Iman, Grand Chaplain of the Sultan“Saturday (July 6th),” says the Press, “the Iman or Grand Chaplain of the Sultan, Hairoulah-Effendi, visited Mgr. Chigi, nuncio of the Pope, and Mgr. the Archbishop of Paris."
The Sultan's trip to Paris is more than a political event, it is a sign of the times, the prelude to the disappearance of religious prejudices that have, for so long, raised a barrier between peoples and bloodied the world. Coming the successor of Muhammad, out of his own free will, to visit a Christian country, fraternizing with a Christian sovereign, it would have been on his part, not long ago, a daring act; today, this event seems quite natural. What is even more significant is the visit of the Iman, his great chaplain, to the heads of the Church. The initiative he took on this occasion, since the etiquette did not oblige him to do so, is a proof of the progress of the ideas. Religious hatreds are anomalies in the present century, and it bodes well for the future, to see one of the princes of Islam setting an example of tolerance and recanting secular prejudices.
One of the consequences of moral progress will, one day, certainly be the unification of beliefs; it will take place when the different cults recognize that there is only one God for all men, and that it is absurd and unworthy of Him to curse just because we do not worship Him in the same way.
