CHAPTER V
A PLEA FOR TOLERANCE
The world just now appears to be awaiting a millennium resulting from a concourse of more or less brilliant and assertive folk with divergent views. Presuming that the necessary change in human nature will be wrought by enactment, we have still to acquire more religious tolerance if we are to live together in unity with our Moslem fellow-subjects and neighbours.
What is the use of talking about a League of Nations and the self-decision of small States if we still seek to impose our religious views on people who do not want them and encroach on the borders of other creeds? Are other people's spiritual affairs of no account, or do we arrogate to ourselves a monopoly of such matters? Both positions are untenable.
The justification of missionary enterprise is based on Christ's last charge to His disciples: "Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature." He clearly defined that gospel as "the tidings of the kingdom," and what that kingdom was He has repeatedly told us in the Sermon on the Mount, frequent conversations with His disciples and others and the example of His daily life. He never sought to change a man's religious belief (such as it was) or his method of livelihood (however questionable it might be), but to reform him within the limits of his convictions and his duties. He has also left on record an indictment of proselytisers that will endure for all time. Of course, if the Gospel narrative is unreliable throughout (as the reverend and scholarly compiler of the "Encyclopedia Biblica" would appear to imply) then these arguments fall to the ground, but so does any possible justification of missionary enterprise. On the other hand, Moslems do believe and reverence the Engîl or Gospel, though they follow the doctrine and dogma of a later revelation.
The logical deduction from these facts is that moral training, education and charitable works among Moslems are permissible and justifiable features of missionary endeavour, if not forced upon an unwilling population, but attacks on Islam itself are not only unmerited but unauthorised and impertinent.
Many missionaries of undoubted scholarship and breadth of view see this and model their field work accordingly, with good results; in fact, most real success in the mission field has been achieved by practical, Christian work on the above lines, and not by religious propaganda; but the flag which missionary societies flaunt before a subscribing Christian public is quite a different banner, as can be easily ascertained from their own published literature, which is very prolific and accessible to all.
In writing about Islam the authors or compilers of these works too frequently allow their zeal to involve them in a web of inconsistency and misstatement, or else they let their religious terminology take liberties with their intellect and that of the public.
We will glance briefly at their indictment of Islam as presented in their quasi-geographical works, disregarding their public utterances and tracts as privileged, like the platform-speeches and vote-catching pamphlets of a General Election; also we will keep to their own terminology and expressions as far as possible.
First and foremost, especially in the United States, where knowledge of non-Christian creeds is not so general as with us, the literature of foreign missions insists on grouping together all regions as yet unexploited by them (whether populated by heathen, Moslems, Buddhists or any other non-Christian race) and describing them indiscriminately as Gibraltars of Satan's power, a challenge to Christendom and a reproach to Zion (whatever that may mean). Yet the four great Christian Churches—Greek, Russian, Catholic and Protestant—seem powerless to check the reign of hell in Bolshevist Europe, where the liberty of man is demonstrated by murder, rapine, torture and every fiendish orgy or bestial lust which mortal mind can conceive. The people among whom these devilries are being enacted are Christians ruled by Christians, and have been Christian for centuries. They are still Christian so far as a blood-besotted clique will let them be anything. And in the face of such facts there are missionaries who enunciate in cold print that without Christianity there could be no charitable or humane organisation of any sort, or good government, or security of property, and—clinching argument—trade would suffer. Could there be any more glaring example of the cart before the horse? Does a dog wag his tail or the tail wag the dog? Is Japan hopelessly benighted and devoid of the activities described as the monopoly of Christianity? Moreover: Can Christian teaching or preaching pacify the embittered struggle between labour and capital which threatens yet to wreck civilisation? Does it even try?
There is no more ridiculous or extravagant boast among a certain class of self-appointed evangelists than the oft-repeated statement that all the modern blessings of Western civilisation are the fruit of Christianity and that the backward state of oriental Moslems is due to the absence of Christianity.