The New World of Islam

Submitted by Pied Piper (Saudi Arabia), May 28, 2014 at 23:07

An even more prescient and certainly more readable account of the origins of the contemporary state of Islam is the tome by the scholar Lothrop Stoddard, The New World of Islam (1922). A short quote from the preface to the first edition pretty much summarizes Stoddard's theme and warning:

"The entire world of Islam is today in profound ferment. From Morocco and China and from Turkestan to the Congo, the 200,000,000 followers of the Prophet Muhammad are stirring to new ideas, new impulses, new aspirations. A gigantic transformation is taking place whose results must affect all mankind."

1922? There were scholars already thinking like this? What's amazing is not that the warnings were heralded so early in the 20^th century but rather how much they were totally ignored. (Who's ever heard of Stoddard or who even quotes him?)

Another quote, this one from his first chapter, could easily have been written last week in any international forum: "Islam is, in fact, to-day torn between the forces of liberal reform and chauvinistic reaction."

A must read, in my opinion, not only for its historical value but for its astonishing up-to-dateness.

Stoddard was heavy into "eugenics" of one sort or another so the reader has to keep that in mind as his writings are influenced in that direction.. Still, he makes available information in this one source hard to find elsewhere.

Full-text online at <http://www.questia.com/library/4462138/the-new-world-of-islam> but I think you have to register and pay (I also can't imagine reading an entire *book* online…I'd go blind.) Real book copies easily available at Amazon cheap.

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