endom can take fuller advantage of it as a tool or a weapon,
though both turn to scourges when used against each other in battle.
Also its handmaid, Education, though in itself a foe to no religion,
_does_ tend to tone down dogma and engender tolerance, thus minimising
the dynamic force of bigotry in pan-Islam, though consolidating the real
stability of religion on its own base. Moreover, some gifts of
civilisation can do a lot of harm if wrongly used; I refer more
especially to drink, drugs, and dress. Just as hereditary exposure to
the infection of certain diseases is said to confer, by survival of the
fittest, a certain immunity therefrom--for example, consumption among us
Europeans and typhoid among Asiatics--so moral ills seem to affect
humanity to a greater or less extent in inverse proportion to the
temptation in that particular respect which the individual and his
forebears have successfully resisted. The average European and his
ancestors have been accustomed to drink fermented liquor for many
centuries, and in moderation as judged by the standard of his time, but
he has always been taught to avoid opium and has not known the drug for
long. The oriental Moslem, on the other hand, has used opium as a remedy
and prophylactic against malaria for generations, but is strictly
ordered by his creed to consider the consumption, production, gift or
sale of alcohol a deadly sin. In consequence, the European can usually
take alcohol in moderation, but almost invariably slips into a pit of
his own digging when he tries to do the same with opium, while the
oriental Moslem can use opium in moderation (provided that he confines
himself to swallowing it and does not smoke it), but when he drinks,
usually drinks to excess because he has not learned to do otherwise. It
is a melancholy fact that hitherto in countries opened up by our Western
civilisation drink has got in long before education, unless
extraordinary precautions have been taken to prevent it; that is one
reason why Moslem States are so wary of civilised encroachment. As for
drugs other than opium (and far more dangerous), civilised Moslems,
especially in Egypt, are alarmed at the spread of hashish-smoking among
their co-religionists, while the cultured classes, including women-folk,
are taking to cocaine: the material for both vices is supplied from
European sources, mostly Greek. Dress, compared with the other two
demons, is merely a fantastic though mischievous spri