From Hate to Love
When my husband and I sat through our cultural orientation training before going overseas I remember being told that there was a strong Muslim community there and that I should at least do some reading. But of course there was one main reasons I did not need to do that: I wasn’t an evangelist– I was support personnel.
My belief was that all Muslims hated us. I also believed they already knew about the Bible (I knew that they had an understanding of Abraham, Moses and Ishmael) and so I thought they knew about the Gospel and yet were deliberately refusing it, thereby sealing their own fate. As far as I was concerned they made a conscious choice to follow the Quran instead of the Bible.
So I don’t have any idea why, after living overseas for about a year, I picked up the book Infidel, by Ayaan Hirsi Ali. I’m not an avid reader so it’s not like I’d come to the end of my library and needed a new literature-high. I don’t know what made me pick up that book. And I’m sure if I knew it was about a Muslim woman from Somalia I would have passed over it. But as I began to read her biography an interesting thing happened. An insatiable curiosity grew in me that would drag me for months through all sorts of crazy experiences and emotional distress.
But even as I was reading and found myself interested I still can’t say I ever mustered any compassion for Muslims. It’s just that what I was learning was so terribly interesting.
One very important thing I learned in Ayaan’s book is that Muslim women live with an enormous amount of anxiety or fear. And this became central to journey of loving Muslim women later on. In Ayaan’s story she helped me understand the great importance of honor and shame in the Muslim world. And at the center of the family of the family’s honor is the behaviors of their women. One woman’s behavior can reflect on the entire community actually but first foremost it reflects on her father and others in her immediate family. So she constantly dances this dance of making sure her every action and thought is honoring to her family. Because if it doesn’t the backlash can range from abuse, neglect, to death. So Muslim women are constantly thinking about their behavior and how it might cost her everything to make a mistake.
One other thing I learned from Ayaan’s book that was that Muslims are taught some very scary things about Christianity; about how Jesus was conceived, about the Holy Spirit and 100 other things that are distortions of Truth. In short, when I finally walked away from Ayaan’s book I understood that Muslim women were not what I thought. Most know almost nothing about the Bible and whatever hate they had toward Westerners was absolutely justified based on some very terrifying misunderstandings.
So it was about this time I developed a dear friendship with an American doctor. When she invited me to join her at the little clinic on the east side of town it had more to do with being an adrenaline junkie than wanting to be an informed and educated citizen. I had heard of Somali Town and knew there was an enormous concentration of refugees there. But it was here I learned rather quickly that to be Somali was to be Muslim. “How convenient” I thought. “Now I can find out if Ayaan Ali was a one off situation, worthy of writing a book. Or perhaps she’s representative of a larger population.
While the clinic where Doc served was for general medicine, it’s fair to say the majority of patrons were Somali women…and the majority of them were coming for one major reason: fertility. As I mentioned to you earlier, the virginity of a Muslim woman is the trophy of the family’s honor. After she’s married, her ability to produce sons can be the difference between being married…and being on the street. Being pregnant…is important – and many women were either coming in with their 9 or 10th pregnancy, or desperate to understand why she wasn’t pregnant at all. I grew to love these women because, despite our enormous differences in worldview, they were exactly like me – and I found absolute delight in making them laugh. And I was astounded to discover I didn’t have to make up new jokes – turns out, naughty children are funny in every culture!
One day a darling woman of about 19 years old came into the clinic. She was there because, surprise surprise, after 4 children she could no longer get pregnant. Doc asked her if she was okay with my presence and she nodded so we didn’t pull the curtain. She laid down on the stainless steel table and drew back the 4 traditional layers of garments to reveal her tummy. Doc was more professional than I so her face never even grimaced. But I know, at a minimum, my eyebrows furrowed. On her perfect cocoa belly were a litany of perfectly white circles where the pigment had been removed. Our translator, Boz, also a Somali Muslim at the time, was one step ahead of me. She questioned the young lady and after gathering the story very matter of factly relayed it to us. After many months of not getting pregnant the Imam decided she must have jinn, or evil spirits closing her womb. So they performed a cleansing ceremony – which apparently she occasionally had done to herself. In an effort to cast out the jinn, they took a 2 inch long flat-head nail and placed it in a fire. Then touched it to her belly.
I tried to remain calm – now a bit more familiar with the concept of shame, I didn’t want my reaction to cause her embarrassment. It wasn’t until Doc began the vaginal exam that I had to excuse myself to the rear courtyard. For this young woman, the witchdoctor’s ceremonial burnings had not worked. At which point they determined that her spiritual condition must have been severe, forcing the demon to enter her uterus. Exercising this unwelcome guest would require more “direct assault”. Same nail…in a more intimate location. I had become familiar with the very common practice of female circumcision and domestic abuse as a common practice – though to this day it raises in me a fury that teeters on unholy. But this….this I could not stomach.
For weeks I screamed at God, “but YOU…how can you just stand by and watch this?” I was angry, appalled and ready to cast my faith to the curb. Graciously, the Lord patiently listened to my rage and I believe even wept with me at the suffering I had witnessed. He was waiting for a very opportune moment to reveal to me a Truth that would change my heart, my beliefs, and my faith forever.
Her name was Habiba. Habiba was a Believer by the time I met her. Many of the injustices I witnessed in the clinic had happened to Habiba, so as our friendship developed I expected to hear her talk about these things as the horrors that they were.
But Habiba turned my “humanitarian heart” on its head. Expressing my compassion she looked at me and said, “Jami, you cannot save every Muslim woman from abuse, or FGM, or honor killings, or painful fertility rituals - in fact, you likely can’t save many. So if you refuse to tell her about Jesus…you condemn her to die another day, without the comfort of the Holy Spirit, the Hope of eternal life, or the Peace of abundant life with a Sovereign Lord. While my justice button flashed furiously, I knew Habiba was right. I...am not her savior.
But I’m hard headed….and fuzzy feelings are fleeting. God knew it was going to take one more big stone to finally build an altar of remembrance in my life.
That episode came in the middle of a very normal day. I was driving downtown in one of the largest cities in Africa. The traffic was unusually light and I had turned the music up on my ipod and was trying to ignore the filth on the streets and the hundreds of pedestrians that I had come to scan like second nature. So I saw her standing on the far corner of the round-a-bout long before I ever knew she’d change my life. I moved all the way to the left lane knowing that I would likely be the only one stopping for the red light. She was at the front of the herd…I mean crowd…as they began to take advantage of a lull in this daily game of chicken. I don’t remember the song that was ringing in my ears when I decided to watch her scurry across 4 lanes of oncoming traffic, but I remember thinking it had been a couple weeks since I’d seen a woman in full hijab– everything covered but her eyes. As she seemingly floated across the street to the median I suddenly took notice of her eyes, darting back and forth – more than is necessary for a light traffic day. I became curious about what she was looking for and my cultural training began to kick in and wonder if whatever or whomever she was looking for had some sort of catastrophic intent. I wanted to do a security scan as I had been trained but I couldn’t take my eyes off of her as she started toward my vehicle.
Just as she reached the right corner of my car some sort of cosmic pause button was pushed at the exact moment that she peered through my windshield and our eyes met. For that moment the music stopped and the world stood still and as we stared at each other some sort of emotion transfusion took place. I experienced the most intense fear I have ever known. Terror…like when you hear that one particular scream from your children? For a moment I was consumed with shear terror. And just before hitting the “play” button I heard God say “she lives there”.
I’m not a person who knows fear – it’s not something I struggle with. Lest I get some reputation for courage I assure you it’s because I’m too dumb to accurately assess risk. So this experience was profound for me because living in that kind of fear – the absolute absence of peace – is a life I cannot fathom. It was also compelling for me because I understood what Habiba had been trying to tell me: living with debilitating pain and oppression from man is nothing compared to the perpetual absence of peace.
Well there was still one major step left in my journey: the actual implementation of my passion to share the Gospel with Muslim women – and that was, sharing the Gospel with Muslim women. I’m sorry to tell you in my 20+ years of being a Christian to that point I had never once led anyone to the Lord. I’m pretty sure I had never tried. I didn’t know the first thing about evangelism except some diagrams of two cliffs with a cross-shaped bridge. Considering most languages in the Muslim world don’t even have a word for “Cross” I knew this might be problematic. I felt terribly insecure about discussing my faith with a Muslim and was begging for some sort of evangelism formula to guide me through.
You remember that Doc had a translator at the clinic, Boz. Well thanks to the courage of another American nurse friend there I had the opportunity to join a little “Bible study” she had going with about 6 Muslim women, one of which was Boz. And I adored Boz from the beginning because Boz had a sincere love for us and was equally compelled to save us from hell as we were her. The first time I went to this little meeting my American friend made spaghetti and we talked and laughed for about an hour. Then she said, “Ladies, I have another story for you”. I remember thinking “Bible stories? We’re just going to tell them Bible stories? That’ll never work.” Isn’t it funny how when we know absolutely nothing about a topic we suddenly become an expert on how everyone else is doing it wrong? But I was trying to be a respectful spectator at this point and so for several weeks I just sat and listened.
I finally decided to abandon this little group and concoct my own missiology when my American friend decided to talk about the Israelites wandering in the desert. “No way is this going to compel anyone – it’s probably the most boring and embarrassing story in the Bible” I thought. I think I audibly sighed when she started talking about the Temple and how the Israelites had to pack it up and re-erect it everywhere they went. Then suddenly, Boz, who to my amazement was enamored with the story, said “Why did they always have to take the same tent with them?” My girlfriend will tell you to this day she has no idea why she said what she said at that moment except evidence of the Holy Spirit. She told the ladies that God has always had a desire to live with and among His people; it’s a priority for Him to dwell within the lives of His children. At this another woman in the group, Amina, jumped to her feet and began ululating and weeping profusely. As a good mid-west Baptist girl I was not at all comfortable with this and stared like an idiot. Boz stood to console her and question her in Somali “what is it? Why are you doing this?” To which Amina replied, “Even me…I want God to dwell with me”.
Those women taught me two things that day: one, none of us knows what the longings of a person’s heart is and therefore we have no idea what part of God’s love will fill it. And two…the evangelism formula I was looking for?
Isaiah 55:10– Just as the rain falls to the ground and does not return until it accomplishes its purpose, so the Word of God NEVER returns void but shall accomplish the purpose for which I sent it!
The formula is the Word of God! Because no matter what story you tell or Proverb you quote, no matter what Fruit of the Spirit you portray in your life…the Word of God NEVER comes back void but SHALL fulfill the purpose for which He sent it.
Today my heart is passionate to see every Muslim hear the words of Jesus and know Him as her personal Savior. I am broken by the suffering of Muslim women worldwide and work to expose the atrocities to end such injustice. But I am even more devastated by the spiritual bankruptcy of Islam and the relentless shame it provokes in even the wealthiest, most empowered American Muslim women. I long for every Christian women to live an abundant life in Christ so that she may more effectively share that Truth with her Muslim friends.
The Truth will set us free.