right must tend to abate the self-respect, and
in like degree to weaken the influence of the sex, impairing thus the
ameliorating and civilizing power which she was meant to exercise upon
mankind. And the evil has been stereotyped by the Koran for all time.

[Sidenote: Principal Fairbairn on home-life under Islam.]
I must quote one more passage from Principal Fairbairn on the lowering
influence of Moslem domestic life:

The God of Mohammed ... "spares the sins the Arab loves. A religion
that does not purify the home cannot regenerate the race; one that
depraves the home is certain to deprave humanity. Motherhood is to
be sacred if manhood is to be honorable. Spoil the wife of sanctity
and for the man the sanctities of life have perished. And so it has
been with Islam. It has reformed and lifted savage tribes; it has
depraved and barbarized civilized nations. At the root of its
fairest culture a worm has ever lived that has caused its blossoms
soon to wither and die. Were Mohammed the hope of man, then his
state were hopeless; before him could only be retrogression,
tyranny, and despair."[74]

[Sidenote: Demoralizing influence of servile concubinage.]
Still worse is the influence of servile concubinage. The following is
the evidence of a shrewd and able observer in the East:

All zenana life must be bad for men at all stages of their
existence.... In youth it must be ruin to be petted and spoiled by
a company of submissive slave-girls. In manhood it is no less an
evil that when a man enters into private life his affections should
be put up to auction among foolish, fond competitors full of
mutual jealousies and slanders. We are not left entirely to
conjecture as to the effect of female influence on home-life when
it is exerted under these unenlightened and demoralizing
conditions. That is plainly an element _lying at the root of all
the most important features that differentiate progress from
stagnation_.[75]

[Sidenote: Deteriorating influence of relations established between the
sexes.]
Such are the institutions which gnaw at the root of Islam and prevent
the growth of freedom and civilization. "By these the unity of the
household is fatally broken and the purity and virtue of the family tie
weakened; the vigor of the dominant classes is sapped; the body politic
becomes weak and languid, excepting for int