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Paul Marshall, of the human-rights group Freedom House, says that although conversion is a crime in some Muslim-majority countries, "the biggest problem is that somebody else, a family member or local vigilante, will kill you, and the state will not intervene." A 2001 study prepared for the Southern Baptist Convention's International Mission Board by a strategy coordinator for "unreached people groups" in Africa's Horn describes his experience in a country where, he claims, "the majority of believers in Jesus Christ were systematically hunted down and martyred." Such perils support the missionary argument that some Muslims remain in the fold less out of faith than out of fear. But the persecution poses for evangelists an additional and potentially embarrassing problem of relative risk, given that (notwithstanding the four recent deaths) converts are in far greater jeopardy than those who brought them to Christ. Conversion is an act of free will, and the Muslims know the risks. But one must share the faith of Wally Rieke, candidate coordinator for the agency Serving in Mission, to accept his observation that converts' "security and their care is dependent on the Lord, and not on us. If it was dependent on us, we would have a lot of people in trouble." Similarly, the Baptist report's "finding" says that "missionaries need spiritual toughness so that when the fruits of their witness are required to walk through the fire, the missionary does not automatically attempt to rescue them." It continues: "To avoid persecution is to hamper the growth of the kingdom of God."
Missionaries also face charges of neglectful carelessness regarding reprisals they sometimes bring down on pre-existing Christian churches and nonevangelistic aid groups. Says Lamin Sanneh, a Muslim convert to Catholicism who teaches the history of world Christianity at Yale: "They come in, don't report to the local churches, stir up a hornet's nest and then quit town when the going gets tough. Why start a controversy if you're not there to face the brunt of it?" Seiple notes that after Curry's and Mercer's arrest in Afghanistan, "all of the other Christian organizations were expelled until the Taliban fell."
For "Robert," the days of waiting appeared to be over. For months the globetrotting evangelist had kept a low profile, waiting for his latest chosen mission field, Iraq, to open up. He had lived quietly in a nearby capital, referring to Iraq by a code name. But after Baghdad's liberation, Robert was ready to roll. He planned to enter Iraq with a secular humanitarian team--a kind of traveling tentmaker--but assumed that his workers could come in later on their own, printing up Arabic-language tracts in anticipation. Not all missionaries supported the Iraq war, but Robert identified personally with George W. Bush. "Something you must understand," Robert e-mailed, "is that diplomacy does not work with Satan." He realizes that interjecting an uncompromising gospel at so sensitive a time and place may provoke hostility. But he sees that as an inevitable consequence. "If Satan's armor is pierced," he wrote, "that fissure will be violently contested at every point and turn." When Christ is proclaimed in Iraq, he predicted, there would be "riots." But after all, he explained, his mandate "is to turn the world upside down."