THE MOSLEM ADVANCE.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1243, 27 September 1911, Page 5

THE MOSLEM ADVANCE.

"THE LAST GREAT WAR." By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright Sydney, September 26. Dr. Karl Kumni, a well-known African explorer, lecturing at the University, sounded a uoto of warning against tho Mohammedan menace in Africa, which, ho said, threatened to swamp tho country. Tribe after tribe was going: over to Islam, and possibly the last great war between the Crescent and the Cross would bo fought in Central Africa. It would bo an awful conflagration. Tho only remedy would bo the Christianising of tho country by a chain of missions fiom the Niger to tho Nile.

CHRISTIAN, MOSLEM, A2CD PAGAN. The activity of the Mohammedan pro~ paganda in Africa was discussed at the World Missionary Conference held at Edinburgh last year. The Rev. Dr. Robson (Edinburgh), reviewing tho condition of Africa, with its 500 languages, said one of tho first necessities was to throw a strong force across Africa to bar the advanco of Mohammedanism and carry Christianity north into tho Sudan. Mohammedan traders, every one a missionary, were- advancing steadily southward, and the British Administration actually gave every encouragement to pagans to become Mohammedans, while hiudering their conversion to Christianity. Dr. Karl Ivumm, from tho Sudan, named a great number of tribes well worth converting—thi. most v>arliki> in Africa—who had maintained their independence and fetish worship in tho mountains against Islam, but who, owing to European domination in the north and south, were now open to Mahommedan Influence. Professor Gnstav 'Wnrneck, tif Halle, in a letter, urged concentration of forces where the greatest battles would be fought-the far East and Central Africa. They were in danger of losing to Islam not only largo parts of now pagan Africa, but territories already Christianised. The Rev. W. H. T. Gairdnej (Church Missionary Society), of Cairo, said that JJr. Miller, the- great authority on the Hausa language, suggested that if sufficient native Evangelists could not be trained in Egypt, they could be got and trained in North Nigeria, where tho instincts of the people marked them out as a groat evangelising race. Dr. Miller declared that if they got forty men, a fair proportion being schoolmasters, they could definitely look forward, with some French help, to evangelising the Western Sudan, aud thenco Central Africa. Dr. Jaya (Church Missionary Society) complained that in Northern Nigeria the British Government was not even neutral. It was obvious to both Christian and pagan that tho Government had no use for them, only for Mohammedans, though if hostilo Mohammedans, now possessing arms, invaded British territory, their co-religion-ists would join them and only tho pagans and Christians would remain loyal. Dr. Mnrgoliouth, of Oxford, in his recent book on Mohammedanism, states that in the main Islam is a religion of tho "Heat Belt," that part of tho earth's snrfneo which lies between HO degrees north latitude and 30 degrees south latitude-, though it hns extended beyond the.se limits. He estimates tho number of Mohammedans in Africa at about 50,000,000.