From Berlin to Bagdad and BabylonZahm, J. A. (John Augustine)
HistoryChristian
From Berlin to Bagdad and Babylon
Zahm, J. A. (John Augustine)
Middle East -- Civilization; Middle East -- Description and travel
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:
_Dead and buried had they seen me, so their ready tale they spread;_
_Yet I lived to see the tellers buried all themselves and dead._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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