Heather Bellamy spoke with Gordon Hickson of Mahabba Network.

Heather: What response is your network getting from the Muslim community across the nation?

Gordon: They seem to love us. We've never had any problem at all with the Muslim community, because they just seem to recognise that we are there to connect them with people. In fact, one of the times that I was opening up a Mahabba group up in Dewsbury, as I started the meeting, we had all the church leaders and some intercessors there and three Muslims walked in. The guy leading the launch meeting that night was so embarrassed that he tried to close the meeting. I said, "No, don't do that. These guys are our friends."

I got the Muslims to come up and I asked them to share what experience they'd had in their connection with local Christians. They said exactly what I would have said, which was that Christians are fearful of them; there's no relationship; they've never even had meals in their homes. At the end of it I just said, "That`s great, it's a really good that you've shared your heart. So let me just share a little about what Mahabba does. Our job is to get these guys to get out of their fear and learn how to relate to you. If you do that, then from our experience, these people are able to unveil Jesus to you. You've heard about 'Isa al-Masih' - Jesus the Messiah, in your book, but these guys can help unveil who Jesus really is. We have witnessed many Muslims coming to know Jesus personally. They've had dreams, visions and healings." These Muslims were so excited, they said, "Please could you pray for us?"

That's just one example of how simple it is. When they realise that we're there to love and bless them, to unveil Jesus to them and that we're not their enemies, we are there to help and be their friend. In fact, the Koran even says that, 'True Christians would be their closest friends.'

Heather: Going back to that meeting you had in Oxford with the Islamic and Christian speaker, I'd imagine local councils would be very interested in your work in that, because of community cohesion. Do you build at all with local councils across the UK?

Gordon: Not really. We're trying to keep out of the political arena, because as soon as you enter that arena, there's another agenda that comes into play. Maybe in the future we might be able to enter that, but we want to keep it very much relational. We find that once Christians and Muslims become close friends, they develop a lifetime of family connections.

Heather: If Islam is in the news, like with most things, it's often bad news. In Islam's case, it's usually terrorism. You don't often hear people talk about loving Muslims in the media, so please tell me about your personal love for Muslims?

Gordon: My personal love for Muslims derives from the fact that we're a military family. My father was in Aden, in South Yemen when I was a child. It was natural for me to relate to Muslim people. My father was actually born in Nepal and my mother was born in Mumbai, so we're a very international family.

Then when I went into business, after I left the army, I found myself working mostly into Saudi Arabia, Iraq and the Gulf. I travelled through those regions and found it so easy to connect to different people. I learnt to really love them.

Then when I worked as a Campaign Director for a man called Reinhard Bonnke, I worked in many Muslim cities. I was the main person that they sent into Islamic cities. I just fell in love with Islamic communities, because I found they were so hungry to know God. Thousands and thousands of these precious Muslim people would just come to our meetings because they were desperate to know God. They were desperate to be healed. We found the love of God overwhelming them. Muslims were weeping as they came to a personal experience of Jesus and many of them were healed in front of us.

There was never ever any sense that we were there to preach against Islam. We were literally preaching the incredible love of Jesus and that has impacted so many cities. I have seen thousands and thousands of precious Muslim people coming to be believers in Isa al-Masih, Jesus the Messiah.

Heather: What do you think is our level of understanding of Muslims and Islam in the church generally? Is it very poor, or is it good?

Gordon: I'm afraid it's pitifully low. People are fed by the media. They will read what the media say and they will pick up on the terrorism, as you said earlier and they'll pick up on all the bad stuff about Islam. There is a lot of stuff out there, but that's not the community. You have to separate Islam and the terrorism from the precious Muslim people. You cannot keep those two together.

We've got to sometimes expose some of the evils of radical and fundamentalist terrorist Islam, but then we have got to learn how to love the actual people, because some of the people even struggle with it as well. We need to train people in how to understand their culture.