When Dayna Curry and Heather Mercer are feted Saturday in Waco, many will cheer them simply as heroes who survived months of unjust imprisonment by the Taliban.
But others view them as soldiers in a war for souls, part of a growing army of Christians trying to convert Muslims.
Ms. Curry and Ms. Mercer were jailed because they broke a Taliban law against Christians trying to convert Muslims. And after they were freed, the women acknowledged that the charge was at least partly true.
In nations such as Afghanistan, where proselytizing is illegal, Christians such as Ms. Curry and Ms. Mercer combine relief work with mission work as a way to carry their message under the radar.
And they represent a dramatic increase in the focus that Christian missionaries have brought to bear on Muslims all over the world in recent years.
In this country, some Christians have stepped up interfaith efforts to reach out to Muslims in the weeks after Sept. 11. But others see the higher profile of Islam in the United States as a threat to be countered, even as they believe that missionaries need to redouble their efforts abroad.
"The thing that frightens me and concerns me the most right now is that so many people, even Christians who have not studied their Bible and do not know Muslim beliefs, say we're all going to the same place and we all have the same God," motivational speaker Zig Ziglar said.
But Muslims say that some Christian evangelists misunderstand or twist the tenets of Islam in their zeal to find converts. Such distortion is as wrong in its view of Islam as is the theology of Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, said Imam Muhammed Shakoor, leader of the Dallas Masjid of al-Islam.
"You've got two extremes, and neither one of them is good," he said.
Missionary work in nations that have laws against it dances on the line between respect of other cultures and laws and respect for human rights, said Dr. Diana Eck, director of the Religious Pluralism project at Harvard University. She participated in a panel sponsored by the U.S. State Department that focused on international questions about religious freedom.
Delicate questions
At what point is missionary work coercive? Does the advantage American missionaries have in money and resources overwhelm the existing culture? Is it acceptable for missionaries to deceive governments that have oppressive laws against their work? Do American missionaries abroad reinforce an image of the United States as an arrogant nation seeking to impose its values and even its dominant faith upon the rest of the world? "We do not have an international consensus about the answers, much less a multireligious consensus," Dr. Eck said.
The Southern Baptist Convention is among the groups aggressively targeting Muslims in other nations. Four years ago, the denomination reorganized its department that handles foreign missions to put more resources into the part of the world where most Muslims live. That same year, the Southern Baptists were criticized for creating a guide for praying for the conversion of Muslims.
Like other evangelical groups, the Baptists are taking aim at what they call the "10/40 window," which runs like a belt around the earth from 10 degrees to 40 degrees above the equator. Between those lines live most of the world's 1.2 billion Muslims, 800 million Hindus and 350 million Buddhists. The area includes mostly Muslim nations such as Sudan, Morocco, Ivory Coast, Iran, and Turkmenistan.
Tension since Sept. 11
This year, a master's program in Muslim studies was created at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth - the world's largest Protestant seminary. The first graduate of that program, Gregory Self of Tifton, Ga., will get his degree Monday. "I once saw Islam as a peaceful religion, but I have come to an understanding that Islam is really rooted in violence," he said. "I have also come to realize how far-reaching Islam is. It has come to the West with such force, and we need to know everything we can about it in order to effectively share Christ with Muslims both in our nation and overseas."
Other Christians in this country have ratcheted up the rhetoric against Islam since Sept. 11. The tension may be inevitable. Christians and Muslims are each followers of faith traditions that claim to have the only fully accurate interpretation of the will of God.
"The God of Islam is not the same God," the Rev. Franklin Graham said last month. "He's not the son of God of the Christian or Judeo-Christian faith. It's a different God, and I believe it is a very evil and wicked religion."
The theologies of the two faiths are very different. Each denies the accuracy of the other's sacred books. Each says the other is wrong about God's standards for forgiveness and what it takes to get to heaven. But both trace their origins to Abraham.
"If you talk about the creator who created everything, we're serving the same God," Imam Shakoor said.
When Ms. Curry and Ms. Mercer were arrested, their supporters denied they had broken the strict Taliban law against Christians trying to gain converts. But after they were freed, the women admitted they brought tools of proselytizing with them to Afghanistan.
They explained how they had shown a movie about Jesus to a family just before being arrested. The movie was filmed in Israel in the late 1970s with spiritual backing from Campus Crusade for Christ and financial backing from the family of Dallas oilman Nelson Bunker Hunt.
But any law in any nation against sharing the Christian message must be trumped by a higher authority, said Dr. Samuel Shahid, director of the Islamic studies program at Southwestern.
That was as true two millenia ago as it is today.
"The disciples were asked by the Jews of their time to stop preaching about Christ," he said. "They told them very clearly that they must obey God more than man."