In these very last years a new progress of modern thought has manifested itself in Cairo in the foundation, under the auspices of Fu’ad Pasha, an uncle of the present Khedive, of the Egyptian University.  Cairo has had for a long time its schools of medicine and law, which could be turned easily into university faculties; therefore, the founders of the university thought it urgent to establish a faculty of arts, and, if this proved a success, to add a faculty of science.  In the meantime, gifted young men were granted subsidies to learn at European universities what they needed to know to be the professors of a coming generation, and, for the present, Christian as well as Mohammedan natives of Egypt and European scholars living in the country were appointed as lecturers; professors being borrowed from the universities of Europe to deliver lectures in Arabic on different subjects chosen more or less at random before an audience little prepared to digest the lessons offered to them.

The rather hasty start and the lack of a well-defined scheme have made the Egyptian University a subject of severe criticism.  Nevertheless, its foundation is an unmistakable expression of the desire of intellectual Egypt to translate modern thought into its own language, to adapt modern higher instruction to its own needs.  This same aim is pursued in a perhaps more efficacious manner by the hundreds of Egyptian students of law, science, and medicine at French, English, and some other European universities.  The Turks could not freely follow such examples before the revolution of 1908; but they have shown since that time that their abstention was not voluntary.  England, France, Holland, and other countries governing Mohammedan populations are all endeavouring to find the right way to incorporate their Mohammedan subjects into their own civilization.  Fully recognizing that it was the material covetousness of past generations that submitted those nations to their rule, the so-called colonial powers consider it their duty now to secure for them in international intercourse the place which their natural talent enables them to occupy.  The question whether it is better simply to leave the Moslims to Islam as it was for centuries is no longer an object of serious discussion, the reforming process being at work everywhere—­in some parts with surprising rapidity.  We can only try to prognosticate the solution which the near future reserves for the problem, how the Moslim world is to be associated with modern thought.

In this problem the whole civilized world and the whole world of Islam are concerned.  The ethnic difference between Indians, North-Africans, Malays, etc., may necessitate a difference of method in detail; the Islam problem lies at the basis of the question for all of them.  On the other hand, the future development of Islam does not only interest countries with Mohammedan dominions, it claims as well the attention of all the nations partaking in the international exchange of material and spiritual goods.  This would be more generally recognized if some knowledge of Islam were more widely spread amongst ourselves; if it were better realized that Islam is next akin to Christianity.