Is Islam Dying?

One never knows what to believe. I keep seeing contradictory assertions on the net. Even assertions coming with solid data: data can be falsified or misrepresented. Scott Adams avers that “all data is false.” 

I hear one moment that Islam is the world’s fastest growing religion.

Then I hear that Islam is collapsing, and Muslims are apostacizing in droves.

All one can do is rely on faith and common sense.

I suspect the latter is more likely the case: that Islam is at least in danger of collapse.

The growth of Islam in recent decades, I gather, had to do with Muslims simply having more children on average than the Christian or secular West. And Muslim birth rates are now apparently collapsing as well. The temporary divergence perhaps had only to do with Muslim countries being less developed than Christian ones. Trends arrive there later.

My strongest evidence that Islam is dying is the worldwide trend to Islamic terrorism. Anger and violence is how people react when they have lost an important argument decisively. It is what you might do when you feel the rug has been pulled out from under you. You want to lash out at the person who destroyed your comfortable world view and self-image.

The reality may be somewhat hidden by the fact that Islam decrees death for apostasy. That being so, apostates are not going to be public about it. The number of actual Muslims might be a fraction of the nominal figures. The instant the threat of punishment is removed, there might be a huge visible exodus. So collapse cold be sudden.

I read that fewer books were translated into Arabic over the past 500 years than are translated into Spanish every year. If true, Islam may have kept deceptively strong by simply avoiding critical examination.

Now, inevitably, especially thanks to the internet, Muslim lands are opening up to the wider world. Islam may be unable to compete in the open theatre of ideas.

And I perceive that it is not losing to secularism, but to Christianity.

Preach It, Brother!

 

The audience for friend Xerxes’s column seems to be composed mostly of Protestant ministers. At least, those are the readers who comment. I was interested if not surprised to see that they seem universally to have approved of his last column, about putting a warning label on Christianity.

“Preach on, brother, preach on!”

“Your column should be nailed onto every religious building’s front door ―a new 95 Theses.”

“There is a good case that organized religion has done more harm than good.”

“After a lifetime in various forms of various ways to share spiritual health care, I have concluded that religions, and in particular Christianity, are toxins; we spend most of our lives trying at least to turn it from poison to a healing substance. Sometimes one wonders if rescuing the bible, defending God, examining the sins of scripture, finding original blessing and reclaiming Jesus has had any real effect. Maybe the smile message we should be about is ‘Don't swallow it!’”

It might come as a shock to many that the average Christian minister does not much believe in Christianity. Having spent a lot of time with Christian ministers in grad school, I am not surprised.

In a sense, too, they are right. “Organized religion” is toxic. The Bible itself, the New Testament, warns us so. But not in the sense they mean. Religious authorities are inclined to be hypocrites, Pharisees, playing a role they do not themselves believe in. That is the original meaning of “hypocrite”—an actor wearing a mask.

This is perhaps not a clear example. These ministers are not exactly concealing their true feelings: they say they want them nailed to the church door, and one imagines they express it in their counseling. But if they feel this way, why are they ministers? And isn’t calling themselves a Christian minister without endorsing Christianity itself a grievous deceit? Shouldn’t they, in conscience, refer the seeker on to someone else who does believe in it?

I remember explaining to Xerxes once why I had not become a Catholic priest: because I felt my faith was not strong enough. I was not sure I could commit to always believing all of Catholicism, into the indefinite future.

And his answer, at that time, was immediate: “so what?”

I see the same phenomenon in teachers. Our teachers do not actually believe in teaching anything. Instead, the class is supposed to “construct their own knowledge.” And the teacher is free to do the same.

To be honest, I just don’t understand this attitude. Maybe the explanation will come to me. In the meantime, I think it is important to notice it. I guess the moral is not to blindly trust the “experts” in any field.