I came across an interesting article about the concern among Muslim scholars that such a large percentage of Islam followers are converting to Christianity. Islam use to represent Africa's main religion. With the large conversion only about 150 million non Arab Muslims live in Africa, which has an over all population of approximately one billion. Whereas the number of Catholics has increased from one million in 1902 to about 330 million in the year 2000. Every hour 667 Muslims convert, every day 16,000 Muslims convert, and every year 6 million Muslims convert to Christianity. Obviously, these are very large numbers, which would concern someone who is trying to protect their religion. These scholars discuss possible ways to avoid this huge conversion. One idea is that so many wealthy Muslims are quick to build a mosque rather than a school. They believe it is important to build the school before the mosque though, because they need to "build the worshiper before you build the mosque". Another scholar mentions his school where he trains missionaries to speak the native language and customs of the people. This attracts the native people, because the missionary is able to work with the people rather than seem like a foreigner. Lastly, one scholar mentions that he believes Islamic countries must fix themselves first before trying to spread their religion.

While reading the book "Things Fall Apart" it talked about how unsure so many Africans were of natives converting to Christianity when the European missionaries moved in. This is very similar to what is even continuing to happen today as followers of Islam are concerned as an overwhelmingly large amount of Muslims convert. I was so surprised to see how large these numbers were. I think it's a positive thing though that these Muslim scholars were able to discuss possible ways to help bring down these huge numbers of converts in Africa. It really stood out to me when the one scholar said to "build the worshiper before you build the mosque". I would've never thought of it in that way, but he made it seem almost like a no brainer. Educating the students about Islam will later create the need for mosques. Whereas if the mosque was built first there may be no need for it with such a small demand.  I also liked the idea of training the missionaries so they would really be able to fit in with the people. Rather than them coming in as a strange person they are able to instead relate with the natives. This would give them more of an ability to make an impact on the people.




Here is a picture of a Christian missionary visiting Africa.