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Some of the secrecy may be unnecessary. David English, executive director of a tentmaking assistance agency called Global Opportunities, points out that even in Saudi Arabia, one of the more restrictive Muslim-majority nations, "it has been clarified that if in the normal course of your work people ask about your faith, you're perfectly free to talk about it and explain it. There's a law against conversion--they're still not playing fair--but that much is O.K." Other experts say local leaders will often tolerate informal preaching as the price for Western expertise in other fields. Says Daryl Anderson of the Evangelical Free Church of America, whose missionaries ply primarily the health and information-technology fields: "We're creative in finding where the government itches, so we can scratch it. And depending on the ideological purity of the government agency, we have a certain freedom to be open about our faith."
Such informal understandings, however, can evaporate when a regime cracks down or a missionary becomes more assertive. In August 2001, Afghanistan's Taliban arrested Heather Mercer, 24, and Dayna Curry, 29, who had traveled from a Texas church to work for a group called Shelter Germany in Kabul. During their three-month incarceration, subsequent rescue and visit with President Bush in the Rose Garden, the press referred to them as "Christian aid workers," implying that they were engaged solely in humanitarian ministry and that their jailers' claim that they were proselytizing was false.
In their book Prisoners of Hope, however, Mercer and Curry wrote of initiating Christian prayer with Muslims, urging them to listen to evangelistic broadcasts (in one case providing the radio) and showing at least two families a film on Jesus. "We understood that the Taliban prohibited non-Muslims from sharing their faith with Afghans," the women stated. But they claimed that this violated international norms, and wrote, "We believe the Afghans--like all people--should at least have the opportunity to hear about the teachings of Christ if they choose." To TIME, Mercer said, "I look forward to the day when the people of Afghanistan, and those of nations like it, have the freedom to choose whom they follow--the freedom of religion and conscience."
Such sentiments are noble enough. But the women's acts were unpopular with a spectrum of Kabul aid groups running from secular workers to fellow Evangelicals. "They broke every rule in the book," says Seiple, the former State Department religious-freedom ambassador. "They were women in a patriarchal society, didn't know the language [well], didn't know the culture and were counseled against doing this by other Christians." Says "Kay," a 13-year veteran of evangelical missions in another Muslim capital who reports that the incident eventually hampered her own work: "I'm sorry that they suffered, but they just didn't think. They did not project their idealism to its farthest conclusion."