CHAPTER EIGHT
ISLAM CHALLENGES THE WORLD
Islam challenges the world! To modern ears these words sound strange indeed, and hopelessly unreal. We are familiar with such headlines as "Communism challenges the world"; "The menace of Fascism"; and "Naziism a threat to world peace." But somehow the phrase "Islam challenges the world" seems out of date, and it leaves us cold. At most it reminds us of things we read in our histories about the Crusades, and pre-war Turkish atrocities visited upon the helpless Armenians—things which belong mostly to a dim and distant past and have no challenge in them for the modern world.
But wait a moment. It must not be forgotten that the things we have been considering about Islam in the previous pages of this book are a part of this very real world in which we are now living. The two hundred and fifty million Moslems who live mostly in Europe, Africa and Asia, forming a huge bloc of humanity in the heat belt of the world, are a very large and important part of this great human family of ours. Their history has been strangely and intimately, and often tragically, interwoven with that of Christian nations. For ten centuries, from the seventh to the seventeenth, Islam swept everything before it in its great onrush, and won victories from Morocco to Manila which have not heen obliterated to this day. Throughout these lands from West to East Christian churches and Hindu and Buddhist temples may be found which for centuries have been converted into mosques where the Moslem worships Allah.
"Yes," you say, "all very good. But those days of challenge belong to the past. What of the present? Are the Moslems planning a new holy war, a jihad, or whatever you call it? Are they about to summon their fanatic hosts once more to launch a great campaign against the non-Moslem nations of the world and offer them the Koran or the sword? If so, who is the caliph and leader of the faithful who is planning such a vast new world war for everyone knows that the Moslem world has been without a caliph since the Turks deposed the last of the Ottoman caliphs in 1924? Since then the different Moslem nations have not been able to agree upon a successor. So who is to head up this new great threat to the world's peace? No," you say, "it leaves us cold. We can't see it."
Well, to tell the truth, neither does anyone else see it just that way any more. But still the fact remains that Islam does offer a challenge to the world, and that great human problems are bound up in it. These Moslem millions are a problem to themselves. Things have not gone as they expected. The great dreams of a vast world empire which were once partly realized have been dashed to the ground. In these modern times a new plan and purpose for life has to be worked out or Islam is lost; and in the process of bringing Islam up to date we find the Moslem nations struggling along shoulder to shoulder with the rest of us in the common task of remaking the world.
The modern world is a vast kaleidoscope of change, in which all peoples, races and religions are part of the shifting pattern. With feverish activity mankind is busy either in proposing and promoting "new deals" in politics and religion or in reconditioning the old models. There has never been a time when there was such a baffling intermixture of human beings, races, philosophies and religions as we find in the world today; and struggling side by side with the other nations are the Moslem peoples, some clinging tenaciously to their traditions and ancient heritage, others eagerly working on the problems of adaptation and readjustment, and all wondering with the rest of us, "What next?"
THE AHMADIYA MOVEMENT edit
In the days when the nineteenth century was about to enter its final decade, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad sat much in meditation in his house in the village of Qadian in northern India. He had received a good education in Arabic, Persian, Urdu and the curriculum of Moslem orthodoxy; but he was thoughtful and studious beyond the average man of his community. Many things in India and the Moslem world at large disturbed him. He was distressed that under the leadership of Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan and his Aligarh reformers young Moslems seemed to be losing their faith altogether; but at the same time he was deadly opposed to the lifeless leadership of the mullahs., or Moslem clergy.
The more he read and meditated on this situation the more he was convinced that it was not peculiar to India alone, but that similar conditions prevailed throughout the Moslem world. Further, his close contact with the people of the two other great faiths of India, the Hindus and the Christians, enabled him to sense their spiritual hopes and aspirations.
Gradually it dawned upon him that the time was ripe for a new spiritual leadership in Islam, and about the year 1890 Mirza Ghulam Ahmad announced to the world that he had been called by Allah to undertake a special divine mission. He declared that he was the promised Mahdi of the Moslems, the great champion of Islam, who, the Traditions say, will come in the last days and convert the whole world to the true faith. Knowing that the Hindus looked for the coming of a new incarnation of the god Vishnu who would usher in a new age, he appealed to them also to accept him as their long expected savior. Turning to the Christians he announced that he was the Messiah Jesus who had returned to earth, and thus in him the second coming of Christ had been fulfilled! Indeed he so fully convinced himself and his followers that he was the Messiah that he formally took that title. Even to this day his sons, who succeeded him, have held to this title, and some years ago when wandering in the bazaars of Lahore I saw an old Ford bearing in bold lettering on one of the doors the arresting title, Khalif at-ul-Masih, II, which being interpreted meant that the old Ford was the property of "The Second Successor to the Messiah" of Qadian!
All the old passion for the renewing of Islam and the revival of its ancient glory in the midst of this modern world began to burn in Mirza Ghulam Ahmad. He recalled how the sun never sets on the Moslem crescent flag; how Islam is the mightiest religion of the world next to Christianity; and how "it holds a world empire of human hearts in its grasp." He thought of the sixty thousand or more who annually come together from every nation under heaven to meet around the Kaaba at Mecca in celebration of the pilgrimage, all one in a common brotherhood and in the use of a common ritual in the Arabic tongue. He pictured himself as the one who, under the guidance of Allah, would arouse the Moslem world to a great revival of Islam that would bring all peoples of the world under the red crescent banner. He remembered how the Prophet Mohammed had sent out letters to the nations of the world inviting them to accept Islam. He, too, would challenge the world! He would set the whole world to thinking about Islam and would convince all the non-Moslem peoples that Islam was the perfect religion, superior to all others.
Accordingly he and his followers organized an extensive movement with the avowed purposes of spreading die revival spirit in Islam and of conducting a vigorous missionary effort throughout the world among non-Moslems. This Ahmadiya movement, as it is called, has been a surprisingly bold effort. It has established mosques in New York, Chicago, London, Liverpool, Paris, and Berlin. The twenty-year record of one of its missionary societies has an interesting account of activities. Here is a brief summary of it:
1. The Woking (England) Moslem mission, the first such mission to the West, has a mosque which has been in use for many years. (There are said to he between two and three thousand British Moslems.)
2. The German Moslem mission was founded in 1924 in Berlin. Upwards of four hundred Germans have been won over to Islam. The magnificent mosque in Berlin was erected at an expense of more than fifty thousand dollars.
3. The Austrian Moslem mission was opened in Vienna in 1934.
4. The Java Moslem mission was founded in 1924 to save the Moslems of that island from Christian propaganda.
5. The holy Koran has been translated into three European languages. The English version alone has run up to thirty thousand copies, while its Dutch translation has been published by the Java mission.
6. The life of the holy Prophet has been translated into the following languages: English, Dutch, Polish, Italian, Turkish, Albanian, Hindi, Sindhi, Bengali, Gurmukhi, Tamil, Gujarati, Kanarese, Javanese, Malay, Siamese and Chinese.
7. Religious periodicals are being published in English, Dutch, German and Javanese.
8. Two high schools have been established in India to imbue the rising generation with the true Islamic spirit.
9. Research work is being carried on in other religions.
10. Arrangements have been made for preparing missionaries to carry on the work of the propagation of Islam in and outside India.
11. The free distribution of the English translation of the holy Koran and the life of the holy Prophet has been made by the thousands to libraries, ships, and to notable personages.
12. Miscellaneous literature in the form of tracts, amounting to seven million pages, has been published for the religious and social uplift of the Moslems.
13. Funds are being raised to start a Moslem mission in Spain, its aim being to win back to Islam that country "which has forsaken Christianity."
14. A branch of the society in Java is planning a mission to Holland. 1
ABDUL HAMID AND PAN-ISLAMISM edit
While Mirza Ghulam Ahmad in his obscure Indian village of Qadian dreamed his dreams, of spiritual conquest of the world in the latter part of the nineteenth and the early part of the twentieth centuries, the caliph of the Moslem world, Abdul Hamid, in his luxurious palace by the Bosporus, dreamed dreams also dreams of Pan-Islamic power that would oust the exploiting, imperialist European powers from India, Egypt and North Africa. He hoped to see the day when it would be possible to establish a great bloc of independent Moslem nations of whose spiritual and political life the Turkish caliph would be the head. To further these ends the caliph joined Germany and
1 Summarized from the Report of the Lahore Anjuman of the Ahmadiya, 1935. the Central Powers in the World War, and sought to rally fellow Moslems throughout the world to his support by issuing the call for a jihad, or holy war. He vainly hoped that the Moslems of India, Egypt and the Sudan would revolt against the British; that their brothers in North Africa would overthrow the Italian, French, and Spanish rule; and that the Arabs would faithfully stand their ground.
But history now shows that Abdul Hamid "backed the wrong horse." The Moslems of India, Egypt, the Sudan and North Africa did not rise in revolt against their non-Moslem rulers; the Germans lost the war; Turkey was dismembered; and even the Arabs themselves staged a revolt in the desert which led to complete independence from the rule of the Turkish sultan. More than this, separate states were carved out of the Turkish Empire, and mandated governments were set up in Palestine, Syria, Iraq, and Transjordania, with the British and French assigned to guardianship. But the final crushing blow came when in 1921 Turkey overthrew the monarchy, abolished the old regime, and became a republic, and finally in 1924 put an end to the Turkish caliphate.
Today Pan-Islamism is dead. There is no caliph of the Moslems. There is no symbol of unity, and no unifying force other than the spiritual influence of the faith and ritual of Islam. Ineffective efforts have been made to revive the caliphate and to elect a new caliph. Suggestions have even been made that a Moslem league of nations be established and that the annual pilgrimage to Mecca be the occasion for the regular meeting of this league. But up to date all attempts to achieve even a semblance of practical political unity among the Moslem peoples of the world have suffered defeat.
Turkey, the strongest and greatest of independent Moslem states, today refuses to have anything to do with such a proposal. On the contrary, under the guidance of their strong man, President Kamal Ataturk, the Turks appear to be far less influenced by religious than by national considerations. Islam it would seem means far less to them than nationalism. To a much less degree, of course, the same may be said of the other Moslem countries. Seeing no way in which Islam can again become politically all-powerful, the Moslems of Afghanistan, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, and Arabia, for instance, are doing all in their power to establish strong national governments, to develop their own national interests, and to take their rightful place in the League of Nations. They are jealous of their own religion and culture, strongly desire full independence where they do not have it, as in Egypt and Syria, and use such nationalistic slogans as "Egypt for the Egyptians" and "Syria for the Syrians."
The following quotation from an Arabic newspaper in Palestine shows that Moslems themselves are aware of the dangers of secularism:
A meeting of sheikhs from Egypt and India would mean much in defense of Islam against the wave of unbelief from the West and against secularism, which will take away religion from education, wants modern laws instead of clerical, and hopes to weaken Islam under the name of nationalism. These dangers are threatening Islam in its very foundations and will destroy it in the hearts of the next generation. Moslems disobey their religion, and it may be heard said: "Of what use is it to bring outcastes or others into Islam, when some of the Moslem peoples leave Islam?"
Under the handicap of such political disunity there is no possibility of Islam's being able, even if it so desired, to confront the world with the old seventh century challenge of a holy war against the infidels. This is a bugaboo that is not likely ever to be revived again.
The names of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad and Abdul Hamid stand today as symbols of the challenge of Islam to the world in these modern times. The caliph's great political challenge of Pan-Islamism collapsed with the crumbling of the Ottoman Empire; but the spiritual challenge of Islam as found in the worldwide missionary effort of the Ahmadiya movement of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad is still very much alive. Its significance lies not so much in its achievements for the cause of Islam or in the number of its converts to the faith for these have not been such as to alarm nonMoslems but rather in the fact that it represents the ever present spiritual desire and aspiration of the whole Moslem world to see the faith of Islam triumph. In this fundamentally religious sense the Abode of Islam still looks upon people of other faiths as belonging to the Abode of War. In the spiritual realm Islam still challenges the world.
THE CHALLENGE OF NEED edit
Everywhere throughout the Moslem lands we are faced by the challenge of desperate human need, a need which very largely grows out of the religious ideas and ideals of the Islamic system itself.
Now it is interesting that some people take the position that one religion is as good as another; or, at least, that every people has a religion which satisfies them, and which is best adapted to their needs. They will tell you that devil worship is good enough for the African in his jungles; the worship of evil spirits is good enough for the animist among India's aborigines; and polytheism and idolatry are good enough for the Hindus of Hindustan. In the same way, Islam is good enough for the Arabs, Syrians, and Iranians or at any rate they are satisfied with it. so why worry? The most that can be said for such a position as this is that it is utterly lacking in a proper sense of values. Even the Moslem himself would vigorously disagree with such a view, for he is very certain that Islam is not only superior to the other systems just mentioned, but that it is vastly superior to Christianity as well!
Then there are those who in a spirit of commendable appreciation feel that Christianity has much to learn from Islam. They feel that Islam is a kind of Unitarian religion, and that if Christians do go to Moslem lands, they should definitely go to share their experience, and learn as much as they can. They should not he primarily interested in winning converts to Christianity, hut in interpreting the values in Christianity within the framework of the Islamic system, and in trying to make Moslems better Moslems. To this end they would maintain schools and hospitals, organize athletic teams to play football, hockey, and basehall, engage in all sorts of humanitarian and character building activities, but leave religion out of the picture entirely. There must be no Bible classes in schools or hospitals, no personal work, and no public preaching. Because of the persecution of converts no attempt must be made to create a church, and all that can be done is to work on the principle that ultimately the leaven will leaven the whole. Of course, in some countries like Turkey, this is the only policy that can now be followed, for there is no freedom to preach and teach.
But there is something deeply tragic about the Moslem world that lays hold of the person who takes his Christianity seriously. He cannot shake off that sense of tragedy; it persistently haunts him. He sees much in Islam to be approved and even admired, but he is conscious of a great emptiness at the heart of it. The Moslem knows God as King, whose will is law; he does not know God as Father, and the transforming power of his love. The Moslem declares the holy Koran is God's supreme revelation of his will to men, but rejects the revelation of God in Jesus Christ and dismisses his supreme sacrifice as an idle tale. The Moslem regards sin as something of small consequence which can easily be righted by good works; he does not see that sin is not so much the outward act as a disease of the inner nature and requires a cure that comes from a power that is beyond oneself. In short, Islam's conception of God is not big enough to serve the deepest needs of man, and neither is its conception of revelation; while its conception of sin is far from going to the root of the matter. It is this basic weakness in the religious ideas of Islam which is responsible for the trail of tragedy which follows in its wake.
Finally, it must not be forgotten that of all the religions of the world Christianity is the Good Samaritan to the world's need. Wherever there is ignorance or oppression; wherever there is pain and suffering; wherever there are systems that crush or degrade the bodies or souls of men and impede their progress; wherever women and little children cry out for help there Christianity must go, or Christ would be less than the Savior of the world. It is ultimately this need, then, that is the great and impelling challenge of the Moslem world, and along with the need there are innumerable open doors of opportunity.
THE OPPORTUNITY FOR MEDICAL MISSIONS edit
The interior of Arabia is one of the most inaccessible parts of the world to Europeans, but the power to relieve distress opens doors even there. Disease is something which attacks rich and poor alike, high and low. The favorite wife of His Highness, Sultan Abdul Aziz ibn Saoud, ruler of Saoudi Arabia, was ill. In fact, she was very ill as she lay in the palace at Riadh, and the local Arabian hakeems, or doctors, had done all in their power without success. The king quickly dispatched messengers across the desert to summon the mission doctors from Bahrein. It is said throughout inland Arabia that next to the king, it would be difficult to name one man more popular than Dr. Louis P. Dame of the American Mission Hospital on the island of Bahrein in the Persian Gulf. On receiving the message from Riadh, the doctor and his associates started out at once and sped across the desert in the modern motor cars which the king had furnished for his guests. The rest of the story we shall hear in the words of Mr. G. D. Van Peursem, who was himself a member of the party:
In exchange for the liberality of Ibn Saoud, Dr. Dame, Mrs. Van Peursem and eleven assistants gave their time and services freely. Naturally the king and his household came first. . . . However, daily clinics were held for the public. Every forenoon except Sundays, two hundred and fifty patients were treated. Rich man, poor man, beggarman, women and children, everybody seemed to turn up at this daily clinic. ... To these masses some forty cases of medicines were distributed. One of the assistants was kept busy giving intramuscular and intravenous injections for the men alone. This indicates that venereal diseases have become all too common in Saoudi Arabia. Someone has said that unless this is checked, it will certainly decrease the population, if not exterminate certain sections altogether. . . .
The afternoons were devoted to surgery. Often the numbers of needy cases made it necessary for the doctor to continue into the hours of the night. As the news of the doctor's arrival radiated into the villages and hamlets, well-nigh hopeless cases were carried into the hospital. The Bedouins, not knowing that even to modern medicine and surgery there is a limit, brought victims of tuberculosis in its last stages. Forms of skin and bone, carried on stretchers, appeared every day; victims of venereal diseases, so repulsive that their faces were not to be shown to the public. One look at such a specimen is enough to leave one cold and chill for days and days. "An extreme case," the doctor says. "No, not extreme," says the Arab. "There are many like that in Hayil." But the amir [king] did not know this until the doctor came.[1]
It is a grim story but a true one, and illustrates how, generally speaking, throughout the Moslem lands there is need and opportunity for medical mission work. It is probably true that the devoted Christian doctors have opened more Moslem hearts to the truth of Christ's love than has any other type of missionary. If it were only possible to multiply a hundredfold the mission hospitals of Sheikh Othman, Basrah, Bahrein and Kuweit in Arabia, Quetta and Bannu on the Northwest Frontier of India, Tanta and Old Cairo in Egypt, Teheran and Meshed in Iran and Beirut in Syria, who could tell the mighty results for good that would follow throughout the Moslem world, not only in bringing the healing and the love of Christ to the poor, the suffering and the needy, but in creating better understanding between the peoples of the Moslem and the Christian lands?
THE OPEN DOOR OF EDUCATION edit
There is not only the challenge of physical need; there is the challenge of the great hunger for education and social reform. The demand for modern education is greater than ever before in every Moslem land.
In the far-away Sulu archipelago among the Philippine Islands, where half a million Moslem Moros live under the Stars and Stripes, a few years ago there was practically one hundred per cent illiteracy. Only a few mullahs, or priests, could read. The people were among the most fanatic and savage Moslems on the face of the earth. Order was maintained by the United States army with the greatest difficulty, and even so, wild outbursts were not uncommon.
Then a missionary was sent there to see what he could do. He went with fear and trembling, leaving his wife and children behind because it was not safe to take them. He soon discovered that the greatest problem of the Moros was illiteracy. With singular ability and rare tact and judgment he tackled the problem of adult education by the direct method of teaching the people to read. He prepared easy charts using the simplest words, and started in. His rule of procedure was one of cooperation. He would teach a man two lessons only on condition that he would go out and teach two others what he had learned before receiving the third and fourth lessons, and so on down the line. The result has heen that in some five years' time nearly half the adult population has been taught to read! The people have become enthusiastic learners, and are now demanding schools and literature. The hunger for education has been aroused. Today, Dr. Frank Laubach is looked upon by these Moros as their greatest friend. So striking have been the results of his work in the Philippines that he has been asked to visit many other countries in Asia and Africa to develop similar methods.
Even in a country like India the challenge of appalling illiteracy staggers one. After all the efforts made there by mission and government agencies, it still can be said that ninety per cent of the Moslem men are illiterate and ninety-eight per cent of the women and this among a Moslem population of seventy-eight millions! Mission schools in Iran, India, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, and Turkey are thronged with Moslems who cannot be accommodated in other institutions. In many cases, or rather, in most cases, mission schools have been the pioneers in modern education in every one of these countries, and have contributed materially to the awakening and to the demand for constitutional government and constructive reforms.
In Iran, we are told by President Samuel M. Jordan of Alborz College, Teheran, since the beginning of the century, American schools have been patronized by the leading men of the country. Among the students have been enrolled sons of the princes of the royal family, first and second cousins of former shahs, the only grandson of the present shah, sons of prime ministers and other cabinet ministers, of members of the mejlis (congress), of tribal chieftains, of provincial governors, and of other influential men from every corner of the land boys who, whether educated or not, would be in the future years among the rulers of Iran. Probably no other school in the world has ever enrolled so many of the children of the leading men of any country as for the past thirty-five years have been enrolled in this college [the Presbyterian mission college in Teheran, now called Alborz College]. Our students imbibed liberal ideas, they agitated for reforms, they cooperated with other forward-looking patriots in transforming the medieval despotism of thirty years ago into the modern, progressive democracy of today. 1
The same might be said of nearly every Christian college in Moslem lands. It most certainly applies to such well known institutions as the American University of Beirut; Robert College, Constantinople; the Forman Christian College, Lahore; Lucknow Christian College; St. John's College, Agra; the American University at Cairo, not to mention a host of others.
And one of the most important things that young men learn in these Christian colleges is how to cooperate, to pull together. As President Jordan puts it:
Iranian statesmen for years have mourned, "We Iranians do not know how to cooperate." But how do you teach
1 "Constructive Revolutions in Iran," by Samuel M. Jordan, in The Moslem World, October, 1935. people to cooperate, how do you teach them to "play the game"? Obviously by playing games, and so we introduced football, baseball, volleyball, basketball. . . . The result is that physical education with all these group games is a regular part of the school program for all of the schools of Iran. ... Throughout the whole empire, young Iran is learning to "play the game" of life.[2]
Through this helpful service in education Iran is gradually coming to take her place in the ever enlarging family of modern nations. The same may be said of practically all the other leading Moslem nations of the world. It is a thrilling thing to lend a hand in an enterprise that is such a vital part of the task of rebuilding the world.
"Are you a Moslem?" I asked a young man as we stood talking together at Ur Junction in the heart of the Mesopotamian desert while waiting for the train for Baghdad. Ur Junction is the railway station near the site of the city of that name made famous by Abraham some five thousand years ago, because he left it and "went west to seek his fortune."
"Am I a Moslem?" repeated the young man. "Well, I was, but recently I joined the Anti-God Society. Today I am an atheist. I don't believe in religion. It divides people, and makes them fight each other, and hinders progress. Iraq would be better off without any religion at all. It would be better if we all gave up our senseless differences, and began to work together for the good of our country. Then the Jews, and these Assyrian Christians here" pointing to the assistant stationmaster and his friends who were standing close by "and the Moslems could make a great country out of this ancient land of Iraq. But as it is I see no chance."
"Are there many Moslems who have joined your Anti-God Society?" I asked.
"Not very many," he answered, "for the idea is new to us Moslems; we are a very conservative people. But we are spreading our atheistic ideas, and the number is growing slowly."
This from Iraq. But even India can tell something of the same story of disillusionment on the part of youth as they observe the futility of a religion that is lived on a basis of selfish concern for only the religious group or community to which the individual belongs. There is jealousy among the religions over special privileges; each is busy seeking to save itself and unaware of the great areas of human need which wait for unselfish service. Two things have produced this disillusionment in Iraq and India first, Western education and the impact of Western materialistic and industrial civilization; and second, the insidious influence of anti-religious Russia.
Turkey also tells the same story in her own way. One Turkish writer in the paper Uyanish says:
We cannot accept any more the despotism of this world or of the next world, or that of a softa [the old Moslem clergy]. We deposed Allah with the sultan. Our temples are the factories.[3]
Of course, these are extreme cases. Islam is not breaking up so fast as they suggest. But these illustrations do indicate a tendency of very serious import. They indicate that the youth of Moslem lands are slowly drifting away from their religious anchorage. They are abandoning belief in God and losing faith in the necessity of religion of any sort. Having dropped religion, the next step is to throw over accepted moral standards, to attempt to face life in one's own strength, to follow one's own impulses and desires.
THE CHALLENGE TO CHRISTIANITY edit
Such young people desperately need an interpretation of religion that will justify itself to their intelligence and will help them solve the pressing problems of life: the problems of human brotherhood and social justice, of sex and the position of women, of war and international relationships, yes, and of man and the future of the race. To young people of this sort Islam has lost its meaning for life, and in their ignorance they assume that all religion has lost its meaning and usefulness for life, too. An amazing challenge, both fresh and urgent, is presented by the educated young Moslems who have lost their way. The question is, Can Christianity be presented to them in such a way that it will appeal as being of such vital and fundamental importance that they cannot meet life successfully without it? Only true disciples of Christ who are themselves living examples of his teachings are equal to this great challenge, the challenge to each one of us to live up to the ideals of Christ.
We cannot dodge this issue. It must he faced by everyone who takes life seriously. Many a young Moslem looks at the "Christian" West and wonders why it is called Christian. A book was published a few years ago by an Indian Moslem who had lived and traveled in Europe and America. He called it Islam versus Christianity and in it he dwelt on the very worst features of Western civilization its gangsters and racketeering; its lynchings and inhuman treatment of the Negro; its city night clubs and the worst phases of immorality and loose living between the sexes; its Renos with their easy divorces; its daring daylight robberies and abominable kidnapings; and, last but not least, its freely flowing alcoholic liquors.
As compared with these things he attempted to prove that Islam had been far more successful as a religion in benefiting humanity than Christianity had been. But he failed to look for, much less uncover, the amazing achievements of Christianity in providing the foundations for multitudes of happy homes where the highest standards of Christian purity prevail; in maintaining vast numbers of schools and hospitals and institutions of every kind for the needy and the oppressed; in inspiring great hosts of individuals with a deep and satisfying faith men and women who practise the closest fellowship with God and who are giving their all to help forward the world's great causes. He did not mention these things, and thereby he failed to give a true picture of Islam versus Christianity.
The truth of the matter is that while there is much in our Western civilization of which we may be ashamed as our Moslem friend has clearly pointed out, and which we know all too well and while many of us individual Christians and the organized churches fall far short of our ideals, yet no case has been made out for our being ashamed of Christanity. At this point there is a vast difference between Islam and Christianity. Every one of the undesirable elements which have been noted in Islam is something that is rooted in the religion itself. They are all lawful: polygamy, child marriage, easy divorce, the keeping of concubines, slavery. But in Western lands, all the objectionable features of life exist in spite of the ideals and standards of Christianity. These evils cannot be fastened on Christianity as part and parcel of the system. One cannot find sanction for them in the teachings or example of Jesus Christ.
The final challenge of Islam to each Christian is to live as a Christian should. That is the hardest challenge of all. That is the last and most convincing argument, and the only adequate response to the Moslem's challenge. How desperately the Moslem world needs this living argument! How difficult the task! The way, too, is dark with ancient prejudices and misunderstandings. But Christ, who said, "All power is given unto me. . . . Go ye therefore," and "Lo, I am with you alway," will be our strength and our companion. It was he who said, also, "I am the light of the world." He will lighten the darkness. For it is not alone Islam that challenges us, but Jesus Christ himself. He goes before us into every area of need throughout the Moslem world. His is the example of the deepest sympathy for human suffering and sacrificial love in ministering to it. He leads the way and bids us follow him in the glorious task of rebuilding the world, a world in which there shall be neither Jew nor Moslem, neither Hindu, Buddhist, nor Confucianist, nor even Christian in any narrow communalistic sense, but all shall be one brotherhood of man in Christ, and all sons and daughters in the common family of God the Father.
- ↑ "Guests of King Ibn Saoud," by G. D. Van Peursem, in The Moslem World, April, 1936, pp. 116-17.
- ↑ "Constructive Revolutions in Iran."
- ↑ Refik Ahmed in Uyanish, August 15, 1929, quoted in The Turkish Press, p. 141. London, George Routledge & Sons, 1932.