THE NEW WORLD OF ISLAM

BY

LOTHROP STODDARD, A.M., Ph.D. (Harv.)

AUTHOR OF: THE RISING TIDE OF COLOUR,

THE STAKES OF THE WAR,

PRESENT DAY EUROPE: ITS NATIONAL STATES OF MIND,

THE TRENCH REVOLUTION IN SAN DOMINGO, ETC.

WITH MAP

SECOND IMPRESSION

LONDON

CHAPMAN AND HALL, Ltd.

1922

Printed in Great Britain by Richard Clay & Sons Limited. Bungay, Suffolk

PREFACE

The entire world of Islam is to-day in profound ferment. From Morocco to China and from Turkestan to the Congo, the 250,000,000 followers of the Prophet Mohammed are stirring to new ideas, new impulses, new aspirations. A gigantic transformation is taking place whose results must affect all mankind.

This transformation was greatly stimulated by the late war. But it began long before. More than a hundred years ago the seeds were sown, and ever since then it has been evolving; at first slowly and obscurely; later more rapidly and perceptibly; until to-day, under the stimulus of Armageddon, it has burst into sudden and startling bloom.

The story of that strange and dramatic evolution I have endeavoured to tell in the following pages. Considering in turn its various aspects—religious, cultural, political, economic, social—I have tried to portray their genesis and development, to analyse their character, and to appraise their potency. While making due allowance for local differentiations, the intimate correlation and underlying unity of the various movements have ever been kept in view.

Although the book deals primarily with the Moslem world, it necessarily includes the non-Moslem Hindu elements of India. The field covered is thus virtually the entire Near and Middle East. The Far East has not been directly considered, but parallel developments there have been noted and should always be kept in mind.

Lothrop Stoddard.

CONTENTS

THE NEW WORLD OF ISLAM

Schiller, Wilhelm Tell.

INTRODUCTION

THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE OLD ISLAMIC WORLD

The rise of Islam is perhaps the most amazing event in human history. Springing from a land and a people alike previously negligible, Islam spread within a century over half the earth, shattering great empires, overthrowing long-established religions, remoulding the souls of races, and building up a whole new world—the world of Islam.

The closer we examine this development the more extraordinary does it appear. The other great religions won their way slowly, by painful struggle, and finally triumphed with the aid of powerful monarchs converted to the new faith. Christianity had its Constantine, Buddhism its Asoka, and Zoroastrianism its Cyrus, each lending to his chosen cult the mighty force of secular authority. Not so Islam. Arising in a desert land sparsely inhabited by a nomad race previously undistinguished in human annals, Islam sallied forth on its great adventure with the slenderest human backing and against the heaviest material odds. Yet Islam triumphed with seemingly miraculous ease, and a couple of generations saw the Fiery Crescent borne victorious from the Pyrenees to the Himalayas and from the deserts of Central Asia to the deserts of Central Africa.

This amazing success was due to a number of contributing factors, chief among them being the character of the Arab race, the nature of Mohammed's teaching, and the general state of the contemporary Eastern world. Undistinguished though the Arabs had hitherto been, they were a people of remarkable potentialities, which were at that moment patently seeking self-realization. For several generations before Mohammed, Arabia had been astir with exuberant vitality. The Arabs had outgrown their ancestral paganism and