e impracticable, so that the legists relaxed
the prescription by concessions to "the force of necessity." Resignation
was thus permitted, even recommended; but the submission to non-Musulmans
was always to be regarded as temporary and abnormal. Although the _partes
infidelium_ have grown larger and larger, the eye must be kept fixed upon
the centre, the Khalifate, where every movement towards improvement must
begin. A Western state that admits any authority of a khalif over its
Mohammedan subjects, thus acknowledges, _not_ the authority of a pope of
the Moslim Church, but in simple ignorance is feeding political programs,
which, however vain, always have the power of stirring Mohammedan masses to
confusion and excitement.

Of late years Mohammedan statesmen in their intercourse with their Western
colleagues are glad to take the latter's point of view; and, in discussion,
accept the comparison of the Khalifate with the Papacy, because they are
aware that only in this form the Khalifate can be made acceptable to powers
who have Mohammedan subjects. But for these subjects the Khalif is then
their true prince, who is temporarily hindered in the exercise of his
government, but whose right is acknowledged even by their unbelieving
masters.

In yet another respect the canonists need the aid of the temporal rulers.
An alert police is counted by them amongst the indispensable means of
securing purity of doctrine and life. They count it to the credit of
princes and governors that they enforced by violent measures seclusion and
veiling of the women, abstinence from drinking, and that they punished by
flogging the negligent with regard to fasting or attending public worship.
The political decay of Islam, the increasing number of Mohammedans under
foreign rule, appears to them, therefore, doubly dangerous, as they have
little faith in the proof of Islam's spiritual goods against life in a
freedom which to them means license.

They find that every political change, in these terrible times, is to the
prejudice of Islam, one Moslim people after another losing its independent
existence; and they regard it as equally dangerous that Moslim princes are
induced to accommodate their policy and government to new international
ideas of individual freedom, which threaten the very life of Islam. They
see the antagonism to all foreign ideas, formerly considered as a virtue
by every true Moslim, daily losing ground, and they are filled with
cons