Page:Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje - Mohammedanism (1916).djvu/129

 122 during the Middle Ages. The great difference is that the Mohammedan community erected this mediæval custom into a system unalterable like all prescriptions based on its infallible "Agreement" (Ijmâʿ). Here lay the great difficulty when the nineteenth and twentieth centuries placed the Moslim world face to face with a civilization that had sprung up outside its borders and without its collaboration, that was from a spiritual point of view by far its superior and at the same time possessed of sufficient material power to thrust the Mohammedans aside wherever they seemed to be an impediment in its way. A long series of the most painful experiences, meaning as many encroachments upon the political independence of Mohammedan territories, ended by teaching Islâm that it had definitely to change its lines of conduct. The times were gone when relations with the non-Mussulman world quite different from those foreseen by the mediæval theory might be considered as exceptions to the rule, as temporary concessions to transitory necessities. In ever wider circles a thorough revision of the system came to be considered as a requirement of the time. The fact that the number of Mohammedans subject to foreign rule increased enormously, and by far surpassed those of the citizens of independent Mohammedan states, made the problem almost as interesting to Western nations as to the Mohammedans themselves. Both parties