Contact, Confrontation, Accommodation: Jesuits and Islam, 1540-1770

Abstract

The encounter between Jesuits and Muslims in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries had as a point of connection the shared engagement with the spoken and written word. But Jesuit efforts both to convert and to understand this “people of the Book” were hampered by the Jesuits’ lack of deep theological understanding of Muslim sacred texts, and by the fact that this faith was not at a sufficient distance from the European Catholic heartland to receive the “longer view” that Jesuits could apply to the religious traditions of India and the Far East. The overstretched commitments of the Jesuits, and the European Society’s emphasis on polemical strategies, which did not prove workable in predominantly Muslim cultures, significantly limited the successes of Jesuits seeking to convert Muslims. The modest gains Jesuits made in the Ottoman and Mughal Empires and in other Muslim societies nevertheless provided narratives of achievement, heroism, and sacrifice that added elements to Jesuit self-presentation and to the narrative of the Society’s progress. Jesuit contacts with Islam continued during and after the Suppression and are still an aspect of the Society’s program today.