Page:The Moslem World - Volume 02.djvu/43

 THE ENTERING WEDGE


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has become an axiom that the Moslem problem is to-day the most difficult facing the Christian Church. Its points of weakness and its points of strength unite to make this true. The moral code of Islam is eminently suited to our fallen nature. The religion that permits an almost unbounded Ucense in the moral sphere is the religion that is sure to be popular in aU but highly- ci\ahsed races. A religion that asserts deficiencies in the very nature of woman, not found in man, is sure to be received with favour b\^ savage and semi-savage peoples, among whom woman has never been admitted to her proper rights.

In conversation, recently, with a sheikh of the Mevlevi, or whirling dervish order, we gradually drifted to the question of female education. He had, two days before, attended the Christmas exercises of our girls' school. He asked me why we did not introduce manual training into our curriculum. I replied that we hoped some day to do so, but at present we could not under- take more than we were doing. For, he continued, a woman should not know more than enough to read, and possibly to write, that she might be able to pen a line or two to her husband when absent from home ; more than that would probablly fit her for her proper sphere. She was born to serve man, she should be taught manual trades so that she could help her husband support the family, and assume the whole burden when he was called to military service.

I contended that the future of the race depended, to a large extent, on the intelligence of the mothers, to whose training and under whose influence the earh^ years of the child are committed. " But," he repUed, " it is not a question as to what we consider wise ; the salient question is, what is wTitten in the Book of God, i,e., the Koran. Everv word of that must be taken literallv, and that asserts woman's inferiority, therefore advanced