WITH THE EYES OF A TURK.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 13453, 1 June 1907, Page 5 (Supplement)

WITH THE EYES OF A TURK.

i MUSSULMAN'S CANDID VIEW OF EUROPEAN CIVILISATION. ft is always interesting, awl generally j seful. to see ourselves as others sec us,!' nd this desirable end may be arrived at, rom a rather novel point of view, by readlg a little book, called "The Crescent orsus the Cross." written by a Turkish}' entleman, Mr'. Haiti Halid, " Licentiate! f the Institute of Law (Constantinople).! lonorary M.A. (Cantab.)." i Mr. Halid accents the fact, generally admitted, that the Christian missionary has" iad little success among Muslim people, nd he compares the advance of the misionaries of tki two creeds, denying that! slam is spread by the force of the sword, j Jhina, which has never been overrun by a| Mussulman Power, is a typical example. " According to the estimate made in 18781 >y a French authority, the number of Chin-; :se Mussulmans exceeds twenty millions.! L"he later European authorities raise this lumber to something between thirty audi hirty-five millions-. The Muslim prosely-j ism in China was begun in the seventh lentury, and it was more or lew about the ame time that Nestorian Christians carried] in active missionary work in China. . . .j n the sixteenth and more especially in the j linelecnth century, Christian propaganda! eceived very effective support from the re.-j igious bodies in Christendom, yet the num-1 xt of the Chinese who profess Christianity .o-d.iy is sadly insignificant when compared with the number of those who follow j Islam." POSITION OF WOMEN. j Perhaps the mos interesting parts of j the book are the chapters referring to the position of women. it is not true that Paradise is closed to the Muslim woman. Respect and affection lor woman are laid down in the Koran, and, indeed, according to Mr. Halid, the relation between the sexes stipulated for in the sacred books of both religions give the advantage from a modern feminist point of view to the Koran, which contains no passage so borough-going as the Biblical injunction, "Let the wives be subject to their own husbands in everything." That the Muslim woman is not a slave is shown by the fact that she can possess property. " Mussulman women have the full right of possessing property, and they can, if they find it necessary, manage tlicii own property quite independently of the interference" of their husbands. The rights of ownership were secured to them some thirteen hundred years ago by a just legislator, and not by the act of any Parliament in recent years." WOMAN" AND EVIDENCE. Certainly a woman's evidence is not valued in cases of crime. Mr. Halid the reason, and it may appeal to some European men, though they would, perhaps, fear to acknowledge it. " The excessive impressibility of women by outward suggestion is responsible for most of the false notions they form; the circumstances of their lives are less hardening, therefore they are more impressed than men by suggestive phenomena. At times all men tell lies; indeed, some of them, with unblushing boldness. But women have a more habitual inclination to veil the fact* of the case." "And as one reads, one thinks of Mr. Alfred Sutro and "John Glayde's Honour." Marriage settlements are strictly enforced, and the husband who delays payment cannot exercise his marital prerogatives. Mr. Halid defends the custom of veiling, though he is broadmind'ed enough to admit that " a wider extension of women's liberty of action may be made in accordance will the true spirit of the Islamic law." Coming to the delicate, question of poly; gamy, we arc told that Mahomet restricted polygamy, taking care to look after tin interests* of the woman. Mr. Halid fur ther asserts that secret polygamy is tin rule rather than the exception among West em nations, and that the Muslim law pro teats women from illicit unions, and chil dren from the stain of illegitimacy. Divorce is no more common among on people than the other, and Muslim teacher have strongly deprecated it. Then we come to slavery. Kindness t< slaves is laid down in the Koran as a duly It is pointed out that it is only within tin last hundred yea<a that the Christian na tions have denounced slavery, and it i: suggested that this was done largely fron interested motives. MUSLIM SLAVES. The slave among the Muslims is giver opportunity foi freeing himself, and w< are told by the laws of Islam, when i slave becomes mother to a free man's chile she is no longer a slave," which is a strik contrast of the state of affairs which ex.iste< before the abolition of slavery in theUnitec States, where in such a case both inothe and child were slaves. In his concluding chapters, Mr. Hali< describes the point of view of a Mussul man towards the rule of a European Power However civilised that rule may be, it i hardly ever wanted. "In an independent Muslim country : despot or a small faction of tyrants ma; oppress the bulk of the people, but at th same time any one among the people ha the chance of becoming somebody anyon can aspire to fame of the highest standinj in the political and social life of the na tion." The religion of Islam is, as a matter o fact, democratic. It accepts literally th' I doctrine that all men aro equal in th [face of God. It care* nothing for difference 'of colour, and it sweeps away the race prid ] which is the characteristic of the European (and which has till now prevented him froti Ireally regarding the coloured man as a rnai land a brother, even though be may shar the same religion. i Mr. Halid asserts that the evils some j times incidental to the rule of Muslims i; j Oriental countries have their parallels ii IChristian countries, and when one reads o j massacres in Russia and the periodical as sassinations among the Balkan Christian? it is difficult to gainsay him. Of all th |European rules of Muslim countries he pre iters the British, because their rule is no !followed by a large European immigration j He denies that there is any Pan-Islami movement, but anticipates, since the vie tory of Japan, a joining together of th i Muslim and non-Muslim Orient for mutua [protection against European aggression, th 'idea being that "there is room for all dt sirable- strangers in this hospitable contin lent of Asia, but empire-making by outsider is henceforth forbidden."