It's a compelling image, shattering Australian stereotypes about the Middle East. The Rev Emil Nabih chats with his landlord Tamar Mosad in Ras el Souda, a poor, rapidly growing outer suburb of Alexandria. Buildings have sprung up without town-planning and government community services are non-existent. Into this void has stepped the Egyptian Anglican Church. Emil Nabih, and is wife Gigi, now run a community centre in Ras el Souda.

Ignorance
Last month, the Sydney Morning Herald made much of recent research that found only one in six Australians could identify key aspects of Islam such as Mohammed and the Koran. The newspaper ran an opinion column calling for a government-sponsored PR campaign for the faith. Yet rather than pinpointing the root of Australian's fear of Islam, it is more likely the research merely reflects widespread ignorance by secular Australians of religious issues in general. How many Aussies can identify the doctrinal differences between the branches of Christianity? I'd suspect that, even amongst Sydney Anglicans, ignorance of the faith of tens of millions of Middle Eastern Christians would be far greater.

Understanding Middle Eastern Christianity helps us understand the clash between Islam and the West in the present. We see that the Muslim world is far from monolithic. And it also shatters the secular myth that assumes Islam has no experience of living with other faiths.

Indeed, many Muslims use the community services run by Emil and the Egyptian Anglican Church.

"From what I was told the response [from Muslims] is usually very positive," says Stephen Daughtry from the Anglican Board of Mission (ABM) who visited AMB's projects in the region this year. "In these poorer areas people appreciate that anyone wants to assist them. Community services are offered without bias to anyone who wishes to participate."

Ministry strategy
Emil's community centre represents a key element of the Anglican Church's strategy. It is in the poor areas with a growing population, where community services make a real difference. There is usually no existing Christian presence, so the work commences in a simple way by opening a centre with basic services such as literacy classes, primary health care, or an after-school care program. As a result Christians then have a place to meet and a centre where those "who would like to join with us without compulsion'  as local Christians delicately put it, feel welcome.

That's not to say it's all smooth sailing. Islamic extremists massacred Coptic Christians repeatedly through the 1990s and it would be naivé, admits Daughtry, to think Anglican clergy are not cautious and sometimes frightened when pursuing public ministry opportunities.

"There are the inevitable tensions in an area where the Christian Church is often seen as aligned with "the West'," says Mr Daughtry. "The overtly evangelistic side of the work is aimed at lapsed Copts, for the most part, and that work is looked on favourably, again, for the most part, by the Coptic authorities with whom [the Anglican Bishop of Egypt] Mouneer Anis has an excellent relationship. The Coptic Church does not have the resources to reach all those who are, by birth and tradition, of their flock so they see the Anglican Church as a partner."

Egypt's indigenous Copts, have a 2000 year history as a Christian Church. With over 11 million Copts still living in Egypt it's not an offer easily ignored.

Sudanese refugees
Protestant refugees from Southern Sudan have played a critical role in Egypt's Anglican revival. Before they arrived, the Anglican community was small and wealthy. Life was comfortable. Although Arabic-speaking, they may have well been an "expat' church. The pressing needs of so many Anglican Sudanese refugees brought them into a new outreach phase. And Bishop Mouneer is first to point out that the refugees have been God's gift to the Anglican community.

Yet the refugees live a fragile existence. They need to be officially recognized by the UNHCR otherwise they have no protection in Egypt and can be deported at any time. This was highlighted last year when 30 refugees, including a 13-year-old child, where killed when Egyptian authorities broke up a protest sit-in outside the UN offices in Cairo. 

CMS NSW supports Liza Hazelton who works for the Musa'adeen program at All Saints Anglican Cathedral, helping refugees with their UN applications. However CMS is very sensitive about discussing details of the work.

House church growth?
Interestingly Australian Pentecostals are far less reticent about discussing their activities.  Indeed, ABC TV recently ran a very balanced story on Foreign Correspondent about missionaries working in Morocco even though it is against the law to proselytise.

AOG pastor John Gerber's tearful plea, "It sucks " it's not fair because people are hungry for God, they want to know the truth, they need to know. To me Islam is a false religion,"  was not only a bold statement, but a rare shot of Christian passion in the secular media. Television is certainly a powerful medium.

Racik (last name protected for security reasons) from Arab Vision in Algeria talks of an explosion in house church membership thanks to Christian TV. He claims 50 new converts were added just last month. "I also met with a man from the city of Bouira. He is a devout man who always went to perform his Muslim duties. One day before he went to the evening prayer he watched our program and after that day he decided to no longer go to the mosque. A month later his family of 13 people committed their lives to Christ. Then he started to point his neighbours and friends to the TV."

Statistics on the growth (or decline) of Christianity in the Muslim world are controversial. House churches operate beneath the radar unrecognised by most Government officials. For examplem legally there can be no Christians in Saudi Arabia. This statistic is quoted by most reference books. Yet one million Filipino guest-workers live in that nation. Undoubtedly the number of Christians living in Saudi Arabia is in the hundreds of thousands. With this in mind the statistics used in these pages are conservative estimates based largely on the following sources:

Over 60 million nominal Christians and over 20 million Protestants live in Muslim-majority Nations. Here are the top 10 Nations.

Where have all the Christians gone?
MOROCCO
CHRISTIAN POPULATION:  est 25,000
STATUS: Unknown
CHRISTIAN MEDIA:  Banned
CHURCH BUILDINGS:  Severe Restrictions
MISSIONARIES:  Illegal
PENALTY FOR MUSLIM CONVERTS:  Jail Sentences of three to six months likely because evangelism is illegal
FLASHPOINT: In January 2005, police arrested a Christian convert from Islam, Hamid al-Madany, whose passport was found on a foreign Christian arrested for distributing Christian tracts in Tetouan. Al-Madany is currently free on bail.

BRIGHT SIDE: From January 2005 until a concert of contemporary Christian music kicked off in May, there was society-wide debate on the influence of evangelical Christianity in the country. An Islamist newspaper, Attajdid, carried an editorial by Habib Choubani, an Islamist Party MP, charging that evangelicals were invading and that the Government, by permitting the concert, was undermining the country's "spiritual security." In spite of considerable criticism, the Government allowed the May concert to take place and no negative incidents occurred.

UZBEKISTAN
CHRISTIAN POPULATION: 3 million (50,000 Protestants)
STATUS:  Growth
CHRISTIAN MEDIA:  Severe Restrictions
CHURCH BUILDINGS:  Severe Restrictions
MISSIONARIES:  Illegal
PENALTY FOR MUSLIM CONVERTS: None (though severe harassment and social discrimination likely.)

FLASHPOINT: During 2005, nearly 30 Baptist pastors and lay church leaders were arrested for running illegal church meetings. On February 11 this year, police burst into a private home where 40 Protestants had gathered for a meeting in the village of Kum Kurgan north of Termez. The police recorded the names of all those present in the house.

BRIGHT SIDE: The situation for Christians in Uzbekistan is both a legacy of a lingering Soviet mentality towards religion and a desire to ensure a "moderate' Islamic faith amongst ethnic Uzbeks (80 per cent of the population). Korean missionaries have been extremely active, and there are now more than 120 officially registered Protestant churches.

EGYPT
CHRISTIAN POPULATION: 11 million (500,000 Protestants)
STATUS: Decline
CHRISTIAN MEDIA: Open
CHURCH BUILDINGS: Restricted
MISSIONARIES:  Restricted
PENALTY FOR MUSLIM CONVERTS: Lose Legal Status and become virtual non-persons.

BRIGHT SIDE: In April 2004, an administrative court allowed Mona Gibran, who had converted to Islam and later converted back to Christianity, to recover her original (Christian) identity. The case set a significant precedent as the Government has refused to acknowledge conversions from Islam to Christianity. The court's written verdict noted, "The Constitution guarantees equality among citizens… without any discrimination based on race, sex, language, or faith. " A flood of similar applications followed, though the legal position of Muslim converts remains unclear.

TURKEY
CHRISTIAN POPULATION: 90,000 (5,000 Protestants)
STATUS:  Growth
CHRISTIAN MEDIA:  Restricted
CHURCH BUILDINGS:  Severe Restrictions
MISSIONARIES: Restricted
PENALTY FOR MUSLIM CONVERTS: None

FLASHPOINT:  Throughout 2005 the Protestant community in Tarsus was subject to repeated threats and harassment from police and municipal officials.

BRIGHT SIDE: Avowedly secular, Turkey is considering more religious freedoms in order to gain EU membership, yet Government propaganda still slanders Christians as "foreign agents' for local political purposes. Despite the social pressures against conversion, in 2005, more than 350 Muslims converts officially applied to change their religious status to Christian.