Duane A Miller Genesis of World Islamic Christianity

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 xphilosopherking@yahoo.com.
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.
Duane Alexander Miller Page 1

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.
5The 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.
15Co-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:
Voluntary/ Involuntary/
Abrahamic Adamic
A
Tourist Refugee
Ab
Temporary Student Asylee
Businessman Slave
Job-seeker Refugee
Permanent Spouse of national Asylee
Professional Slave
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.

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 11 th‘, 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
35They can all be seen in multiple languages at www.morethandreams.org.

36Lausanne 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.‖
64Johnstone (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.
67The 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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Duane A Miller Genesis of World Islamic Christianity

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Woven in the Weakness of the Changing

Body: the Genesis of World Islamic

Nazareth Evangelical Theological Seminary

Yet the enchainment of past and future

Duane Alexander Miller Page 1

1. Methodology and Purpose

The two questions I asked were:

Duane Alexander Miller Page 2

The list, with the number of mentions, follows:

Duane Alexander Miller Page 3

Rev. Jim Bakker and his then-wife Tammy Faye.

your right hands possess.‖

Duane Alexander Miller Page 4

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

14 Asma bint Marwan was her name.

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2.3 Contextual and Culturally Sensitive Communication

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

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2.4 Living Abroad and Migration

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2.5 Prayers/A move of the Spirit/God’s timing

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 1948: Birth of the State of Israel

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2.6 Dreams, Visions, and Miracles

35They can all be seen in multiple languages at www.morethandreams.org.

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2.7 Greater Number of Missionaries

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

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

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

09: ST: 12 MT: 12 LT: 93

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

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

09: ST: 2 MT: 6 LT: 43

2.8 Translation of the Bible and other Communications

47 By Tom Pfeiffer (15 Dec 2008). Accessed 13 Jan 2010 <uk.reuters.com/article/idUKTRE4BE0JL20081215>

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50 Cf. Ibn Warraq ed. contains numerous such examples.

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2.9 Greater diversity in missionary strategies/platforms (4)

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61 From here, accessed 24 Dec 2009: http://www.joshuaproject.net/definitions.php

2009). Image is also from this website.

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2.10 Great Boldness in Evangelization

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3. Areas for Further Research