CORRESPONDENCE.
ISLAM AND THE EMPIRE.
(TO THE EDITOR OF THE " SPUTA:MR.1
Silk—It would be an interesting development, and one of great importance to the Empire, if the intellectual centre of the Mahommedan world were transferred from Turkey or Arabia to India. It is true that hitherto the Hindi or Indian Mussuhaan has been of slight account in Islam, but he is making such strides under England's liberal and educat- ing rule that he must soon beCome the leader of Mahommedan thought. The bitter lesson, which he has learnt with so much suffering and humiliation, is the lesson which all other Mussulmans have to learn, and they will learn it with more readiness when they perceive that it has saved him from the misery and degradation which are yawning in front of them. What, then, is the intellectual position of the Indian Mahom- rued= to-day? The most advanced section, still numerically few, recognises the humiliating truth that their people are, both morally and intellectually, inferior to the peoples of Christen- dom; they believe that in their faith are enshrined the great truths of religion and morality, but that in the past they have misread the Word of God and that narrow-minded Moollahs have expounded it amiss. They assert that in the Koran are the clearest directions to marry but one wife and to free the slave, and that God through his Prophet most emphatically forbade coercion in religion. These men detest the Maulvis, who have made the Word of God of none effect by their traditions, and they study their scripture in the light of modern morality and by the canons of rational interpreta- tion,—more attentive to the spirit than the letter. They are all ardent advocates of English education, and their worldly ambition is to become honoured subjects of the British Empire, and to be recognised as the equals of the Europeans, whose views upon all but the inspiration of Mahommed they share. Many of these men reckon English. men among their closest friends, and are devotedly loyal to the British rule, under which alone they see any hope of working out the salvation of their community. The sacrifices which many of these reformers have made in carrying the New Light (as_ it is nicknamed) to their people deserve the sympathy and admiration of Englishmen; and these sacrifices have not. been thrown away; they have leavened the whole of Mahommedan thought in India. Their influence has been specially significant
upon their opponents,the orthodox conservatives, the Mahom- medan Right. Among this group Englisheducation is very rare; they derive their ideas from Persian and Arabic sources, and would be outraged at the suggestion that they were haft- enced by the doctrines of the " coat-pantaloon " (i.e., English- educated) party. But the contest between rationalism and prejudice has not been waged for so many years without educating both parties of the debate. The old school will not publicly defend a lower morality than their opponents; they contend that Moslem ethics are far purer than those of the innovator or misbelieving Frank, and they are thereby driven to reprobate behaviour which an older generation of divines certainly tolerated. The battle between the two schools has raged round the question of English education and of the adop- tion by the Mussulman community of English manners and customs. Intimately associated with this, though not so loudly discussed, is the question of the proper attitude for a pious Mohammedan to adopt towards English rule. The reformers have pushed this question to the front, maintaining that it is the duty of Mahommedans to be sincerely loyal to the British Raj, but the old-fashioned party naturally shrank from a public discussion of the question. There is no doubt that a generation ago all the orthodox party believed that there was something unholy in the government of Mussul- mans by Christians, and many of the more scrupulous refused,. and still refuse, to take service under the British. But the more ferocious forms of hostility are nowadays condemned; the unprovoked murder of Englishmen, for instance, is revolting to the public conscience, and the Maulvis do not believe that their. religion sanctions barbarism. They have accordingly re-read their scripture, and discovered that there is no justification for these crimes in Islam. In the summer of this year a Tinhorn- medan society at Lahore circulated a pamphlet upon "the miscalled Muni murders exposed in a Paws signed by some of the most famous Muhamadan theologians in Upper India." The Fatwa, or authoritative verdict of the doctors of the law, is as follows:—" To kill a person unjustly is, according to the faith of Islam, quite unlawful and a heinous crime whether the person killed be a Muslim or non-Muslim, a Christian, a Jew, a Hindi, or a Parsi," and the learned divines support their opinion by texts from the Koran and the traditional sayings of the Prophet; and they close their exposition of the subject by saying "The murders that are committed in the frontier cannot therefore receive any support from the Koran and the Faith of Islam." Among these Mahommedan conservatives, it is a dis- puted question whether loyalty to the British Government is a religious duty. Those who dispute the proposition do not necessarily hold that they are bound in conscience to rebel, but they are not convinced,. on the other hand, that their religion enjoins upon them to love their English rulers. Many others, however, who behold the Anglicising of their co-religionists with loathing, and are punctiliously precise in observing the very letter of Mahommedan law, believe that their religion binds them to be true and loyal subjects because they are permitted the free exercise of that religion in India. A friend of the writer's satisfied a scrupulous conscience upon this subject when at Mecca by obtaining written decisions from each of the leaders of the four great schools of divinity to the effect that India was Dar ul him—that is, a country of Islam— to whose rulers he was bound in conscience to be loyal. The Mahommedan Right have no leaders and no policy, but indi- vidualMaulvis have each a considerable influence within definite areas. Among such men may be found at one place a ripe Arabic scholar who leads a life of self-denial and charity, a broad- minded man whose mental horizon accident only has confined to Oriental learning, and elsewhere the crowd will follow an ignorant Moollah whose pretensions to scholarship are confined to one book of Arabic theology, and who justifies his followers' opinion of his piety by rabid hostility to all non-Moslems. A few years ago an attempt was made to create an organisation that would represent the orthodox party ; the Nudvat ui Ulenia, or Council of the Learned, came into being for that purpose, and to promote the only policy which that party has ever promulgated, the encouragement of the study of Arabic and theology. few extremists held aloof and denounced the dangerously liberal tendencies of the Nudvat ul Ulema ; others came and peeped in at the meeting, but ran away in terror when they saw the members seated upon chairs (instead of the carpet), exclaiming, "There are Feringhis in there." On the first day it was difficult to get to business for every member had come with a sermon, ready prepared, upon "things in general," and would not deny himself the pleasure of delivering it with so choice an audience at his feet. Such a body was not likely to evolve an effective organisation, and the Named u1 Ulema has failed to achieve any results commensurate with the influence which individual members certainly exercise over the crowd. It includes among its adherents men who are saturated with the ideas of the English educated party, but whose bent of mind is intrinsically conservative and religious, and who cannot bring themselves to a violent rupture with the old ways. Such men desire that the study of English and Arabic should go hand in hand, "English for this world and Arabic for the next"; they have indeed caught the spirit of the reformers, but they still cling to the external forms of Mahommedan civilization; in their aversion to exchange the dignified turban and flowing robes of the Moslem world for the Euro- pean's trousers and top-hat they probably have the sympathy of all Englishmen. It must not be supposed that all the Mahommedans of India have definitely associated themselves with one or other of these parties ; there is every shade of individual opinion, from the extreme reformer to the most stiff-necked partisan of the Right; moreover, the greater number even of men who are capable of forming any opinion at all upon these matters are apathetic or indifferent; they con. tent themselves with an occasional hai, hal over the degenera- tion of Islam, and are soon absorbed again in the material cares of daily life. In a country so imperfectly educated as India the numerical majority of any community must always consist of those who can hardly think at all upon such problems as these; and the new spirit has not disturbed the Punjabi peasant in his devout repetition of uncomprehended prayers, nor the Kashmiri boatman in his adoration at the shrines of wonder-working saints. But the reformers may well take heart from the successes they have already achieved; they have demonstrated, beyond a doubt, the material advantages of their policy ; Mahommedans educated upon the new prin- ciples are winning fortune and honours everywhere; they rise high in Government service because their hands are unsoiled by corruption, and they are making their way to the top of the Bar and other lucrative professions; whereas the most brilliant disciple of an old-fashioned Maulvi can hardly hope for a precarious pittance of thirty shillings a month. More important still, the reformers, though they have not compelled the formal surrender of the orthodox party, have broadened the views of their opponents, and driven them to accept modern standards of conduct and enlightened principles of scriptural interpretation. In comparison with their opponents, the reformers are energetic and well organised, and they have zealous partisans winning adherents to their cause in every part of India. From Peshawar to Dacca and Moulmein, and from Mysore to Sindh and Waziristan, boys are sent to be educated at their central institution in Aligarh, and carry back to their homes the desire to enlighten and elevate their people. An effort is already being made to create a central Mahommedan University in the liberal atmosphere of which all Mussulman boys of India should receive their collegiate education, a University which should combine the best teaching of the European sciences with a rational and purified Islam, and which might in time become the intel- lectual capital of Mahommedan India. The successful develop- ment of this movement in India could not fail to influence Mahommedans in other puts of the world. There is, indeed, no such thing as a Mahommedan nation, though Mahommedan writers love to speak of it; but as all Mussulmans are, in varying degrees, heirs of a common civilisation, they have a community of sentiments and. methods of thought which facilitates the passage of ideas among them. The universal decline of Mahommedan power, and their own poverty and degradation, are everywhere bitterly discussed ; a Mahom- medan movement that could promise an escape from these evils would be eagerly received. As education spreads, they perceive that an appeal to the sword would provide no remedy; the cause of their downfall lies in their own back- wardness and ignorance; whence it comes, as a Mahommedan writer in Egypt recently observed, that the people of Islam are everywhere conquered in war by those whose religion teaches them to turn the other cheek to the smiter. It is possible that the regeneration of Islam may come to pass through recognition of this bitter truth; the Indian Mahom-
mama are already eager to carry their message to Mussul- mans beyond the seas. The creation of a great central Mahommedan University would assuredly promote this movement of thought; students would certainly come to such a centre from Central Asia, from Burmah and the Malay Peninsula, and possibly Java; Persia has always been in communication with India and Egypt, and Syria might send students in the wake of the Arabic masters whom the promoters of the Mahommedan University already talk of engaging. How momentous would be the political effect of the successful realisation of this design, and how invaluable to the Empire! The guiding ideas of Islam would be formed in the temperate atmosphere of a British province and beneath the shadow of British law. The leaders of Mahommedan thought would be men saturated with English ideas, whose best inspiration would be derived from English books and from daily intercourse with Englishmen, an inter- course not of subordinates with superiors, but of fellow- workers in a common field. The spread of new ideas in Islam would go hand in hand with a movement of friendship towards the British Empire; the sympathy of the Mahom- medan world would be secured in favour of England. Mahommedan sympathy cannot, indeed, any longer show itself in armed battalions, but how much would it not add to our authority in the council of nations !—I am, Sir, &c.,
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