Odd Column

Religious wars, conversion, the third world adopting Christianity....is it just me or this a weird intellectualizing of crusading?

At a MSA event yesterday a young man spoke about his Muslim NGO going to Indonesia. He said there are a tremendous number of evangelical Christian NGOs out there using the Tsunami as an excuse to convert Muslims. This offended him and many of the Muslims in the room.

My initial reaction, "Big deal, dude, at least they're helping."

I spoke to him afterwards and he was much cooler - these evangelicals, he said, are hurting other Christian NGOs as well, the people in Indonesia are suspicious of foreigners, Christians just interested in helping and not converting and Muslims trying to help as well.

Religious wars, indeed.