Islam, a challenge to faith; studies on the Mohammedan religion and the needs and opportunities of the Mohammedan world from the standpoint of Christian missions (1907) (14591570410)

Identifier: islamchallengeto00zwem (find matches)
Title: Islam, a challenge to faith; studies on the Mohammedan religion and the needs and opportunities of the Mohammedan world from the standpoint of Christian missions
Year: 1907 (1900s)
Authors: Zwemer, Samuel Marinus, 1867-1952
Subjects: Islam Islam -- Muslims Islam Zending Missie Christendom
Publisher: New York, Student volunteer movement for foreign missions
Contributing Library: Princeton Theological Seminary Library
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN



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at polygamy and slavery have had a tremendous power in the spread and grasp of Islam. It is the testimony of history that the slave-traders of Zanzibar were also the missionaries of Islam, in darkest Africa; and the last census report of Bengal states that the increase of the Mohammedan population there is due, not to conversions from Hinduism, but to polygamy and concubinage as open doors into a higher caste for submerged Hindu womanhood. We must also consider that the loose moral code of Islam is ever an attraction to the unregenerate. It is impossible to give here, even in outline, the true character, extent and effect of these three *religious institutions of Islam. A Moslem who lives up to his privileges and who follows the example of the saints in his calendar can have four wives and any number of slave-concubines; can divorce at his pleasure; he can re-marry his divorced wives by a special though abominable arrangement; and, in addition to all this, if he belong to See Surah 33:37.
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i^^\i\^ THE ETHICS OF ISLAM 12/ the Shiah sect he can contract marriages for fun (Metaa), which are temporary. As Robert E. Speer said at the Student Volunteer convention at Nashville, 1906: *The very chapter in the Mohammedan Bible which deals with the legal status of woman, and which provides that every Mohammedan may have four legal wives, and as many concubines or slave girls as his right hand can hold, goes by the title in the Koran itself of The Cow. Altho, of course, the title of the chapter was not given it for that reason. The degrading views held as regards the whole marriage relation are summed up by Ghazzali when he says: Marriage is a kind of slavery, for the wife becomes the slave (rakeek) of her husband, and it is her duty absolutely to obey him in everything he requires of her exceptin what is contrary to the laws of Islam. Wife beating is allowed by the Koran, and the method and limitations are explained by the laws of religion. The Slave-Trade. Arabia, the cradle of Islam