p. 7 | Note and Comment

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Aug 5, 1909

Note and Comment

The Turk Again

TURKEY has again claimed the attention of the world by the recent political revolution and by the terrible massacres which accompanied the effort of the old régime to reinstate itself in power. These recent developments have furnished the material for much newspaper and magazine writing in which the various phases of the Eastern question have been quite fully discussed. Among those who have thus expressed themselves is Dr. William Milligan Sloane, Professor of History at Columbia University, who has the name of being an authority on Oriental politics. In an article in Van Norden for June, Dr. Sloane considers the recent remarkable changes in the light of the religious belief of the Turk. We quote:—

Recent events at the seat of Islam could not have been brought about unless there was a tendency among advanced Turks to depart from old religious beliefs. That the tendency is not altogether new becomes evident when we look at the many massive volumes of interpretations of the Koran, by which the Mohammedan world has hitherto been ruled. The more intelligent leaders of the new movement realize perfectly that they must either interpret away this body of doctrine or abolish it entirely. The Oriental mind is exceedingly adroit, and these leaders conceive that they can adapt their system to admit the establishment of a Western order of things.

But we must remember that the Mohammedan form of government is an absolute theocracy, and that the very essence of Moslem faith is the doctrineof the unity of life. I have traveled extensively in Morocco, Egypt, and Turkey, and it is my firm conviction that the simple, believing Moslem could not conceive of such things as the rights of man, nor could he make the distinction between ecclesiastical and social systems, which is fundamental to our idea of human liberty. . . .

The amount of transformation which must go on before government as we conceive it can replace that authority is stupefying to contemplate. The doctors of the laws have imbued the Moslem mind with the teaching that a Christian must either “believe, pay tribute, or die!” Confronted with that popular tenet, no weak power can continue the new order of things. It must rest on the authority of an adequate central military organization. Without this, only the power of Islam itself can prevent the “faithful” from turning to slaughter the Christians.

If Dr. Sloane’s analysis of the situation is correct, the establishment of the so-called constitutional government in Turkey denotes something entirely different from the idea conveyed to the Western mind by this expression. The inherited political views of a people, based upon the religious teaching of centuries, are not transformed by a revolution which is accomplished in a day, and it is evident that the Eastern question is not yet settled.