QUESTIONS ON CHAPTER VIII 1. What has been the past effect of Mohammedan rule in the Turkish Empire? What is the present position? {135} 2. What was the condition of Persia in 1895? 3. Account for the fact that degradation in Moslem lands reacts upon Britain. Illustrate from Morocco. 4. What does Mohammed teach about GOD? 5. What position does Mohammed assign to man, and what to woman? 6. Contrast the Moslem idea of Paradise with that of the Christian. 7. What seem to you the most striking points of contrast between Islam and Christianity? [1] Gibbon, vi. 29. (Frowde.) [2] _Quarterly Review_, July 1895. [3] Freeman's _The Turk in Europe_. [4] Bosworth Smith, _Mohammed and Mohammedanism._ [5] The Moslem sects which include the great majority of the Mohammedans of Persia. [6] _Missions and Politics in Asia_, R. E. Speer, pp. 49-50. For recent developments in Persia also see _infra_, chap. xii. [7] Hall Caine in _The Scapegoat_. [8] Palgrave, _Journey through Central and Eastern Arabia_, vol. i. p. 175. [9] Whatever may be the rearrangement of the map of Europe and Western Asia to which the Great War will lead, it is clear already that the problem of Islam will have assumed a new importance and a new urgency. For Moslem Turkey has been courted and won in alliance by great European powers, and armed and organized for their support. It has already been terribly proved that Germany feels herself unable to curb the passions she has roused--witness the wholesale massacre of Armenian Christian populations in the Turkish Empire, of which Lord Bryce, speaking in the House of Lords (on 6th October, 1915), said: 'It would seem that three-fourths or four-fifths of the whole nation has been wiped out. There is no case in history, certainly not since the time of Tamerlane, in which any crime so hideous and upon so large a scale has been recorded.' It is clear enough that for Germany, or for us, or for any other nation, there is only one means ultimately of making the Turk a healthy influence in the world and a worthy member of the commonwealth of nations, and that is to change his heart--which indeed is the programme of the Christian Gospel. [10] See Appendix D. King George V. has at least twenty million more Moslem than Christian subjects. Great Britain holds the highways and gateways of the Moslem world, and every great Moslem metropolis, save Constantinople, is under her power. [11] Sura LXXIV. [12] Sura XVII. [13] One of the Moslem commentators on the Korân (Ibn Khaldun) says: 'Dieu a implanté le bien et le mal dans la nature humaine, ainsi qu'il l'a dit lui-même dans le Korân: la perversité et la vertu arrivent à l'âme humaine par l'inspiration de Dieu.'--French translation from the Arabic in _Notices et Extraits de la Bibliothèque Impériale de France_, vol. xix. p. 268. [14] Dr. Porter, _Five Years in Damascus_, vol. i. p. 141. {136} CHAPTER IX 'THE CHALLENGE OF ISLAM'