I spent part of yesterday visiting with Ifrahim Mathew. He is Secretary of the Evangelical Fellowship of Pakistan, founder of Potohar Evangelistic Outreach, and long time partner of The Barnabas Fellowship. We have a relationship of cooperation that goes all the way back to 1989.
Ifrahim was catching me up on the situation in the flooded Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan and what is currently being accomplished by the mission. There are several camps where as many as 200 Christian families are trying to survive. They have literally lost everything. And in a land where Christians are on the bottom of the food chain, it’s very tough.
I was sharing with a friend two days back when they were talking about the “mosque controversy” in New York, how I had always had more difficulty raising funds for work among Muslims. It didn’t matter whether we were distributing Bibles in Iran, providing funds for outreach in Pakistan, hiding converts in our “safe house” while they sought to escape angry families, or supporting the wonderful job Brother Edison Christian and Al-Bashir are doing in India…raising funds for Muslim ministry is just plain tough. And we aren’t the only ones. Here’s an example from The American Red Cross!
* In 2004 the American Red Cross quickly raised over 100 million for the Indian Ocean Tsunami
* For Hurricane Katrina the organization put together over 670 million dollars
* For the relief effort in Haiti it has raised 230 million
* Now get this— for Pakistan it’s managed to receive 2 million
Here’s my point! What I’ve encountered for years trying to serve among those in Pakistan is easily reflected in the general psyche of the American public. People just don’t want to help folks in Islamic countries. It’s not in their heart. The answer is something like “Let the Saudi’s do it.”
I’ve also watched as church buildings were built in Muslim countries and the incredible bias those from the Muslim community would show Christians. I’ve always said, “In America, there’s freedom of religion, you could build your place of worship.” Wow, guess everything is relative, isn’t it? Treating your neighbor as yourself is a great Sunday School lesson, unless the neighbor is a Samaritan or a Muslim. We must be different, Folks…Jesus was!
