[Sidenote: Yet the veil necessary under existing circumstances.]
At the same time I am not prepared to say that in view of the laxity of
the conjugal relations inherent in the institutions of Islam some such
social check as that of the veil (apart from the power to confine and
castigate) is not needed for the repression of license and the
maintenance of outward decency. There is too much reason to apprehend
that free social intercourse might otherwise be dangerous to morality
under the code of Mohammed, and with the example before men and women of
the early worthies of Islam. So long as the sentiments and habits of the
Moslem world remain as they are some remedial or preventive measure of
the kind seems indispensable. But the peculiarity of the Mussulman
polity, as we have seen, is such that the sexual laws and institutions
which call for restrictions of the kind as founded on the Koran are
incapable of change; they must co-exist with the faith itself, and last
while it lasts. So long, then, as this polity prevails the depression of
woman, as well as her exclusion from the social circle, must injure the
health and vitality of the body politic, impair its purity and grace,
paralyze vigor, retard progress in the direction of freedom,
philanthropy, and moral elevation, and generally perpetuate the normal
state of Mohammedan peoples, as one of semi-barbarism.
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