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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE
The second and third sections of this book are presented as anhistorical document on the prejudices of Christians in Europe andAmerica against Islam at the time this book was written.
STUDIES IN THE FAITHS. II.
ISLAM
[All rights reserved.]
ISLAM
BY
ANNIE H. SMALL
AUTHOR OF‘YESHUDAS,’ ‘SUWARTA,’ ‘STUDIES IN BUDDHISM,’ ETC.
1905
London
J. M. DENT & CO.
New York: E. P. DUTTON & CO.
Richard Clay & Sons, Limited,
BREAD STREET HILL, E.C., AND
BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.
Perhaps mutual understanding andsympathy are more difficult betweenChristianity and Islam than between anytwo of the world’s living Faiths. On theside of Islam is the too-little rememberedfact that the only Christianity of which sheis, so to speak, officially conscious, is theleast true, the least pure; while on theChristian side, we tend to turn even fromsuch points of contact as exist betweenourselves and this latest of the Faiths withan undefined shrinking from the possibilityof sympathy: the prophet repels us, thereligion repels us, the moral code repelsus, the history repels us. When we discoverthat Islam claims to supersedeChristianity, we are filled with indignationand horror. When we discover, as we doat intervals, how dark the darkness of[Pg vi]Muslim lands and how cruel the tendermercies of Muslim rule may be, we desirenothing better than that Islam should beblotted from off the face of the earth.
But Islam is still a world power, beforewhich the Christian nations of Europehave stood helpless even while fellow-Christianshave been cruelly and wickedlyentreated. Islam cannot be ignored nordespised. Rather it is imperative that itshould be studied, if possible with sympathy,by the Christian peoples, in orderthat the Muslim motive power may b