Africa has, in fact, considerably diminished; but I
am not quite sure of the proportional increase of the liberty which the
natives of that continent enjoy at home.

Slavery as well as polygamy is in a certain sense to Mohammedans a sacred
institution, being incorporated in their Holy Law; but the practice of
neither of the two institutions is indispensable to the integrity of Islam.

All those antiquated institutions, if considered from the point of view of
modern international intercourse, are only a trifle in comparison with the
legal prescriptions of Islam concerning the attitude of the Mohammedan
community against the parts of the world not yet subject to its authority,
"the Abode of War" as they are technically called. It is a principal duty
of the Khalif, or of the chiefs considered as his substitutes in different
countries, to avail themselves of every opportunity to extend by force the
dominion of Allah and His Messenger. With unsubdued unbelievers _peace_
is not _allowed_; a _truce_ for a period not exceeding ten years may be
concluded if the interest of Islam requires it.

The chapters of the Mohammedan law on holy war and on the conditions on
which the submission of the adherents of tolerated religions is to be
accepted seem to be a foolish pretension if we consider them by the light
of the actual division of political power in the world. But here, too, to
understand is better than to ridicule. In the centuries in which the system
of Islam acquired its maturity, such an aspiration after universal dominion
was not at all ridiculous; and many Christian states of the time were
far from reaching the Mohammedan standard of tolerance against heterodox
creeds. The delicate point is this, that the petrification or at least the
process of stiffening that has attacked the whole spiritual life of Islam
since about 1000 A.D. makes its accommodation to the requirements of modern
intercourse a most difficult problem.

But it is not only the Mohammedan community that needed misfortune and
humiliation before it was able to appreciate liberty of conscience; or that
took a long time to digest those painful lessons of history. There
are still Christian Churches which accept religious liberty only in
circumstances that make supreme authority unattainable to them; and which,
elsewhere, would not disdain the use of material means to subdue spirits to
what they consider the absolute truth.

To judge such things with equity, we