AUTHOR OF: THE RISING TIDE OF COLOUR, THE STAKES OF THE WAR, PRESENT DAY EUROPE: ITS NATIONAL STATES OF MIND, THE TRENCH REVOLUTION IN SAN DOMINGO, ETC. WITH MAP SECOND IMPRESSION LONDON CHAPMAN AND HALL, Ltd . 1922 Printed in Great Britain by Richard Clay & Sons Limited. Bungay, Suffolk...

The entire world of Islam is to-day in profound ferment. From Morocco to China and from Turkestan to the Congo, the 250,000,000 followers of the Prophet Mohammed are stirring to new ideas, new impulses, new aspirations. A gigantic transformation is taking place whose results must affect all mankind. This transformation was greatly stimulated by the late war. But it began long before. More than a hundred years ago the seeds were sown, and ever since then it has been evolving; at first slowly and

THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE OLD ISLAMIC WORLD The rise of Islam is perhaps the most amazing event in human history. Springing from a land and a people alike previously negligible, Islam spread within a century over half the earth, shattering great empires, overthrowing long-established religions, remoulding the souls of races, and building up a whole new world—the world of Islam. The closer we examine this development the more extraordinary does it appear. The other great religions won their way

THE MOHAMMEDAN REVIVAL By the eighteenth century the Moslem world had sunk to the lowest depth of its decrepitude. Nowhere were there any signs of healthy vigour, everywhere were stagnation and decay. Manners and morals were alike execrable. The last vestiges of Saracenic culture had vanished in a barbarous luxury of the few and an equally barbarous degradation of the multitude. Learning was virtually dead, the few universities which survived fallen into dreary decay and languishing in poverty a

PAN-ISLAMISM Like all great movements, the Mohammedan Revival is highly complex. Starting with the simple, puritan protest of Wahabism, it has developed many phases, widely diverse and sometimes almost antithetical. In the previous chapter we examined the phase looking toward an evolutionary reformation of Islam and a genuine assimilation of the progressive spirit as well as the external forms of Western civilization. At the same time we saw that these liberal reformers are as yet only a minorit

THE INFLUENCE OF THE WEST The influence of the West is the great dynamic in the modern transformation of the East. The ubiquitous impact of Westernism is modifying not merely the Islamic world but all non-Moslem Asia and Africa, [72] and in subsequent pages we shall examine the effects of Western influence upon the non-Moslem elements of India. Of course Western influence does not entirely account for Islam's recent evolution. We have already seen that, for the last hundred years, Islam itself h

POLITICAL CHANGE The Orient's chief handicap has been its vicious political tradition. From earliest times the typical form of government in the East has been despotism—the arbitrary rule of an absolute monarch, whose subjects are slaves, holding their goods, their honours, their very lives, at his will and pleasure. The sole consistent check upon Oriental despotism has been religion. Some critics may add "custom"; but it amounts to the same thing, for in the East custom always acquires a religi

NATIONALISM The spirit of nationality is one of the great dynamics of modern times. In Europe, where it first attained self-conscious maturity, it radically altered the face of things during the nineteenth century, so that that century is often called the Age of Nationalities. But nationalism is not merely a European phenomenon. It has spread to the remotest corners of the earth, and is apparently still destined to effect momentous transformations. Given a phenomenon of so vital a character, the

NATIONALISM IN INDIA India is a land of paradox. Possessing a fundamental geographical unity, India has never known real political union save that recently imposed externally by the British "Raj." Full of warlike stocks, India has never been able to repel invaders. Occupied by many races, these races have never really fused, but have remained distinct and mutually hostile, sundered by barriers of blood, speech, culture, and creed. Thus India, large and populous as Europe or China, has neither, l

ECONOMIC CHANGE One of the most interesting phenomena of modern world-history is the twofold conquest of the East by the West. The word "conquest" is usually employed in a political sense, and calls up visions of embattled armies subduing foreign lands and lording it over distant peoples. Such political conquests in the Orient did of course occur, and we have already seen how, during the past century, the decrepit states of the Near and Middle East fell an easy prey to the armed might of the Eur

SOCIAL CHANGE The momentous nature of the contemporary transformation of the Orient is nowhere better attested than by the changes effected in the lives of its peoples. That dynamic influence of the West which is modifying governmental forms, political concepts, religious beliefs, and economic processes is proving equally potent in the range of social phenomena. In the third chapter of this volume we attempted a general survey of Western influence along all the above lines. In the present chapte

SOCIAL UNREST AND BOLSHEVISM Unrest is the natural concomitant of change—particularly of sudden change. Every break with past, however normal and inevitable, implies a necessity for readjustment to altered conditions which causes a temporary sense of restless disharmony until the required adjustment has been made. Unrest is not an exceptional phenomenon; it is always latent in every human society which has not fallen into complete stagnation, and a slight amount of unrest should be considered a

Our survey of the Near and Middle East is at an end. What is the outstanding feature of that survey? It is: Change. The "Immovable East" has been moved at last—moved to its very depths. The Orient is to-day in full transition, flux, ferment, more sudden and profound than any it has hitherto known. The world of Islam, mentally and spiritually quiescent for almost a thousand years, is once more astir, once more on the march. Whither? We do not know. Who would be bold enough to prophesy the outcome

General: Accents and capitalisation, particularly of sources, have been left as in the original. Pages 8, 274, 303: Spelling of Kharijites/Kharidjites/Kharadjites left as in source. Page 21: Inquity replaced with iniquity. Page 39: Hyphen added to El-Afghani for consistency. Page 45: Zawais replaced with Zawias. Page 49: Hyphen removed from re-percussions. Page 94: Hyphen removed from easy-going. Footnote 257: Italicization removed from March following The Century. Footnotes 257, 259: Full stop