A MOSLEM REVIVAL | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Oct 6, 1887

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 13, No. 39.

A MOSLEM REVIVAL.

TURKEY has entered upon a revival of education and religion; that is, a revival according to Moslem ideas. It commenced by the issuance of orders for closing all schools supported by foreigners which did not have special grants from the Sultan. Next, the movement was extended to European and American schools of all kinds, Moslem children being prohibited by law from receiving instruction from foreigners, while at the same time Turkish schools were opened in towns and villages, and the children were made to attend them by compulsory laws.

Side by side with this educational movement there has been inaugurated a religious revival. The mosques have been repaired, renovated, and decorated, new places of worship have been opened, and the shrines of Moslem saints have been multiplied.

The Turk is described as conducting this revival not in a fanatical spirit, but in a practical, business-like way, for the sake of consolidating his political power and reviving his influence in Asia.

This action of Turkey, miscalled a revival of education, puts a period to her intellectual advancement. All that Turkey has learned of late years has been taught her in the schools founded and supported by foreigners—chiefly Americans. Turkish schools, outside of Constantinople, are merely names, nothing more. The one book of study for the children in these schools is the Koran. From this they learn to read, and its precepts are impressed on their minds continually; and among these precepts, and the one chiefly insisted upon, is not the declaration that there is but one God and Mohammed is his prophet, but that the one true religion is Islamism, and that to conquer the world by the sword and to convert all people to the true faith on pain of death, is the duty and privilege of every believer.

It may be asserted that the revival of Turkish education and of the Moslem religion is unaccompanied by a spirit of fanaticism, but the assertion cannot be true. Education is made to depend upon the national religion, and the very genius of that religion is fanaticism. As well say that education in the tenets of Mormonism is unconnected with polygamy, or that training in the school of the Apache warrior does not teach murder and rapine.

Such a revival augurs ill for the future of Turkey. Conquest of the infidel is an essential, ingrained part of a genuine Turkish education, and if carried to its logical sequence must result in an attempt on the part of Turkey to extend its power by the sword; an attempt which can result only in the utter destruction of the Ottoman Empire.—S. F. Chronicle.