Highlight: Sharing the love of Christ with Muslim women

Have you ever encountered a Muslim person in your community and felt like they gave you the cold-shoulder? Emily Foreman says that there is a misconception running rampant that Muslims, especially Muslim women, aren’t interested in getting to know Americans.

“It’s easy for us to draw the conclusion that the Muslim women here in the U.S. don’t want to interact with us, that they feel awkward, they’re just bashful or they just try to avoid us when in reality that is actually a lie from the enemy.”

Many Muslims are convinced they are unwanted and many don’t feel comfortable looking at Americans.

“The majority of Muslim women, all they know is from what they see on television and what they experience when they go to the store is that no one else wants to make eye contact with them, or they are they’re looking at them with a suspicious eye. For them, they feel like that they are not wanted here, they feel like they don’t want to make you uncomfortable so they’re not going to look at you, because they think that we think they’re all terrorists.”

What is truly going on in the heart of a Muslim woman?

“Many Muslim women are extremely lonely because they can’t find jobs as easily wearing the veil or the head covering. Their husbands go to work and they try to make a living for their family so they can send their children to school, but the women day in and day out are stuck at home, and if they don’t have a community of other Muslim women then they’re even more isolated.”

“Women especially have a need for companionship, for friendship, and for understanding. A lot of Muslim women come into the States and unless they have a Muslim community, they are not receiving that at all and they are extremely lonely.”

What can I do to make an impact?

“So I say to women, the next time you see a woman with a head covering on approach her and just say, ‘Wow, your head covering is so beautiful, where you from?’ and watch her melt before you. Know the biggest bridge for the gap is to say ‘Let me say that I’m just so glad you’re here’ and you’ll have an absolute friend for life.”


Emily Foreman is a longtime ministry worker whose passion is to see the captives set free. She had this desire as a child and still does today, even after the death of her husband at the hands of al-Qaeda extremists. Compelled by God’s love for Muslims and inspired by her late husband’s willing sacrifices, she and her family continue to work in North Africa and strive to mobilize Christians across North America to see the Muslim world through a lens of faith.

We died before we came here