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ILLUSTRATIONS

Mohammedan Religious Service at Delhi, India, Frontispiece

Facing page

Islam and Modernism. Opening of Parliament by the
Sultan at Constantinople. The Sultan-Caliph
Stands Alone in the Central Box

Mosque at Mombasa, British East Africa

48 76

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Where Islam Meets Paganism in Africa:

Street Singer, Assuan, Egypt, a Moslem From
the Nyam-nyam Tribe

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Warriors of the Bisharin Tribe, Pagans, in the
Eastern Sudan

Chinese Mohammedans :

A Mohammedan Teacher

Butchers From West China

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The Late Sir Sayyad Ahmad Khan, Founder of the
Mohammedan College at Aligarh

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"And it came to pass, when Joshua was by Jericho, that he lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold there stood a man over against him with his sword drawn in his hand and Joshua went unto him and said unto him, Art thou for us or for our adversaries ? And he said Nay, but as prince of the host of Jehovah am I now come."-Joshua v. 13, 14.

"When the strong man fully armed guardeth his own court his goods are in peace, but when a stronger than he shall come upon him and overcome him he taketh from him his whole armour wherein he trusted and divideth his spoils."-Luke xi. 21, 22.

"Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith Jehovah of hosts."-Zechariah iv. 6, R. V.

I

AN INTRODUCTORY SURVEY

REV. SAMUEL M. ZWEMER, D. D., F. R. G. S., ARABIA

T

HE Moslem world is not a haphazard expression

invented by missionaries to represent a portion

of the great world problem of evangelization, but is a literalism which sums up an actual situation. Six years before the Cairo Conference the first number of the Revue du Monde Musulman was published in Paris, and for ten years this monthly magazine has, from a purely scientific standpoint, tried to survey the extent of Islam, its condition, and developments in those lands where it holds sway, and which as a world by itself scien⚫ tifically requires unity of treatment.

Nor is the Moslem world merely a geographical expression for the vast areas covered by Moslem conquest or conversion. The term is of much deeper significance. As Dr. C. H. Becker pointed out in his article in the first number of Der Islam, the word Islam itself stands for a unity of religious conception, a unity of political theory and of ideals of civilization, as well as of religion, which together form the problem of Islam, Therefore the essential and philosophical unity of the problem, in lands which constitute the Moslem world, has been recognized by all those who have made a study of the subject.

It is possible, for this reason, to give a general survey of the Moslem world as a unit, and there are three reasons why this survey should be given at the opening of the Conference which succeeds that held at Cairo five years ago. The Cairo Conference marked a great step in advance towards the evangelization of the Mohammedan

world because it gave the first full information through its published reports of the actual state of Mohammedan lands early in the twentieth century; but for one reason or another some lands were left out in that survey, and in other cases the survey was inadequate or inaccurate. The chief value of the Cairo Conference was to inaugurate or stimulate more accurate observation and more careful report among missionaries in Moslem lands. The first reason, therefore, for a general survey of the Moslem world at the opening of this Conference is to supplement the Cairo Conference Reports. The second reason is to correct its returns and statistics by later investigations and developments; and the third reason, sufficient in itself, is that only by a general survey can the delegates to this Conference see the whole problem at the outset and recognize its unity, its opportunity, and the importunity of the situation because of both.

We will take up the present survey in four divisions:

First, as regards Statistics;

Second, Political conditions and developments;
Third, Social and intellectual movements since
the Cairo Conference; and,

Fourth, The changed attitude towards the Mos-
lem world and missions to Moslems in the
home Churches as a result of the Cairo Con-
ference.

Such a survey can only be general, and preparatory to the more careful consideration of the topics that follow on our programme: Pan-Islamism, Missions and Governments, The Moslem Advance, Reform Movements, The Training of Missionaries, and The Methods to be used.

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We must still answer the question as to the total population of the Moslem world by conjecture instead of

accurate statistics, at the beginning of the twentieth century. The discrepancies in the statistical surveys of the Moslem world given by various authorities are as disconcerting as they are surprising. The total population of the Moslem world, for example, has been variously estimated as follows:

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Yet the discrepancy between the highest figures given, for example, by Hubert Jansen and Dr. Hartmann, and the lowest figures of the Allgemeine Missions Zeitschrift are partly explained by the varying estimates placed as to the number of Moslems in the Sudan and in China. For the rest of the world there seems to be at least partial agreement. The most detailed statistics can be found in Jansen, but they are not reliable in many respects and not as conservative as the results obtained in the papers prepared for the Cairo Conference. The latest statistical survey of the Moslem world is that given by Dr. Hartmann in an appendix to his valuable book, "Der Islam." The chief discrepancies between the statistics he gives and those of the Cairo Conference are the following:

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