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Life Talk!

Islam's Decline

gkisseberth

Germany

a couple of members have posted about all the christian conversions to islam.

In light of that, I found this interesting 

 

Islam's Decline

A very interesting article from Pajamas Media about Islam's decline
. Quoting an article by an Islamic scholar:

Islam used to represent … Africa’s main religion and there were 30 African languages that used to be written in Arabic script. The number of Muslims in Africa has diminished to 316 million, half of whom are Arabs in North Africa. So in the section of Africa that we are talking about, the non-Arab section, the number of Muslims does not exceed 150 million people. When we realize that the entire population of Africa is one billion people, we see that the number of Muslims has diminished greatly from what it was in the beginning of the last century.

On the other hand, the number of Catholics has increased from one million in 1902 to 329 million 882 thousand (329,882,000). Let us round off that number to 330 million in the year 2000.

As to how that happened, well there are now 1.5 million churches whose congregations account for 46 million people. In every hour, 667 Muslims convert to Christianity. Everyday, 16,000 Muslims convert to Christianity. Every year, 6 million Muslims convert to Christianity. These numbers are very large indeed.

Pajamas Media goes on to point out that some of the conversion of Muslims to Christianity represents a repudiation of tyrannical state religion in places like Iran and the former Soviet Union:

Although al-Qataani points to Africa, there is another phenomenon based on repulsion from Islamist dictatorship, corruption, and terrorist violence. In Iran as many as 1 million people have surreptitiously converted to Evangelical Christianity in the last five years. Pastor Hormoz Shariat claims to have converted 50,000 of them through his U.S.-based Farsi-language satellite ministry. He contrasts the upswing to the efforts of evangelical missionaries in Iran between 1830 and 1979, whose 149 years of work built a Christian community of only 3,000. One Iranian religious scholar believes youth are abandoning Islam because it is identified with the corrupt Iranian government. Now the Iranian Majlis (parliament) is debating the death penalty for conversion.

...

In southern Russia the same pattern is emerging. According to Roman Silantyev, executive secretary of the Inter-religious Council in Russia, freed from atheist control, two million Muslims converted to Christianity. Repulsed by bloody terrorist attacks, those living in areas such as Beslan have converted to Christianity in the greatest numbers of all. As many as 100,000 have converted to Christianity in post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan.

After decades of Islamist war, evangelicals report thousands of sub-rosa converts in rural areas of Kashmir. Says one churchgoer: “I am interested in this religion. I hate violence. I hate fundamentalists in Islam. I come here to seek peace.” An Indian newspaper headline reads: “Urban Muslim Youth Out to Junk Faith.”

 

05:18 PM Apr 11 2008 |

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Jane Doe

Jane Doe

Indonesia

so you are using your friend's comment instead of using your own brain..perfect.Smile

02:43 PM Apr 14 2008 |

zanaz

zanaz

Algeria

Again you are stupid to not notice i've said my comments.

02:52 PM Apr 14 2008 |

gkisseberth

Germany

zanaz, I feel that the reporting in the article was accurate, and it did mention that some of the numbers were estimates. 

I would also agree that overall education levels in Africa are lower than in Europe. However that does not mean that conversions to Christianity are due to lower education. I would guess that education levels in India and Iran are also higher than in Africa, and yet we see large numbers of conversions to Christianity there. 

 

When the people of Africa chose Islam in the previous centuries were they better educated? Did they become less educated over the last few hundred years?

 

Last, I'm confused by your statement that the Church is using money and beautiful girls as a means to convert muslims to their faith. Can you explain how this works and give some examples?

 

Also, how much money and how beautiful are the girls? If the deal is good enough, I might be interested.  Tongue out

04:32 PM Apr 14 2008 |

gkisseberth

Germany

I feel the same way about the freedom to offend muslims by printing a cartoon about Muhammad. If your feelings are hurt, too bad.  

then welcome to u in the Foruth world war

 

Angel, do you think muslim countries are prepared to wage war against the countries who exercise their right to free expression?  

04:34 PM Apr 14 2008 |

devindernagpal

India

Friends,

Can we define 'silence' with words, no, not at all ,nor we can describe 'peace' with words but instead of becoming peaceful we start using words & loose our peace,just start living peacefully,that's what I want to say.

05:54 PM Apr 14 2008 |

M. Augustus

United States

gkisseberth, I like your style.Wink

 

The fact of the matter is that in the Western world, we DO believe in free speech when it comes to the matter of offending or insulting somebody – even a large group of somebodies.   That's kinda the whole point of 'free expression'. 

Your comments about "preparing for World War 4" because of a dinky little cartoon, not even published in a Muslim nation, confirm every negative stereotype in the media about the irrational, violent, 'jihadist' Muslim, and you would do well, if you want to portray your culture as possessing something better than a backwards, medieval attitude, to retract those statements.

07:27 PM Apr 14 2008 |

gkisseberth

Germany

I said in another thread that I think Islam needs to "grow up" if it wants to survive into the next century. The fact that some muslims and their leaders can be so upset by a perceived insult to their prophet that they would kill, commit acts of terror or even go to war is absurd, and as M. Augustus says only contributes to the backward image of Islam. 

 

One of the supposed strengths of Islam is that it's Holy book and it's law has never changed. I think this "strength" is one of its biggest weaknesses.  

08:34 PM Apr 14 2008 |

M. Augustus

United States

EXACTLY!   The repeated mantra I've seen on this forum that people favor Islam because it's Holy Book has never changed confuse the heck out of me.  The world situation has changed a lot since the 7th century, and going around using 7th century spirituality just seems like a bad idea to me.

There's also the fact that we only know that Christian/Jewish texts have gone through the number of changes they have because of the secular field of Religious Studies in the Western academic tradition (mainly in the past ~150 years).  Muslim 'religious studies' lacks this tendency to exam their religious texts critically, and not many Western scholars have published research in this field (because of the fear of fatwas, I'd imagine)... but if a serious study were made of the composition history of the Qu'ran, I think some interesting facts might come to light.

08:47 PM Apr 14 2008 |

M. Augustus

United States

I can't speak for gkiss., but I'm an atheist who has read the Bible and the Qu'ran (in translation, but I'm working on my Qu'ranic Arabic skills)... and so far, yup, still atheist.

 

Further, one doesn't need to have religious knowledge to know that the argument "If people are attacking us, we must be right" is ludicrous.

People attack communism – is communism right?  People attacked Naziism – is Naziism right?  There are now some books out there in response to the atheist publishing binge of the past couple years attacking atheism – so by your logic, atheism must be right too. 

Gosh, and you know what?  People attack Zionism!  Congrats!  According to your logic, the state of Israel MUST be right, since people attack it.  I'll notify Hamas they're mistaken. 

Again, this is all basic logic and has nothing to do with the theology of a particular religion. 

09:11 PM Apr 14 2008 |

gkisseberth

Germany

Angel, I didn't say that I don't know what the holy books are about. I may have admitted that I am not an expert, but I am by no means clueless either.

 

And the fact that I am an atheist is something I am proud of. As proud as you are of your belief in god.  Not believing in a god or gods does not equate to ignorance about religion. I don't assume that you are ignorant of atheism or science just because you are muslim. If you are, I will count on your words to reveal that. 

 

And you continue with the threats. How, well, babyish.  

09:16 PM Apr 14 2008 |