Islam, Apostasy and Missions Essay

Sharkeys pudding stone and Muslim Conversion Historical Reflections on Christian commissionings in Egypt, Kiesers Mission as A Factor of Change in Turkey (Nineteenth to original half of Twentieth Century) and Erhans footstools Official locating Toward American Missionaries and a chapter from timothy Marrs work The Cultural root of American Muslimism, are scholarly enterprises that runs a comprehensive details round nearly diachronic phenomenon pertaining to Christian Missionaries, Muslim world and American History. on the self-coloured these articles refer to missionaries activities in the different geographical region within Islamic world moreover all these indicate similarities in their fond and political orientations, their patterns and procedures and their successes and failures. All the authors ready tried to present different aspects of missionary activities in the Islamic world with different approaches of historiography. still mostly all of them have illustrated the Missions movements in the Western hemisphere of the Islamic world.Egypt and pull empire during the nineteenth century and early 20th century with a brief references to different parts of Islamic world (Mostly Sharkey has provided succinct comparisons with Iran, Pakistan and Indonesia and so on ) hither and thither. Their methodology to explore the historical realities, to analyze the issue and to provide judgments remains different. For example, Sharkey like a distinguished historian approaches the question with professional integrity and objectivity and restrains himself from providing sweeping conclusions about the alone scenario that he has analyse intensively and extensively.He only provides the verified and verifiable arguments in bridge over of his thesis and tries to coverall the aspects of evolution of phenomenon of Mission action at law, their triumphs and failures and applies these historical judgments to the contemporary situation and control tenet of Clash of Civilization. Whereas Hans-Lucas Kieser arguments lucidly without relying much on primary and lowly sources but sometimes he adopts an authoritative stance over some issue without providing any substantial proof.Although Erhan also mulls over the phenomenon of missionary activity in the Ottoman Empire but he has aimed a particular issue of Ottomans official attitudes toward theses evangelistic missions. Other generator like Sharkey and Kieser touch some aspects of Ottomans approach and policies toward these missionaries but Erhan discusses these exhaustively along 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 theory first and then draws on far-fetched intellectual arguments to harbor his thesis. He collects all the historical evidences that can support his thesis and localise them in a way so that they seem converging on a single point i. e. to draw parallels between major tenets of abolitionist spirit with romantic perception of Islamic world. He takes into account the whole Antebellum period.The ultimate 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 large importance in this regard as its intention is to trace scratch off the roots of Missionary activity in the Anglo-American imperialism and to locate the causes of the origin of post-compound drive 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 based on historical facts and figures that Missionaries in the Ottoman empire s were actors of social and mental change. He tries to subvert the popular Muslim judgement that Christian missionaries were carters of anti-Muslim agenda. Erhans Ottoman Official Attitudes Toward American Missionaries give the design of a complete intellectual exercise to advance some historical findings.All the writers have specified a special 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 equivalent argumentative suck about the g radual evolution of missionary activity and acknowledged unfeignedly explained the phenomenon of Missionaries premature activities to convert Muslim to the Christianity, their realization of the impossibility of the efforts and diversion to other socio-religious groups and minorities in the same geographical area.Sharkey says that although Ottomans political moves of liberalism and allowance account under the Anglo American imperial influence has facilitated the missionary activities but socio-cultural compulsions remained at that place that hindered the way of missionaries and kept them away from an agenda of renascence. So conversion of bulk Muslims was a fruitless effort. So zealous missionaries turned their attention to the Orthodox Christians of the area i. e. to convert 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 due the strong legal an social sanctions against conversions, but not only to that. Like the Jews, for deep historical and psychological reasons, the Muslims remained on the whole impermeable to the enthusiastic approach of the Protestants. (Kieser, p. 392-393)He further asserts that therefore the ABCFM heavy 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 brio at Palestine (p. 316) but soon realized that Jew were tight-knit religious community and thus largely immune to Christian evangelical activities ( Erhan, p. 315) But he further illustrates that Christian missionaries were diverted to their fellow Christian with eastern versio n of Christianity.All these writers have assessed the situation precisely as Quranic injunctions and sharias rulings that consider Islam as the final version of divine religions that traverse 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 apostasy was social outcast and in some cases demise penalty.