Christians writing about Islam

Gordon Nickel, Missions director at Bethany Bible Institute, Hepburn, Sask. And a former missionary to Pakistan.

Where can a Christian go for help with basic questions about the faith and practices of Muslims or how to come alongside them with the good news of Jesus Christ? The following selection of recent books covers a range of materials from general knowledge to history and anthropology.

George Braswell Jr. offers a user-friendly introduction to the general reader in his Islam: Its Prophet, Peoples, Politics and Power. Braswell taught at the Faculty of Islamic Theology of the University of Teheran from 1968-74. He is now professor of missions and world religions at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. In his introduction he lists 20 questions which people frequently ask about Islam. He then sets out to investigate these questions, and in the final chapter he provides a succinct answer for each. In addition to chapters on Muhammad, Islamic history and religious practices, Braswell includes sections on how Muslims live their daily lives, and on the development of Islam in the United States. He also gives a country-by-country description of regions of high Muslim population.

Format features which make Islam a handy resource are the detailed table of contents, useful charts and maps, and descriptive sub-headings. Braswell often presents his points the way modernist Muslims would express them. This puts the best "western" face on Islam, but does not necessarily represent how most of the world's billion Muslims think and act. However, on other points, for example "warfare" and "folk Islam," Braswell simply portrays the situation as it is.

A comparable resource is Cross & Crescent from a British missionary, Colin Chapman. Chapman is one of the finest evangelical teachers and writers on Christian witness to Muslims, with experience in Egypt and Lebanon. Chapman gives a description of the basics of Islamic faith and practice in the first half of the book, but then moves on to how Christians can interact with Muslims in a helpful way. I like the way Chapman works at encouraging a Christ-like attitude towards Muslims, and the practical suggestions he offers on how to use the Bible to make the gospel "intelligible and relevant."

"Dialogue" has become a bit of a buzzword in discussions of inter-faith relationships, but it is not always clear what sort of interaction is intended. Badru Kateregga and David Shenk have demonstrated in a very helpful way how a Muslim and a Christian can converse meaningfully without slipping into polemic on the one hand or denying their respective faith commitments on the other. The two friends wrote A Muslim and A Christian in Dialogue while teaching together

at Kenyatta University in Nairobi, and first published it in Africa in 1980. Since then the book has won a reputation for itself as both a source of information about the two faiths and a model of respect and integrity.

Each author sets out his faith in 12 chapters of roughly seven pages each on topics such as "The Seal of Prophets," "The Mission of the Umma," and Salvation." At the end of each chapter the other author responds briefly. Katerrega is now ambassador for the Republic of Uganda in Saudi Arabia. Shenk is director of international ministries with Eastern Mennonite Missions and one of the finest evangelical Anabaptist scholars on Islam. This book is one of the best buys of the bunch.

Fouad Elias Accad, who grew up in Lebanon in the Greek Orthodox Church, offers a method for leading Muslims to put their trust in Christ in Building Bridges. Accad makes the case that using the Qur'an is the way to establish "cultural common ground" with Muslims. He then offers seven "Muslim-Christian principles" for Christians to work through one by one with a Muslim friend. Communicating the principles includes reading together in both the Bible and the Qur'an. The advice in this book is well worth taking to heart. It comes from an Arabic speaker who gave decades to friendship and conversation with Muslims. Accad died in 1994 after a lifetime of fruitful witness.

Another example of the fresh and very creative angle which two-thirds-world scholars can bring to the topic is Piety & Power by Lamin Sanneh. Sanneh is a Christian convert from Islam in Gambia, currently professor of Missions and World Christianity at Yale University. He caught the attention of many readers with his remarkable 1989 study, Translating the Message. Sanneh writes from the inside about Muslim communities in Africa which are experiencing growing pluralism. He is fascinated with the African context and its ability to work with the influences of Islam and Christianity according to its own unique character.

Sanneh presents a stimulating discussion of the relationship between religion and politics in the two faiths which has special interest for Anabaptists. He tells the story of a Christian-Muslim public debate in Freetown and reflects on its meaning for interfaith encounter. He freely injects autobiographical material about his Muslim training in a mosque school and his conversion to Christianity. Here as in Translating the Message, Sanneh turns conventional wisdom on its head by his penetrating research and by his astonishing command of the English language. Typical of his style is the comment that "Christianity and Islam are united perhaps less by the things they have in common than by what divides them" (p. 7).

Bill Musk, a British pastor, takes an anthropological approach to Muslim ministry in Touching the Soul of Islam. Out of his experience of Muslim people in the Middle East, Musk considers nine aspects of Arabic cultures which influence the understanding of the gospel, such as "Male and Female," "Honour and Shame," and "Time and Space." He makes extensive use of stories written by Arab Muslims to describe each cultural trait. At a certain point in each chapter Musk enters in to interact as a Christian. At times he concludes that Muslim cultures are closer to the worldview of the Bible than is Western culture. He makes some shrewd observations on how to tailor the presentation of the gospel to the cultural setting.

The social sciences approach has actually been one of the strongest trends in writing about Muslim ministry in the past several decades. Not all of that writing has been accompanied by a thorough theological discernment about the relationship of the gospel to Islam. All of the books above, however, were written out of a love for Muslim people and a commitment to the gospel of

Jesus Christ. That is a very good place from which to write. And it gives readers confidence that the insights offered are worth their careful consideration.

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