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Sheltered in a Chicago-area Starbucks one afternoon, Tahir* is dreading the commute home. "My home situation is like a time bomb," he sighs, describing the tense stand-off between his Christian faith and the Palestinian Muslim family that considers him a traitor.

Following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, anti-Arab sentiments initially angered Tahir and made him a more devout Muslim. But they also inspired an intense search of the New Testament, which slowly began to convince him of its truths. As Tahir's new faith took shape, his family became ashamed. Things exploded during a dinner-table debate at which Tahir's brother-in-law told Tahir's wife, "If he's no longer Muslim, your life with him is a sin!"

Today, as Tahir tries to quietly model Christ to his children, his wife warns that she will enroll them in a mosque or flee to Palestine: "Just because you sold your soul to the Devil doesn't mean you're taking the kids with you." Tahir's father has disowned him—"You are no longer my son"—and has threatened to recruit Fatah strongmen to beat him.

Like Tahir, many Christians from Muslim backgrounds are at once cultural and spiritual refugees, even as they settle into American addresses. They are struggling to reorient themselves in a new land and a new Christian identity while bearing the weight of their Islamic heritage.

Some seek an adoptive home in American evangelical churches, where they hear leaders preach about the missional "10/40 window" in North Africa and the Middle East. But not many evangelicals see the Muslim enclaves and seekers in their own backyards. Feeling alienated and misunderstood, these new converts sometimes leave American congregations.

Increasingly, though, these new Christians are finding community in a movement of "Muslim-background believers"—mostly in reclusive urban groups of 10 to 20 believers. Last fall, their leaders convened at conferences and summits in Toronto, Detroit, Indianapolis, Atlanta, Dallas, and Washington, D.C.

They are emboldened by books and videos by former Muslims. The sons of a martyred Iranian pastor directed the award-winning 2007 documentary A Cry from Iran. Last year, an anonymous YouTube posting unveiled a who's who of 100 video testimonies and 50 web links to the ministries of Muslim-background believers.

Despite these resources, many of their fledgling fellowships are fraught with growing pains, leadership squabbles, and ethnic tensions—especially in more diverse Arab and Asian groups. A new Chinese Christian, for example, can explore his or her faith in a familiar ethnic community. But a Muslim-background believer often faces the culture shock of segregation and of a sudden minority status within fellowships of rival Muslim nationalities.

Although Iranian churches have sprung from the same rocky soil, they are more established in the U.S. When the U.S.-backed Shah fell in 1979, pastor Hormoz Shariat was a Muslim student revolutionary chanting "Death to America!" in Tehran's streets alongside his young American bride, Donnell, a Muslim convert. Today, the couple's church of 300 in Silicon Valley is believed to be the world's largest gathering of Muslim-background believers. Arab Muslims generally do not reflect this Iranian receptivity to the gospel, where often the domino effect of one new believer turns an entire family to the Christian faith.

"In Arab countries, people see Islam as the answer," Shariat says. "But in Iran, they now see Islam as the problem."

Desperate for community, Tahir first located an Arab church in Chicago, only to find that some Arab Christians looked on the few Muslim-background believers with suspicion. "I was still a Muslim in their eyes, a second-class believer," Tahir recalls.

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September 2008, Vol. 52, No. 9