Pan-Islam

Do proselytising missionaries in the Islamic field ever sit down and think what they are really trying to do? Does the social ostracism of a human being, the damnation of his folk and the salvation of none but a remnant of mankind mean anything to them? If so they ought to be overcome with horror – unless it is their idea of humour, which I cannot believe.

To pester a man into abandoning a perfectly sound and satisfying religion for one which may not suit him so well is more reprehensible than badgering a man to go to your doctor when his own physician understands his case and has studied it for a long time. At least his discarded medical adviser will not make his life a burden to him – a burden which the proselytiser does not have to share.

On the other hand, Moslems are often glad enough to avail themselves of such Christian works as mission education, medical treatment and organised charity, so they should tolerate the proselytising propaganda which seems inseparable from these enterprises.

Missionaries afield are usually justified by their works; it is the aggressive policy blazoned abroad from mission headquarters which does so much mischief. Islam was never intended to overthrow Christianity, but to bring back pagan Arabs to the true worship of God. Mission policy clamours for attack on it as if it were an invention of the devil and then complains of Moslem fanaticism, forgetting that if it were an artifice of Satan they cast doubts on the omnipotence, omniscience or beneficence of God for permitting it to exist and flourish. Otherwise, they infer that they are in a position to correct the Almighty in this matter. It is their complacent pedagogy which exasperates Moslems so. It is not the way to treat people who believe in the Immaculate Conception, who call Christmas Day "the Birthday" and respect us as "People of the Book."

It is time some protest was lodged against this policy if only on behalf of Christian administrations in Moslem countries, which are always being attacked by it and urged to give more facilities of spiritual aggression, especially just at present when Turkey's power has been shattered and mission strategy thinks it sees an opening.

There was never a less desirable moment for unchecked religious exploitation than now, when the war-worn nations of Christendom are trying to reconstruct themselves, and the world is seething with unrest and overstocked with discarded weapons of precision.

There is no compromise in religion, nor should there be; you cannot go halfway in any faith, and no one wants a mongrel strain begotten of the two great militant creeds such as our leading exponent of paradox wittily describes as "Chrislam." Yet surely there is a reasonable basis for a religious entente between Islam and Christianity.

Think what Islam has done to advance the knowledge of humanity long before the dawn of modern science. Moslems, too, would do well to remember what Christian civilisation has done for them in trade, agriculture and industries. If you accept gifts from others you should tolerate their ways; it is but an ill-conditioned cur that bolts the food proffered and then snarls.

A Moslem or a Christian worthy of the name will remain so. He may expand or (more rarely) contract his views, but will still be a Moslem or a Christian, as the case may be.

No human being has the right to say that his conception of the Deity is correct and all others wrong, nor is such a conclusion supported by the Gospel or the Koran.

It is the alchemy of the human soul which can transmute the dross of a sordid environment to the gold of self-sacrifice, and the gold of inspired religion to the dross of bigotry.

Whether we believe, as Christians, that Christ died on the Cross and rose the third day, or, as Moslems, that He escaped that fate by an equally stupendous miracle, we know that He faced persecution and death for mankind and His ideals, and that both creeds are based on the same great doctrine – "God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth."

FINIS

1

"The Land of Uz," Macmillan.

2

"Arabia Infelix," Macmillan.

3

The definite article precedes most Arabic place-names, but is only retained in ordinary local speech as above, presumably to denote respect. I hold to native pronunciation, except in cases of long-established custom, and consider "the Yamen" as clumsy as "the Egypt" – both take the definite article in Arabian script.