Islam's Three Centers

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Nov 28, 1911

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 38, No. 47.

Islam's Three Centers

In view of the present situation of affairs in the Near East, Dr. S. M. Zwemer's description of the Mohammedan State is interesting. Writing in the Moslem World, he says:

The Mohammedan world has three capitals: Mecca, Cairo, and Constantinople. Mecca has been the heart of the Moslem world for many centuries. It is to-day the pulse that throbs with a religious life which finds an outlet to the farthest limits of the Moslem empire. Cairo is the head, where religious thought and education, controversy and Moslem propagandism through the press, have their center. And Constantinople has, since the Ottoman Turks made it their capital, been the hand, the center of Mohammedan political power; and not only of political power, but of grievous political persecution. These three capitals, knit together by the warp and woof of their cosmopolitan influence, weld the great Mohammedan world into a surprising solidarity.