gious reformation is an uncritical return to
the primitive cult. To the religious reformer the only way of salvation
is a denial of all subsequent innovations, regardless of their
character. Our own Protestant Reformation began in just this way, and
Humanists like Erasmus, repelled and disgusted by Protestantism's
puritanical narrowness, could see no good in the movement, declaring
that it menaced all true culture and merely replaced an infallible Pope
by an infallible Bible.

As a matter of fact, the puritan beginnings of the Mohammedan Revival
presently broadened along more constructive lines, some of these
becoming tinged with undoubted liberalism. The Moslem reformers of the
early nineteenth century had not dug very deeply into their religious
past before they discovered--Motazelism. We have already reviewed the
great struggle which had raged between reason and dogma in Islam's early
days, in which dogma had triumphed so completely that the very memory of
Motazelism had faded away. Now, however, those memories were revived,
and the liberal-minded reformers were delighted to find such striking
confirmation of their ideas, both in the writings of the Motazelite
doctors and in the sacred texts themselves. The principle that reason
and not blind prescription was to be the test opened the door to the
possibility of all those reforms which they had most at heart. For
example, the reformers found that in the traditional writings Mohammed
was reported to have said: "I am no more than a man; when I order you
anything respecting religion, receive it; when I order you about the
affairs of the world, then I am nothing more than man." And, again, as
though foreseeing the day when sweeping changes would be necessary. "Ye
are in an age in which, if ye abandon one-tenth of that which is
ordered, ye will be ruined. After this, a time will come when he who
shall observe one-tenth of what is now ordered will be redeemed."[9]

Before discussing the ideas and efforts of the modern Moslem reformers,
it might be well to examine the assertions made by numerous Western
critics, that Islam is by its very nature incapable of reform and
progressive adaptation to the expansion of human knowledge. Such is the
contention not only of Christian polemicists,[10] but also of
rationalists like Renan and European administrators of Moslem
populations like Lord Cromer. Lord Cromer, in fact, pithily summarizes
this critical attitude in his statement: "Is