Page:The Moslem World Vol XI.djvu/114

94 paralysis—which characterizes even the classic lands of the Faith. In the story of Moslem conquest and expansion, stately language veils the brutal butcheries which, even down into recent times, have followed Mohammed's sanction of the sword. As calmly as if he were discussing American democracy does Dr. Mann sketch the political fortunes of the Ottomans. Not a hint is conveyed of the labyrinth of iniquity through which Turkey has tottered to its downfall. Abdul Hamid is politely dismissed as a political passe, but no mention is made of his massacres of Armenian Christians, which, even for two decades before the Great War, shocked the heart of decent humanity. There are no pictures of slave-markets or harems. There is not a paragraph in reprobation of Islam's age-long blight on womanhood. On the contrary, an apology (p. 77) is offered for the veil, the purdah and even for polygamy and concubinage! The camera presents no faces of the millions of disheveled, neglected, Moslem children, nor of the fierce semi-barbarians who, like the Kurds and Baluchis, mumble prayers toward Mecca and live by lance and plunder. The literary touch is so lightsome that one does not feel the dead weight of tradition and animism, which hangs on the Moslem mind.^ All this is another story, about which the author has chosen to be silent.

From the viewpoint of Christian missions it is in the conclusions and suggestions of the final chapter that the present book reveals its chief defect. Here the dispassionate historian loses his critical acumen to indulge in theoretical musings, dangerously akin to the ex-Kaiser's flattering compromise when, in 1898, that world-aspiring monarch consorted with the Sultan at Constantinople, linked Pan-Islamism with German propaganda, and, as "Hadji Wilhelm," at Damascus, decked the sepulcher of Saladin with flowers.

How does our author diagnose the disease of the modern Mohammedan world? All its present woes and problems he ascribes to that "catastrophe" which forever destroyed its political unity, viz., the Mongolian invasions of Western Asia, beginning in the 13th century with the "cataclysm of the Great Khans," ending with the death of Tamerlane in 1405 (pp. 110-112). This is a sad load to heap on the heads of Hulagu and the Terrible Tartar of Samarkand! The modern assassins may wash their hands in innocence! Islam's general ailment, according to Dr. Mann, is not one of corruption but only of ^disruption. The bones are broken but the blood is pure. Islam has not failed because of inherent incompetence or insufficiency to meet progressively the higher needs of man, but because, through no fault of its own, it lost its political solidarity and has been prevented from making "any essential progress for seven centuries" (p. Iio). Such is the argument. The responsibility is with those mediaeval Mongols! What boots it that the ferocious hordes of Timur, "the Scourge of God," were themselves disciples of the Prophet? Eo non exculpantur!

In considering the preferred solution of the present status we must charitably remember that Dr. Mann wrote before the War. What is his remedy for the ills of the Near East, and of Islam as a whole? Not a superficial varnishing with European culture (oberflachliche Vberkleidung mit europaischem Kulturfimis), nor a puritanical revival of the primitive faith and practice after the manner of the Hanbalites and Wahhabitcs. So far, so good. Our author's panacea is wrapped up in two words, "Fortbildung" and "Kultur"—by which he means the further development of Islam within the limits and toward the goal of a strictly autochthonous {bodenstdndig) Mussulman 'Cf. Zwemer's The influence of Animism on Islam, Macmtllian, 1920.