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The question whether it is better simply to leave the Moslims to Islam as it was for centuries is no longer an object of serious discussion, the reforming process being at work everywhere in some parts with surprising rapidity. We can only try to prognosticate the solution which the near future reserves for the problem, how the Moslim world is to be associated with modern thought.
And they inquired of him how it came to pass that he should be on foot and alone in that pagan kingdom, seeing it was evident by his dress that he was a Moslim.
But King Selim, being a good Moslim, had refused to give his daughter in marriage to the son of a heathen, and one, moreover, who was reported to be proficient in the vilest arts of magic. Hence the declaration of war. The Caliph, being naturally of a very fierce and hasty temper, resented hotly this insult to his host.
His successors, Jehangir and Shah Jehan, were also tolerant of Hinduism, but Aurungzeb was a fanatical Moslim and though he extended his rule over all India except the extreme south, he alienated the affection of his Hindu subjects by reimposing the poll tax and destroying many temples.
Almost every Moslim village has its patron saint; every country has its national saints; every province of human life has its own human rulers, who are intermediate between the Creator and common mortals. In no other particular has Islam more fully accommodated itself to the religions it supplanted.
The real history of India begins with the life of the Buddha who lived in the sixth century B.C. At that time the small states of northern India, which were apparently oligarchies or monarchies restricted by the powers of a tribal council, were in process of being absorbed by larger states which were absolute monarchies and this remained the normal form of government in both Hindu and Moslim times.
This task they have always conceived in accordance with their political interests; Islam has had its religious persecutions but tolerance was very usual, and even official favouring of heresy not quite exceptional with Moslim rulers. Regular maintenance of religious discipline existed nowhere.
It was more human than Nârâyaṇa, less sensuous than Kṛishṇa. Every Hindu was familiar with the poetry which sings of Râma as a chivalrous and godlike hero. But he was not, like Kṛishṇa, the lover of the soul, and when Râmaism was divested of mythology by successive reformers it became a monotheism in which Hindu and Moslim elements could blend.
It is the girls' school that will awaken those sleeping ones and so, slowly and gradually, prepare a better future, when the Moslim woman will be the worthy companion of her husband and the intelligent educator of her children.
When Mohammed, taking his stand as opposed to Judaism and Christianity, had accentuated the Arabian character of his religion, the Meccan rites of pagan origin were incorporated into Islam; but only after the purification required by monotheism. From that time forward the yearly celebration of the Hajj was among the ritual duties of the Moslim community.
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