The Rebuke of Islam: Being the Fifth Edition, Rewritten and Revised, of The Reproach of Islam 9781463220372

Citation preview

T h e Rebuke of Islam

Exploring the House of Islam: Perceptions of Islam in the Period of Western Ascendancy 1800-1945 3 Series Editors Mark Beaumont Douglas Pratt David Thomas

This is a series of re-publications of writings by Europeans, Americans and other non-Muslims on Islam from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries up to the end of the Second World War. This period of Western political, economic, cultural and religious impact on the Islamic world is shown through the eyes of mainly European and American Scholars, Travellers, Missionaries and others who perceived Muslim culture in a variety of ways. The series is devoted to three kinds of perception: of Islamic History and Institutions; of Islamic Religion and Culture; and of Islam in comparison with Christianity. Making these works available again will enable renewed understanding of the attitudes and actions of non-Muslims in their engagement with Islam.

The Rebuke of Islam

Being the Fifth Edition, Rewritten and Revised, of The Reproach of Islam

By

W. H. T. Gairdner Introduction by

Colin Chapman

1 gorgias press 2009

Gorgias Press LLC, 180 Centennial Ave., Piscataway, NJ, 08854, USA www.gorgiaspress.com Copyright © 2009 by Gorgias Press LLC Originally published in 1920 All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. N o part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise without the prior written permission of Gorgias Press LLC. 2009 • ^

1 ISBN 978-1-60724-411-0 Reprinted from the original edition published in London (1920).

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gairdner, W. H. T. (William Henry Temple), 1873-1928. The rebuke of Islam / by W. H. T. Gairdner ; with introduction by Colin Chapman. -- 5th ed., rewritten and rev. p. cm. -(Exploring the house of Islam: perceptions of Islam in the period of Western ascendancy 1800-1945 ; 3) Originally published under the title: The reproach of I s1am. Includes bibliographical references. 1. Islam. 2. Missions to Muslims. I. Chapman, Colin. II. Gairdner, W. H. T. (William Henry Temple), 1873-1928. Reproach of Islam. III. Title. BP163.G24 2009 2 97--dc22 2009041655 Printed in the United States of America

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Table of Contents

v

Series Foreword Exploring the House of Islam: Perceptions of Islam in the Period of Western Ascendancy 1800—1945 vii 1. Perceptions of Islamic History and Institutions viii 2. Perceptions of Islamic Religion and Culture xi 3. Perceptions of Islam in Comparison with Christianity xv 4. The Scope of the Series, Exploring the House of Islam: Perceptions of Islam in the Period of Western Ascendancy 1800-1945 xx References xxii W. H. T. Gairdner, The Rebuke of Islam

v

xxiii

T h e Rebuke of Islam

Exploring the House of Islam: Perceptions of Islam in the Period of Western Ascendancy 1800-1945 3 Series Editors Mark Beaumont Douglas Pratt David Thomas

This is a series of re-publications of writings by Europeans, Americans and other non-Muslims on Islam from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries up to the end of the Second World War. This period of Western political, economic, cultural and religious impact on the Islamic world is shown through the eyes of mainly European and American Scholars, Travellers, Missionaries and others who perceived Muslim culture in a variety of ways. The series is devoted to three kinds of perception: of Islamic History and Institutions; of Islamic Religion and Culture; and of Islam in comparison with Christianity. Making these works available again will enable renewed understanding of the attitudes and actions of non-Muslims in their engagement with Islam.

The Rebuke of Islam

Being the Fifth Edition, Rewritten and Revised, of The Reproach of Islam

By

W. H. T. Gairdner Introduction by

Colin Chapman

1 gorgias press 2009

Gorgias Press LLC, 180 Centennial Ave., Piscataway, NJ, 08854, USA www.gorgiaspress.com Copyright © 2009 by Gorgias Press LLC Originally published in 1920 All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. N o part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise without the prior written permission of Gorgias Press LLC. 2009 • ^

1 ISBN 978-1-60724-411-0 Reprinted from the original edition published in London (1920).

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gairdner, W. H. T. (William Henry Temple), 1873-1928. The rebuke of Islam / by W. H. T. Gairdner ; with introduction by Colin Chapman. -- 5th ed., rewritten and rev. p. cm. -(Exploring the house of Islam: perceptions of Islam in the period of Western ascendancy 1800-1945 ; 3) Originally published under the title: The reproach of I s1am. Includes bibliographical references. 1. Islam. 2. Missions to Muslims. I. Chapman, Colin. II. Gairdner, W. H. T. (William Henry Temple), 1873-1928. Reproach of Islam. III. Title. BP163.G24 2009 2 97--dc22 2009041655 Printed in the United States of America

SERIES FOREWORD EXPLORING THE HOUSE OF ISLAM: PERCEPTIONS OF ISLAM IN THE PERIOD OF WESTERN ASCENDANCY 1 8 0 0 - 1 9 4 5

Contemporary debate about the way non-Muslims in the colonial era wrote about Islam has been centred on the accusation that Europeans and others were often more engaged in constructing a picture suited to their own imaginations than passing on to their Western readers a portrait of Islamic realities. Edward Said, one of the strongest proponents of this view, argues that 'the language of Orientalism.. .ascribes reality and reference to objects of its own making... "Arabs" are presented in the imagery of static, almost ideal types, and neither as creatures with a potential in the process of being realized nor as history being made' (Said: 1985, 321). Ziauddin Sardar, while criticising Said's secularism as failing to represent Islam adequately, agrees with his thesis concerning Western writing about Islam and claims that many in the West are still perpetuating the same old ideas today. 'Unless the limitations of representation masquerading as reality are perceived and understood, a plural future founded on mutual respect and enhanced mutual understanding is impossible. We will continue to live out the consequences of conflict, mistrust, denigration, and marginalisation that are the all too real legacy of Orientalism' (Sardar: 1999, 118). To what extent such criticisms can be weighed depends on familiarity with the writing of those from outside the House of Islam who ventured to depict those who lived in the house. This series of re-publications of non-Muslim writings about Islam aims to provide resources for contemporary readers to investigate the attitudes and actions of mainly American and European scholars, travvii

viii

THE REBUKE OF ISLAM

ellers, and missionaries in their engagement with Muslims during the period of Western ascendency, 1800-1945. The series is grouped around three forms of perception of Islam: of Islamic History and Institutions; of Islamic Religion and Culture; and of Islam in comparison with Christianity. 1. PERCEPTIONS OF ISLAMIC HISTORY AND INSTITUTIONS

The beginning of the Nineteenth century saw the arrival of Napoleon in Egypt and new development of French interest in Islam typified by the work of Silvestre de Sacy at the licole de luingues Orientales Vivantes, established in 1795 in the wake of the revolution. He was the father of many European scholars of Islam, particularly emphasising an objective, scientific study of texts. His promotion of solid research was reflected in the founding of several scholarly societies; The Paris Asiatic Society in 1821, the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland in 1823, the American Oriental Society in 1842, and the German Oriental Society in 1847. His Chrestomathie arabe in three volumes was published in 1826 and contained extracts from a wide range of Arabic writing in prose and poetry, destined to become a staple source for Europeans seeking an entry into the unknown world of Islamic thought. However, this attempt to investigate Muslims by means of a very long history of literature in Arabic was made more complex by the onset of colonial control of Muslim peoples in the second half of the nineteenth century. Although the Dutch and British East Indies Companies had interacted with Muslims in their respective areas of trade before the nineteenth century, French annexation of Algeria in 1848 and British and French dual control of Egypt in 1879 brought more Europeans into direct contact with Muslims, not just as travellers, traders, and missionaries, but as rulers. The upshot of this exercise of power was likely to result in the objectification of those being governed as "inferior" in order to control rather than to appreciate. The complaint of Said and Sardar, rooted in this reality, is echoed by Máxime Rodinson, 'All this, inevitably, could only encourage a natural European self-centredness, which had always existed, but which now took on a very markedly contemptuous tinge' (Rodinson: 1979, 9-62, 51). Nevertheless, interest in Islam as a subject of intellectual pursuit developed considerably in the second half of the nineteenth century. Several new posts for the study of Islam were created in

SERIES FOREWORD

ix

European universities and editions and translations of Muslim writings were published. One example of this academic development is William Muir who became an administrator at the University of Edinburgh after being a civil servant in British India. Muir produced a four volume The Ufe of Mahomet in 1861, transmitting for English readers traditions concerning the Prophet from Muslim sources. His German contemporary, Gustav Weil, published his five volume Geschichte der Chalifen in 1862, which similarly interpreted Muslim accounts of the early centuries of Islamic rule for European readers. On the basis of such editing and translating arose a variety of interpretations of Islamic history in the subsequent generation. Foremost among these interpreters was Ignaz Goldziher, a Hungarian Jew, whose erudition in Judaism and Islam was remarkable. Beginning with studies in his own religion, he gradually displayed such a mastery of Muslim traditions, jurisprudence, theology, mysticism, and philosophy, in publications from 1872 to 1919, that Goldziher has been credited with establishing 'Islamology as a historical science' (Waardenburg: 1963, 244). Much of this academic study of Islam was based on manuscripts lodged in European museums such as The British Museum in London or in University libraries such as Leiden in the Netherlands. Thus the history of Islam was told in a dialectical conversation between Muslim writers, mainly from the classical period of the ninth to twelfth centuries, and the elite group of European specialists who could engage with them. Waardenburg has shown how five different Western scholars from the late nineteenth through to the early twentieth century crafted their distinctive portraits of Islam on different presuppositions. Goldziher saw the development of Islamic orthodoxy from the spiritual seeds sown in the earliest sources (Waardenburg, 244). Dutch scholar, Snouck Hurgronje, whose writing on Islam ranged from 1882 to 1928, emphasised the system of organising society set up by Muhammad and expanded in a variety of settings on the history of Islam (ibid, 248—9). C. H. Becker's writing, from 1899 to 1932 in Germany, painted a very different picture in his belief that Islam was a product, not so much of the original sources in Arabia, but rather of the cultures into which it expanded. The context created the history (ibid, 252). D. B. MacDonald, writing in the USA between 1895 and 1936, understood the diversity of Islam to have a central core of authentic religious experience, the soul encountering God (ibid, 256). Frenchman

X

THE REBUKE OF ISLAM

Louis Massignon published from 1909 to 1959 significant studies of Islamic mysticism, which he regarded as the centre of Muslim life (ibid, 263-4). Such considerable divergence of views might support Said's opinion that so called 'scholarly objectivity' was actually a mask for the exercise of control over Muslims. In his own review of these five orientalists Said sweeps aside all but Massignon as 'hostile' to Islam (Said, 209). He notes how even the latter willingly accepted the call from colonial administrators to offer advice in managing their Muslim charges (ibid, 210). He concludes that collusion in colonial rule had become the norm for European scholars of Islam in the early decades of the twentieth century. Waardenburg accepts the heart of this critique. He recognises that the scholars of Islam who supported colonial administration shared a common assumption that Europeans knew best what their Muslim subjects should believe and practise in terms of Islam. 'Consequently, not only the colonial administration but also the scholars connected with it mostly had a negative view of any Muslim movement that opposed the Western mother country, and indeed all forms of Islam that implied a threat to the colonial power's rule' (Waardenburg: 2002, 103). He concedes that 'disinterested' study of Islam was 'extremely difficult' in the period before independence from European domination after World War Two (ibid, 105). It seems clear then that since Western scholars in the universities were concentrating on the study of ancient Muslim texts it was likely that interest in current Islamic life would be relegated to illustrating the contents of the established tradition. So when actual Muslim life seemed to diverge from what was prescribed in the texts it was necessary to call it popular, folk or animistic Islam and to decry the fact that real, authentic or pure Islam was not being followed as it should by many who claimed to be Muslims. The overall importance of the academic research into Islamic texts especially from the ninth to twelfth centuries lay in making non-Muslims aware of the rich heritage of the formative period of Islamic history that established norms for proper Muslim belief and conduct, and that passed on the intellectual inheritance of Greek civilisation to an intellectually impoverished medieval Europe. Thus while Islam sometimes was attractive to nineteenth century European intellectuals such as Thomas Carlyle, in his On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History of 1841, for the sheer mono-

SERIES F O R E W O R D

xi

theism of the message of Muhammad, the main reaction to the discovery of the vast literary output being surveyed by the academics was gratitude for the assimilation and development of Aristotle, Galen, and Euclid by leading Muslims in the 'classical' period of Middle Eastern Islam, and the subsequent passage of such Greek thought to Europe through Muslims in Spain. Attitudes of the educated public who paid attention to the actual content of the scholarly outpouring were rather more critical, continuing the longstanding antipathy of Europeans to the anti-Christian character of Islam which had in the past represented a political threat to them. The fact that the Ottoman Empire was the 'sick man of Europe' enabled intellectuals in Europe to treat Islam with condescension, and to suppress to some extent the old fears of invasion that arose from the strength of Islam in the past. If there were limits to the value of relating Islamic history and describing long-standing Muslim institutions, then the observations of travellers and missionaries restored some balance to the perceptions of Islam as it was actually lived out, since, unlike many of the university academics, they spent time living among Muslims, observing and analysing them. In addition, by the end of the nineteenth century the academic discipline of Anthropology was becoming established, with the result that serious investigation of Muslim societies began in earnest, providing scholarly respectability to writing about Muslim religion and culture as contemporary phenomena. The re-publication of writing about the religion and culture of Muslims is the rationale of the second section of the series. 2. PERCEPTIONS OF ISLAMIC RELIGION AND CULTURE French interest in Egypt grew out of Napoleon's initiative to establish French dominance there. This led to French managers who could relate to Egyptian cultural concerns, illustrated in a multivolume Description de l'Egypte produced between 1809 and 1828. Travel writing by François-René Chateaubriand, Itinéraire de Paris à Jérusalem, et de Jérusalem à Paris, 1810—11, and Alphonse de Lamartine, Voyage en Orient, 1835, though focused on the Holy Land, gave readers a glimpse of Muslims in the Middle East. British visitors to Egypt included Edward Lane who, unlike the French travellers, stayed long enough to offer much more than a glance at Muslim life. His detailed observations in An Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians, 1836, were backed by fluency in Arabic

xii

THE REBUKE OF ISLAM

demonstrated in his Arabic-English lexicon. He also published The Englishwoman in Egypt: Letters from Cairo written during a residence there in 1842, which included descriptions of Egyptian female life by his sister Sophia Lane who learned enough Arabic to spend time visiting local women in their homes. Publication of such observations of Muslim culture led to further interest in exploration of little known Muslim societies. Special attention to Arabia, the origin of the Islamic faith, was given by the English translator of the Arabian Nights, Richard Burton, whose Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah and Mecca, published in 1893, included a minutely observed account of the Muslim TLajj, achieved as a result of passing himself as a Muslim doctor from India in 1855—6. Another Englishman, Charles Doughty, spent two years among the Bedouin in Arabia in the 1870's practising Western medicine. His description of several different tribes as well as townspeople of the Hejaz was published in two volumes in 1888 as Travels in Arabia Deserta. Fluent like Burton in Arabic, Doughty was able to relate the attitudes of those who gave him hospitality in their tents and houses. Unlike Burton, he challenged their religious and cultural assumptions. While attempting to make a living dispensing medicine he encountered Bedouins who held out their hands to have them read by him. 'They esteem the great skill in medicine to bind and cast out the jan. They could hardly tell what to think when, despising their resentment, I openly derided the imposture of the exorcists; I must well nigh seem to them to cast a stone at their religion' (Doughty: 1921, vol 1, 548). Doughty was more typical of European travellers than Burton. Not content to describe and analyse, he ventured to denigrate by generalising from particular experiences. For instance, he noticed that children were never checked for lying although he heard it said that lying was shameful. 'Nature we see to be herself most full of all guile, and this lying mouth is indulged by the Arabian religion' (ibid, volt, 241). By the end of the nineteenth century the sciences of anthropology and sociology had become established in European universities and the documenting of how ethnic groups lived gathered pace as a proper academic pursuit. For example, The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland was founded in 1871 to provide a showcase for field work among the world's peoples. There was now a new opportunity for social scientific investi-

SERIES FOREWORD

xiii

gation of contemporary Muslim societies to supplement the knowledge of texts from Islamic history. The criticism that 'disinterested' study of Muslim peoples was next to impossible since European ethnologists held that Muslims were inferior to them in social development has to be balanced by the care with which data were gathered and interpreted by leading field workers. While some of these worked for colonial governments such as Hurgronje in the Dutch East Indies, others were independent, such as the Finnish Edward Westermarck, whose studies of Moroccan Muslims were outstanding in thoroughness and impartiality. Westermarck visited Morocco on a travelling scholarship from the University of Helsinfors in 1898 and returned another twenty times up to 1926 when he published his two volume 'Ritual and Belief in Morocco, having spent seven years in total visiting all the regions of the nation. The fruit of a career of listening to Moroccans speak about their beliefs and practices is unfolded in an analysis of baraka, 'a mysterious wonder-working force which is looked upon as a blessing from God' (Westermarck: 1926, vol 1, 35); ofjinn, 'a special race of spiritual beings that were created before man' (ibid, 262); of martin, 'a person who has an evil eye' (ibid, 414); of categorical and conditional curses; of dreams; and of rites connected with the Muslim calendar, childbirth, and death. He had already elaborated on marriage rites in his 1914, Marriage Ceremonies in Morocco. An instance of his reliance on evidence-based conclusions comes at the end of his exposition of beliefs and practices concerning the dead. The belief widespread among sub-Saharan African peoples that dead relatives can have a malevolent impact on the living was not evident in Morocco. 'The people are in close and permanent contact with their dead saints, who are looked upon as friendly beings by whose assistance misfortune may be averted or positive benefits secured. On the other hand, the souls of the ordinary dead rarely exercise any influence at all upon the fate of the living, either for good or for evil' (Westermarck: 1926, vol 2, 552). The fact that the Muslim world stretched from Morocco to the Philippines meant that local versions of Islam were being described in quite diverse settings during the first half of the twentieth century. The more social scientists spent time engaging with specific Muslim peoples the more complex the house of Islam seemed to be, with a much larger number of rooms occupied by different sorts of Muslims than the historical texts might have im-

xiv

THE REBUKE OF ISLAM

plied. S h f i Muslims in Iran shared core beliefs and practices with SunnI Muslims elsewhere but significant divergences of belief and practice were observed by Bess Donaldson in Mashhad in the province of Khorasan in her 1938 depiction of the religious life of the average person, The Wild Rue: A. Study of Muhammadan Magic and Folklore in Iran. Much of her information came from women, and her chapter topics are similar to Westermarck's. In her treatment of beliefs concerning the evil eye, Donaldson reported an incantation used to avert the danger of the evil eye. Incense made of wild rue, myrtle, and frankincense was burned at sunset and the following incantation repeated; 'Wild rue, who planted it? Muhammad. Who gathered it? ALI. Who burned it? Fatima. For whom? For Hasan and Husain'. She commented that the names of the 'Five' combined 'their power with that of the incense', and that Iranian women called the incantation 'atil wa batil'offensive and defensive' (Donaldson: 1938, 20-1). S h f i devotion to the family of "Ali coloured the whole of life for the people of Mashhad such that spiritual power was believed to emanate from these five to overcome everyday problems. Mashhad was the site of the martyrdom of "Ali Rida, the eighth Imam, and his tomb had been a very popular destination for Twelver Shfi's. Donaldson reported that around a hundred thousand made the pilgrimage each year, many to make a vow by tying a piece of cloth to the railings of the tomb or to collect water poured over the lock of the gates to the tomb to take home for the healing of the sick (ibid, 66—8). Academic social scientists strove for as much objectivity as possible, and their ability to refrain from value judgments based on 'enlightened' Western attitudes marked them out from those who wanted to see change in the societies they were observing. Christian missionaries tended to be in the latter group. Even the more dispassionate among them were living among Muslims so that they could pass on the benefits of Christian civilisation. An example of more thoughtful descriptive writing from the missionary community comes from the husband and wife team, V. R. and L. Bevan Jones, who taught at the Henry Martyn School of Islamic Studies in Aligarh, India. Their Woman in Islam, 1941, was designed as an introduction to Muslim women for female missionaries in India. Their treatment of the seclusion of women was presented in a dialectical style to show the kinds of change that were taking place for a few. The ninety five percent of Muslim women who were pardan-

SERIES FOREWORD

XV

ishin could be seen by no man with whom they could be married and when outside the home wore the burqa. 'That simple statement may seem at first empty of content, but consider how the rule operates. Here is a university student, newly married, who insists that he is going to take his bride for a drive. What a thrill! But as the elder women dress the girl for the occasion they murmur disapproval of these new ways. The bridegroom goes eagerly to take his bride out and finds in the carriage the girl's mother, three little girls, and a small brother—all crowded in, with the windows closed and curtained. And yet even that was a step forward' (Bevan Jones: 1941, 49). The impact of non-Muslim beliefs on Indian Muslims is described in relation to fear of the spirits of the dead, particularly the ghosts of the sweeper caste who were 'believed to be notoriously malignant' (ibid, 339). These Churels could possess Muslim women when they were ceremonially unclean, particularly 'those who have failed to win their husband's love or are themselves of bad character' (ibid). The Bevan Jones' approach to detailing the everyday lives of Indian Muslim women combined study of the Qur'an, the Sunna, and subsequent interpretations of the roles of women in the various Indian Muslim communities in a careful way. However, their presence in India represented the missionary force that had been engaged in persuading Muslims to change in the direction of Christian faith. The republication of writing by missionaries is the aim of the third section of the series. 3 . PERCEPTIONS OF ISLAM IN COMPARISON WITH CHRISTIANITY

At the beginning of the nineteenth century Muslims in India were already known to Europeans through Catholic mission and the administration of the British East India Company. Henry Martyn worked for the latter as a chaplain but also set up schools for Muslims in which portions of the Bible were studied. Martyn completed the translation of the New Testament in Urdu in 1810, and his Persian version was published after his early death in 1812. Education for Muslims was the role of various mission agencies in the period of formal British rule. Within this approach were ideas concerning the relative truth of Islam and Christianity and the enlightenment thought to follow from an embracing of Christian values. Martyn found that Muslims were more than willing to debate with him about the rationality of the oneness of God over against the Trin-

xvi

THE REBUKE OF ISLAM

ity, and future mission to Muslims in India became marked by such polemical encounter (Vander Werff: 1977, 30—36). The best known example of debate was Karl Pfander, a German member of the Basel Mission who published The balance of Truth in Urdu in 1843 after having produced an Armenian version in 1831 and a Persian one in 1835. As a result of engagement with Muslims in India, he rewrote the work in the late 1840's using Muslim writing on Muhammad and the early history of Islam provided by Muir and Weil as well as the Hadith collection of Majlisi published in Teheran in 1831 (Powell: 1993,147-8). This knowledge of Muslim tradition enabled Pfander to compare Jesus and Muhammad from the perspective of Islamic sources. Rather than denigrate the latter in the style of his European predecessors, Pfander quoted sayings of Muhammad concerning the sinlessness of Jesus and contrasted these with his own admission of sin, and concluded, 'If Muhammad himself claimed to have needed forgiveness and yet taught that Jesus was without fault then the Christian case is made by the Prophet of Islam' (see Beaumont: 2005,118). The tradition of answering Muslim questions about the validity of Christian beliefs continued through the remainder of the nineteeth century. Englishman William St Clair Tisdall of the Church Missionary Society represented the best of this approach as publisher of literature in Persian from the Henry Martyn Press at Julfa in Isfahan. His Sources of Islam, 1901, in Persian and his additions to Pfander's The Balance of Truth, 1910, in English, used European scholarship to argue that the Qur'an was influenced by previous religious traditions, not least Jewish and Christian, thus conveying to a Muslim audience the virtually unanimous convictions of non-Muslim students of Islam. His A Manual of the Teading Muhammadan Objections to Christianity, 1904, written to assist missionaries in answering Muslim questions about Christianity, advised care with the use of the Bible since it was widely regarded as corrupt by Muslims. It would be wiser to refer to the way the Qur'an actually refers to the Christian scriptures, 'to show that the arguments which Muslims now bring against the Bible are confuted in large measure by the statements of the book which they themselves believe to be God's best and final revelation to man.. .in quoting it we acknowledge merely that it has been handed down from Muhammad, and that he claimed for it the lofty position which Muslims accord to it' (Tisdall: 1904, 4). It is clear from this advice

SERIES FOREWORD

xvii

that Tisdall believed it was imperative not to show disrespect to the Prophet himself, and this is emphasised in the way a missionary should answer the question, What do you think of Muhammad? 'In this manual I have on certain occasions pointed out certain facts with reference to Muhammad, e.g. that he is not in the Qur'an regarded as sinless. This has been done for the information of the Christian student, and is necessary in a book of this description. But it is very delicate ground indeed on which to tread in speaking with a Muslim' (ibid, 16). This sensitivity to the feelings of Muslims 'was a marked improvement over many earlier apologetic approaches' (Vander Werff, 277). Another attitude to Christian mission to Muslims can be seen in the French Cardinal Charles Lavigerie whose appointment as Bishop of Algiers in 1867 led, the following year, to his founding of the Society of Missionaries to Africa, popularly known as 'The White Fathers', because they adopted white versions of local inner and outer robes, gandora and burnous. Lavigerie shared the sentiments of many French Catholics that the establishment of French rule in Algeria in 1830 might result in a return to the Christian way of life not seen properly since the time of Augustine in the fifth century. 'In his providence, God now allows France the opportunity to make of Algeria the cradle of a great and Christian nation. . .He is calling upon us to use these gifts which he has given us to shed around us the light of that true civilisation which has its source in the Gospel' (Lavigerie, 'First Pastoral Letter', 1867, in Kittler: 1957, 41—2). Lavigerie's intentions for the new missionary order were that they should work on a fourfold plan of education, charity, example, and prayer. Schools and hospitals would be the means to achieve the plan. He established a female version of the order that became known as 'The White Sisters', and by 1871 there were eight young men and six young women from French backgrounds actively learning Arabic, and about Islam and Algerian culture. The life of compassion was the hallmark of this approach to Muslims, and this was necessitated by the reality that Algeria was governed by the French political principle of the separation of church and state. There was no room for the kind of debating with Muslims that was tolerated by British governors in India. Colonial administration took different forms with respect to the promotion of Christianity.

xviii

THE REBUKE OF ISLAM

The Middle East contained Christian communities that stretched back in time before the arrival of Islam and this reality affected European and American Christian engagement with Muslims in the region. There were three approaches to relations with these churches according to William Shedd in lectures given at Princeton Theological Seminary in 1902—3. Shedd, an American Presbyterian missionary in Persia, had an intimate knowledge of Christian sources in Syriac as well as Muslim history in Arabic, and related the history of relations between Muslims and Christians in the first five lectures. In his sixth and final lecture he discussed the attitudes of Christians from outside the region. The Catholic Church and the Russian Orthodox Church had attempted to absorb Middle Eastern churches into their own communions. The Anglicans had accepted the Assyrian Christian Church of the Nestorians as autonomous, yet sympathised with the Russian Orthodox in believing that there should be a return to the true orthodox community. Other Protestants worked for a reformation within the ancient churches but found that individuals preferred to be identified with the style of Christianity lived out by the missionaries, and so independent Protestant churches emerged from the traditional Christian communities. Shedd reluctantly accepted the necessity of the latter. 'I do not believe that such separation should be sought, but experience shows that it is inevitable.. .the policy of the Protestant missionaries in permitting separation from the ancient churches is justified by the fact of history that Christianity as expressed and limited by the forms of belief and organization of the oriental churches has failed to conquer Islam and that a reformation consequently is imperative in order to do so' (Shedd: 1904, 217-8). This confidence in the ability of Christian mission to attract significant numbers of Muslims was shared particularly by Americans who perhaps had more of a pioneering spirit than many Europeans. Outstanding among them was Samuel Zwemer who determined to tackle the most difficult challenge of all in the Muslim world, the Arabian Peninsula, while training for the ministry of the Reformed Church in America in 1888. Bahrain and Kuwait had no indigenous church so the Reformed mission had no competition in its outreach to Muslims. Medical work and personal evangelism based on literature were the means of interacting with the local population. Zwemer produced much of the literature in Ara-

SERIES FOREWORD

xix

bic and had a reputation for talking to all kinds of Muslims. 'Taking the name Dhaif Allah (guest of God), he was at times labelled Dhaif Iblis (guest of the devil) but years later local citizens called him, Fatih al-Bahrain, (the pioneer of progress in the Islands)' (Vander Werff, 175). Among his voluminous writing for fellow Christians is his constant advocacy of making Christ known to Muslims who have the barest knowledge of him. In The Moslem Christ of 1912 he provides extensive analysis of the way the Qur'an, the Hadith, the Qur'an commentators, and the traditional stories of the prophets portray Jesus. In a subsequent chapter entitled 'Jesus Christ Supplanted by Mohammed' he points out that 'for all practical purposes Mohammed himself is the Moslem Christ' (Zwemer: 1912, 157). Having observed Muslim devotion for the Prophet and consulted popular literature from the bazaar, he expounded the widespread beliefs he encountered for a Western audience reared on classical versions of Islam. 'In spite of statements in the Koran to the contrary, most Moslems believe that he will be the only intercessor on the day of judgment. The books of devotion used everywhere are proof of this statement.. .Mohammed holds the keys of heaven and hell: no Moslem, however good his life, can be saved except through Mohammed. Islam denies the need of Christ as Mediator, only to substitute Mohammed as a mediator, without an incarnation, without an atonement and without demand for a change of character' (ibid, 160—1). So what was the Christian missionary to do? In his final chapter, 'How to preach Christ to Moslems who know Jesus', Zwemer suggests that Muslims be encouraged to read the gospels for themselves so that they can appreciate why Christians want to bear witness to him. There is no value in offending Muslims over their estimation of Muhammad, but since 'they glorify their prophet, why should we not glorify ours?' (ibid, 184). The fact that relatively few Muslims in the Middle East publicly identified as Christians caused even the most enthusiastic missionary to ponder why this was so. As colonial rule by European nations was being rejected within majority Muslim communities particularly after the First World War, Missionaries had to reevaluate their work. Wilson Cash, missionary in Egypt and then General Secretary of the Church Missionary Society, reflected on the relationship between Christians and Muslims in his Christendom and Islam, of 1937. After a historical survey he approached 'the

XX

T H E R E B U K E O F ISLAM

Christian Answer to the Moslem Quest' in his final chapter. H e advised that 'Christians can only make their contribution and preach their message in a spirit of humility.. .They cannot go as members of a superior race, but as brothers in a common humanity. They must live their faith before they can teach it.. .Ultimately men will see that the ideal held up to them is not Mohammed at all, but Christ, and in the Eternal Christ they will find again the source of life and power' (Cash: 1937, 173—4). Humble service rather than reliance on colonial prestige was now the right approach. With the coming of independence of Muslims from foreign rule after World War Two, the opportunities for Christian missionaries would become fewer in Muslim populations, and the Christian mission enterprise would come under increasing pressure. The rise of renewed and vigorous forms of Islam would mean that Muslims would become ready to see the whole enterprise of European and American impact on the House of Islam as a plot to undermine the foundations of the House, led by Christian missionaries whose task was to soften up the ground for their political masters. Republication of writing by Christian missionaries should enable readers to determine to what extent this criticism is true. 4. T H E SCOPE OF THE SERIES, EXPLORING THE HOUSE OF ISLAM: PERCEPTIONS OF ISLAM IN THE PERIOD OF WESTERN ASCENDANCY 1800-1945 The aim of the series is to re-publish significant books from the period by non-Muslims about Islam. Books written by Muslim authors are not part of the series since the views of non-Muslims are the central concern. While books that are selected for republication refer to Muslim oral and written sources, these are passed through a non-Muslim filter, and it is this process of interpretation that is the main focus of the series. The series includes a wide variety of interpretations of Islam so that no particular school of thought is privileged. This inclusive approach explains the division of the series into three sections that allow for books by scholars of Islamic texts and anthropologists of Muslim societies to be read alongside observations of travellers and reports of missionaries. Within these three sections is a sufficient range of voices, the dismissive, the critical, the sympathetic, and the admiring, which provide evidence for twenty-first century readers of approaches to

SERIES FOREWORD

xxi

Muslims by outsiders in the modern colonial era. If these voices can be heard afresh in all their various tones then they should enable a fully rounded assessment to be made of attitudes to Islam in this period. The critique of Said and Sardar that western writing about Islam has been irrevocably tainted by a false imagination can then be evaluated through contact with original sources. The resulting conclusion may be that, though never free from presuppositions about Islam, European and American writers about Muslims were not uniformly prejudiced but at times reported quite objectively about their explorations of the House of Islam. The first six volumes to be published include two from each of the three sections. Ignaz Goldziher's Mohammed and Islam [1917] and John Subhan's Sufism, Its Saints and Shrines [1938] provide views of various aspects of Islamic history and institutions; Alexander Kinglake's Eothen [1844] and Amy and Samuel Zwemer's Moslem Women [1926] portray Islamic religion and culture in divergent ways; and W. R. W. Stephens' Christianity and Islam [1877] and W. H. T. Gairdner's The "Rebuke of Islam [1920] show how Christian writing about Islam in comparison with Christianity varied within the period. Each volume contains a general introduction to the series along with a particular introduction to the book which places the work in its context for the twenty-first century reader. The series aims to include re-publications of around one hundred volumes. Projected books to be included are, in Section One, 'Perceptions of Islamic History and Institutions', Muir's The Efe of Mahomet [1878], Grimme's Mohammed [1892-5], and MacDonald's The Development of Muslim Theology, Jurisprudence and Constitutional Theory [1903]. Section Two, 'Perceptions of Islamic Religion and Culture', will include Lane's An Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians [1836], Doughty's Travels in Arabia Deserta [1888], and Bell's The Desert and the Sown [1907]. Section Three, 'Perceptions of Islam in Comparison with Christianity', will have Wherry's Islam and Christianity in India and the Far East [1907], Jessup's F i f t y Three Years in Syria [1910], and Zwemer's The Muslim Christ [1912],

xxii

THE REBUKE OF ISLAM

REFERENCES

Beaumont, I. M. Christo log)/ in Dialogue with Muslims, (Carlisle: Paternoster, 2005) Bevan Jones, V. R. & L. Woman in Islam, (Lucknow: The Lucknow Publishing House, 1941) Cash, W. W. Christendom and Islam, (London: SCM Press, 1937) Donaldson, B. A. The Wild Rue: A Study of Muhammadan Magic and Tolklore in Iran, (London: Luzac, 1938) Doughty, C. M. Travels in Arabia Deserta, new edition, (London: Jonathan Cape, 1921) Kittler, G. D. The White Fathers, (London: W. H. Allen, 1957) Powell, A. A. Muslims and Missionaries in PreMutinj India, (Richmond: Curzon Press, 1993) Rodinson, M. "The Western Image and Western Studies of Islam" in The Legacy of Islam, (eds) J. Schacht and C. E. Bosworth, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979) Said, E. Orientalism, (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985) Sardar, Z. Orientalism, (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1999) Shedd, W. A. Islam and the Oriental Churches: Their Historical Relations, (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1904) Tisdall, W. S. A Manual of the Leading Muhammadan Objections to Christianity, (London: SPCK, 1904) Vander Werff, L. L. Christian Mission to Muslims: The Record, (South Pasadena: William Carey Library, 1977) Waardenburg, J. D. J. L'Islam dans le Miroir de L'Occident, (Paris & the Hague: Mouton & Co, 1963) Waardenburg, J. D . J . Islam. Historical, Social, and Political Perspectives, (Berlin & New York: De Gruyter, 2002) Westermarck, E. Ràtual and Belief in Morocco, (London: Macmillan, 1926) Zwemer, S. M. The Moslem Christ, (Edinburgh & London: Oliphant, Anderson & Ferrier, 1912)

Series Section III: Perceptions of Islam in Comparison with Christianity

W. H . T. GAIRDNER, THE REBUKE OF ISLAM

The title of this book, The Rebuke of Islam, first published in 1920, suggests that in Temple Gairdner's mind the very existence of Islam needs to be seen by Christians as a rebuke to the Christian churches of the past and present. He sees Islam as 'a perpetual reminder to Christendom of the latter's failure truly to represent her Lord. For if she had done so, Mohammed would have been a Christian. And the world by this time would have been won for Christ' (iii). This theme is introduced at the very beginning when, describing the Great Omayyad Mosque in Damascus (originally the great Church of St John the Baptist), Gairdner expresses the sense of shame felt by many Christians who see this mosque as a demonstration of the victory of the Crescent over the Cross. The first five chapters attempt to describe Islam and the Muslim world in a variety of different ways. Chapter one is entitled 'The Extent of Islam' and explains the spread of Islam throughout the world. Chapter two gives an account of the life of the Prophet Muhammad and the rise of Islam, while chapter three describes the spread of Islam from the Caliphs to the great periods of expansion up to the end of the 19th century. The fourth chapter attempts to describe 'what Islam is in itself (97), focussing especially on its system of theology and law and the five pillars, but taking note also of the significance of Sufism. Chapter five attempts the difficult task of looking at 'the effects of Islam', suggesting that in countries where Islam is supreme, 'it is fairly just to attribute observed results, on the whole, to Islam itself as cause' (139). Looking at North Africa, for example, he says, 'It must be confessed that in none of these four countries does one gain the impression that Isxxiii

xxiv

THE REBUKE OF ISLAM

lam can save a nation, or raise up a modern civilization' (149). While he acknowledges that Islam 'can and does bring forth ethical fruits that are good' (139), he does not shrink from being critical of many aspects of the Islam that he observes in his own time. The remaining chapters all have as their main title 'How save it?' and outline Gairdner's response to 'the gigantic problem' (171) that is presented to Christians by Islam. Thus in chapter six he reviews Christian responses in the past, focussing especially on work of St John of Damascus, St Francis, and Raymond Lull. The seventh chapter has the sub-title 'The Evangelization of Islam today' and describes different methods of evangelism being used in his time—direct evangelism, medical work, literature, education, and work with oriental Christians. The final chapter begins by underlining once again 'the reality, the paramount seriousness, and inevitableness, of the problem of ISLAM to the Christian Church ... Islam is a unique problem to the Christian Church; unique in its urgency, unique in its difficulty' (222, 224). It ends, however, on a very positive and optimistic note, suggesting that 'the Time has come, and ... the day of action, as of salvation, is Today' (223). Christians therefore have no need to despair, since recent experience and the many positive opportunities for Christian witness in their present situation should 'shatter the continual contention that "to convert a Mohammedan is impossible'" (239). In the conclusion Gairdner asks 'What then will it not be when the Church as a whole has realised that she exists to evangelize the world?' (240). He then returns to 'that Church-Mosque at Damascus' which he has described in the first chapter, and to the text of Psalm 145:13 which is inscribed in its Septuagint version on the outside wall of the building: 'Thy kingdom, O Christ, is a kingdom of all ages'. Gairdner sees these words as a prophecy—a prophecy that for him was endorsed by the words of a Muslim sheikh who had read the New Testament given to him by a Christian: 'I am convinced that Jesus Christ will conquer Mohammad. There is no doubt about it, because Christ is King in Heaven and on earth, and His Kingdom fills Heaven and will soon fill the earth' (243). Why then might twenty-first century readers be interested in a book about Christian responses to Islam written nearly a hundred years ago when the British were still in control of Egypt and much of the Muslim world? There are five particular ways in which

INTRODUCTION

XXV

Gairdner's book may be of special interest to contemporary readers, and may even encourage some to be more critical about their approach to Islam today. Firstly, readers will no doubt be struck by the comprehensiveness of what Gairdner attempts in 248 reasonably short pages. He seeks to see Islam 'as a whole', covering many aspects of Islam and Christian-Muslim relations throughout the centuries. Perhaps because he is not writing for an academic audience, he wants to paint 'the big picture', expecting his Christian readers to recognise 'the tremendous problem' presented to Christians by Islam. Secondly, it is remarkable that Gairdner found a way of maintaining his strong missionary spirit while continuing to be engaged in serious academic study of Islam. He was greatly helped in reaching this synthesis by a sabbatical year of study between 1910 and 1911, which he later described as his 'grand transformation drama'. The American scholar Duncan Black Macdonald and the Hungarian Jewish scholar Ignaz Goldziher helped him to sharpen his academic skills and to enter with great sympathy into the very best of Islamic theology and spirituality. As he continued in Cairo with as much academic research and writing as he was able to fit in alongside his work with the church and among Muslims, he never lost his sense of Christian mission to the world of Islam. Thirdly, at a time when political correctness discourages writers of all kinds from passing critical judgements about other faiths, some readers may be surprised, if not shocked, by Gairdner's bluntness in drawing attention to what he sees as some of the darker aspects of Islamic history, belief, and practice. Writing for example about the revelations received by the Prophet Muhammad, he says that they 'seemed to degenerate into sanctions for his personal needs, and notions, and policies—and saddest of all, his revenges and his personal desires' (36). Speaking about the Islamic way of life, he writes of 'a social system which insinuates itself by the privileges it offers, the penalties it can impose, and the easiness of the spiritual demands it makes' (23). He makes no moral judgement about the Atlantic slave trade (commenting that it is largely at an end now, thanks to Christian England' (20), but is extremely critical of 'the unspeakably brutal, cruel and dastardly Arab slavetrade' (92). Fourthly, readers cannot fail to notice his emphasis on what he calls 'the Spirit of Christ'. If the second half of the book and the

xxvi

THE REBUKE OF ISLAM

conclusion suggest to modern readers a kind of Christian triumphalism, the only kind of triumph that he looks forward to is the triumph achieved by the crucified and risen Christ. In the new preface to this edition of the book he writes: 'Throughout the book a very special emphasis has been placed on the Person and work of the Spirit of Jesus' (iv). Later he explains that the Christian message for the Muslim 'must indeed be a religion of Spirit, of the Spirit of Jesus. We have nothing else to give him ... Christianity has always cut its most pitiful figure when seen trying to meet Islam with Islam's weapons, or competing with it on its own ground. Nothing but the Spirit can bind and free Islam ... The Spirit of the Father in Jesus Christ—we have nothing else to give Islam; no, NOTHING! ... The Spirit ofJesus is the only asset of the Church' (136—7). Finally, contemporary readers may be interested to notice the extent to which Gairdner's work has influenced Christians who came after him. Constance Padwick, for example, who worked with Gairdner for the last five years of his life and wrote the classic biography, Temple Gairdner of Cairo, in the six months after his death, maintained the same kind of sympathetic engagement with Islam in her book Muslim Devotions: A. Study of Prayer-Manuals in Common Use (1961). Bishop Kenneth Cragg has gone considerably further than Gairdner in his sympathetic engagement with the Qur'an and in his desire to find good Islamic reasons for commending the kind of God revealed in the person of Jesus. But his concept of the 'call to retrieval', developed in his Call of the Minaret (first published in 1956) contains clear echoes of Gairdner's approach. These writers are examples of a distinctively Anglican response to Islam which owes much to Gairdner, and which in certain respects has been significantly different from Catholic and Reformed responses. Some words of Constance Padwick about the 13th century Raymond Lull could equally well be used to describe the significance of the work of Temple Gairdner that is so well exemplified in this book: 'He is climbing beyond the men of his day, half held by old ways, half struggling out to new.' Colin Chapman, Cambridge, UK.

THE

GREAT

MOSQUE AT

DAMASCUS

PREFACE TO FIFTH EDITION TEN years have gone since this book was first brought o u t 1 and studied. The present edition is not merely a reprint, it is a thorough revision. Chapter IV has been revised and largely added to (the mystical aspect of Mohammedanism has in particular been given greater prominence), and Chapter V I I has been entirely rewritten. Nevertheless, it remains the same work. A few blunders have been corrected, but in general, the author has modified his positions by additions not by subtractions. The title has been changed. It was with pain that the author found, when too late, that an undesigned double entente lurked in the original title. Nothing more was meant than that Islam was a perpetual reminder to Christendom of the latter's failure truly to represent her Lord. For if she had done so, Mohammed would have been a Christian. And the world by this time had been won for Christ. The Biblical sense of the word " reproach " escaped him-—namely a thing so unspeakably vile that its very existence is a shame. The book is the fruit of twenty years spent in the East in one of the great centres of islam, and of some sincere hard thinking, which has been unsparingly given both to the object itself, as studied 1

Under the title, The Reproach of Islam, A u g u s t 1909,

¡a

iv

THE R E B U K E OF ISLAM

in experience, and to the Arabic reading with which that experience has been supplemented. It is one of the galling necessities of such a task as this, that the author seems to be forced into playing either the advocate—which he feels is partial, or the judge—which he feels is unfair. He hovers painfully between each position, content with neither. It must suffice him if he can humbly claim that he has tried to burke no fact and to blink no truth ; to weigh as scrupulously as he can words and judgments ; to give to all the facts that are known to him their full weight before embarking on that most perilous of all things—a generalization. No writer of a book like this can pretend that he writes it without what friends call strong convictions—enemies, strong prejudices. But he can at least see to it that all his views have a rationale ; and that his fundamental position is not made void by facts which he refuses to face. There is one word of explanation which the author would like to make, to avoid the chance of misunderstandings which would be especially regrettable. Throughout the book a very special emphasis has been placed on the Person and work of the Spirit of Jesus. If the whole book, in its entire scope and significance, does not explicate these words, the writer will account it to have failed. But this much may be said here. The expression is pregnant to the very highest degree. It means all that God in Christ is ; all that the heart of Him who was and is Jesus contained and contains ; His whole

PREFACE TO FIFTH EDITION

v

character, His whole view of the world and God and religion and man and man's healing—His Spirit: —all this, clothing itself in the lives of those who confess His name, taking flesh in the life of His Church. . . . For the rest, let the book itself speak ; it being well understood, that this insistence on the utter and fundamental necessity for a spiritual Christianity is not for one moment intended to disparage or throw doubt on the necessity of order and form, and all that goes with them. But the vital thing is that they be informed by the Spirit from within. If not, they abide indeed, but only like the dried husks and pods that litter the roads after the life that once informed them and quickened them from within has fled. How are the pages of history, how are the countries of Orient and Occident, thus littered and strewn with the husks of churches, systems, theologies, organizations, rituals, forms, creeds, orders, canons . . . which the Spirit of Jesus may once have caused to grow, true organisms once, but now, alas, to all appearance little more than outsides ! But, ever and always " abideth hope." It was said of that Spirit . . " that He may abide with you for ever." . . . " Prophesy unto the wind, prophesy, son of man, and say to the wind, Thus saith the Lord God ; Come from the four winds, O Spirit, and breathe on these slain, that they may live." W. H. T, G. CAIRO,

Whitsunday,

1919.

N O T E ON T H E P R O N U N C I A T I O N ARABIC WORDS AND

OF

NAMES

N o a t t e m p t has been made t o distinguish t h e various consonants which are peculiar t o Arabic. Such a n a t t e m p t would h a v e involved tlie use of tiresome diacritic marks, which disfigure t h e page and are equally useless t o the reader w h o knows, and who does not know, Arabic. The only consonant t h a t calls for remark is kh {e.g. in Khâlid), which is pronounced something like the Scottish ch in loch. Gh has also been written : — i t is pronounced rather like a continental r, grasseyé. B u t in difficulties let it be g. V e r y different is it w i t h the vowels, w h i c h can and should be pronounced a p p r o x i m a t e l y correctly. A n d if the simple indications given below are observed, the reader will find t h a t he avoids the painful hash made b y the non-Arabic scholar when he pronounces Arabic names w i t h o u t guidance, and he m a y h a v e peace in the t h o u g h t t h a t his rendering is quite respectably near t h e mark, even when the consonants are pronounced as in English. (1) A circumflex has been used to denote a long vowel.' A n d t h a t vowel practically a l w a y s has the accent. Other vowels in the same word are (practically) short. (2) In words without circumflex it m a y be assumed t h a t all the vowels are d i o r t . The accent is generally selfevident, b u t is occasionally noted (see n e x t page). (3) The values given to the long t o w e l s m u s t be the continental, not the English ones. T h a t is t o say, â like t h e a in ah or spa. e.g. K h â l i d (Khahlid, not K h a y l i d ) : t like the second i in quinine, e.g. K h a d i j a h ( K h a d e e j a , not K h a d a i j a ) ; and u like the 00 in soon, e.g. M a h m û d . 1 The circumflex has not been marked in every case, e.g. Islâm has been written Islam throughout. [ED.]

vi

NOTE ON PRONUNCIATION

vii

(4) The short vowels are likewise v e r y simple : a like the English a in man} e.g. M a ' m u n , (the apostrophe is sometimes written to indicate t h a t the svllable before it must be finished u p sharp and the next syllable begun afresh) ; i like t h e i in pin, e.g. I b n ; and u like t h e u in full, not like the u in mud, e.g. U h u d . In the latter word b o t h the u's are pronounced north-country fashion as in full, not mud, and the accent is on the first syllable. (5) A few names h a v e been given their conventional spelling when it results in a pronunciation sufficiently near t o the original, and when a change would h a v e seemed rather pedantic : e.g. M o h a m m e d (accent on t h e a—we h a v e passed for e v e r from the d a y s of Mahomet, pronounced M a y o m e t t !). F o r the information of accurate persons i t m a y be said t h a t Mohammed is, properly, M u h a m m a d , and Moslem properly Muslim, t o w h i c h names the a b o v e rules m a y be applied. T h e double m in the former case is pronounced like double letters in Italian, not English : the secret m a y be discovered b y the reader's discovering how, as a m a t t e r of fact, he has a l w a y s pronounced t w o words t h e first of which ends, the latter begins, w i t h m. Imagine, in fact, t h a t y o u were saying t o a child three nonsense words, pronounced rapidly together, moo h a m mad. T r y it. Voilci M u h a m m a d . AVBSHA. A'isha, first syllable long and accented and separated from the next two, which are short. CALIPH. Arabic Khalifa, or " Successor " to the Prophet. YATHRIB. Both syllables are short ; accent on the first. MOSLEMS. Properly, Muslims ; participlc of isldm : i.e. those who surrender to God. OMAR. Properly, Umar ; the first syllable is short, but accented. 1 According to the true Arabic pronunciation ; in Persia and India a is as a rule equivalent to the u in mud.

CONTENTS PAGE AUTHOR'S NOTE CHAP.

PREFACE

.

.

.

ON P R O N U N C I A T I O N I. T H E II.

.

EXTENT

WHENCE

III.

How

IV.

WHAT

OF

CAME

CAME

.

.

.

iii

.

.

.

vi

.

I

ISLAM

IT ?

.

24

57

IT ?

IS I T ?

.

96

IT ?

138

V.

How

WORKS

VI.

How

SAVE

VII.

How

SAVE IT ? — ( 2 ) T h e

? — ( 1 ) The Past

IT

.

171

Evangeliza-

tion of Islam—To-day „

VIII. How

STATISTICAL INDEX

SAVE

194

IT ? — ( 3 ) T h e

Impossible-

Possible Problem, and the Spirit of Jesus . . . . . .

APPENDIX

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

222 244 245

ILLUSTRATIONS The Great Mosque at Damascus . Desert Life . . . . . . The Kaaba, Mecca . . . . Tombs of the Caliphs, Cairo . . . The Pearl Mosque, Agra . . Moslem Ablutions . . . . The Bab Zuway'a, Cairo . . Interior of El Azhar University, Cairo

.

. . .

Frontispiece facing p. 24 57 , , 8 8 ,, 121 ,, 152 „ 1 8 5 ,, 216

MAPS Centres of Christianity, circa A.D. 600 . . Extent of Islam, A.D. 800 . . . . Extent of Islam, A.D. 1480 . . . .

. . .

5 59 87

THE REBUKE OF ISLAM CHAPTER I THE EXTENT OF ISLAM T H E R E is a city, a garden-city, an emerald set in the glowing desert-plain, beyond the long ranges of Lebanon, beyond the snowy dome of Hermon, Damascus, one of the cities that are in themselves epitomes of world-history. That city has seen many a kingdom come, increase, and pass away. Gods many and lords many have been acknowledged there, both before and since the day when a King, leaning on a great officer of state, confessed 1 Rimmon, god of Syria and of the plains, mightier than the Jehovah whom he thought to be but the hill-god of a highland nation. But Rimmon of Syria passes away, and Asshur of Assyria, and Nebo of Babylon, and Ormuzd of Persia, and Zeus of Hellas. Last of all comes Jupiter of Rome. But the time has come when JEHOVAH, the God of Israel, is made known, through His Son Jesus Christ, to be the God and Father of all. . . Who is this coming from Jerusalem, with garments 1

A*

2 K i n g s v. 18. !

2

T H E R E B U K E OF

ISLAM

drenched in the blood of saints from the city of Jehovah ? A man with threatening mien is approaching this city of the ages. But a dazzling light from heaven strikes him down ; a voice more terrible than thunder speaks to him. A divine work, begun then and there, is completed in a room of a house overlooking the main bazaar of the great city ; and that man rises from his bed, redeemed and made whole, assured now that in this JESUS, Jehovah, the God of the whole earth, has fully and finally revealed Himself; that the future is His ; and that nought remains now but to bring all nations of the earth to His pierced feet, through the power of His Cross and the mighty working of His Spirit. . . . The task is entered upon ; it proves a costly one ; blood, and tears, and lives are poured out on it : but the issue is sure—the Cross has won the day ! And lo, there arises in that great city of the East and of the West a glorious fane, where the One God is worshipped through the Lord Jesus Christ. And the Cross, the symbol of Suffering, has become the symbol of Triumph, for it crowns the entire building, just as the building itself dominates the whole city and country. And so an order is given to one of the masons to carve on the architrave of a beautiful gate in one of the transepts of that fane a triumphant verse, in which Old Testament and New Testament blend their voices to the glory of God in Christ:

THE EXTEND OF ISLAM

8

T H Y KINGDOM, O CHRIST, IS A KINGDOM OF ALL AGES; AND THY DOiUXION ENDURETH THROUGHOUT ALL GENERATIONS.1

And yet to-day when the traveller stands iii that city and contemplates that great fane, what does he see and hear ? Within, long, even rows of v/orshippers are bowing to the earth. B u t lo ! the direction towards which they bow is South, not East. . . . They are bowing before an Unseen. A low, subdued roar, like a wave breaking on a beach, fills the whole building—they are proclaiming that God is One. B u t — t h e y are joining another name to His in their confession, a name that is not the Name of Jesus ! And that book which the Reader is now reciting is not the Gospel, nay, it is proclaiming to the worshippers that Jesus, Son of Mary, is neither Lord nor Son of God, and that He never died upon the Cross. . . And when the traveller passes out of the building and raises his eyes aloft, he sees no Cross crowning all, but a Crescent m o o n — a Crescent that reminds him also of a Scimitar. This Church epitomizes the character of the phenomenon that meets us in a most startling way almost all over the Eastern Hemisphere. And the phenomenon is unique: nowhere has it the least parallel. For though there be many 1

Cf. Pdalin oxlv. 13 (Septuagint ).

4

THE REBUKE OF ISLAM

Sacred Books other than the Gospel, yet when you interrogate them concerning Jesus Christ they return you no answer either good or bad ; for they were written or collected long centuries before He came. And though there be many shrines and temples, in which many gods and lords many are confessed, yet none of them were ever Churches dedicated to the Name of Christ. The Brahman in Benares reading the Rig-veda, the Parsi with his Zend-avesta, the Buddhist, the Confucian pondering their Masters' wisdom— know nothing of Jesus Christ; and their temples are their own. But in Constantinople, in Damascus, in Egypt—Europe, Asia, Africa—the Moslem is bowing down where once the Christian knelt. And this symbolizes the fact that of religious founders the Founder of Islam alone is later in time than the Christ of God, and coming after Him is by many preferred before Him ; and that his book alone claims to supersede, and alone denies, the Book in which the world is claimed for the Lord Christ.

1 " Europe ! " yes, even Europe harbours Islam. It is strange that the land from which the visionary Macedonian cried out to St Paul, the land which was the first-fruits of Europe for Christ, is now mainly Mohammedan. In Constantinople (Byzan-

Ce3? ¡ft ) •• Ï

i '

1

r ^ w IT''

. d. Come to prayer.' One day as I was walking in the direction of the great bridge, I saw a notice which attracted my attention : ' This is the house of the English clergy for the discussion of religious and moral questions.' So I said to myself, ' This is just what I want.' So I entered t h e reception room, and began to talk with the catechist about the missionaries. Soon Mr Thornton came in. After the usual salutations he began to talk to me, and asked me to attend the meeting in the evening. This I did. The subject t h a t evening was : ' Which was the true sacrifice, t h a t of Isaac (as in the Bible), or t h a t of Ishmael (as is implied in the Koran) ? ' I got up and told Mr Thornton t h a t he did not know what he was talking about, as I was sure it was Ishmael, not Isaac, who was offered by Abraham. After the close of t h e meeting, tracts were given to me, b u t I was so angry t h a t I tore t h e m up, as being the words of unbelievers. One evening I even brought twenty students with me from El Azhar on purpose to break up the meeting. I remember the subject t h a t evening was ' The Crucifixion of Christ.' Now, the Moslems do not believe t h a t Jesus was ever really crucified, so I stopped the speaker, and called out to all true believers to rise up and protest. " Still, one thing seemed strange t o me. I was treating the missionaries with hatred and insult, b u t the missionaries never ceased to treat me with courtesy, and even love. So I saw t h a t whereas Islam teaches us to return hate with

I I O W

S A V E

IT

?

209

hate, Christianity, on the contrary teaches men t o love their enemies, and to ir< at them coi\-t«r nu-ly " So then I b e g a n ro chaa„;i, m y o m d m f I came to the meetings week b y -veo'., 'out 1.0 lon.'er \o oppose, b u t t o listen. I t o o k the tracts ami rea-i a-.-ia diligently, and fixed m y attention i a i princiy y o ' n t s — t h e origin of Islam, the meaning oi the mission 01 Mohammed, and the nature of t h e inspiration ol the K o r a n . As I read t h e Christian tracts, and especially the m o n t h l y magazine, called the Orient and Occident, published b y the missionaries in Cairo, t h e beams of Christian light b;;gan t o reach m y soul. " T h e n Mr Thornton. i r he understood m y m a l a d y and the medicine required for it, r a t the Bible into m y hands. God gave me a right understanding of the Gospel. I saw revealed the love of God towards man, our need of reconciliation w i t h God, the need of the sufferings of Christ t o redeem mankind, and t h e t r u t h of t h e Christian teaching in the N e w Testament, and I asked Mr Thornton for regular Bible instruction. " A f t e r t w o weeks 1 i n s t m c t i o n I was entirely convinced of the t r u t h of Christianity. B u t I had now been four years at E l Azhar, and m y father wished me to go t o Constantinople in order t o s t u d y law with a view t o ultimately becoming a Moslem judge. I did not wish t o go, because I k n e w I should not be able t o show t h a t I was a Christian ; y e t if I did not go, all m y worldly prospects for the future would be ruined, and m y father would be made angry, and I should h a v e t o live as an exile in foreign lands. A f t e r a long struggle within me, as I pondered these things upon m y bed, I fell asleep, and while asleep a voice came t o me s a y i n g : ' Rise up. L i g h t is on t h y path. Be not afraid, for I a m with thee.' This happened three times. " In the morning I w e n t a t once t o Mr Thornton t o tell h i m w h a t had happened. W h e n he was convinced t h a t all I said was true, he received me into t h e mission compound, and t h e doctors gave me a room under their house. T h e same afternoon I wrote t o m y father to tell him where

210

THE REBUKE OF ISLAM

I was, and on 7th October 1905, I applied to the propel quarters to have my name legally inscribed as a Christian. I h e following day Mr Thornton publicly received me as a catechumen in the Old Cairo Church, and alter a few months of instruction and trial he baptized me by the name of Bulus (Paul) instead of my former name of Mahmud. But before I was baptized my father wrote frequently from Jerusalem to dissuade me from being a Christian, and ultimately came himself to Cairo to bring me back. He had several interviews with me in Mr Thornton's house, and offered me half his fortune if I would renounce Christianity and return home with him. When his entreaties were in vain, my father appealed to Lord Cromer. 1 had to appear before his Lordship, who told me that my father was very angry with me, but that I was old enough to profess what religion I preferred, as Egypt was now a free country. I told Lord Cromer that I did not wish to go to Syria until it was a free country, and thereupon he made me sign a document to that effect in his presence, and that of other witnesses to my signature. The Prime Minister of Egypt and the Minister of Foreign Affairs were present during the interview, and witnessed my confession. I thank God for giving me strength to remain firm. He has given me another father in Mr Thornton in place of my own father whom I have lost, and he has promised me treasure in Heaven in place of the earthly possessions which would have been mine ; and now I feel and know that God is near me, in a wa}' I never knew before. Pray for me. Peace be with you." 2. Medical. T h i s is a n i n d i s p e n s a b l e m e t h o d , s p e c i a l l y in r e g i o n s w h e r e p r e j u d i c e a n d f a n a t i c i s m are intense. T h e m e d i c a l m i s s i o n is one c o n t i n u o u s o b j e c t - l e s s o n in C h r i s t i a n i t y , t h e religion of service, humanity and love. B y i t C h r i s t is m a n i f e s t e d to multitudes from w h o m He would otherwise h a v e been impenetrably veiled. Within the medical

HOW SAVE IT ?

211

mission " direct evangelization" is always going on, even in regions where otherwise it is almost impossible. Consider too what a centre for the diffusion of light and life a medical mission is. For example, to one such hospital (that of the C.M.S. in Old Cairo) came in one year nearly 11,150 patients, each of whom stayed an average of 14 days in the hospital, for the figure is exclusive of the far larger number of out-patients. Now from where did those 11,150 men and women come ? Most of them came from the provinces round Cairo and others from the remoter provinces all the w a y from Assuan to Alexandria—a clear thousand miles. That hospital is not therefore at Old Cairo : it is in nearly ten thousand centres of Egyptian life ! at every one of which a worker from the hospital, if he visited that place, would be welcomed as an old friend. In many purely Mohammedan villages some mission hospital is regarded as almost communal property : it is " our hospital," no villager would dream of going elsewhere; he will take a journey and pass on the way a Government hospital or two in order to be treated at a mission institution—where he knows he will daily have the message and claims of Christ presented to him. The late Lord Kitchener when visiting a mission hospital and chatting with this or that patient found one who, he knew, must have passed at least two public hospitals in order to get where he was, and curious to know the reason for this asked the man why he had not

212

THE REBUKE OF ISLAM

gone to the nearer institution. " Our hospital is better," answered the village-man. " But the hospital at is also an excellent one." "Here is better," replied the stolid one. " Well, what's the matter with the one at ? " To which the final reply was, " The work here is clean ! " He was not manifesting an unsuspected enthusiasm for asepsis ; he had rather in his mind the care put into the details of the w o r k ; the Christian h u m a n i t y ; the atmosphere of free service; the absence of the baksheesh system (baksheesh only means tipping—done in advance) which accompanies most things in the East. Here then are magnificent opportunities (the merely professional opportunities for the nurse or keen practitioner of both sexes are inconceivable) for whoso desires to use his gift in the free service of his generation, and in lands where he is really needed. In recent years one biography, which surely will become a classic, has given a striking account of what a medical missionary to hardest-shell Mohammedans may achieve, and may b e : the biography of Dr Pennell of Bannu. And Pennell did not stand, and does not stand alone. Take for example the life and work of Sterling of Gaza — t h e centre of a bigotedly Mohammedan district in South Palestine. There for 21 years he worked, doctor, evangelist, clergyman. Day by day, in addition to his medical duties, he might be seen testifying to the Gospel of Christ before Mohammedan audiences, both learned and unlearned,

HOW SAVE IT ?

213

so that in all that wide area the Christian man of God was known, respected, and loved. Only when the war came was lie compelled to quit his post. And he died within sight of his city shortly before the armies of good hope entered it in 1917, just when we were saying that he was about to gather the fruits of his labours. And herein is that saying true " one laboureth and another reapeth." 3. Literary. The printed word penetrates where the spoken word cannot and does not. Like the wind-blown seed or pollen it is wafted on many a breeze to the most distant, secluded, and unlikely spots, where it may find some unsuspected soil and bring forth unexpected fruit. This applies both to the Scriptures and to Christian literature of all sorts, evangelistic, devotional, expository, apologetic, controversial. One good mission press will not only effect the permeation of the whole country in which it is with Christian literature, but sends its wares by land and ocean routes to many far-off countries and peoples. The Nile Mission Press, to take a press which was started recently with the express purpose of evangelizing Moslems by means of the printed page, has been particularly successful in getting its Arabic publications into other lands. Before the Great War nearly forty Moslem lands, were being more or less penetrated in this way. Scores of parcels (in a single day) have gone up the Persian Gulf, and not a few to the Moslems in South America. A still more remarkable case is

214

THE REBUKE OF ISLAM

that of China, to the utmost bounds of which the N.M.P. books go ; in fact, a most promising field of service for Moslems (in Kansu) is being sown with Arabic literary seed from Cairo. How inspiring to reflect that the Arabic writers in Cairo are preaching the Gospel in Kansu (at present nine weeks' journey by the quickest mail) ! Here clearly are opportunities for men and women with the literary gift—or with the business and organizing gift, for without distribution the production of literature avails nothing ; Christian bookselling is as important as Christian publishing. And by Christian literature should be understood also all manner of good general literature, in which Mohammedan mission-lands are painfully deficient, —stories, biographies, popular, scientific, etc. To the boys and girls, and the adolescence generally, of these countries this need is not merely secondary : it is imperative. " What shall I do ? " exclaimed one headmaster lately, " I am nearly in despair. I give these boys the taste for reading and then I have nothing to give them to read. There is almost nothing between religious literature on the one hand and the erotic literature of the native press on the other. They will get no good from the latter, and they cannot always be reading the former." The words open up avenues for service which perhaps are rarely or never given a thought : for those who can write, for those who can edit : for men and women with the imaginative or the journalistic gift. Is it not well seen that in the

IIOW

SAVE

IT ?

215

Moslem mission-field, too, there are diversities of gifts, and the one Spirit of Jesus ? 4. Educational. This word opens up again great avenues and vistas. In Mohammedan lands, taking them all together, there is everything from the kindergarten to the degree-giving college. In the lands of the old Mohammedan civilizations, especially those which the war has opened up, higher education is specially important. In 1911 the writer was conversing with a particularly suspicious Mohammedan Sheikh in Aleppo, that great ancient, but now greater modern metropolis of the east. He was deploring the lack of a secondary school, based on moral and religious principle, to which he could send his son, an unsatisfactory youth of sixteen. And t h e n — " W h y do not the Americans start here a school such as the one they have at Sidon ? " was his astonishing question. Specially important is higher educational work in lands where European influences have reached an advanced stage. India has proved this. And if anyone doubts whether he can render best service in a mission or a Government institution, testimony comes every now and then from the highest and most unexpected quarters that it is the mission school that offers the greatest scope. And for this simple reason. A t the Government school, whether it is run as in E g y p t on Mohammedan lines, or as in India with dead neutrality, a master cannot really be giving his whole self to the boys, however hard he slaves at his work. The more

216

THE REBUKE OF ISLAM

he is a Christian, the more he must be withholding his best from his pupils. And this very often causes a continual and increasing sense of dissatisfaction and disappointment. Precisely the same applies to Government girls' schools and the quality of the opportunity they afford to women from the west. Not so w i t h the missionary. Within his own school he is as free as air. He can and does give all his self, all his time, all his interest to his work and to his boys. The difference in atmosphere m a y be imagined ; in moral result ; in welding of mutually hostile elements in the " communal spirit " of the school, which is really informed b y the Spirit of Jesus, though the pupils know it not. All of which applies equally to mission girls' schools. This is not simply the testimony of missionaries. It is testimony coming from highest officials in the Ministries of Education, and from men and women actually engaged in teaching in Government institutions, t h a t declares t h a t greatest is the opportunity for the profoundest and the highest work in mission schools and colleges. This implies of course t h a t the institutions shall be the best possible of their kind, and generously staffed, and t h a t we are in earnest about educational work. And more and more this is corning to be the case. W h a t a radiator of light and heat could one such school be, with its pupils drawn from far and near in some Moslem land ! 5. Oriental Churches, But lest we be wise in our own conceits, we must re-asseri what has already

HOW SAVE IT ?

217

been said, that not the foreign missionaries but the Christians of the soil and of the land are to be the evangelizers of Islam, whether Eastern-church, Reformed, or converts from Mohammedanism. And the best work that the missions from the West can do is to recognize this fact and plan accordingly. Whether the inspiring and fortifying of the progressive and spiritual elements in the old oriental churches of the Near East, or the frank creation of reformed and separate bodies is the best method, cannot be discussed here. In the providence of God both have had their task : in the providence of circumstance neither, probably, has been avoidable. But, since the old oriental churches will always be far the more numerous, and since their historical and traditional roots go down deepest into the soil, it becomes increasingly important to watch, help, and foster the efforts of their younger members after spiritual progress and reform. And here, too, comes in the importance of institutional work. " With the general opening out which has been brought about by the war, club-work, like that organized by the Y.M.C.A. and the Y.W.C.A. and the Student Movement for both sexes, will become increasingly possible and important. 1 Now is the time for Christian college men and women to show what a generation of Christian effort in the colleges of the west has done for them, and that 1

Mission work has touched very little the classes educated on western lines in the east. It is possible that almost only thus can they be reached. H

218

THE REBUKE OF ISLAM

t h e y are able t o c o m e f o r w a r d in t h e Spirit of Jesus, a n d show t h e y o u n g m a n h o o d a n d w o m a n h o o d of t h e east h o w c a p t i v i t y m a y b e led c a p t i v e , t h r o u g h t h a t S p i r i t ; h o w the u t t e r l y impossible m a y b e c o m e possible, a n d t h e oriental churches w h i c h failed thirteen centuries ago, a n d w h o s e failure h a s been for these thirteen h u n d r e d y e a r s r e b u k e d b y Islam, m a y succeed a t l a s t — m a y conquer, not b y r e c o v e r e d m a s t e r y (certain t o be abused), b u t b y t h e recovered d y n a m i c of t h e Spirit of t h e Christ of G o d .

Ill T h e p r o b l e m , h o w e v e r , is not s i m p l y a p r o b l e m of c o n v e r t i n g , of w i n n i n g back. I t is in A f r i c a , a n d t o a large e x t e n t in R u s s i a n A s i a also, a p r o b l e m of preventing. T h e following, f r o m W e s t A f r i c a , brings v i v i d l y t o our notice t h e contest of I s l a m for t h e h e a t h e n tribes : " All to the north and east and mostly west of us is won to Islam : the south is occupied by pagans, wholly hostile to Islam, and hating it with a deadly hatred : further south again, among the great Nupe and Yoruba peoples, it is making rapid strides. . . . The most of the propaganda is done by traders : it is very superficial at first, but in a second and third generation it will become an intelligent power according to the capability of each people, probably nowhere so great as among the Hausas themselves. " Of course the principal thing needed is a native agency. The Government has brought Mohammedans from India as clerks, artificers, blacksmiths ; we ought to bring

HOW SAVE IT ?

219

Christians from India and E g y p t t o these countries. I a m convinced t h a t the value of a converted M o h a m m e d a n from E g y p t in this country, if he could live h u m b l y and simply, would be revolutionary. Here converted heathens t o Islam win more converts t h a n o t h e r s . "

So arises the great problem of building up the African Christian Churches. " Missions will scarcely be able to prevent the entrance of Islam a m o n g a single tribe, m u c h less into large districts. Islam is spreading w i t h the certainty and irresistibility of a rising tide. T h e only question is if it will still be possible for missions t o organize Christian Churches like breakwaters, able t o resist the flood, and o u t w e a t h e r it, or whether e v e r y t h i n g will be carried a w a y headlong." 1

The following, by the Rev. J. L. Macintyre 2 of Nigeria, brings the noise and dust of this tremendous conflict more nearly home to our hearts and imaginations than a dozen essays written by theorists at home : — " I beg t o lay before y o u the following proposals with regard t o an organized effort t o c o m b a t the a d v a n c e of Islam in W e s t Africa, and in Nigeria especially. " . . . A s ignorance is t h e greatest stronghold of Mohammedanism, so education is t h e Church's greatest weapon in meeting it. " (i) Beginning with literature, efforts should be made t o produce vernacular literature dealing with the Mohammedan controversy. There is a large a m o u n t of such already published in India and in E g y p t . Gradually these could be translated into t h e different vernaculars, a n d 1 2

Pastor Würz, Secretary of the Basel Mission. In the Western Equatorial Diocesan Magazine, Nov

1908.

220

THE REBUKE OF ISLAM

thus t h e weapons already forged in warfare with Islam elsewhere would a t once become available in West Africa. " (2) In all Mission Schools definite instruction should be given on the errors of Islam, and the pupils forearmed. As Mohammedanism claims t o be a larger revelation, and to supersede Christianity, it is imperative t h a t this bold challenge should be met, and not passed over in silence, and t h a t every mission pupil should learn not only t h e Christian truths, b u t also their position with regard t o attacks on those truths. " (3) Special efforts should be made to encourage the systematic study of this question by all workers, both clergy and laymen, as too often they are not well equipped to meet the current objections to Christianity put into t h e minds of their hearers, which objections may a t any time become dominant. " (4) Evangelistic effort ought to be more used among Mohammedans. . . . Special meetings ought to be held for Mohammedans, and every means used to find out what sort of address or what form of meeting specially appeals to them. Preachers will need to be specially trained for this work. " (5) Special efforts should be made to occupy strong Mohammedan centres, as it is from these centres t h a t t h e Mohammedan influence on the pagan districts is exercised. . . . " (6) An itinerant order of (native) preachers, to go about in something the same way as Mohammedan malams go about from village to village, would be a great means of extending t h e Kingdom. The men would need to be specially trained, and would then be given as free a hand as possible, going about in a certain district, and staying in the villages for a week or a month, and endeavouring t o get some place or building set a p a r t for Christian worship. The ordinary visit of the missionary on his itineration is too soon forgotten, while the itinerant missionary free to stay in t h e place for a month, if need be, would be able to

HOW SAVE IT ?

221

reap some of the fruit, and leave a permanent instead of a transient impression."

The problems in East Africa are to a large extent the same as those already mentioned. The barrier Churches in Uganda and around Lake Nyassa are breakwaters in the flood of Islam—they need strengthening all along the line. As the task gradually comes into focus in all its extent and all its difficulty, the word rises to heart and lips, " I m p o s s i b l e ! " B u t the word itself brings up the answer that refutes it : — " With GOD nothing is impossible. Nothing shall be impossible to YOU." REFERENCES FOR FURTHER

STUDY

R e p o r t s of L u c k n o w C o n f e r e n c e — I s l a m and Missions. Olipliant. 6s. 6d. n e t . Daylight in the Harem. Olipliant. 3s. 6d. net. V a r i o u s writers. The Vital Forces of Christianity and Islam, Mil ford. ¿s. 6d. net. G . F . HERRICK. Christian and Mohammedan: A Plea for Bridging the Chasm. Revell. 5s. net. G. SIMON. Islam in Sumatra. Marshall. 6s. net. W . H. T . GAIRDNER. Life of D. M Thornton. H o d d e r . 33. 6d. net. T . PENNELL. Among Seeley. 6s. net.

the Wild

Tribes

of th;; Afghan

frontier.

CHAPTER How

Vili

S A V E IT ?

(3) The Impossible-Possible Problem, and ihe Spirit of Jesus THE reader has surely gathered, in the course ot studying the preceding pages, the reality, the paramount seriousness, and inevitableness, of the problem of ISLAM to the Christian Church. He has also probably wondered, with whatsoever he is capable of wonderment, at the fact that it is, nevertheless, this problem, which of all others has been repudiated, blinked at, and shirked by the Church of Christ. It is idle to speculate on the ultimate reason for both the existence of the problem and the behaviour of Christendom in the face of it. It is also unnecessary to recapitulate the medley of reasons which have been, and are still, advanced in favour of the very facile policy of laissez-faire : it is palpable that the worst of these are the offspring of no-faith in Christianity, dislike of trouble, or secret cowardice ; and that even the best of them would not stand for a moment when intellect, heart, and spirit have been honestly submitted to the spirit or the letter of the New Testament, of Christianity, of Christ. Already we have mentioned those 222

HOW SAVE IT ?

223

reasons with their varying degrees of sincerity. But there is yet one—it may, or may not, be the sincerest of them all—which has not been mentioned ; one voice that is always with us—the voice of him who says, " I allow all you say—but— the Time has not come " ! Often that voice belongs to one to whom " the Time " is as a horizon that ever retreats ; it never does " come," nor is there in fact desire that it should ever come. But this voice sometimes belongs to those who only need the encouragement given by information and by knowledge to be turned into sane enthusiasts who know that the Time has come, and that the day of action, as of salvation, is To-day. Whether then for such, or for ourselves, this book, and more particularly this chapter, is written. Action is such an enormously responsible and serious thing that it is no wonder if a man refuses to be committed to it unless intellect, heart and spirit have been convinced, and are at rest. It would seem a strange way of stimulating action, to mass and to focus the facts which cow and discourage it. Nevertheless that is what we are about to do. It is written : What king, as he goeth to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and take counsel whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him t h a t cometh against him with twenty thousand ?

We are now going to take careful and deliberate stock of that twenty thousand. But was this

224

THE REBUKE OF ISLAM

stock-taking intended by the divine Commander to discourage action ? Surely, to call it out ; to awaken dormant energies, unsuspected heroisms ; to inspire shame of that so miserable army of ten thousand, and thus to urge the calling out of the infinite resources and unknown reserves which are available to reinforce it.

I " Islam is the only one of the great religions to come after Christianity ; the only one that definitely claims to correct, complete and supersede Christianity ; the only one thai categorically denies the truth of Christianity; the only one that has in the past signally defeated Christianity; the only one that seriously disputes the world with Christianity; the only one which, in several parts of the world, is to-day forestalling and gaining on Christianity." These words, taken from a recent summary of the problem and the rebuke of Islam, sum up the main reason why Islam is a unique problem to the Christian Church ; unique in its urgency, unique in its difficulty. It cannot be treated like any other; it baffles more than any other, for it is more difficult to concede to it what is gladly conceded to other religions that appeared before Christ, that they in some sort prepared and prepare the way for Him. How can that which denies the whole essential and particular content of His message be said to prepare

HOW SAVE IT 1

225

for H i m , or to be a h a l f - w a y house to His K i n g d o m ? F o r t h a t is w h a t Islam does. Other religions k n o w nothing of Christianity ; one and all t h e y came before it and speak of it neither good nor evil. B u t the whole t h e o r y of Islam is t h a t it, the latest-sent of all religions, does not so m u c h abrogate Christianity a n d its B o o k , as specifically and categorically deny both as wilful corruption and lies. Point b y point, that which is particular in t h e content of Christianity, steeped through and through w i t h the tenderness of t h e love of God, is negated with abhorrence b y I s l a m : — the F a t h e r h o o d of G o d ; the Sonship and Incarnation of Jesus C h r i s t ; the D i v i n i t y of the H o l y G h o s t ; the death of Christ and all t h a t it means, whether e t h i c a l l y — o f love, infinite tenderness, infinite selfsacrifice ; or s p i r i t u a l l y — o f sin condemned, and sin forgiven ; the Resurrection of Christ on the third d a y ; His glorification w i t h the F a t h e r w i t h the glory which H e h a d w i t h H i m before the world w a s — e a c h several truth of these truths is a b l a s p h e m y in the eyes of every Moslem, a lie which Islam came expressly to blast, taught b y a B o o k which the K o r a n came expressly to replace. I t is easier to convince a m a n of t h a t of which he k n o w s nothing in particular, than of t h a t which he firmly believes to be definitely false. A d d to this, t h a t Islam actually succeeded in displacing, humbling, and destroying that which bore the name of Christianity in m a n y lands ; and so Moslems became y e t further convinced of the weakness and ignorance of Christians, and of their disfavour w i t h R*

226

THE REBUKE OF ISLAM

God. The rise of the Christian nations has done nothing to dispel this, for Islam puts that down to anything but their religion. It therefore burns with a two-fold desire to revenge its own humiliation on the unbelieving nations whose yoke is on its neck, and to vindicate its own still unfulfilled claims to universality and supreme victory. To universality: for with the possible exception of Buddhism, no other great non-Christian religion seriously cares whether it becomes universal or not. Some indeed expressly repudiate universality. Islam alone claims it, and actively and ceaselessly works to make good its claim. Do we need any more words as to the inevitableness of the problem of Islam ? But as to its seriousness ? Back to that Church-Mosque at Damascus whence we took our start ! See where a Cross once stood, and where there stands a Crescent to-day ! That sight stands for, and typifies, what every Moslem sees inwardly, and believes he has the right to see actually, when he looks at the Cross on every continental cathedral spire, every English minster rising from the sweet silent close, every village church, from whose belfrytower the chimes come like a benediction over the hamlet nestling at its feet, and the meadow-lands smiling in the sunlight beyond. . . . So much for the problem's inevitableness: so much for its seriousness. But this is not all. What has been told does not tell yet half the difficulty. We have to remember that the Moslem knows that his religion arose in the full light of historic

HOW SAVE IT ?

227

day. His intellect goes back to, and rests on, the undoubted historic fact of Mohammed, the Arabian Prophet who was given a Book from heaven, the authenticity of which none denies, the strangeness of which, as coming from Mohammed, none questions. Here are phenomena, universally admitted, which seem to him a conclusive proof of divine action. The very absence of miracle is becoming a matter of boast to him. Monsieur So-and-so is telling him that Islam is the only rational religion that does not ascribe to its founder an irrational miracle —it only claims the rational miracle of the Koran itself. And so forth. All this gives the Moslem hard ground on which to plant his feet in denying and rejecting any other faith, and adds to the strength with which he cleaves to his own. Nor is this all, nor nearly all. Add to this the simplicity and the rigid definiteness of the creed to which the Moslem invites the world's adherence. Islam simplifies with a vengeance ! " There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is the Apostle of Allah " ; a child can learn it in a moment, and to its vigorous negative exclusion, and simple universal assertion, a meaning can be instantly attached. It seems to require no explaining, no elaboration ; it can never be forgotten ; the densest intellect can hold on to i t ; and to it moreover an infinite virtue and value has been solemnly attached. The Moslem has as little demand made on his intellect as on his moral faculty : his is the ideal religion for " the plain man," " the man in the street "—those familiar

228

THE REBUKE OF ISLAM

figures who m reality stand for the man who dislikes having to take trouble in religious matters. Not that the Moslem spares trouble in his religion ; but it is of the kind that costs human nature least, and especially oriental human nature—obedience to a fixed, rigid, and invariable series of ordinances and prohibitions. He has not the trouble of asking why, or of looking for principles. He need not keep a vexatious conscience which continually asks him if he is keeping the spirit of God's will. This only brings us to aspects even more bitter to contemplate in the light of our present purpose. For this fatal simplification which Islam makes in creed and code leads naturally to a further contrast, that between the propaganda of the two religions—between their task and ours. Let us face this thing; let us look at it until we are veritably overwhelmed by the superhuman odds against Christianity, the impossible handicap which the spirit deliberately assesses against itself in its contest with the flesh. For it stands to reason that this externality and simplicity must give Islam favour in the eyes of the sons of Adam, especially the unnumbered millions in Africa to-day, for whom such a creed and such a code are, in addition to their facility and the poverty of their demands, an undoubted step beyond the incoherence and chaos of their native animism. To such, the new religion, which gives them a standing in the world of men, whose simple creed gives them intellectual satisfaction while its code deals lightty with the funda-

HOW SAVE IT ?

229

mental lusting of the human heart, is irresistibly attractive. They flock into it, and it is content to let them flock in by the thousand, no question asked, no scrutiny prescribed in regard to motives. . . . Motives ! that is for Allah to judge, not man. For Mohammed emphatically forbade the rejection of any man who professed Islam by repeating the Kalima (the " Word," i.e. Creed) ; and Islam has joyously followed his lead—much it cares for the state of soul of him who makes his profession ! Are not his children certain to be Moslem to the core ? A„nd so Islam spreads and spreads. Against a propaganda such as this, what chance has a religion which demands the surrender of the whole man. the subordination of flesh to spirit by the branding of the former with the slave-mark of the Cross ; which searches for the " one " sheep—for individual souls ; which insists on the importance of principle, the duty of loving the spirit of the commandment of Jesus ? No wonder Moslems boast, all over the Moslem world, of the religion which spreads with so divine a spontaneity, and point with contemptuous pity to the painful efforts of Christianity, the portentous outpouring of energy on the part of its devoted agents, with the pitifully incommensurate results. As one Moslem writer in Cairo put it, speaking more trufy than he knew, " Christianity opposes, Islam follows, the current of human nature." But this is not all. Not only is a simple moral standard demanded from the proselyte, but an equally simple standard is allowed to the proselytizer,

230

THE REBUKE OF ISLAM

What is the moral standard, do we suppose, of the Arab traders and ex-slavers, the Sudanese mallams, who spread the faith in West and East Africa ? It may be good, indifferent, or downright bad—yet in each case alike the man may be a highly successful worker for Islam. Where little is expected, there is no disappointment. So we get the strange fact that bad men may be fervent professors of Islam— tyrants, bullies, liars, fornicators, men of blood, but fanatics for the religion of Allah and his Prophet, consigning heartily to Jehannam all others—such men may be and are real promoters of Islam. We ma}' admit, and earnestly lay to heart the admission, that those men at least are willing to receive into fraternity the wretches they have wronged, or still wrong. It may be at bottom a tremendous proof of the divinity of Christianity that the " Christian " trader, living in sin, is not and cannot be an advertisement of his religion, and that moreover he neither calls himself a Christian, nor cares if he be known as such or not. The fact remains that Islam can, and does, use instruments which Christianity must deliberately and necessarily refuse. What shall we call such a contest as this ? One is tempted, again and again, to turn away with a groan, as the French general did when he surveyed what was essayed at Balaklava—" It is magnificent, but it is not la guerre." Yet even this is not all. This is not the only point in which our Christian propagandism seems positively to defeat itself by its high standard : we

HOW SAVE IT ?

231

have not yet considered the simplicity of their culture and race problems, the complexity of ours. Christian culture—in the high sense that includes character—is a thing of long growth, with roots far back in the past, and deep down in Christ, who is the Truth, not only in religion, but in knowledge and in art as well. He who has that culture cannot if he would, should not if he could, divest himself of it. And yet how often and how often the messenger of Christ feels it a veritable barrier between himself and those to whom he comes. The very thought that there are whole realms of soul-life which he cannot impart to these people, into which they can never enter, is, more than he realizes perhaps, a discouragement to him ; more than they realize, an obstacle to them. A gulf seems fixed—can it indeed be crossed, or narrowed ? Thus it is that the very complexity of European culture at its simplest— the glorious successes that its centuries have won —seem often to be solely a hindrance in the field of missionary action. Body and mind, and not soul only, demand in fact a minimum which, as the missionary almost in despair observes, seems to place him in a different class from the people with whom he longs to show his unity in the Christ. What chance then has Christianity against those whose religion brings a culture that is the simplest and most superficial thing imaginable, so that it seems to the savage just so superior that it must be coveted, and not so superior that it must be despaired of ? Does even the effect produced by

232

THE REBUKE OF ISLAM

the self-emptying of the Christian after the fashion of his Lord, counteract these things ? Can that renunciation ever be complete enough to be so much as noticed by the very people whose attention it is supposed to arrest ? Enough !—yet there is more. For at the heels of this simplification of the culture-problem comes a weightier matter still, a more grievous handicap than any yet mentioned—the simplicity of the race problem for Islam ; its complexity for Christendom. It is not mere pride and prejudice that have forbidden the mixing of white with black or brown or yellow. It is gravely to be considered whether nature herself—and God is behind nature—has in the past blessed the banns in such mixtures, or will do so in the future. Is this a small matter in relation to the subject of our enquiry ? Consider ! Why is it that the Moslem occupation of a country has always meant the gradual and unimpeded Islamizing of its people, whereas the occupation of an African or Asiatic country by a Christian European nation, so far from having a corresponding effect, seems to have the very reverse ? We hear it wondered at that ' even ' the prestige of Christian conquerors is insufficient to recommend their religion. " Even ! " It is that ver}' prestige that damns it, because those conquerors are conquerors who will not mix with their conquered. There is no mingling of families, there are separate castes. And separate castes have separate gods. A father can with ease impose his religion on his family throughout the east, but

HOW SAVE IT ?

233

those who remain outside the family life (which is the social life) of the people they ruie, will be indeed outsiders, and their religion will be indeed foreign. And how deep is the loathing of a. nation for a foreign religion : it is the religion of their eternally foreign conquerors ! Here too, then, Christianity has all the handicap against it, for this very tiling is Islam's strength. No law has seemed to forbid the mingling of Arab and other Moslem races with whatsoever nations they settled amongst. Syria, Persia, Egypt, North Africa, Negro Africa, Mongol Asia, India, Malaysia, all tell the same tale : the Moslem host enters ; the conquest is made ; the conquerors assume all the posts of government, and fill their harems with the women of the land. (A Moslem may marry an " unbelieving woman," but not vice versa. Notice the deep world-wisdom of this rule.) In one generation, under these circumstances, the sore of conquest has probably been forgotten, and once " thy people are my people " is realized, " thy God is my God " follows. Thus was it when the first Moslems conquered Persia, Syria, and E g y p t ; thus was it when Moguls conquered India ; and Fulahs the Sudan. Thus is it not with Christians. Consequently the religion of Moslems spreads like a natural product, and with the greatest celerity; while the religion of the Christians has against it, and most of all in the lands where Christians rule, the whole force of that hatred which is entertained by those who feel the stigma of inferiority to be

234

THE REBUKE OF ISLAM

hourly obtruded through the conqueror's veto against intermarriage with their race. And as if this were not enough, Christianity, the more it realizes the meaning and the character of the Kingdom of Christ, becomes the more scrupulous in disclaiming the interest and the aid of the state, as such, in prosecuting the work of its King. No doubt it was not always so. But now in propaganda in Moslem or heathen lands, Christians often have the rulers of their own creed against them, or in armed neutrality; only rarely in anything like earnest sympathy. How shall so scrupulous a religion contest for the world with Islam, which identifies religion and state-craft in a theocracy where all law is religious law ? Christianity has abjured the methods of physical conquest, and encourages the rulers of state neither to make difference between man and man, nor to discriminate against anyone for changing his religious faith. When supreme in any realm, Islam has at its disposal, and without scruple uses, the whole machinery of the state, by rewarding those who profess it or turn to it, and by loading with an hourly sense of inferiority and contempt those who refuse to conform to it. It makes death the portion of the man who abandons it, and the portion of the woman imprisonment till she recant, or till death steps in to end her misery. Such is Islamic canon-law to-day, and it should be distinctly understood that every inroad made by civil law into canon-law is made in Islam's despite. Whether canon-law can, or cannot, be enforced,

HOW SAVE IT ?

235

such is the spirit of Islam, the spirit that animates all Mohammedans against those who preach in their midst another religion than their own. Were ever souls in this humour wooed ? Were ever souls in this humour won ? Were ever such odds as these ? How colossal seems the sheer mass, how irresistible the momentum, of this league of nature, the world, and the flesh ! What avails spirit against such forces as these ? Why must we for ever renounce all the favourable conditions, giving, like the Scottish King at Flodden, all the advantages to the opponent ? Why must we strive always up the hill, with the sun for ever in our eyes, the wind and rain for ever driving in our faces ; ever, ever conceding, never, never receiving, the handicap and the odds ? So, in effect, argued the Ten. But the wisdom, as well as the courage, was found with the Two, with Joshua the son of Nun, and Caleb the son of Jephunneh. If Islam's forces are indeed nature, the world, and the flesh, then Islam has left to us one weapon, in taking away all the others—it has abandoned to us the sword of the Spirit. The Two considered that as enough. " Their defence is removed from over them, and the Lord is 'with us : fear them not." The Spirit of Jesus is the only asset of the Church.

236

THE REBUKE OF ISLAM II

Thus we say in faith, Nil desperandum Christo duce. And, turning to the work itself, we encounter many facts that bear out this supreme encouragement of the invincibility of the Christ. By far the greater part of the Mohammedan world is perfectly open to missionary work. Practically the whole of Asiatic Islam, except parts of Afghanistan and of the peninsula of Arabia, receives, or would receive, the messengers of Christ's Gospel : and the same may be said of African Islam, with the exception of a part of the Sudan. And these exceptions—how soon may they not cease to be exceptions ? At any moment a turn in the political wheel, some daring and original individual exploit, may open up these countries also. But is the Church proving her willingness and ability to enter even the doors that are open to-day ? Again, most of the important strategic centres are occupied by at least some representatives of the Gospel. Mecca and Timbuktu on the Niger are perhaps the most important exceptions, but is it not wonderful to think that such great spiritual or social centres as Constantinople, Damascus, Beyrout, Jerusalem, Cairo, Zanzibar, Baghdad, Ispahan, Bokhara, Lahore, Delhi and other great Indian Moslem centres, are also centres of work carried on in the name of Christ. 1 Every one of these centres 1

Cf. Zwemer's Islam, p. 2 1 5 .

HOW SAVE IT ?

2 S7

needs strengthening to an indefinite extent; but the fact remains, they are occupied. Again, the language problem is n^i so insuperable a one as some other missionary language problems. The languages spoken by Moslems are relatively few, and the Bible has been translated, in whole or in part, into nearly all of them. " The Beyrout press alone has issued over a million volumes of the Arabic Scriptures since, it was founded ; the demand for the Bible in Persia, Arabia, Egypt, and the Turkish Empire is phenomenal." The Arabic tongue, itself spoken by over 45,000,000 Mohammedans, is read by many more ; and if the Mohammedan revival results in increased study of Arabic all over the Moslem world, that will only give increased prestige and opportunities of circulation to the Bible itself, and to other Christian books, in Arabic. Well might D. M. Thornton be an enthusiast for harnessing the Arabic tongue, turning that own weapon of Islam against Islam's own bosom. Dr Zwemer tables twenty main Moslem languages, or twenty-eight, counting dialects, into which the Bible has been already translated in whole or in part. The Koran on the contrary is rarely translated ; and when it is, it sometimes merely loses its prestige in the process. We have seen, too, how a growing body of literature, in the tongues most spoken by Moslems, is gradually getting into their hands in all parts of the House of Islam. The seed is indeed being sown ; who knows what is germinating silently underground ?

238

THE REBUKE OF ISLAM

Add to this the hundreds of thousands of Moslem hearts, which are touched and disarmed every year by the ministries of Christian hearts and Christian hands in school, hospital, and dispensary all over the House of Islam ; and the many who in bookdepot, or bazaar, or preaching-room listen quietly to the doctrine of Jesus quite apart from such ministries of teaching or of healing. What might it not be if a new anointing of the Spirit of Christ were given to-day, like that of Pentecost, to all these ministrants, giving to their every word and action a grace that were itself an argument not to be resisted or gainsaid ? Why should we not expect, in answer to our prayers, the anointing of Mohammedan converts with the fullness of that Spirit, to be as prophets to their own people ? Dr Pennell says, after speaking of an Afghan Moslem convert, Abdul Karim, martyred because he would not deny Christ, that a public acknowledgment of Christianity in Afghanistan would mean death, and probably a cruel death. " At the same time I believe that the Church in Afghanistan will not be established till there have been many such martyrs, who will seal their faith with their blood. When the news of the death of Abdul Karim reached Bannu, more than one of our Afghan Christians offered to go over into Afghanistan and take his place, as herald of the Cross, and bear the consequences, but I pointed out to them that the time was not yet." Is the time perhaps near at hand ? More and more prayer is needed for the outpouring

HOW SAVE IT ?

239

of the Spirit on all converts from Islam that they may be used of God as apostles for the evangelization of their own kindred and their own people. And then we have the actual results; those thousands in Makiysia and I n d i a ; those groups wherever honest and courageous work has been done. Is not the earnest sufficient ? Does it not sufficiently shatter the continual contention that " to convert a Mohammedan is impossible " ? We have, too, on every side the testimony to their quality when won—what brighter stars have there been among oriental converts than the old man, Imad - ud - din of India, the young man, Kamil Abdul Messiah of Syria ? What was possible in the past is possible in the future—nay, on a greater and continually increasing scale—not only possible, but certain, if only the Church is worthy of her calling and her Lord. For verily great names have led the way to the saving of Islam, men of faith who even at times when all, all was against them, looked neither to the left nor to the right, but went straight forward ; for they endured, as seeing Him who is invisible. Francis of Assisi, Raymund Lull, Francis Xavier, Henry Martyn, Karl Pfander, Valpy French, Ian Keith-Falconer, Douglas Thornton—these are names of right noble men who have passed to their everlasting reward—these, with living names that might be added to theirs, challenge us to accomplish even more than they accomplished, by

240

THE REBUKE OF ISLAM

just as much as our opportunities and means are greater than theirs, while the Spirit of Jesus was not more theirs than ours. And, indeed, it does correct and dispel the blank misgiving which besets us when we see what remains to be accomplished, and the mountainous obstacles in the way, to look back only a hundred years and see the marvellous progress that has been made. We climb the mountainside with painful steps and slow, the summit seems so far—it is not until we look back and down that we see how much has been accomplished.

CONCLUSION

What then will it not be when the Church as a whole has realized that she exists to evangelize the world ? When by God's voice in sermon, address, organization, missionary study in church and college, the whole Church realizes that every true member is responsible for world evangelization, and that every Christian who goes abroad in any capacity is a foreign missionary ? When the hint given us by Islam is spiritually fulfilled, and Church members, whether they be administrators, or soldiers, or merchants, or mechanics, or clerks, are " dismissed " to their spheres of work to make them into spheres of service, places where, directly or indirectly, they will do all they can, be it little or be it much, to forward the conscious end, shared by them with

HOW

SAVE

IT ?

241

the whole Church, of " making Jesus King " 1 over all, and, though " Islam defies your King," 2 King over Islam ? Y e t more, Look Upward. For in the long last, the Spirit is mightier than the flesh, as God is mightier than man. The stone which the builders rejected shail become the headstone of the corner. The Spirit of Jesus has been deliberately left b y Islam to the Church, and so even He whom the warriors have rejected shall be the chosen Leader and Power of that Church. There is no other. Y e t do we know what we ask ? It means that we are claiming a right to have it said to us, " Ye are they which have continued with me in my temptations." For verily the bare contemplation of this problem of Islam is, until death relieves our watch, an abiding on the mountain-top of Temptation with the Lord. Even while we wrote or read this chapter, were we not in spirit there ? Nay, is there on earth anything which so nearly as the contemplation of the problem and reproach of Islam reproduces for us the situation that faced the Redeemer on that Mount ? He, too, was shown a whole world of men in a moment of time, as we have been shown : He, too, saw with piercing clearness, as we have seen, the monstrous dead-weight of the natural forces of world and flesh which b y mere vis 1 Motto cabled to S.V.M.U. Conference at Liverpool, 1896, by the Scandinavian Student Christian Movement. 2 Motto cabled by Cairo Student Volur. eers to the London Conference, 1900.

242

THE REBUKE OF ISLAM

inertia or sheer brute power threatened to overwhelm His whole work : He, too, knew what it was to feel that these advantages must be ever conceded, never claimed—even when, cruelly tantalizing, they were lying ready to hand : He, too, knew what it was to fall back on the Spirit, to realize and to confess that only by what seemed like weakness must all that strength be met, only by the foolishness of the Message, only by the scandal of the Cross : He knew what it cost to confess deliberately that " the weakness of God is stronger than men," and " the foolishness of God is wiser than men." He knew all this : He made the choice : He chose Spiritpower, and rejected all else. By that He chose to save the world with all its forces, cost what it might. So, then, Islam is the greatest call the Church ever has had, or will have, to look to Him who is invisible—to come to an understanding and realization of the meaning of CHRIST. In a score of ways, the Rebuke of Islam that rebukes us day by day, calls us back to explore His forgotten secrets, and to realize what He in Himself is. Most of all it calls us to a closer association with Christ Himself—to that continuance with Him in His temptations— to learn what is the Kingdom of God, Who is the Spirit of Jesus. If this be so, is Islam itself too great a price to have had to pay for the lesson ? And if the Church is brought truly to learn this lesson, she will face the Rebuke of Islam, with shame and sorrow indeed, but without dismay, for she will, in so learning, learn also the secret of Christ's

HOW SAVE IT ?

243

Victory, and will prove in herself the power of His Risen Life.

W h e n the SPIRIT OF JESUS is set free

to work, the issue is assured.

And so we come back in thought to that ChurchMosque at Damascus, from which we took our start, and read again that inscription which is both instruction and pledge : THY KINGDOM, O CHRIST, IS A KINGDOM ALL AGES

OF

It is a prophecy that was unconsciously endorsed by that old Sheikh of the College-Mosque of Bokhara who said to one who had caused him to read the Book of the Christians : " I am convinced that Jesus Christ will conquer Mohammed. There is no doubt about it, because Christ is King in Heaven and on the earth, and His Kingdom fills Heaven and will soon fill the earth." So be it. And now let us go hence.

STATISTICAL APPENDIX MOSLEM

POPULATION

OF

THE

Asia—

Total Population

India D u t c h E a s t Indies R u s s i a n E m p i r e (including B o k hara and Khiva) T u r k e y in A s i a Chinese E m p i r e Afghanistan Persia Arabia . Ceylon . R e s t of Asia Total for

WORLD

Asia

(19141) Mohammedan Population

308,965,933 38,216,979

65,955,886 35,308,996

167,003,400 19,705,200

20,000,000 12,278,800 8,421,000S 5,000,000 4,500,000 2,500,000

427.135.305 5,900,000 5,000,000 2,500,000 —

276,361 2,449,067

—

156,690,110

4,105.535

Africa— Egypt . R e s t of A f r i c a

— -

10,269,445 31,769,904

—

42,039,349

11,287,359

Total for A jrica

Europe— T u r k e y in E u r o p e Balkan States Great Britain R e s t of E u r o p e Russia)

. . . . . . . . (not including . . . .

Total for Europe Russia)

(not including . . . .

2,000,000 17,000,000 45,369,090

1,000,000 699-637 1,000 673,039

2.373.676

America

.

174,061

Australia TOTAL

FOR M O H A M M E D A N

WORLD,

201,296,696

1 T h e above figures h a v e been taken from the Statistical Survey b y Professor Westermann and R e v . S. M. Zwemer, D . D . , given in The Moslem World, April 1914. I t is not possible at the time of going to press to obtain post-war statistics of Moslem p o p u l a t i o n s . — W . H. T . G. 2 A census in 1918 points to the Moslem population in China being considerably larger than this.

INDEX A Abdallah, 27, 37 Abdul Wahhab, 88, 130, 144, 149, 166 Abu Baler, 37-9, 58, 60, 6 1 - 2 , 68, 77 Abu Taiib, 28, 41 Abyssinia, 20, 40, 45, 88 Afghanistan, 1 0 - n , 22, 82, 1 5 0 - 1 , 197, 236, 238 Akbar, 82 al Ghazz£li, 1 1 8 , 159 A1 Kindy, 1 7 3 Algeria, 17, 64, 185 Aligarh College, 152 Allah, attributes of, 99, 1 0 1 , 121 Arabia, 7, 8, 9, 22, 57, 60, 64, 69, 70, 88, 140 et seq., 190, 236, 237 in the time of Mohammed, 26 et seq, Arab slavers, 20 Armenia, 7, 189 Arnold, T. W., quoted, 82, 83-4, 8,8, 89, 1 5 5 Assyria, 1 , 8 Ayesha, 48, 54, 160 Azhar, El, 205, 208, 209 B

Balkan States, 6, 61, 81 Baluchistan, 10, 82 Black Stone, 2 1 , 29, 5 1 , 1 3 1 Bokhara, 1 3 , 65, 78, 80, 82, 84, 190, 236, 243 BÛI113 (Paul), 2 0 7 - 1 0 Byzantine Empire, 25, 63 C Cairo, 22, 64, 130, 1 3 5 , 145, 146, 148, 158, 1 6 1 , 163, 208—10, 214, 236 Caliphate, 69, 80 Carlyle, T. quoted, 67 China, 13, 14, 15, 61, 66, 80, 82, 84, 85, 1 5 3 - 4 / lf 39, 194, 2 1 4 Church, Divisions in the, 26, 78-9 Church-Mosque of Damascus, 2 - 3 , 6, 23, 136, 226, 243 Congo State, 19 Consensus, 122, 128 Constantinople, 4, 24 et seq., 62, 63, 66. 80, 81, 147, 160, 188, 189, 236 Copts, 16, 26 Cromer, Lord, 167, 160, 210 Crusades, 67, 81, 174-5

D Babylon, 1 , 8, 10 Dale, G., quoted, 99 Badr, 51 Baghdad, 8, 79, 80, 84, 190, Damascene, John, 1 7 3 Damascus, 1 , 4, 7, 80, 1 3 5 , 236 236

246

THE REBUKE OF ISLAM E

East5

A f r i c a , 20, 92, 154, 192, 2 2 1 , 230 E a s t e r n C h u r c h e s , 8, 16, 217 E a s t I n d i e s , 1 5 - 6 , 80, 86, 153, 189, 196, 197, 1 9 S - 9 E g y p t , 4, 8, 16, 53, 64, 76, 81, 88, 93, 94, 144, 145, 147, 158-60, 164, 169, 189, 192, 197, 210, 2 1 5 , 233, 237 F Firdous, 32 F r a n c i s of Assisi, St., 1 7 5 , 176, 178, 239 F r e n c h , V a l p y (Bishop), 1 8 8 9°, 239

H Hadith, 1 0 1 , 103, 122 Hadji Khan, quoted, 143-4 H e j a z , 27, 140 Higra, 43 H u m e - G r i f f i t h , M. E . , q u o t e d , 114 H u r g r o n j e , S n o u c k , 169

I s l a m , c r e e d o f , 32, 124, 227 d i s t r i b u t i o n of, 6 - 2 2 e a r l y p e r s e c u t i o n s , 38, 40 f a s t i n g , 125, 1 3 1 - 2 F o u n d e r of, 4 i n t e r m a r r i a g e , 48, 66, 77- 8, 85, 86, 90, 233 marriage system of, 133, 159-64 p i l g r i m a g e , 125 pillars of, 122 p o l i t i c a l s y s t e m , a , 45, 74, 146 et seq. p r a c t i c a l d u t i e s of, 1 2 4 - 3 2 p r a y e r , o b s e r v a n c e o f , 124— 31 social s y s t e m , a, 74, 135, 1 3 9 u n i v e r s a l i t y o f , 53, 226 w o m e n , p o s i t i o n of, 1 5 7 - 6 4

J J a v a , 16, 86, 94, 1S9, 199, 200 Jl'hannam, 32, 1 1 8 , 230 J e n g h i z K h a n , 83, 85 J e r u s a l e m , I , 47, 236 J i h a d , 60, 70, 90, 9 1 , 1 2 5 , 1 4 1 , 168

K I I l m i n s k y , 191 I m à d - u d - d ì n , 188, 198, 239 I n d i a , 1 0 - 1 2 , 15, 25, 27, 6 1 , 82, 83, 93, 94, I 5 I - 3 . l 6 6 > 187, 189, 204, 2 1 5 , 233, 2 39 Injil, 3 c I r a k , 8, 145, 190 I s l a m , a l m s g i v i n g , 125, 1 3 1 a n d t h e J e w s . 39, 4 6 - 7 c o n c e p t i o n of Go-!, 101 et seq.

K a a b a , 29, 45, 5 1 , 130 K a m i l A b d u l Messiah, 197, 239 K h a d i j a h , 28, 34, 36, 43, 46 K h a l i d , 7 1 , 72 K o r a n , a n d B i b l e , 39 and Paradise, n 7 - 9 i n s p i r a t i o n of, 1 2 1 language and imagery of, 97 ct seq. origin of, 3 5 - 6 teaching regarding women, 158