Missionary activity of Islam II

Missionary activity in South Asia

 

 

 

Early missionary activity (750 - 1550)

Muslim missionaries played a key role in the spread of Islam in India with some missionaries even assuming roles as merchants or traders. For example, in the 9th century, the Ismailis sent missionaries across Asia in all directions under various guises, often as traders, sufis and merchants. Ismailis were instructed to speak potential converts in their own language. Some Ismaili missionaries traveled to India and employed effort to make their religion acceptable to the Hindus. For instance, they represented Ali as the tenth avatar of Vishnu and wrote hymns as well as a mahdi purana in their effort to win converts. At other times, converts were won in conjunction with the propagation efforts of rulers. According to Ibn Batuta, the Khiljis encouraged conversion to Islam by making it a custom to have the convert presented to the Sultan who would place a robe on the convert and award him with bracelets of gold. During Ikhtiyar Uddin Bakhtiyar Khilji's control of the Bengal, Muslim missionaries in India achieved their greatest success, in terms of number of converts to Islam.

Missionary activity during the Mughal Empire (1550 - 1750)

Muslim missionaries across India received a significant moral boost with the formation of the Mughal Empire in Northern India in the fourteenth century. However, the empire evolved into a mixed blessing for Islamic missionary work, with its two most powerful rulers taking a somewhat diametrically opposite view of religion. Initially, Akbar the Great chose to follow a form of inter-faith dialogue somewhat contrary to the views of the traditional clergy, a stratagem that was to be totally reversed by his great-grandson Aurangzeb half a century later.

Missionary activity during the Colonial Era (1750 - 1950)

With the decline of the Mughals and a vast majority of the Muslim lands coming under the rule of the European Colonial powers, Islamic missionary activity faced a new challenge, vis-a-vis Christian missionaries that arrived along with the colonial rulers. It was said that much of Muslim missionary zeal in India arose to counteract the anti-Muslim tendencies of Christian missionaries and thus, Islamic missionary effort was defense rather than direct proselytizing. The influence of Christian schools has caused significant interest among younger Indian and South Asian Muslims to study their faith, consequently sparking religious zeal. Moreover, some Muslims have adopted propagation methods of Christian missionaries such as street preaching.

Missionary activity in Southeast Asia

The first Indonesians to adopt Islam are thought to have done so as early as the eleventh century, although Muslims had visited Indonesia early in the Muslim era. The spread of Islam was driven by increasing trade links outside of the archipelago; in general, traders and the royalty of major kingdoms were the first to adopt the new religion. Dominant kingdoms included Mataram in Central Java, and the sultanates of Ternate and Tidore in the Maluku Islands to the east. By the end of the thirteenth century, Islam had been established in North Sumatra; by the fourteenth in northeast Malaya, Brunei, the southern Philippines and among some courtiers of East Java; and the fifteenth in Malacca and other areas of the Malay Peninsula. Through assimilation Islam had supplanted Hinduism and Buddhism as the dominant religion of Java and Sumatra by the end of the 16th century. At this time, only Bali retained a Hindu majority and the outer islands remained largely animist but would adopt Islam and Christianity in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Missionary activity in modern-day Europe

With Islam seemingly in constant military conflict with Europe at their mutual borders, missionary activity within Christian Medieval Europe was virtually non-existent until the dramatic changing of the European political map in the 20th century on one hand and the concurrent decline of the Ottoman Empire on the other. As such, this paved way for a subsequent mass immigration of Muslims from the Muslim World to Europe in the 20th century. With the arrival of this new immigrant population in Europe, Islamic missionary activity has followed as well.

Missionary activity in North America

The Muslim population in the United States has increased vastly since 1950, with growth driven by both widespread conversion as well as immigration. The conversion to Islam of most converts in North America can be attributed to several distinct, yet symbiotic, missionary activities.

Nation of Islam

Black supremacist group Nation of Islam's efforts to recruit members to its fold would be the earliest example of Islamic missionary activity in the United States. While considered a heretic branch of Sunni Islam, throughout the 1950s and 1960s, the Nation of Islam was the main source of information about Islam available to most Americans. As such, the Nation of Islam has been the single most important factor behind the subsequent widespread adoption of the more orthodox Sunni Islam in the African-American community. Many former Nation of Islam members have gone on to become major figures in the large African-American Muslim presence in North America, such as Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali and Nation of Islam founder Elijah Muhammad's own son, Warith Deen Mohammed.

Muslim immigrants and their missionary implications

A major push for Islamic missionary work in North America occurred when large numbers of educated professional Muslim immigrants as well as higher-education seeking foreign Muslim students began to arrive in Canada and the United States in the early 1970s.The arrival of these new immigrants coincided with a growing curiosity about Islam among the American public in the late 1970s, following political events in the Muslim World, which had been up until this point, somewhat invisible from the American public's consciousness. However, the Middle East Oil Crisis of 1973, the Iranian Revolution in 1979, followed by the beginning of the Afghan-Soviet War in 1980 dramatically raised the profile of Islam and Muslims in the North American media. The new wave of Muslim immigrants were thus well-placed to begin a variety of small-scale missionary efforts across their communities to inform their fellow Americans about their somewhat mis-understood religion.

Missionary work in prison systems

A more recent missionary front has been the US Prison System, where encouragement of religious study has opened an avenue for Muslims to promote their own religion. There is an increasing trend towards hiring of full-time Muslim chaplains to cater to increasing populations of Muslim prisoners. and in large urban areas J. Michael Waller claims that Muslim inmates comprise 17-20% of the prison population, or roughly 350,000 inmates in 2003. He also claims that 80% of the prisoners who "find faith" while in prison convert to Islam.

Saudi-financed missionary work

With the burgeoning Muslim population in North America by the late 1980s, numerous missionary outlets saw an opportunity to receive financing for their missionary work from various Saudi-based religious foundations as well as influential private Saudi citizens. This phenomenon, which flourished for much of the decade of the 1990s, came to an abrupt end following the events of the September 11 attacks. Some of the works undertaken at the time included:

• Mass distribution of A Brief Illustrated Guide to Understanding Islam (ISBN 9960-34-011-2) a high quality color booklet widely available at missionary outlets.
• Mass distribution of the complete Yusuf Ali translation The Meaning of the Holy Qur'an. Tens of thousands of the US Amana Publications edition (ISBN 978-1590080252) were available for free at missionary outlets across North America during the 1990s. These were printed under the auspices of the Iqraa Charitable Society of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
• Issuing of numerous scholarships, especially to African-American converts during the early 1990s, for 2-5 year courses of Islamic studies at various Islamic universities in Saudi Arabia.
• Supporting local efforts in building Mosques. The King Fahd Mosque in Culver City, California and the Islamic Cultural Center of Italy in Rome represent two of Saudi Arabia's largest investments in foreign mosques as former Saudi king Fahd bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud contributed US$8 million and US$50 millionto the two mosques, respectively.

Missionary activity by specialists

With the increasing population of Muslims in North America, a number of specialist missionaries have emerged, focusing primarily on missionary work in North America. The more well-known of these Muslim missionaries include:

• Ahmed Deedat, South African preacher who visited North America on several occasions in the 1980s to debate Christian contemporaries and lecture on Christian-Muslim dialogue.
• Jamal Badawi, Canadian-Egyptian professor, who has been very active in Christian-Muslim dialogue for over 30 years.
• Shabir Ally, is an international speaker and very active missionary with his own weekly TV Show that airs in Canada.
• Zakir Naik of India is the founder of a vast missionary organization, Islamic Research Foundation (IRF), under whose auspices he produces numerous audio-visual missionary material for world-wide distribution. He often invites well-known North American converts for speaking tours to India.
• Abu Ameenah Bilal Philips a convert to Islam, originally from Canada, is one of the earliest and most famous public figures to speak on missionary themes in North America. He has published numerous books on Islam, and Islamic studies for new Muslims, over the past 30 years to supplement his public preaching.
• Yusuf Estes, a former Protestant Minister and now self-styled "American-Muslim chaplain" is very active in missionary work, with special focus on online missionary activity.

Muslim celebrity missionary impact

With the power asserted by the celebrity culture of North America, the presence of several high-profile Muslim converts in the sports and arts celebrity scene has resulted in unintended but significant missionary consequences.

• Muhammad Ali has been, by far, the biggest Muslim celebrity in the American public consciousness, not only as a pre-eminent sportsperson, but also for his greater than life persona. Originally a member of the Nation of Islam, he later made the transition to more orthodox Sunni Islam and became an active Muslim missionary after he contracted Parkinson's disease. He has been known to often pass out material on Islam to fans and the general public when approached at airports, restaurants and other public places.
• Malcolm X, the public face of the Nation of Islam during much of the tumultous late 1950s and early 1960s, has since been identified as one of the most important African-American leaders of the past century. His celebrity aside, he made an even more direct contribution to Islamic missionary activity in North America with his book The Autobiography of Malcolm X which in 1998, Time named as one of the ten most influential non-fiction books of the 20th century.
• Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, originally Lew Alcindor Jr., was a stand-out college basketball player, who converted to Islam soon after turning pro. Changing his name to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, he was to remain in the public limelight for well over a decade thereafter with a Hall of Fame pro career as a member of the high profile multiple championship winning Los Angeles Lakers teams of the 1980s.
• Yusuf Islam, originally known as Cat Stevens, an English musician with multiple platinum hits to his credit, while he was still in his 20s, famously converted to Islam in 1977 following years of spiritual awakening and initially renounced his musical career altogether, not only changing his name, but also actively promoting Islam in public thereafter.
• Hakeem Olajuwon, a prominent Nigerian-American basketball player, who won the NB Championships twice in 1994-95 as a member of the Houston Rockets, publicly acknowledged a renewed interest in his Islamic roots early in his pro career. He also represented the United States National Basketball team at the Olympics, as a naturalized US citizen, during the later part of his career.