The Progress and Arrest of Islam in Sumatra (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from The Progress and Arrest of Islam in Sumatra

This book marks a new epoch in the scientific study of missions to Moslems. Following so closely on Johann Warneck's The Living Christ and Dying Heathenism, it is in one sense a complementary study to that important work, yet in no wise subsidiary. For while Warneck has given us the philosophy and psychology of Animistic paganism in its conflict with the forces of Christianity, this volume deals with the far more important religion of Islam from a similar standpoint.

Lowell, in his Study Windows, tells us that translations are often "only an imitation of natural flowers in cambric or wax"; but this is not the case in the book before us. Miss E. I. M. Boyd has done her work well. By careful interpretation, rather than by slavish literalism, in all difficult passages she has put the German work before English readers in usable and attractive form.

The author has had eleven years' experience as a missionary on the Island of Sumatra, where the Moslem propaganda has indeed accomplished its masterpiece. Among a population of four million, over three and a half million profess the faith of Islam, although this religion entered Sumatra at the beginning of the fourteenth century; and it is in this very island world of Malaysia that Christian Missions to Moslems have had the largest direct results. Not only has his life and environment fitted the author for his task, but he has made a thorough study of all important authorities, especially the masterly works of such scholars as Snouck Hurgronje, Niemann and Poensen.

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