CHAPTER XXIII

ISLAM IN WEST AFRICA

Being now perhaps in a somewhat more open frame of mind with regard to the work of Islam in West Africa, we may attempt to investigate the methods of Islam and the methods of Christianity in their relationship to the Negro. In this manner we may hope to come to still closer quarters with the subject, and by so doing arrive at a tolerably clear impression of its various phases. Why does Africa, which was, as has been truly said, “the nursing mother of Christianity,” remain impervious to the teachings of the highest religion? Why does Christianity, which has laboured for so many centuries in Western Africa, make no appreciable advance in that country? The failure may, I think, be ascribed to four main causes: first, the refusal to admit that the circumstances which regulate certain natural laws vary with climatic considerations and racial idiosyncrasies; secondly, the tendency which Christianity, as taught in West Africa, has to denationalise; thirdly, the incompatibility between the ideals of Christ and modern conceptions of Christianity; fourthly, the political action of Christian Powers.

For obvious reasons the question of polygamy is a very difficult one to publicly discuss, but the subject of Christianity and Mohammedanism in Western Africa cannot adequately be treated without referring to it. It is no use shutting our eyes to the fact that the refusal of the Christian Church to admit polygamists into its fold is one of the great obstacles with which the Church in West Africa has to contend. That is not seriously disputed, and yet, so far as can be observed, the chief dignitaries of the Church with whom all decisions affecting missionary enterprise in West Africa must ultimately lie, give no sign that they realise the paramount importance of the problem. Now and again individual utterances are made, which tend to show that some Churchmen, at least, are possessed of a spirit sufficiently broad to approach the subject in more practical fashion. A well-known Canon of the Church once remarked that, “owing to polygamy, Mohammedan countries are free from professional outcasts, a greater reproach to Christianity than polygamy to Islam.” Although the first part of that statement may not be accepted _ad literatim_, there are, unfortunately, sufficient data to show that the morals of Mohammedan communities in West Africa are higher than those of the Europeanised West Coast towns, where alone Christianity has gained a sort of foothold, and where a monogamous Christianity has been preached off and on for centuries past. And it is, at any rate, true that in West Africa the Mohammedan is, as a rule, distinctly averse to relationship with public women; and also, as a rule, jealously guards the honour of his wives and daughters.

Let us consider for a moment how this refusal on the part of the Church to receive polygamists appeals to the Negro in relation to Christianity. If there is one social feature of the Negro which all observers are agreed in recognising, it is the sincerity and depth of the link between mother and son.[194] With what sort of feelings, then, must the Negro look upon a religion which, according to its expounders, brands his parents with immorality? In very truth, whether we approach this great subject from a standpoint of common sense and severe practicability, or whether we claim to study it on moral grounds alone, only one conclusion can be arrived at. To offer Christianity to the Negro at the price of repudiating the members of his household is unreasonable, preposterous, unjust, and even cruel. It is unreasonable, insomuch as it ignores the most fundamental laws of human affection which exist in more or less developed form in every community and under every clime. It is preposterous, because it displays an extraordinary ignorance of the customs of the Negro and the strength of the family tie, and all that appertains to it among the Negroes. It is unjust, because it would deprive the rejected women (and children) of all they possess, cover them with shame and obloquy, thus deliberately inciting them to lead immoral lives. It is cruel, because, with an entire inconsequence and heedlessness of after effects, it would break up a social system consecrated by immemorial usage. There is a noble passage in Faidherbe’s great work which I cannot refrain from quoting in this connection:

“Certain people,” said that distinguished Frenchman, “would seem to desire that the natives should be induced to repudiate their wives and to retain but one. This method appears to me to be thoroughly immoral. What! Our object is to strengthen family ties, and we would begin by disorganising the family! We should commit a great injustice, and we should be displaying a singular callousness towards the women and children, if we professed to grant to the native the title and privileges of a citizen on the condition that he kept one wife and expelled the others. We should place venerable fathers of families in the position of sending away, with their children, wives with whom they had lived for fifteen, twenty, or thirty years. And how would they distinguish between their wives?... Disorganisation would be complete.”[195]

There is another aspect of the question which cannot fail to arrest the attention of all enlightened and truly Christian men. Is polygamy a necessary institution on physical grounds for the Negro _in Africa_? The evidence in a corroborative sense is not to be lightly dismissed. Without stopping to discuss the generally admitted theory that the sexual side of man’s nature becomes more pronounced as the tropical zone is approached, it is incontestable that a well-grounded belief exists in West African educated native circles that the effects of monogamy upon the Negro _are racially destructive_. Dr. Blyden’s testimony in this respect may not, perhaps, command universal acknowledgment, but the following passage from his writings is well worthy of note:

“Owing,” he says, “to the exhausting climatic conditions, the life and perpetuity of the population depend upon polygamy. The difference is marked between children born under monogamic restrictions and those whose parents are polygamists. In the one there is the evidence of physical deterioration and mental weakness; in the other are manifest physical vigour and mental activity and alertness. In the one there is the sad evidence of arrested growth, suppressed physical development, and intellectual sluggishness; in the other there is astonishing muscular strength and fully developed chest—a reproduction of their fathers’—not weaker, but wiser than their fathers’, when not diverted from aboriginal simplicity by alien influence.”

The exhausting climatic conditions of which Doctor Blyden speaks is accountable for a custom, almost universal throughout West Africa, among both Mohammedans and pagans; which, although it may have some drawbacks attaching to it, must nevertheless be assumed to entail preponderating advantages for the racial welfare of the people, or it would hardly have been so widely adopted. I refer, of course, to the extensive period of lactation—three years as a rule—during which time husband and wife have no connection; connection, indeed, generally ceasing when conception has taken place. The custom is attributive to the belief that too frequent child-bearing is injurious to the health of the mother and the offspring, in view of the climate.[196] This is a point which also deserves the most attentive consideration. The instinct of primitive peoples in such matters is generally found to be based upon knowledge born of experience. The only portion of the Dark Continent where orthodox Christianity has made any appreciable inroad is Uganda. Now what does Sir Harry Johnston tell us in his last report? He says there is a serious decrease in the birth-rate of the Bantu Waganda. He quotes Monseigneur Strachir’s opinion that one of the causes of this state of affairs is the introduction of monogamy, consequent upon the spread of the Christian faith.

“In many parts of West Africa,” continues Sir Harry Johnston, “where Christianity prevails, but where there is very little result other than pious utterances from the mouth, ostensible monogamy is corrected by the possession of recognised or unrecognised concubines, and by a general promiscuousness in sexual matters. But in Uganda, Christianity seems to have taken such a real hold upon the people that, though by no means free from immorality—as no nation or community is free from the same tendency—they really seem to be striving at genuine monogamy and the exclusive possession of one wife for a partner. As the Baganda women are certainly very poor breeders, this means that the majority of couples only have one child. In fact, the birth of a second child on the part of the wife is such an unusual occurrence that the wife, in consequence thereof, is given a new and honorific title.”

A Liberian Bishop—one of the kindliest of men—to whom I showed the above passage, replied sententiously that the ways of the Almighty were unfathomable, but that the disappearance of the few could not be held to weigh in the balance as compared with the salvation of the many; which seemed to me to bear a curious analogy to that passage in “Azurara” in which the old Portuguese historian, apostrophising Prince Henry the Navigator on the occasion of the first appearance at his court of West African slaves, torn with every accompaniment of barbarity from their homes by those gallant knights Antam Gonçalvez and Nuno Tristram, exclaims:

“O holy Prince, peradventure thy pleasure and delight might have some semblance of covetousness at receiving the knowledge of such a sum of riches, even as great as those thou didst expend to arrive at that result?... But thy joy was solely from that one holy purpose of thine to seek salvation for the lost souls of the heathen. And in the light of this it seemed to thee, when thou sawest those captives brought into thy presence, that the expense and trouble thou hadst undergone was nothing: such was thy pleasure at beholding them. And yet the greater benefit was theirs, for though their bodies were now brought into some subjection, that was a small matter in comparison with their souls, which would now possess true freedom for evermore.”

I hope it will not be thought that these references are made with any idea of depreciating the efforts, and in some respects surprisingly successful efforts, of Christian propaganda among the Bantu races of the Uganda Protectorate. The point under discussion is not the evangelising success of the Church in Uganda, but the physical effects of a monogamous Christianity upon the races of Africa.

[Illustration: FULANI MALLAM]

I have been at great pains to obtain all the evidence available bearing directly or indirectly on this subject, and in the aggregate it bears out what precedes. The highest type of the Christian educated Negro urges that an entire latitude should be left to the aboriginal element in the matter, and although professing monogamists themselves, they strictly maintain—whether rightly or wrongly is not for the layman to decide—that in so doing the Church would not be acting contrary to the principles of divine revelation.[197]

I have given as the second contributory cause of the non-success of Christian missions in West Africa the tendency to denationalisation. It is unhappily true that the Christianised Negro becomes to a large extent denationalised, and the reason of it lies in the methods employed to convert him. Islam, on the other hand, not only encourages the spirit of nationality in the African, but intensifies it. The Muslim Negro is elevated among his pagan neighbours; he gains their respect and increases his own. Islam takes the Negro by the hand and gives him equality with all men. From the day the pagan adopts Islam, no Semite Muslim can claim racial superiority over him. Islam to the Negro is the stepping-stone to a higher conception of existence, inspiring in his breast confidence in his own destiny, imbuing his spirit with a robust faith in himself and in his race. Christianity does not do this for the Negro. Its effect, indeed, is quite contrary. Instead of encouraging, it discourages. Instead of inculcating a greater self-reliance, it seems to lessen that which exists. The Christian Negro for the most part is a sort of hybrid. He is neither one thing nor another. His adoption of European clothes causes him to be looked upon partly with suspicion, partly with ridicule, by his pagan fellow-countrymen; although they make use of his services as clerk or secretary when occasion requires it. Mohammedans treat him with undisguised contempt. More bitter perhaps than anything else is the scorn which Europeans themselves bestow upon him. Question any white official, military man, trader or traveller, as to his impressions of the West African native. He will tell you that the pagan native of the interior is more often than not a fine fellow, one of nature’s gentlemen, hospitable, kindly, simple, courteous; that the Mohammedan native is a splendid man, with a carriage full of pride and self-reliance, arrogant may be, haughty, but singularly dignified, with a conscious superiority and quiet confidence stamped all over him. But the Christian Negro is seldom spoken of without opprobrium. His vanity, his conceit, his “veneer of civilisation,” the vices he has acquired and so forth, are the inevitable theme. His unfortunate habit of adopting the latest vagaries of European fashions, both in his own person and in the person of his women folk, is the butt of constant sarcasm, as are the accounts of the solemnisation of the Christian form of marriage in a native West Coast town. Even the missionaries are compelled, although with natural unwillingness, to admit an unpalatable fact. “There are a great many natives on the coast and in Lower Nigeria,” writes Canon Robinson, “who call themselves Christian; there are distressingly few converts.... My advice to travellers on the coast in search of trustworthy servants would be to prefer the heathen or Mohammedan to the professing Christian, because a bad religion sincerely accepted, or even no religion at all, is to be preferred to a religious profession which is only a sham.” A humiliating confession, humiliating to the Christian Church, humiliating to European civilisation. What between one thing and another, the Christianised Negro is a _déclassé_, a _culotté sans culottes_.[198] Of course there are exceptions, but they are relatively scarce, and consist in the main of natives who have acquired wealth by commerce (wealth being a safeguard to open obloquy all the world over, no matter what the colour of the possessor’s skin), and who either through the enjoyment of special educational advantages, or because they are men of unusually high character and intelligence naturally, have succeeded in grasping the true Christian ideal and have gained moral and spiritual ennoblement thereby. It is my privilege to number such a man among my friends. But I greatly doubt whether he would feel at ease in travelling or sojourning alone in the interior, even among the tribe to which he belongs, in his own country of origin. There seems to be a barrier between the Christianised Negro and his non-Christian countrymen; a barrier which excludes sympathy, and which European policy tends to still further accentuate.

To what are these things due? To no one particular circumstance, but to a whole set of circumstances, which together produce the effect. To the general, omnipresent suggestion—possibly quite unintentioned in many cases—of the Negro’s inherent racial inferiority, inculcated by European missionaries. To the never absent, one might say inevitable insistence, whether outspoken or only understood, upon a great intellectual, social, moral gulf which yawns between the Negro and his Caucasian instructor; a gulf that can never be bridged by Christianity, as taught in West Africa by Europeans.

The third and fourth contributory causes, viz. incompatibility between the ideals of Christ and the modern conceptions of Christianity, and the political action of Christian Powers, may be treated together, for they are closely allied one to the other; as, indeed, they also are to the third cause, upon which I have briefly touched. There is a striking passage in the last literary contribution on West African affairs, penned by Miss Kingsley on that fatal voyage to the Cape, which puts in more pregnant language than I could hope to do the underlying thought expressed above:

“I know,” wrote Miss Kingsley, “that there is a general opinion among the leading men of both races that Christianity will give the one possible solution to the whole problem. I fail to be able to believe this. I fail to believe Christianity will bring peace between the two races, for the simple reason that, though it may be possible to convert Africans _en masse_ into practical Christians, it is quite impossible to convert the Europeans _en masse_ to it. You have only got to look at the history of any European nation—the Dutch, the Spanish, the Italian, the German—every one calling themselves Christian, but none the more for that tolerant and peaceable. Each one of them is ready to take out a patent for a road to heaven, and make that road out of men’s blood and bones and the ashes of burnt homesteads. Of course, by doing this they are not following the true teachings of Jesus Christ, but that has not, and will not, become a factor in politics.”

The bewildering contradictions between the ideals laid down by Christ, as taught by the expounders of his word, and the practical effect of that teaching as exemplified in the conduct of Europeans and European Governments, confronts the Negro at every turn. The more intelligent he is, the more advanced in the social scale, the more puzzling does it become. Is it a question of charity? The Muslim propagandist speaks of Christ with deep respect amounting to reverence. He is _Kalima_—the Word; _Masih_—the Messiah; _Qual-ul-Haqq_—the Word of Truth; _Ruh_—the Spirit (of God). He is “One illustrious in this world and in the next”: “One who has near access to God.” The Christian missionary speaks of Mohammed “as an impostor;” “an arch impostor;” “a man full of evil and wickedness.” Islam is a “bad religion”: “its ways are the ways of darkness”: “it is Satan’s work,” and so on. Is it a question of self-abnegation? The Bible and the Koran utter the same precepts in almost identical terms. But what a difference in the spiritual practice of their respective expounders in West Africa! The Muslim preacher follows out the letter of his book. He goes on his way alone and unattended, carrying neither purse nor scrip. He lives the life of the Negro, enters into his pursuits, shares his hardships and his pleasures, assimilates himself in every possible way with those whom he hopes to convert. The European missionary is compelled, by the exigencies of the climate very greatly, to attend primarily to his own comforts. He travels with a long file of carriers bearing his baggage; preserved foods, linen, camp impedimenta and what not. Some of the most earnest missionaries keenly realise the drawbacks which such procedure must entail in the prosecution of their work, both physically and morally. They are deeply sensible of the adverse influence which it cannot fail to exercise over their labours. We have seen an English prelate, high up in the hierarchy of his Church, suggest a decrease in his salary, in order that the balance might be devoted to the appointment of another helper in the great cause.[199] On the other hand, we find in the works and letters of prominent missionaries engaged in the West African field, egotistical essays of the following description: “Care must be taken that the waterproof cloak is _stitched_. Sponges, bath-towels, &c., will suggest themselves. Do not forget the table-linen; a neatly arranged table helps to tempt the appetite, which is often fastidious. Antibilious compounds are worth in my judgment _two guineas_ a box.” The above passage is derived from a book recently published, written by a missionary with nine years’ experience in West Africa. The articles mentioned by the writer are recommended by him as indispensable to the welfare of a teacher of the Gospel in West Africa. The following is a typical passage culled from the epistolary effusions published from time to time in the organ of the Church Missionary Society from the pen of a most energetic Bishop, who has been endeavouring with singular ill-success, and not without some danger of arousing disturbances, to evangelise the Hausas. “We are all well.... Our appetites are enormous. We have plenty of food. We receive presents of food from the people every day—rice, onions, corn, maize, fowls, bananas, &c. B—— shoots a good many partridges and guinea-fowl, and we have a good reserve of European and English stores.” That these little peculiarities do not in the slightest degree detract from the sincerity of the writers may be accepted without reserve. All we are here concerned with, is to consider the general effect which these conceptions of the methods of propagating Christianity in West Africa are likely to have upon the African. Are men who profess so tender a regard for their well-being calculated to make much headway in an evangelical sense? It may reasonably be doubted.

Is it a question of vice? The Mohammedan preacher does not leave a stone unturned to combat drunkenness in every form, and to a very large extent he succeeds. The sobriety of the great mass of Muslimised Negroes no longer requires to be demonstrated. Laxity in this respect is the exception which proves the rule. The European missionary also denounces drunkenness, and with a fervour at times which is not always discriminating. But he is terribly handicapped (1) by the European trader, about one-fifth of whose total trade consists in the importation of freshly distilled liquor, often but not invariably containing various impurities, and in quality not exceeding that which is sold in low public-houses in this country, and which freely mixed with water may not be very injurious, but drunk neat, as for the most part it is, in the _coastal_ regions of West Africa, is—we have overwhelming testimony to that effect—harmful;[200] (2) by the European Governments who, although they do now and again raise the duty on spirits in deference to public opinion, tacitly encourage a traffic without which their whole administrative machinery would become temporarily paralysed, seeing that from 45 per cent. to 75 per cent. of the revenue of their Colonies is derived from this traffic. These circumstances may, or may not, be preventable. They exist, and cannot be ignored. As for another kind of vice; the life lived by many white men in West Africa is not, perhaps, calculated to give the Negro a high idea of the morality of Christian Europe. His occasional visits to Europeanised coast towns—presuming him to be living some distance in the interior—do not probably imbue him with the notion that his trousered countrymen are the gainers in moral ethics, through contact with European civilisation; nor, unhappily, can it be said that the tales and personal experiences related by those of his educated brothers who visit our great cities are of a kind to lessen the impression he may already have formed as to the results of twenty centuries of Christianity in Europe.[201]

Is it a question of gauging the true inwardness of the doctrine of peace and love? It is to be feared that the political aims of European Powers in West Africa are too often associated with Maxims and Martinis to admit of much doubt on that score. The Negro is a shrewd man, and he distinguishes professions from actions. The readiness with which the white interlopers in his country appeal to the sword as the shortest cut to the solution of a misunderstanding is instructive. The hastiness with which his habits and customs are trampled upon by his would-be elevators; the cheerful alacrity he is expected to show in swallowing innovations thrust upon him at what, to his conservative prejudices, appear to him a moment’s notice; and, finally, the increasing desire on the part of his European friends to appropriate his most precious heritage, his ancestral lands, and the fruits thereof, for their own use—all these things, whether in fashionable parlance they be the “inevitable” accompaniments of opening up West Africa by Western Europe or not, constitute those contradictions of which I have already spoken, and whatever else they may do, militate against the spread of Christianity in the land of the Negroes.

Is there a remedy, and if so, on what lines is it to be sought for? There is only one _native_ Christian State in Africa—Abyssinia—and its Christianity is declared by eminent divines to be tainted with all sorts of heresies and objections. But it has endowed Abyssinia with sufficient vitality to enable her to repel Mohammedan invasion for a long term of centuries, and the strong religious zeal of Abyssinia’s warriors was not a negligible factor in beating back the unjustifiable aggression made upon the independence of that country by Italy. To-day the Emperor of this African Christian State is, with one exception, probably the most powerful native ruler in the world. No doubt, it does not enter the heads of European statesmen to encourage the growth of a similar State in West Africa; which, indeed, is an obvious impossibility for many reasons. Yet Abyssinia provides a moral for the Christian Church. The Christianity of Abyssinia is an _African_ Christianity, originally taught by an _African_, perpetuated by _Africans_. Orthodox or unorthodox, it has shown itself suitable to the necessities and the requirements of Africans; and if Christianity in West Africa, is ever destined to make appreciable progress, it will be when it is provided with its only feasible agent, a West African Church: a Church designed to respond to the needs of West Africa, which are not the needs of Europe; a Church whose servants shall be neither Europeans nor repatriate “Afro-Liberians,” but West African Negroes, imbued with the instincts and patriotism of race; a Church founded upon an enlightened acquaintance with nature’s immovable laws; upon principles of true science, which is true religion; upon a wise recognition that what is good and proper and right for one great branch of the human family may be bad, improper, and wrong for another.

PART IV