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Terrorist Osama bin Laden might inadvertently have helped many people find Jesus Christ, world missions expert Patrick Johnstone said. Muslims who oppose bin Laden's fanaticism but are afraid to speak out against it are "secretly searching" for answers beyond Muslim extremism – and many are becoming Christians, said Johnstone, author of the reference guide Operation World. "My comment about Osama is a bit daring, but has validity," Johnstone told religionjournal.com. "It was certainly true with the Ayatollah Khomeini and the Iranians – thousands of Muslims coming to Christ out of anger and disgust of the narrow, medieval tyranny of extreme Islam." Bin Laden "has polarized the Arab and Muslim world," said Johnstone, who is based in the United Kingdom. "There is an increase of those favoring extremism – [because of] the honor factor – and a violent 'jihad' expression of Islam, but there is a silent majority who abhor what is going on and are driven the other way to seek alternative answers." The Kabyle people of North Africa are an example of a group that is searching for answers beyond Muslim fundamentalism, Johnstone said. "Many thousands" of them have become Christians over the past few years – a reaction to "an Arab cultural imperialism and a violent Islamic extremist war," he said. The Kabyle live primarily in Morocco, western Libya, Tunisia, and the coastal mountain regions of northern Algeria. The same thing is happening in Indonesia, according to Johnstone. Churches there are growing while Islamic extremist persecution and the genocide of Christian people go on in Sulawesi and Maluku. Persecution is beginning to occur in largely Christian Papua, also known as Irian Jaya, he added. Johnstone is not optimistic that the capture of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein will have a positive impact on the Muslim world. "The biggest positive is that he did not resist arrest and die a martyr, and thus proved himself a coward," Johnstone said. "Thousands of Iraqis were slaughtered by him as cowards because they would not fight in the wars he generated." However, "the capture of Saddam is an American thing," Johnstone said. "I think that there is considerable incomprehension [in the United States] about why things went so wrong after the most recent Gulf War officially ended. Why do the 'liberated' cheer the killing of U.S. and British soldiers and hamper the munificent U.S.-led reconstruction of Iraq?" Johnstone said he was deeply concerned a year ago that "the hype for war" would lead to effective plans for a military victory but that "very little thought [was put into] the post-war occupation or finding out how Iraqi or Arab minds work." Thus, he worried, the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people would be lost. "My fears have been unfortunately substantiated," he said. Arabs, whose worldview is dominated by "a history of centuries of being the world's superpower," want their honor restored, Johnstone said. Yet Europeans and Americans "have thwarted the Muslim advance and humiliated the Arab peoples with colonialism, economic domination and military conquest. Saddam is an utterly evil man, but gains grudging respect across the Arab world because he stood up to the humiliators. Such courage covers a multitude of sins and excuses a thousand lies." Much of the reaction in the Arab world in the near future "depends on how [the United States] handles the Saddam issue: Western triumphalism or [sensitivity] to Arab perceptions," he said. Johnstone believes that the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the U.S. response have "made it harder for Westerners to witness in the Arab and also the wider Muslim world." As a result, there may be "an increase in the Asian component of the Christian witness, in the Middle East especially. The Koreans have never fought a war in the Middle East." |
