A summary of Het raadsel van den Islam (The enigma of Islam), the first essay (dated December 24, 1907) in Om de oude wereldzee, vol. 2, pp. 1–51. In The Enigma of Islam “Kuyper examines a number of explanations for the astonishing decline of Christianity in North Africa with the arrival of Islam”, however, “he does not find any of the explanations wholly satisfactory”, pp. 138/139. This summary, with a short introduction and some connecting shortcuts by the translator, is “following Kuyper’s wording fairly closely while omitting some material of little contemporary interest”, p. 138.

The translator, Rimmer de Vries Ph.D. (economics), retired Chief Economist and Managing Director J.P. Morgan Bank, was born (1929) in Winsum, the Netherlands and is a.o. beneficiary of the PTS Rimmer and Ruth de Vries Chair for Reformed Theology and Public Life, also called the Kuyper Chair.

The summary is published in the first volume of a new Review published on the initiative of the Kuyper Center for Public Theology (Princeton Theological Seminary, N.J., USA). The editor, Gordon Graham, Henry Luce III Professor of Philosophy and the Arts at PTS, intends to compose annually a volume including new essays in Reformed Theology and Public Life.

In the same year, Jan H. Boer (see 1991.02) also published an english translation of this chapter from 1908.25: The mystery of Islam. eBook 2010.