By Martin Roth, BosNewsLife Senior Columnist
PORTO-NOVO, BENIN (BosNewsLife Columns)– Events in the Middle East during 2014, and now in Paris at the start of 2015,suggest that militant Islamism is on the move. At the same time it often seems that the persecution of Christians is intensifying throughout the Muslim world.
The newly released World Watch List from the Open Doors organization, ranking the 50 countries where persecution of Christians for religious reasons is most severe, shows that fully 35 of them – including eight of the worst 10 – are Muslim nations.
Yet Christians need to be aware that not all Muslim countries persecute Christians.
Take the West African nation of Benin. It’s one of 57 member states of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, the body which describes itself as “the collective voice of the Muslim world.”
Benin’s president, Boni Yayi, was born into a Muslim family. But he is now a devout Evangelical Christian. He worships at his local Pentecostal church, where he sometimes also preaches the sermon, and has expressed a desire to “evangelize the world” when his presidential term ends in 2016.
NERVOUS NATIONS
In fact, some Muslim nations are as nervous about the advance of extremist Islamism as are Christians.
Senegal, also in West Africa, is overwhelmingly Muslim, yet, in the words of the Operation World prayer guide, “enjoys religious freedom and is remarkably tolerant toward other faiths – a point of pride for Senegalese.” It is noteworthy for its Mouride Brotherhood order of Sufi Islam, which stresses the importance of discipline and hard work.
However, the Operation World guide adds ominously: “Aggressive Islamist groups, funded by Saudi Arabia and Libya, are making inroads and threaten the tolerant status quo.”
This helps explain a remarkable outreach by Senegal – towards Israel. Just last month a new high-tech drip-irrigated vegetable farm was inaugurated in the country, an Israeli initiative that came about after a request to the Israeli Embassy from the First Lady of Senegal.
A few weeks earlier six senior imams from Senegal had toured Israel, accompanied by members of the Senegalese media. They met the Israelipresident and local rabbis, and visited the Yad Vashem holocaust museum and the Western Wall.
BRAVERY SHOWN
These are small steps, but they are also brave ones, as they have sparked criticism from some fellow Muslims.
Yet Senegal’s political and religious leaders have seen what happened in neighboring Mali, where extremist Islamists known as AQIM – Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb – overran large parts of the country in 2012.
So if there is any good coming from the advance of Islamist extremism it is that it forces countries and people to take sides.
It could mean a growing openness among some Muslim countries towards working with other faiths, along with reduced levels of persecution for Christians.
This is certainly something for Christians to pray about.
(Martin Roth (www.authormartinroth.com) is an Australian journalist and a former Tokyo-based foreign correspondent. He is the author of “Journey Out Of Nothing: My Buddhist Path to Christianity” and of the Brother Half Angel series of thrillers, which focus on the persecuted church. BosNewsLife Columns distributes opinionated columns and commentaries providing a fresh perspective on issues in the news. They do not necessarily reflect the opinion of BosNewsLife News Agency or its parent company).
What a wonderful post. We must hope when there is opportunity to do so. We must pray that Muslims who reject violence and aggression will be sustained in their hope by the same kind of response Israel has given to Senegal. Thank you for sharing this information. I look forward to sharing it with many people.