File 53/1915 Part IV 'German War: Turkey; Caliphate etc' [‎234v] (465/481)

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who, while devoted to the culture and habits of the past, are moving along
the path of unorthodox mysticism, which knows no immutable formulae nor
restriction of thought. These may be recognised in persons like the Grand
Shelabi of Konia, who is equally conversant with Oriental and Occidental
ideas, or the Bahai whose teaching ha§ found some adherents in England
and the United States.
Class I.— The highest type among the moderns, is a person of good
family who has entirely absorbed a Western education, and in the process
has become, as far as supernatural affairs are concerned, an agnostic, and in
mode of life a person who eats and dresses as an European. However, this
class labours under a decided disadvantage in being mentally unable to
absorb one of Hie basic ideas of European civilisation, and that is the idea
of nationalism. Having behind them centuries of Islamic tradition which
knows politically neither colour, tongue, nor frontiers, members of this class
are entirely baffled by the fundamental notion which runs through all
European teaching, which somehow connects past glories and wrongs with a
real or imaginary combination of language and blood. Thus to preach
nationalism to Bulgarians was easy enough ; though the Bulgarian people
have a borrowed tongue, and are a mixture of autochthonous and invading
peoples, a modicum of song, legend and fragmentary history was sufficient
to revive or invent a nation which is now a grim reality. To a Moslem, be
he Syrian, Egyptian, or Turk this is literally impossible; there is nothing
real, conscious or sub-conscious, which responds to the call of nationalism as
an European understands the word. However, though the real meaning of
nationalism is literally incomprehensible and unappreciable, they accepfthe
European idea of nationalism which underlies all European teaching and
apply it inevitably to Islam ; that is to the misty political idea of a vague
Caliphate vaguely ruling over a number of confederations of Moslems who
form the dominant political force in the region they inhabit, whether in a
majority or a minority.
I have been obliged to elaborate this idea at some length owing to the
fact that it governs all the actions and thoughts of those on the ^modern
side.
( lass I., whose characteristics I have already summarised, apply the
ideal of Nationalism to Islam on moderateand reasonable lines ; being already
of an European State. However, it mufet always be remembered that such
peisons, no matter how similar to us in thougnt and carriage they may seem,
are separated from us by an immense, if invisible gulf, and for the reasons
above stated cannot spontaneously recognise Christians of their own tono-ue
and blood as their co-nationalists, for though they no longer believe in the
Prophet they still believe in the Muslemin.
( lass IP Ihe second among the moderns are the poor, incompetent, or
criminal who have received an inferior European education, and whose
minds by circumstance or temperament, or both, are driven into more sinister
channels than the first class. Just as the members of Class I. apply the
catch words, phrases, and machinery of European Nationalist Liberalism to
Ulam, so do Class 11. apply the methods and violence of European Jacobinism,
Nihilism, Revolutionary Socialism and Anarchism to the body politic of
Sunni Mahommedanism, their position is mentally less confused than
Class I. for they have taken a cosmopolitan European doctrine and applied
it to an international religious organisation. Members of this class inevitably
drift towards the Committee of Union and Progress or its kindred or
affiliated revolutionary societies. In office their methods are those of the
french Commune, when out of office those of Ravachol. They combine the
fanaticism of Islam with the desperate ideas of International'Anarchy. In
theory they are atheists, but in practice they are Ghazis or Fedais. In
Moderns.
prosperous they desire no revolution, and where, as in Egypt, their majority
is unchallengable, they are ready to work on strictly constitutional lines, to
break up into parties and generally behave as if they were the inhabitants