future, but which yields nothing tangibly profitable in the present. Thus the pan-Islamic idea becomes weakened in the soul of the Mohammedan. It loses through contact with Christendom something of its impure and therefore corrupting magnificence. As opposed to this widely spread hope, the Christian has at all events an equivalent in the communion of saints. This exists not only in the enthusiastic consciousness of the Christian, but it emanates from the mission, recognizable by the Mohammedans and visible in its effects.

That the pan-Islamic hopes have no prospect of realization becomes more evident from year to year. The Christian European education which increasingly filters through from the mission schools to the common people does more and more to shake the visionary hopes of the Mohammedans. The united band of humble Christians becomes year by year, through deeds of love, stronger and more prominent. The pan-Islamic hope has no other foundation than the ever reiterated glowing descriptions of the Mecca pilgrims. They have indeed seen in Mecca the Moslem unity of belief; but in the Dutch East Indies no fruit rich in blessing has yet ripened for the Moslem. Not missionary work alone, but also many government measures undertaken in a Christlike spirit remove from European rule the odium of existing only for the oppression of the inferior races and link the duty of a service of love with the right to rule a conquered nation.

Thus the mission dries up the pan-Islamic movement; it shows the European in a new light, it deprives the panIslamic thought of a substantial part of its power of attraction. The hatred against the conqueror binds the people together in pan-Islamism; the love enjoined by the European mission weakens this bond and fastens by new threads the soul of this primitive people to its place under the foreign conqueror.

Pan-Islamism is one of those currents of spiritual feeling in the hearts of these Mohammedan peoples which must be diverted into another channel if ever Christianity is to find there full entrance.

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VII

POLITICAL CHANGES IN TURKEY

PROF. J. STEWART CRAWFORD, BEIRUT

T

HE proclamation of the Turkish Constitution in 1908 roused the Mohammedan portion of the empire to a new activity. Political and social influences, of which the Moslem masses had previously had but a dim conception, were now, with a startling emphasis, forced on the attention of Islam. With the introduction of the constitutional régime, the theocratic conception of the state had been, in effect, completely set aside. The nation was now asked to live its political life on a separate plane from that of the Mohammedan faith. Mass meetings were held in all the cities of the empire, at which orators vied with one another in expounding the new conception of nationalism. They laboured to prove that the life of the nation as a whole was a public affair that did not directly involve religious issues. These speakers announced, as though it was a great discovery, that the tests of loyal citizenship were purely civil and moral, and that in relation to the government the forms of a man's religious belief gave him no title to special privileges. Astonishing and ingenious arguments were brought forth from the teaching of their prophet, in the Koran and the Tradition, to show that these new political principles were not foreign to Islam, but were in accord with the purpose of its founder. These mass meetings were addressed by men of the new school, or at any rate, by those who professed to belong to the new school. The zealous leaders of ecclesiastical life-the Ulema, who

were devoted to theological study and to the principle of religious prestige-displayed only a passive sympathy with the new movement. An undercurrent of deep hostility was even then drawing the more active spirits of this class into a conspiracy of opposition. Nevertheless, for many months, no one publicly questioned the correctness of the new theory of nationalism.

It must be remembered that the people in most sections of the empire, for years previously, had been undergoing a process of education in modern political ideals. Although during the reign of Abd ul Hamid the newspapers had been compelled to avoid all revolutionary topics, or even mention of revolutionary events in other countries, nevertheless the news of the world was reported to the nation sooner or later, even though some parts of it were of necessity stated in guarded form. In particular, the awakening of Japan had been fully discussed by all classes alike. For the first time in history a Moslem people were stirred to a deep admiration for a heathen nation. The success of Japan restored faith in the power of an Oriental people to achieve as great results as could any Occidental nation. Of still greater significance was the fact that Japan had adopted Western science, Western organization, Western political standards, and a portion of what might be called Western social ideals, without officially accepting Western religion. In this significant omission lay the chief attraction for the Moslem mind in the story of Japan. The superficial fact that Russia, the ancient rival of Ottoman ambition, had been humiliated, only partially explained the enthusiastic interest of Mohammedan Turkey in Japanese successes. The full explanation lay rather in the fact that the story of Japan seemed to demonstrate the possibility of the assimilation, by an Oriental people, of Western forces and institutions without any apparent disloyalty to their former faith.

Thousands of young Moslem reformers took their cue from this feature of Japanese experience; viz., their acchievement of scientific, industrial, and social progress without a national change of religion. Henceforth, without hesitation, they could urge any degree of reform-and reform according to Western standards-without the implication of disloyalty to Islam. This was one phase of the education of the nation previous to the proclamation of the Constitution.

Another equally important phase of the social education of the Ottoman world has resulted from the introduction, near the beginning of the Hamidian régime, of the Kanuni Humayun, or the system of law and the machinery of courts and legal administration based on the Code Napoleon. This new code of law had been prepared, about 1876, by the Midhat Pasha school of reformers, in conjunction with the Constitution and the representative system of government which they had devised. The Constitution and the Parliament Abd ul Hamid soon suspended by an arbitrary exercise of autocratic will. By an equally arbitrary decision, he set in operation the principles and the machinery of the Kanun or Code Napoleon. Thus there had been established by imperial fiat a system of law other than the Sheriat or the sacred law of Islam. Both systems of law were henceforth to serve as parallel codes ostensibly on a par with each other, each to serve certain functions of individual and national life. In general men were left free to bring their lawsuits before the courts of either system as they preferred. Religious questions growing out of the life of Mohammedan citizens, such as inheritance, marriage, or divorce, were automatically referred to the Sheriat courts for decision. Cases not directly religious, or those in which other than Moslem interests were in. volved, all came before the Kanun system of courts, and