Did Muhammad Exist? The Qur'an was canonized in 1924...and other gems

Well, well. What can one say about Jay Smith? He's....a special fellow!

In this great video he gives us a great lecture summarizing the latest research about controversial topics: did Muhammad exist? Was Petra, not Mecca, the original qibla. Did Abd al Malik invent Muhammad? Why did the earliest mosques not face Arabia at all? How is it that sections of the Qur'an have been found that predate the alleged life of Muhammad?

Check it out. You will not be disappointed.

 

Christians in the Middle East

Middle East Call to Prayer
How did the area of the world known as the birthplace of civilization and later Christianity become a place so hostile to the followers of Jesus? Explore some of the history of Christianity in the Middle East, the current decline in Christian population and the glimmers of hope that are visible if you know where to look. And as you study the scenario from a spiritual perspective, use the prayer ideas to guide you as you talk to God about the Middle East.

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.

Turkey: a mixed bag for religious freedom

Turkey can be a difficult country to interpret. On the one hand, legal conversion there is possible and I very much appreciate that. On the other hand, the notions of identity there mean that anyone who leaves Islam is understood to have betrayed the Turkish people.

But here is a little bit of good news:

For almost a century, the bells of St. Giragos, a magnificent 14th-century church built of sturdy black basalt bricks, were silent.

Severely damaged during the 1915 massacre and deportation of local Christians, it stood roofless and abandoned for decades, a poignant reminder of the void left by the killing of its congregants.
Yet for several months now the tolling of bells can once again be heard emanating from the belfry and echoing through the city’s narrow alleyways and busy markets.

St. Giragos recently underwent an extensive $3 million dollar restoration that included a new roof, the reconstruction of all seven of its original altars—a unique feature for a church, which usually has just one—and the return of an iron bell to its belfry.

“Right now the bells are just symbolic,” said Arahim Demirciyen, an ethnic Armenian who rings the bells twice a day. “A priest is currently in training in the Armenian quarter in Jerusalem. When he finishes and arrives here we can also start holding regular weekly services.”

Well, God bless this small community, and may this church be willing to welcome believers in Christ from among the Turks and Kurds and not only the Armenians. From HERE.

Turkey to restore properties to Christian groups

Wow, and the good news for the Christians of Turkey does not cease. I recently posted on some good news HERE, and now we read this:

The Turkish government made a historic U-turn in state policy this past weekend, issuing an official decree inviting Turkey’s Christian and Jewish communities to reclaim their long-confiscated religious properties. [...] 

Within hours of the surprise announcement, the boards of Turkey’s minority religious foundations in Istanbul were scrambling to review the status of their confiscated immovable properties. They must apply within the next 12 months to the General Foundations Board to recover each individual property. 

Their former holdings include schools, churches, cemeteries, stores, hospitals, orphanages, houses, apartment buildings and factories that were seized by the Turkish state and re-registered as public or foundation properties. A number were later sold to third parties.

Read it all at CompassDirect, and good for Turkey. If you want to know more about the growth of the Protestant Church in Turkey, the best article I know of is James Bultema's article in IJFM, which you can read here.

Good news for Christians in Turkey

Turkish leaders smooth way for Christians

TURKEY The recently reelected Muslim prime minister of Turkey is making the country more comfortable for its Christian minority. Recep Tayyip Erdogan has granted Turkish citizenship to a number of young Eastern Orthodox bishops around the world. This makes the bishops eligible for leadership in the Patriarchate of Constantinople, currently run by 71-year-old Patriarch Bartholomew and an aging cohort. Erdogan's government has also allowed Christians to reclaim land they had lost illegally, restored old churches, and criticized ultranationalists responsible for recent violence against Christians.

From Christianity Today.

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[...]

Feb 21, 2011: More reflections on the Middle East

The developments in Egypt, and now Libya are really unprecedented. There was no way for anyone to expect this.

Well, let me qualify that. It has been known for some time that there was a demographic time bomb in many of these countries. You have several factors combining to create instability and revolution: a large population of young males who are largely a) unemployed, and b) unmarried. This always leads to instability, and now we have seen that boil to the surface, though, like I said, no one saw it coming right now and in this form.

In some ways, the self-immolation of the young Tunisian fruit-vender is what occasioned this whole series of revolutions. It is one of those small, obscure acts that parlayed itself into something much larger, like the assassination of a certain arch-duke.

But the real question is what does the future hold? A couple of points follow.

1) The Western press often stresses that the movements in Egypt and Tunisia had a lot of 'modern' or 'secular' people in them. To which I respond, who cares? What matters is coordination and organization. The Muslim Brotherhood has that. In Egypt, no one else does.

2) Islam and democracy are in esse incompatible. Islam is devoted to the imitation of the Prophet, who was totalitarian in his polity without any question. He consolidated all political, military, juridical, and religious authority into his own hands. Democracy, on the other hand, is based on a Judeo-Christian anthropology, and it seeks to spread power as widely as possible because it understands that humans in their sinfulness cannot be trusted with the totality of power.

3) Turkey. Everyone points to Turkey and says, see Islam and democracy can work! Sorry, but that is not quite right. The inspiration for Turkey's democracy was nationalism, not Islam. In fact, as Turkey has grown more Islamic in its polity, it is questionable to what extent democracy there can survive. Also, Turkey has undergone reforms in order to enter the EU. Tunisia and Egypt and Libya don't have that carrot dangling in front of them.

4) The foundational problems are not with regimes, but demographics, agriculture, and Islam. Too many children (especially in Egypt), too little arable land, and an Islamic society which, for whatever reason, is often tribalistic and nepotistic. A new regime, even a secular, democratic one, will not solve these problems.

5) Freedom. Ultimately, if people want freedom, they will have to find some other religion. Pure and simple. Not very PC. But there you have it.

So what does this all lead to? A struggle between nationalist kleptocratic militaries and Islamists. Not very much fun.

But let us pray. As Martin Luther said, 'Even the devil is God's devil.'

Abu Daoud

Austrian MP sick of Turkish hypocrisy

Wow, so at least some Europeans are aware of the reality.

The Apex of Islamic Civilization? Not really...

The greatest Turkish architect and mosque builder was the brilliant Sinan (1489-1588), who was born a Greek Christian, and who learned his engineering skills while a janissary. A former Christian used a former Byzantine church [the Hagia Sophia] as the model for the glorious mosques that awed visitors to Turkey and are today seen as the apex of Islamic civilization.

Jenkins in The Lost History of Christianity, p 194

Growth of the Protestant Church in Turkey

There is a great new article in the Spring edition of the International Journal of Frontier Mission by James Bultema, who has done some very interesting research on the Protestant Church in Turkey. There were two large growth spurts and this is how he accounts for them:

During these four and half decades [1960-2005], you see one period—from 1988 to 1994—that towers over other periods with respect to the growth rate. The reason for that spike in growth is quite simple: the New Testament in modern Turkish was printed and distributed, beginning in mid 1987. We had another spike from 2000-2002, and that is because the whole Bible in modern Turkish was first printed and distributed at the beginning of that period. (Bultema 2010: 28)

Check it all out over at www.ijfm.org.

Peter Pikkert on The Great Experiment

This is also from the most recent issue of St Francis Magazine, which has some tantalizing articles. The Great Experiment was the primary missionary effort to the Muslim world for over two centuries and in this book review its main idea is outlined. I have read the book and it is quite good. If you don't feel like reading the entire book at least check out the book review over at SFM.

Anyway, a quote from Miller's review of Pikkert's book "Protestant Missionaries in the Middle East":

His main target is the so-called Great Experiment. When Protestant missionaries arrived in the area in the early 1800’s they soon decided that direct evangelization of local Muslims was too dangerous and difficult; thus was born the Great Experiment, whereby missionaries would revive what they saw as the moribund churches of the land—whether Maronite, Armenian, Greek Orthodox, Coptic, or what have you. These churches would be resurrected in the image of Western Protestant evangelicalism with all its iconoclastic and individualistic trappings. In other words, they were largely ambassadors of their culture—even to the other Christians. So schools, orphanages, clinics, printing presses and hospitals were all established, mostly with the aim of reviving the Christian communities. Pikkert argues that this behavior was suspicious to the local rulers, making their communities highly visible when they had managed to survive over the centuries largely by not being auspicious. Consequentially the various genocides and mass emigrations from the Middle East and Asia Minor over the centuries can be attributed, at least in part, to this misguided Great Experiment.

Not only that, the Great Experiment quite clearly did not work. While it did result eventually in the founding of Protestant churches composed mostly of OBP’s (Orthodox-background Protestants), it should not be surprising to anyone that even these Westernized Christians had little interest after centuries of mistrust and isolation in suddenly flinging wide the gates of the churches to Turkish and Arab Muslims converts.

TV shows cause controversy in the Arab world

Very insightful article here from the IHT. TV is huge during Ramadan because people will stay inside most of the day just lounging around until iftar, when the fast breaks in the evening.

A segment:

The recent controversy over soap opera-style serials suggests that the Arab authorities, whether religious, tribal or political, are anxious about the extraordinary public reach of such muselselaat and their power to challenge accepted ideas or traditions.

Perhaps the best example is "Noor," the popular Turkish series that ran over the summer. The show violated Arab cultural taboos in a number of ways: besides having Muslim characters who drank wine with dinner and had premarital sex, a cousin of the male protagonist, Muhannad, had an abortion.

Perhaps more important, Muhannad treats his wife as an equal and supports her career as a fashion designer.

The show and the liberties it displayed prompted unusual condemnations from hard-line clerics throughout the Middle East, including Sheik Abdul Aziz al-Asheik, Saudi Arabia's leading cleric, who issued an instruction that Muslims should not watch it.

Achmed Kalfa: Martyr, Saint, Convert from Islam

2. Saint Martyr Achmed Kalfa, +1682 (3/16 May).

Achmed, àlso a Turk, lived in Istanbul 150 years before saint Konstantin and, in contrast the latter, he was comfortably off, occupied a significant government post and at moment of converting he was middle-aged.

He had a Russian slave concubine. Achmed magnanimously allowed her to attend Christian Church and he had noticed her particular gracious changes occurring every time her came from the liturgy. Interested in this, he had expressed to the priest his wish to attend the liturgy during the service of Patriarch, and, of course, he had got such an opportunity. As a distinguished guest he had got a special place.

And so during a liturgy this moslem official suddenly had seen that when Patriarch blessed people, his trikiri and fingers irradiated and rays beamed on the heads of all christians, and only its own chapter remained empty. Astonished with such a miracle, Achmed had expressed a desire to be immediately baptized, and this sacrament was secretly perfected on him.

The martyr remains for some time a secret christian. This phenomenon has its justification in Holy Scripture too: 2 Kings 5:17-19, Jn 3. What was happening with hime during this period is not reported. It is possibly that his love to her, who guided his converting to Church, now, in a unity of faith, became immeasurably finest and empyrean. Perphps the saint had for this period several meatings with a spiritual father in Church, where he was baptized, for edification in Law of Christ.

And so he continued until once during a meeting officials did start to argue about better decision.

When queue run up Achmed, and have asked his opinion, he unexpectedly for all aloud has declared:

- A Christian faith is better.

- Are You a christian? - has asked with smile one of the sitting officer.

- Yes, I am a Christian. - slowly, peacefully and audibly has answered the saint and smile climb down on face of asking...

And saint Achmed has endured all and had underwent a martyr's death on May 3 1682.

From HERE.

Part XVIII: Islam and Democracy

Part XVIII: Islam and Democracy
by Abu Daoud
June 18, 2008

Presently there exists in a large and important Middle Eastern country an effort to introduce democratic government. Indeed many of the people express a desire for greater freedom, and one might think that this would go hand in hand with some form of representative democracy, wherein no one party has all power and sides are forced to compromise and accommodate differing view points.

What is missing from this calculation is the fact that Islam is religion plus, as I pointed out in Parts IV and V of this series. Not only does it come with a complete set of ritual and doctrinal elements, it also presents a complete economic model (coming soon to a city near you in the form of Islamic banking, which is growing robustly) and a fairly detailed political model that does not include elements or practices traditionally associated with democracy at all.

At the heart of the Islamic polity is the Caliphate. The Arabic verb khalafa means “he succeeded” or “came after”, so a caliph (khaliifa) is the successor in any given office or position. When we speak of an Islamic Caliphate we are talking about the person who succeeds Muhammad. The office has been around for a very long time and is subject to the creative permutations of history: at times there have been more than one caliph, the process for the selection of a caliphate has varied from appointment by tribal elders to hereditary succession to seizure by military coup. At times the caliph has been an extremely important, pious and influential person, at other times he was a debauched pawn of his generals. Also, caliphs have come from numerous ethnicities: Arab, Persian, Albanian, Turkish, Kurdish, Mongol, and so on. Some were Shi’a and some were Sunni. Their capitals ranged from Iberia to Arabia to Asia Minor then over to Southern Asia.

The original division between Sunni and Shi’a Islam was in fact regarding how the caliph should be chosen—by marriage into the Prophet’s family (Muhammad had no sons who survived into adulthood—a great dishonor in Arab culture) or by consultation of the leaders of the Islamic community. The caliphate was dissolved in 1924 by Kemal Ataturk who desired to found a secular nation in Asia Minor (Turkey), and the vast territories of the (Turkish) Ottoman Empire were transferred from Islamic Imperialism to the hands of European Imperialism.

In theory, the Caliph rules over all of the Umma (the Islamic Nation) and his authority respects no national boundaries (which in themselves are theoretically un-Islamic). By virtue of his inheriting the authority of Muhammad his power is at once religious and civil, spiritual and military. He is the one who has the authority to declare an offensive jihaad to aggregate lands and peoples into the Umma until, as Muhammad said, “all religion is for Allah.”

There are today efforts to reinstate the office of the Caliph, but this is probably a pipe-dream. No sovereign nation state will cede power to such a person. Also, the ethnic divisions among Muslims are extraordinarily strong and it is hard to see Nigerians and Albanians, Arabs and Persians, Sunnis and Shi’as agreeing on one person to hold the office. This is the case even for a solely Sunni Caliphate. But it is what it is: the official Islamic form of government and rule according to the sharii’a.

Democracy is, on the other hand, profoundly un-Islamic. The concept of conferring equal decision-making power on men and women, on rich and poor, on pious and wicked—it sounds as bizarre to many Muslims today as it did to Christians in the middle ages. In some ways democracy is in fact anti-Islamic, for Islam seeks to locate all power and authority in the hands of one person who represents the one god, just as Allah is unitarian in his person, so authority is unitarian in nature and is entrusted to one person. Moreover, the democratic impetus to divide power is related to the Christian concept that all humans have a nature corrupted by sin, thus making no one person capable of the unbearable load of absolute power. Compare this to Islam wherein Allah may, as he pleases, grant a person immunity to sin (as he has with the prophets), and wherein sin is understood as a lapse occasioned (probably) by ignorance.

If democracy were to succeed in the Arab Muslim world (something which I think over the long term is unlikely) it would entail a very strong suppression of the traditional Islamic voices who know very well that Islam and democracy have nothing in common. People mention countries like Malaysia and Turkey as examples that Islam and democracy can go hand in hand, but the coming decades will prove them wrong, if recent events are any indicator.

Ziya Meral: Bearing the Silence

Excellent article here from a Muslim-background believer (MBB) in Turkey. Please do read it all, but here is one section:

Bearing the Silence

I must admit, I am no heavenly man! Unlike most other Muslim-background believers, there is nothing supernatural to tell about how I came in touch with Christians or decided to be one.

On the contrary, I went to an old Anglican church with some friends because of an article about it in a local Turkish newspaper, which accused it of luring young people to become Christians by offering them wine, 100 U.S. dollars every Sunday, and the possibility of marrying a young British woman.

I was 17 years old when I had to face my family and relatives about my decision to be a follower of Jesus. I remember vividly how fearful I was, and how isolated and alone I felt as I lay in the fetal position in a sleeping bag on a friend's floor.

I am still broke, sober, and single after all these years, and I still struggle with shame, loneliness, and fear.

[...] More Christians are killed than are saved from execution at the last minute. More Christians stay locked in prison, beaten and tortured, than are able to walk free, guided by miraculous escape plans. More Christians suffer lifelong deprivation of their most basic civic and economic rights. More converts from Islam give up their faith than stay Christians, and those who remain in the church struggle with lifelong battles with shame, depression, and isolation, caused by the loss of ties to their families, communities, and nations.

Above all, for the average persecuted Christian, there are unanswered prayers and the absence of peace, strength, courage, and joy. Their humanness in a very earthly plot line finds no place in our modern-day obsession with heroic stories with victorious resolutions. [...]

HUGE NEWS: Turkey in radical revision of Islamic texts

Wow, things are happening these days! First the stufff about those ancient texts from Yemen that they are working on in Germany. Now this. This is news. It is exciting. God bless them. Maybe I was wrong, maybe Islam can modernize and be reformed...Alhamdulillah!

Turkey in radical revision of Islamic texts

Turkey is preparing to publish a document that represents a revolutionary reinterpretation of Islam - and a controversial and radical modernisation of the religion.

The country's powerful Department of Religious Affairs has commissioned a team of theologians at Ankara University to carry out a fundamental revision of the Hadith, the second most sacred text in Islam after the Koran.

The Hadith is a collection of thousands of sayings reputed to come from the Prophet Muhammad.

As such, it is the principal guide for Muslims in interpreting the Koran and the source of the vast majority of Islamic law, or Sharia.

But the Turkish state has come to see the Hadith as having an often negative influence on a society it is in a hurry to modernise, and believes it responsible for obscuring the original values of Islam.

It says that a significant number of the sayings were never uttered by Muhammad, and even some that were need now to be reinterpreted.

'Reformation'

Commentators say the very theology of Islam is being reinterpreted in order to effect a radical renewal of the religion.

Its supporters say the spirit of logic and reason inherent in Islam at its foundation 1,400 years ago are being rediscovered. Some believe it could represent the beginning of a reformation in the religion.

Turkish officials have been reticent about the revision of the Hadith until now, aware of the controversy it is likely to cause among traditionalist Muslims, but they have spoken to the BBC about the project, and their ambitious aims for it.

The forensic examination of the Hadiths has taken place in Ankara University's School of Theology.

An adviser to the project, Felix Koerner, says some of the sayings - also known individually as "hadiths" - can be shown to have been invented hundreds of years after the Prophet Muhammad died, to serve the purposes of contemporary society.

"Unfortunately you can even justify through alleged hadiths, the Muslim - or pseudo-Muslim - practice of female genital mutilation," he says.

"You can find messages which say 'that is what the Prophet ordered us to do'. But you can show historically how they came into being, as influences from other cultures, that were then projected onto Islamic tradition."

The argument is that Islamic tradition has been gradually hijacked by various - often conservative - cultures, seeking to use the religion for various forms of social control.

Leaders of the Hadith project say successive generations have embellished the text, attributing their political aims to the Prophet Muhammad himself.

Revolutionary

Turkey is intent on sweeping away that "cultural baggage" and returning to a form of Islam it claims accords with its original values and those of the Prophet.

But this is where the revolutionary nature of the work becomes apparent. Even some sayings accepted as being genuinely spoken by Muhammad have been altered and reinterpreted.

Prof Mehmet Gormez, a senior official in the Department of Religious Affairs and an expert on the Hadith, gives a telling example.

"There are some messages that ban women from travelling for three days or more without their husband's permission and they are genuine.

"But this isn't a religious ban. It came about because in the Prophet's time it simply wasn't safe for a woman to travel alone like that. But as time has passed, people have made permanent what was only supposed to be a temporary ban for safety reasons."

The project justifies such bold interference in the 1,400-year-old content of the Hadith by rigorous academic research.

Prof Gormez points out that in another speech, the Prophet said "he longed for the day when a woman might travel long distances alone".

So, he argues, it is clear what the Prophet's goal was.

Original spirit

Yet, until now, the ban has remained in the text, and helps to restrict the free movement of some Muslim women to this day.

As part of its aggressive programme of renewal, Turkey has given theological training to 450 women, and appointed them as senior imams called "vaizes".

They have been given the task of explaining the original spirit of Islam to remote communities in Turkey's vast interior.

One of the women, Hulya Koc, looked out over a sea of headscarves at a town meeting in central Turkey and told the women of the equality, justice and human rights guaranteed by an accurate interpretation of the Koran - one guided and confirmed by the revised Hadith.

She says that, at the moment, Islam is being widely used to justify the violent suppression of women.

"There are honour killings," she explains.

"We hear that some women are being killed when they marry the wrong person or run away with someone they love.

"There's also violence against women within families, including sexual harassment by uncles and others. This does not exist in Islam... we have to explain that to them."

'New Islam'

According to Fadi Hakura, an expert on Turkey from Chatham House in London, Turkey is doing nothing less than recreating Islam - changing it from a religion whose rules must be obeyed, to one designed to serve the needs of people in a modern secular democracy.

He says that to achieve it, the state is fashioning a new Islam.

"This is kind of akin to the Christian Reformation," he says.

"Not exactly the same, but if you think, it's changing the theological foundations of [the] religion. "

Fadi Hakura believes that until now secularist Turkey has been intent on creating a new politics for Islam.

Now, he says, "they are trying to fashion a new Islam."

Significantly, the "Ankara School" of theologians working on the new Hadith have been using Western critical techniques and philosophy.

They have also taken an even bolder step - rejecting a long-established rule of Muslim scholars that later (and often more conservative) texts override earlier ones.

"You have to see them as a whole," says Fadi Hakura.

"You can't say, for example, that the verses of violence override the verses of peace. This is used a lot in the Middle East, this kind of ideology.

"I cannot impress enough how fundamental [this change] is."

The Unorthodox Patriarch

Great article here on the state of the Orthodox Patriarchate in Constantinople, which is probably on the verge of extinction. Also, he is coming out with a new book and there is some info about it here. Please do read it, it's not very long.

The Unorthodox Patriarchate

The faith returns to Turkey

Two great articles from CT here and here on the return of the Christian faith to Turkey. I also will mention that I know a former Muslim who pastors a small church there and that some progress is indeed being made. Here are some quotes from both articles:

Few nations have as rich a Christian history as Turkey. This is where Paul founded some of the earliest churches, including the church at Ephesus. Seven churches in this region were addressed in the Book of Revelation. Those in the early monastic movement found the caves of Cappadocia a near-perfect place to live out lives of prayer. Constantinople, now the city of Istanbul, became the capital of the Roman Empire just as it was being Christianized, and the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople has been the leader of worldwide Orthodoxy for centuries.

But Christianity came under Islamic rule in Turkey in 1453 and steadily declined for centuries; the last 100 years have been the worst. In 1900, the Christian population was 22 percent. Now most experts estimate that there are fewer than 200,000 Christians nationwide, comprising less than 0.3 percent of the population.

[snip]

"When a Turkish Kurd becomes a Christian, it ruins his whole life," Mattix says. "The family cuts the Christian off, and he loses opportunities for marriage and jobs through the family network."

"As we create a larger church, we are creating a church family and this softens the blow," Mattix says. Pastor Kaan Koryurek of Besiktas Protestant Church in Istanbul says more resources are needed. "The church should be ready to help them, but we don't do it like we should. It is a big problem. We need to provide a home for people."

[snip]

In 1999, the Izmit earthquake, which killed 17,000 and left 800,000 homeless, led Christian agencies to start new relief work, and they eventually began working alongside independent Christian fellowships. These fellowships, along with new growth in traditional Orthodox congregations, have created a 3 percent annual growth in the country's Christian population, about three times Turkey's overall population growth rate.

[snip]

Thirty years later, the church started by new believers has achieved new maturity and public acceptance. The independent Turkish church now comprises almost 100 congregations and more than 100 house fellowships.

Turkish Christians of Muslim backgrounds have anchored the leadership of the church around their own new identity—and by portraying Jesus Christ as a Turk. This helps resolve a crucial conflict in Turkish minds, that only Muslims can be truly "Turkish."