Page:The young Moslem looks at life (1937).djvu/55

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THE PERFECT RELIGION
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that Allah says to Mohammed: "This day have we perfected for you your religion." The faithful consider that the end of the matter.

The faith must be taken as it is: believed in, and acted upon. For this reason Islam has had little use for critics and reformers. For the most part it has been content to go along with the minimum of change from the traditional way. Therefore, most Moslem reformers have been considered the enemies of Islam. Some of them have had to face persecution, and even death. But all of them have taken the position that, since the people of their day had fallen into serious errors, they were merely trying to bring them back to the purer and more original form of the true Islam.

In Arabia, Mohammed ibn Abdul Wahhab in the eighteenth century sought to abolish the worship of saints and the use of tobacco, claiming both were contrary to the teaching of the Prophet. He was violently opposed, but he and his followers, who have come to be known as Wahhabis, finally won out on the basis that theirs was the purer form of this "perfect religion."

Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan of India in the nineteenth century was confronted with the problem of leading his people out of their deplorably backward condition. It was clear to him that Islam would have to be modernized, the medieval classical Arabic courses would have to be given up, and Western education introduced or the Moslems of India would be left far behind in the struggle for existence. This dis-