The Future of Islam

by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt

The Shiites say also that this Móhdy will be no new personage, but that he lives already in the flesh, being no other than the twelfth and last of their recognized Imams, who was born in the year 260 of the Hejira, and whose name was Mohammed ibn El Hassan, Abul Kassem, El Móhdy, Lord of the Command and Lord of Time; and who, while yet a child, disappeared from the world, retaining nevertheless his authority. This Móhdy they expect when the Turkish rule is in decay. After accomplishing his vengeance and re-establishing justice he shall rule for an undetermined period, when Jesus the Son of Mary also shall come, and the Apostle Mohammed, an apparition which will announce the end of the world.[16]

It would seem, therefore, exceedingly probable that out of the religious ferment which we now see agitating Africa some enthusiast will arise who will announce himself as this Móhdy, and head an active movement of reform. Already, indeed, two such personages have made their appearance, one in Tripoli, of whom I heard much talk a year ago, and who is now said to be marching to join the defenders of Keruan; and a second quite recently in Soudan. It is not difficult to imagine the kind of reformation such an inspired Guide would preach. Indeed his rôle is marked out for him in the prophecies just quoted. He would purge the earth of injustice with the sword, and, breaking with all authority but that of the Koran he would seek to renew a kingdom of heaven on the model of Islam militant. It would be a repetition, but on a grander scale, of the Wahhabite movement of the eighteenth century, and, having a wider base of operations in the vast fanatical masses of North Africa, might achieve far more important results.

Even without pretending to the rank of an inspired guide, it is certain that a man of zeal and character might in the present crisis easily persuade the Malekite Arabs to reform their moral practice, if necessary to asceticism, by proving to them that they would thus regain their ascendancy in arms. On this basis a reformation would be easy; but it would be analogous to that of the Hussites and Anabaptists in Europe, rather than of the true Church reformation which succeeded these, and would hardly be universal or permanent.

I once heard a most distinguished Alem describe the qualifications of one who should preach a reform of this kind:—"The man," said he, "who would persuade us to reform must come, in the first place, of a well-recognized family. He must be either a prince, or a Sherif, or an hereditary saint. This would secure him from a first personal attack on the ground of seeming impiety. He must secondly be an Arab, gifted with the pure language of the Koran, for the Arabian Ulema would not listen to a barbarian; and he must possess commanding eloquence. A reformer must before all else be a preacher. Thirdly, he must be profoundly learned, that is to say, versed in all the subtleties of the law and in all that has been written in commentary on the Koran; and he must have a ready wit, so that in argument he may be able constantly to oppose authority with authority, quotation with quotation. Granted these three qualifications and courage and God's blessing, he may lead us where he will."

The chief obstacles, however, to a reformation of this sort would not be in the beginning, nor would they be wholly moral ones. The full programme of the Móhdy needs that he should conquer Mecca; and the land road thither of an African reformer lies blocked by Egypt and the Suez Canal. So that, unless he should succeed in crossing the Red Sea through Abyssinia (an invasion which, by the way, would fulfil another ancient prophecy, which states that the "Companions of the Elephant," the Abyssinians, shall one day conquer Hejaz), he could not carry out his mission. Nor, except as an ally against the Turk, would a fanatical reformer now find much sympathy in Arabia proper. The Peninsular Arabs have had their Puritan reformation already, and a strong reaction has set in amongst them in favour of liberal thought. They are in favour still of reform, but it is of another kind from that preached by Abd el Wahhab; and it is doubtful whether a new militant Islam would find many adherents amongst them.

The only strong advocate of such views at the present day among true Arabs in Arabia is the aged Sherif, Abd el Mutalleb, the Sultan's nominee, who indeed has spared no pains, since he was installed at Mecca, to fan the zeal of the North Africans. A Wahhabi in his youth, he is still a fierce Puritan; and it is possible that, should he live long enough (he is said to be ninety years old), he may be able to produce a corresponding zeal in Arabia. But at present the mass of the Arabs in Hejaz, no less than in Nejd and Yemen, are occupied with more humane ideas. Abd el Mutalleb's chief supporters in Mecca are not his own countrymen, but the Indian colony, descendants many of them of the Sepoy refugees who fled thither in 1857, and who have the reputation of being the most fanatical of all its residents. The true Arabs are in revolt against his authority.

Again, it is improbable that any enunciation of Puritan reform would find support among the northern races of Asia, which are uniformly sunk in gross sensuality and superstition; while Constantinople may be trusted to oppose all reform whatever. Wahhabism, when it overspread Southern Asia, never gained a foothold further north than Syria, and broke itself to pieces at last against the corrupt orthodoxy of Constantinople. And so too it would happen now. Abd el Hamid, in spite of his zeal for Islam, would see in the preaching of a moral reform only a new heresy; and, as we have seen, the Móhdy's mission is against all evil rule, the Sultan's and Caliph's not excepted. So that, unless Abd el Hamid places himself openly at the head of the warlike movement in Africa and so forestalls a rival, he is not likely long to give it his loyal support. Already there are symptoms of his regarding events in Tunis with suspicion, and on the first announcement of an inspired reformer he would, I believe, not hesitate to pronounce against him. I understand the Turkish military reinforcements at Tripoli quite as much in the light of a precaution against Arab reform as against infidel France.

Puritanism, then, on a militant basis, even if preached by the Móhdy himself, could hardly be either general or lasting, and its best result would probably be, that after a transient burst of energy, which would rouse the thought of Islam and renew her spiritual life, a humaner spirit, as in Arabia would take its place, and lead to a more lasting, because a more rational, reform.

But it was not to such a Puritan reformation that I was pointing when I expressed my conviction that Islam would in the end work out her salvation, nor do I hold it necessary that she should find any such deus ex machinâ as an inspired guide to point her out her road. Her reformation is indeed already begun, and may be gradually carried to its full results, by no violent means, and in a progressive, not a reactionary spirit. This only can be the true one, for it is a law of nations and of faiths, no less than of individuals, that they cannot really return upon their years, and that all beneficial changes for them must be to new conditions of life, not to old ones—to greater knowledge, not to less—to freedom of thought, not to its enslavement. Nor is there anything in the true principles of Islam to make such progress an unnatural solution of her destiny.

Mohammedanism in its institution, and for many centuries after its birth, was eminently a rationalistic creed; and it was through reason as well as faith that it first achieved its spiritual triumphs. If we examine its bases its early history, we must indeed admit this. The Koran, which we are accustomed to speak of as the written code of Mohammedan law, is in reality no legal text-book by which Mussulmans live. At best it enunciates clearly certain religious truths, the unity of God, the doctrine of rewards and punishments in a future life, and the revelation of God's claims on man. Psalms, many of them sublime, occupy the greater number of its chapters; promises of bliss to believers and destruction to unbelievers come next; then the traditional history of revelation as it was current among the Semitic race; and only in the later chapters, and then obscurely, anything which can properly be classed as law. Yet law is the essence of Islam, and was so from its earliest foundation as a social and religious polity; and it is evident that to it, and not to the Koran's dogmatic theology, Islam owed its great and long career of triumph in the world.