There are few signs of extreme want, but disease and deformity meet one everywhere, and blindness is perhaps the most pitiful.
Egypt is largely an agricultural country, and naturally the largest percentage of her inhabitants are tillers of the soil. A little more than half belong to the peasant class and are known as "fellaheen." They are industrious after their own fashion, conservative to the point of bigotry, yet good-humored and peaceable. The peasant class are the hope of Egypt. They look back to a past full of crushing tyranny, political and religious, but under the improved political condition of the country the Egyptian peasant is beginning to widen his horizon and to aim for education and civilization. Poor they certainly are, but what of that when they have enough to eat such as it is and can spend their whole lives in sunshine and fresh air? Warm enough with the lightest clothing, well sheltered by the rudest cabin, no hard winters to provide against, and no coal to buy.
Such is the physical condition of Egypt and the Egyptian. What of the moral and spiritual?
Nine-tenths of the people are Mohammedans, thus Mohammedan ideas rule the thought and manner of life.
Because Mohammedans worship one God, many people say, "Let them alone, their religion is good enough for them, it is even better suited to them than Christianity." It is true that Mohammedanism was a revolt against the idolatry and corruption of the early Christian churches, but is that revolt, even though an honest effort to find a purer form of worship, any excuse for not holding out to them the true way of salvation? Is not that revolt rather a trumpet call to Christianity, wakening her up to her great responsibility toward the unbelief of Islam, whose apostasy was caused by the unfaithfulness of the old Christian churches of the East?
No one who has drunk deeply at the fountain of evangelical truth can defend Islam. It has been commonly supposed that the God of the Koran is the God of the New Testament. Those who have made the subject a matter of careful study and investigation find that they are totally different. The God of Christianity is a God of love, the God of Islam is an Oriental despot.
The element of love is left out of both the religion and morality of Islam. Marriage is not founded upon love but upon sensuality. A mother was rebuked for arranging a marriage for her fourteen-year-old son. Her excuse was, "I do it to keep him from learning the bad habit of visiting prostitutes." The sensual nature has been trained in the Egyptian to an indescribable degree of disgusting perfection. As some one has said, "Mohammedans have added a refinement of sensuousness to pagan sensuality." As a result of this training men and women have sunk to depths of degradation unconsciously manifested in their customs, in their speech, and in their life.
For twelve centuries the blight of Islam has fallen over the fortunes of Egypt. Politics, commerce, learning, all have felt its withering blast, but that which has most keenly felt the blast and blight of Islam is society. There is no word in the Arabic language for home, the nearest approach to it being "beit," which means "house" or "a place in which to spend the night." To quote from an interesting writer on this thought—"The word is lacking because the idea is lacking." "Home, sweet Home" with all its wealth of meaning is a conception foreign to the average Oriental. An educated young Moslem with advanced ideas in many respects was asked if the members of his family took their meals together. He said they did not, each one when he became hungry told the servant to bring food. "Would it not be better to eat together?" "Yes, it would be much cheaper," he replied, showing that the first ray of the beauty of the home circle had not penetrated his active mind. How can it be otherwise when woman, the heart and life of the family circle, was in his mind because of inherited ideas relegated to the position of prisoner and slave rather than to that of companion and helpmeet? "It was Islam that forever withdrew from Oriental society the bright, refining, elevating influence of woman by burying her alive behind the veil and lattice of the Harem."
Arabic poetry and literature is generally very uncomplimentary to woman, characterizing her as a donkey, or even a snake. The majority of the men hoot at the gallantry and courtesy which Anglo-Saxon etiquette demands of men towards women. Says an Egyptian, "Our women must be beaten in order to be made to walk straight." And beaten they are for trifling offence by father, husband, brother, or son as occasion demands. This custom is so common that the women themselves expect a whipping occasionally.