Pan-Islam

by G. Wyman Bury

I found the attitude of Moors generally towards Christians curiously inconsistent. In the towns there was a certain amount of formal fanaticism which found vent in donkey-drivers addressing their beasts as "Nasara" to the accompaniment of whacks and yells, but public behaviour was tolerant enough, and the attitude of Moorish officialdom was almost courtly.

Jews had rather a bad time, if local subjects, as their black slippers and furtive bearing outside their own quarter made them a mark for naughty little boys, who flung their canary-coloured slippers at them with curses and imprecations deserving a more direct and personal application of their footgear. Most of the wealthier Jews had acquired European or American protection, and were safe enough. They lived in the Frankish quarter and dressed in ultra-European style. They made rather a depressing spectacle on Saturdays, when, garbed in black broadcloth, with bowler hats, they drifted through the sunlit streets on their Sabbath constitutional from one town gate to the next and back. They were keen trade competitors, and gained or lost fortunes by gambling in the almond export-market or catching a grain-famine at the psychological moment. One of them had retired to a leisured affluence on the proceeds that a big cargo of almonds had yielded him at a startling turn in the market. He was a hospitable soul who met me once entering the landward gate in a travel-stained burnoose and insisted on dragging me into his gorgeously-carpeted house to drink aquardiente and look at his "curios." These consisted chiefly of modern firearms, some of first-class London make, which hung on his walls as ornaments, having been bought haphazard without ammunition or sporting intent. I nearly had a fit when he showed me a double .577 Express hopelessly rusted by the damp sea-air and offered to lend it me if I could find "shots" for it. The reverse of the shield was illustrated by another acquaintance of mine who had made a large fortune by importing Russian wheat to Morocco in famine time and had lost it in a short but striking career in England, during which he was said to have entertained Royalty, astonished the racing world and married a well-known actress in light comedy. He, too, was of hospitable intent, but had generally left his purse at home when the reckoning came. On the other hand, he always carried the "stub" of the cheque-book which had seen him to the apogee of his meteoric career, and a glance at its counterfoils (by his express invitation) was well worth the price of a drink or two.

The local Islamic attitude toward Moorish Jews was one of contemptuous tolerance. They could certainly travel, in native dress, where no Christian could. Once, in the patio or go-down of a European merchant, I met a greasy, unkempt Jew in a tattered gaberdine watching my commercial friend as he weighed what I took to be a double handful of crude brass curtain rings such as traders used to sell by the gross along the West African coast. They were solid gold and represented the venture of a Jewish syndicate which had collected it in pinches of gold-dust from the river beds of southern Soos and hit on this form of transport. A troop of horse could never have brought it, as gold, a day's journey through the lawless tribes of the south, but that tatterdemalion Jew had done it at the price of a few contemptuous buffets. He had, indeed, offered one truculent gang of highwaymen a few of the tawdry-looking rings to let him pass, but they had waved such obvious trash aside in their eager search for actual cash, which they had taken to the last rial.

The only other occasion on which I have known a Moor to be hoisted with the petard of his own contemptuous fanaticism was an experience of my own.

I was moving quietly through a belt of timber just before dawn in the hopes of getting a shot at a boar who was in the habit of feeding till daybreak among some barley that grew near a caravan route. Before the light was quite strong enough to shoot by I was more than a little annoyed and astonished to hear cocks crowing all over the place; presuming an early caravan with poultry for market, I pushed on to the track, meaning to pass the time of day and ask if they had glimpsed my quarry or heard him. I almost ran into a town-bred Moor who was trying to round up some scattered poultry in the gloom and cursing volubly. He explained that he was riding his donkey along the track perched between two light reed cages containing fowls when the donkey baulked as a boar snorted in the thickets just off the road. He whacked the donkey and cursed the boar as a pig and a Christian. Thereupon came a rush like cavalry, the donkey was knocked from under him and he was lying amid the wreckage of his flimsy crates with his poultry scattered abroad. The boar, already angry and suspicious, as anyone but a townsman would have known by the noise he made, had charged like a thunderbolt at the sound of a human voice so close to him and galloped off with all the honours of war.

The donkey was badly hurt and the man only escaped because he was sitting high and just above the point of impact. I helped him secure his poultry and started back to my village to send him another donkey. He thanked me in brotherly style as one Moor to another. "I'm a Christian myself," I remarked at parting, and added in my best beginner's Arabic as I turned to go, "It is incumbent on me to assist you after the aggression of my co-religionist."

This conventional attitude of arrogance toward Christendom is perhaps traceable to Moorish predominance in the Middle Ages and the importation of Christian slaves by the pirates of the Barbary coast. In any case, it has been much toned down of late years owing to contact with capable and well-intentioned Franks as administrators and technical experts.

Morocco should never become a forcing-bed of religious or racial antipathy, and will not so long as France continues to develop the country by methods which the natives can assimilate, and is not lured into over-exploitation of her mineral resources or unwarrantable interference with her spiritual affairs.

A perfectly justifiable missionary policy would be the inauguration of industrial schools on the coast and at one or two big inland centres, also medical missions (with consent of the local authorities) wherever feasible. Moorish craftsmanship is worth stimulating, and doctors are welcomed for their science. Both schemes would redound to the credit of Christendom and be in accordance with the best traditions of the Early Church.

In the other Barbary states (Algeria, Tunis and Tripoli) a few Catholic missions have been established, and the North African Protestant Mission has an advanced post at Kairwan in Tunis. Here many routes converge, for Kairwan is a great centre of pilgrimage and taps the religious thought of all the Saharan tribes. Under such conditions, Islam gets ahead every time, as every caravan traveller is a potential missionary, while Christian missions are anchored to the spot or have to rely on native colporteurs, who labour under the initial disadvantage of being proselytes and seldom have the combination of tact and staunchness which evangelists require.