Note 1 — CONTROVERSIAL LITERATURE BETWEEN MUSLIMS AND THE FOLLOWERS OF OTHER FAITHS.

The formation of societies for carrying on a propaganda in an organised and systematic manner is a recent development in the missionary history of Islam—as indeed it is comparatively recent in the history of Christian missions. Such Muslim missionary societies would appear to have been formed in conscious imitation of similar organisations in the Christian world, and are not in themselves the most characteristic expressions of the missionary spirit in Islam. In the Western world there is very little to note. No attempt seems to have been made to form such a society before the latter half of the nineteenth century, and the earliest efforts were attended with little success. When H. M. Stanley in 1875 urged in the English Press the sending of a Christian mission to King Mutesa of Uganda, the wide-spread attention paid to his appeal led to the formation of a missionary society in Constantinople for the propagation of Islam in that country, but no Muhammadan missionaries were ever sent to Uganda, and the outbreak of the Russo-Turkish war in 1878 diverted the attention of the Turks from any such enterprise.1 A similar failure to establish organised missionary effort was manifested when the Anglo-Egyptian Government of the Sudan marked out zones of influence for various Christian missionary societies in districts the natives of which were heathen; some Muslims of Cairo claimed that a part of the territory should be allotted to the followers of Islam; whereupon the Government replied that all they had to do was to send the missionaries and the same facilities would be afforded to them as to the Christian missionaries; but the necessary organisation was lacking and the matter was allowed to drop.2 In 1910 Shayk͟h Rashīd, the editor of al-Manār, founded a missionary society in Cairo, the object of which is to establish a college (entitled Dār al-daʻwah waʼl-irshād) for the training of missionaries and apologists for Islam, who are to be sent primarily into heathen and Christian lands, but also into those Muhammadan countries in which attempts are being made to induce the Muhammadans to abandon their faith.3