Breeding Contempt or Converts?

There is a video clip doing the e-mail rounds now which shows the changing demographics of our world. The population of Muslims is rapidly rising not because people are converting to Islam but because Muslim women are breeding at a faster rate than non-Muslim women (approximately 6 to 1). Even if Christian leaders became radical and decided to reword Jesus’ Great commission to read “while you are going, make babies in all nations…” Christianity would not thereby be assured of an increase in population.

The reason is quite simple. Children raised in even fussy Christian homes are allowed freedom of choice as they grow up, to become Christians, Muslims or even atheists. Their choice is supreme.

The average Muslim child is deliberately raised to embrace Islam and renounces Islam at great peril. The seriousness with which the child of a conservative Christian couple embraces Christianity is pale in contrast to the seriousness with which the child in a Muslim family embraces Islam.

It could be said without exaggeration that the supremacy of volition and the not so rare duplicity in life within a Christian family often means that even professing Christian parents can, unwittingly, breed contempt for Christianity in their children while the Muslim family keeps on breeding converts for Islam through strict adherence to Islam’s fundamental tenets and acceptance of Islam’s global mission.

There is a fascinating comparison/contrast that can be made between Christianity and Islam. The Great Commission in Mt. 28.16-20 has two dimensions: an Imperative Dimension: ‘Make Disciples’ and an All-inclusive Dimension: ‘…of all nations’. These two dimensions can be seen in Islam as well in the nature of Islam’s Jihad. Oh yes, there is a greater jihad of spiritual struggle but the lesser jihad of literal fighting or war is the more popular principle and practice.

Imperative Dimension: Re non-Muslims,

“And slay them wherever ye catch them, and turn them out from where they have turned you out; for tumult and oppression are worse than slaughter.” (Sura 2.191)

“Mohammed said: Whoever changes his Islamic religion, kill him.” (Hadith 9.57)

All-inclusive Dimension: the Islamic view of the world is in three zones,

Dar al Harb (where infidels now rule, Dar al Sulh (transitional turf where Muslims strategically compromise and bide their time until…) and Dar al Islam (where Muslims rule).

“I have been ordered by God to fight with people till they bear testimony to the fact that there is no God but Allah and that Mohammed is his messenger…If they do it, their blood and their property are safe from me.” (Mohammed, in Sahih Al-Bukhari, vol. 1, bk. 2, no. 25)

“Islam must rule the world and until Islam does rule the world we will continue to sacrifice our lives.”
(Al-Badr spokesman Mustaq Aksari, CNN, 9/19/2001)

Jihad is not just an incidental notion for serious Muslims but a crucial concept. As former Muslims Ergun & Emir Caner say in their book Unveiling Islam, 2002,195

“For the Muslim who fears that the scales may be weighted toward his eternal damnation, jihad provides the only true eternal security. For the Muslim in fear or without hope, death in jihad is not only a viable option- it may be the only option.”

If Christians desire to halt Islam’s impact on global demographics they will have to take the two dimensions of the Great Commission much more seriously.