Crossing Cultures: Compassion and Conflict in Muslim Outreach! - Episode #11 Summary of the episode: In this episode of the E.A.R. Podcast, we explore the complexities of cross-cultural relationships in Muslim outreach, inspired by the book Loving Your Muslim Neighbor. Through stories of helping desperate Syrian refugees, navigating tensions at a Yemeni mosque, and facing personal conflict, we’ll dive into the challenges of extending compassion while confronting cultural misunderstandings. How do we bridge the gap between differing worldviews? Join us as we discuss the power of empathy, humility, and unwavering love in building lasting connections with our Muslim neighbors, even in the face of conflict. Discover how empathy and love can overcome cultural barriers. Tune into this discussion with Brandon and Timothy as we explore real stories of compassion, conflict, and understanding in reaching our Muslim neighbors! Meet the Guest: Timothy and Miriam speak in churches everywhere to educate, equip, and energize Christians to gain God’s heart for Muslim people and to love them. Please listen to Episode #1 of this season to learn more about Timothy and Miriam Harris. Calls to action: Please check out their website, www.lovingyourmuslimneighbor.com. You can also purchase a copy of the book from the website and follow along during this season! To connect with Timothy and Miriam Harris, email them at [email protected]. Note: This podcast is part of the Christian Podcast Community. You can click here to access more episodes and similar podcasts. Check out the website to our podcast here! Works Cited: Cover Art: Brandon Queen | Bible Translations – English Standard Version (unless stated/noted in the interview)| Quotes: authentic from the host and guest (unless stated/pointed out during the podcast) | Song: Turkish Beat - Music by: Muzaproduction from Pixabay --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/elderqueen/support, or you can go to our website and click on Membership --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/elderqueen/support
You can find my podcast and other podcasts similar to mine on the Christian Podcast Community at podcast.strivingforeternity.org.
The Ear, Evangelical and Reformed, Christian Podcast. Welcome to The Ear, the Evangelical and Reformed, a Christian podcast that urges you to think deeper and draws you closer to God through faith. Through powerful sermons, teaching segments, and discussions, The Ear hopes to give you a different perspective on secular topics from a Christian worldview. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.
Please welcome your host, Brandon Queen.
Good morning, podcast world, and welcome back to yet another vibrant, excellent, cool episode from my new season, Loving Your Muslim Neighbor. This season is based on a book written by Timothy and Miriam Harris. Now, what I love about this book is it is actual stories that are tangible, that actually happened in my lifetime, if you will. And now we're able to take these stories and
and put them in a podcast form so that our listeners can hear why we should love our Muslim neighbors, why we're ordered or called by God to love our Muslim neighbors, and why these stories can help us when we encounter Muslim people as Christians following Jesus Christ. Without further ado, welcome back to the podcast, Mr. Timothy. How are you doing today?
Great, Brandon.
Always good to be with you, brother. Awesome. As I always say, I am really, really enjoying this season. We are, I think, six or seven episodes into the season and it is going pretty well.
Hey, praise God, man. I hope that your listening audience is getting more and more of God's heart for lost people and particularly in this case for Muslim people.
Amen. I love it. I love it. Now, last week we did and I like the format so much better than what I've been doing. We we pull three stories and we talked about those three stories. I want to repeat that this week because the three stories that I read are good and I think they should be shared in detail.
So if you are a book owner and you have a copy of Loving Your Muslim Neighbor, I'm going to be starting on page 145, which is chapter twenty nine. And the title of that chapter is Helping Desperate Syrian Muslim Refugees. So thank you to my listeners for listening to the pain of these Muslim brothers and sisters. So without further ado, Timothy, can you tell us about this particular chapter?
Yeah. So in 2012, the Lord just opened up a whole new chapter.
aspect of our ministry to muslim people and it was refugees and it was refugees that we would meet as we would travel to a certain country in the middle east and so man i tell you brandon we were just kind of blown away by by listening to these people for example the first story i tell um in this chapter is about um a muslim syrian man named malik malik um
had lived in Syria, and not long after the civil war started there in 2011, he dared to lower the Syrian flag. It was on a flagpole on top of a building, and he dared to lower it and put up a flag of one of the resistance groups. And so the Syrian army very quickly grabbed him, imprisoned him for a year and a half.
and tortured him terribly for a year and a half, so much so that they actually threw him out. He doesn't know exactly. He thinks it was kind of like a pile of trash, but they threw him out for dead or to leave him to die, and somehow, someway, he has no idea to this day he wound up waking up in a hospital in an adjoining country.
Um, yeah, he lived on the very close to the border of an adjoining country, but he doesn't know how he even got to this other country. Woke up, um, once he was able to called his wife, she thought he was dead. I mean, there was just that shock amongst his family. And, um,
And so he's just one example of a refugee that we talked to, and we've talked to maybe hundreds now, that God then took that suffering and brought them to Christ. So can I just share briefly how that happened with him?
Yeah.
Okay. So what happened to Malik was I met him with one of our sons. We were traveling together to do a trip to work with these refugees. And I met him in 2014 and I shared the gospel with him, but he just wasn't ready for it yet. He just he was so depressed and unable to use his hands and just from the torture because they told him because he took down that Syrian flag.
They said, you'll never use these hands again. And so but I saw him one year later in 2015. And I was with our Arab Christian friends that have this wonderful NGO that help refugees. And we saw Malik walking down the street. And I said to my friend, man, he looks different. What's going on? And my Arab Christian friend said, he said, Tim, he's been born again. Malik's been born again.
I said, what's the story? And here it is in a nutshell. Malik said, I was sitting in my apartment one day, I was smoking and thinking I was depressed and a bright light came into my room. He said, I felt like it was in another world and I could see a man, but not his face. And he said to me, Malik, I am the savior of the world. I am the way, the truth and the life.
And I want to introduce myself to you. Isn't that wild, Brandon?
That is pretty crazy. I mean, oh, man, I don't know. I think I would have wanted to see his face so I could be with him. You know?
Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, and so he went right away the next day to the to the Christian NGO that I keep referring to, our dear friends.
and they were able to just show him hey you saw jesus this these words you heard are from john 14 6 in the bible and and so he became a believer and brandon it is so cool man we see him at least once a year and he just keeps growing in his faith his wife hated us for years she would not accept
uh jesus she would not accept christianity but then she then she heard a voice once that she was bowing to do her prayers or muslim prayers five times a day and someone from behind her hugged her and said don't do that anymore and she was so shocked but the voice was so amazing And she knew it was Jesus and she was born again. And now she just smiles. She loves us.
And so these are just two examples of refugees that God has used their terrible suffering and then used Arab Christians and some of our teams from the States. To help them come to Christ.
That's awesome. And, you know, God doesn't usually like I look at Job, like hearing this story, I look at Job. Yeah, his wife told him to curse God and die. But in the end, she was still faithful. Like, does that make sense?
Like, so here we have this, this Muslim wife of this Muslim husband that became Christian and she somehow, or in a way despises what her husband has become, but then she becomes the very thing she despised him for becoming.
Yeah. Yeah. It's just, yeah. It's like we said in the last podcast, you know, sometimes if you ever have the devil put in your mind a doubt about, Hey, Is all this Christianity stuff real? Is there really going to be a heaven? Was Jesus who he said he was? When you see someone born again, you know that it's nothing short of a miracle. And it's God. God is real. He's alive.
Jesus is who he said he was. And yeah, but man, our lives, Brandon, have been changed today.
by these refugees i mean we go we go with this christian ngo in the winter a lot um and give them blankets and stoves and little washing machines and i mean you should you should just see i still remember seeing this dear woman syrian refugee woman with her daughter she took this blanket that we took to them and she took it out of the plastic um kind of thing that held it.
And the whole time we talked, she and her daughter just stroked that blanket. I mean, it was like this precious possession because they have nothing, man. You go into their little apartments and it's just like the Syrians, they just have mats on the floor. They often don't have beds, no furniture. They just have nothing. And so they appreciate all this physical help, but
i still remember these two syrian brothers that said to us um think and we take them food bags too by the way a lot like almost weighing about 50 pounds uh food bags and um i still remember these two refugee brothers syrians they said to us thank you for the food but thank you so much more for listening to our pain
And you know, is it listening to their pain or is it joining them in that pain?
Boy, some of both. You're right.
And Christ calls us to join our Christian brothers and sisters in their pain. Look, I've been saying this for a while since I've been podcasting. No one has ever been called to walk alone in his or her own faith. We walk together. That also means we walk in pain together. We walk in stress together. We become one another's burdens. And by God's grace, he sees us through that.
And through that, we see God at work.
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely, brother. Yeah, man. I think, you know, cliches are cliches, right? But sometimes they have such good truth. And one old Christian cliche is that people won't care what we know until they know that we care. Yes. So, you know, it is kind of trite, maybe a cliche sounding, but man, is it true for the people that we all meet? Right.
Right. Now, I kind of want to shift into the next story. And I find this one slightly funny, at least the title. It says going into Yemeni mosque, you have insulted my holy Koran.
Yeah.
Before we get into it, you know, God's word can be offensive and it can insult and it does insult the wicked. So let's talk about that.
Yeah. Well, this is a yeah, this is chapter 30 in our book. And so one of the blessings in our lives and some of your listeners might think when I tell them what it is, they might think that doesn't sound like much of a blessing to me. But but Miriam, my wife and I have been in mosques.
um all over the united states i mean i can't even i don't think i could count how many mosques we've been in uh we go to mosques for two different reasons one um to be a to be a light you know for jesus and to befriend people there to get to know them but number two we very very often take christians
on scheduled visits to mosques so that they can observe the prayer time not participate in anything but just observe watch from the back get to know the leader of the mosque and ask questions and hear what they say about about islam so In one situation, I had gone to a mosque. It was during Ramadan, which is, of course, that 30-day time when Muslims fast during the day and feast at night.
And so I went with a dear friend, John, to a mosque in Dearborn, Michigan. Dearborn's a very, we've talked about a little bit before, but it's an amazing place. Might have the largest Arab Muslim population there. In the world outside the Middle East, it's that it's that Arab and that Muslim. Wow. Yeah. And so we went to this to this mosque. And it was mostly people from Yemen.
It was built in 1937. It's old and historic. And we went for the meal after the.
at night to the end of the day during ramadan and we joined in with uh the muslim men and sat on the floor and uh just enjoyed you know kind of talking and they were welcoming us but finally one old man uh he was listening to conversation i was having with a couple of other men about islam and he said you know islam you know so much about it why haven't you said the shahada
Now, the Shahada for your listeners is the statement of faith that someone says to become a Muslim. It's a statement of faith that Muslims say many times a day. And so he just I said, you know, I wasn't interested, but I was there to be a friend.
interact and he just he began to preach at me louder and louder and more and more men gathered around us like encircling us my friend John said Tim I think it's time to go man we need to get out of here and I just and I just I mean we're outnumbered like 300 to 2 or 4 there might have been four of us And I just couldn't leave.
I didn't want to get into a competition with this guy, but I didn't want to give in to a spirit of fear. And I also didn't want the rest of the Muslim men there to kind of see me as a defeated foe for the glory of Islam. So I wasn't determined to win because I think that's a bad place. When we get in an argument with a Muslim and we're determined to win, it's not a good thing. But
His temperature kept rising, man, and he just kept challenging me to say the Shahada. And finally, I just said to him, I challenge you to see that Jesus died for you on the cross and wants you to accept his sacrifice for you. And he said, oh, man, now he was hot. He was visibly angry. His temperature kept rising. His voice kept getting louder.
And he just shouted at me in front of all these Muslim men, you have insulted my holy Quran, you know, my holy book. And so at that point, Brandon, even I knew it was time to go. So we started up the steps from the basement. He followed us. He was just preaching at me all the way. We got out on the sidewalk. He was still preaching at me. He shouted at me, I know you're in the CIA or the FBI.
You're spying on us. I said, no, my friend. No, I just came here to love you in Jesus name. And and he's and then he just said to me, you'll be the first one in line on the day of judgment because you knew the truth about Islam and you rejected it.
and so so the way the story ends this story ends brandon is uh i really i just thanked him for the warning and i just i just gave him a hug and i think he was just so shocked uh and disarmed by the hug he just didn't know what to say and so he turned around and left but yeah that was um That was one interesting story of going to a mosque and things escalating, let's say.
Yeah. So I'm going to ask you a question before we move on to the next one. What would you say to the listeners if they were a group of Christians that visited a mosque? How are they to behave or feel or, you know, interact with Muslim people?
Yeah. So good, brother. So good. Let me before I answer that, let me just say that that is the. I think maybe I've only had two or maybe three situations like that in 15 years in mosques all over the United States and many mosques in the Middle East also. Generally, Muslims will welcome you to the mosque because, first of all, they want to convert you.
That helps them get to paradise if they can convert a Christian. Just culturally, they're hospitable. So it's just built in. And third, they don't want you to think that they are all terrorists. So they want to put on a good, you know, show their good side. Right. And so but yeah, I think that I do not recommend to your listeners just to walk up to a mosque and go in.
No, it's especially those who might be young in their faith or even those who are older in their faith.
um you need to go with it with at least one other person and i highly highly recommend that you call the mosque first and make an appointment and just tell them hey i'm a follower of jesus jesus tells us to love our neighbor and i would just love to come and meet you and learn more about what you believe And and then people just need to pray first because Islam is very enticing.
Don't try to go and win an argument when you're there. Don't. And I really think don't go with the sole purpose of, quote unquote, dumping the gospel on people. You know, if a Muslim visited your church, you wouldn't want them to come in and loudly or rudely try to convert you to Islam. You would respect them much more if they just watched, they were observant, they asked questions respectfully.
And so we need to do the same. So yeah, we need to go with humility, be good listeners. And then sometimes the Lord does, there's like a gap or an opening or a nudge from the Holy Spirit to just share something of the gospel. And we've done that many times, but
Yeah, we really recommend your listeners, if you want to visit a mosque, make an appointment, go as a group, never go by yourself, and just go and be the light of Jesus. Go with his kind of beautiful humility and strength.
Hey, man, that's beautiful. That is beautiful. I love that. I want to I want to visit a Muslim mosque now. But but, you know, right now, Tim, I just want to hit you. OK, I don't. That is the title of Chapter 31 in your book.
Yeah.
Can you please tell me about that?
Yeah, so this was in August of 2012, and my outreach partner and I, Gary, we would very often visit a Muslim guy that had his own auto repair place. His name was Amir. And so we went and visited them one day, and they were actually getting ready to go to the mosque. It was a Friday, and Friday is the big day for Muslims to go to the mosque. It's usually a midday day.
a sermon that they have from their leader and a time of prayer and so we just asked hey could we could we go along uh we asked amir and his friend yusuf that was there and so we went with them we came back to the auto repair place and um amir's friend yusuf never met him before that day but when we got back to the auto repair place he just kept hammering me with islam
Somewhat like the last story of the guy in the mosque. He was just preaching Islam at me. And this doesn't happen too often, but occasionally you'll find a Muslim that just they don't want a discussion. They don't want a dialogue. They just want to kind of defeat you. by just overpowering you with words and trying to wear you down until you become a Muslim.
Goodness.
And that's what this guy did. And finally, he just, this is a short story, he just saw that he wasn't making any headway with me. I was listening, but, you know, he could tell I wasn't agreeing with what he was saying. And he finally just got so exasperated that he was so flustered. frustrated, he finally turned to me and he said, Tim, I just want to hit you right now.
And, you know, I mean, Brandon, I am not what you would consider a brave person at all. And but and I didn't really know, you know, what was going to happen next. But the words that came out of my mouth were, well, OK, all right. If it makes you feel any better, go ahead. And he And he was so disarmed by that silly kind of comment that he just started laughing.
It just diffused everything, you know?
Yeah. But you see, that's what I'm talking about. Like, I see Christians do – and I don't mean to cut you off, but I see Christians do this a lot. And I'm talking –
hostile christians not hospitable christians but hostile christians where you know they're they're preaching the gospel or trying to preach the gospel and their witness doesn't line up with what they're preaching you know because in that comes anger when somebody doesn't get it when they come across an atheist and they just get angry with that atheist and they want to you know try to show them who's intellectually smarter but as i remember you
And I'm no Bible scholar, but Proverbs 15.1 literally talks about that. It talks about us giving a soft answer and that soft answer turns away wrath.
Yeah, man. That's right. That's right.
But I want to go further and I want to say showing love makes people laugh. You know, it's I don't know. It's just me. I think if you're going to be a witness for Christ and if you're going to be that sidewalk preacher. Pray to God that he that he takes the hostility away from you and gives you more of a heart of hospitable meaning.
Amen. Amen, brother. Yeah, we. Yeah, that's you said it.
Yeah. I mean, just think of a hot tempered person, you know, angry all the time. And look, if I could be so bold to say that Muslim guy did the Muslim faith of this of this credit.
yeah he did you know he did yeah yeah we just want to keep encouraging people don't get sucked in to an ego kind of driven ego driven battle with a muslim over who's right and who's wrong it just no matter what you will lose uh or more importantly the gospel will lose because uh that person feels they have to win you feel you have to win
And so we just tell people, don't get sucked into a competition or a head-to-head, you know, debate, endless debate. But rather, you know, just smile at your Muslim friend and kindly ask them questions like, have you ever asked Jesus to show you who he is? Or have you ever had a dream or a vision of Jesus? And you might tell them a story of someone like the story I just mentioned about Malik.
in the pre about the preceding chapter uh you might ask them are you worried about the day of judgment that's a big one yeah because almost all muslims are really afraid of hell and the day of judgment and you might ask him hey you know you've been talking to me and preaching islam at me um do you think allah will allow you into paradise what do you think
And then finally, you can just ask, hey, is there anything I can pray for you about? I love to pray for my friends, and I consider you my friend. Is there anything I can pray for you about? So those are the kind of questions that with some Muslims will diffuse if there's kind of a hot, you know, somebody's hot-tempered and they're really, it's not going well.
Some of those things can be that gentle answer that turns away wrath. And in this case, gentle questions that turn away wrath. Yeah.
But, you know, in in anger, a lot of people say, you know, anger releases, you know, different types of stresses, hormones or whatever, what have you. All that physiological physiological stuff that they talk about.
But if you and what I love about these three stories, and that's why I kind of went with this format again for this episode, is that these three stories are different, yet they're distinctively the same.
And you got one where a group is saying thank you for listening to our pain to one guy that wants to punch you in the face to another guy that's, you know, I'm not ready yet, but thank you for being there for me. And that's what I want this entire series to be about. You know, I am on this heavy, heavy kick of Revelation 7-9. You can call me a nut job when it comes to me being
feeling and being optimistic and hoping for that future of not just the United States, but the world. Because our goal, just like Matthew 28, 29 tells us to do, that we're to go and teach, I'm sorry, Matthew 28, 19, we're to go and preach the gospel to all nations. We're to baptize them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but we're also to love them as our brothers and sisters, okay?
So when we get that out of the way, Then we get to James chapter two, where he points out favoritism in the church and how we shouldn't show favoritism. And what I mean by that is we shouldn't hate our Muslim brothers and sisters because of 9-11 or because they quote unquote hate us.
Because at the end of the age, Revelation 7-9, and this is just a part of the end of the age, we will literally be before the father.
myriads and myriads upon myriads upon myriads of people every nation tongue and tribe standing before the throne am i crazy am i crazy for thinking man no that is so much um that is so much of a something that all of us can join you in brandon as kind of an ultimate vision for our lives like
Like we're stressing so much now at EPC World Outreach, the whole thing about 3 billion people woke up today in spiritual darkness, blind to the glory and love of Jesus. And so it's kind of like two sides of the same coin. On one side of the coin, it's we're looking at how many people have never heard of Jesus. We would call them least access or least reached people.
And so that's one side of the coin that, you know, that maybe that one third of the world that hasn't heard. But the other side of the coin is the is the so that's the painful side. The other side that's so optimistic and amazing and beautiful is your Revelation seven nine. verse in the Bible, which, you know, talks about, hey, but there will be, it's going to happen.
There will be people around the throne of God from every tribe and language and people and nation. And so let's, you know, I think every person should ask themselves, how can I be part of seeing that statistic change about 3 billion people who've never heard? How can I be part of that?
And then how can I then have this vision that Brandon has, man, that there will be those people gathered around the throne. I want to be part of making that happen. Man, I long for all your listeners, all of us, to have that kind of passion that you do about this.
Yeah, and trust me, this is something that, you know, ever since I've been on our Revelation 7-9 task force and I got to hear Rufus Smith read this verse with so much vigor and so much passion. You know, and, you know, we're looking at it simply as a five to seven mile radius where we're reaching people in our community first.
But boy, if we can get that right, what is it going to take for us to get back into church? God forbid another 9-11. Like, come on, let's think about that for a minute. You know, so I say I'm not a missionary person and I'm not one called to go overseas and preach the gospel. But if that's where God is leading me, then let it be so.
amen brother well hey you know as we've talked about so many times on this podcast if you're called to go overseas great but most are not but they can be senders with their finances and they can be prayers you know and and also then for those who do go and then the other thing is as we've talked about so many times God has brought the nations here right I mean if you live anywhere near a
a community college or any kind of university, you are going to see international students from all over the world. And many of them come from places where they don't have much access at all or no access to the gospel, but now they're here. And so I think every Christian should be a missionary no matter where they live. But we are. We are, aren't we? We are. Or we should be, at least. Right.
We need to see ourselves that way. Yeah. Yeah.
Well, look, that is all I have for this episode. I do have to run, unfortunately. This has been great, Tim. I absolutely love this. I don't know. I might do this again later on in the season. But that is all I have. And to my listeners, it is still not too late to get a copy of this book. And you can catch up on the previous episodes at your own free will.
But you can get a copy of this book at lovingyourmuslimneighbor.com. Go check it out and go see God at work through Timothy and Miriam Harris. Thank you again. God bless you all. And I look forward to speaking with you next week. God bless.
You have reached the end of yet another episode from the ear. We hope that God's word remains on the ears of the listeners. We pray that this podcast would urge you to go forth and spread his good news to the world. Thank you for tuning in. Please don't forget to subscribe to our podcast. See you at the next episode. God bless you and may his glory shine upon you.