Re: Islam in fast demise
The following is part of the transcript of Al
Jazeera's Interview with Al Qataani translated to
English. Here is the original transcript in Arabic
This interview is also posted here
Maher Abdallah:
Dear viewers, peace of Allah be upon you, greetings
and welcome to a new episode of the program Islamic
Law and Life.
Our topic this evening will be Christianization in the
Dark Continent ... Africa. For after Islam was the
religion of the majority, the great majority of that
continent, the number of Muslims now is no greater
than a third of the population. This is taking into
consideration, of course, that a large portion of this
group are Arab Muslims. No doubt that the missions of
evangelization and Christianization played a great
role in this demographic shift of Muslims in the
continent.
To discuss this topic, it is my pleasure to introduce
today a man who is an expert on the issue of
evangelization and Christianization in Africa, even
though he will concentrate on the issue of
Christianization first and foremost…. Sheikh Ahmad Al
Qataani; the president of The Companions Lighthouse
for the Science of Islamic Law in Libya, which is an
institution specializing in graduating imams and
Islamic preachers.
Sheikh Ahmad, welcome to you on the program.
Ahmad Al Qataani:
Greeting to you.
Maher Abdallah:
If we start by inquiring about your strict stance
against the Christian missions in Africa, don’t the
followers of every religion have the right to seek new
converts, exactly as you train and graduate young
Muslims to propagate Islam?
Ahmad Al Qataani:
I seek refuge in Allah the Seer, the Knower, from the
stoned devil. In the name of Allah the Merciful the
Beneficent. Thanks to Allah the One, the Only, the
Permanent One, who did not give birth nor was born, to
whom no one was equal. I bear witness that there is no
God but Allah who has no partners, and I bear witness
that our master Muhammed – Allah’s prayers and peace
be upon him - is his messenger and seal of prophets;
Allah prayers be upon him and his brothers the
prophets and messengers and their families.
The question that you pose is a result of not
comprehending the difference between the concept of
Christianization and the concept of evangelism.
The concept of evangelism: is inviting the
non-Christians to the Christian or Nazarene religion,
and this is the right of every Christian and the right
of every believer to call others to his faith.
However, we are talking about a different matter;
which is Christianization. Christianization means the
following: preparing plans, and executing these plans
and evolving these plans to change Muslims into
Christians by taking advantage of the ignorance and
poverty (of the people) and whatever necessitates from
similar circumstances.
So, we are faced with the issue of taking advantage of
circumstances, taking advantage of humanitarian needs,
taking advantage of the lack of education for example,
that these people (missionaries) use to take Muslims
out of their religion.
Maher Abdallah:
Fine. This is a big and dangerous phrase. Taking
advantage of poverty, of ignorance, of lack of
education, of some need is something that a Muslim can
also be accused of. So if you don’t back up what you
say with examples, with references, your words remain
in the air without much weight to them.
Ahmad Al Qataani:
The reality is that these words say a lot less than
they should. As we said in the beginning, everyone has
the right to invite others to his religion; this is
what is known as evangelism (or proselytizing). As for
Christianization, no one has the right to take Muslims
out of their religion, and you asked for references
and the references are too numerous.
Islam used to represent, as you previously mentioned,
Africa’s main religion and there were 30 African
languages that used to be written in Arabic script.
The number of Muslims in Africa has diminished to 316
million, half of whom are Arabs in North Africa. So in
the section of Africa that we are talking about, the
non Arab section, the number of Muslims does not
exceed 150 million people. When we realize that the
entire population of Africa is one billion people, we
see that the number of Muslims has diminished greatly
from what it was in the beginning of the last century.
On the other hand, the number of Catholics has
increased from one million in 1902 to 329 million 882
thousand (329,882,000). Let us round off that number
to 330 million in the year 2000.
As to how that happened, well
.there are now 1.5 million churches whose
congregations account for 46 million people. In every
hour, 667 Muslims convert to Christianity. Everyday,
16,000 Muslims convert to Christianity. Ever year, 6
million Muslims convert to Christianity
These numbers are very large indeed …..
Maher Abdallah (interrupting):
Hold on! Let me clarify. Do we have 6 million
converting from Islam to Christianity or converting
from Islam and other religions?
Ahmad Al Qataani:
Great (question)! The other religions are not placed
on the list of Christianization; rather they are
placed on the list of evangelization. The other
religion in Africa is paganism; so it’s Islam,
Christianity or paganism. There isn’t something
similar to Asia for example where you have Buddhism or
Zoroastrianism. In Africa it is just these three, so
if you talk about Christianization then it targets the
only other heavenly religion which is Islam. As for
paganism, those people worship animals and planets and
the like.
Maher Abdallah:
So 6 million Muslims a year convert?
Ahmad Al Qataani:
Every year ….. In the African nations this century a
tragedy happened. Take for example what happened in
Ethiopia. Ethiopia is an Arab nation and I am not
saying a muslim nation. If any student looks up the
word Habasha (Ethiopia) in the book Ocean Dictionary
written by Al-Fairuz Abady, he will find that the word
Habashat means “people of different tribes” and this
is what happened. Ethiopia was a place where Arabs
from different tribes would go to live for a while. We
all know that Islam entered Ethiopia before Islam
entered the city of Medina. We all know that
AL-Najashy (the ruler of Ethiopia) was a Muslim. It is
mentioned by Al-Darkatny in his biography of the
prophet – Allah’s prayer and peace be upon him – that
during the month of Rajab in the 9th year of the Hijra
(Muslim calendar) that the prophet said to his
companions: “Rise up and pray on your brother
Al-Najashy.” From that year on the practice of praying
on the absent was established. Therefore from the time
of the prophet – Allah’s prayer and peace be upon him
– Islam entered Ethiopia. So what has happened to
Ethiopia?
What happened is that in the days of Emperor Hela
Silasi who used to force Muslims to bow to the
Christian, and if he refused then he was whipped 45
lashes and jailed between 2 and 5 years. In the year
1948, a massacre occurred at the hands of the Amharic
tribes; the Amharic being Christians and
collaborators, who continued to slaughter Muslims for
7 months and perform the most horrific acts
imaginable. For example they deprived them from the
most basic human rights, to the point that they
mutilated the male Muslim’s reproductive organs so
that no more Muslim children would be born. Ethiopia
was rewarded after all these horrific acts; rewarded
by being made the head quarters of the African Unity
League.
Let us move to another location in Africa, let it be
Nigeria. Nigeria is known by Muslims by the name of
the Land of Takror. Nigeria was founded at the
beginning of the last century by the British, and many
Islamic sources mention it’s name as the Land of
Tekror. There is even a letter by the reciter Suyuti,
who died in the year 911 Hijri, where the title is:
Opening the blessed request and relating the hidden
openly to the questions of the people of Takror. So
there was an established relationship, and they used
to send questions to the scholars of Islam, so this
letter (of questions) was sent from one of the sheikh
scholars of Nigeria that was called Takror to the
Muslim scholar AL Suyuti in Egypt and he in turn
responded and the contents of this letter are
published and printed and is found in the book “The
collection Islamic decrees”.
Nigeria’s population is 120 million people, 70% of
whom are Muslim. In the 1960’s a British missionary
came and declared that he will Christianize North
Nigeria, the majority of whom are Muslim. As a result,
Ahmad Banulo (from the leaders of the Msulims) was
forced at the time to move him to Lagos the capital.
As a result the butcher Arorese, that was present at
the time, eliminated all the Muslim rulers and killed
Ahmad Banulo, why? Because he merely dared to move
this missionary who declared that he wishes to
Christianize North Nigeria.
In another country, Zanzibar, is an Arabic African
nation and I am not saying Muslim. Zanzibar was always
connected to the Sultanate of Oman (in the Persian
Gulf). Concerning Zanzibar, there was a priest by the
name Julius Niriry, president of Tanzania, who
annihilated 20,000 Muslims (male and female) with a
military force lead by a chicken thief. This thief was
imprisoned for being accused of stealing chickens; he
was released and asked to command the military brigade
that annihilated 20,000 Muslims.
Maher Abdallah:
My dear viewers welcome back to this episode where we
are speaking about the topic of Christianization in
the African continent and we are speaking with the
Sheikh who is observing and following this issue, as
each hour Islam loses just under 700 Muslims who join
the Christian religion which leads us to the number of
6 million Muslims every year.
Our sir, you mentioned that there are advantages being
taken of necessities: poverty, ignorance; what you
mentioned then are waves of elimination, waves of
religious eradication, and there is no need to call is
racial eradication….. However, let us go back to the
topic necessity and exploitation. This may have all
been in the past; the military expeditions that you
spoke of were all in the beginning or middle of the
last century, but what is happening today in regards
to exploiting necessities?
Ahmad Al Qataani:
What I wanted to say is that these military
expeditions and wars paved the way for what we are
seeing today; converting 6 million Muslims every year
did not happen from nothing, but was a result of what
I mentioned earlier.
As for the topic of necessity exploitation, then a
nation like Somalia, whose population is 9.5 million
people, are all Muslim without exception. There are no
Christians or pagans. And if you did find any then
they are an insignificant number that are not even on
official statistics. A Belgian missionary by the name
of Sabeh came to Somalia and purchased 30,000 Muslim
youth, he took advantage of their parents poverty, and
we all know the terrible situation that Somalia is
going through now and what it went through a few years
ago. This is taking advantage of a humanitarian need
that any human can go through.