NO HOLDS BARRED
Raja Petra Kamarudin
About one-quarter of the world’s population or 1.8 billion humans are Muslims. Of course, there are still more Christians who make up 31% or 2.2 billion of the population of this world. Nevertheless, if you want to separate those who are Muslims/Christians ‘in name only’ from those who are practicing Muslims/Christians, then there are more Muslims than Christians.
In fact, there are more Muslims who know about Islam than Christians who know about Christianity. For example, all Muslims without exception know how the Qur’an was ‘revealed’ to Prophet Muhammad (Muslims believe that Muhammad did not author the Qur’an but God/Allah revealed it to him through the Angel Gabriel).
Most Christians, however, do not know the history of the various Bibles and some even think that Christians only need to follow the New Testament and not the Old Testament (which they say only the Jews follow). The fact that Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, and the rest of the 39 books, are from the Old Testament (all those stories which Christians believe in) means Christians also follow the Old Testament and not just the 27 books of the New Testament.
And do all Christians know that there are a total of 66 books which they need to follow opposed to just one Qur’an for the Muslims? Stop any Christian on the street and he or she will not know this fact. But then stop any Muslim on the street and most likely he or she can reply to most of your questions regarding Christianity.
In short, most Muslims are knowledgeable about Christianity while most Christians are not only ignorant about Islam but also about their own religion as well. And if Christians need to gain a bit more knowledge regarding Christianity they are better off talking to a Muslim than to a fellow Christian who would not know much.
Anyway, that is not what we want to talk about today. What we want to talk about is the very mischievous front-page of The Star that headlined the story on terrorism and then showed a picture of Muslims in prayer. That would be like showing the picture of the IRA bombing in Manchester 21 years ago below the story of the British Prime Minister, Theresa May, recently promising to step up the war on terrorism.
