Evangelical Christians in the Muslim Sahel

3. From “Satan’s Masterpiece” to “The Social Problem of Islam”

3 From “Satan’s Masterpiece” to “The Social Problem of Islam” Finally, those who have not yet received the Gospel are related in various ways to the people of God. . . . [The] plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator. In the first place amongst these there are the Mohamedans, who, professing to hold the faith of Abraham, along with us adore the one and merciful God, who on the last day will judge mankind. —Vatican Council II, Lumen Gentium, 1964, 16 The rhetoric of demonization has, as we have seen, been common in the religious discourse of almost all parties in the region at one point or another (with the notable exception of the Catholicism of the post–Vatican II era, as the above epigraph suggests) and has a logic that is extraordinarily destructive. However, the image of Islam SIM missionaries in the region have held has not been static and bears the marks of ongoing adjustment in the face of shifting global politics, deepening understanding of local practice, shifting opportunities for interaction with Africans, and the demographics of missionary recruitment. SIM evangelical missionaries working a century ago began with attitudes similar to those of the Vie Abondante mission today but found themselves adapting and adjusting to the realities and necessities of the mission field in which they worked. By tracing those shifting attitudes among missionaries devoted to converting Hausa-speakers of Nigeria and Niger to From “Satan’s Masterpiece” to “The Social Problem of Islam” / 85 Protestantism, I hope to offer a broad overview of the circumstances that have shaped the mission’s interventions, provide a the history of changing strategies that will structure the succeeding chapters, and offer an introduction to the race and gender dynamics of this complex intercultural encounter. This chapter is based primarily upon publications of the Sudan Interior Mission, particularly The Sudan Witness, a periodical sent out to mission supporters and potential donors. Most of the articles were written by missionaries in the field; articles by administrators in the United States were generally authored by former field missionaries who had moved into administration later in their careers. Articles, letters to the editor, photographs, and cartoons in this and other SIM publications give a good sense of the shifting perceptions SIM missionaries had of Muslims. They also provide narrative descriptions of the strategies the mission pursued at different historical moments. The publications reveal how the mission presented itself to its supporters, its recruitment strategies , and (indirectly) how the populations the mission encountered reacted to the mission. Most important, the mission’s presentation of its work to like-minded Christians offers a window on evangelical perceptions of Islam over time. Obviously such representations are discursive in the sense that they tell us little about actual Muslims and a great deal more about what evangelical Christians sympathetic to faith missionary activity took for granted or found perplexing about Islam. The earliest figurations of the Muslim in Africa in SIM discourses at the turn of the century would include the despot king slaver, the Hausa merchant as potential evangelizer, and the Muslim as fanatical scholar. By the 1920s, the rhetoric of Islam as “Satan’s masterpiece” had emerged forcefully in evangelical writings. Gradually, with greater exposure to Muslims on the ground, missionaries modified that image to emphasize Muslims as slaves to empty ritual; later still, they began to see Islam as a social problem. As the African mission fields moved closer to decolonization , Islam came to be seen as one of a number of threats, part of the rising tide of isms that included nationalism and Marxism. At the close of the colonial period, with the mission’s growing success in medical ministry, missionaries began to feminize Islam in their characterizations and to see Muslims as victims of underdevelopment. Most recently , missionaries have begun to see Hausa Muslims as “nominal Muslims” at the “soft underbelly of Islam,” amenable to conversion and perhaps different in kind from the dangerous “green menace” that has become a familiar part of contemporary discourse emanating from the United States. But throughout these imaginings and reimaginings, the 86 / Evangelical Christians in the Muslim Sahel specter of Islam as the archenemy of Christianity has had an enduring appeal as a result of the binary thinking characteristic of American evangelicalism . Most of these representations have been available throughout the history of SIM in Niger; however, I am interested in how and...