Thabiti Anyabwile, a pastor and former Muslim, on trading fear and the evangelism project for real friendship, real hospitality, and a confidence that does not need to win the argument.
The short answer: love them as a neighbor first, not as a project. Have real confidence in the gospel, practice actual hospitality, and refuse to let fear set the terms of the relationship. Learn enough about Islam to notice where the same words carry different weight, and when a question outruns your answer, say so honestly and keep the door open.
Why Do So Many Christians Treat Muslim Neighbors Like a Project Instead of a Person?
There is a version of evangelism that treats every conversation as a transaction to close. You meet someone, you clock their religion, and from that second forward they are a target instead of a person. Thabiti Anyabwile, who came to Christ out of Islam, names this directly. The instinct is not new, and it is not unique to Muslim outreach, but it shows up with particular force whenever the other faith feels foreign or intimidating. The fix he offers is not a better script. It is a different posture toward the human being in front of you.
His logic starts with the gospel itself. If the good news really is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, as Paul writes in Romans, then a Muslim neighbor is not a uniquely hard case. He or she is simply another person who needs what every person needs.
“If the gospel is the power of God unto salvation for everyone who believes, then our Muslim friends are Gentiles too. If we know and understand the gospel, we know everything we need to know for our neighbor to be saved. But they're not just your evangelistic project. You hopefully have an interest in them as a human being.” – Thabiti Anyabwile
The obvious objection is that this sounds soft, like it trades urgency for niceness. Anyabwile is not arguing for less confidence in the gospel. He is arguing that confidence in the gospel is exactly what frees you from having to manufacture urgency through pressure. You do not need clever lines if you actually believe the message carries its own power. What changes is not the stakes. What changes is whether the person across the table experiences you as a friend or as a sales call.
What Does Real Hospitality Toward a Muslim Neighbor Actually Look Like?
Anyabwile points out something Western Christians often miss: hospitality is not a nice extra in much of the Muslim world. It is close to a moral obligation, a marker of basic decency. Which makes it especially striking, and especially sad, that so many Muslims who come to the West never once sit at an American Christian's table.
“Foreign students will come here for four to ten years and never be in an American home, much less a Christian home. Invite your neighbor for a meal or for tea. Just be a good neighbor. That creates a relational context for spiritual conversation.” – Thabiti Anyabwile
This is not a roundabout evangelism tactic dressed up as friendliness. It is the actual biblical category of hospitality, the kind Hebrews 13 commands without qualification. A shared meal does something an argument cannot. It puts you both in an ordinary human posture, eating, talking, present, and it earns the kind of trust that makes an honest spiritual conversation possible later, on its own timeline, not yours.
The practical objection here is obvious: most Christians do not have a Muslim neighbor or coworker they actually know. Anyabwile's answer assumes you do the basic work of noticing who is already in your life, the international student, the coworker, the family down the street, and then doing the unglamorous thing of inviting them over. The strategy is not exotic. It is just rarely practiced.
Why Does Fear Quietly Sabotage Christian Witness to Muslims?
Underneath the avoidance, Anyabwile says, is fear. Christians worry a Muslim neighbor knows more theology than they do, or worry, more darkly, that the person is somehow dangerous. Both fears, he argues, do real damage, because fear and love cannot occupy the same space for long.
“We really have to renounce fear. Fear is the enemy of faith, and it will drain you of any loving, evangelistic concern. Our greatest apostle was a terrorist. Paul was on his way to arrest and imprison Christians, but God saved him. So even if your neighbor is a terrorist, the one thing that can change him is the gospel.” – Thabiti Anyabwile
That last line is doing real work. Anyabwile is not minimizing the existence of religious violence. He is pointing out that the worst-case version of a person, Saul of Tarsus, a man actively hunting Christians down, was not too far gone for the gospel to reach. If that conversion is true, then fear of who a neighbor might be is never a sufficient reason to withhold love from who they actually are, an ordinary person, most likely, with ordinary needs.
Justice Okoronkwo, who has spent years studying how spirituality functions across African contexts, makes a related point about posture rather than panic. “For the African, spirituality is his lifestyle. You cannot separate him from it,” he says, describing why approaching any deeply religious neighbor, Muslim, traditionalist, or otherwise, requires patience rather than alarm. A worldview that someone has lived inside their whole life will not be dismantled by a confrontation. It will only be understood through relationship.
Do Christians and Muslims Mean the Same Thing by the Same Words?
One of the quieter mistakes in interfaith conversation is assuming shared vocabulary means shared meaning. Anyabwile flags this directly: the word "sin," for instance, often lands for a Muslim friend as a mistake or a failing, not the cosmic rebellion against a holy God that the Bible describes. Talk past that gap without noticing it, and both people walk away thinking they agreed or disagreed about something they never actually discussed.
Rahil Patel, a former Hindu monk who now does interfaith evangelism, names the same trap from a different religious direction. “Christians often ask Christian questions in the hope of finding Christian answers. Go into that world first. Then ask, where is the bridge?” he says. The instinct to lead with your own categories, even good categories, can actually block the conversation you are trying to have. Understanding a neighbor's actual beliefs, in their own terms, has to come before you can locate where the gospel genuinely intersects with what they already think is true.
What Do You Say When a Muslim Friend Asks a Question You Cannot Answer?
Anyabwile frees Christians from a pressure many feel without naming it: the sense that every theological question deserves an immediate, confident answer or the conversation, and maybe the friendship, has failed.
“If they ask you a question you don't know the answer to, let me give you the magic answer every time: I don't know, but I'll get back to you. It's honest, and it keeps the conversation open.” – Thabiti Anyabwile
That line does double duty. It is honest, which matters because Muslim friends, like anyone, can tell when someone is bluffing. And it keeps the relationship alive past the moment of the hard question, which is usually the moment fear tells you to either fake confidence or quietly disappear. Neither is necessary. The friendship was never supposed to rest on you having every answer. It rests on you being honest and present.
Anyabwile also draws a clear line worth knowing if the topic comes up: the Nation of Islam is not orthodox Islam. Drawing on his own years inside the faith before his conversion, he is direct that no traditional Muslim would recognize the Nation of Islam's teaching as authentic Islamic doctrine. It is a useful distinction to hold, since conflating the two will make you sound uninformed to either a Muslim or a Nation of Islam adherent.
Is This Approach Too Soft for the Stakes Involved?
There is a real version of this objection worth taking seriously: if eternity is on the line, does a meal and a patient friendship move fast enough? Anyabwile's answer is that urgency and patience are not actually opposites. The urgency belongs to your own prayer life and your own willingness to keep showing up. It does not belong in the posture you bring to the relationship, because a posture of pressure tends to close the very door you are trying to walk through.
Dr. CJ Rhodes, a pastor who has thought carefully about why people drift from organized religion altogether, makes a point that applies here too: “We can defend the church without being defensive about the church.” The same logic holds for defending the gospel to a Muslim friend. You can hold real conviction about the truth of the resurrection without treating every conversation like a courtroom. Confidence and patience are not in tension. Anxiety and patience are.
None of this means truth gets softened. It means the relationship is allowed to be the actual relationship, not a stage for a performance of certainty. A friendship that lasts years will, almost always, produce more honest conversations about Jesus than a single confrontation ever could. Anyabwile's own story, a Muslim who became a pastor, did not happen because someone won an argument against him in one sitting. It happened over time, through people willing to stay present.
Quick Answers
- Where do I start with a Muslim friend? With confidence in the gospel and genuine interest in them as a person, not a target. Anyabwile says if you understand the gospel, you already know what they need; build the friendship from there.
- What if I am afraid of saying the wrong thing? Renounce the fear directly rather than letting it manage you. Fear drains love and witness, and Paul, a former persecutor of Christians, proves no one is beyond the gospel's reach.
- What if I get a question I cannot answer? Say, "I don't know, but I'll get back to you." It is honest, and it keeps the relationship going.
- Is the Nation of Islam the same as Islam? No. Anyabwile, drawing on his own years as a Muslim, says no orthodox Muslim would recognize the Nation of Islam's worldview as orthodox Islam.
- Do I need to win every conversation? No. Hospitality and honesty do more long-term work than argument, and the friendship itself is the context where the gospel gets heard.
Listen to the Full Conversation
This piece draws on the Jude 3 Project podcast conversation with Thabiti Anyabwile. Listen to the full episode for his testimony, his summary of Islam, and how he compares the Bible and the Quran.
Thabiti Anyabwile is a pastor in Washington, DC, and a former Muslim who came to faith in Christ. He is the author of "The Gospel for Muslims." His conversation was hosted by Lisa Fields, founder of the Jude 3 Project.
