the true reformers whom
I have described. Their malevolent desire to stir up the fanatic
passions of the ignorant masses and their equally malevolent hatred of
everything Western except military improvements are revealed by
outbursts like the following from the pen of a prominent "Young Turk."
"Yes, the Mohammedan religion is in open hostility to all your world of
progress. Learn, ye European observers, that a Christian, whatever his
position, by the mere fact that he is a Christian, is in our eyes a
being devoid of all human dignity. Our reasoning is simple and
definitive. We say: the man whose judgment is so perverted as to deny
the evidence of the One God and to fabricate gods of different kinds,
cannot be other than the most ignoble expression of human stupidity. To
speak to him would be a humiliation to our reason and an offence to the
grandeur of the Master of the Universe. The worshipper of false gods is
a monster of ingratitude; he is the execration of the universe; to
combat him, convert him, or annihilate him is the holiest task of the
Faithful. These are the eternal commands of our One God. For us there
are in this world only Believers and Misbelievers; love, charity,
fraternity to Believers; disgust, hatred, and war to Misbelievers. Among
Misbelievers, the most odious and criminal are those who, while
recognizing God, create Him of earthly parents, give Him a son, a
mother; so monstrous an aberration surpasses, in our eyes, all bounds of
iniquity; the presence of such miscreants among us is the bane of our
existence; their doctrine is a direct insult to the purity of our faith;
their contact a pollution for our bodies; any relation with them a
torture for our souls.

"While detesting you, we have been studying your political institutions
and your military organizations. Besides the new arms which Providence
procures for us by your own means, you yourselves have rekindled the
inextinguishable faith of our heroic martyrs. Our Young Turks, our
Babis, our new fraternities, all are sects in their varied forms, are
inspired by the same thought, the same purpose. Toward what end?
Christian civilization? Never!"[23]

Such harangues unfortunately find ready hearers among the Moslem masses.
Although the liberal reformers are a growing power in Islam, it must not
be forgotten that they are as yet only a minority, an elite, below whom
lie the ignorant masses, still suffering from the blight of age-long
obscurantism, w