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Christianity Today, September, 2008 |

Looking for Home

Muslim-background believers in the U.S. struggle to find Christian community.

Christopher Lewis | posted 9/24/2008 11:07AM

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He left his career as a Silicon Valley scientist to shepherd a thriving Bible study into a church that suffered two splits in the first ten years. Caught between several rival church factions, Shariat was voted out of the pastorate temporarily. "I wanted to quit," he said.

This decade, however, Iranian Christian Church (ICC) has planted four churches, converted a warehouse into a $5 million church building and studio, and launched an international television ministry. A team of eight ICC phone counselors now handles 1,000 calls each month, which tripled after the Mohabat channel morphed into a 24-hour network in 2006. Translated as "agape love," mohabat is an unusual Farsi-Arabic word.

"Deep in their hearts," Shariat says, "Muslims hope God is really like that."

Christopher Lewis is a freelance journalist in Kansas City, Missouri.

*Many of the names in this article have been changed to protect those featured.

Related Elsewhere:

Muslims who convert to Christianity tell their stories on websites like MuslimJourneyToHope.com and Answering-Islam.org.

MBB is a network for Muslims who convert to Christianity.

Previous articles on Islam are available on our website.

Christianity Today previously wrote on Muslims who convert to Christianity.

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September 2008, Vol. 52, No. 9

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Lawrence Mwangi

Posted: September 28, 2008 12:42 AM


Les Nordman.thants good but the Isah in Qurann isnt Jesus FYI but the rest is okay we have a grouip called the C5 belivers that follow those rights and clad in hijab and cover their heads just like a normal Muslim or Jews used to do but they are botrn again this mainly hapens in extreme Islamic nations where persecution is very high..so in that they reduce risk opf being noticed

Alain Maashe

Posted: September 25, 2008 10:49 PM

This was a powerful article and a needed reminder that we have brothers and sisters in Christ that have lost everything (family, community, job, and country) to serve Christ. The deserve our assistance and prayers. It is also a clear reminder of the grace many of us have, where the only persecution is to be rediculed by friends and coworkers who think that we speak too much about God.Instead, for many of the former Muslims, it is a matter of life and death. They are true heroes of the faith.

RJR_fan

Posted: September 25, 2008 1:02 PM

Christian Reconstruction is a hopeful development among evangelical Protestants that breaks with the self-obsessed navel gazing of pietism to proclaim that Jesus is Lord, not guru. He is interested in every sphere of life. When you are asking someone to turn his back on a whole world, you'd better have an equally comprehensive world to offer. Islam is a total world and life view, and as such is far more than a "personal experience." Christianity, too, is "more than a feeling." But, we seem to have forgotten that over the last few centuries in America.

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