At the annual prize-giving in an Islamic college, a visiting Muslim scholar gave an impassioned speech against Christians, saying they were trying to make Muslims into Christians, to stop women wearing the veil, and even kidnapping Muslim babies to bring them up to become Christian priests and NGO directors. A few of the students got very angry and said to each other, we must find these people and kill them! A little later some of those students happened to meet a Christian outreach team, but since they used Muslim terms, such as “Allah”, each student took a packet of booklets from them, and posted the coupon to receive a free correspondence course. After completing the course with full marks, each received in the post a free New Testament in the Bengali language for a Muslim audience.
Whilst completing the course, the students realised that though it was a Bible course, it was sincerely taught, using only scripture, and so they forgot their anger. At a follow-up meeting they met several Bangladeshi Muslim background believers, some of whom had been highly trained in the Quran, but even the Christians there were soon found to be good people who respected Muslim culture and all were known as “Isayi” (followers of Jesus).
The students got more friends interested, and together would go from time to time to learn from the Isayi teachers as they showed how much of the Quran pointed to Jesus and commanded Muslims to follow the “asmani kitab”, the books of the Bible. Eventually, they decided to follow Jesus themselves, and over many years have encouraged others to become “Isayi”.
Pray that the Lord would guide many more Sylhetis to Bible truth through modern methods of outreach such as social media, YouTube etc., and new small groups of “Isayi” would form.
2 Corinthians 4:2b. …we do not use deception, nor do we distort the word of God. On the contrary, by setting forth the truth plainly we commend ourselves to everyone?s conscience in the sight of God.