ON ISLAM AND ANIMISM. 



103 



by the practices and doctrines of the people among whom the religion 

 was promulgated. 



Mr. C. E. BuCKLAND said that, in reading The Moslem Wmid, a 

 quarterly conducted by Dr. Zwemer, he had noticed frequent men- 

 tion of the spread of Islam among the wild tribes of Africa. 

 Apparently these tribes turned more readily to Islam than to 

 Christianity ; and Dr. Zwemer's paper seemed to supply a very 

 possible explanation of the fact. The animistic and superstitious 

 beliefs and practices in Islam were just the kind of things that 

 would commend themselves to tribes who knew no better. There- 

 fore, he would have liked to hear more about them. If animism 

 and Islam were related, then missionaries to Moslems were supplied 

 with a clue which they might well take up in dealing with African 

 tribes. 



Mr. M. L. Rouse, B. A., B.L., adverting to the remarks of the pre- 

 vious speaker, said that the Africans had tree-worship — sacred trees 

 to which they devoted unfortunate children. A child would be found 

 sitting under a tree and no one was allowed to feed him, and there 

 he had to die because offered as a sacrifice to the spirit of that tree. 

 Sacred trees also prevailed in China, under which people addressed 

 evil spirits. He thought with the last speaker that the reason 

 Mohammedanism gained ground was partly because it tolerated such 

 superstitions, and partly because it was a religion which did not impose 

 on men the task, so repugnant to human pride, of overcoming evil 

 with good ; which did not bid men be gentle and forbearing, but 

 bade them attack their enemies and propagate religion by the sword, 

 as Mohammed did at the outset. 



Mohammed was nephew of the guardian of the Kaaba at Mecca — 

 a stone about nine inches long, which was fabled to have been once 

 a ruby, but to have become black through weeping over the sins of 

 the world ! Thus a kind of soul was given to this stone, and that 

 idea of course still prevailed. It was still a scene of worship. 

 Mohammed as a young man had to set up the Kaaba again when the 

 sacred house in which it was kept fell out of repair. He learnt all 

 the rites which were practised, and went through them ; and there- 

 fore it was only natural that, while setting up a worship of one God, 

 he should retain many such rites. Nor, conversely, was his 

 monotheism a wholly new thing at Mecca ; for while we read that 



