Duane a Miller Genesis of World Islamic Christianity

Duane Alexander Miller Page 1

Woven in the Weakness of the Changing Body: the Genesis of World Islamic

Christianity

By Duane Alexander Miller1

Nazareth Evangelical Theological Seminary

Yet the enchainment of past and future

Woven in the weakness of the changing body,

Protects mankind from heaven and damnation

Which flesh cannot endure.

--Eliot

Introduction Since the mid 60‘s there has been a significant increase in the number of Muslims converting to the Christ of

the Gospels2. The need for this somewhat cumbersome phrase has been covered elsewhere in my writings3,

but suffice to say that some of these Muslims have made a break, a conversion from Islam to Christianity,

but others continue to identify themselves as Muslims, and thus they have made a conversion within Islam, as

one can convert within Christianity from Anglicanism to American Orthodoxy. There is a significant

conversion, a genuine change in spirituality and identity, but within a larger context of continuity. The

addendum ―of the Gospels‖ is to clarify that all Muslims are believers in the Messiah, but there is a

significant difference between the Christ of the Qur‘an and the Christ of the Gospels. The former does not

give his life ―as a ransom for many,‖ where the later not only does that but somehow is reconciling all

things to God4—a claim of cosmic and eternal kavod.

That this increase in conversions has happened is a fact. That Christians have been sending preaching

missions and missionaries to the Muslims since the time of that great pioneer the Bl. Ramon Llull in the 13th

C. is also a fact. If one objects that there is some sort of fundamental difference between Catholic missions

and Protestant missions, we can point to well over two centuries of Protestant missions in Dar al Islam. That

those missions have largely been numerically unsuccessful on the whole until fairly recently is also well-

known. The question I am seeking to answer then is this: what has changed in the last decades that has

1 Mr Miller is the lecturer in church history at Nazareth Evangelical Theological Seminary in Nazareth, Israel, where he and his wife and two children attend Christ Church (Anglican). He holds a minor in Spanish, a BA in Philosophy, an MA in Theology, a Diploma in Arabic, and is working on a PhD in World Christianity through the Center for the Study of World Christianity at Edinburgh University in Scotland. He can be contacted through his blog at duanemiller.wordpress.com or by e-mail at [email protected]. 2 Some place the beginning of the genesis of World Islamic Christianity later in the late 70‘s, noting the key role of the Glen Eyrie Report in 1978 (Camel Training Manual 82). I opt for the earlier date because of the sheer magnitude of the conversions in Indonesia (about two million conversions). In this I am agreeing with Rick Love (2000: 11, end note 3). 3 Miller 2009, ‗Reappropriation…‘, pp 6, 7. 4 Col. 1:20.


caused this shift from very few converts to a relatively small but quite significant number of converts

around the world? In other words, I wish to give an account of the genesis of World Islamic Christianity.

1. Methodology and Purpose There are different ways of approaching this topic. I wish to ab initio explain that this question is one of

history: our world is changing quickly, what changes have made this rather surprising and startling

development possible? This question must be differentiated from the related question of why do Muslims

convert5. Substantial work has been done on that question already and I will not at this point enter into

that discussion. The two questions are related, of course, but they are not the same.

I have chosen as my methodology the use of a questionnaire, with two questions, which was sent out to

Christian ministers who have experience in religious ministry in a largely Islamic context. Many but not all

have an explicit interest in ministry to Muslims, including evangelism of Muslims. Every respondent has at

least eight years of experience in such a context, many of them have more than 20. All respondents minus

one (a Catholic) are Protestant and/or evangelical. The locus of their experience is in the Arab world,

where I have spent the bulk of these last five years, but there are also representatives from other regions

like Sub-Saharan Africa and SE Asia.

The two questions I asked were:

1) Over the last decades there has been a significant increase in Muslims making some sort of commitment to Jesus and

his message as they are portrayed in the Gospels. What are some of the factors in your opinion that have led to this?

2) Were there any books/articles/speakers that personally influenced your understanding of Christian witness in the

Muslim world?

The validity of this study then rests on the assumption that Christian religious practitioners in an Islamic

context have unique insights that help us to discern why this increase has taken place. They are, so to

speak, the experts in this topic, being exposed to both Christianity and Islam, questions and instances of

conversion, and the dynamics of life and religion in Dar al Islam, or at least Islamicized sections of the

West (and there are many such areas, though I have found that often times people of Western ancestry

do not know of these areas in their own cities).

I should be very clear then in what I think this questionnaire can and cannot accomplish. It can, I think,

provide us with a partial picture, one important point of view, that can shed light on this complex

development. This one puzzle piece which I am presenting would need to be complemented by data from

the converts themselves (widely available, as I have noted) as well as other scholars in areas like sociology

and perhaps anthropology. Nevertheless, the Christian minister in the Muslim world is uniquely positioned

to be able to discuss and analyze this topic; it is this point of view that I am presenting here.

Let me also note that every respondent was informed that this survey was being done for research

purposes, and that names and identifying information would not be used. They were also advised that

there was no limit on how little or how much they could write. Indeed the shortest answer was barely two

lines long. The longest was well over a page. On average the answers were between half a page and

one page long. The survey was done by e-mail and I am grateful to two colleagues who wish to remain

unnamed—they were helpful to me in contacting the various respondents.

5 The best sources on this are Woodberry et al. 2001 and 2007. For Muslims leaving Islam in general (many of whom do not embrace Christianity) see also Ibn Warraq ed. 2003 and Khalil and Bilici 2007.


2. Question One: Why is this happening now? This really is the main section of this paper6. I analyzed the survey answers and identified a number of

general categories. Every time someone mentioned one of these categories I would make a note of this,

and fairly soon it became apparent that there were a number of recurring responses. From time to time a

respondent would mention a factor that did not represent a new development, for example the presence

of Christian schools and hospitals. These have long been present in Dar al Islam and while a number of

Muslim testimonies do involve these institutions, they do not represent a new factor. We have here

something involved in why Muslims convert, but not something that accounts for the increase in conversions.

Such answers were few, and they will not be discussed.

The list, with the number of mentions, follows:

1. Media (15)

2. Exposure to other ways of life/thought/and religion (15)

3. Contextualized or culturally-sensitive witness (11)

4. Living Abroad/migration (9)

5. Prayers/a move of the Spirit/God‘s timing (9)

6. Dreams/Visions/Miracles (8)

7. Greater number of missionaries (5)

8. Translation of the Bible and material into local languages/dialects/forms (5)

9. Greater diversity in missionary strategies/platforms (4)

10. Great boldness in evangelization (4)

2.1 Media ―Modern technology became a facilitator of knowledge… media, satellites, and Christian programs targeting Moslem

listeners are playing an important role in this increment of Moslems accepting the Good News as Light and Life granted by

Christ the Lord.‖—an indigenous minister in the Arab world.

―One hears that Christian electronic media productions have attracted attention. Particularly from Iran there are countless

testimonies about new congregations springing up around the TV screen showing Iranian Christian worship services broadcast

from abroad.‖—a Western minister with experience in the Arab world.

The key development here is satellite television. At the time of the First Gulf War (2 Aug 90-28 Feb 91)

many households throughout the Middle East found that the only way they could get unbiased news was

from international sources available via satellite TV and satellite dishes started to become more and more

common:

The era of satellite TV has changed (and continues to change) the politics, expectations and life styles of millions of

people in the Arab world. The era began with the success of CNN during the first Gulf War in 1991, and sky-rocketed

with the launch of another Arabic satellite channel in the same year as the launch of SAT-7, viz. the Qatar-based news

channel Al Jazeera. Half of the population of the region now has satellite TV at home (in some countries the figure is

almost 100 percent). Satellite television is in most countries the only truly uncensored form of information or

entertainment, and today more than 300 different Arabic-language satellite TV channels are broadcasting.7

Today throughout MENA they are ubiquitous—I have even seen Bedouins living out of tents, yet they have

a satellite dish so they can watch their favorite shows. Jos Strengholt, an authority on the Christian use of

6 Indeed, I will not be presenting an analysis of the second question I asked. Suffice to say that the three most-mentioned persons were Zakaria Botros (Coptic Orthodox) and Kenneth Cragg (Anglican) and Phil Parshall (Presbyterian). Cragg‘s Call of the Minaret and Parshall‘s New Paths in Muslim Evangelism are staples in many seminaries for people training to be missionaries. 7 Schmidt 2007: 290.


media in the Muslim world, commented8 on the developments after the First Gulf War: ―People began to

realize the beauty of the dish on the roof that gave them direct access to world news without censorship.

Now: 80% of homes have a dish, [there is] a massive TV industry for satellite now, including ten Arabic

Christian stations broadcasting 24/7—Catholic, Coptic, Protestant […], TBN9 […], etc. Since 1995 Miracle

Channel and Sat7 [have been] broadcasting in Arabic. That was really the beginning of Christian TV in the

Arab world.‖

We will find again and again that one factor will support another one. Here with the question of media

we have a connection #2 and #10 on our list above. One name that came up several times by the

respondents, both for questions one and two, was Abouna10 Zakarias Botros, a Coptic priest living now in

exile in North America. He has been called Islam‘s ‗Public Enemy #1‘ by an Arabic newspaper11. He

described his polemical style to me as ―short, sharp, and shocking‖ during the one rather short conversation

we had in person. He told me at that time that he had baptized over 500 Muslims himself. Raymond

Ibrahim, in a short but interesting article introducing Fr. Botros to the Western readers of the National

Review, describes how it is that his combination of polemics with a truly astonishing knowledge of the

authoritative scholarship and writings of Islam result in ―Mass conversions to Christianity—if clandestine

ones.‖ Ibrahim suggests three reasons for his success:

First, satellite TV and the internet. ―It is unprecedented to hear Muslims […] even from Saudi Arabia, where

imported Bibles are confiscated and burned—call into the show to argue with Botros and his colleagues,

and sometimes, to accept Christ.‖ Second, Botros is Egyptian, Arabic is his first language, his ―mastery of

classical Arabic not only allows him to reach a broader audience, it enables him to delve deeply into the

voluminous Arabic literature—much of it untapped by Western writers who rely on translation—and so

report to the average Muslim on the discrepancies and affronts to moral common sense found within this

vast corpus.‖

Third, his polemics have gone largely unanswered. He is outstanding in his ability to name his sources, and

he offers Islamic scholars the chance to call in can refute his positions regarding Islamic doctrine and

practice. He insists that such refutations be based on evidence and proof, and not invective. His offer to be

refuted is rarely taken up.

Examples could be multiplied of the specific topics he addresses. Some of the most famous are those of

―the breastfeeding of the adult‖ (rida3at al-kibar), the sexual habits of the Prophet (ie, dressing in his

wives‘ clothing), and concubinage, whereby the Qur‘an permits men to have sex with ―what your right

hands possess,‖ that is, slave girls12, or the recommendation of the Prophet that drinking camel urine is

beneficial for health13. The point here is not to offer an extensive coverage of the ministry and witness of

Fr. Botros, though his apologetics and polemics have been and are extremely important in the larger

8 From an interview with Dr. Strengholt, text via Skype, 23 Oct 2008. Minor changes to spelling and punctuation have been made. 9 Trinity Broadcasting Network, a Pentecostal broadcaster based out of California. Among its co-founders are the Rev. Jim Bakker and his then-wife Tammy Faye. 10 Arabic, lit. ‗our father‘. It is the honorific given to priests throughout the Arab world. 11 See the article by Raymond Ibrahim in the bibliography for more details. 12 4:3. The impersonal ―what‖ is correct, as the Arabic uses the article ma, not man, which would make it ―those whom your right hands possess.‖ 13 ―…A group of people from 'Ukl (or 'Uraina) tribe—but I think he said that they were from 'Ukl came to Medina and (they became ill, so) the Prophet ordered them to go to the herd of (Milch) she-camels and told them to go out and drink the camels' urine and milk (as a medicine). So they went and drank it, and when they became healthy, they killed the shepherd and drove away the camels.[…]‖ Sahiih al Bukhari Vol. 8, Book 82, Number 797.


context of the Arab world—a point we shall return to later. And as I suggested earlier, there are links. This

ministry would be very limited in its reach without media (specifically the internet and satellite), but it also

is very much intent on challenging the most basic tenets of Islam and thus constitutes an exposure to other

ways of life/thought/and religion.

The internet works along with satellite often—the one referring to the other on a regular basis. A TV show

might refer to a chat room, a web site might advertise a particular program on TV. The internet also

allows for some anonymity, and one respondent to the questionnaire suggests this is a very important

factor:

In a closed society, there is a limited amount of information that Muslims could get access to about Christ and rumors and

pseudo facts about Christianity were (and still are) widely held (Bible has been changed, Christians worship 3 Gods).

However, from the privacy of one‘s home or from the ease of a local internet café Muslims can search and try to find out

for themselves whether it is true or not. Also, they can ask Google and not have to face the shame of asking a friend

about their quest for truth.

These are all examples of how media is being used. Even media that is not created to directly counter

Islam is important in this whole process. We recall the introduction of CNN into the Arab living room when

we read the following sentence, ―Visual media is portraying non-Muslim societies as successful while

exposing uncomfortably negative political and historical realities in Muslim societies….‖ Islam is a

comprehensive system, a civilizational structure, a diin, not just a ‗religion‘ (a watered-down mutilation of

the unity of life). Islam lives with its indivisible spheres of indivisible power flowing from an indivisible God.

The fact that Islam has produced few free or prosperous societies is painfully present in the minds of many

Muslims. This reality has been the occasion for the reform movements within Islam that seek to recapture a

supposed greatness of past Islamic societies that were, it is said, truly Islamic and consequentially were

superior to others in areas of science, art, commerce, and political and military power. The implementations

of the theories of Islamic reformation espoused by great thinkers likes Muhammad ibn ‗abd al Wahab and

Seyyid Qutb has had mixed results, and this brings us to the second point.

2.2 Exposure to other ways of life/thought/and religion (15) ―Various factors are exposing Muslims to ideas and facts that challenge Islamic assumptions and the tribal systems that

perpetrate them.‖—a Western minister with experience in the Arab world.

One common theme that surfaced again and again was how closed Islamic society has been for many

centuries. Closed in terms of not allowing certain forms of critical discourse, an ancient custom reaching

back to the Prophet himself, who in one instance, for example, upon being ridiculed by a poet, procured

her assassination14. In Islamic law this act of execution is not a crude thing—indeed to affront the Prophet

is to affront God and must be met with the appropriate response. The lack of room for critical discourse in

Islamic societies for many centuries has also led to a good deal of conflict, the most famous recent example

being the publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet of Islam, which led to multiple violent outbursts in

many Islamic societies, including in the West, that included arson, murder, and the death threats. Examples

could be multiplied—the publication of The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie being another fine example

of the use of coercion to force a cessation of critical discourse—or even discourse that has been

misinterpreted as critical.

But with globalization, more and more options are becoming available. This is related to the first answer

(media) but is not identical to it. Thus respondents tended strongly to mention both elements, and not

always in connection with each other. Since the intention here is to accurately reflect the results of the

14 Asma bint Marwan was her name.


survey, I have followed their lead. The other ways of life/thought/and religion were of a great variety

and they were related often to things like the treatment of women, the use of violence in the name of

religion, apologetics that answered traditional arguments against Christianity, the concept of the love of

God in Christianity being more attractive than the image of God present in Islam, and something

mentioned many times, disillusion with the ongoing Islamic reformation, variously called political Islam,

jihadism, terrorism, and Islamo-fascism.

All these elements are interconnected, and this exposure to different narratives and meta-narratives,

including ones that challenge or undermine the meta-narrative of Islam, were previously not available on

any significant scale. In the past, when one heard that Muslim women were treated better than the women

of the Franks, what could one do but believe it? But now the statement is subject to falsification, and some

Muslim women have come to the conclusion that this is in fact not the case. That on the balance many

women in dar al harb have a life characterized by a greater deal of self-determination, which is good,

than do those of Dar al Islam, and that the former is preferable to the latter, is a conclusion that has led

some Muslimaat (the plural feminine) and Muslims to discard Islam for another religion or none, and still

others have been led to try to reform Islam.

The same forces at work here have also aided the Islamic reform movements in their critical discourse:

previously if one thought the local imam was not presenting the true teaching on jihad, one had few

options. Now one can find the kind of Islam one wants to find: mystical, modern, liberal, traditional,

reformed/reforming, and so on. There has been a genuine delimitation of the options available to people.

One respondent went so far as to link the increased number of religious choices with the increased options

available at the supermarket: ―[There is m]ore economic openness in many Arab countries—choice on the

shelves develops people‘s ability to make up their own mind.‖

This is the area where we can incorporate the many insights provided by the literature on why Muslims

convert. The greater number of options available today is one historical factor, a true change in the Muslim

world; the surveys on why Muslims convert speak more to the question of felt need, the question of motives.

The two work together, and both of them must be present for this increase in the number of converts to

obtain. There is no large movement of Muslims to Buddhism, for example; if I am right this is either because

Buddhists in general have not made it a point to communicate their message to Muslims on a significant

scale, and/or because Buddhism does not meet a felt need of any significant number of Muslims.

One of the most important researchers on this topic of why Muslims convert to the Jesus of the Gospels is

Dudley Woodberry, a professor at Fuller Theological Seminary. A concise summary of his findings is the

article ‗Why Muslims Follow Jesus‘15 and he outlines a number of felt needs, which are listed here:

1. Seeing a lived faith: appealing perceptions of Christian charity, treatment of women, loving marriages, a non-

materialistic life-style, a willingness to forgive and forego revenge, a sense that Christianity promotes peace and

not violence.

2. The ―power of God in answered prayers and healing,‖ successful exorcisms, intercessory prayer resulting in

healing, the Bible contains a theology of suffering and redemption.

3. ―[D]issatisfaction with the type of Islam they had experienced‖: the sense that the Qur‘an emphasizes punishment

more than God‘s love, its inability to be translated, use in folk Islam of fetishes; dissatisfaction with Islamic political

programs, as in Iran and Pakistan.

4. Visions, dreams.

5. The message of the gospel which assures forgiveness and salvation, unlike Islam where one is always uncertain.

15 Co-authored with Russell G. Shubin and G. Marks, in Christianity Today, October 2007. Accessed online on 15 April 2009 at <http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/article_print.html?id=50866>


6. The Bible as a book, which Muslims ―often find […] compelling [reading] and discover truth that they conclude must

be from God.‖

7. The love of God as it is described in the Bible and especially in Jesus‘ teaching and life.

Other lists are similar, but the one I have presented here encompasses nearly every factor mentioned in

other writings16. Most of these factors in conversion are related to our second point: exposure to otherness.

That exposure comes in a great number of forms, and the fact that these are now present in the Muslim

world to a greater extent than ever before, is truly an unprecedented occasion in human history; it is

related to other factors in our list—media, migration—but is not identical with any one of them. The

message of Messiah is available in an unprecedented manner, and that message is meeting the felt needs

of some Muslims and Muslimaat.

2.3 Contextual and Culturally Sensitive Communication ―The primary factor that I see for people coming to faith is the way that they hear the gospel. When [Muslims] are presented

with the stories of Jesus they are almost always receptive. When they are told that being a follower of Isa17 is what God has

asked of them, they are often interested. When they have other people that have come from the same background sharing

Truth with them, they are generally intrigued.‖—a Western minister with experience in SE Asia, South Asia, and the Turkic

World

―Presentation of the Gospel in more culturally sensitive ways. Presentation of the gospel message in a chronological fashion,

from creation to Christ, that preserves the underlying biblical meta-narrative creation-fall-redemption-consumation.‖ –a

Western minister in the Arab world

Referring to the Insider Movement: ―Not extracting them [Muslims who want to follow Jesus], but letting them remain as they

were when they were called by God (1 Cor. 7:17-24). Building bridges of relationship and truth from where they are

(Koran) to Jesus. Not preaching Christianity but Jesus.‖ –a Western minister with experience in the Arab World

―NOT to expect conversion [to Christianity], but simply to ask for faith (just as one would anywhere else) has given such

discussions [about Jesus Christ] a very different character.‖ –a Western minister in the Arab world

―Oral Bible Storying…‖ –a Western minister in the Arab world

A cursory reading of the New Testament will turn up an astounding plurality of images used to describe

what the early Christians had experienced in Christ: redemption—related to a slave being set free;

adoption; expiation—a particularly cultic image; justification—read by Protestants as an image of a

forensic declaration of innocence and by Catholics as an organic process of growth whereby one learns

how to be righteous; theosis—a narrative that became central to Eastern Christianity; the prisoner being

ransomed; and so on. Evangelicalism has strongly favored the narrative of forensic justification, to the

extent of giving it a place of unique ontological primacy in both its theology and its preaching. The

reasons for this are primarily related to tradition and history, as it is not clear anywhere in the NT that

forensic justification is of a higher veracity or theological or metaphysical significance than is, say, a

soteriology of adoption or theosis. What is important is to observe that forensic justification is and has

been the central soteriological construct in evangelical theology (if not worship) since the inception of the

tradition.

16 Cf. Abu Daoud‘s ‗Apostates of Islam‘ (2008), Chapter 5 in Pikkert 2008, and Khalil‘s ‗Conversion out of Islam: A Study of Conversion Narratives of Former Muslims‘ 2007. 17 The Islamic Arabic name of Jesus.


The question of how the Gospel is communicated to people is central to whether or not they will perceive it

to be something that is appealing to them. The concept of imputed righteousness must have made a great

deal of sense to a lawyer like John Calvin, for example. But are absolute categories of guilt and innocence

present in, say, Arab or Turkic culture? The answer is clearly no. Evangelical missionaries came to be aware

of this, and it offered them at least part of the explanation of why they had been so un-successful for so

long—they were using categories that to their Western context made a great deal of sense—but to

Berbers and Arabs and Persians made little sense. For the non-Wetserners it was indeed possible to be, in

a sense guilty, and in a sense righteous, at the same time—simil justus et pecator—without the death of

Messiah. If one committed a secret sin that had gone unnoticed, then one was in a sense guilty of it, but

also in a sense had been acquitted of it, as God in his mercy had not caused the sin to be disclosed, thus

preserving his honor. Let us also throw into this cauldron the fact that the word Christians commonly used

for sin in Arabic was xatiyya, which can mean a wicked action that is an affront to God‘s law or simply a

mistake with no moral connotations whatsoever. Furthermore, let us add to this that in evangelicalism one‘s

status before God was very much a question of personal commitment, personal choice—not the choice of

one‘s parents and not a matter of where one was born. In an attempt to explore these facets of identity I

have often asked Muslims why they are Muslims, they are often quite surprised by the question and frankly

admit to never having thought about it before. From time to time one will get a theological answer:

because of Muhammad, or because of the Qur‘an, but usually the answer is simply, I was born into a

Muslim family.

In other words, the evangelical presentation of the Gospel, indeed the way that early evangelicals in the

19th C. had contextualized the Gospel for a Western audience, was, unsurprisingly, both individualistic and

concerned with personal guilt. Audiences throughout Dar al Islam were not very concerned with personal

guilt in general, and the missionaries‘ concern with personal commitment to Christ disconnected from the

identity of theie community was at best incoherent. Moreover Islam had (and has) rather robust and

textured systems for procuring forgiveness for sins without going to the rather extreme length of the

Messiah‘s self-sacrifice.

These questions of contextualization—a word that only goes back to the 1970‘s—or ‗cultural relevance‘

have become of utmost interest to evangelical missionaries since around that time. I have discussed the

specifics of these developments elsewhere, so a short summary of the kinds of changes in presenting the

Gospel that have been made will be presented. Moreover, every one of these is an example given by one

or more of the respondents of the survey, some of whom simply wrote ‗contextualization‘ while others gave

specific examples without using that word. Note that none of these are universally accepted by missionaries

in the Muslim World, and some of them are actually contested by indigenous Christians.

1. Insider Movements: the intention of insider movements is not to extract new converts from their social milieu.

Previously converts often were martyred or had to leave their native land. They had converted to Western

Christianity, thus shaming their families. The goal of these movements is for converts to retain as much cultural

identity as possible so they can, though they are converts, retain their position in their family/society, and thus

hopefully go on to make more converts. This is usually coterminous with self-identification as a Muslim.

2. ―Not preaching Christianity but Christ‖: again, a controversial and not universally-accepted practice of driving a

wedge between Christianity as a religion/church and Jesus Christ as a person. This change in vocabulary is

significant, examples are to use titles like ―vice-regent of God‖ (xaliifat18 allah) instead of ―Son of God‖, or

―follower of Jesus‖ rather than ―Christian‖ and to speak of the Kingdom of God rather than the Church. Or as one

respondent noted, ―NOT to expect conversion but simply to ask for faith […] has given such discussions [about

Jesus] a very different character.‖

18 Traditionally this Arabic word has simply been translated using its English cognate, caliph.


3. Use of the vocabulary of shame and honor, in addition to or rather than innocence and guilt. One oft-mentioned

book in the second question of influences was Roland Muller‘s Honor and Shame: Unlocking the Door, which ―shares

about Shame based culture surrounding Islam and why some [Western] tools in sharing the Gospel fall on deaf

ears.‖

4. Chronological Bible Storying: a move towards the narrative quality of the Bible as one interconnected story, and

away from the more Western analytic approach, ie, three lessons about alcohol, five verses about how to treat

your wife, five points about Election, four spiritual laws, and so on. One respondent, in a follow-up conversation,

said that he can explain the broad narrative of the Bible from Creation to the Parousia in less than 15 minutes, and

that he often does so.

5. Oral Bible Storying: a shift away from reading the Bible as a religious text to telling Biblical stories in a dramatic

and captivating way. This is at once a contextual move and an anti-contextual move. Anti-contextual in that the

Qur‘an is certainly not read this way (it contains very little narrative material), but contextual in that being able to

narrate an exciting and captivating story is a much-loved art form in itself, one that has largely died out in the

West. This also is important because so many people throughout Dar al Islam are functionally illiterate.

6. Instead of viewing the Qur‘an as a text to be discredited, to use it as a bridge to the Gospels. An example of this

is the Camel Method, which presents a series of Qur‘anic verses that lead Muslims to investigate the Jesus of the

Gospels starting with Jesus of the Qur‘an.

All of this having been said, there is certainly not unanimity regarding the merit of these efforts at

contextualization, or the extent to which they should be used, if at all. One respondent, an Arab Christian,

was openly critical; I quote him in full because he is making a nuanced point, not against contextualization

per se, but about how it should be carried out and by whom:

Despite the attempt by contextualists, the vast majority of MBCs have emulated western styles of conducting church. I

have no problem with this because it is natural that a missionary gives what they have. However, the national church in

time begins to change and they start composing their own music and they begin to introduce indigenous styles of

worship. I have experienced that myself. So there is a process of transitioning from a western to a more local style within

10 years or more. I see no problem with this. Contextualization [as the Western missionaries are carrying it out] usurps

this natural process by immediately adopting indigenous cultural forms. By doing this they deny the national church to

figure out what the church should look like in that community. Neither missionaries nor new converts are in a position to

decide that before the church is planted. This is complicated and takes many pages.

If I may have some liberty in bringing together the many answers here, we might say that the Gospel has

been presented in a way that addresses the felt needs of the people of Dar al Islam. Moreover, as there

are now a variety of options for following Christ in the context of Islam and Christianity, which I have

broadly categorized as rejectionist and accommodationist, there is a greater variety of communities for

people to have their needs met. Just as some secular Westerners are drawn to the fideist and emotional

aspects of forms of, say, Pentecostalism, others are drawn to the aesthetically pleasing peacefulness of

Anglican worship. They come from similar backgrounds, but they have different felt needs, and it takes two

different incarnations of Christianity to meet those two needs. We should not be surprised to see a similar

dynamic operating within the Muslim world. I will return to this point at the end of this writing.

One particularly popular example of contextualization is the Camel Method. It is a manner of sharing the

Gospel beginning with the Qur‘an and what it says about Jesus. Indeed, the Camel Method, developed by

Muslim Christians in South Asia and then refined and publicized by Kevin Greeson, a former Baptist

missionary in South Asia, is one of the best-known forms of presenting the Gospel to Muslims which is

custom-tailored (contextualized) for Muslims. I wish to mention from the beginning here that according to

Greeson this method is not of his own invention at all, rather he has simply ordered and systematized what

he saw in the Muslim Christian communities of South Asia. Camel, therefore, can be identified as pertaining

to a specific group of MBC‘s in one location.


Camel is identified not as a method of evangelism, that is, a presentation of the complete Christian

message, but as a form of pre-evangelism, or of identifying a ‗man of peace.‘ The man of peace concept

is based on Luke 10:1-20 wherein Jesus sends out his disciples two-by-two carrying ―neither money bag,

knapsack, nor sandals…But whatever house you enter, first say, ‗Peace to this house.‘ And if a son of

peace is there, your peace will rest on it; if not, it will return to you‖ (vv 3-6). Camel is therefore a pre-

evangelism tool used to discern who is and is not pre-disposed to the Gospel. ―Our purpose is to find those

who want to know more about Jesus (Isa) so that we can take them to the Bible and show them the full truth

about Jesus‖ (CTM 46). As the training manual for people learning to use Camel says, ―Recognize that

your mission is to lead the man of peace to receive Christ and to share with his family and friends. He then

will share with many more in that region‖ (35).

In terms of content, Camel is built around one of the sections from the Qur‘an that describes Jesus son of

Mary. The word Camel is an anagram itself for the elements to be pointed out in this passage:

Chosen: 3:42-44

Announcement: 3:45-47

Miracles: 3:48-49

Eternal Life: 3:50-5519

Based on this one passage from the Qur‘an the follower of Jesus can then discuss the unique traits of Jesus

in the Qur‘an—he heals, he gives life to a clay bird, he is close to Allah, he is pure, he has access to hidden

knowledge, and so on. In other words, ―We can use the Koran to lift Jesus out of a prophet status and

closer to Savior status in the mind of a Muslim‖ (40). The man or woman who shows interest in learning

more about Jesus—ie, has been identified as a man or woman or peace—can then be invited to study the

Bible20. Incidentally, Greeson expresses thanks to the government of Saudi Arabia for translated the

Qur‘an into many of the worlds languages21. While theologically the Qur‘an lacks translatability (again, a

rather devastating problem for a diin making universal claims like Islam), the ‗translation of the meaning‘ is

now available in all major languages. This intense activity of translation, based in Medina in Saudi Arabia

no less, has thus been co-opted by those devoted to the evangelism of Muslims. (The translation and

distribution of the Qur‘an is, of course, an initiative modeled around that of Christian ministries like the

Gideons and Wycliffe Bible Translators.) The nameless authors of the CTM claim that this method has been

very successful in South Asia, leading to 250,000 baptisms between 1998 and 2003 and the founding of

some 8000 MBC‘s as of November of 2003.

The approach of using the Qur‘an is controversial. It certainly is ‗contextual‘ in that it starts with an

authority already accepted in the cultural-religious context of the Muslim (the Qur‘an), this opposed to an

older, polemical approach of discrediting the Qur‘an before moving on to the Bible, or still a third

19 CTM 47. 20 The Camel method itself may be pre-evangelistic, but the CTM contains a section called ―Appendix 2: The Korbani Plan of Salvation Step by Step‖ (94-98) which uses the story of Abraham offering his son as a sacrifice of God, only to be stopped by the angel at the last moment and their sacrifice of an animal miraculously and providentially provided by God, which is one of the few stories that is both in the Qur‘an and the Bible, though with some differences. The point of the study is to demonstrate that Jesus is the providential, merciful sacrifice (korbani, or in Arabic qurbaan) provided by God so that we (like Abraham‘s son) could be spared. 21 The main Qur‘an that I use is one such Qur‘an in fact, printed in Medina, with a column in Arabic and then a column in English, along with extensive footnotes and commentary. I confess that the translation has so many additions and interpolations in parentheses that it is at times difficult for me to consider the English ‗translation‘ anything other than propaganda. One feels sorry for the person who thinks that he has been provided with an even marginally accurate translation.


approach which simply refuses to pay any close attention to the Qur‘an . This third approach seeks to bring

the Muslima into the world of the Bible with the hope that what she finds there will be judged as self-

evidently true/divine, while at the same time not destroying the relationship by challenging deeply-held

beliefs about the Qur‘an and the Prophet. Missionaries (and others) have argued vociferously about these

topics, usually advocating their own stance as the normative one, or in evangelical Christian parlance, the

Biblical position. But if we approach the topic from a non-normative framework we find again that the

proliferation of strategies has probably been one of the factors leading to the growth of Islamic

Christianity. For some Muslims a polemic destroying the credibility of the Prophet—a la Zakaria Botros—is

decisive and convincing, especially if presented with his erudition and the accompanying silence of Islamic

scholars. For other Muslims the ability to stay within the framework of the Qur‘an—even if it becomes

demoted in the long term to subservience to the Bible—is of the utmost importance. For the latter something

like the Camel Method is a viable avenue towards conversion. The person tired of Islam and what she

perceives as its addiction to violence and misogyny is perhaps happy to accept Christ and thus Christianity,

or even Christianity and, because he seems rather indispensable, Christ.22

It should finally be mentioned that in the responses I received, there did not seem to be a belief that

polemic and contextualization are mutually exclusive. There are other examples of contextualization, but I

have described the Camel Method because it is one of the best known ‗contextualized‘ forms of witness.

Other examples could be given, but let us move on to the next point.

2.4 Living Abroad and Migration ―The number of Moslems who departed the region, looking for better conditions of life in the West, where they become,

through their daily experience, disposed to Christian values and Christian education.‖ –A minister indigenous to the

Middle East.

―Globalization and the interaction of cultures due to travel, immigration [to non-Muslim countries], refugees, and

international students.‖ –A minister indigenous to the Middle East.

―…the traffic flow in and out [of the Middle East] that has increased (look at any Middle Eastern airport and they are

booming with flights!), migrant labor both in and out of the region…‖ –A Western minister.

―Arabs travel the world much more than before[.]‖—A Western minister in the Arab world.

―Increased exposure to the outside world and therefore the message through […] migrant workers in Europe.‖—a

Western minister with experience in the Arab World and Africa.

―Muslims are experiencing first-hand life in societies in which Christian thought is widespread.‖—a Western minister with

experience in the Arab world.

―Christian friends.‖ –a Western minister involved in evangelism of Muslims living in the West

This fourth factor is integrally related to number two. Indeed the two principal ways that Muslims have of

becoming aware of other ways of life and thought are through the media and through leaving Dar al

Islam. Migration takes many forms, sometimes it is temporary, as in the case of the tourist or the student,

and sometimes permanent, as in the case of some refugees and economic migrants. And even between

22 Compare this manner of contextualization to Ramon Llull‘s though. He certainly contextualized his message for Jews and Muslims by moving away from an argument regarding Scriptures to one about the glory of God. So while he did not concede the validity of the Qur‘an—and some accuses the Camel Method of doing just this—he did concede the Islamic picture of the nobilities of God, something that Muslims, Christians, and Jews all held in common. (See Bonner‘s introduction to Llull‘s ‗Book of the Gentile‘ for more on this interesting topic.)


these categories there can be shifts: the refugee might be able to return home once peace is established,

the student might get find a job and a spouse in her new country and her plans change. Furthermore, some

migrations happen voluntarily, as in the case of the student, and sometimes involuntarily, as in the case of

the journalist who must flee after offending his country‘s regime, or the corrupt official whose government

has been overturned in a coup d’état who escapes his angry and violent country-men who desire revenge,

perhaps quite reasonably. We can represent the four classes with a diagram:

Abrahamic migration refers to a voluntary migration like that of Abraham, that promises a ―superlatively

better future‖, whereas Adamic migration represents ―disaster, deprivation, and loss‖ (Walls 2002: 4), like

Adam and Eve‘s involuntary expulsion from the Garden of Eden.

Indeed, the great migration from Europe to the Americas and the various colonies is now in reverse: ―The

great new fact of our time—and it has momentous consequences for mission—is that the great migration

has now gone into reverse. There has been a massive movement, which all indications suggest will continue,

from the non-Western to the Western world. […] The increase in population growth will be concentrated in

the areas least able to sustain it, leading to irresistible pressures for migration‖ (10). In addition to this,

areas in the Middle East that traditionally received migrants, like Egypt, are now sending out migrants in

very large numbers. Egypt is a good example of rapid population growth in a region that has no ability

to sustain a large population in terms of natural resources like water and food.

There are even more striking examples, like Yemen, which is on the verge of exhausting its fresh water

supplies and oil supplies: ―The country‘s 2.8 billion barrels of oil reserves, which fund 70 percent of the

national budget, are forecast by the government to run out over the next decade. With little foreign aid,

economic prospects are shrinking for a population that is expected to double by 2030 to 40 million.‖23

Similarly on an index of countries ordered by the rate of population growth Yemen is 7th, growing at a

rate of 3.46% per year24. On an index showing how many children will be born to a woman during her

lifetime Yemen is 6th, with 6.41children/woman. Examples could be multiplied, but obviously, with a large

23 Henry Meyer, April 26, ‗‖Failing State‖ Yemen May Send Terror to Gulf as Economy Fades‘ at Bloomburg.Com. Accessed 29 April 2009 <http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601100&sid=a_aYx9Hk2V2Q&refer=germany> 24 All demographic data is from www.indexmundi.com, accessed 29 April 2009.

Temporary

Permanent

Voluntary/ Involuntary/

Abrahamic Adamic

A

Ab Tourist

Student

Businessman

Refugee

Asylee

Slave

Job-seeker

Spouse of national

Professional

Refugee

Asylee

Slave


number of such countries throughout Dar al Islam the countries of the West must obviously expect growing

numbers of migrants, increasingly of the Adamic sort—having left dehydrated, deforested, anarchic lands

like Somalia. And speaking of Somalia, it is the single most Islamic country in the world by percentage of

population, ranks 4th in terms of fertility (6.6 children/woman), and its population is growing at 2.82% a

year, faster than any country in Europe or the Americas. As a consequence of this we read of hundreds, or

perhaps thousands, of Somalis dying every year as they flee their homeland for the relative stability of

Yemen. As Walls points out, this phenomenon is destined to increase, and that increase will take place at a

rapid pace, I would suggest.

All of this to say that as the populations of many Islamic countries continues to increase25 while their ability

to employ and feed the people either stagnates or declines, we will see an increasing number of migrants

to the West. Therefore, if the suggestion of several respondents is correct, that migration (temporary or

not) is related to an increase in conversion, then we can project that this trend of growth in Islamic

Christianity will continue well into the future. I am also suggesting that we will see more migration of the

Adamic variety due to the disintegration of order in Dar al Islam which is accompanying the environmental

pressures that the region is experiencing. However, once shari‘a is established in different sections of the

West—and this process is well under way—then conversion out of Islam will become illegal, which is the

universal consensus in all schools of shari‘a. The universal consensus among Islamic scholars is that apostasy

is a capital crime and the appropriate punishment is often execution, for it is ―quite clear that under Islamic

law an apostate must be put to death. There is no dispute on this ruling among classical or modern

scholars‖ (Ibn Warraq ed. 2003: 17). The key question is, I think, not will this happen, I don‘t see any series

of events short of something truly cataclysmic that could prevent it. Rather, as Philip Jenkins explains, the

question is whether or not it will happen peacefully. He proposes that something like the Lebanese civil war

is a real possibility for Europe as the ancestral ethnic groups continue to eliminate themselves by means of

birth control, selective abortion, and choice of life-styles that do not lead to procreation, while also

demanding high taxation of the working class and controlling the majority of the counties wealth:

I have an image in my mind from Lebanon. I don't know how many of you remember some of the images of

that war but some of them were so much from a science-fiction fantasy. The key battle in Beirut in 1976 was

the battle of the Holiday Inn, and you have the battles of the hotels, when Shiite militias finally put enough

cannon in the Ramada to take out the Holiday Inn. Sometimes I wonder if something like that might be a face

of civil conflict in Europe. However, I would be most alarmed not where you necessarily have a growing

population or a shrinking population, but where a growing poor population meets a shrinking rich population.

That to me would seem to be a Lebanon in the making.26

So much for that lengthy excursus into the topic of demographics. It is an important topic though, and one

that will to a great extent determine the future of Europe. The myths of assimilation and multi-culturalism

need to both be jettisoned; they have no place in realistic discussions of the future of Europe because that

conversation will take place within an increasingly Islamic milieu, and Islam has historically had little use for

those two concepts, both of which are Western, and will pass away with the West. ―As Western power

declines, the ability of the West to impose Western concepts of human rights, liberalism, and democracy

on other civilizations also declines…‖ (Huntington 1998: 92).

25 There are very interesting exceptions, like Iran, which has seen something of a demographic collapse. But on the whole when we look at MENA we find quickly growing populations, and when we look at Europe we find shrinking populations (when migration is not counted.) 26 From the transcript of ―The Coming Religious Wars? Demographics and Conflict in Islam and Christianity,‖ hosted by the Pew Research Center, May 18, 2005. Accessed 26 Oct 2008 at <http://pewforum.org/events/?EventID=82>. Italics are mine.


What we have here in this fourth point is an indication of increasing exposure to other ideas. As this

exposure has increased, both through actual personal, immediate interaction (point 4) and interaction by

means of the media (point 1), the world view of Islam is, in some cases, challenged. And this fourth point is

indeed a genuinely recent development. For many centuries it was considered illegal for a Muslim to live

outside of Dar al Islam, except for in very specific cases, like a temporary stay for the purpose of

commerce or a government mission. The idea that someone might leave Dar al Islam for the purpose of

education did not surface on any significant scale until the 20th C. Similarly, the idea that one would leave

Dar al Islam to escape violence, war, or oppression for dar al harb (ironically meaning the house of war)

was also not countenanced. The reason for both of these factors, which limited emigration, was that Dar al

Islam was convinced of its own superiority in every way. By the 19th and even more the 20th Century it

became impossible to maintain the position that Islamic culture was superior to non-Islamic cultures in terms

of technology, commerce, military power, economics, education, and so on. This historic situation led Sam

Huntington to make his oft-quoted statement that, ―The underlying problem for the West is not Islamic

fundamentalism. It is Islam, a different civilization whose people are convinced of the superiority of their

culture and are obsessed with the inferiority of their power‖ (ibid. 217). Whether or not Huntington was

correct in his assessment is not the point, but he is correct in stating that the Islamic umma has always seen

itself as ―the best of all peoples‖ (Q. 3:110), superior to other cultures and civilizations precisely because

they possess the revealed truth of God and are not in ignorance like others.

Another factor that is important to take into account is the end of European colonialism in MENA. Once the

various struggles for self-rule were won, European powers, and the USA as well, vied for favor with the

various new states by offering the scientific and technological educations available at their universities,

which were not—and to a great degree are not—available in the countries themselves. So thousands of

foreign exchange students started to pour into the USA and the former imperial masters of MENA, many of

these countries newly wealthy with petrodollars. Similarly, after the conclusion of the world wars large

numbers of peoples indigenous to Dar al Islam—Arabs, Turks, peoples from Pakistan and India—were

recruited to revive the decimated industries of the European states. Why it was thought that these ―guest

workers‖—as they were called in Germany—would return to what was often a life of squalid poverty in

their former homes is a baffling question. Clearly they did not return home, on the contrary, they brought

over parents and children and wives, and when it was time to marry, many opted to bring over a new

bride from their ancestral homelands. This custom continues to this day and is no small factor in the

demographic victory of Islam over Europe.

In conclusion, several events throughout the 20th C. made this flurry of migration both possible and actual.

Environmental factors, political instability, a declining European demograph, and a much higher Islamic

fertility rate, all indicate that migration will continue from Dar al Islam into the West, until the West, or at

least parts of it like Western Europe, are Dar al Islam. When one looks at the figures and trends this seems

like a very obvious conclusion, and I have not read any arguments that conflict with these conclusions.

When this occurs there will be an eclipse of human rights in Western Europe, and rather than having Paris

just Muslim, we will see Amman, just in France. The theory of education in the Islamic diin has very little use

for critical thought or empirical experimentation, which will mean the decline of the university system and

the ability to develop new technologies and scientific theories. Indeed, critical thought and analysis is more

viewed as a vice than a virtue historically in Islam, to ask questions that your community cannot answer or

has not considered is to start down a dangerous path that may well endanger the solidarity and unity of

the umma. It is true that we find some impressive figures in the history of Islamic science, and it has become

the lex loci of Europe to practically admit that Islam has produced more and better science than has


Christendom—an absolutely false and absurd claim. I do not wish to go into great detail here, but I will

make two points: first: some of those developments were made under Islamic governments but not by

Muslims or by people who had recently converted to Islam—meaning that their world view had not been

completely Islamized. Second: Once a culture had been deeply Islamized—ie, Christian, Jews, and

Zoroastrians had been properly assigned to their status of dhimmi and the educational system had been

Islamized—then the scientific fecundity of those lands decreased very substantially. When one takes both

of those factors into account she will find that there is indeed a very real contribution to science by Islam,

but it is not nearly as inflated or grandiose as what is alleged by revisionists. If I may make a third point

here as well: oftentimes those genuine Islamic developments were not actually used by other Islamic

scholars. So yes, there were great minds, but a culture of continual, trans-generational and accruing

scientific knowledge never developed within Dar al Islam as it did in the West. For these reasons, the

educational system of Europe will not retain its luster as Islamization proceeds.

Similarly, Europe will not retain its mighty economic position in the world. I will suggest a few reasons for

this: first: nepotism and tribalism will rise in terms of hiring and promotions, rather than the meritocracy that

exists now, at least to some degree. Second: rule of law will decline, and having good contacts in the

government will become more important than actually following the laws—this is almost universally the

case today in the countries throughout Dar al Islam, and it will spread to Europe. Third: as legalized

discrimination against non-Muslims continues to wax strong in Europe, I believe that many of the practicing

Christians and Jews may well decide to leave Europe rather than stay. This will cause a loss of skill and

knowledge that will be difficult, if not impossible, to replace. Again, this is the pattern we have seen

throughout the Middle East and countries like Pakistan. A recent example of this is Lebanon, which as it has

become more Islamic has become more lawless and less productive economically, and Christians—many of

them well-educated and skilled—have emigrated in large numbers. The population has continued to grow

however because of the high birth rate of the sections of the Muslim population, sections which are to a

large degree uneducated and unskilled.

If I am correct in my projections, then a number of countries in Dar al Islam will become more like Somalia

and the Taliban‘s Afghanistan, and countries in Europe will become more like Egypt and Lebanon. Human

rights—a European notion of Judeo-Christian heritage—will pass away with the West.

2.5 Prayers/A move of the Spirit/God’s timing ―…more prayer focused on our region [MENA]—evident in several region-wide prayer networks, more prayer trips into

the area and more access via internet and technology to see and pray with insight for things on the ground.‖ –a

Western minister in the Arab world.

―Prayers of Christians after the first Gulf War (10-40 Window)‖—a Western minister with experience in the Arab

world.

―Movement of God‘s Spirit among Muslim people groups in an unprecedented way over the past 20-30 years.‖—a

Western minister with experience in the Arab world and other places.

―When pressed for a theological explanation I fall back to my Reformed heritage: God will do what it takes to draw

His own to himself.‖—a Western minister with experience in the Arab and Turkic worlds.

―…the most important [factor] I feel is the focus that many groups and organizations have placed on prayer for

breaking down the walls of Islam in general and focus on the [Muslim] people groups in particular. There would not be

the response if it were not for the prayers.‖ –A Western woman minister in the Arab world.

―The timing of God, Kairos time.‖—a Western minister with experience in the Arab World and Africa.


―But some of the increase is not explainable—it‘s the Lord‘s […] timing, and His movement of the Holy Spirit, and we just

get to enjoy it… Also there has been more concerted prayer for the Muslim world than probably ever before.‖ –a


There is no question that in the Christian world-view prayer is an important and powerful resource that

people have before God. Thus according to the respondents of my survey it makes sense to find this

answer, indeed, I was surprised that not more people mentioned it. What are the factors that led to the

increase in prayer focus on this region that was for many centuries just a mysterious desert region in the

Christian mind or the far-off home of dissolute Saracens? What happened to draw attention to MENA, as

opposed to Central Asia or the Caribbean or some other region? A number of occasions can be discerned,

though my respondents did not specifically mention most of them. But there were a series of seminal events

that globalized the relationship between the West and the Middle East. The two regions were compressed,

we may say, and it became very clear, not always in a positive manner, that their fates and fortunes were

linked in a way that had not been the case since, perhaps, the days of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. A

brief timeline might be helpful:

1948: Birth of the State of Israel

1967: Six-day War

1967: First Arab Oil Embargo

1973-4: Second Arab Oil Embargo

1979: Islamic Revolution (Iran)

1979-81: Iranian Hostage Crisis

1989: Soviets retreat from Afghanistan

1990-1: First Persian Gulf War

2001: 9/1127

2003: Beginning of Iraq War

2004: 3/11 Madrid Train Bombings

2005: 7 July

I want to suggest that the Second Arab Oil Embargo was very important. People who had no interest in

mere political events—even very important ones like 1948—and who perhaps did not have strong

feelings about the two sides of the actual conflict were affected in a very real, and very adverse way by

decisions made by Muslim Arabs on the other side of the world who had a different culture, religion, and

language. We see something similar with the trio of great attacks in the USA, London, and Madrid in the

space of four years. People were basically forced to formulate their feelings about Muslims and Islam, and

one reaction to all of this among evangelical Christians was, not surprisingly, prayer and the sending of

missionaries. One missions leader made the following statement after 9/11:

We can no longer ignore the Muslim world. Although the terrorist act was carried out by extreme fanatics, the whole

world has been confronted by the challenge of Islam. Most of us are now learning about Islam, the names of Muslim

countries and who the people are. Our politicians are learning names and politically correct terms they did not know

existed. One sixth of humanity is now staring us in the face. There has to be a response. People are now praying even

27 One former missionary in Arab world explicitly mentioned this in connection with prayer: ―We must not omit the most powerful reason Muslims are coming to Christ in unprecedented numbers today, that is, the power of prayer. Since the 10/40 Window emphasis in prayer was started about the time of the second Gulf War in the early 1990‘s Muslims have started turning to Christ. Christians in the West finally awoke to the fact that if they do not pray for Muslims the Muslims will be their eternal enemy. It took the shock of the battlefield to arouse the attention of the Christian world to the need of Muslims for a personal relationship with God through faith in Jesus as Savior and Lord. The attacks on the USA on 9/11 drove home the desperate need of praying for Muslims to come to Christ before they turn themselves into suicide bombers‖ (Register 2009: 20).


for Osama Bin Laden to be saved. While the Governments will act within their parameters, the whole church will have to

respond as salt and light. There is no middle road here.28

The ability of God to make your enemy into your friend is as old as Christianity itself; the conversion of

Saul (Acts 9), devoted to the physical extermination of the fledgling church, is a kind of foundational story

in the world of missionaries. St Paul the ex-terrorist actually did go out into the Gentile world to make

converts, while the other Apostles, for a while at least, simply stayed put in Jerusalem. That increase in

prayer was certainly not their only response, as #7 will show they also decided to send more missionaries

into Dar al Islam, a remarkably bold step really, when compared to the relative inaction of other churches.

Again, let us recall the entrepreneurial roots of evangelicalism: where others saw an occasion for worry or

self-blame for the oppression of Muslims, a fair number of evangelicals saw in these different events an

opportunity to serve God (and perhaps country as well—but that is another topic).

One concrete example is a highly effective and well-produced prayer guide to be used by Christians

praying for Muslims during Ramadan. Each day of Ramadan a different people group from the Muslim

world is described, some facts are given about it, and then some specific pointers are given for how to

pray for that people group. It is not used only by individuals, but can be used by entire churches and one

website29 gives tips on how to get the whole congregation praying for Muslims during Ramadan. One

influential missionary agency30 is in the process of composing a book with the profiles of 50

unreached/unengaged people groups (UPG‘s)—that is, ethnic groups with a common language and

identity that either have very little or no indigenous Christian presence. Previously this kind of information

and awareness was only the province of anthropologists, missionaries, or aristocratic travelers, it certainly

was not available in an easy-to-understand, attractive format with pictures and maps and interesting facts

about large groups like the Sanani Arabs of Northern Yemen (est. population 10.5 million31) to small

groups like the Circassian Muslims of Jordan (est. population of 97,00032) or Israel (630033).

Whatever the effect of this increase in prayer may have been is beyond the scope of this work. The nature

of the efficacy of prayer and the relation between the sovereignty of God and human free will have been

debated by Christians from the beginning, with both sides marshaling their favorite biblical verses to

support their view, and I am happy to not address the topic. But that prayer somehow affects the flow of

both quotidian life and the destinies of civilizations has always been, and will always be, essential to

every form of Christianity because ‗the prayer of a righteous man availeth much‘ (Jas 5:16).

Suffice to say that globalization, the discourse of Islamic reform34, and the technologies and events I listed

above, have brought the Muslim world, and the Arab world especially, into the common mind of Western

Christians to an extent that has not been the case since probably the Crusades. Moreover, more detailed

knowledge is available now than ever before, allowing for what some of my respondents suggested was

28 Chacko Thomas, ‗Missions to the 10/40 Window after September 11th‘, available through the Urbana website. Accessed 11 Jan 2010 <http://www.urbana.org/articles/missions-to-the-10-40-window-after-september-11th> 29 http://ramadan.everypeople.net/ 30 http://frontiers.org/home, the book is titled Called to Pray: Frontiers’ Guide to Praying for the Unengaged. 31 http://www.joshuaproject.net/peopctry.php?rop3=108627&rog3=YM, accessed 13 May 2009. 32 http://www.joshuaproject.net/peopctry.php?rog3=JO&rop3=100079, accessed 13 May 2009. 33 http://www.joshuaproject.net/peopctry.php?rop3=100079&rog3=IS, accessed 13 May 2009. 34 Which does include what is often referred to today as ‗terrorism‘, ‗extremism‘, ‗radicalism‘, and ‗jihadism‘. I do not much like these terms. They serve as an excuse to not grapple with the very real and deep claims being made by its supporters. Ultimately, much of our use of the term fundamentalist is not born from research or a real understanding of the Muslims who ascribe to such views, but from ―sheer laziness as well as because of the power of western media‖ (Charles Amjad-Ali 1996: 8).


more specific and thus more effective prayer. According to the respondents this increase in prayer has

been an important factor accounting for the increase in conversions.

2.6 Dreams, Visions, and Miracles ―The Holy Spirit is answering the prayers of God‘s people by sending dreams and visions and evangelists.‖—a Western

minister with experience in the Arab world.

―The strong pervasion of the miraculous as part of mission theology now.‖—a Western minister with experience in the

Arab World and Africa.

―Dreams are having a big impact it seems.‖—a Western minister with experience in the Arab world.

―…it is a known fact that God is revealing Himself to Muslims through dreams and visions. However, they [the Muslims]

think this would draw ridicule, so they don‘t tell anyone. Yet when we ask them [if they have seen the Messiah in a

dream], they can‘t believe we know that they had dreams. This opens doors.‖—a Western minister in the Arab world.

―The incidence of dreams and visions leading to faith commitments seems to have risen in the recent period.‖—a


―I believe that Jesus has been revealing Himself to Muslims for thousands of years via dreams and visions and

appearances but those folks have had limited ways of communicating with the outside world to tell their story…‖ A

Western minister with experience in the Arab world and internet ministry.

The matter of dreams and visions has been much publicized in the Christian press. Some of the reports are

clearly exaggerated and sensational, but the fact that these are being reported more and more cannot

be denied. Moreover, when one reads a number of the reports it is hard to think of them as evangelical

inventions because so many of the elements in them are not evangelical at all. One missionary complained

to me that so many women were having dreams of Mary, this obviously was too Catholic for her liking.

Another example is a man who had a dream of a priest holding a chalice and the host, again, very un-

evangelical imagery and not what one would expect from a fabrication.

These testimonies of conversion including dreams/visions have been parlayed into an evangelistic tool in

fact; to date five of them have been made into short movies of surprisingly good quality. The name of the

ministry responsible for these is, not surprisingly, More than Dreams. They are about characters from very

different places (Nigeria, Egypt, Turkey, Iran, and Indonesia) who came to the Christian faith and

attributed that conversion—or part of it—to experiencing a dream or dreams35. An article by More than

Dreams in a popular missions publication36 gives some background information:

For decades, a well-documented phenomenon has been occurring in the Muslim world—men and women who, without

knowledge of the gospel, or contact among Christians in their community, have experienced dreams and visions of Jesus

Christ. The reports of these supernatural occurrences often come from ―closed countries‖ where there is no preaching of

the good news and where converting to Christianity can invoke the death sentence. But these are more than just dreams.

Setting them apart is the intense reality of the experience and the surrender of one‘s heart and mind to Christ in the

wake of the dream. A common denominator appears to be that the dreams come to those who are seeking—as best

they can—to know and please God.

(There is no appeal for funds either in the movies, the website, or in the article, incidentally. The overall

tone of the movies as well as the sinner‘s prayer at the end indicate quite clearly that they are the work of

evangelical Christians, but a certain denominational connection could not be determined. Indeed, so much

35 They can all be seen in multiple languages at www.morethandreams.org. 36 Lausanne World Pulse, January 2007. The article‘s authors‘ names are not listed, it is simply attributed to the ministry More than Dreams. Accessed 11 May 2009 <www.lausanneworldpulse.com/worldreports/595>


of evangelicalism today is non-denominational that there may well not be any one denominational

sponsors at all.)

Another person who has written on the topic of dreams and visions is the Pentecostal minister and TV

personality Christine Darg. She wrote a book called The Jesus Visions which is available online for free in

both English and Arabic37. She offers a general description of what her research yielded:

A typical ―Jesus dream or vision‖ with innumerable variations is usually described by Muslims as a peaceful face that they somehow recognize as Jesus. Often they encounter a compassionate figure in a white robe, calling them to come to Him. Sometimes His hands and arms are extended wide, or Jesus reaches toward them in love and invitation. Many dreams are preparatory experiences to encourage Muslims with the possibility of following Jesus. Other visions or dreams are ―epic‖ experiences of such magnitude that the person knows unquestioningly that he or she is destined to walk the lonely path of faith, even martyrdom, with Jesus.38

Darg39 is the head of Exploits Ministry40, their work includes TV programs and setting up ―David

Tabernacles‖ throughout Dar al Islam, including some rather challenging locales like Pakistan. Whatever

one might say about her missionary strategy, she has managed to gather up a number of different

accounts from people in many countries. These include the touching story of Jesus coming to feed children

who had been locked in a tomb in Egypt and left to die (Ch. 6: Glory in Egypt) and the experience of a

whole classroom full of children who saw Jesus (dressed in local clothing, incidentally) while their teacher

did not (Ch. 9: Jesus Appears in Arabia), and the second-hand account of a dream of Yasser Arafat41

wherein he saw that ―...a lamb led me to Bethlehem. There I saw the Virgin Mary holding Jesus. I kissed

Jesus. When I woke up, I was so moved that I ordered a lamb to be slaughtered and taken to the priests

at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem for them to have a feast‖ (Ch. 2: Miracles in the Holy Land).

Whatever the veracity of these reports may be, it is an interesting and some might say fantastic, if not

particularly well-written, book42. I also appreciate her ability to see the beauty in the ancient churches of

the Middle East.

Let us also recall that Woodberry‘s research43 also listed dreams and visions in fourth place in his survey of

the reasons given by Muslims of why they converted. However one desires to interpret these reports, there

is no doubt that there has been a dramatic increase in their numbers in that last few decades. One

respondent saw a direct link between the dreams and visions and the increased prayer.

2.7 Greater Number of Missionaries ―Surge in people called to train and witness to Muslims.‖ –Western minister with experience in the Arab world

―More workers—when we first came to in[to] our country, it was only a small number that were targeting the country. It

has blossomed as more and more groups have engaged.‖ –a Western minister in the Arab world

―The fact that really a large majority of believing expat Westerners are in the country is another plus in terms of nationals making commitments...or at least making those commitments and/or decisions public (mostly to expats at this point). When we first went to there 20 years ago, there were many more government aid organizations and many more secular expats in comparison to the handful of expat believers. The overall impression of the Xian west (due to input from TV, etc) was ‗verified‘ by the life-style of the expats. I feel that now, there are so many believing expats that the

37 http://www.jesusvisions.org/content.shtml 38 NP, from the Introduction. 39 I attempted to contact Christine Darg through her website, but I could find no way to do so. 40 http://www.olivetree.org/ 41 1929-2004, one-time president of the Palestinian National Authority. 42 There is also a collection of dream narratives in The Camel Training Manual, pp 84-92. 43 In Woodberry and Shubin 2001, there is the suggestion that there are, in general, two categories of dreams: preparatory and empowering. The former coming before and leading to conversion, the latter supplying strength to withstand persecution.


message is being reinforced as nationals talk to various people and hear much of the same message about who Christians are and what we believe.‖ –Western woman minister with experience in the Arab world ―Increase of workers on the ground—now at least 4 times the number compared to 25 years ago.‖ –a Western minister in the Arab world. ―I think there is an increased commitment in some sectors of the church to a focus on [Muslims].‖ –a Western minister in the Arab world

This point has been the most difficult to verify. There is a lot of anecdotal information out there indicating that the number of missionaries to the Muslim world has increased, but actually getting precise figures has been rather challenging. But what information has been found certainly supports the claims of the respondents that there has been an increase in the number of missionaries going to the Muslim world:

Not for a century has the idea of evangelizing Islam awakened such fervor in conservative Christians. Touched by Muslims‘ material and (supposed) spiritual needs, convinced that they are one of the great ‗unreached mega peoples‘ who must hear the Gospel before Christ‘s eventual return, Evangelicals have been rushing to what has become the latest hot missions field. Figures from the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Massachusetts, suggest that the number of missionaries to Islamic countries nearly doubled between 1982 and 2001—from more than 15,000 to somewhere in excess of 27,000. Approximately 1 out of every 2 is American, and 1 out of every 3 is Evangelical. Says George Braswell Jr., a missions professor at the Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, ‗We‘re having more now than probably ever before go out to people like Muslims.‘ Sept. 11 appears only to have fueled the impulse.44

Furthermore, we have more recent figures from the Mission Handbook, and we can compare the figures from the 2004-06 edition (Welliver and Northcutt eds.) to the figures from the recent 2007-09 edition (Weber and Welliver eds.), and we do indeed see an upward trend in Islamic countries and regions in terms of all categories of missionaries—short term, medium term, and long term. For example, here are the figures for the generic Middle East category, which would include many of the countries ruled by fundamentalist regimes like Saudi Arabia and Yemen:

2004-06: Short Term45: 16 MT: 4 LT: 77

2007-09: ST: 21 MT: 8 LT: 176

There are substantial increases in every single category. Short term missionaries often times do not have

the language skills needed to engage much in personal evangelism, so we should focus on the dramatic

increase in long term missionaries—an increase of 128%. But maybe part of this increase is not a genuine

increase, maybe it represents that missions agencies (who submit the information) are opting for the more

secure category ‗Middle East‘ rather than name specific countries. But when we look at the numbers of

specific countries we find that this is not likely. Consider for example the stats for Jordan and Egypt46, both

of which are heavily Muslim and have good relations with the US:

Jordan: 06: ST: 2 MT: 6 LT: 31

09: ST: 12 MT: 12 LT: 93

Egypt: 06: ST: 6 MT: 6 LT: 47

44 Dawn Bible Students Association, ‗Preaching the Gospel,‘ in The Dawn Magazine, October 2003. Accessed 13 Jan 2010 < http://www.dawnbible.com/2003/0310-hl.htm> 45 ST: two weeks to on year; MT: 1-4 Years, LT: 4+ Years. 46 I have tried to select countries that are solidly Muslim. For example, Israel has a large Muslim population, but many of the missionaries there could be focusing on Jewish evangelism, say. There is no way to know form the material in the handbook what kind of ministry the missionaries are doing. No doubt some of it is not focused on Muslim evangelism, but there is no way, aside from interviewing each missionary, of knowing how much of their work is focused on Muslim evangelism.


09: ST: 3 MT: 15 LT: 40

We see a dramatic increase in the Jordan numbers, for every single category. There is a decline for long

term missionaries in Egypt, but it is set off by an increase in medium term missionaries. The figures above

are for the American (USA) missionaries, but the Canadian figures also show a very robust rate of growth.

Here are the Canada figures for the overall category ‗Middle East‘:

Canade to ME 06: ST: 0 MT: 0 LT: 16

09: ST: 2 MT: 6 LT: 43

The increase in the Canadian LT missionaries is even higher than that of the USA, an increase of 168%.

Could this represent a shifting of personnel to more relatively stable countries like Jordan, and away from

less stable countries? I suspect that is not the case because even when we look at a country like Lebanon,

which has not been very stable in recent memory also showed an increase in LT missionaries from 18 to 27.

There is also evidence for an increase in missionary activity (and the number of missionaries) in the secular

press. Reuters ran an article47 in 2008 titled ‗Christian missionaries stir unease in north Africa‘ and the New

York Times had a similar 2002 article48 titled, ‗With Missionaries Spreading, Muslims' Anger Is Following.‘

There has also been a significant number of new missionaries coming from Latin America. Not having the

luggage of the American or British passport can, in some circumstances, be an advantage. Latin American

countries also don‘t have the long history of colonialism to deal with. We read an estimate that as of 2007

the churches in Latin America have sent about 780 missionaries (Thomas 2007: 10), which is a striking

figure49 given that just ten years ago the number was probably in the single digits. In addition to greater

focus from North America, a new movement in Latin America (which, granted, does not focus solely on the

Muslim world), there is also the rise of South Korean missions. South Korea, in terms of total number of non-

domestic missionaries, is second only to the USA now.

More research needs to be done on this point, but at the moment it is clear that churches around the world

are more focused on Islam now than they have been in centuries. Part of the outcome of that has been an

increase in the number of missionaries sent and funded by these churches.

2.8 Translation of the Bible and other Communications ―Another really helpful new development is that the Good News and the Koran are available in so many local

languages. I think if you can get a Muslim reading they will [be] open to jumping kingdoms [that is, becoming a Muslim

follower of Jesus, but not leaving Islam for Christianity]‖ –a Western minister with experience in SE and Central Asia

―…TV and radio programming in peoples‘ heart language, and distribution projects getting the Word in (including the

Jesus film in various heart languages), and more Scripture translated and being made available in heart language…‖ –

a Western woman minister with experience in the Arab world

―Availability of Bible in local languages in [both] written and spoken form.‖—Western minister with experience in the

Arab world

47 By Tom Pfeiffer (15 Dec 2008). Accessed 13 Jan 2010 <uk.reuters.com/article/idUKTRE4BE0JL20081215> 48 By Susan Sachs (31 Dec 2002). Accessed 13 Jan 2010 <www.nytimes.com/2002/12/31/world/threats-responses-religion-with-missionaries-spreading-muslims-anger-following.html?pagewanted=1> 49 Figures for Latin America are dubious. One recent article focusing on missionaries from Brazil claims around 4,000 cross-cultural missionaries, and that 20% of them are in the 10/40 window (Bastos 2009: 4).


―Availability of Scriptures and distribution. Bible translation made this possible as well as a greater distribution effort by

many organizations.‖ –a minister indigenous to the Middle East

―Bibles are available in local languages.‖ –Western minister with experience in the Arab world

Lamin Sanneh said that, ―…as a translated religion, Christianity through history became a force for

translation,‖ and, ―The overwhelming majority of the world‘s language have a dictionary and a grammar

at all because of the modern missionary movement‖ (qtd. in Bonk 2003). The translatability of the Christian

faith makes it a very different sort of diin than Islam, which insists that its book is incapable of translation.

The strangeness of this claim—that a divine book intended for all humanity is incapable of translation—

has been at times a strength of Islam, but at times a weakness. On the one hand, being able to dismiss the

claims of any non-Arabic speaker is a classic apologetic: you do not speak Arabic, so you cannot read the

Qur‘an, so you are therefore not qualified to critique it, its message, or really anything about Islam at all.

But it also has its drawbacks, as numerous ex-Muslims (both converts to Christianity and atheism) explain

that they came to see Islam as a form of Arab imperialism—imposing its customs, names, and yes,

language, in the name of God50. This is very different than what we find with Christianity as it has

engaged in mission in the Muslim context in the modern period. The most widely-used Bible in Arabic today

is the Van Dyke translation, the fruit of the largely American Presbyterian mission to Syria (including

Lebanon). Such was the zeal of the Presbyterians that they not only did the work of translating, but also

produced the first ever printing press Arabic font with vocalizations51 (ie, fatha, kesra, damme, sukun), it

was widely-used and was known simply as the American typeset. The translators of the Van Dyke Bible

were aiming for ―a version which in the style of language and form of letter should win their [Arabs‘]

respect and admiration‖ (Centenniel 1923: 5)52. But that whole process of translating and preparing and

printing the Van Dyke took place from 1846 through 1865, and that is not the time period we are

primarily concerned with. It is offered though as an example of a huge undertaking for the sake of

translation, the likes of which continue today.

More recently, we find that, ―The revolution started around the mid-1980s, when more and more

translation projects began making use of the personal computer. Thanks to the PC, a text had to be typed

only once. After that, only the corrections needed to be entered and upon completion of the project, the

text could be sent to the printer in digital format‖ (De Blois 2009: 5). Harnessing advancements in

technology has resulted in improvements in productivity, quality, and cost-effectiveness. Thus we are not

surprised to learn that along with the growth of Christianity among the Kabyle Berbers of Algeria we have

the New Testament translated into their indigenous language, which took place from 1990-5 (Guera

2009). Presently (2009) the final details of the Old Testament translation are being ironed out. To present

a minority like the Kabyle with a holy book in their own language is conspicuous when one understands

that the Berbers have often perceived themselves as being under the yoke of Arab imperialism. For the

first time ever they will soon have the Bible in their own language, not that of French or Arab colonization.

The drive to use local languages comes through both in print and other forms of media and has been one

reason for the growth of Islamic Christianity: ―…The media have played a great part in the conversion of

Kabylie. The majority of the radio stations have a strong following in this region, [many listening] to Radio

Monte Carlo and particularly the popular broadcasts in Amazigh‖ (Qtd in Ibn Warraq, ed. 2003: 92;

Amazigh is the name of the Kabyle Berber dialect.) The total number of Christian Kabyles is, of course,

50 Cf. Ibn Warraq ed. contains numerous such examples. 51 Centennial 43 52 But there are also plenty of detractors of the Van Dyke: Mallouhi says, ―The current Arabic translations of the Scriptures are full of Christian terminology that a Muslim can‘t understand‖ (qtd in Chandler 204)


difficult to determine, but it is probably somewhere between 20,000 and 100,000 (Guera 2009), mostly

in Algeria with some in France as well. In 1990 the number was negligible by all accounts.

Because of this impetus towards translation in modern evangelical missions—and which is not at all unique

in the history of Christianity—we should not be surprised to learn that, ―In terms of population, at least a

portion of the Bible exists in languages spoken by ninety-five percent of the world‘s population‖ (Mitchell

4). And indeed much of that has happened since the middle of the 20th Century, ―In that time there has

been an explosion of Bible translation. From 1950 to 2005 new translations have been made available in

1,196 languages‖ (ibid). It is the confluence of multiple factors53 that has resulted in this increase,

examples are the explosion of translation sciences, developments in social sciences, and developments in

biblical studies. Those are in addition to the foundation of missionary societies explicitly dedicated to

translation like Wycliffe in 1942 by William Cameron Townsed, a missionary to the Cakchiquel Indians of

Guatemala, or the founding of the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) in 1934 (also by Townsend with key

contributions from Kenneth L. Pike). All of these factors resulted not only in more translations, but also in an

improvement of the quality of the translations through the application of knowledge gleaned from

anthropology these different sources.

But translation is not limited only to the question of languages, broadly speaking, but also to forms of

speech and thought within one language. Specifically, I am referring to the somewhat contentious topic of

Muslim Compliant Translations (MCT‘s) of the Bible or parts of it. It is not inaccurate to say that there is a

considerable interstice separating Islamic Arabic and Christian Arabic. In some cases the actual words or

names are different, as is, rather famously, the case for Jesus‘ name. In the Qur‘an it is ‗issa and in the

Bible it is Yasuu‘. And then there is the question of what to do with titles like ‗Son of God‘ which many

Muslims find to be heretical. Is it legitimate to perhaps replace that term with something like

‗representative of God‘? The debate is ongoing, and I mention it because we have here an overlap

between the contextualization-syncretism debate which characterizes so much of Islamic Christianity today

and translation. Furthermore, because of the technological advances mentioned above it is now possible

for a much smaller team on a smaller budget in a shorter period of time to produce their own translation.

Previously it was usually the case that missionaries and/or scholars from multiple backgrounds and

denominations would have to sign off on a translation before it was released because the process of

translation was so cumbersome, expensive, and lengthy. This did not guarantee a particularly good

translation, but it did mean that multiple voices from different denominations and traditions had their say in

the matter. It functioned, to borrow a political expression, as an imperfect but not unimportant system of

checks and balances54.

One more aspect of translation should be mentioned: the use of technology to present the Bible to non-

literate populations. This is perhaps not, strictly speaking, translation. But I include it here because it was

indeed mentioned by the persons who answered the survey, and also because it seems that we find a

similar motive and dynamic at play—the desire to assure that the message of the Bible is accessible and

available to absolutely anyone, whether that means translating it into a local dialect of Chinese or Islamic

Arabic or handing out free, handheld devices that play audio files of the Gospel according to John. An

53 The list is from ‗Into the New Millenium: The Changing Face of Bible Translation‘ in LWP, January 2007, pp 17, 18. (No author listed in the article.) 54To show just how ecumenical Bible translation can be consider that in 1968 the United Bible Societies (UBS) and the Catholic Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity jointly published the ‗Guidelines for Interconfessional Cooperation in Translating the Bible.‘ It is difficult to imagine something like this happening before Vatican II (1962-5). (Note that Mitchell says it was published in 1969, but according to the document which is available through the Vatican website it was 1968. It was then revised and re-released in 1987.)


example of this impetus to go to great lengths to ensure that people have access to the message of

Scripture in an accessible format can be found in Starling 2009, where he describes his own ministry with

Global Recording Network (GRN). He states that ―as much as two-thirds of the world‘s population, perhaps

four billion people‖ are oral communicators (OC‘s), as opposed to text-based communicators, which is more

common in the West. Starling goes on to describe that OC‘s have a different communication style, which

requires that Christian missionaries ―adapt our communication style,‖ provide a dynamic equivalence

translation based on Scripture and that ―the messages are largely dictated by natural linguistic forms and

local cultural dynamics‖ (14). This culturally-sensitive approach to translation and teaching become all the

more effective because of the continual improvement of technology. ―Over the years, GRN technology has

changed from phonograph records to audio cassettes to CD‘s, DVD‘s, VCD‘s, MP3s, etc. GRN has freely

downloadable recordings on their website in over four thousand speech varieties‖ (15). The point is not

that GRN is unique among missionary agencies in their creative use of technology and teaching, but that

such work is being done across a broad spectrum of missionary agencies, and GRN is one good example.

This is also a case of creative strategy combined with the translation impetus inherent in the Modern

Missionary Movement and the availability of new, affordable technologies and even the internet.

If we want to look at what must be the most translated movie in the world we find ‗The Jesus Film‘, which is

part of the missionary work of Campus Crusade for Christ and is based on the Gospel of Luke55. Teams

travel around and give out DVD‘s of the film in the local language(s), or in some places show the movie in

a public place and invite local people to see it. As another example of how the translation impulse works,

consider that as of 16 December 2009 the movie has been translated into 1068 languages56. Special

versions of the film exist for children and one edition highlights the story of Mary Magdalene and is

designed to speak to the issues and difficulties faced by women.

So yet again, we find that in terms of the growth of Islamic Christianity, the whole is greater than the sum

of the parts—the use of technology, linguistics, advances in translation method, increasing reliance on

native-language speakers, and internet all augment each other‘s effectiveness. This in turn means that, over

the last decades, a sort of Christian witness to Muslims is possible and, in some places, a reality, which

historically was not possible on a large scale.

2.9 Greater diversity in missionary strategies/platforms (4) ―My guess is that indigenous, culturally helpful Christian witness (even by the stories of Muslim believers themselves) has

improved significantly over the past 20 years.‖ –a Western missionary with experience in the Arab world

―The embrace of holistic or transformational perspective on Kingdom activity and the diversity now of ministry including

business, ministry to the poor, disabled, etc.‖ –a Western missionary in the Arab world and Sub-Saharan Africa

―Greater emphasis on the unreached Muslims since the Lausanne conference in 1974.‖ A minister indigenous to the

Middle East

We are nearing the end of the list and it should be apparent by now that every element mentioned is

often in some way dependent on other elements in the list. This is certainly the case with this factor. For

example, domestic missions in the West on campuses are a fairly new and at times productive strategy.

However, without the increase in people movement, this would not be possible; likewise, without the

55 For a fascinating description of how the Jesus Film is being used to evangelize Muslims in present-day rural Niger see Cooper 2006: 402 ff. 56 According to the Jesus Film Project website, which updates the list on a regular basis: < http://www.jesusfilm.org/ film-and-media/statistics/languages-completed>


increase in communications people in the Muslim world would not know about the educational opportunities

available in the West. Moreover, we could point out that it is not uncommon to find educational immigrants

who are in fact sponsored by their Islamic state, with the hope or expectation that they will return and

assist the state in becoming less reliant on foreign skilled work. Which is to say that there may even be a

tinge of political motivation involved.

One key shift in strategy that has deeply affected the face of Western mission to Muslims is the rise of so-

called ‗tent-making‘ missionaries57. The reference is to St Paul‘s practice of using his own non-religious skills

(in his case it was tent-making, literally [Ac 18:1-3]) to further his missionary labor. Today it is defined as,

―engaging intentionally in wholistic ministry in a cross-cultural context by using professional skills that are

the practitioner's primary identity‖ (Smythe 2009: 39). The analogy between Paul‘s situation and the

current variety of strategies is only approximate, for Paul traveled within one empire, and he only worked

when he needed funds but was glad to rely on church support when it was available (Phil 4:10-14), and he

had no aversion to openly proclaiming himself to be a religious preacher. But the main point is not to

dispute how appropriate the label is, the point is that it marks a substantial shift from the older model of

the missionary visa which could be granted by the colonial governor or the puppet regime. In

correspondence with the former director of an influential mission with a substantial presence throughout the

Muslim world, I posed the question, ‗Are there any key events you can think of that really changed the

ground in terms of Chr[istian] witness in the m[uslim] world? What happened in the late 70's/early 80's

that shifted things so much?‘ In his response he listed five points, one of which is of particular relevance

here: ―When we woke up that the NT didn't say ‗go if you can get a missionary visa‘,‖ and he added a

little more, explaining that, ―When one agency got people in, well... ‗the kingdom of God goes forth by

jealousy‘. ‗If they can do it, so can we.‘‖58 In other words, the emerging generation of mission leaders

started to realize that relying on a positive political scenario wherein one could procure a missionary visa

was no longer realistic. This realism is, no doubt, related to the birth of the modern Middle East59 at the

end of World War I, and then the increase in the assertiveness of the various governments throughout Dar

al Islam as they flexed their muscles in the context of the rise of oil and the Cold War. Gradually, keeping

local Muslim leaders happy became more important than keeping the far off Western powers content.

Also, the West became less religious, and was more and more disinclined to identify Christian missions as a

particularly beneficial endeavor that was worthy of the expenditure of political capital60. Today it is not

uncommon to find missionaries with educational visas, secular work visas, or tourist visas. This shift in

accessibility represents a key change in missionary strategy regarding the great majority of Islamic

nations.

But to this restructured political scenario, let us add a second element which is also related to the question

of mission strategy: metrics. It is not an exaggeration to say that the metrics of missions underwent a minor

revolution in the second half of the 20th C. I will give two salient examples: the first is the development of

‗people groups‘ as a metric. If we look back 100 years to Edinburgh 1910, an important event in the

history of Protestant world mission, we do not find this sort of vocabulary, rather ―the missiological

57 The main person who popularized this new strategy was J. Christy Wilson who published his book Today’s Tentmakers: An Alternative Model for Worldwide Witness in 1972. It has been reprinted multiple times since then. 58 Italics in original e-mail. ‗The Kingdom of God goes forth by jealousy‘ is a paraphrase of Mt 11:12. 59 In my mind the key book on this topic is Fromkin‘s splendid volume A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East (New York: Henry Holt & Co 1989). 60 Which is not to say that even during the heyday of the European empires that relations were always good between missionaries and colonial governments. In some cases the two operated very closely and at other times clashed in a dramatic manner. The tradition of identifying mission as a hand-maiden of colonialism is no longer tenable on any general or universal scale.


discourse at Edinburgh 1910 was the vocabulary of ‗nation‘ and, what makes us rather more

uncomfortable, ‗race‘‖ (Stanley 2009: 5). But once European colonialism declined, leaving scattered and

newly-sovereign nation states across the map, this metric of nations and races proved to be deficient.

Missionaries learned that one could have a robust and growing Christian community in one city, and then in

the neighboring city nothing at all. Why did the Gospel spread from one group to another group while

totally skipping over a closer city or town without making any impact whatsoever? Out of these

experiences in the mission field a growing realization that the nation-state qua metric of missionary

progress was lacking. In its place was proposed the people group, which according to the 1982 Chicago

meeting of the Lausanne Committee and the Joshua Project is defined as follows:

A significantly large sociological grouping of individuals who perceive themselves to have a common affinity with one

another. "For evangelization purposes, a people group is the largest group within which the Gospel can spread as a

church planting movement without encountering barriers of understanding or acceptance."

In many parts of the world lack of understandability serves as the main barrier and it is appropriate to define people

group primarily by language with the possibility of sub-divisions based on dialect or cultural variations.61

Thus the metric of the people group, and then the more over-arching ‗people cluster‘ could be applied to

the measurement of missionary progress as well as planning and the allocation of resources. A fine

example of this regarding one creative-access country62 in the Arab world analyzes the five main people

groups there, asking them questions like, how honest are the x people? Would you allow your daughter to

marry someone from the y people? Are the z people good Muslims? The purpose was to identify one

people group in the country that is respected by the others, such that converts from that group could

effectively evangelize among people outside his or her group. The metric of the people group, and the

unreached people group (which has no indigenous Christians and is not presently being evangelized), was

forcefully publicized by Ralph Winter at Lausanne 1974. Subsequently, the people group has become the

metric that is used overwhelmingly by evangelical missions. Because of this we are not surprised to read

the following in an article from 1999: ―The momentum for research on the world's peoples has accelerated

over the past 20 years. We need to know who the Unreached [sic] peoples are, where they live and what

their evangelization status is‖ (Johnstone 1999: 64).

If the concept of the unreached people group allowed mission strategists to focus their resources on specific

unreached groups or customize their ministry to reached groups in terms of equipping them to cross cultural

boundaries and thus evangelize an unreached group, it was the 10/40 Window, introduced by evangelist

Luis Bush in 1990, that brought the concept of the urgency of world evangelization to the average

evangelical churchgoer on Sunday morning. According to the AD 2000 and Beyond movement,

The 10/40 Window is the rectangular area of North Africa, the Middle East and Asia between 10 degrees north and

40 degrees north latitude. The 10/40 Window is often called "The Resistant Belt" and includes the majority of the

world's Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists. An estimated 4.09 billion individuals residing in approximately 7,026 distinct

people groups are in the 10/40 Window. The 10/40 Window is home to some of the largest unreached people groups

in the world [….]63

61 From here, accessed 24 Dec 2009: http://www.joshuaproject.net/definitions.php 62 What was formerly called a closed country. 63 Also from the Joshua Project website: http://www.joshuaproject.net/10-40-window.php (accessed 24 December 2009). Image is also from this website.


A glance at the image above makes it clear that almost all of the world‘s Muslim-majority countries are

contained within the 10/40 Window. The 10/40 Window, as an image, was intelligible to the average

Christian in a way that a discussion on the Dimli Kurds or the Soccotran Yemenis was not, and we are not

surprised to learn that this strategic breakthrough in terms of popularizing and prioritizing missionary work

was then parleyed into a massive64 prayer movement called ‗Praying through the Window.‘

There is a third strategic shift that I wish to mention briefly, but one that I project as having a negative

long-term effect on the growth of Islamic Christianity, at least insofar as it is connected to missionaries. I am

speaking of the huge increase in short-term missions (STM‘s) that we have witnessed over the past two

decades. Presenting a comprehensive evaluation of the plusses and minuses of STM‘s is not my agenda, but

I will say that in terms of mission to Muslims it is difficult to see how the majority of STM‘s as they are

currently operated can make a contribution. The reasons for this are numerous: on the part of the short-

term teams we find a lack of language facility, religious knowledge and familiarity with local customs, and

so on. Furthermore, the popular idea that STM‘s will produce long-term missionaries who will do the long,

hard work of acquiring language skills and cultural familiarity and forming lasting relationships with

Muslims, has proved to be what Michael Jaffarian, writing as recently as 2008, calls a ‗hollow hope‘:

The myth says that growth in short-term missions and mission trips leads to growth in long-term missions. The facts,

however, say that growth in the one has not led to growth in the other. The Mission Handbook statistics regarding the

overall U.S. and Canadian trends are clear: the short-term boom has not produced a long-term echo. (36)

Furthermore, long-term missionaries are devoting more and more of their time to planning and

coordinating ‗ministry‘ events for teams. There will always be exceptions, but in the long term it is difficult

to see how the vast resources invested in STM‘s will further Christian mission to Muslims. Jaffarian is correct

in describing this change from funding and sending long-term missionaries to short-term missionaries as a

‗radical shift‘ (36). Finally, we should note that this change in strategy has largely emerged from the local

churches and not from the missionary agencies. One respondent affirmed that there has been a significant

increase in conversions, but stated flatly, ―Where growth [in the number of conversions] is reported and

where there is a lot of short term people and outside funds, the response is over-reported.‖

64 Johnstone (64) says that the third ‗Praying through the Window‘ movement probably had up to 50 million participants.


The fourth and final strategic shift I want to mention is the rise of the use of indigenous missionaries. Here,

the Indian pastor and evangelist K. P. Yohannan ―has been enormously influential‖ (Jaffarian 38, de

Bordenav Interview). His missionary organization, Gospel for Asia65, reported a massive increase in the

number of ‗native missionaries‘ (as he calls them) in nine years from 6,439 to 16,377. The idea is to use

Western money to pay the salaries of these native evangelists. It costs much less than sending a Western

individual or family overseas, they already know the language, and their cost of living is much lower as

they are not used to Western amenities. In situations where there are very few or no indigenous Christians

to begin with, the impact of this approach is minimal. But in large countries like India or China, which both

have indigenous Christian communities and large Muslim populations, this is an important new element in

missionary strategy. In terms of nation-states which are largely unevangelized though (Libya, Saudi

Arabia, the Maldives) it is difficult to see how this sort of missionary strategy could make any real impact

without rather considerable creative alterations. In those countries there simply are no native Christians to

‗mobilize‘.

(Other examples could be given in developments in strategy, for example we might point to the growing

popularity of the concept of the Church planting movement (CPM) and the Strategy Coordinator (SC)

model for non-residential mission66, both of which were popularized largely by Southern Baptist

missiologist-practitioner David Garrison. My intention is not to minimize the importance of these strategic

developments, but none of my respondents mentioned explicitly the term ‗church planting movement (CPM)‘

or the the SC approach. In answering the second question two people did mention Garrison‘s much-read

book Church Planting Movements. The terms tent-making, 10/40 Window, and people groups were

mentioned multiple times.)

In reviewing these selected strategic shifts in the execution of evangelical mission over the last decades, we

must note that they are not simply new ideas that no one had thought of before. Rather, they could not

have existed on any large scale previously. STM‘s could not exist without affordable international travel;

the rise of indigenous evangelists on a large scale (as in the cases of GFA and Campus Crusade for Christ

International) funded from the West is hard to picture without the highly-integrated international banking

system of today, which is itself based on the 1944 Bretton Woods Agreements.

2.10 Great Boldness in Evangelization ―The emphasis that is being placed on starting to train new conv[er]ts in how to find p of peace and share appropriately...as well as preparing them for pers[ec]ution has made MBB‘s bolder and realizing more that the spread of the good news is their responsibility...not just the responsibility of expats who happen to be in the country.‖ –a Western woman minister in the Arab world ―The efforts of missionary societies who defy all kinds of restrictions imposed by different Moslem governments banning evangelization in their countries.‖ –a minister indigenous to the Middle East ―Increased sowing by workers [missionaries]—when we arrived nearly 30 years ago in [the Arab world], workers were so timid and afraid that they sowed very little for fear of being deported or imprisoned.‖ –a Western minister in the Arab world

Of all the entries this is perhaps the hardest to explain. It comes at the end of the list, with only four

people having mentioned it, and when they did so it was rarely accompanied by any further comments or

65 Founded by Yohannan in 1978 and active mostly in India, but also throughout other countries in Asia. 66 Cf. Garrison‘s 1990 The Nonresidential Missionary: A new strategy and the people it serves.


elaboration. In many ways it leads to more questions than answers: who has greater boldness? The local

Christians or the missionaries? Is the greater boldness due to the fact that one can critique Islam

anonymously (on the internet for example) or from the safety of one‘s home in Canada or Australia? Or

are we to understand that the missionaries and indigenous Christians in Islamic lands have become more

bold? I believe that the respondents were referring mostly to that final option because there is really

nothing new about being bold and aggressive when there is no possibility that harm will come to you.

If we are looking for an indigenous Christian from Dar al Islam who exemplifies this one figure that was

mentioned by name by several people was the previously-mentioned Abouna Zakaria Botros. Expanding

on what I previously said about him (in the section on media), let me now add two more elements to the

picture: contextualization, and the psychological effect of Botros‘ ministry.

The third FFC (factor facilitating conversion) in the list was ‗contextualized and culturally-sensitive witness‘. I

raise the point because one author argues that Botros‘ combination of polemic and scholarship and, for

lack of a better word, indigenity represent a particularly excellent case of contextualized witness to

Muslims:

I believe that Botros is an example of contextualized ministry par excellence. This might sound like a strange thing to say today when contextualization and a non-polemical approach are seen as inseparable. Au contraire. Contextual witness does not mean being nice, and it certainly does not mean refraining from criticism of the Prophet of Islam or its book. What contextualization means is that you are asking the questions to which people want to know answers. A basic example of this is the now commonplace insight that Arabs are more moved by honor-shame questions than innocence-guilt ones. That is context. And Abouna does this very well: Muslims want to know about Muhammad, the shari‘a, the ahadiith, and so on. They want to know how Islam can (or cannot) be al haal, the solution, as other great Egyptians have argued (Al Banna? Qutb?). And Botros is uniquely prepared to address these questions[. …] Egypt asks Zakaria: in what way can Islam be the solution? Zakaria responds: this is the life of the Prophet and the law of Islam; you make your own decision. (Abu Daoud 2009: 96)

Whether or not one agrees with Botros‘ polemic, or Abu Daoud‘s assertion that Botros represents

contextualized ministry ‗par excellence’, the fact that a Christian priest from an oppressed minority that is

discriminated against both de facto and de jure is standing up on international television and asking very

uncomfortable questions about the Prophet and the Qur‘an gives a sense of self-worth and confidence to

indigenous Christians, including those from outside of the Coptic Orthodox Church. One Western missionary

who has done a great deal of work with media and satellite ministry in the Arab world had this to say in

an interview67:

Missionary: What I hear is that due to the Christian TV channels, especially Abuna Zakaria, the number of

Christians with doubt about their faith has decreased much because now finally Christians can answer Islam

in the public arena and they do it very successfully. [It has made a] big impact.

Duane Miller: So these ministries are also emboldening Christians?

M: Yes, very much so. They teach Christians what they believe and what Islam teaches. The funnier sides...

DM: Yes, the infamous breastfeeding debacle...

M: And many, many others.

DM: Such as? Just one or two examples.

M: Muslims can have sex at any time with their believing slave girls, the usage of drinking camel pee, the 99

names of God - some are wicked.

67 The interview was done via Skype, hence the format. Minor corrections to spelling and punctuation have been made. The interview was done in 2008.


The savvy use of international media like satellite and the internet by Fr. Botros accompanied by his

contextualized polemics both feed into a sense of boldness and confidence in indigenous Christians. The

testimonies of Muslim converts on the internet also appear to foment a sense that Christianity has not only

the vitality to survive under Islam, but indeed to go on the offensive. The old adage that agood offense is

the best defense comes to mind here. It is hard for Westerners to understand how different this mind-frame

is from that of dhimmitude under the various caliphates through the centuries. Cragg describes the general

dilemma of the Christian church in a Muslim state well: ―Their authority to worship, to solemnize marriages,

to own property, and the like, is contingent on their observing a policy of ‗introversion.‘ By a legacy of the

millet68 concept it is difficult for them to be at once communities of worship and communities of evangelism.

This is a cruel dilemma, but a real one‖ (Cragg 2000 [1956]: 320, 1). For Christians to shift

psychologically and spiritually from the status quo of introversion to bold witness would be, if indeed it is

occurring on a large scale, a momentous change. Furthermore, it would probably be the sort of gradual

development that one could not expect to occur in a short period of time.

3. Areas for Further Research In section 2 I outlined the FFC‘s which I gleaned from various Christian sources with extensive experience in

ministry in an Islamic context, I went on to provide some details about the historical and practical meanings

of those developments. It has been stressed that the ten factors above often overlap and augment each

other, and a few examples were given (the Algerian Kabyle movement, the work of Abouna Botros). It is

also clear that an analysis of the genesis of World Islamic Christianity is incomplete without including

several political and economic realities that have previously been largely ignored in missionary

scholarship. For example, Rick Love writes, ―there are five reasons that I believe God is doing a ‗new thing‘

in the Muslim world. (1) More workers, (2) More collaboration, (3) Contextualization, (4) Prayer, signs and

wonders and spiritual warfare, (5) Socio-political change‖ (2000: 7). Obviously there is some overlap

between Love‘s list and what this research has produced, but the centrality of economic and political

developments and the revolution in transportation and communications are not given the full weight they

merit. On the other hand, his stress on developments and changes in missionary techniques—while these are

indeed important—seems to overemphasize their importance. Competent study in this field will require the

researcher to shun secularist traditions of separating religious and political spheres and live and think

within the un-secularized cosmology of the non-Enlightenment cultures of the Muslim world. Specifically, a

serious discourse on the relation between post-colonialism and Christian mission is much needed.

This writing has sought also to go beyond the more narrow question posed by Woodberry and Shubin

(2000, 2007) of why Muslims ‗choose Christ.‘ In examining their answers I am struck by how narrowly

evangelical some of them sound. Given that the majority of MBB‘s throughout the world have indeed come

to an evangelical form of the faith, it is not surprising. But this is another blind-spot in research in the field

of World Islamic Christianity. Thousands of Muslims are baptized into the Catholic Church every year in

France. One of the Orthodox bishops in Albania is an MBB, as is the senior priest of the Orthodox mission

in Indonesia69. What are the narratives of these people? Christianity is much broader than evangelicalism,

and it is not unrealistic to suppose that some of the characteristics of these forms of Christianity—their

liturgy, sense of aesthetics, organic connection to an Eastern (Semitic) cosmology, hierarchical

organization—would attract people to the faith who would not be attracted by the rather individualistic

and history-less forms of evangelicalism they encounter. Conversion studies of non-evangelical MBB‘s

68 The Turkish word for ‗nations,‘ this was the Ottoman Empire‘s version of dhimmitude. 69 Under the auspices of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR).


should also be a priority for future research70. Some of their reasons will indeed overlap, because they

are, so to speak catholic71, but I suspect some surprises will come to light as well.

4. Conclusion In my research I was able to identify ten key factors facilitating conversion (FFC‘s). In the modern period

we can roughly trace the beginning of the growth of World Islamic Christianity back to the 1965 move of

Javanese ‗folk‘ Muslims to Christianity in Indonesia, which is "the largest group of Christians [in modern

times] to become Christians of a Muslim background."72 Since then there have been other substantial

movements which make this movement one that can be described as global. In previous periods of history

there were certainly movements back and forth, some of them in large numbers, and which were often

related to shifts in political domino. What we are seeing now though is not the sporadic, isolated,

disconnected clusters of conversions we have seen throughout history, but a unique situation wherein these

FFC‘s work synergistically, augmenting the impact of each other, so that we can say, without triumphalism

or vacuous talk of the impending demise of Islam, that we are witnessing the genesis of World Islamic

Christianity. Certainly there have been some places more affected than others—Algeria, Indonesia, parts

of Central Asia, areas in South Asia, the Persian Diaspora, and so on—but that does not negate the fact

what we are seeing is truly unprecedented. An attempt to identify the reasons for the genesis of World

Islamic Christianity has been the purpose of this writing.

In conclusion, we find that over the course of the second half of the 20th C. there has been a unique

confluence of and synergy between factors that, on the surface, may appear to be unrelated. They

include, but are not limited to: the rising independence of Islamic states in the post-colonial period;

developments in transportation radically shortening the time and cost of international travel; massive,

world-wide emigration by Muslims to the West; the birth of the State of Israel, the Six-day War73, and the

Arab Oil Embargos; the internationalization and application of reformed Islamic theories of identity (ie,

Islamic Brotherhood, Al Qaeda, the Taliban); the failure of Arab nationalism to achieve prosperity or

justice or destroy Israel; the Islamic Revolution and its subsequent failure to produce prosperity and justice;

the First Gulf War and the consequent spread of satellite dishes through the Arab world. These are

related to developments in missionary strategy: the decline of the European empires required new thinking

about accessing and sustaining missionaries; the rise of media opened the way for satellite and internet-

based ministries and anonymity; developments in sociology and anthropology as well as an application of

American entrepreneurialism set the stage for re-evaluating the metrics of mission, leading to the definition

and use of concepts like people groups, clusters, etc.; the de-Christianization of the West (including the US)

has made denominational segregation in mission something of an unaffordable luxury to most; the

decisions of main line churches in the West to adopt liberalist hermeneutics resulted in the decline of

70 I have started some basic research in this area, see for example my article ‗The Conversion Narrative of Samira: From Shi‘a Islam to Mary, her Church, and her Son‘ in St Francis Magazine. 71 For example the compassion of Christ, the charity of the church, and the Bible are all factors that will, I predict, surface in most any sort of conversion narrative—regardless of the form of Christianity adopted. 72 Qtd. in Heffner 1993: 100. 73 Consider the following quotes regarding the significance of the Six-day War: ―But Nasser‘s secular policies

disintegrated with his armies in the Six-Day War, permitting Islam to renew its courtship of the masses‖ (Viorst 1994:

111), and, ―Earlier that summer, the world around me had crumbled as the Six-Day War woke us to the reality of the

hollowed termite-ridden colossus that was the Arab army. My hero, Egypt‘s Gamal Abdel Nasser, had turned out to

be a paper tiger. The Israelis had defeated the Arabs comprehensively. In Karachi old men wept as if they had had

a personal calamity. How could tiny Israel defeat 200 million Arabs in twenty countries?‖ (Fatah 2008: 71)


denominational missions which after WWII were largely replaced by missions centered around a certain

mission focus rather than a denomination; the largely successful arguments of mission thinkers like Roland

Allen74 and Rufus Anderson that the prerogatives and self-directing of a local church should be respected

was itself a sort of (limited) de-colonialization of mission, and set the stage for what we are now seeing

with the rising numbers of missionaries coming from Latin America and South Korea to the Muslim world.

The rise of the Petro-states75 provided for them the funds to send their students abroad to universities in

the West, opening the door for Muslim evangelism on campuses. And finally, the growing prominence of

reformed Islamic discourse in almost every corner of the Muslim world and the West, has added a sense of

urgency to the question of how the churches should interact with Muslims. Some churches have opted for

more inter-religious dialogue, others have tended towards scare-mongering, and still others have opted to

pray and evangelize at home and abroad, or at least try to. It is not incorrect to say that many Christians

all around the world are afraid of an Islamic future, and in moments of greater fidelity to the Gospel that

fear is channeled into heart-felt prayer, sometimes into massive movements focused around prayer and/or

recruiting new missioners and evangelists.

But that is what there is to say about the side of the matter that we can see and study and discuss. And

indeed, it is the sort of study and reflection a Christian is called to, as he attempts, hopefully with

academic rigor and humility, to ―read the signs of the times.‖ But as much as we can discern and analyze,

we are also reminded that, ―The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell

where it comes from or where it is going.‖ It is in that tension the Christian scholar tries to discern patterns

and forms, however vague they may be, to describe the dramatic and surprising developments woven into

the life of the often weak and superbly human body that is the Church.

74 Whose oft-re-published book [1912] is still a staple in missions courses today: Missionary Methods: St. Paul's or Our Own? 75 On this topic I highly recommend Daniel Yergin‘s 1993 book, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power.


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Documents

Duane a Miller Genesis of World Islamic Christianity