s is well known, one of the
marriage affairs of Mohammed himself, with its appropriate revelation
from Allah. In the twenty-fourth Surah of the Koran women are forbidden
to appear unveiled before any member of the other sex, with the
exception of near relatives. And so by one verse the bright, refining,
elevating influence of women was forever withdrawn from Moslem society.
The evils of the zenana, the seraglio, the harem, or by whatever name it
is called, are writ large over all the social life of the Moslem world.
Keene says it "lies at the root of all the most important features that
differentiate progress from stagnation."

In Arabia before the advent of Islam it was customary to bury female
infants alive. Mohammed improved on the barbaric method and discovered a
way by which _all_ females could be buried alive and yet live
on--namely, the veil. How they live on, this book tells! Its chapters
are not cunningly devised fables nor stories told for the story's sake.
Men and women who have given of their strength and service, their love
and their life to ameliorate the lives of Moslem women and carry the
torch of Truth into these lands of darkness write simply the truth in a
straightforward way. All the chapters were written by missionaries in
the various lands represented. And with three exceptions the writers
were women. The chapter on Turkestan is by a converted Moslem; and the
two chapters on the Yemen and the Central Soudan are by medical
missionaries. The book has as many authors as there are chapters. For
obvious reasons their names are not published, but their testimony is
unimpeachable and unanimous. We read what their eyes have seen, what
their hands have handled, and what has stirred their hearts. It has
stirred the hearts of educated Moslems too, in Egypt as well as in
India. A new book on this very subject was recently published at Cairo
by Kasim Ameen, a learned Moslem jurist. Although he denies that Islam
is the cause, yet speaking of the present relation of the Mohammedan
woman to man the author says:

"Man is the absolute master and woman the slave. She is the object of
his sensual pleasures, a toy, as it were, with which he plays, whenever
and however he pleases. Knowledge is his, ignorance is hers. The
firmament and the light are his, darkness and the dungeon are hers. His
is to command, hers is to blindly obey. His is everything that is, and
she is an insignificant part of that everything.

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