Methods for Missions to Muslims
Muslim countries are notoriously difficult mission fields. Across history, Christians in those countries face much persecution and antagonism from Muslims. Despite all its trials, in some ways however, it is just like any other field. Though our human methods make look slightly different depending on the country, the Holy Spirit who converts hearts remains the same in every nation, in every year. The gospel is the same across all the nations. It is unchanging and effective.
Samuel Zwemer, born in Michigan in 1867, was a missionary to Muslims in the Arabian area, and was known as the Apostle to the Islam. He revolutionized how Christians viewed Muslims, encouraging Christians to evangelize to them. Zwemer wrote Islam, A Challenge to Faith based on his experiences ministering to Islamic people. In one chapter, from which this article is excerpted, he wrote of the methods used to evangelize to the Muslims. He speaks of using the Bible, of using hospitals and schools, and of preaching. Though he was a missionary around one hundred years ago, there is wisdom that applies across the centuries. Even today, missionaries can appreciate his advice on how to reach Muslims with the gospel.
How to Reach Muslims
The Islamic missionary problem is a challenge to our faith, for it is beset with many difficulties, and there are opinions current, as we have seen, to the effect that missions to the Muslims are fruitless, if not hopeless. Back of all methods, therefore, we need faith, such faith as dwelt in the pioneer heroes who led the attack against this citadel of error—Raymund Lull, Petrus Venerabilis, Henry Martyn, Pfander and Keith-Falconer. Such faith exhibits itself in the words of a lady missionary in Algiers, Miss I. Lilias Trotter: “Take it at its very worst. They are dead lands and dead souls, blind and cold and stiff in death as no heathen are; but we who love them see the possibilities of sacrifice, of endurance, of enthusiasm, of life, not yet effaced. Does not the Son of God, who died for them, see these possibilities, too? Do you think He says of the Mohammedan, ‘There is no hope or help for him in his God’? Has He not a challenge, too, for your faith; the challenge that rolled away the stone from the grave where Lazarus lay? ‘Said I not unto thee that, if thou wouldst believe, thou shouldst see the glory of God? Then took they away the stone.’ To raise the spiritually dead is the work of the Son of God. But we are to believe and take away the stone from the place where the dead lay.”
The Bible
The distribution of God's Word has proved the best method for beginning work in all Muslim lands. It is nearly everywhere permitted. It is strong yet inoffensive. It strikes at the root of Islam by placing the Bible over against the Quran, and the sublime story of the life of Jesus, the Christ, over against the artificial halo that surrounds the life of Mohammed. In this method of work we have immense advantage over Islam. Translations of the Quran into other Muslim languages than Arabic exist, but they are rare, expensive, and are necessarily far inferior to the original in style and force. But the Bible has been translated into nearly every Islamic tongue, and is the cheapest and best printed book in the Orient; nor has its beauty or power ever been lost in a good translation. The Arabic Quran is a sealed book to all non-Arabic-speaking races, but the Bible speaks the language of every cradle and every market-place in the Muslim world. Every missionary to Muslims should be a colporteur [a peddler of religious books] and every colporteur a missionary. Distributions should be by sale, not by free gift. We prize that which we pay for. Among Muslims there are portions of Scriptures which are especially acceptable and therefore effective, namely, Genesis, Matthew's Gospel, John's Gospel and the Psalms.
Medical Missions
These break up the fallow ground of prejudice and fanaticism, are possible nearly everywhere, and, when conducted with evangelistic zeal, have proved fruitful in results as has no other agency. The Punjab, Persia, and Egypt are examples. Hospitals and dispensary clinics reach the crowded centers, but medical missionary touring is essential in sparsely settled countries like Arabia, Persia and Morocco.
Educational Institutions
“To make wrong right, let in the light.” From the kindergarten on the veranda of a mission house to the well-equipped university of India, all educational forces, great and small, help to undermine that stupendous rock of ignorance and superstition, Muslim tradition. But the work of education is only preparatory. The New Islam of India and Egypt is the revolt of the educated mind against traditionalism. We must reach the heart and conscience, or fail. Education is only a means to an end.
Preaching
There are many ways of doing this that are more suitable to Muslims and the Orient than the pulpit or the platform. Preaching in this larger sense includes talking with men by the wayside, or in the coffee-shop, with a group of sailors on deck, or to the Mohammedan postman who brings your letters. The glorious liberty of bazaar preaching is not yet granted in many Muslim lands, nor do Muslims as yet come in large numbers to Christian churches; but that does not mean that there is no opportunity for preachers or preaching. It is well to remember the resolution of the Church Missionary Society, passed as early as 1888: “While the difficulties in the way of missionary work in lands under Muslim rule may well appear to the eye of sense most formidable, this meeting is firmly persuaded that, so long as the door of access to individual Muslim is open, so long it is the clear and bounden duty of the Church of Christ to make use of its opportunities for delivering the Gospel message to them, in full expectation that the power of the Holy Spirit will, in God's good time, have a signal manifestation in the triumph of Christianity in those lands.” There is no question about the door of access to individual Muslims being open. It is wide open everywhere for men and for women. What single lady missionaries have done and are doing in North Africa and Persia among fanatical villagers proves that there is a loud call for women to preach to their Muslim sisters the unsearchable riches of Christ.
Preaching must have for its subject the essentials of Christianity. Preach Christ crucified. Show the reasonableness of the mysteries of revelation, of the incarnation, and of the Holy Trinity; but never try to explain them by mere philosophy. The problem is to reach, not the intellect, but the heart and conscience, to arouse it from stupor, to show the grandeur of moral courage to the man who is intellectually convinced of the truth. In trying to convince the will—that citadel of man's soul—we must follow the line of least resistance. Yet compromise must not take the place of tact.
The right angle for the presentation of truth can best be learned by studying the strength and the weakness of Islam. The history of Muslim theology, for example, shows that heterodoxy has nearly always been connected with a strong desire for a mediator. This natural longing for an intercessor and an atonement is fully supplied in Christ, our Savior. Again, when Muslims object to the eternal pre-existence of the Word of God as a form of polytheism, point out that orthodox Islam holds the Quran to be eternal and uncreated simply because it is the word of God. Preach to the Muslim, not as a Muslim, but as to a man—as a sinner in need of a Savior. There is no use in arousing the picket-guard by firing blank cartridges before the attack, yet controversy has its place.
The Place of Controversy
That it has a place, and an important one, in reaching Muslims is evident from the whole history of Islamic missions. But the subject is a large one and perplexing, because it is hard to look at things from the Muslim viewpoint. Dr. Tisdall's “Manual of the Leading Mohammedan Objections to Christianity” is indispensable for the missionary, and is a deeply interesting book for all students of missions. Prayerful contact with the Muslim mind will teach one how to use this keen weapon to the best advantage in every special case. There is a large amount of controversial literature in many languages… In dealing with inquirers it is helpful to remember three facts and three texts which apply to such cases:
- There are many secret believers in all Muslim lands of whom the missionary will perhaps never know. Pray for them. “Yet I have left me seven thousand in Israel, all the knees which have not bowed unto Baal, and every mouth which hath not kissed him” (1 Kings 19:18).
- It is exceedingly difficult, even in countries under Christian rulers, for a Muslim to break away from Islam and confess Christ. Be tender and patient. “A bruised reed shall He not break, and smoking flax shall He not quench, till He send forth judgment unto victory” (Isaiah 42:3).
- In every possible way encourage public confession of Christ. Living apostles who, freed from the yoke of Islam, preach the gospel with all boldness and are ready to die for Christ, such, and such alone, will vanquish the religion of Islam. “Whosoever, therefore, shall confess me before men, him will I also confess before my Father which is in heaven. But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father, which is in heaven” (Matthew 10:32).