Already what is called the "Progress
of the World" envelopes her with its ships and its commerce, and, above
all, with its printed thought, which she is beginning to read. Nor is it
likely in the future to affect her less. Every year as it goes by
carries her farther from the possibility of isolation, and forces on her
new acquaintances, not only her old foes, the Frank and Muscovite, but
the German, the Chinaman, and the American, with all of whom she may
have in turn to count. If she would not be strangled by these influences
she must use other arms than those of the flesh, and meet the
intellectual invasion of her frontiers with a corresponding
intelligence. Otherwise she has nothing to look forward to but a gradual
decay, spiritual as well as political. Her law must become little by
little a dead letter, her Caliphate an obsolete survival, and her creed
a mere opinion. Islam as a living and controlling moral force in the
world would then gradually cease.
In expressing my conviction that Islam is not thus destined yet awhile
to perish I believe that I am running counter to much high authority
among my countrymen. I know that it is a received opinion with those
best qualified to instruct the public that Islam is in its constitution
unamenable to change, and by consequence to progressive life, or even,
in the face of hostile elements, to prolonged life at all.
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