anization because it is founded on a
practice coeval with their history.

Lastly, Semitic thought is a strong leaven which everywhere pervades the
minds of nations, aliens though they be, who have once admitted it; and
it will not easily be cast out. We have seen in Europe, even in England,
a land never brought physically into contact with Arabia, how long
Arabian thought, filtered as it was through France and Spain to our
shores, has dominated our ideas. Chivalry, a notion purely Bedouin, is
hardly yet extinct among us. Romance, the offspring of pre-Islamic
Arabia, is still a common motive of our action, and our poets express it
still, to the neglect of classic models, in the rhymed verse of Yemen.
The mass of our people still pray to the God of Abraham, and turn
eastwards towards that land which is Arabia's half-sister, the Holy Land
of the Jews.

If then we, who are mere aliens, find it impossible to escape this
subtle influence, what must it be for those races wholly or half Arabian
who have for centuries been impregnated with Islam, the quintessence of
Arabian thought? Who shall fix the term of its power, and say that it
cannot renew itself and live? "Send forth," says a famous English
writer, who was also a famous English statesman, "a great thought, as
you have done before, from Mount Sinai, from the villages of Galilee,
from the deserts of Arabia, and you may again remodel all men's
institutions, change their principles of action, and breathe a new
spirit into the scope of their existence."

But I must not lose myself in generalities or forget that it is for
practical Englishmen that I am writing. To be precise, I see two ways in
which it is probable that Islam will attempt to renew her spiritual
life, and two distinct lines of thought which according to external
circumstances she may be expected to follow--the first a violent and
hardly a permanent one, the second the true solution of her destiny.

Among the popular beliefs of Islam--and it is one common to every sect,
Shiite and Abadite, as well as Sunite--is this one, that in the latter
days of the world, when the power of God's worshippers shall have grown
weak and their faith corrupted, a leader shall arise who shall restore
the fortunes of the true believers. He shall begin by purging the earth
of injustice, fighting against oppressors wherever he shall find them,
Mohammedan as well as Infidel, and he shall teach the people a perfect
law which they sha