Page 87 - Protestant Missionary Activity in the Arabian Gulf

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in the Middle East, had actually set it “backward hy speeding

the collapse of Constantinople. At the same time the wars

had not only caused considerable damage in destruction of Arab

lives and property, but had also done much to slow the advance

and development of Islamic civilization. The net result of

152
the Crusades was thus negative for both the East and the West.

In marked contrast to this legacy of the original knights

Templar, the latter-day "crusaders” of the Arabian Mission

brought about a much more productive cultural interchange.

They gained acceptance and trust, first from several of the

more enlightened Arab leaders and then from the populace them­

selves and argued persuasively and effectively through their
schools and clinics for a greater compassion in human relation-

ships and a more modern approach to medicine, As Zahra Ereeth

wrote of the Arabian Mission in her memoirs of childhood in

Kuwait:
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"Since the founding of the Mission in Kuwait Dr.
; Mylrea.and his colleagues have worked unceasingly to
convince the people of the efficacy of western medicine,
and of the need for immediate skilled attention in the
hundred and one diseases which living conditions of pov­
erty and dirt bring to the inhabitants of town and desert.
• • • The fact that today the Arab mother will voluntarily
! take her child to be vaccinated is one of the results of
forty years of work and teaching on the part of the Mission
hospitals." 153

There are several reasons why the missionaries had been

so effective in winning acceptance in such a traditional Islamic

society. In the first place their involvement in the area

was seen by most of the Arabs to be free of selfish ulterior

motives. As Mubarak the Great had said so theatrically to
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the Kuwaitis in 1913, the missionaries were not politicians
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