The _jihâd_-program assumes that the Mohammedans, just as at their first appearance in the world, continuously form a compact unity under one man’s leadership. But this situation has in reality endured so short a time, the realm of Islâm has so quickly disintegrated into an increasingly large number of principalities, the supreme power of the so-called Caliph, after flourishing for a short period, has become so much a mere word, that even the _jihâd_-prescriptions have had to be adapted to this state of crumbling authority. As in most other respects so also concerning the waging of the holy war, the law therefore transfers the authority and the duties of the one Caliph to the various territorial heads, to each one for the extent of his dominion. Now it is evident that this shifting of authority from one to many is a great simplifying influence for the internal government; but it is equally evident that by this disintegration the continuance of the world-conquest, as it was started in the first century of Islâm, is made impossible. To be sure, there were a number of other causes which stemmed the first wild rush of the Moslim legions. They met frontiers where resistance could not be broken at once, and the enjoyment of what had been conquered weakened their energy. The great deeds of the first generations were idealized in the imagination of the later ones, the stains removed from them, and the theory of their desirable continuance elaborated in details, the more casuistical as their realization was getting further outside the sphere of possibilities. Only where a Mohammedan territory is attacked by a nation of unbelievers, there the duty of defence is put upon the whole of the population. Offensive action is justified only when it is ordered and regulated by a recognized head of the state. Where unbelievers succeed in subjecting a Moslim population, the latter must not resign itself to this state of submission, but must grasp the first opportunity for either throwing off the yoke or for emigrating to an independent Moslim country; and this as much in order to ward off the danger with which their own religion is threatened, as in order to strengthen the ranks of the faithful for the struggle against the enemy, _i. e._, the non-subjected unbelievers. Even if the impossibility of effective resistance or emigration should endure for centuries, the relation of dependency upon a non-Mohammedan state-authority created thereby is to be accepted only as temporary and abnormal.