ভূমিকা

Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Invitation to Islam: A Survival Guide Mission or Invitation: Making it Work The purpose of this lecture is to present and briefly evaluate the various kinds of missionary activity that has been used. I shall chiefly examine Christian and Islamic methods.

Hopefully a summary of methods will give the individual extending the invitation to Islam a clear picture of the available alternatives, to what extent and under what circumstances they are effective, and whether or not they are generally applicable in an Islamic context. Islam was historically spread by several means. The first was the web of kinship ties. Later Islam was associated with trading ties.

Military expansion also became a factor, although provision was made for non-Muslims to live under Islamic jurisdiction without reversion to Islam. For the most part, the principle of no compulsion in religion has been implemented to varying degrees. Christian Missions: An Evaluation Christianity was first spread as a movement within Judaism.

It opposed Jewish collaboration with Rome with a conservative programme recognizing the abiding character of divinely appointed leadership, namely in the figure of Jesus (as). Rome rightly saw this as a threat and forced it underground. It thus spread as an underground, illegal movement using networks such as kinship and trades. True Christianity continued underground when the visible Church became allied with the empire under Constantine.

We must therefore differentiate between the propagation of true Christianity and the Church, which are historically opposing institutions. True Christianity has always remained an underground movement known under various names, such as the Waldensians. Their method of propagation consisted of itinerant preachers who went about the countryside reciting the Bible by memory, generally in the local language, and hiding their identity under the cloak of peddling cloth, jewels, and other notions.

At the time of the Reformation they were lured out of the woodwork and either were destroyed or capitulated to the established heresies, that is, the doctrines of the Trinity, the Atonement, and the Church. True Christianity may still exist, but it is not known to. The Church was an arm of the State for the purpose of controlling the population. It was spread through State patronage and military expansion. The Church established itself in Europe through the sword.