The World of Islam 9781463218782

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THE WORLD OF ISLAM

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The World of Islam

Analecta Gorgiana

185 Series Editor George Anton Kiraz

Analecta Gorgiana is a collection of long essays and short monographs which are consistently cited by modern scholars but previously difficult to find because of their original appearance in obscure publications. Carefully selected by a team of scholars based on their relevance to modern scholarship, these essays can now be fully utilized by scholars and proudly owned by libraries.

The World of Islam

James Thayer Addison

1 gorgias press 2010

Gorgias Press LLC, 954 River Road, Piscataway, NJ, 08854, USA www.gorgiaspress.com Copyright © 2010 by Gorgias Press LLC Originally published in 1937 All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise without the prior written permission of Gorgias Press LLC. 2010

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ISBN 978-1-60724-281-9

ISSN 1935-6854

This is a facsimile reprint of the book published under the same title by The National Council of the Protestant Episcopal Church, New York, 1937.

Printed in the United States of America

is designed to help guide Churchmen and women in their reading on the Moslem world. At this time when, as Dr. Addison points out, Islam is throwing off the inertia of centuries and actively seeking to adopt the ways of the West, it is especially necessary to understand the beginnings, development, and current trends in Mohammedanism. Hence, Dr. Addison, who is one of the leading students of Islam in the Episcopal Church today, has written this brief essay and appended to it descriptions of a few well selected books which will give the reader an understanding of the World of Islam. Most of the books described in the following pages will be found in local public libraries but they also may be borrowed from Church Missions House Library or purchased from Church Missions House Book Store at prices listed on page 15. THIS PAMPHLET

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HE World of Islam consists of 240,000,000 Moslems distributed over Asia, Africa, and parts of Europe. Representing several scores of races and every grade of civilization from the highest to the lowest, they are bound together by their faith, the religion which we call Mohammedanism and which they call Islam. T o understand them as Moslems, then, we must first know something of: that religion. Islam is the latest, and perhaps the last, of the world's great religions. It began in the seventh century after Christ with the ministry of its founder, Mohammed, who was born at Mecca in Arabia in the year 570. A t the time of his birth Arabia was an independent country, peopled by warring tribes of Bedouins and hemmed in on two sides by great empires—the Persian Empire and the late Roman or Byzantine Empire. T h e religion of the Arabs was primitive, consisting of the worship of clan gods, nature gods, and nature spirits. Yet in some of its towns and along its borders there were Jews and Christians. In the unknown years before he entered on his ministry, Mohammed must have learned much from these believers in God, for when he began in

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Mecca his public preaching as a prophet, his message voiced the belief in one God whom he identified with the God of Jews and Christians and with one of the vaguer Arab deities who was known as Allah. He proclaimed Allah to be the sole God and denounced the idolatrous worship of all other divinities. He summoned all his countrymen to repent and submit to Allah and declared that Allah would one day sit in judgment upon all men, rewarding believers in heaven and consigning all others to hell. Though he gradually won a small band to his cause, he met for many years with opposition and persecution. But in 622 a group of believers from the near-by town of Medina urged him and his followers to flee from Mecca and find a welcome with them. This was the famous year of the flight or Hegira by which the Moslem reckoning of years is dated. Once established in Medina, Mohammed slowly forged his way to power by uniting its tribes in the brotherhood of one faith. Here, indeed, Islam was really born—that firm organization which was at once political and religious. By the time of Mohammed's death in 632, the whole of Arabia had been won to Islam, united in a simple faith and conscious of growing power and ambition. Since Mohammed had been supreme ruler, both temporal and spiritual, and since he left no son, a successor had to be elected, the first of a long line

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known as Caliphs. With the second Caliph. Omar, who came to power in 634, there began the series of victories which launched Islam on its world career. Within ten years the Arab armies had met and defeated in a series of battles the mighty forces of the Persian and Byzantine Empires and had conquered Persia, Mesopotamia, Syria, Palestine, and Egypt. By 644 the Moslem world extended from North Africa to the frontiers of India. In the lands subdued by the Arabs, Jews and Christions were allowed to keep their own faith if they submitted and paid taxes, but vast numbers of them accepted the new religion. Thus began the development of that great Moslem civilization, with its seat first at Damascus and then at Baghdad, which from the eighth to the thirteenth centuries equalled and often surpassed that of Europe, marked for centuries by high achievements in philosophy, science, mathematics, and architecture. The story of expansion from the seventh century onward is too long and complex to be rehearsed. Partly it was the outcome of political and military force, partly of true missionary activity. As a consequence of this vigorous growth of centuries, Islam today is the religion not only of the lands it first conquered but also of North Africa, large parts of Negro Africa, Turkey, and Central Asia. In India seventy-seven million are Moslems, in China eight or ten million, and in the

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Dutch East Indies thirty or forty million. Even in Russia and the Balkan countries there are twelve or fifteen million more. The religion of Islam is essentially simple. Between the eighth and the twelfth centuries it experienced a rich development in the fields of theology, legislation, and mysticism, so that a lifetime can be spent in the study of its philosophy, its law, and its devotional literature. But the fundamental requirements for the mass of believers have always been plain. They may be summed up in the "Five Pillars of Islam": 1. The confession of faith in Allah and in his apostle Mohammed, the last and greatest prophet. 2. The prescribed prayers, five times daily. 3. The regular giving of alms. 4. The annual fast between dawn and sunset during the month of Ramadan. 5. The pilgrimage to Mecca. The ideal Moslem, however, not only fulfills these requirements, but lives, wherever it is possible, according to all the laws of Islam, which are as numerous and detailed as those which bound the Pharisees. From the Christian point of view the most interesting aspects of Mohammedanism are its likenesses to Judaism and Christianity. Its sacred book, the Koran, contains many Old Testament stories of Moses and other heroes, and it pays to Jesus the

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honor of recording him as one of the three greatest prophets, who was born of a virgin and lived a sinless life. Yet it denies the crucifixion and combats the Christian claim that Jesus is the Son of God and the Saviour of the world. For the Moslem, moreover, God is primarily supreme Power whose will dominates the universe and who is somehow responsible for its evil as well as its good. His character is rather that of an oriental monarch than that of a loving Father. Because the Moslem thus knows of God and of Jesus but is certain that the Christian view of God and Jesus is wrong, he is harder to convince and convert than any other type of non-Christian. For some seven hundred years the world of Islam has made little progress in thought and culture and its civilization has first become stationary and then stagnant. Formerly on a level with that of Europe, it slipped behind when Europe went through the great changes of the Renaissance and entered on the modern period. The contrast between Islam and Christendom, from the worldly point of view, has become all the more marked in the past two centuries during which the West has experienced its amazing scientific and material development and the Moslem East has halted in the Middle Ages. Differences have been further magnified and hostility further increased during this same period by the imperialistic expansion of the Western

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powers. As a result of European conquests the greater part of the Moslem world is now under the control, partial or complete, of Christian nations, as in India, the Dutch East Indies, Syria, and Africa. The latest chapter in the history of the world of Islam has only recently begun and is that which chiefly interests us in 1937. It is the story of the awakening of Islam during the past generation and especially since the World War, the story of reviving energies in politics, in thought, in education, and in material progress. There has been a worldwide movement among Moslem peoples, stirred by the negative impulse to throw off the control of Western powers and by the positive impulse, quite as strong, to adopt the political institutions, the economic organization, and the educational system of the West by deliberate choice instead of under pressure. Indeed, "the most remarkable feature of the present Moslem World is not that it is becoming westernized, but that it desires to be westernized." The spirit of nationalism has been the inspiration of most of these movements and the key to understanding them. It has stirred Moslem peoples to maintain or to achieve their independence, to revise their systems of education, to concentrate their energies upon scientific and material progress, to move toward the liberation of their women,

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and to throw off whatever religious limitations stood in the way of advance. T h e outstanding example of such revolution is Turkey, whose rapid changes since 1921 are almost unexampled. But Egypt and Persia are traveling the same road and the spirit and ambition they manifest are spreading. A reading course on T h e World of Islam, as this brief sketch will remind us, must take account of more than one aspect of a wide area and a long development. There is the religion of Islam, the growth and decline of Islam during the past, and the radical changes of our own era. T o view these facts and events from the Christian point of view and to interpret in the light of them the missionary opportunities of the Christian Church is a rewarding study. It helps us to approach with more realism, more intelligence, and more enthusiasm one of the great tasks that God has set before His Church for the generations to come—the conversion of the Moslem World. B O O K S T O R E A D ON T H E W O R L D O F

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he Koran, the sacred Book of Islam, is believed

by all Moslems to be the direct Word of God transmitted through the angel Gabriel to Mohammed. Every word of it is accounted perfect and infallible. Its 118 chapters, arranged in no sort of

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order, cover in translation about five hundred pages. It unquestionably gives us the messages, sermons, laws, and stories of Mohammed and is our only reliable source for his life and teachings. Thomas Carlyle found it wearisome reading and many will agree with him. But a taste of it is necessary for even a slight acquaintance with Islam. C. Snouck Hurgronje, one of the three or four greatest Islamic scholars of modern times, gives us in his lectures on Mohammedanism, delivered in America some twenty years ago, a brief account of the origin and the political and religious development of Islam, with a concluding survey of Islam and modern thought. He is so completely master of his subject that he can make it clear to beginners. A slightly longer account, Islam, Beliefs and Institutions by H. Lammens, a learned Jesuit professor at Beyrout, gives us in greater detail a thorough summary of all the aspects of that religion. T h e range of his book is indicated by its chapter headings: T h e Cradle of Islam, Mohammed, the Koran, the Traditions, Islamic Law, Mysticism in Islam, the Sects of Islam, Reformists and Modernists. For any reader who had used Hurgronje's lectures as an introduction this volume would offer a useful expansion for further study. The People of the Mosque, by L. Bevan Jones, is a somewhat fuller treatment than those by Hur-

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gronje and Lammens of the religion of Islam. Its five main sections deal with the Rise and Expansion of Islam, the Foundations of Islam, the Faith and Practice of Islam, Islam in the Modern World, and Christianity and Islam. Under these headings there is adequate treatment of every important feature of Mohammedanism, with special attention to Islam in India. The author is Principal of the Henry Martyn School of Islamics at Lahore, India. Christendom and Islam, their Contacts and Cultures down the Centuries, a brief volume by W. Wilson Cash, General Secretary of the Church Missionary Society, is wholly concerned with a vitally interesting subject to which other books devote hardly more than a chapter. The topics included are the Expansion of Islam and the Shrinkage of Christendom, the Contribution of Christianity to Islamic Thought and Life, the Contribution of Islam to the Making of Modern Europe, the Influences of Europe in the Disintegration of Modern Islam, and the Christian Answer to the Moslem Question. The reader who wants a rapid survey of all those factors in the World of Islam which we have briefly noted will find it in What Is This Moslem World? a book by Charles R. Watson, President of the American University at Cairo. No better introduction for the beginner could be found, for it includes in simple form the treatment of such major

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subjects as these: an A i r Journey across Moslem Lands; Moslem Folk, their W a y of Living; the Gripping Power of Islam; an Appraisal of Islam; Ferment and Revolution; Islam's Contact with Christendom; and the Christian Missionary Movement. Across the World of Islam, "Studies in aspects of the Mohammedan faith and in the present awakening of the Moslem multitudes," is by Samuel M . Zwemer, one of the greatest living missionaries to Moslems. R i c h experience and wide travel lie behind this broad survey of what Islam looks like today in India, Africa, Persia, Russia, the East Indies, and elsewhere. Of all the Moslem lands T u r k e y has recently experienced by far the most extraordinary and extensive revolution, under the leadership of its masterful dictator Kemal. T h e transformation of T u r k e y from an Oriental empire to a modern nationalist State of the Western type, the elimination of religion from all contact with law and education, the westernizing of every department of life in a miraculously brief time, are all recorded accurately and vividly in The Turkish Transformation by Henry E. Allen. Since no feature of the new Moslem world has been more striking than the change in the position of women, we are fortunate to have a book so recent and so thorough, devoted wholly to this sub-

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ject as Moslem Women Enter a New World. Its author, Ruth F. Woodsmall, has worked and traveled in the Near East for ten or twelve years, and writes, from wide and varied experience, of the educational awakening, the new economic role of women, and the widening sphere of Moslem women's interests. T h e Episcopal Church touches the Moslem World at only three minor points: China, the backcountry of Liberia, and the southern Philippine Islands. T h e activity is small and nowhere concerns educated Moslems. But its sister Church of England, through its Church Missionary Society, has long been successfully at work in several Moslem countries. Among these are Egypt and Palestine. How the Anglican Church carries on its mission by the way of partnership through evangelism and in schools and hospitals is told in vivid detail in The Way of Partnership by Samuel A. Morrison, secretary of the C.M.S. in Egypt. This little book, with its fifteen illustrations and maps, helps us to learn just what can be done and how. Americans have reason to be proud of the American University at Cairo, founded in 1920, and long since an influential factor in the educational life of Egypt. How a brilliant young American teacher, in charge of its religious work, enlisted the enthusiasm of its students (Moslem and Christian alike) not only in the study of Christianity but in

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active social service, is related in Erdman Harris's lively book, New Learning in Old Egypt. How they learned by doing, to the benefit of Cairo slumdwellers and Egyptian peasants makes a fascinating story. T h e life of Temple Gairdner of Cairoa great Christian and a devoted missionary to Moslems, is strongly and exquisitely written by one of his fellow workers, Constance E. Padwick. W e can learn more about the Christian approach to Islam through such a biography than through many books about theories and methods.

Copies of this booklet may be obtained from T h e Book Store, C h u r c h Missions House, 281 F o u r t h A v e n u e , N e w York, N. Y . Price 15 cents. A s this booklet is not published for financial profit, the price is computed on a basis lower than that necessarily used by commercial houses. 1E. 057. 1M. B.