Go; seek knowledge everywhere, if needs be, even into
China."
Verses from the Hadith.
Amongst us Europeans it is commonly accepted as a proven fact that
Islam is merely a religion of obscurantism, bringing in its train the
stagnation of nations, and hampering them in that march to the unknown
which we call "progress." But such an attitude shows not only an
absolute ignorance of the teaching of the Prophet, but a blind
forgetfulness of the evidence of history. The Islam of the earlier
centuries evolved and progressed with the nations, and the stimulus it
gave to men in the reign of the ancient caliphs is beyond all
question. To impute to it the present decadence of the Moslem world is
altogether too puerile. The truth is that nations have their day; and
to a period of glorious splendour succeeds a time of lassitude and
slumber. It is a law of nature. And then one day some danger threatens
them, stirs them from their torpor and they awake.
This immobility of the countries of the Crescent was once dear to me.
If the end is to pass through life with the minimum of suffering,
disdaining all vain striving, and to die entranced by radiant hopes,
the Orientals are the only wise men. But now that greedy nations beset
them on all sides their dreaming is no longer possible. They must
awake, alas.
They must awake; and already the awakening is at hand. Here, in Egypt,
where the need is felt to change so many things, it is proposed, too,
to reform the old university of El-Azhar, one of the chief centres of
Islam.
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