TIME TO STUDY ISLAM!

I think it would be fair to say that most Christians know very little about Islam and would have a hard time responding to their belief system.

What we need to realize is that Islam is growing and Christians are going to have to be ready to give an answer and a defense of the christian faith.

To see how Islam is growing consider the following news report:

Muslims more numerous than Catholics: Vatican

Islam has overtaken Roman Catholicism as the biggest single religious denomination in the world, the Vatican said on Sunday.

Monsignor Vittorio Formenti, who compiled the Vatican's newly-released 2008 yearbook of statistics, said Muslims made up 19.2 percent of the world's population and Catholics 17.4 percent.

"For the first time in history we are no longer at the top: the Muslims have overtaken us," Formenti told Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano in an interview, saying the data referred to 2006.

He said that if all Christian groups were considered, including Orthodox churches, Anglicans and Protestants, then Christians made up 33 percent of the world's population -- or about 2 billion people.

The Vatican recently put the number of Catholics in the world at 1.13 billion people. It did not provide a figure for Muslims, generally estimated at around 1.3 billion.

Formenti said that while the number of Catholics as a proportion of the world's population was fairly stable, the percentage of Muslims was growing because of higher birth rates.

He said the data on Muslim populations had been compiled by individual countries and then released by the United Nations, adding the Vatican could only vouch for its own statistics.

The source for this story is Reuters: You can read the article at this link:

Islam

So ask yourself, how much do you know about Islam? Could you engage in an intellectual conversation with a Muslim about his faith?

I would recommend that Christians begin a study of Islam. Begin with books written by Muslims and writings they consider authoritative. The reasons to do this is that you know you are seeking knowledge about Islam from Muslims and not from people who are biased against it.

After you have a good knowledge of Islam from Islamic sources then seek good material from those who are critical of the Muslim faith and who are christian.

Here would be my suggested course of Study:

1. The History of Islam

2. The History of the Qur'an

3. The Teachings of the Qur'an

4. The Holy Days of Islam

5. The Differences between Islam and Christianity.

Does anyone of the Preaching Today blog team want to begin finding good resources on Islam and posting some additional articles?