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, a Christian community center for Chicago’s Hindu and Muslim populations, and co-edited The Gospel for Islam: Reaching Muslims in North America.

Q:How would you gauge evangelicals’ interest and involvement in Muslim outreach since 9/11?
A: The average evangelical is like the average American. The American public is hungry for information, trying to make sense of a world in which violence has come to our own doorstep. We live in an information age; what we want is information, not necessarily action.

It takes an awful lot for a person who is scared of evangelism to outreach to a person with another culture. There are huge emotional hurdles to overcome. I don’t think a lot of us are willing to cross those cultural barriers because it’s so strange, so foreign. Evangelism is difficult—particularly if the church is in a fortress mentality.

Q: Are Muslims more open to Christianity or more on their guard?
A: I would not say huge numbers of Muslims are running to churches. The war on terrorism and resurgence of fundamentalist Islam may be pushing many more into a nominal state. They don’t want anything to do with religion because all it means is conflict and they want to live in peace. I’ve heard secular Muslims say, ‘It’s my heritage, but it has nothing to do with me.’

Some Muslims are thoroughly embarrassed and want to distance themselves from conservative Islam. They’ve gotten rid of their Islamic dress and have put on Western clothes to try to identify with Western society. They don’t want to stick out for fear of reprisals against them. Many feel they need to justify they are decent human beings, not terrorists, and that they do not side with this type of people. A lot of Imams in North America and other religious zealots look at this as a golden opportunity to propagate Islam.

Q: How are Muslims evangelizing in North America these days?
A: In the universities, Muslim student associations have gone from Muslim awareness-raising in one week per academic year, to almost weekly public forums to discuss Islam. A lot of their tactic is to attack Christianity and particularly the Bible. Muslims say, ‘We have the perfect text, it has been proclaimed and transmitted in the same language since its beginning.’ The nominal Christian student will not look at this message with a critical spirit because of the religious pluralism we live in today. Everyone and every religion is considered good.

Q: What should evangelicals do about this trend on campuses?
A: Campus groups need to go to these Muslim student meetings and counter a lot of the false propaganda. If there’s no evangelical Christian there to say, ‘That’s not at all what we believe, that’s a twisting of scripture,’ the naïve university student will be unaware that they’re getting the wool pulled over their eyes.

The question is whether we can get campus groups to catch the vision. Right now their focus is to reach those who are open—Asian foreign students. Their focus needs to include another need—exposing lies. Churches that outreach to campuses need to do the same thing.

We can get material or experts to help train people to counter this type of propaganda. Two Web sites are very helpful tools- and .

Q: How can Western Christians be more effective in their Muslim outreach?
A: There are two things that North Americans are not supposed to talk about—politics and religion. We have swallowed our culture’s lie that we can’t talk about religion without conflict. So many of us Christians have gone clandestine. Even in developing friendships we are afraid to bring up God and religion.

First, we need to live our Christian life openly and unashamedly, calling people into our “God-walk,” how we live our world with God at the center. Then we are not attacking one religion against another, but doing what Matthew 5:16 says, “Let your light shine…” Be bold as a Christian and realize that your behavior needs to conform to Christ and not what is expedient.

Second, we have to get away from our ethnocentric racist attitudes and reach out to the foreigner and stranger in our midst. Whenever I openly speak about my relationship with God or pray about people’s needs, they are surprised to find a white person who has a theocentric point of view. It opens all kinds of doors for me to share about Christ. In the Muslim worldview the two things you always talk about are politics and religion. When I talk about God and my relationship to God, it fits their worldview very naturally.

Third, we have to get rid of our unquestionable support of Israel. Human rights issues in the Middle East entail violations on both sides. Retaliation for whatever reason continues the cycle of violence. We shouldn’t let our understanding of God’s chosen people hinder our relationships with Muslims.

If we can just unashamedly live our Christian life, openly love the strangers in our midst and call evil evil, we’ll go along way in witnessing with Muslims.

September 6, 2002