I have a good friend named Ibrahim. He is a North African refugee and he works as a guard and compound manager at my home just outside the refugee camp. Nineteen years ago Ibrahim was a younger man living back in his home village across the border. One day his community was celebrating a traditional ceremony and everyone was gathered in the open, singing, dancing and eating together. And then the army showed up. Whether because of their skin color or the fact that too many of their young men had started joining the rebels in their ongoing resistance movement, Ibrahim always tells this story by saying “And that was the day that the war first came to our home.”
The government soldiers surrounded the village firing guns into the air and shouting “Allah hu akbar!” Even though Ibrahim and the entire village were in fact Muslims too, the soldiers rounded everyone together in a central place – men, women and children. They then pulled community leaders out of the terrified crowd – sheikhs, umdahs, prominent men – and bound them with ropes to trees. And then they executed them, either with a bullet to the head or a knife across the throat.
Ibrahim was only a young husband and father at that time, not the respected grandfather and elder that he is now, and he survived that day. But his much loved older brother Ayoub did not. Ibrahim fled his home soon after, vowing that if what he had seen and experienced was of Islam, then he would no longer have any part of it. He headed North and began living with other displaced people in a safer town.
It was here that he first came into contact with Christians. There was a small church made up of other displaced peoples from a neighboring tribe. Ibrahim began slipping into the back of their meetings on Sundays and leaving before the service ended. He didn’t speak their language, but he began learning. The words I heard were sweet, he says now. The words I heard were true. Eventually he stayed all the way to the end of the service and some of the church leadership struck up a conversation with him. Over the next few months and years, Ibrahim’s language skills deepened as did his relationships with the Christian community. Eventually, Ibrahim committed to becoming a follower of Jesus, becoming the first Christian from his sub-tribe of over 20,000 people (there were several other believers from the single other sub-tribe).
Today, in a refugee camp of almost 50,000 people who have fled the oppression of the same government that attacked Ibrahim’s village 19 years ago, Ibrahim is a respected church leader in his small local church, and four generations of his family fill the log pews. Many young men look to him as an example, a person who was willing to choose another way even when it went against tradition and propriety.
When a lot of people hear Ibrahim’s story, their response is often horror and indignation. How can Muslims do such awful things in the name of God? How can Islam allow such atrocities? The questions are fair to say the least. I never knew the deep evil of religious extremism as personally as I do now that I live next door to its victims. But if you look closely, you will see that there are two kinds of Muslims in Ibrahim’s story. And the narrative of the first kind – the kind that raids a village firing guns and shouting “God is Great!” – is told a lot these days and it is disproportionately loud, bloated with fear and horror. The narrative of the second kind of Muslim is harder to find; it is whispered under all the chaos of 24-hour news feeds and hysteria-inducing blips on social media. But the whisper is powerful. And it is deeply, shockingly true.
The whisper speaks of Muslims like Ibrahim and so many others like him. Men and women who are honest, courageous, and hospitable beyond belief. They are the kind of Muslims that are so eager to have a relationship with God that they meet him in prayer five times a day and devote an entire month of the year to fasting. And sometimes, they are the kind of Muslims who will learn a whole new language to simply hear more about him. Sometimes they will risk losing everything – family, community, respect, their very lives, to devote themselves to Him. They are the kind of Muslims, that, when given half an introduction to Jesus, turn out to be some of his most devoted followers.
I sometimes get the impression that the world thinks that the comfortable, free, middle-class, Christian West is the greatest victim of Islamic extremism. But the truth is that Muslims are in fact the greatest victim of Islamic extremism. More Muslims are killed by terrorists than anyone else, by a long shot. (According to a report published in 2011 by the US Government’s National Counter-Terrorism Center, Muslims account for between 82% and 97% of the victims of terrorism). So for those of us who are deeply concerned about terrorism in the world today, and who bear little risk of ever actually being killed by a terrorist, perhaps the best thing we can do in this world of fear and violence is to reach out with love to radical Islam’s greatest victims: Muslims.
Because you see, people like Ibrahim are eager for a relationship with God. But so many of them have never met a follower of Jesus. Ever. They live in villages that have no churches, healthy or unhealthy. They speak languages into which the Bible has never been translated, not that they could read it even if it was. And they are so often victims of a radicalized form of the only path they have ever known to reach God. But they are ready. And they are open. They have just never heard.
So the next time you see that horrible story on the news, instead of spending energy being angry and afraid and disgusted by terrible people who do terrible things, think about people like Ibrahim instead. Pray for them and then do something. Help make sure their first encounter with Christianity is not just another politicized religion so reminiscent of the very one they are running from, but is instead the true Gospel of Jesus.
The author of this blog is a missionary in North Africa with Pioneer Bible Translators. She, along with her husband and three little girls, lives on the outskirts of a refugee camp working to facilitate disciple-making, Bible translation and mother tongue literacy among two least-reached Muslim groups. Her favorite things about North Africa include drinking scalding hot mint tea, wearing colorful tobes, watching her daughters play on ant hills, and hearing people’s stories. Her least favorite things include rats in the kitchen and dry season dust storms.
