Nor has the special nature of her position towards them
been unappreciated by Mohammedans.
In spite of the deceptions on some points of late years, and recent
vacillations of policy towards them, the still independent nations of
Islam see in England something different from the rest of Christendom,
something not in its nature hostile to them, or regardless of their
rights and interests. They know at least that they have nothing to dread
from Englishmen on the score of religious intolerance, and there is even
a tendency with some of them to exaggerate the sympathy displayed
towards them by supposing a community of beliefs on certain points
considered by them essential. Thus the idea is common among the
ignorant in many Mussulman countries that the English are _Muwahedden_,
or Unitarians, in contradistinction to the rest of Christians, who are
condemned as _Musherrakin_, or Polytheists; and the Turkish alliance is
explained by them on this supposition, supplemented in the case of the
Turks themselves with the idea that England is itself a part of Islam,
and so its natural ally.[18] These are of course but ideas of the
vulgar. Yet they represent a fact which is not without importance,
namely, that England's is accepted by Mussulmans as a friendly not a
hostile influence, and that her protection is sought without that
suspicion which is attached to the friendly offices of other powers.
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