Page:Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje - Mohammedanism (1916).djvu/138

 Rh of every opportunity to extend by force the dominion of Allah and His Messenger. With unsubdued unbelievers peace is not allowed; a truce for a period not exceeding ten years may be concluded if the interest of Islâm requires it.

The chapters of the Mohammedan law on holy war and on the conditions on which the submission of the adherents of tolerated religions is to be accepted seem to be a foolish pretension if we consider them by the light of the actual division of political power in the world. But here, too, to understand is better than to ridicule. In the centuries in which the system of Islâm acquired its maturity, such an aspiration after universal dominion was not at all ridiculous; and many Christian states of the time were far from reaching the Mohammedan standard of tolerance against heterodox creeds. The delicate point is this, that the petrification or at least the process of stiffening that has attacked the whole spiritual life of Islâm since about 1000 makes its accommodation to the requirements of modern intercourse a most difficult problem.

But it is not only the Mohammedan community that needed misfortune and humiliation before it was able to appreciate liberty of conscience; or that took a long time to digest those painful lessons of history. There are still Christian Churches which accept religious liberty only in circumstances that make supreme authority unattainable to them; and which, elsewhere,