It is just in this last century that the Turks, through a concourse of circumstances, have sometimes succeeded in coining some small advantage out of this doubtfully legal, now meaningless title.
Means of communication increased a thousandfold have now brought into contact Mohammedan nations which formerly knew nothing, or hardly anything, about each other’s existence. The approximately 230,000,000 of Mohammedans living under non-Moslim rule mostly do not possess sufficient historical remembrance to understand that the change in administration has been an improvement for them. They see the political past of Islâm only through the veil of legend, and when the present gives occasion for grievances and objections—and where are these lacking?—they are rather prone to believe that all their complaints would be cured, if only the Commander of the Faithful could take their interests in hand. Of the maladministration under which the real subjects of the Sultan of Turkey are labouring, they hear little and experience nothing. And the Sultan, who has been the worst in this respect, until in 1909 he was deposed and exiled by his subjects, has worked more zealously and more successfully than any of his predecessors for the dissemination amongst the Mohammedans of the false imaginations concerning the Caliphate. His wily but short-sighted policy, which brought his own empire ever nearer to its fall, made him seek solace for many a failure in Panislamic intrigues, staged by unscrupulous but mostly ignorant and blundering confederates, who showed the credulous the ideal picture of a Caliph, assuring them that it was a good likeness of Abdulhamîd.
There has often been talk of an organization of Panislâm under the direction of Abdulhamîd, but this is without foundation. In 1897, in connexion with some foul, secretly circulated, pamphlets, which the most intimate counsellors of the Sultan in vying for his favour had let loose against each other, I tried to describe the atmosphere around the despot,[1] and when, in 1908, I witnessed the first two months of the revolution in Constantinople, I found a complete justification of my description.[2] That gang of shallow intriguers was little qualified to lead a serious international movement. They exploited the connexions established with certain Mohammedans of consequence in non-Turkish territory to increase their own advantage and prestige, without being of any real use in the resuscitation of the dead Caliphate. The establishment of a few Turkish consulates in Mohammedan countries under European rule also failed of its aim. They usually forgot to pay the consuls their salaries; the consuls did not even know the languages of the populations amongst whom they lived, and took no pains to learn them. Their mostly very “advanced” manner of living did not serve to heighten respect for the man who sent them.
It is a fact that Panislâm cannot work with any program except with the worn-out, flagrantly impracticable, program of world-conquest by Islâm; and this has lost its hold on all sensible adherents of Islâm; whereas, among the stupid multitude, which may still be tempted by the idea of war against all kâfirs, it can stir up only confusion and unrest. At most it may cause local disturbances; but it can never in any sense have a constructive influence.
Probably without intention, some European statesmen and writers have given a certain support to the Panislamic idea by their consideration, based on an absolute misunderstanding, of the Caliphate as a kind of Mohammedan papacy. Most of all did this conception find adherents in England at the time when that country was still considered to be the protector of the Turk against danger threatened by Russia. It was thought useful to make the British-Indian Moslim believe that the British Government was on terms of intimate friendship with the head of their church. Turkish statesmen made clever use of this error. Of course they could not admit before their European friends the real theory of the Caliphate with its mission of uniting all the faithful under its banner in order to make war on all kâfirs. They rejoiced all the more to see that these had formed about that institution a conception which, to be sure, was false, but for that very reason plausible to non-Mohammedans. They took good care not to correct it, for they were satisfied with being able, before their co-religionists, to point to the fact that even among the great non-Mohammedan powers the claim of the Ottomans to the Caliphate was recognized.
Although Panislâm was not organized, nevertheless in Mohammedan countries under European rule it often would oppose the normal development of a mutually desirable relation between the governing and the governed. Speculating on dissatisfaction in every form, it secretly worked as a disturbing element, without there being any hope that the division caused or intensified might lead to improvements.
All European powers must have hailed as a welcome consequence of the revolution of 1908 the fact that the Young Turks who forced the re-establishment of the constitution wanted to put an end to the mediæval mixture of religion and politics. The upholding of Islâm as a state-religion was on their part a concession to the old tradition, without prejudice to the complete equality of the adherents of all religions as citizens of the Turkish Empire. Re-born Turkey was to be a modern constitutional state in the full meaning of the word. For Caliphate and jihâd there was no room in such a state. Turks and Arabs, Greeks, Armenians, and Jews, and whoever else lived together under the Crescent, were to co-operate in liberty, equality, and fraternity to make Young Turkey into a state respected in international life. The empire of the Ottomans was not to presume on any interference with co-religionists living under non-Mohammedan rule. At most the government, in case such had reason to complain about the violation of their rights, might permit representations to be made similar to those which the Christian powers had so often addressed to Turkey in connexion with alleged oppression of Christian nations under Turkish rule.
Soon these ideals were shown to be too exalted for the time being. The greed of the European powers did not grant Young Turkey the rest necessary for internal reform. Upon the enthusiastic harmony of the first days of deliverance from the claws of despotism, there speedily followed the renascence of the old internal strife, now no longer held in leash by the common fear of the despot. The Committee of Unity and Progress, which before or behind the scenes had the direction of things, found itself constrained on one side to resort again to the hateful governing methods of despotism, on the other side to grant many concessions to the detriment of its own program, even to Moslim orthodoxy and to the beliefs and superstitions of the multitude. The fetish of the Caliphate had to be exhumed again from the museum of antiquities where it had temporarily been stored. As to the idea of jihâd, which was so closely connected with it, the European powers took care that it was not forgotten. Turkey was continually forced to a jihâd.
When we translate the word jihâd by “holy war” this is justified, inasmuch as such a war has for the Mohammedans a holy, a religious character. But it is a mistake to imagine that besides this there exists a non-holy or secular war. Apart from using the army to repress revolt against lawful authority, which must be considered as a police measure, Islâm knows no war other than the jihâd, and no other aim to the jihâd than the defence of the interests of Islâm against attacks by non-Mohammedans or the extension of the territory of Islâm to the detriment of the Dâr al-Harb, the country of the unbelievers. The wars which Turkey had to carry on under Abdulhamîd against Russia and against Greece have never been called by Turks and Arabs by any other name but jihâd, even if they were prudent enough not to use that term of mediæval fanaticism in their intercourse with Europeans. This holds true also of the war with Italy for the possession of Tripoli and of that with the Balkan States. For the Mohammedans, who continue in the old fashion mixing politics and religion, there is no other war but religious war. That a special edict of the Sultan-Caliph should be needed to stamp one of Turkey’s wars as a holy war, is one more of those ridiculous misconceptions of things Mohammedan, of which so many have become current in Europe. The Turks do not usually protest against such nonsense; but in their dealings with Europeans they mostly endorse it when their interest requires it. For no Moslim in the world, however, when Turkey is involved in war, does the question whether the Sultan has decreed the holy war possess a reasonable meaning. All this ought to be well considered if one is to understand correctly the political events of these days in so far as they involve Turkey.