Page:Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje - The Holy War, Made in Germany (1915).djvu/24

 Rh in the Middle Ages not only with the Mohammedans: before and even long after the Reformation our ancestors did not think very differently on the matter. The difference is chiefly this, that Islâm has fixed all these mediæval regulations in the form of eternal laws, so that later generations, even if their views have changed, find it hard to emancipate themselves from them. This emancipation became all the more difficult because both the multitude and the scribes clung the more tightly to this questionable legacy of their ancestors, the more circumstances seemed to flout the realization of this mighty program. It is a fact that in the countries of Islâm all through the centuries little care has been given to the education of the masses, and the idea of a future world-domination was too pleasing to their vanity to be lightly discarded. The jurists, in their narrowness, did not