The headline was straightforward enough.....Muslims more numerous than Catholics: Vatican.At first glance, the story appears to confirm that statement:
"Islam has overtaken Roman Catholicism as the biggest single religious denomination in the world, the Vatican said on Sunday.
Monsignor Vittorio Formenti, who compiled the Vatican's newly-released 2008 yearbook of statistics, said Muslims made up 19.2 percent of the world's population and Catholics 17.4 percent."
"The Vatican recently put the number of Catholics in the world at 1.13 billion people. It did not provide a figure for Muslims, generally estimated at around 1.3 billion."
There is one question I have about the statistic......brought up by this quote;
"He said that if all Christian groups were considered, including Orthodox churches, Anglicans and Protestants, then Christians made up 33 percent of the world's population -- or about 2 billion people."
For these statistics, the Christians have been separated into different denominations.......they note "Orthodox churches, Anglicans and Protestants" which actually just touches the surface on the different Christian denominations.
Why, then, are Muslims not separated into Sunni and Shia for these statistics?
Is the number 1.3 billion Muslims for the total of both denominations added together or is it 1.3 billion Sunni?
So, the question still remains.....are there more Catholics than Sunni ?
9 comments:
even then..all the 1.3+ million are bound in unity by the one and only-Holy Qur'an.
so its not just in the name but even the scripture that gave the name-muslim!!!
surprisingly ,catholics and protestants do not follow the same number of Biblical books,fracturing the only scripture they've had which..well..does'nt even address them as 'Christians' !!!
You cannot say the Sunni and Shia Muslims are united simply because they use the same Qur'an. They are killing each other every day.
Irrespective of the present day escalation in conflict that is obviously among the various repurcussions of the current Occupation in those Muslim countries, muslims (as against the followers of Christ)all over the world have the strongest case.
Islam is the only religion on the face of the earth which has preserved an undisputed documentation of its scripture-the Holy Qur'an ,with regards to:
1.'What'(language or script) was revealed .
2.'When' it was revealed.
3.'Where' it was revealed.
4.'How'it was revealed.
5. unto'Whom'it was revealed.
I say "revealed" and not "revised/updated" as its again a unanimous consensus about the veracity of the claim-the verbatim "Word of God".
No conflict arises from the scripture that names its followers as Muslims and whatever there is, does not pertain to the scripture-again a marked distinction!
You wrote;
"Islam is the only religion on the face of the earth which has preserved an undisputed documentation of its scripture-the Holy Qur'an ,with regards to:
1.'What'(language or script) was revealed .
2.'When' it was revealed.
3.'Where' it was revealed.
4.'How'it was revealed.
5. unto'Whom'it was revealed."
I would say that the Latter-Day Saints with their, "Book of Mormon" would disagree with you on that.
"Irrespective of the present day escalation in conflict that is obviously among the various repurcussions of the current Occupation in those Muslim countries"....I'm afraid you'll have to rephrase that because that comment makes not sense as written.
I've commented on this post and exchange on a new post- "The World's Largest Denomination" redux.
you wrote:
"I would say that the Latter-Day Saints with their, "Book of Mormon" would disagree with you on that."
Sir,please quote me in full.
'I say "revealed" and not "revised/updated" as its again a unanimous consensus about the veracity of the claim-the verbatim "Word of God".'
Joseph Smith, Jr., founder of the Latter Day Saint movement (1830),has claimed himself to be the Author and Proprietor of the Book of Mormon. (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cc/The_Book_of_Mormon-_An_Account_Written_by_the_Hand_of_Mormon_upon_Plates_Taken_from_the_Plates_of_Nephi.jpg)
This shows :
1.Its definitely not the verbatim "Word of God" unless its author(Joseph Smith) claimed to be the Divine God himself.
2.Supposing it DOES have divine origins,then it should not have been revised/updated/manipulated/tampered/corrupted..etc. by the hands of men(here,Joseph Smith)so much so that the original script(here,Reformed Egyptian)is no longer used.Such incidents are common with other Biblical books eventually amounting to losing or degrading their divine credibility.
Further,for your better understandability square brackets have been inserted into my original comment :
Irrespective of the present day escalation in conflict [Sunni-Shia] that is obviously among the various repurcussions of the current Occupation[US,UK etc.] in those Muslim countries[like Afghanisthan,Iraq & not SaudiArabia,Indonesia,Egypt,Iran etc.], muslims (as against the followers of Christ)all over the world have the strongest case[case for? read the topic of this blog].
Islam is the only religion on the face of the earth [again,as against the followers of Christ]which has preserved[http://www.iol.ie/~afifi/BICNews/Sabeel/sabeel3.htm] an undisputed documentation of its scripture-the Holy Qur'an ,with regards to:
1.'What'(language or script) was revealed .
2.'When' it was revealed.
3.'Where' it was revealed.
4.'How'it was revealed.
5. unto'Whom'it was revealed.
I say "revealed" and not "revised/updated" as its again a unanimous consensus about the veracity of the claim-the verbatim "Word of God".
[again,as against the followers of Christ]
No conflict arises from the scripture that names its followers as Muslims and whatever there is, does not pertain to the scripture-again a marked distinction!
[again,as against the followers of Christ.]
It will take time for me to analyze and respond properly to your last comment. One area I want to look into further is your assertion that there have been no revisions or updating to the Qur'an and how that relates to the Muslim practice of abrogating verses.
Before you do that,sir, kindly provide me the Aaya't (verse(s)) that you have in mind which according to you were thrown away/abolished from the Qur'an.
I am not,obviously,a Qur'anic scholar. I do not pretend to have a complete understanding of the Qur'an. I have to depend on the work of others to address some of what you have written.
On the website, answering-islam.org I found this regarding your claim that Islam has preserved an undisputed documentation of the Qur'an.
Shortly after Mohammed’s death, his verses remained written on stones, bones, leather, and hidden in the memories of his followers. Years passed and most of those, who claimed to remember all of the Qur'an by heart, were killed in battle. Some of the items on which verses were written were damaged or lost. So with great urgency experts shared what they remembered and gathered the verses recorded by others to produce the first Qur'ans. They were copied and distributed throughout the Islamic communities.
Muslims today are committed to the idea that there was one original Qur'an which was compiled without any mistakes, omissions or additions. Yet, Islamic history shows that perhaps four to seven different versions of the Qur'an emerged. One of Mohammed’s successors, Caliph Uthman, was shocked by this fact. He assigned a committee of three people to construct a standardized version of the Qur'an. Then Muslim leaders tried to burn all other versions of the Qur'an (Sahih Bukhari, Vol. 6, p. 479).
The most respected Hadith records that even Uthman’s standardized copy had to be corrected. One of the committee members, Zaid, related how they realized that a verse was missing. They searched and found it with a man named Khuzaima-bin-Thabit al Ansari. Tradition says that the passage which was added to the standardized version is found in chapter thirty-three, verse twenty-three of the modern Qur'an (Sahih Bukhari, Vol. 6, p. 479). Even with the addition of that passage, there are less reliable Islamic traditions which report that verses were left out of the Uthman standardized Qur'an. It was reported that Mohammed recited verses for the Qur'an that commanded stoning of adulterers (Ibn Ishaq, Sirat Rasulullah, p. 684). This teaching is not found in the Qur'an today.
Post a Comment