Here starts the auto-generated transcription of Muslims in America with Roy Oksnevad and Mike Urton:
And I’d share them, and and he would say, my goodness. You understand us quite well. And I just sort of asked him. I said, okay. You are at this mosque and you’ve gone and others.
What’s going on? And come to find out, he was at a very conservative mosque and he was sort of forced out by the leadership there because, he didn’t have this very conservative anti western mentality. So he went to another mosque and found there that there was a growing conservativism that was taking place and en route in that mosque and he left that mosque. And now he’s currently, founded Sufi group which is much more open. He’s not sort of focused on this religious aspect of things and we have these really good honest conversations about family, his children, my children, but a real genuine friendship that has gone on.
And as I’ve done that, I’ve been able to be very honest with him, he, with me, and the bridge of trust that has been built has been to the point where I can say things flat out to him. And it he doesn’t flinch in regards to it. He knows that I love him. And I really am seeking the best for him. I’m not trying to push something over on him.
So it’s been a really good friendship. I still love to see him come to know Christ. I still at one at one point, I find frankly just told him and said, listen, your answer is not in religion. It’s in Jesus. And just really laid it out to him.
And he but that didn’t affect the relationship at all because there’s that personal relationship that is there. He seeks me out. I seek him out. It’s an ongoing relationship. And I think that if we have those kinds of general genuine relationships we can share our faith uncompromisingly.
And it will be received genuinely and I think that’s where we need to be rather than sort of, let me hit him with the gospel and and lead type of thing. Well, Once again, Muslim terrorists A terrorist. Islamic extremists now in control of the country. They’re random, dumb, and brutal, and dangerous. News flash, America.
These Muslim extremists are are alive and well. They are not dead, and their video is not gratuitous, and it certainly is irrelevant. It is a warning. Welcome to the truth about Muslims podcast, the official podcast of the Zwemer Center For Muslim Studies, where we help to educate you beyond the media. Here are your hosts, Howard and Trevor.
Hi, Trevor. Hi, Howard. Hey, Mike. Hey, Mike. Nice to meet you.
Nice to meet you. You haven’t I’ve listened to a couple of your guys’ podcast already. I’ve enjoyed them. Great. Nice.
We don’t normally use the phone, but for some reason, Skype is failing us miserably. Okay. Can you guys just go ahead and, briefly introduce yourself to Howard so we can do a a sound test real quick? Okay. It’s Roy Akshamad, director of Muslim ministry here at the Billy Graham Center.
Mike Erton, Muslim ministries coordinator at the Muslim ministry department at the Billy Graham Center For Evangelism at Wheaton College. That’s my full title. Do you have to take a breath in between just giving your title there? Had to get classes and control breathing to be able to get all that out. Well, we we just did a podcast with Dave Cashin, and he was asking us to drone with him while he engaged in some sort of Sufi chant, and I nearly passed out from not being able to breathe.
Alright. Well, let’s go ahead and get started. We’ve got, Roy Oksanovad and Mike Urton on, on the phone today. Roy is the director of Kama, and Mike also works there alongside of Roy with Kama. And, Roy, just give us a heads up.
What is what exactly is COMA? And what does it stand for? And is that how you say it? Because we’ve heard people say it, coma. And I just thought that doesn’t sound right.
Yeah. Exactly. I’ve had a number of people say coma, and I said, sorry. We are really alive and well and kicky here. Comma is spelled with 1 m and comma with 2 m’s.
So, definitely, they’re not the same. Okay. So we’ve cleared that up. It is Kama. So what exactly is Kama?
Kama is a coalition of ministries to Muslims in North America. And, just sort of I can give you a little brief history on that. We had been missionaries overseas, came back to the United States, and, overseas basically, we were working in a very small country. Anyone in any mission group, we all worked together because there just weren’t enough of us. And we knew what was going on and we also knew what was happening on a much broader level, particularly in the Francophone areas.
So, coming back to the United States, I wanted to continue involved in Muslim Ministry and wanted to know, who was working where, what was going on, could we just have some history of what’s going on at all and found out that there was nothing like that. So, back in 1998, 97, 98, pulled together a bunch of people and said, wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could just meet together and talk about what we have done and what’s going on and who’s doing it where? And out of that, they said, yeah. We should do that, and we ended up with, our first meeting in 1999 and decided to call ourselves COMMA. And for my position, it was a onetime event, and everybody enjoyed it so much they wanted to continue on.
So that’s how COMMA began. So it was supposed to be a weekend event, and here you are how many years later and still still running this thing. How how often do you guys meet together? Accama has got several different layers to it. On a national scale, we meet together every other year.
So starting in 99 all the way up until, this year, 2015. Wow. So every other year we meet, pulling people together. And so the primary scope is North America, reaching Muslims in North America. Correct.
There are conferences and other events that talk about reaching Muslims worldwide, but there is a very significant number of Muslims here in North America. In fact, we have more Muslims here than some Muslim countries. Wow. So, nobody was considering, this really as a field and, our focus was, well, let’s talk about what’s happening in North America. So how many people are are gathered in at at your meetings about?
Our meetings have been as high as, almost, 280 Woah. To a low of a 150. That’s amazing. There are a lot of various groups and organizations that are doing Muslim awareness seminars and all kinds of organizations are doing that and they sort of think that comma might be the same kind of thing, and and that’s not what it is at all. We do personally these kinds of seminars which I would call sort of Islam 101.
For those wanting to know about Muslim ministry, wanting to know what’s happening in the United States, just sort of out of curiosity. Cono is formed to be a place for people who are engaged with and working with Muslims, either on a part time basis or a full time basis. It’s not for the curious. It’s not for in the sense the novice of saying gee, you know, I’d like to know something. This is sort of an area of interest, but I will not talk to Muslims type of thing.
I have no contact with Muslims at all. This is really for those who are engaging in ministry to come together to talk about what we are doing. So this is a consultation, not a meet together, network together, and even out meet together, network together, and even out of some of these things of new networks and various other things have, been produced out of this kind of meetings. Does that, make it sort of clear? Yeah.
Much more. And these aren’t just folks that are, like you said, interested maybe in learning something about Islam, but they’re actually practitioners. They’re engaging with Muslim communities here in heart already for reaching Muslims. A lot of them I think I was at the meeting in LA. That was the Pasadena, if I’m if I remember correctly.
Correct. So, yeah, what I noticed was that a good majority of the folks there had all probably had a significant amount of overseas experience as well. Yeah. There’s a growing number of people who are being, for one reason or another, having to leave the the field, whether that be a Muslim country or Muslim minority country. And still have a real heart and a calling of God to reach out with the love of Christ to Muslims and have come back to United States and said, is there a place for me to do this type of work?
And, Thomas says, sure. You can share, this kind of information on our network that we have, information, connect with people, find out where there are needing people to do more ministry and get connected and involved. And right now as you guys know the Muslim community in the United States is still fairly young, but it’s it’s growing. The latest Pew Research has projected this is back in 2010, they projected that the Muslim population would double in the next 20 years. So we’re looking to go 6,000,000 or so Muslims, in the United States.
Wow. Now whether that will happen or not, you know demographic predictions are very hard to make, but at least it’s a growing community. And so really now is the time, for us, as as believers, as followers of Christ to get involved with the Muslim community here in the United States and and in Canada. Alright. So I’m curious.
Mike, Roy, you guys, I’m assuming, have a good sense or a pulse on the Muslim communities here in the United States. You get to meet with all of these different folks all over North America that are working with Muslims. Can we talk for a little bit about what is the pulse right now of the Muslim community in America? The Muslim community in in North America is dealing with its very serious PR problem, which is almost nightly on the news where it highlights another bombing, another attack, ISIS, this type of things. And because of that, they are very much wanting to reach out to the community to say that we are not these terrorists.
We don’t believe in this type of thing. In fact, we don’t think that they have anything to do with Islam. They’re wanting very much to do dialogue, interface type of things so that they can, show the community that, they are not what, the media has been showing that they are. They’re starting to get involved a lot more with community issues whereas before they were very much by themselves, sort of an insular community. Somewhat afraid of exposing themselves and their families to American culture which was viewed particularly in their own home country as being decadent and, they would lose their children if they have ever did so.
But, that has changed and they recognize that basically the American community is much more in tune with the same values and principles that they have than, say, the ISIS groups or these Muslim radicals. So they’re they’re coming out of that insular type of mentality and wanting very much to have contact with the American community. In fact many of them are being much more aggressive, in what you would call dollar or their evangelism type of things because they want to show that they are not at all what, the media has been portraying them as. And and one of the things I think we need to understand about the Muslim community United States, it’s not a monolith. The community here is very diverse and we talk about different Muslims around the world.
And you’ll probably find just about any type of Muslim, any kind of, socio religious background here in the United States as well. So anyone from the really, conservative to the really liberal, you’re gonna find them here, living in the United States. Hey, ladies. I’m from, truth about Muslims podcast. Have you heard of it?
Yeah. Okay. So we want you to read an ad for us. Can you do that? You’ll be famous, like, world famous.
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CIU. I’m Kevin Kekaizan. Kevin. I’m a winner. Oh, wow.
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Wow. CIU educates people from a biblical worldview to impact the nations with the message of Christ. You wanna read that again? Yeah. I feel like I’ll be so embarrassed to be honest with you.
How are they, getting their voice out there in their communities? Is it just by being, like, involved in their schools or, even politics? Like, what are they doing to get their voice out? A lot of them are sort of taking the lead from what they’ve seen the Jewish community do. So they’ve tried to use the political arm to get the message out.
But, some of the local mosques are doing much more, trying to raise funds for kids, disadvantaged kids in public schools. But, yeah. There the community centers, this type of thing, they’re they’re really trying to be something more than just sort of a Muslim community to themselves. Yeah. After the the burning of churches here in South Carolina following the, Charleston mass shooting, we saw that there were a few Muslim communities that were actually doing fundraisers to help, raise money to rebuild these churches that were burned.
And I thought, well, this is an interesting turn of events. Yeah. Yeah. And I would say a lot of that changed at September 11th, when back in 2001 and all of a sudden terrorism had hit the United States and they go, we’ve made to shift our rhetoric. We need to shift the way that we’re talking.
I was in one mosque, and this was something that I found very interesting. The person that was doing the presentation to the group that we had, He said, you know, the problem that we have had as Muslims is that, we have created a utopian understanding of our historical past And because of that, we’re losing so many of our people to the sort of radicalization that’s taking place. And because they’re giving the same rhetoric of this utopian understanding that Islam will bring in. And he said we’ve got to get away from that utopian understanding. I thought that was the first time he had had ever heard that and this was one of the largest significant mosques here in the Chicago area.
One of the other things they’re also doing, they’re taking some pages from the evangelical playbook and doing some kind of mass, Dawah campaigns. Here in Chicago, just outside O’Hare off of a 294, a huge billboard, that would say something like game peace and give a 1 800 number where you could actually call someone and ask questions, and they would, send you a free Quran, and some other literature as well talking about what Islam is. So that’s what you’re talking about when you said, kind of evangelism. They’re actually trying to reach out to people that are not Muslim and bring them into Islam? Oh, very much so.
And they’re using various events at the mosque to do that type of thing. We’ve had a, during the summer, a town celebration, and you’ll see the Muslim set up a a booth there to talk about Islam. So very much wanting to be out there and engaging in this type of stuff. And what are the responses? Are are they are they, you know, disdained by the community?
Or are they just accepted? Like, this is just something new? Or, like, how do the how does the community perceive them? Communities really don’t know what to do with them, because, lack of information. I had talked with a funeral director and he was sort of, somewhat upset with all of the rules and regulations that had to take place for burial and he found that, they weren’t very easy to deal with.
The police themselves have been somewhat, not knowing what to do with them because, sometimes the mosques will have some vandalism that’s done to them and they would cry this is anti Islam. This is more of a racial event, failing to realize that, hey, the churches have get tagged by gangs all the time, and it’s not against the religion. It’s just the gang activity and various other things that bust out windows, but they would take it as you know a hate crime. And so that the relationships at times have been somewhat tenuous because of that type of of reaction. And you guys know from being, in the southern part of the United States, there have been, like and so like such as, in Tennessee where the Muslims haven’t been particularly well received Right.
In some communities, and that’s that’s sad. And I’m always grieved to hear that. One of the things, this is an older study. It was done in the mid nineties. It was pre 9 11.
So you have to take a little little bit of grain of salt, but it was done by Muslims and it was on conversions of folks here in the United States. And essentially what that study bore out is about 2 thirds of those who convert to Islam here in the US eventually leave Islam. So they have kind of a revolving door problem as far as, converts are concerned. Right. Yeah.
I had a, I had a a friend in Rwanda that was asking, you know, how do we keep our our children from converting to Islam? And we need some some teachings on how to keep kids from leaving the church and going to Islam. And I thought, you know, Muslims have the same problem except they’re not as you know, they’re actually wondering how do we keep our kids from leaving Islam for secularism. And, you know, Nabil Jabbour mentioned how many millions had left Islam in Egypt for secularism. And so there’s a revolving door, kinda, that is shared by both of us as communities of faith where, you know, you’re seeing even the next generation and wondering how do you keep them in a faith in a society that is so secular.
And so I’ve actually had a few interesting conversation with Muslim parents about that. And I thought, that’s an interesting, conversation. I never thought I’d be having that one with a Muslim, wondering, you know, how do you keep your kids in Christianity because they’re trying to keep their kids in Islam. Oh, yeah. And it’s kind of interesting.
A new generation, the 2nd gen, Muslims have come out with a movie that is called Unmasked, A documentary just on what is taking place in the mosques and how they have been driving their own people away from mosques. And it a lot of it happens to be gender issues, also with leadership that’s coming in from overseas, not knowing at all the US culture and sort of imposing, clothing restrictions and various other things that they have had from overseas onto the mosques here, and there’s just certain repercussions sort of driving people away from that. And this is sort of a way of documenting what’s going on. And I noticed that in a couple of months, they have changed leadership, from the old guard to a new guard which is much more sensitive to American culture, much more understanding, and much better at communicating with people rather than sort of taking an old world stand. I started this one guy is Pakistani.
Very strong Pakistani mentality. And we were had a discussion in the mosque, and you could see the young people just sort of cringe every time we talked. So, you know, they There’s some churches with that problem. So what they’ve done is they’ve tried to to move this kind of old guard out and bring people that are much more sensitive, who speak English well, understand the culture, can be much more relevant, and they see that as a real particular need within the mosque. That’s interesting.
Trevor, as you were also, pointing out, I’ve had the same kind of conversations with Muslims about being concerned about the secular society they find themselves in. And they actually see us as as evangelicals, those who take their faith serious. Seriously. As people who they wanna be talking to and be friends with because they see something in us. They see in themselves.
I’ve actually, had, one Muslim friend say, I didn’t know there are people like you here in the United States because they’re so used to interacting with those who are secular who think religion isn’t important. Right. It’s funny that you’re saying all these because, I I’m a youth pastor in a Korean church and, they invited, the youth to come to the adult revival service. And they had this guy who was supposed to speak to everyone, the adults and the kids. And, the majority of our kids don’t speak Korean very well, at least not fluently.
And, he the first thing he said was you’re, you’re not Korean or you’re not Korean enough if you don’t speak the language. And I looked around and all the kids just shut down just like immediately. And it just kinda reminded me, like, what what, the Muslims are dealing with with, the old guard and not being sensitive to. And I don’t know. It just kinda hit me viscerally.
I, like, I felt it. I’m, like, oh, yeah. I know exactly what you’re talking about in that in that regard. That’s so that’s so interesting. You know people are people no matter where they are, and we have very much the shared kind of experiences.
And for the Muslims they’re looking and wondering where are the Christians and, I know that this one particular mosque, has done interfaith type of thing and well, for them anyone who’s got faith is a person of faith, so they ended up with a Unitarian church, a mainline denominational church, and a Jewish group and we were doing a talk in a in a mosque and this was a real bible believing fellowship and we talked and shared and there was much more robust discussion on faith. And he pulled me aside and said, my goodness. I need your people to come to my church or my mosque because, these people don’t believe in anything. Oh, man. Ones that believe in something.
That’s crazy. I you know, Roy and Mike, I have gotten 2, emails from from friends, reliable friends, mutual friends, actually. One of them was about a mosque in Toronto, and, the sign outside the mosque, said, everyone is welcome and no one is told he’s a sinner. And that was on the mosque in Toronto. And then the other one was up in Connecticut, and that one said, Friday night meetings, bring your own beer.
This was at a mosque. And so I just thought and and I’m just picturing the imam in a in a set of skinny jeans, a little goatee, and the black glasses kinda metro, you know. I can reach the next generation type, you know, and and it’s really kind of a little bit humorous, sad at the same time, but humorous that we’re a lot of dealing with a lot of the same things. So have you have either one of you guys participated in some of the interfaith dialogue, and how’s it gone? I have participated in interfaith dialogue, and I would say that there has been a shift.
About 10 years ago, it was I’m gonna use the word, of a former guy in South Africa, Ahmed Diddot, and he did a lot, produced a lot of videos. A lot of the Islamic bookstores, would have all of these tapes that were very much polemic, anti Christian. And, in this interfaith dialogue, all of the did not one of these were there and they just took this as a great opportunity to bash christians. And I had a friend of mine in a halal meat shot say, okay. We’ve got these dialogues at our mosque.
Come with me, failing to realize I had already been at these. He went there and then he afterwards, he said, I am so embarrassed. I will never ever go to this type of thing again. Fast forward now, I’ve been involved in in some of these type of things and it’s no longer bash the Christians. It is let’s sit down and talk.
Let’s talk about faith. That one guy just was a friend of mine. He just said, Roy, you talk to us. And I had a wide open opportunity, and I said that, I know that you guys are going through a very, very difficult time in your history right now. And, we are sorry that you’re going through that type of of circumstances in your in the history of Islam.
And I said we as well are going through a very difficult time in our faith, history. And I said there are 2 things in particular that we as Christians can help you in this time of crisis in your in your history. 1 is reconciliation, and the other one is forgiveness. Because we’ve been reconciled with God and we received that reconciliation. We can now give that kind of reconciliation forgiveness to others, and we understand that that is central to our message.
That is what, in essence, our message is, and we would like to help you because we know that if you don’t have reconciliation and you don’t have forgiveness, you will have this continuing event of discussion that’s taking place. And, I said we would like to help you. They thanks to me for that message because I didn’t bash them, but I was there willing to help them. I would never have had that opportunity 10, 15 years ago. And to piggyback on what what Roy is saying, one that I was a part of is actually a Bible Quran course at a local mosque.
And this is a wonderful opportunity to to interact with Muslims. I had many opportunities myself just to share straight from the Bible. And, Muslims afterwards, after sessions, wherever would say all they said to me was thank you. Thank you for sharing, right from the bible, with us. And it just showed to me that we as evangelicals need to have a seat at the interfaith dialogue table and authentically represent what we believe.
You know, the man who is the Muslim man who is leading the the sessions, you know, presented Islam honestly. Talked about things like we don’t believe Jesus died on the cross. And that’s what Islam teaches. You know he doesn’t need to have any apology for that. That’s what Islam says.
The The same way we can come and we can present who we are, what our distinctives are, what we are passionate about, what we believe. I mean, passion resonates with Muslims. They you’re not passionate about what you believe, they think you don’t really believe it. So So what was the this is a real opportunity for us. What was the sense in the mosque when you were teaching the bible?
Were they, guarded or were they open? What was the expressions on their faces as you taught what the Bible taught, teaches? They were incredibly open, and the reason was they were there because they wanted to know what the Bible said. They they weren’t saying, hey, I’m coming because I’m having doubts about Islam or something like this, but I really don’t know the Bible. I don’t know what it teaches.
I don’t know what Christians believe, and I really wanna know. And they were really excited. One of the last weeks was actually Palm Sunday. And, I brought, some Jesus films with me as gifts for the class. I came with 20 of those.
I left with 5. As soon as I announced them, one Muslim man tapped me on the shoulder and said, please may I have one. So they were just very open. And I think a lot of times the fear that we have of, offending Muslims because we want to authentically represent who we are and what it is we believe just is a false a false belief. It’s a false fear.
Do do you find oh, I’m sorry. Do you find that the church is as open if, if a an imam would to come into a church or teach a bible study? Would you think the Christians would be as open to hearing what the Quran taught? I think it depends on the church. It’s gonna depend on the leadership of that church.
And, unfortunately, I think at this point in our our history, we as evangelicals are not necessarily known for being as open. Yeah. Wow. Alright. So this show wouldn’t be possible without sponsors.
And at this point in the show is where if you wanna partner with us, we would put your ad. So if you wanna be a part of the show, you like partnering with us, you like what we’re doing, you wanna be on our team, what have you, Bringing this show to the world. Then email us and let us know. It’s hard to pick up on that, at our consultation that’s gonna take place this fall. One of the plenary topics is dealing with, interfaith dialogue, and the title on that one will be from interfaith dialogue to multiphate engagement.
Therein is the shift. Before I’d say that the, interface dialogue stuff was really dual monologue. Muslim would get up and talk, and Christian would get up and talk, but they’d never talk to they talked at each other, and they didn’t talk with one another. And now we’re the the circumstances have changed and there’s much more of an openness. There is an ability for having people share, their faith without visceral reactions.
So there can be this multi faith engagement with each other rather than, I’m close to you. I’m right period and I’m just going to sort of attack you in regards to that. So, yeah, things have changed and it’s going from interfaith to, to some engagement that can take place rather than, dual monologues. Now how is that affecting people coming to faith in Christ Jesus, through good relations with Muslims, and Christians? I think that I mean, we’re not seeing large numbers of people coming to faith in Christ at this point in time.
But in these type of circumstances, there are people who are hearing the true message of the gospel for the first time and are intrigued by that. It sets them down the road, and in some of these areas significant people have come to know Christ. And for the folks that I’ve been involved with who have, come to Christ, you’re thinking usually in terms of years, not usually in terms of weeks or months. Right. And just walking with those people through their questions, you know, their struggles, their objections and what’s this going to be like for me and these kinds of things.
So it’s really it’s a journey you have to take with them, not, it’s it’s probably not gonna be the first time you present the gospel to them, but it happens. So it sounds like you’re saying it’s not necessarily like a method for evangelism. It’s actually just having life, sharing life with Muslims and being their friend and and, even having open dialogue about each other’s faith. I think sharing more of, of their life. Oh, very much so.
And instead of being in our insular communities and behind our walls, we need to be out there. And and frankly before it has been much more of, what we’d call the more liberal version of Christianity that was open to that type of thing, and there would be a compromise in regards to the message because of wanting not to offend Muslims, And I think that, we’re sort of moving past this whole thing of offended offending Muslims. We can be authentic. They’re looking for authentic faith and we can share our faith authentically without these visceral reactions we’ve had in the past. Right.
And we developed a whole, actually DVD curriculum, 6 week DVD curriculum called Journey to Jesus Building Christ Centered Friendships with Muslims, that models exactly Howard what you just talked about, kind of life on life, walking with people and and being a part of their journey, towards towards coming to Christ. But but do you have, like, a 3 step model that that we could just, you know, if we meet them or something in 1, you know, 30 seconds, 3 step model, you know. I feel like that’s what a lot of people an elevator pitch that you can do, and everyone will accept Christ from that. Right. That’s that’s all we’re looking for.
I don’t know if that’s too hard to ask. It’s amazing. We we think gospel blends are particularly effective. So it does sound like some encouraging things are happening despite what it seems like right now. The pulse of the American church is is you know, there is a lot of fear.
I mean, granted, we’re down here in the South, but it does seem, you know, pretty widespread. There’s a lot of fear, a lot of concern. And as you guys mentioned, sort of a turning inward, becoming very insular, and not wanting to reach out. Do you have hope that the church is going to shift from this place that we’re currently that it seems that we’re in to a place where we’re really seeing that the Muslims that are coming here to the United States are actually it’s a wonderful thing because now we have access to share the love of Christ with them. You know, I think there’s a real shift that’s taking place within the Christian community.
There are all kinds of relief organizations like World Relief, Catholic Charities and others who have brought a lot of refugees in. And many of the churches are, engaged in trying to help and partner with these, relief organizations in helping the new people come. And when they do, they realize that my goodness, these people are not the ones on TV. They are caught in a very difficult time of their life. They’re very needy and, need help, through these types of things.
And through those personal interactions with, real life people that are realizing, okay, this religion isn’t the only aspect to the person. They happen to be real people and they have life hitting them and we can share these life experiences and from our faith uncompromisingly, without worrying about some kind of backlash. And just using my own church as an example, I think fear is a problem as you guys have said. Sometimes I wonder if it’s less of a problem, than we really think it is in the ministry community. Because sometimes I think it’s it’s an issue of getting people face to face.
So in understanding American culture. You know, American culture is a planned culture, is an organized culture. A lot of times if you, you know, just give people information and tell them, you know, the Muslims are out there, go get them. It’s not gonna work. But if you say, hey.
I met this guy at a grocery store named Mohammed. He needs to go to the doctor at 8 o’clock on Tuesday morning. People will look at their schedule, and they’ll say, yes, we’ll do that. We had a Somali family that moved pretty close to us. My wife actually taught them ESL.
They had 8 kids, 9 kids. And coming from Somalia, they don’t the parents aren’t educated. They’ve left they’ve left civil war and they really need help, with people tutoring their kids. So we put this out of our church. Shaina’s a Somali family.
They need help with with tutors and we got volunteers and people who are excited to do it because it was something they could think about how do I schedule that, how do I organize that. So some of that I think might be us needing to do a little bit more thinking about how does American culture interact with, this need to reach out to Muslims as well. Hey. Well, tell us for comma, not coma, comma, how, how can people be involved? Particularly the event that you guys have coming this year.
Yeah. This year we have a theme for our conference which is called, emerging Muslim communities, how radical Islam is changing ministry among Muslims. And a part of the discussion will be just sort of tracing, pre 9 11 the discussion in Muslim literature to present as to what has taken place. In regards to Muslim ministries, whether or not acute stress and post traumatic stress disorder, are the people that are coming here going through this and how that impact our ministry, move us to Christ around the world. How is that taking place?
So we’re trying to deal with issues such as, growth of Islam within the Hispanic community, and Islam within the prison system in North America, and we have a chaplain who will be dealing with that. So we’ll be talking about some of these topics as well as some of the more personal ones, sort of what you’ll be doing on mapping Muslims in your city using Facebook, conversations of 2nd generation Muslims, what are their issues they’re dealing with. So, you can go to our comma website which is www.comanetwork.com, and there on our front page, you will see the consultation, comma, 2015, And, you go to that link, it’ll give you the more details of where the venue is, the the specific dates, as well as the topics that will be covered. I’m really excited about the, post traumatic stress and acute, stress discussion because it sounds like even, Mike, from your story with the the family from Somalia, a lot of these folks are coming from very, traumatic situations. They’re coming to the United States looking for rest in some sense and opportunity.
And a lot of them are coming with a lot of, a lot of baggage. And so it would be great if we had more Christians that understood how to counsel in a godly way and be able to sit with Muslims that are coming from these areas and just be Christ to them. And I think that we will see more and more people come to know Christ that way. Amen. Yeah.
And and one of the topics is also on, we have 2 topics dealing with engaging Muslims on campus particularly in response to the large number of close to over 70,000 Saudi students who have come here to the United States and as I’ve gone throughout the United States, a lot of people that are on campus and campus ministries have seen this influx of of Muslims onto campus and, sort of the response that we need to have towards that. Well, Roy and Mike, thanks so much for being with us today. Roy, is it, is it true you have finished your doctorate and your thesis is complete? That is true. Congratulations, my friend.
And you’re working on yours. I understand. You you could say that, I guess, working on it, very diligently. Yeah. I am diligently working on it.
Yeah. It’s it’s quite a undertaking. And every time I see someone finish, it gives me a little bit more hope. Yeah. And now I’m working on trying to finish a book.
Oh, well. Well, everyone, listening, thank you so much for, tuning in. You can find us again on iTunes. Also check out, comma at www.comannetwork.com, and, keep those review reviews coming in. Thank you so much for listening.
We’ll see you next week.