some major challenges in missions to the muslims
TRANSCRIPT
Leaven Leaven
Volume 7 Issue 1 Missions and the Church Article 8
1-1-1999
Some Major Challenges in Missions to the Muslims Some Major Challenges in Missions to the Muslims
Robert Douglas
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Missions and the Church 23
Some Major ChallengesIn Missions to MuslimsRobert Douglas
Christians do not live well with ambiguity. Yet ambi-guity is basic to life, missions-everything. Certainly, theMuslim world is characterized by a strong dose of ambi-guity. It is a world of a strange convergence of factorsbeyond our control, a world where God's fingerprints areoften difficult to see clearly, yet where change is under-way-and, with change, opportunity for Christians (whoreflect great ambiguity toward Islam) to minister.
To speak of the Muslim world is to imply that it is aworld. In reality, it is and at the same time is not. It is aworld that straddles the earth's waist, spanning vast conti-nents, numbering more than one billion people, encom-passing extremes of riches and poverty, education and il-literacy. It somehow defies singularity. The Muslim world,by virtue of its vastness and complexity, embodies plural-ism. Yet within all its diversity there are threads of one-ness that knit nation to nation, people to people, and indi-vidual to individual and thus create a global tapestry thatextends back through the centuries, tying today's Mus-lims to their rich history and countless forebears.
The Muslim world captures a large portion of the at-tention of our media today. Many of the events reportedreflect an interesting mix of "success" and "failure," of-ten in spite of the "best" and the "worst" of people, high-lighting more our culture and its fears than anything else.In the midst of it all, God is sovereign and brings to passwhat he wants!
We can only hope that God's people can be morearoused to meet the challenges presented by the Muslimworld. Whether our primary concern is peace, justice,human development, or evangelism, the Muslim worldcalls for our best thinking, deepest faith, and most inno-vative and courageous action. Here are some of the majorchallenges in that call.
Secularization, Religious Fundamentalism, andGeopolitical Instability
This is a tim~ of resurgent conservative religious ex-pression-Jewish, Hindu, Christian, and Muslim. In eachcase, the faithful feel that their fundamental values andlifestyle are under assault. There is a longing for the "oldways," the tried and true values, as a means of checkingthe growing secularization of society. The Muslim worldembodies these same currents with all their contradictions.Various shades of reaction are underway. Since the im-pact of modern education and technology will not go away,the debate about what it means to be Muslim will con-tinue. Struggle, social disruption, and violence are all toocommon by-products.
A major-part of the debate within Islam and betweenMuslims and non-Muslims focuses on politics, law, power,and government and the appropriate interplay betweenthem as vehicles to shape and control culture.
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The church was never more involved in politics thanduring the era of the Holy Roman Empire (starting in A.D.
800). Under the empire Christianity became"Christendom." Such an arrangement worked only so longas there was a more or less homogeneous, cohesive soci-ety segmented into more or less stable social classes. Co-hesion became increasingly difficult to maintain in the faceof growing pluralism and social mobility. Finally, withthe rise of national ethnic consciousness fueled by the drivefor religious freedom, the formal structures of the reli-gious empire collapsed. These same dynamics animatetoday's Muslim world.
Some Muslim fundamentalists are little interested inconsidering how Muslims and others might be integratedinto a society where religion is not enforced or enforce-able. At the same time, the form of Islam that departs fromthe tradition of voluntarism is difficult if not impossiblefor Westerners to endorse.
Islam has always conceived a political role for reli-gion, a fact that has become increasingly apparent to West-erners faced with Muslims in their midst. Westerners arecaught in a bind in the face of Muslim demands: the logicof religious toleration requires making concessions toMuslims, while the logic of privatized Christianity, of re-ligion taken out of the public arena, disqualifies Western-ers from dealing effectively with Muslim theocratic de-mands. Is a meeting between these two positions possible,and if so, on what grounds and to what end?
The late Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran once complainedthat Muslims have been robbed of their heritage throughWestern connivance. Western agents, he charged, "havecompletely separated [Islam] from politics. They cut off
Christians need to tryto think theologicallyabout Muslim refu-gees! What is Goddoing and saying?
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its head and gave the rest to us." The reference is to thecreation in Muslim countries of the secular national stateas the successor to the transnational Islamic caliphate.
It is important to recognize the new context in whichMuslims have encountered the West: not as a subjugatedpeople in a colonial empire but as free people looking foropportunities. Westerners cannot preserve religious tol-eration by conceding the extreme Muslim case for territo-riality; a house constructed on that foundation would haveno room in it for the pluralist principle that has made theWest hospitable to Muslims and others in the first place.The fact that these religious groups have grown and thrivein the West at a time when religious minorities in Islamicsocieties have continued to suffer civil disabilities revealsthe unevenness of the two traditions.
In some instances the reactionary nature of fundamen-talist fever will prompt people to seek a way of life be-yond what Islam offers. Fundamentalist Islam is in themain a friend of the gospel (though not friendly to it),since it disrupts established patterns of thinking and liv-ing and drives questioning people to look for alternatives,providing opportunity for the good news. How are we torespond, and what does all of this have to do with minis-try?
RefugeesThis is the age of refugees, immigrants, and displaced
people. The United Nations reports that there may be asmany as thirty million refugees in the world, more than atany other time in this century. In the Muslim context, refu-gees are everywhere. Senegalese have been expelled fromMauritania and Mauritanians from Senegal. Somalis havebeen driven into Ethiopia and Kenya, Eritreans into Sudan,Ethiopian Muslims into Sudan; the Yao, a Muslim peoplein Mozambique, have spilled over into Malawi. One-thirdof Afghans live outside of their homeland. Five millionIranians are scattered around the world. Azerbaijanis havebeen dislocated in their conflict with Armenians. And onit goes.
Christians need to try to think theologically aboutMuslim refugees! What is God doing and saying? Refu-gees have always had a special place in the heart and pur-pose of God. Abraham, the father of the faithful, was arefugee. Jacob was displaced as the result of economicproblems. Israel grew up in Egypt but then was expelledinto the desert. Later, Israel was displaced again-ten tribesinto Assyria, and Judah into Babylon.
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It has often been in times of dislocation that peoplehave come to new spiritual insights. Abraham would neverhave learned what he learned about God had he remainedin Ur. It was in the course of the Exodus that Israel learnedmuch about the power of God. It was in exile in Babylonthat the Jewish people once and for all got over their loveaffair with idolatry and polytheism. There they developednew religious institutions, such as the synagogue. Howshall Western Christians partner with God in respondingto this challenge?
UrbanizationOurs is a world that is becoming more and more ur-
ban. David Barrett says that 55 percent of all non-Chris-tian people are found in cities. By the year 2000, therewill be 400 megacities, 150 in the third world alone.
The Muslim world is caught up in urbanization. Sevenof the world's twenty largest cities are basically Muslimin ethos: Cairo, Istanbul, Baghdad, Tehran, Karachi, Dacca,and Jakarta. Islam is in fact an urban religion. Islam wasborn in a city, Mecca, and moved to a city, Medina. Itleaped from city to city-Jerusalem, Damascus, Alexan-dria. It built great cities, Cairo and Baghdad. Islam thrivesin the city. Muslims feel that they comprehend the breadth,the complexity, and the depth of city problems, and theyare not put off by them. Islam's theological holism allowsit to tackle city problems eagerly-jobs, education, healthcare, crime, and pollution.
North American evangelical Christianity has not donewell in urban areas in the twentieth century. When citiesare mentioned, the temptation is to react negatively. Thecity is too much like Sodom, Babylon, or Rome. It is aplace of congestion, of dirt, a place of crime, of drugs, ofprostitution, of evil. It is a place that dehumanizes. It is tobe rejected. The tendency has been to flee the city andclose our eyes to both its problems and its possibilities.
In the Bible, cities have a very special role with God.Abraham' was an urbanite. He came from one of the big-gest cities in the world of his day. It was on the outskirtsof a city that God performed his greatest acts in the cruci-fixion and resurrection of Christ. It was from city to citythat the gospel initially spread. And, like it or not, the pic-ture of the destiny of the faithful is not a garden but a city(Rev 20). Cities clearly have special significance with God.
God, somehow in the convergence of migration, therise of the urban world, and Islam's connection to both, isbringing together a context that can provide rich opportu-
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nities for the expansion of his kingdom. To meet the chal-lenge of Muslim cities, God's people must find greaterwillingness tobe cooperative, give greater attention to therange of problems associated with high density living, anddiscover responsive population segments in a very diversesocial maze.
Religious Tolerance/MinoritiesEverywhere in the Muslim world one finds ethnic and
religious minorities. In the past, Islam handled this phe-nomenon with a degree of effectiveness through the mil-let system. Today, the old system has been fractured.People are not as willing to be submissive (Kurds,Kashmiris). A global village encourages cries for respectand autonomy. Islam is being challenged to respond innew ways while a wider world watches. The world's grow-ing attention to issues of religious freedom and human
North American evan-gelical Christianityhas not done well inurban areas in thetwentieth century.
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rights is a particular problem in Muslim areas. The recordof religious intolerance in Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Iranis tragic and, fortunately, well publicized. Pakistan's treat-ment of non-Muslims and Muslim sects such asAhmadiyyahs remains harsh. The small Christian pres-ence is threatened with further isolation by the attempt toinstall discriminating identity cards.
Malaysia's steady erosion of religious rights for non-Muslims extends to language use. The Kalatan state ispushing for further conformity to Islamic law that wouldinclude the death penalty for a Muslim who adopts an-other faith. There is a growing concern on the part ofevangelicals to respond to denials of religious freedom.This concern has led to a proliferation of new organiza-tions, "desks" in older agencies, and networks for moni-
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toring and sharing data regarding persecution that is oc-curring within Muslim areas.
But there is a lack of consensus as to what to do inaddressing religious rights problems, the timing of action,and the appropriate channels to be used. Is there a placefor public outcry? When does the threat of withholdinggovernment aid become counterproductive? To some, pub-lic (and even quiet, private) pressure smacks of nineteenth-century gunboat diplomacy. What about the possibility offallout on local Christians who cannot leave and are notsubject to deportation?
Behind this whole discussion is a philosophical/theo-logical question-at least for Christians in the West. Thatis, how does one define religious rights, toleration, andthe relationship of "church" (or, by analogy, mosque) andstate? Our whole recent Western heritage predisposesevangelicals to come to the discussion with a well-devel-oped set of assumptions regarding politics and religion.The possible implications of those assumptions have notalways been thought through. Certainly, most Muslimscome to the matter of religious rights, especially the free-dom to change one's religion, with a different frame ofreference.
EvangelismIn addition to wrestling with socioeconomic and po-
litical issues, evangelicals must reflect on ways to carryforward evangelism in today's Muslim context. Thethought of evangelizing the Muslim world challenges thevision, faith, and strategic planning of God's people asdoes almost nothing else. The challenge of Islam is tre-mendous. More than one billion Muslims! Approximatelyone out of every five people in the world is a Muslim.Muslims constitute the largest block of unreached peoplein today's world, and their numbers are rapidly increasingbecause of a high birth rate. More than 930 differentethnolinguistic groups need churches planted amongthem-a task that calls mainly for cross-cultural missions.
During these latter years of the twentieth century, Is-lam is once again on the march. At a recent missions con-ference in Los Angeles, Muslims announced a goal ofwinning fifty to seventy-five million Americans to Islam-their target: "the strata of society suffering from the bank-ruptcy of the social order." Further, they declared that theyare in North America for the long haul, indicating a will-ingness to invest centuries, if necessary, to gain their ob-jectives. As models of what may be required, they alluded
to their history of gradually becoming numerically domi-nant in Egypt, North Africa, and Indonesia.
Since the birth of Islam in Arabia in the seventh cen-tury, Christian mission efforts from both the East and theWest among Muslims have been minimal. The church hastraditionally viewed Muslim peoples as largelyunwinnable. Such a view is reflected in the relatively smallnumber of Christians working full-time with Muslims hereand abroad. Some estimate that today only 2 percent ofall Christian workers (traditional missionaries andtentmakers) worldwide are involved in ministry to Mus-lims. Even fewer are working at church planting.
Attitudes held by Christians toward Muslims, bothfirst-world and third-world, are a major barrier to Muslimevangelization. These attitudes include indifference, asense of the task's being impossible, and basic resentment,fear, and prejudice toward Muslims. In the West, the po-litical and economic events of the last twenty years haveintensified older stereotypes. In some third-world areas,long years of discrimination and overt persecution haveimpacted believers negatively and led to isolation.
However, things are changing. There is growing evi-dence that the church's heart is softening to its biblicalmandate to carry out effective witness to Muslims every-where. More publications are carrying accurate informa-tion regarding the nature and needs of the Muslim world.Significant conferences focused on missions to Muslimshave been held at an increasing rate over the past decade.More agencies and churches are now taking intentionalsteps to allocate resources to Muslim work. More train-ing/educational institutions are including Islam-relatedcourses. More aspiring missionaries are designating Mus-lim peoples as the focus of their call. Yet the numbers in-volved remain very small. For major progress to be madein evangelizing Muslims by the year 2000 and beyond,several basic things are needed: vision, networking, andstrategic planning.
God's purposes unquestionably include the Muslimworld. It is thrilling to be involved in what appear to bethe beginning phases of a greater harvest. The comingharvest springs from God's grace. The dedicated labor ofmany who cleared, plowed, and planted is not to be for-gotten. Now is the time for Muslims.
ROBERT DOUGLAS is professor of world mission at Lin-coln Christian Seminary in Lincoln, Illinois.
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