The true Mussulman loves neither progress, novelty, nor education; the Koran is enough for him.  He is satisfied with his lot, therefore cares little for its improvement, somewhat like a Catholic monk; but at the same time he hates and despises the Christian raya, who is the labourer.  He pitilessly despoils, fleeces, and ill-treats him to the extent of completely ruining and destroying those families, which are the only ones who cultivate the ground; it was a state of war continued in time of peace, and transformed into a regime of permanent spoliation and murder.  The wife, even when she is the only one, is always an inferior being, a kind of slave, destitute of any intellectual culture; and as it is she who trains the children—­boys and girls—­the bad results are plainly seen.

Matters were not always and in all parts of Turkey so bad as this; but they frequently became so under cruel or corrupt governors, or in times when Moslem fanaticism ran riot.  In truth, the underlying cause of Turkey’s troubles is the ignorance and fanaticism of her people.  These evils result largely from the utter absorption of all devout Moslems in their creed and ritual.  Texts from the Koran guide their conduct; and all else is decided by fatalism, which is very often a mere excuse for doing nothing[86].  Consequently all movements for reform are mere ripples on the surface of Turkish life; they never touch its dull depths; and the Sultan and officials, knowing this, cling to the old ways with full confidence.  The protests of Christian nations on behalf of their co-religionists are therefore met with a polite compliance which means nothing.  Time after time the Sublime Porte has most solemnly promised to grant religious liberty to its Christian subjects; but the promises were but empty air, and those who made them knew it.  In fact, the firmans of reform now and again issued with so much ostentation have never been looked on by good Moslems as binding, because the chief spiritual functionary, the Sheikh-ul-Islam, whose assent is needed to give validity to laws, has withheld it from those very ordinances.  As he has power to depose the Sultan for a lapse of orthodoxy, the result may be imagined.  The many attempts of the Christian Powers to enforce their notions of religious toleration on the Porte have in the end merely led to further displays of Oriental politeness.

[Footnote 86:  “Islam continues to be, as it has been for twelve centuries, the most inflexible adversary to the Western spirit” (History of Serbia and the Slav Provinces of Turkey, by L. von Ranke, Eng. edit. p. 296).]