LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Islam and the West: Black Muslims
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In its encounter with the West, militant Islam faces a twofold challenge: external domination and internal decay. Muslims have had to admit that Western domination of the Islamic world became a reality only when Islamic societies had degenerated into corrupt and fragmented entities ruled by the Shahs or the Sultans far removed from the Islamic ideals of piety and justice. The responses of modern Islam to this dual challenge has been correspondingly twofold: external defense and internal reform. Beyond this general consensus of the nature of the problem and the challenges it presents, there is considerable disagreement among the Muslims today as to the strategy and tactics of the struggle. Although the Islamic Revolution in Iran initially captured the imagination of many Muslims throughout the world, its mixed success with the dual aspects of the challenge has had a sobering effect on the Muslim world. There are no easy solutions in this world, no panaceas.
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If Jenkins is correct, then perhaps the interaction between Christianity and Islam, and subsequently the opportunities for evangelism, should take a different form in the future. Instead of the traditional pattern of Western missionaries taking the lead and relocating to Muslim countries, Western Christians should recognize their limitations and give way to the leadership of Christians from Africa, Asia and Latin America in bringing the Gospel to the Muslim world. African, Asian and Latin American Christians do not carry the same impassioned historical freight that Western Christians bear. It would be difficult to dismiss an Asian Christian who is unfamiliar with the history of Western Christendom, and who could just as easily lament the atrocities of Imperialism. There are reports of Chinese Christians in China strategically focusing their evangelistic efforts on Muslim countries. Not only do they avoid Western stigmas, but members of the house church in China have had first hand experience with persecution and suffering, something the church in the West has long forgotten, but which Christian missionaries in Muslim countries maybe confronted with.
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In the early 16th century, the Shi'ite Safavid dynasty assumed control in Persia and established Shi'a Islam as an official religion there, and despite periodic setbacks, the Safavids remained powerful for two centuries. Meanwhile, Mamluk Egypt fell to the Ottomans in 1517, who then launched a European campaign which reached as far as the gates of Vienna in 1529.[88] After the invasion of Persia, and sack of Baghdad by the Mongols in 1258, Delhi became the most important cultural centre of the Muslim east. [89] Many Islamic dynasties ruled parts of the Indian subcontinent starting from the 12th century. The prominent ones include the Delhi Sultanate (1206–1526) and the Mughal empire (1526–1857). These empires helped in the spread of Islam in South Asia. but by the mid-18th century the British empire had ended the Mughal dynasty.[90] In the 18th century the Wahhabi movement took hold in Saudi Arabia.
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Most Westerners, including many Jungians, are unaware of the profound and living alchemical tradition in Islam. This ignorance is due to the general decay and decline to the point of extinction, of alchemy in the West. Hence, infect, the significance of Jung’s researches into the subject. In any case, there is firstly no doubt that Islam has an ancient and highly developed and active alchemical tradition. Secondly, there is ... no doubt as to the historic role played by the Arabs who were of course, Muslims, in the (retransmission of many types of knowledge– including alchemy– going back to the Greeks and Egyptians. As is evident from Jung’s own work, significant alchemical text by European authors which he ‘decoded’ are largely drawn from Arabic writings on the subject.
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It isn't exactly clear where Jews and Christians fit in when Islam distinguishes between believers and non-believers - although the distinctions are no less rigidly delineated than those between Jews and non-Jews, or Christians and heathens, in the West. In some passages, the Koran refers to them as believers, but in others they are conscripted into the great army of unbelievers that Muslims must fight with every resource available. From a theological perspective, this is a complex issue, because the Koran and Islamic theologians hold that believing in Christ as the son of God is perilously close to polytheism, for it suggests that Christians do not worship a single God. This point, like so many others, highlights the extent to which the Koran - treated by most Muslims as the unadulterated word of God, to be understood verbatim - requires and has always required interpretation.
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[E]nergizing and powerful were Muhammad's teachings and leadership that by the time of his death in 632 he had unified all of Arabia under Islam. By a century after his death Islamic followers had conquered the Middle East to the borders of India and China, North Africa, and Spain. Though Muslims may have lived far apart, their common link was that they formed an ummah, a community of believers who had the right relationship with Allah and one another. A rich Islamic civilization developed that produced great writers, mathematicians, astronomers, philosophers, architects and medical scholars. It saved ancient Greek learning from disappearing and made the later Renaissance and the scientific revolution possible in Western Europe.
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