The Cross and the Crescent

             I wrote an earlier piece on witnessing to those of the Jewish persuasion. This piece will deal with those of the Muslim persuasion.

Depending on whose data you want to use (CIA, Pew reports, etc) there are about 7 billion people in the world today. Of those about 2 to 2.3 billion are Christians, about 1.5 to 2 are billion Muslims, and about 13 million Religious Jews. The data collected is often collected from both demographics (the study of human populations) as well as from self-reporting – i.e. somebody conducted a poll or survey and somebody answered one way or the other.

If this data is relatively accurate that means over half of the people in the world all believe, not only in “a” God, but in the same God of Abraham. A majority opinion does not prove something is right; but, that’s a lot of folks agreeing on something that many say can’t be “proven”. It is even more surprising when one considers that those same folks don’t agree on much of anything else. The Muslims break down into Sunni, Shi’a, Sufi, etc. The Christians break down into Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Protestant, etc. The Jews break down into Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, etc.

What may surprise many Christians is that Muslims also believe in the existence of Jesus; and, in portions of the Christian Holy Bible. While non-Christian Jews reject Jesus entirely, Muslims do accept Jesus (Isa) as a prophet – even His virgin birth and miracles. While non-Christian Jews reject the New Testament entirely, some Muslims still accept most of it, others only small portions of it. You may wonder why Muslims accept any or only some portions of the Bible. It is because although they believe that the original Holy book was given to Jesus by God, the Injil or Injeel, that it has been mostly lost/corrupted.

To persuade them that they are mistaken there is an excellent three part article written by a (former) Muslim who did a lot of research into the matter of comparing and contrasting the Qur’an and the Holy Bible with what he was taught. For more general info there is an article elsewhere that addresses more areas in a less academic manner.