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About Medford mail tribune. (Medford, Or.) 1909-1989 | View Entire Issue (Feb. 23, 1961)
First in a Series , Islamic Faith Playing Important Behind African Nationalism Fditor'f note: Following li the first of two dispatches by Louis Cassels, VPi religion editor, about me unpununt roie oi tn islamic laiin in Airica. By LOUIS CASSELS . UPI Correspondent From the long view of his tory, the key figure in Afri ca's turbulent political equa- - th?sl tion mav be neither Nasser nor- Lumum- 3 ba, nor even XT:i.:t . vi shchev, but a camel driver named Mo hammed who lived in the city of Mecca casseis nearly 1.400 years ago. Mohammed founded the re ligion of Islam. For centuries, Western Christians have r& garded this religion as mori bund., But in recent years it has undergone a dramatic renaissance. It is now on the march all over Africa. And it has become one of the most dynamic elements in the ex plosive mixture of anti-Western, anti-white emotions which is the driving force be hind African nationalism. Westerners Know Little Despite its growing impor tance as a factor in the Afri can crisis, the average west erner knows little about the Islamic faith. He may, for ex ample, refer to its adherents as "Mohammedans," which they intensely resent. The correct name is "Moslems." There is also a widespread tendency to think of Islam as an Arab religion. It is true that nearly all Arabs are Mos lems. But not all Moslems are Arabs by any means. Islam has always been strong in such non-Arab nations as Tur key, Iran, Pakistan and In dia. In recent years, it has spread rapidly into "Black Africa" south of the Sahara In many of the new African states, where Christian mis sionaries have been at work for more than a century, Is lam is now winning four or five new converts for every one attracted to Christianity. Gam in United States Islam has even begun send ing missionaries to the United States. And they are winning some converts, particularly among American Negroes. There are now about 80,000 Moslems in the United States, and mosques can be found in 11 American cities, including Washington, New York, Chi cago, Philadelphia, Detroit and Sacramento, Calif. Woldwide, Islam has about 400 million adherents or roughly half as many as Chris tianity. Although Buddhism is technically the world's sec ond largest religion with about 500 million nominal followers in Asia - it has not experienced a r e s u r gence comparable to that which has taken place in Islam, and it has none of Islam's fierce mis sionary zeal. Islam today stands alone as a real chal lenger to Christianity - par ticularly in Africa. Islam has at least two tre mendous advantages in Afri ca. . 'White Man's Export' Africans are inclined to look upon Christianity as a "white man's export." They associate it with colonial rule which they are so violently rejecting. And they connect it with the racial discrimina tion that takes place in some Christian nations.' Islam, on the other hand, can present itself as a faith "native" to Africa - and one which has never had any color line. Racial equality has al ways been a major emphasis of Islam. As virtually every African knows, one of Mo hammed's four wives was a Negro. The emotional appeal which Islam has for Negroes smart ing under the stigma of seg regation has been reflected in the United States by the growth of the so-called "Black Muslim" sect. This sect is not truly Moslem in its religious doctrines. Its main teaching is an implacable hatred of all white men. But its adherents take Arab names, wear fezzcs and otherwise identify them selves with Moslem customs. Some of the American Ne groes who participated in last week's pro-Lumumba demon tration at the United Nations described themselves as Mos lems. Islam Demands Less Islam's, second great advan tage in Africa is that it makes lighter demands on its con verts than Christianity does. For example, an African who becomes a Christian must also become a monogamist. But if he becomes a Moslem, he can have four wives. This is no small consideration in Afri can countries where polygamy is widely practiced. Islam has also been willing to let its African converts continue to practice many of the rituals of their old tribal religions, including black mag- Medford Tribune SECTION B MEDFORD, OREGON, THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 1961 PAGES 1 to 8 -It' X x -x&?ri fzi ffer W "TIRED OF RAIN Even Gus, a 4-months-old lion from the Portland zoo, is getting tired of the rain in Portland. He enjoys car rides but rainy weather obstructs his view of the city. It has rained 11.17 inches in Portland since Jan. 1. (UPI Telephoto) B70 Test Pilot Needs To Be Enqineer and Flier Los Angeles (UPB A new type of test pilot is emerging from the world of the wild blue yonder. He's mature and well edu cated, a flier turned engineer. Like his predecessor, he loves to fly, but his compelling in terest is in solving difficult aeronautical problems. There are only a few of his breed. One of them is Alvin S. White, engineering and test pilot for North American Avi ation, Inc. A pilot since 1941 and an engineer since 1947, he looks like many another 41-year-old businessman. Sometime late in 1962, how ever, Al White will shed his coat of conformity and will be thrust into the limelight as pilot of the B70, an intercon tinental super bomber being rfoeinnprf to conquer- tne so- called thermal barrier and cruise 70.000 feet high at 2,000 milps an hour. Other pilots, flying rocket powered experimental planes, will have encountered the heat barrier for brief moments prior to the first flights of the B70. But the big bomber will be the first airplane capable of continuous flight at triple sonic speeds where friction heats a plane's skin to more than 600 degrees Fahrenheit, enough to melt today's alumi num aircraft. White must knbw more about the B70 than any test nilot ever has known about his plane on a first flight. To give him the information he needs. North American de- sieners and engineers are log ging thousands of hours of "eround flieht" in a variety of wavs-in computers, wind tun nels, environmental test cells One of the most extensively used is North American's com puter center where the revolu tionary bomber is being test "flown a section at a time, as a whole plane and even in groups of up to 150 aircraft. The number of mathemati cal calculations required to design and perfect any new airplane of major size is stag gering. Before the B70 s first flight more than 13,000 hours of calculations will have been made on an IBM 7090 com puter. This computation job would take 13,000 engineers with desk calculators more than 900 years to complete. The B70s wings and fuse lage surfaces will be made of heat resistant stainless steel in honeycomb sandwich con struction. And its six jet en gines, located in the tail near the center line of the aircraft, will provide three times as much power as the fastest flying bomber today. Although White believes to day's test pilot should be an engineer, he also is convinced there still is a measure of "seat of the pants" flying in testing supersonic planes. "A human pilot who under stands his aircraft can do something that gauges and meters cannot," he said. "He can anticipate. His sixth sense gives him the extra second he may need. The B70 will be able to reach any military target on earth in a matter of a few hours. During a recent con gressional study of the B70 program it was pointed out: "Should an invasion fleet set out from China toward Formosa, some 100 miles from the Chinese mainland, travel ing at a speed of 10 knots, and should word reach the U.S. military headquarters one hour alter the invasion fleet had departed, B70's scrambled from San Francisco could reach this fleet (about 6,000 miles distant) before it arrived at the halfway point on its journey to Formosa." ic, which Christian mission aries cannot condone. In fact the available evidence indi cates that no great effort is being made to get newly-converted Negro Moslems to ob serve the detailed precepts of Islamic faith, as they are prac ticed in ancient Islamic coun tries like Egypt or Iran. They are simply being asked to con s i d e r themselves Moslems, and to embrace the one-lino Islamic creed: "There is no god but Allah, and Moham med is his prophet." i ; J' t V c SUBSONIC AIRLINER This is a model for transatlantic fares to S31. Named the a proposed 300-seat all-wing subsonic air- HPU7, the craft has a luminar-flow wing, liner which could according to its design ers, Hadley-Page Ltd. of Britain reduce (UPI Telephoto) .- .. ;i j-rj j "Do People Listen When Yob Talk?" A New York Psychoanalyst lists the reasons why the answer to this question is sometimes "Nol" FEBRUARY 26th IN With The Medford Mail Tribune Penney's DOWNTOWN MEDFORD 1EC3 !ii for the FAMULI? a in whs Make the most of your money! Get the most value from your budget dollars! Shop the jeans headquarters of Medford... your Thrifty Penney Budget Saving Store! See how Penney's has cut prices but not quality on sturdy blue denim jeans for the whole family! COME! SAVE! A. Boys' 10-Oz. 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