Soul winners are increasingly confronted with the need to witness to Muslims. Islam is considered the fasted growing religion in the world. Estimates vary, but most indicate that over one billion people worship Allah.

In the West, new mosques are appearing almost daily, many in converted church buildings. Internet directories list over 600 Islamic centers in the U. S. with over 5 million adherents.

It is the second largest religion in the world, with Christianity listed as first with Hindism a distant third. One prison chaplain estimated that 25 percent of the prison population had converted to some form of Islam, mostly Black Muslims.

Outside of Roman Catholicism, Islam should be the soul winner's next concern. As with most witnessing situations, the basic question for the Muslim remains: "What will you do with Jesus." Robert Morey points out in his book, "The Islamic Invasion", that Islam claims to honor both Jesus and Muhammad as great prophets sent by Allah. If this is true, then no part of their ministries or teachings can contradict each other. Yet, if the Muslim is willing to follow you in a careful comparison of the two, he must agree that there are many such contradictions, that Jesus and Muhammad could not possibly represent the same God.

Morey says that at some point in the discussion, the Muslim will say that the record of Jesus in the Bible is hopelessly corrupt and that the Bible is thus not worthy of reference. Morey then challenges the Muslim to review with him the two books as literature, rather than as divine revelation. The honest Muslim will have to admit that, compared to the Koran's "disjointed and irregular character," the Bible is far superior in its logical, coherent presentation of God's thoughts in a chronological, historical context.

Morey goes on to illustrate how the Koran is classic early Arabic literature which contains "numerous examples of such ecstatic and often confused poetic material."

Witnessing to the Muslim is usually quite difficult. His religion is his very culture. To give up Islam is to give up almost every aspect of his way of life and often his family relationships as well. Morey points out that "Islam is actually the 'deification' of seventh-century Arabian culture. In a profound sense, Islam is more cultural than it is religious."

Thus the soul winner is asking the Muslim to give up his whole way of life (and in some countries, life itself) to convert to Christianity. But we are commissioned to testify of God's love to everyone. Islam is just another form of spiritual bondage that Christ wants broken.