The Son of God and the 'sons of the land'

MALAYSIA—Every morning, the widow wakes up at 2:30 a.m. and buses to the main market to pick up trays of kuih (traditional steamed rice cakes and pastries). She then sits before her kuih at the wet market in suburban Kuala Lumpur, watching the tide of shoppers push and bump and squeeze past her stall. She listens to loud haggles and hears the bangs against wooden boards as cleavers whack at fish heads and beef tendons.

On good days, Hannah (WORLD agreed not to use her real name to protect her safety) asks God to give her courage to talk about the gospel with someone. On bad days, she worries whether the Malaysian religious police will finally arrest her, separate her from her 12-year-old adopted son Joshua, and lock them up for the crime of apostasy.

Because she’s Malay, Hannah is bound by Malaysia’s federal constitution to identify as Muslim. Individuals accused of apostasy—a crime in Malaysia that carries the death penalty in at least two states—often disappear into the notorious, isolated religious rehabilitation camps, where officials force-feed apostates Islamic propaganda for up to 36 months. To Malays, rejecting Islam is equivalent to betraying the Malay race, culture, and community. So intricate is the tie between ethnicity and religion that the term masuk melayu—“to become Malay”—describes conversion to Islam. Hannah’s late husband, an ethnic Chinese, had to convert to Islam officially to marry her.

So when Hannah professed Christ in 2013, she did so by herself in the privacy of her room. To her family, neighbors, and fellow market vendors, she’s a Muslim who doesn’t wear a hijab and speaks little about her private life. But at home, she pores through her Bible for hours and absorbs every good sermon she can find online and discusses them with her son. They church-hop to deflect unwanted curiosity and prefer large churches where they can disappear into massive crowds. Hannah, aware that eyes and ears are everywhere, warns Christians who know her not to greet her in public.

Ethnic Malays make up a largely unreached people group—in a nation with megachurches and missionaries. Some Christians are now undertaking the dangerous work of preaching the gospel to them

I met Hannah and Joshua during one of her braver moments. We lunched at a non-halal restaurant, where her cautious peering about for potential eavesdroppers soon shifted to enthusiastic testimony-telling. So eager was she to talk about what Jesus did in her life, she barely touched her rice.

Hannah was 38 when her husband died suddenly, less than two years after their wedding. Then health problems and depression came. Even as a Muslim, Hannah sought after every religion out of “rock-bottom desperation,” she said. She visited Malay shamans, hung spirit-exorcising Taoist talismans around her house, offered incense at Chinese temples, and even responded to an altar call at a huge Christian event.

But it wasn’t until she watched a Christian man’s testimony online that she “truly understood the gospel.” Her son noticed her changing—“she always used to worry and be angry and visit shamans,” he recalled—and he too soon professed Christ after several dreams in which Jesus hugged him and told him, “Don’t be afraid.” The boy now openly talks about the gospel with his Malay classmates, because he knows few else will.

That’s why when Hannah talks about the many ways in which the Malays cannot hear the gospel, her brown eyes gleam with rage and sadness: “It’s killing us! The biggest, saddest oppression is the inability to choose eternity.”

ABOUT 50 PERCENT of Malaysians are ethnic Malays whom the government registers at birth as Muslims. Nobody knows how many closeted Malay Christians exist in Malaysia. Plenty of rumors flutter about: Some claim more than a million Malay converts live in Malaysia, but missionaries tell me Christians and Muslims are inflating these numbers. One American missionary estimates the entire country has no more than 500 true Malay believers.

Three-fifths of the nation’s multiracial, multireligious population identifies with Islam, Malaysia’s official religion, and state-administered Sharia laws govern all Muslims. The government encourages non-Malay citizens to convert to Islam but allows them to practice their own religion—up to a point. For example, witnessing to Malays is illegal, so religious officials closely watch churches, Christian schools, and private social events. Some even mandate Islamic recitations and teachings in private Christian schools with Malay students.

The United Malays National Organization, the nation’s dominant political party that has never lost an election since Malaysian independence, promises to protect the bumiputra (“sons of the land”)—the Malay race, now interchangeable with Muslims. Malay Muslims gain special privileges over non-Malays: political voice, preferences in civil employment, public education, financial assistance in housing, and more.

Non-Muslims resent that officials spend their tax money (10 percent of the 2016 federal budget) on building mosques, training and dispatching Islamic missionaries, funding Islamic departments and schools, and maintaining “rehab centers” for apostates, some who report torture with electric shocks and skin-stripping canes. Meanwhile, Islamic groups portray Christianity as a symbol of encroaching Western imperialism that erodes Malay/Muslim culture and values, further stoking religious and ethnic tensions.

Such segregation between the Malay majority and the non-Malay minorities dampens many local Christians’ desire to evangelize their Malay neighbors. Grace-Melody Moo, a minister in a large Methodist church in Penang, put it this way: “A lot of Christians here look at Malays with mixed feelings. We feel pity, but we also blame them as the source of a lot of discrimination against us. That puts up a mind block: If they’re making life difficult for us, how can we want to minister to them?”

Missionary Rich (who spoke on condition of anonymity because of his ongoing work in Malaysia) first started comprehending the “bleak” situation in Malaysia after he asked 40 full-time pastors and missionaries whether they had ever met a Malay Christian convert. Not a single one had, despite the nation having many megachurches and missionaries. Rich is now in his eighth year as a missionary in Malaysia. He says it’s rare to meet a Malay who’s willing to reject Islam and profess Christ, but just as rare to find a local church willing to bear the heavy risk of welcoming, protecting, and shepherding these converts.

“That’s basically saying, ‘If you leave Islam, we will not stand with you. You will be alone.’ That’s what makes this field so bleak,” said Rich. “The devil is so confident, and the churches so weak, that he’s not even afraid of having massive churches next door.”

One young Malay woman whom Rich baptized was so enthusiastic she finished reading the entire Bible in 40 days. She went back to her hometown to witness to her family, but had to flee because they tried to kill her. At her new location, she tried to attend a local church, but they barred her because she told them she was Malay. So she visited another church without mentioning her ethnicity and participated in every service. Later, when church leaders found out she was Malay, they sent her a text message warning her that the Islamic police were waiting by the church entrance—a lie to scare her away for good. She kept showing up anyway.

The church finally begged her not to come, saying she was putting the whole church in danger—and it’s true: Churches could lose everything they own, including the ministries they already have in place. Not many churches are willing to risk all that for the Malays.

In extreme cases, church leaders punish members who evangelize Malays or even report Malays who visit the church to religious authorities. That happened to one Malay woman Rich knows: The pastor called the Islamic police when she entered the church wanting to learn more about Christianity, and the police dragged her off to a rehabilitation camp for three months. (She still became a believer.) In other cases, churches will allow Malay Christians to attend—so long as they stay in the shadows and don’t ask for prosecutable things such as baptisms.

Malays who profess Christ do so at great cost: They may lose their family, community, legal rights, employment, housing, marriage prospects, even their lives. So far, the responsibility of shepherding these vulnerable spiritual babies has mostly fallen on foreign missionaries, who historically had not done much evangelistic outreach to the Malays. That’s changed, but those with the sole mission of reaching the Muslims still struggle with obstacles such as language, timidity, fear, inability to engage the local church, and the classic pressure to impress financial supporters back home.

In some circles, bold, gospel-centered preaching has given way to a “culturally sensitive” methodology known as the Insider Movement, which advocates “contextualization” of Christian teaching for Muslims. IM is a wide spectrum, but at some point in that continuum, it crosses into heresy and syncretism. Many missionaries in Malaysia use the Quran as an evangelistic tool to talk about Jesus, but some overstep boundaries by imputing new “Christianized” interpretations to Quran verses. Some missionaries encourage those who profess Christ to remain within their Muslim community, which can lead to confusion and poor discipleship. Some missionaries also simply don’t evangelize enough.

THAT’S WHAT RETIRED business-owners-turned-missionaries Mark and Kathy Strandjord discovered when they visited Kuala Lumpur in 2004. For many years, their church had supported several missionaries to reach the Malays. But when Mark Strandjord asked them how many Malays they had helped convert, they gave the same answer: zero. Strandjord was flabbergasted. He asked, “Well, how do you share the gospel with them?” Oh no, no, no, these missionaries said, evangelism to Muslims is illegal. They said they don’t bring up Jesus to Muslims until they’ve known them for three years. Strandjord was so devastated that he stepped outside and wept.

After several more trips, the Strandjords sold everything they had and moved to Malaysia to do what they felt not enough are doing: preach the explicit gospel to the Malays. For six years, they trekked to towns and villages all over the country, including conservative states like Kelantan where strict Sharia laws reign. Despite receiving multiple death threats, they still visit villages to preach to strangers—and wherever they go, they say they see miracles: healings of the sick and brokenhearted, deliverance from demon possessions, and an awe and fervor for Jesus among Muslims whose eyes glimmer with tears when they hear what Christ did for them.

One village imam flung his Quran onto the floor, crying, “For 12 years I’ve prayed to Allah, and nothing, nothing! But Jesus! He sent you guys all the way over here to share the good news? We want your Bible.” Another Islamic teacher spying on them for the government later professed Christ and even put her security on the line by defending the Strandjords when village headmen plotted to expel these relentless white missionaries.

“The harvest is plentiful,” Kathy Strandjord said. “But the rate of Malays giving their life to Christ is slow, because there isn’t enough workers who persevere.”

That’s slowly changing. Once the Strandjords started retelling these testimonies with the local churches, people were moved to weeping and repentance. Pastors confessed, “We need to get rid of our anger and bitterness.” More and more non-Malay Malaysian Christians from various churches, with their pastors’ blessing, started joining the Strandjords on mission trips to learn how to love their Malay neighbors better. Today they form a “ministry team” that visits and disciples various families of closet Malay believers—“a kind of miracle,” Strandjord said, considering how fearful they were before.

The Strandjords are currently back in Minnesota but still make twice-yearly trips to Malaysia. Everybody keeps in touch daily through a group chat on WhatsApp, a free messaging app, to share devotions, words of encouragement and exhortation, and random photos. These Malays live with the constant awareness that they’re putting their comfort, safety, and lives on the line as Christians, so it’s a continuous fight for strength, peace, and faith in Jesus’ greater sacrifice and blessings for them.

“It’s all about Immanuel,” said Hannah, the Malay widow. “If not for that promise, how can I do this?” She and Joshua are part of that group chat with the Strandjords, whom Joshua calls “Grandpa” and “Grandma.” Hannah said her theology was once “all jumbled up” until she found “good shepherds” in a few local Christians and missionaries willing to disciple her with sound doctrine. She prays other underground Malay Christians will also find a family of believers who constantly remind them of Immanuel.

At times, when she’s overwhelmed with fear, anxieties, and exhaustion, Hannah turns to her son and sighs, “Is this all worth it, Joshua?” And Joshua, always the little preacher, replies, “Ma, don’t grumble. God will provide. We just trust in the Lord.”