Introduction
In 1866, the Dutch missionary Jan Nannes Wiersma decided it was necessary to teach the Muslim heads in the place where he was working about the life of the prophet Muhammad - rather a peculiar thing for a messenger of Christianity to do. The Board of the Nederlandsch Zendelinggenootschap [Dutch Missionary Society; DMS], who had sent him, therefore reprimanded him. Wiersma, however, defended himself by stating that if the chiefs knew more about what Islam really was, they would have reached a higher level of intellectual development, and they would be closer to conversion to Christianity. This opinion was not uncommon among adherents of the so called Modern Theology or Modernism.