Indonesians Think Christianity Is More Modern

THERE IS NO doubt that the west needs to get a lot more serious about the Islamic mass movement and its program to create a world-wide caliphate. But we need to keep a sense of proportion.

Here is a brief item from Strategy Page about Christianity in Indonesia. Moderate Muslim leaders want help from the Indonesian government “to stem the growth of Christianity.”

While 85 percent of Indonesians are Moslem, most of the remainder are Christian. On some islands, the population is half, or more, Christian. On those islands, many Moslems see Christianity as a more “modern” religion. Christian clergy and missionaries are generally better educated than their Moslem counterparts, and the Christians tend to be more successful economically as well.

Meanwhile, Mark Steyn is needling the British about their coddling of Islamic terrorists with housing benefit and generous welfare. The British should get serious, he writes: they are in a war. To encourage them, he reminds them of the progress that Islam is making,

[T]here’s a lot more of the world that lives under Sharia than there was, say, 30 years ago: Pakistan adopted it in 1977, Iran in 1979, Sudan in 1984.... Fifty years ago, Nigeria lived under English common law; now, half of it’s in the grip of Islamic law. So, as a political project, radical Islam has made some headway.

Of course, Steyn is right. The Islamicist mass movement is a real threat and we should treat it as a war—how about calling it a global war on terror? We should rough up the Islamic welfare queens in Britain and Old Europe and make them get a job.

But let us not lose sight of the enormous strength of global capitalism, global democracy and global Christianity. The only way that Islam makes headway politically is by using brute force. It needs to, if the islanders of Indonesia think of Christianity as more modern. They understand, as this website does, that enthusiastic Christianity is the Road to the Middle Class. And they want to get on it.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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