will be conceded all the rights
of the sacred office. Then the legal difficulty will at last be
overcome. The dead hand of the law will be no longer dead, but will be
inspired by a living voice and will.

Since we are imagining many things we may imagine this one too,--that
our Caliph of the Koreysh, chosen by the faithful and installed at
Mecca, should invite the Ulema of every land to a council at the time of
the pilgrimage, and there, appointing a new Mujtahed, should propound to
them certain modifications of the Sheriat, as things necessary to the
welfare of Islam, and deducible from tradition. No point of doctrine
need in any way be touched, only the law. The Fakh ed din would need
hardly a modification. The Fakh esh Sheriat would, in certain chapters,
have to be rewritten. Who can doubt that an Omar or an Haroun, were they
living at the present day, would authorize such changes, or that the
faithful of their day would have accepted them as necessary and
legitimate developments of Koranic teaching?

It would be an interesting study to pursue this inquiry further, and to
see how it might be worked out in detail. The crying necessity of
civilized Islam is a legal _modus vivendi_ with Europe, and such an
adaptation of its law on points where Europe insists as shall suffice to
stave off conflict. It is evident that legal equality must now be
accorded to Christians living under Mohammedan law, and that conformity,
on the other hand, in certain points to foreign law must be allowed to
Moslems living under Christian rule.

Again, slavery must, by some means, be made illegal; and a stricter
interpretation of the Koranic permission be put on marriage,
concubinage, and divorce. That all these changes might be logically
effected by a process of reasoning from the traditions, and expanding or
minimising the interpretation of the Koran, no one need doubt who
remembers what fetwas have already been given on these very points by
some of the Azhar Ulema. At present these decisions are unsatisfactory
to the faithful at large, because those issuing them have no recognized
authority to strain the law, but with authority the same decisions would
meet with general approval. At least such is the impression of modern
Mohammedan opinion made on me by my conversation with Mohammedans. It
would be interesting to work out these points; and I hope some day to
have an opportunity of doing so, but for the present I have neither the
time nor