Islam, Canada, and M-103

“Canadians don’t know Muslims; they don’t understand Islam. And that ignorance is fuelling a lot of fear. And the fear is just leading people to become more aggressive.” This is a small excerpt from this week’s important conversation on Islam, Canada, and the recent motion that was passed in Canada – M-103. We’re joined by Dr. Wesley A. Thiessen from Calgary, Alberta who has lived for many years in both North Africa and Jerusalem. It was during this time that God began to work in and through Dr. Thiessen’s life to help him learn the religion of Islam more in depth. This has led him to have many great relationships with Muslims, and great knowledge to help people like us who may not know how to respond to the influx of Muslims in Canada. We all have different ideas and opinions, so let’s talk. But first, listen to this conversation with Dr. Thiessen.

Episode Links

Dr. Wesley has a blog! He obviously writes about Islam. Check it out!

Read It

*Below is an edited transcription of the audio conversation.

Introduction

With me today is Dr. Wesley A. Thiessen. He’s got his PhD in Islamic history, and he’s recently now back in Canada. Anyways, thanks for being on the show today with us.

Isaac, it’s great to be here. Thank you very much for having me.

Why don’t you just share a bit about who you are personally and what exactly you do. And also after that, how you came to know Jesus as well.

So, I live in Calgary, Alberta – I was born and raised here. When I was doing my graduate studies I spent some time overseas. I was in Jerusalem for a couple of years, and those were very life-changing years for me. It opened up my horizons of people in different cultures and I felt like during those times God gave me a very, very strong love for Arab peoples. And I knew that at some point in my life that I would go back and live in an Arab culture.

After that I got married, started having kids, and then an opportunity came for me to go and teach English in North Africa. So we went to Libya, we were there for six months. And then we spent, after that, fifteen years living in Tunisia in North Africa.

And in the middle of that time, or closer to the end of it, I actually came back to Canada to complete my PhD in Islamic history because of the time I had spent there and my desires to better understand the people I was living among and how Islamic law actually was formed. My focus is on the early, formative period of Islam.

And how did you come to know Jesus in all of that?

Well I was brought up, like I said, in Calgary – I was brought up in a Christian home. So I’ve been a church goer for most of my life, except when I moved to the Muslim world where it’s difficult sometimes to find a church. I made a decision when I was eight years old that I wanted to commit my life to Christ. There were various times throughout my teen years afterwards, being involved in summer camp and things like that, where I continued to grow in my relationship with God. And then at one point I just made a decision that I was going to commit my future to God as well and let Him decide where I was going to go.

And have you felt Christ working in and through the different decisions you’ve made, especially when it comes to studying Islamic history and all that? Have you felt the guiding of the Spirit in that?

You know, I would probably point back to a day when I was in Libya – we were only there for six months, but we lived in a city that was eight hundred kilometers south of the coast line, so you could say that it was in the middle of the Sahara Desert. A city of about a hundred thousand people.