Politically the Crescent is declining today--as compared wih the past centuries of its history. After it conquered Egypt and Arabia, it swept westward and northward like a great tidal wave, engulfing Greece, rolling over Bulgaria, Serbia, and Hungary, until it was finally halted at the gates of Vienna. The tide turned, and the armies of the Sultan, meeting defeat after defeat, were driven back step by step, until finally, at the beginning of the present century, the political influence of the Crescent was almost totally eclipsed.
Religiously, however, Islam is growing. From the Near East and the Far East news comes that greater numbers of Mohammedans are making the holy pilgrimage to Mecca than was ever before known in history. After thirteen hundred years there is a vitality in the Mohammedan religion that challenges respect.
At the call of the muezzins, millions raise their hands in a gesture of adoration and pray in a multitude of tongues and dialects: "Allah, Allah, Allah Alcbar!" Black men and brown men in the heart of Africa, in the jungles of Siam, in the rice fields of India, in Sudan and Arabia, Algeria and Morocco, and white men in the Balkans, repeat these words of the Koran, the trumpet call of the Mohammedan belief in one God and Mohammed as His prophet, bowing down their heads toward Mecca.
Today 300,000,000 people believe in the visions and strange dreams of Mohammed, and would gladly die to defend that faith. Every year a large number of young people leave the University of Cairo as missionaries to spread their faith in Asia and Africa. But every Mohammedan merchant is a missionary. It is his solemn duty to convert his fellow men to the faith. These persistent activities of the Moslem make it very difficult for the Christian missionaries laboring in fields where Mohammedanism prevails.
In the new Turkish Republic there has been an important revolution in ideas and concepts since the Great War, which the gospel worker must take into consideration. The views which have influenced the intellectual life of Islam have entirely changed, giving place to new ideas and new ideals which were absolutely foreign to the forefathers. Until a few years ago Mohammedan women wore the ring of slavery on their feet, chains of prejudice and fanaticism around their necks, and the black veil of inferiority over their faces. The woman's sole business was to cook in the kitchen and to care for her child. She called upon the physician with shame and a sense of sin. Under the influence of the Western world, superstition has vanished, and equality with men has been given to the Turkish women. Previously they were nothing before the law; today they are entitled to almost all the civil rights of men.
Until recently, most of the common people were illiterate, perhaps only one fourth of the men and only a very few of the women being able to read and write. Their literature consisted of the Koran and a few other books dealing with their religion. Only one tenth of the people know the reason for the many Moslem customs, and still fewer can give any real explanation of their religion. Many of them are not able to read the Koran, but carry it as an amulet. The masses are ignorant, fanatical, and superstitious. Such minds are not open to conviction nor easily convinced by reason or proof. The Moslem not only believes, but positively affirms, that he alone possesses the only true religion. He firmly believes that there is no proof to the contrary, and not until you have successfully convinced him that he is in great spiritual poverty will he listen to you.
Moslem Mentality and Morality
The Mohammedan has an emotional disposition, and frequently shows contempt for efforts of the intellect. His religion is for him mainly a matter of observance, and his emotional nature is fully devoted to it. He is taught that it is not necessary to reason out his articles of faith. He is supposed to accept his religion as he finds it. It has been mapped out for him, and he simply accepts it as indefinable—"There is but one God, Allah, and Mohammed is His prophet or messenger." The very simplicity of this creed is sufficient, and it is objectionable to enter into any further definition. Speaking purely from a subjective viewpoint, religion for the Moslem is the feeling of absolute dependence or surrender. His idea of God is so replete with sentiment and fills him with so much awe, that he absolutely declines to discourse further upon it. Allah, for the faithful, forces upon them a definite line of conduct; and the pious Mohammedan considers that to be the duty of his whole life which, in his opinion, he believes is the will of Allah.
The Mohammedan may appear to us as a villain because of some of his deeds, but to him, from the standpoint of his conscience, these are truly moral acts which from logical necessity were derived from his conception of God. As is his religion, so is his morality. We cannot blame him; we must blame his religion. From our viewpoint of a higher conception of God, his acts are immoral. If judged by the standards of the gospel, their evil only proves how important it is for us all to have the right kind of religion.
The Moslem Religion
The Mohammedan religion is a natural product of human nature,—the human nature of its originator. It was designed to meet the requirements and peculiarities of the semisavage and semicivilized Arabic race, and has since developed along the lines of its peculiarities.
The good in Islam is Judaic, while its errors are its own. Its spirituality and intellectuality, in its orthodox form, are far inferior to Christianity. What models of virtue can you find in all Ottoman history? Courage is not lacking, but what is needed is a new life from above, a life of sacrificing love, void of all selfish motives.
A missionary laboring for Mohammedans must be thoroughly versed in the faith and history of Islam. He must be fully acquainted with the influence this religion has had on the social, political, and intellectual life of the nations and peoples who have followed it throughout the centuries. Only then will he be able to reach their hearts and minds.
The modernized Moslem, claims that his is a religion for the inculcation of monotheism, morality, and ethics, at least as good as Christianity and Judaism. Of course the morals and ethics of Islam are utterly different from those set forth in the Christian and Jewish religions, but the Mohammedan does not concede that. It is almost impossible for him to understand the theological differences in Christendom, and it is often just as true that we cannot understand his.
(To be continued)
