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Earlier this year, Muslims from overseas took a listening tour of Presbyterian churches. According to a recent news account, the Muslims endured such questions as: Do you wear shoes in your country? Do you ride camels? Do you wash your faces with cow's urine?

Americans have more questions than answers concerning the world's second largest religion. They also have a lot of criticisms. Christians, like many others, are full of anger about the shedding of innocent blood by militant Muslims and are less impressed by Islam than ever. An October ABC News/Beliefnet poll showed that since January 2002 more Americans have an unfavorable view of Islam and believe that Islam does not teach respect. Pollsters also found that white evangelicals are more likely than other Americans to think that Islam encourages violence.

Continued radical Muslim assaults on the innocent contribute to that assessment. Christian reaction has been swift and strong. A year ago, Franklin Graham called Islam "very evil and wicked." On The 700 Club in February, Pat Roberston said Muslims "want to coexist to control, dominate, and if need be, destroy." In June, Jerry Vines told fellow Southern Baptists that Muhammad was a "demon-possessed pedophile." In October, Jerry Falwell told 60 Minutes correspondent Bob Simon that Muhammad was a terrorist.

Though such comments are emotionally comprehendible, they are offensive to Muslims. They are unbalanced, and they omit key parts of the truth. Christian leaders would be better off sticking to all the facts. No one can honestly dispute that a number of Muslim-ruled nations deprive their citizens of basic rights, that some militant Muslims kill their political opponents, that Muhammad was betrothed to a six-year-old girl and waged war on his enemies. But Islam would not have become the second largest world religion if it were experienced as thoroughly evil, as these comments suggest.

Falwell had the humility to apologize to law-abiding Muslims, and he gingerly removed his foot from his mouth. His apology ("I have always shown respect for other religions, faiths, and denominations") hints at one way to sustain potentially evangelistic relations with Muslims.

Despite profound and irreconcilable differences, Islam and Christianity share some important things: a belief in the power of prayer, a belief in an authoritative revelation from God, and a vision for a moral, just society. As C. S. Lewis noted in Mere Christianity, "If you are a Christian, you do not have to believe that all the other religions are simply wrong all through."

At an October gathering in Paris, Bernard Sabella, a Christian living in Jerusalem and ministering to Palestinian refugees, reminded Christian and Muslim scholars, "Man is created in the image of God. Accordingly, all persons, irrespective of background, are my brothers and sisters because they are in the image of God, the Creator."

Respect is a good starting point for evangelistic engagement, but it is not enough, and Christians in the southeast Asian nation of Sri Lanka may be helpful on this point. In Sri Lanka, Christians find themselves in the Sinhala majority (mostly Buddhist) and the Tamil minority (mostly Hindu). That nation's civil war, raging since 1983, has cost 100,000 lives and led to the assassinations of two heads of state. Christians in Sri Lanka are no strangers to religiously inspired violence.

"We don't need to be afraid of appreciating the good in others," says Ajith Fernando, a leading Sri Lankan evangelical. "The Christian method of approaching those of other faiths is to go in love."

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December 9 2002, Vol. 46, No. 13