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The Stealth Crusade
A Columbia, SC university gives its students a goal: to wipe out Islam
By Barry Yeoman
Page 5 of 6
In other cases, she adds, evangelicals provoked so much resentment "that the other groups doing aid had to pull out, simply because it was too dangerous."
Derr and others note that there is another model for missionary work, one followed by many mainline Christians: serving those in need without actively recruiting new believers. For example, Catholic Relief Services delivers food and blankets to Afghanistan, builds drinking-water systems in Morocco, and promotes small-business development among Egyptian women -- all without trying to recruit Muslims to Catholicism.
"We reflect our beliefs in our actions, in our relations, in our respect for people," says Ken Hackett, the agency's director. "We don't ask even our own staff to convert. If you're a good Muslim, you're a good Muslim."
Rick Love admits that some evangelical groups "are unwise in how they share their faith." But even if it takes some stretching of the truth, he adds, it would be wrong to ignore the call to share the Word. "That is what the Bible teaches," he says, "so I could never be part of an organization that focuses on deed only."
As Love sees it, the lack of religious freedom in many Islamic countries forces missionaries to conceal their intentions. "I want the freedom to share my faith with you and not be persecuted," he says, "and I want you to have the same with me. It should be a matter of persuasion, and not political power."
Doubly dangerous assignmentsOn the last day of the "winterim" session, things turn decidedly somber in Love's classroom. It's the lesson in which the instructor reminds his students that their work can have dire -- even deadly -- consequences for the people they try to convert. He refers to Curry and Mercer, the two Americans who were airlifted from a Taliban prison two months earlier.
"What happened with Dayna and Heather is not typical," he says. "We do have people imprisoned, but usually you're asked to leave. We get a ticket out of the country -- but the new believers, what do they face? Loss of job, children taken away, imprisonment, torture, even martyrdom."
Of all the criticisms launched at Christian evangelists, this is the one that's least disputed: Missionary work often puts local believers in serious danger. "It is common for mission agencies to be expelled from countries awash with persecution," reports an internal study by the Southern Baptist Convention based on 300 interviews in 45 countries. "Virtually overnight, local believers are left destitute and exposed." The study cites Indonesia, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, and Pakistan as particularly repressive. In one East African community, it reports, converts were "systematically hunted down and martyred by adherents to Islam. Other believers are displaced; they live in refugee camps; they reside in adjacent countries, or in the West."
The common thread among the victims? "All those martyred had a relationship to expatriate Christians that contributed to their deaths." In another country unnamed in the report, "significant numbers of Muslim-background believers were arrested and tortured due to their relationship to the expatriate missionary."
Tahir Lavi converted to Christianity during secret midnight Bible-study sessions at a madrassah in Kashmir where he was studying the Koran. His parents disowned him, and he was forced to flee after a group of men threatened to kill him. For the past 13 years, he has lived in exile in a small house at the end of a narrow lane in a north Delhi slum. But despite the risks, he continues to preach to other Muslims, exhorting them in the words of Jesus: "Take up your cross and follow me."
Indeed, evangelical leaders encourage missionaries to continue proselytizing, even though converts might be tortured or killed.
"Missionaries need maturity and spiritual toughness so that when the fruits of their witness are required to walk through the fire, the missionary does not automatically attempt to rescue them," the Southern Baptist study urges. "Persecution is Biblically and historically normative for the emerging church; it cannot be avoided or eliminated. . .To avoid persecution is to hamper the growth of the kingdom of God."
In the end, say evangelicals, the earthly suffering of Christians pales before the eternal hell to which Muslims are sentenced.
"It's hard for me to say, "I have a passport out of here if things get out of hand, but you have to stay here and take it,'" says Raymond Weiss, a former missionary in Bahrain. "But that's what Jesus says: Sometimes it will be fathers and mothers against each other for his sake. If Jesus is cosmically, ultimately true, then whatever cost in this world is nothing."
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