The Influence of Animism on Islam. By Samuel M. Zwemer.
(New York : Macmillan. 2 dollars.)—These lectures delivered at Hartford and Princeton by a well-known American missionary who has spent many years in the Near East show very clearly that popular Islam is altogether different from the religion as recorded in its sacred Book," and is largely compounded of the most primitive superstitions. Animism is the belief that inanimate nature and all creatures are endowed with human reason. It is a belief in demons who have to be propitiated. Mr. Zwemer has accumulated a mass of curious evidence in regard to the childish superstitions current among all but the few educated Moslems. The fear of " jinn " or demons is as real to-day as it was in the Thousand and One Nights. The worship of trees and stones and serpents is widely practised. Mr. Zwemer is doubtless right in thinking that the rapid spread of Islam in Africa and Malaya is largely due to its readiness to compromise with paganism. His book is well worth reading.
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