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For all their work, Dedrick and his fellow missionaries win few new believers. That doesn't seem to faze them.
"My goal is not to convert a Muslim," says Al Dobra, a 45-year-old with a gravelly voice and military haircut who befriends Muslim businessmen in Nairobi, Kenya, and then tries to convince them of Islam's fallacies. "My goal is to plant a tiny seed that will fester and gnaw and grow, so that eventually they will begin to question their religion. My prayer is that they will become restless sleepers and troubled by what they hear. That's a horrible thing to wish on someone."
That absolute certainty that Christianity is the only truth -- and that other religions are satanically inspired -- runs throughout the two weeks of Rick Love's course.
One morning Tom Seckler, a dark-haired missionary with a bland face and thick black mustache, tacks the Cambodian flag to the classroom bulletin board and lays a map of the country on the overhead projector. Seckler's mission agency, World Team, has targeted the Western Cham, an impoverished Muslim minority group in Cambodia that was massacred by the thousands by the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s. Despite World Team's efforts, Seckler estimates there are only about 25 Christian converts, some of whom meet Tuesday nights in Phnom Penh.
"Please pray for the Cham people," he asks his classmates. "There's a degree of self-righteousness among the Cham. They think they're OK. We don't see a big spiritual hunger among them."
The class begins to worship, eyes closed, each person offering a spontaneous request. "Lord, we come into your presence and we ask that you would give us a fresh sense of your burden and your love for Muslim people, especially the Cham," says Love. He falls silent, and then Brent McHugh takes over: "I pray, Lord, that the Cham people do hunger, and realize what they're missing in Christ."
Conflict with relief agenciesThe anti-Islam prayers reflect CIU's official attitude toward what it considers a competitor religion. Prominent on the university's website is an essay posted shortly after September 11. "To claim that "Islam' means "peace' is just one more attempt to mislead the public," it reads. "Muslim leaders have spoken of their goal to spread Islam in the West until Islam becomes a dominant, global power."
The essay was written by Warren Larson, who directs the university's Muslim Studies program and served as a mentor to John Weaver, the Afghanistan missionary. A former missionary himself, Larson fears that Christianity might be losing the race for world domination.
"Islam is biologically taking over the world," he says. "They're having babies faster than we are."
Before coming to CIU, Larson worked for 23 years in Dera Ghazi Khan, Pakistan, trying to convert Muslims to Christianity. He and his wife hosted prayer meetings, Bible studies, and informal gatherings where Muslims came for tea and Coke. Many of their neighbors showed up -- some to learn about their religion, but most for more practical reasons.
"People had the idea that foreigners have money," Larson says. "A lot of them would come because you might be able to help them get to America. Or they would come asking for help: "My father, he's sick. Can you write a letter of introduction to the hospital?' Some of them would be willing to talk about Christianity. Most would not."
Larson was indeed rich by local standards. Not only did he hire Muslims for domestic help, but he also owned household luxuries like a refrigerator. And while the Larsons often engaged in community service -- visiting widows, taking people to the doctor -- they were still seen by some neighbors as the embodiment of the West. One morning, 200 armed Muslims stormed Larson's home, throwing bricks at his ministry's two Land Rovers, kicking down his door, and setting fire to religious literature. After that, Larson says, "whenever we would hear something that sounded like a riot, it would scare us."
The attack on Larson's home came in the midst of fierce anti-US sentiment in the Muslim world, which culminated in the takeover of the American embassy in Iran in 1979. Now, in the wake of September 11, some critics say evangelists are again fueling distrust and resentment toward Westerners. Last October, Islamic militants opened fire on a church built by missionaries in Pakistan, killing 16 Christians, and Muslim rebels threatened to execute two missionaries kidnapped in the Philippines.
"The issue is the disproportional power relationship," says Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Washington, DC-based organization that works to promote a positive image of Muslims. "They use their resources to coerce people to do what they want them to do."
