Page:Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje - Mohammedanism (1916).djvu/140

 Rh progressive elements of Moslim society spontaneously meet us half-way. But behind them are the millions who firmly adhere to the old superstition and are supported by the canonists, those faithful guardians of what the infallible Community declared almost one thousand years ago to be the doctrine and rule of life for all centuries to come. Will it ever prove possible to move in one direction a body composed of such different elements, or will this body be torn in pieces when the movement has become irresistible?

We have more than once pointed to the catholic character of orthodox Islam. In fact, the diversity of spiritual tendencies is not less in the Moslim world than within the sphere of Christian influence; but in Islâm, apart from the political schisms of the first centuries, that diversity has not given rise to anything like the division of Christianity into sects. There is a prophetic saying, related by Tradition, which later generations have generally misunderstood to mean that the Mohammedan community would be split into seventy-three different sects. Moslim heresiologists have been induced by this prediction to fill up their lists of seventy-three numbers with all sorts of names, many of which represent nothing but individual opinions of more or less famous scholars on subordinate points of doctrine or law. Almost ninety-five per cent. of all Mohammedans are indeed bound together by a