Thursday, May 04, 2006

Muslim Scholar Claims 6 Million African Muslims Convert to Christianity Every Year

In a remarkable television interview one year ago on al-Jazeera, Shiekh Ahmed Katani bemoaned the successful efforts to Christianize Africa. Muslims stand by and do nothing, he says, while Christian missionaries feed the hungry, heal the sick and provide education to hundreds of millions of people in Africa each year. The result?
Islam used to represent, as you previously mentioned, 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 …..
The interview was translated and posted at Ex-Muslim. If you are at all interested in Christian missions in Africa or in other places in the world where there are significant populations of Muslims you MUST read this interview. It will open your eyes to how this more or less moderate Muslim sees things from his side of the religious divide.

Even so, 6 million converts a year is remarkable. It connects with rumors of tens of thousands (hundreds of thousands?) of "closet Christians" in North Africa who have converted to Christianity in their hearts but must preserve the appearance of being faithful Muslims in order to survive.

It is no wonder that Islam forbids both thproselytizingng of Muslims by other faiths and wields a death sentence for any Muslim who converts out of their faith. It appears to be far easier for a Muslim to convert to the Christian faith than for a Christian to convert to the Muslim faith.

I think that words like love, compassion, mercy, charity and sacrifice might havsomethingng to do with it.

ht:lgf