When Urquhart, the first exponent of Mohammedanism to
Englishmen, began his writing, the Hanefite teaching of Constantinople
had not begun to be questioned, and he was perfectly justified in citing
it as the only rule recognized by the mass of the orthodox. No such
thing as a liberal religious party then existed anywhere, and those who
broke the law in the name of political reform were breakers of the law
and nothing more. Every good man was their enemy, and if any spoke of
liberty he was understood as meaning licence. It was not even conceived
then that the Sheriat might be legally remodelled. Now, however, and
especially within the last ten years, a large section of godly and
legal-minded men have ranged themselves on the side of liberal opinion,
and serious attempts have been made to reconcile a desire of improvement
with unabated loyalty to Islam.
A true liberal party has thus been formed, which includes in its ranks
not merely political intriguers of the type familiar to Europe in Midhat
Pasha, but men of sincere piety, who would introduce moral as well as
political reforms into the practice of Mohammedans. These have it in
their programme to make the practice of religion more austere while
widening its basis, to free the intelligence of believers from
scholastic trammels, and at the same time to enforce more strictly the
higher moral law of the Koran, which has been so long and so strangely
violated.
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