To say, then, that Islam has always been inflexibly opposed to the influence of foreign science, or law, or philosophy, or theology when these elements enabled it “to mould its intellectual heritage” and adjust itself to an alien spirit or a new environment is not in consonance with the facts of history. So far, indeed, is this from the truth that “it may safely be said that there is nothing more extraordinary in the whole history of Islam than the way in which the theory of the verbal inspiration of the Koran and the consequent stereotyped and unalterable nature of its precepts have, by ingenuity, by legal fictions, by the ‘Sunna,’ or traditional sayings of Mohammed or by responsa prudentum been accommodated to the changing circumstances and the various degrees of civilization of the nations which profess it.”[256] Such being the case, one is not surprised in finding so distinguished a writer as Stanley Lane-Poole making the categorical assertion that “the faith of Islam has passed through more phases and experienced greater revolutions than perhaps any other of the religions of the world.”[257]

No less misleading and mischievous are the continuously repeated statements that the days of Mussulman missionary activity have long since passed; that Mussulman zeal for propagating the teachings of the Koran and the Prophet no longer exists; that Pan-Islamism, as a religious force with which Christianity must reckon, was long ago dealt its death blow in the Gulf of Lepanto by Don Juan of Austria and under the walls of Vienna by the immortal Sobieski.

But still, again, what are the facts? It is true that Moslem canon law still divides the world into Dar al-Islam—Abode of Islam—and Dar al-harb—Abode of war, according as these two parts are in the possession of Mohammedanism or are yet to be won to it by the sword, yet it is, nevertheless, equally true that this distinction is now practically a dead letter and that the Christian Powers of the world are now able to curtail Islam’s schemes of territorial expansion and render forever impossible all hopes of world conquest. But, although Islam as a political and military power is no longer to be apprehended—at least for the present—it is not true that she has discontinued her missionary activities or that her propaganda in behalf of the religion of the Prophet is less determined than it was in the days of Saladin or Solyman the Magnificent. We have only to scan the authentic tokens that come to us from every quarter of the globe to be convinced that Pan-Islamism is to-day a greater missionary force—peacefully aggressive but fanatically persistent—than it has perhaps ever been in any period of her history.[258]

Let us see. According to the most reliable statistics there are now about two hundred and fifty million Mohammedans in the world,[259] and this number, stupendous as it is, is rapidly increasing. The strongest agency in their phenomenal development is the annual hadj or pilgrimage to Mecca which every free Mussulman is required to make at least once in his lifetime. During the period of the hadj, the Sacred City of Moslemism sees gathered around and within its walls a vast, surging throng of devotees, which ranges from two to three hundred thousand strong. They come from every part of Asia and Africa—from the snow-swept steppes of Siberia, from the coral-fringed islands of the Indian Archipelago, and from the tangled jungles of Senegambia and Abyssinia. Turks, Kurds, Persians, Tartars, Chinese, Malays, Egyptians, Berbers, Nubians—men of all colors and of countless tribes and tongues—they all foregather in the Sacred City of Arabia to get inspiration and strength to win proselytes to the creed of Mohammed.

From Mecca where every one is thrilled by the peculiar half-pagan ceremonies which Mohammed incorporated into his religion, every hadji returns to his home, imbued with the surpassing greatness of Moslemism and exulting in the thought that his is the blessed privilege of being numbered among the followers of the Prophet. Each one is a zealous agent of Moslemism and is prepared, if need be, to give his life, in disseminating its principles and in contributing, so far as in him lies, towards the realization of the hopes of every true Mohammedan—the final world triumph of Pan-Islamism.

Such a determined army of missionaries, stirred to a frenzy of enthusiasm by their experience in what is to them the holiest spot on earth, has during the last few decades achieved results that are positively startling. Not in centuries has Islam so defiantly thrown the gauntlet down to Christendom. And never before was it so incumbent, as at present, on the followers of Christ to use every effort to counteract their well-directed campaign of Mohammedan proselytism.

No agency is overlooked by the Moslems that will contribute towards their success in their world-wide propaganda—traders, shepherds, soldiers, husbandmen, shop-keepers, mollahs, muftis, marabouts—all are engaged in the same ubiquitous, unceasing work of winning converts to the religion of Mohammed.

But more active and persistent—were that possible—than the proselytizers just mentioned, are the legions of zealots known as dervishes who now count nearly a hundred different orders and millions of members. Among them are all classes of people from the humblest hamal to the proudest shah and sultan. They count untold thousands of such ardent reformers as the Wahabis and Sanusiyahs who are undoubtedly the most powerful propagators of Islam that the world has yet known. The last named order has zawivas or lodges with six million oath-bound members in northern Africa alone. These are all sworn to labor unceasingly for the extension of Pan-Islamism and for the propagation of the revelation of Allah as contained in the Koran. So unexampled has been their proselyting activity between Egypt and Cape Colony during the last few decades that millions have been brought under the banner of the prophet. Frequently in equatorial Africa whole tribes have, in a short period of time, been won to Moslemism by the unflagging zeal and resistless enthusiasm of its missionaries.

Every instrumentality that promises success is unhesitatingly brought into requisition. With the view of confirming the wavering in their own ranks and continuously increasing the number of converts, they have everywhere established schools, orphan asylums, and printing presses, and in Christian countries they have erected mosques. Only lately a great mosque was completed at Petrograd. Converts to Islam are found in Japan, Jamaica, British Guiana, and Brazil. The number of immigrant Moslems in the New World was recently estimated at more than one hundred and fifty thousand, most, if not all, of them fired with the same zeal for the propagation of Mohammedanism as their brethren in Asia and Africa. In the various parts of India, where according to the most available statistics, there are more than sixty million adherents of the Prophet, the annual number of converts to Moslemism is variously estimated from ten thousand to six hundred thousand.

These facts prove conclusively that Islam is very far from being either tottering or moribund. In the vigorous prosecution of the campaign which is to make Pan-Islamism not only a dominant religious power but a dominant political power as well, it exhibits all the pertinacious activity of its palmiest days. It is everywhere winning victories and ceaselessly planning new and greater victories. It is the most vigorous and the most resolute anti-Christian force that confronts the Church to-day. Those who think that Islam is approaching dissolution or extinction should ponder the words of the Arab poet:

In the preceding pages I have endeavored in the limited space available to give an honest statement regarding the actual tenets and status of Moslemism in the past as well as in the present. While, on the one hand, I have studiously eschewed everything like detraction, I have, on the other, as carefully avoided anything that could reasonably be construed as an apology either for Mohammed or for Mohammedanism. It has never entered my mind, God forbid! to compare Moslemism with Christianity as a means for attaining to a true knowledge of our Creator or for realizing the highest spiritual ideals of which our race is capable. No, Christianity, especially that form of it which has sanctified and crowned the lives of a St. Jerome, a St. Francis of Assisi, a St. Theresa, a Joan of Arc; which presided at the sublime meditations of an Augustine of Hippo, or a Thomas of Aquin, of a Dante Alighieri, of a Christopher Columbus; which has given to the world such matchless heroes and heroines of charity and self-sacrifice as a St. Vincent de Paul, a Father Damien, a Sister of Charity, or a Little Sister of the Poor; that for us is the truest, the holiest, the most beneficent of all religions; the one that contains in all its fullness the revealed word of God, the one which must be our guide to a world of happiness eternal in the life beyond the tomb.

Truth and justice, however, compel us to admit that there are many, very many, things in Islam to extort our admiration. Nor can there be any doubt that Mohammed achieved many things for the improvement of his idolatrous, drink-sodden, vice-steeped, feud-wrecked countrymen. The Koran, we must confess, contains many beautiful things regarding one’s duties towards God and one’s neighbor; but all of them are directly or indirectly derived from the New or the Old Testament, or from the doctrines of the early Church. Notwithstanding all this, however, the teachings of Islam are as far beneath the saving and incomparable truths of Christianity as is the gross and sensual Prophet of Mecca beneath the all-pure and all-perfect Son of God.

But, to recur again to the previously quoted opinion of Cardinal Hergenrœther, Islam can serve as a stepping-stone from fetishism to Christianity and as such is worthy of our sympathetic study and appreciation.

Among the countless amiable, honest, hospitable, deeply religious Mussulmans that every traveler finds in Moslem lands there is a large number who yearn for union with God and who would make any sacrifice to conform with His holy will were it but clearly and unmistakably made known to them. They are but awaiting the arrival of the Savior’s messenger and will receive the word of salvation with joy and thanksgiving. The spiritual unrest among Moslems; the ever-increasing attempts at social and doctrinal reform; even the very zeal which loyal Moslems exhibit in extending the creed of the Prophet—the only form of religion with which they are really acquainted—attest their eagerness in seeking the truth and explain their ardor in propagating what they deem to be the only revelation of the Most High.

Add to all this a widespread feeling among Mussulman leaders as well as among Christian missionaries that the time has finally come when a serious effort should be made towards effecting some kind of a rapprochement between the Cross and the Crescent; when the vast organizations of Islam and Christianity should endeavor to arrive at a better understanding of one another’s doctrines and practices; when, rising superior to that age-long antipathy and that mischievous odium theologicum which has so long kept them in a state of implacable hostility, they should strive to meet one another as brothers in one Lord and as children of the same Father.

More than sixty years ago Abd-el-Kader, the gifted Algerian ruler and patriot, wrote: “If the Mussulmans and Christians would give ear to me, I should cause their divergence to cease and they would become brothers.”[260]

The number of Moslems who entertain a view similar to that of the distinguished emir is daily increasing. They feel that the moral and religious ideas of the various races of mankind are not so irreconcilable as they are ordinarily supposed to be. The greatest barrier towards a nearer communion of sentiments between Christians and Mohammedans has been erected by ignorance and prejudice. Remove this barrier and the way, they contend, will be prepared for intellectual sympathy and, eventually, for religious union.

Notwithstanding the long centuries of wars between the Cross and the Crescent, Mohammedans are so far from regarding our Savior, as is commonly supposed, with the hatred and contempt which Christians have usually entertained for the Prophet of Mecca, that they have for Him a reverence which is inferior only to that with which He is regarded by Christians themselves. They believe that He will again return to earth and, having slain Antichrist, will establish a reign of peace and justice among men. They believe that truth will at last be triumphant and the sword will be sheathed forevermore. According to the Shiahs of India there will then be an amalgamation of Islam and Christianity and then, finally, will be realized in its truest and highest sense something of Tennyson’s dream of universal peace and charity

The spiritual agitation now existing among Moslems, the aspirations of so many of them for a purer and more elevating creed than that of Mohammed would seem to offer a peculiarly favorable opportunity for preaching to them the Gospel of the world’s Redeemer. But there are, unfortunately, almost insuperable difficulties in the way. There are, first and foremost, the selfish diplomacy and the unprincipled aggressions of the European Powers, which nullify in advance all projects of Christian propaganda. The frequent exhibitions of very questionable morality on the part of certain European diplomatists who have manifested a total disregard of the most solemn covenants; the ruthless conquests of Christian nations which have at times displayed an utter disregard of the most elementary rights of humanity and have often had recourse to the most cruel and barbarous methods of warfare—these things have not helped to commend to Moslems the religion of their conquerors. The recent campaigns of Italy in Tripoli, of England on the Gold Coast,[261] of Russia in the Transcaucasia have but intensified the bitterness of Islam toward Christendom and fanned the flame of fanaticism among millions who sullenly await an opportunity for making reprisal.

Then, too, there is among many the pessimistic feeling which is expressed in Kipling’s couplet:

a feeling that has been engendered among them by a vague notion that there is an impassable chasm between the peoples of Asia and Europe and that any attempt to reconcile them will prove not only illusory but impossible. Starting with such an assumption they still cling to the detestable theory in politics of identifying power and right and of enforcing the inexorable demands of an iniquitous diplomacy by the satanic instrumentality of machine guns and trinitrotoluol.

Christian nations, if actuated by the altruism which they are constantly preaching, if guided by the same law of charity which is binding on individuals, need not such help or such defenders of their prestige or national honor.

No, what is now needed more than ever before is a complete change of attitude of the West towards the East. If we are to make the brotherhood of man anything more than an idle phrase; if we are to bring together in amity and comity the peoples of the Orient and the Occident; if we are to heal the wounds which the followers of Mohammed have suffered from centuries of cruel calumny and still crueler wars; if we are to lead Islam to a knowledge of Christianity and to an eventual acceptance of the Gospel of peace and love; we, the followers of the Crucified, cannot too soon abjure our accursed theory that might makes right nor can we too soon control that abiding lust of conquest which has plunged the weak and the innocent into such untold suffering and which has tended to perpetuate the deep hostility and the fatal misunderstandings which for long centuries have separated the God-created souls of the East from the God-created souls of the West.

The time has come for a new Crusade but a Crusade in which fire and sword shall, in the words of good old Padre Marracci, be replaced by lingua et calamo—by the voice of the evangelist and the pen of the expositor of Christian teaching. It must be a Crusade which shall be inspired by the ardent love of a Francis of Assisi; by the flaming intelligence of a Raymond Lully; by the wisely tempered zeal of a Peter the Venerable.[262] It must be a Crusade to win souls for Christ, our Savior, and to make all men children of the same heavenly Father. And that which in the Crusades of old was the war cry should, in the new Crusade, be the peace cry—Deus lo volt—God wills it.