Islam and A Blue eyed Blonde Jesus !

After I moving to US, somebody from the largest Islamic country asked me couple of questions - How do US treat the muslims? Why many Christians change their religion to Islam etc. The question came with a 'what do you think?' prefix or suffix.. In what way my opinion matter if Christians change their religion to Islam when I do not follow neither of the religions? I don't know.

I had never thought about such a scenario till I face this question. But what do I think, if I have to think?

The outlook of the americans towards muslims changed after that 9/11 incident, thats a fact. Bin Laden even gave a direct message to US to accept Islam or face consequences. Attacking US (India too) is jihad for him/them. I live in a place which has considerable muslim population. This area is said to have the largest Afghan population in this State (or even country, not sure). I do not think they are being discriminated here at least in my locality. Or I better say I never felt so (no such news so far).

Why do Christians convert into Islam? I did not think about it. But this question made me recollect certain things that came and gone through my head. First of all, I am not sure about this conversions. But the person who asked me gave Michael Jackson as an example. Yes, thats true, sometimes back I too had blogged about his conversion. Then I realized that an acquaintance of mine too left Christianity and embraced Wicca. Some more conversions too went through my mind. Two of my acquaintances changed their faith to Islam to marry muslim guys (one Christian and one Hindu. Islam and Hinduism has polar difference at this point. There is no exit clause for Islam. If you change religion, you get death. In Hinduism there is total freedom – you worship Jesus, you worship Allah, you worship this or that, you don’t worship anything at all, you worship Satan, you change religion to a cat's of dog's or even donkey's religion, no questions asked. Hinduism do not believe in forcing religion on to others or even among Hindus). One thing common with couple of these people were that they were African Americans or dark skinned people. Is Islam picking up in African countries? Not sure but if it is, I am not surprised coz...

Last week, I was checking (at the largest online store in here in US/in the world) the list of the top selling books here in US . There was an interesting book which tells us about a boy's near death experience (NDE). What is interesting is that this boy claims that he went to heaven and met Jesus and even God (plus angels and some of his relatives -who died earlier- etc). This book is promoted as a true story and people are buying it and giving very high rating too. Surprisingly, lots of them believe that it is for real (personally, I do not believe because the book is written by his father who is an evangelist and the boy says funny stuffs like Angels always carry sword to fight with Satan etc. Sword? Oh yeah? So, they still live in the iron age? I expected at least a Light Saber...if that boy really had an NDE, I don’t think he is telling lies. But his these sort of experience can be very much explained in terms of psychology/para-psychology). But in what way this is connected to Islam?

How did the Jesus look like? He was tall , white skinned and had blue eyes. So, Jesus is a tall white man with blue eyes (there is a confusion regarding the color of his hair; some say its blonde and some say its chestnut). So, Jesus was probably an American?

I spent a lot of time reading stuffs here and there to find how the americans feel about Jesus. Many of the white people like this 'fact', they believe Jesus was a white man for sure (in reality, if they check Jesus's DNA, it would be closer to Bin Laden and not Gorge Bush !). But the problem here is when Jesus gets promoted as a blue eyed blonde white man, may be it is bit hard for the darker skinned people to digest (I have seen some pictures of Jesus where he was shown as a dark skinned man, may be this was to promote Christianity in Africa). But Prophet Mohammad wasn't a white man plus Islam believes in Jesus (as a messenger).

I have heard it from some of the very popular promoters of Islam that when Jesus comes again, he will be coming to testify to Christians that he never said he is God and he will be coming to re-assure the words of prophet Mohammad, the words or Allah, spoken in the Koran. According to Islam, Jesus's message was exclusively for Israel. I spend about 6 hours to listen to the talks and teachings of one of the 'islamic evangelists'. He speaks convincingly. I think even the celebrity evangelist/televangelist Benny Hinn can not counter his points. He says Jesus was a muslim and muslims are more christians than the present day christians because they follow the teachings of Jesus better than the christians....lots of stuffs like that

So, these new Jesus image and promotions could be one of the reasons why Christians are changing their religion to Islam. At least thats one possibility.