THE FUTURE OF ISLAM. 



71 



that even when shorn of its characteristic institutions it can 

 retain enough to satisfy such need of religion as ordinarily 

 enters into tlie life of an individual or a community ; and that 

 the loss of some of the privileges of the system when it was 

 victorious does not result in its followers either abandoning it, 

 or adhering fanatically to the precepts that remain. 



Of slackness of nominal belief in Islam it is easy to quote 

 evidence from many parts of the world. Mr. Schuyler* 

 observed that owing to the exclusion of missionaries from 

 Tashkent Moslem observance had become lax ; and since, owing 

 to the action of the Eussian government, compulsory attendance 

 at mosques has been abolished, attendance is rare. The 

 customary ablutions and performances which are called prayers 

 are getting into desuetude. Dr. Pruenf testifies the same for 

 East Africa ; in Palgrave's time it held good of Arabia itself, 

 but there would appear since his time to have been some 

 movements in the opposite direction. In Egypt and India it 

 is not difficult to find Moslems who make no concealment of 

 the low esteem in which they hold the rites that their 

 ancestors prized, though they have no intention of leaving the 

 Moslem community. 



The question whether the European standard of conduct and 

 principle is making any way m these communities is of great 

 importance, and it is especially of interest to compare the 

 statements of modern observers with those made a generation 

 ago by Yambery, whose practical acquaintance with Moslem 

 countries was unique. In his charming w^ork on Islam in the 

 nineteenth century he gave a history of the attempts that had 

 till then been made to introduce European civilization into 

 Turkey, Persia, and the Mohammedan East, and he told the 

 reader not to condemn the Mohammedans prematurely as incor- 

 I'igible, because these attempts had in the main been failures. 

 In spite of the gloomy character of the narratives in that work, 

 and the author's harsh condemnations of the methods and 

 abilities of the Oriental reformers, the reader is less struck l^y 

 their failure or their incompetence than by their number and 

 their earnestness ; if the Turkish and Persian rulers failed to 

 make their countries European, it was clearly not for want of 

 trying, though, like those who attempt to draw, they may have 

 made many unsuccessful drafts in attempting to get a 

 resemblance. In reading very recent works on Turkey the 



* Turlestan, i, 162. 



t The Arab and the A frican. 



F 



