Perhaps mutual understanding and sympathy are more difficult between
Christianity and Islam than between any two of the world’s living
Faiths. On the side of Islam is the too-little remembered fact that the
only Christianity of which she is, so to speak, officially conscious,
is the least true, the least pure; while on the Christian side, we tend
to turn even from such points of contact as exist between ourselves
and this latest of the Faiths with an undefined shrinking from the
possibility of sympathy: the prophet repels us, the religion repels us,
the moral code repels us, the history repels us. When we discover that
Islam claims to supersede Christianity, we are filled with indignation
and horror. When we discover, as we do at intervals, how dark the
darkness of Muslim lands and how cruel the tender mercies of Muslim
rule may be, we desire nothing better than that Islam should be blotted
from off the face of the earth.
But Islam is still a world power, before which the Christian nations
of Europe have stood helpless even while fellow-Christians have been
cruelly and wickedly entreated. Islam cannot be ignored nor despised.
Rather it is imperative that it should be studied, if possible with
sympathy, by the Christian peoples, in order that the Muslim motive
power may be understood, and that Islam may be met face to face, as it
must one day be met by Christianity, worthily and Christianly. What
if the inevitable battle should be fought by the armies of the Cross,
rather than by the armies of the Nations?
This little book has been prepared, not primarily as a study of Islam,
but rather to indicate directions which Christian, and especially
Missionary, thought might profitably take. For the sake of those who
have not already some knowledge of Islam itself, or of its doctrines as
they compare with those of our own Faith, the chapters have followed
these two lines; but matters of great importance to the special student
have been necessarily omitted; and others have been very lightly
touched upon. For the guidance of any who are desirous of making a
more exhaustive study of this most important of all subjects, to those
who have at heart the honour of Christ and His speedy reign, there is
available a very large literature, in English, German, and French, upon
Islam and its relation to Christianity.