The Ahmadiyya Quest for Religious Progress: Missionizing Europe 1900-1965
Book presentation by Gerdien Jonker on 9th June 2016 at the Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO) in Berlin:
What happens when the idea of religious progress propels the shaping of modernity? In The Ahmadiyya Quest for Religious Progress. Missionizing Europe 1900 – 1965 Gerdien Jonker offers an account of the mission the Ahmadiyya reform movement undertook in interwar Europe. Nowadays persecuted in the Muslim world, Ahmadis appear here as the vanguard of a modern, rational Islam that met with a considerable interest.
The engagement of the Ahmadiyya in the Europe mesmerized European “modernists”, including Jews, Christians, theosophists and agnostics, artists and scientists, liberals and national socialists. All of them strived for modernity in their ways and were convinced that Islam was part of this modernity. Based on a wide array of resources, this book puts the various levels of entrapment that brought up the missionaries and their target groups, into place.