Amid the storm, a quiet wind in ‘House of Islam’

                                                   

 

The Arab Spring movement for freedom, which brought so much hope and expectation to the Middle East just three years ago, is stone-cold dead — hijacked by Islamic extremists, brutalized by repressive governments, trampled into the dust by factional power struggles.

That’s the consensus in the Arab world, now torn apart by civil war, insurgencies, chaos, political crackdowns and a widening confrontation between Sunni and Shiite Muslims. The Syrian war has produced unimaginable suffering and millions of refugees. Iraq might be on the verge of breaking into Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish pieces. A well-armed — and murderous — Islamist “caliphate” has emerged, straddling the crumbling borders between Syria and Iraq and threatening both. Egypt has returned to autocracy after rejecting the brief and disastrous rule of the Muslim Brotherhood. Next door, yet another round of fighting is crushing the already-fading hopes for peace between Palestinians and Israelis.

Tunisia, where the protests for freedom that led to the Arab Spring began in late 2010, is the only Arab country where real political reforms have taken hold. The more than 400 million mostly Muslim people living elsewhere in the region will have to wait until the desire for change once again overcomes the forces arrayed against change. Like sheep without a shepherd, they wonder if a better future will ever come.

Meanwhile, wave after wave of attacks on Christians appear to threaten the very existence of the church in the Middle East. Prospects for expansion of the Gospel among Arabs would seem bleak at best.

Or are they?

“Could there be more to this current mess than meets the eye?” asks IMB global mission strategist David Garrison. “Could the Muslim world’s agonizing labor pains be leading to some new expression of life that is yet to be revealed?”

The Arab region is only one of nine “rooms” in the Dar al-Islam — the global “House of Islam” that encompasses 1.6 billion Muslims, Garrison writes in his new book, A Wind in the House of Islam (WIGTake Resources, 2014). The wider Islamic “house” includes other “rooms” throughout Africa, the Persian world, greater Turkestan (Central Asia), South Asia and Indo-Malaysia.

Garrison is the author of Church Planting Movements: How God is Redeeming a Lost World, which helped revolutionize how evangelicals spread the Gospel among unreached peoples. I highlighted A Wind in the House of Islam in a column last year, before it was published. Now it’s available; I highly recommend it if you want to learn about what God is doing behind the scenes in the Muslim world (order at http://www.WindintheHouse.org).

Over a period of three years, Garrison traveled a quarter of a million miles throughout the Islamic world, conducting interviews with more than 1,000 Muslims who have decided to follow Christ as Lord and Savior.

“Today, in more than 70 separate locations in 29 nations, new movements of Muslim-background followers of Christ are taking place,” he reports. “Each of these movements has crossed the threshold of at least 100 new church starts or 1,000 baptized believers, all of whom have come to Christ over the past two decades. In some countries the numbers within these movements have grown to tens of thousands.

“Though the total number of new Christ followers, between 2 million to 7 million, may be a statistically small drop in the vast sea of Islam, they are not insignificant,” Garrison continues. “Not limited to a remote corner of the Muslim world, these new communities of believers are widespread, from West Africa’s Sahel to the teeming islands of Indonesia — and everywhere in between. ... And these religious renegades are paying an incalculable price [in persecution and rejection] for their spiritual migration to Christ. Yet they continue to come. What began as a few scattered expressions of dissent is now growing more substantial. Historically unprecedented numbers of Muslim men and women are wading against the current of their societies to follow Jesus Christ. And it is only beginning.”

Why historically unprecedented? Because very few such movements occurred during the first 14 centuries of Muslim-Christian interaction. In his research, Garrison identifies 82 instances throughout history of Muslim movements to Christ (defined as the occurrence of at least 1,000 voluntary Muslim baptisms into the Christian faith over a two-decade time span). Of these 82 movements, 69 are occurring today — and began within the past 20 years.

“These 21st-century movements are not isolated to one or two corners of the world,” Garrison says. “They are taking place across the Muslim world, including sub-Saharan Africa, the Persian world, the Arab world, in Turkestan, in South Asia and in Southeast Asia.”

Specific locations include Iran, heart of the Shiite revival; Indonesia, the largest Muslim country in the world; Algeria, where a struggle between Islamists and the military saw more than 100,000 civilians killed in the 1990s; Central Asia, ruled for generations by Soviet communism and, for centuries before that, by rigid forms of Islam; and Bangladesh, born in the blood of a war for independence from Pakistan in 1971, ravaged by poverty and natural disasters. Garrison includes actual testimonies from Muslim-background Christ followers — Islamic sheikhs and imams in the Horn of Africa, jihadi warriors from the Afghan frontier, Sufi mullahs from Bengali villages. 

One of them, a 50-year-old Arab Muslim named Sabri,* became a follower of Christ after hearing the Gospel from Nasr,* another Muslim-background believer. Raised in a strong Islamic environment, Sabri says he “began to see the truth from a lie, and I wanted to follow the truth.” He led his family to faith and now leads a network of 400 believers in his area, including 25 disciple group leaders.

“We keep the groups really small because it causes a problem when the groups get large,” he explains. They also use caution in their contacts with traditional Arab Christian churches, which often fear self-identified Muslim converts to Christ will bring persecution — or suspect they might be agents of the secret police. Still, Muslim-background believer groups are growing in the area.

“There are a large number of secret believers,” Nasr says. “We need to say to the masses, ‘Come.’”

If Garrison’s findings are accurate, many more will come.

“Something is happening — something historic, something unprecedented,” he writes. “A wind is blowing through the House of Islam.”

*(Name changed)

Blowing in the wind

                                                  

                                                           

Ramadan is especially hungry in the Arab world this year.

As Muslims there observe the annual month of fasting, which began July 8, they face violence, chaos and growing uncertainty about the future. Have the hopes invested by so many in the Arab Spring finally died? Many think so.

“Roughly two-and-a-half years after the revolutions in the Arab world, not a single country is yet plainly on course to become a stable, peaceful democracy,” reported The Economist magazine in a recent cover story. “The countries that were more hopeful — Tunisia, Libya and Yemen — have been struggling. A chaotic experiment with democracy in Egypt, the most populous of them, has landed an elected president behind bars. Syria is awash with the blood of civil war.

“No wonder some have come to think the Arab Spring is doomed. The Middle East, they argue, is not ready to change. One reason is that it does not have democratic institutions, so people power will decay into anarchy or provoke the reimposition of dictatorship. The other is that the region’s one cohesive force is Islam, which — it is argued — cannot accommodate democracy. The Middle East, they conclude, would be better off if the Arab Spring had never happened at all.”

But that view is “at best premature, at worst wrong,” The Economist contends. The millions of people in the region who want something better will not give up so easily. Nor should they. Political change comes slowly, but it comes. More than 20 years after the fall of the Soviet Union, for instance, the peoples once ruled by that dead empire still struggle under varying degrees of oppression. “The Arab Spring was always better described as an awakening: the real revolution is not so much in the street as in the mind.”

The mind and the heart, meanwhile, are the unseen cradles of another, far more profound revolution. It has begun not just in the Middle East but throughout the Dar al-Islam — the global “House of Islam” that encompasses 1.6 billion Muslims from West Africa to Indonesia.

For the first millennium of its existence, Islam expanded relentlessly, absorbing tens of millions of Christians, “while not a single uncoerced Muslim movement to Christ [took] place,” writes IMB strategist David Garrison, one of evangelical Christianity’s top scholars of church-planting movements around the world. Despite heroic efforts by missionaries and other believers, even “the Great Century” of Christian global advance (the 1800s) produced only one movement to Christ among Muslims that counted at least 1,000 converts.

Garrison’s forthcoming book, A Wind in the House of Islam, excerpted in the latest issue of Mission Frontiers, explores the cracks that have appeared more recently in the façade of seemingly monolithic Islam. Its biggest internal struggle, between Sunnis and Shiites, is obvious — and fuels many of the sectarian conflicts now tearing apart the Middle East. But a quieter shift is occurring behind the scenes, as Garrison confirmed in his travels to every corner of the Muslim world, where he collected interviews from more than 1,000 former Muslims who have decided to follow Christ.

“Today, in more than 60 separate locations in at least 17 of the 49 countries where Islam holds sway, new communities of Muslim-background followers of Christ are emerging,” Garrison writes. “Each of these movements has seen at least 1,000 baptized believers and at least 100 new worshipping fellowships, all of whom have come to Christ over the past two decades. In some countries the communities have grown to number tens of thousands of new Muslim-background followers of Christ.

“Though the total number of new Christ followers, perhaps as many as 1 million to 5 million, may be a statistically small drop in the vast sea of Islam, they are not insignificant. Not limited to a remote corner of the Muslim world, these new communities of believers are widespread, from West Africa’s Sahel to the teeming islands of Indonesia — and everywhere in between. … And these religious renegades are paying an incalculable price [in persecution and rejection] for their spiritual migration to Christ. Yet they continue to come. What began as a few scattered expressions of dissent is now emerging as substantial, and historically unprecedented, numbers of Muslim men and women wading against the current of their societies to follow Jesus Christ. And it is only beginning.”

Some of these movements to Christ have occurred in places that seem, on first glance, unlikely breeding grounds for the Gospel: Iran, heart of the Shiite revival. Indonesia, the largest Muslim country in the world. Algeria, site of a murderous struggle between Islamists and the military that saw more than 100,000 civilians killed in the 1990s. Central Asia, ruled for generations by Soviet communism and, for centuries before that, by rigid forms of Islam. Bangladesh, born in the blood of a war for independence from Pakistan in 1971, ravaged by poverty and natural disasters.

The common elements? Conflict and wrenching change have played a role, to be sure. Political and religious oppression have given rise to a yearning for true freedom. But social and political explanations are inadequate. Could it be that God has chosen, in His time and by His power, to answer the prayers of many centuries, to reveal Himself in Christ to Muslims yearning for a true encounter with Him? Can there be any other explanation for the countless stories, offered by Muslims themselves, of Christ appearing to them in dreams and visions?

“These 21st-century movements are not isolated to one or two corners of the world,” Garrison says. “They are taking place across the Muslim world: in sub-Saharan Africa, in the Persian world, in the Arab world, in Turkestan, in South Asia and in Southeast Asia.

“Something is happening, something historic, something unprecedented. A wind is blowing through the House of Islam.”

If this is true, how tragic it would be for Christians to continue responding to Muslims in fear and hatred — or worse, indifference — at the very moment of the greatest turning of Muslims to Christ in history. If God asks you one day where you were when He began opening the door to nearly a quarter of humanity, what will you say?

(Read an excerpt from A Wind in the House of Islam at http://www.missionfrontiers.org/issue/article/god-is-doing-something-historic. Visit Garrison’s new website: www.WindintheHouse.org.)