William Carey's Muslim encounters in India: the founding of the Baptist Missionary Society of England in 1792 and its sending of William Carey to India the following year resulted from Carey's sermonic pamphlet, An Enquiry into the Obligation of the Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathen

Baptist History and Heritage, Spring, 2004 by Galen K. Johnson

The January 1794 encounter at Manicktulla turned into a disputation on the relative merits of the Bible and the Koran. According to Carey's report, Muslims argued for the "divine original" of the Koran. They contended that it was sent to "confirm" the Bible. Carey thought it to their disfavor that none could understand the Koran in its original Arabic (for they spoke Persian), and he invoked Revelation 22:18-19 that no one was to add or take away from scripture. The Muslims responded that Jews and Christians had corrupted the Bible, which was why God revealed the Koran to Muhammad. From Carey's perspective, if the Bible was true, it needed no confirmation from the Koran, but if the Muslim contention that the Bible had been corrupted was true, the Koran only "confirmed" corruption and was therefore also corrupt. (12) In either case, the superiority of the Koran would be refuted. On another occasion, Carey told a congregation of Muslims and Hindus at Mudnabatty "that their books were like a loaf of bread, in which was a considerable quantity of good flour, but also a little very malignant poison, which made the whole so poisonous that whoever should eat of it would die." (13)

The theological impasse of the first Carey-Muslim debate was typical of most of the subsequent encounters between them. The Muslims would have been particularly difficult to convert in any event since they believed that their religion and holy book were six centuries later and thus a more complete divine revelation than Christianity. But as Sunil Kumar Chatterjee noted, political circumstances were also of consequence. Muslim rule over India during Carey's time was in a degenerative condition. The Mogul rulers had become weak; no strong spiritual leadership for Muslims in India existed. The economic and educational achievements in the country were declining, and as a consequence, there was already apprehension that if the British Christians wrested control of India from the Moguls, the Christians might try to convert Muslims by force, as the Muslims had done to some Hindus. (14)

For Carey's part, he found little evidence to overturn the preconception of Muslims as argumentative to the point of narrow-mindedness. Though he recognized their zeal as "very great," (15) he still referred to them in his letters as superstitious, "foolish," "bad," and disappointing. (16) This last description came out of his witness to a Muslim named Sookman, who first appeared interested in the Christian answer to what he must do to be saved, but waned in responsiveness so that Carey "almost fear[ed] to hope" for his conversion. (17)

Despite the lack of response from Muslims, Carey did not avoid preaching to them. Instead his efforts toward reaching Muslims with the gospel increased. He told an amusing story of some Muslims who had never seen white people and thought that perhaps Carey's wife Dorothy was the missionary and that the term "wife" applied to himself! (18) He recalled discussing with most of the inhabitants of a Muslim village the universality of sin and holiness of God, questioning a fakir whom some of that village thought had turned a pot of water into milk, and preaching to Hindus and Muslims in his house.