Spiritual and Political Revolutions in Islam - Taschenbuch

SPIRITUAL AND POLITICAL REVOLUTIONS IN ISLAM BY FELIX VALYI LONDON KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER CO., LTD. BROADWAY HOUSE 68-74, CARTER LANE, E. C. 1925 PREFACE THE title of this book may at first sight appear somewhat pretentious. The whole of the Musulman world is in a state of fermentation, whilst in the following pages the author has only treated one or two aspects of the racial conflicts that have bathed the Near East in rivers of blood and have had such disastrous effects upon the fate of Europe. Never theless, the transformation of the Musulman nations which is taking place under our eyes with a rapidity which has surprised even the wisest observers, can only be designated by the word Revolution in its widest significance that is to say, a revolution at once political and spiritual. It is a tremendous upheaval of which we can here only describe a few aspects, and we beg the indulgence of the reader for any discrepancies there may be in a book which was written from time to time as the various problems with which it deals were presented to the author. The essay on the origins of the ArmenianProblem deals only with the period ending with the Russian Revolution of 1917 a period the documentation for which seemed to the author sufficient for placing the responsibility for the massacres in Asia Minor partly on the shoulders of the Tsarist Government. As for the events subsequent to 1917, and particularly for the part played by the Western Powers in the development of the Armenian problem down to the time of the Conference of Lausanne 1923 the author was of opinion that the historical documentation IV. PREFACE accessible was insufficient for the purposes of an impartial enquiry.Nevertheless the most superficial observer cannot help seeing that Russian methods in the East have undergone no change, and that behind the fafade of the Bolshevik Revolution the same expansion on the part of Russia is still menacing the interests of all the free nations. It would, there fore, be a most unpardonable error on the part of Musulmans to allow themselves to be hypnotized by the pompous phrases issuing from Moscow. If the following pages succeed in shedding a little light on the great problem of the relations between East and West, they will have accomplished their object. October, 1924. CONTENTS PAGE INTRODUCTION i THE TURKISH REVOLUTION AND THE FUTURE F ISLAM 17 THE PROBLEM F EGYPT 77 RUSSIA IN ASIA MINOR 139 INTRBUCTION EUROPE AND ASIA AT this moment, when the material passions con suming the soul of Europe are manifested in a form of diplomacy entirely devoid of science and ideas, and threaten once again to shatter the peace of the whole world, it behoves us to study, with care and precision, those lessons of history and those funda mental truths upon which the future depends. The crisis reached by the spirit of the West in its dealings with the nations of Asia and Africa is apparent to all. The white race is undergoing one of those attacks of conscience, which, at certain moments in history, upset the established order rf things, shake Governments and Empires to their foundations, and provoke all kinds of antagonistic forces which in a latent state, from times immemorial, are to be seen accompanying the evolution of man kind, doomed to suffering. History, confronted by these prodigious phenomena of universal dissolution and social and economic disintegration, standsperplexed. It has not yet succeeded in understanding the mystery of the 2 REVOLUTIONS IN ISLAM human soul, which, under periodical assaults of collective frenzy, frivolously pulls to pieces what it has taken centuries of painful effort and struggle to accomplish...