return to genuine Islam, an Islam without a priest class, writing in 1929: "In the New Dark Age of my faith, from which we have just emerged into the sunny vistas of real religion, a curious politico-religious system had grown; and it is indeed by reason of our forebears having been seen so long under that influence that the average European wonders whether we have not definitely divorced Islam by our modernization. The truth is that the organization of the Doctors of Moslem Law, backed by autocratic Eastern monarchs was the very antithesis of the words of the Koran. In Turkey, for instance, no man was permitted to consult the Holy Book of Islam and seek interpretation for himself; despite the fact that the only reason for which the faithful places his book above every other Revealed Law is that any man can have his cue directly from it. The Prophet himself emphasized this fact repeatedly and thereby meant to destroy the human tendency of priestcraft. This particular teaching was so deep that it was not until many political cross-currents amongst the Moslem States had much weakened the spiritual essence that the clergy at last won the battle which they had fought for at least a thousand years." Justifying Turkey's modernisation efforts under Kemal Atatürk, Ali Shah condemned what Islam had become in Turkey: "Even the slightest divergence from the established church was considered the highest crime; and the faithful wandered in and out of the four water-tight compartments of schools of theology completely dazed by the priest-made dogma that neither would reconcile with the early teachings of Islam nor ring true to the advancing humanity of the present age. The clergy made every effort to circumscribe the view of every Moslim and placed the right of interpretation beyond the reach of even the intelligent seeker after truth." He noted with approval that – "When ecclesiastics frowned upon women parading the streets in Stamboul, the young men were able to silence the objections by quoting the Koran to prove that the Koran enjoined only modesty and not the cruel practice of closing women in the houses." In the 1930s he was in Geneva, working in collaboration with the League of Nations supporting disarmament, and attending the European Muslim Congress of 1935, promoting Islamic unity. According to Augy Hayter (a student of Ikbal's son Omar Ali-Shah) the Sirdar's connection with the