Compared to their counterparts in sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Asia, Christian missionaries in the modern Middle East affected relatively few formal conversions. Nevertheless, in the past 15 years, scholars have begin to appreciate how missionaries in the Middle East exerted far-reaching cultural, political, and economic influences on the region, through schools, hospitals, and other institutions. Scholars have also begin to appreciate how missionaries variously strengthened, mediated, and deflected forms of European and American imperialism, while forging long-distance connections between the Middle East and their home countries

Sharkey, Heather J

English

ScholarlyCommons@Penn

University of PennsylvaniaScholarlyCommonsDepartmental Papers (NELC) Department of Near Eastern Languages andCivilizations (NELC)2013Conflict, Conquest, and Conversion: TwoThousand Years of Christian Missions in theMiddle East [Review]Heather J. SharkeyUniversity of Pennsylvania, hsharkey@sas.upenn.eduFollow this and additional works at: http://repository.upenn.edu/nelc_papersPart of the African History Commons, Christianity Commons, History of Religions of EasternOrigins Commons, Islamic World and Near East History Commons, Missions and WorldChristianity Commons, and the Near Eastern Languages and Societies CommonsHeather J. Sharkey's review of Conflict, Conquest, and conversion: Two Thousand Years of Christian Missions in the Middle East by Eleanor H. Tejirian andReeva Spector Simon.This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. http://repository.upenn.edu/nelc_papers/3For more information, please contact libraryrepository@pobox.upenn.edu.Recommended CitationSharkey, H. J. (2013). Conflict, Conquest, and Conversion: Two Thousand Years of Christian Missions in the Middle East [Review].Middle East Journal, 67 (3), 493-494. http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/mej.2013.0052Conflict, Conquest, and Conversion: Two Thousand Years of ChristianMissions in the Middle East [Review]AbstractCompared to their counterparts in sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Asia, Christian missionaries in the modernMiddle East affected relatively few formal conversions. Nevertheless, in the past 15 years, scholars have beginto appreciate how missionaries in the Middle East exerted far-reaching cultural, political, and economicinfluences on the region, through schools, hospitals, and other institutions. Scholars have also begin toappreciate how missionaries variously strengthened, mediated, and deflected forms of European andAmerican imperialism, while forging long-distance connections between the Middle East and their homecountries.DisciplinesAfrican History | Christianity | History of Religions of Eastern Origins | Islamic World and Near East History| Missions and World Christianity | Near Eastern Languages and SocietiesCommentsHeather J. Sharkey's review of Conflict, Conquest, and conversion: Two Thousand Years of Christian Missions inthe Middle East by Eleanor H. Tejirian and Reeva Spector Simon.This review is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn.edu/nelc_papers/3MIDDLE EAST JOURNAL M 493sary supersede the application of the shari‘a (e.g., prayer, pilgrimage, and fasting). This remarkable statement was taken by many to mean the demise of the experiment of Islamic governance in Iran. Readers of this book would not find such a development at all surprising. It is an important contribu-tion to understanding the role and potential of the shari‘a in the modern world.Mark D. Welton, Professor Emeritus, Unit-ed States Military Academy at West PointConflict, Conquest, and Conversion: Two Thousand Years of Christian Mis-sions in the Middle East, by Eleanor H. Tejirian and Reeva Spector Simon. New York: Columbia University Press, 2012. 296 pages. $35.Reviewed by Heather J. SharkeyCompared to their counterparts in sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Asia, Christian missionaries in the modern Middle East af-fected relatively few formal conversions. Nevertheless, in the past 15 years, scholars have begun to appreciate how missionaries in the Middle East exerted far-reaching cultural, political, and economic influences on the re-gion, through schools, hospitals, and other institutions. Scholars have also begun to ap-preciate how missionaries variously strength-ened, mediated, and deflected forms of Euro-pean and American imperialism, while forg-ing long-distance connections between the Middle East and their home countries.In Conflict, Conquest, and Conversion, Eleanor H. Tejirian and Reeva Spector Si-mon recount the history of Christian mis-sions in the Middle East in light of this bur-geoning scholarship. Noting that most works on missionaries have focused on particular countries, missions, or periods, Tejirian and Simon aim to survey “the entire landscape of Western missionaries — Roman Catholic as well as Protestant, European as well as American, their impact on the region, and the effect of their activity on other aspects of Western involvement in the Middle East” (p. ix). They do so in a dense and fast-paced chronicle of missionary history. with short quotations from philosophers, so-ciologists, and other thinkers to support this analysis. The modern state is an amoral entity based on positivism that exists solely for its own perpetuation. In order to survive, it de-mands the complete adherence of its citizens, and concepts such as the rule of law and sepa-ration of powers are subordinate to, and inef-fective constraints on, the political, cultural, economic, and legal instruments of the state’s “will to power.” There is no idea or goal great-er than the survival of the state; the Is and the Ought are irreconcilable, and the latter has no relevance to the functioning of the state.The shari‘a admits of no such separa-tion between the Is and the Ought. It is a comprehensive approach to individual and communal life in which the moral impera-tive is always present and indeed dominates the legal, political, cultural and social as-pects of society. Resting primarily on the five pillars of religion (shahada, prayer, fasting, pilgrimage, and almsgiving), the shari‘a focuses on shaping and developing the individual as a moral being.What binds the law together with political rule is the overarching concept of God’s sovereignty. This means that paradigmatic Islamic gov-ernance exists not as an end in itself, but as a means to develop fully the divinely man-dated moral content of the community and the individual subject. The idea of Islamic governance, “nurturing the community qua Community and serving its interests as a morally constituted entity” (pp. 139–40), is therefore fundamentally at odds with the concept of the modern state.Professor Hallaq’s arguments are well-constructed and thought-provoking, and the depth of his knowledge of both West-ern and Islamic political and legal thought is evident throughout. The postmodern critique of the modern state is compelling, though readers unfamiliar with the works of such philosophers as Alasdair MacIntyre may find that the discussion requires care-ful and repeated scrutiny, with frequent reliance on the many endnotes. Despite its short length, this is not a book to be ab-sorbed in one quick reading.In 1988, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatol-lah Khomeini declared that the interests of the Islamic state would whenever neces-494 M MIDDLE EAST JOURNALthe same time, they distill current scholar-ship on the subject, making the book valu-able to those who work at the intersection of Christian studies and diplomatic history. Heather J. Sharkey is Associate Professor in the Department of Near Eastern Lan-guages and Civilizations at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of Amer-ican Evangelicals in Egypt: Missionary Encounters in an Age of Empire (Princeton University Press, 2008).Toward an Islamic Enlightenment: The Gülen Movement, by M. Hakan Yavuz. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2013. 300 pages. $35.Reviewed by Michael M. Gunter This is a richly nuanced, balanced anal-ysis of the influential Gülen movement, a “transnational religious network of schools, finance and community services” (p. 248) that “might be termed the first quasi-Prot-estant version of Islam” (p. 10). Spawned from the philosophy of Said Nursî (1873–1960), an enlightened Kurdish Sufi mystic, Fethullah Gülen’s (b. 1941) “key and con-troversial assumption is that individuals must be pious in order to be good citizens… that scientific curiosity is compatible with Islamic concerns …[and] that one can be a democrat and in favor of civil society out of religious convictions” (p. 8). Thus, “the significance of the Gülen movement is that it has not only vernacularized the ideas of Enlightenment, but . . . also turned them into a religio-social movement” (p. 6). “Gülen has forged a cohesive …social movement stressing individual character formation and community building, with the goal of cata-lyzing an Islamic renaissance compatible with the needs of the modern world” (p. 15). Following its contextually stimulating introduction, Professor Yavuz’s study con-sists of three parts: Man, Movement, and Meaning. The shorter first part examines Gülen’s life story and key concepts such as Islam, morality, the good life and commu-nity, modernity, democracy, pluralism, and nationalism within Islam. The authors begin their survey with the career of Jesus and his disciples, and end around 1920. They cover the history of ear-ly Christianity, the Crusades, the Protestant Reformation, and Catholic Counter-Refor-mation, before surveying the activities of both Catholic and Protestant missionaries in the 19th and early 20th centuries. American Protestant missionaries feature as the most dynamic characters in their narrative — the most pedagogically innovative, the most di-verse, and also, in many ways, the quirkiest. The vast temporal scope of this book makes it possible for the authors to trace con-tinuities and recurring themes in this history of Christian missions. For example, to illus-trate the persisting importance of the Cru-sades for European Christian imaginations, the authors describe Kaiser Wilhelm’s visit to Jerusalem in 1898. The goal of this visit was to bolster Ottoman-German relations, though it probably did more to fulfill the Kaiser’s Orientalist fantasies. “Dressed in a white cos-tume evocative of the Teutonic knights and with a golden eagle atop his helmet,” they write, “Wilhelm rode into Jerusalem through a breach in the walls that had been prepared especially for his entourage” (p. 117). The authors assume that readers will ap-proach this book with a firm grasp of Chris-tian, European and American, and Middle Eastern history. For this reason, they do not explain certain concepts or issues that will be familiar mostly to expert readers — for ex-ample, the terms for debate in early theologi-cal controversies over the nature of Christ (which were so important in determining sec-tarian schisms), or the changing fortunes of Jesuits vis-à-vis the Roman Catholic church. This means that the book is not intended for newcomers to mission history. Nevertheless, scholars with a special interest in the history of missions are likely to welcome this book as a reference that is useful and concise.If anyone questions the importance of the history of Christian missions to the mod-ern Middle East, then a quick look at this densely detailed book will dispel doubts. The authors succeed in showing how Chris-tian missions have inextricably connected the religious, cultural, and political history of this region over the past two millennia. At 

Conflict, Conquest, and Conversion: Two Thousand Years of Christian Missions in the Middle East [Review]

Kosmopolis

University of Pennsylvania
ScholarlyCommons
Departmental Papers (NELC) Department of Near Eastern Languages andCivilizations (NELC)
2013
Conflict, Conquest, and Conversion: Two
Thousand Years of Christian Missions in the
Middle East [Review]
Heather J. Sharkey
University of Pennsylvania, hsharkey@sas.upenn.edu
Follow this and additional works at: http://repository.upenn.edu/nelc_papers
Part of the African History Commons, Christianity Commons, History of Religions of Eastern
Origins Commons, Islamic World and Near East History Commons, Missions and World
Christianity Commons, and the Near Eastern Languages and Societies Commons
Heather J. Sharkey's review of Conflict, Conquest, and conversion: Two Thousand Years of Christian Missions in the Middle East by Eleanor H. Tejirian and
Reeva Spector Simon.
This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. http://repository.upenn.edu/nelc_papers/3
For more information, please contact libraryrepository@pobox.upenn.edu.
Recommended Citation
Sharkey, H. J. (2013). Conflict, Conquest, and Conversion: Two Thousand Years of Christian Missions in the Middle East [Review].
Middle East Journal, 67 (3), 493-494. http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/mej.2013.0052
Conflict, Conquest, and Conversion: Two Thousand Years of Christian
Missions in the Middle East [Review]
Abstract
Compared to their counterparts in sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Asia, Christian missionaries in the modern
Middle East affected relatively few formal conversions. Nevertheless, in the past 15 years, scholars have begin
to appreciate how missionaries in the Middle East exerted far-reaching cultural, political, and economic
influences on the region, through schools, hospitals, and other institutions. Scholars have also begin to
appreciate how missionaries variously strengthened, mediated, and deflected forms of European and
American imperialism, while forging long-distance connections between the Middle East and their home
countries.
Disciplines
African History | Christianity | History of Religions of Eastern Origins | Islamic World and Near East History
| Missions and World Christianity | Near Eastern Languages and Societies
Comments
Heather J. Sharkey's review of Conflict, Conquest, and conversion: Two Thousand Years of Christian Missions in
the Middle East by Eleanor H. Tejirian and Reeva Spector Simon.
This review is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn.edu/nelc_papers/3
MIDDLE EAST JOURNAL M 493
sary supersede the application of the shari‘a 
(e.g., prayer, pilgrimage, and fasting). This 
remarkable statement was taken by many 
to mean the demise of the experiment of 
Islamic governance in Iran. Readers of this 
book would not find such a development at 
all surprising. It is an important contribu-
tion to understanding the role and potential 
of the shari‘a in the modern world.
Mark D. Welton, Professor Emeritus, Unit-
ed States Military Academy at West Point
Conflict, Conquest, and Conversion: 
Two Thousand Years of Christian Mis-
sions in the Middle East, by Eleanor H. 
Tejirian and Reeva Spector Simon. New 
York: Columbia University Press, 2012. 
296 pages. $35.
Reviewed by Heather J. Sharkey
Compared to their counterparts in sub-
Saharan Africa and parts of Asia, Christian 
missionaries in the modern Middle East af-
fected relatively few formal conversions. 
Nevertheless, in the past 15 years, scholars 
have begun to appreciate how missionaries in 
the Middle East exerted far-reaching cultural, 
political, and economic influences on the re-
gion, through schools, hospitals, and other 
institutions. Scholars have also begun to ap-
preciate how missionaries variously strength-
ened, mediated, and deflected forms of Euro-
pean and American imperialism, while forg-
ing long-distance connections between the 
Middle East and their home countries.
In Conflict, Conquest, and Conversion, 
Eleanor H. Tejirian and Reeva Spector Si-
mon recount the history of Christian mis-
sions in the Middle East in light of this bur-
geoning scholarship. Noting that most works 
on missionaries have focused on particular 
countries, missions, or periods, Tejirian and 
Simon aim to survey “the entire landscape 
of Western missionaries — Roman Catholic 
as well as Protestant, European as well as 
American, their impact on the region, and 
the effect of their activity on other aspects 
of Western involvement in the Middle East” 
(p. ix). They do so in a dense and fast-paced 
chronicle of missionary history. 
with short quotations from philosophers, so-
ciologists, and other thinkers to support this 
analysis. The modern state is an amoral entity 
based on positivism that exists solely for its 
own perpetuation. In order to survive, it de-
mands the complete adherence of its citizens, 
and concepts such as the rule of law and sepa-
ration of powers are subordinate to, and inef-
fective constraints on, the political, cultural, 
economic, and legal instruments of the state’s 
“will to power.” There is no idea or goal great-
er than the survival of the state; the Is and the 
Ought are irreconcilable, and the latter has no 
relevance to the functioning of the state.
The shari‘a admits of no such separa-
tion between the Is and the Ought. It is a 
comprehensive approach to individual and 
communal life in which the moral impera-
tive is always present and indeed dominates 
the legal, political, cultural and social as-
pects of society. Resting primarily on the 
five pillars of religion (shahada, prayer, 
fasting, pilgrimage, and almsgiving), the 
shari‘a focuses on shaping and developing 
the individual as a moral being.What binds 
the law together with political rule is the 
overarching concept of God’s sovereignty. 
This means that paradigmatic Islamic gov-
ernance exists not as an end in itself, but as 
a means to develop fully the divinely man-
dated moral content of the community and 
the individual subject. The idea of Islamic 
governance, “nurturing the community qua 
Community and serving its interests as a 
morally constituted entity” (pp. 139–40), 
is therefore fundamentally at odds with the 
concept of the modern state.
Professor Hallaq’s arguments are well-
constructed and thought-provoking, and 
the depth of his knowledge of both West-
ern and Islamic political and legal thought 
is evident throughout. The postmodern 
critique of the modern state is compelling, 
though readers unfamiliar with the works 
of such philosophers as Alasdair MacIntyre 
may find that the discussion requires care-
ful and repeated scrutiny, with frequent 
reliance on the many endnotes. Despite its 
short length, this is not a book to be ab-
sorbed in one quick reading.
In 1988, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatol-
lah Khomeini declared that the interests of 
the Islamic state would whenever neces-
494 M MIDDLE EAST JOURNAL
the same time, they distill current scholar-
ship on the subject, making the book valu-
able to those who work at the intersection 
of Christian studies and diplomatic history. 
Heather J. Sharkey is Associate Professor 
in the Department of Near Eastern Lan-
guages and Civilizations at the University 
of Pennsylvania. She is the author of Amer-
ican Evangelicals in Egypt: Missionary 
Encounters in an Age of Empire (Princeton 
University Press, 2008).
Toward an Islamic Enlightenment: The 
Gülen Movement, by M. Hakan Yavuz. 
Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 
2013. 300 pages. $35.
Reviewed by Michael M. Gunter
 
This is a richly nuanced, balanced anal-
ysis of the influential Gülen movement, a 
“transnational religious network of schools, 
finance and community services” (p. 248) 
that “might be termed the first quasi-Prot-
estant version of Islam” (p. 10). Spawned 
from the philosophy of Said Nursî (1873–
1960), an enlightened Kurdish Sufi mystic, 
Fethullah Gülen’s (b. 1941) “key and con-
troversial assumption is that individuals 
must be pious in order to be good citizens… 
that scientific curiosity is compatible with 
Islamic concerns …[and] that one can be 
a democrat and in favor of civil society out 
of religious convictions” (p. 8). Thus, “the 
significance of the Gülen movement is that 
it has not only vernacularized the ideas of 
Enlightenment, but . . . also turned them into 
a religio-social movement” (p. 6). “Gülen 
has forged a cohesive …social movement 
stressing individual character formation and 
community building, with the goal of cata-
lyzing an Islamic renaissance compatible 
with the needs of the modern world” (p. 15). 
Following its contextually stimulating 
introduction, Professor Yavuz’s study con-
sists of three parts: Man, Movement, and 
Meaning. The shorter first part examines 
Gülen’s life story and key concepts such as 
Islam, morality, the good life and commu-
nity, modernity, democracy, pluralism, and 
nationalism within Islam. 
The authors begin their survey with the 
career of Jesus and his disciples, and end 
around 1920. They cover the history of ear-
ly Christianity, the Crusades, the Protestant 
Reformation, and Catholic Counter-Refor-
mation, before surveying the activities of 
both Catholic and Protestant missionaries in 
the 19th and early 20th centuries. American 
Protestant missionaries feature as the most 
dynamic characters in their narrative — the 
most pedagogically innovative, the most di-
verse, and also, in many ways, the quirkiest. 
The vast temporal scope of this book 
makes it possible for the authors to trace con-
tinuities and recurring themes in this history 
of Christian missions. For example, to illus-
trate the persisting importance of the Cru-
sades for European Christian imaginations, 
the authors describe Kaiser Wilhelm’s visit to 
Jerusalem in 1898. The goal of this visit was 
to bolster Ottoman-German relations, though 
it probably did more to fulfill the Kaiser’s 
Orientalist fantasies. “Dressed in a white cos-
tume evocative of the Teutonic knights and 
with a golden eagle atop his helmet,” they 
write, “Wilhelm rode into Jerusalem through 
a breach in the walls that had been prepared 
especially for his entourage” (p. 117). 
The authors assume that readers will ap-
proach this book with a firm grasp of Chris-
tian, European and American, and Middle 
Eastern history. For this reason, they do not 
explain certain concepts or issues that will be 
familiar mostly to expert readers — for ex-
ample, the terms for debate in early theologi-
cal controversies over the nature of Christ 
(which were so important in determining sec-
tarian schisms), or the changing fortunes of 
Jesuits vis-à-vis the Roman Catholic church. 
This means that the book is not intended for 
newcomers to mission history. Nevertheless, 
scholars with a special interest in the history 
of missions are likely to welcome this book 
as a reference that is useful and concise.
If anyone questions the importance of 
the history of Christian missions to the mod-
ern Middle East, then a quick look at this 
densely detailed book will dispel doubts. 
The authors succeed in showing how Chris-
tian missions have inextricably connected 
the religious, cultural, and political history 
of this region over the past two millennia. At 


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Conflict, Conquest, and Conversion: Two Thousand Years of Christian Missions in the Middle East [Review]

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