Christian Evangelicals tryin to Convert Nomads

[GarYaQaaN]

This is a passage from a New York Times article; "Seeing Islam as 'Evil' Faith, Evangelicals Seek Converts" It talks about an Evangelical School sectritary in Columbus Ohio trying to conver Somali students, and more. If you want to read the whole article follow the hyperlink below.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/27/national/27ISLA.html

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Pat McEvoy, a secretary at a high school in Columbus, said she had known very little about Islam before the seminar. Her school has an influx of students from Somalia, and as she walked through the hallways she regarded these immigrants as "a virtual mission field."

 

She said she felt an obligation to save them from an eternity in Hell.

 

"If I had the answer for cancer, what sort of a human would I be not to share it?" Ms. McEvoy said.

 

The teacher concluded by giving the students tips on what to do and not to do to reach Muslims: Don't approach them in groups. Don't bring them to your church, because they will misunderstand the singing and clapping as a party. Do invite them home for a meal. Do bring them chocolate chip cookies. Do talk about how, in order to get saved, they must accept Jesus.

 

"Our job," he said, "is not to make the Muslim a Christian. Our job is to show them the love of Christ."

[Caano Geel]

GarYaQaaN: copy and paste the article pls, because you need to join to read it, and i cant be asked with that, about the conversions, yep their everywhere its not just the us they're in somalia trying to convert nomads there, bosnia, iraq, afganistan, anywhere thats and the intresting thing is its almost always american Evangelicals with the support of the government look at the following links, no need to register either

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,929338,00.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2983433.stm

[Caano Geel]

more on the evangalist thing:

 

 

President Bush was sworn in by Reverend Franklin Graham:

"The invocation was delivered by Reverend Franklin Graham, son of Billy Graham who delivered the invocation in 1989 at the inauguration of George W Bush's father"

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/1125845.stm

 

the same man who said

".. Islam as an inherently violent religion, with fanatical extremism openly encouraged in the Qu’ran."

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/8.30/relrpt/stories/s654845.htm

 

 

and an interview that aught to make you laugh at the stupidity,then cringe at the influence and access to power this guy has

http://www.beliefnet.com/frameset.asp?pageLoc=story/111/story_11117_1.html&boardID=44251

 

--> sorry about the rant, dont mean to take over the topic

[sweet_gal]

I heard that in Bosnia and some other places, they say we'll give u a whole meal or blanket if u accept Christianity...........The people are really poor and probably some god fear and so they reject but then there are those who just think thats a good deal.......And also on tv they were talking about how there are some christian leader who plan to preach the iraq's about christianity and they even brough tapes, video translated in arabic...they got everything with them.......Who know's maybe they put black magic on the tapes and the people might not want to convert but the black magic might work on them..

[Thinkerman]

What about this........

 

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Church World Service Welcomes First Somali Bantu Refugees to Denver, Phoenix

 

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Church World Service(CWS) - USA

Website: http://www.churchworldservice.org

 

May 19, 2003

DENVER, CO & PHOENIX, AZ – Global humanitarian agency Church World Service is welcoming the first two families of Somali Bantu refugees to be resettled in the U.S., on Thursday May 22, in Denver, Colorado, and Phoenix, Arizona. The Bantu families’ arrival marks a new chapter in the life of a people who have lived in constant oppression for almost two centuries.

 

The two families are the first of a group of approximately 12,000 Somali Bantu that the U.S. State Department has approved for resettlement in nearly 50 U.S. cities over the next two years.

 

WHO: One Bantu family of five is arriving in Denver on Thursday, where they will be settled by Ecumenical Refugee Services (ERS) of Denver (the local affiliate of Church World Service) and the Denver congregation that has agreed to co-sponsor the family, St. Francis Cabrini Catholic Church.

 

In Phoenix that same day (5/22), Church World Service affiliate Lutheran Social Ministry of the Southwest is greeting another family of nine Somali Bantu, along with a welcoming community interfaith group including the city’s new Somali Association and the refugees’ host congregations in Phoenix, the Congregational Church of Tempe and The Islamic Cultural Center and Mosque of Tempe.

 

WHAT: Church World Service spokespersons and local affiliate agency directors are available for interviews prior to and after the Somali Bantu’s arrivals.

 

Media are invited to make advance arrangements for visuals and interviews with Somali Bantu individuals (via interpreter) within approximately two weeks, after the new refugees complete necessary entry and settlement processes.

 

BACKGROUND: After almost two centuries of slavery, persecution, and dispersion across Africa and the Middle East – and, more recently, a decade of life in refugee camps – "the Somali Bantu come to us as a very special group of people," says Church World Service Immigration and Refugee Program Director Joe Roberson.

 

"The Bantu have proved their adaptability under all circumstances, but in their early days in the U.S., they will need solid support as they adapt to their new lives and a vastly different culture."

 

"That’s the strength of CWS' network of faith-based and other community organizations," Roberson adds. "It’s the capacity and willingness of CWS affiliate agencies and local communities of faith who become hosts to the refugees that help guide even the least acculturated through the system’s processes, then into the education, training, and employment they need to become contributing people in their communities."

 

CWS expects to resettle more than 900 Somali Bantu by the end of the program, with about 500 over the next 12 months, and the first hundred arriving in the next few months.

 

Up to 12,000 Somali Bantu were approved by the U.S. State Department in 1999 for resettlement in about 50 U.S. cities. However, following 9/11 and tightened U.S. security, refugee admissions dropped from 85,000 in 1999 to a trickling 10,500 in mid-2002.

 

Caught in the squeeze, the Somali Bantu remained in suspension, living in Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya during the past year.

 

Many Somali Bantu young people have never known anything but life within a refugee camp.

 

With a history of oppression and slavery since the 1800s, the Somali Bantu – a rural, agricultural people denied education – have lived at the lowest levels of African society.

 

From their home in East Africa, the Bantu were traded on the Zanzibar slave market and scattered across Africa and the Middle East. After slavery was abolished, the Bantu in Somalia continued to be persecuted and work in subservient jobs.

 

During the 1990 Somali civil war, most Somali Bantu fled to Kenya, where they remained in Dadaab Refugee camp for a decade – along with Somali refugees who had been the Bantu’s oppressors – while the United Nations High Commission on Refugees unsuccessfully sought a home for them.

 

In 1999, the U.S. agreed to accept 12,000 of the Somali Bantu, moving them in 2002 from Dadaab to Kakuma Camp some 900 miles away. Considered one of the best run refugee camps, Kakuma is home to about 80,000 people from various African countries, cultures, and ethnicities.

 

But the Bantu’s arrival in the U.S., expected in mid-2002, was delayed due to continued U.S. homeland security pressures on immigration. Now the U.S. State Department has assured the first 1,200 entry and resettlement over the next year, beginning this month.

 

Church World Service Executive Director Rev. John L. McCullough says the global humanitarian agency is "pleased and relieved that the doors are finally opening on the possibility of a better life for the Bantu."

 

But he notes, "We’re still deeply concerned over the rapid decline in numbers of refugees that the U.S. is admitting." McCullough says that "admitting 12,000 of Africa's most profoundly and historically deprived people doesn't let the U.S. off the hook for maintaining its foundational role as a place of hope and asylum for the world’s oppressed."

 

There are currently 15 million refugees and asylum seekers and 20-25 million internally displaced people worldwide. And less than one percent of the world's uprooted are addressed by resettlement programs.

 

Through an agreement with the U.S. Department of State, Church World Service administers virtually all U.S. refugee processing in sub-Saharan Africa.

 

A global humanitarian agency of 36 Protestant, Orthodox, and Anglican denominations, CWS works in partnership with indigenous organizations in more than 80 countries including the U.S., supporting sustainable self-help development, meeting emergency needs, aiding refugees, and advocating to address the root causes of poverty and powerlessness.

 

For more information about the Church World Service Immigration and Refugee Program or the Somali Bantu, please visit:

 

http://www.churchworldservice.org/Immigration/

[GarYaQaaN]

Caano Geel, this is the main article:

 

 

Seeing Islam as 'Evil' Faith, Evangelicals Seek Converts

By LAURIE GOODSTEIN

 

 

GROVE CITY, Ohio — On a recent Saturday in a church fellowship hall here, evangelical Christians from several states gathered for an all-day seminar on how to woo Muslims away from Islam.

 

The teacher urged a kindly approach: always show Muslims love, charity and hospitality, he said, and carry copies of the New Testament to give as gifts. The students, scribbling notes, included two pastors, a school secretary and college students who said they hoped to convert Muslims in the United States, or on mission trips abroad.

 

But although the teacher, an evangelical preacher from Beirut, stressed the need to avoid offending Muslims, he projected a snappy PowerPoint presentation showing passages from the Koran that he said proved Islam was regressive, fraudulent and violent.

 

"Here in the Koran, it says slay them, slay the infidels!" said the teacher, who said he did not want to be identified because being a missionary to Muslims put his life at risk. "In the Bible there are no words from Jesus saying we should kill innocent people."

 

At the grass roots of evangelical Christianity, many are now absorbing the antipathy for Islam that emerged last year with the incendiary comments of ministers. The sharp language, from religious leaders like Franklin Graham, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and Jerry Vines, the former president of the Southern Baptist Convention, has drawn rebukes from Muslims and Christian groups alike. Mr. Graham called Islam "a very evil and wicked religion, and Mr. Vines called Muhammad, Islam's founder and prophet, a "demon-possessed pedophile."

 

In evangelical churches and seminaries across the country, lectures and books criticizing Islam and promoting strategies for Muslim conversions are gaining currency. More than a dozen recently published critiques of Islam are now available in Christian bookstores.

 

Arab International Ministry, the Indianapolis group that led the crash course on Islam here, claims to have trained 4,500 American Christians to proselytize Muslims in the last six years, many of those since the 2001 terrorist attacks.

 

The oratorical tone of these authors and lecturers varies, but they share the basic presumption that the world's two largest religions are headed for a confrontation, with Christianity representing what is good, true and peaceful, and Islam what is evil, false and violent.

 

The criticism is coming predominantly from evangelicals, who belong to many independent churches and Christian denominations, including the Southern Baptist Convention.

 

Evangelicals have always believed that all other religions are wrong, but what is notable now is the vituperation.

 

"The Koran's good verses are like the food an assassin adds to poison to disguise a deadly taste," writes Don Richardson, a well-known missionary who worked in Muslim countries, in "Secrets of the Koran" (Regal Books, 2003). "Better to find the same food, sans poison, in the Bible." This month, he is scheduled to speak on Islam at churches in five American cities.

 

Most of the authors and teachers preach a corollary of the Christian dictum to "love the sinner and hate the sin." They assert that while the vast majority of Muslims are not evil, they have been deceived by a diabolical religion based on a flawed scripture that can never bring them salvation.

 

Akbar Ahmed, chairman of the Islamic studies department at American University, said he grew up attending Catholic and Protestant missionary schools in Pakistan, but never heard a negative word about Islam from the missionaries. Now, he said, the new hostility to Islam and, in particular, the insults to the prophet Muhammad have outraged the Muslim world.

 

"The whole range of Muslims, from orthodox to liberal secularists, are all lined up against these attacks coming from the American evangelists," said Mr. Ahmed, the author of a new book "Islam Under Siege: Living Dangerously in a Post-Honor World" (Polity Press). "Unwittingly, these evangelists have unleashed a consolidation of sentiments for Islam. Even the most moderate Muslims have been upset by this."

 

The push for conversions may backfire for the evangelists, he said, since Muslims who may have been open to the missionaries' presence feel their honor has been insulted.

 

In interviews, evangelical authors and lecturers said their work did not denigrate Islam as much as share the truth about Christianity.

 

Ergun M. Caner, raised a Muslim by his Turkish family, converted to Christianity as a teenager and wrote, with his brother Emir, "Unveiling Islam: An Insider Look at Muslim Life and Beliefs" (Kregel Publications), which has sold more than 100,000 copies.

 

"I am more interested in apologetics than polemics," said Mr. Caner, now a professor of theology and church history at The Criswell College. "Apologetics is defending your faith, and polemics is critiquing others. A Muslim has the right to to worship Allah, and I have a right to stand in front of that mosque and tell them that Jesus saves. That's the hope for Iraq, the hope for Afghanistan."

 

Evangelical scholars and leaders cite several reasons for their quickening interest in Islam: the American defeat of a major Muslim nation, Iraq, which may open it to Christian missionaries, while other Muslim nations remain closed; the 2001 terrorist attacks, which led many Americans to see Islam as a global threat; the greater numbers and visibility of Muslims in the United States, and the demise of Communism, once public enemy No. 1 for many evangelical organizations.

 

"Evangelicals have substituted Islam for the Soviet Union," said the Rev. Richard Cizik, vice president for governmental affairs of the National Association of Evangelicals, which represents 43,000 congregations. "The Muslims have become the modern-day equivalent of the Evil Empire."

 

The National Association of Evangelicals called on Christian leaders this month to temper their anti-Islam oratory, saying it had been unhelpful to interfaith relations, and dangerous to Christians spreading the gospel to Muslims. While some evangelical leaders welcomed the criticism, others bristled and said that it was not the Christians but the Muslims who must stop the hate-speech.

 

Historians note that enmity between Christianity and Islam dates as far back as the Crusades, the fall of Byzantium and the reconquest of Spain.

 

"Keep in mind that Islam is the only religious tradition that has ever threatened the existence of Christianity," said Charles Kimball, chairman of the religion department at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C., and author of the book "When Religion Becomes Evil" (Harper San Francisco, 2002). "That's deeply woven into our subconscious, into Western literature and culture, and so this image of an Islamic threat taps into a notion that's there already."

 

The conservative evangelical approach to Islam is in stark contrast with the "interfaith understanding" approach of many Orthodox, Roman Catholic and mainline Protestant churches like the Methodists, Episcopalians and Lutherans. Since 9/11, local churches in these denominations began inviting Muslims to explain their faith at a flurry of interfaith events and dialogue sessions.

 

"God calls all of us to have an open mind and an open heart," said the Rev. Robert Edgar, general secretary of the National Council of Churches, which represents many Protestant and Orthodox denominations. "And many of the people who are part of the National Council of Churches believe that if judgment is to be made it needs to be made by God and not by those of us who have divided ourselves up around a particular ideology."

 

These churches acknowledge theological differences between Christianity and Islam, but stress the common roots and essential compatibility. They teach that Muslims are monotheists, "Allah" is simply Arabic for God, and both faiths share Abraham as patriarch.

 

But for many of the evangelical experts on Islam, these notions are simplistic whitewash to paint over a real theological divide.

 

At the daylong seminar in the fellowship hall of Southwest Grace Brethren Church, just outside Columbus, the teacher drew on his own life experience as evidence of Islam's evils. While President Bush and others have depicted Islam as a peaceful religion that has been "hijacked" by extremists, the teacher said he knew better than to believe that.

 

He spoke of a childhood friend in Beirut who joined the Hezbollah terrorist network and showed off his victims' severed ears. Another friend, he said, was threatened with death by his father when he converted to Christianity. (The teacher did not mention the Phalangist Christian militias that helped stoke Lebanon's civil war.)

 

He did not tell the class who he was, and his mysteriousness reinforced his message that Christian missionaries face danger in Muslim nations. At least six have been killed since Sept. 11, 2001.

 

"You can tell me Islam is peaceful, but I've done my homework," he said, reeling off a list of Koranic citations. "From the beginning of Islam, the sword brought results faster than words."

 

Some of what he taught would be accepted by most theologians: Muslims reject the Christian concept of a Trinitarian God — the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. Muslims respect Jesus as a prophet, but do not accept the Christian belief that he is the son of God.

 

But he intermingled accepted facts with negative accounts of Islamic teaching, history and traditions. The pilgrimage to Mecca, he said, is a dangerous event at which people are killed every year. Communal prayers each Friday are "a day of rage," he said.

 

And Muslims even pray differently than Christians, he said. "Muslims pray to get points," he said, "not to communicate with God." Group prayer on Fridays is for "extra points," he said.

 

Pat McEvoy, a secretary at a high school in Columbus, said she had known very little about Islam before the seminar. Her school has an influx of students from Somalia, and as she walked through the hallways she regarded these immigrants as "a virtual mission field."

 

She said she felt an obligation to save them from an eternity in Hell.

 

"If I had the answer for cancer, what sort of a human would I be not to share it?" Ms. McEvoy said.

 

The teacher concluded by giving the students tips on what to do and not to do to reach Muslims: Don't approach them in groups. Don't bring them to your church, because they will misunderstand the singing and clapping as a party. Do invite them home for a meal. Do bring them chocolate chip cookies. Do talk about how, in order to get saved, they must accept Jesus.

 

"Our job," he said, "is not to make the Muslim a Christian. Our job is to show them the love of Christ."

[GarYaQaaN]

Shujui-1 thanks for the article man. But do you guys distinguish between churches that do strictly humanitarian work and don't try to convert you and those whose main mission is to seek converts? I know also many Islamic NGO's in non-Muslim countries (Latin America for example) that just provide humanitarian care. Is the "Church World Service" the same or does it have a hidden agenda?

[Thinkerman]

I dont no if you can. One things for sure the Evangelical branch of the christian movement is the one that is more of the active it seems in trying to convert people

[LuCkY]

:eek: WELL WHAT CAN I SAY! :rolleyes: THIS IS AN UTTER OUTRAGE, A VERY INDEED STUPID, IGNORANT GROUP OF PEOPLE TRYING TO CONVERT SOMALI AND OTHER MUSLIMS-I PRAY THEIR MISSION FAILS AND BACKFIRES UPON THEM.

 

At the grass roots of evangelical Christianity, many are now absorbing the antipathy for Islam that emerged last year with the incendiary comments of ministers. The sharp language, from religious leaders like Franklin Graham, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and Jerry Vines, the former president of the Southern Baptist Convention, has drawn rebukes from Muslims and Christian groups alike. Mr. Graham called Islam "a very evil and wicked religion, and Mr. Vines called Muhammad, Islam's founder and prophet, a "demon-possessed pedophile."

THIS ABOVE QUOTE HAS MY ANGER LEVEL RISING :mad: :mad: :mad: (I WONT LET THEM GET THE BEST OF ME)

 

THIS MAN WHO DARES CALLS ISLAM A "VERY EVIL AND WICKED RELIGION" AND THEN STOOPS DOWN TO LEVEL OF STUPIDITY AND IGNORANCE (AS IF HE WASNT STUPID ENOUGH ALREADY) AND CALLS OUR BELOVED PROPHET MUHAMMAD(SAW) USING ILL-WITTED AND DEGRADING NAMES "demon-possessed pedophile." . :eek: :mad:

 

WELL ONE THING IS FOR SURE HE IS VERY LUCKY HE IS NOT AROUND ME PREACHING AND MAKING STATEMENTS LIKE THAT.

 

AS IF A PERSON LIKE HIM KNOWS ANYTHING ABOUT OUR RELIGION, MAKING NONSENSE AND PATHETIC PREACHING USING POWERPOINT PRESETATIONS LIKE THE LIKES OF HIM CAN EVER UNDERSTAND OUR RELIGION AND ITS BENEFITS.

 

I PRAY EVERYDAY FOR THEIR FAILURES AND CORRUPTION FOR THEIR MISSION AND MAY ALLAH GIVE THOSE THAT THEY COME UPON THE STRENGTH AND COURGE TO BREAK THEM DOWN AND MOVE ON CLINCHING TO ISLAM LIKE NEVER BEFORE!!!

[king_450]

if one can be converted that easy, then no need to trace his origin, let him/her swim the blood of sin.

[king_450]

If one can easily be converted so easily, then no need to trace his/her origing, let them swim blood of sins.

[sweet_gal]

I don't understand how someone who's Somalian can convert to Christianity........I mean they have sperate churches black people go to black peoples church and white people go to white people's church and they say racism is over........But in Islam people go to one place no matter their race, age or nationality the mosque......Where every u are it doesn't matter......I remember one time a speaker at our school was talking about how islam is united and everything.....One day a balck guy was in a white hood he was really religious it was a sunday and so he decided I should go to church....When he gets there he see's that it's a white church and so he says oh well I'll go in anyways and he gets stoped and they tell him sorry......U dont look white.....This is white people's church....I mean if they can do that to one person then what kinda religion would it be " WHite people religion" and in another church "Black people's religion"..

[sweet_gal]

I don't understand how someone who's Somalian can convert to Christianity........I mean they have sperate churches black people go to black peoples church and white people go to white people's church and they say racism is over........But in Islam people go to one place no matter their race, age or nationality the mosque......Where ever u are it doesn't matter......I remember one time a speaker at our school was talking about how islam is united and everything..... Then he started talking about Christianity and told us a true story.....One day a balck guy was in a white hood he was really religious it was a sunday and so he decided I should go to church....When he gets there he see's that it's a white church and so he says oh well I'll go in anyways and he gets stoped and they tell him sorry......U dont look white.....This is white people's church....I mean if they can do that to one person then what kinda religion would it be " WHite people religion" and in another church "Black people's religion"..