“The hatred which the Christian world attributes so gratuitously to us is only the reflection of its own animosity towards us. The centuries which have elapsed since the Renaissance have been unable to efface this hatred from the spirit of Christianity. It is now half a century since Orientalists of different countries have been doing their best to eradicate these voluntary errors, and to spread the truth with regard to Islamism; but they have not been able to change the old Christian antagonism with regard to us. The last Græco-Turkish war fully demonstrated this. ‘Cet animal est bien méchant. Quand on l’attaque il se défend!’ Our legitimate defence against unprovoked aggression was accounted a crime because the aggressors were Christians and according to the words of the mediæval troubadours we are the ‘Adorers of Moham.’
“I see that thoughtful minds, such as Father Hyacinthe, Draper, Carlyle, and others, are supposed to have investigated the tenets of Islamism. Is it really possible to make serious investigations into what you have been accustomed to look upon as a ‘multitude of contradictory and false[[23]] conceptions—the barbarous ideas of a false Prophet, the sanguinary aspirations of a barbarian’?
[23]. That this outburst is not entirely unprovoked or unjustified seems to be proved by an extract from a public speech of the late Lord Salisbury, in which he spoke of England’s antagonist in Egypt as representing “the most hideous side of barbarism which a false religion can produce”—this religion (the Mohammedan) being that of sixty millions of British subjects.
“And here I would say: The time for these blackguardisms, the fashion for these blasphemies, has passed. We live to-day in an age when everything has to submit to the process of analysis. We no longer rest satisfied with abstract ideas or despotic dicta. We insist upon the results of exact observation and study; we ask for concrete, logical judgment. You must study the Mohammedan faith; you must institute a fair, well-balanced comparison between our creed and other religions before you are in a position to judge, much less to condemn. Is such a comparison feasible? To my mind it is a task of supreme difficulty, and yet without an attempt in that direction it is impossible to be fair and unbiased towards the Mohammedan world.”
An accusation against Islam which Midhat resented more than any other was its supposed antagonism to letters and learning, an accusation which, by the way, is sufficiently refuted by the history of the Moors in Spain. In this connexion Midhat used to cite the following words of the Koran: “Advance with your lances in order to make room for your pens”—the term for “lance” and “pen” being identical in Arabic. The Koran thus intended to convey the idea that warlike advance was only to make way for opportunities of culture and enlightenment.
Talking one day to Midhat on these and kindred matters, I said:
“Midhat, they tell me at a certain Embassy that you are a fanatical old Turk who hates the stranger within the gates; though, to be frank with you, if I were a Turk, I too should hate them with a vengeance, after all the uncharitable things they say about Turkey.”
“And I tell you,” replied Midhat, “that you have only to read up the unbiased records of our history to learn that tolerance is the very basis of our conduct. Does not the word of Mohammed tell us: ‘Whosoever does wrong unto a Christian or a Jew shall find me as his accuser on the Day of Judgment’? Do not the Jews and the Mohammedans keep the same fasts and almost the same festivals? The principal difference I detect between them and us is that the Jews do not believe in Christ or Mohammed; whereas the Mohammedans believe in Moses, Christ, and the Prophets.
“The history of the Crusades (which has long since been, so to speak, a monopoly of the Christian world) is the greatest source of injustice to the Saracens. To-day it is acknowledged by those experts who have investigated this vast subject that the Christians domiciled in the East rarely made common cause with the Crusaders, and that those who did so were not molested by the Saracens after the withdrawal of the former. When the Crusaders of the Third Crusade got as far as Constantinople they found that the Byzantine Emperor and his Christian subjects were in close alliance with the Saracens. History relates that instead of directing their efforts against the Saracens, the Crusaders on more than one occasion fell out among themselves and robbed the Greeks. In fact, wherever the Crusaders went they brought rapine and seduction with them. Neither do we ever hear how it came to pass that the Christians in Asia never joined the Crusaders against the Saracens or assisted them in any way. Thus we are bound to assume that as far as their religion is concerned the Christian population was, at least at that time, not molested by the Mohammedans.
“I tell you that a Christian place of worship has never been desecrated by a Turk, except, as at the taking of Constantinople, during the heat of battle. And for this very simple reason: that the Koran expressly lays down that a Christian church is sacred as an edifice devoted to God, and must be respected as such. You yourself have had ample opportunity of seeing that this injunction has been strictly carried out in the past by the untouched condition of the many Christian monasteries on the road between Trebizond and Erzeroum. You can see it even in Constantinople to-day, where many mosques which were formerly Greek churches still show the images of Christian saints on the walls restored to-day, as they were over 500 years ago, notably in the Kaarie Mosque.[[24]] The fresco images of the saints of the Byzantine Church look down from the walls upon the Mohammedan worshippers.