The better to gauge the present political aspect of the Moslem world, the statesmen of Europe--of France and Great Britain more particularly--should make an earnest study of the spirit of Islam. If we regard Islam as the work of Mohammed--as we are bound to--there are certain broad features we must also recognize. Right away from its very inception he worked not only as a prophet, but as a political reformer. Travelling as he did with his eyes, ears and all his senses open, the political state of the eastern portion of Europe and the western side of Asia must have been well known to him. To accomplish his religious ends was impossible without the political unity of Arabia. To him the political and religious unity of his country were synonymous. As a shrewd and practical trader, the material advantages of commerce were taken into consideration. He recognized that without a sound commercial basis and political unity there could be no national stability. He also saw that in a country like Arabia, split up into clans and communities, it was only possible to effect this through the spiritual potentialities of the one and only true God. If he did not himself accomplish this great project, we know at least that it was the magnificent legacy he bequeathed to his followers in the spirit of Islam, that eventually did so in reality. He or the spirit he evoked was clearly and unmistakably the cause of all subsequent Moslem triumphs, intellectual and political as well as religious. Thus it was that scarcely eighty years after his death, Islam reigned supreme over Arabia, Syria, Persia, all the northern coast of Africa, including Egypt, as well as Spain. So, too, notwithstanding the internal schisms and rifts that subsequently took place, it kept on growing with great strides, until at last in 1453, the Crescent gleamed from the spires of St. Sophia at Constantinople, and the soul-stirring war cry “La ilah illa Allah” resounded seventy-six years afterwards before the very gates of Vienna. Lecky is undoubtedly right in assuming that: “To trace in every great movement the part which belongs to the individual and the part which belongs to general causes without exaggerating either side is one of the most difficult tasks of the historian.” But in the case of Islam there can be no mistake. True, the Arabs in themselves were a great and virile people. But it was the genius of Mohammed, the spirit he breathed into them through the soul of Islam, that exalted them. That raised them out of the lethargy and low level of tribal stagnation, up to the high water mark of national unity and Empire. It was in the sublimity of Mohammed’s deism, the simplicity, the sobriety and purity it inculcated, the fidelity of its founder to his own tenets, that acted on their moral and intellectual fibre with all the magnetism of true inspiration. To them Islam was the Faith--the Faith God.