Page:Islam, Turkey, and Armenia, and How They Happened.djvu/54

48 bloody axes, clubs and daggers in their hands, eagerly inquiring whom they were to massacre, the Greeks or the Armenians.

2. The Character of the Ulemah. The general character of this religious party is corrupt and detrimental. They have only the Koran for their lifelong study, and shutting themselves against any modern or external influence, and relying upon the fatalistic principles of Islamic philosophy, and indulging in cruel pleasures, they live a very depraved life.

They believe that every event of life, good or bad, is pre-ordained of God, and that no human agency can modify it. "On man's forehead," they say, "his presonalpersonal [sic] destiny is written in a mysterious way that the guardian angels only can read it, and when his time is come they immediately take his soul; but before that appointed moment no enemy, no disease and no danger can cause death." This philosophy contradicts the idea of human freedom and responsibility, mortifies the aspiration towards the better, and leaves the energy of life as an instrument for the prevailing vice, corruption and oppression.

A language full of unimaginably corrupt expressions, a home discipline full of shameful inducements of hellish practices, a street life more wicked than that of Sodomite character, a religious teaching nothing more than a diabolic mechanism of cruelty, a pulpit advocating hatred and malice, a religious system of bloodshed and robbery, a book demoralizing the human likeness. This is the nearest description of the modern "Hell upon the earth." The