Via Jihad Watch's Raymond Ibrahim comes this must-see video from the Arabic-language satellite TV station Al-Haya (Life TV). Al-Haya is, as Ibrahim describes it, a Christian missionary TV station aimed at converting Muslims. Ibrahim doesn't mention where it is based, perhaps deliberately. I would guess in the U.S., but it would be entirely understandable if the location were kept secret. The two hosts of the show "Daring Question," known only by their first names, take telephone calls from Muslims around the world about Islam and Christianity.
In this Youtube clip, subtitled in English, they receive a call from a Moroccan woman named Sana, calling from the UK. Sana has come to believe that Christianity is true but is terrified lest her husband find out, because she believes he will divorce her and take her children away from her. She cannot lose her children, she feels, and she wants her children to be Christians, too. The hosts pray for her and with her over the phone.
The news that all of this is going on is simultaneously moving, sobering, and uplifting. It is sobering in part because, while Sana might simply be uninformed about her rights under British law, it is also possible that her husband would find some speciously plausible way to claim that she had "agreed" to arbitration of a divorce by sharia, in which case she might very well lose her children, just as she fears.
But it is uplifting to learn about this missionary effort. All of us who are worried about the Islamic threat to America have our ideas about what should be done--banning Muslim immigration, a jihad sedition law. But we also know that nobody is going to listen to these ideas. And this can lead to a feeling of helplessness. The men who host these shows are not helpless. They know that they have God on their side, and they are fighting Islam in the power of the Holy Ghost, converting one soul at a time.
Comments (3)
The video was very touching. Sana's situation appears almost surreal, really. Listening to her frightened, quivering voice was heartbreaking, and those hosts were wonderfully understanding and soothing for her.
You're right that the men who host these shows aren't helpless. And neither are we--we can pray for her too.
Thank you for the post.
(I surfed the sight after watching the video and read the biography on David Horowitz. Seems that God certainly worked on him as well. Growing up with two communist parents, yet embracing conservatism while still relatively young is a feat in itself.)
Posted by lauran | October 25, 2008 10:47 PM
It's interesting how much in demand Mel Gibson's, The Passion of the Christ was in the Muslim world.
It's been my fervent wish for some time that missionaries would begin to nibble at the edges of Islam. As we see Christianity growing by leaps and bounds in Africa, Muslims are ripe for conversion.
It's a little ironic that Christianity which was rather easily supplanted with a "simpler" religion in 600 AD in certain regions, has become the much simpler religion to follow now and would make great inroads into Islam if it gets the chance.
Posted by mark butterworth | October 26, 2008 2:39 AM
I am a secular person and I have had many criticisms of many of the widely held views of the Judeo-Christian culture and epistemological differences with the belief systems in general (Though I have a great admiration of Jews and the Israeli state as they are often slandered and attacked for being ethical, practical and successful - people who hate these qualities are often the greatest antisemites.)
So while I would not normally be rooting for the Christian missionary movement to convert the world, especially given that many of the most zealous missionary groups are often the ones who adhere to an Old Testament, tribal Jewish version of the faith, I am certainly rooting for Christianity to spread in the Muslim world. Islam's treatment of apostates, its intrinsic inequalities before the law for women and for people of different religions and its complete lack of separation between religion and state make honest and informed incompatible with modern civilized society. A fundamentalist Christian world would not be pleasant for secularists but it would be far more livable than anything Shariah could offer.
The nature of the issue makes reliable statistics and evidence difficult to obtain but it seems to me that Christianity is gaining momentum in the Muslim world and much of the effort is being taken up by former Muslims (Muslim background believes as some missionaries call them). This means that issues like apostasy and oppression and violence against Christian converts will be an increasingly relevant issue. The more Muslims who convert, the more pressure hardliners will put on politicians in the Islamic world to do something to stop the conversions. If the politicians don't act, terrorism and mob justice will increasingly be resorted to by certain elements among the most zealous Islamic believers. None of this will slow Christianity in the Muslim world - it would likely accelerate - it but it is not going to be good for anyone in the short term.
Also, fertility rates are dropping across the world and while they are still higher in the most Muslim nations than in the West and industrialized Asia, they are lower than the primarily Christian sub-Saharan African nations. Islam is running on borrowed time.
Posted by Saul Wall | November 15, 2008 12:41 PM