Christian missionaries, Churches and NGO’s, rightly take up these social welfare works and charitable projects to manage and execute them in a sophisticated and scientific manner. The majority of international charities and welfare organisations are non-Muslims organizations and one way or another they are related to Christian missionaries.
by Rifai Naleemi
(December 03, London, Sri Lanka Guardian) As we previously reiterated Islamic teaching has greatly emphasised the significance and importance of charitable and humanitarian works yet we see that very little has been done by Muslims in the international charitable and humanitarian works. We, Muslims do not have the equivalent international charities in calibre of Oxfam, Red Cross, and other international charities. Why is this heedlessness and negligence? Is it because of the lack of comprehensive understanding of Islamic teaching? Or is it because of the lack of organizational and management skills? Or is it because of the lack of political will among Muslim leadership? Unlike western nations people in Muslims countries do not involve in charitable works in any systemic humanitarian works. Contrary to this a large of number of western NGOs work in third world countries to alleviate the hardship and poverty from people.
Christian missionaries, Churches and NGO’s, rightly take up these social welfare works and charitable projects to manage and execute them in a sophisticated and scientific manner. The majority of international charities and welfare organisations are non-Muslims organizations and one way or another they are related to Christian missionaries. Muslims participation and involvement in humanitarian and charitable works are meagre and minimal at international and national levels. Muslims are either marginalized or excluded themselves from working with these charities. After all, the Qurān constantly demands them to work for good causes not only for Muslim alone but also for the sake of entire humanity. Fadlullah Wilmot in his research article on dawa: A practical approach for the future alludes to the failure of Islamic movements to pay much needed attention to humanitarian causes in the field of dawa. Such an claim may be partially true to some extent. He further maintains that Christian missionaries are winning hearts and minds of people by helping desperate people all over the globe through humanitarian causes. He draws our attention to the well known al- Hadith al-Qudsi of the prophet Mohammed (SAW) in support of his argument, which reads:
“God will ask son of Adam on the Day of Judgement, “O son of Adam, I was ill but you did not pay a visit to me!” The man will reply, “How could I have paid a visit to you? You are the Lord of the world!” Then, God will ask, “Did you not remember that one of My servants was sick, but you did not visit him? Don’t you know that if you had gone to see him you would have found me by his side? Then God would ask again, “O son of Adam, I asked you to feed Me but you refused it to Me” Then, the man would reply, “How could I have fed you? You are the Lord of the worlds” Then the reply of God would be, “Do you not remember that one of My servants asked you for food? Don’t you know that had you given him food you would have found Me by his side? Then, God would ask again, “O son of Adam I asked you for water to drink but you refused it to Me! The man would reply, “How could I have given you water? You are the Lord of the worlds? But God would reply, “Do not you remember that one of My servants asked you for water, but you refused. Don’t you know that if you had given him water, you would have found Me by his side” 1 He argues that it has been left to Christian missionaries to work on the guidance of this noble hadith and Muslims have grossly neglected the real teaching of this Holy tradition.
To our amazement, an identical saying of this kind is reported in Christian traditions as well. This Hadith explicitly manifests the clear-cut approach to dawa through social welfare and humanitarian works. This Hadith alone can be a steering force of encouragement for Muslims to work on humanitarian and charitable works. . Yet, we notice, that Christian missionaries undertake most of humanitarian and social welfare works. They execute these charitable works with profound dedication, compassion and commitment. They win hearts and minds of millions of destitute people all over the world. This kind of social service is often described as an “Agape Love” in Christian religious thought. This means that serving the humanity without expecting any reward in return. It is reported that “Since 1948 the World Council of Churches Commission has been financing relief programme among the Palestinians at the rate some$ 1.7 Million a year. The Lutheran Church while meeting in Caracas in 1979 approved forty-two developmental projects of which seventeen were to be implemented in Asia. This cost the church $ 1.4 million for the Asian projects alone. In Bangladesh many schools in towns are run by the Christian missionaries, they are running fourteen hospitals and orphanages and two leprosy centres. These services are in addition to other projects which aim at developing fisheries and poultry”.
Though this quote is an outdated quotation it reveals us many astonishing statistics. This may be many times more today than two decades ago. Moreover, this tells us about well-sophisticated approaches of Christian missionary to the principle of evangelism. Through this mechanism, they have intelligently managed to penetrate into many communities of the world and indeed, they have wiped out sufferings of many million people around the world. Thus, these Christian missionaries have endeavoured to establish a humanitarian contact with poor and needy people of world. This extrasensory and telepathic approach to missionary works has attracted many people into Christianity. Mother Tracer gave a vivid example to this extrasensory approach in Calcutta. She migrated to India from Eastern Europe with a missionary mind and dedicated her life for the service of the poorest of poor in India. She attracted many thousands of people into Christianity. In Sri-Lankan case, they are many foreign Fathers dedicating their life for the service of Christianity in all over the Island and Late Father Weber of Baticaloa is an example of such dedication. More importantly these missionaries work day and night in times of natural disasters, wars and calamities. That is the way they wind hearts and minds of people. It is my intention here to refer to some of Christian missionary works in our countries and to see the extent of evangelization in our countries:
One could trace the history of Christian missionary works since the time of St Paul. Earliest historical records show us that Christian missionary works aim at evangelization: Christianity was introduced to sub-continent with Portuguese colonization in 1540. Unlike other colonial powers Portuguese people were missionary minded colonial power. They not only tried to occupy our lands but also try to brainwash our peoples’ minds and hearts with Christian theology. Indeed, they succeeded to some extents that is why now we see some Christian communities among indigenous people in sub-continent are Christians. It is not my intention to trace history of Christian missionary in our countries rather it is my purpose here to explore some of Christian missionary evangelization in our countries: often through social welfare works, charities, education programmes, economic developments, healthcare projects, small industries and through other various means. Proselytizing campaign very often start with these welfare, developmental and charitable works. Often Christian missionaries get maximum advantages from the impoverishment of people: They have greatly succeed in India and Bangladesh due to abject poverty of people: It is proper to note here the prophetic tradition of our beloved prophet that reads “Poverty/ extreme hungry may pay the way to disbelief”
Asaf Husain note that “the ultimate objective of the numerous mission organizations & agencies operating there is the evangelization of the people of Bangladesh… As such economic development was not-an end in itself to benefit the people but a mean for proselytizing them. Missionaries were therefore, very articulate about their developmental schemes but very reticent about evangelization of the people, particularly, in case of Muslims any such statistics of evangelization of Muslims was not published” (Birth of Bangladesh: the political role of missions). It is not surprising to note that missionary organizations always use crafty stratagem sometime using Muslim names, Islamic symbols, and religious calligraphies. These missionaries have different strategies at different levels. People who work with these missionaries are well trained and well educated. They know how to approach different people in different ways. They approach people physiologically, emotionally and socially and they interact with people with love, affection and kindness: they portray themselves as dedicated team of workers who want to help people in time of difficulties and hardship. A. Husain further describes the mechanism of these missionaries “Christian missions are approaching Muslims populations in a very systematic and well organised manner. They lack neither funds nor organization nor expertise. The Muslim countries, on the other hand, have done nothing to confront this”. This is indeed, an alarming situation in countries like Bangladesh, India, Indonesia and some African countries:
What is more alarming is these missions influence political and elite groups of people. Dr Y. Ali describes these missionary influence more shocking words: “The Christian mission, taking the opportunity of people’s poverty and distress, is evangelizing them through financial assistance and other means. The rapidly increasing number of conversion to Christianity among the tribal population is alarming. The The missionary activities are spreading around the country, chiefly in the intellectual arena, in educational institutions, and in other aspects of life. The influence of it on the culture, education, religion and lifestyle of people results into converting people to the Christian ideology. .Particularly the young generations are inclining towards this lucrative dogma of the new age. Media, both print and electronic , are propagating and claiming the banning of the da‘wah movement. In these situation, the Islamic da‘wah movements require to explore and implement new methodology to face the enormous challenges to prevent Bangladesh from becoming a Christian country in future.” Similar missionary works are taking place around the world particularly in the third world countries. Poor people in India due cast system easy become victims of Christian missionary works to maintain their social and economic survivals and our country is not exceptional to these missionary works.
One of the reasons that these missionary workers are going out from European countries to poor countries to convert people to Christianity is that Church going people in European countries are going down in alarming rate. Now younger generation does not bother about religion and in schools pupils are disputing teachers on theological and dogmatic issues. Some teachers struggle to explain the complex nature of Christian theology to pupil in logical and rational methods. People are deserting Religion and Church. A large of numbers of people in western nations is atheists and agnostics. Moreover, most of western nations are secular nations and religion is a private matter and it is greatly marginalised. The missionary works have utterly failed in these nations and they have turn to our countries to attract people into Christianity. Because they think that people in our countries are more religious and less secular. Western people increasingly become materialistic and they no longer bother about religion. Therefore, the survival of Christianity depends largely on these missionary works that aim at evangelizing people.
While these works are done by our Christian brothers our Muslim political and religious leadership in Muslim countries are fighting for trivial matters. Sometime for internal political disputes or theological matters: It is sad to note sometime unnecessary sectarian violence among Muslim sects cost a lot in term of human and material lost every year. Shia and Sunni internal fights cost a lot for Muslims every year. Sometime our priorities are mixed up. Our missions and visions are lost in the contemporary world. We give more priorities for less important issues and matters: Our religious understanding is sometime confined to literal meanings of the texts without any proper reading into modern contexts in our contemporary world. We will see the role of Islamic movements in the next week article.
To be continued next week.
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