Page:Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje - Mohammedanism (1916).djvu/127

 120 movement of spiritual progress goes almost too fast, so that one revision of the stores of religion is immediately followed by another. Then dissension is likely to arise among the adherents of a religion; some of them come to the conclusion that there must be an end of sifting and think it better to lock up the treasuries once for all and to stop the dangerous enquiries; whereas others begin to entertain doubt concerning the value even of such goods as do not yet show any trace of decay.

The treasuries of Islâm are excessively full of rubbish that has become entirely useless; and for nine or ten centuries they have not been submitted to a revision deserving that name. If we wish to understand the whole or any important part of the system of Islâm, we must always begin by transporting ourselves into the third or fourth century of the Hijrah, and we must constantly bear in mind that from the Medina period downwards Islâm has always been considered by its adherents as found to regulate all the details of their life by means of prescriptions emanating directly or indirectly from God, and therefore incapable of being reformed. At the time when these prescriptions acquired their definite form, Islâm ruled an important portion of the world; it considered the conquest of the rest as being only a question of time; and, therefore, felt itself quite independent in the development of its law. There was little reason indeed for the Moslim canonists