discoveries of America and the water route to India. The effect of these discoveries simply cannot be overestimated. When Columbus and Vasco da Gama made their memorable voyages at the end of the fifteenth century, Western civilization was pent up closely within the restricted bounds of west-central Europe, and was waging a defensive and none-too-hopeful struggle with the forces of Turanian barbarism. Russia lay under the heel of the Mongol Tartars, while the Turks, then in the full flush of their martial vigor, were marching triumphantly up from the southeast and threatening Europe's very heart. So strong were these Turanian barbarians, with Asia, North Africa, and eastern Europe in their grasp, that Western civilization was hard put to it to hold its own. Western civilization was, in fact, fighting with its back to the wall-the wall of a boundless ocean. We can hardly conceive how our medieval forefathers viewed the ocean. To them it was a numbing, constricting presence; the abode of darkness and horror. No wonder mediæval Europe was static, since it faced on ruthless, aggressive Asia, and backed on nowhere. Then, in the twinkling of an eye, the sea-wall became a highway, and dead-end Europe became mistress of the ocean-and thereby mistress of the world. The greatest strategic shift of fortune in all human history had taken place. Instead of fronting hopelessly on the fiercest of Asiatics, against whom victory by direct attack seemed impossible, the Europeans could now flank them at will. Furthermore, the balance of resources shifted in Europe's favor. Whole new worlds were unmasked whence Europe could draw limitless wealth to quicken its home life and initiate a progress that would soon place it immeasurably above its once-dreaded Asiatic assailants. What were the resources of the stagnant Moslem East compared with those of the Americas and the Indies? So Western civilization, quickened, energized, progressed with giant strides, shook off its mediæval fetters, grasped the talisman of science, and strode into the light of modern times. Yet all this left Islam unmoved. Wrapping itself in the tatters of Saracenic civilization, the Moslem East continued to fall behind. Even its military power presently vanished, for the Turk sank into lethargy and ceased to cultivate the art of war. For a time the West, busied with internal conflicts, hesitated to attack the East, so great was the prestige of the Ottoman name. But the crushing defeat of the Turks in their rash attack upon Vienna in 1683 showed the West that the Ottoman Empire was far gone in decrepitude. Thenceforth, the empire was harried mercilessly by Western assaults and was saved from collapse only by the mutual jealousies of Western Powers, quarrelling over the Turkish spoils. However, not until the nineteenth century did the Moslem world, as a whole, feel the weight of Western attack. Throughout the eighteenth century the West assailed the ends of the Moslem battle-line in eastern Europe and the Indies, but the bulk of Islam, from Morocco to Central Asia, remained almost immune. The Moslem world failed to profit by this respite. Plunged in lethargy, contemptuous of the European "Misbelievers," and accepting defeats as the inscrutable will of Allah, Islam continued to live its old life, neither knowing nor caring to know anything about Western ideas or Western progress. Such was the decrepit Moslem world which faced nineteenth-century Europe, energized by the Industrial Revolution, armed as never before by modern science and invention which had unlocked nature's secrets and placed hitherto undreamed-of weapons in its aggressive hands. The result was a foregone conclusion. One by one, the decrepit Moslem states fell before the Western attack, and the whole Islamic world was rapidly partitioned among the European Powers. England took India and Egypt, Russia crossed the Caucasus and mastered Central Asia, France conquered North Africa, while other European nations grasped minor portions of the Moslem heritage. The Great War witnessed the final stage in this process of subjugation. By the terms of the treaties which marked its close, Turkey was extinguished and not a single Mohammedan state retained genuine independence. The subjection of the Moslem world was complete on paper. On paper! For, in its very hour of apparent triumph, Western domination was challenged as never before. During those hundred years of Western conquest a mighty internal change had been coming over the Moslem world. The swelling tide of Western aggression had at last moved the "immovable" East. At last Islam became conscious of its decrepitude, and with that consciousness a vast ferment, obscure yet profound, began to leaven the 250,000,000 followers of the Prophet from Morocco to China and from Turkestan to the Congo. The first spark was fittingly struck in the Arabian desert, the cradle of Islam. Here, at the opening of the nineteenth century, arose the Wahabi movement for the reform of Islam, which presently kindled the far-flung "Mohammedan Revival," which in its turn begat the movement known as "Pan-Islamism." Furthermore, athwart these essentially internal movements there came pouring a flood of external stimuli from the West-ideas such as parliamentary government, nationalism, scientific education, industrialism, and even ultramodern concepts like feminism, socialism, Bolshevism. Stirred by the interaction of all these novel forces and spurred by the ceaseless pressure of European aggression, the Moslem world roused more and more to life and action. The Great War was a shock of terrific potency, and to-day Islam is seething with mighty forces fashioning a new Moslem world. What are those forces moulding the Islam of the future? To their analysis and appraisal the body of this book is devoted. THE NEW WORLD OF ISLAM "Das Alte stürzt, es ändert sich die Zeit, CHAPTER I SCHILLER: Wilhelm Tell. THE MOHAMMEDAN REVIVAL By the eighteenth century the Moslem world had sunk to the lowest depth of its decrepitude. Nowhere were there any signs of healthy vigor; everywhere were stagnation and decay. Manners and morals were alike execrable. The last vestiges of Saracenic culture had vanished in a barbarous luxury of the few and an equally barbarous degradation of the multitude. Learning was virtually dead, the few universities which survived fallen into dreary decay and languishing in poverty and neglect. Government had become despotism tempered by anarchy and assassination. Here and there a major despot like the Sultan of Turkey or the Indian "Great Mogul" maintained some semblance of state authority, albeit provincial pashas were forever striving to erect independent governments based, like their masters', on tyranny and extortion. The pashas, in turn, strove ceaselessly against unruly local chiefs and swarms of brigands who infested the countryside. Beneath this sinister hierarchy groaned the people, robbed, bullied, and ground into the dust. Peasant and townsman had alike lost all incentive to labor or initiative, and both agriculture and trade had fallen to the lowest level compatible with bare survival. As for religion, it was as decadent as everything else. |