Missionaries Under Cover

摘要

She wasn't a muslim, but she would do for now. Last march, at just about the time American troops were massing outside Baghdad, she shuffled, dressed in a dark burqa, into a cramped schoolroom in the New York City borough of Queens. The class she was addressing was organized by the U.S. Center for World Mission and packed with eager evangelical Christian students wanting to learn how to be missionaries in a foreign country. The black-clad "Shafira was gamely trying to explain her faith. "It is not in the heart of all the Muslims to have violence," she said in broken English, alluding immediately to Sept. 11. "So sorry that people having dying. I'm wanting peace for my children. I'm thinking you wanting peace. It's the same." She listed Islam's five pillars of faith and reminded her audience that holy war is not among them. "We have a lot in common," she said, but she did wonder about the Trinity: "God Father plus God Mary equals God Son?"