Epilogue, p.659, f.1
Gobineau, writing in about the year 1865, testifies as follows: "Public
opinion holds that the Babis are to be found in every social class and
among the members of every religion, with the exception of the Nusayris
and the Christians, but it is especially the educated classes, the men of
learning who are suspected of sympathy with Babism. It is believed, and
with good reason, that many mullas and, among them, outstanding mujtahids,
magistrates of high rank, and high court officials very close to the king,
are Babis. According to a recent estimate, there would be in Tihran, a
city of about eighty thousand souls, five thousand Babis. But this
estimate is not very reliable and I am inclined to think that, if the
Babis were to triumph in Persia, their number in the capital would be much
larger, for, at that moment, one would have to add to the number of the
zealous ones, whatever that number may now be, a large proportion of those
who are recently in favor of the officially condemned doctrine and to whom
victory would impart the courage to declare their faith openly." (Les
Religions et les Philosophies dans l'Asie Centrale," p. 251.) "Half a
century has not yet elapsed since Mirza Ali-Muhammad, the young Seer of
Shiraz, first began to preach the religion which now counts its martyrs by
hundreds and its adherents by hundreds of thousands; which seemed at one
time to menace the supremacy alike of the Qajar dynasty and of the
Muhammadan faith in Persia, and may still not improbably prove an
important factor in the history of Western Asia." (E. G. Browne's
introduction to the "Tarikh-i-Jadid," p. 7.) "Babism," writes Professor
James Darmesteter, "which diffused itself in less than five years from one
end of Persia to another, which was bathed in 1852 in the blood of its
martyrs, has been silently progressing and propagating itself. If Persia
is to be at all regenerate it will be through this new faith." (Extract
from "Persia: A Historical and Literary Sketch," translated by G. K.
Nariman.) "If Babism continues to grow at its present rate of
progression, a time may conceivably come when it will oust Muhammadanism
from the field in Persia. This, I think, it would be unlikely to do, did
it appear upon the ground under the flag of a hostile faith. But since its
recruits are won from the best soldiers of the garrison whom it is
attacking, there is greater reason to believe that it may ultimately
prevail. To those who know anything of the Persian character, so
extraordinarily susceptible of religious influences as it is, it will be
obvious to how many classes in that country the new creed makes successful
appeal. The Sufis, or mystics, have long held that there must always be a
Pir, or Prophet, visible in the flesh, and are very easily absorbed into
the Babi fold. Even the orthodox Musulman, whose mind's eye has ever been
turned in eager anticipation upon the vanished Imam, is amenable to the
cogent reasoning, by which it is sought to prove that either the Bab, or
Baha, is the Mihdi, according to all the predictions of the Qur'an and
the traditions. The pure and suffering life of the Bab, his ignominious
death, the heroism and martyrdom of his followers, will appeal to many
others who can find no similar phenomena in the contemporaneous records of
Islam." (Lord Curzon's "Persia and the Persian Question," vol. 1, p.
503.) The author, in the same chapter, commenting on the prospects of
Christian missionary enterprise in Persia, writes as follows: "Persia has
even been described as the most hopeful among the fields of missionary
labour in the East. While conscious of the valuable work that has been and
is being done by the representatives of English, French, and American
Mission societies in that country, by the spread of education, by the
display of charity, by the free gift of medical assistance, by the force of
example, and while in no way suggesting that these pious labours should be
slackened, I am unable, from such knowledge as I possess, to participate in
so sanguine a forecast of the future." (p. 504.) "...In Persia, however,
not the least of the obstacles with which Christian communities are
confronted arise from their own sectarian differences, and the Musulmans
are perfectly entitled to scoff at those who invite them to enter a flock
the different members of which love each other so bitterly. Protestants
squabble with Roman Catholics, Presbyterians with Episcopalians, the
Protestant Nestorians look with no very friendly eye upon the Nestorians
proper, and these, again, are not on the most harmonious terms with the
Chaldaeans, or Catholic Nestorians. The Armenians gaze askance upon the
United (or Catholic) Armenians, and both unite in retarding the work of the
Protestant missions. Finally, the hostility of the Jews may, as a rule, be
reckoned upon. In the various countries of the East in which I have
traveled, from Syria to Japan, I have been struck by the strange and, to my
mind, sorrowful phenomenon, of missionary bands waging the noblest of
warfares under the banner of the King of Peace with fratricidal weapons in
their hands." (Pp. 507-8.) "...If, then, the criterion of missionary
enterprise in Persia be the number of converts it has made from Islam, I
do not hesitate to say that the prodigious expenditure of money of honest
effort, and of sacrificing toil that has been showered upon that country
has met with a wholly inadequate return. Young Muhammadans have sometimes
been baptised by Christian missionaries. But this must not too readily be
confounded with conversion, since the bulk of the newcomers relapse into
the faith of their fathers and I question if, since the day when Henry
Martyn set foot in Shiraz up till the present moment, half a dozen
Persian Muhammadans have genuinely embraced the Christian creed. I have
myself often enquired for, but have never seen, a converted Musulman (I
exclude, of course, those derelicts or orphans of Musulman parents who are
brought up from childhood in Christian schools). Nor am I surprised at
even the most complete demonstration of failure. Putting aside the
dogmatic assumptions of Christianity (e.g. the doctrine of the Trinity and
the Divinity of Christ), which are so repugnant to the Muhammadan
conception of the unity of God, we cannot regard the reluctance of a
Musulman to desert his faith with much astonishment when we remember that
the penalty for such an act is death. The chances of conversion are remote
indeed so long as the body as well as the soul of the convert is thrown
into the scales But personal apprehensions, though an important are not the
deciding factor in the situation. It is against the impregnable rock-wall
of Islam as a system embracing every sphere, and duty, and act of life,
that the waves of missionary effort beat and buffet in vain. Marvellously
adapted alike to the climate, character and occupations of those countries
upon which it has laid its adamantine grip, Islam holds its votary in
complete thrall from the cradle to the grave. To him, it is not only
religion, it is government, philosophy, and science as well. The
Muhammadan conception is not so much that of a state church as, if the
phrase may be permitted, of a church state. The undergirders with which
society itself is warped round are not of civil, but of ecclesiastical,
fabrication, and, wrapped in this superb, if paralysing creed, the Musulman
lives in contented surrender of all volition, deems it his highest duty to
worship God and to compel, or, where impossible, to despise those who do
not worship Him in the spirit, and then dies in sure and certain hope of
Paradise. So long as this all-compelling, all-absorbing code of life holds
an Eastern people in its embrace, determining every duty and regulating
every act of existence, and finally meting out an assured salvation
missionary treasure and missionary self-denial will largely be spent in
vain. Indeed, an active propaganda is, in my judgment, the worst of
policies that a Christian mission in a bigoted Musulman country can adopt
and the very tolerance with which I have credited the Persian government is
in large measure due to the prudent abstention of the Christian
missionaries from avowed proselytism." (Pp. 508-9.)