On the other hand, it is equally certain that the vast majority of those who profess the faith of Islam look upon that faith as the most precious inheritance bequeathed them by their fathers, and decline to put it in peril for the sake of any worldly advantage. They consider that, in seeking the general good of a Mohammedan community, the first and absolute essential to be considered is the good of the Mohammedan religion; and this is their first thought, too, when the practical question of individual education comes before them. All Mohammedan fathers are desirous that, before everything else, their sons should inherit their own gift of faith in the one true God and the teaching of His apostle.
Thus, then, it happens that, while recognizing fully the necessity there is for worldly knowledge, the mass of respectable Mohammedans have held back, and still hold back, from the purely secular education afforded in Government schools and colleges to Hindus and Christians with themselves. They look with suspicion on the teaching, and with more than suspicion on the teachers. They refuse to believe that any education can be a sound one which is without a religious basis. They see that neither history nor philosophy nor Western literature can be taught by unbelievers in the divine mission of their Prophet without serious risk of undermining their pupils’ faith; and they find no institution in India in which these necessary branches of human learning are taught to Mohammedans wholly by Mohammedans. Neither the Indian University, nor the Calcutta Madraseh, nor the Hooghly College, nor even the College of Aligarh entirely fulfil this condition. In the Indian University there is at the present moment no single Mohammedan professor. At the Madraseh, the president and many of the professors are Englishmen; and at Aligarh also the principal is an Englishman, and there are English and Hindu teachers. In none of them is there the certainty that religious influence other than Mohammedan shall not be brought to bear upon the students.
Lastly--and this is the most important consideration of all to the leaders of the Mohammedan community of India--they find in all the Empire, no central school of religious thought such as is to be found in other Mohammedan lands. Although their population is the largest of any now existing in the world, they are without a recognized seat of learning which can claim for them to be the fountain head of orthodox opinion. They have no central body of Ulema, whose teaching and discussion should serve to keep alive the intellectual activity of the religious teachers and so give its tone to the whole mass. They feel this to be the most serious want of all of their situation in presence of the growing intelligence of other religious bodies around them.