APPENDIX III.
MUSLIM MISSIONARY SOCIETIES.
The formation of societies for carrying on a propaganda in an organised and systematic manner is a recent development in the missionary history of Islam—as indeed it is comparatively recent in the history of Christian missions. Such Muslim missionary societies would appear to have been formed in conscious imitation of similar organisations in the Christian world, and are not in themselves the most characteristic expressions of the missionary spirit in Islam. In the Western world there is very little to note. No attempt seems to have been made to form such a society before the latter half of the nineteenth century, and the earliest efforts were attended with little success. When H. M. Stanley in 1875 urged in the English Press the sending of a Christian mission to King Mutesa of Uganda, the wide-spread attention paid to his appeal led to the formation of a missionary society in Constantinople for the propagation of Islam in that country, but no Muhammadan missionaries were ever sent to Uganda, and the outbreak of the Russo-Turkish war in 1878 diverted the attention of the Turks from any such enterprise.[1] A similar failure to establish organised missionary effort was manifested when the Anglo-Egyptian Government of the Sudan marked out zones of influence for various Christian missionary societies in districts the natives of which were heathen; some Muslims of Cairo claimed that a part of the territory should be allotted to the followers of Islam; whereupon the Government replied that all they had to do was to send the missionaries and the same facilities would be afforded to them as to the Christian missionaries; but the necessary organisation was lacking and the matter was allowed to drop.[2] In 1910 Shayk͟h Rashīd, the editor of al-Manār, founded a missionary society in Cairo, the object of which is to establish a college (entitled Dār al-daʻwah [[439]]waʼl-irshād) for the training of missionaries and apologists for Islam, who are to be sent primarily into heathen and Christian lands, but also into those Muhammadan countries in which attempts are being made to induce the Muhammadans to abandon their faith.[3]
But it is in India that there has been the greatest expansion of such organisations. One of the best organised of these is probably the Anjuman Ḥimāyat-i-Islām of Lahore, but propagandist work forms only a small part of the wide field of its activities and it cannot therefore be described as a missionary society pure and simple. The original purpose for which the Anjuman Ḥāmī Islām of Ajmer was founded was to answer the objections urged against Islam by the members of the Ārya Samāj, but it included among its objects the preaching of Islam and the providing of food and clothing to new converts.[4] The Anjuman Waʻz̤-i-Islām, as its name denotes, concentrated its efforts on the preaching of Islam, and, while Mawlavī Baqā Ḥusayn K͟hān (p. 283) was its Secretary, published lists of the converts gained—as did also the Anjuman-i-Islām and the Anjuman Tablīg͟h-i-Islām (which aimed at the conversion of the Hindu untouchables) established in Ḥaydarabad (Deccan), but it does not appear that either of these societies continues to exist.[5] Among the societies that have been established in the twentieth century are the Madrasa Ilāhiyyāt at Cawnpore, for the training of missionaries and the publication of tracts in defence of Islam and in refutation of attacks made upon it; and the Anjuman Ishāʻat wa Taʻlīm-i-Islām at Baṭālah in the Panjāb, with similar objects. But the largest of these organisations is the Anjuman Hidāyat al-Islām of Dehlī, to which as many as twenty-four other societies,[6] in various parts of India, are affiliated; this Anjuman sends out missionaries to preach the doctrines of Islam and to hold controversies with non-Muslims, and publishes controversial literature, especially in refutation of the attacks made by the members of the Ārya Samāj. [[440]]
[3] The Moslem World, vol. i. p. 441.
R. du M. M., vol. xv. p. 374; vol. xviii. pp. 216, 224. [↑]