Empire and Muslim conversion: historical reflections on Christian missions in Egypt

Abstract

This article considers Christian evangelization among Muslims in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries and traces its relationship to the global and local dynamics of Western imperialism. Focusing on Egypt, where Anglo-American Protestant missionaries were active, the article examines why missionaries encountered fierce resistance from Muslim audiences despite the small number of Muslim conversions and how they inadvertently galvanized Egyptian anti-colonial nationalist and Islamist movements. Reflecting on this history of cultural encounter from a postcolonial perspective, the article then discusses the challenge of assessing missionary motives, social influences, and long-term legacies given the sharp differences of interpretation that have often prevailed among Christian and Muslim scholars and polemicists. It draws special attention to an Arabic postcolonial genre of anti-missionary treatises that portray Christian missionaries as neo-Crusaders whose legacies have posed a continuing threat to the integrity of Muslim societies.

Notes

Goddard identifies the Briton W. H. T. Gairdner as the more conciliatory type of missionary, and the American Samuel M. Zwemer as more confrontational; these two men were contemporaries who played critical roles in organizing the Edinburgh missionary conference of 1910 – a watershed in the development of the Protestant ecumenical movement.

Andrew Watson of the American Presbyterian mission in Egypt claimed that his mission had presided over 140 Muslim conversions in 52 years but suggested that some of those had recanted (Watson, 1906).

The author is tracing this bid for religious liberty as a human right through the papers of the Presbyterian Historical Society in Philadelphia. It is worth noting that American Christian groups persisted over the years in urging the United States government to act on the religious liberty issue. In 1998 Christian lobbyists succeeded in getting the US Congress to pass the International Religious Freedom Act authorizing the US Department of State to ‘integrate religious freedom initiatives into US foreign policy.’ See US Department of State, Office of International Religious Freedom, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, ‘History of the Office of International Religious Freedom: Fact Sheet’, 16 April 2001, http://www.state.gov/g/drl/irf/fs/2298.htm (accessed 17 February 2004).

The roster of missionary leaders and scholars in Egypt includes W. H. T. Gairdner (not only an early force in the ecumenical movement, but also a pacesetter in the development of colloquial Arabic pedagogy for foreigners), Samuel M. Zwemer (ecumenical leader and activist in Muslim evangelization), Constance Padwick (missionary biographer and Islamic scholar), E. E. Elder (another leader in the pedagogy of colloquial Arabic, and a mission historian), and Charles C. Adams (Islamic studies scholar whose book on Muhammad ‘Abduh [Adams 1933] is still cited in scholarly works).

See also Presbyterian Historical Society, Philadelphia [henceforth PHS], UPCNA RG 209-1-04: J. W. Acheson Papers, ‘A summary of NMP Annual Report for 1925’ (Nile Mission Press), attached to a letter from Acheson to Edie dated March 16, 1925.

PHS UPCNA RG 209-2-53: David Finney Papers, letters from Finney to Friend of the Laubach Campaign, Cairo, 12 December 1950; to Glenn Reed, Cairo, 15 June 1951; and to Rev. A. R. Stevenson, Cairo, 23 February 1952.

These developments are charted in the papers of E. M. Bailey, held in the Presbyterian Historical Society in Philadelphia. From the Bailey papers see, for example, PHS UPCNA RG 209-2-05: Bailey to Reed, Assiut, 20 January 1947; RG 209-2-09: Bailey to Black, 6 July 1955; and RG 209-2-10: Bailey to the Egyptian Minister of Education, Cairo, 14 May 1956.

PHS UPCNA RG 209-2-11: E. M. Bailey Papers, Bailey to Black, Cairo, 18 February 1957.

See, for example, PHS UPCNA RG 209-4-20: Helen J. Martin Papers, Martin to Kelsey, Cairo, 20 July 1948; Martin to Reed, Cairo, 22 May 1948; copy of letter from E. E. Elder to President Truman, 21 May 1948.

On the American school for missionary children in Alexandria, which was able to establish a wider role after 1956 by enrolling the American and European children of oil company and World Health Organization employees (at a time when the British-run Victoria College had been nationalized) see PHS UPCNA RG 209-4-35: George Meloy Papers, Memorandum on Schutz School [1957].

PHS UPCNA RG 209-2-09: E. M. Bailey Papers, Black to Bailey, 31 May 1955; and RG 209-2-10: E. M. Bailey Papers, Bailey to Black, 29 May 1956; RG 209-2-10: E. M. Bailey Papers, ‘Government to exercise control over all private schools,’ typescript copy of article from Egyptian Gazette, 21 May 1956; Bailey to Black, Cairo, 18 May 1956; Bailey to Black, 24 January 1956; Confidential, ‘The Report on the Field Deputation by Dr. Reed and Dr. Black Concerning Teaching of Islam in Schools in Egypt, June 23–July 8, 1956’.

This mission is called Middle East Christian Outreach; its official website emphasizes work among Middle Eastern Christians. http://www.aboutmeco.org/website/welcome.htm; and http://www.aboutmeco.org/website/alm.htm (accessed 14 February 2004).

As an example of late twentieth-century Christian missionary polemic, consider, for example, Vander Werff's history of Christian missions to Muslims, a carefully researched study which presents itself as a manual for improving Christian evangelical overtures to and disputations with Muslims (Vander Werff, 1977, pp. 3, 6). The author suggests that evangelists can learn from history's lessons.

Malik Manu¯r's book, unlike others mentioned here, has a leftist, Marxist, pan-Arabist (not Islamist) orientation – not surprising, given that the author published in Baathist Iraq.

This author, Ibrāhīm Khalīl Amad, was an Egyptian convert to Islam from American-missionary propagated Presbyterianism who described his treatise as a manual of sorts, ‘a lantern for studied planning of the Islamic mission (da‘wā) to conquer the non-Muslim world ideologically’.

The US military's Crusader artillery system was scheduled for completion in 2008, though its production was halted in 2002 because presidential advisers deemed it too old-fashioned and favoured funding for satellite-guided weapons instead. See Crusaders belong to the past, The Economist, 18 May 2002, pp. 30–31.