PRESENT-DAY OUTLOOK.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 242, 12 October 1929, Page 2 (Supplement)

PRESENT-DAY OUTLOOK.

Z [l CROSS AND CRESCENT. CHRISTIANITY'S FORMIDABLE FOE. SIMPLICITY OF MOSLEM CREED.

(By H.H.D.)

The holding of a special conference in jour city of those who are interested.in Christian missions to Moslems may well lead us to pay some heed to this great Teligion and our relation to it. More than 60,000,000 Mohammedans are under the British flag in India alone. Many are under the British mandate in Syria and Africa. Of the 230,000,000 Mohammedans of all nationalities widely scattered over the face of the earth it Ss probable that at least a third of them fere under the same Government as ourteelvea. Yet it may be safely said that >re know but little of their marvellous Ihistovy and think but vaguely of their religious beliefs and practices. Although it is said there are 10,000 Moslems in liondon, few are found in our colonial jcities and their influence among us is only slight. The attitude of Islam to Christianity has always and everywhere Tbeen defiant and contemptuous. When the great missionary, conference met in Edinburgh in 1910, the Mohammedan college at AI Azhar, Cairo, cabled to it the insolent message: "Islam defies your King." A pamphlet on the Moslem menace issued by the Church Missionary iiSociety frankly admits that: "Islam is jfche only one of the great religions to "jboffift after Christianity; the only one ihat definitely claims to correct, complete, and supersede Christianity; the only one that categorically denies the truth of Christianity; the only one that las, in the past, signally defeated Christianity; the only one that seriously disputes the world with Christianity; the pnly one which, in several parts of the World is, to-day, forestalling and gamtug on Christianity." An Easily Learnt Creed. The creed of the Moslem is simplicity Itself: "There is no.God but Allah, and Mohammed is the Prophet of Allah." It is easily learnt. Children and savages, iof the densest, type can readily repeat it, and infinite importance is ascribed to the utterance of it. The duties presented by Islam are few and the moral and jethical claims of Islam are not burdensome or exacting. Its triumphs during jthe early years of its amazing career jwere won at the edge of the scimitar; ■they are won now by an easy concession jto human weaknesses. A Moslem writer in Cairo put it tersely: "Christianity bpposes, Islam follows, the current of ihuman nature." Islam permits polygamy and slavery, which Christianity denounces and forbids. The reward' for loyalty to Mohammed and the Koran are sensuous, whereas the rewards for loyalty •fco Christ and the Gospel He proclaimed, are spiritual. Mohammedans all the world over turn to the Ivaaba at Mecca as the centre of their faith; Christianity turns to' Calvary, the knoll outside the •walls of Jerusalem, on which the Cross on which- their. hopes centre" wals. reared [well nigh two hiiltonninnis ago; It may be freely admitted that the Christian Church -has fetfc herself paralysed before the formidable difficulties which have confronted her in Moslem lands. She has remembered how the Churches, founded, and governed by her greatest martyrs, teaehers, and bishops in the early centuries of her eventful :iiatory, were devastated by the victorious followers of Mohammed. She has ;'rotcd with alarm the rapidity of the /expansion of Islam and the firmness of its grasp upon the people when it has ■won. She has felt that the subtlety of iier doctrines and the austerity of her inorals could not compete with the few .'and simple tenets of the Koran. She :haa smarted under thu failure of the 'Crusades and suffered unspeakably from ■the ruthlesaness of Mohammedan conquerors. And she has felfc that of all •the tasks set before her by the Master '[Whose name she ■bears and Whose World--Wide command she endeavours to obey, •■the task of winning the Moslems is the inost arduous and the least promising. 'Its greatness has appalled her. Its apparent unffiuitfulness has depressed her.

Splendid Exceptions. Yet there have been splendid except Sioiis to this prevailing apathy and disinay. Petrus Venerabilia, the Benedic- ; ■jfcine Abbdfc of Clugny, who died in 1157; St. Francis of Assisi; the learned Rayiuond Lull (12350315); Francis Xavier '(died 1552); Nerny Martyn, the great (Cambridge scholar, who translated the $ible into Arabic and Persian; Wander, tthe Gennani.SMss; Bishop Valpy French, .of Lahore; lon Keith Falconer, the brilliant Professor of Arabic and Oriental languages at Cambridge—all these /devoted rai'e linguistic abilities and the : •ripest culture of \heir times in an en/dearour to roaster and refute the teaching- of Mohammedan inoulvies and to •prove the superiority of Christianity. In ,cvr own day Dr. ». Ziverner has become one of the chief authorities on Islam, and none who desire to know the present •Attitude of the Christian Church towards ■this great alien and antagonistic sy*tem ■ ksn afford to neglect his works. ' There (lied recently in Cairo, Canon t /Temple Gairdner, an Oxford scholar who epent himself with splendid unreserve in work among Moslems. He acquired, fry years of strenuous study, a facility Bn the Arabic 'tongue which β-urpnsed those who knew it best. Next to English, Arabic is read and reverenced over the widest' area of the earth's surface ' and is actually spoken by some 50,000,000 souk. Gairdner and his companion, D. M. Thornton, set themselves to produce Christian literature in this classical language of Islam, and to edit a' magazine, "Orient and Occident," which wfliild deal with the points of controversy between the rival faiths. He studied various " aspects, of the Mohammedan problem under Professor Goldziter, of Germany,. Professor Mai'goliouth, of Oxford, and Professor Macdonald, of Hartford, U.S.A., and wrote so ably and so extensively on it that it was said of him: "The influence of his life in this one field in Arabic teaching alone was ■perhaps . more extensively lasting than that of any man in the Moslem world." Jor mission study circles he wrote; "The Reproach of Isltim" (a title altered ift later issues to "The Rebuke of Islam"), in whtdi he makes a mastevlv survey of the countries which Islanv'has captured, an excellent summary of the life of Mohammed, and oi the teaching of the Koran, and a careful and eaiidid account of the attitude of th ft Christian Church towards this fierce rival in the past, the present, and the future. 11 was said of him that with his instinct foi i . fundamentals he mined and tunnelled Mi I way into thy heart of Islamic theolog\ I and thought and it is certain that only as

these two tremendous rivals in the realm of religion came to understand each other can truth be ascertained. Nothing can be gained by mutual contempt. Frank and scholarly discussion of the points at issue is essential to any final victory for either faith. Which will ultimately win—The Crescent or the Cross?