The extensive political program of Islam, developed during the first centuries of astounding expansion, has yet not prevented millions of Mohammedans from resigning themselves to reversed conditions in which at the present time many more Mohammedans live under foreign authority than under their own.  The acceptance of this change was facilitated by the historical pessimism of Islam, which makes the mind prepared for every sort of decay, and by the true Moslim habit of resignation to painful experiences, not through fatalism, but through reverence for Allah’s inscrutable will.  At the same time, it would be a gross mistake to imagine that the idea of universal conquest may be considered as obliterated.  This is the case with the intellectuals and with many practical commercial or industrial men; but the canonists and the vulgar still live in the illusion of the days of Islam’s greatness.

The legists continue to ground their appreciation of every actual political condition on the law of the holy war, which war ought never to be allowed to cease entirely until all mankind is reduced to the authority of Islam—­the heathen by conversion, the adherents of acknowledged Scripture by submission.  Even if they admit the improbability of this at present, they are comforted and encouraged by the recollection of the lengthy period of humiliation that the Prophet himself had to suffer before Allah bestowed victory upon his arms; and they fervently join with the Friday preacher, when he pronounces the prayer, taken from the Qoran:  “And lay not on us, O our Lord, that for which we have not strength, but blot out our sins and forgive us and have pity upon us.  Thou art our Master; grant us then to conquer the unbelievers!” And the common people are willingly taught by the canonists and feed their hope of better days upon the innumerable legends of the olden time and the equally innumerable apocalyptic prophecies about the future.  The political blows that fall upon Islam make less impression upon their simple minds than the senseless stories about the power of the Sultan of Stambul, that would instantly be revealed if he were not surrounded by treacherous servants, and the fantastic tidings of the miracles that Allah works in the Holy Cities of Arabia which are inaccessible to the unfaithful.

The conception of the Khalifate still exercises a fascinating influence, regarded in the light of a central point of union against the unfaithful.  Apart from the ’amils, Mohammed’s agents amongst the Arabian tribes, the Khalifate was the only political institution which arose out of the necessity of the Moslim community, without foreign influence.  It rescued Islam from threatening destruction, and it led the Faithful to conquest.  No wonder that in historic legend the first four occupiers of that leadership, who, from Medina, accomplished such great things, have been glorified into saints, and are held up to all the following generations as