Islam, Apostasy and Missions Essay

Sharkeys Empire and Muslim Conversion diachronic Reflections on Christian Missions in Egypt, Kiesers Mission as A Factor of Change in Turkey (Nineteenth to stolon half of 20th Century) and Erhans quilts Official Attitude Toward the Statesn Missionaries and a chapter from Timothy Marrs work The Cultural Roots of American Islamicism, argon scholarly enterprises that provides a comprehensive details about some historical phenomenon pertaining to Christian Missionaries, Islamic realness and American History. only these articles refer to missionaries activities in the assorted geographical region within Islamic world scarce whole these indicate similarities in their social and political orientations, their patterns and procedures and their successes and failures. All the authors leave tried to present different aspects of missionary activities in the Islamic world with different approaches of historiography. But mostly all of them welcome illustrated the Missions movements in t he Western hemisphere of the Islamic world.Egypt and nance empire during the nineteenth century and archaeozoic 20th century with a brief references to other parts of Islamic world (Mostly Sharkey has provided succinct comparisons with Iran, Pakistan and Indonesia etc. ) hither and thither. Their methodology to explore the historical realities, to analyze the issue and to provide judgments remains different. For example, Sharkey deal a distinguished historian approaches the question with professional integrity and objectiveness and restrains himself from providing sweeping conclusions about the whole scenario that he has analyzed intensively and extensively.He only provides the verified and verifiable arguments in support of his thesis and tries to coverall the aspects of ontogeny of phenomenon of Mission activity, their triumphs and failures and applies these historical judgments to the contemporary situation and ruling tenet of brushing of Civilization. Whereas Hans-Lucas Kieser arguments lucidly without relying much on primary and secondary sources only if sometimes he adopts an authoritative stance over some issue without providing some(prenominal) substantial proof.Although Erhan also mulls over the phenomenon of missional activity in the pull Empire but he has contemplateed a specific issue of Ottomans official attitudes toward theses Evangelical missions. Other writer like Sharkey and Kieser mention some aspects of Ottomans approach and policies toward these missionaries but Erhan discusses these exhaustively on with the diplomatic relations between Ottoman Empire and United States of America in the early 18th century and how these relations affected the American missionaries status in the geographical domain of Ottoman empire.Timothy Marr postulates his supposition first and then draws on far-fetched intellectual arguments to support his thesis. He collects all the historical evidences that can support his thesis and arrange them in a w ay so that they seem converging on a adept point i. e. to draw parallels between major tenets of abolitionist spirit with quixotic perception of Islamic world. He takes into account the whole Antebellum period.The crowning(prenominal) purposes of all the articles seem to develop an understanding of the patterns and processes of Evangelical missionaries work in the Muslim world and its implications in the contemporary scenario (except Timothy Marr that analyzes the effect of Ismaicism on antislavery movement in America). Sharkeys work is of great importance in this regard as its intention is to trace down the roots of Missionary activity in the Anglo-American imperialism and to locate the causes of the origin of post-colonial trend of considering these missionaries as neo-crusaders and proponents of anti-Islamic neo-imperialism by the Muslim masses.Kiesers article seems to create a justification establish on historical facts and figures that Missionaries in the Ottoman empires wer e actors of social and mental depart. He tries to subvert the popular Muslim notion that Christian missionaries were carters of anti-Muslim agenda. Erhans Ottoman Official Attitudes Toward American Missionaries give the impression of a breeze through intellectual exercise to advance some historical findings.All the writers have specified a picky period of Evangelical missionary activities in a particular geographical location. Sharkey takes into account the Missionary activities in Egypt but does not bind himself to chronological limits. He covers the colonial and post-colonial eras but pays special attention to the imperialistic moves of Anglo-American nations and their correlation with the missionary activities of the Anglo-American Churches.Kieser consider the activities of ABCFM in the Ottoman Empire especially the Armenian and Assyrian provinces in the 19th century and first half of 20th century. Sharkey, Kieser and Erhan adopts the uniform argumentative line about the daw dling evolution of missionary activity and acknowledged rightfully explained the phenomenon of Missionaries premature activities to permute Muslim to the Christianity, their realization of the impossibility of the efforts and digression to other socio-religious groups and minorities in the same geographical area.Sharkey says that although Ottomans political moves of liberalism and tolerance under the Anglo American imperial influence has facilitated the missionary activities but socio-cultural compulsions remained there that hindered the way of missionaries and unploughed them away from an agenda of conversion. So conversion of majority Muslims was a unproductive effort. So zealous missionaries turned their attention to the Orthodox Christians of the area i. e. to substitute native orthodox Coptic Christians to Protestants.Kieser has analyzed the same pattern of diversion among the missionaries of ABCFM (American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions) in Ottoman Empire. H e illustrates that The first Missionaries of ABCFM learnt early on the impossibility of evangelizing the members of Ottoman ummetTheir resistance to conversion was partly repayable the strong legal an social sanctions against conversions, but not only to that. kindred the Jews, for deep historical and psychological reasons, the Muslims remained on the whole impermeable to the evangelistic approach of the Protestants. (Kieser, p. 392-393)He farther asserts that therefore the ABCFM concentrated its work on the Assyrians, Armenians and Greek minorities and kept in contact with Muslim marginals. (p. 393) Erhan takes a different stance and says that the initials efforts of the American missionary were directed toward Jews living at promised land (p. 316) but soon realized that Jew were tight-knit religious community and therefrom largely immune to Christian evangelical activities ( Erhan, p. 315) But he nevertheless illustrates that Christian missionaries were diverted to their f ellow Christian with Eastern version of Christianity.All these writers have assessed the situation precisely as Quranic injunctions and Shariahs rulings that consider Islam as the final version of divine religions that encompass the teachings and tenets of Christianity and Judaism. These Islamic doctrines further hold that Murtid i. e. convert, has no place in Islamic society. These injunctions are psychologically and emotionally absorbed in the Muslims minds so the ultimate result of defection was social outcast and in some cases death penalty.