PANISLAMISM. This word was first employed in journal istic literature in the early '8os of the 19th century to describe the efforts made in the Muslim world to bring about some unity of ac tion in opposition to the Christian powers of Europe. Invented to express what was believed to be a new order of circumstances, the word has led to much misunderstanding, since it has obscured the facts that Muhammadan political theory has always embodied a hostile attitude towards unbelievers unless they submitted to Muhammadan rule, and that the ideal of the unity of all believers has formed an integral part of the religious outlook of Islam since its very inception. The only new circumstance in the relations between the Christian Powers and the various Muslim populations was that the expansion of the Press in the East had improved methods of communication and had enormously facilitated the rapid circulation of ideas. The alarmists who regarded Panis lamism as a danger, credited Sultan Abdul Hamid II. (1876– 1909) with a wide-spread propaganda designed to gain for him self recognition as the spiritual head of all the Muslims through out the world, whatever might be the Government to which they owed temporal allegiance. It was feared that this recognition of the sultan of Turkey as Caliph might be a cause of political dis turbance among the Muhammadan subjects of European Powers. The growing decline of political power in the Muhammadan world had indeed given to Turkey an increasing importance in Muslim eyes as being the single Muhammadan state of im portance that could take part in the councils of Europe. But the emissaries of Abdul Hamid were ill-chosen, and the success of their efforts appears to have been slight, and the Panislamist move ment was mainly confined to journalistic denunciations of the op pression of the Muslims by Christian Governments and exhorta tions to promote the unity of Islam. But no practical scheme was worked out, and Abdul Hamid who was theoretically the head of the movement, showed great discretion and restraint in his propa ganda, which was rendered the less effective by the profound distrust which his cruelty and despotism excited especially among his own subjects. After his deposition an attempt was indeed made by the Committee of Union and Progress at the Salonika Congress of 1911 to adopt a definite scheme of Panislamic propaganda, and it was resolved that a congress of delegates from all the Muslim countries of the world ought to meet annually in Constantinople to discuss questions of interest to all Muslims. Emissaries appear to have been actually sent out during these years to win or to confirm adherents to the Ottoman Caliph wherever Muslims were subject to Europeans, even to remote parts of Africa, including Morocco; others worked among the Muslims of China.
Attempts were also made to deal with the old difficulty which had confronted Panislamism, the schism between Sunni and Shicah. Early in 1911 a letter was published by a number of Ottoman and Persian jurists assembled at Nejef, asserting that there was no difference of principle between the two sects and urging co-operation between the two empires, Persia being at that time, it was supposed, menaced by England and Russia. The
sympathies of the Muhammadan world became again focussed on Turkey with the outbreak of the Italian war in Sept. 1911 and of the Balkan war in Oct. 1912. The talk about the need for union between Muslims was renewed in the Muhammadan press through out the world and it became more widely realised among them that someone claiming to be their Caliph existed.
But the outbreak of the World War in 1914 revealed the weak ness of Panislamism, and the more active influence of nationalist feeling thrust the Panislamic idea into the background. The European Powers against whom it was directed—England, France, Russia and afterwards Italy—received during the course of it great proofs of loyalty and attachment from their Muslim sub jects ; and it seems clear that there was little sense of unity with the Turks on the ground of common religion on the part of these populations, in which, on the contrary, the sense of loyalty to the empires within which they are incorporated had been de veloped. The proclamation of a jihad with no response shows that the time for the employment of that instrument had passed, if it was ever effective. The reduction of the Ottoman Empire after the conclusion of the war to a comparatively small area produced a feeling of depression among the Islamic peoples, who could no longer look with confidence to a great Islamic Power as the natural leader in any scheme for the recovery of hegemony in Asia and Africa. The Turkish republic (one of the few inde pendent Muhammadan states now surviving) on more than one occasion made it clear that it did not concern itself with the fate of Muslim populations in other countries.
This attitude of aloofness on the part of the Turkish Govern ment dealt a severe blow at Panislamism, for those who worked for the unity of Islam during the 19th century had looked on Turkey as the rallying point of their efforts. The last refuge of the Panislamist movement was India, in which the Khilafat move ment was started in Oct. 1919, maintaining that the dignity of the Caliphate required that the holder of this office should be left in possession of territories adequate for the defence of the faith, and that the guardianship of the Holy Places should remain in his hands. But the declaration of a republic in Turkey in Oct. 1923, followed in March 1924 by the abolition of the Caliphate, com pelled the Indian Muhammadans to adopt a new programme, and accordingly the Central Khilafat Committee, at its meeting in Bombay in May 1924, resolved in future to endeavour to promote friendly relations between the various Muslim countries and to ex change communications regarding a settlement of the Caliphate question, in accordance with the Sacred Law of Islam. The altered circumstances of the problem were much discussed in Egypt and Java also, and as a result two separate congresses were held in 1926, the Caliphate Congress in Cairo and the All-Muslim Con gress in Mecca. But in neither of these gatherings was any de cision of a practical nature arrived at, and it is uncertain whether any attempt will be made to convene such meetings again.