Getting Help from Muslim Teachers
Using the Arabic Script in Tamajaq Literature
January 19, 2001

I wonder if we would lose most of our support if we admitted that Muslim teachers may one day help us in the spread of the Gospel. Well it's possible (in a sense). Children in Niger often get sent to koranic schools to learn to pronounce Arabic so that they can give the appearance of reading. It is common to see children under a straw shelter, huddled over their wooden boards reading all at once but seldom in unison. They learn the letters and how to pronounce them, but for the most part they have no idea what they are reading. Arabic is not their language.

Last year we received a copy of Luke in the Tamajaq language but it was written with these Arabic letters. I showed it to some of my Tamajaq friends who I thought were illiterate. To my surprise they could read it. They had gone to one of these koranic schools when they were children. They were delighted to finally find something that they could not only read but also comprehend. We began having regular Bible studies with two of these men. They seemed to really enjoy our times in the Word. They now have God's Word in their hands. 

But in order to make the most of this script, we have come to the conclusion that more research is needed.  Bob Loader is a computer programmer who lives in England and has written a program to convert romanized script into the Arabic script.  We want to test to see that this conversion is working accurately.

It is not wise to widely distribute Scripture in an untested script.  If there are errors in conversion, it reflects poorly on the sacred text.  So we have decided to convert our history booklets first and use them to test the script.  Mike is also meeting with a Muslim teacher who is a close friend.  This man is teaching Mike to read the Arabic script so he can examine the text for himself.

If the program is accurate, this may be a breakthrough.  There may be thousands of Tamajaq people out there who may suddenly find themselves able to read.  And we pray that we will have many new people reading God's Word. 

Pray for Mike as he faces a steep learning curve in learning to read this script.