It is a pity indeed that thus far women vigorously striving for liberation from those mediaeval institutions are rare exceptions in Mohammedan countries.  Were Mohammedan women capable of the violent tactics of suffragettes, they would rather try to blow up the houses of feminists than those of the patrons of the old regime.  The ordinary Mohammedan woman looks upon the endeavour of her husband to induce her to partake freely in public life as a want of consideration; it makes on her about the same impression as that which a respectable woman in our society would receive from her husband encouraging her to visit places generally frequented by people of bad reputation.  It is the girls’ school that will awaken those sleeping ones and so, slowly and gradually, prepare a better future, when the Moslim woman will be the worthy companion of her husband and the intelligent educator of her children.  This will be due, then, neither to the Prophet’s Sunnah nor to the infallible Agreement of the Community of the first centuries of Islam, but to the irresistible power of the evolution of human society, which is merciless to laws even of divine origin and transfers them, when their time is come, from the treasury of everlasting goods to a museum of antiquities.

Slavery, and in its consequence free intercourse of a man with his own female slaves without any limitation as to their number, has also been incorporated into the sacred law, and therefore has been placed on the wrong side of the border that is to divide eternal things from temporal ones.  This should not be called a mediaeval institution; the most civilized nations not having given it up before the middle of the nineteenth century.  The law of Islam regulated the position of slaves with much equity, and there is a great body of testimony from people who have spent a part of their lives among Mohammedan nations which does justice to the benevolent treatment which bondmen generally receive from their masters there.  Besides that, we are bound to state that in many Western countries or countries under Western domination whole groups of the population live under circumstances with which those of Mohammedan slavery may be compared to advantage.

The only legal cause of slavery in Islam is prisonership of war or birth from slave parents.  The captivity of enemies of Islam has not at all necessarily the effect of enslaving them; for the competent authorities may dispose of them in any other way, also in the way prescribed by modern international law or custom.  In proportion to the realization of the political ideal of Islam the number of its enemies must diminish and the possibilities of enslaving men must consequently decrease.  Setting slaves free is one of the most meritorious pious works, and, at the same time, the regular atonement for certain transgressions of the sacred law.  So, according to Mohammedan principles, slavery is an institution destined to disappear.  When, in the last century, Mohammedan princes signed