every continent. It is Islam that will conquer them; the signs of this are to be seen. For in the past, eight obstacles prevented the Illustrious Shari'a vanquishing completely the bigotry and blind imitation of tent-dwellers in their far-flung privation, and the embellished trivia and despotism of house-dwellers in the lands of ignorance. But now they have been routed by three truths, or are being routed. The obstacles obstructing the Europeans were their blind imitation, ignorance, and bigotry, and the authority of their priests; while those obstructing us were various forms of despotism, immorality, our confused circumstances, and despair, which leads to idleness. These obstacles caused the steady eclipsing of the sun of Islam.

The eighth, and principal, obstacle and chief calamity is this: together with the Europeans we deludedly imagined (tevehhüm) there to be a clash and contradiction between some of the apparent matters of Islam (zevâhir-i İslamiyet) and some questions of science. Bravo to the abounding efforts of education and science (fünun)! For they have decked us out with the desire to search for the truth, love of humanity, and the tendency to be fair, and have overturned those obstacles and got rid of them, and are so doing.

Yes, the chief reason we have been deprived of the comforts of this world and the Europeans have been deprived of the happiness of the next and the sun of Islam has been eclipsed, is the misunderstanding and groundless idea of the clash and conflict between Islam and science. How strange! How can a slave hostilely oppose his master, or a servant his lord, or a child his father? For Islam is the master and guide of the sciences (fünun), and the chief and father of all true knowledge (ulûm). But regretably, the above misapprehension and false idea has prevailed up to the present, and with its doubts has caused despair and closed up the door or civilisation and learning (ma'arif) to the Kurds and their likes. For imagining some of the apparent matters of religion to be opposed to some questions of science, they shied away from them. For instance, the sphericity of the earth, the very first step of geography, is the most elementary matter of science. But because they supposed this self-evident matter to be contrary to the six matters to