MOHAMMEDAN PROPAGANDISM AND OPPOSITION TO CHRISTIANITY: Two features distinguish Mohammedanism from all other non-Christian religions, its bitter opposition to Christian teaching and its active missionary spirit. Islam is one of the great missionary religions of the world, and its spread may be divided chronologically into three periods. The first period was from the death of Mohammed, 632-800; the second under the Ottomans and Moguls, 1280-1480; and, lastly, the modern period from 1780 on. During the first period Islam triumphed in western Asia, North Africa, and western China. During the second it extended into Central Asia, India, Malay Archipelago, and southeastern Europe. Recent advance has taken place in Africa, Russia, Malaysia, and India. Islam is still aggressive and is overrunning districts once pagan. Its numbers are increasing in Bengal, Burma, South India, the East Indies, West Africa, Uganda, the Congo Basin, Abyssinia, and on the Red Sea coast. In West Africa and Nigeria missionaries know of a "Mohammedan peril."

To the modern Christian world, missions imply organization, societies, paid agents, subscriptions, reports, and the like. All this is absent from the present Moslem idea of propagation, and yet the spread of Islam continues. With loss of political power, the zeal of Islam seems to increase, for Egypt and India are more active in propagating the faith than are Turkey or Morocco. The three currents of present progress in Africa are along the Upper Nile from Zanzibar into the Congo Region, and up the Niger Basin. Five factors favor the spread of Islam in Africa: the strategical geographical position, the advantage of higher culture over paganism,

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the favor of European colonial governments, the growth of race-hatred against Europeans, and the low moral standards and pagan elements in Islam. All this applies, although to a less extent, to the spread of Islam in other parts of the world.

Mohammedan opposition and objections to Christianity either arise from unregenerate human nature, in common with all other religions, or spring from belief in Islam and ignorance of the true nature of Christian faith. The latter are by far the stronger obstacles, and include: objections assailing the genuineness of the Bible and its present authority, those directed against leading Christian doctrines, especially the Trinity and the need of the atonement; and objections based on the claim that Mohammed succeeded Christ as Christ did Moses. Nine out of ten of objections by Mohammedans come from the ineradicable tendency to look upon everything and interpret everything carnally. It is the task of the missionary to meet these objections, since they are not only urged orally by individuals, but are the basis of an immense antiChristian literature, which, although constantly shifting its ground of attack and defense, continues to spread in the Moslem world, chiefly from Cairo, Delhi, Constantinople, and Calcutta, as centers.

S. M. Zwemer.

Bibliography: T. W. Arnold, The Preaching oflalam, Westminster, 1896 (a history of the propagation of the Moslem faith); W. St. Clair Tisdall, A Manual of the Leading Muhammadan Objections to Christianity, 2d ed., London, 1909; E. M. Wherry, Islam and Christianity in India and the Far East, New York, 1907; S. M. Zwemer, Islam. A Challenge to Faith, ib., 1907; F. WOrz, Die Ausbreitung des Islam in AJrika, in Allgemeine Misaionazeetschrift, Jan, 1910; Azharul-Hak (an Arabic work against Christianity in 2 vols., published at Cairo, of which there are Persian and Urdi translations, and one in French issued at Paris); At Hidayah (an Arabic work in 4 vols. issued at Cairo; replying to Arabic polemics, especially to the Azharul-Hak).