The Future of Islam | Page 6

sign of a living church. In addition to the
dogmas already mentioned, they hold that, after the Prophet and his
companions, other authorised channels of tradition exist of hardly less
authority with these. The sayings of the four first Caliphs, as collected
in the first century of the Mohammedan era, they hold to be inspired
and unimpeachable, as are to a certain extent the theological treatises of
the four great doctors of Islam, the Imams Abu Hanifeh, Malek, Esh
Shafy, and Hanbal, and after them, though with less and less authority,
the "fetwas," or decisions of distinguished Ulema, down to the present
day. The collected body of teaching acquired from these sources is
called the Sheriat (in Turkey the Sheriati Sherifeh) and is the canon law
of Islam. Nor is it lawful that this should be gainsaid; while the Imams
themselves may not inaptly be compared to the fathers of our Christian
Church. It is a dogma, too, with the Sunites that they are not only an
ecclesiastical but a political body, and that among them is the living
representative of the temporal power of the Prophet, in the person of his
Khalifeh or successor, though there is much division of opinion as to
the precise line of succession in the past and the legitimate ownership
of the title in the present. But this is too intricate and important a matter
to be entered on at present.
The Sunites are then the body of authority and tradition, and being
more numerous than the other three sects put together in a proportion of
four and a half to one, have a good right to treat these as heretics. It
must not, however, be supposed that even the Sunites profess
absolutely homogeneous opinions. The path of Orthodox Islam is no
macadamised road such as the Catholic Church of Christendom has

become, but like one of its own Haj routes goes winding on, a labyrinth
of separate tracks, some near, some far apart, some clean out of sight of
the rest. All lead, it is true, in the same main direction, and here and
there in difficult ground where there is a mountain range to cross or
where some defile narrows they are brought together, but otherwise
they follow their own ways as the idiosyncrasy of race and disposition
may dictate. There is no common authority in the world acknowledged
as superior to the rest, neither is there any office corresponding even
remotely with the infallible Papacy.
The Mohammedan nations have for the most part each its separate
school, composed of its own Ulema and presided over by its own
Grand Mufti or Sheykh el Islam, and these are independent of all
external influence. If they meet at all it is at Mecca, but even at Mecca
there is no college of cardinals, no central authority; and though
occasionally cases are referred thither or to Constantinople or Cairo, the
fetwas given are not of absolute binding power over the faithful in
other lands. Moreover, besides these national distinctions, there are
three recognized schools of theology which divide between them the
allegiance of the orthodox, and which, while not in theory opposed, do
in fact represent as many distinct lines of religious thought. These it has
been the fashion with European writers to describe as sects, but the
name sect is certainly inaccurate, for the distinctions recognisable in
their respective teachings are not more clearly marked than in those of
our own Church parties, the high, the low, and the broad. Indeed a
rather striking analogy may be traced between these three phases of
English church teaching and the three so-called "orthodox sects" of
Islam. The three Mohammedan schools are the Hanefite, the Malekite,
and the Shafite, while a fourth, the Hanbalite, is usually added, but it
numbers at the present day so few followers that we need not notice
it.[2] A few words will describe each of these.
The Hanefite school of theology may be described as the school of the
upper classes. It is the high and dry party of Church and State, if such
expressions can be used about Islam. To it belongs the Osmanli race, I
believe without exception, the ruling race of the north, and their
kinsmen who founded Empires in Central and Southern Asia. The

official classes, too, in most parts of the world are Hanefite, including
the Viceregal courts of Egypt, Tripoli, and Tunis, and it would seem
the courts of most of the Indian princes. It is probably rather as a
consequence of this than as its reason that it is the most conservative of
schools, conservative in the true sense of leaving things exactly as they
are. The Turkish Ulema have always insisted strongly on the dogma
that the ijtahad, that is to say the elaboration of