That later on the Mohammedans developed a fierce anti-Christian fanaticism is largely due to centuries of political conflict with Christian peoples, and to the many wars that have been fought to defend Islam against the never-ceasing aggressions of Europe. Within the Turkish Empire itself, for example in Arabia and in Northern Albania, dangerously fanatical Moslem populations are to be found, but these are not people of Turkish blood. The majority of the Turks of any education, though religious, are not fanatics, and on this very account are regarded as indifferent Mussulmans and often frankly called _kafirs_ by the bigoted Arabs. Of all the various peoples who inhabit Turkey the Mussulman Turks are undoubtedly the least intolerant. The Christians of different sects there hate each other as no Turk hates a Christian and no Christian hates a Turk. The orthodox Greeks and the Bulgarian schismatics in Macedonia employ all methods of barbarism in their persecutions of each other. When Bulgaria formed part of Turkey the Bulgarians had often to petition the Turks to protect them against the fanatical Greeks. The Catholic Latins, too, in Turkey, being in a minority, would doubtless have been exterminated by their fellow-Christians had it not been for the protection extended to them by the Turks, with the result that they are grateful and loyal to the Ottoman rule. The recent revolution appears to have brushed away almost completely what religious fanaticism there was still left among the Mohammedan Turks, and the Young Turks themselves, the deliverers of the nation and its real rulers, are entirely free from it. I have conversed with hundreds of these Young Turks and have many friends among them, and in no country have I come across more broad-minded and tolerant men. There is no doubt that Islamism has of late years undergone a modernising process, thereby gaining strength. The Sheikh-ul-Islam himself, as head of the _Ulema_—the Doctors of Law whose duty it is to interpret the judicial precepts of the Koran, and who have hitherto composed the most fanatical and conservative element in Turkey—has been at great pains to impress it upon the Mussulman people, upon whom from his position he exercises such great influence that the Constitution which has been granted to them, though introducing the principle of complete equality between Mussulmans, Christians, and Jews, is quite in accordance with the teachings of the Koran.