Conflict, Conquest, and Conversion surveys two thousand years of the Christian missionary enterprise in the Middle East within the context of the region's political evolution. Its broad, rich narrative follows Christian missions as they interacted with imperial powers and as the momentum of religious change shifted from Christianity to Islam and back, adding new dimensions to the history of the region and the nature of the relationship between the Middle East and the West.
Historians and political scientists increasingly recognize the importance of integrating religion into political analysis, and this volume, using long-neglected sources, uniquely advances this effort. It surveys Christian missions from the earliest days of Christianity to the present, paying particular attention to the role of Christian missions, both Protestant and Catholic, in shaping the political and economic imperialism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Eleanor H. Tejirian and Reeva Spector Simon delineate the ongoing tensions between conversion and the focus on witness and "good works" within the missionary movement, which contributed to the development and spread of nongovernmental organizations. Through its conscientious, systematic study, this volume offers an unparalleled encounter with the social, political, and economic consequences of such trends.
- Table of Contents
- List of Maps and Figures
- Acknowledgments
- Prologue: The Parable of the Montgolfière and the Translation of Haleby’s Corpse
- Introduction: Good Things Made Lawful: Euro-Muslim Objects and Laissez-Faire Fatwas
- 1. The Toilet Paper Fatwa: Hygienic Innovation and the Sacred Law in the Late Imperial Era
- 2. Fatwas for the Partners’ Club: A Global Mufti’s Enterprise
- 3. In a Material World: European Expansion from Tripoli to Cairo
- 4. Paper Money and Consummate Men: Capitalism and the Rise of Laissez-Faire Salafism
- 5. The Qurʾan in the Gramophone: Sounds of Islamic Modernity from Cairo to Kazan
- 6. Telegraphs, Photographs, Railways, Law Codes: Tools of Empire, Tools of Islam
- 7. Arabian Slippers: The Turn to Nationalistic Consumption
- 8. Lottery Tickets, Luxury Hotels, and Christian Experts: Economic Liberalism Versus Islamic Exclusivism in a Territorial Framework
- Conclusions
- Notes
- Selected Bibliography
- Index
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