The crisis of Muslim vitality
Muhammad Shahtakhtinsky, The crisis of Muslim vitality (Кризис мусульманские жизнеспособности) in Joseph M. Bikermann (Бикерман И.М.) — Turkish collection: On events in the Middle East (Турецкий сборник. К событиям на Ближнем Востоке), St. Petersburg: printing house “North” (Север), 1909. — vol. 4, pp. 97–115
I
We Muslims have long known that we are in a dangerous crisis. The failures and misfortune that we endure are so great, obvious and tangible that it is impossible not to notice them.
At present, all Muslim peoples depend on the European powers. For some, this dependence is open, formal. They were conquered by the Europeans, are their subjects and directly controlled by them. Others are under the patronage of European powers, such as Bukhara, Egypt, Tunisia, etc.
The same Muslim states, which are officially considered independent, are in fact also subject to the political and economic domination of Europeans. The European powers negotiated for their subjects the right to free trade in all Muslim countries by virtue of well-known treaties called capitulations. Europeans do not pay any state or city taxes to the east, and are not subject to either the authority of the local administration or the judiciary of the local courts. The Europeans pay an insignificant duty for the goods imported into the Muslim countries, which the Muslim state does not have the right to raise, no matter how imperatively the protection of the local industry, or planting it where it does not exist, is imperatively demanded. Therefore, at present, only European goods diverge in Muslim countries. Even the sale of goods on the spot will pass to the Europeans little by little. Thanks to the exemption from all taxes, European merchants are able to sell their goods cheaper than locals.
In addition to this general subordination of all Muslim countries to all European ones, each of the Muslim states is also under the special influence of one or another European power or group of powers.
According to the Anglo-French agreement, Morocco is under the influence of the French. By virtue of the Anglo-Russian agreement, Afghanistan is subject to the influence of Great Britain. According to the same treaty, Persia is under the combined influence of Russia and England.
As for Turkey, the most significant of the Muslim states, the general dependence of all Muslim states on the European powers, which we mentioned above, not only applies to her, but in relation to her has an even more concrete form: the European powers signed a special treaty of Paris to guarantee its existence. Lord Salisbury, in his capacity as the British Minister of Foreign Affairs, at the end of the last column, wrote in a note addressed to the Powers: “Turkey lives not because of its viability, but because of the agreement of the Powers among themselves, seeing in the preserved existence of the Ottoman Empire a means to avoid clashes between the Powers because the distribution of the Turkish territories.” In addition, Turkey is also under the special influence of some of the great powers.
Under the Cyprus Convention, England has the right to control the reforms in Anatolia. According to the Mürzsteg Agreement, Austria and Russia are carrying out reforms in Macedonia. (Which also gives Russia a right to move on to the European Concert).
It is quite consistent with such a reduction by the European powers of the state rights of Muslims, the general opinion of Europeans about Muslims.
Europeans consider Muslims an element harmful to world progress due to their social immobility. It seems to them that even the existence of a Muslim in a condition subject to European powers seems to be an obstacle to the advancement of civilization, although then they are naturally deprived of the opportunity to influence the general direction of life in a given country. Europeans strive to ensure that only peoples living on the globe live in accordance with the requirements of modern civilization. As for the existence of Muslims as ruling peoples, the Europeans treat it with obvious hostility.
When any European power conquers this or that Muslim country, then all Europeans rejoice in this, seeing in this the spread of civilization, an event gratifying from the point of view of world culture.
If any European power prevents another from making conquests at the expense of the Muslim state, then only envy induces it to do so. As soon as the rivals divide the bear’s skin among themselves, then immediately the obstruction will give way to a joint attack on the prey.
As for the Christian subjects of Turkey, they also adopted the negative opinion of Europeans about Muslims. They consider their subordination to Muslims not only as a disaster for themselves, but also as a disgrace to world civilization.
That is why not only the largest ethnic groups of Eastern Christians - who hope to replace the Turks in dominance - are striving with all their might for the destruction of the Turkish state, but even the small ones do, who cannot hope for this. These latter are guided by the idea that no matter who gets power from the Turks, the country can only benefit from it.
Considering the desire of Eastern Christians for liberation from Turkish domination as deserving of all sympathy, Europeans encourage it in every possible way.
If any European power is hostile to the rebellion of one or another Christian nation against Turkey, then this happens for two reasons. Or the given power fears that, escaping to freedom, the nationality, having achieved its goal, will join the camp of its rivals. Or, this power has outlined the homeland of this nationality as the subject of a future conquest for itself. Otherwise, in principle, all European and non-European Christian peoples are with unanimous hatred for the domination of Muslims over Christians. They all recognize it as their moral duty to do everything in their power to destroy it.
The hostile attitude of the European peoples towards the power of Muslims has already entered as a principle into European international law. During a conference that met on the Thessalian question after the Greco-Turkish war, England and Austria stated as a matter of principle: “Once a country has in one way or another left the power of the Muslims, then it can no longer return under it.”
Such a sentence is nothing but a carte blanche given by Europe to the Balkan powers, freed from the Turkish yoke, to destroy Turkey without risk to themselves. They will beat Turkey, enrich themselves at its expense. If they are defeated, they will not lose any part of their territory. But no matter how unfriendly this verdict is for the sovereignty of the Muslims, the elimination of the situation created by the Greco-Turkish war, carried out by Europe, surpassed it in hostility towards the Muslims. The Europeans not only did not give the Turks Thessaly, but also took away the island of Crete from them. Meanwhile, the peace was broken by the Greeks and they suffered defeat. This means that from now on, in their clashes, Christians will acquire Turkish territories even in defeat.
The Muslim powers are moving unceasingly towards total extinction.
II
In England, France and Holland, which have a huge number of Muslim subjects, these latter do not have any rights of citizens of the state. In these countries, the fate of the population is decided in Parliament. Meanwhile, none of the parliaments of these states allow Muslim deputies who could declare the wishes, rights and complaints of millions of their fellow believers.
In these countries, Muslims are also not accepted into the public service, either in the military or in the civil service. Not a single Muslim will be appointed here either as an officer or an official. They won’t even make him a city mayor or an ordinary official.
In the colonial troops, recruited from the natives, Muslims are allowed in the officer corps. But they can only be assistants to the commanders of Europeans, but they themselves are not allowed to command even the smallest parts of the troops. There is no higher position for a Muslim than an assistant commander of a regiment.
Europeans consider Muslims to be uncultured peoples, and therefore undeserving of civil rights, which, according to their understanding, are the privilege of civilized peoples. That’s why they don’t allow Muslims into Parliament and public service. And then they do not see anything incompatible with the rights of a citizen either in the fact that Muslims are of other faiths for them and not in the fact that they are not natives of Europe.
The French do not give any civil rights and freedoms to the Algerian Arabs. They are subordinate to all orders of the military administration. Meanwhile, the same French granted the native Algerian Jewish population the rights of French citizens. These latter are now just as full French citizens as the French themselves.
In India, the Muslim population does not have any civil rights. Meanwhile, in the other colonies of England, the local population enjoys wide autonomy and, in local matters, are the same full-fledged masters of their countries as the English are in Great Britain.
In Russia, the legal status of Muslims is incomparably better. In the first and second convocations of the State Duma, the Muslim population of the Empire participated in legislative elections on the basis of complete equality with the rest of the Russians of the Christian faith. But the law of June 3, 1907 diminished the electoral rights of Muslims, unlike other foreigners.
It deprived as many as nine regions of Turkestan and the steppe, entirely populated by Muslims of voting rights completely. Although the law of June 3 reduced the electoral rights of other foreigners, but only Muslims were subjected to such destruction of rights, unlike so many other Russian foreigners.
In eastern Transcaucasia, this law cuts off the rights of Muslims in favor of Christians. In three provinces: Baku, Erivan and Elizavetpol, it provides the choice of one deputy to the Christian and Muslim population. Despite that Muslims outnumber Christians by more than three to one.
On the other hand, Russia has always accepted its Muslim subjects into the civil service.
An example of religious tolerance unparalleled in the world is shown by the Russian army. In its ranks, Muslim officers command purely Russian troops, often occupying high positions. For example, at present, a Muslim of noble origin, His Majesty’s retinue, Major General Hussein Khan Nakhichevankiy, is in command of the Life Guards Cavalry Regiment.
III
Europeans gave themselves access to all Muslim countries.
The Europeans use the acquired right to sell their goods and use their labor and enterprise in Muslim countries in proportions, the further, the more increasing. All Muslim bazaars and markets are filled with European goods. European merchants, entrepreneurs, workers, business people of every kind are found in every corner of the Muslim world. Everywhere they take an ever-increasing part in the business and economic life of Muslim countries, both privately and publicly. The most important and largest branches of private and state industry are: the construction and operation of railways, the maintenance of private banks and such as the Ottoman bank, which serves only the Turkish government, the organization of the fleet and everything that relates to the admiralty, making all kinds of weapons for the army and navy — all this is exclusively in the hands of Europeans. The right of the master over his country is now shared by the Muslim everywhere with the European, who everywhere has become not only an equal in rights, but more than he is a privileged master in his country. Nowhere else is there a Chinese wall separating Muslim life from European life. From an economic point of view, Baku and Calcutta are now the same Muslim European cities as Constantinople and Tangier.
Thanks to this contact, the struggle for existence between Muslims and Europeans is now everywhere in full swing. The victory, by all means, remains on the side of the Europeans. The more the Muslims continue, the more they lose ground.
Any profitable occupation will gradually pass to the Europeans and to the Eastern Christians, who have become Europeanized thanks to the perception of the European worldview. That is why Muslims suffer defeat in the worldly field both from Europeans and from local Christians.
In Algiers, in the port cities, in which the main arteries of life of all so-called French Africa are concentrated, there is almost no Mohammedan population left at all. They did not move out, but died out, unable to withstand the struggle for existence with a more cultured people.
About 30 years ago there were not even 500 Armenian families in the city of Baku. And now there are tens of thousands of them. They took the oil wealth into their own hands and stand immeasurably higher than the Muslims in terms of wealth, activities, welfare, etc.
Everything in Beirut is Arabic. Muslim Arabs live in one part of the city, and Christian Arabs live in the other. Turkish government, which, of course, is more favorable to Muslims. The language and literature of Muslims and Christians is common. What do we see? Among Beirut Christians everywhere you meet cleanliness, well-being, ability to work, cheerfulness. Muslims are poor, dirty, apathetic, obviously weary of life.
If there is no radical change in the Muslim way of life, then not only the loss of independence by Muslim states, but also the complete extinction of the Muslim element is only a matter of time.
IV
Many of the Muslims attribute the crisis to the weakening of the feeling of unity among Muslims in general, and in particular the lack of mutual support between Muslim states. They see, therefore, the healing of Muslim ailments in the close rapprochement of Muslims among themselves; Pan-Islamism was born from this way of thinking. Others see the reason for the fall of Muslims in the disorder of military affairs, and others in the backwardness of the form of government. And very few people talk about the main reason for our failures — the backwardness of our world outlook.
In the Middle Ages, Muslims and Christians had the same religious outlook. The viability of peoples, their strength and weakness depends on the worldview. Therefore, at that time there was no organic excess in terms of viability between these two elements. When they attacked each other, the victory depended on external causes. In the centuries-long Muslim-Christian wars of those times, the final victory remained: in Spain, for the Christians, and in Syria, for the Muslims. The first country adjoined the Christian world, and the second, the Muslim one.
In the current modern period of history, Europeans have moved on to a real, secular, scientific worldview. They now see things not as the preachers of Christianity saw two thousand years ago, but as modern science sees them. Thanks to their realistic view of things, Europeans have made tremendous progress in all areas of life, have become strong, powerful, invincible. They now organically surpass us Muslims with their vitality. We Muslims still remain with dogmatic worldviews. The goal of life for us is not to improve its conditions for us and for our offspring, but to beg from Allah for access to heavenly pleasures in the next world through the zealous performance of religious rites in this.
The European considers himself entitled to control his own destiny and legislate over his own life. He has a correct conception of life and laws. Life unceasingly develops and incessantly presents new requests and demands depending on this. Laws govern the flow of life. That is why the European constantly changes and corrects his laws according to the course of life.
There was a time when religion did not allow a European to have a different idea of the universe other than its teaching, and embrace lifestly that was not sanctified by its authority. But the Europeans, thanks to their striving for truth, intellectual independence and the good of mankind, have freed themselves from religious slavery and now legislate completely freely over all branches of human life.
Europeans put into practice not only all the laws that European people propose to them, finding them appropriate to the needs of current life, but also those that they meet among non-European peoples and which seem to them useful. For example, divorce was previously not allowed in Europe according to civil laws. Montesquieu first praised its application among Muslims in his “Spirit of the Laws”. Since that time, it has become popular among Europeans and now it is allowed by all European codes of laws, and I must say, furnished and conditioned by Europeans is incomparably more expedient than by Muslims.
Current European life is normalized by laws that are now recognized by civilized mankind as the most expedient. They prepare each of these laws to give way to a better one than it, . The longer Europeans live, the more they progress. Even the concept of progress was created by humanity from observing European life.
Thanks to such a fundamental progressiveness of the European way of life, a better system than the European one cannot be imagined even in thoughts. Let’s assume the impossible — A life was found somewhere in all respects superior to that of Europe. Tomorrow the Europeans, according to their principle of progressiveness, will accept all of it and become as advanced in progress as those who live this life. But if this newly discovered life is not allowed, like our Muslim one, by changing its forms, then the Europeans, by virtue of their same fundamental progressiveness, after accepting it now, can bring in a new improvement from themselves and then their life will turn out to be better than the one that so recently surpassed the European in all its parts.
Therefore, any nation that wishes not to lag behind universal human progress can live only a European life.
In this progressiveness of theirs, the Europeans find justification for the unceremoniousness with which they violate the state rights and economic interests of the Muslim peoples.
According to the opinion of Europeans, the earth exists so that the human race will develop and improve more and more on it. Only peoples living in the bosom of European civilization fulfill this calling of humanity. Muslims not only do not improve, they even reject the idea of progress. Socially, Islam is the worship of stagnation and rigidity. It is not surprising that Europeans do not recognize any moral right for Muslims to exist on the globe and look at them like weeds in a garden. The sooner you tear it out and throw it out, the more useful it is for the cause.
What an immeasurably lofty being is a European in his quality as a legislator over his life, if you look at him from the point of view of the Muslim worldview. According to the teachings of Islam, it is not man himself who has the right to give laws for his human life, but God, Allah. Muhammad only promulgated among the people the laws of the Quran received by him from Allah. He is the Governing Senate. Therefore, a European who writes laws for his life, according to Muslim concepts, is higher than Muhammad. He … Almighty Allah himself.
Islam is not only religious in the sense of Christianity, but also civil law. The Quran is equal to the Gospel and the code of criminal and civil laws. All Muslims, no matter what nationality they belong to, and no matter what country they live in, not only have the same religion, but also the same way of life.
Part of the laws that form this system is contained in the Quran, and the rest is extracted from the words and examples of the life of Muhammad and his companions. All the laws of the system together are called Sharia.
In essence, Sharia is nothing but the customs and habits of the Hijaz Arabs of the time of Muhammad. In Sharia, they are somewhat softened and purified, but have not undergone a radical change. Therefore, the Sharia remains in full compliance with the legal and social norms of the people’s life of the pre-Mohammedan pagan Arabs. Take, for example, polygamy.
It existed even before Muhammad. The Prophet preserved the custom, but limited to four the number of wives a Muslim could legally marry.
That is why, while the monotheism of Muhammad destroyed the religious life of the Arab pagans to the ground, the social laws of the Quran did not cause any revolution in the life and teaching of the compatriots of the Prophet were accepted by the pagans as a simple codification of their morals and customs.
In the same tone, the Quran expounds the basic tenets of the Muslim religion, the eternal principles of morality and virtue, and social, political and other laws, which, by the very nature of things, must have a local and temporary character. Nowhere is it mentioned that the first two categories of these laws are eternal, and the last is subject to change according to circumstances and the course of life.
The absence of such a clause was interpreted by Muslim theologians in favor of the immutability of all the laws of the Quran, according to the well-known Muslim religious formula: “The Sharia of Muhammad will continue until the Last Judgment.”
Naturally, the social Sharia laws, extracted from the way of life of the Arab nomads of the 7th century, have now outlived their time for the Arabs themselves. Much has changed in Arab life over such a long period of time. As for other Muslim peoples, these laws did not correspond to the conditions of their life even when they appeared among them for the first time. They accepted them because since they entered into the monotheism of Muhammad, they could not refuse to accept all the laws of the Quran. The teachings of Muhammad seemed to them an indivisible whole.
It is superfluous to talk about harmfulness while maintaining such laws in operation.
To force 300 million Muslims, settled all over the globe and divided into so many peoples, often sharply differing from each other in character and way of life, to live forever in a way of life that in the era of Muhammad, distant from our days, stretching as much as 14 centuries, live like the small the uncultured Hijaz nation — this is the same unnatural rule as it would be if, all the patients of the globe were treated forever and ever according to prescriptions written for patients who are on a certain day in any hospital.
Such a usurpation by Sharia among the Muslims of their natural right to resolve and streamline their lives, to write the laws necessary for it, destroys the collective will, folk self-awareness, public opinion, a sense of common blessings, the duty and obligation of a citizen and man. Sharia destroys the thoughts of a person who is conscious of her own.
Political despotism is a thousand times less pernicious. Under such conditions a person, enslaved from the outside, remains free in his inner self. As soon as the circumstances become favorable, internal freedom will not pretend to submit to the external. The despotism of Shariah is all the more pernicious because Muslims consider it a phenomenon not only legal, but also sacred, and therefore do not strive to be freed from it in their thoughts. Sharia destroys the very concept of freedom of thought in the Muslim.
The absence in Muslims of the right to give themselves laws for their lives makes it pointless for them to engage in social sciences and in general all sciences and literature, since the bait, benefit, ultimate goal of all this is nothing more than a change for the better of the conditions of human life. The same must be said about political freedom, democracy, parliamentarism.
If we Muslims are not imbued, following the example of Europeans, we will convince ourselves that we, by human right, are obliged to make our own rules, to constantly improve its conditions by changing the laws in accordance with its planned needs, and if this holy cause, on which the very existence of peoples depends, if we do not devote all our strength with that inspiration and self-denial, which is observed among Europeans, then our extinction is inevitable. Stagnation and life are incompatible.
But once we accept a European style real, scientific worldview, then it will not be difficult to cleanse our lives of the anti-communal Sharia laws. If Muslims now do not renounce them, it is not because they approve of them, but because they hold the view that it is not the business of man to interfere in the realm of laws. God gave laws to Muslims in the Quran, and they are obliged to obey them, not only without changing them, but without criticizing them.
And when they cleanse the anti-social laws of Muhammad and accept changing the laws in accordance with their needs, Muslims will enter the family of civilized peoples, then nothing will prevent them from becoming as viable as the civilized peoples themselves.
Muslims are now being made into dying peoples only by keeping the old laws, which have outlived their time, and confessing inertia and stagnation. With a progressive life, however, they cannot but become viable. Muslims are young and healthy people by nature. They are capable of any mental and physical labor.
It does not mean that modern Muslims did not participate in the creation of the current world civilization. So many peoples who did not participate in the creation of modern civilization later joined it and now live happily ever after in this world, showing the same vitality as the Western Europeans, its creators.
But a special place in its destructive effect on the life of all Muslim peoples is occupied by polygamy and seclusion of women.
Polygamy offends the human dignity of a woman. The husband of several wives is not a spouse, who is connected to his wife by mutual love and respect, but a slave owner, subordinating a given number of slaves for money to his domination. There can only be tyranny on the part of the husband and involuntary submissiveness on the part of the wives. Children, on the other hand, treat their father servilely, following the example of their mother, and they treat their mother rudely, imitating their father. Between the children of the same father from different mothers and between the wives of the same polygamist, there is always an irreconcilable hatred, which will certainly pass into the next generation.
Polygamists produce weak, stunted, skinny children, causing damage to public health and national ability to work.
Polygamy greatly contributes to the reduction of population. When the rich take several wives, the poor are doomed to celibacy for the rest of their lives or for part of it. From one polygamist, as many children cannot be born as there would be, if each of his wives constituted a special family.
In the polygamy and seclusion of women, which makes dating between men and women difficult and the conclusion of marriages, one must look for the origin of sodomy, a vile unnatural vice, unfortunately so widespread in the Muslim East.
Polygamy greatly harms the social position of Muslim subjects in the eyes of the European powers on which they depend. For them, it is irrefutable proof of the lack of culture of the people, the rudeness, the immorality. All Muslim people living in dependence on European powers must abolish polygamy even for the sole sake of their legal status. If in recent times the French in Algeria, as we have said above, have given the rights of French citizens to the native Jews, and deny this to the Arabs, it is only because, in the eyes of the French, Muslims, as polygamists, do not deserve to be treated as a civilized people.
Even a few centuries ago, the Jews perfectly understood this mood of the Europeans, when they abolished polygamy. What an excellent example of love for their people and a clear understanding of the international situation, the Jews give us in this example, if we Muslims can use it.
In disrespect for a woman, seclusion goes even further than polygamy. It is not content with turning a woman into a slave and turning her into an inanimate object, a thing. “A man hides his gold from strangers, why should he not do the same with his wife?” — This is how a Muslim argues, practicing the seclusion of women.
Seclusion drives a woman out of public life. She is chained to her house, like a prisoner to her prison cell. She does not know what life is, what is her role in it. Closure makes a Muslim woman bodily flabby, but mentally helpless. She is clumsy, motionless, timid, agitated for no reason, full of prejudice, incredibly ignorant. All these defects of her character she naturally communicates to her children.
Fortunately, seclusion exists only in cities. The villagers and nomads have almost none at all. That’s why in Turkey and Persia, if you meet a completely healthy mentally and physically people they are usually in the villages and on the nomads.
Everyone knows the excellent fighting qualities of the Turkish soldier. Meanwhile, according to the reviews of all competent people, Turkish officers in terms of energy, endurance and decisiveness of character and boldness of plans make one wish for a lot.
This comes from the fact that the soldiers are the children of peasant women and nomadic women, who live almost as freely as the women of the Europeans, and the officers are the children of city dwellers doomed to seclusion.
What are the chances of fighting against the omnipotence of Shariah? These chances are not as small as it seems. All that is needed is for the Muslim intelligentsia to devote themselves wholly to freeing Muslim thought from the clutches of Shariah. When the propaganda of enlightening ideas begins seriously, the transition of the Muslim world from the current theocratic worldview to a realistic, scientific, European one will be completed faster and easier than the transition of the European way of thinking from medieval to modern took place in its time. The Europeans had to develop a new worldview themselves, but we find it completely ready for the Europeans. Europeans needed philosophers, discoverers of scientific truths. We only need translators who would translate from European languages into Eastern books, which contain the modern worldview.
Moreover, the truth - the perception of which by the Muslim masses is necessary in order for the evolution of the worldview necessary for the revival of the Muslim world to take place — is so simple and obvious that for it to be introduced into Muslim minds, it is enough to refer to popular common sense in short, simple words without any scientific treatises, translations or original.
It will not be difficult for Muslim humanists to convince their co-religionists that the law is a tool by which we humans among ourselves encourage good and punish evil. We resort to the law, being powerless to turn evil people into good ones. All religions do not imagine God otherwise than as omnipotent. If the Almighty really wanted people not to do evil, then it would cost Him nothing to create them infallible. The writing of laws for the ordering of human life is incompatible with the omnipotence of God. It is a deed below His dignity, an insult to His greatness. Therefore, there is not and cannot be any legal laws that would come from God.
In reality, the laws in Muslim countries are different, and so far, after all, they have not remained completely motionless. The first example of the changeability of the laws of the Quran is given by the Quran itself. It has a whole series of verses containing laws which are abolished by verses later promulgated by Muhammad. The abolished verses, according to Muslim theological terminology, are called abolished verses (ʾĀyāti mansūkhi). The famous caliph Omar dismissed the temporary marriage that existed before him, which still remains in use among the Shiites. The limitation of the rule of infidelity in a Muslim state follows both from the letter of Sharia law and from their common spirit. Meanwhile, Turkey canceled it according to the ḫaṭṭ-ı hümayun of 1856 (Sultan’s decree) and solemnly proclaimed the equality of Christians with Muslims.
I summarize. The current oppression of Muslims by Europeans is a natural and inevitable result of the civilization of Europeans and the lack of culture of Muslims. This oppression will certainly bring Muslims to complete extinction, if Muslims do not join European civilization.
The beginning of a civilized life for Muslims is the recognition by every Muslim for himself of the right to give himself, together with his compatriots, laws for his life. He must consider pernicious for himself and for his people eternal, reckless obedience to the laws of the Quran and Sharia. The legislator of a living people should be the living people itself, and not a book of laws corresponding to the state of affairs that existed 14 centuries ago.
The struggle of Muslim states with European powers in order to achieve actual equality with them in the international arena, with the current lack of culture of Muslims, is doomed to certain failure and to the inevitable worsening of the already unbearable situation of Muslim states.
The same fate awaits, due to the same lack of culture among Muslims, the struggle of Muslim subjects against European powers, both to win political independence and to achieve civil equality with the ruling peoples.
When Muslims change their worldview, civilize and become viable, Europeans will be forced by the force of a fait accompli to recognize Muslims as equal in viability. And then, between the Muslim and Christian worlds, a modus vivendi satisfactory to both can be established without a fight.
The initiative to spread free-thought ideas in the Muslim environment should be assumed by us, Muslims, a state of citizenship of the European powers. We are free from religious Muslim censorship and can call a spade a spade without risk to ourselves. Sharia censorship does not allow our fellow believers living in Muslim states to be critical of religious issues.
Among the Muslim subjects of the European powers, we Russian Muslims must naturally play the first role in all matters relating to the friendship of Muslims with European civilization. Among us, the movement towards Europeanism is more conscious, and it is stronger with us than with our co-religionists, who are dependent on other European powers.
