Word: animists
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Word for Word. When the Anglicans began to work among the Eskimos in 1820, they found them more than ready for Christianity. The animist Eskimo religion is formidable with taboos, short on nourishment for the soul and solutions to community problems. Taboos often left an Eskimo physically as well as spiritually starved; for example, certain parts of an animal were forbidden to be eaten if a man had recently died in the community, other parts were forbidden if a woman had died, and frequently, when both a man and a woman had died, everyone went hungry...
...sticklers for the letter of the law, the sufis met the un believer as near as they could to his own doctrinal ground. No doubt Islam suffered some theological dilution in this process, but its tribes increased wonderfully. Followers of sufism converted the animist Berbers of North Africa, and later the Turks, who broke out of Asia conquering the Arabs and great Constantinople as well. Sufism, carried largely by Moslem merchants, converted Sumatra, Java, Malaya, all without any military help from the centers of Islam...