Page:The further side of silence (IA furthersideofsil00clifiala).pdf/365

Undeterred by the knowledge that mutilation, vio- lent death, and an ingenious system of tortures, had proved quite powerless to cure the Kelantan folks' innate propensity to misappropriate one another's property, Maha Mentri conceived the bold idea of converting the entire population, on a sudden, into fervent and fanatical Muhammadans. Now, judged as an exponent of Islam, your average Malayan peas- ant is wofully slack and casual, but the people of Kelantan are the dullest and least fervent Malays in the Peninsula. No more unpromising material for a religious revival could be found in any part of Asia, and any attempt to make such folk scrupulous ob- servers of the Prophet's law, by the local equivalent of an Act of Parliament, was foredoomed to failure from the outset. Nothing daunted, however, Maha Mentri insisted upon all men attending at the mosque on Fridays, for the recital of congregational prayer, and inculcated the breaking of the heads of recal- citrant church-goers: he observed, and personally superintended the observance of fasts; he did his best to prevent the use of silk garments by any save women, and this, be it remembered, in a country which is famous for its silk fabrics: he set his face against cock-fighting, bull-matches, ram-butting, human prize-fights, hunting, and the keeping of dogs, all the sports of the well-to-do, in fact; and while he pried into the home of every family in the capital, with the landable object of ascertaining whether its immates prayed regularly at each of the five hours of appointed prayer, he dealt an even more