Page 92 - Protestant Missionary Activity in the Arabian Gulf

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the Islamic community. When the Mission launched a fund drive

for building a parish hall and extension for the church in

Kuwait in 1957, most of the money donated came from local

Kuwaitis. One of the larger donors, in fact, was Shaikh

Yusuf al-Jenafi, the most highly respected of Kuwait’s Islamic

leaders. Shaikh Yusuf justified his contribution to the

Christian community church to the Rev. Donald MacDeill by
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stating simply: "A house of prayer is a house of peace.”

In the year following the Suez Crisis this was perhaps a par­

ticularly appropriate comment.

Thus, as its fund of enthusiasrh, concern and support

in the United States atrophied, the Mission came to be more

and more closely associated with the Islamic community it was

serving. As the years went by, the missionaries came to feel
more at home in the Middle East than in their own land. Re­

tirement from the field was a painful process and many ex­

missionaries gladly welcomed the opportunity to come back

after retirement as interim doctors and teachers whenever

the current missionaries were on furlough or sick leave. In

some ways this high degree of identification with the Middle

East may have hindered the missionaries’ effectiveness as

'they developed a most un-Victorian tolerance toward Islamic

But in other ways
civilization and Middle Eastern customs,

this "Middle Easternization" of the Mission was a source of

strength and resilience and undoubtedly another reason for

the Mission’s unique position of trust and respect in the

Arab world. Islam was not to be taken by storm even by such

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