Christianity On The Rise In Bangladesh As Tens Of Thousands Of Muslims Are Turning Away From Allah To Embrace Jesus

Christianity is making such significant gains in one Muslim-majority nation in South Asia that local evangelists are now envisioning the day when their country would become a Christian nation.

The country is Bangladesh, the fourth largest Muslim nation in the world with a population of 164.8 million people, only 866,000 of whom are Christian, according to Open Doors USA.

Christian Freedom International (CFI) says official figures claim that 89.1 percent of the country’s population are Muslim, 10 percent Hindi, and less than 1 percent Christian.

However, the numbers are deceiving. CFI says official reports on religious composition only count “traditional Christians,” or Bangladeshis who are born into the Christian faith and attend government approved churches. The surveys and reports do not include former Muslims who converted to Christianity.

The consensus among believers in Bangladesh is that Christians now make up at least 10 percent of the country’s population and is growing more every day. If the 10 percent figure is correct, then this Muslim-dominated nation is now the home of at least 15.6 million Christians, CFI says.

In fact, one local pastor says Christianity is growing so fast that it has become “a real problem” for the country’s Muslim leaders.

“In the last 12 months, more than 20,000 Muslims have converted to Christianity, and this is becoming a real problem for the Muslims,” says Pastor Khaleque, a former Muslim who is now a Christian street pastor.

The rise of Christianity has also resulted in the increased persecution of believers and crackdown on underground Christian churches as Muslim leaders try to stamp out the threat to their religion.

Source

„May the growth continue until the abominable religions are wiped out and every nation on earth honors the universal kingship of Christ.„

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Hundreds of Secret Algerian Converts Requesting Bibles Each Month

Thousands of Muslims in Algeria are requesting Bibles and becoming Christians, disillusioned with the so-called Arab Spring and the rise of violent Islam, the country’s sole Bible distributor said.

Ali Khidri, Executive Secretary for the Bible Society in Algeria, told The Tablet that “hundreds” of people every month were turning up at his office in Algiers requesting a Bible, and that “thousands” were going to churches to enquire about the Christian faith.

Mr Khidri said Muslims were questioning their faith because they were disillusioned by acts being carried out in the name of Islam. “They are more and more come to feel that this is the true face of Islam,” he said.

He added that some Christian converts were making television programmes to engage Algerians with the Bible, using their knowledge of the Qu’ran.

He added that some Christian converts were making television programmes to engage Algerians with the Bible, using their knowledge of the Qu’ran.

According to the Bible Society there are between 100,000 and 200,000 Christians in Algeria – a huge increase from 2,000 30 years ago. Exact figures are impossible to establish because Christians cannot practise their faith openly. Mr Khidri said that government claims there are 600,000 Christians was an attempt to scaremonger.

More than 2,000 baptisms took place in 2013, the Bible Society says; there are 48 registered Protestant congregations, about 200 “underground” congregations that meet in people’s homes, and a few dozen Catholic ones, though these are mainly attended by expatriates. Catholic clergy generally send inquirers to Evangelical churches to avoid the risk of priests being deported, he said.

Mr Khidri has previously said that Algiers tolerates conversions are among the Berber people, which account for many of them, because they were Christian before the arrival of Islam, and that Muslim women are drawn to Christianity because of Jesus’ respectful treatment of women.

Since a presidential decree was passed in 2006, evangelisation has been criminalised, non-Muslim worship is restricted to approved premises, and handing out a Bible can lead to a five-year jail sentence or deportation for foreign priests.

Source

– Tens of thousands of Algerian Muslims turning to Jesus

– Your Christian Heritage

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