Part 4 (1/2)

Most significant of all were the appeals made at this time by Moslems to non-Mohammedan Asiatics for sympathy and solidarity against the hated West. This was a development as unprecedented as it was startling.

Mohammed, revering as he did the Old and New Testaments, and regarding himself as the successor of the divinely inspired prophets Moses and Jesus, had enjoined upon his followers relative respect for Christians and Jews (”Peoples of the Book”) in contrast with other non-Moslems, whom he stigmatized as ”Idolaters.” These injunctions of the Prophet had always been heeded, and down to our own days the hatred of Moslems for Christians, however bitter, had been as nothing compared with their loathing and contempt for ”Idolaters” like the Brahmanist Hindus or the Buddhists and Confucianists of the Far East.

The first symptom of a change in att.i.tude appeared during the Russo-j.a.panese War of 1904. So great had Islam's fear and hatred of the Christian West then become, that the triumph of an Asiatic people over Europeans was enthusiastically hailed by many Moslems, even though the victors were ”Idolaters.” It was quite in keeping with Pan-Islamism's strong missionary bent that many pious Moslems should have dreamed of bringing these heroes within the Islamic fold. Efforts to get in touch with j.a.pan were made. Propagandist papers were founded, missionaries were selected, and the Sultan sent a wars.h.i.+p to j.a.pan with a Pan-Islamic delegation aboard. Throughout Islam the projected conversion of j.a.pan was widely discussed. Said an Egyptian journal in the year 1906: ”England, with her sixty million Indian Moslems, dreads this conversion.

With a Mohammedan j.a.pan, Mussulman policy would change entirely.”[50]

And, at the other end of the Moslem world, a Chinese Mohammedan sheikh wrote: ”If j.a.pan thinks of becoming some day a very great power and making Asia the dominator of the other continents, it will be only by adopting the blessed religion of Islam.”[51]

Of course it soon became plain to these enthusiasts that while j.a.pan received Islam's emissaries with smiling courtesy, she had not the faintest intention of turning Mohammedan. Nevertheless, the first step had been taken towards friendly relations with non-Moslem Asia, and the Balkan War drove Moslems much further in this direction. The change in Moslem sentiment can be gauged by the numerous appeals made by the Indian Mohammedans at this time to Hindus, as may be seen from the following sample ent.i.tled significantly ”The Message of the East.”

”Spirit of the East,” reads this noteworthy doc.u.ment, ”arise and repel the swelling flood of Western aggression! Children of Hindustan, aid us with your wisdom, culture, and wealth; lend us your power, the birthright and heritage of the Hindu! Let the Spirit Powers hidden in the Himalayan mountain-peaks arise. Let prayers to the G.o.d of battles float upward; prayers that right may triumph over might; and call to your myriad G.o.ds to annihilate the armies of the foe!”[52]

To any one who realizes the traditional Moslem att.i.tude towards ”Idolaters” such words are simply amazing. They betoken a veritable revolution in outlook. And such sentiments were not confined to Indian Moslems; they were equally evident among Chinese Moslems as well. Said a Mohammedan newspaper of Chinese Turkestan, advocating a fraternal union of all Chinese against Western aggression: ”Europe has grown too presumptuous. It will deprive us of our liberty; it will destroy us altogether if we do not bestir ourselves promptly and prepare for a powerful resistance.”[53] During the troublous first stages of the Chinese revolution, the Mohammedans, emerging from their sulky aloofness, co-operated so loyally with their Buddhist and Confucian fellow-patriots that Dr. Sun-Yat-Sen, the Republican leader, announced gratefully: ”The Chinese will never forget the a.s.sistance which their Moslem fellow-countrymen have rendered in the interest of order and liberty.”[54]

The Great War thus found Islam everywhere deeply stirred against European aggression, keenly conscious of its own solidarity, and frankly reaching out for Asiatic allies in the projected struggle against European domination.

Under these circ.u.mstances it may at first sight appear strange that no general Islamic explosion occurred when Turkey entered the lists at the close of 1914 and the Sultan Caliph issued a formal summons to the Holy War. Of course this summons was not the flat failure which Allied reports led the West to believe at the time. As a matter of fact, there was trouble in practically every Mohammedan land under Allied control.

To name only a few of many instances: Egypt broke into a tumult smothered only by overwhelming British reinforcements, Tripoli burst into a flame of insurrection that drove the Italians headlong to the coast, Persia was prevented from joining Turkey only by prompt Rus...o...b..itish intervention, while the Indian North-West Frontier was the scene of fighting that required the presence of a quarter of a million Anglo-Indian troops. The British Government has officially admitted that during 1915 the Allies' Asiatic and African possessions stood within a hand's breadth of a cataclysmic insurrection.

That insurrection would certainly have taken place if Islam's leaders had everywhere spoken the fateful word. But the word was not spoken.

Instead, influential Moslems outside of Turkey generally condemned the latter's action and did all in their power to calm the pa.s.sions of the fanatic mult.i.tude.

The att.i.tude of these leaders does credit to their discernment. They recognized that this was neither the time nor the occasion for a decisive struggle with the West. They were not yet materially prepared, and they had not perfected their understandings either among themselves or with their prospective non-Moslem allies. Above all, the moral urge was lacking. They knew that athwart the Khalifa's writ was stencilled ”Made in Germany.” They knew that the ”Young-Turk” clique which had engineered the coup was made up of Europeanized renegades, many of them not even nominal Moslems, but atheistic Jews. Far-sighted Moslems had no intention of pulling Germany's chestnuts out of the fire, nor did they wish to further Prussian schemes of world-dominion which for themselves would have meant a mere change of masters. Far better to let the West fight out its desperate feud, weaken itself, and reveal fully its future intentions. Meanwhile Islam could bide its time, grow in strength, and await the morrow.

The Versailles peace conference was just such a revelation of European intentions as the Pan-Islamic leaders had been waiting for in order to perfect their programmes and enlist the moral solidarity of their followers. At Versailles the European Powers showed unequivocally that they had no intention of relaxing their hold upon the Near and Middle East. By a number of secret treaties negotiated during the war, the Ottoman Empire had been virtually part.i.tioned between the victorious Allies, and these secret treaties formed the basis of the Versailles settlement. Furthermore, Egypt had been declared a British protectorate at the very beginning of the war, while the Versailles conference had scarcely adjourned before England announced an ”agreement” with Persia which made that country another British protectorate in fact if not in name. The upshot was, as already stated, that the Near and Middle East were subjected to European political domination as never before.

But there was another side to the s.h.i.+eld. During the war years the Allied statesmen had officially proclaimed times without number that the war was being fought to establish a new world-order based on such principles as the rights of small nations and the liberty of all peoples. These p.r.o.nouncements had been treasured and memorized throughout the East. When, therefore, the East saw a peace settlement based, not upon these high professions, but upon the imperialistic secret treaties, it was fired with a moral indignation and sense of outraged justice never known before. A tide of impa.s.sioned determination began rising which has set already the entire East in tumultuous ferment, and which seems merely the premonitory ground-swell of a greater storm. So ominous were the portents that even before the Versailles conference had adjourned many European students of Eastern affairs expressed grave alarm. Here, for example, is the judgment of Leone Caetani, Duke of Sermoneta, an Italian authority on Mohammedan questions. Speaking in the spring of 1919 on the war's effect on the East, he said: ”The convulsion has shaken Islamic and Oriental civilization to its foundations. The entire Oriental world, from China to the Mediterranean, is in ferment. Everywhere the hidden fire of anti-European hatred is burning. Riots in Morocco, risings in Algiers, discontent in Tripoli, so-called Nationalist attempts in Egypt, Arabia, and Lybia are all different manifestations of the same deep sentiment, and have as their object the rebellion of the Oriental world against European civilization.”[55]

Those words are a prophetic forecast of what has since occurred in the Moslem world. Because recent events are perhaps even more involved with the nationalistic aspirations of the Moslem peoples than they are with the strictly Pan-Islamic movement, I propose to defer their detailed discussion till the chapter on Nationalism. We should, however, remember that Moslem nationalism and Pan-Islamism, whatever their internal differences, tend to unite against the external pressure of European domination and equally desire Islam's liberation from European political control. Remembering these facts, let us survey the present condition of the Pan-Islamic movement.

Pan-Islamism has been tremendously stimulated by Western pressure, especially by the late war and the recent peace settlements. However, Pan-Islamism must not be considered as merely a defensive political reaction against external aggression. It springs primarily from that deep sentiment of unity which links Moslem to Moslem by bonds much stronger than those which unite the members of the Christian world.

These bonds are not merely religious, in the technical sense; they are social and cultural as well. Throughout the Moslem world, despite wide differences in local customs and regulations, the basic laws of family and social conduct are everywhere the same. ”The truth is that Islam is more than a creed, it is a complete social system; it is a civilization with a philosophy, a culture, and an art of its own; in its long struggle against the rival civilization of Christendom it has become an organic unit conscious of itself.”[56]

To this Islamic civilization all Moslems are deeply attached. In this larger sense, Pan-Islamism is universal. Even the most liberal-minded Moslems, however much they may welcome Western ideas, and however strongly they may condemn the fanatical, reactionary aspects of the political Pan-Islamic movement, believe fervently in Islam's essential solidarity. As a leading Indian Moslem liberal, The Aga Khan, remarks: ”There is a right and legitimate Pan-Islamism to which every sincere and believing Mohammedan belongs--that is, the theory of the spiritual brotherhood and unity of the children of the Prophet. The real spiritual and cultural unity of Islam must ever grow, for to the follower of the Prophet it is the foundation of the life and the soul.”[57]

If such is the att.i.tude of Moslem liberals, thoroughly conversant with Western culture and receptive to Western progress, what must be the feelings of the Moslem ma.s.ses, ignorant, reactionary, and fanatical?

Besides perfectly understandable fear and hatred due to Western aggression, there is, among the Moslem ma.s.ses, a great deal of genuine fanaticism caused, not by European political domination, but by religious bigotry and blind hatred of Western civilization.[58] But this fanaticism has, of course, been greatly inflamed by the political events of the past decade, until to-day religious, cultural, and political hatred of the West have coalesced in a state of mind decidedly ominous for the peace of the world. We should not delude ourselves into minimizing the dangerous possibilities of the present situation. Just because the fake ”Holy War” proclaimed by the Young-Turks at German instigation in 1914 did not come off is no reason for believing that a real holy war is impossible. As a German staff-officer in Turkish service during the late struggle very candidly says: ”The Holy War was an absolute fiasco just because it was not a Holy War.”[59] I have already explained how most Moslems saw through the trick and refused to budge.

However, the long series of European aggressions, culminating in the recent peace settlements which subjected virtually the entire Moslem world to European domination, have been steadily rousing in Moslem hearts a spirit of despairing rage that may have disastrous consequences. Certainly, the materials for a holy war have long been heaping high. More than twenty years ago Arminius Vambery, who knew the Moslem world as few Europeans have ever known it, warned the West of the perils engendered by recklessly imperialistic policies. ”As time pa.s.ses,” he wrote in 1898, ”the danger of a general war becomes ever greater. We should not forget that time has considerably augmented the adversary's force of resistance. I mean by this the sentiment of solidarity which is becoming livelier of late years among the peoples of Islam, and which in our age of rapid communication is no longer a negligible quant.i.ty, as it was even ten or twenty years ago.

”It may not be superfluous to draw the attention of our nineteenth-century Crusaders to the importance of the Moslem press, whose ramifications extend all over Asia and Africa, and whose exhortations sink more profoundly than they do with us into the souls of their readers. In Turkey, India, Persia, Central Asia, Java, Egypt, and Algeria, native organs, daily and periodical, begin to exert a profound influence. Everything that Europe thinks, decides, and executes against Islam spreads through those countries with the rapidity of lightning.

Caravans carry the news to the heart of China and to the equator, where the tidings are commented upon in very singular fas.h.i.+on. Certain sparks struck at our meetings and banquets kindle, little by little, menacing flames. Hence, it would be an unpardonable legerity to close our eyes to the dangers lurking beneath an apparent pa.s.sivity. What the _Terdjuman_ of Crimea says between the lines is repeated by the Constantinople _Ikdam_, and is commented on and exaggerated at Calcutta by _The Moslem Chronicle_.

”Of course, at present, the bond of Pan-Islamism is composed of tenuous and dispersed strands. But Western aggression might easily unite those strands into a solid whole, bringing about a general war”.[60]

In the decades which have elapsed since Vambery wrote those lines the situation has become much more tense. Moslem resentment at European dominance has increased, has been reinforced by nationalistic aspirations almost unknown during the last century, and possesses methods of highly efficient propaganda. For example, the Pan-Islamic press, to which Vambery refers, has developed in truly extraordinary fas.h.i.+on. In 1900 there were in the whole Islamic world not more than 200 propagandist journals. By 1906 there were 500, while in 1914 there were well over 1000.[61] Moslems fully appreciate the post-office, the railroad, and other modern methods of rapidly interchanging ideas.

”Every Moslem country is in communication with every other Moslem country: directly, by means of special emissaries, pilgrims, travellers, traders, and postal exchanges; indirectly, by means of Mohammedan newspapers, books, pamphlets, leaflets, and periodicals. I have met with Cairo newspapers in Bagdad, Teheran, and Peshawar; Constantinople newspapers in Basra and Bombay; Calcutta newspapers in Mohammerah, Kerbela, and Port Said.”[62] As for the professional Pan-Islamic propagandists, more particularly those of the religious fraternities, they swarm everywhere, rousing the fanaticism of the people: ”Travelling under a thousand disguises--as merchants, preachers, students, doctors, workmen, beggars, fakirs, mountebanks, pretended fools or rhapsodists, these emissaries are everywhere well received by the Faithful and are efficaciously protected against the suspicious investigations of the European colonial authorities.”[63]

Furthermore, there is to-day in the Moslem world a widespread conviction, held by liberals and chauvinists alike (albeit for very different reasons), that Islam is entering on a period of Renaissance and renewed glory. Says Sir Theodore Morison: ”No Mohammedan believes that Islamic civilization is dead or incapable of further development.