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Sick Man of Europe. The torch of Islamic empire-building passed in time from Arab to Seljuk to Mongol to Ottoman Turk. All the while, Islam was intellectually withdrawing from engagement with alien thought, under the influence of the mystical Sufis, and the orthodox ulama (scholars) who saw all wisdom in the Koran and Moslem tradition. By the 19th century, Islam was enfeebled in body as well as spirit; lands once ruled by Saladin and Suleiman the Magnificent became European protectorates; Turkey, resident of the impotent caliphs, was the "sick man of Europe."
But even in the midst of decay the seeds of rebirth took root. As early as 1744 the fierce Wahhabi movement began preaching the need for a strict return to Islamic practice, and its doctrine slowly spread through the lands of the faith. Sharply countering Moslem fatalism, the 19th century philosopher Al Afghani preached ijtihad (self-exertion), urging Islam to adapt to the currents of change in the modern world. India's Ahmadiyya movement helped revive Islam's long-dormant lust for converts. Twentieth century nationalism gradually brought independence, and a new spirit of confidence, to Islamic countries of Africa and Asia.
Inner Weakness. But many orientalists see a basic ambiguity in Islam's position, and feel that outward expansion is matched by inner weakness. One such weakness is that Moslem devotion, outside of rural areas where social pressure to conform runs strong, is often little more than skin-deep. Morocco still fines men caught smoking during Ramadan, and Malaya's Moslem courts zealously crack down on khalwat (close association of the sexes). Saudi Arabia has neither alcohol nor movies, but even here faith is succumbing to the influences of modernism: this year Jeddah will have a TV station.
Elsewhere in Islam, some pillars of the faith are crumbling. In Algeria and Tunisia, few town dwellers bother to stop work or play for the five-time ritual of daily prayer. In the cities of Westernized Syria and Lebanon, a majority of Moslems drink, and the percentage of those who fast through Ramadan is on the decline. In much of Africa, as British Orientalist J. Spencer Trimingham points out, "Islam and the pagan underlayer have blended"—leading to a mixture of Allah-worship and animism that would scandalize the learned sheiks of Cairo.
Indifference to many of Islam's traditional practices and customs seems prevalent among college-educated Moslems of Africa and the Middle East, for whom heaven is more likely to be a well-paying job with an oil company than a houri-filled paradise. For hundreds of years Moslem women have had to endure the restrictions of purdah—seclusion and heavy veiling. The liberated young ladies of Lebanon, long freed from purdah, now wear bikinis on the beaches of Beirut, dance the watusi at discothèques, and even marry Christians. "The young intelligentsia are fighting to modernize," says Dr. Régis Blachère of Paris' Institute of Islamic Studies. "They would like Islam to be an ethic without the limitations of practices in contradiction to modern life."