The New World of Islam Part 8

[92] Both the above instances are taken from C. S. Cooper, _The Modernizing of the Orient_, pp. 339-340 (New York, 1914).

[93] An "Unbeliever"--in other words, a Christian.

[94] Quoted by A. Woeikof, _Le Turkestan russe_ (Paris, 1914).

[95] B. L. Putnam Weale, _The Conflict of Colour_, p. 193 (London, 1910).

[96] Quoted from H. H. Powers, _The Great Peace_, p. 82 (New York, 1918).

[97] L. Bertrand, _Le Mirage oriental_, pp. 441-442 (Paris, 1910).

[98] On this point see the very interesting essay by Meredith Townsend ent.i.tled "The Charm of Asia for Asiatics," in his book _Asia and Europe_, pp. 120-128.

[99] Townsend, _op. cit._, p. 104.

[100] H. Spender, "England, Egypt, and Turkey," _Contemporary Review_, October, 1906.

[101] Bertrand, pp. 209, 210.

[102] For discussion of this Hindu att.i.tude see W. Archer, _India and the Future_ (London, 1918); Young and Ferrers, _India in Conflict_ (London, 1920). Also see Hindu writings of this nature: H. Maitra, _Hinduism: The World-Ideal_ (London, 1916); A. Coomaraswamy, _The Dance of Siva_ (New York, 1918); M. N. Chatterjee, "The World and the Next War," _Journal of Race Development_, April, 1916.

[103] Archer, pp. 11, 12.

[104] Cromer, _Political and Literary Essays_, p. 25.

[105] Townsend, _Asia and Europe_, p. 128.

[106] I have dealt with it at length in my _Rising Tide of Colour against White World-Supremacy_.

[107] Townsend, p. 97.

[108] Rev. C. F. Andrews, _The Renaissance in India_, p. 4 (London, 1911). For other similar accounts of the effect of the Russo-j.a.panese War upon Oriental peoples generally, see A. M. Low, "Egyptian Unrest,"

_The Forum_, October, 1906; F. Farjanel, "Le j.a.pon et l'Islam," _Revue du Monde musulman_, November, 1906; "Oriental Ideals as Affected by the Russo-j.a.panese War," _American Review of Reviews_, February, 1905; A.

Vambery, "j.a.pan and the Mahometan World," _Nineteenth Century and After_, April, 1905; Yahya Siddyk, _op. cit._, p. 42.

[109] A. Vambery, "An Approach between Moslems and Buddhists,"

_Nineteenth Century and After_, April, 1912.

[110] For the effect of the war on Asia and Africa, see A. Demangeon, _Le Declin de l'Europe_ (Paris, 1920); H. M. Hyndman, _The Awakening of Asia_ (New York, 1919); E. D. Morel, _The Black Man's Burden_ (New York, 1920); F. B. Fisher, _India's Silent Revolution_ (New York, 1919); also, my _Rising Tide of Color against White World-Supremacy_.

CHAPTER IV

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 religious sanction. The mantle of religion of course covers its ministers, the priests forming a privileged caste. But, with these exceptions, Oriental despotism has usually known no bounds; and the despot, so long as he respected religion and the priesthood, has been able to act pretty much as he chose. In the very dawn of history we see Pharaoh exhausting all Egypt to gratify his whim for a colossal pyramid tomb, and throughout history Oriental life has been cursed by this fatal political simplicity.

Now manifold human experience has conclusively proved that despotism is a bad form of government in the long run. Of course there is the legendary "benevolent despot"--the "father of his people," surrounded by wise counsellors and abolis.h.i.+ng evils by a nod or a stroke of the pen.

That is all very well in a fairy-tale. But in real life the "benevolent despot" rarely happens and still more rarely succeeds himself. The "father of his people" usually has a pompous son and a vicious grandson, who bring the people to ruin. The melancholy trinity--David, Solomon, Rehoboam--has reappeared with depressing regularity throughout history.

Furthermore, even the benevolent despot has his limitations. The trouble with all despots, good or bad, is that their rule is entirely _personal_. Everything, in the last a.n.a.lysis, depends on the despot's personal will. Nothing is fixed or certain. The benevolent despot himself may discard his benevolence overnight, and the fate of an empire may be jeopardized by the monarch's infatuation for a woman or by an upset in his digestion.

We Occidentals have, in fact, never known "despotism," in its Simon Pure, Oriental sense; not even under the Roman Empire. Indeed, we can hardly conceive what it means. When we speak of a benevolent despot we usually think of the "enlightened autocrats" of eighteenth-century Europe, such as Frederick the Great. But these monarchs were not "despots" as Orientals understand it. Take Frederick, for example. He was regarded as absolute. But his subjects were not slaves. Those proud Prussian officers, starched bureaucrats, stiff-necked burghers, and stubborn peasants each had his sense of personal dignity and legal status. The unquestioning obedience which they gave Frederick was given not merely because he was their king, but also because they knew that he was the hardest-working man in Prussia and tireless in his devotion to the state. If Frederick had suddenly changed into a lazy, depraved, capricious tyrant, his "obedient" Prussians would have soon showed him that there were limits to his power.

In the Orient it is quite otherwise. In the East "there lies upon the eyes and foreheads of all men a law which is not found in the European decalogue; and this law runs: 'Thou shalt honour and wors.h.i.+p the man whom G.o.d shall set above thee for thy King: if he cherish thee, thou shalt love him; and if he plunder and oppress thee thou shalt still love him, for thou art his slave and his chattel.'"[111] The Eastern monarch may immure himself in his harem, casting the burdens of state upon the shoulders of a grand vizier. This vizier has thenceforth limitless power; the life of every subject is in his hands. Yet, any evening, at the pout of a dancing-girl, the monarch may send from his harem to the vizier's palace a negro "mute," armed with the bowstring. And when that black mute arrives, the vizier, doffing his robe of office, and with neither question nor remonstrance, will bare his neck to be strangled.

That is real despotism--the despotism that the East has known.

Such is the political tradition of the Orient. And it is surely obvious that under such a tradition neither ordered government nor consistent progress is possible. Eastern history is, in fact, largely a record of sudden flowerings and equally sudden declines. A strong, able man cuts his way to power in a period of confusion and decay. He must be strong and able, or he would not win over other men of similar nature struggling for the coveted prize. His energy and ability soon work wonders. He knows the rough-and-ready way of getting things done. His vigour and resolution supply the driving-power required to compel his subordinates to act with reasonable efficiency, especially since incompetence or dishonesty are punished with the terrible severity of the Persian king who flayed an unjust satrap alive and made the skin into the seat of the official chair on which the new satrap sat to administer justice.

While the master lives, things may go well. But the master dies, and is succeeded by his son. This son, even a.s.suming that he has inherited much of his father's ability, has had the worst possible upbringing. Raised in the harem, surrounded by obsequious slaves and designing women, neither his pride nor his pa.s.sions have been effectively restrained, and he grows up a pompous tyrant and probably precociously depraved. Such a man will not be apt to look after things as his father did. And as soon as the master's eye s.h.i.+fts, things begin to go to pieces. How can it be otherwise? His father built up no governmental machine, functioning almost automatically, as in the West. His officers worked from fear or personal loyalty; not out of a patriotic sense of duty or impersonal _esprit de corps_. Under the grandson, matters get even worse, power slips from his incompetent hands and is parcelled out among many local despots, of whom the strongest cuts his way to power, a.s.suming that the decadent state is not overrun by some foreign conqueror. In either eventuality, the old cycle--David, Solomon, Rehoboam--is finished, and a new cycle begins--with the same destined end.

That, in a nutsh.e.l.l, is the political history of the East. It has, however, been modified or temporarily interrupted by the impact of more liberal political influences, exerted sometimes from special Eastern regions and sometimes from the West. Not all the Orient has been given over to unrelieved despotism. Here and there have been peoples (mostly mountain or pastoral peoples) who abhorred despotism. Such a people have always been the Arabs. We have already seen how the Arabs, fired by Islam, established a mighty caliphate which, in its early days, was a theocratic democracy. Of course we have also seen how the older tradition of despotism rea.s.serted itself over most of the Moslem world, how the democratic caliphate turned into a despotic sultanate, and how the liberty-loving Arabs retired sullenly to their deserts. Political liberalism, like religious liberalism, was crushed and almost forgotten.

Almost--not quite; for memories of the Meccan caliphate, like memories of Motazelism, remained in the back of men's minds, ready to come forth again with better days. After all, free Arabia still stood, with every Arab tribesman armed to the teeth to see that it kept free. And then, there was Islam. No court theologian could entirely explain away the fact that Mohammed had said things like "All Believers are brothers" and "All Moslems are free." No court chronicler could entirely expunge from Moslem annals the story of Islam's early days, known as the Wakti-Seadet, or "Age of Blessedness." Even in the darkest times Moslems of liberal tendencies must have been greatly interested to read that the first caliph, Abu Bekr, after his election by the people, said: "Oh nation! you have chosen me, the most unworthy among you, for your caliph. Support me as long as my actions are just. If otherwise, admonish me, rouse me to a sense of my duty. Truth alone is desirable, and lies are despicable.... As I am the guardian of the weak, obey me only so long as I obey the Sheriat [Divine Law]. But if you see that I deviate but in the minutest details from this law, you need obey me no more."[112]

In fine, no subsequent distortions could entirely obliterate the fact that primitive Islam was the supreme expression of a freedom-loving folk whose religion must necessarily contain many liberal tendencies. Even the sheriat, or canon law, is, as Professor Lybyer states, "fundamentally democratic and opposed in essence to absolutism."[113]

Vambery well summarizes this matter when he writes: "It is not Islam and its doctrines which have devastated the western portion of Asia and brought about the present sad state of things; but it is the tyranny of the Moslem princes, who have wilfully perverted the doctrines of the Prophet, and sought and found maxims in the Koran as a basis for their despotic rule. They have not allowed the faintest suspicion of doubt in matters of religion, and, efficaciously distorting and crus.h.i.+ng all liberal principles, they have prevented the dawn of a Moslem Renaissance."[114]

In the opening chapter we saw how Oriental despotism reached its evil maximum in the eighteenth century, and how the Mohammedan Revival was not merely a puritan reformation of religion, but was also in part a political protest against the vicious and contemptible tyrants who misruled the Moslem world. This internal movement of political liberalism was soon cross-cut by another political current coming in from the West. Comparing the miserable decrepitude of the Moslem East with Europe's prosperity and vigour, thinking Moslems were beginning to recognize their shortcomings, and they could not avoid the conclusion that their woes were in large part due to their wretched governments.

Indeed, a few even of the Moslem princes came to realize that there must be some adoption of Western political methods if their countries were to be saved from destruction. The most notable examples of this new type of Oriental sovereign were Sultan Mahmud II of Turkey and Mehemet Ali of Egypt, both of whom came to power about the beginning of the nineteenth century.

Of course none of these reforming princes had the slightest idea of granting their subjects const.i.tutional liberties or of transforming themselves into limited monarchs. They intended to remain absolute, but absolute more in the sense of the "enlightened autocrat" of Europe and less in the sense of the purely Oriental despot. What they wanted were true organs of government--army, civil service, judiciary, etc.--which would function efficiently and semi-automatically as governmental machinery, and not as mere amorphous ma.s.ses of individuals who had to be continuously prodded and punished by the sovereign in order to get anything done.

Mahmud II, Mehemet Ali, and their princely colleagues persisted in their new policies, but the outcome of these "reforms from above" was, on the whole, disappointing. The monarchs might build barracks and bureaux on European models and fill them with soldiers and bureaucrats in European clothes, but they did not get European results. Most of these "Western-type" officials knew almost nothing about the West, and were therefore incapable of doing things in Western fas.h.i.+on. In fact, they had small heart for the business. Devoid of any sort of enthusiasm for ideas and inst.i.tutions which they did not comprehend, they applied themselves to the work of reform with secret ill-will and repugnance, moved only by blind obedience to their sovereign's command. As time pa.s.sed, the military branches did gain some modern efficiency, but the civil services made little progress, adopting many Western bureaucratic vices but few or none of the virtues.

Meanwhile reformers of quite a different sort began to appear: men demanding Western innovations like const.i.tutions, parliaments, and other phenomena of modern political life. Their numbers were constantly recruited from the widening circles of men acquainted with Western ideas through the books, pamphlets, and newspapers which were being increasingly published, and through the education given by schools on the Western model which were springing up. The third quarter of the nineteenth century saw the formation of genuine political parties in Turkey, and in 1876 the liberal groups actually wrung from a weak sultan the grant of a parliament.

These early successes of Moslem political liberalism were, however, followed by a period of reaction. The Moslem princes had become increasingly alarmed at the growth of liberal agitation among their subjects and were determined to maintain their despotic authority. The new Sultan of Turkey, Abdul Hamid, promptly suppressed his parliament, savagely persecuted the liberals, and restored the most uncompromising despotism. In Persia the Shah repressed a nascent liberal movement with equal severity, while in Egypt the spendthrift rule of Khedive Ismail ended all native political life by provoking European intervention and the imposition of British rule. Down to the Young-Turk revolution of 1908 there were few overt signs of liberal agitation in those Moslem countries which still retained their independence. Nevertheless, the agitation was there, working underground. Hundreds of youthful patriots fled abroad, both to obtain an education and to conduct their liberal propaganda, and from havens of refuge like Switzerland these "Young-Turks," "Young-Persians," and others issued manifestoes and published revolutionary literature which was smuggled into their homelands and eagerly read by their oppressed brethren.[115]

As the years pa.s.sed, the cry for liberty grew steadily in strength. A young Turkish poet wrote at this time: "All that we admire in European culture as the fruit of science and art is simply the outcome of liberty. Everything derives its light from the bright star of liberty.

Without liberty a nation has no power, no prosperity; without liberty there is no happiness; and without happiness, existence, true life, eternal life, is impossible. Everlasting praise and glory to the s.h.i.+ning light of freedom!"[116] By the close of the nineteenth century keen-sighted European observers noted the working of the liberal ferment under the surface calm of absolutist repression. Thus, Arminius Vambery, revisiting Constantinople in 1896, was astounded by the liberal evolution that had taken place since his first sojourn in Turkey forty years before. Although Constantinople was subjected to the severest phase of Hamidian despotism, Vambery wrote, "The old attachment of Turkey for the absolute regime is done for. We hear much in Europe of the 'Young-Turk' Party; we hear even of a const.i.tutional movement, political emigres, revolutionary pamphlets. But what we do not realize is the ferment which exists in the different social cla.s.ses, and which gives us the conviction that the Turk is in progress and is no longer clay in the hands of his despotic potter. In Turkey, therefore, it is not a question of a Young-Turk Party, because every civilized Ottoman belongs to this party."[117]

In this connection we should note the stirrings of unrest that were now rapidly developing in the Eastern lands subject to European political control. By the close of the nineteenth century only four considerable Moslem states--Turkey, Persia, Morocco, and Afghanistan--retained anything like independence from European domination. Since Afghanistan and Morocco were so backward that they could hardly be reckoned as civilized countries, it was only in Turkey and Persia that genuine liberal movements against native despotism could arise. But in European-ruled countries like India, Egypt, and Algeria, the cultural level of the inhabitants was high enough to engender liberal political aspirations as well as that mere dislike of foreign rule which may be felt by savages as well as by civilized peoples.

These liberal aspirations were of course stimulated by the movements against native despotism in Turkey and Persia. Nevertheless, the two sets of phenomena must be sharply distinguished from each other. The Turkish and Persian agitations were essentially movements of liberal reform. The Indian, Egyptian, Algerian, and kindred agitations were essentially movements for independence, with no settled programme as to how that independence should be used after it had been attained. These latter movements are, in fact, "nationalist" rather than liberal in character, and it is in the chapters devoted to nationalism that they will be discussed. The point to be noted here is that they are really coalitions, against the foreign ruler, of men holding very diverse political ideas, embracing as these "nationalist" coalitions do not merely genuine liberals but also self-seeking demagogues and even stark reactionaries who would like to fasten upon their liberated countries the yoke of the blackest despotism. Of course all the nationalist groups use the familiar slogans "freedom" and "liberty"; nevertheless, what many of them mean is merely freedom and liberty _from foreign tutelage_--in other words, independence. We must always remember that patriotism has no essential connection with liberalism. The Spanish peasants, who shouted "liberty" as they rose against Napoleon's armies, greeted their contemptible tyrant-king with delirious enthusiasm and welcomed his glorification of absolutism with cries of "Long live chains!"

The period of despotic reaction which had afflicted Turkey and Persia since the beginning of the last quarter of the nineteenth century came dramatically to an end in the year 1908. Both countries exploded into revolution, the Turks deposing the tyrant Abdul Hamid, the Persians rising against their infamous ruler Muhammad Ali Shah, "perhaps the most perverted, cowardly, and vice-sodden monster that had disgraced the throne of Persia in many generations."[118] These revolutions released the pent-up liberal forces which had been slowly gathering strength under the repression of the previous generation, and the upshot was that Turkey and Persia alike blossomed out with const.i.tutions, parliaments, and all the other political machinery of the West.

How the new regimes would have worked in normal times it is profitless to speculate, because, as a matter of fact, the times were abnormal to the highest degree. Unfortunately for the Turks and Persians, they had made their revolutions just when the world was entering that profound _malaise_ which culminated in the Great War. Neither Turkey nor Persia were allowed time to attempt the difficult process of political transformation. Lynx-eyed Western chancelleries noted every blunder and, in the inevitable weakness of transition, pounced upon them to their undoing. The Great War merely completed a process of Western aggression and intervention which had begun some years before.

This virtual absence of specific fact-data renders largely academic any discussion of the much-debated question whether or not the peoples of the Near and Middle East are capable of "self-government"; that is, of establis.h.i.+ng and maintaining ordered, const.i.tutional political life.

Opinions on this point are at absolute variance. Personally, I have not been able to make up my mind on the matter, so I shall content myself with stating the various arguments without attempting to draw any general conclusion. Before stating these contrasted view-points, however, I would draw attention to the distinction which should be made between the Mohammedan peoples and the non-Mohammedan Hindus of India.

Moslems everywhere possess the democratic political example of Arabia as well as a religion which, as regards its own followers at least, contains many liberal tendencies. The Hindus have nothing like this.

Their political tradition has been practically that of unrelieved Oriental despotism, the only exceptions being a few primitive self-governing communities in very early times, which never exerted any widespread influence and quickly faded away. As for Brahminism, the Hindu religion, it is perhaps the most illiberal cult which ever afflicted mankind, dividing society as it does into an infinity of rigid castes between which no real intercourse is possible; each caste regarding all those of lesser rank as unclean, polluting creatures, scarcely to be distinguished from animals. It is obvious that with such handicaps the establishment of true self-government will be apt to be more difficult for Hindus than for Mohammedans, and the reader should keep this point in mind in the discussion which follows.