The Unoriginal Muse

One of the good things about being a christian (something of a minority faith in this part of the world these days) is that you get access to media sources a lot of people simply don’t know about. Christian news and media is becoming one of the modern succes stories yet it goes virtually unnoticed. Now, it is written from a christan perspective but, unlike most media, it doesn’t try and pretend it’s neutral.

The result? Articles like this one, from Mission network News, that show another side of what’s happening out there.

Europe (MNN) — 40 years ago in England there were only a few thousand Muslims. Now, there are 2 million. Mosques have increased in number from a few dozen to more than 2,000. That’s the story in England, Germany, Italy, Spain and France.

Greater Europe Mission’s Roy Nagelkirk, speaking from France, says as Muslim communities grow, “It puts pressure on those living those living in those communities, and there are reports of up to 50,000 French who have converted to Islam, but the question is how many of those simply live in such heavily Muslim communities it’s just easier to get along that way.”

However, Nagelkirk says there’s another side to the story. “There are people very disappointed with Islam who want to understand God in a different way, who believe God is there and it’s a matter of how to get to them.”

Jack Shiflet with the Association of Baptist for World Evangelism says there is something happening under the media radar. “There (are) more Muslims coming to Christ today than any time in the history of Islam.”

I find this encouraging, despite the fact that so many french are apparently converting to Islam. It would seem that more are converting away from it.

While the media covers the bombings, effigy burnings and other radical Muslim violence, Shiflet says it’s having another affect on moderate Muslims. “When they see tragedy going on, or bombs going off because of protests for cartoons and what have you, God is working,” he says. “He’s teaching the Muslim people that Islam is not what they thought it was.”

It might seem surprising to some, but many muslims don’t know their own religion very well. They were brought in to it using the nice bits, the parts written while Mohammed was still trying to get converts in Mecca, before he moved to Medina and bought a sword. Most muslims aren’t very literate, or don’t speak the arabic used in the Koran. In that sense they’re a lot like the christian church pror to the reformation, when the mass was conducted in latin, and the bible was only read by elders with understanding of its language. Without proper access to their scriptures, most muslims are simply unaware of just how violence and hate is so intertwined in to their professed faith. As this is revealed to them, more and more muslims can - and are - see the truth about Islam’s core beliefs and the truth of the almost faustian pact they’ve made to be a part of it.

The article gives details of how to contact the organisations mentioned within it, and I’d encouorage people to do so. Right now things seem pretty hopeless if you’re trying to glean y our information from the MSM, or are relying soley on the opinions of people who assume that the islamisation of europe is inevitable. As I often say, nothing is inevitable, and the rise in muslims converting to christianity seems to prove this. To say something is inevitable is to give up hope. My hope has just been refreshed by this news, my faith in human nature renewed, and I no longer feel quite so concerned for the future. Not to say that I’m pretending there isn’t a problem, because there certainly is; you can’t watch the news from France over just the last few days and not realise that. The problem, however, is not as inevitable as we might have thought, and the solution is already being carried out. A little faith goes a long way.