ISLAM'S CHALLENGE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 4, 6 January 1937, Page 10

ISLAM'S CHALLENGE.

DEEP BRITISH INTEREST. HOLLAND'S FINE EXAMPLE. PARIS. There does seem a real need for Britain to give more thought to her Islamic, policy, or rather to the present lack of it. Within the Empire, in India, Africa, Malaya and elsewhere live over 100,000,000 Moslems. Holland, with about half as many, has set us a fine example in the attention that she has devoted to Islamic studies, as well as to all other problems affecting her overseas dominions. In the universities of Holland and in the Netherlands Indies, many of the best scholars of Holland—and the Dutch are people with brains—are devoted to these studies. In the British Empire not nearly enough attention is given to such matters. While there is no need to worry about French influence in Egypt, since France has parallel interests, it is curious that we have allowed French education and French culture to dominate Egypt to such an extent. France's interest in Islam is in the western, or Arabic, speaking part. Holland, which comes second to Britain as a Molsem power, is concerned only with the eastern part. Britain has the deepest interest in both parts of the Islamic world. It is mainly India with its 70,000,000 Moslems that makes her the greatest Moslem Power in the world. She has also millions of Moslem subjects in Malaya, North Borneo, Fiji, British Guiana, and other regions. Since Britain controls i the South Persian oil field she has also' great interests in Persia. j She is concerned with Iraq, again because of oil, as well as to some extent because of air communications. To the westward her main concern is with the great waterway flanked by Moslefo lands. This is her great interest in Egypt and in the Suez Canal zone. : I In Palestine, Britain holds a wolfsome would say two wolves, but let us leave it an open question which is the w plf—by the. ears. She dare not let go, and it seems dangerous to hold on. •; Why should there not be a British school in ' Cairo on the lines of the . BntMi-school at Athens, but on a larger scale and with a wider field? Ancient Egypt fascinates and concerns the whole "world, and there is a vast amount still to be done. Then there is the world of Islamic history and of Islamic culture, with Arabic language and literature, for the study of which Cairo is a most suitable centre. There are the problems, scientific and industrial, of modern Egypt. All these could be linked up in a British centre of work in Egypt.