Note 191 — Chapter VIII · FREETHOUGHT UNDER ISLAM1

It may be worth while, in conclusion, to note that the comparative prosperity or progressiveness of Islam as a proselytizing and civilizing force in Africa—a phenomenon regarded even by some Christians with satisfaction, and by some with alarm191—is not strictly or purely a religious phenomenon. Moslem civilization suits with negro life in Africa in virtue not of the teaching of the Koran, but of the comparative nearness of the Arab to the barbaric life. He interbreeds with the natives, fraternizes with them (when not engaged in kidnapping them), and so stimulates their civilization; where the European colonist, looking down on them as an inferior species, isolates, depresses, and degrades them. It is thus conceivable that there is a future for Islam at the level of a low culture-stage; but the Arab and Turkish races out of Africa are rather the more likely to concur in the rationalistic movement of the higher civilization.