St Francis Magazine Nr.

4 (March 2006)

The Challenge of Islam in the 21st Century

(This seminar paper was prepared for an evangelical missions congress in May 2005, and is slightly adapted here.)

A) The Muslim World Today

At the start of this third millennium, what is the state of the Muslim world? Let’s begin by comparing it
with the Muslim world nearly 100 years earlier, as viewed by the famous missionary Samuel Zwemer.
In his day almost all Muslims lived under colonial rule. Their Muslim cultures seemed backward and
dormant compared to the vigorous progress of their European rulers. Zwemer surveyed their identity
crisis and felt sure that under the influence of Western governments and Western education, more and
more Muslims would leave their outdated religion. He thought the walls of Islam would soon crumble.
Well, 100 years later we can see that Zwemer was wrong! In the century since he made those
predictions the Muslim world, far from collapsing, has grown from 12% to 21% of the world’s
population. All Muslim-majority countries are now free from western colonialism. Indeed Muslims,
inspired by the 20th century Islamic revival, have recovered their confidence in their own identity.
Meanwhile the fortress of western civilisation, apparently impregnable in Zwemer’s day, has been so
battered by two world wars and ideological doubts that its walls, not Islam’s, seem to be the ones that are
crumbling.
So it is not surprising that many evangelicals today view Islam’s growth with fear and dismay. Listen,
for instance, to a recent author Marvin Yakos in his book Jesus vs. Jihad: “As terror and darkness
continue to spread, the proliferating spirits of Allah continue to devour humanity.. [Jihad] is the
required mentality for all Muslims, and Satan patrols the Islamic corridors to insure continued
compliance… Jihad is to Islam as love is to Christianity”.1 But Christine Mallouhi, an Australian who
has lived in the Arab world for 25 years, is worried about this demonizing approach. She warns “This
approach has confused us. It blurs our thinking about who the enemy really us and causes us to fight our
brothers and sisters instead of the real enemy. The enemy of our souls is Satan, not any particular
ideology or religion.” 2
So who is right, Yakos or Mallouhi? Or are the issues too complex to divide into black and white? How
should we respond as evangelicals to the challenge of Islam - in our theology, our missiology and our
living relationships with Muslims? Of course this seminar is too short to cover these questions properly,
while to predict the challenges for the coming millennium would be absurdly ambitious! So I have
chosen to highlight four broad areas in which Islam presents a challenge to us today. Exploring those
will help us to understand also the challenges which the Muslim world itself faces in those same areas –
for in some ways modernity is only now having the impact on Islam that Zwemer predicted. Finally we
will consider four ways in which we may respond to these challenges, as evangelicals.

B) Third Millennium Challenges

So let’s look at these four areas of challenge in and from the Muslim world today. I call them political,
demographic, ideological and spiritual challenges. Perhaps you would like to come straight to the
spiritual challenges and opportunities, but in fact these are very much affected by the other factors which
we should not sidestep.

B.1. Political Challenges:

“If you take politics out of Islam, it ceases to be Islam”, said the Ayatollah Khomeni. He brought
modern political Islam to the world’s attention in 1979, with the Iranian revolution. But authentic Islam
is, and always has been, a political religion.
At different times through their history, Muslims have been motivated to bring their own governments
more into line with their vision of the true Islamic state. One hundred years ago two such ideologues
were born: Maulana Mawdudi in India (later Pakistan) and Hassan al Banna in Egypt. They deplored
the way the Muslim elite in their respective countries had capitulated to Western culture. They urged
their Muslim communities to wake up and rediscover pure Islam, applying it to every area of life. They
each founded political movements, the Jamaat-e-Islami and the Muslim Brotherhood respectively, giving
impetus to the 20th century Islamic revival. These movements, along with Mawdudi’s prolific writings,
spread around Muslim countries at a time in the mid-20th century when their governments were
struggling to deal with the complexities of their new-found freedom from colonial rule.

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By the 1960’s governments were failing to meet their people’s expectations, and pressure started to build
for more radical change. The fiery radical Syed Qutb was executed by the Egyptian government in
1966, but far from quelling discontent, his example and his writings served only to inspire others to give
their lives for the Islamist cause. In country after country, Islamic revivalist movements found a ready
hearing from angry young men of the lower middle classes, typically those who had migrated from their
traditional communities and had worked hard to gain a degree, only to find their aspirations blocked by
unemployment or corruption. ‘There must be something better’, they thought – and became militants.
Militant Islam, as opposed to the merely political Islam of Mawdudi, scored its first ‘success’ in the
1981 assassination of President Sadat in Egypt. It gathered strength in the 1980’s as the ‘mujahideen’
gained military experience in their long campaign to drive out the Russians from Afghanistan.
Afghanistan provided a meeting-point for radicals from across the Muslim world, as they compared
notes and inspired each other to greater ambitions in the 1990’s. Osama bin Laden helped to coordinate
these efforts with training and funding. The resultant large-scale attacks on western targets are well-
known.3 This very city of Madrid saw 192 civilians slaughtered last year in the name of jihad. Perhaps
some of you here today had loved ones killed or injured in that attack. I was living in Pakistan at the
time of the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Centre, and throughout the series of attacks the following
year including on my children’s school, so I too know something of the horrors of Islamic terrorism.
So we are right to view this political challenge, now escalating to a militant challenge, as a serious
threat. But this should not stop us seeking to understand the Islamist movement in its wider perspective.
Islamists at their best have sought justice instead of corruption for their countries, prosperity instead of
unemployment, equality instead of grossly unfair gaps between rich and poor. They want to see God’s
will be done and His kingdom come on earth. As biblical Christians, viewing ourselves as ‘radicals’
also, how should we respond to this movement? We will return to this point shortly.
These Islamists have succeeded in spreading fear in the West, but not yet in solving the Muslim world’s
problems. For if we review those governments which tried in recent decades to impose political Islam
on their countries, they have nearly all failed. In Iran it led to deep resentment, in Pakistan regret, in
Saudi Arabia hypocrisy, in Sudan civil war and in Afghanistan to the Taliban being deposed. Scholar of
Islam Olivier Roy summed up such trends in his astutely titled book The Failure of Political Islam.4
Even though the agents of militant Islam have wrecked terrible slaughter already and will do so even
more if they acquire weapons of mass destruction, yet eventually their very own supporters sicken of the
bloodshed. This happened in Algeria where the militant group Group Islamique Arme, through 100,000
gruesome murders, ended up alienating the general public and imploded in violent infighting. Likewise
after the atrocity of Beslan in September 2004, prominent Muslim commentators spoke out sharply
against militancy. “We cannot clear our names unless we own up to the shameful fact that terrorism has
become an Islamic enterprise”, commented a leading Arab journalist, “these are the people who have
smeared Islam and stained its image.”5
So, right now there is widespread political soul-searching in the Muslim world. Many Muslims,
especially in countries with stagnating economies and repressive governments, are eager for change.
Only a few of them are attracted to militancy, so what other political models are available? Communism
has lost its credibility. Democracy is attractive and many middle-class Arabs want it, but on their own
terms not America’s. Islam is deep in their culture but how can it be made work better in governing 21st
century states? These are the questions informed Muslims are asking. Islamic thinkers like Jamal al
Banna strive to articulate ‘an Islamic strategy for the 21st Century’6. The political challenge to the
Muslim world is as great as the challenge from Islam.

B.2. Demographic Challenges

In a small shop in northern Pakistan, I once read a sticker with this advice for Muslims: ‘A large family
makes jihad easy. The more children for jihad, the better’. It rhymes nicely in the original Urdu.
But catchy slogans don’t feed hungry mouths. In South Asia, which already has the highest number of
the world’s Muslims, their populations continue to rise rapidly. This puts huge pressure on employment,
education, housing and the environment. Another quarter of the world’s Muslims live in South East
Asia, which generally is doing better but still with large populations of poor in some countries. And in
the Arab world, home to 1 in 7 of the world’s Muslims, it has been estimated that 100 million young
people will enter the job market during the next 20 years. How will all these new jobs be found? United
Nations human development reports on the Arab world, issued in 2002 and 2003, make sober reading
indeed.

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Demographic pressure brings ever fiercer competition for scare resources, which in turn fuels ethnic
conflict. In those countries which cross religious fault-lines, such as Indonesia or Nigeria, this ethnic
clash takes on a religious colour.7 What can Muslim governments do about it?
One solution is for them to export their excess people. This relieves their own demographic pressures
but raises new challenges in other countries. Throughout Western Europe the ‘natives’ are getting
restless about the Muslims in their midst. The French government has cracked down on Islamic head-
scarves in schools. The Dutch people were deeply shaken when Theo Van Gogh was murdered in 2004
for having made an anti-Islamic film. And although the European Union has decided in principle to
allow Turkey to apply for membership, many of its members are open in their misgivings.
But demographic realities win in the end. So long as Europe continues to produce too few children to
sustain its population, and the Muslim world too many, then inevitably by legal or illegal means large
numbers of Muslims will continue to find their way there. The same is true of Canada and Australia,
and perhaps to a lesser extent the United States and Latin American countries. Unlike previous
generations of immigrants, Muslims have proved much harder to integrate into host communities.
So Muslim minorities pose a demographic challenge to the majority populations. At the same time they
face a challenge themselves – of how to practice authentic Islam while under a non-Muslim government.
It is an anomaly which the Quran never anticipated. So, in response, Muslims carve out little pieces of
Islamised ‘space’ whether by adopting the veil, or setting up Islamic schools or living together in
particular neighbourhoods. This instinct is understandable but does nothing to help them integrate into
the countries of their adoption.

B.3. Ideological Challenges

At first sight, Islam poses a bigger ideological challenge to the West than the West does to Islam. We
see a Western culture, sustained for a thousand years on its Christian foundations, now living on
borrowed time since those foundations were washed away. At frightening speed since the 1960s,
Christianity has been eclipsed by modernity and now by overlapping postmodernity. People tolerate
anything except intolerance. They consider themselves free, and independent and rich, yet are trapped in
insecurities. They have embraced the materialistic life but now, discovering this to be an empty shell,
seek to fill it with any kind of spirituality except historic Christianity. The trappings of Western life may
look attractive, but where is the substance?
Resurgent Islam confidently offers an alternative to this bankrupt ideology. It declares that life only
makes sense under God. It calls humans to give of their best to Him, to discipline themselves through
daily prayer and annual fasting, and to find their fulfilment in a higher goal than hedonism. It offers a
coherent (though idealistic) assessment of what is wrong with our world, and an appealing call to return
to God’s ways. Tens of thousands of Westerners have turned to Islam, many of them because of the
strong moral certitudes it offers - in contrast to an empty humanism and a double-minded church.
Idealistic Islam is appealingly simple. But real life is not that simple. I see three challenges to the
ideology of revivalist Islamic movements.
Firstly, sinful human nature. Muslims believe that God sent his prophets to show mankind the
‘straight path’ of following his will. All Muslims know what that straight path is: say your prayers five
times a day, always be honest, drink no alcohol, do not commit adultery. But, as I have argued many
times with Muslim friends (and they usually agree with me), our problem is not to know what God’s
straight path is, but actually to follow it. Human beings are neither willing nor capable of doing so. This
explains why, in a country like Pakistan, there is such a demand for pornographic websites. Or why
Saudis drive across the causeway to Bahrain to find alcohol and prostitutes. Sex outside marriage takes
place to a surprising extent in the Muslim world, despite severe penalties in the Quran. The human heart
craves for what Islam bans. So, whenever idealist Islam tries to enforce its ideology on a society, it just
drives sin underground rather than reforming the human heart.
Secondly, information technology. The internet and the satellite dish have facilitated the spread of an
international culture which is immensely appealing to young people throughout the Muslim world.
These technologies undermine constantly the world-view being taught in the mosque. Come with me to
the roof of the apartment block where I live in Amman, Jordan. A forest of satellite dishes and TV
antennae reaches to the sky. Over in the distance the minaret of the local mosque also reaches to the
sky. So these two influences, the religious and the secular, compete for Muslim hearts and minds.

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Of course, Islamists too are able to use information technology to their benefit. Back in 1979, audio
cassettes of Ayatollah Khomeini’s sermons helped to fuel the Iranian revolution. Satellite television has
since proved a powerful tool for Osama Bin Laden in spreading his message. But overwhelmingly, the
culture being spread worldwide is a humanistic one which conflicts deeply with traditional Islam. “The
present encounter, with its universal Western culture and pervasive technology, is perhaps the most
forceful of onslaughts on Muslim civilisation yet”, comments the Muslim academic Akbar Ahmed.8
Thirdly, individual decision-making Young people in the Muslim world today are subject to deeply
different influences from their parents’ generation. Advertising opens their eyes to an attractive
consumer world, while city life has broken up old tight-knit communities. Young Muslims no longer
have to do & say what the local mullah tells them. They are free to shop around in the market-place of
ideas.
This trend of independent thinking is perhaps most evident among Muslims living in the West. The
Trouble with Islam, by Bangladeshi Irshad Manji now living in Canada, is only one of several recent
books taking this line9. And even when living in the West has strengthened rather than weakened a
person’s Islamic identity, sometimes postmodernity modifies their attitudes in unrecognised ways. I
recently watched a fascinating documentary tracing the lives of four Muslim women in Britain who have
chosen to wear the veil. They are Islamic by choice, in contrast to their parents who were Muslim by
culture. But even here, one of them let slip a comment which revealed postmodern relativistic influence
on her thinking. “We don’t want to condemn you all to hell”, she said, “we just want to be ourselves”.10
This permeation of modern thinking is just starting to lead Muslims to re-examine their own sources for
religion. This ‘new ijtihad’, as we may term it, is willing to question the centuries of legal interpretation
in historic shariah law and throw out what does not fit. Even established hadith traditions like those of
Bukhari are being questioned in some quarters. And perhaps the Quran itself may be opened up to some
small degree of textual criticism. A few years ago, in a very old mosque in Yemen, a hoard of ancient
Quranic manuscripts was accidentally discovered. Fascinatingly, their wording varies slightly from one
manuscript to another. Some Muslims are keen to cover this up. But sooner or later the texts will be
published and Muslims will need to draw their own conclusions.
This is not to say that Islam will immediately collapse in the face of these challenges. It survived the
threat of modernity in Samuel Zwemer’s day, and it will survive post-modernity in our day. But, as
French Jesuit Jean-Marie Gaudel comments, “Social conformism will no longer suffice to deal with the
great questions of life .. every human being has to make his own choice by himself, or herself”. Gaudel
expects that that we will see an increasing amount of religious change in all directions. “The days of
closed, homogeneous, unchanging societies are rapidly going and they will not come back”.11

B.4. Spiritual Challenges

I remember vividly one occasion when I visited the conference of Pakistan’s Tablighi party, at which up
to one million Muslim men gather each year for three day’s instruction, before they head out at their own
expense throughout Pakistan and even worldwide, as missionaries of Islam. But as I was setting out,
their conference had already finished and they were on their way back to start their mission trips. I was
all on my own on my motorbike, trying to make headway in one direction against the solid column of
their buses and trucks all coming against me, thirty kilometres long and four lanes wide. And it felt to
me like a parable. What could I, as one Christian missionary, do against all the crushing weight of
missionary-minded Islam?
"Our struggle is not against flesh and blood", and certainly not against individual Muslims, but against
all the forces of the evil one. And although we should not simplistically attribute everything to spiritual
warfare, neither should we go to the other extreme and dismiss it. It seems that Satan’s grip on the
Muslim world is maintained through a mix of powerful strategies. Firstly, because Islam is the only
world religion to arise after Christianity, Muslims’ ears are effectively closed to our exclusive claims for
Christ because they can already explain him within their system. Secondly, Muslim culture has taken
such a deep hold on the lifestyle of 1300 million people in this world that, whether they sincerely follow
their religion or not, most would never think of changing it. Thirdly, very many of the world’s Muslims
are influenced by folk religion. The fear which this induces, and the spiritual forces which it unleashes,
combine to keep people bound. Fourthly, coercion to keep people in line, and revenge against enemies,
seem to occur widely in Muslim countries, and I believe these too are satanic strategies.
So, for the most part, Islam still resists the gospel. But we start to sniff change in the air. In country
after country indigenous churches are starting to grow where none existed before. God is doing
remarkable things in the Muslim world today. More Muslims have access to the gospel than ever before
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 St Francis Magazine Nr. 4 (March 2006)

– through the Jesus film in its many Muslim languages, or satellite TV or the internet. Hundreds of
Muslim viewers write in every month to Arab Christian TV stations. Muslim women, previously far
more inaccessible then men, are also being reached in the privacy of their own homes.
We should not fool ourselves that this is happening everywhere. Huge resistant blocs of Muslims
remain in the Arab world and South Asia. But nevertheless, more Muslims are turning to Christ than
ever before in history, and it is God’s doing!
All of this presents a big challenge to us, and also to Islam. The challenge for us is how to cope with this
marvellous harvest. We will come to that shortly. The challenge for Islam is what to do with all these
‘apostates’. Islamic law says that if they don’t repent they should be killed.12 Only a few extreme
governments still have the death penalty for apostasy, but others treat it with severe civil consequences,13
and unofficial action against converts frequently occurs from relatives even when the government takes
no action. But the modern world views this as an abuse of human rights. An interesting test-case is
going through the courts in Jordan at present. In Britain also, though behind closed doors, high-level
Muslim leaders are being pressed to clarify their position on apostasy.

C) Responding to the Challenges

C.1 In Our Personal Relationships

Up till now we have spoken about ‘Islam’ as a system. This is valid, but we must not take it to
extremes. It is vitally important that we keep a balance by remembering Muslims are people – ordinary
men and women, facing the same concerns that we do. They worry about health problems, about their
children’s education, about earning enough money to pay the bills. They enjoy the same things that we
do: jokes, TV, family picnics. When I think of the hundreds of Muslims it has been my privilege to
know over the last 25 years, from all walks of life, the first adjective which comes to my mind is ‘kind
people’. I think of the man who fixed my puncture on a lonely mountain road in the dead of night. I
think of my landlord who assured me in the first days of the 1991 Gulf war, ‘don’t worry, no one will
attack you, we are here to protect you’. And the Palestinian taxi driver who refused payment for a ride
last week. And superb meals beyond number in the homes of Muslim friends.
Do you remember the two evangelicals we quoted at the beginning of this seminar? Marvin Yakos
demonizes Islam. But he lives in the United States and, so far as I know, has spent no time in the
Muslim world. He dedicated his book “to all those who lost loved ones on September 11, 2001”. By
contrast the dedication in Christine Mallouhi’s book is “to Zainab, the little daughter of Hassan bin
Othman in Tunis, who sent me a piece of bread from her house, thereby inviting me to become a
member of her family”. It seems to me that Yakos, like some other very outspoken writers, demonizes
what he does not know. Mallouhi has learned to enjoy Muslims as friends. And so should we!
All Muslim evangelism starts at the level of personal friendships. Let us never get so caught up in
theories and trends that we stop relating to Muslims as people.
My Request: Please assure Christians that they have nothing to fear in getting to know Muslims as
friends. Show them what to appreciate in Muslim family life. Tell them to relax and enjoy the rich
cultural diversity of Muslim societies. Remind them that all cultures have both good and bad, and Islam
is no exception.

C.2 In Our Theology

Islamist leaders, from al Banna to Qutb to Bin Laden, have consistently criticized Christianity for
separating ‘the things of Caesar from the things of God’. In November 2002 Bin Laden wrote this to the
American people. “You are the nation who, rather than ruling by the shariah of Allah … choose to
invent your own laws as you will and desire. You separate religion from your policies”.14
So are they right? Are they the ones with an agenda to bring the whole of life under God's rule, and we
Christians only concerned to save people's souls? We need to articulate our theological response in a
way which makes sense to Islamists. How may we respond to the challenge of bringing our faith to bear
on the whole of life, without at the same time falling into the trap of seeking to impose religion through
law in the same way that Islam itself does?
Let us Christian radicals begin where Muslim radicals do, by asserting God's supremacy over the whole
of life. Mawdudi wrote ‘The real purpose of Islam is to establish the kingdom of God on earth’. Surely
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we share the same vision, even if we differ over the methods. We, like Muslim activists, long to see
God's kingdom come and his will be done on earth! We pray for it in the Lord's prayer. Our Islamist
friends must know that we don't care just about personal salvation. Like them we hate to see injustice in
this world, like them we know that the only hope for human societies is fully to come under God's rule.
But the way in which king Jesus rules is totally opposite to the Islamic model. This becomes very
obvious when we compare Christ’s path to power with Muhammad’s. In 622AD Muhammad took the
opportunity to turn his back on persecution in Mecca. At his triumphal entry to Medina soon afterwards,
he accepted the people’s offer to make him their ruler. Combining religious and political leadership, he
made Medina the first Islamic state and from there his kingdom, or Muslims would prefer to say God’s
kingdom mediated through Muhammad’s law and example, spread rapidly through the Middle East.
By contrast Jesus, when he knew the people ‘intended to make him king’, instead withdrew. He went up
steadfastly to the city of persecution instead of fleeing from it. After his own triumphal entry, he did
nothing to seize political power, but rather spurned it at every opportunity during that final week. He
went voluntarily to a criminal’s death, believing somehow that by this would he ‘drive out the prince of
this world’ and ‘draw all men to himself’. He reigned from the cross, as the thief beside him recognised,
and defeated death three days later. And from there his kingdom, mediated through his personal rule in
his followers’ lives, spread rapidly through the Roman Empire.
Both kingdoms, Christ’s and Muhammad’s, have stood the test of time. Both seek to bring God’s rule in
every part of life and in every corner of the world. But in the way they work, they are utterly different.
Islam, in its formative period of expansion, worked from a position of power in society and worked
down through its laws and institutions. It sought to change society ‘from the outside inwards’, hoping to
create such a strong Muslim cultural environment that people’s external behaviour and inner values
would become conformed to it. Christ’s kingdom, unlike Islam, know no political power for the whole
of its formative period. It spread from the bottom up in Roman society until after 300 years it reached
the emperor himself. The nature of its rule is – or should be - total without being totalitarian. And still
today it works best by changing society from the inside outwards, starting with their personal allegiance
to king Jesus which then changes, progressively, their values, behaviour, family life, community, social
institutions and laws.
In short, we have two competing visions: for people and societies either to be conformed to God’s rule
(the Islamic way) or to be transformed by God’s rule (the Christian way). And if the summary of God’s
law is to love rather than to obey, then only the second vision makes sense. For true love leads to
obedience anyway, but obedience can never lead to love by itself. Hearts are won by love not force.
If we can articulate this vision in terms Muslims understand, and demonstrate by our lives that it actually
works, then we have a powerful apologetic to offer the Muslim world. For, as we have seen, both
political and militant Islam carry the seeds of their own failure. They lead to coercion and hypocrisy in
society. But to what may Muslims turn instead? Simply to become westernised is to swap one sin-
sodden culture for another. We do not preach a Western solution for the problems of their societies, but
the kingdom of God. And the more that the ambassadors of this kingdom are non-Western, the better.
This kingdom theology guides not only our apologetics but also our missiology. It gives us an integrated
approach to mission in the Muslim world. Jesus on this earth advanced God’s kingdom by driving out
evil spirits, preached God’s kingdom by his words, demonstrated God’s kingdom in his works of mercy,
and inaugurated God’s kingdom in his death on the cross. These same dimensions of the kingdom –
‘words’, ‘works’, ‘wonders’ and ‘weakness’ – should all be seen in our own mission in the Muslim
world. We know the need for works of power to open blind eyes and free people from the grip of fear,
demonstrating through visions and miracles that the King of the universe really cares for them. But we
enter Muslim countries from a position of human weakness, knowing that our presence there will be
barely tolerated at best, and we may be thrown out at any time. We go with integrity, to serve in real
jobs that contribute to Muslim societies, not seeking any old ‘tentmaking’ visa as a mere excuse to live
there. We seek to demonstrate the values of God’s kingdom in our hard work and our family lives on
the field. We work for the good of the people we serve, and the transformation of their societies in a
multitude of valid ways. This comprehensive approach to mission is based theologically on the
Kingdom of God.
Finally, kingdom theology can help Christians in the Muslim world to establish stronger roots in their
own countries. It is not surprising when they feel excluded by their own countrymen. Islam classically
divides the world into two mutually exclusive geographic zones, ‘the house of Islam’ and ‘the house of
war’. Thus, standing at Pakistan’s border with India, you may hear the crowd shouting across to the
Indians: “The meaning of Pakistan is ‘There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is His prophet’ “.
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Similarly in polarised northern Nigeria, as you cross district borders you may read signs such as ‘you are
now entering Christian territory’ or on return, ‘you are now entering Muslim territory’. Naturally, this
concept of territorial kingdoms makes it hard for Christian minorities to feel loyal to a Muslim state. But
the kingdom of God has no geographical boundaries, and thus they can simultaneously be members of
two overlapping kingdoms.
Not long ago complaints were brought to the mayor of a north African town about the growing number
of its people converting from Islam to Christianity. He was urged to take action against them. “Why?”
he retorted. “Since Christianity started growing in this town the crime rate has gone down. Let it
continue!” That is exactly the kind of transformation which Christ’s kingdom should be bringing in the
Muslim world. Let us pursue it and teach it!
My Request: In our theological response to Islam, let us develop the Biblical concept of God’s kingdom
to guide our apologetics, our missiology and our teaching of Christians in Muslim lands.

C.3 In Our Politics

I care about politics much more than I used to. Perhaps that is inevitable, living in the Middle East. I
care partly for the sake of the gospel, and partly for the sake of justice.
For the sake of the gospel, we must think through our political opinions because of the religious
polarisation in the world since 9/11. Even before the recent presidential election George Bush was
known as an evangelical. But since then evangelicals played a major part in voting him back into office.
The world knows it, and judges us accordingly.
‘Clash of Civilisations’ language, first expounded by Samuel Huntington in 1993, has become
widespread in the Muslim world. Listen to the comments of four Muslim commentators, all writing in
the same Arabic newspaper on the same day last year. The first said: “Don't forget that the relationship
of hostility between the West and the Arabs began with the Crusades… This struggle threatens us to our
core because we are weak and they are strong.” The second had a cartoon of some Crusaders attacking
Muslims. The third article describes Bush as the "hooter of the Christian right (60 million people)" who
are waiting for the battle of Armageddon. The fourth article begins: “What is happening in the Arab
and Islamic worlds is a hateful crusading war”.
If one newspaper in one day can print four such articles, then what kind of stereotype of Christians must
it be giving to Muslims? For our spiritual message to have any credibility, we must think through our
politics. Even more than ourselves as expatriates, national Christians in the Middle East suffer from
being linked with American foreign policy. Photographs of three Mosul bishops were recently
circulated, with the threat that they should be killed as infidel agents of the USA. Distributed leaflets
say ‘Christians go; leave Iraq’. Emigration, for this and other reasons, means that the Christian
presence in parts of the Middle East is almost disappearing in our generation. The birthplace of
Christianity is in danger of becoming its grave.
Colin Chapman considers that “for many Muslims, Christian support for Zionism, the concept of the
Jewish state and many of the policies and actions of Israel creates a major stumbling block for the
gospel.”15 But even if polarised politics had no negative impact on the gospel, I would still care about
them for the sake of justice. The God in my Bible cares about justice, therefore I care too. Palestinians
often ask me, “If someone took your land and destroyed your livelihood and occupied your house, what
would you do?” How should I reply? Just tell them to accept it as God’s will, because Israel is God’s
special nation? And when United Nations resolutions get enforced against Syria or Iraq, but ignored
with impunity by Israel, can I approve? And is it fair for the United States to threaten Iran over its
pursuit of nuclear weapons while allowing Israel to keep maybe 200 warheads?
I am well aware of the evils of Islamic militancy. But the problem of Palestine is not primarily about
fighting terrorism. Nor is it basically a religious problem, even though fundamentalists of all three
stake-holding religions have sought to make it so. Nor is it about democracy. It is primarily about land.
Even as I write these words, two weeks after the Israeli and Palestinian leaders shook hands on a
ceasefire, Israel has continued to confiscate Palestinian land to build its wall. Yesterday’s paper showed
an old lady weeping as an Israeli bulldozer tore up her land.
George Bush said, ‘if you are not for us, you are against us’. But do we as evangelicals have to take
sides like that? I refuse to believe so.

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My Request: Even if you disagree with me on the theological place of Israel in God’s plan, please look
carefully at what is actually happening on the ground in Palestine today. Formulate your opinion as a
biblical Christian. Work out how you would explain your political views to an Arab Muslim.

C.4 In Our Training of New Believers

About ten years ago a veteran observer of the Arab world told me of the increasing number of Muslims
coming to Christ. “I feel that what is starting to happen now is like water starting to fill the dry river
beds of the desert”, he said. “We have prayed for so long, and now the rain is coming, but if we don’t
build dams to catch the water when the floods come then it might all flow away”. Well, he was right
about the floods of new believers in some countries! God is doing awesome things. Now our priority
should be not just to pray for rain but, urgently, to build those dams.
Many ‘dams’ are needed, but here are three of the most important:
1) Help Believers to keep their Jobs and Families Some Muslims still lose their lives by turning
to Christ, but not many. Much more commonly, they lose their families and jobs. When a new believer
is thrown out on the street, without shelter or work or wife or husband, the promises of Jesus and
practical help from Christians will sustain that person – for a while. But the longer such a situation goes
on, the harder it gets. Moreover, such believers lose an opportunity to influence further their own
Muslim family, whose impression is confirmed that this foreign religion Christianity brings nothing
positive, only division.
So what is the alternative? Perhaps you would advise the convert to remain in his family, keeping his
faith secret, attending the mosque and fasting in Ramadan? You think of him as a C6 Christian, i.e. at
the ‘fully contextualised’ end of the Muslim background believer scale16. He continues to grow in his
faith while giving a quiet but effective witness in his own family. Missiologically it sounds great,
doesn’t it? Unfortunately it doesn’t work. Secret believers who remain permanently secret, as opposed
to those for whom this is a temporary stage, rarely grow strong in their faith and witness.
Can we strive for the best of both worlds? Can a believer remain in her Muslim family and job but still
be bold as a Christian disciple? In research conducted on the degree of persecution faced by seventy
Muslim background believers in Pakistan, it became clear that the biggest factor in this was not at all the
Islamic theory, but the social shame which came to the families as a result of one of their members
converting. Most Muslim societies care very much indeed about honour and shame. So the biggest
thing a convert can do to try to keep his place in his family is to honour them in all his actions and seek
to avoid any public dishonour. But this issue is all the more acute for women believers, and there are no
easy solutions except in countries where whole family groups turn to Christ together.
Schemes to provide local employment for Muslim background believers are also very important.
Expatriates can help with this in some countries, and also in some situations help to link up converts
with believing marriage partners. Expatriates may help to get converts out of the country, but in my
opinion this sets a bad example and should only be done as a very last resort. Another generally
unhelpful route is for expatriate Christian workers to come single to Muslim countries, pick up an MBB
spouse and then return to their own countries.
2) Give appropriate Discipling and Training The more Muslims come to Christ, the more urgent is
the task of discipling and equipping them! I believe this should be given far greater priority. What
should be our aims and methods in this? Do our standard discipling materials which work in the West
fit the particular needs of Muslim background believers? Very often they don’t. We should give
teaching on persecution, and family loyalties, and the ways their ethical standards should change now
they are followers of Christ. We should help them too to understand the importance of being committed
to a local group of Christ’s followers.
Not only our training curriculum should be appropriate, but also our training methods. What are the
advantages and limitations of story-telling? How much can be achieved by correspondence or media,
how much by personal mentoring and how much in small groups? Then we should work on our training
strategy. For discipling and basic level training, we should not pull people out of their own
communities. Sending new believers off to Bible college is expensive and usually damaging. Far better,
I believe, is to use methods such as TEE (theological education by extension) to equip Muslim converts
firstly to live for Christ in their own communities and secondly to serve Christ as volunteers in their
local churches, according to their gifts and opportunities. Only those whose calling is thus tested should
be recommended, by their local churches, for higher level leadership training at Bible college.

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Missionaries have often bypassed local churches in their selection of candidates for training, and it is a
mistake.
I have written a discipling course for Muslim background believers and have collected a range of other
relevant training materials from different parts of the Muslim world. For more information, please
contact me by email.
3) Model Contextualised Churches Whenever a brand new church comes into being, in a country
which previously had no church, it is an exciting and fragile experiment. Exciting, because it gives the
chance to find new models appropriate to that particular culture. Fragile, because Satan quickly gets to
work. He loves to exploit human sin and sow seeds of distrust among Muslim background believers.
So, while thanking God for the truly amazing way he is gathering together Muslim background believers
into brand new churches in different countries, also pray passionately for the great shepherd to protect
his flock and his under-shepherds from the wolves.
Satan is not the only one who can spoil church growth movements. Missionaries are quite good at it too!
Consciously or subconsciously, they perpetuate the models of church worship and leadership with which
they are familiar. This sets the pattern for coming generations, which become very much harder to
change later. Or they choose certain new believers and spoil them as their favourites, or they pay
national workers in a way which perpetuates dependency. We evangelical missionaries need to learn
from our mistakes!
As one good example of a contextualised Muslim background church, have you seen the video CD
produced by Create International? It shows a real-life example of new believers in Indonesia, meeting as
a home group to worship and study God’s word together. What I really like about it is that instead of
just talking about contextualised worship it actually models it in front of your eyes. Of course no one
model gives the final answers, but I do recommend you get hold of a copy17 and show it to any of your
people involved in church planting among Muslims.
My Request: Give urgent priority to the discipling and training of Muslim background believers. Help
expatriate workers to think through their ecclesiology and contextualisation more carefully. Develop
appropriate methods and materials, and find ways for those to be used as much as possible without
pulling Muslim background believers out of their contexts.

D) Hope for the Third Millennium

As we close, come with me to one of the loveliest mosques it has ever been my privilege to visit – the
Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, Syria. Thirteen hundred years old, it is one of the most important
Islamic sites in the world. Yet, on one corner of the mosque stands a minaret. It is called the ‘Jesus
minaret’ because Muslims believe it is on this spot that Christ will descend when he comes to this world
again. So even here, in this stronghold of Islam, we find a fascinating reminder that Christ is king, he is
in control, he is already building his kingdom in the Muslim world and will do so far more until he
comes again! Hopefully long before this third millennium is finished.
Edward Evans, March 2005

1
Marvin Yukos, Jesus vs. Jihad: Exposing the Conflict between Christ and Islam, pg.8, 87
2
Christine Mallouhi, Waging Peace on Islam (UK: Monarch, 2000) pg.29
3
Jason Burke gives an excellent account of these developments in Al-Qaeda: The True Story of Radical
Islam (UK: Penguin, revised edition 2004)
4
Olivier Roy, The Failure of Political Islam, I.B. Tauris, 1992
5
Abdel Rahman al-Rashed, in the London-based pan-Arabic newspaper Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, September
2004
6 st
Jamal al Banna, An Islamic Strategy for the 21 Century (Cairo: Dar al-Fikr al-Islami, 2004) translated
by Bob Robertson
7
Philip Jenkins warns of increasingly violent demographic clashes in the next half-century. See The Next
Christendom (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002) pg. 163ff.
8
A. Ahmed, Postmodernism and Islam: Predicament and Promise (London: Routledge, 1992) pg.107
9
Published in 2004, compare also Ibn Warraq Leaving Islam: Apostates Speak Out (2003) and Azar
Nafisi Reading ‘Lolitha’ in Tehran (2004).
10
Syeda, in the BBC documentary ‘Covering Up’, broadcast on BBC World 6th November 2004
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11
Gaudel, pg.225,226
12
This is just a summary of the legal position. The actual technicalities are quite complicated.
13
Eg. Divorce from one’s spouse, loss of one’s children and confiscation of one’s property.
14
Quoted by Bernard Lewis, The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror (New York: Random
House, 2003), pg.159, writing in the wake of 9/11. See also another leading American academic, John
Esposito, Unholy War: Terror in the Name of Islam (USA: OUP, 2002)
15
Colin Chapman, ‘The Challenge of Islam’, a paper presented to the World Evangelical Alliance in
Cyprus, 2000.
16
This is the scale well-known since the October 1998 edition of Evangelical Missions Quarterly, with a
C1 believer being culturally furthest from Islam and C6 being culturally closest.
17
contact www.createinternational.com

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