I brought the notes of “Hájí Ráz” to a conclusion in the last chapter; and he himself has bidden the reader farewell. It now remains for me to say a few words on what I conceive to be the greatest weakness in the Mussulman faith as interpreted by the Mullahs; and in so doing I wish it to be understood, particularly by my Eastern readers, that I am solely responsible for the opinions I am about to express on the subject of the Mussulman’s attitude to slavery, the existence of which, in the fourteenth century of the Hegira, must be a source of some misgiving on the part of those who sympathise with so much in the Muslim creed. And I appeal throughout to the enlightened laymen of our Indian Empire, on whose interpretations of the Prophet’s message the welfare of Islám will, in the future, depend in an ever-increasing degree. Now, the British are the champions of freedom: under their flag every man is born free. Nothing is more hateful, to their way of thinking, than that one human being should be the slave of another. In their opinion the quality of slavery is to brutalise both the slave and his master--the slave by depriving him of the self-respect which is the heritage of every man who is free to choose his own career and to rule, within the limits of humanity, his own destiny; and the master, by making him the owner of a human soul--a responsibility so awful that it is far more likely to lower him to the level of a beast than it is to raise him to the height of a god. If this, in brief, be a fair statement of the British attitude towards slavery, it will be interesting and, in a measure, enlightening to the reader to follow, by way of contrast, the argument supported by the ordinary Mussulman.