Page:Ossendowski - The Fire of Desert Folk.djvu/194

178 from the north or east that Fate demands action, this patience, calm and seeming tolerance will disappear as a morning mist before the burning sun of their flaming faith and only the severity of Islam will remain. And these messengers who are to point out and explain have already come—I have seen them in the whirlpool of revolution in Persia and Turkey, in the Moslem movement in Afghanistan. The great World War, the colonial policies of white peoples and the downfall of their power and spell over the colored races have furnished a new watchword for the coming of the hour.

Islam has not the characteristics of evolution in its soul, but manifests itself in a series of revolutionary bounds. Uniformity of thought has formed and held tightly together a large and strong organization, added to which piety maintains the impulse and contributes the element of persisting endurance. And the Moslems tenaciously persist not only morally but physically since, as nomads and small agriculturalists, always hardened by training for fighting, they have restricted and simple wants. They came to North Africa from the more barren plains of Asia, found here easier conditions of life and now ask nothing better than the chance to defend these possessions which they have acquired after persistent struggle and great effort. They love their country, this earth here burned by the sun, cracking and stony, there beside some well or watercourse drawing over itself a bright mantle of flowers and grass—they love it, because they bought it with their blood, because it nourishes them, because it has developed Islamic leaders, scholars and saints and is now hallowed by their ashes.