548 



The Review of Reviews. 



THE HOLY CITIES OF ISLAM. 

 Shall Napoleon's Policy be Ours? 



In the Oxford and Cambridge Review for 

 October J. F. Scheltema writes on Constanti- 

 nople and the holy cities of Islam. He recalls 

 the policy of Napoleon when in Egypt : — 



In the instructions left sur V etat des affaires et sur mes 

 frojets, he showed no less that his guiding principles 

 weie always the same : active courtship of Moslim senti- 

 ment ; exaltation of Mecca in opposition to Constanti- 

 nople ; incitement of the Muhammadan world against 

 the encroachments of the Ottoman Caliphate with the 

 ultimate personal aim of eclipsing the fame of Alexander 

 the Great as conqueror of the East. " It must be boine 

 in mind that, while Mecca is the centre of the Muham- 

 madan religion, Cairo is the second key to the holy 

 Caaba. The policy of the Sooltans of Constantinople 

 having been to discredit the Sherii of Mecca, to restrain 

 the relations between him and the ulemas, our policy 

 must be exactly the reverse. . . . The greater care 

 has to be taken to convince the Moslemin of our love 

 for the Qoran and our veneration for the Prophet." 



Such was Napoleon's policy. What shall be 

 ours? — 



In the race for the reversion of the protectorate over 

 the Holy Cities of Islam the actual situation seems 

 decidedly in favour of Great Britain. Not to speak of 

 the leavening process promoted by the Settlement of 

 Aden, a lump of yeast in the Arabian dough which may 

 or may not have something to do with its growing re- 

 luctance to Turkish kneading, with the disturbances in 

 Yemen, the continued occupation of Eg\pt offers ad- 

 vantages the ambition of Napoleon Buonaparte was not 

 slow to improve upon already more than a century ago. 

 Acting on the principles he tried to instil, with the funda- 

 mental difference that now his rivals lay down the law 

 in Cairo, there is no reason, urged a recent writer on 

 the subject, why the Khedive should not usurp the place 

 of the (Ottoman) Sooltan as head of Islam. . . . 

 Shall Great Britain be more fortunate? Egypt and the 

 Sudan cannot be called' indisputably hers before she 

 controls the Nile from its sources to the Delta, with all 

 its tributaries; before she draws Abessynia into her 

 orbit, and there the agreement of December 13th, igo6, 

 with France and Italy, is in her way, shielding the 

 integrity of that last remaining independent state of 

 the Black Continent. 



ISLAM IN AFRICA. 



In the International Review of Missions for 

 October Professor Westermann gives an ex- 

 haustive account of Islam in the West and 

 Central Sudan, with a map compiled by Bern- 

 hard Struck. 



THE negro in islam AND IN CHRISTIANITY. 



The Professor shows that Islam represents 

 for the African a higher state of social organisa- 

 tion than heathenism. The expansion of Islam 

 has taken place in the main automatically, and 

 without any direct effort. The dominant con- 

 sideration is rather the desire, through the 

 adoption of Islam, to obtain better conditions 

 of life :— 



When the negro adopts Islam, he at once becomes a 

 member of the higher social class. He is admitted 



without any restrictions into the Mohammedan society. 

 He quickly gains self-confidence and self-respect, and 

 feels that he is a member of a world-encircling organisa- 

 tion He enters into a clearly defined relationship with 

 Europeans. The despised bush negro becomes a Moham- 

 medan of position, whom even the European involun- 

 tarily treats with respect. It is quite otherwise when a 

 heathen joins the Christian community. We Europeans 

 remain foreigners to the African, and when he outwardly 

 adopts our civilisation he does not really understand^ it. 

 We have not yet fully learned, not even the missionaries, 

 to comprehend the negro in his distinctive qualities. We 

 have not taken sufficient trouble to understand his civi- 

 lisation and to ennoble it with the help of our own and 

 of Christianity; instead of this we are destroying his 

 civilisation and seeking to substitute our own. We are 

 thus exposed to the danger of turning the negro into a 

 mere caricature of the European, while Islam makes 

 him a self-respecting African. Moreover, the Euro- 

 peanised negro never obtains among the whites that 

 social equality to which Islam admits him readily. 

 There are Europeans who take little pains to conceal 

 the fact that the Christian "nigger" is as contemptible 

 in their eyes as the bush negro, and they not seldom take 

 every opportunity of expressing their preference for 

 Mohammedans. This sufficiently explains the fact that 

 recently even natives who have received a Christian edu- 

 cation have become advocates of Islam. Since they 

 need never expect a position of equality among their 

 European fellow-believers, they are disposed to see in 

 Islam the religion of the modern African. 



At the same time, the African knows a real 

 longing for the living God. To many a thought- 

 ful negro the impressive doctrine of the unity 

 of God, the Omnipotent Lord, comes as a reve- 

 lation. The political life, the social tone of the 

 general culture of the Sudan, owe a good deal 

 to Islam : — 



The Mohammedan is better dressed than the heathen, 

 has finer houses, is more prosperous, has enjoyed some 

 sort of education, is gentlemanly, dignified, and self- 

 possessed in his manner, and betrays in his intercourse 

 with Europeans not infrequently a noble and generous 

 bearing. 



Islam is also entitled to the honour of having intro- 

 duced the art of reading and writing into the Sudan. 



EFFECT OF ISLAM ON MORALS. 



In morals there is little difference between 

 Islam and heathenism. The position of women 

 is no better among Mohammedans than among 

 heathen. Sexual excesses are far more wide- 

 spread among Mohammedans than among the 

 heathen, with their more natural instincts. A 

 beneficent effect of Islam, so far as West Africa 

 is concerned, has been the suppression of the 

 use of alcohol. Islam has also put an end to 

 several other barbarous heathen customs, such 

 as cannibalism, the putting to death of children 

 and old people, death by means of ordeal, and 

 blood revenge. The Mohammedan of the Sudan 

 receives from his religion hardly anv moral 

 duties, but only religious commands, which exert 

 no influence on his inward disposition. How far 

 Islam has influenced the inner life of its ad- 

 herents is still but little known. The African 

 will not allow a stranger to see his heart. 



