The unseen Arab revolution

(Listen to an audio version of this post at http://media1.imbresources.org/files/146/14622/14622-81159.mp3)

Some revolutions play out for all the world to see. Others unfold behind the scenes.

Both types of change are rippling through the Arab world.

It’s been a year since massive demonstrations began Jan. 25, 2011, in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, ultimately toppling longtime Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak. In the days before and after that turning point, nearly every country in the region experienced social and political shifts of greater or lesser magnitude.

It started in Tunisia, where the first uprising of what would become the “Arab Spring” began in December 2010 after a young protester burned himself to death. The old authoritarian regime there has been replaced by a democratically elected one, dominated by Islamic political parties promising moderation.

Things are a lot murkier in Egypt, but a similar result seems likely — if the military-backed caretaker government hands over power after elections are completed later this year. Parties representing Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and the even more conservative Salafists won the majority of seats in the new parliament.

In Syria, the collision of a protest movement and a long-ruling regime determined to crush it is mutating into civil war. In Libya, the civil war is over and a dictator is dead. What happens next is unclear, but secularists and returning Libyan exiles hope to share power with Islamists as they build a new society from the ground up. Turmoil in Yemen rages on as the long rule of President Ali Abdullah Saleh staggers to an end. Other movements for change continue in Bahrain, Morocco, Jordan and elsewhere.

“The political uprisings that have swept the Arab world over the past year represent the most significant challenge to authoritarian rule since the collapse of Soviet communism,” declared Freedom House, the human rights monitoring group, in an introduction to its just-released annual survey of global political freedom. “Yet even as the Arab Spring triggered unprecedented progress in some countries, it also provoked a harsh and sometimes murderous reaction, with many leaders scrambling to suppress real or potential threats to their rule.”

It’s a mixed bag, in other words. Discouragement, anger and fear have descended on many protesters, particularly in Egypt, who believe their revolution has been hijacked by forces hostile to real reform. Even so, Freedom House President David J. Kramer insists “the past year’s trends give reason for hope. … We are at a historic moment. …”

Veteran foreign correspondent Robin Wright, who has covered the region for more than 30 years, is even more optimistic. Her 2011 book, Rock the Casbah, explores changes brewing not just in Arab lands but throughout the Muslim world.

“The most important story of the early 21st century is the epic convulsion across the Islamic world,” she asserts. “Rage against geriatric autocrats is only one part of it. Most of the region … is also actively rebelling against radical ideologies. … (F)rom mighty Egypt to Islamic Iran, tiny Tunisia to quirky Libya, new players are shattering the old order. Uprisings in the Middle East — breathtaking in their scope and speed, if unnerving in their uncertain futures — represent the greatest wave of empowerment” currently breaking across the world.

Some might call that view naïve or premature. But the thirst for change across the Arab world is real, and it transcends politics alone. The “unseen” revolution is unfolding in different arenas: the hearts and minds of people. Especially young people, who want the freedom to think for themselves.

“There’s a large number of people who, in their heart and mind, have seen a glimpse of what they want,” says an American Christian worker with extensive experience in the Middle East. “They do not want to go back. You have a group of young people who are empowered. We see this across the region — whole countries where young people, 24 or younger, make up a large percentage of the population. And they are saying, ‘We’re not going back.’”

To the worker, that new mindset represents an answer to prayer — and a window of opportunity.

“We [U.S. Christians] often want to back off because it is working with Muslims,” he says. “We want to back off because these are difficult areas to go to. And yet right now the opportunity is so great. We’ve never seen an opportunity like this. Across Northern Africa and the Middle East, we’ve seen a sweeping of these revolutions where we have been able to go in and do things now that we’ve never been able to do. We’ve been able to pass out materials door to door. We’re able now to go into communities and have a clinic when before the government said we couldn’t do that.

“It is a window of opportunity that could close so quickly. We need to walk alongside our partners and help them so that if and when we have to leave, we have partners on the ground who can pick up the baton and continue on. This is an opportunity that we weren’t expecting, and yet we should have been. We have been praying for revival in the ‘10/40 Window’ [region containing most of the globe’s unreached peoples]. God has opened up the window. This may not have been the response we were thinking of in that prayer, but right now we have the opportunity and we need to respond to it.”

Conditions for Christians in the region are difficult and may get worse, he acknowledges. Some believers are leaving for friendlier, safer nations. Those who remain are facing new challenges and uncertainties or the return of pressure and persecution. Many fear what may happen if Islamists consolidate political power. Yet churches are stepping forward to minister and proclaim the Gospel in ways he has never before witnessed.

“It is critical that we know that God is at work, that this is His,” the worker says. “He raises up rulers and kings and He takes them down. This is not happening in a vacuum. If it doesn’t go the way we think it should, that doesn’t mean God has stepped away from it. We need to stay with it. It’s going to get hard for believers in some of these churches. We need to be praying specifically for these countries and these peoples daily. God sent his Son to die for these people and we cannot lose the eternal big picture. We just have to see what door He is going to open because of this, and then walk through it.”

You say you want a revolution

“You say you want a revolution. Well, you know, we all want to change the world. …”

Those words come from “Revolution,” one of the Beatles’ hit songs of 1968 — a tumultuous year of mass protests, student demonstrations and demands for change across Europe, America and beyond (listen to the song at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vJMmpJYDF8). It was a heady time for idealists, particularly on the political left. Many insisted on the nonviolent tactics so effectively adapted by Martin Luther King Jr. and the U.S. civil rights movement from the strategy Gandhi used to end British rule in India.

Others, less patient and more militant, advocated using “any means necessary” (read: violence) to overthrow what they saw as oppressive systems. Some supported or even joined Marxist guerrilla movements across Latin America and Asia.

Pop stars aren’t known for their political sophistication. But in “Revolution,” the Beatles warned of the dangers involved in rapid political and social change — even as they led the charge:

“[W]hen you talk about destruction, don’t you know that you can count me out. …You tell me it’s the institution, well, you know, you better free your mind instead. …”

Wise words for those leading the movements for change now shaking societies across the Arab world. Many worldly institutions are rotten, corrupt and long overdue for tossing into history’s dustbin. But what will replace them?

The institution most in need of transformation is the human mind.

“It’s a dangerous time, because the youth are full of anger,” says an Arab Baptist pastor in one of the Middle Eastern countries rocked by protests. “This is not something new. The youth get this frustration from their parents when they can’t afford what they need to live or to get education. And even for the ones that do graduate, they have the same frustration: no jobs. They take loans from banks and then they don’t find work. That causes them to go to drugs, to steal, to be dishonest, to prostitute.”

Arab Christians, he adds, deal with all of those stresses, plus the added burden of oppression as a religious minority — “especially the evangelicals.”

“As an evangelical church, what we are doing now is praying for more awareness for the people and what they should do at this time,” he says. “At the same time, we are trying to find more [connections] between us, between Christians and Muslims. Pray for policies to change — for more freedom, more human rights, more freedom for the people to choose what they want.”

He is hopeful, but realistic. He places little hope in human institutions — democratic or otherwise.

“My hope is in God, not with people,” he states. "I'm a good reader of [Arab] history."

A Christian representative based in the region believes the current cascade of events constitutes a “perfect storm,” under God’s sovereign control, to spread His glory throughout North Africa and the Middle East.

The peoples of the region are experiencing “an ever-widening sociopolitical discontent that is moving like a tsunami wave across their communication networks,” the representative says. “Whether they live in the thick of demonstrations occurring in Libya, Morocco or Yemen, or in an apartment complex in Dallas-Fort Worth or Los Angeles, they are anxious and rightly concerned about what is happening across their homelands.

“This visceral dissatisfaction makes people either run from God or run toward Him. Let’s pray the majority of our peoples run toward Him!”

Specifically, the worker asks for prayer that God will be honored and glorified in each country as governments shift and change; that the Gospel will spread to millions of families; that disciples of Christ among peoples of the region will multiply; and that believers will “be of one mind and one heart to carry out God’s purposes on earth” during this historic moment.

Revolutions typically take one of three courses, according to geopolitical analyst George Friedman:

* They fail.

* They falter, but sow seeds that bloom for decades afterward.

* They succeed — and create a new order in a nation, a region, even the world.

Pray that the revolutions now sweeping across the Arab world will create a new spiritual order in the minds of men and women, regardless of what happens to their political institutions.

(Listen to an audio version of this post at
http://media1.imbresources.org/files/123/12370/12370-69197.mp3)

Three 'evangelical lies' about reaching Muslims

Listen to an audio version at http://media1.imbresources.org/files/113/11355/11355-62029.mp3

Karim* grew up in an Arab Christian family in a Middle Eastern country — part of the “1 percent of Christians among the 99 percent Muslims,” as he describes it.

When you’re part of a tiny, historically persecuted minority, you tend to keep your head down and your mouth closed. You also tend to believe what your elders tell you about the majority, whether it’s true or not. Karim did — for a time.

Now an evangelical pastor in the Middle East, Karim fervently believes the Christians of the region “are responsible for reaching the 99 percent.” But too many still accept three “evangelical lies” that prevent them from sharing Jesus with their Muslim neighbors:

* A spirit of fear. “Most Christians are afraid to go and reach Muslims because of fear,” Karim declares. “We [Christians] say, ‘They will kill us. They will kill our family, our children.’”

* Muslims won’t believe. “Many, many Christians say that Muslims will not follow Christ” — ever. End of story.

* Christians lack the resources to evangelize Muslims. “We say we don’t have the money,” Karim says. “This is another lie, because if I have the heart to reach Muslims, I can go out and reach 1,000 people and share Christ with them. Maybe I need $5 to put gas in my car. If I go walking, I don’t need any money at all.”

But it took Karim a long time to reject the lies.

As a young man he wandered in the spiritual wilderness. He worked in a nightclub (“I was a big sinner,” he confesses). Weary of cultural Christianity, he even converted to Islam for several years. When he returned to Christ with his whole heart, a Muslim friend quickly noticed the change in his life.

“I was so excited about what happened to me, so the first thing I did was to share it with one of my best friends,” Karim recounts. “He said, ‘Karim, if Jesus did that in your life, I want to follow Him.’ I said, ‘No, no, no.’ You see, the fear is there inside us. He said, ‘But I want to follow Christ as you did because it is very good.’ I said, ‘OK, think about it, and we can talk tomorrow.’ The next morning at 8:30 he came to me and said, ‘I decided to give my life to Jesus and to follow Him with no conditions.’”

A second friend believed, and a third, and a fourth. All were Muslims. Not all decided to follow Christ as quickly as the first, but Karim could no longer deny Muslims wanted the priceless gift he had to share.

He began to sense what a Saudi friend later put into words: “We Muslims are beloved people, but we are cheated” — cheated out of knowing about the One who loves them because other followers of Christ are too timid or indifferent to tell them about Him.

“You know the difference between leading a Christian-background person to Christ or a Muslim?” Karim asks. “The first is like a tree planted in your backyard, and in six months you start to get fruit. But to lead a Muslim to Christ, you are digging in a mine. You may spend years, but what you find there is not fruit. It is diamonds!”

What keeps him digging? Every day he hears about — or personally witnesses — a Muslim coming to Christ.

“This is the fuel I’m getting from the Lord.”

*(Name changed)