Reduced to a syllogism, Mussulman loyalty
may be read thus: There must be a Caliph, and the Caliphate deserves
respect; there is no other Caliph but Abd el Hamid; ergo, Abd el Hamid
deserves respect.
It has been pointed out, however, that, if the Sultan's recent revival
of spiritual pretensions is his present strength, it may also in the
immediate future become his weakness. The challenge which the
Constantinople school of Hanefism threw down ten years ago to the world
has been taken up; and all the learned world now knows the frailty of
the House of Othman's spiritual position. The true history of the
Caliphate has been published and set side by side with that Turkish
history which the ignorance of a previous generation had come to
confound with it. At the present day nobody with any instruction doubts
that Abd el Hamid and his house might be legally displaced by the first
successful rival, and that the only right of Constantinople to lead
Islam is the right of the sword. As long as the Ottoman Empire is
maintained and no counter Caliph appears, so long will the Sultan be the
acknowledged head of religion; but not a day longer. The Caliphate, for
one alien as Abd el Hamid is to the Koreysh, must be constantly
maintained in arms, and on the first substantial success of a new
pretender his present following would fall off from him without
compunction, transferring to this last their loyalty on precisely the
same ground on which Abd el Hamid now receives it.
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