What they want is a legal authority to change.  Now, no such authority exists, either in the Ottoman Sultan, or in the Sherif, or in any Sheykh el Islam, Mufti, or body of Ulema in the world.  None of these dare seriously meddle with the law.  There is not even one universally recognized tribunal to which all Moslems may refer their doubts about the law’s proper reading, and have their disputes resolved.  A fetwa, or opinion, is all that can be given, and it applies only to the land where it is issued.  The fetwa of this great Alem in one Moslem state may be reversed by the fetwa of another in that.  The Sheykh el Islam at Constantinople may be appealed against to the Mufti at Mecca or Cairo, or these again, it may be, to Bokhara.  None absolutely overrides the rest.  Thus while I was at Jeddah there came a deputation of Mussulmans from Bengal, being on their way to Mecca to ask a fetwa on the disputed point whether believers were permitted or not to use European dress.  A previous fetwa had been asked at Constantinople, but the deputation was dissatisfied, alleging that the Sheykh el Islam there could not be trusted and that they preferred the Meccan Mufti.  Thus legal-minded Moslems who would see their way to improvement are constantly faced with a legal bar, the want of authority. As things stand there is no remedy for this.

An opinion, however, seems now to be gaining ground among the learned, that a legal issue may one day be found in the restoration to the Caliphate of what is called by them the Saut el Hai, the living voice of Islam, which in its first period, and indeed till the destruction of the Abbaside dynasty by Holagu, belonged to the successors of the Prophet.  It is certain that in the first four reigns of Abu Bekr, Omar, Othman, and Ali, such a living power to legislate was accorded to the Caliphs; and that on their own authority they modified at will the yet unwritten law.

Thus it is related of Abu Bekr that in one instance he set aside a law called the Mota, though based directly on some sentences of the Koran, declaring it not conformable to the better tradition; and that Ali again reversed this ruling, which has, nevertheless, been adhered to by the Sunites.  Later, too, the Ommiad and Abbaside Caliphs exercised this right of legislation by deputy; it was in their names that the Mujtaheddin, Abu Hanifeh and the rest, framed their first codes of law; and to the last the words of their mouth were listened to, as in some measure inspired utterances, by the faithful.

It was only when the sacred office passed from the sacred and legitimate House that this feeling of reverence ceased, and the living voice of the Caliph was disregarded in Islam.  The Ottoman conqueror, when he took upon him the title of Emir el Mumenin, did not venture to claim for himself the power to teach, nor would Moslems have listened to any such pretension.  The House of Othman was from the first sunk in degrading