The Yemenis who work at the convenience store I pass by every day want to convert me. I’m not sure why it is that a Christian making this attempt creeps me out so much, but when Muslims try it just seems kind of sweet. I guess coming from any person who knows you, an attempt to convert is a kind of compliment, a way of saying: Come join us.
Maybe it’s because Christians tend to practice an indiscriminate, pamphleteering kind of outreach that makes it clear that they’re doing it to anyone unlucky enough to stumble across them, whereas Muslims in this country are much more low key. On the other hand, my Coptic Christian friends experienced a very different Islam in Egypt, which turned them very ardently against it. In fact, as far as I can tell, every religion seems to do better (by which I mean it doesn’t make so much trouble) when it in the minority: just part of the larger mix. I guess with the possible exception of Tibetan Buddhists, whom I’ve never heard anything particularly gory about.
It’s an interesting intellectual exercise to imagine the trouble Quakers would get up to if we ever constituted a politically powerful majority… the only government we ever had control of, in Pennsylvania, didn’t last long. Perhaps our small numbers are a blessing.
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