Page:Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje - The Holy War, Made in Germany (1915).djvu/28

 Rh which the population labours in such a country as Turkey has also excited aspirations to intellectual development. The Young-Turk movement of these late years loudly speaks for that.

In the more highly developed circles of all Mohammedan countries the conviction has become general that the mediæval mixture of religion and politics, which the system of Islâm wanted to uphold for ever, is not of our times. The Mohammedans have become inferiors in this world, politically and socially; so much so that the idea of a world-dominion founded on their religion could not keep anything of its attraction for all but the ignorant. The others are almost ashamed of the presumption expressed by the teaching of the jihâd, and try hard to prove that the law itself restricts its application to circumstances which do not occur any more.