of citizenship, and the Sacred Law prescribes in plain terms a course of systematic hatred and insult towards them. My experience and reading convince me that the Turks are not a
bit more cruel than other Mahommedan races. In fact, there are hardly any Turks in Turkey. The most cruel of the Mussulmans of Turkey are the official class, just because they have drunk the most deeply of the religion. It is this fact which makes it of such vital importance that any reforms in the administration of Armenia should be placed under the control of the European Powers. Equality of rights between Mussulman and Christian is absolutely forbidden by the Sacred Law of Islam, and therefore cannot be carried out under independent Mussulman rule.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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