| Messages from partners Back to the home page. Morocco The Alliance of Baptists is committed to interfaith dialogue as we seek to participate in the unfolding of God's shalom on earth. See the Alliance statement on Christian-Muslim Relations.
These messages come from Alliance
member Karen Thomas Smith. Karen is not a missionary and her
position is non-proselytizing. She is a Chaplain serving in an Interfaith Context at Al Akhawayn University. Her
ministry is one of dialogue, encounter, and service, not proselytism.
The funds she receives from the Alliance of Baptists Mission Offering
help cover her expenses, and are not a salary.
Back to the home page. January 30, 2006 Hi, friends, We are snowed in here. Literally. The mountain is closed to traffic. We've got two feet on the ground and it's still snowing. Plus it's cold this time, so this stuff will likely stick around a while. The vans from the university are not even running across town today, but hearty Kevin is cycling in as usual to make sure the School of Science and Engineering is up and running; his Dean can't make it in, so the coordinator of Computer Science Programs will hold down the fort. Friday night, I was in Casablanca walking around without a coat. I organized our national Week of Prayer for Christian Unity service which was held in the Anglican church in Casablanca. I took a student choir down to sing in it. We heard stories of God's faithfulness in Morocco from Catholics, Protestants, Orthodox, and Anglicans. I particular loved the testimony the Russian Orthodox priest gave about their founding priest, a monk named Father Barsanuphius who had only wanted to be a monk, but was forced to flee the Soviet Union and came to Morocco via Finland to serve the Russian laborers in the country. They had no money to build a church, but a wealthy Moroccan Muslim who had terminal cancer asked the monk to pray for him, and after Father Barsanuphusius prayed for him, the man was healed. In return, the Moroccan man paid for the construction of a church in gratitude for his prayers. The Anglican representative also told of an attack on Casablanca by a Berber tribe in 1916 in which the church was not damaged, but the Moroccan caretaker and his family were taken hostage. Two months later the caretaker escaped, came back to the rector, and showed him where he had had the forethought to bury all the church's valuables (including a silver communion set which they still use). The church then raised the money to ransom the caretaker's wife and children. I relay those stories to show how Muslims have cared for Christians in this country over the years. Four of our students were housed in the Protestant Church in Casa after the service. They discovered yesterday that they could not get back up the mountain (I was afraid of this and came back Saturday); their taxi was turned around by the police after waiting for about an hour. Anyway, I made one phone call to the Catholic priest in Meknes, who didn't hesitate to offer to take in the student refugees for the night.So they (our four and two of their friends) spent last night in the Catholic church of Meknes. It has been an ecumenical weekend to remember. Just thought y'all might like to be in on this! Love, Karen -________________
Oct. 10, 2005
Dear loved ones, I am writing because I am burdened over two crises right now. The biggest concern is the plight of Sub-Saharan African migrants who are flooding into Morocco in attempts to get into Europe. Earlier this year, it was estimated that there were some 20000 migrants in Morocco at any given time. The number is probably closer to 25000. The past two weeks have seen almost daily assaults on the fences that separate Morocco from its two Spanish enclaves, Ceuta and Melilla. In May, the Spanish authorities raised the height of these razor wire and steel gates from three meters to six meters. It just means that the makeshift latters the migrants used are now twice as long. It also seems that now the migrants have decided their despair is so great that they are willing to take greater risks. They assault the walls in great numbers -- 400 at a time. (It's extremely organized.) Those that get across get taken in by the Red Cross in Spain. But we know at least 25 have died this week alone in the attempt -- killed by the rubber bullets of Spanish authorities or baton blows by Moroccan authorities. And thousands have been arrested and quite literally dumped in the Algerian desert (right across the Moroccan border). We got an urgent call this morning from medicins sans frontieres (Doctors without borders) saying they have located a group of 1500 with absolutely nothing -- no shelter, no food, no water. The churches around Morocco will try to collect clothes today. Some of you will remember that I've been involved with this situation for a couple of years. I was part of an effort by the Eglise Evangelique au Maroc to organize all the NGO's who were helping migrants in some ways -- A Coordinating Committee of sorts. I wrote a job description for CBF that was filled by our good friends David and Julie Brown. David and Julie are coordinating the work of the churches in cooperation with MSF (DWB) and a Moroccan association for migrants; they are truly on the front lines here. There is this enormous material need and also an overwhelming spiritual need. The camps in the forests have organized churches. There are three churches of illegal migrants in Rabat now, all English-speaking because they are predominantly Nigerian. The French-speaking migrants tend to come to our French language worship services. Our little congregation just answered a request for donated Bibles for Nigerians in the forest near Nador. But Lord knows if the Nigerians will be there when the Bibles arrive next week. Morocco is doing a massive sweep of the forests; all the busses in the Nador region were requisitioned this weekend to dump African migrants across the border. (I know this because my friend's freezer was supposed to be delivered from Nador yesterday, and the dealer called and told her this.) Last Sunday when I preached in Rabat, I had a copy of the International Herald Tribune with me and held open the second page with side by side articles on the crisis in Sub-Saharan Africa (a Katrina every X days -- I forget the number now) and the rise of Islamism. We live both of these realities here. On top of this, my Franciscan sister friend Mary Donlon wrote me this morning to say that the dam above their village in the High Atlas mountains (Tattiouine) broke and all of their crops were ruined -- 100%. But even worst, the dam provides the irrigating water for the entire region. And this has already been a dry year. She also asked us to pray. (This is the village that has the rug project similar to the one we are doing in Tarmilat on which we have relied for guidance.) So I ask you to pray for these brothers and sisters in crisis. And be with all of us who seek to help as we can. Grace and peace, Karen Back to the home page. Thursday, May 12, 2005 Attacked in the press, but still hopeful Hi, Alliance friends, We've been attacked in the press again, and this time by the most respected Arabic language paper in the country, Es Sabah (the Morning News). (Think New York Times.) In the Saturday edition on the front page, one of the fat headlines was, "Government Report Finds Al Akhawayn University A Center for Proselytism". Supposedly, a confidential government source had leaked this tidbit. In actuality, the government is preparing a report on covert proselytism in this country in response to the myriad articles which have appeared since January. (We had gone a whole three weeks without an article in the press about Christian missionary activity when this came out.) The National Council of Churches (on which I serve) had sent the government a report of the activities of official churches in this country, including ours at the University, making it clear that we were not a center for proselytism. The Minister of Religious Affairs has asserted that he knows this is true, as has the Minister of the Interior, so any report they have received is bogus. Our university officials are furious that this paper didn't bother to verify the report's credibility. In actuality, most of the article is the same stuff that has been appearing since January on Christian missionary activity. It just has one small paragraph about Al Akhawayn, and it recycles earlier claims made by Aujourd'hui le Maroc in March, that AUI is a proselytizing center because of its connections to Baptist universities in Georgia and Arkansas. Saturday's article simply cites "people" from Georgia and Arkansas; as a person from Georgia (more or less) this bothers me. Citing a secret government report seems to give these claims credibility, despite the fact that they are groundless. It has angered students, faculty,and administration here, both those who know it's not true and those who fear some parts of it may be true. When you read something like this in a credible newspaper, you tend to believe it. Please pray for us. We have been waiting two weeks for a loan to be approved to buy a house here. Our dream is to remodel it, adding two retreat rooms on the front. It might seem crazy to want to buy a house given the climate of suspicion that the press has been generating since January, but it feels very right to us. Yesterday, when I was at my lowest, Kevin and I drove over to the new house. It is just 100 meters from the entrance to the national forest. We walked into the forest, and looked up and saw a Barbary ape sitting placidly in a cedar tree. It felt like a sign of peace. Then as we walked further in, a runner came by. It was Hicham El Guerrouj, the Olympic (and world) 1600 meter champion. He waved. As we were coming out of the forest later, he was stretching after his run. We stopped and chatted. He asked about our daughter (whom he has seen running with us in the jogging stroller) and we asked about his wife and baby. (His wife is a student at AUI). He told us he is also looking for an old villa to fix up in the neighborhood. I told him we'd be delighted to have him as a neighbor. That reminded me of what a wonderful small world Morocco is. Finally, I noted that through the forest there is also a trail leading to Tarmilat, the shepherding community where we have started the rug-making project. I was just out there day before yesterday; we delivered $300 of rug profits to the women. We are having a brochure on the project printed this week, and in two weeks are sending students to interview all the women participants and take pictures of them, so we can have a card printed up on each woman to be attached with every rug she makes. I felt connected again. God is so big. And God is so good. Love, Karen Back to the home page. ______________________________ March 19, 2005 My heart is so sick today. A friend of mine, an open pastor, has been asked to leave Morocco in two days. He is South African. This is the way the police in Marrakesh are responding to the charges of proselytism; but they don't go after the clandestine people. They have chosen to boot out a pastor as a warning. I have arranged a meeting with two reporters on Monday in Casablanca to oppose this action. Another pastor friend, Jack Wald, will join me. I had said I would not speak to any more reporters in this crisis. But I have to speak out here. I hate to have to make that long drive to Casa and back in one day during Holy Week. But it is unavoidable. Please pray for Deon Malan, his wife Iona, and his two daughters. He is a non-fundamentalist Baptist, a preacher of very sound sermons and a fine, fine person. And please keep praying for me. I have lost much sleep over all of this even before I knew about Deon. Karen Thomas Smith _____________ March 11, 2005 I ask you to ask Alliance people to pray for me. I was "outed" in a very public way as opposing covert evangelism through an article that appeared in Paris' Le Monde as a double-page spread Sunday. I granted the journalist an interview and was misquoted slightly (in a way that has deeply offended some people here), but she was nevertheless true to the spirit of what I said -- that I thought covert evangelism gave a negative impression of all Christans as deceptive and that it was in contrast to Jesus' own spirit of honesty and transparency. As you can imagine, this has angered covert missionaries. But it came about as a result of a terrible article in a national Moroccan paper called Le Journal Hebdomadaire (sort of like USA Today) which essentially lumped all us Protestants together as having a covert agenda of proselytism. Now every journalist in the country wants to talk to Protestants to find out if that is true. And, of coure, they call people who are NOT covert like me and ask us to make a statement. I have now spoken with four journalists (Moroccan, French, German, and Danish) and received messages from others who want to talk to me. Just today, a new article appeared in the national Moroccan press which implies that our university, Al Akhawayn, is complicit in covert evangelism through its Baptist connections (because Baptists are the chief force behind this covert missionary effort in Morocco, it says); it explicity cites Mercer University, Ouachita University and Samford University, all of whom have exchange programs with AUI. It also says that many missionaries are university professors who are Baptist having connections to prestigious North American Universities. (Maybe this is Kevin more than me being targeted here. Or maybe it has nothing to do with us. But our colleagues will find this interesting.) So being Baptist incriminates us in the eyes of the Moroccan Press, despite my stated position on covert evangelism, and being against covert evangelism incriminates us in the eyes of Baptists and other evangelicals here. I assume such struggles are familiar to many Alliance Baptists. And we would appreciate it if you would ask them to pray. This is a huge deal here right now. The Minister of Religious Affairs is being callled on by the press to stop covert evangelism and he may end up being pressured to crack down on the offical churches which are not behind the agenda of aggressive proselytisation attributed to all Protestants. In the meantime, so many wonderful things are happening. Our glad tidings to shepherds project is up and running and I am positively amazed at what is happening. Karen Thomas Smith _______________ December 2004 Glad tidings to shepherds and their families in Morocco The shepherds of Tarmilat live in a mountain village right outside of the Moroccan resort town of Ifrane. In contrast to the Swiss-style red-roofed homes of Ifrane, the homes of the shepherds and their families are made of mud walls and roofed with rough-hewn logs covered by plastic sheeting; their "yards" are littered with garbage from the town dump, located right next to them. They make their living by "ksiba", caring for animals belonging to wealthier people on land owned by the state but allotted for livestock raising. The location is good because of a mountain spring which assures water for the animals. But the bitter cold of mountain winters makes for harsh living. "We live like donkeys," one woman of Tarmilat told me; a despairing comment in Morocco where to call someone a donkey is the lowest of insults. We came to know the shepherds of Tarmilat as our university's Hand in Hand association surveyed the poorest communities of Ifrane in preparation for distribution of food for Ramadan. I went with the university's high school chapter of the association to assess needs in this community right outside our city. Seeing the difficult situation in which they live close-up, our students were moved to take more significant action to help them improve their living conditions. While we had our ideas about what might be good, we realized the first step was to meet with the community to let them speak of their dreams. We organized three community meetings with them: one to discuss what kind of project we might help them realize, one to come to a decision together, and a final meeting to finalize logistics. (The second of these meetings took place on Thanksgiving Day, by the way; they served us a meal; it was delicious - Turkey stew.) The project that we have decided on together is twofold: 1) We will provide 20 sheep, one per family, to be fattened and sold again for Aid El Kebir, the feast of the sacrifice, coming up in January. This will provide further income to increase their personal herds ensuring future income. 2) We will help the women to learn to weave traditional rugs in a quality that we can help them to market through our school. We will draw on the resources of four women in the community who already know how to make rugs whom we will pay to teach others, and we will provide them with all the resources they need to get started. We will pay the teachers and pay for teaching space (half of a "house") for six months, beginning in January. Then we will assess the project. (We have just met with the local "caid" who supports our project and is helping us to refine it, by the way.) I am very excited about my high schoolers taking on a real development project for the first time. And it's scary too; we've raised the hopes of a community and we don't want to disappoint them. The project begins when we buy the sheep next Tuesday, December 14. We are still raising money for the rug-making project. It feels almost like we are participating in the Christmas story itself this season, walking side by side with shepherds and shepherdesses toward a light of hope. Thank you for your prayers for us. May the Lord grant you also a blessed Christmas. Peace, Karen Thomas Smith Chaplain, Al Akhawayn University Ifrane, Morocco P.S. We greatly appreciate all your gifts to the Alliance of Baptist's Bridges of Hope Offering which supports our work among other ventures of hope in this world! Back to home page |