pean control like India, Egypt, and Algeria, there are many Moslems,
Western educated and Western culture-veneered, who have drifted into an
attitude varying from easygoing religious indifference to avowed
agnosticism. From their minds the old Moslem zeal has entirely departed.
The Algerian Ismael Hamet well describes the attitude of this class of
his fellow-countrymen when he writes: "European scepticism is not
without influence upon the Algerian Moslems, who, if they have kept
some attachment for the external forms of their religion, usually ignore
the unhealthy excesses of the religious sentiment. They do not give up
their religion, but they no longer dream of converting all those who do
not practise it; they want to hand it on to their children, but they do
not worry about other men's salvation. This is not belief; it is not
even free thought; but it is lukewarmness."[21]

Beyond these tepid latitudinarians are still other groups of a very
different character. Here we find combined the most contradictory
sentiments: young men whose brains are seething with radical Western
ideas--atheism, socialism, Bolshevism, and what not. Yet, curiously
enough, these fanatic radicals tend to join hands with the fanatic
reactionaries of Islam in a common hatred of the West. Considering
themselves the born leaders (and exploiters) of the ignorant masses, the
radicals hunger for political power and rage against that Western
domination which vetoes their ambitious pretensions. Hence, they are
mostly extreme "Nationalists," while they are also deep in Pan-Islamic
reactionary schemes. Indeed, we often witness the strange spectacle of
atheists posing as Moslem fanatics and affecting a truly dervish zeal.
Mr. Bukhsh well describes this type when he writes: "I know a gentleman,
a _Mohammedan by profession_, who owes his success in life to his faith.
Though, outwardly, he conforms to all the precepts of Islam and
occasionally stands up in public as the champion and spokesman of his
co-religionists; yet, to my utter horror, I found that he held opinions
about his religion and its founder which even Voltaire would have
rejected with indignation and Gibbon with commiserating contempt."[22]

Later on we shall examine more fully the activities of these gentry in
the chapters devoted to Pan-Islamism and Nationalism. What I desire to
emphasize here is their pernicious influence on the prospects of a
genuine Mohammedan reformation as visualized by