Part 3

Whoever sought favour or advantage in Turkey after 1908, had to force it or beg it from the Committee. The latter could not at once trust Germany, as also our German writers remark, because the liberal Turks, who had fled their country before the revolution, were given the cold shoulder in Germany on account of the friendship with the despot. When Austria availed herself of the general confusion after the revolution, first to help in the complete detachment of Bulgaria from Turkey, afterwards to annex a piece of Turkish territory herself, Germany did not raise one finger to keep its ally from an amputation so painful to Turkey. Later on Italy took Tripoli and Turkey found it difficult to fully appreciate the fact that Germany was the only one in the Triple Alliance who did not take anything, because Turkey knew, as well as anybody else, what natural obstacles there were to such an undertaking. Where no such natural obstacles existed, Germany took her part as greedily as the others; and in Africa she even has subjected two million Mohammedans to her authority, an authority which will not be found by those concerned to be less tyrannical than the British-Indian and North-African Mohammedans, according to Sultan Mehmed Reshâd and according to Becker, find the British or French administration.

Now Becker may argue: those Mohammedans were already under our rule before our great infatuation with Turkey and Islâm began, and, besides, the coal-black Moslems do not count for much even in the eyes of Turks and Arabs. But this is not a serious answer to the objection, the more so since Islâm not only repudiates the contempt for negroes theoretically, but because practically all ways have ever been much more widely open to gifted negroes in Moslim than in Christian countries. To be sure, Becker has estimated the number of _oppressed_ Mohammedans who must now be helped by Germany at only one hundred and fifty million; so that only Russia, England, and France are counted as oppressors. But the Sultan in his manifesto has mentioned the full three hundred million, at which the Kaiser estimated the adherents of Islâm, as victims to be set free, and has thus by mistake included amongst them the two million German subjects and the Moslims under Austrian and Italian rule, not to mention any others.

During the Balkan War, the independence of Turkey was certainly no less seriously menaced than was now the case before the _jihâd_-declaration; but even then it received little support from its German friend. Grothe remarks that for the sake of Turkey alone it would have been difficult to stir up in Germany sufficient enthusiasm for a war, whereas now, against the rivals, England and Russia, it has been found so easy. Still, it will have to be admitted that the effect of Emperor William’s visits to the Sultan, with which according to Becker and Grothe, the conscious Islâm-policy of Germany was inaugurated, has not developed normally but that it has long remained exceedingly latent.

* * * * *

All this may emphasize the somewhat one-sided character of Germany’s policy still more than the writings of Becker and Grothe, but it does not do away with the fact that under the present political constellation, Turkey herself may derive great advantage from the alliance with Germany. But, if now we imagine the future as the German writers desire it, the situation stripped of all accessories appears like this: Turkey freed by Germany from all troublesome meddling of England, France, and Russia, will fall under German guardianship, and, though with careful avoidance of the name, it will become a _German protectorate_. Its army, its administration, its finances, everything will have to be thoroughly reorganized by Germany. The relation will be different in form only from the protectorate of France in Morocco and that of England in many a Mohammedan principality. In calmer times eulogies on the method by which the English in India, the French in Northern Africa, ruled their Mohammedans, have never been lacking in Germany; although criticism and indignation were never lacking either, when German interests were at stake. They talked of the _pax Britannica_ and of the _pax Gallica_, which had replaced the former insecurity, confusion, and corruption. Even England’s work in Egypt was appreciated, and favourable opinions were heard about the Islâm-policy of Russia in Central Asia. We have no reason to expect less favourable results of a German protectorate in Turkey; nay it would even be possible that they might avoid many mistakes of their predecessors and that the end might prove a blessing to Turkish countries. But the Germans would certainly find that the gratitude of the Turks would end when the absolutely unavoidable interference would start in earnest, even if the Turks did not fail to recognize the advantage to themselves of some of the reforms determined upon.

Besides, the opinions of German experts about Turkey and about Islâm, especially about their possibilities for reorganization, are not, at any rate were not before this war, at all the same as those which are now so warmly defended by Grothe and Becker. Professor Joh. Marquart, at present Professor in the University of Berlin, derides in the preface of his work, _The Benin-collection of the National Museum of Ethnology in Leiden_ (1913), “the alleged function of Islâm as a bearer of culture,” and he speaks with biting irony of the “blessings of the _jihâd_, predatory murder on the path of Allah turned into a religious duty,” _i. e._, that duty which Germany now has again impressed on Turkey. It was not only in German missionary circles that Islâm was considered as the enemy who was most of all to be fought, but in a German colonial congress this resolution was adopted: “_As the expansion of Islâm is a serious danger to the development of our colonies, the colonial congress suggests for earnest consideration_,” etc.

Professor Martin Hartmann, who teaches the science of Islâm at the Seminary for Oriental Languages in Berlin, and whose pen has given us a number of notable writings on Islâm and on Turkey, never tires of pointing out that the Moslims are kept from participating in culture mainly by the institutions of Islâm, which scorns woman and despises non-believers.[7]

He calls the Caliphate of the Ottoman Sultans a usurpation which could only have been committed through contempt for the holy tradition, a “_means of agitation_,” an “_easy way to be considered by the world of Islâm as a kind of fetish_”; he says that “_this double quality_ [of the Sultan-Caliph] _has never been recognized by the civilized powers_” and that the honest abandonment of this title would rather strengthen Turkey than weaken her. Of course he also has a few things to say about the holy war. About this he intentionally put his opinion on record when the word _jihâd_ was brought up by the Turks in their war with Italy over Tripoli, and he made use of this expression which has again become topical: “... _the threat of holy war, i. e., of war against all unbelievers, except against those who are expressly designated to the community by the leaders of Islâm as friends of Islâm. This idea is madness._” As the seat of the agitation was at that time in Berlin, he adds to this: “_Let this be a warning against the creation of unrest by the excitation of religious fanaticism. All civilized nations will unanimously stand together against any such attempt._” I could quote reams of print with similar contents; I content myself with one more: “_Islâm is a religion of hate and of war. It must not be suffered to be the ruling principle in a nation of the civilized world._”

I could quote at least as many utterances of the same author which give the impression that the Turks are the nation least fitted in all the Turkish Empire to do any good for the development of their country. Everywhere, where the Turkish element had obtruded itself on other Mohammedans at the point of the sword, it has “_destroyed cultural possessions and has created nothing, absolutely nothing, in the way of cultural values_.” Their religious conceit is even more intolerable than their national conceit. The Turks of Constantinople are “_an awful pack_” (“ein schauderhaftes Gesindel”) and the “_honest Anatolian_” (who also appears in Grothe) is a product of legend. And such an inferior nation “_wants to be the ruling element in the great empire from Scutari and Prevesa to Van and Bassora_!”

Professor Hartmann has an exceedingly lively temperament, and I would not dream of endorsing all his opinions or denying that his expressions are exaggerated. But in knowledge of his subject he stands far higher than Grothe; and as regards Turkey, also higher than Becker, together with whom he is the chief representative of the science of Islâm in Germany. Besides, Becker himself has formerly expressed himself about the Islâm question in much the same way, although in a more moderate form and in a different tone. Naturally, Becker himself has been the first to feel the contrast between his joining in the flourish with the words Caliph and _jihâd_ in his latest writings, and the opinions expressed by him in former times of quiet scientific work. He himself repeats the concluding sentence of a lecture delivered by him in Paris in 1910: “_If the solidarity of Islâm is a phantom, the solidarity of the white race is a reality_,” but now he does so in order to weaken the impression of these words and to limit them to the Islâm of the negroes in Africa, who were the main subject of his speech. Probably none of the audience understood this limitation, as the words quoted were immediately preceded by these: “the fear that one power might unite with Islâm to thwart another, does not seem to me very well founded.” Besides Becker had formerly, _e. g._, in 1904, in an article on Panislamism represented the panislamistic idea as contrary to the real interests of Turkey[8]: “_The Young Turks had hoped_ [after the Russo-Turkish War of 1878] _to put an end by their reforms just to that religious element, which made of the Sultan above everything else the Caliph, the protagonist of Islâm, and thus_ =made impossible the normal development of the Ottoman Empire, which after all is mainly made up of Christians=.” And in the German translation[9] of the above-mentioned lecture, which was delivered in Paris in 1910, the following additional passage occurs: “_The Caliphate of the Sultan of Constantinople was, up to the time of the Young-Turkish revolution, the basis of Turkey’s Islâm-policy. To be sure Young Turkey has not abandoned the claim to the Caliphate_; =but if she wishes at all to grow into a constitutional state, she will have to make as little use of it as possible.... A strong Turkey, it goes without saying, will never claim political sovereignty over the Islamic subjects of other powers....=”

In his latest pamphlet, _Deutschland und der Islam_, Becker confesses his recent conversion and argues that his long-cherished notions were wrong. He, as well as Grothe, dwells at length on the two visits paid by Emperor William to Sultan Abdulhamîd (1889 and 1898), the second one combined with what Grothe calls “_a political pilgrimage to the Holy Land_.” The world has considered these visits, the first of which took place one year after the concession of the Anatolian railway, that is to say in 1889, as overgorgeous demonstrations of Germany’s industrial and commercial interest in Turkey. The way it was done made many, even in Germany, shrug their shoulders. First of all Abdulhamîd, the “blood-drinking” tyrant, in whose crimes the great powers after all shared the guilt, on account of what Berard, and together with him Hartmann, called “_the conspiracy of silence_,” seemed a strange object for such a hearty expression of friendship, which left behind it in Constantinople a lumbering commemorative fountain, which according to experts is an insult to good taste. Furthermore, the impression produced on the Moslim world was not at all such as was intended. To be sure, it was thought remarkable that the monarch of a powerful European empire should go twice to pay homage to the Sultan, the more as it was known that no return-visits of the Sultan followed; _the caller_ therefore showed himself to the inhabitants as _the inferior_; and simple Mohammedan souls, who draw their knowledge of the world’s map and the world’s history more from legends than from reality, saw in this a confirmation of their belief that the whole earth is subjected to the mightiest Moslim sovereign, and that all princes are his vassals, even if they are in parts very unruly. Those homages in no way contributed to the glory of Germany in the East, whatever flatterers may palm off about it on German travellers. The strangest impression of all, however, was produced on all those who know Islâm by the Emperor’s speech on his second journey (1898), at Damascus, at the grave of Saladin, on which he also deposited a wreath.

Saladin (Salâh-ad-din) has become popular in Europe through the history of the Crusades and especially through Lessing; in the Mohammedan East his name has been long forgotten, except by the few students of history and literature. These know him as an unscrupulous politician, who by faithlessness and treason had risen to great power, and who is forgiven much because he was a strictly orthodox _kâfir_-hater; and not as the example of eighteenth-century tolerance which Lessing in his _Nathan der Weise_ has made of him. On the grave of this hater of Christianity, the Emperor of a world-empire, which, as Becker reminds us, has Christianity as its state-religion, spoke these words: “_The three hundred million Mohammedans that are scattered through the world may rest assured that the German Emperor will eternally[10] be their friend._”

This part of the display has made as little permanent impression in the Moslim world as Saladin himself; and German scientists at that time shook their heads when they heard of it. But now these words suddenly are at a premium: Grothe and Becker give their interpretations of them, and the Turks have been so energetically reminded of them that Nazim-bey quoted them in his address to the German ambassador and that the Sultan by mistake borrowed from them the oftentimes corrected, at any rate very antiquated, census-figures of his manifesto.

Till recently Becker, “through ignorance,” as he now avers, has “_considered this emphasizing of the Caliph-title by Germany as a mistake_”; but now, after Prince von Bülow’s explanations in _Deutschland unter Kaiser Wilhelm II._, he joyfully discovers in it the first powerful expression of “_a conscious German Islâm-policy_” and the proof “_that German policy has from the first taken Islâm into account as an international factor_.” Becker’s scientific conscience, in this conversion and in his defence of the adoption of the Caliphate among the factors of international politics, is not so untroubled as that of Grothe, who does not seem to feel at all the grotesqueness of this Islâm-policy. At any rate, Becker says that he does not wish to be considered as having expressed an opinion on the relation between Turkey and Germany; that he restricts himself to stating the fact that such a relation exists; that, as a matter of fact, millions of dissatisfied Mohammedan subjects of European nations expect their salvation from Turkey, and that the hour has struck for Germany to make use of this mood.

* * * * *

Salvation from Turkey! The country of which Martin Hartmann quite recently said that “_the exclusion of the Islamic-Turkish rule from Europe is drawing near_”; and that “_she_ [Turkey] _should have been already long ago threatened with being placed under guardianship_”; or again: “_thus will only come more quickly that which will have to come sometime, anyway: the lapsing of political power from the hands of dying Turkdom_”; from Turkey, which, according to Becker, must be re-created and under the energetic direction of Germany be transformed into a modern civilized state, a thing which a few years ago he declared to be feasible only if the Caliphate-idea were either entirely abandoned or emphasized as little as possible!

How is it that Turkey suddenly is considered able to do that which until recently had been put aside as nonsense; how is it that now they recommend as useful to Turkey what, such a short time ago, was considered a source of certain ruin? When, in his _Ultimatum des Panislamismus_ Hartmann scourged the agitators who wished to give to the Turkish-Italian conflict the character of a religious war, he at the same time gave the sharpest criticism imaginable of Germany’s present attempt to revive the dying mediæval fanaticism of the Mohammedan world. “_Turkey can only exclaim: Heaven protect me against my friends!_”--so he then justly said. What may not Turkey exclaim now that her best friend is exciting her to religious war, and presently turns over to her the Mohammedan prisoners who fought against Germany, in order to submit them to a politico-religious conversion cure?

We can only attribute all this to the lamentable upsetting of the balance, even in the intellectual atmosphere, of what we used to call the civilized world. For in normal times we know that the Germans are far too sensible and logical to digest the enormous nonsense that a thing which in general would be considered as a shame for mankind and a catastrophe for Turkey can become good and commendable as soon as Germany places herself behind or beside the Crescent. We do not know what will be the issue of many of the present terrible happenings; but this, I think, I may already now foretell with certainty, that within a not very long time a number of German writings will testify that also in Germany indignation has been aroused by the despicable game that is being played with the Caliphate and the holy war.

It would be risky, now that the facts will so speedily speak their incontrovertible language, to try to foretell in how far the attempt to light the blaze of a Mohammedan religious war on a large scale, and thereby to cause endless confusion in international relations, has a chance to succeed. Hartmann formerly denied the possibility with full conviction: “... _as soon_,” said he, “_as the representatives of the various Islamic groups confer together about common measures, the enormous differences in ethnical, economic, and intellectual tendencies among the two hundred million Mohammedans show themselves!_” Becker, who formerly called “_the solidarity of Islâm a phantom_,” says now: “_The great war which reveals and decides so much, will also bring the proof as to whether the often-discussed international solidarity of Islâm is a real factor or a delusion._”

It is certain that if Germany persists in her present “Islâm-policy” there will be no lack of all sorts of measures destined to put before the Mohammedan public the history of the origins of that policy and the new relation of vassal in which the re-created Sultan-Caliph finds himself with regard to Germany. But against a Commander of the Faithful, himself under an unbelieving Commander, even Mohammedans of the old stamp, who otherwise might have been duped by the comedy, will have serious objections. The main basis of the claim of the Ottoman sultans was _their_ sword; not a sword that would be drawn and sheathed at the order of an unbelieving “ally.”

Fortunately, we need not worry with regard to our Dutch-Indian Mohammedan population. They adopted Islâm when the Turkish Empire had already come into existence, but without Turkey’s noticing it; and they have never had any contact with the Crescent. The Sultan of Rûm, as they call the Great Lord of Constantinople, has remained a legendary creature for them. To be sure, the panislamistic idea has penetrated into the East-Indian Archipelago, but it has found little favourable ground. The large mass of the lower classes remains untouched, and the majority of the higher classes is entirely immune against this politico-religious mixture of deceit and nonsense. And we have good reason to believe that this immunity will constantly spread. For if Germany has quite recently inaugurated her “_conscious Islâm-policy_” with the above-described displays, we have already had for a few years longer our conscious _educational policy_ towards the native population which history has entrusted to our care; and against that, Caliphate and holy war and other mediæval iniquities are fortunately powerless. If we only unshakably adhere to our centuries-old guarantee of complete religious liberty for our Mohammedans, and at the same time continue to pursue our educational policy at a constantly increased pace, we shall never have to fear the peculiar sort of “intellectual weapons” which now for the first time are put into circulation with the trade-mark “made in Germany.” Still, we keep hoping in the interest of humanity that Germany will before long withdraw the new product from the market.

* * * * *

The holy war of Islâm is, as we have remarked several times, a thoroughly mediæval institution, which even the Mohammedan world was outgrowing. One of the peculiarities of this institution we may sincerely admire: holy war against co-members of the Mohammedan community is absolutely excluded by the law of Islâm. The restriction of the community to Mohammedans, to those who profess the same dogma about what is beyond this life, is mediæval; but the consideration of strife within the sphere of the community as impious, provides an excellent foundation for the highest social civilization and is rather humiliating for the modern world. Let us hear what Martin Hartmann in his excited tone writes about it: “_In contrast to Islâm, where war is on principle limited to war against those of different belief as being ‘unbelievers,’ nobody in the Christian world takes exception to war against adherents of the same faith, and here the servants of the church of Love are not infrequently the most zealous in the urging, that is, in denying the Gospel; they provide to order the patriotic gesture, which in this case represents a violation of the fifth commandment, not to mention that other commandment: Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself._”

Indeed, in Islâm it is only necessary to remove the mediæval restriction of the right to complete political existence, which was limited to members of the same community, and to expand the idea of the community to one embracing the whole world, in order to assure absolute world-peace, an absolute command of the divine law. To modern states which have Mohammedans as subjects, protégés, or allies, the beautiful task is reserved of educating these and themselves at the same time to this high conception of human society; rather than leading them back, for their own selfish interests, into the ways of mediæval religious hatred which they were just about to leave.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] “Eenige Arabische strydschriften besproken,” _Tydschrift van het Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen_, vol. xxxix., pp. 379-427.

[2] My experiences at that time I reported in the February issue of _De Gids_, 1909.

[3] On his journeys Grothe, being a German, was continually referred to by Turks as “our friend,” which he translates by _bizim dost_ instead of _dostomuz_, and his Turkish translation for “a German” is always _Alemanly_ instead of _Alman_ or _Almanjaly_.

[4] This computation is taken from the speech delivered by the German Emperor in 1898 by the grave of Saladin; the population then appears not to have increased in the last sixteen years.