Awful Desecration

Enough to set hairs a-standing on pious Mohammedan heads would be a proposal to cover the broad, flat floors of mosques with hateful, heathen pews.

Pews would prevent squatting in the traditional attitude of prayer. Pews would obstruct reverent foreheads from bending down to touch the floor of the House of Allah. Pews would be an awful desecration --as awful as though heathen Christians should not don slippers before entering a mosque, and thus pollute the floor.

However, since the present ruling class of Young Turks are not pious Mohammedans, it was natural, last week, that the Commission on Religious Reform, recently appointed by President Mustafa Kemal Pasha should recommend: 1) Pews to cover the floor of every mosque; 2) abolition of the mosque slipper and prayer rug; 3) installation of organs, choirs.

Observers of the Young Turks' successful occidentalization of Turkey marveled, once more, at the docility of the Turkish masses, which have abandoned the fez, ceased to contract polygamous marriages, and now seem prepared to alter the fundamental rites of their religion--all this within ten years.