Yet the fact remains: these women and girls cannot be educated and emancipated, without bringing to bear on the social fabric influences which would result in its disintegration and destruction, with nothing better to replace it. Galling as are the curtain and the veil, they cannot be dispensed with, for fear of worse evils. Ignorance and seclusion are better than education and liberty without moral restraint.
While polygamy and divorce exist, and there is no standard of purity equally applicable to both sexes, more freedom than woman now possesses cannot with safety be granted her. I fail to see any remedy, but in the doctrine and practice of Christianity. The fact known to be true of a school in Syria, points out the solution of the problem. Of the pupils of a Protestant school, conducted there, for many years, and largely attended by Moslem girls, it is stated a case has never been known where a pupil who had passed through their hands had been divorced or obliged to accept a second wife in her home.
These women have learned lessons of duty, of personal responsibility to God, of self-respect, self-control, kindness, and love, that cause the hearts of their husbands safely to trust in them. Can we say as much for any other system of education or religion?
Certainly Mohammedanism, with its twin evils of polygamy and divorce, has not only failed to elevate woman, but has everywhere resulted in her degradation. More pitiful than the more obvious wrongs inflicted by this system, is the effect produced upon character. Being distrusted, she has become untrustworthy; being abused, she has become abusive; and every evil passion is given free rein.
The bad wife is described by a Moslem writer as "a rebel for contumacy and unruliness; as a foe for contemptuousness and reproach; and as a thief for treacherous designs upon her husband's purse." She becomes an adept in the use of woman's weapon, the tongue; "an unruly evil full of deadly poison." "An angry woman in a passion of rage, pouring forth torrents of curses and invectives, is a fury incarnate." The jealousy of rival wives often leads to dreadful crimes. One woman became blind from vitriol thrown in her face by another wife; an only son, most precious and of high rank, was poisoned in his innocent babyhood by his mother's rival; a young bride attempted suicide in her despair.
These are but instances; every harem has its unwritten tragedies.
Not the least feature of the moral ruin into which they have fallen, is the impurity which seems to permeate every thought; so that they delight in obscene songs, vile allusions, and impure narratives. A missionary lady visiting at the home of a highborn Moslem woman, very religious and devout according to their standards, was so shocked by the character of the conversation with which her hostess was trying to entertain her, as to be forced to say, "If you talk to me like this, I shall be obliged to excuse myself and leave your house."
Saddest of all, they often become so depraved that they not only connive at the evils of the system, but actively promote them. A lady going on a long pilgrimage herself chose and brought two young girls, to be her husband's concubines in her absence. A mother cultivates in her son the passions she should teach him to subdue. The present mode of life is supposed to be perpetuated in Paradise, where every true believer is to have "seventy-two wives, and eighty thousand slaves," all Houris specially created for him. The place for Moslem woman is not definitely specified.
The religion that robs them of happiness in this life, and gives no hope of it in the next, lays the same obligations upon them as on men, viz., the five foundations of practice: the witnessing to the Unity of God and the apostleship of the Prophet; observing the five daily seasons of prayer; alms-giving; the fast of Ramazan; and the pilgrimage to Mecca.
In Persia is added the mourning for a month, for Hassan and Hossein, the martyred grandsons of Mohammed. As in all religions, women are most zealous and devoted in the performance of these duties, but the practice of Islam has nothing to satisfy their soul hunger. Their belief in God is cruel fatalism, and all their rites work no change of heart, and give no peace of conscience.