ahmadiyyafactcheckblog

Intro
Professor Charles S. Braden wrote about the Ahmadiyya Movement in 1959 via “Moslem Missions in America”, Religion in Life 28, no. 3 (1959): 331– 343. Some of the content of this was quoted in “The Black Muslims In America” by Eric, Lincoln C. (1961) and Fanusie in 2008.

This study was quoted in an attempt to argue that Ahmadi’s had been accepted as Muslims and the NOI is looking for the same type of acceptance. I was not able to find this study.

It seems that Braden went to Pakistan in 1952 and met the 2nd Qadiani-Ahmadi Khalifa, Mirza Basheer ud Din Mahmud Ahmad.

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Moslem Missions in America

CHARLES S. BRADEN[1]

I

So LONG HAVE WE in America been on the sending end of a great missionary enterprise that it comes to many as a shock when they learn that we are now ourselves the objects of a foreign missionary enterprise supported by non-Christian peoples with the avowed purpose of making converts of Americans to their faith. Most Americans have had

no contact with representatives of other faiths than Christian. They may have been dimly aware that here and there in the larger cities, alien temples have been built, but mostly in areas where there was a concentration of foreign people, who wished to carry on their traditional religious practices, as in the various “Chinatowns,” especially on the West Coast. They may have seen on trips to California an occasional exotic-appearing temple, perhaps Hindu, but they have shrugged that off as just what one might expect to find in California, which is popularly supposed to be the natural habitat of the so-called “cults.” But that any concerted effort might have been undertaken by specific oriental or other religions to evangelize America has hardly entered their thinking.

            Yet in these latter days, this is actually happening. On a small scale, to be sure—thus far. But it is happening. Some of the alien faiths claim that they do not seek converts away from Christianity; they only want to enrich the religious life of Christian America by bringing to Americans the unique insights which their faiths have to offer. This is notably true of Hinduism. Yet the net result of their labors is the creation of little groups who do effectively withdraw from active participation in the life of the Christian churches and become Hindus in faith and practice. Some of them even adopt Indian dress and Indian names, just as some Christians in India adopt Western dress and take Christian names.

            But in the case of Islam, the proper designation of the faith of Mohammed, America faces a religion which, like Christianity, has a profound sense of mission that will not be satisfied until all the world is Muslim (sometimes spelled “Moslem”). It began six centuries later than Christianity, yet today claims more than 400,000,000 followers, as over against the more than 800,000,000 claimed as Christian. The number of Muslim converts in America is today negligible. There are, of course, many Muslims who have migrated from Muslim lands and who remain loyal to their Prophet. But I once heard a Muslim missionary say on the occasion of the opening of a mosque in Chicago, “Our numbers today may seem very small, but sooner or later America will be Muslim.” And he spoke with a quiet faith such as I have observed in Christian missionaries as they have

spoken of winning the world for Christ.

            It has been popularly supposed that Islam was spread chiefly by military conquest. It is undoubtedly true that Islamic political domination of an enormous area in Asia Minor, Africa, Europe, and the Middle East was won by military might. It is also true that this favored conversion of many people to the faith, even when they were not usually compelled to renounce their own faith or die. Actually, there was a good deal of tolerance, especially of Christians and Jews as “people of the Book.” They were sometimes subject to taxation from which Muslims were exempt, as well as other social pressures, to which those of not too deep a Christian faith undoubtedly succumbed and became converts. But within the Muslim-controlled areas, Christian groups, chiefly of the Eastern Orthodox branch of the church, have succeeded in maintaining their separate existence right down to our own day—as the Coptic church in Egypt, the Armenian church in Armenia, the Syrian churches in the Near East, while there have been continuing Christian and Jewish communities in Palestine.

            But quite outside of the area of political dominance, Islam has spread and continues to spread. There was no conquest of China, or of Indonesia, yet Chinese Muslims claim as many as 50,000,000 followers, and over 70 per cent of the Indonesians are said to be Muslims. Nor has there been any political domination of Africa south of the Sahara, yet it is being said that for every convert to Christianity in that part of the world, there are ten turning to Islam. A study made fifty years ago by a famous scholar, Sir Thomas Arnold, declares:

“The spread of this faith over so vast a portion of the globe is due to various causes, social, political, and religious, but among these, one of the most powerful factors at work in the production of this stupendous result, has been the unremitting labors America of Muslim missionaries, who, with the prophet himself as their great ensample, have spent themselves for the conversion of unbelievers.”[2]

He regarded the duty of missionary work as no mere afterthought in the history of Islam, but one that was enjoined on believers from the very beginning, as he proved by citing numerous sayings of Mohammed from the Quran.

            But missionary work has been, in general, rather different in Islam than in Christianity. For the greater part it has not been the work of professionals, persons commissioned and sent out as missionaries, but that of devout laymen, merchants, travelers, government officials, etc., who have carried their faith with them as they have gone to live in other lands and created new centers of Islamic worship and belief to which the surrounding people have been attracted. Since in Islam there exists no real priesthood

or theory of the separateness of the religious teacher from the regular body of believers, there seems to be a feeling of greater responsibility on the part of the laymen to propagate the faith rather than to rely upon the efforts of the professional clergyman or teacher. It is said sometimes that every Muslim is a missionary, just as it is sometimes said that every Christian ought to be a missionary. While this may be and probably is an exaggeration, it is certainly true that much of the spread of Islam is due to the work of devout, nonprofessional, lay men and women, whose missionary outreach is simply the result of their own sense of responsibility to bring others into the brotherhood.

Beyond the work of individuals in Islam, there has been some active propaganda of a missionary sort by certain Muslim orders resembling those within Christianity. But actual missionary work by societies constituted for this specific purpose is a late development within Islam, and largely as a result of the enormous missionary effort put forth within Christianity during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Arnold, writing early in the twentieth century, was able to name a few small societies organized chiefly in India to combat the extraordinary activity of the Arya Samaj, a militant Hindu reformed society which sought to reconvert Muslims and Christians who had forsaken Hinduism for one or the other of these faiths. Arnold devotes only two pages to this sort of missionary effort, out of nearly four hundred and fifty pages in which he is really writing of the missionary outreach of Islam.

            But the most active present Islamic missionary group he did not even mention, for it had come into existence only a few years, less than a decade, before the first edition of his book appeared. Since it is this group, the Ahmadiyya Movement in Islam, which is quite the most active in its missionary activity in America, it is of this that I shall chiefly write in this article, though there are other Islamic or semi-Islamic groups which have made or are making some impact in the American scene.”[3]

II

            The Ahmadiyya Movement, it should be said, is regarded by orthodox Muslims as heretical. It has, indeed, been bitterly persecuted at times both in India, where it originated, and in other Muslim areas into which it has sent its missionaries. But it is Islam in every basic belief and practice. Its one distinctive feature is that it believes that in the latter half of the nineteenth century, there appeared in India The Promised Messiah, one Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, founder of the Movement, “whom God raised for the reformation of the present age.” The movement is obviously eclectic, for he claimed to be the Messiah for the Christians, the Madhi for the Muslims, Krishna or the Neha Kalank Avatar for the Hindus, and Mesio Darbahmi for the Zoroastrians. In short, he was “the Promised Prophet of every nation and was appointed to collect all mankind under the banner of one faith. In him were centered the hopes and expectations of all nations; he is the Dome of Peace under which every nation may worship its Maker; he is the opening through which all nations may obtain a vision of their Lord; and he is the center at which meet all the radii of the circle. . . . It is ordained, therefore, that all the world shall find peace and rest only through him.”[4]

            The movement founded by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad in 1889 had its center in Qadian until the intercommunal rioting on the occasion of the partition of India and the formation of Pakistan brought about its destruction. It is now at Rabwah, about ninety kilometers north of Lahore, a site chosen by the second successor of the Promised Messiah, one of his sons, who is the present head of the Movement. He told me the story of it over a delicious luncheon at which I was his guest in Rabwah in 1952. It was the result of revelation. After the destruction of Qadian, when it became apparent that it was no longer suitable as the headquarters, he had a dream or vision in which he saw on a hill overlooking a valley through which flowed a large river, an ancient hut. In front of it, there were certain figures. It came to him that this was a sign as to where the new center should be located. One day, months later, he was driving in the area to the north of Lahore. It was a dusty, treeless valley, almost uninhabited, but near a river which had cut its way deep in the level plain. No more unlikely spot could have been seen. Suddenly, on the hill he was approaching, he saw an ancient hut before which were grouped three figures exactly as in his vision. “This is the place,” he cried.

            He immediately proceeded to buy up the land and to subdivide it. First, he built a mosque. When I was there less than four years later, there was a city of some ten thousand people, a veritable hive of busy building activity, though there was yet much to be done. The pumps to bring up water from the river were not yet installed. Electricity had just been introduced. The streets were dusty for lack of sufficient irrigation water, but there was a spirit of eagerness among the people as they built solidly what was to be the holy city of their sect, the headquarters of a movement which would send its people out to the ends of the earth carrying the faith of the Prophet, as interpreted to them by the living voice of the Successor to the Promised Messiah, through whom revelation continues to come from Allah to his people.

            It is this Movement which has become the most aggressive missionary arm of Islam. They have taken over almost bodily the methods and techniques of the Christian missionary enterprise and are endeavoring thus to make Islam known to the world. It is they who have missions scattered all over the world, and of course, in America. A little book entitled Our Foreign Missions has just been sent to me by the head of the mission in America from Washington, D. C. It states in very clear language in the introduction the motives and aims of the missionary activity of the movement, more clearly than anything I had previously seen.

            The writer begins by saying that missionary activity in Islam had practically died out long before the coming of the Promised Messiah. The aggressive onslaught of Christians on Islam had reached a peak. It took the form of a campaign of misrepresentation and vilification from pulpit and press, concentrated particularly at the point of proving that Islam was the negation of all civilization and progress, and of painting in ghastly colors the Islamic conception of jehad or the Holy War and the use of the sword as a means of conversion. The powerful assault of Christian missionaries, he says, shook the Muslim world as a tornado, “so that broken and defeated Muslims shrank within themselves with terror and began to feel that the storm would wash away all trace of Islam from the face of the earth.”

            It was exactly at this point, when the Muslim mind was feeling defeated and dejected, and they were raising their eyes to heaven praying that God would come to their aid, that God raised the Promised Messiah who would, on the one hand, revivify Islam and on the other would “shatter the Cross to pieces . . .” So successfully was the task of revivifying Islam carried out, says the writer of the booklet, “that Christian plans to wipe out Islam were completely obliterated from the world map of future possibilities. In fact, he completely turned the tables upon the Christian peoples in this respect, until now we find that the Christian clergy… are seriously concerned because they find that Ahmad’s interpretation of Islam is actually making successful inroads upon Europe and the Americas as well.”[5]

            The task of shattering the Cross to pieces demanded that, just as Christian missionaries had been penetrating to the nooks and corners of earth, Ahmadi missionaries should roll the tide back and carry the fight into the homelands of the Christians themselves. . . . The wind is now beginning to blow from East to West. . . . / Already we are beginning to find that the selfsame people who were not prepared to listen

to the merest mention of Islam, now are coming forward to bear witness that the work of breaking the Cross to pieces is already well in hand, and that the day does not seem distant when only one religion would prevail over all the world, the religion brought by Mohammad.”[6]

III

The missionary work of the Ahmadiyya Movement in America was begun in 1921 in Chicago, and national headquarters were maintained there until 1950, when they were removed to Washington, D. C. During most of this period, a quarterly magazine has been published, called the Muslim Sunrise, besides pamphlets and a few books. It is from an examination of these and personal acquaintance with successive heads of the mission that I attempt to set forth here what seem to be the major points of emphasis which the movement makes in its approach to the people of America.

            First, let it be noted that they make a good deal of the fact that Islam is not something wholly alien to Christianity. On the contrary, it makes a very definite attempt to link Islam to the Judeo-Christian tradition. Muslims are quite as much the children of Abraham, and therefore heirs to the promises of God to Abraham, as are the Jews, for they descend from Abraham just as much as the Jews do. Indeed, they are the descendants

of his firstborn son Ishmael, and primogeniture is an important matter among Near-Eastern peoples. Furthermore, the Prophet Mohammed is definitely foretold in Scripture, indeed, both in the Old and New Testaments.”[7]

Second, they make much of Jesus, who appears very often in the Quran. Speaking and writing among people of a dominantly Christian background, they pay high tribute to Jesus, though not of course to Jesus as conceived in orthodox theological circles. It is Jesus the prophet they admire and honor.

            But since it is a fundamental point of emphasis among them that the oneness of God admits of attributing divinity to none other, they are at frequent pains to attack the notion of Jesus’ divinity. To do this, they feel obliged to attack the notion of his death and resurrection, particularly. But what of the New Testament narratives? Anything that serves to discredit these or to throw any doubt upon their literal truth is likely to be used. Although insisting that the Christian Scriptures prophesy the coming of their prophet, they consistently contrast these with the Quran, holding that while the Quran is an absolute revelation, not subject to human error, the Bible is an extremely human document, full of errors. They make frequent use of the statements of modern scholars from the Christian and Jewish faiths, which set forth the apparent contradictions or inconsistencies due to such things as the plural authorship of some of the books of the Bible. The title of one book, The Bible is Human, was made the basis of an article in one of the magazines of the movement, showing just how human they think it to be.

            Since there is such a human element in the Bible, it cannot be trusted as true when such claims are made concerning Jesus as his virgin birth, some of his miracles, and particularly his resurrection. This is on the negative side. Positively, they assert and insist that they have proof that Jesus, after his crucifixion, did not die, as reported in the Gospels, but was taken alive from the tomb, having only swooned, and escaped to India, where he spent many years of ministry, finally dying and being buried in Srinagar, in Kashmir. There is to be found the Tomb of Isa, none other than Jesus, and multitudes of Muslim pilgrims each year come to pay honor to him. The proof is, to say the least, an interesting one if not convincing. One proof is that Jesus said in Mt. 15:24, “I was not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” But who are the lost sheep of the house of Israel? None other than the people of Afghanistan and of Kashmir. So Jesus went to them and ended his ministry among them. This has been written over and over again, published in their magazines and separately in pamphlet form. It is available at the Washington headquarters of the Movement at 2141 Leroy Place, N.W., Washington 8, D. C., under the title, The Tomb of Jesus.

            Where precisely the Promised Messiah got the idea to begin with, I have no way of knowing. I have seen references to The Unknown Life of Jesus, by Baron Notovich, cited by Muslims as supporting the idea, although according to this account, Jesus visited India in the early years of his career, before his baptism and ministry, for which he apparently returned to his own country. Also, reference has been made in its support to The Mystical Life of Jesus, by H. Spencer Lewis, the Rosicrucian leader. It is firmly held by the Ahmadiyyah and is cited by them frequently in support of their claim that Jesus was only human.

IV

But what values do they assign to Islam as they attempt to win American converts? What may Islam be expected to do for its followers that Christianity is not already doing? I recall a single printed sheet, which was given to me many years ago, that was apparently used as a tract to interest people. I have found these same ideas so often repeated in their publications and in the lectures I have heard them give, that I think they

may be fairly said to be their major points of emphasis, in addition, of course, to the theological doctrines which are common to all Moslems. Islam, they say, stands for peace, for racial brotherhood, for temperance, and for the uplift of women. Let me elaborate briefly on these.

            1. Peace! The very word Islam, the name of the religion itself, means just that, peace, the peace that comes, first of all, to the individual from a complete surrender of the will to God, Allah. Peace also in the family life, peace in the daily round of business or professional life, but also peace between nations and peoples. I have heard a Muslim say: “The world will never know peace until it embraces Islam.” But of course, I have heard a

Buddhist say that it must become a Buddhist, and a Christian that it must become a Christian. This claim sounds strange to those who have uniformly associated Islam with war and conquest, which it must be truly said has been the way Islam was generally presented to the Western world by its writers. Muslims say that this is not so, and that they have been maligned.

Until there has been a considerably more widespread reading of books by Muslim writers who can present a different picture plausibly, the warlike character of Islam will probably continue to be the idea most Westerners have. The doctrine of the Holy War, as one of the pillars of Islam, requires not a little explaining to peoples of the West. This the Ahmadiyyas are trying to do. Actually, some of their representatives, while not pacifists, insist that only defensive war is ever permissible. The ambiguity of the meaning of defensive war, of course, leaves a great deal of room for the continuance of war. As I have heard their ideas expounded, they sounded not so different from the Roman Catholic doctrine that only the just war is permissible. |

            2. Most appealing of all is the claim of racial brotherhood, especially to those of our American people who labor under the disability of being colored. When the Muslims affirm as they do constantly that there is no color bar in Islam, they get the attention, particularly of Negroes. And it must be said that the greater number of converts to Islam have been from among Negroes. A friend was passing through Forty-third Street on the South Side of Chicago one Sunday night. At a corner, he saw a crowd around a man on a soapbox listening intently. He was obviously preaching. Drawing near, my friend saw that it was a Muslim missionary, and he was saying to his 100 percent Negro listeners, “There is no color bar in Islam. In the brotherhood, there is no distinction of race or class.”

            Is there one in Christianity? Of course not, if one goes to the New Testament. But what if he goes to a Christian church? It was this precisely that most of these people had done, and seen men divided on the basis of something about which they could do nothing, color. In the whole of the United States, there are comparatively but a handful of Christian churches that are integrated as to race. Nor is the church in the vanguard of the movement to end segregation on a racial basis. It has been the world of sport, the armed services, and the courts that have taken the lead in ending discrimination based upon race. To be sure, there have been outstanding leaders within the church who have been active in seeking integration.

Many have spoken out courageously, even in the deep South at the risk of loss of position and even of violence; but the fact remains that, as was said recently, eleven o’clock on Sunday morning is the most segregated hour of the week. No wonder it appears to many colored people that there is a color bar within Christianity, and they are greatly attracted when they hear of a faith which claims that no such bar exists.

            Effectively, has Islam eliminated the color bar? The answer must, I think, be that whether or not it has done so completely, there can be no question that their record in this regard is better than the Christian record. It has been remarked that this may be due not so much to Muslim teaching as to the fact that Islam has spread most notably among those peoples who do not have the deep racial feelings of the northern Europeans, and were not accustomed to discriminating among people on a color basis before Islam came to them. Would Islam, if it got a foothold in Europe or America, where the deeper racial prejudices seem most to flourish, be any better than the Christians? The answer cannot be certainly known. I recall having called to the attention of a Muslim missionary at one time the fact that he preferred to meet with a group of his white members in his downtown

office, rather than at the mosque, where there were generally present more black folk than white, and which was situated in a segregated colored area. His reply was: “That is because of the Christian background of these white people.” Presumably, he would have to educate them out of their prejudices before they could be successfully integrated into the Muslim group. I have never been quite sure who came off better in that exchange. What does the Christian reader think?

            3. A third emphasis is temperance. Islam has, from the beginning, been rigorously opposed to the use of intoxicants. That does not mean that no Muslims ever drink. Bootlegging is not solely a practice of so-called Christian peoples. It is not unknown in Islam. But by and large, again, it must be said that their record in this regard is better than that of Christianity. The Muslim world was thrilled when the United States passed the Eighteenth Amendment outlawing liquor. The famous “Pussyfoot” Johnson, anti-liquor leader, shortly after the successful passage of the amendment, went on a trip around the world. In Egypt, he is said to have been met by a delegation of important Muslims with the statement, “Mr. Johnson, we are so happy that at last the United States have become Muslim.” (We have lapsed from the faith since then in a big way! ) Much emphasis is laid upon this matter in their preaching and their literature. A recent magazine carried the statistics of liquor consumption in the United States for the year past. Often, the evils of the traffic in liquor are proclaimed, and they believe that only as America becomes Muslim will it succeed in its fight against the consumption of intoxicating beverages.

            4. The fourth emphasis will sound strange to Americans who have heard of the low estate of women in Moslem lands, and who have uniformly looked with pity upon them. What could Islam have to say to Americans about the uplift of women? It was my custom for many years as a teacher of the History of Religions to invite living representatives of the various faiths to speak to my classes and permit my students to ask questions. It was always at this point that my Muslim guests had their worst time, especially at the hands of women members of the class. What about purdah, the seclusion of women? What about polygamy? And what about Mohammed himself, who was married to so many women?

            There is not room here to detail the answers he attempted to give. He was clearly on the defensive. He could assert, and with truth, that the general picture of the place of women in Islam has been misstated and misinterpreted. He could show that Mohammed actually lifted the level of women very much indeed in the Arabia of the seventh century, and he could point out properly that he put women on an economic plane in respect to men that she does not yet enjoy in some so-called Christian countries, greater in some respects than exists in some of the states of the United States. He could and did raise the question as to whether all the gains of freedom and equality with men which women enjoy in America is an unmixed good, but his female listeners were little impressed with what he had to say. Rather oddly, the Ahmadiyya group, which seems quite heterodox to orthodox Muslims, seems to be less liberal in this area than many of the orthodox Muslims are. The practice of purdah, which has been sloughed off in many Muslim communities, is practiced in Rabwah, the headquarters in Pakistan, and the wives of Ahmadiyya missionaries, even in America, have continued to do so, at least some of them.

            Polygamy is definitely on the decline throughout the Muslim world, but its practice is theoretically justified, under certain conditions, among the Ahmadiyyahs. The present head of the Movement, I was told, has the four wives permissible under Muslim law. Only when a husband can give absolutely equal treatment to his several wives is plural marriage permitted, they teach. The difficulties of doing this are a profound limitation on its general practice. How can a man love equally four women at one and the same time?

            As a matter of fact, plural marriage, since it is forbidden in America, becomes an academic question for Muslims who desire to continue to live in America, so it is rarely discussed except when the defense of the faith or of the Prophet demands it.

            Possibly one other aspect of their teaching should be mentioned, namely the principle of zakat, for it affords the basis of a claim by very eminent Muslims that, properly practiced, it successfully solves the problem of the distribution of wealth among the people of the world. It is one aspect of the total economic and social teaching of Islam, which it is claimed is superior to any other system, either socialism, communism, or capitalism, and makes of it a rival of these systems. There is not space here to develop the idea fully. The most eminent exponent of this idea is a distinguished Ahmadiyya Muslim, formerly foreign minister of Pakistan, head of the Pakistan delegation to the United Nations, and presently one of the judges of the International Court at The Hague. A typical statement of this point of view appears in the Muslim Sunrise in discussing Pakistan:

“In Pakistan, there is no place for either Communism or Capitalism, firstly, because the Islamic doctrine of equality and brotherhood is, on the one hand, superior both in theory and in its practical consequences, to the equality preached by Communism, and on the other, it cures the inequality produced by Capitalism. Secondly, while recognizing the right of individual ownership, Islam sets up an effective machinery for a fair and equitable distribution of wealth. Islam is the golden mean between two extremes and is bound to triumph over both.”[8]

V

What success has the mission in America had? For a detailed study of this, see my article in the International Review of Missions referred to above. In summary, it is enough to say here that there are Ahmadiyya Muslim communities in more than a dozen of the larger cities of America. Six missionaries are actively at work. There were but two in 1948. In several of the cities, mosques exist in buildings that have been rented or purchased and adapted to serve as places of worship or built as mosques. And others are being planned. Some forty different titles of books or pamphlets are available at the Washington headquarters. The membership is not large, and the missionaries tell me that they have all the same difficulties that missionaries anywhere have in building a solid, loyal organization that will represent well the essential spirit of the faith. Finances are a real problem, since the supporting base in India is small and of a lower standard of living than in America. The result is that they are obliged to find local self-support to a large degree, and this is difficult. But the work goes on, as deeply consecrated Muslim men and women, sometimes at great personal sacrifice, somehow manage to maintain themselves.

            There is, besides this direct missionary activity of Islam, an indirect approach of the Muslim world to America, best typified in the new and very beautiful mosque and Moslem Cultural Center in Washington, D. C., supported by the various embassies of Muslim countries as well as by private Muslim philanthropy. Here, the effort is not direct conversion, but to present the finest features of Islamic culture, its art, literature, and scholarship, all of which are of course closely bound up with its religion, that of the Prophet. The net result of it is, of course, to win for Islam a new respect in the West and to offset to some degree the adverse judgment of the West on it, based, as Muslims think, on misinformation and prejudiced writing on the part of the writers of Christendom. This constitutes the finest kind of indirect missionary work, and is precisely the sort of thing Christian missionaries have done at times, especially in the earlier years of their entrance into countries where there was little popular acceptance of the direct approach.

            What we are seeing today in America is the clearest kind of evidence that long quiescent religions are coming awake, that they are beginning to defend themselves against the world Christian mission in their own lands, and even to take the offensive and carry the battle to the very lands whence the missionaries of Christ have come. The day is definitely past when it could be quietly assumed that it is only a matter of time until “every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is the Christ.” What difference, if any, should that fact make in the strategy of the Christian world mission? For Christians, it may well be a time of “agonizing reappraisal.”

            I do not know what others may think concerning this attempted invasion of our so-called Christian countries. As for myself, I welcome it. Some of the missionaries of Islam and other faiths are warm personal friends of mine. A genuine Christianity, if it be true, has nothing to fear from such activity. If these people have something they can teach us concerning how to achieve peace, either inward or between nations, about a true brotherhood that knows no color bar; about the values of true temperance; even about the way we treat our women, I am all for them. As a matter of fact, their very presence among us may force us to see more clearly our own faith and its significance for the whole of life, and spur us to a deeper commitment to it. I am old-fashioned enough to believe that in the democratic give-and-take between religious faiths, there may emerge some deeper insight and understanding of the truth and its application to the life of our world and our times.

 

ISLAM IN AMERICA

By CHARLES S. BRADEN[9]

THE United States of America, which has been chief among the nations of the world in its outpouring of money and the dedication of its sons and daughters to carry the Gospel of Christ to the ends of the earth, is itself now regarded by other religions as an object of missionary endeavor. It may come as a surprise to some Americans to know that there are now Hindu, Buddhist, Shinto, and Muslim missionaries, perhaps others also, who are seeking to implant their respective faiths on American soil. It is true that in no instance are large numbers involved—as yet. So far, followers of these faiths are found chiefly among people who have come from the Orient, the Near East, or Africa—but not entirely. One now finds converts from among the ‘native’ Americans whose background is Christian. They are drawn, moreover, from no single class, neither the intellectuals alone, who seem to be attracted especially to some form either of Hinduism or of Buddhism, nor from the poor or the ignorant, nor from those who have suffered racial discrimination. They represent a fair cross-section of the people of America.

            But here our concern is with Islam. What, if any, ‘Muslim missionary activity’ is to be observed in the United States? Even if by missionary activity we mean the deliberate, concerted activity by Islam or some of its numerous sects from somewhere in the world to send in representatives to preach and teach Islam, to win converts and to organize them

into groups for worship and the performance of the characteristic practices of Islam, as Christianity does in its missionary out-thrust into foreign lands, it definitely exists. As we shall see, such an effort is now being made by one of the Indian Muslim sects, the Ahmadiyya movement in Islam.

            This movement is, to be sure, limited in its outreach, chiefly because adequate financial resources are lacking The financial burden of sending missionaries from a low-income, and therefore a low standard of living area to what is probably the highest income country in the world, with a correspondingly high standard of living, and where it will be necessary to buy scarce dollars at a high premium, is almost unbearable. When, further, the sending group is a comparatively new sect, and one that is therefore limited in its membership, the difficulty is all the greater. It forces the missionary to find a large measure of his support in America. When, still further, it is noted that the Ahmadiyya movement is regarded by orthodox Muslims as heretical, that it has been cruelly persecuted in some Muslim lands and that the great majority of Muslims who have migrated to America, from whom support might be expected, are orthodox, it will be seen that the movement is confronted with a difficult situation. Fortunately for it, many orthodox Muslims have made contributions and have participated to some extent in the movement’s activities, as the only form of Islam available to them.

            Yet, in spite of all, the Ahmadiyya movement manages to carry on an active, if limited, programme in America. The head of the mission, whom I know personally, has been helpful in supplying information concerning the work. The headquarters of the movement is in Washington, D.C., where they have purchased an attractive property, at 2141 Leroy Place, a large, comfortable, three-story house which serves as mosque, office, and residence of the head of the mission in the United States. Later, a mosque is to be erected on the site.

            The work in America began in Chicago, Illinois, about 1925. The founder, Dr Mufti Muhammad Sadiq, began to publish a periodical, the Moslem Sunrise, which at first appeared somewhat irregularly, though generally once a quarter. As the Muslim Sunrise, it still serves as the official organ of the movement in America, and has now reached volume 26. For many years, the cover page bore a map of North America over which the sun was just rising—obviously the Muslim sunrise. The general format and content have remained relatively unchanged. There is usually a picture, either of the founder, the present head or some other prominent Muslim leader. Then follow selections from the Qur’an, usually in both Arabic and English, with some commentary. This is frequently followed by a selection from the writings of the founder of the movement, Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, the promised Messiah and Mahdi (1835-1908), or of the present head of the movement, Hazrat Mirza Bashiruddin Mahmud Ahmad, the second successor of the promised Messiah, whose headquarters are at Rabwah, Pakistan.

            There are sometimes testimonies by recent converts to Islam, and articles on some feature of Islamic faith or practice, frequently apologetic in tone, answering criticisms of Islam by Western writers. Favorite topics relate to the status of women in Islam, the person of Muhammad, or the divine revelation in the Qur’an. Or there may be articles exposing the weaknesses of Christianity or the inaccuracies of the Bible, which is thought to betray too many human elements, while at the same time it witnesses, by way of prophecy, to the Prophet who was to come. A favourite topic is the belief of these Muslims that Jesus did not die on the Cross, but only swooned and was taken alive from the tomb by His followers, escaped from Palestine and spent some forty years preaching in the Orient, dying and being buried finally in Srinagar, Kashmir, where to this day the tomb of Isa is an object of pilgrimage for many Muslims.

            In general, therefore, the articles provide propaganda for Islam, either in a negative or in a positive form. Most numbers contain book reviews, particularly of books which deal with Islam or which, bearing upon Christianity, best lend themselves to a criticism of that faith, to the advantage of Islam. There is usually a news section on the Muslim world, especially on the activities of Ahmadiyyah.

            The Muslim Sunrise is in fact, a propaganda organ, very much of the kind that is published by most Christian missions in their respective fields. Every issue carries advertisements of the books, pamphlets, and other literature that would be helpful in the spread of Islam and the nurture of its membership.

            The titles of some of these publications will give some idea of the approach of the Ahmadiyyas to the American public. There is, of course, the English translation of the Qur’an. But, oddly enough, there is no cheap edition to make it easily available. There is one book of selections from the Qur’an, but even this costs two dollars. There are translations by Western scholars, such as that by J. M. Rodwell in the Everyman Library, and a paper-bound translation by a modern Muslim, Marmaduke Pickthall, under the title, The Meaning of the Glorious Qur’an. But none of these versions are regarded as faithful translations, according to Ahmadiyya understanding, and are therefore inadequate for use in the movement’s own work. But, as noted above, every issue of the Muslim Sunrise includes passages from the Qur’an, with translation, which is true also of the Review of Religions, published by the Ahmadiyya movement at Rabwah, Pakistan.

Books or pamphlets by the present head of the movement include: Ahmadiyyah, or The True Islam; Introduction to the Study of the Holy Qur’an; The New World Order of Islam; The Economic Structure of Islamic Society; Muhammad, Liberator of Women; Communism and Democracy; and The Life of Muhammad. By other authors, for example, the distinguished former Foreign Minister of Pakistan and the leader of the Pakistani delegation to the United Nations, Sir Zaffrulla Khan, Moral Principles as the Basis of Islamic Culture; My Faith and The Concept of Justice in Islam. Still others, without naming the authors, are: The Tomb of Jesus; Attitude of Islam Toward Communism; Islam and Universal Brotherhood; Vindication of the Prophet of Islam; Muhammad in the Bible; The Status of Women in Islam; How Jesus Survived the Crucifixion; Islam the Misunderstood Religion and The Christian Doctrine of the Atonement.

            For a long time, there was but one missionary of the movement in America. Indeed, there was a period when active missionary effort was suspended entirely. A property had been purchased on Chicago’s south side to serve as a mosque and headquarters for the movement, but it was closed. I recall being present at the re-opening of the mosque under the leadership of Sufi M. R. Bengalee, who came to Chicago in 1929. By this time, there were small groups in a number of cities in America. Fraternal delegations came from some of them, and messages of congratulation were read from others, even such typically American cities as Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in which there was a textile industry that employed a number of immigrants from the Near East, all Muslims.

            Sufi Bengalee and I became warm friends, and often discussed the problems of a missionary in a foreign land, I having had a decade of missionary experience abroad. Sufi Bengalee was a deeply devoted Muslim, whose abiding faith in God and childlike trust in the goodness and guidance of Allah often left one with a feeling of deep admiration for him and of humility in his presence. He spent almost twenty years in America, which he came to love deeply, and when, for health reasons, he returned home, he continued to write to me.

            Sufi Bengalee, since deceased, was succeeded in the direction of the movement by Khalil Nasir, who came first to study at Northwestern University, where I was teaching. He took his master’s degree there and did advanced work for the doctorate, which he finally completed at the American University in Washington, for he had thought it best to shift the headquarters to the nation’s capital.

            Some indication of the progress of the movement may be seen in the fact that it now has properties of its own in Washington, D.C., Chicago, Pittsburgh, Dayton, Ohio, and St Louis, as well as rented quarters in New York, Milwaukee, Baltimore, Cleveland, Detroit, and Los Angeles. Smaller groups meet in private homes in Boston, Trenton, N.J., Philadelphia, Youngstown, Ohio, Indianapolis, Cincinnati, and Kansas City. Individuals in several other towns or cities of the United States and Canada maintain contact with the Washington headquarters.

            The movement has six workers stationed in different zones to take care of several missions in each area. Two of them support themselves wholly, being employed or engaged in business, but sent here mainly for the purpose of serving the movement. This, it should be said, is in keeping with traditional Muslim practice. Indeed, the definite sending out of missionaries supported by a movement represents something of an innovation in Islam.

            The membership is not a large one. Those who desire to join must fill out an ‘initiation form’. They are then expected to show their affiliation by practicing the distinctive tenets of Islam, such as repeating the five daily prayers, fasting, abstaining from intoxicants, pork, and other specified food, by attending the meetings and subscribing to the support of the movement. The number who faithfully do this may total

about two hundred, with another two to three hundred who are more or less lax in their practices. They show up sometimes at meetings and sometimes pay their pledges!

            About 30 per cent are Muslims born in oriental lands, with another five to ten per cent European-born Muslims. A large percentage of the members are therefore converts. Who are they? Racially the greater proportion are Negroes, Dr Nasir estimating that the white converts account for only five to ten per cent, Islam’s freedom from the color bar accounting primarily, in his opinion, for the difference. Other factors, he thought, were the simplicity of Islam, the emphasis upon its rational aspects and the reaction against the way in which some of the churches treated Negroes. He reports that among the pamphlets circulated by the movement, those which deal with Islamic teachings on equality are the most attractive to Negroes. The pamphlets explaining that Jesus did not die on the Cross also attract a good deal of attention, though whether this interest is on the part of Negroes, he did not say.

            Little opposition to their work is experienced in America. Their leaders are frequent guest speakers before college classes in the history of religion, and also in church and young people’s groups. The main opposition comes not from the Christian population, but from non-Ahmadiyya Muslims. They encounter, however, grave financial

difficulties, since the sending mission can afford so little financial help and the cost of living and working in America is so high. About one-third of the expenses are met from abroad, from India. The rest must come from gifts and donations in the United States—there is so far no organized group in Canada, though individual members are to be found in Halifax, Montreal, Ottawa, and Toronto.

            ‘Our most difficult problems,’ writes Dr Nasir, ‘is to keep the small numbers in each town sufficiently close to each other to form a community, and thus keeping their social interest in the movement. Many members drift away simply because, after they have accepted the tenets of Islam, we do not offer them much in the form of social community

life.’

            This, so far as I have been able to discover, is the only Muslim missionary activity promoted from overseas in America, and Dr Nasir knows of none either. But there are other groups in America which are chiefly Muslim in character, but which owe nothing to foreign effort. These are of the order of some of the native American cults which develop around some dynamic leader, but of Muslim rather than Christian orientation.

            One group, which was extremely active for a time, acknowledged as its Prophet and founder, one, Drew Ali. It was known as Moorish Science, had its own Qur’an, and held services of an esoteric character in a number of American cities in the years before and during the early days of the Second World War. It was suspected of being subversive in the early days of the war, and it was very difficult to get information concerning the nature of the faith or of its practices. As a teacher of religion at Northwestern University, I encouraged my students to investigate religions of all kinds, but we did not succeed in finding out much about them. The movement, wholly Negro, seems to have declined and almost disappeared, though it was said at one time to have been quite widespread in the South.[10]

            Another movement has appeared which may have taken over part of the following of the earlier group, though it is difficult, again, to get information concerning it. Its founder is Elijah Muhammad, who presides over what he calls the University of Islam, situated only a few blocks from the University of Chicago, in Chicago. No published study

of it has come to my attention, and curious visitors to the meeting are said to be unwelcome. It is not difficult, however, to learn what the founder teaches. A booklet, The Supreme Wisdom, with the sub-title, ‘Solution to the So-called Negro Problem’, by Elijah Muhammad (1957) is before me as I write, and the introduction, supplied by Abdul Basit Naeem, editor and publisher of the Moslem World and the U.S.A., himself a Muslim, gives certain facts about the leader and the movement.[11]

            There were then some twenty temples of Islam, the name apparently used for the local gathering places. They were found in New York, Michigan, Illinois, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia, Ohio, and the District of Columbia. Note that but one southern State occurs in the list. The movement is said to be known also for its highly successful and smart business enterprises, including farms, restaurants, apartments, food stores, and bakeries. And it is declared by Elijah Muhammad (p. 8) to be the fastest-growing Muslim body in America. The founder writes a column weekly for the Pittsburgh Courier, a weekly Negro paper with a circulation of almost two hundred thousand. Correspondence with the editor elicited no information of consequence concerning the movement or its founder.

            Mr Naeem goes on to say that there are clear differences between traditional Islam and Elijah Muhammad’s teachings, as the latter recognizes. He insists that Muslim brothers of the East, “were never subjected to conditions of slavery or systematic brainwashing by the slave masters… so he does not blame them if they differ in their interpretations of the message of Islam.” Mr Naeem thinks that the teachings are in the true spirit of Islam. ‘The spirit of Islam in the followers of Prophet Elijah Muhammad may be seen in the attention they pay to such important aspects of life as food and clothing. They never eat outside the home, save in Muslim restaurants, eat no pork, ham, bacon; drink no intoxicants, and do not even smoke. They wear only Muslim-style clothing. They do not dance, go to nightclubs, or attend any function unlawful in the eyes of Allah.’ He appreciates Muhammad’s efforts to bring the black people of America back into the fold of Islam, which he thinks is the only solution of their fundamental problems (p. 5).

It will be of interest to quote directly certain passages from The Supreme Wisdom. I find no indication of any copyright on them.

Allah Forgives. Regardless of our sins that we have committed in following and obeying our slavemasters, Allah will forgive us if we turn to him and return to our own kind (p. 11).

Concerning the Bible. From the first day that the white race received the divine scripture, they started tampering with its truth to make it suit themselves and bind the black man. It is their nature to do evil, and the book cannot be recognized as the pure and Holy Word of God (p. 12).

Of Cena. Christianity is a religion organized and backed by the devils for the purpose of Geikins dee of lak wantin (page 13).

Fear. Fear is the worst enemy that we the so-called Negroes have, but entire submission to Allah and his Messenger will remove this fear. The white race put fear in our fore-parents when they were babies, so says the Word of Allah (p. 15).

Of Jesus. The so-called Negroes must get away from the old slavery teaching that Jesus, who died two thousand years ago, is still alive somewhere listening to their prayers (p. 16).

Muhammad, an Arab, was a member of the black nation. . . . The Jews and Christians are the white race and they do not believe in Muhammad as a Prophet of God (p. 18).

‘ ok desires to make the black nation the equal or superior of the white race, (p. 19).

Allah taught us that we, the so-called Negroes, are the original people of the earth who have no birth record (p. 19).

He told us we must give up our slave names (of our slavemasters) and accept only the name of Allah himself or one of the divine attributes (p. 21).

They say that I am a preacher of racial hatred, but the fact is that the white people do not like the truth, especially if one speaks against them (p. 21).

Any so-called Negro who turns Muslim can go and live among the Muslims of Arabia or anywhere on earth and will be accepted as a brother and citizen of that government. Try it yourself, brother. Aili are equal in Islam, not like your proud white Christians (p. 30).

This is a constantly recurring note throughout the entire booklet, and also in the column that Elijah Muhammad writes weekly in the Pittsburgh Courier. It is clear that this is no missionary movement from without, but is Islam, or a caricature of it, embraced by a dynamic leader and preached as the solution to the terrible problem of race. ‘Islam’, he cries, ‘recognizes the equality and brotherhood of the races. Christianity does not’ and unfortunately, the bad racial record of a large segment of Christianity in America causes Negroes who have felt the sharp sting of discrimination, even within the churches, to listen to his cry.

How widespread this movement may become, there is no telling. The intensification of racial antagonism, which has occurred in the struggle to maintain segregation in the schools, though outlawed by the Supreme Court of the United States, will make the appeal of men like Elijah Muhammad an attractive one to many Negroes. What a disservice to the missionary cause of Christ is the defense of segregation by multitudes of church members and even some Christian ministers.

While disclaiming any direct missionary intent, those Muslims from many nations who have joined together to build and equip a worthy Muslim Centre, including a beautiful mosque, in the national capital, are in a real sense performing a mission for Islam in America. Fifteen Muslim countries support it by direct financial aid or by valuable gifts. The ambassadors of these countries constitute its Board of Directors, and they employ two distinguished representatives of the great Muslim University, Al-Azhar—the ‘oldest University of Islamic theology and culture in the world’. Doubtless, there is no regular attempt to make Muslim converts, and in addition to the mosque services, there are lecture halls where lectures are given on Muslim literature, philosophy, and art, by both Muslim and non-Muslim scholars. There is also a library, which will eventually be the finest Islamic library in the country, and a museum that will present the best in Islamic art and culture.

Among the stated purposes of the Centre, as announced in a brochure distributed to the public, are these:

To meet and care for all the religious needs of the Muslims of the United States.

To promote understanding between America and the Muslim world by informing society of the true spirit of the religion of Islam, and its philosophy and literature, and to produce a magazine eventually that will give an accurate picture of the intellectual thought and literary activities in modern Islam.

To provide materials for research in Islamic culture and philosophy to interested persons.

            Clearly, this is not a direct missionary approach to America, designed to make Muslims of individual Americans. But its activities remind one very much of the indirect approach made by Christian missionaries in other lands through some of their great institutions, where the intention is less the immediate conversion of individuals from the other faiths than the leavening of the total life of the surrounding culture with the basic ideals of a Christian culture, thus creating a more favorable atmosphere in which direct missionary work can be done. It at least provides Islam with an effective outpost in America, through which it may be expected indirectly to appeal to some thoughtful persons in the West. Indirectly, it is undoubtedly an effective step in the direction of making Islam at home in America.

CHARLES S. BRADEN

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Links and Related Essay’s

Charles S. Braden – Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_S._Braden

#Ahmadiyya mentioned in “The Black Muslims In America” by Eric, Lincoln C. (1961) – ahmadiyyafactcheckblog

#Ahmadiyya mentioned in “The Black Muslims In America” by Eric, Lincoln C. (1961)

Fatimah Abdul-Tawwab Fanusie, “Fard Muhammad in Historical Context: An Islamic Thread in the American Religious and Cultural Quilt” (PhD diss., Howard University, 2008)-review by Dr. Shah – ahmadiyyafactcheckblog

Fatimah Abdul-Tawwab Fanusie, “Fard Muhammad in Historical Context: An Islamic Thread in the American Religious and Cultural Quilt” (PhD diss., Howard University, 2008)–review by Dr. Shah

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