File 756/1917 Pt 2-3 ‘ARAB BULLETIN Nos 66-114’ [‎261r] (530/834)

sovereignty unlawful. As Snouck Hurgionje has repeatedly
written, the Sultan receives recognition of his aspirations through
the ignorance of European Powers, in a manner different from
that which they intended, yet more consonant with the historical
and legal principles of the Mohammedan religion. The majority
of Sunnis ; in their need of a political centre of action against
Europe, waive the difficulties which their own doctrines raise
against the Caliphate of the Ottoman Sultans.
Anyone following the native press must be aware that
those Mohammedans who are not Ottoman subjects turn towards
Turkey, not because they believe the Moslem faith in danger,
but because they hope for the eventual restoration of the unity
and political independence of Islam. It would be easy to quote
innumerable examples of this, but I will content myself with
an extract from a long anti-Italian article written by an Indian
at one time residing in Cyrenaica, and published in the Cairo
Nationalist newspaper El-Alam. on September 25, 1912. In
discussing the rumours of peace in the near future between
Italy and Turkey, the writer The lowest of the four classes into which East India Company civil servants were divided. A Writer’s duties originally consisted mostly of copying documents and book-keeping. sorrowfully draws attention
to the continual European occupation of Moslem territories.
He declares that Turkey is the only State capable of resisting
similar disasters, and concludes : “ My belief in this is due to
the fact that Khutbas are recited in the name of H.M. the Sultan
m all the territories of Islam, though the Ottoman Government
does not hold them in its effective dominion. 1 It would be
difficult to be more explicit than this.
In accepting the Ottoman or any other Caliphate, Moham
medans are fully aware that they are deceiving their Christian
masters, and that they are living in a chronic state of political
protest. It is really rather curious that European States
should be competing with one another to revive artificially
an institution which died of its own accord many centuries ago,
and which, in its existence, is completely opposed to their own
sovereignty over regions inhabited by Mohammedans. I cannot
repeat too often that the Caliphate is nothing but a universal
sovereignty of Islam, or, in other words, a form of political
Pan-Islamism. The doctors or Ulema, whose duty it is to
maintain the unity and integrity of their religious doctrines,
have never had spiritual, moral or bureaucratic relations with
the Caliphs. For a European State with Mohammedan subjects
the recognition of the Caliph does not signify a provision for their
religious or spiritual needs, but merely an introduction into
its government of a germinating, but nevertheless, dangerous
foreign sovereignty. The risk of serious political trouble is run in
the event of the majority of Mohammedan people recognising
a different Caliph. Lastly, it contributes to the maintenance