Matthew J. Kuiper - Dawa

Dawa

The New Edinburgh Islamic Surveys
Series Editor: Carole Hillenbrand

Contemporary Issues in Islam Asma Asfaruddin

Astronomy and Astrology in the Islamic World Stephen P. Blake

The New Islamic Dynasties Clifford Edmund Bosworth

Media Arabic Julia Ashtiany Bray

An Introduction to the Hadith John Burton

A History of Islamic Law Noel Coulson

Medieval Islamic Political Thought Patricia Crone

A Short History of the Ismailis Farhad Daftary

Islam: An Historical Introduction (2nd Edition) Gerhard Endress

A History of ChristianMuslim Relations Hugh Goddard

Shiism (2nd Edition) Heinz Halm

Islamic Science and Engineering Donald Hill

Muslim Spain Reconsidered Richard Hitchcock

Islamic Law: From Historical Foundations to Contemporary Practice Mawil Izzi Dien

Sufism: The Formative Period Ahmet T. Karamustafa

A History of Islam in Indonesia Carool Kersten

Dawa: A Global History of Islamic Missionary Thought and Practice, Matthew J. Kuiper

Islamic Aesthetics Oliver Leaman

Persian Historiography Julie Scott Meisami

The Muslims of Medieval Italy Alex Metcalfe

The Archaeology of the Islamic World Marcus Milwright

Twelver Shiism Andrew Newman

Muslims in Western Europe (4th Edition) Jrgen S. Nielsen and Jonas Otterbeck

Medieval Islamic Medicine Peter E. Pormann and Emilie Savage-Smith

Muslims in Eastern Europe Egdnas Raius

Islamic Names Annemarie Schimmel

The Genesis of Literature in Islam Gregor Schoeler

Islam in Modern Turkey, Kim Shively

The Quran: A Historical-Critical Introduction Nicolai Sinai

Modern Arabic Literature Paul Starkey

Islamic Medicine Manfred Ullman

A History of Islamic Spain W. Montgomery Watt and Pierre Cachia

Introduction to the Quran W. Montgomery Watt

Islamic Creeds W. Montgomery Watt

Islamic Philosophy and Theology W. Montgomery Watt

Islamic Political Thought W. Montgomery Watt

The Influence of Islam on Medieval Europe W. Montgomery Watt

Muslims of Central Asia: An Introduction Galina M. Yemelianova

edinburghuniversitypress.com/series/isur

Dawa

A global history of Islamic missionary thought and practice

Matthew J. Kuiper

For my parents

Edinburgh University Press is one of the leading university presses in the UK. We publish academic books and journals in our selected subject areas across the humanities and social sciences, combining cutting-edge scholarship with high editorial and production values to produce academic works of lasting importance. For more information visit our website: edinburghuniversitypress.com

Matthew J. Kuiper, 2021

Edinburgh University Press Ltd
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A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 4744 5155 0

The right of Matthew J. Kuiper to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498).

Published with the support of the University of Edinburgh Scholarly Publishing Initiatives Fund.

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Islam, in all its varieties, is the religion of nearly two billion people who live on every inhabited continent, speak hundreds of languages and dialects, represent countless of ethnicities and sectarian divisions, and make major impacts in most fields of human endeavour. Today, a majority of Muslims, or followers of Islam, and most Muslim-majority countries are found in the vast and historically rich swath of land stretching from Senegal and Morocco in the west all the way to Indonesia in the east. However, there are also growing Muslim populations in many other places, including western countries. The book in your hands surveys the story of how Islam became a world religion of such immense scale. It does so by providing a global history of dawa, or missionary thought and practice in Islam, from the Quran to the present (from circa 610 to 2020 CE) but more on the books purpose and plan in the Introduction, just a few pages ahead.

Anyone who sets out to study a major theme in history and then to write a global history on that theme is either slightly crazy, or else blissfully unaware of what they are truly in for. I plead mostly the latter. Having already published a specialist monograph on Islamic mission or dawa (Dawa and Other Religions, Routledge, 2018), I believed that I had a decent head-start towards writing a second, more general, history of Islamic mission for a wider audience. I was only partially correct. While the earlier book gave me a foundation to build upon, writing this new book turned out to be a monumental undertaking which involved over two years of almost continuous research and reflection. Along the way, I ventured into many historical periods, regions of the world and subfields of Islamic Studies. While most of my earlier conclusions about dawa were confirmed, in some cases I found myself refining my understandings. This book is the fruit of that process. In addition, writing this book enabled me to fill out several areas of the earlier book where I was only able to nod at certain phenomena or cover them thinly. I gratefully acknowledge the permission Routledge granted me to use material from Dawa and Other Religions for this project. Although some aspects of to the end of Dawa: A Global History is almost entirely new.

While this work with its inevitable limitations and shortcomings is mine alone, I gratefully acknowledge the help and support of multiple individuals and organisations. I thank Prof. Carole Hillenbrand, editor of the New Edinburgh Islamic Surveys series, and Nicola Ramsey and Kirsty Woods at Edinburgh University Press (EUP) for their expert guidance. I also thank the anonymous reviewers of the initial book proposal and the reviewer of the final manuscript. These scholars comments and suggestions proved to be very helpful. I am grateful to Prof. John Voll, who invited me to write what would become two lengthy annotated bibliography articles, one on Dawa and another on the Tablighi Jamaat, for Oxford Bibliographies in Islamic Studies in 201718. Writing these two articles was instrumental in preparing me for this project. I also thank Julian Millie and Dietrich Reetz who peer-reviewed these articles. I am indebted to my friend Gabriel Said Reynolds, with whom I initially floated my idea for this book and who provided encouragement and feedback along the way. So, too, Paul Kollman, who facilitated a week-long research retreat for me at the University of Notre Dame in May 2019 and who provided feedback on part of the manuscript. Appreciation is also due to the Holy Cross brothers who hosted me at Moreau Seminary at Notre Dame during that week. I am very grateful to Ermin Sinanovi and the Center for Islam in the Contemporary World (CICW) at Shenandoah University for the generous research grant which enabled me to take additional research and writing retreats in July and November 2019.