خلاصه ماشینی:
The fact that conversion in South Asia was a subject which demanded investigation followed from the administrative needs and practices of the British government of India in the later nineteenth century5 and from the religious experiences and structures of the Christian West.
The Western understanding of Islam had thus been formed “amid inherited pre- judice and suspicion,” and writers on conversion in South Asia had been ready to impute to Muslims an attitude of acceptance concerning the use of force which Christians had themselves displayed.
It was natural, therefore, that Western writers concern» ed with conversion to Islam in South Asia should have offered explanations that were based upon the notion of force exercised by the state or of directed missionary effort by priest, preacher or mystic and that they would have seen conversion in religious rather than in social terms.
W. Hunter, who observed that “the whole conception of Islam is that of a church either actively militant or conclusively triumphant— forcibly converting the world, or ruling the stiffmecked unbeliever with a rod of iron?“ The myth of force was given historical credibility by men like Ibbetson, compiler and author of the 1881 Census Report.
On the basis of material collected from district gazetteers and census reports, he propounded and popularized the view that the large—scale conversions of Hindus to Islam in - South Asia were the result of the preaching and activities of the Sufis,“ who were the bearers of an image of spirituality, religiousness, and piety in the countryside as well as in town.