Chapter II: Pan-Islamism (2)

Sir Theodore Morison describes the attitude of Moslem liberals. How Pan-Islamists with anti-Western sentiments feel is well set forth by an Egyptian, Yahya Siddyk, in his well-known book, _The Awakening of the Islamic Peoples in the Fourteenth Century of the Hegira_.[65] The book is doubly interesting because the author has a thorough Western education, holding a law degree from the French university of Toulouse, and is a judge on the Egyptian bench. Although, writing nearly a decade before the cataclysm, Yahya Siddyk clearly foresaw the imminence of the European War. "Behold," he writes, "these Great Powers ruining themselves in terrifying armaments; measuring each other's strength with defiant glances; menacing each other; contracting alliances which continually break and which presage those terrible shocks which overturn the world and cover it with ruins, fire, and blood! The future is God's, and nothing is lasting save His Will."

Yahya Siddyk considers the Western world degenerate. "Does this mean," he asks, "that Europe, our 'enlightened guide,' has already reached the summit of its evolution? Has it already exhausted its vital force by two or three centuries of hyperexertion? In other words: is it already stricken with senility, and will it see itself soon obliged to yield its civilizing rôle to other peoples less degenerate, less neurasthenic, that is to say, younger, more robust, more healthy, than itself? In my opinion, the present marks Europe's apogee, and its immoderate colonial expansion means, not strength, but weakness. Despite the aureole of so much grandeur, power, and glory, Europe is to-day more divided and more fragile than ever, and ill conceals its malaise, its sufferings, and its anguish. Its destiny is inexorably working out!...

"The contact of Europe on the East has caused us both much good and much evil: good, in the material and intellectual sense; evil, from the moral and political point of view. Exhausted by long struggles, enervated by a brilliant civilization, the Moslem peoples inevitably fell into a malaise; but they are not stricken, they are not dead! These peoples, conquered by the force of cannon, have not in the least lost their unity, even under the oppressive régimes to which the Europeans have long subjected them....

"I have said that the European contact has been salutary to us from both the material and intellectual point of view. What reforming Moslem princes wished to impose by force on their Moslem subjects is to-day realized a hundredfold. So great has been our progress in the last twenty-five years in science, letters, and art that we may well hope to be in all these things the equals of Europe in less than half a century....

"A new era opens for us with the fourteenth century of the Hegira, and this happy century will mark our Renaissance and our great future! A new breath animates the Mohammedan peoples of all races; all Moslems are penetrated with the necessity of work and instruction! We all wish to travel, do business, tempt fortune, brave dangers. There is in the East, among the Mohammedans, a surprising activity, an animation, unknown twenty-five years ago. There is to-day a real public opinion throughout the East."

The author concludes: "Let us hold firm, each for all, and let us hope, hope, hope! We are fairly launched on the path of progress: let us profit by it! It is Europe's very tyranny which has wrought our transformation! It is our continued contact with Europe that favours our evolution and inevitably hastens our revival! It is simply history repeating itself; the Will of God fulfilling itself despite all opposition and all resistance.... Europe's tutelage over Asiatics is becoming more and more nominal--the gates of Asia are closing against the European! Surely we glimpse before us a revolution without parallel in the world's annals. A new age is at hand!"

If this was the way Pan-Islamists were thinking in the opening years of the century, it is clear that their views must have been confirmed and intensified by the Great War.[66] The material power of the West was thereby greatly reduced, while its prestige was equally sapped by the character of the peace settlement and by the attendant disputes which broke out among the victors. The mutual rivalries and jealousies of England, France, Italy, and their satellites in the East have given Moslems much food for hopeful thought, and have caused corresponding disquietude in European minds. A French publicist recently admonished his fellow Europeans that "Islam does not recognize our colonial frontiers," and added warningly, "the great movement of Islamic union inaugurated by Djemal-ed-Din el-Afghani is going on."[67]

The menacing temper of Islam is shown by the furious agitation which has been going on for the last three years among India's 70,000,000 Moslems against the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire. This agitation is not confined to India. It is general throughout Islam, and Sir Theodore Morison does not overstate the case when he says: "It is time the British public realized the gravity of what is happening in the East. The Mohammedan world is ablaze with anger from end to end at the partition of Turkey. The outbreaks of violence in centres so far remote as Kabul and Cairo are symptoms only of this widespread resentment. I have been in close touch with Mohammedans of India for close upon thirty years and I think it is my duty to warn the British public of the passionate resentment which Moslems feel at the proposed dismemberment of the Turkish Empire. The diplomats at Versailles apparently thought that outside the Turkish homelands there is no sympathy for Turkey. This is a disastrous blunder. You have but to meet the Mohammedan now in London to realize the white heat to which their anger is rising. In India itself the whole of the Mohammedan community from Peshawar to Arcot is seething with passion upon this subject. Women inside the Zenanas are weeping over it. Merchants who usually take no interest in public affairs are leaving their shops and counting-houses to organize remonstrances and petitions; even the mediæval theologians of Deoband and the Nadwatul-Ulama, whose detachment from the modern world is proverbial, are coming from their cloisters to protest against the destruction of Islam."[68]

Possibly the most serious aspect of the situation is that the Moslem liberals are being driven into the camp of political Pan-Islamism. Receptive though the liberals are to Western ideas, and averse though they are to Pan-Islamism's chauvinistic, reactionary tendencies, Europe's intransigeance is forcing them to make at least a temporary alliance with the Pan-Islamic and Nationalist groups, even though the liberals know that anything like a holy war would dig a gulf between East and West, stop the influx of Western stimuli, favour reactionary fanaticism, and perhaps postpone for generations a modernist reformation of Islam.

Perhaps it is symptomatic of a more bellicose temper in Islam that the last few years have witnessed the rapid spread of two new puritan, fanatic movements--the Ikhwan and the Salafîya. The Ikhwan movement began obscurely about ten years ago in inner Arabia--the Nejd. It is a direct outgrowth of Wahabism, from which it differs in no essential respect. So rapid has been Ikhwanism's progress that it to-day absolutely dominates the entire Nejd, and it is headed by desert Arabia's most powerful chieftain, Bin Saud, a descendant of the Saud who headed the Wahabi movement a hundred years ago. The fanaticism of the Ikhwans is said to be extraordinary, while their programme is the old Wahabi dream of a puritan conversion of the whole Islamic world.[69] As for the Salafî movement, it started in India even more obscurely than Ikhwanism did in Arabia, but during the past few years it has spread widely through Islam. Like Ikhwanism, it is puritanical and fanatical in spirit, its adherents being found especially among dervish organizations.[70] Such phenomena, taken with everything else, do not augur well for the peace of the East.

So much for Pan-Islamism's religious and political sides. Now let us glance at its commercial and industrial aspects--at what may be called economic Pan-Islamism.

Economic Pan-Islamism is the direct result of the permeation of Western ideas. Half a century ago the Moslem world was economically still in the Middle Ages. The provisions of the sheriat, or Moslem canon law, such as the prohibition of interest rendered economic life in the modern sense impossible. What little trade and industry did exist was largely in the hands of native Christians or Jews. Furthermore, the whole economic life of the East was being disorganized by the aggressive competition of the West. Europe's political conquest of the Moslem world was, in fact, paralleled by an economic conquest even more complete. Everywhere percolated the flood of cheap, abundant European machine-made goods, while close behind came European capital, temptingly offering itself in return for loans and concessions which, once granted, paved the way for European political domination.

Yet in economics as in politics the very completeness of Europe's triumph provoked resistance. Angered and alarmed by Western exploitation, Islam frankly recognized its economic inferiority and sought to escape from its subjection. Far-sighted Moslems began casting about for a _modus vivendi_ with modern life that would put Islam economically abreast of the times. Western methods were studied and copied. The prohibitions of the sheriat were evaded or quietly ignored.

The upshot has been a marked evolution toward Western economic standards. This evolution is of course still in its early stages, and is most noticeable in lands most exposed to Western influences like India, Egypt, and Algeria. Yet everywhere in the Moslem world the trend is the same. The details of this economic transformation will be discussed in the chapter devoted to economic change. What we are here concerned with is its Pan-Islamic aspect. And that aspect is very strong. Nowhere does Islam's innate solidarity come out better than in the economic field. The religious, cultural, and customary ties which bind Moslem to Moslem enable Mohammedans to feel more or less at home in every part of the Islamic world, while Western methods of transit and communication enable Mohammedans to travel and keep in touch as they never could before. New types of Moslems--wholesale merchants, steamship owners, business men, bankers, even factory industrialists and brokers--are rapidly evolving; types which would have been simply unthinkable a century, or even half a century, ago.

And these new men understand each other perfectly. Bound together both by the ties of Islamic fraternity and by the pressure of Western competition, they co-ordinate their efforts much more easily than politicals have succeeded in doing. Here liberals, Pan-Islamists, and nationalists can meet on common ground. Here is no question of political conspiracies, revolts, or holy wars, challenging the armed might of Europe and risking bloody repression or blind reaction. On the contrary, here is merely a working together of fellow Moslems for economic ends by business methods which the West cannot declare unlawful and dare not repress.

What, then, is the specific programme of economic Pan-Islamism? It is easily stated: the wealth of Islam for Moslems. The profits of trade and industry for Moslem instead of Christian hands. The eviction of Western capital by Moslem capital. Above all, the breaking of Europe's grip on Islam's natural resources by the termination of concessions in lands, mines, forests, railways, custom-houses, by which the wealth of Islamic lands is to-day drained away to foreign shores.

Such are the aspirations of economic Pan-Islamism. They are wholly modern concepts, the outgrowth of those Western ideas whose influence upon the Moslem world I shall now discuss.[71]

FOOTNOTES:

[25] Islam has not only won much ground in India, Brahmanism's homeland, but has also converted virtually the entire populations of the great islands of Java and Sumatra, where Brahmanism was formerly ascendant.

[26] The small Parsi communities of India, centring in Bombay, are the sole surviving representatives of Zoroastrianism. They were founded by Zoroastrian refugees after the Mohammedan conquest of Persia in the seventh century A.D.

[27] Though Mecca is forbidden to non-Moslems, a few Europeans have managed to make the Hajj in disguise, and have written their impressions. Of these, Snouck Hurgronje's _Mekka_ (2 vols., The Hague, 1888) and _Het Mekkaansche Feest_ (Leiden, 1889) are the most recent good works. Also see Burton and Burckhardt. A recent account of value from the pen of a Mohammedan liberal is: Gazanfar Ali Khan, _With the Pilgrims to Mecca; The Great Pilgrimage of A. H. 1319 (A.D. 1902)_, with an Introduction by Arminius Vambéry (London, 1905).

[28] The Shiite Persians of course refused to recognize any Sunnite or orthodox caliphate; while the Moors pay spiritual allegiance to their own Shereefian sultans.

[29] The Turkish name for Constantinople.

[30] On the caliphate, see Sir W. Muir, _The Caliphate: Its Rise, Decline, and Fall_ (Edinburgh, 1915); Sir Mark Sykes, _The Caliph's Last Heritage_ (London, 1915); XX, "L'Islam après la Guerre," _Revue de Paris_, 15 January, 1916; "The Indian Khilafat Delegation," _Foreign Affairs_, July, 1920 (Special Supplement).

[31] Literally, "he who is guided aright."

[32] "Seyid" means "Lord." This title is borne only by descendants of the Prophet.

[33] The explorer Dr. Nachtigal.

[34] On the Islamic fraternities in general and the Sennussiya in particular see W. S. Blunt, _The Future of Islam_ (London, 1882); O. Depont and X. Coppolani, _Les Confréries réligieuses musulmanes_ (Paris, 1897); H. Duveyrier, _La Confrérie musulmane de Sidi Mohammed ben Ali es Sénoussi_ (Paris, 1884); A. Le Chatelier, _Les Confréries musulmanes du Hedjaz_ (Paris, 1887); L. Petit, _Confréries musulmanes_ (Paris, 1899); L. Rinn, _Marabouts et Khouan_ (Algiers, 1884); A. Servier, _Le Nationalisme musulman_ (Constantine, Algeria, 1913); Simian, _Les Confréries islamiques en Algérie_ (Algiers, 1910); Achmed Abdullah (himself a Sennussi), "The Sennussiyehs," _The Forum_, May, 1914; A. R. Colquhoun, "Pan-Islam," _North American Review_, June, 1906; T. R. Threlfall, "Senussi and His Threatened Holy War," _Nineteenth Century_, March, 1900; Captain H. A. Wilson, "The Moslem Menace," _Nineteenth Century and After_, September, 1907; ... "La Puissance de l'Islam: Ses Confréries Réligieuses," _Le Correspondant_, 25 November and 10 December, 1909. The above judgments, particularly regarding the Sennussiya, vary greatly, some being highly alarmist, others minimizing its importance. A full balancing of the entire subject is that of Commandant Binger, "Le Péril de l'Islam," _Bulletin du Comité de l'Afrique française_, 1902. Personal interviews of educated Moslems with El Sennussi are Si Mohammed el Hechaish, "Chez les Senoussia et les Touareg," _L'Expansion Coloniale française_, 1900; Muhammad ibn Utman, _Voyage au Pays des Sénoussia à travers la Tripolitaine_ (translated from the Arabic), Paris, 1903.

[35] On Moslem missionary activity in general, see Jansen, _Verbreitung des Islams_ (Berlin, 1897); M. Townsend, _Asia and Europe_, pp. 46-49, 60-61, 81; A. Le Chatelier, _L'Islam au dix-neuvième Siècle_ (Paris, 1888); various papers in _The Mohammedan World To-day_ (London, 1906).

[36] T. R. Threlfall, "Senussi and His Threatened Holy War," _Nineteenth Century_, March, 1900.

[37] D. A. Forget, _L'Islam et le Christianisme dans l'Afrique centrale_, p. 65 (Paris, 1900). For other statements regarding Moslem missionary activity in Africa, see G. Bonet-Maury, _L'Islamisme et le Christianisme en Afrique_ (Paris, 1906); E. W. Blyden, _Christianity, Islam, and the Negro Race_ (London, 1887); Forget, _op. cit._

[38] A. Guérinot, "L'Islam et l'Abyssinie," _Revue du Monde musulman_, 1918. Also see similar opinion of the Protestant missionary K. Cederquist, "Islam and Christianity in Abyssinia," _The Moslem World_, April, 1921.

[39] S. Brobovnikov, "Moslems in Russia," _The Moslem World_, January, 1911.

[40] Broomhall, _Islam in China_ (London, 1910); Nigârèndé, "Notes sur les Musulmans Chinois," _Revue du Monde musulman_, January, 1907; paper on Islam in China in _The Mohammedan World To-day_ (London, 1906).

[41] See papers on Islam in Java and Sumatra in _The Mohammedan World To-day_ (London, 1906); A. Cabaton, _Java, Sumatra, and the Dutch East Indies_ (translated from the Dutch), New York, 1916.

[42] Quoted from article by "X," "Le Pan-Islamisme et le Pan-Turquisme," _Revue du Monde musulman_, March, 1913. This authoritative article is, so the editor informs us, from the pen of an eminent Mohammedan--"un homme d'étât musulman." For other activities of Djemal-ed-Din, see A. Servier, _Le Nationalisme musulman_, pp. 10-13.

[43] Quoted from W. G. Palgrave, _Essays on Eastern Questions_, p. 111 (London, 1872).

[44] A. Vambéry, _Western Culture in Eastern Lands_, p. 351 (London, 1906).

[45] Abdul Hamid's Pan-Islamic schemes were first clearly discerned by the French publicist Gabriel Charmes as early as 1881, and his warnings were published in his prophetic book _L'Avenir de la Turquie--Le Panislamisme_ (Paris, 1883).

[46] Gabriel Hanotaux, "La Crise méditerranéenne et l'Islam," _Revue Hebdomadaire_, April 13, 1912.

[47] See "X," "La Situation politique de la Perse," _Revue du Monde musulman_, June, 1914; B. Temple, "The Place of Persia in World-Politics," _Proceedings of the Central Asian Society_, May 4, 1910; W. M. Shuster, _The Strangling of Persia_ (New York, 1912).

[48] Quoted from A. Vambéry, "Die türkische Katastrophe und die Islamwelt," _Deutsche Revue_, July, 1913.

[49] Shah Mohammed Naimatullah, "Recent Turkish Events and Moslem India," _Asiatic Review_, October, 1913.

[50] Quoted by F. Farjanel, "Le Japon et l'Islam," _Revue du Monde musulman_, November, 1906.

[51] Farjanel, _supra_.

[52] Quoted by Vambéry, _supra_.

[53] Vambéry, "An Approach between Moslems and Buddhists," _Nineteenth Century and After_, April, 1912.

[54] Vambéry, "An Approach between Moslems and Buddhists," _Nineteenth Century and After_, April, 1912.

[55] Special cable to the New York _Times_, dated Rome, May 28, 1919.

[56] Sir T. Morison, "England and Islam," _Nineteenth Century and After_, July, 1919.

[57] H. H. The Aga Khan, _India in Transition_, p. 158 (London, 1918).

[58] This hatred of Western civilization, as such, will be discussed in the next chapter.

[59] Ernst Paraquin, formerly Ottoman lieutenant-colonel and chief of general staff, in the _Berliner Tageblatt_, January 24, 1920.

[60] A. Vambéry, _La Turquie d'aujourd'hui et d'avant Quarante Ans_, pp. 71, 72 (Paris, 1898).

[61] A. Servier, _Le Nationalisme musulman_, p. 182.

[62] B. Temple, "The Place of Persia in World-Politics," _Proceedings of the Central Asian Society_, May, 1910.

[63] L. Rinn, _Marabouts et Khouan_, p. vi.

[64] Sir T. Morison, "England and Islam," _op. cit._

[65] Yahya Siddyk, _Le Reveil des Peuples islamiques au quatorzième Siècle de l'Hégire_ (Cairo, 1907). Also published in Arabic.

[66] For a full discussion of the effect of the Great War upon Asiatic and African peoples, see my book _The Rising Tide of Colour against White World-Supremacy_ (New York and London, 1920).

[67] L. Massignon, "L'Islam et la Politique des Alliés," _Revue des Sciences politiques_, June, 1920.

[68] Sir T. Morison, "England and Islam," _op. cit._

[69] For the Ikhwan movement, see P. W. Harrison, "The Situation in Arabia," _Atlantic Monthly_, December, 1920; S. Mylrea, "The Politico-Religious Situation in Arabia," _The Moslem World_, July, 1919.

[70] For the Salafî movement, see "Wahhabisme--Son Avenir sociale et le Mouvement salafî," _Revue du Monde musulman_, 1919.

[71] On the general subject of economic Pan-Islamism, see A. Le Chatelier, "Le Reveil de l'Islam--Sa Situation économique," _Revue Économique internationale_, July, 1910; also his article "Politique musulmane," _Revue du Monde musulman_, September, 1910; M. Pickthall, "La Morale islamique," _Revue Politique internationale_, July, 1916; S. Khuda Bukhsh, _Essays: Indian and Islamic_ (London, 1912).