GERMANS AND MOSLEMS.

Bruce Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 43, 4 June 1917, Page 1

GERMANS AND MOSLEMS.

• A FORLORN HOPE. NEW REVELATION, By now, presumably, the Germans ' nave given up any hope of success lor tneir attempt to gain Moslem support i'or the Kaiser. When the Kaiser long ago took the lust stops in pursuance or the policy of preparing the Moslem world to raiiy one day to Germany, he iiad some prospects oi success. But. tlia great handicap was the Moslem experience or* the beneficence of English rule. To this handicap the Hermans gratuitously added tiie burden of a bad reputation of their own. They had neither the wit nor the heart to do the decent thing, a new revelation of German ways, as seen by sensible Moslems, recoutly appeared in an Arabic paper J published *n Algiers, in the shape of a I letter writn.ii to an Arab merchant in I Tripoli by a Moslem notable of Dar-es-Balaam. This man opened his letter by rejoumg at the British successes in East Africa, and proceeded to give wine account of the sufferings endured by the Moslems under the Germans' I brutal rule. "The German officials' I herty" he said "were cruel oppressors, j imposing upon the natives a single law -—that of the rod. If any Moslem I complained to a German Governor of [injury done him by a German, the Go--1 vcrnor paid not the slightest attention to his complaint, nor granted restitution, but brutally repulsed him and delivered him to his minions, who would revile and beat the man and cast him into prison." The Germans' outrageous disregard for the persons and property of tkMoslems was hardly more bitterly resented than the attempts which were made to suppress the Moslem faith: "The Germans above all transgressed against our benevolent religious law, They drew up stringent regulations forbidding the opening of schools where the Great Koran is taught, and thus our children had no opportunity to read the Koran except in their homes, secretly, The Germans also forbade the right of circumcision, which is approved by the Sunna of our honorable Prophet. They even kept a* strict watch over the judges and the Imams of the mosques, and so shamefully ilMised them that finally Moslems would not accept these, offices, through fear of tbo German administration. " In addition t) ail this, they compelled the native* tj rear pigs, though it is well known how despicable such a trade is from tho Moslem point of view." If Britain had not long known how to handle nlien subject races, she would have learned from Germany nearly all that could b* taught about the way not to do it,