indifference to avowed agnosticism. From their minds the old Moslem zeal has entirely departed. The Algerian Ismael Hamet well describes the attitude of this class of his fellow-countrymen when he writes: "European scepticism is not without influence upon the Algerian Moslems, who, if they have kept some attachment for the external forms of their religion, usually ignore the unhealthy excesses of the religious sentiment. They do not give up their religion, but they no longer dream of converting all those who do not practise it; they want to hand it on to their children, but they do not worry about other men's salvation. This is not belief; it is not even free thought; but it is lukewarmness."[21]

Beyond these tepid latitudinarians are still other groups of a very different character. Here we find combined the most contradictory sentiments: young men whose brains are seething with radical Western ideas—atheism, socialism, Bolshevism, and what not. Yet, curiously enough, these fanatic radicals tend to join hands with the fanatic reactionaries of Islam in a common hatred of the West. Considering themselves the born leaders (and exploiters) of the ignorant masses, the radicals hunger for political power and rage against that Western domination which vetoes their ambitious pretensions. Hence, they are mostly extreme "Nationalists," while they are also deep in Pan-Islamic reactionary schemes. Indeed, we often witness the strange spectacle of atheists posing as Moslem fanatics and affecting a truly dervish zeal. Mr. Bukhsh well describes this type when he writes: "I know a gentleman, a Mohammedan by profession, who owes his success in life to his faith. Though, outwardly, he conforms to all the precepts of Islam and occasionally stands up in public as the champion and spokesman of his co-religionists; yet, to my utter horror, I found that he held opinions about his religion and its founder which even Voltaire would have rejected with indignation and Gibbon with commiserating contempt."[22]

Later on we shall examine more fully the activities of these gentry in the chapters devoted to Pan-Islamism and Nationalism. What I desire to emphasize here is their pernicious influence on the prospects of a genuine Mohammedan reformation as visualized by the true reformers whom I have described. Their malevolent desire to stir up the fanatic passions of the ignorant masses and their equally malevolent hatred of everything Western except military improvements are revealed by outbursts like the following from the pen of a prominent "Young Turk." "Yes, the Mohammedan religion is in open hostility to all your world of progress. Learn, ye European observers, that a Christian, whatever his position, by the mere fact that he is a Christian, is in our eyes a being devoid of all human dignity. Our reasoning is simple and definitive. We say: the man whose judgment is so perverted as to deny the evidence of the One God and to fabricate gods of different kinds, cannot be other than the most ignoble expression of human stupidity. To speak to him would be a humiliation to our reason and an offence to the grandeur of the Master of the Universe. The worshipper of false gods is a monster of ingratitude; he is the execration of the universe; to combat him, convert him, or annihilate him is the holiest task of the Faithful. These are the eternal commands of our One God. For us there are in this world only Believers and Misbelievers; love, charity, fraternity to Believers; disgust, hatred, and war to Misbelievers. Among Misbelievers, the most odious and criminal are those who, while recognizing God, create Him of earthly parents, give Him a son, a mother; so monstrous an aberration surpasses, in our eyes, all bounds of iniquity; the presence of such miscreants among us is the bane of our existence; their doctrine is a direct insult to the purity of our faith; their contact a pollution for our bodies; any relation with them a torture for our souls.