North Africa may be tough terrain in which to sow the seed of God’s word, but Bill Musk, the new Area Bishop of the region, is clear-sighted about building on strengths already present in his new Episcopal Area and parish. 
Bill Musk (Photo: © Bill Musk/CMS) The Rev Canon Dr Bill Musk, 59, is excited and challenged by his appointment to a new Episcopal Area in North Africa.
As the Most Rev Dr Mouneer Anis, Bishop of the Episcopal/Anglican Diocese of Egypt with North Africa and the Horn of Africa, notes: “With the growth of the Church in this area and increasing demands for discipleship, community service and interfaith dialogue, we felt that the time has come to create this new Episcopal Area. We are sure that Canon Bill Musk has a lot to contribute in this area.”
As well as becoming Area Bishop, Bill Musk will be Rector of St George’s, Tunis — “virtually two jobs with big portfolios,” as he describes them.
Bill and his wife Hilary have in-depth experience of life and work in the region. They served for six-and-a-half years at All Saints’ Cathedral, Cairo, Egypt, where Bill was ordained.
They worked too in Lebanon.
Bill formerly had responsibility, with Living Bibles International, for Middle East work, covering countries such as Afghanistan, Iran and Turkey, and has worked for Operation Mobilisation and Middle East Media.
Between 1988-89, Bill and Hilary were selected as CMS mission partners to work in Nigeria, but their visa never came through. While they waited nearly a year for it to arrive, Bill worked for the CMS Personnel Department and did research into mission partners’ service conditions.
Within the UK, Bill has served as an incumbent on Merseyside. He is currently Vicar of Holy Trinity and St Matthias, a multi-ethnic Anglican church in Tulse Hill, where he lives with Hilary and their four daughters.
Bill is a well-known Islamicist and the author of books such as
The Unseen Face of Islam,
Touching the Soul of Islam,
Holy War and
Kissing Cousins? Among the regional building-blocks already in place that Bill hopes to develop further are the good, trusting relationships established as a result of the five-year-old inter-faith student exchange programme agreed by Sheik Fawzi Al Zafzaf, President of the Interfaith Dialogue Committee of Al Azhar, the Islamic centre and university in Egypt, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams.
The agreement, signed as part of the “Dialogue with the Monotheistic Religions”, enables younger Christian and Muslim scholars to spend a period of time in an institution that trains future religious leaders of the other faith.
Another foundation stone, Bill believes, is participation in the Evangelical Christian-Muslim Dialogue, which held its second meeting in Tripoli, Libya, in January 2008, “providing a forum for respectful discussion,” as Bill puts it.
Participants seek to honour three principles in the dialogue: frank and honest witness to their respective faiths, without compromise; a willingness to be challenged and transformed through conversation; and a readiness to change preconceived notions and reformulate ways of thinking.
Bill is also looking forward very much to being at St George’s in Tunis, which has “a very diverse, lively congregation” of 200 people, including expatriate workers employed by the African Development Bank, for which “it holds two services back to back each Sunday”.
Educated Tunisians within the church have established close, English-language links with a circle of contacts in Europe through a web-based network, which, Bill hopes, will expand.
He plans to ameliorate and refine any “blunt-instrument approach to evangelisation” he may find within the congregation.
One of the challenges Bill anticipates is the church’s social ministry to the local community since St George’s is located in an inner-city “urban priority area” of considerable poverty near the Medina, the largest in Tunisia.