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#Post#: 3425--------------------------------------------------
Islam, Fastest Growing Religion
By: Piper Date: December 8, 2015, 5:04 am
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[font=trebuchet ms]Why is Islam the fastest growing religion? I
was reading about Trump wanting to bar all Muslims from the
U.S., and the article mentioned that Islam is the fastest
growing religion. Why?[/font]
#Post#: 3426--------------------------------------------------
Re: Islam, Fastest Growing Religion
By: Kerry Date: December 8, 2015, 7:22 am
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[quote author=Piper link=topic=393.msg3425#msg3425
date=1449572644]
[font=trebuchet ms]Why is Islam the fastest growing religion? I
was reading about Trump wanting to bar all Muslims from the
U.S., and the article mentioned that Islam is the fastest
growing religion. Why?[/font]
[/quote]Having wives working and not wanting many children could
be a factor for why Christians aren't having as many children as
they used to. Contraception plays a role too in almost every
Christian country. By geography, economics, and culture all
figure into it.
HTML http://www.pewresearch.org/files/2015/04/FT_15.04.23_muslimFertility.png
You can see that the highest birth rate in the Muslim population
lies in Subsaran Africa. The article
HTML http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/04/23/why-muslims-are-the-worlds-fastest-growing-religious-group/<br
/>says:
The main reasons for Islam’s growth ultimately involve simple
demographics. To begin with, Muslims have more children than
members of the seven other major religious groups analyzed in
the study. Each Muslim woman has an average of 3.1 children,
significantly above the next-highest group (Christians at 2.7)
and the average of all non-Muslims (2.3). In all major regions
where there is a sizable Muslim population, Muslim fertility
exceeds non-Muslim fertility.
Note that the birth rates in Muslim countries correlates
roughly too the economic situations. The poorer the country,
the more children people tend to have. Part of the strain of
the "flood of immigrants" into Europe right now comes from
this. People in poorer countries are having more children --
and they want jobs -- and their countries don't have that many
jobs. So they want to go to Europe where some of the "native"
Christians are not having many children at all.
I also saw a different study (sorry I don't remember where it
was) that showed how the birth rate was falling in several
Muslim countries as contraception was becoming more available.
That estimate from the Pew Foundation is doing some projecting
into the future that may not turn out completely true. The
infant mortality rate is also higher in poor countries; and so
are famines and diseases that sometimes run rampant. If the
developed nations slam the door on immigrants from the poorer
Muslim countries, the situation could change radically.
There is a similar trend in Catholics that you can see. In
developed nations, Catholics use birth control. Catholics in
the the poorer countries tend to have more children -- and those
countries then have "too many" people who want to migrate
somewhere else.
#Post#: 3427--------------------------------------------------
Re: Islam, Fastest Growing Religion
By: Piper Date: December 8, 2015, 9:23 am
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[font=trebuchet ms]Thanks for that.
Most people in Mexico are Catholic? I assume conditions in
Mexico are bad, so many Mexicans hope for a better life in
America?[/font]
#Post#: 3428--------------------------------------------------
Re: Islam, Fastest Growing Religion
By: Piper Date: December 8, 2015, 9:28 am
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[font=trebuchet ms]And why are there a lot of Muslims in
Britain? Did they migrate in, or is that because of high birth
rate, too?[/font]
#Post#: 3429--------------------------------------------------
Re: Islam, Fastest Growing Religion
By: bradley Date: December 8, 2015, 9:52 am
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One main reason, they promote large families, regardless of
ability to take care of them, and they forcibly teach their
children to follow Islam or suffer worldly pain.
#Post#: 3430--------------------------------------------------
Re: Islam, Fastest Growing Religion
By: Kerry Date: December 8, 2015, 10:21 pm
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[quote author=Piper link=topic=393.msg3427#msg3427
date=1449588183]
[font=trebuchet ms]Thanks for that.
Most people in Mexico are Catholic? I assume conditions in
Mexico are bad, so many Mexicans hope for a better life in
America?[/font]
[/quote]Nominally most are still Catholic despite the rise of
the wild Santa Muerte cult. The reasons for immigration are
many: Bad economic conditions to begin with, bad government if
any -- so bad many people arm themselves since they know the
government can't protect them from gang violence. Bad weather
-- or climate change -- call it what you want -- driving some
farmers into bankruptcy. The "free trade" agreement which has
also undermined Mexican agriculture.
But the Catholics in Mexico still tend to have more children
than they can support -- and it's natural they want to go
somewhere else. The Catholic Church in the US wants them --
thinks they need them -- because of declining numbers of
Catholics among "Anglos." This was a factor in Obamacare too
since so many Catholic health care providers had so many illegal
immigrants using their facilities. It was a drain on their
finances. American Bishops lobbied in favor of Obamacare to
begin with since they thought it would help these Catholic
health care providers if immigrants got insurance instead of
showing up and getting health care for free. How much of that
was real compassion for Hispanics who needed health care, and
how much of it was it Bishops worried about declining numbers in
their congregations?
At any rate, Mexicans and other Latinos who show up in the US
do tend to be Catholics -- for the first generation. The second
generation tends to go Pentecostal, abandoning the Catholic
Church for more dramatic meetings in Pentecostal churches.
Something similar is seen with Muslims too. The adults may
continue to think a certain way; but their children won't.
Some adults enjoy the additional freedoms in the US and don't
want to go back to the rigid ways of the countries they left.
Islam in America is different than it is in other places.
I've met some Muslims who did things here that they couldn't get
away with in other countries without fearing the consequences.
Then there are the Muslims who see how Islam is different in
America and get disturbed by it -- they become radicalized.
Others feel they don't fit in and they can get radicalized.
As I see it, the real threat to ISIS, ISIL, the Daesh -- call it
what you want -- is the more liberalized forms of Islam that are
appearing. Women who don't want to wear the veil for example!
They have some Muslim countries where women don't have to wear
the veil already -- and those too are seen as threats. The more
rigid far-right Muslim fanatics are frightened that their way of
life is threatened. Their goal is to create such a backlash
against Muslims in the US and in Europe that Muslims feel they
don't fit in. They'll either return to their native countries
or turn to violence and perform acts of terrorism in the US and
EU. [quote author=Piper link=topic=393.msg3428#msg3428
date=1449588519]
[font=trebuchet ms]And why are there a lot of Muslims in
Britain? Did they migrate in, or is that because of high birth
rate, too?[/font]
[/quote]That began after the collapse of the British Empire.
Lots of people from Pakistan immigrated to England. They still
come and go. But they have lots of children, yes.
I'm not sure how many immigrants from Africa to the UK are
Muslims; but my guess is quite a few. I do know that the
Catholic Church there is now mostly a church of African
immigrants. You can see how that goes -- if you're white,
would you want to attend a church where most people were black
and different from you culturally as well? So the influx of
African Catholics is keeping up the British Catholic numbers
somewhat but it's also creating a divide that is religious,
cultural and racial.
Indeed Africa is almost seen as the new hope for the Catholic
Church as their numbers seem to be declining elsewhere. I
wonder myself about it when I see how priests from Africa are
brought into the US because the US has a shortage of priests.
About 10% of the priests in New York come from Africa.
From
HTML http://www.columbia.edu/itc/journalism/gissler/anthology/weblyman.html
That attitude may prove significant as African priests become a
growing presence in New York's Catholic Church. With the ranks
of the clergy thinning in the United States, African priests
like Ugwoji and Akpabio, sent to here to pursue post-graduate
degrees in administration and pastoral care, are being asked to
bolster the lines. About 10 percent of the active Catholic
clergy in New York City come from Africa (mostly Ghana and
Nigeria), and their presence throughout the nation is growing.
Their pastoral approaches, emphasizing unity in the face of
adversity, however, clash with African-American Catholic clergy,
who demand more politics from the pulpit, and confrontation with
race matters - in American society and within the Church.
West African priests, confused and occasionally bewildered by
American notions of race, do not feel they can bring such issues
into their homilies without dividing their congregations - a sin
in a religious tradition that emphasizes community. Father Felix
Akpabio, a Nigerian based at St. Gabriel’s Roman Catholic Church
in Queens, serves an overwhelmingly black, West Indian
congregation, but doesn’t feel a mandate to address racial or
economic challenges. "The question does not come up," he said.
African-American Catholic clergy are much more willing to raise
issues of race themselves. "The clergy of African descent makes
an extraordinary effort to be universal," said Brother Tyrone
Davis, director of the Archdiocese’s Office of Black Ministry,
which serves the diocese’s 300,000 black Catholics. "Sometimes
it’s at the expense of a part of their nationality."
Catholics in West Africa are still a minority (in Nigeria, they
make up 11 percent of the population), but the Church there is
gaining numbers and influence. Cardinal Francis Arinze,
archbishop of Nigeria, has worked for reconciliation between
Christians and Muslims in his country, and Church observers
consider him a possible successor to John Paul II.
Arinze’s church also boasts more priests per capita than the
American church. Vocations in the United States have plummeted
16 percent since the late 1970s; in Queens, only about 30 men
are studying for the priesthood at a seminary in Douglaston.
Nigerian seminaries, however, count enrollment in the thousands.
#Post#: 3431--------------------------------------------------
Re: Islam, Fastest Growing Religion
By: Kerry Date: December 9, 2015, 7:44 am
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[quote author=bradley link=topic=393.msg3429#msg3429
date=1449589934]
One main reason, they promote large families, regardless of
ability to take care of them, and they forcibly teach their
children to follow Islam or suffer worldly pain.
[/quote]In poorer countries without government retirement
programs or other social safety nets, having lots of children is
seen almost as a necessity. If most of them die, you hope to
have enough survive to take care of you when you get too old to
work. It's a somewhat backward approach -- to have children so
they can take care of you.
One of the worst aspects of Islam in my book is that they say
it's the death penalty if a Muslim converts to another religion.
How is that freedom of religion? How does that fit in with
what the Quran says that religion should not be a matter of
compulsion? And moreover, if I thought my religion was best --
the most benevolent, the truest, the most rational and so on,
why would I be afraid of losing members to other religions?
I think that aspect of Islam informs us they're afraid to
compete on a level playing field for the hearts and minds of
people.
Then there's the marriage law -- a Muslim man can marry a
Christian or Jewish woman-- and all the children are raised
Muslim; but a Muslim woman isn't allowed to marry a Christian or
Jewish man. This too seems designed to keep the numbers going
up.
What I don't really understand is why Muslims would leave their
own countries and then expect the countries they go to to cater
to them. If you don't like the way an European country is run,
why move there? Why go there and make demands they imitate the
country you left? If the country you left was so wonderful
and run so well, why leave?
There is a line in the Quran that I think has caused lots of
trouble -- for Muslims mostly. That's to the effect that when
someone takes something from another person, God is behind it.
In other words, if you wage a war and get land, God wanted you
to have it. This is practiced on a personal basis too. If
you owned a house and land somewhere and leave the country for a
while, someone else might take it over and claim it's theirs
because God wanted them to have it. I think that line may
have been "useful" when Mohammed wanted to inspire people to go
fight wars to win land -- in the early days of expansion of
Islam.
It's not very useful today, not if you want a stable country
with a stable economy. Saying might makes right -- and whoever
wins in a conflict must be backed by God -- leads to all kinds
of trouble. The sad fact is Islam is not a religion well
adapted to economic development or continuing prosperity. It
just isn't. Take a good look at the oil-rich countries in the
Mideast and Africa. Most of the people are dirt poor. Iran's
economy is in a shambles.
Saudi Arabia is out of money -- and still pursuing its crazy
idea of pumping more and more oil, depressing the price of oil.
How long, I ask, can the cash gotten from oil be used to support
the royal family which is huge already and continuing to grow?
The royal family is basically the Saud clan, it seems. Some
other people have lots of money there too; but the wealth hasn't
been spread around very equally.
Some efforts are being made to combat the growing unease there.
They've built desalination plants so more people had clean water
-- but how stable is that? Why encourage larger and larger
numbers of people to live in a desert where water is hard to
come by and air conditioning is a necessity? The natives are
also rather spoiled and think some jobs are beneath them --
perhaps they're following the lead of the royal family. So they
import tons and tons of workers from abroad. And guess what,
the latest figure I saw just out was that the foreigners commit
2/3 of the crimes there. It's to be expected.
Then there's the problem of employers abusing their foreign
servants. If you can get away with it, do it -- seems to be
the attitude of many men there and in other Muslim countries.
Again it's the "might makes right attitude" and I see that as
part of the history of Islam that began when Mohammed was still
alive. It's not just Saudi Arabia of course. The child
prostitution and rape problem in the UK involved Pakistani men.
For some reason or another, British authorities completely
ignored this for years.
Sweden is now the rape capital of Europe. That may not be
explained totally by the influx of Muslim men from Africa; but
it surely is a major factor.
HTML https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_in_Sweden#Immigrants
The anti-immigration Sweden Democrats Party has repeatedly made
the claim that the high number of rape reports is at least
partly due to the influx of Muslim immigrants. Two reports from
the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention (BRÅ) are
relevant to the rate of rape among immigrants to Sweden and
their descendants. The latest published report that indicates
the association between immigrants and rape was published in
2005 and revealed that foreign born individuals were 5.5 times
more likely to be charged of rape than individuals born in
Sweden to two Swedish parent. While the report does not break
down the foreign born category by country of origin, it has been
found to be predictive of crime rates in other Nordic countries.
An earlier report published in 1996 by the BRÅ did break down
rate of rape convictions by country of origin. It found that
between 1985 and 1989 individuals with a foreign background made
up 61% of all rape convictions while only representing 6.3% of
the population. Ethnic groups with particularly high rates of
rape included individuals born in Iraq, North Africa (Algeria,
Libya, Morocco and Tunisia), and Africa (excluding Uganda and
the North African countries) who were convicted of rape at rates
20, 23, and 17 greater than individuals born in Sweden
respectively.
You could argue this has more to do with culture than with
religion; but the form of Islam as practiced by many Muslims has
culture all mixed up with religion. There is this might makes
right aspect to it that often takes on a patriarchal aspect or a
sexist aspect. This lends itself to callousness and even
brutality at times.
#Post#: 3432--------------------------------------------------
Re: Islam, Fastest Growing Religion
By: Piper Date: December 9, 2015, 11:42 am
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[font=trebuchet ms]Thanks again, Kerry, for all the info.
Very surprised about the African priests being brought in to
America. Yes, seems likely that would cause some culture clash.
We have a middle-size town near us that is almost all Mexican
now. The health clinic there has hired mostly Mexican workers
that are able to speak both English and Spanish. In Lincoln
there are a lot of Nigerian people. I see them working at
Walmart a lot. Very, very black beautiful skin. Very
different, kind of exotic. And tall.
* * *
The number of mass shootings in this country concerns me. I
read that the statistics come out to one every day! What on
earth is going on? Just crazy. And I hate when they put the
killer's face on the front page of the papers. Seems a very bad
idea to me.
Do you guys (you and Brad) agree that it's only a matter of time
before we have a large-scale organized Terrorist event here?
Seriously, I wonder if the 'Preppers' aren't so crazy. I think
it might well be a good idea to have at least a small stockpile
of supplies ready at home.
I dunno. I just keep wondering when it's all going to go
completely berserk.
And, honestly, the idea of an EMP does worry me. What easier
way to completely set America in panic mode? Ever think about
it? No power! No deliveries to stores, etc. Wow. The
implications are endless. Terrible. [/font]
#Post#: 3433--------------------------------------------------
Re: Islam, Fastest Growing Religion
By: bradley Date: December 9, 2015, 12:07 pm
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And even though most muslims arent violent, neither do they
protest much over the violence of those who are.
#Post#: 3434--------------------------------------------------
Re: Islam, Fastest Growing Religion
By: bradley Date: December 9, 2015, 12:10 pm
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And yes, the violence is only beginning in America, but it will
increase, probably more so if Clinton is elected, but more
regardless of who wins the presidency.
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