Many believers grieve the loss of their families after they come to faith. This tragic outcome is often unavoidable, even for the most winsome of witnesses. Yet it is not impossible for believers from Muslim backgrounds to hold fast to Jesus and to eventually be reconciled to their Islamic families.

I’ve heard it said that if a believer from our region faithfully endures persecution long enough, his unbelieving family will eventually come to respect him for it—and will even boast about him to their Muslim friends and neighbors.

“This is our son. He became a Christian and for years we were awful to him because of it. But he put up with all of it and is doing better than ever. What a man!”

This past week I heard a testimony where this has actually happened. Now that we’re back in Caravan City,* we are once again fellow church members with Brother Ahmed,* the local believer who once taught me that jihad is the only understanding of covenant in his culture.

Ahmed was testifying because a group of us who were part of the church back in 2020 were spending the evening together, sharing how God has been faithful to us over the past five years.

“You know that things with my family were terrible after I became a Christian,” Ahmed shared. “Especially on my dad’s side. For three years they cut me off and wanted nothing to do with me.”

Shunning like this is one of the more common forms of persecution used against believers here. It’s a pressure mechanism meant to cut them off from their primary support network and publicly shame them back into conformity. In a culture where the family network is everything because there are almost no trustworthy public institutions to rely on, this is often a devastating blow.

Ahmed continued,

“Last year my middle brother came back from abroad and asked to stay with us. We were happy to have him live with us while he was looking for a job. At least, that was the reason he gave us for his visit. He later admitted that our dad had sent him to spy on us.

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