In the preceding pages I have endeavored in the limited space available to give an honest statement regarding the actual tenets and status of Moslemism in the past as well as in the present. While, on the one hand, I have studiously eschewed everything like detraction, I have, on the other, as carefully avoided anything that could reasonably be construed as an apology either for Mohammed or for Mohammedanism. It has never entered my mind, God forbid! to compare Moslemism with Christianity as a means for attaining to a true knowledge of our Creator or for realizing the highest spiritual ideals of which our race is capable. No, Christianity, especially that form of it which has sanctified and crowned the lives of a St. Jerome, a St. Francis of Assisi, a St. Theresa, a Joan of Arc; which presided at the sublime meditations of an Augustine of Hippo, or a Thomas of Aquin, of a Dante Alighieri, of a Christopher Columbus; which has given to the world such matchless heroes and heroines of charity and self-sacrifice as a St. Vincent de Paul, a Father Damien, a Sister of Charity, or a Little Sister of the Poor; that for us is the truest, the holiest, the most beneficent of all religions; the one that contains in all its fullness the revealed word of God, the one which must be our guide to a world of happiness eternal in the life beyond the tomb.
Truth and justice, however, compel us to admit that there are many, very many, things in Islam to extort our admiration. Nor can there be any doubt that Mohammed achieved many things for the improvement of his idolatrous, drink-sodden, vice-steeped, feud-wrecked countrymen. The Koran, we must confess, contains many beautiful things regarding one’s duties towards God and one’s neighbor; but all of them are directly or indirectly derived from the New or the Old Testament, or from the doctrines of the early Church. Notwithstanding all this, however, the teachings of Islam are as far beneath the saving and incomparable truths of Christianity as is the gross and sensual Prophet of Mecca beneath the all-pure and all-perfect Son of God.
But, to recur again to the previously quoted opinion of Cardinal Hergenrœther, Islam can serve as a stepping-stone from fetishism to Christianity and as such is worthy of our sympathetic study and appreciation.
Among the countless amiable, honest, hospitable, deeply religious Mussulmans that every traveler finds in Moslem lands there is a large number who yearn for union with God and who would make any sacrifice to conform with His holy will were it but clearly and unmistakably made known to them. They are but awaiting the arrival of the Savior’s messenger and will receive the word of salvation with joy and thanksgiving. The spiritual unrest among Moslems; the ever-increasing attempts at social and doctrinal reform; even the very zeal which loyal Moslems exhibit in extending the creed of the Prophet—the only form of religion with which they are really acquainted—attest their eagerness in seeking the truth and explain their ardor in propagating what they deem to be the only revelation of the Most High.
Add to all this a widespread feeling among Mussulman leaders as well as among Christian missionaries that the time has finally come when a serious effort should be made towards effecting some kind of a rapprochement between the Cross and the Crescent; when the vast organizations of Islam and Christianity should endeavor to arrive at a better understanding of one another’s doctrines and practices; when, rising superior to that age-long antipathy and that mischievous odium theologicum which has so long kept them in a state of implacable hostility, they should strive to meet one another as brothers in one Lord and as children of the same Father.
More than sixty years ago Abd-el-Kader, the gifted Algerian ruler and patriot, wrote: “If the Mussulmans and Christians would give ear to me, I should cause their divergence to cease and they would become brothers.”[260]
The number of Moslems who entertain a view similar to that of the distinguished emir is daily increasing. They feel that the moral and religious ideas of the various races of mankind are not so irreconcilable as they are ordinarily supposed to be. The greatest barrier towards a nearer communion of sentiments between Christians and Mohammedans has been erected by ignorance and prejudice. Remove this barrier and the way, they contend, will be prepared for intellectual sympathy and, eventually, for religious union.
Notwithstanding the long centuries of wars between the Cross and the Crescent, Mohammedans are so far from regarding our Savior, as is commonly supposed, with the hatred and contempt which Christians have usually entertained for the Prophet of Mecca, that they have for Him a reverence which is inferior only to that with which He is regarded by Christians themselves. They believe that He will again return to earth and, having slain Antichrist, will establish a reign of peace and justice among men. They believe that truth will at last be triumphant and the sword will be sheathed forevermore. According to the Shiahs of India there will then be an amalgamation of Islam and Christianity and then, finally, will be realized in its truest and highest sense something of Tennyson’s dream of universal peace and charity
In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world.
The spiritual agitation now existing among Moslems, the aspirations of so many of them for a purer and more elevating creed than that of Mohammed would seem to offer a peculiarly favorable opportunity for preaching to them the Gospel of the world’s Redeemer. But there are, unfortunately, almost insuperable difficulties in the way. There are, first and foremost, the selfish diplomacy and the unprincipled aggressions of the European Powers, which nullify in advance all projects of Christian propaganda. The frequent exhibitions of very questionable morality on the part of certain European diplomatists who have manifested a total disregard of the most solemn covenants; the ruthless conquests of Christian nations which have at times displayed an utter disregard of the most elementary rights of humanity and have often had recourse to the most cruel and barbarous methods of warfare—these things have not helped to commend to Moslems the religion of their conquerors. The recent campaigns of Italy in Tripoli, of England on the Gold Coast,[261] of Russia in the Transcaucasia have but intensified the bitterness of Islam toward Christendom and fanned the flame of fanaticism among millions who sullenly await an opportunity for making reprisal.