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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 May 2009
Ahmed Fahmy, who was born in Alexandria, Egypt, in 1861 and died in Golders Green, London, in 1933, was the most celebrated convert from Islam to Christianity in the history of the American Presbyterian mission in Egypt. American Presbyterians had started work in Egypt in 1854 and soon developed the largest Protestant mission in the country. They opened schools, hospitals, and orphanages; sponsored the development of Arabic Christian publishing and Bible distribution; and with local Egyptians organized evangelical work in towns and villages from Alexandria to Aswan. In an age when Anglo-American Protestant missions were expanding across the globe, they conceived of their mission as a universal one and sought to draw Copts and Muslims alike toward their reformed (that is, Protestant) creed. In the long run, American efforts led to the creation of an Egyptian Evangelical church (Kanisa injiliyya misriyya) even while stimulating a kind of “counter-reformation” within Coptic Orthodoxy along with new forms of social outreach among Muslim activists and nationalists.
1 University of London, School of Oriental and African Studies, Council for World Mission Archives (henceforth SOAS CWM), Annotated Register of L.M.S. Missionaries, 1796–1923, Appendix A, p. 176 #854, “FAHMY, Ahmed.” This LMS register states that he was born in 1860. However, Edinburgh University records, completed in Ahmed Fahmy's own hand, declare that he was born on August 25, 1861: Edinburgh University Library, Special Collections (henceforth EUL), records of “Preliminary Examination and Course of Study [Medicine]” for Ahmed Fahmy, “Medical Graduates 1886,” shelf mark Da 43.
2 The American Presbyterian mission was substantially larger than the mission of the Church Missionary Society. Moreover, after Britain invaded and occupied Egypt in 1882, the Americans did not have to struggle as CMS missionaries did to dissociate themselves from colonial authorities. On the CMS in Egypt, see Matthew Rhodes, “Anglican Mission: Egypt, A Case Study,” paper delivered at the Henry Martyn Centre, Westminster College, Cambridge University, May 2003, available at http://www.martynmission.cam.ac.uk/CMRhodes.htm.
3 Sharkey, Heather J., American Evangelicals in Egypt: Missionary Encounters in an Age of Empire (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2008)Google Scholar.
4 Watson, Andrew, “Islam in Egypt,” in Zwemer, S. M., Wherry, E. M., and Barton, James L., eds., The Mohammedan World of To-Day (New York: F. H. Revell, 1906), 23–29Google Scholar.
5 Donald Black, “Board of Foreign Missions of the United Presbyterian Church of North America, 1954–1958: Reflections of the Executive Secretary,” unpublished typescript, n.d.; and Ralph McLaughlin, “Important Event in the Nile Valley,” United Presbyterian, 30 November 1953.
6 Watson, “Islam in Egypt,” 36.
7 Hall, Catherine, Civilising Subjects: Metropole and Colony in the English Imagination, 1830–1867 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002)Google Scholar; Comaroff, John L. and Comaroff, Jean, Of Revelation and Revolution, 2 vols. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991 and 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Landau, Paul Stuart, In the Realm of the Word: Language, Gender, and Christianity in a Southern African Kingdom (Portsmouth, N.H.: Heinemann, 1995)Google Scholar; Makdisi, Ussama, Artillery of Heaven: American Missionaries and the Failed Conversion of the Middle East (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2008)Google Scholar.
8 On the LMS, for example, see Johnston, Anna, Missionary Writing and Empire, 1800–1860 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and an earlier work, Jon Bonk, “‘All Things to All Men’: Protestant Missionary Identification in Theory and Practice, 1860–1910: with special reference to the London Missionary Society in Central Africa and China,” Ph.D. diss., University of Aberdeen, 1982. A recent work on the British imperial aspect of missions is Porter, Andrew, Religion versus Empire? British Protestant Missionaries and Overseas Expansion, 1700–1914 (New York: Manchester University Press, 2004)Google Scholar.
9 Peel, J. D. Y., Religious Encounter and the Making of the Yoruba (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000)Google Scholar.
10 Sanneh, Lamin, Whose Religion Is Christianity? The Gospel beyond the West (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2003)Google Scholar.
11 The UPCNA was an antecedent church of what is now the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and sponsored missions to Egypt, northern India (later Pakistan), Sudan, and Ethiopia. Ahmed Fahmy served as a doctor to missionaries of the RCA in the Amoy district of China; his second wife was also an RCA missionary.
12 Jenkins, Philip, The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wijsen, Frans and Schreiter, Robert, eds., Global Christianity: Contested Claims (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2007)Google Scholar.
13 Featherstone, Mike, Undoing Culture: Globalization, Postmodernism and Identity (London: Sage, 1995), 13–14Google Scholar. See also Appadurai, Arjun, “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy,” in Featherstone, Mike, ed., Global Culture: Nationalism, Globalization and Modernity (London: Sage, 1990), 295–310Google Scholar; and Appadurai, Arjun, ed., Globalization (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
14 Gilley, Sheridan and Stanley, Brian, eds., World Christianities, c. 1815–1915 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006)Google Scholar.
15 Rambo, Lewis R., Understanding Religious Conversion (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1993)Google Scholar. On the idea of conversion as a “self-constitutive act,” see also Coleman, Simon, “Continuous Conversion? The Rhetoric, Practice, and Rhetorical Practice of Charismatic Protestant Conversion,” in Buckser, Andrew and Glazier, Stephen D., eds., The Anthropology of Religious Conversion (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003), 15–27Google Scholar.
16 Hefner, Robert W., “Of Faith and Commitment: Christian Conversion in Muslim Java,” in Hefner, Robert W., ed., Conversion to Christianity: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives on a Great Transformation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 99–125CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
17 SOAS CWM, Annotated Register of L.M.S. Missionaries.
18 Gilley and Stanley, eds., World Christianities.
19 Kinnear, Elizabeth Kelsey, She Sat Where They Sat: A Memoir of Anna Young Thompson of Egypt (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1971)Google Scholar. See p. 36 regarding Muslim females attending American mission schools in the 1870s. In 1878, on his matriculation papers for Edinburgh University, Ahmed wrote that he had attended the American mission school in Cairo for nine years: EUL, Records for Ahmed Fahmy, “First Matrics 1878,” shelf mark Da 34.
20 The three most important sources are: Watson, Andrew, The American Mission in Egypt, 1854 to 1896, 2nd ed. (Pittsburgh: United Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1904), 305–311Google Scholar; Presbyterian Historical Society, Philadelphia (henceforth PHS), RG 58-1-10: Anna Young Thompson Papers, Diary, 1872–1880; PHS RG 210-3-6: Andrew Watson, Diaries, July 1877–December 1877.
21 Watson, The American Mission in Egypt, 305–307.
22 See chapter 4, “Apostasy,” in Friedmann, Yohanan, Tolerance and Coercion in Islam: Interfaith Relations in the Muslim Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 121–159CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
23 Sharkey, Heather J., “Muslim Apostasy, Christian Conversion, and Religious Freedom in Egypt: A Study of American Missionaries, Western Imperialism, and Human Rights Agendas,” in Hackett, Rosalind I. J., ed., Proselytization Revisited: Rights, Free Markets, and Culture Wars (London: Equinox, 2008), 139–166Google Scholar.
24 PHS RG 210-3-6: Andrew Watson, diary entries for December 22 and December 25, 1877.
25 PHS RG 210-3-6: Andrew Watson, diary entry for December 24, 1877.
26 PHS RG 58-1-10: Anna Young Thompson, diary entry for November 19, 1877.
27 Watson, The American Mission in Egypt, 305–311.
28 The fourth Lord Aberdeen served as prime minister of Britain from 1852 to 1855, and along with Lord Elgin (of Elgin Marbles fame) also excavated and shipped Greek antiquities to the U.K. The fifth Lord Aberdeen was an evangelical Christian interested in poor relief and Bible distribution. The sixth Lord Aberdeen, eldest son of the evangelist, died off the coast of Galveston, Texas, while working incognito as a sailor.
29 C. J. Montague, Sixty Years in Waifdom, or, The Ragged School Movement in English History (1904), reprinted with an introduction by Katharine F. Lenroot (Montclair, N.J.: Patterson Smith, 1970). This movement strongly influenced the British missionary Mary Whately in Egypt: Whately, M. L., Ragged Life in Egypt, and More About Ragged Life in Egypt, new ed. (London: Seeley, Jackson, and Halliday, 1870)Google Scholar.
30 The Rev. Elliott, E. B., ed., Memoir of Lord Haddo, in His Latter Years, Fifth Earl of Aberdeen, 5th rev. ed. (London: Seeley, Jackson and Halliday, 1869)Google Scholar; and Heather J. Sharkey, “American Missionaries, the Arabic Bible, and Coptic Reform in Late Nineteenth-Century Egypt,” unpublished paper.
31 Gordon, John Campbell, Marquess of Aberdeen and Temair, and Ishbel Gordon, Marchioness of Aberdeen and Temair, “We Twa”: Reminiscences of Lord and Lady Aberdeen, 2 vols. (London: W. Collins Sons & Co., 1925)Google Scholar.
32 Keddie, Nikki R., An Islamic Response to Imperialism: Political and Religious Writings of Sayyid Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983)Google Scholar.
33 Ian Buruma, “Tariq Ramadan Has an Identity Issue,” The New York Times Magazine, February 4, 2007; Ramadan, Tariq, Western Muslims and the Future of Islam (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004)Google Scholar.
34 Watson, The American Mission in Egypt, 308.
35 Kedourie, Elie, Afghani and Abduh: An Essay on Religious Unbelief and Political Activism in Modern Islam (New York: The Humanities Press, 1966), 45Google Scholar.
36 PHS RG 58-1-10: Anna Young Thompson, diary entry for November 15, 1877.
37 Watson, Charles R., Egypt and the Christian Crusade (New York: Young People's Missionary Movement, 1907), 174–177Google Scholar.
38 Elder, Earl E., Vindicating a Vision: The Story of the American Mission in Egypt, 1854–1954 (Philadelphia: The United Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions, 1958), 76–77Google Scholar.
39 Sharkey, American Evangelicals in Egypt, 3, 7, 229–230.
40 PHS RG 58-1-10: Anna Young Thompson, diary entry for November 17, 1877.
41 PHS RG 58-1-10: Anna Young Thompson, diary entry for December 24, 1877.
42 SOAS CWM, Annotated Register of L.M.S. Missionaries, 1796–1923, Appendix A, p. 176 #854, “FAHMY, Ahmed.”
43 Ibid., 73–76.
44 Islamic law stipulates that Muslim men can marry Christian women, but that Christian men cannot marry or remain married to Muslim women. If a married Muslim man converts to Christianity and persists in his apostasy, then an Islamic court can unilaterally divorce him from his Muslim wife.
45 EUL, Records for Ahmed Fahmy, “Preliminary Examination and Course of Study [Medicine],” in “Medical Graduates 1886,” shelf mark Da 43.
46 SOAS CWM, Annotated Register of L.M.S. Missionaries, 1796–1923, Appendix A, p. 176 #854, “FAHMY, Ahmed.”
47 The Chronicle of the London Missionary Society, vol. XI, 1902, pp. 160 and 204, announcing the death of Mary Fahmy of “Chiang Chiu.”
48 Lovett, Richard, The History of the London Missionary Society, 1795–1895, vol. 2 (London: Henry Frowde, 1899), 487–488Google Scholar.
49 SOAS, papers of Dr. Douglas Harman and Mrs. Gladys Harman, MS 380815/1/1: “A History of Mission Medical Work in Changchow Fukien, China II”: A Letter from Gladys Busby, 18 February 1987.
50 An isolated reference to his Muslim origins did appear in his first year as an LMS missionary: this was in the society's Chronicle for 1888—the same volume that reported his establishment of the Zhangzhou hospital. Ahmed Fahmy disputed the claim of a church canon who had suggested that conversion to Islam (apparently among practitioners of local religions) could be a stepping-stone to Christianity, and who had claimed that slavery and polygamy had little foundation in Islamic religion: Fahmy, Ahmed, “South China, Work for the Medical Missionary” and “Mohammedanism as it Is” in the Rev. Cousins, George, ed., The Chronicle of the London Missionary Society for the Year 1888 (London: London Missionary Society, 1889), 175–176, 326–327Google Scholar.
51 A. Fahmy to the Rev. Wardlaw Thompson, London Mission, Foreign Secretary, dated Chiang-chiu, S. China, London Mission Hospital, 31 January 1889, in SOAS CWM China—Fukien, reports, box 1, file 96, 1888.
52 A. Fahmy to the Rev. R. Wardlaw Thompson, dated Chiang-chiu Hospital,10 January 1891, SOAS CWM China—Fukien, reports, box 1, file 98, 1890.
53 See, for example, accounts in Hunter, Jane, The Gospel of Gentility: American Women Missionaries in Turn-of-the-Century China (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1984)Google Scholar.
54 SOAS, papers of Dr. Douglas Harman and Mrs. Gladys Harman, MS 380815/1/1: “A History of Mission Medical Work in Changchow Fukien, China II”: A Letter from Gladys Busby, 18 February 1987.
55 Lodwick, Kathleen L., Crusaders against Opium: Protestant Missionaries in China, 1874–1917 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1995)Google Scholar.
56 Dunch, Ryan, Fuzhou Protestants and the Making of a Modern China, 1857–1927 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2001), xvii, 36Google Scholar.
57 A. Fahmy, “Report of the Chiang-Chiu Hospital for 1902,” in SOAS CWM China—Fukien, reports, box 3, file 110, 1902.
58 A. Fahmy to the Rev. G. Cousins, dated L.M.S. Chiang-Chiu, Amoy, 18 April 1908, in SOAS, CWM South China—Fukien—Incoming Correspondence, box 9, folder 1, 1908.
59 A. Fahmy, “Report of the Changchowfu Hospital for 1913” in SOAS CWM China—Fukien, reports, box 4, file 121, 1913; and letter from Ahmed Fahmy to the Rev. Frank Lenwood, London Mission, Chanchowfu [sic], Amoy, 13 January 1913, in SOAS CWM China—Fukien—Incoming Correspondence, box 11, folder 1, 1913.
60 A. Fahmy to the Rev. R. Wardlaw Thompson, dated London Mission, Chiangchiu, Amoy, 30 December 1893, in SOAS CWM China—Fukien, reports, box 2, file 101, 1893.
61 “Report of the Chiangchiu Hospital for the year ending December 31st, 1896,” in SOAS CWM China—Fukien, reports, box 2, file 104, 1896.
62 SOAS, Papers of Dr. Douglas Harman and Mrs. Gladys Harman, MS 380815/1/1: “A History of Mission Medical Work in Changchow Fukien, China III,” description of events from 1941 to 1951 and from 1985. See also Goodall, Norman, A History of the London Missionary Society, 1895–1945 (London: Oxford University Press, 1954), 189–190, 518–519Google Scholar.
63 SOAS, papers of Dr. Douglas Harman and Mrs. Gladys Harman, MS 380815/1/2: D. J. Harman to Mrs. Johnston, dated Eltham, London, 14 November 1987.
64 SOAS, papers of Dr. Douglas Harman and Mrs. Gladys Harman, MS 380815/1/1: “A History of Mission Medical Work in Changchow Fukien, China III,” description of events from 1941 to 1951 and from 1985.
65 A. Fahmy to the Rev. R. W. Thompson, dated London Mission, Chiangchiu, Amoy, China, 19 January 1893, in SOAS CWM China—Fukien, reports, box 2, file 100, 1892.
66 A. Fahmy, “Report of the Changchow Hospital for the year ending December 31, 1917,” in SOAS CWM China—Fukien, reports, box 4, file 125, 1917.
67 A. Fahmy, Chiang-chiu Hospital report for the year ending 31 December 1900, in SOAS CWM China—Fukien, reports, box 2, file 108, 1900.
68 A. Fahmy, Report of the Chiang-chiu Hospital for 1901, SOAS CWM China—Fukien, reports, box 2, file 109, 1901.
69 SOAS, Papers of Dr. Douglas Harman and Mrs. Gladys Harman, MS 380815, including correspondence from Jessie Platz.
70 Dunch, Fuzhou Protestants and the Making of a Modern China, 194–195.
71 A. Fahmy, Report of the Chiang-Chiu Hospital for 1902, SOAS CWM China—Fukien, reports, box 3, file 110, 1902.
72 A. Fahmy, “Decennial report of the Changchow Hospital, 1900–1910,” in CWM China—Fukien, reports, box 4, file 118, 1910.
73 Gordon and Gordon, “We Twa,” vol. 1, 182–184. A later reference to the built-over burial site appears in D. J. Harman to Mrs. Johnston (granddaughter of Ahmed Fahmy), dated Eltham, London, 14 November 1987, SOAS, papers of Dr. Douglas Harman and Mrs. Gladys Harman, MS 380815.
74 Gordon and Gordon, “We Twa,” vol. 1, 182–184.
75 The Chronicle of the London Missionary Society, vol. XXIII (New Series), 1915: “Killed in action in France on September 25, 1915, Sergeant Eric P. Fahmy, 8th Battalion Seaforths, elder son of Dr. A. Fahmy, Changchowfu, Amoy, China, aged 24.”
76 Ernest Chalmers Fahmy (d. 1982) co-authored, with William Francis Theodore Haultain, Ante-Natal Care: A Practical Hand-Book of Ante-Natal Care and the Abnormalities Associated with Pregnancy (Edinburgh: E. & S. Livingstone, 1929). Also, see details by searching for “Ernest Fahmy” on the rugby website at http://www.scrum.com (accessed 6 January 2009). Detailed information on his career appeared in an obituary published in the Edinburgh University Journal (1983).
77 Letter from Jessie Platz to Douglas and Gladys Harman, dated Hanover, Pa., 13 July 1988, in SOAS, papers of Dr. Douglas Harman and Mrs. Gladys Harman, MS 380815/1/1.
78 Porter, Religion versus Empire?, 13.
79 Goodall, A History of the London Missionary Society, 189–190.
