Had the chance to meet with a missionary to Bangladesh, and he had an interesting tidbit or two about Muslim culture. (Yes, believe it or not, missionaries actually try to learn about their audience these days, instead of going in declaring that "your religion is funny and stupid; ours is the way of truth and justice; switch or burn!" What a concept, huh? Still, if you happen to be Muslim and think what he told me was baloney, you're the expert.)

A lot of Muslims don't distinguish between church and state like we do. Islam is a way of life, characterized by the behavior of both the individual and the larger nation (at least ideally). So Muslims within Muslim nations have this tendency to not only group Islam and their own country together, but Christianity and America (a concept that many Americans, both Christian and non-Christian, would find laughable).

And this leads to a lot of funny assumptions about what qualifies as "Christian behavior", just because it comes from America. Las Vegas? Christian. Baywatch? Christian. That chick dancing around in her underwear on MTV is definitely Christian: look, she's even got a crucifix dangling from her bra! And the war in Iraq? That's Christians attacking Muslims. Bush is a Christian, Blair is a Christian, ergo...

Puts a bit of a new spin on how they see us, and why they're so resistant to the idea of Christianity in general.