Muslim

Many American Christians believe they can achieve Christ's kingdom on earth through political means, by dominating the culture. Author Tim Alberta, in his 2023 book The Kingdom, The Power, And The Glory: American Evangelicals In An Age Of Extremism, attempts to get to the core of the issues involved.

He spoke to Pastor Brian Zahnd of Word of Life Church in St. Joseph, Missouri. Zahnd told him:

Christianity is inherently countercultural. That's how it thrives. When it tries to become a dominant culture, it becomes corrupted. This is one major difference between Islam and Christianity. Islam has designs on running the world; it's a system of government. Christianity is nothing like that. The gospels and the epistles have no vision of Christianity being a dominant religion or culture.

Tim Alberta elaborates:

The Bible, as Zahnd pointed out, is written primarily from the perspective of the underdog: Hebrew slaves fleeing Egypt, Jews exiled to Babylon, Christians living under Roman occupation. This is why Paul implored his fellow first-century believers - especially those in Rome who lived under a brutal regime - to both submit to their governing authorities and stay loyal to the kingdom built by Christ. It stands to reason that American evangelicals can't quite relate to Paul and his pleas for humility, or Peter and his enthusiasm for suffering, never mind that poor vagrant preacher from Nazareth. The last shall be first? What kind of socialist indoctrination is that?

Pastor Zahnd considers that the kingdom of God isn't tangible for many Christians: "What's real is this tawdry world of partisan politics, this winner-take-all blood sport. So, they keep charging into the fray, and the temptation to bow down to the devil to gain control over the kingdoms of this world becomes more and more irresistible."

Alberta concludes:

Pastor Zahnd told me he was offended by what the American Church had become. God does not tolerate idols competing for His glory and neither should anyone who claims to worship Him. He said, “You can take up the sword of Caesar or you can take up the cross of Jesus. You have to choose.”

Controversial activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali became well known when she published her 2007 memoir Infidel, which was an account of her life as a Muslim woman and her fight against radical Islam. She made headlines worldwide when she converted to atheism, receiving numerous death threats. In November 2023, she announced her conversion to Christianity. Her reasons address in part what is happening in the world today. She writes:

Atheists were wrong when they said rejection of God would usher in a new age of reason and intelligent humanism. But the 'God hole'—the void left by the retreat of the church—has merely been filled by a jumble of irrational, quasi-religious dogma. The result is a world where modern cults prey on the dislocated masses, offering them spurious reasons for being and action. This is mostly by engaging in virtue-signaling theater on behalf of a victimized minority or our supposedly doomed planet. The line often attributed to G.K. Chesterton has turned into a prophecy: 'When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.'

In this nihilistic vacuum, the challenge before us becomes civilizational. We can’t withstand China, Russia, and Iran if we can’t explain to our populations why it matters that we do. We can’t fight woke ideology if we can’t defend the civilization that it is determined to destroy. And we can’t counter Islamism with purely secular tools. To win the hearts and minds of Muslims here in the West, we have to offer them something more than videos on TikTok.

The lesson I learned from my years with the Muslim Brotherhood was the power of a unifying story, embedded in the foundational texts of Islam, to attract, engage, and mobilize the Muslim masses. Unless we offer something as meaningful, I fear the erosion of our civilization will continue. And fortunately, there is no need to look for some New Age concoction of medication and mindfulness. Christianity has it all.

In Iran, Anooshavan Avedian, an Iranian Armenian pastor, started the 10-year prison sentence he received last year for “propaganda contrary to and disturbing to the holy religion of Islam.”

Avedian was arrested while leading a worship service in a Tehran home in 2020. The Assemblies of God meeting place was shut down 10 years ago for holding services in Farsi. Iranian security forces have arrested thousands of Christians in the past few years.

Editor’s Note: Worldwide persecution of Christians is rising. In a 2024 listing of the top countries which persecute Christians, Iran is #9. The complete 2024 top 10 list is: North Korea (No. 1), Somalia (No. 2), Libya (No. 3), Eritrea (No. 4), Yemen (No. 5), Nigeria (No. 6), Pakistan (No. 7), Sudan (No. 8), Iran (No. 9), and Afghanistan (No. 10).

You can view the full report here.

In his memoir, Everything Sad Is Untrue, Daniel Nayeri tells the gripping story of his mother’s conversion from a devout Muslim background to a saving faith in Jesus Christ. She gave up wealth and social status, eventually being forced to flee from Iran under a death threat. But she was willing to pay the price. Nayeri writes about one example of her costly faith:

One time she hung a little cross necklace from the rearview mirror of her car, which was probably a reckless thing to do. ... My mom was like that. One day after work, she went to her car, and there was a note stuck to the windshield. It said, “Madame Doctor, if we see this cross again, we will kill you.”

To my dad, [who is not a Christian], this is the kind of story that proves his point. That my mom was picking a fight. That she could’ve lived quietly and saved everyone the heartaches that would come. If she had kept her head down. If she stopped telling people. If she pretended just a few holidays a year, that nothing had changed. She could still have everything.

My mom took the cross down that day. Then she got a cross so big it blocked half the windshield, and she put it up. Why would anybody live with their head down? Besides, the only way to stop believing something is to deny it yourself. To hide it. To act as if it hasn’t changed your life.

Another way to say it is that everybody is dying and going to die of something. And if you’re not spending your life on the stuff you believe, then what are you even doing? What is the point of the whole thing? It’s a tough question, because most people haven’t picked anything worthwhile.

In his gripping memoir, Everything Sad Is Untrue, Daniel Nayeri recounts the gripping story about why his mother became a Christian.

She grew up in a devout and prestigious Muslim family. She was a doctor and had wealth and esteem. But eventually she would forsake all of that to follow Jesus. She was forced to flee for her life from Iran, eventually settling in the U.S. as a refugee. When people ask her why, she looks them in the eye with the begging hope that they’ll hear her, and she says, “Because it’s true.”

Why else would she believe it? It’s true and it’s more valuable than $7 million in gold coins, and thousands of acres of Persian countryside, and 10 years of education to get a medical degree, and all your family, and a home. And maybe even your life. My mom wouldn’t have made the trade otherwise.

If you believe it’s true, that there is a God, and he wants you to believe in him, and he sent his Son to die for you—then it has to take over your life. It has to be worth more than everything else, because heaven’s waiting on the other side. That or my mother is insane. There’s no middle. You can’t say it’s a quirky thing she thinks, because she went all the way with it. If it’s not true, she made a giant mistake. But she doesn’t think so.

She had all that wealth, the love of all those people she helped in her clinic. They treated her like a queen. She was a devout Muslim. And she’s poor now. People spit on her on buses. She’s a refugee in places where people hate refugees. And she’ll tell you––it’s worth it. Jesus is better. It’s true … Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again. The whole story hinges on it.

Best-selling Muslim author and renowned critic of Islam, Irshad Manji shook the religious world with her ground-breaking and highly acclaimed book The Trouble with Islam Today. Translated into more than 30 languages, Manji writes about the lack of inquiry and freedom of thought and speech that pervades across the entire Islamic world.

In 1972, her devout Muslim family immigrated from East Africa to a suburb of Vancouver, British Columbia, when she was four-years-old. She writes that she came to believe in the basic dignity of every individual not from Islam, but "It was the democratic environment to which my family and I migrated." A couple of years later, her always frugal parents enrolled her in free baby-sitting services at a Baptist church when her mom left the house to sell Avon products door-to-door.

There the lady who supervised Bible study showed me and my older sister the same patience she displayed with her own son. She made me believe my questions were worth asking. The questions I posed as a seven-year-old were simple ones: Where did Jesus come from? When did he live? Who did he marry? These queries didn't put anyone on the spot, but my point is that the act of asking always met with an inviting smile.

She cites another example at her junior high school and her evangelical Christian vice-principal.

[The majority of students] lobbied for school shorts that revealed more leg than our vice-principal thought reasonable. After a heated debate with us, he okayed the shorts, bristling but still respecting popular will. How many Muslim evangelicals do you know who tolerate the expression of viewpoints that distress their souls?

Of course, my vice-principal had to bite his tongue in the public school system, but such a system can only emerge from a consensus that people of different faiths, backgrounds, and stations ought to tussle together. How many Muslim countries tolerate such tussle? I look back now and thank God I wound up in a world where the Quran didn't have to be my first and only book.

In the horror of 9/11, Charles H. Featherstone turned from Islam to Christianity. In an issue of Christianity Today he shared his story:

Although both of his parents were raised as Lutherans, his mother never had much use for religion, and his father lost his faith in God in the jungles of South Vietnam. When his father left the army, the family settled down in Southern California where Charles attended school. He writes:

I had been on the receiving end of my father’s intense but sporadic violence for years. I learned to both fear and hate him. School quickly became unsafe as well: I was bullied, terrorized, and abused regularly. There was no one to trust. I was frightened, incredibly alone, and increasingly angry. Would anyone ever love and value me?

Searching for something to do with his life he began studying journalism at San Francisco State University. Charles said: “That’s where I found Islam. A friend introduced me to the Qur’an, and I was entranced by its words. The Muslims who first taught me welcomed me as no one else had before.”

But Islam also provided religious and political fuel for his anger. At one mosque he fell in with a group of jihadis. They discussed the texts of revolutionary Islam. One brother went to fight in Bosnia, and Charles wanted to join him. But there was Jennifer, whom he’d met at San Francisco State. There would be no one to care for her. He said, “I belonged to her, and she to me. This was a turning point. The anger that had burned in my soul was beginning to burn itself out.”

He started a journalistic career which eventually took him to offices in Lower Manhattan, right across from the World Trade Center. He was there on the morning of September, 11, 2001.

In the chaos and terror of the streets below, as I looked up at the burning twin towers and watched people tumble to their deaths, life-changing words came to me—words I suddenly heard inside my head: “My love is all that matters, and this is who I am.” I knew then that everything I understood about God, about sin and redemption, about the whole human condition, had changed. What happened was the kind of divine intervention that drove Abraham to leave home, trusting in God’s promises. The kind of force that struck Saul blind on the road to Damascus.

Charles and Jennifer began attending a church in Virginia.

The people showed me that it was the risen Jesus Christ who had spoken to me. They taught me the gospel, proclaiming the forgiveness of sins for the entire world. This is who I had met that horrible day in September. It was Jesus Christ who, in the midst of terror and death, assured me that his love is all that matters.

I belong to Jesus. He saw me and told me to follow. I left everything and obeyed. So, I trust God. For the first time in my life, I know who I am. I know whose I am. And that is all that matters.

Editor’s Note: Charles H. Featherstone is the author of The Love That Matters: Meeting Jesus in the Midst of Terror and Death .

The lights had been strung, the guest list was set and the Santa hats were ready to go for the first Christmas party Umniah Alzahery and Mike Bounacklie would openly throw in Saudi Arabia. This in a country famous for its ultraconservative form of Islam. The only problem was the tree, which they had to procure in whispers from a gift store proprietor who quietly produced one from a darkened room.

Saudis and their government have long played peekaboo over certain behaviors that were officially banned, but privately widespread. These days, however, Christmas is bursting out of the shadows.

Over the last year or so, shop windows in Riyadh have begun to display wink-wink-nod-nod gift boxes in red and green and advent calendars, while cafes dispense gingerbread cookies and florists advertise “holiday trees.”

It is all possible because of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who has won over millions of young Saudis by relaxing some of the stricter religious rules. He is showcasing what he hopes will be seen as a newly tolerant, moderate Saudi Arabia to attract foreign investment and tourists.

On a recent evening, Maha Aljishi and her 13-year-old daughter were wandering through Riyadh Boulevard, an enormous new shopping, dining, and entertainment complex when they stumbled on a giant gingerbread house and a herd of twinkling reindeer.

They were the kind of decorations Ms. Aljishi and her relatives once feared getting caught putting up at home. “Am I in Saudi Arabia?” Ms. Aljishi wondered aloud. “Is this a dream? Just a few years ago, this was all haram” (an Arabic word meaning forbidden by Islamic law).

Revan Moha, 19, has never left Saudi Arabia, but nonetheless was desperate to find a Christmas tree in Riyadh this December. “Oh,” she said recently, “I wish it would snow!” She was delighted to learn that trees were readily available in party supply stores--artificial ones, of course.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Although Christmas may be celebrated in Saudi Arabia for mixed reasons, it is an opportunity for them to hear “good news of great joy that will be for all the people” (Luke 2:10). As Jesus said, “And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a testimony to all nations and then the end will come” (Matt 24:14).

Abbas Hameed grew up in Iraq in an untraditional family. His mother was Muslim and his father was Catholic and a wealthy businessman. When Hameed was about eight-years-old it was discovered that his father had not finished his military service and as punishment, he was sentenced to one year in an underground prison. There he endured complete darkness, except for two minutes above ground each day. Broken from suffering, he grew desperate and cried out to God.

Hameed writes:

God began profoundly changing my father’s heart. My family noticed a huge difference when he returned from prison. He became less selfish and an overall happier man who always had a smile on his face. As an example, we ran into a homeless man wearing tattered clothing. My father had compassion for this man and, stripping down to his underwear, gave away the clothes he was wearing. He said, “He needs these clothes more than I do.” I stood in shock because of his generosity. I knew then that my father’s life had been forever changed.

In March 2003 American soldiers invaded Iraq. Hameed decided to join the United States military police. He worked as a security officer and also as an interpreter. A few months later, he was chosen for US SWAT training.

Hameed said:

In the spring of 2005, I was assigned to inspect suspicious vehicles. One such vehicle came in my direction. I motioned for it to stop, but the car suddenly detonated. I flew into the air, fell to the ground, and crawled to a curb where I shielded myself from shrapnel. I looked around and noticed the suicide bomber’s limbs scattered around. It was a brutal, bloody, disgusting scene. While waiting in the hospital for an evaluation, I reflected on what had happened that day. I felt certain that the God who created heaven and earth was responsible for saving my life.

In 2007 Hameed met Sgt. Scott Young and realized there was something different about him. He was always reading his Bible. Hameed also began reading the Bible and asking Scott questions. He went to Scott and told him that “I didn’t want to be me anymore. He asked, ‘How can I become a Christian?’” Scott told him to go into a quiet place and pray.

Hameed prayed a heartfelt prayer. “I asked Jesus to come into my life and change me, that I might be embraced as God’s son. The next morning, the whole military company noticed a change, just like the change in my father after his own conversion. God had worked a huge and powerful transformation.”

Hameed says,

Today, I live in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, with my wife and children. I began Hameed Christian Ministries and share my testimony at churches and military bases, and with veterans’ groups, I give praise and thanks to God for saving my life—and drawing me near.

Global missions expert Paul Borthwick remembers living in Boston after the Boston Marathon terrorist bombings of April 2013. Most people were suspicious of Muslims in their community. Borthwick says,

I was traveling from Boston Logan airport about two weeks after the bombing. As I stood at the gate waiting for my flight, I noticed a young woman standing very much alone at her newspaper stand. She wore the hijab head covering of a conservative Muslim woman. I sensed that the Lord wanted me to speak to her. I approached her and greeted her with “As-salaam alaikum,” the Arabic greeting that means “Peace be onto you.” The woman burst into tears.

I immediately thought I had insulted her or said something wrong or pronounced a word incorrectly. I apologized and asked what I had said wrong. She said, “No, what you said was perfect. I’m crying because I’ve been standing here over two weeks now since the Boston Marathon bombing, and you are the first person who has even spoken a word to me.”

Her name was Aisha. Borthwick concluded, “How will someone like Aisha ever know God’s love if everyone in our community avoids her?”

J. Dudley Woodberry, senior professor of Islamic studies at Fuller Theological Seminary, said, “More Muslims have become Christians in the last 35 years than in all previous centuries since the foundation of Islam. But they do not have a Christian background to support their newfound faith. Many of these converts have come to faith through such means as satellite TV or the Bible passed along via cell phones. So, a greater depth of understanding (of doctrine) is needed.”

In an issue of CT magazine, David Nasser shares the story of his escape from Iranian religious zealotry and coming to faith in Christ:

I was nine Wyears old when I decided that I hated God. I hated him because I believed he hated me first. It was 1979, during the middle of the Iranian Revolution. Ayatollah Khomeini and his religious zealots had recently overthrown the existing government and seized political power. My father was a military officer in the previous regime. A couple of weeks into the revolution, I was at school when we were called outside. A soldier read off three names, including mine, and called us to the front. Removing a gun from his holster, he quoted from the Qur‘an and told me he would kill me to deliver a message to supporters of the old regime. Fortunately, the school principal intervened, and the soldier relented.

Traumatized, I rushed home to tell my father what had happened. Despite his usual sternness, he took me into his lap and pledged to keep us safe. He devised a plan to leverage my mother’s heart issues as a means of escape. We met with a few trusted doctors, offering everything we owned if they would risk helping us. One day my mother began faking chest pains. She was rushed to the hospital, where the doctors “assessed” her and recommended a trip to Switzerland for open-heart surgery.

One day my mother suggested praying to the “God of America” named Jesus. Maybe he would let us into “his” country. Her plan sounds silly in retrospect, but it worked: One week later we were flying to America.

A few months after graduation from high school, a friend asked why I seemed so down. I explained that all of my friends were moving away, and I was feeling isolated. He suggested coming with him to church the next morning. I conceded that I would go—but only with my parents’ permission. To my utter shock, they didn’t immediately shoot down the idea.

Unbeknownst to me, some people from this church had been dining at the restaurant my father owned. When they noticed he was shorthanded, they left their seats and began waiting and busing tables. For days, they kept returning and serving. Their kindness touched my father’s heart. And so I walked into that enormous Baptist church one Sunday morning as a youth rally was taking place. Within five minutes, everyone was dispersing—everyone except Larry Noh.

Everyone in our town knew Larry. He was a local legend—a linebacker from a rival football team who was outspoken about his faith. Throughout the Bible study, he made sure I felt included. One Sunday night, the preacher invited people forward to give their lives to God. Afraid, I slipped out quickly and drove home thinking I was finished with this “church stuff.”

Arriving home, I wanted to show God who was boss of my life, so I took one of the youth group’s Bibles, and doused it with lighter fluid, but I couldn’t find a match! Frustrated and curious all at once, I opened the Bible and began reading. When I came to the story of Peter walking on the water toward Jesus, it came alive! God was calling me to step out—out of myself, out of my excuses. That night, in my bedroom, I trusted Jesus.

My father immediately reproached me: “You can’t be a Christian,” he said. “We are Muslims.” But getting baptized sent them over the edge. When I arrived home, my father had a duffel bag packed. I was dead to him, he thundered, and I had to leave.

That night I called Larry Noh and told him I was homeless. He invited me to come live with him and six other interns in a house that belonged to the church. In the months to come, they helped me grow tremendously in my walk with the Lord. Meanwhile, one by one, God started saving my family. First my sister came to faith. Then my mother and brother were saved. We prayed relentlessly for my father, and eventually he too gave his life to Christ.

God, in his amazing grace, has turned my family’s tragedy into testimony. Though I hated him as a child, I can see now that he was holding us all along.

Editor’s Note: Today David Nasser is senior vice president for spiritual development at Liberty University

Former Muslim Zaine Abd Al-Qays shares his personal testimony in an issue of CT magazine:

My story begins in the Arabian Gulf region, where my tribe raised me as a devout Muslim. When I was a child, my father would wake me up at 5 a.m. so we could attend morning prayer at the mosque. Growing up, I was proud to be zealous in my faith.

The first major turning point in my life occurred when my family moved to an English-speaking country. I hated it there. I had a conversation with my grandmother, who warned me, “Watch out for the infidels, and don’t befriend or associate with them; they are a disease on society.” I prayed for the death and destruction of Jews and Christians, the “atheists” who were unclean, equal to pigs and dogs, and not to be touched.

My first conversation with a Christian man (who) came to our home bearing gifts—clothes for our family and a car for my father. He spoke to me with love and kindness. He even asked to pray for us, bowing his head and saying, “Father in heaven, I pray for your blessings upon this family. Show them your love, mercy, and grace.” It shocked me to see him pray this way while I was praying for his punishment.

My Christian friends … invited me to a church service for prayer and support. Entering the church, I experienced a strange sensation: As people began praising God, I felt an overwhelming surge of emotion and fell to my knees. I felt helpless and weak—but also as if someone was assuring me that everything would work out.

After the service, I received a Bible and … days later, I started reading the New Testament and fell in love with the character of Jesus. As a Muslim, I knew of Jesus, but I was unfamiliar with the miracles he had performed and the claims he had made about his status as God’s Son.

Within months, I had read the Bible in its entirety. The more I read, the more I saw God as my true and loving Father. God’s Word spoke to all the difficult situations in my life, to my many fears and anxieties. I knew that whenever I opened the Bible, I would feel God’s comfort.

One day I went up to my room, locked the door, fell on my face, and prayed to God, telling him I would put my trust in Christ as Lord and Savior. I wanted to share this decision with my family, but I was terrified of the repercussions. I started waking up every Sunday morning to attend church, but my family noticed these strange absences. When my mother and my siblings found my Bible, they had proof I had become a Christian. One night, around 2 a.m., I received a call from my grandfather—the head of our tribe. As we spoke about my faith, he grew angry, shouting, “You are no longer part of the family! Change your name—you are dead to us!”

My uncle called me with a warning: “Gather your family, pack your bags, and move out of the house, because your grandfather is going to terrorist groups, and if they find you, they will kill every single person in the house.”

Looking back, I can see that the boastful spirit I had developed as a Muslim carried over into my newfound Christianity. I needed to let go of my pride so I could love my Muslim family and community. I didn’t need to fear that I was abandoning Christ by participating in their events and celebrations.

In 1 Corinthians, Paul writes, “To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews…I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some” (9:20, 22). From his example, I learned that I can retain my traditions and honor my elders while remaining a follower of Christ. Adopting this mindset has improved relations with my family, some of whom have now heard the gospel with warm hearts.

Editor’s Note: Zaine Abd Al-Qays (a pseudonym used for security reasons) is the founder of Al Haqq Ministries

Many pastors challenge their hearers to meditate on Scripture. But a teenager in France took this idea in completely wrong direction.

An article in Live Science reports that 16-year-old Adrien Locatelli, a French high school student, transcribed parts of the Hebrew Book of Genesis and the Arabic-language Quran, into DNA and injected them into his body—one text into each thigh. DNA is just a long molecule that can store information. Mostly, it stores the information living things use to go about their business. But it can be used to store just about any kind of information that can be written down.

Locatelli explained, “I did this experiment for the symbol of peace between religions and science, I think that for a religious person it can be good to inject himself his religious text.”

Locatelli said he didn’t experience any significant health problems following the procedure, though he reported some “minor inflammation” around the injection site on his left thigh for a few days.

Possible Preaching Angles:

Love God’s Word. But the correct way to get the Bible deep within us is not through sequencing and injection but by reading and studying the Bible every day.

Philip Yancey writes about a 2019 visit to Beirut, Lebanon:

Christianity had its beginnings in this part of the world, and biblical reminders abound. Solomon purchased cedars of Lebanon to build his temple. To visit the refugee camps, we drove along the “Damascus Road,” near the site of the apostle Paul’s conversion.

Christians who work in Muslim countries speak of “MBBs” (Muslim Background Believers), their abbreviation for people raised Muslim who decide to become followers of Jesus. Some keep their new identity secret, continuing to faithfully attend the mosque. Others declare their new allegiance, which often leads to family shunning and sometimes violence. Local pastors tell of murder threats against converts. Or, a woman may have her children taken away, and be held in a kind of detention, forbidden to leave her house.

In one city, I visit a church service that includes many MBBs. The pastor says, “Please don’t take pictures. The danger to Muslim converts is real.” I ask, “Why do they take such a risk, if it’s so dangerous?”

The pastor replies, “There are two main reasons why they become Christians. Many have visions or dreams of a man in white beckoning them, and they then discover the man is Jesus. I hear this story over and over from converts. The second reason is simply love. Not so long ago this city was besieged by the Syrian army, bombed every day. Six thousand died, with many more injured. You can understand why not many volunteered to help at the Syrian camps right away.”

He leads me downstairs, to an underground parking lot:

“Once our church got to know the refugees, though, we felt compassion for them. They have lost everything, and live in a kind of limbo, people without a country. So we converted this indoor parking lot into a school that now educates 650 kids. Not all our neighbors approve—we’ve been to court many times. But Jesus' love wins.”

In the days leading up to 9-11, fighting in Afghanistan between local groups and then the Taliban resulted in thousands of refugees pouring down into neighboring Peshawar, Pakistan. There they were squashed into tents and mud hovels in refugee camps in intense heat and poor sanitation. J. Dudley Woodberry and his wife Roberta were working in the refugee camps at the time. Woodbury describes what happened in the camps:

Conditions at one camp were harsher than at the others; so Roberta and her class took school supplies to the students so they had more than just blank slates with chalk. Another group of eight workers imported thousands of sandals for the children who ran around with bare feet on the rough parched ground. But they decided that they would also wash their feet as Jesus had. My daughter-in-law joined the group.

For a week they washed every foot with antibacterial soap, anointed with oil, and silently prayed for the child. Then they gave each of them new sandals, a quilt, and a shawl, plus a small bag of flour for every family. At first the sores, pus, pink eye, and dirt were revolting. But then our daughter-in-law felt a deep love as she silently prayed, “Dear Father, this little girl looks like she does not have anyone to care for her. Let my touch feel to her as if you are touching her. May she remember how you touched her this day, and may she seek after you hereafter. Thank you for those who seek you will find you." Many children looked up and shyly smiled.

Sometime later a teacher in one of the tents used for a refugee school asked her class, “Who are the best Muslims?" A girl raised her hand and replied, “the kafirs" (a term meaning unbelievers that is often used by Muslims for Christians). After the teacher recovered from her shock, she asked, "Why?" The young girl replied, "The Muslim fighters killed my father, but the kafirs washed my feet.”

There was once a Muslim college student who came to believe in Jesus Christ. One of his friends was shocked and asked him, “Why did you become a follower of Jesus?” Here was his response: “It’s simple really. Imagine that you’re walking down a road and you come to a fork in the road and there are two people there to follow as your guide along the way. One of them is dead, and one of them is alive. Which one would you follow?”

One of the great appeals of Christianity is that Jesus, its Founder, is not dead but alive, and so even after the hype from Easter Sunday fades into the grind of Monday, Jesus is still alive. And because he lives, people should seek him, worship him, and obey him.

Everybody lies, but Google searches reveal our darkest secrets. That's the conclusion of US data scientist Seth Stephens Davidowitz, who analyzes anonymous Google search results. His research shows disturbing truths about our prejudices. Stephens-Davidowitz writes:

Consider what happened shortly after the mass shooting in San Bernardino, California, on 2 December, 2015 … That evening, minutes after the media first reported one of the shooters' Muslim-sounding names … the top Google search in California with the word "Muslims" in it at the time was "kill Muslims." And overall, Americans searched for the phrase "kill Muslims" with about the same frequency that they searched for "martini recipe" and "migraine symptoms." In the days following the San Bernardino attack, for every American concerned with "Islamophobia," another was searching for "kill Muslims."

He also notes the popularity hate-fueled internet searches for the "N-word."

Either singular or in its plural form, the word is included in 7 million American searches every year. Searches for "N-word jokes" are 17 times more common than searches for [other ethically derogatory jokes]. When are these searches most common? Whenever African Americans are in the news. Among the periods when such searches were highest was the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, when television and newspapers showed images of desperate black people in New Orleans struggling for their survival. They also shot up during Obama's first election. And searches rose on average about 30 percent on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.