The _Hanefite_ school of theology may be described as the school of the
upper classes. It is the high and dry party of Church and State, if such
expressions can be used about Islam. To it belongs the Osmanli race, I
believe without exception, the ruling race of the north, and their
kinsmen who founded Empires in Central and Southern Asia. The official
classes, too, in most parts of the world are Hanefite, including the
Viceregal courts of Egypt, Tripoli, and Tunis, and it would seem the
courts of most of the Indian princes. It is probably rather as a
consequence of this than as its reason that it is the most conservative
of schools, conservative in the true sense of leaving things exactly as
they are. The Turkish Ulema have always insisted strongly on the dogma
that the _ijtahad_, that is to say the elaboration of new doctrine, is
absolutely closed; that nothing can be added to or taken away from the
already existing body of religious law, and that no new _mujtahed_, or
doctor of Islam, can be expected who shall adapt that law to the life of
the modern world. At the same time, while obstinate in matters of
opinion, Hanefism has become extremely lax as to practice. Its moral
teaching is held, and I believe justly, to be adapted only too closely
to the taste of its chief supporters.
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