Publications, Newspaper Cuttings, Photographs and Correspondence about Persia and the Persian Gulf [‎183v] (367/879)

654
JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF ARTS.
May 27, 1910.
lived its uses, and there are men who will
overwhelm it w'ith vituperation. Of this sort,
as a rule, is the anti-clerical fury. There may
naturally come a time in the development of a
great religion when its priests, who are its
teachers, cease to be a help and even become
a drag. It is confessedly so with teachers in
other domains of knowledge. The graduate
who goes forth from his university to do
intellectual prodigies in the world might, if
compelled to remain for life under collegiate
tutelage, degenerate into a pedant. But to
say that a religion on arriving at spiritual
maturity may be justified, in certain circum
stances, in freeing itself from ecclesiastical
bonds is not to sanction vilification of all sacer
dotal institutions. Probably no religion has
been, or could be, reared through the perils of
unpopular infancy, and the difficulties of
juvenescence, except by priests. It is only
when priestly power outstays its office, or over-
steps it, or corrupts it, that it incurs just blame.
History, unfortunately, provides many examples
of clerical abuse : but history also glows with
the renown of priestly works which have con
tributed to the uplifting of mankind.
Islam, like other religions, owes its growth
and its greatness in large measure to its
priests. Unhappily, it also owes to them its
decay and its downfall. This is no irresponsi
ble pronouncement; it is the verdict of those
who have, perhaps, the best right to be the
judges—representative Muhammadans. I have
moved about the Moslem world for fourteen
years, and everywhere in my travels—in India,
in Persia, and in Arabia—earnest Muhamma
dans (not Bahais) have urged upon me the
same strong conviction. This is far from
implying that the whole of Islam has become
conscious of its degradation and of the cause.
Enlightment is, as yet, limited almost entirely
to the inconsiderable literate classes, and the
uninstructed millions still preserve much of the
old superstitious veneration for Mujtahids,
Mullahs, Syeds, Dervishes, Pirs, Imamzadehs,
and other adorable people. But the new anti
clerical idea is surely spreading, and it seems
to be the special mission of Bahaism to propa
gate it to the ends of the Moslem universe.
Some of the most learned Persian Bahais to
whom I have submitted this view of Bahaism
at Tehran conferences have acknowledged its
justness, and have objected only to the impli
cation that the energies of the new teaching
are limited to the regeneration of Islam. This
limitation is not of my making. I am the last
to presume to set a bound of my own imagining
to the potentialities of any human movements
It is a limitation of present-day fact. Yow
have only to consider that the Muhammadan
converts to Bahaism number more than two
million, and the non-Muhammadan converts
only a few thousand, to perceive the strength
of the statement. The Bahai dream of a
world-wide propaganda is doubtless a proper,
and may even be a reasonable, object of
aspiration and endeavour. My concern here
is with what is actually being accomplished.
Historical Comparisons between
EUROPE and Asia.
If the Reformation in Christendom be-
brought into view for comparison—so far as
comparison can go—with this new Reforma
tion in Islam, some remarkable parallels will
appear. In earliest days, several centuries
before the Reformation dawned in Europe,
Christianity divided itself into two great
Churches, the Greek and the Roman, which
never again commingled, and to this day dwell
apart, the one ruled by its Patriarchs, the
other by its Popes. Islam similarly, in its-
young years, split up into two great Churches,
the Sunni and the Shiah, which never after
wards recombined, and still remain mutually
antagonistic, the one under its Caliphs, the
other under its Imams or their successors. In
both cases priestly zealotry widened the gulf
and kept it open. One of the cherished aims
of Bahaism is to bring Sunnis and Shiahs
together again in a reformed faith of love.
Priestly pretensions to temporal power, in
Christendom as in Islam, brought Church and
State into frequent conflict, and generally it
was the people, distracted between their civil
duties and their religious fears, who suffered
most. Bahaism seeks to reconcile the spiritual
and temporal authorities in Islam by showing
that each is a necessary adjunct of the other :
the Church performs the religious functions of
the State ; the State discharges the civil obliga
tions of the Church.
Abuse of priestly power, in Christendom as
in Islam, provoked from time to time sporadic
outbreaks of what may be called premature
Protestantism, and in both religions these
revolts were extirpated by fire and slaughter.
The massacre by Pope Innocent III. of the
heretical Albigenses in Languedoc, whose
offending was that they anticipated Luther by
three centuries, could be matched by more
than one agonising tale from the history of
early Islam.
When we get down to later times, the

Publications, Newspaper Cuttings, Photographs and Correspondence about Persia and the Persian Gulf [‎183v] (367/879)

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Publications, Newspaper Cuttings, Photographs and Correspondence about Persia and the Persian Gulf [‎183v] (367/879)

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