The Fastest Growing Religion? Facts behind the Fiction

Submitted by Moses Gbenu (United States), Nov 26, 2002 at 10:24

I have never accepted the claim that Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world. Those who feed us with statstics are Americans who do not see the whole picture.

The major problem in Africa and Asia is documentation. But those who have the culture of documentation (America and Europe) use wrong statistics to compute their figures about the Christian growth. They assess the growh of Islam by the noise of Muslims all over the world. Secondly, through the exaggerated figures by Islamic countries. Christian missionaries compound the issue, maybe in an attempt to get more people involved in reaching Muslims.

Islam is 'growing' only by 'biological evangelization' - am explosion in childbearing. Secondly, Muslims are migrating to the West. They settle down and begin to build mosques all over the place. Anywhere they find themselves in the West, thney begin to make noise, agitate for recognition, protesting for rights and privileges they do not have in their countries. Such noise gives the impression that they are growing so fast!

The intense persecution of Christians and the introduction of the Sharia legal system in the northern part of Nigeria, for example, is simply a reaction to the phenomenal growth of Christianity in Africa, particularly, the rate at which Muslims are getting converted to Christianity. The Sharia makes it illegal for a Muslim to convert to Christianity, and to make evangelization of a Muslim a criminal offence punishable by death (for both the Christian evangelist and the Muslim).

No doubt, Muslims are making efforts to spread Islam, but we must get the facts right. Ther is no week that thousands of Muslims are not converted to Christinity in Africa. That is major cause for the anger of the Muslims in Nigeria.

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".