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A woman named Hafsa lives down my street. She is Muslim. I have met her son, Mousa. Mousa and my son skateboard on our street and talk about religion. I told Mousa that I would like to meet his mother. He gave me her phone number and I called her. She was not home. I called again a week later. Mousa answered. He said that she wasn't home but that he would have her call me. She didn't call.

A week later I tried again. Mousa answered and said he would "make it my mission" to have his mother call me. That was several weeks ago, and she still hasn't called. I'm told that many Muslim women possess as much reticence and misunderstanding toward "Christian Americans" as Christians do toward Muslims. They think that our faith is corrupted and that we hate them.

"When it comes to reaching Muslims, multitudes of people have stumbled for cultural, social, and linguistic reasons, before they ever had the opportunity to stumble at the cross," says Robert Douglas, former director of the Zwemer Institute of Muslim Studies and now director of the Chicago Center for Urban Mission. He means that Christians confront many obstacles that thwart them in understanding and relating to Muslims.

"There is a desperate need for evangelical Christians to take the time to understand Islam and not to buy into the stereotypes that are floating out there," Douglas says. "We will have to work hard at building relationships with Muslims, which means a Christian presence where Muslims are concentrated."

As we move into the third millennium, God-fearing Muslims from every corner of the earth are moving into our neighborhoods. And more are coming.

"God is sending the world to the door of the [American] church," Douglas says. "Every lay person in the pew has the opportunity for outreach."

Between 1989 and 1998 the Islamic population in Europe grew by over 100 percent, to 14 million (approximately 2 percent of the population), according to United Nations statistics. During the same period, the Muslim population in the United States grew by 25 percent. Islam is the second-largest religious group in the world, with more than a billion members worldwide (some estimates put it closer to two billion). An estimated 4 to 6 million Muslims live in the U.S. today, and that number is growing. Islam could be the second-largest religion in America by 2015, surpassing Judaism, according to some estimates. By other estimates, Islam has achieved that rank already.

Muslims moving to the West are changing the cultural and religious landscape. A hospital in Detroit offers Muslim patients copies of the Qur'an; Denver International Airport includes a chapel for Muslim prayers; the U.S. Senate has invited a Muslim cleric to open its session in prayer; the military has hired four Muslim chaplains; the White House sends greetings (like its Christmas cards) on Id al-Fitr, the feast that ends Ramadan; the Saudi Arabian Embassy in Washington D.C. sends 100 Qur'ans a month to prisons while imams (spiritual leaders) send volunteers to teach Arabic. "On Capitol Hill … weekly Muslim prayer services and forums to expose congressional staffers to Muslim viewpoints have become regular fare," notes Ira Rifkin of Religion News Service (Nov. 30, 1999), "and a bill has been introduced in Congress to issue a postage stamp commemorating Ramadan."

Muslims are fully exercising the rights and freedoms available to them in the West. Last fall, the watch dog Council on American—Islamic Relations (CAIR) objected to the season premiere of Touched by an Angel, which featured a story line about slavery in Sudan and forced conversions of Christians living in the south. A CAIR official said the show was tantamount to "thinly disguised anti-Muslim propaganda and political partisanship."

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April 3 2000, Vol. 44, No. 4