CHANGE IN ISLAM

Southland Times, Issue 19254, 27 May 1924, Page 3

CHANGE IN ISLAM

PROFOUND CONSEQUENCES IN MOSLEM WORLD. Almost unnoticed in Europe, a radical change is being rapidly carried into effect in Turkey which cannot fail to have profound consequences throughout the Moslem world, writes C. Ward Price m the Daily Mail. Under the impulsion of the progressive Turkish President, Mustapha Kemal Pasha, the general who led the Nationalists Army to victory against the Greeks which bore rich fruit in the Treaty of Lausanne, steps are being taken to disestablish the Moslem religion in Turkey, expel from the country the remaining members of the imperial family in which the Caliphate, or Mohammedan papacy, has hitherto been held, and even to abolish the Caliphate altogether. These measures form part of Kemal’s programme for modernising Turkey and assimilating her institutions to those of Western states. In urging them he risks the hostility of the most conservative and powerful bodies of opinion in the country, the hodjas, the white-turbaned religious teachers who take a very active interest in politics and will be reconciled with difficulty to the loss of their present position as a sort of official clergy, and the Turkish peasants of Anatolia, in whose eyes the dignity of their former ruler as Padishah and Commander of ‘ the Faithful always used to surpass that of Sultan. In 1922 the firat reduction of the prestige of the Caliph was made, when it was separated from the office of Sultan of Turkey. It had been united to the Sultanate after the conquest otf Egypt, ■ where the Abbasid dynasty of Caliphs had exercised spiritual functions without temporal power for three hundred years. As the most important Moslem ruler, the Sultan of Turkey thenceforth claimed the privilege of exercising spiritual supremacy over ail Mohammendans.

After the victory of the Nationalist Government in Turkey in the autumn of 1922, however, the reigning Sultan fled from his dominions and was declared deposed, his religious dignity alone being passed on to his brother, the present Caliph, Abdul Medjid. If the project of expelling the latter in his turn and abolishing the Caliphate is now carried through, the pre-eminent position in the Moslem world, which Abudul Hamid especially built up for Turkey by emphasising the importance of the Caliph’s position, will cease to have any foundation.

The field will moreover be open for some other Moslem ruler to assume the office which the Turks will have rejected. That ambitious young monarch, the Amir of Afghanistan, who had been a turbulent neighbour on our North-west Indian frontier, is known to covet the dignity. King Hussein of the Hedjaz might be another candidate. In any case, Mustapha Kemal’s scheme will sow the seeds of much discord among the followers if the Prophet the whole world over.