THE MOSLEM WORLD --- --

January, 1933 No. 1 ~- - VOL. XXIII

WHITHER ISLAM?

A book of deep significance for the Islam of today and tomorrow has recently appeared. I t is “Whither Islam? A Survey of Modern Movements in the Moslem World” (Victor Gollancz, London, 1932). It is edited, with two large and important contributions, by Professor H. A. R Gibb, of the University of London, and his fellow contributors are Professor Massignon, of the Uni- versity of Paris, Dr. Kampffmeyer, of the University of Berlin, Lieut.-Col. M. L. Ferrar, of the Indian Army, retired, and Professor Berg, of the University of Leiden. The contributors have plainly tried to view their subject from Islam outwards, and to state the movements which they have found working within Islam, and they touch only indirectly and by implication the influences working upon Islam. There is thus little mention in the book of Christian missions to Moslems.

The object of the present editorial note is not to re- view this book, but to use it as a starting point for a con- sideration of that precise matter which it has, so far as at all possible, ruled out.’ The world of Islam is in process of change; there are many drifts in it of baffling com- plexity, acting and reacting upon one another. Yet there is a unity in Islam, lying behind it all, and holding its own in spite of racial, political, educational, spiritual and economic stresses and strains. What part do Christian missions play in this complex of forces, and what should be the attitude of the Christian missionary towards the

1 The book mentioned will be reviewed in our next numhr.-Ed.

I

2 THE MOSLEM WORLD

people to whom he has been sent and towards the funda- mentals of their life and faith? Some things will be very plain to him-and must be plain to anyone in real contact with Moslems. For one thing, they are super- naturalists through and through ; behind this visible world of sense there lies for all of them an unseen world, which may hypothetically break in upon them at any time. Those of them who have received a Western edu- cation and who wish to stand well with Westerners may try to ignore this, but they too, at heart, are under the same spell. Further, Moslems are genuinely and thoroughly religious, after their fashion. A relationship to the divine is a fundamental reality for the masses of them in a way that our generation in the West has almost completely forgotten. It may not govern their conduct in the ways that we would approve, but it is there as a basal fact in their life. Fveryone who is professedly a re- ligious person and who does not accept it as they do is a puzzle and a paradox to them. And, further, this re- ligious attitude is directly to God-perhaps better, to Allah, for that is His proper name, and H e is a person- ality to them. Yet again, they are His people; they feel they are the people of Allah, His chosen people, as ab- solutely as the Hebrews felt that they were the people of Jehovah. H e demands that they have faith in Him, sur- render themselves to Him, take refuge with Him, and so be safe in the last Judgment. For there is a Judgment to come.

All this every one in real contact with Moslems knows, and this is perfectly clear throughout the book from which we have started. All this has affected and does affect all the sides of Moslem life, personal and communal; i t lies behind Moslem politics, whether in- side a state, or in the interrelations of states; it may for a time be ignored, but it always reasserts itself. I t be- longs to the very fabric of Moslem life, and to the very soul of Moslem thought. W e of the West may like i t or not; we may criticize it or we may fear it; but we cannot

WHITHER ISLAM? 3

ignore it, and it is folly to sneer a t it and its workings. I t has produced a sense of brotherhood where Christen- dom has failed; it has linked Moslem states together where the League of Nations has failed. For it has not limited itself to furnishing a means of problematically smoothing out disputes, but has been itself a family union, in which conflict was indeed possible, but was also fratricidal and under the curse of Allah.

I t is absurd, therefore, to lump Moslems in with the peoples whom we call glibly the hdathen. They are of our own kind, and there are ways in which we-the masses of us-can well learn from the masses of them. In the eclipse of full religious faith and of a spiritual attitude towards life which has come upon us we may find that they possess realities which have become shadowy for too many of us. And, to push the matter still further, it is well for us to remember that Islam in all strictness is a Christian heresy; that Mohammed was little further out of the Christian fold than Arius; and that a party even in the Roman church holds that all Moslems are capable of salvation because they believe in a personal God and in future rewards and punishments. If there is to be any dividing, theologically and re- ligiously, Islam, Christendom and Judaism must go to- gether as one household of faith, and Islam may have its lessons to teach to its two brethren of the West. Certain it is that Islam feels very sure that it has.

But these things being so, whither is the Islam of to- day drifting? and what part have we, the specific Church of Christ, in its driftings? No man lives or dies to him- self, and the responsibilities of a Church are infinite. On us is the burden of the con;mission of the Lord Christ, and it is for us, generation by generation, to realize it and to take it up. If the historical Incarnation is a divine reality, beyond any faith or dream of Mohammed, all the greater is our responsibility towards those half-brothers and sisters of oiirs. And what is the essence of our re- sponsibility? Part of it, and the basal part, is very plain.

4 THE MOSLEM WORLD

It is for the Christian Church to complete the imperfect message of Mohammed, and to guide his people out of the heresy as to the person of Christ in which they have been involved. That is a tremendous task, but to such tasks the Church was commissioned, and such testimony it must bear. Islam expects that testimony to be borne, and respects the man who bears it. Contrariwise it has no respect at all for those who seek to win favor with it by the use of weasel words and ambiguous phrases. Islam is still theologically minded, and it knows its the- ology. Commonplaces about our worshipping the same God it will meet politely but decisively. Except for a very small minority who have come under the influence of Christian ideas, Allah is not our Father and we are not His children. So great is still our essential task.

But there are other tasks which fall to it as part of the civilization of the West, and as the institution which is, when all is said, the very basis of that civilization. The whole problem of “Whither Islam?” lies in the working of that Western civilization on the world of Islam. By it the world of Islam has been shaken awake, and is being guided into new ways. I n those changes the new generations of Islam are doing their part, and the old vital forces of Islam have come to fresh life. There is much action and reaction, and in many ways, arising from the different situations in the different elements of the Moslem world. But the arousing impact has come from the West. And it is the whole Western civilization in all its phases that has come thus to bear upon the East. We of the Christian Church know very well what our modern civilization has come to be, We know its eco- nomic brutality and rapacity; we know its lop-sided studies and knowledge; we know its worship of material comfort; we know its faith in elaboration of organiza- tion; and we know its contempt for spiritual realities. We of the Christian Church are at grips with all these things in our own world, and are often sorely tempted to join from the bottom of our hearts in the hymn-“The

WHITHER ISLAM? 5

times are waxing late.” But we are keeping up the struggle, for we believe too the words of our Lord, “And lo, I am with you alway.” And now we see this world of ours pouring out its energies of all those kinds on the world of Islam, and our duty as the Christian Church is clear. We, too, must go with our world and bear our testimony and work our work, with our world and against it, in the world of Islam. We know very well what the Western world would be without the saving force and guidance of the life of Christ in it. We know how many strange uses the word “Christian” has come to have with us, but we know that in them all it always means the truest and the best of anything. W e have to see to i t that that truest and best goes with and has part in all the work- ings of the Western civilization on the world of Islam. That, too, is part of the testimony of the Christian Church, and that testimony can only completely be borne by the missionaries of Christ, the successors in our modern world of His own apostles. Perhaps from their mouths, if the witness is clear and complete, the world of Islam may believe that the Western world is not wholly sunk in materialism and irreligion. For, viewed on this side, it is not a question of Christianity as against Islam; it is a question of religion as against irreligion. W e know that that is rapidly coming to be our problem-the prob- lem of the whole spiritual or material attitude towards life. With almost equal rapidity it is becoming the problem of the East. And the responsibility for that development lies largely on Western schools-or schools on Western models-in the East. The older-fashioned East is aghast at this, and sees in this one of its greatest problems. I t is one of the greatest problems, too, of the Christian Church. How can it make its direct agencies, such as schools and colleges, safe for the world of Islam? There can be only one answer. I n or beside these schools there must go unequivocal testimony to the fact of Christ. And such testimony Islam will always respect.

Hartford, Conn. DUNCAN BLACK MACDONALD.