Islam in Europe: Threat or Challenge to Christianity?

Abstract

“Threat of Islam” is a historical perspective still persisting long after the Ottoman generals knocked at the door of Vienna. Island communities of Islamic culture left behind by the retreating Muslim tide in the seventeenth century have been reinforced in the mid-twentieth by some six million immigrant workers, students, and refugees. Initial knee-jerk reaction on the part of churches to the new mosques and their worshipers has ranged from suspicion to outright animosity. Now European Christians have to ask themselves if it is not a unique outworking of Providence which has brought to their very doorsteps millions of adherents to the world's most gospel-resistant religion. The very essence of the challenge is that mass communication methods of evangelism will only confirm Islamic prejudice, since all Islamic cultures depend upon personal relations.