BO OK 8.

THE NEW WORLD OF ISLAM.* [FIRST Noma.] THE NEW WORLD OF ISLAM.* [FIRST Noma.] " Our survey of the Near and Middle East is at an end. What is the outstanding feature of that survey"? It is : Change. The " Immovable East " has been moved at last—moved to its very depths. The Orient is to-day in full transition, flux, ferment, more sudden and profound than any it ha's hitherto known. The world of Islam, mentally and spiritually quiescent for almost a thousand years, is once more astir, once more on the march."—(Conclusion of Mr. Stoddard's book.)

" Such is the situation to-day : an East, torn by the conflict between new and old, facing a West riven with dissension and sick from its mad follies. Probably never before have the relations between the two worlds contained so many incalculable, even cata- clysmic, possibilities. The point to be here noted is that this strange new East which now faces us is mainly the result of Western influ- ences permeating it in unprecedented fashion for the past hundred years."—(From Mr. Stoddard's chapter on Political Change.)

" In the West, the whole science of government rests on the axiom that the essential divisions of humanity are determined by considera- tions of race and geography ; but for Orientals these ideas are very far from being axioms. For them, humanity divides according to religious beliefs. The unity is no longer the nation or the Stall, but the 111Wah.' Europeans see in this a counterpart to thezr Middle Ages—a stage which Islam should pass through on its way to modernity in the Western sense. How badly they understand how religion looks to a Mohammedan I They forget that Islam is not only a religion, but also a social organization, a loran of culture, and a nationality. . . . The principle of Islamic f?aternity—of Pan-Islamism, if you prefer the word—is analogous to patriotism, but with this dsfference : this Islamic fraternity, though resulting in identity of laws and customs, has not (like Western nationality) been brought about by community of race, country, or history, but has been received, as we believe, directly from God."—Mohammed Ali, " Le Mouvement Musulman dans l'Inde," Revue Politique Internationale, January, 11514 (quoted by Mr. Stoddard). "Such is the situation in the Near East—a situation very grave and full of trouble. The most hopeful portent is the apparent awakening of the British Government to the growing perils of the hour, and its consequent modifications of attitude. The labours of men like Lord Milner and Sir Percy Cox, however hampered by 7Jurblind influences, can scarcely be wholly barren of results. Such men are the diplomatic descendants of Chatham and of Durham ; the upholders of that great political tradition which has steered the Britiah Empire safely through crises that appeared hopeless. On the other hand, the darkest portent in the Near East is the continued intransigeance of France. Steeped in its old traditions, French policy apparently refuses to face realities. If an explosion COMM, as come it must unless France modifies her attitude ; if, some dark day, thirty or forty French battalions are caught in a simoom of Arab fury blowing out of the desert, and are annihilated in a new Adowa ; the regretful verdict of many versed in Eastern affairs can only be : French policy has deserved it.' ":—A. Semler, " Le Nationalisms Musulman," p. 181 (quoted by Mr. Stoddard).

Tam is a book which no man who aspires to an opinion on world policy, and especially on the policy of the British Empire, can afford to neglect. It not only enables him to see and to understand one of the great permutations of humanity, but gives him a clue to escape from the maze. Hence, Mr. Stoddard's most able and informing book should be read by all our politi- cians, and especially by those who deal with foreign affairs, with Dominion and Colonial affairs, and with India, Egypt and Palestine. Happily, it is an easy book to read. It is written with great zest and interest on the part of the writer, and his views are supported on every page by copious quotations. In a word, it is not a piece of vaticination, but a chronicle of facts, writings and sayings. The net result is to show that on the top of the Great War has come as great a thing, though as yet the world does not realize it. That thing is what Mr. Stoddard calla ".The New World of Islam." It can also be called " The Reformation and Renaissance of Mohammedanism." We • The Kw World of Islam. By Lothrop Stoddard. Loudon : Mailman and Hall. Ira_ no' •

thought Mohammedanism was dying slowly, but surely. Ws called it a back number, an obsolete faith, something which would not fit in with the new world, something which must be abandoned by men so soon as they received the new learning. And now we find that what we took for death was a new birth.

Islam at the moment is being affected by what at first sight appeared to be two contradictory forces. The first is the great Puritan movement which began a hundred years ago in Arabia with the Wahhabees, and has been carried down into the present century and to the present day by the Senussi, the desert followers of the desert prophet, who shrouds his face and his spirit in the Sahara Desert, but who none the less is one of the great potentates of the East. Side by side with a return to what we might call the primitive austerity of Mohammedanism is another and equally important renaissance, that of the intellectual and cultivated form of Mohammedanism which amazed the world in the early days of the Caliphate—the days when Haroun Alrasohid rivalled Charlemagne in power and far surpassed him in literature and the arts and sciences. All over the Moslem world men of light and leading are developing the Mohammedan creed, not merely in the Puritanical sense, but in a sense that will enable it to accept the teachings of science, law and history, and all tho intellectual developments which have so deeply affected the Christian world.

But these broad and enlightened Mohammedans, as we may call them, are neither sceptics nor Agnostics. They are the Broad Churchmen of Islam. They want to clear away a great deal of the old.superstitions, which, as they would say, shroud and disgrace the true faith ; but they are as earnest in maintain- ing what they believe was Mahomet's true purpose as are the fanatics of the desert. Strange as it may seem, the men of enlightenment, for the moment at any rate—later a certain amount of conflict seems unavoidable—hold out their hands to the successors pf the Wahhabees and to the Senussi, the unlearned zealots of Arabia and North Africa. They do so because they recognize that these men are also reformers. The Puritans want, just as do the men of enlightenment, to get rid of abuses, and are firm in the belief that Islam may be purged and revivified.

But it is not only those, whom we may call the right and the left wings of Islam, who are in deadly earnest. There are also vast numbers of Mohammedans who are deeply moved by what, for want of a better expression, may be termed the national- istic feeling of Islam. Strictly speaking, Islam is not a nation- ality, but a faith. All Moslems are equal and all Moslems are brothers. The worshippers of the true God entertain for each other a political freemasonry such as that felt by all speakers of the English tongue. They may quarrel among themselves and have bitter thoughts of each other, but when it comes to conflict with men who have not their ties of blood, race and language, they stand together. This feeling, whioh, if not exactly rationalistic, comes within range of being so, binds all the children of the Prophet. It happens, alas 1 that we English, who are more deeply interested in the Moham- medan problem than any other external question, have managed to handle it ever since the end of the War in such a way that it is difficult to see how we shall escape without grave injury. Partly through blindness, partly through ill-luck, and still more through the fact that somehow or other our old instinct for government and statesenift has deserted us, we have contrived to antagonize the Mohammedan in almost every part of the world. Without doing any good to ourselves, and without meaning it, we have contrived to make enemies of the Mohammedan Puritans, of the enlightened Mohammedans, and of both the dominant racial forces in the Mohammedan world

maki—thengTurksthe Mohammedan the eArianbea.ndTotheha double h ab was, indeed,:a kind of miracle, for the Arabs and Turks naturally hate each other very bitterly, and the Arabs have many reasons for liking us and being grateful to us. Yet at the moment we are forcing the Arabs and the Turks together and making Britain appear to both of them as the natural, the essential enemy.

In something of the same inept way we are in India actually

Hindu done this But though there is co-operation at the top of the scale, there is very little at the bottom. At heart they hate each other. India will return to the state of chaos In which we found it a hundred and fifty years ago unless there is some external power to keep peace between the two religions and to prevent the worst evils of caste tyranny.

If the matter was not fraught with so much potential misery

for humanity, and so much danger for ourselves, there would be something extremely comic in the way in which we gravely try to reconcile the Mohammedans and the Brahmins in their desire to shove us out of India. And all the time, at the bottom of the scale, unrest, fostered by the joint action of our enemies, results in good old-fashioned rising of the Moslem against the Hindu. The Mohammedans slaughter the Brahmins or else achieve a forcible conversion by a violent breaking of caste. If we remember rightly, Tippoo used to convert whole districts by the simple device of pouring beef tea down the throats of Brahmins. It was then pointed out to them that, as they were polluted and had become outcastes, they had better join the Mohammedan faith. There the outcaste, in spite of himself, became the equal of the highest in the land.

Unless we greatly change our policy, though we are the de- fenders of Mohammedanism in India, and especially of the Moham- medan revival, we are going to manage matters in such a way that we shall antagonize the Moslems without placating the Hindus. In the last resort, what the political Brahmins want is to become independent of British power and influence. But the scheme is not to let us go altogether. We are to lend the Brahmin oligarchy British bayonets in order to enforce their rule upon the Mohammedans and upon India as a whole. That is an unthinkable role for the British soldier. Yet we are managing to make the Mohammedans believe that we mean it. Thus we are losing the confidence which our impartiality between the two religions once inspired in India.

This is bad, but we are drifting into an even more dangerous position in Palestine. Only a year or two ago we were regarded by the Arabs, who, after all, constitute the essential element in Mohammedanism, as deliverers and benefactors. From their point of view we had put the Turkish oppressor in his place. We helped, besides, to create an independent Mohammedan kingdom in Arabia, and though we had difficulties with the Arabs in Mesopotamia, we convinced the leaders there that our aims were not those of conquerors. But, unhappily, we are in process of wiping out all this and are making the Arabs' hate of us even more malignant than that of the Turks, whose Empire, after all, we had a right to overthrow, for had not the Turks sprung at our throats in the crisis of the War ? By the extra- ordinary folly of our administration in Palestine we have con- trived to fill the minds of the Arabs with rage and misgiving. It may have been right that we should take on the task of finding a national home for the Jews, but only statesmen bereft of their senses could, one would imagine, have done it in the way in which we have done it. By placing a Jew in supreme power in Jerusalem, and by other acts of political ineptitude, we have contrived to give not only the Arabs of Palestine, but the Arabs of the desert and the Arab race throughout the world, the impression that we mean ultimately to assist the Jews in driving the existing Mohammedan inhabitants out of Palestine. We have even contrived to let them imagine that we shall allow what they would regard as the desecration of their holy places, and that the Jewish claim to be the original owners will ulti- mately develop into prerogative rights over the whole Temple enclosure. Of course, these rumours are utterly false; so false, indeed, as to seem ridiculous to Englishmen at home. But they sound anything but ridiculous to Orientals. These are the sort of things about which wars have always come in the East. Finally comes our backing of the Greeks in Asia Minor. With that backing we have contrived to give the impression in the mid-Mohammedan world that we are the enemies of Islam.

In a word, we have managed to antagonize the re-awakening Mohammedan world at its -vital points. India is the spiritual home of the modem and intellectual Moslem. In Arabia and Africa is to be found the Puritan spirit. The Senussi, remember, are Arabs in language and to a certain extent in race.

We have accomplished all this antagonizing without meaning it in the very least. It is the product of a muddy mixture of rashness and ignorance. We are not even consistent in our policy, for we let the Milner Commission go to Egypt and then refused to act on its report. There was a great deal to be said against the Milner policy. There was a good deal to be said for it. There is never anything to be said for dangling a dead sheep in front of a panther and then whisking it away when the meal is about to begin. People who do that sort of thing are in- variably bitten if they get in the way, and they deserve it. Having sent the Milner Commission we should have acted on its report the instant it was published.

(To be continued)