CTS Grads Move to Egypt

For the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, CRC News has prepared aseries of stories about how the Christian Reformed Church and its members have responded – and what we have learned – in the last 10 years.

Ten years after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, Anne Zaki and her husband, Naji Umran, will soon begin an innovative approach to ministry in the culturally rich, politically dynamic, land of Egypt.

For Zaki and her husband, it marks a return to the country where they were living onSept. 11, 2001 when they learned that something terrible had happened in the United States.

News at first was spotty, but then it became clear that terror from abroad had arrived on U.S. soil — Zaki’s home for several years — in a violent, almost unimaginable manner.

Zaki says she is pleased and hopeful that, a decade after 9/11, she will be working in Egypt.

She and her husband will return at a crucial moment in the country's history.

"There is an urgency to us going back, especially after the overthrow of the Mubarak government," said Zaki.

Protesters earlier this year took to the streets, demanding an end to Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year- rule and asking for more freedom. The protests led to Mubarak’s fall from power.

"Elections will be coming up and, for the first time in a long time, Christians could have a voice in the government," says Zaki.

Zaki and her husband came the U.S. in 2002 to attend Calvin Theological Seminary. Anne had graduated from Calvin College.

After graduation from CTS, they served a Christian Reformed Church congregation in Grand Rapids, Mich., and one in British Columbia.

In Egypt, Zaki will teach at a seminary and work with the Christian community while Umran, who is Canadian, begins a ministry focused on creating dialogue between Christians and Muslims.

"We hope to edify people through peaceful preaching. We will be speaking about Reformed culture, which teaches us to be very active agents for change in the world. That is a beneficial learning to take with us," Zaki says.

As she returns, memories of 9/11 have sifted back, making her realize yet again the changes that have occurred around the world and in Egypt after the attacks.

Zaki recalls seeing the looks of sadness on the faces of friends, family members and Muslims after the news of the attacks broke.

While some news outlets were reporting Muslims dancing in the streets to celebrate the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Zaki says she never saw any celebrations. If anything, Egyptians were somber.

Ironically, the attacks also brought a sense of hope that perhaps the U.S. would pay attention to the reality that factions of Islam had been challenging the fabric of moderate Egyptian society.

"People were really grieving for the United States, at the same time they had the sense that perhaps the U.S. would now be able to relate better to the suffering that our people are going through," says Zaki.

Zaki is no stranger to the violence that can erupt in the Middle East. Last Christmas season, members of her family were attending a service in a Christian church that was bombed, killing many people. Her family members were not physically harmed.

Peter VanderMeulen, director of the CRC’s Office of Social Justice, says he is encouraged by the type of work Zaki and her husband will be doing, right in the heart of a country that experiences all of the tensions and opportunities that exist for building relationships between Christians and Muslims in the Middle East.

"Anne is a wonderful, brilliant and energetic person of faith,” VanderMeulen says. “We are very fortunate that she and her husband will be working right there on the ground."

Joel Hogan, director of international ministries for Christian Reformed World Missions, says Zaki and her husband initiated the move to Cairo in response to God's call.

Although they are not employees of the CRC, the denomination is working to stay connected with them and "to dream together about ways to use their considerable gifts and their good relationships with both the CRC and with Christians throughout the Middle East to make bridges for dialogue and engagement," says Hogan.

In preparing to return, Zaki has had a chance to think about how some Egyptians were impacted by 9/11.

Moderate Muslims, she says, "understand Islam as a religion of peace that makes room for people of other faiths.”

Muslims have been denied visas to travel, go to school or conduct business in the U.S. and Europe. Meanwhile, fear spread among moderate Muslims of what the more fundamentalist members of Islam would do to them if they kept practicing a more peaceful and accepting form of the religion.

"They saw a tide of fundamentalism coming on and feared it would be so strong that it would take away their rights," said Zaki. "This especially affected women who were working and involved in society.”

Many of these women now stand on the fringes of society, denied a place by leaders that hold to a strict view of Islam, meaning that women need to stay home and, whenever in public, wear a head covering.

At the same time, though, the terrorist attacks of 9/11 helped to bring the world to a deeper awareness that there were many Muslims in the world and encouraged Christians and Muslims to learn more about the other's religion and culture.

Similarly, it spurred Muslims to read the Qur'an more carefully and Christians to do the same with the Bible.

"We've already seen better engagement among many groups," says Zaki. "There is more empathy and more of a willingness to learn about one another."

Zaki said she is very grateful that the CRC is today paying more attention to events and looking for opportunities to serve in the Middle East.

She attributes some of the growing interest to a trip to the Middle East, put together by OSJ and sponsored in 2007 by the CRC. At that time, a large group of CRC visitors viewed firsthand the culture and spoke face-to-face with Christians and Muslims alike.

"People in Egypt are encouraged by this – to see a small denomination make it known that it is not unaware of their needs and that they are not alone," says Zaki.