This consideration goes partly to explain the success of Muslim as contrasted with Christian missions among the Negro peoples. It has frequently been pointed out that the Negro convert to Christianity is apt to feel that his European co-religionists belong to a stratum of civilisation alien to his own habits of life, whereas he feels himself to be more at home in a Muslim society. This has been well stated by a modern observer, in the following passage:—“Islam, despite its shortcomings, does not, from the Nigerian point of view, demand race suicide of the Nigerian as an accompaniment of conversion. It does not stipulate revolutionary changes in social life, impossible at the present stage of Nigerian development; nor does it undermine family or communal authority. Between the converter and converted there is no abyss. Both are equal, not in theory, but in practice, before God. Both are African; sons of the soil. The doctrine of the brotherhood of man is carried out in practice. Conversion does not mean for the converted [[358]]a break with his interests, his family, his social life, his respect for the authority of his natural rulers.… No one can fail to be impressed with the carriage, the dignity of the Nigerian—indeed of the West African—Mohammedan; the whole bearing of the man suggests a consciousness of citizenship, a pride of race which seems to say: ‘We are different, thou and I, but we are men.’ The spread of Islam in Southern Nigeria which we are witnessing to-day is mainly social in its action. It brings to those with whom it comes in contact a higher status, a loftier conception of man’s place in the universe around him, release from the thraldom of a thousand superstitious fears.”[151]
According to Muhammadan tradition Moses was a black man, as may be seen from the following passages in the Qurʼān. “Now draw thy hand close to thy side: it shall come forth white, but unhurt:—another sign!” (xx. 23). “Then drew he forth his hand, and lo! it was white to the beholders. The nobles of Pharaoh’s people said: ‘Verily this is an expert enchanter’ ” (vii. 105–6). The following story also, handed down to us from the golden period of the ʻAbbāsid dynasty, is interesting as evidence of Muhammadan feeling with regard to the Negro. Ibrāhīm, a brother of Hārūn al-Rashīd and the son of a negress, had proclaimed himself Caliph at Bag͟hdād, but was defeated and forgiven by al-Maʼmūn, who was then reigning (A.D. 819). He thus describes his interview with the Caliph:—“Al-Maʼmūn said to me on my going to see him after having obtained pardon: ‘Is it thou who art the Negro k͟halīfah?’ to which I replied:—‘Commander of the faithful! I am he whom thou hast deigned to pardon; and it has been said by the slave of Banuʼl-Ḥasḥās:—“When men extol their worth, the slave of the family of Ḥasḥās can supply, by his verses, the defect of birth and fortune.” Though I be a slave, my soul, through its noble nature, is free; though my body be dark, my mind is fair.’ To this al-Maʼmūn replied: ‘Uncle! a jest of mine has put you in a serious mood.’ He then repeated these verses: ‘Blackness of skin cannot degrade an ingenious mind, or lessen the [[359]]worth of the scholar and the wit. Let darkness claim the colour of your body: I claim as mine your fair and candid soul.’ ”[152]
Thus, the converted Negro at once takes an equal place in the brotherhood of believers, neither his colour nor his race nor any associations of the past standing in the way. It is doubtless the ready admission they receive, that makes the pagan Negroes willing to enter into a religious society whose higher civilisation demands that they should give up many of their old barbarous habits and customs; at the same time the very fact that the acceptance of Islam does imply an advance in civilisation and is a very distinct step in the intellectual, moral and material progress of a Negro tribe, helps very largely to explain the success of this faith. The forces arrayed on its side are so powerful and ascendant, that the barbarism, ignorance and superstition which it seeks to sweep away have little chance of making a lengthened resistance. What the civilisation of Muslim Africa implies to the Negro convert, is admirably expressed in the following words: “The worst evils which, there is reason to believe, prevailed at one time over the whole of Africa, and which are still to be found in many parts of it, and those, too, not far from the Gold Coast and from our own settlements—cannibalism and human sacrifice and the burial of living infants—disappear at once and for ever. Natives who have hitherto lived in a state of nakedness, or nearly so, begin to dress, and that neatly; natives who have never washed before begin to wash, and that frequently; for ablutions are commanded in the Sacred Law, and it is an ordinance which does not involve too severe a strain on their natural instincts. The tribal organisation tends to give place to something which has a wider basis. In other words, tribes coalesce into nations, and, with the increase of energy and intelligence, nations into empires. Many such instances could be adduced from the history of the Soudan and the adjoining countries during the last hundred years. If the warlike spirit is thus stimulated, the centres from which war springs are fewer in number and further apart. War is better organised, and is under some form of [[360]]restraint; quarrels are not picked for nothing; there is less indiscriminate plundering and greater security for property and life. Elementary schools,[153] like those described by Mungo Park a century ago, spring up, and even if they only teach their scholars to recite the Koran, they are worth something in themselves, and may be a step to much more. The well-built and neatly-kept mosque, with its call to prayer repeated five times a day, its Mecca-pointing niche, its Imām and its weekly service, becomes the centre of the village, instead of the ghastly fetish or Juju house. The worship of one God, omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, and compassionate, is an immeasurable advance upon anything which the native has been taught to worship before. The Arabic language, in which the Mussulman scriptures are always written, is a language of extraordinary copiousness and beauty; once learned it becomes a lingua franca to the tribes of half the continent, and serves as an introduction to literature, or rather, it is a literature in itself. It substitutes moreover, a written code of law for the arbitrary caprice of a chieftain—a change which is, in itself, an immense advance in civilisation. Manufactures and commerce spring up, not the dumb trading or the elementary bartering of raw products which we know from Herodotus to have existed from the earliest times in Africa, nor the cowrie shells, or gunpowder, or tobacco, or rum, which still serve as a chief medium of exchange all along the coast, but manufactures involving considerable skill, and a commerce [[361]]which is elaborately organised; and under their influence, and that of the more settled government which Islam brings in its train, there have arisen those great cities of Negroland whose very existence, when first they were described by European travellers, could not but be half discredited. I am far from saying that the religion is the sole cause of all this comparative prosperity. I only say it is consistent with it, and it encourages it. Climatic conditions and various other influences co-operate towards the result; but what has Pagan Africa, even where the conditions are very similar, to compare with it? As regards the individual, it is admitted on all hands that Islam gives to its new Negro converts an energy, a dignity, a self-reliance, and a self-respect which is all too rarely found in their Pagan or their Christian fellow-countrymen.”[154]
The words above quoted were written before the partition of the greater part of Africa among the governments of Christian Europe—England, France and Germany—but the imposing character of Muslim civilisation has not ceased to impress the Negro mind, or to operate as one of the influences favourable to the conversion of the African fetish-worshippers. Brought suddenly into contact with European culture, these have received an impulse to advance in the path of civilisation, but being unable to bridge over the gulf that separates them from their foreign rulers, they find in Islam a culture corresponding to their needs and capable of understanding their requirements and aspirations.[155] So far, therefore, from the extension of European domination tending to hamper the activities of Muhammadan propagandists, it has to a very remarkable degree contributed towards the progress of Islam. The bringing of peace to countries formerly harassed by wars of extermination or the raids of slave-hunters, the establishment of ordered methods of government and administration, and the increased facilities of communication by the making of roads and the building of railways, have given a great stimulus to trade and have enabled that active propagandist, [[362]]the Muslim trader, to extend his influence in districts previously untrodden, and traverse familiar ground with greater security. Further, the suppression of the slave-trade has removed one of the great obstacles to the spread of Islam in pagan Africa, because it was to the interest of the Arab and other Muhammadan slave-dealers not to narrow the field of their operations by admitting their possible victims into the brotherhood of Islam.[156] Converts are now won from pagan tribes which in the days of the slave-trade were untouched by missionary effort. To this result the European governments have contributed by employing Muhammadans to fill the subordinate posts in the civil administration (since among the Muhammadans alone were educated persons to be found) and distributing them throughout pagan districts, by employing Muhammadan teachers in the Government schools, and by recruiting their armies from among Muhammadan tribes; they have thus added to the prestige of Islam in the eyes of the pagan Africans—a circumstance that the Muslims have not been slow to make use of, to the advantage of their own faith.[157]
So little truth is there in the statement that Islam makes progress only by force of arms,[158] that on the contrary the partition of Africa among the European powers, who have wrested the sword from the hands of the Muslim chiefs now under their control, has initiated a propaganda which seems likely to succeed where centuries of Muhammadan domination have failed. [[363]]
[1] An excellent map of the extent of Islam in Africa is to be found in “The International Review of Missions,” vol. i. p. 652. [↑]
[2] Fournel, vol. i. p. 271. [↑]
[3] i.e. the diviner or priestess; her real name is unknown. [↑]