date itself to Christian demands in its internal policy.
It contemplated, too, mainly a state of war, and it accepted slavery and
concubinage as war's natural concomitants. It did not understand that
some day Islam would have to live at peace with its neighbours, if it
would live at all, or that the general moral sense of the world would
be brought to bear upon it with such force that the higher instincts of
Moslems themselves should feel the necessity of restricting its old and
rather barbarous licence as to marriage and divorce. Yet these things
have come to pass, or are rapidly coming; and the best thinkers in Islam
now admit that changes in the direction indicated must sooner or later
be made. Only they insist that these should be legally effected, not
forced on them by an overriding of the law.

What they want is _a legal authority to change_. Now, no such authority
exists, either in the Ottoman Sultan, or in the Sherif, or in any Sheykh
el Islam, Mufti, or body of Ulema in the world. None of these dare
seriously meddle with the law. There is not even one universally
recognized tribunal to which all Moslems may refer their doubts about
the law's proper reading, and have their disputes resolved. A fetwa, or
opinion, is all that can be given, and it applies only to the land where
it is issued. The fetwa of this great Alem in one Moslem state may be
reversed by the fetwa of another in that. The Sheykh el Islam at
Constantinople may be appealed against to the Mufti at Mecca or Cairo,
or these again, it may be, to Bokhara. None absolutely overrides the
rest. Thus while I was at Jeddah there came a deputation of Mussulmans
from Bengal, being on their way to Mecca to ask a fetwa on the disputed
point whether believers were permitted or not to use European dress. A
previous fetwa had been asked at Constantinople, but the deputation was
dissatisfied, alleging that the Sheykh el Islam there could not be
trusted and that they preferred the Meccan Mufti. Thus legal-minded
Moslems who would see their way to improvement are constantly faced with
a legal bar, the want of authority. _As things stand_ there is no remedy
for this.

An opinion, however, seems now to be gaining ground among the learned,
that a legal issue may one day be found in the restoration to the
Caliphate of what is called by them the _Saut el Hai_, the living voice
of Islam, which in its first period, and indeed till the destruction of
the Abbaside dynasty by