The New World of Islam

h is modifying governmental forms, political concepts, religious beliefs, and economic processes is proving equally potent in the range of social phenomena. In the third chapter of this volume w

Orient that superficial observers of the East are prone to assert that these matters are still substantially unaltered, however pronounced may have been the changes on the external, material side. Yet

myriad innovations, weighty and trivial, important and frivolous, useful and baneful? Does it mean nothing socially as well as materially that the Prophet's tomb at Medina is lit by electricity and that picture post-cards are sold outside the Holy Kaaba at Mecca? It may seem mere grotesque piquancy that the muezzin should ride to the mosque in a tram-car, or that the Moslem business man should emerge from his harem, read his morning paper, motor to an office equipped with a pray

tion: Is it possible that these are my Turks of 1856; and how can all these transformations have taken place? I was astonished at the aspect of the city; at the stone buildings which had replaced the old wooden ones; at the animation of the streets, in which carriages and tram-cars abounded, whereas forty years before only saddle-animals were used; and when the strident shriek of the locomotive mingled with the melancholy calls from the minarets,

t significance. For a people may, to be sure, assimilate foreign influences in the intellectual field, if it be persuaded of their utility and advantage; but it gives up with more difficulty customs and habits which are in the blood. One cannot over-estimate the numerous sacrifices which, despite everything, the Turks have made in this line. I find all Tur

the last forty years, and it cannot be denied that this transformation has been produced by internal conviction as much as by external pressure." Noting the spread of female education, and the increasing share of women in

will cure." Nevertheless, he does not minimize the critical aspects of the present situation, which implies nothing less than the breakdown of the old social system. "The clearest result of this breakdown of our old system of domestic life and social customs under the assault of European ideas," he says, "is to be found in two directions-in our religious beliefs and in our social life. The old system, with all its faults, had many redeeming virtues." To-day this old system, narrow-minded but

irtues. This must be remedied. We must learn at the feet of Europe, but not at the sacrifice of our Eastern individuality. But this is precisely what we have not done. We have dabbled a little in English and European history, and we have commenced to despise our religion, our literature, our histor

ugh the purdah system[246] still prevails, it is no longer that severe, stringent, and unreasonable seclusion of women which existed fifty years ago. It is gradually relaxing, and women are getting, step by step, rights and libertie

nge which is going on. Of course it must not be forgotten that both writers deal primarily with the educated upper classes of the large

cred texts combined with exercises of religious devotion. The Mohammedan or Hindu student spent long years reciting to his master (a "holy man") interminable passages from books which, being written in classic Arabic or Sanskrit, were unintelligible to him, so that he us

schools and universities giving a liberal education and fitting students for government service or the professions, there are numerous technical schools turning out skilled agriculturists or engineers, while good normal schools assure a supply of teachers qualified to instruct coming student-generations. Both public and private effort furthers Western education in the East. All the E

ich they do not understand, and give themselves up to anarchistic revolutionary agitation. Sir Alfred Lyall well describes the dark side of Western education in the East when he says of India: "Ignorance is unquestionably the root of many evils; and it was natural that in the last century certain philosophers should have assumed education to be a certain cure for human delusions; and that statesmen like Macaulay should have declared education to be the best and surest remedy for political discontent and for law-breaking. In any case, it was the clear and imperative duty

hat they are tempted to condemn the whole venture of Western education in the East as a mistake. Lord Cromer, for example, was decidedly sceptical of the worth of the Western-educated Egyptian,[250] while a prominent Anglo-India

French North African civil service (the bulk of these officials, of course, Western-educated men), and concludes: "Strictly conservative Orientals, and also fanatically inclined Europeans, think that with the entrance of our culture the primitive virtues of the Asiatics have been destroyed, and that the unciv

be confined to books. Granting, therefore, for the sake of argument, that colonial governments could have prevented Western education in the formal sense, would not the Oriental have lear

oration. Bad enough in Mohammedan countries, it is perhaps at its worst among the Hindus of India, with child-marriage, the virtual enslavement of widows (burned alive till prohibited by English law), and a seclusion more strict even th

undly affected the women of the upper classes, and female education, while far behind that of the males, has attained considerable proportions. In the more advanced parts of the Orient like Cons

her sons as well as in her daughters. What could be a worse handicap for the Eastern "intellectual" than his boyhood years spent "behind the veil"? No wonder that enlightened Oriental fathers have been in the habit of sending their boys to school at the earliest possible age in order to get them as soon as poss

. Women who learn housewifery, methods of modern cooking, sewing, and sanitation in the domestic-economy schools, are bound to cast about the home upon their return the atmosphere of a civilized community. The old-time picture of the Oriental woman spending her hours upon divans, eating sweetmeats, and indulging in petty and degrading gossip with the servants, or wi

al changes of the most far-reaching character, because few antitheses could be sharper than the living conditions prevailing respectively in the traditional East and in the modern Western world. This basic difference lies, not in wealth (the East, like the West, knows great riches as well as great poverty), but rather in comfort-using the word in its broad sense

ess thrown out of gear. This opening of a whole vista of new wants means a portentous rise in his standard of living. And where is he going to find the money to pay for it? If he be poor, he has to skimp on his bare necessities. If he be rich, he hates to forgo his traditional luxuries. The upshot is a universal growth of extravagance. And, in this connection, it is well to bear in mind that the peoples of the Near and Middle East, taken as a whole, have never been really thrifty. Poor the masses may have been, and thus obliged to live frugally, but they have

dered necessities which were considered luxuries or entirely unheard of a generation ago, the Oriental peasant or town working-man is finding it harder and harder to make both ends meet. As o

stilence, and famine, which swept off such multitudes of people that, despite high birth-rates, populations remained at substantially a fixed level. But here, as in every other phase of Eastern life, Western influences have radically altered the situation. The extension of European political control over Eastern lands has meant the putting down of internal strife, the diminution of governmental abuses, the decrease of disease, and the lessening of the blight of famine. In other words, those "natural" checks which previously kept down the population have been diminished or abolished, and in response to the life-saving activities of the West, the enormous death-

he people live from hand to mouth from season to season on a low diet; and where, nevertheless, they breed and multiply at such a rate; there we can at least see that this power and force of multiplication is no evidence even of safety, far less of comfort." Towards the close of the last century, Sir William Hunter termed population India's "fundamental problem," and continued: "The result of civilized rule in India has been to produce a strain on the food-producing powers of the country such as it had never before to bear. It has become a truism of Indian statistics that the removal of the old cruel checks on population in an Asiatic country is by no means an unmixed blessing to an Asiatic people."[261] Lord Cromer remarks of India's poverty: "No

hen the people take advantage of it, not to save and raise their standard of living, but to breed to the very margin of subsistence. Henry George used to point out that every mouth that came into the world brought two hands along with it; but though the physiol

litical control. In fact, the only case that I know of where an Eastern thinker has boldly faced the problem and has courageously advocated birth-control is in the book published five years ago by P. K. Wattal, a native official of the Indian Finance D

ther he has not at some of the most momentous periods of his life been handicapped by having to support a large family, and whether this encumbrance has not seriously affected the chances of advancement warranted by early promise and exceptional endowment. This question should be viewed by itself. It is a physical fact, and has nothing to do with political environment or religious obligation. If we have suffered from the consequences of that mistake, is it not a duty that we owe to ourselves and to our progeny that its evil effects shall be mitigated as far as possible? T

ily in the waste places of the earth. The very name of son, 'putra,' means one who saves his father's soul from the hell called Puta. A Hindu maiden unmarried at puberty is a source of social obloquy to her family and of damnation to her ancestors. Among the Mohammedans, who are not handicapped by such penalties, the married state is equally common, partly owing to Hindu example and partly to the general conditions of primitive society, where a wife is almost a necessity both as a domestic drudge and as a helpmate in field work."[26

e death-rate brought down to the level of England or Scotland? Is there room enough in the country for the population to increase so fast as 20 per 1000 every year? We are paying the inevitable penalty of bringing into this world more persons than can be properly cared for, and therefore i

e quality and sapping the vigour of the race. It is the lower elements of the population, the negroid aboriginal tribes and the Pariahs or Outcastes, who are gaining the fastest. Also the vitality of the whole population seems to be lowering. The census figures show that the number of elderly persons is decreasing, and that the average statistical expectation of life is falling. "The coming generation is severely handicapped at start in life. And the chances of living to a good old age are considerably

ain parts of India there are foreshadowings of birth-control. For example, he quotes from the census report for 1901 this official explanation of a slight drop in the birth-rate of Bengal: "The postponement of the age of marriage cannot wholly account for the diminished rate of reproduction. The deliberate avoidance of child-bearing must also be partl

midst. In the land of the bullock-cart, the motor has come to stay. The competition is now with the more advanced races of the West, and we cannot tell them what Diogenes said to Alexander: 'Stand out of my sunshine.' After the close of this gigantic World War theories of population will perhaps be re

ire Orient are basically the same, prudential checks and rational birth-control being everywhere virtually absent.[272] Remembering also that, besides over-popula

huts, often without a window or a levelled floor, are minute dungeons of baked mud, usually of two small rooms neither whitewashed nor carpeted. Those which I entered were bare of any visible property, save a few cooking utensils, a mat to serve as a bed, and a jar which held the staple food of maize."[273] As for the poorer Indian peasants, a British sanitary official thus depicts their mode o

nstantinople, and Jerusalem. Omitting his more poignant details, here is his description of a Cairo tenement: "In Cairo, as elsewhere in Egypt, the wretchedness and grossness of the poorer-class dwellings are perhaps even more shocking than in the other Eastern lands.

ep in the streets. In Calcutta, twenty years ago,[276] land had reached $200,000 an acre in the overcrowded tenement districts."[277] Of Calcutta, a Western writer remarks: "Calcutta is a shame even in the East. In its slums, mill hands and dock coolies do not live; they pig. Houses choke with unwholesome breath; drains and compounds fester in filth. Wheels compress decaying refuse in the roads; cows drink from wells soaked with sewage, and the floors of bakeries are washed in the same pollutio

r times the congestion of London. And the late war has rendered the housing crisis even more acute. In the East, as in the West, the war caused a rapid drift of population to the cities and at the same time stopped building owing to the prohibitive cost of construction. Hence, a prodigious rise in rents and a plague

easing cost of living; and these complaints were uttered by Europeans as well as by the natives."[281] To-day the situation is even more difficult. Says Sir Valentine Chirol of conditions in Egypt since the war: "The rise in wages, considerable as it has been, has ceased to keep pace with the inordinate rise in prices for the very necessities of life. This is particularly the case in the urban centres, where the lower class

TNO

the educated

ie d'aujourd'hui et d'a

. the prie

ie d'aujourd'hui et d'a

ie d'aujourd'hui et d'a

ys: Indian and Isl

says: Indian and

separating the women's apartme

ys: Indian and Isl

opean and native auspices, see L. Bertrand, Le Mirage oriental, pp. 2

n to Sir Valentine Chiro

dern Egypt, Vol.

The Real India, p.

rn Culture in Easter

an Life in Town and Count

ie d'aujourd'hui et d'a

r, op. cit.

y Sir Bampfylde Fuller, "East and West: A Study of Diff

penditure on Western products, see A. J. Brown, "Economic Changes in Asia," The Century, March, 1904; J. P. Jones, "The Pr

; Fisher, India's Silent Revolution, pp. 46-60; Jones, op. cit.; T. T. Williams

rown, o

of India is roughly estimated to have been about 100,000,000.

India of the Queen and Other

vernment in Europe and Asia," Nine

nd the Future, pp. 15

Department, Assistant Accountant-General

ttal, pp

Wattal

Ibid.,

Wattal

bid., p

Wattal

Ibid.,

he Near East, see Bertran

T. Rothstein, Egypt's Ruin, pp. 298-300 (London, 1910), Sir W. W. Ramsa

s a Cause of Political Unrest,"

nd, op. cit.

. e., i

ndia's Silent R

s, In India. Quote

ted by A. Yusuf Ali, Life and Labo

sher, pp

ertrand

land's Peril in Egypt," f

rtrand and F