“Not going into the matter more fully, we would say that after the various wars in which Turkey has been engaged recently, and after the Balkan war particularly, the Empire of the Khalifa was reduced to such narrow limits that Muslims considered the irreducible minimum of temporal power adequate for the defence of the Faith to be the restoration of the territorial status quo ante bellum....
“When asking for the restoration of the territorial status quo ante bellum, Muslims do not rule out changes which would guarantee to the Christians, Jews, and Mussulmans, within the scheme of the Ottoman sovereignty, security of life and property and opportunities of autonomous development, so long as it is consistent with the dignity and independence of the sovereign State. It will not be a difficult matter. We have here an Empire in which the various communities live together. Some already are sufficiently independent and others hope—and here I refer to India—to get a larger degree of autonomy than they possess at the present moment; and consistently with our desire to have autonomous development ourselves, we could not think of denying it to Arabs or Jews or Christians within the Turkish Empire.”
He went on as follows:
“The third claim that the Mussulmans have charged us with putting before you is based on a series of injunctions which require the Khalifa to be the warden of the three sacred Harams of Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem; and overwhelming Muslim sentiment requires that he should be the warden of the holy shrines of Nejef, Kerbela, Kazimain, Samarra, and Baghdad, all of which are situated within the confines of the ‘Island of Arabia.’
“Although Muslims rely on their religious obligations for the satisfaction of the claims which I have specified above, they naturally find additional support in your own pledge, Sir, with regard to Constantinople, Thrace, and Asia Minor, the populations of which are overwhelmingly Muslim. They trust that a pledge so solemnly given and recently renewed will be redeemed in its entirety. Although the same degree of sanctity cannot be claimed for Constantinople as for the three sacred Harams—Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem—Constantinople is nevertheless held very sacred by all the Muslims of the world, and the uninterrupted historic tradition of nearly five centuries has created such an overwhelming sentiment with regard to Islambol, or the ‘City of Islam’—a title which no city has up to this time enjoyed—that an effort to drive the Turks out ‘bag and baggage’ from the seat of the Khilafat is bound to be regarded by the Muslims of the world as a challenge of the modern Crusaders to Islam and of European rule to the entire East, which cannot be taken up by the Muslim world or the East without great peril to our own Empire, and, in fact, to the Allied dominions in Asia and Africa. In this connection, Sir, I might mention one point, that the Muslims cannot tolerate any affront to Islam in keeping the Khalifa as a sort of hostage in Constantinople. He is not the Pope at the Vatican, much less can he be the Pope at Avignon, and I am bound to say that the recent action of the Allied Powers is likely to give rise in the Muslim world to feelings which it will be very difficult to restrain, and which would be very dangerous to the peace of the world.”
With regard to the question of the Caliphate and temporal power, on which the Indian delegation had been instructed to insist particularly, M. Mohammed Ali, in order to make the Moslem point of view quite clear, wrote as follows:[20]
“The moment this claim is put forward we are told that the West has outgrown this stage of human development, and that people who relieved the Head of a Christian Church of all temporal power are not prepared to maintain the temporal power of the Head of the Muslim Church. This idea is urged by the supporters of the Laic Law of France with all the fanaticism of the days of the Spanish Inquisition, and in England, too. Some of the most unprejudiced people wonder at the folly and temerity of those who come to press such an anachronistic claim. Others suggest that the Khalifa should be ‘vaticanised’ even if he is to retain Constantinople, while the Government of India, who should certainly have known better, say that they cannot acquiesce in Muslim statements which imply temporal allegiance to the Khilafat on the part of Indian Muslims, or suggest that temporal power is of the essence of the Khilafat. Where such criticisms and suggestions go astray is in misunderstanding the very nature and ideal of Islam and the Khilafat, and in relying on analogies from faiths which, whatever their original ideals, have, for all practical purposes, ceased to interpret life as Islam seeks to do.”
As he had said in the course of his official interview with the British Premier, as Islam is not “a set of doctrines and dogmas, but a way of life, a moral code, and a social polity,”—
“Muslims regard themselves as created to serve the one Divine purpose that runs through the ages, owing allegiance to God in the first place and acknowledging His authority alone in the last resort. Their religion is not for Sabbaths and Sundays only, or a matter for churches and temples. It is a workaday faith, and meant even more for the market-place than the mosque. Theirs is a federation of faith, a cosmopolitan brotherhood, of which the personal centre is the Khalifa. He is not a Pope and is not even a priest, and he certainly has no pretensions to infallibility. He is the head of Islam’s Republic, and it is a mere accident, and an unfortunate accident at that, that he happens to be a king. He is the Commander of the Faithful, the President of their Theocratic Commonwealth, and the Leader of all Mussulmans in all matters for which the Koran and the Traditions of the Prophet, whose successor he is, provide guidance.”