I won’t pretend I know the exact answer to this, but I just took a class on Islam and I will try to recite what I know.

Islam is growing rapidly, mostly in Africa, Asia and the Middle East to the best of my knowledge (as well as parts of Europe). Some of the beliefs and practices of Islam are similar to ones that the tribes in Africa had. Muslims are known for trade and that is just one way that they can spread their religion. Another is through conquest which is how Islam was spread to many parts of the world.

Part of the situation in Africa is that the colonialists were all Christian and seen as hostile. Well, this, to say the least, discourages people in that region from wanting to even think about converting to Christianity because of the way that the colonialists acted. The Muslims traded a lot with the people in North Africa and had a more peaceful means of being able to covert people since they were not there to conquer (as were the white, European Christians).

That’s about all I know about the spread of Islam (or at least what I know that pertains to this topic).

I do not know what converts to Islam feel or why they convert. I have not taken any surveys. It may be that the situation is the same in many other countries where white, Christian people came in to colonize their nation and because of that it gave them a bad impression of Christianity.

It also might be all the weird versions of Christians that are out there trying to give everyone a Bible thinking that it will change everyone’s life (not that I find anything wrong with the Bible of course, but I just get fed up with the people that think we need to send Bibles to China or something without actually taking it in context of the rest of Christianity).

Here is my thoughts. It’s going to be hard to keep this short.

The following I think has contributed to the spread of Islam:

1. According to the historic Muslim understanding, there is no separation between religion and government-what in Christianity would be called the separation of church and state. I am not speaking here of the secularist idea that the state should marginalize religion and discourage people from voting their consciences as Christians. We are talking about the idea that church and state are not the same thing and that they have different spheres of activity. Christians understood seperation of church and state from Christ himself, Matthew 22:21, in which Christ is quoted as saying: ‘Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.’

2. Because of the need to expand God’s dominion by wars of conquest, Islam’s ideology imposes on Muslims the duty to fight for God’s community. This duty is known as jihad (Arabic, “struggle, fight”). French sociologist Jacques Ellul notes, “Jihad is a religious obligation. It forms part of the duties that the believer must fulfill; it is Islam’s normal path to expansion.”

3. In the seventeenth century it had begun to sink into Muslim consciousness that something was desperately wrong in the world. Though Muslim society had previously been more advanced economically and in some ways culturally than European society, it began to dawn on Muslim leaders that the barbarian infidels of Europe were catching up and in certain ways were ahead of Muslim society.

4. European domination of the Muslim world was short-lived, ending in the 1960s with the close of the de-colonialization that followed World War II. Yet it had an enormous effect on the Muslim psyche.

In conclusion, the Muslim mindset is trying to go back to the good old days. Where Muslims had a religious superstate. Anyone resisting would be dealt with. There is several history you can read on this.

Hope this helps.

In Christ
~Victor Mesina

[/b]

One of my Iranian Friends has his M.S. in History, I also have a couple Father Mitch Pacwa’s video tapes and you can also find some of this on catholic.com.

Is there something I found that does not match what you found?
I’m always open to being corrected if that is the case. We have enough people doing that already.

~Victor

No, I just found the exact same information on Catholic Answers and some other Islam sites. I was wondering if you wrote it yourself or just paraphrased someone else’s work.

Islam is an interesting religion. I know come Chrsitians say that the Koran promotes violence and warfare, but I think the same could be said about the Bible as well.