Not long ago, at the beginning of the twentieth century, the world-famous Calvinist Rev. Professor Dr. Abraham Kuyper Sr. became the Prime Minister of the Netherlands. Thereby, he became Chief Politician of the largest Islamic country in the world, the then Dutch colony of "India" (alias the present Indonesia just to the north of Australia). At that time, Kuyper could indeed still claim: "Our Queen [Wilhelmina] rules over less Christians and more Muhammadans than the Sultan of Turkey in Europe and Asia together. England with her...millions of Muhammadans in the Indian SubContinent, still leads." Since then, England and the Netherlands and Turkey have all lost their Empires. Yet Islam has today become almost the most influential religion in the world.

In 1905, Kuyper lost the General Election in the Netherlands. He then requested Queen Wilhelmina to discharge him from his office. Immediately thereafter, he began to write his impressive two-volume work Om de Oude Wereldzee [Around the Mediterranean]. Much of what he there says about Islam is still very important. More so, because the Islamic lands that were then colonies of Western nations - have become independent since the Second World War, and in many cases proclaimed Islam as the law of the land. Thus the West today ignores the warnings in Kuyper's book to its own peril.