Brief Summary
This article examines the methods Christian missionaries use to convert Muslim Iranians to Christianity, focusing on a strategy of creating a sense of rupture and discontinuity with Islam. It highlights how missionaries present Christianity as a solution to the moral and political issues within the Islamic Republic of Iran.
- Missionaries operate within transnational Christian networks, employing methods that both challenge and engage with Iranian society and culture.
- The conversion discourse emphasizes anti-Islam sentiments.
- The research is based on participant observation in missionary groups and Christian churches, both online and in-person.
[Abstract]
The article analyzes the methods used by Christian missionaries to convert Muslim Iranians to Christianity. These methods are based on creating a sense of rupture and discontinuity with Islam, positioning Christianity as the solution to the moral and political crises experienced by Iranians in the Islamic Republic. The conversion discourse is centered around anti-Islam sentiments. The evangelical missionaries, operating within a transnational Christian network that includes both Iranians and non-Iranians, use methodologies that challenge and engage with the local culture of their target audience, presenting evangelical Christianity as an alternative for Iranians. The research involves participant observation in missionary groups and Christian churches for Iranians, conducted via digital media and in face-to-face interactions, to understand the conversion process from Islam to evangelical Christianity.
[References]
The references include a wide range of academic works relevant to the study. These sources cover topics such as feminism and modernity in the Middle East, the concept of imagined communities, the anthropology of Islam, ethnographies of Islam, the history of sexuality, Muslim society, collective memory, the invention of tradition, the semantics of historical time, the politics of piety, comparative exploration of Islam and Christianity, places of memory, moral performance and the public sphere in Syria, mystical bodies and subjectification in Syrian Sufism, moral self in the lives of young Egyptians, and the anthropology of Islam.
