“The beginning of systematic, self-conscious pan-Islamism dates from about the middle of the nineteenth century. The Sennussi are careful to avoid a downright breach with European Powers. Their long-headed, cautious policy is truly astonishing. For more than half a century the order has been a great force, yet it has never risked the supreme adventure. In many of the fanatic risings which have occurred in various parts of Africa, local Sennussi have undoubtedly taken part, and the same was true during the Italian campaign in Tripoli and the late war, but the order itself has never officially entered the lists. The Sennussi program is the welding, first, of Moslem Africa, and, later of the whole Moslem world into the revived “Imamat,” of Islam’s early days; into a great theocracy embracing all true believers—in other words, pan-Islamism. But they believe that the political liberation of Islam from Christian domination must be preceded by a profound spiritual regeneration. Year after year and decade after decade the Sennussi advance slowly, calmly, coldly. They are covering North Africa with their lodges and schools; and to the southward converting millions of pagan negroes to the faith of Islam. Every candid European observer tells the same story. As an Englishman remarked some twenty years ago: ‘Mohammedanism is making remarkable progress in the interior of Africa. It is crushing Paganism out. Against it the Christian propaganda is a myth.’ And a French protestant missionary remarks in the same vein: ‘We see Islam on its march, sometimes slowed down, but never stopped, toward the heart of Africa. It fears nothing. Even Christianity, its most serious rival, it views without hate. While Christians dream of the conquest of Africa, Mohammedans do it.’ These gains are being made at the expense of African Christianity as well. The European missions lose many of their converts to Islam, while across the continent, the ancient Abyssinian Church, so long an outpost against Islam, seems in danger of submersion by the rising Moslem tide. There is to-day in the Moslem world a wide spread conviction that Islam is entering on a period of Renaissance and renewed glory.” Mohammedanism to-day covers the northern part of Africa from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea, nearly to the equator, far below which it has passed on the East; it surrounds Abyssinia, an island of degenerate Christianity; it holds solidly Arabia, Persia, Afganistan, Turkestan and has overrun large portions of China and Russia, where it is making rapid progress. It is one of the leading religions of India, and has reached the Dutch Indies and Philippines.