Page:The young Moslem looks at life (1937).djvu/163

 to the seventeenth, Islam swept everything before it in its great onrush, and won victories from Morocco to Manila which have not heen obliterated to this day. Throughout these lands from West to East Christian churches and Hindu and Buddhist temples may be found which for centuries have been converted into mosques where the Moslem worships Allah.

"Yes," you say, "all very good. But those days of challenge belong to the past. What of the present? Are the Moslems planning a new holy war, a jihad, or whatever you call it? Are they about to summon their fanatic hosts once more to launch a great campaign against the non-Moslem nations of the world and offer them the Koran or the sword? If so, who is the caliph and leader of the faithful who is planning such a vast new world war for everyone knows that the Moslem world has been without a caliph since the Turks deposed the last of the Ottoman caliphs in 1924? Since then the different Moslem nations have not been able to agree upon a successor. So who is to head up this new great threat to the world's peace? No," you say, "it leaves us cold. We can't see it."

Well, to tell the truth, neither does anyone else see it just that way any more. But still the fact remains that Islam does offer a challenge to the world, and that great human problems are bound up in it. These Moslem millions are a problem to themselves. Things have not gone as they expected. The great dreams of a vast world empire which were once partly realized have been dashed to the ground. In these modern