Sharing Jesus with Muslims in America—now available for Kindle

Hi all, Been a while, I know. I'm glad to share that my book, Sharing Jesus with Muslims in America, is now available on Kindle. A great resource and very affordable! Click HERE to buy it. Peace and grace be with you this Lent. —Abu Daoud

My new book: Sharing Jesus with Muslims in America

Dear Friends,

I am very happy to share with you this new book which is available both in print and Kindle editions through Amazon.

The Muslim population in the United States is growing quickly, and there are no signs of this growth slowing down. So how should Christians respond? With fear? With tolerance? By ignoring Muslims?  Or with boldness, hope, and the Good News of Jesus Christ, clearly the biblical answer. For centuries the church did not go to Muslims with the gospel because Christians thought it was too dangerous or too difficult. Now God is bringing Muslims to America where Christians can lead them to Christ. But when I share this opportunity with churches around the country, I'm asked, “But how? How do I meet Muslims? How can my church make the connections?” This book seeks to answer those questions and more. If you are a Christian, I hope you will open your heart to God’s plan for Muslims in your community.  You can start by reading this book.

"For the Sake of the Name: a letter to new missionaries in the Arab world" by Abu Daoud

I am pleased to share with you that I have recently published this article in St Francis Magazine (Vol 11:1).

I had the privilege of being part of the training and mobilization of this couple, and shortly before they moved to the Arab world, I wrote this letter to them. I thought it was worthwhile enough to share with a wider audience.

Here are a couple of the points of advice I offer:

• learn from the ancient churches
• remember that you are Americans and don't try to hide it
• apply yourself to language acquisition above all
• learn the history of the people and the country

And others. But read the article which contains a lot of other good stuff.

Read it all. Download the PDF from St Francis or check it out on Academia.edu.

But before I get to that, let me share with you my favorite Bible verse about missionaries, and I commend this to you: “For they went out for the sake of the Name, accepting nothing from the Gentiles [that is, non-Christians]. Therefore we ought to support such men, so that we may be fellow workers with the truth” (3 John 7, 8). This might seem like the kind of verse you would use when fundraising, but I like it because it reminds us of who we are and what we do at the heart of our vocation: that we have gone out– out from our culture, from our homeland, from our language– and that this has been done for the sake of “the name”. Jews in the 1

st

 Century (as today) often did not want to pronounce the divine name (YHWH) because of its overwhelming holiness, so they would say “the Name” or “ha shem”. (May I note that the Hebrew 

shem 

 and the Arabic 

ism 

 are cognates?) But here John the elder means not God, but God as revealed in Jesus– 

Jesus 

 is now 

ha shem 

 or “the name”. There is much more one could say on these two brief verses, but let us move on to the heart and soul of this letter.

What countries have the smallest Christian population by %?

The folks at Pew Research have provided us with another great chart that provides information on religious composition by country, and it can be viewed by percentage, or by number. A bit of clicking got me the countries of the world with the lowest percentage of Christian populations. And guess what? Not until you get to place 13 do you find a country that is not Islamic. Here are the top 13 places:

1. Morocco
2. Somalia
3. Afghanistan
4. Iran
5. Tunisia
6. Western Sahara
7. Yemen
8. Algeria
9. Bangladesh
10. Mauritania
11. Maldives
12. Turkey
13. Cambodia (Buddhist majority)

What does this mean? I don't want to jump to any conclusions, but one possible factor (of many, I would think) is that Muslim countries do a good job keeping the Gospel out, or making sure that converts leave (or die).

Please pray for those top 13 countries, and do visit the Pew site, HERE.

Responding to Marc Cortez and the poor situation of Theology PhD's

Marc Cortez recently posted on the dismal job prospects of folks who have recently received a PhD in Theology (HT to Phil Sumpter). Here is a portion of his post, just so you get what he is getting at:

In 2008 ATS schools hired 420 new faculty. In 2009 they hired 339. By 2010 the number was down to 226. That’s an almost 50% decrease in just two years.

[...]

That becomes a problem when you consider the number of new PhDs produced every year. ATS schools alone graduate over 400 new doctoral students every year. Add in the students graduating from non-ATS schools (including all of the overseas programs) and you begin to see the shape of the market.

I felt that his post was interesting and worthwhile. Here is the comment I posted on his site:

I just am wrapping up a PhD in divinity (close enough, no?) and am very content working as a missionary to Muslims. I teach on the side at a local university but that is not my main job or main source of income. Consider the mission field. It is wonderful and dynamic, trying and exhilarating. Even if I got an offer for a T[enure] T[rack] position I would not automatically take it.

So check out his blog post, and chime in with your own thoughts. My overall impression is we need a closer relation between theological training and mission, like back in the maligned medieval Church, which I rather like.

Did the Apostles espouse insider movements?

I answer that the Biblical witness clearly leads to the answer no:

Further, the mixed churches in cities like Rome and [the region of] Galatia were likewise errors. These believers, both Jews and non-Jews, had mistakenly supposed that they in some way had come into a new oikos and a new identity, and Paul, lacking wisdom as usual, taught them these things. Indeed, a triumph of IM hermeneutics and practice would have meant that Peter should have been victorious when Paul confronted him. Indeed, Paul, in violating kashrut was stepping needlessly outside of his oikos, while Peter himself was honoring his God-given identity as a Galilean Jew. 

In the end though, it was the faith—the apostolic faith—that was victorious. A faith which understood that in Jesus a new community had come into being demanded allegiance above and beyond one’s own community of birth. Or as one African pastor put it in those early centuries: you cannot have God for your Father without having the Church for your mother.

From my recent article on insider movements.

A Church of Afghan Converts

Wow, what a wonderful story. Praise be to God for bringing these people to the light and hope that is found in Jesus, who is the very image and icon of God:

Between 200 and 250 Afghan converts from Islam to Christianity who feared persecution from the Afghan authorities and the Taliban have found refuge in Delhi.


“The number of coverts to Christianity increased as the U.S. presence increased after the fall of the Taliban,” said Obaid Jan, 33, the pastor, who led the Bible service. “Most of the Christian converts lived in urban areas, so the threat from the Taliban was minimal,” he added.

But the Christian converts started fleeing Afghanistan around 2005, fearing their identities might become public. Most came to India after video footage of their secret churches found its way to Noorin TV, a Kabul-based television network, in May 2009. Their lives were further endangered in 2010, when an influential member of the lower house of the Afghan parliament, Abdul Sattar Khawasi, called for the converts’ execution.

Execution indeed. And that is the punishment which Muhammad explicitly prescribed for people who leave Islam: "Who so changes his religion, slay him!" (Google it, it's from Sahih al Bukhari). And so, in the religion of peace, the four schools of Sunni shari'a are in unanimous agreement that the apostate must be killed.

How can someone look at a man who would say such a thing and think he is the final prophet from God? I just don't understand it.

May God bless and guide Muslims, and bring them into his wonderful light.

Read more HERE.

The New issue of St Francis Magazine

Hi All,

Well, the new issue of SFM is out a few days late, but better late than never. I have not read the whole thing yet, but so far there are two articles that are noteworthy I think.

The first is Jeff Morton's harsh review of the missiology and theology of Carl Medearis. I have not personally read Medearis' book Muslims, Christians, and Jesus, but I have heard several people speak highly of it. So it is interesting to find such a critical review of his work. Here it is:


THE LYRICS OF CARL MEDEARIS: A POST-MODERN CROONS A SONG OF CULTURAL IMPERIALISM by Jeff Morton

Second, I actually put together a complete bibliography of SFM's first five years. Do check it out. I guarantee you will find some interesting articles that you will want to read. Also, you will most certainly enjoy my intelligent and penetrating insights into the journal's strengths and weaknesses ;-)

St Francis Magazine: A Complete Bibliography of the First Five Years by Abu Daoud

Or by all means, just download the entire issue if you prefer.

--Abu Daoud

Zakaria Boutros: 'Islam is not just a religion, it's a state.'

Islam is not just a religion; this is a misunderstanding in the West. You think that Islam is like Judaism or Buddhism, so we give Islam lots of opportunities to grow in the West. No, Islam is a State, and religion is a factor to establish this state. It is a Kingdom, the Kingdom of Islam. Non-Muslims in their country are invaders. The invaders brought missionaries with them.

From Bob Blincoe's interview with Father (Abouna) Zakaria Boutros (or Botros), my favorite Coptic priest out there :-) This is from the third post on Blincoe's blog containing his interview.

I have written about Fr Boutros HERE and HERE, if you care to learn more about this impressive man. The second link there is one of the most commented-on posts I've ever have, if I'm not mistaken. Also, I develop a similar concept to what Fr Boutros said HERE: Islam, Religion Plus.

Pray for facility in travel for me and my family, please. --AD

The new St Francis Magazine

Well, the August 2011 SFM just came out. This is the one and only journal which explicitly deals with questions related to Christian witness in the Muslim (and especially Arab) world. While I enjoy other publications like IJFM and IBMR, I do think SFM is able to offer more for multiple reasons, but I won't go into that right now.

Anyway, have by now read most of the new issue. Here are my thoughts:

Basil Grafas, 'Year of the Lab Rat'. Well, Grafas doesn't pull any punches, his main point is that converts from Islam to Christianity are the most vocal opponents to what is often, incorrectly, called 'contextualization', ie, using Islamic forms and Islamic identity while proclaiming to be Christ-centered. My experience with Arab and Iranian MBB's totally backs this up, but then again, the insider movements I read about are mysterious and no details are given about them, so I have no way to evaluate them.

JS William, 'Inside/Outside: getting to the center of the Muslim contextualization debate'. Well, this is the main article of this SFM, imho. The writer (using another lame pseudonym...come on, William as a surname? Good grief...) has read most of the material about 'contextualization' in IJFM, SFM, and Evangelical Missions Quarterly (EMQ). But he has a huge chink in his armor. What is it? He doesn't know where the word contextualization comes from, and appears to be unaware that how his sources are using the word is incorrect. Ouch. Well, evangelicals have always been really good at not knowing history (hint: if you have not read Shoki Coe, don't even try to write about the topic). Still, the best article in this issue.

Duane Alexander Miller, 'Book Review: Charles Thorley Bridgeman, The Episcopal Church and the Middle East (New York: Morehouse-Gorham, 1958)'. A brief book review on an obscure book. But still, as an Anglican I am glad to see anything on the topic of the history of Anglicanism in the Middle East.

Download the whole issue here if you like.

Politics and mission to Muslims

Great quote from an article on the present-day reality regarding mission to Muslims:

The mere fact of one's citizenship affects the reception of one's message. A Western Christian worker in the twenty-first century cannot assume that he or she is bringing the message of the Gospel as Paul did, for Paul was a Roman citizen, traversing the provinces of an empire is which his language, his ethnicity, and even his views were given a fair and legal hearing (e.g., as in Acts 22). He was free to travel and speak as he saw fit. The situation is different today for Western missionaries.

from David Grafton's article in IBMR 31:3, 'The Legacy of Ion Keith-Falconer'

Ramon Llull: Muslims honor Muhammad more than Christians honor Jesus

I recently went on a one-day retreat to spend some time in prayer and reflection, and during that time I read (most of) Ramon Llull's mystical reflections in his Book of the Lover and the Beloved, can be downloaded HERE. It is about 50 pages long and contains a short introductory essay from one of the foremost translators and scholars of Llull, E. Allison Peers.

Most of the meditations (366 of them) are on the nature of love and how the love of God is tied to grief and tribulation. From time to time he gets autobiographical and addresses missionary topic explicitly, in terms of how he has traveled far and wide to defend the honor of his beloved's name, and also his disappointment with the mediocrity of the average Christian of his medieval day.

But there is one verse that explicitly mentions Islam, and I wanted to share that with you:

The Lover (Llull) reproached Christian people, because in their letters they put not the name of his Beloved, Jesus Christ, to do Him the same honour that the Saracens do to the false prophet Mahomet, when they honour him by naming him before everything in their letters. v. 149

Presumably he is referring to a custom of writing the shahada at the beginning of any official communication, which does indeed name Muhammad.

You can find some other of my posts on Llull here, here, and here. A list of all the links is here.

Kenneth Cragg on Mission to Muslims

The question about mission can never be 'whether': it can only be 'how.'

2000. ‘Being Made Disciples—the Middle East’ in The Church Mission Society and World Christianity, 1799-1999. Kevin Ward and Brian Stanley eds. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Pp 120-143.

Horatio Southgate of Constantinople--accused of being an anglo-catholic!

One of the interesting events of Southgate's life was a rather intense dispute he had with some Congregationalist and Presby missionasries from the ABCFM, which is the grand-daddy of all American mission boards.

Southgate was sent out by the Episcopal Mission Board in the 1840's, and eventually got into deep trouble because he read some sensitive material written by an ABCFM missionary to an Armenian Christian. It was about how a division in the Armenian Catholic Church (non-Chalcedonian Orthodox, for all you church history nerds out there) would be desirable.

Obviously, this caused a big stir. In a very obscure article which I wanted to bring to light in this post, a detailed description of the entire ordeal is giving. The article on the whole is very critical of Southgate. He did make a big mistake reading that material to an Armenian Christian in the Ottoman Empire, I suspect, but in the end the article's author finds fault with him for being high church Episcopalian.

Interesting article, if a bit long-winded. No author is given.

Tyler, Edward R, et al, eds. 'Bishop Southgate and Episcopal Missions' 1845. The New Englander and Yale Review. Vol 3:2, Pp 244-272.

Horatio Southgate, Episcopal missionary to the Ottoman Empire

The Church of England sent out many a missionary to the Muslim world over the years, but less known (and less active) is the Episcopal Church in the USA. Horatio Southgate was one such missionary, he did two tours in what was then the Ottoman Empire. At one point, he got in trouble with some of his fellow missionaries, who wrote back to the USA about him, and he had to write a letter in his defense. You can read it here.

Note here one of the issues of complaint, and his defense of himself:

Never so much as once did I receive the Sacrament of Holy Communion from the [non-Episcopal] missionaries at Constantinople; never so much as once take any part with them in the administration of it. They may, perhaps, refer to a single instance in which I did receive it, from other Congregational missionaries, in another place. If so, why do they speak of sitting down "with us," "receiving from our hands," and "taking part with us? Those who write are the missionaries at Constantinople, and they say expressly, in two different places in their pamphlet, (pp. 5 and 30,) that they speak throughout only of what concerns themselves and their station. But again, they speak of this intercommunion as if it had been a habit with me; whereas I never but once partook of the Communion in connection with Congregational missionaries in Turkey[...]

New issue of St Francis Magazine

Well, issue two of volume seven of St Francis Magazine has now come out. I'm not surprised it took a while longer than usual, given the tumult in the Middle East where several of the editors are. But that having been said, I'm really excited about several of the articles. Here they are, and let me share why I think they are worth your scrutiny. (Though let me admit that I have not yet read all of these, though I have read some of them.)

John Damascene in context: An Examination of “The Heresy of the Ishmaelites” with special consideration given to the Religious, Political, and Social Contexts during the Seventh and Eighth Century Arab Conquests, by D. Bryan Rhodes

I'm a big fan of church history, as long-time readers will know. I am looking forward to detailed analysis of the first documented commentary of a Christian on Islam.

What is the Qur’an? A Moroccan intellectual’s critique of the Qur’an’s ethical teachings, by Bassam M. Madany

Madany is a great source for translating and interpreting Arabic-language documents. Also, he's been doing ministry for longer than I've been alive.

‘Your swords do not concern me at all’: The liberation theology of Islamic Christianity, by Duane Alexander Miller

I love the idea of combining liberation theology and ex-Muslim Christians doing theology!

Enjoy the reading! And let me know what you think about the various articles.

--Abu Daoud

On the baptism of Muslims

As many of you know, I really enjoy reading St Francis Magazine. Yes, yes, I have published articles there in numerous occasions, but that is not the only reason why I like it.

I was looking over some older articles and I ran across this one by one Azar Ajaj, a Palestinian (ethnicity) Israeli (citizenship) evangelical (spirituality). I thought his article on the topic of Muslims seeking baptism was really good.

I especially enjoyed his explanation of how people from an Arab-Islamic background understand what they are asking for:

I want to pause for a moment here, and try to explore the meaning of baptism for a person coming specifically from Islam. For many people in the west, Islam is seen only as a religion. But as a person who has lived among Muslims for more than forty years, I can say that Islam is much more than that; it is described as ‘the best nation’, or khayra ummah in Arabic (Quran 3:110). Muslims consider themselves as a nation, a family with similar traditions and points of view . Ummah is related to the word umm in Arabic, which simply means mother. For a person to leave Islam is to leave his ‘mother’, ‘family’, nation. Or maybe it is better to say (as they [un-converted Muslims] understand it) to betray them.

How is this related to our case? Well, Islam is a religion that emphasizes the practice of rituals [...]

Don't you want to read more? Check out his entire article here: Baptism and the Muslim Convert to Christianity by Azar Ajaj.

Glorious Servants

One thing that is interesting about back in the sending country (note that I don't say being back home, I don't consider this home), is that you find rare people who really become your cheerleaders.

Like there is one old lady at a local church which is rather large and wealthy and she always gets our prayer requests and tries to get us an entrée to speak about our ministry in the ME, and yes, raise funds. She does not seem to be particularly dynamic in her personality, her emails don't end with dramatic Christian sign-off's like 'in Him' or whatever (not that I dislike those), and she doesn't appear to have a very deep knowledge of mission or the Bible or theology. But she is a big supporter, not in terms of her own funds, but in terms advocacy. Without people like her our work would not be possible.

The last six years have been extremely difficult. I sometimes wonder why I'm putting my family through all this. It is encouraging to find people like this unassuming, glorious sister who partner with us by using the resources they have at hand.

AD

Part XXII: Iranian Christianity

Part XXII: Iranian Christianity

by Abu Daoud
November 2010

That Muslims are converting to Christianity in numbers unprecedented throughout history comes as a (welcome) surprise to most Christians in the West. Every now and then I find someone who has heard about one of these movements, like the tens of thousands of Berbers in Algeria who in the last two decades have converted, or the hundreds each year who are baptized into the Catholic Church in countries like France and Italy. Or perhaps they have heard of the experimental laboratory that is Bangladesh, where there are groups of people who call themselves Christ-followers but don’t use the term Christian or Muslim to refer to themselves.

But one of the most numerically significant movements of Muslims to Christianity is among Iranians. I am not talking about people with Iranian citizenship who come from ethnic groups which are traditionally Christian (Armenians and Assyrians), but about the large ethnic group whose ancestors were Zoroastrians and slowly but surely, century by century converted to Islam. Today there are very few Zoroastrians left in Iran.

While I have spent most of the last five years in the Arab world, I have of course occasionally spent time in the US and the UK for multiple reasons—conferences, education, vacation, weddings, and so on. And during that time I have had the pleasure of meeting with many Iranian Christians. Some of them are brand new believers, just-baptized, some of them converted decades ago and are seasoned leaders in their churches. Some left Iran under favorable circumstances, while many left Iran as political, economic, or religious refugees. Some of them converted while still in Iran, some of them after their departure. I want to outline here a couple of things I have noticed about Iranian Christianity in the Diaspora.

First, this is a new church. If you have an Egyptian or Palestinian who comes to Christ, they are able to look back to their ancestry and say, ‘I had Christian ancestors, I’m returning to something ancient.’ And that can be important from a psychological and emotional point of view. Knowing that can bring them strength and encouragement. But Iranians never were Christians. So the churches they are forming and the sort of Christianity they are constructing is genuinely something brand new, and not simply a newer version of something ancient.

Second, Iranian Christianity preserves Iranian culture and identity. Iranians who become Christians tend to be critical of Islam to some extent. Many of them identify it with Arab culture and thus as something imported from afar, and ultimately something that degraded Persian culture. Most of their children have Persian names, and not Arabic ones. On the other hand, they continue to celebrate the Iranian New Year (Nowruz) with its rich traditions, because it is pre-Islamic.

Third, it is non-denominational. While these Christians by and large are evangelical and perhaps charismatic, there is no one denomination or Christian tradition that dominates the movement. On the plus side this means that Christians from many different churches and denominations are able to bring their ideas and spiritualities to the table. The down side is that personal differences among leaders can sometimes lead to divisions that probably did not need to happen. Over the years I have been in touch with Iranian Christians who are Anglican, Assemblies of God, Baptist, Catholic, Episcopal, Lutheran, Presbyterian, as well as some who don’t belong to any one denomination. In spite of all this diversity, the good news is that the churches and leaders tend to stay in touch and consult together by means of meetings, conferences, the web, and so on.

Fourth, Iranian Christianity is facing huge challenges. The most obvious one is persecution within Iran, but there are others too. How does one train leaders when it is impossible to open a seminary (in Iran)? How can churches and leaders remain accountable to each other when they belong to so many different denominations? Will the prosperity gospel lead to a bitter split among their churches? And what to do with the second generation, who are born in the West and perhaps feel more at home in a normal English- or German-speaking church?

Nonetheless, the story of Iranian Christianity is exciting and inspiring. We can now very realistically speak of hundreds of thousands of Iranian Christians around the world, and a substantial population in Iran itself. But as the church grows, opposition increases too. “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” Remember the Iranian Church in your prayers. It is the new-comer to global Christianity, but one with a lot of energy, but a lot of difficulties to face as well.

My Letter to the Pope

Hi All,

Well, I'm not sure he'll every actually read this, but I thought it was worth writing. My letter to the Pope on the topic of Catholic witness to Muslims can be downloaded at St Francis Magazine's website. Or just click HERE for the PDF.

Here is a sample:

The first reform I suggest is regarding Holy Scripture. One of
the most recurrent themes in conversion narratives of Muslims is
the reading of the Bible. Yet how many hundreds of thousands of
emigrants live throughout the West without access to the bible in
their own language? What if parishes in areas with significant
immigrant populations were told they had to have bibles available
in those languages--perhaps Arabic, Urdu, Farsi, Pashto, Turkish,
or something else? What if each sleepy Catholic parish became a
de facto source of distribution of Scripture? I am not talking about
proselytism, or even evangelism.

Please pass this on or link to it on your blog or website, especially if you are Catholic. Catholic mission to Muslims today is very weak, and it doesn't need to be like that.

--Abu Daoud