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: Were I to attempt the catalogue of mosques, colleges, schools, chapels and the like, repaired or wholly fresh--built within the circle of my own personal inspection alone--several pages would hardly suffice to contain it. Trebizond, Batoom, Samsoon, Sivas, Keysareeyah, Chorum, Amasia, and fifty other towns of names unknown, or barely known in Europe, each can boast its new and renovated places of Mahometan worship; new schools, some of law, others of grammar, others primary, have sprung up on every side; new works of charity and public bequest adorn the highways.... Meanwhile, year after year sees a steady increase in the number of pilgrims to the holy places of Islam; and, although the greater facilitation consequent on steam has undoubtedly contributed not a little to this result, much must also be put down to the growing eagerness manifested by all, high and low, to visit the sacred soil, the birthplace of their religion and Prophet; while the pride that each village takes in its “hajjees” is manifested in the all-engrossing sympathy that accompanies their departure, and the triumphant exultation of the entire populace that welcomes them home. It may not have been less a thousand years ago: it certainly could not have been more.[254] 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.