Note 149 — Chapter XI · THE SPREAD OF ISLAM IN AFRICA.

The arrival of the Muhammadan in a pagan country is also the beginning of the opening up of a more extensive trade, and of communication with great Muhammadan trading centres such as Jenne, Segu or Kano, and a share in the advantages of this material civilisation is offered, together with the religion of the Prophet. Thus “among the uncivilised negro tribes the missionary may be always sure of a ready audience: he can not only give them many truths regarding God and man which make their way to the heart and elevate the intellect, but he can at once communicate the Shibboleth of admission to a social and political communion, which is a passport for protection and assistance from the Atlantic to the Wall of China. Wherever a Moslem house can be found there the negro convert who can repeat the dozen syllables of his creed, is sure of shelter, sustenance and advice, and in his own country he finds himself at once a member of an influential, if not of a dominant caste. This seems the real secret of the success of the Moslem missionaries in West Africa. It is great and rapid as regards numbers, for the simple reason that the Moslem missionary, from the very first profession of the convert’s belief, acts practically on those principles regarding the equality and brotherhood of all believers before God, which Islam shares with Christianity; and he does this, as a general rule, more speedily and decidedly than the Christian missionary, who generally feels bound to require good evidence of a converted heart before he gives the right hand of Christian fellowship, and who has always to contend with race prejudices not likely to die out in a single generation where the white Christian has for generations been known as master, and the black heathen as slave.”149