Felt Needs in Folk-Islamic Societies

People in folk-Islamic societies are influenced by many felt needs. These include the need to avoid the influence of the evil eye, the jinn, and the spirits of those who have recently passed. To achieve these goals, they often resort to the use of charms and amulets, visiting a fortune teller at a ‘holy place’ (where a ‘saint’ is buried), or seeing a folk healer or Mullah. If we, in the Bible translation world, ignore these felt needs we will find that those attending local communities of believers will tend to continue with their previous folk-Islamic practices.

This paper will argue that the establishment of good-quality projects leading to the transformation of believers’ lives will depend upon taking such felt needs into account. This will mean having translation embedded in a Scripture engagement programme with its activities. The programme and activities will need to be developed with such felt needs in mind, which will make it and the practices developed by local communities of believers more contextualised than would be the case with more traditionally run programmes. This will help the project meet conditions six and seven of Wayne Dye’s ‘Eight Conditions of Scripture Engagement.’ It will also help to ensure that the quality of believers’ lives is high (Ephesians 4.7-16).