Heather Bellamy spoke with Gordon Hickson of Mahabba Network.

If you wanted to talk to somebody about God in your town, then walk down the street and look for a Muslim. They will probably immediately want to talk to you about God. Most British people probably wouldn't want to, but a British Muslim person would come up to you and say, "Tell me." and they would want to have a coffee with you and talk to you. They are the hungriest people I've ever met in wanting to connect to God, because to them God's a million miles away. When they find people who really are close to God and have a personal relationship with Him then they are so hungry to know that.

Heather: You have spoken about some Muslims becoming Christians. What do Muslims, generally speaking, experience from their families and faith community when they want to change their faith and become Christians?

Gordon: It depends on each community you're working with. If you're working with the Iranian community, then there is great rejoicing and a great sense of peace. I would say that probably about 8,000 Iranians have come to know Jesus in the last two years, so there is no real opposition there. The same is true with the Afghan community, because these are both communities that have suffered severely by radical fundamentalists and probably aggressive Islam. They want to find an alternative and for them there's no real problem. However, if you have the very tight-knit communities, like in England with the Mirpuri Pakistani community, or the Somali, or the Bengali community, communities like that are very tight. They are strong families. So there is a sense of a fear dynamic there. They feel that if somebody comes to faith that it will break their relationship with the community.

We have to be very careful that we're not telling people to leave their culture and leave their family. We're trying to help people to come to the living faith in Jesus so that they can relate to God.

If they leave their faith to become Christians, then from the Koran they can legitimately be killed. In this country it hasn't happened much. There have been honour killings in this country, but I'm not sure how many honour killings have happened because of faith.

I have been discipling a young boy who had calls from Pakistan, I was in the house at the time, where they threatened him with being killed the next day. They said they had people in Oxford who would be willing to kill him if he didn't recant and go back to the Mosque. So there is a huge cost to some of these people if they really want to give their lives to Jesus.

Heather: How understanding is our Government and services and the church, of these issues that Muslim converts face? Is there enough support for them?

Gordon: There is probably zero support and understanding at the Government level. They don't really believe that sort of thing happens.

One particular boy, I told the Government three times that he had a death sentence on his head. They just didn't believe it. Eventually I had to record the telephone calls that came from Pakistan before they actually believed it.

There is very little understanding at that level. However, the churches are beginning to wake up and there are a number of groups now to help look after people who have come to faith, where they have been rejected from their communities.

We try and help people who have come to faith to stay within their community. We feel that they don't need to leave their family; they don't need to lose their community; they can stay within the Muslim community.

Coming to faith does not mean that they've given up their family and their friends. So we try and help people on that journey and there are ways of doing that.

For those who have been rejected and have been cast out, there are support mechanisms to help these people. Quite a number of people have taken up the safe houses, where they were able to go on a journey and can have a living faith in Jesus without losing their lives.

Heather: How much inter-faith dialogue happens in our nation, or in Europe, to help build bridges of understanding for these issues, you know, with those tight-knit communities that might fear people leaving and changing faith?