No one can travel through the Near East with an intelligent appreciation of the manners and customs of its people without an accurate knowledge of the religion professed by the majority of them and an adequate familiarity with the life and times of the one whom they revere as their Founder and Prophet. The reason is obvious. The inhabitants—Osmanlis, Arabs, Turkomans—of this part of the once great Ottoman Empire have so long lived under the theocracy established by Mohammed and his successors that every detail of their religion and civil life is regulated for them with a thoroughness that, outside of Islam, is quite unknown. The Sultan as well as the Mollah is both a religious and a civil functionary, and theocratic government prevails everywhere from the palace of the Padishah on the Bosphorus to the tent of the Bedouin in the Syrian and Arabian Deserts. What is not prescribed by the Koran is ordered by the Hadith, that body of legislative traditions which is based on the reputed sayings or acts of the Prophet of Mecca, and which, in the eyes of loyal adherents of Islam, has the force of prescriptions emanating directly or indirectly from Allah, and which are, consequently, immutable.

It is evident, therefore, that one who is ignorant of the history of Islam will not only seriously misunderstand the people of Moslem countries but will also be compelled, before he shall be long in their midst, greatly to revise his previous notions respecting them. For he will soon discover, as have many others before him, that while he knew all about their defects, he had little or no knowledge of their many and very great virtues.

As his sojourn among the Moslems is prolonged and he becomes better acquainted with them, he will find that most of his views concerning them were based on ungrounded prejudice or age-old stories that had no other basis than crass ignorance or un-Christian hatred. Not only this; he will gradually learn to admire those whom he had been taught to despise and, if he be of a deeply religious nature, he may find himself endorsing the statement of the late General Gordon: “I love the Moslems because they are not ashamed of God.”

To the student of history it seems incredible that so many and so egregious errors regarding Islam should have so long prevailed among men who are otherwise well informed and disposed to be fair in their judgments of all peoples, regardless of creed or color. For “although Islam has been described in so many books, there are yet educated people who,” in the words of the learned Padre Marracci,[228] “believe that Moslems are idolaters who adore Mohammed and the moon,”[229] and who, as the scholarly Sprenger writes, “have not gotten much further in the knowledge of Islam than that the Turks allow polygamy.”

If it were a question of the inhabitants of Central Africa, who were practically unknown until the explorations of Speke, Stanley, and Livingstone, we should not be surprised that even geographers should know next to nothing about them. But it seems difficult to explain the widespread ignorance which has everywhere obtained regarding a people who have played so important a rôle in history as the Moslems, and who during more than twelve centuries have been in constant relations with the Christian nations of Europe.

But, although the contact between the East and the West has been uninterrupted since the time Moslemism essayed

the misrepresentations of Mohammed and his followers have continued without intermission from the days of the Crusaders to the present time. And the strangest thing is that the most extravagant tales about Mohammedans and their religion were put in circulation when their originators must have known that they had no foundation in fact.

Many of the stories—as false as they were ridiculous—that were long current respecting the Arabian Prophet and the religion which he founded were due to the Trouvères and the Troubadours. A great majority of the Chansons de Geste exhibit a pitiful ignorance of the tenets of the Saracens, and not a few of them contributed to give vogue to the most revolting fables respecting Mohammed and Islam. Although neither Leo the Isaurian nor Oliver Cromwell, both the sworn enemies of images, were more opposed to idolatry or to the worship of images than Mohammed, nevertheless, in La Chanson de Roland,[230] the Franks are represented under the walls of Saragossa as avenging their defeat at Roncesvelles by mutilating and destroying the idols of their enemies.

In the Chanson d’Antioche—declared to be “a very beautiful chanson which does not contain any fables but only the unadulterated truth”—the author, Richard le Pelerin, in the beginning of his poem, asks God to put to dire confusion the followers of Mohammed—especially those

In the Roman de Beaudouin de Sebourc, the author goes to still greater lengths. By a strange aberration he makes the idol of Mohammed the emblem of Islam, as the Cross is the emblem of Christianity. For, in this chanson the Comtesse de Porthieu is represented as wishing to abjure her faith before the Sultan Saladin and expressing her readiness to adore the effigy of the Prophet:

And Saladin, on his part, is pictured as ordering the idol to be brought for the adoration of the newly made convert to Mohammedanism:

When it is remembered that Mohammed was all his life the relentless enemy of images of all kinds and that he absolutely proscribed the representation of animated creatures; when it is recalled that images of all kinds have been studiously excluded from every mosque in the world from the time of the Prophet until the present, one would think that such misrepresentations as those spread broadcast by the trouvères would have found little acceptance, or have been as short-lived as they were false. Had the object of the trouvères been to perpetuate animosity among Christians toward Moslems they could not have devised a more effective method of achieving their purpose.

But Mohammed and his followers had to be discredited and recourse was had to foul means as well as fair. Not satisfied with making them favor what they always consistently denounced, trouvères and chroniclers invented a most cruel legend regarding the death of the Prophet. Notwithstanding the concordant and unquestioned verdict of history respecting the demise of Mohammed, the pilgrim Richard, author of the chanson La Conquête de Jerusalem, fabricates the odious fable that the founder of Islam was devoured by swine while helplessly inebriated.[231] And this, despite the well-known fact that Mohammed was during his entire reforming career as much opposed to the use of intoxicating drinks as he was to the use of images! Nevertheless this alleged disgraceful end of the Prophet is assigned by the pilgrim Richard and by Guibert de Nogent in his “Dei Gesta per Francos” as the reason why Mohammedans never eat pork![232]

I call special attention to the erroneous notions regarding Mohammed and Islam which pervade the pages of the chansons de geste, as they are samples of other errors equally preposterous regarding a people who should have been better understood, and as they help to explain the origin of many similar misconceptions which, notwithstanding all that has been said and written to the contrary, still persist, among large masses of people, in all their original force and crudeness.

Even long after the time of the trouvères there were not wanting historians and divines who were willing to repeat the silly legends of the chansons de geste whenever they thought they would thereby give point to their attacks on the Koran or the Prophet. Thus, among the leaders of the Reformation, the distinguished Orientalist, Bibliander, seriously institutes a comparison between Mohammed and the Devil. Melancthon declared him to be either Gog or Magog, if not both together.[233]

Voltaire, in writing of the Koran, of which he had as superficial an acquaintance as of many other things which engaged his flippant and caustic pen, declared it to be “Ce livre unintelligible qui fait fremir le sens commun à chaque page”—that unintelligible book which makes common sense shudder at every page. And, like many writers before and since his time, he was fully aware that his fictions were totally at variance with history. But, as has been well expressed by Hurgronje, “he wanted to put before the public an armed Tartuffe and thought he might lay the part upon Mohammed.”[234]

Others again, like many writers of our own day, had a political as well as a religious object in their attacks upon Islam. For, under pretense of waging war against the nefarious tenets and practices of Moslemism, they secretly had in view an assault on the Turkish Empire, or, as a noted Swiss Orientalist long ago declared, all their efforts were really directed in oppugnationem Mahometanæ perfidiæ et Turcici regni.[235]

From the days of the Crusaders until the present there has been no cessation of the campaign of vilification of everything Mohammedan as there has for long been no abatement in political hostility on the part of certain nations of Europe against everything Ottoman. Centuries ago the cry was “Pestem hanc ferro et flamma ab orbe depellendam esse”—the pest of Islam must be driven from the earth by fire and sword. To-day the war cry is in Gladstonian phrase, “The Turk must, bag and baggage, get out of Europe.” How much of truth and how much of falsehood there have been in the most recent outcries against the Moslems, especially against those living in the Ottoman Empire, will be determined only when the historian shall be free from the violent passions and the selfish interests and the age-long antipathies which blind the writers of the present as they have blinded those of the past.

In the preface to his monumental work on the Koran, the erudite Padre Lodovico Marracci laments the prevailing ignorance of his time regarding everything Mohammedan and the paucity of books of value respecting the religion and practices of so large a part of mankind as the adherents of Islam.

But, notwithstanding Marracci’s eloquent plea for a more thorough study of Islam, his words fell, for the most part, on deaf ears.[237] It was not until our own epoch that a critical investigation of the Koran was begun and that a really impartial inquiry into the life of Mohammed was seriously undertaken. Men were still in doubt as to the true character of the Arabian reformer and were still undecided as to whether he was

All, however, were forced to admit that he must have been a man of extraordinary power and influence to set in motion that mighty human current which only a little more than a century after his death had founded an empire which extended from the Tigris to the Gaudilquivir and from the burning sands of Yemen to the chilly steppes of Turkestan. Yet, although the scholarly works of Sprenger, Margoliouth, Prince Caetani, and Noldeke-Schwally have thrown a flood of light on many formerly obscure points in the life of the Prophet and elucidated many previously disputed passages of the Koran, there is still as much discussion as ever regarding the nature of Mohammed’s religious vocation. Some contend that it was the result of hallucination, others of epilepsy, others of psychopathic abnormality, others of auto-hypnosis, while, as a result of long researches, Aloys Sprenger is quite sure that the Prophet was a victim of muscular hysteria.[238]

But however much controversy there may be respecting the origin of Mohammed’s self-styled mission or the nature of the mental disease from which he is said to have suffered, there can be no doubt whatever about the essence of his teaching as incorporated in the Koran. For the creed of Islam is so simple that, as has been said, “it can be written on a fingernail.”

The five duties of Islam, which means resignation to the will of God, as declared by Mohammed, are as follows:

In view of the clearness and simplicity of this creed, it is difficult to understand how the Western World has so signally failed to comprehend the real nature of Mohammed’s teaching. It is equally difficult to conceive how the authors of the countless books on the Prophet and his religion could have been honest and sincere when they penned their diatribes against Mohammed or pronounced their bitter and ludicrous invectives against his followers and the religion to which they were so ardently attached. Had they been actuated by a spirit of fairness and Christian charity they could so easily have ascertained the truth about the doctrine which they so strangely misrepresented and the people whom they so pitilessly maligned. For there never was a time since the day Saladin entered the Holy City of Jerusalem accompanied by its bishop, who had gone out to greet the humane conqueror; never a time since the Poverello of Assisi went as a missionary to the Sultan of Egypt, when men of good will, seeking the truth and nothing but the truth, might not have had all the information desired both about the doctrines of Islam and the practices of the millions who looked upon Mohammed as directly commissioned by God to teach them the way to Heaven.

Those who always exhibited such readiness to defame Islam and its followers should have recalled the words of St. Augustine when he declares that “there is no false doctrine which does not contain something of truth.”[239] They should have given heed to the counsels of the learned and zealous Father Marracci, who, guided by the experiences among the Mohammedans of his brothers in religion, taught them how they might bring the followers of Islam to a knowledge of the Gospel and to a love of the Crucified. Had they done so there would not be that inveterate hatred that now exists between the Cross and the Crescent, and there would not be that separation into two hostile camps of so many hundred millions of people who normally should be in the same fold and under the same Shepherd.

For, contrary to what has been so often said and written during the last thousand years and more, there is much, very much good in Islam. No less an authority than the illustrious Cardinal Hergenrœther declares:

When Mohammed began his marvelous career of religious reform his countrymen in Arabia were, in many respects, as deeply sunk in vice as the most debased tribes of Central Africa. They were idolaters who were addicted to the grossest and most absurd fetishism. Trees, stones, shapeless masses of dough and the most trivial things in nature were objects of adoration. There was a special divinity for each of the countless tribes of the peninsula. In Beit-Alia—House of God—in Mecca, there was a different idol for each day of the year. Here also was the most jealously guarded object of worship—a black stone that was reputed to have fallen from heaven in the days of Adam—a stone which, it was averred, was originally of immaculate whiteness, but which was subsequently blackened by the myriad osculations of its sinful worshipers.

Nor was this all. Not only were the Arabians noted for their loathsome idolatry but also for their inhuman practice of disposing of female children at their birth by burying them alive. And so great was their superstition that it was not an infrequent occurrence for a father to sacrifice his child to appease the fancied anger of an offended deity. Besides this, blood feuds, sensuality of the vilest kind, drunkenness, and utter disregard of even the natural rights of women were as rampant as their general results were widespread and fatal.

When Mohammed set out to preach monotheism to these people who were so steeped in every vice—people who had heard the Gospel but had long abandoned its sublime teachings for the abominable practices of idolatry, he encountered the strongest opposition from all quarters. So relentless was the hostility displayed by friend and foe that his projected reform seemed foredoomed. But, notwithstanding the jeers which greeted him on every side and the persecutions which he endured for years, he was eventually successful beyond his most sanguine expectations.

Here we have the spectacle of a man that could neither read nor write who, after twenty years of incessant struggle, had succeeded in extirpating a system of idolatry which, by fostering morals the most depraved and practices the most hideous, had for centuries made the fairest parts of Arabia reeking sinks of iniquity. In place of a blighting and debasing fetishism he substituted the worship of one God, the Greater of heaven and earth—a God who is eternal, omnipotent, merciful; who presides over the destinies of all His creatures; who sees all their actions, even the most secret; who punishes the wicked in another world and rewards the good, and who never abandons them for a single instant either in this life or in the one to come. He preaches submission, the most humble and the most confiding submission, to the holy will of Him who is not only the Author of their existence but also their unfailing support and their just and omniscient judge. And the sole worship which the Mussulman is required to give to this one God is prayer at stated periods of the day and an annual fast during the month of Ramadan—a fast which is designed to direct his thoughts to Him who has created him, who sustains him during life and who, for weal or for woe, will be his Sovereign Lord after death.

Such essentially is Islam in all its simplicity as preached to the Arabian world by the unlettered camel driver of Mecca; such the doctrine which was destined to be adopted by many races and nations in every clime. There is nothing new in it. Mohammed never pretended to introduce anything new. He simply proclaimed to his benighted countrymen not a new revelation, but, as he always insisted, the long-forgotten faith of Abraham and Moses and Christ, as he understood it.

And, with the exception of Christianity and Judaism, it is the only religion in the world which has recognized and consecrated monotheism. It is, therefore, far superior to the debasing paganism of Greece and Rome. It is loftier and nobler than the repugnant dualism of Zoroaster and the selfish and materialistic utilitarianism of Confucius. It is incomparably more elevating than the fantastic metempsychosis and the atheistic Nirvana of Gautama Buddha, which, with Confucianism, holds in spiritual bondage a great majority of the teeming millions of Central and Eastern Asia.

The eminent doctor of the Church, St. John of Damascus, shows how near he considers Islam to Christianity when, in his account of the creed of Mohammed, he treats it as a heresy analogous to Arianism.[242] Peter the Venerable, the illustrious Abbot of Cluny, the first one to have a translation made of the Koran, was of a similar opinion, as is evinced in his work against Mohammedanism—a work which treats not of the paganism but of the heresy of the Saracens, as its title—Adversus Nefandam Hæresim sive Sectam Saracenorum—conclusively indicates.[243] In like manner Dante, who was almost as distinguished as a theologian as he was as a poet, places Mohammed in hell not as a heathen but as a sower of “scandal and schism.”[244]

Arius, by denying the divinity of Christ, had prepared the way for Islam, which saw in the Son of God only a prophet who, as Moslems subsequently claimed, was but the precursor of Mohammed. St. Jerome, in his memorable words—Igemuit totus orbis et Arianum se esse miratus est—the world uttered a sigh and was astonished to find itself Arian—expressed the one-time prevalence of the errors of the Alexandrine heresiarch. The grave dissensions in the churches of Asia and Africa that followed close upon dissemination of the heresy of Arius immensely assisted Islam in its lightning career of conquest. For the divided and degenerate Christians of these two continents were easily persuaded that Moslemism was but one of the various Christian sects and not a new religion.

The followers of Mohammed were formerly the victims of calumny on account of their alleged beliefs and practices. Now it is the organization of Islam and the character of its religious services that seem to give rise to the most misunderstandings.

Thus, according to many modern writers, the Sultan of Turkey is to Islam what the Pope is to Christendom. Nothing, however, could be farther from the truth. That the caliphate, whether of the Ottoman, Ommiad, or Abbassid dynasties, is in no way comparable with the Papacy is clearly evidenced by the fact that Islam has never in all its history regarded the Caliph as its spiritual head.[245]

Again the same writers, as well as many modern travelers, constantly refer to the priests and the clergy of Mohammedanism. The fact is that Islam has not and never has had anything like a clerical body as it is understood in the Christian world. There is no ordination, no priesthood with powers to bind and loose, no confessional, no baptismal font, no altar, no sacrifice, no mediator between man and God. There is in fact no one possessing any special powers through ordination to perform any act that any adherent of Islam could not as rightfully perform. For, Islam, as has been well said, is and has always been “the lay religion par excellence.” There are, it is true, the Khatib—preacher—and the imam—leader in prayer—but neither the one nor the other possesses anything whatever of the sacerdotal character of the Christian priesthood or of the hereditary Levites of ancient Judaism.[246] They are usually selected on account of their grave deportment and their knowledge of the Koran and of the traditions of Islam, but otherwise they might be replaced by a mufti or kadi whose occupations are analogous to our lawyer or judge. The chief purpose of the imam, whose function closely resembles that of a precentor, is to preserve order in public worship. But whether the religious functions of the Moslems be performed by imams, khatibs, mollas, or any of that large class of functionaries known as ulema, there are no gradational distinctions among the worshipers themselves. The ulema may act like priests and may sometimes be considered as priests by uninformed people, but the ulema themselves, who ought to know, strongly and consistently insist on their non-priestly character. So alien, indeed, is all classification to Moslemism, so abhorrent to Islam is the very idea of an ecclesiastical organization as distinct from the laity, that Palgrave, whose long and intimate intercourse with the Mohammedans made him thoroughly familiar with all the details of their creed, did not hesitate when referring to their religious organization, to declare, “‘Each one for himself and God for us all’ is an almost literal translation of what the Koran sums up and a hundred traditions confirm.”[247]

The erroneous notions that so generally prevail respecting the real object of mosques are as numerous as those respecting its khatibs and imams. The primary use of a mosque is to indicate the direction of Mecca. Originally it was a simple platform with a wall at the end facing Mecca. In facing this wall the worshiper looked towards what was to him the holiest city in the world. In southern climates this primitive type of mosque[248] sufficiently answered the chief purpose contemplated. But the more rigorous climates of the north required roofed places of worship, which eventually developed into the magnificent structures which one now finds in Brusa, and Constantinople, as well as in cities much farther south, such as Damascus and Cairo and Jerusalem.

But the reverence which a Mussulman entertains for his mosque and that which a Roman Catholic feels for his church are entirely different in character. There is, in the eyes of a Catholic, a sanctity attaching to a church that does not and cannot attach to a mosque. This is shown by the names given to the two places of worship. A common name for mosque is Jami, which means a meeting house, while the word church, derived from the Greek, signifies the house of God—Τὸ κνριακὸν. In a Moslem’s view God is present in the jami or mosque, but only as he is present everywhere else—in the field, on the mountain. But in the church, according to Catholic teaching, God is really and truly present under the veil of the Blessed Sacrament. Hence all the pomp and ceremony of the Catholic ritual, all the gorgeousness of decoration which so distinguishes the Catholic house of God from the Mussulman meeting house. Because of the Sacramental Presence every Catholic church is called the house of God. But among Mohammedans there is only one specifically recognized Beith Allah—house of God. This is the Kaaba at Mecca, which contains the Black Stone which was for ages an object of idolatrous worship and which is even to-day the chiefest object of Mohammedan veneration, if not also of downright superstition. It is because of the presence of this old pagan fetish in the Kaaba,[249] as well as on account of the fantastic legends which are associated with the Kaaba itself, that the Moslem, when praying, always turns toward Mecca. It is this Kebla—the direction of the Kaaba in Mecca—that is carefully indicated by the niche or mihrab in the interior wall of every mosque. For a time the Kebla was changed from Mecca to the rock in Jerusalem, on which Solomon’s temple was erected, but, whether from policy or atavism, Mohammed changed it back again to its original location. By so doing he virtually reduced Islam to a national religion—the religion of Arabia—instead of making it, as he had dreamed, the religion of the world.

Again, the mosque, unlike the church, is never the center of that kind of religious organization which we know as a parish. There is no congregation comprising those who worship in a particular mosque. Nor have the imams and khatibs any jurisdiction, like that of a Catholic pastor, over those who assemble in the mosque for prayer. Worship in the mosque may be called congregational only in so far as certain individuals, who happen to gather there, unite in prayer to Allah under the direction of the imam, but it is nevertheless individual, as no Moslem has closer affiliations with one mosque than with another. Wherever he happens to be when the muezzin calls for prayer, there is his mosque and there he joins with his fellows in worship.

In the Ottoman Empire the imam, so far as he is charged with special functions, is no more than a paid servant. Outside of acting as precentor, or fugleman, at prayer his chief duties are to officiate at marriages and funerals. There is none of that spiritual relationship which exists between the Catholic priest and his parishioners; none of that love of a father for his children, and none of that affection of children for their father, which exists in every Catholic parish; no one who is in any sense the shepherd of his flock—to assist the weak, to direct the erring, to admonish the remiss, to upbraid the sinner, and lead those aspiring to holiness to higher degrees of perfection in the spiritual life. Far from feeling the need of such a guide and superior, the Moslem prides himself on his ability to dispense with such aids which he would regard as curtailing his religious liberty and circumscribing his independence of action. He prefers to lead his own life, without let or hindrance, without monitors or directors, and to be free, if so disposed, to follow those votaries of pleasure in other parts of the world, who

But one cannot fully understand the religious spirit of the Mussulman without knowing something of the prayers which he is wont to address to the Deity. No class of men, probably, have the name of God—Allah—more frequently on their lips than the Moslems. This is particularly true of those devotees—and their number is legion—known as dervishes.

Prayer five times a day is the second of the five pillars of Islam. At dawn, at midday, in the afternoon, evening and night the Muezzin ascends the minaret and repeats in a loud voice:

But prayer may be said only when the clothes and body of the worshiper as well as the place of prayer are free from all impurity. Moreover, the prayers, whether said privately or in common, must be recited according to a prescribed form and in specified postures from which there can be no deviation. There are constant repetitions of the words “God is great,” “I extol the holiness of my Lord, the Most High.”

A devout Mussulman will recite these and similar forms of prayer no less than seventy-five times a day. But these words, which admit of no variety or change, become, after ceaseless repetition, rather a mechanical than a mental act and are frequently more in the nature of lip service than the prayer of the Christian, which consists not only in acts of praise, as in the above words of the Moslem worshiper, but also in acts of impetration and thanksgiving. The Moslem’s nearest approach to a Christian prayer is the first sura of the Koran, called the Fatihah, which reads:

But we have only to compare this prayer—which has been called “the quintessence of the whole Koran”—with the “Our Father” to see the vast difference between the prayer of the Christian and that of the Mohammedan. It is manifest in the very first word of the Pater Noster, which shows that there is no comparison between the Christian and the Moslem conception of God. Mohammed believed in God, feared and obeyed Him according to his light, but, not recognizing His Fatherhood, he did not and, from his view of the Deity, could not love Him. It is so with his followers. Their God is a God of fear, not a God of love, because not known as God Our Father. How different is this from the relationship—sonship—of the Christian to his Creator, who enjoys the blessed privilege of calling God Abba—Father.

Denying the Fathership of God, Moslem theologians maintain that it is impossible for men to love Him. Man and God, they contend, are of different natures, and where there is a difference of genus there can be no love. The nearest approach to love, they contend, is man’s perseverance in obedience to Allah.

Again, according to the same theologians, there can be no love of God for man, for love, say they, implies change, which, as God is infinitely perfect, is impossible. When God therefore is said to love man, all that is meant, according to Al-Gazali, one of the most eminent of Moslem theologians and philosophers, is that “God so affects man that man comes to God.”[250]

But in this case, as in so many others, the common sense—or shall we call it a special divine illumination?—of many in Islam has enabled them to arrive at a truer conception of God and of their relations to Him than was ever attained by Moslem philosophers and casuists and incomparably superior to anything found in the Koran or in the traditional teachings of Mohammed.

As a proof of this assertion, I need only adduce the beautiful prayer of the Persian imam, El Kachiri, who, discarding the cold and formal acts of praise prescribed in Moslem worship, pours forth his soul to God in these touching and heart-felt words:

This prayer is fully in keeping with the teaching of many other Moslem mystics of non-Semitic origin, who, contrary to the vulgar notions so widely entertained respecting the Mohammedan paradise, explicitly declare that the infinite happiness of the elect in heaven consists in the enjoyment of the beatific vision. This ineffable happiness, they aver, so far transcends all the other joys of paradise that they completely disappear before it. “Paradise, O Lord,” exclaims the Sheik el Alem, “is desirable only because one there sees Thee; because, without the light of Thy beauty, it would pall on us.”[252]

These two quotations are remarkable but no less so than the words of a Mussulman poet of Persia who, in addressing himself to Isa—Arabic for Jesus—says:

How like the language of a Christian speaking of the grace of our Saviour, Jesus Christ!

Far less excusable than ignorance of Moslem doctrine and practices, is the disposition everywhere manifested in Europe and America to regard Islam not only as a disintegrating organization but also as a decaying power. Those who thus minimize the ever-growing strength of one of the largest religious bodies in the world exhibit the fatuity of the ostrich which imagines danger does not exist because it is unseen.

For generations past the western world has been periodically informed that Mohammedanism as a religion is moribund and that Christendom has nothing more to apprehend from it. It has been assured that the mosques are unfrequented and crumbling into ruins; that schools and colleges of Moslem law are neglected or languishing for lack of financial support; that the precepts of the Koran are generally disregarded and frequently openly flouted; and that Islam is under an eclipse which portends disaster and extinction.

But what are the facts? I can best answer them in the words of Palgrave whose sixteen years of investigations of Mohammedan conditions from the shores of the Euxine to the interior of Arabia makes his words on the question authoritative. Writing in 1872, he declares:

Although it is nearly half a century since the noted author of the Narrative of a Year’s Journey through Central and Eastern Arabia penned the paragraph just quoted, there is no evidence, so far as I have been able to gather in my travels in Asia and Africa, that the current of Moslem revival is running lower than it was fifty years ago, nor is the rejuvenescence of Islam less marked nor its power less resistant or less persistent.

Not only has Mohammedanism long been declared to be moribund but it has also, from time immemorial, been represented as changeless in doctrine as are the agricultural implements of the East—which are the same to-day as “when Proserpine went a-Maying through Enna”—and “the difficulty of bringing Islam and its ways into harmony with modern society as comparable to squaring the circle.”

Again, what are the facts? So far is Moslemism from being what it was when it came from the hands of the Prophet, or from what it is as exhibited in the Koran, that it has been constantly undergoing modification in religious doctrine and practice since the days of the first caliphs. Not to speak of the countless changes which have insensibly been effected by the quiet but continuous action of Christianity, innumerable others have been brought about by the teachings of Plato and Aristotle, by Roman law, Neo-Platonism, and other similar but persistent and irresistible influences. This is practically manifest in the hadith as modified and developed by canonists, dogmatists, and mystics to enable Islam “to shape religious ordinances of old customs” or “to adapt itself to the peculiar characteristics and stages of development of the people whose allegiance it wishes to win.”