No 2

(Islam)

Islam is well-known to all because it is in the news almost every day. The word Islam means submission. Movies have been made about it such as: Not Without My Daughter and Delta Force, just to name a couple. Of course, in both these movies and basically what we read about in all the newspapers is that Islam is bad and it is run by extremists. Unfortunately, in our Western culture, we do not see the good side of this religion. I am not condoning it, I'm just saying that we only see the bad parts on our TV screens when there are several truly good points.

Islam was founded by Muhammad around the year 610 AD when the whole of Arabia was in total idol worship and in chaos. He began preaching about there being only one God (Allah), and that he (Muhammed) was his prophet. The adherants to this religion are called Muslims, which means "those who submit to Allah".

Islam has two holy cities Mecca and Medina (both in Saudi Arabia); every adult Muslim must, if possible, make a voyage to Mecca at least once in his lifetime. They (the Muslims) are very strong believers and adhere, to the laws that are described in their sacred book of writings, the Koran. This book was written in the original language and only until very recently (1900) was it translated into other languages. Some Muslims have learned the whole book by heart.

This religion in its purist form in very moral, protective of their women, and punishes sin very severely. An example is if someone is caught stealing, their hand is cut off. Guess what, no one gets their hands cut off in those countries. You know why? Because they know axiomatically, that if they steal, they lose a hand. What do we do with robbers? We give them community service to perform or send them back out on the streets on parole. You decide which system is better.....

In the end, however, we all know that we don't get to heaven because of our merits or because we didn't steal; we get to heaven because some one paid the price for our sins, once and for all; Jesus Christ who is sitting at the right hand of God at this very moment and is interceding for us (Romans 8:34).

One last thing about Islam: They worship the true God but in a self-styled manner.