Having spent a good deal of my life in seeking for the right method of associating with modern thought the thirty-five millions of Mohammedans whom history has placed under the guardianship of my own country, I could not help drawing some practical conclusions from the lessons of history which I have tried to reduce to their most abridged form.  There is no lack of pessimists, whose wisdom has found its poetic form in the words of Kipling: 

  East is East and West is West,
  And never the twain shall meet.

To me, with regard to the Moslim world, these words seem almost a blasphemy.  The experience acquired by adapting myself to the peculiarities of Mohammedans, and by daily conversation with them for about twenty years, has impressed me with the firm conviction that between Islam and the modern world an understanding is to be attained, and that no period has offered a better chance of furthering it than the time in which we are living.  To Kipling’s poetical despair I think we have a right to prefer the words of a broad-minded modern Hindu writer:  “The pity is that men, led astray by adventitious differences, miss the essential resemblances[1].”

[Footnote 1:  S.M.  Mitra, Anglo-Indian Studies, London, Longmans, Green & Co., 1913, P. 232.]

It would be a great satisfaction to me if my lectures might cause some of my hearers to consider the problem of Islam as one of the most important of our time, and its solution worthy of their interest and of a claim on their exertion.

INDEX

A

Abbas (Mohammed’s uncle)
Abbasids government
 Khalifate
Abd-ul-Hamid, Sultan
Abduh, Mufti Muhammed
Abraham
Abu Bakr
Abyssinians
Africa
Africans
Agreement of the Community, see ‘Ijma’
Ahl al-hadith (men of tradition)
’Ajam
Al-Ash’ari
Alexander the Great
Ali, the fourth Khalif
Ali, Mohammed, the first Khedive
Alids
’amils (agents)
Anti-Christ
Arabia
Arabian, view in regard to the line of descent through a woman tribes prophet heathens migration race armies
 Shi’ah conquerors origin of hajj peninsula
Arabic, traditions speech arts custom grammar language
Arabs the nations conquered by the of Christian origin
Arnold, Professor T.W. 
Asia
Assassins
Augustin
Azhar-mosque

B

Bab Dereybah
Babis
Bagdad
Barbarians
Basra
Beduins
Beha’is
Bellarminius
Berber
Bible See Scriptures
Bibliander
Black Stone
Boulainvilliers, Count de
Breitinger
Buddhism
Burckhardt
Burton
Byzantine Empire
Byzantines

C