WOMEN UNDER POLYGAMY
Moslem harems. "There are uncounted millions of men and women and children growing up in the most degrading superstitions, and suffering in mind, body and estate from inherited Pagan customs."
Sir Lepel Griffin stated some years ago that women in the past held, and still hold to-day in India "a great and often dominating influence in the domestic and political life of the country." Yet we are constantly assured by missionaries that Hindu and Mohammedan women are treated little better than animals.
The Rev. Dr. Elliott, of the Church Missionary Society, said, in an address[1] to the Zenana Missionary Society:—
"Mohammedanism is in its essence carnal, it is gross and sensual and it panders to the worst of passions, and it does not inculcate holiness. … It is a religion of grossness, sensuality, cruelty and darkness," etc.
Such extreme denunciation is far from uncommon in the literature of missionary organizations.
The following is a lady missionary's comparison of the Hindu and Mohammedan zenanas, written in 1892:—
Miss Harcourt, who has been one year at Bangalore, writes of it in the light of past experience in other parts of India.
- ↑ "India's Women," Vol. XII., p. 436.
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