“With me is one who used to enjoy it all. She tells me how she twisted the fowls’ heads off with her own hands. I look at the fine little brown hands, and I can hardly believe it. ‘You, _you_, do such a thing!’ And she says, ‘Yes; when the day came round to sacrifice to our family divinity my little brother held the goat’s head while my father struck it off, and I twisted the chickens’ heads. It was my pleasure.’”[76] Truly, “the dark places of the earth are full of the habitations of cruelty!” [Sidenote: The Mohammedan Child at Worship.] The Mohammedan Child at Worship! From the minaret of the Sunni Mosque or the roof of the Shi’ite Mosque sounds the call to prayer. Children of seven or older are supposed to join their elders in obeying the summons five times a day,--in the early dawn, at noon, two hours before sunset, at sunset, and two hours later. The religious law, however, provides that no child shall be beaten for neglecting his prayer until he is ten years of age. Praying, however, is not as easy a task for the Mohammedan lad as for his Thibetan cousin. He must first wash his face, hands, and arms, feet, and legs, learning which side of the face, which hand and foot to wash first, whether the arms should be stroked from the wrist to the elbow or in the opposite direction. His prayer will not count before the great “Allah” if the ablutions are not correct. Then he must learn the words of the prayers, and these are in Arabic, which three-fourths of the Mohammedan children of the world cannot understand. Turning toward Mecca, he must stand, kneel, and bow himself with his forehead to the ground, at just the proper intervals during the prayer. At the age of twelve he begins to observe the month of Ramazan, and his nine-year-old sister must do the same, when from sunrise to sunset no morsel of food or drop of drink may cross their lips. “Is such the fast that I have chosen? wilt thou call this a fast and an acceptable day unto Jehovah?” With deep insight into the truth has Mrs. Malcolm said:-- “Here again we see Mohammed giving his people what we may call ‘nursery rules,’ treating them as children, while our Master expects us to grow up so that we can arrange these matters for ourselves. The very fact that the detailed rules of Mohammedanism are binding through life shows that the Mohammedan is not expected to grow up as we understand growing up.”[77] [Sidenote: The African Child at Worship.]