It is probable that all these would
readily acknowledge the nominal sovereignty of a Caliph who could not
pretend to coerce them physically, and that the spiritual allegiance of
orthodox believers everywhere would accrue to him as other Mohammedan
sovereignty relaxed its hold. Thus the dream of what is called
Pan-islamism may yet be fulfilled, though in another form from that in
which it is now presented to the faithful by Abd el Hamid and the Ulema
of Constantinople.
That Islam in this spiritual form may achieve more notable triumphs than
by arms in Eastern and Southern Asia we may well believe, and even that
it may establish itself one day as the prevailing religion of the
Continent. Its moral advance within recent times in the Malay
Archipelago, in China, in Tartary, and in India, encourages the
supposition that under alien rule Mohammedanism will be able to hold its
own, and more than own, against all rivals, and that in the decay of
Buddhism it, and not Christianity, will be the form under which God will
eventually be worshipped in the Tropics. Its progress among the Malays
under Dutch rule is certainly an astonishing phenomenon, and, taken in
connection with a hardly less remarkable progress in Equatorial Africa,
may well console those Mussulmans who see in the loss of their temporal
dominions northwards signs of the decay of Islam.
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