Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Law of Apostasy in Islam Answering the Question Why There, Are So Few Moslem Converts, and Giving Examples of Their Moral, Courage and Martyrdom
The story is told that Damocles, at the court of Dionysius of Sicily, pronounced the latter the happiest man on earth. When, however, Damocles was permitted to sit on the royal throne, he perceived a sword hanging by a horse-hair over his head. The imagined felicity vanished, and he begged Dionysius to remove him from his seat of peril. To-day we read of new mandatories, of liberty, and of promised equality to minorities under Moslem rule; and newspapers assert that a new era has come to the Near East. Economic development, intellectual awakening, reforms, constitutions, parliaments and promises! Does the sword of Damocles, however, still hang over the head of each convert from Islam to Christianity? Is the new Islam more tolerant than the old? Will the lives and property of converts be protected, and the rights of minorities be respected? This little book is an attempt to answer one aspect of these large questions, which are all of vital importance to the work of Christian Missions.
Again and again has European pressure, aided by a few educated Orientals, endeavoured to secure equality before the law for all religions and races in the Near East. But as often as the attempt was made it proved a failure, each new failure more ghastly than the last. The reason is that the conscience and the faith of the most sincere and upright Moslems are bound up with the Koran and the Traditions. Civilization cannot eradicate deep-seated convictions. Rifles and iron-clads, the cafe, the theatre, written constitutions, representative parliaments; none of these reach far below the surface. A truer freedom, a deeper religious experience, a higher life than the one supplied by their own faith, must come before Moslems can enter into the larger liberty which we enjoy.
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