(2 of 2)
If next we turn to the second circle, the continent of Africa, I may say without exaggeration that we cannot under any circumstances, however much we might wish to, remain aloof from the terrible and sanguinary struggle going on in Africa today between five million whites and 200 million Africans. We cannot do so for an obvious and important reason: we are in Africa. The peoples of Africa will continue to look to us, who guard their northern gate and who constitute their link with all the outside world.
Islamic Domain
There remains a third circle−a circle which stretches across continents and oceans and which is the domain of our brothers in faith who all, wherever under the sun they may be, turn as we do in the direction of Mecca and whose devout lips speak the same prayers.
When I consider the 80 million Moslems in Indonesia and the 50 million in China, and the millions in Malaya, Siam and Burma, and the close to 100 million in the Middle East, and the 40 million inside the Soviet Union, and the other millions in far-flung parts of the world−when I consider these hundreds of millions united by a single creed, I emerge with a sense of the tremendous possibilities which we may realize through the cooperation of all these Moslems, a cooperation not going beyond the bounds of their natural loyalty to their own countries, yet enabling them and their brothers in faith to wield a power without limit.
And now I go back to the wandering role looking for a hero to play it. The role is there. Its characteristics I have described. This is the stage. By the laws of geographical circumstance, we alone are able to play it.