Indifferent Islam: Marijuana, Muslims and McDonald’s

When I stepped off the plane for the first time into the Arab World, I was shocked, not by what I saw but by what I didn’t see.

I didn’t see people walking around in robes and turbans.

I didn’t see everyone performing the prayers in the streets with their prayer mats.

I didn’t see people looking angry or like they were ready to pick a fight with me about Islam.

Instead, I saw a lot of people walking around in clothes that looked like mine (jeans and a T-shirt), working in gas station parking lots or the McDonalds down the street, with faces that seemed strikingly normal.

What I didn’t realize then but began to realize more and more the longer I was in North Africa, was that the people I would be living and working among weren’t going to be the hardcore, legalistic as possible to earn their way to heaven, kind of Muslims. Instead, I was mostly going to encounter nominal or cultural Islam in the people I would meet and speak to.

Living in a Muslim context means that getting into a spiritual conversation can be incredibly simple. Their culture, from the bottom to the top, has religion so mixed in that it can be pretty natural to move from culture directly to religion. No matter how cultural religion might be for them or how seriously (or not seriously) they might practice their religion, whenever you challenge or question their beliefs, Islam will rear its ugly head. It often reminds me of a sponge. As long as you’re not squeezing the sponge, it’ll stay the same and you may never know what’s inside it. But as soon as you squeeze it just a little bit, the inside comes pouring out. And that’s exactly what happens with nominal, cultural Muslims in our area.

Before I moved to North Africa, I read “Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus” by Nabeel Qureshi and loved it. He was such an incredible storyteller and I was amazed to read of how God moved in his heart and life to convert him from Islam. Nabeel was coming from orthodox Islam, though, and orthodox Islam can be fairly different from the cultural Islam practiced in our context. Most of the time, what we see is people taking little bits and pieces of religion from books, sermons, YouTube clips, and beliefs their parents pass down to them and mixing them all together.

It can be helpful to prepare to share with a Muslim by reading the Quran, or reading books about Islam, or listening to popular debates online and those are all really good. However, until you sit down and ask them face to face what they think about the most important things in life, you’re not going to really know what they think. Learn to listen to them to understand instead of just to win the argument. Ask God to work through your questions, through your witness, and most importantly through the Word in the lives of who you’re listening to. The Islamic stereotypes help give a bit of framework, but after that it’s case-by-case depending on who you’re talking to (which is of course true for everywhere, not just in the Arab World).

Recently, I was sitting with some guys at a restaurant outside of the city and as we were sitting there talking, one of them pulls out some marijuana and started to roll it up into a cigarette. They asked me if I smoked and I said no but it opened the door to a spiritual conversation. A couple minutes later the same guy who had offered me the weed was trying to convert me into Islam! Even people who seem unreligious and are living in blatant sin will have Islam bleed out of them when push comes to shove.

The thing I’ve found to be most helpful when sharing with Muslims is to listen really well to whatever they want to say. You can then direct the conversation to sin on a personal level and how the gospel meets them where they’re at personally. Talk about your own personal testimony and how God saved you from your own sin. It’s important to work through some of the big, religious words with them because you’re likely operating on different definitions for key terms. For example, Muslims don’t have the same idea of sin as the Bible does. Therefore, patiently explaining the concept of sin and walking  through what God has told us about sin and salvation from the Bible is a great way to go about sharing with them.

2 Corinthians 4:3-6 has never felt truer to me than when I’m talking with men here about the Good News: “And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ…For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ made his light shine in our hearts to give us the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ.”

Their culture built on the foundation of sin and Islam has so blinded and calloused people’s hearts to their own sin, that the gospel is veiled to them. This is exactly why we pray for God to shine the light of the gospel into their hearts that they might understand the Good News. All the words we have to say might fall on deaf ears and blind eyes, but God is the One who makes the blind to see and the deaf to hear. Only the Lord Jesus can tear the veil of their hearts from top to bottom so they can be sealed with the Holy Spirit and have eternal life in Christ.

I’d like to finish up with a request. It’s halfway through Ramadan (big religious time where their good deeds supposedly count for more than usual) and almost every Muslim will be taking this month to fast and seek God. They think they’re earning extra favor this month so they can go to heaven and get their sins forgiven. However, we know all our righteous deeds are filthy rags and there’s only one Way, Truth, and Life whose blood redeems us from our sins.

With this in mind, would you take some time today and pray for your Muslim neighbors?

Pray that the emptiness of their deeds would become clear to them, and they’d turn from all their useless idols and empty deeds to the living and true God.

Pray that during their fasting, Muslims would really meet God as they receive the Good News for the forgiveness of their sins.