Why aren’t more Muslims converting to Christianity?

Why aren't more Muslims converting to Christianity?

Michael Cook | Jul 26 2016 | comment

Muslim refugees prepare for an evangelical baptism in Germany / Der Stern

The atrocities in Orlando and Nice -- and today in Normandy -- keep a burning question alive: will Muslims ever integrate successfully into Western societies? If you listen to Donald Trump or Marie Le Pen, the answer is no. Their sympathisers seem to believe that Muslims will always be a dangerous cyst within the secularised West.

There is another possibility, though. Why don’t Christians aspire to convert Muslims to their own faith? The novelist Michel Houellebecq created a stir with his most recent novel Submission(Soumission in French) which imagines France governed by an Islamic party in 2022. The central character, a professor of literature, decides to convert to Islam because he can get a secure job and multiple wives.

But why is this scenario more plausible than the gradual conversion of Muslims?

This is not as absurd as it sounds. There have been a number of reports from Europe of conversions to Christianity among Muslim refugees:

According to Austrian website Kurier, 83 adults were approved for baptism in Vienna in 2016, about half of them Muslims, mostly from Syria, Afghanistan, and Iran.
The German pastor of a Evangelical-Lutheran church in Berlin claims that 1,200 Muslims have joined his congregation in the past three years.
Mohammad Eghtedarian, a refugee from Iran who converted to Christianity and was later ordained, is now a curate at Liverpool’s Anglican Cathedral where a weekly service in Persian attracts between 100 and 140 people.

Critics will say that these are merely opportunistic, not genuine conversions. A feature in the German magazine Der Stern records the reaction of an elderly German woman, amazed at the spectacle of a mass baptism in a river: “That’s ridiculous; who’s fooling who here?” she murmurs. Refugees may believe that they will get more benefits and permanent residency if they declare themselves Christians. It might even be true.

But few areas are more controversial than religious demography. Some churches exaggerate the number of conversions in mission lands in order to promote donations back home or to recruit more young missionaries. There is no clear standard of what constitutes a “conversion”. Is it “a decision for Christ”; or is it just baptism; or is it attending a church regularly? Do the statistics include people who converted but reverted to Islam?

Despite all these methodological problems, a recent article in the Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion (IJRR) estimates that 50 years ago, in 1960, there were only about 200,000 believers in Christ with a Muslim background. By 2010 this number had increased to nearly 10 million. Most of these – about 6.5 million – were Indonesian. But according to the IJRR tally, there were about 450,000 Muslim converts in the United States and about 150,000 in Europe. Apart from Indonesia, the largest number of Muslim-to-Christian converts was in Africa, about 2.2 million.

These figures could understate the truth, as conversion invites persecution and even murder, so gathering statistics is difficult. Even in refugee camps in Europe, some converts fear for their lives. Kurier, the Austrian website, interviewed “Christoph”, an elderly Afghan who became a Catholic in Vienna. "This could be my death sentence,” he says. Some Christian churches exaggerate their "success"; others keep it quiet. Catholics seem to be far more reticent than evangelicals and far more concerned about educating prospective converts before receiving them into the Church.

Less well-known are Muslim anxieties. In 2003 Sheikh Ahmad Al Katani, the president of The Companions Lighthouse for the Science of Islamic Law, a Muslim preacher-training centre in Libya, told Al-Jazeera that “Every year, 6 million Muslims become Christians [in Africa alone]. What used to be a majority religion is now turning into minority.” In the light of the statistics in the IJRR, this seems vastly inflated. Perhaps he was trying to whip up anger towards Christian missionaries. Perhaps his Lighthouse was having a donations drive.

What seems beyond dispute is the attraction of the Christian message. Here are the reflections of some Muslim converts as reported in the European press:

Christoph, the Afghan convert in Vienna: "Although I was a Muslim, I did not feel connected. Even at school I began to look for alternatives. Christianity for me is the religion of humanity. Jesus I admire his life and suffering."
Johannnes, from Tehran, told The Guardian: “I found that the history of Islam was completely different from what we were taught at school. Maybe, I thought, it was a religion that began with violence? A religion that began with violence cannot lead people to freedom and love. Jesus Christ said ‘those who use the sword will die by the sword’. This really changed my mind.”
“In Islam, we always lived in fear,” another convert told Der Stern. “Fear God, fear of sin, fear of punishment. But Christ is a God of love.”

Their responses tally with the reasons given by the sociologists in the IJRR. Because of globalisation and the increasing ease of communications, Muslims know more about the religion which is the mainspring of Western culture. What they know is dim, incoherent and sullied by degraded commercialism and opportunistic politics. But something of Christianity’s central message is getting through.

And then the barbaric atrocities of Islamic terrorists also appal Muslims. Granted, most Muslims are not terrorists, but nearly all the terrorists are Muslims. Some devout people are bound to ask: can my religion be true if some of my co-religionists are blowing innocent people to smithereens in the name of Allah? The IJRR scholars write:

Social and political turmoil in the Muslim world has caused many Muslims to question their faith. For some Muslims, this has led to embracing of a militant form of Islam that has further exacerbated the turmoil. For others, the result has been revulsion against the perceived harshness or tyranny of such forms of Islam.

Militant Islam is a threat to the West, but, as the adage goes, when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. The savagery and fanaticism of ISIS and other fanatics open, to slip into marketing language, a window of opportunity. This is true even in predominantly Muslim countries. The Algerian newspaper Al-Yawm reported in 2000 that many people in outlying villages were converting. This was during a bloody civil war between the government and Islamists in which 200,000 people died. Women could be killed for wearing lipstick -- and yet these Algerians were willing to risk their lives to become Christian:

The deterioration of the image of Islam during the crisis has played its part in this rise of conversions to Christianity and the adoption of its principles. What is happening and what has happened in Algeria, such as the massacres and killings in the name of Islam, has [sic] led many, when asked what the difference, in their view, was between Islam and Christianity, to declare: "Christianity is life, Islam is death."

Obviously, there are gigantic obstacles to converting Muslims, including fear of reprisals and ostracism, centuries of hostility, and deep-seated misunderstandings. But the biggest obstacle of all is timid Christians who have forgotten that love is more powerful than hatred. Take, for example, Pastor Gerhard Scholte of the Reformed Keizersgracht Church, the head of a refugee task force for churches in Amsterdam. In an interview with the Daily Beast he said bluntly, “conversion to Christianity is not promoted in our church, so we see very little of it.” He believes that “Everyone is a child of God,” whether baptized or not. So what need is there for Christianity? Or any religion at all, for that matter.

Sadly, Pastor Scholte is by no means the first Christian to throw in the towel. The historian-monk Bede the Venerable (672-735) was a Saxon whose ancestors had been converted to Christianity only a century before by Italian missionaries. He makes a scornful comment in his Ecclesiastical History about the Celtic Christians whom the Saxons had supplanted and slaughtered. "Among other most wicked actions, not to be expressed, which their own historian, Gildas, mournfully takes notice of, they [the Celts] added this -- that they never preached the faith to the Saxons, or English, who dwelt amongst them." Sometimes it seems that today's Christians are taking the Celtic option.

What Western Christians need is more confidence in their own “product”. Christianity built cathedrals, built universities, built hospitals, allowed commerce to flourish, abolished slavery, fostered science, laid the foundation of democracy, treated women as equals, and converted empires. It can meet the challenge of Islam.

Were Martin Luther King Jr alive today, no doubt he would give Christians the same advice he gave to those fighting segregation and racism in the US in 1957: "The great military leaders of the past have gone, their empires have crumbled and burned to ashes. But the empire of Jesus, built solidly and majestically on the foundation of love, is still growing. It started with a small group of dedicated men, who, through the inspiration of their Lord, were able to shake the hinges form the gates of the Roman Empire, and carry the gospel into all the world."

To the Muslim world as well.

Michael Cook is editor of MercatorNet.

I was about to post out the newsletter when news came through of a fresh atrocity by foot soldiers for ISIS in France. An 83-year-old Catholic priest was celebrating morning Mass in a town outside Rouen when two men with knives burst in, took several hostages and slit the throat of the priest. The terrorists were shot dead by police.

How are we supposed to react to such appalling and irrational violence? I've offered one long-term solution in my article below: convert the Muslims.