Missionaries, Christian, in the Islamic world - Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE
[Article]
Murre-van den Berg, Heleen
Leiden
Brill
(2,172 words)
Christian missionaries in the Islamic world , from the sixteenth century to the twentieth centuries, built upon mediaeval patterns, attempting primarily to convert local Eastern Christians. While most considered the conversion of Muslims their ultimate aim, this effort was largely postponed because of political and social constraints. Missions in the Middle East were motivated by generic ideas about converting the heathen but also by a certain type of piety in which the "Land of the Bible" or the "Holy Land" represented both the place of Christianity's origins (i.e., Holy