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As an educator of nearly 40 years experience (32 of these years in PURE Islamic education), I would say that the answer to this problem is an educational solution. In my travels through the Muslim world, having lived three years in Northern and Southern Sudan and taught in the universities there, I must advise here that because Muslims are not being educated in Islam, through constant studies of Quran and Hadith, that the Muslims become victims of other people in social, political, religious, psychological and economic spheres. In the Sudan there was an effort by the Ikhwan al-Muslimeen to call the people back to Islam. You see, under the leadership of Niemeri and those who succeeded him the Sudanese government existed under the mask of Islamic government, but it was not a true Islamic state. When I first arrived I was appalled at the fact that there were beer gardens all over the capital of Khartoum, the women were dressed unIslamically, men staggered through the streets drunk, women were smoking, as well as men, and there were many other obvious deviations from true Islam. In Saudi Arabia I learned of homosexuality, prostitution, theft, drunkenness and other crimes against Islam. So you see, Muslims need to get busy and teach the religion to Muslims. I found the people in the places where I visited living by tradition, even when that tradition conflicted with the Quran. So a tremendous effort must be made all over the MUSLIM WORLD to teach the Quran, the true way of Islam, and to teach the Hadith so that people may know for sure. it is this surety that guards one's religion. The Christians are not smarter than the
Muslims, but they capitalize on the Muslims mistakes. For example,
when a new convert to Islam comes, we leave that convert straying and fending
for himself. We do not take him by the hand and answer his questions
and help him to learn how to use the Quran as his framework of reference.
We seem to be quite arrogant and self-assured and give little to those
who are seeking the way of Islam. The Christians are not the problem. The Muslims are the problem because they are failing their own people in the way of establishing permanent institutions for the teaching of Islam. All arguments, discussions or questions that any Christian can bring are counteracted by the Holy Quran. We must guide our people to the reading, recitation and comprehension of the Quran. Bro. Ahmed Deedat of South Africa (RA) did a tremendous job in his lifetime of teaching Muslims and Christians and published such outstanding books as "Is the Bible God's Word" and "Crucifxion or Crucifiction?" These books unveiled the very questions that are raised in this article and gave the Muslims the words that they needed to counteract the Christian arguments. Once in a debate with Jimmy Swaggart, Ahmed Deedat questioned him about the fact that they (the Christians) say that Jesus died on Friday and was in the bowels of the earth for three days; then he rose on Sunday morning. Mr. Deedat held up his fingers and counted from Friday evening to Saturday evening as 24 hours and from Saturday evening to Sunday morning as approximately 12 hours which totals 1 1/2 days. Mr. Swaggart then said, "Well, he must have died on Wednesday." We have the materials to teach the Muslims, but we fail in our responsibility to enlighten our own people. A sound knowledge of what is in the Quran will counteract anything that a Christian can say. I have Christian missionaries to visit in my home, but when I get through whipping them with the Quran and the blatant falsehood and confusion in the Bible, they leave and get a higher elder to come with them and when I get through with the two of them, they leave and do not return. It is the weakness that results from ignorance that makes them even think that they can convert a Muslim. In the Southern Sudan, I talked with Muslim and Christian converts who had converted from paganism to either religion. I learned that they convert because they are hungry and the need clothes to wear. I asked one young lady to let me use her Bible. She looked at me with great surprise and told me, "I don't have a Bible." I said, "Then how do you learn your religion?" She laughed and said, "They tell me what they want me to believe, but I do not believe it." As to the question of polygamy, they only address polygyny which is different from polyandry. You see, the word polygamy includes both marriage to more than one woman and marriage to more than one man (which is practiced in some cultures). So if we teach the Muslims of the practice of polygyny as practiced in the Bible from the mention of Elkanah in the early chapters of the Old Testament to Solomon, Moses, Abraham, etc., then there can be no distasteful reaction to the practice of polygyny by the one who is sought as a convert. The Muslims are not actively involved in providing the needs of people in Bosnia, Serbia, Afghanistan, Chjechnya, but are so naive and unsuspecting that they would put their sadaqa in the hands of a people who steal everything from table knives to races of people. So we have ourselves to blame. We have charitable organizations, but we seem to be unable to support them on the scale that is needed to come to the aid of our brothers and sisters. In the Sudan, the war is really not a religious war, but an economic war. There are thousands and thousands of Muslims in the south who are being decimated by the Muslims of the north who seem to see only skin color before they shoot. I have talked with people on both sides and married a Muslim from the South. It was here that I learned that the da'wah effort was so shallow that unless a person was driven by Allah, it was difficult to even convert. The missionaries in Southern Sudan want to make the world believe that Muslims are slaughtering Christians, but when at a recent meeting sponsored by the World Council of Churches, I stood and discussed the truth of the war in Sudan, some of the people were shocked. When Apollo 9 was sent up several years back, they saw a large black spot on the surface of the earth and when they sent this information back and it was investigated, it was found that it was a tremendous hidden oil reserve that had never been tapped. The North has tried to redefine the lines of separation between North and South to include some of this oil reserve as well as the uranium discovered by Shell Oil and other riches of the South. The "so-called" rebels are fighting to preserve the part of the country that belongs to them and they embrace their Muslim brothers in fighting for the land and the resources. We are misled by the media in the west because they want us to believe that Muslims are slaughtering Christians because of their religion. Not So! We must develop a universal da'wah program
first of all for Muslims, and then for Christians, Jews, pagans and others.
Let's look at ourselves because we have no control over what the Christians
do, but we do have control over what we do with Muslims. |