The Standard of the Prophet.
[The following article has an interesting bearing on the present Russo-Turkish war. It is an editorial of the Chicago Tribune of May 11.] “The startling news is sent from London that the Sheik-ul-Islam, who is the head of the Church in Turkey, and to whom the Sultan must refer in every act of importance, has instructed the leader of the annual pilgrim caravan which starts shortly from Constantinople for Mecca to proclaim in all the cities through which he passes that the faithful are called to the war against Russia, and that he will bless the Sultan as the leader of the holy war. The news is in accordance with previous dispatches which have represented the Sultan as declaring, in spite of English advice to the contrary, that he would unfurl the standard of the Prophet when the emergency arose. With one powerful army along the whole line of the Danube from its mouth to the Servian frontier, and another driving the Turks before it through Asia Minor, the Sultan may well imagine that the emergency has come. “The unfurling of this standard, the ‘Sanyak-Sherif,’ will present a new phase of the conflict. The standard is as old as Mohammedanism itself. It was part of the flowing curtains that adorned the room of Mohammed’s favorite wife, and has always been carefully guarded from profane eyes in the Seraglio. It matters little how old it is, or what it is, however, to Mohammedans. It is to them the symbol of their faith, the standard of their Prophet, the badge of Islam. When that standard is unfurled, it summons every Mohammedan to the rescue of Islam. It calls upon 3,500,000 Mohammedans in European Turkey, over 40,000,000 in India, 3,500,000 in Persia, and over 100,000,000 more scattered through various parts of Asia and Africa, to rally to the defense of Islam against the ‘infidels.’ “It is of course impossible that Turkey could ever organize these immense hordes into regular armies, regularly drilled and disciplined, to encounter the troops of Russia. It is not the purpose of Turkey to do it. The unfurling of this standard is an invitation to massacre and plunder all who do not believe in Mohammedanism. It is a declaration that every Mohammedan who kills nine infidels, men, women, or children, it matters not which, will receive a passport to Paradise. If this news be true, then indeed is Turkey rushing upon her doom, and taking the first step to array the whole Christian world against her. When the standard of the Prophet is unfurled, Russia will not be alone in this war. The advocates of the Christian religion and of Christian civilization, the whole world over, will rise and declare that Turkish rule shall forever end in Europe, and that the Turkish tyrants shall be sent over the Bosphorus to their old Asiatic possessions.”