Redeeming Stories

The old pastor, the neighbor, the broken window

My favorite story from last weekend’s troubles is about the Muslim neighbors who saved a 73 year-old pastor and family from their burning house (the in-laws of one of our friends). A mob had broken into their house, taking and breaking things, and then lit fires, so that the old man and family were caught in a room nearly suffocating from the smoke. But when some neighbors saw the smoke and realized what was going on they came and broke in a window to pull the family out. In the house their books were in ashes and only the iron frame of their beds was still standing. The pastor stated, “I have forgiven everything because those who burned my house did not know what they did.” And he invited them to “learn better their religion for it does not teach what they have done.”

Elsewhere a medical clinic and guesthouse run by our partners was threatened by a mob four different times. But each time their Muslim neighbors (we mentioned we had a chance to mourn with some of them in an earlier post) convinced the mob to not burn this place that offers them so much help. They even had to physically scuffle to push the crowd back at its worst. Here, our language teacher’s teenage son has Muslim friends who slept outside his house overnight to deal with anyone who would try to attack. We also heard of a small town pastor with a Muslim friend who called him to forewarn him and then rushed with his pick-up to get the pastor’s family to safety before the mob got there. The stories go on like that, but I think it’s also notable that government leaders have repeatedly said those who have done this violence have “failed to understand anything about Islam.” This seems like a pretty strong condemnation of this type of action socially and religiously.

Our kind neighbors helping our new guard put up an "extra room" (hut) in our
front yard, for his kids to sleep in on the weekends and storage