1

results in keeping half of the community in ignorance and degradation;" and Mansur Fahmy, an educated Egyptian, has shown, in a recent critical study on the condition of women, that her position under Islam has gradually deteriorated. He proves this from Mohammedan literature and from the Koran itself. In Arabia, before Islam, her status was higher, and the veil did not exist before the time of the Prophet. The successive stages in what the author calls the degradation of womanhood are traced in the history of the caliphs and of the later dynasties. He also gives an excellent summary of the low position of woman in Moslem law, owing to polygamy and divorce. Her incapacity is emphasized by the fact that both as a witness and in the inheritance of property her sex is counted against her. And because this is all based upon the Koran and the official teaching of Islam, it has had its effect in every land and among all nations. The Moslem type of civilization can be recognized everywhere in the place assigned womanhood, and by the results of such social teaching upon childhood. So true is this that when one reads a standard book on the manners and customs of modern Egyptians, like that of Lane, he has in reality a picture of Moslem home life not only in Egypt, but

1 "La Condition de la Femme dans la Tradition et l'Évolution de l'Islamisme." Paris, 1913.

in Morocco, North India, and Central Asia. The outstanding features and fundamental lines in the picture are the same; the only difference is that of local colour and in matters that are secondary. When Edward Westermarck, therefore, wrote his great work on the "Marriage Ceremonies in Morocco," he practically gave a history of Moslem marriage throughout the world, citing parallel cases among Moslems in other lands.

The testimony of missionaries from Northern Nigeria is that the degradation of womanhood followed the introduction of Islam, and that she has a distinctly lower place in the Mohammedan community than she occupies among pagans. Gottfried Simon gives the same testimony in regard to Malaysia, stating that "the position of Moslem women is lower than that of her heathen sisters. Divorce and polygamy are rare in heathen districts; in purely Mohammedan districts, on the other hand, divorce is the order of the day. Mohammedan family life is often below the level of that of the heathen. . . . Disorderly conduct among the young people marks the arrival of Islam in the country."

A threefold burden rests, as an inheritance of ill, upon childhood throughout the Moslem world, namely, the evil effects of child marriage, superstitious medical practices, and fatalism in the care

of infants. One may trace the effect of these customs and beliefs, all based on Islam, in the physical and moral condition of Moslem childhood, and find it the same, whether in Persia or the Philippines, Manchuria or Morocco, Bulgaria or Bokhara, Cape Town or Calcutta. Heredity and environment have here produced similar effects. In a symposium on Islam from a medical standpoint, physicians from Kashmir, Mombasa, Baluchistan, Palestine, Arabia, Morocco, Nigeria, and Turkey were united in their testimony that ignorance, fatalism, and superstition darken the lives of Moslem women and children, blunting the child's finer feelings and handicapping him at the outset by insanitary conditions, dirt, and neglect. In the treatment of women before and after childbirth there is often actual cruelty, with its consequent results on the life of the child. Child marriage is specially spoken of; not the marriage of children one to another, but the marriage of little girls to men many years their seniors. "The saddest cases," writes Dr. Brigstocke of Palestine, "are those of little girls who ought to be enjoying games and school life, seriously injured, if not maimed for life, as a result of this horrible practice." (For sad details on this part of the subject, see The Moslem World, Vol. III, pp. 367-385.)

We must remember in this connection that Mos