From The Economist:

“OUR politicians were corrupt, but we had enough money to buy food,” says Shah Alam, a day labourer in Rangpur, one of Bangladesh's poorest districts, nostalgic for the days before the state of emergency imposed in January last year. He has been queuing all day for government-subsidised rice. Two floods and a devastating cyclone last year, combined with a sharp rise in global rice prices, have left some 60m of Bangladesh's poor, who spend about 40% of their skimpy income on rice, struggling to feed themselves.

This quote is eerily familiar to my reading on other countries in Southeast Asia and the people's response to government. I remember reading either On the Road to Kandahar or The Places In Between (or both) and one of the themes was that most of the people didn't care about religion or government, they just wanted to feed their families. If that happened through the Taliban or Islam, so be it. It realistic, but scary at the same time.

I remember talking to a pastor in Kibera, a slum community in Nairobi, and he said that the Muslims and other religions were becoming very active in feeding the people in that area, and the people were responding by giving their allegiance to Islam. It's scary because though Christians were doing a lot of work in that area as well, you can't feed all of the people, and though food opens a door you can't rely on feeding everyone just so they follow Christ. Christianity stands on a much greater foundation than that, the Word of God and Message of Christ stand alone and don't require bread or rice to be relevant. I found the pastor we were working with almost requiring the person to confess Christ before he would hand over the food, which I don't agree with, but he found it the only way. Food and medicine is good, but as I stated earlier, he must realize that the Holy Spirit is not bound to our food or medicine to break through these strongholds, we must rely on that power as we work in the most poverty-stricken areas of the world, which continue to increase in number.