Posted by ACN News on 15/3/2006, 9:04 am
Message modified by board administrator 16/3/2006, 7:00 am

ACN NEWS 15/3/06 Zambia: Buying souls for Islam

Christian population drops from 70 percent to 50 percent in just 10 years By Terry Murphy

WEALTHY Muslim evangelists are dazzling poverty-stricken people with riches in a bid to win Zambia for Islam – so says a Polish missionary working in the country.
 

Father Andrzej Halemba, who is based in the Kasama diocese in the north-east of the country, told the charity Aid to the Church in Need of a huge campaign of Islamisation, backed by funding from abroad.
 

He said that in a country where many were living on just over a dollar day, people were being offered money and jobs on condition that they converted to Islam. In a country with an average life expectancy of below 40, Muslims were being singled out to receive free schooling.

In an interview with the charity which supports the suffering Church, the priest said that in the space of a decade the Christian population in parts of northern Zambia had plummeted from 70 percent to as low as 50 percent.
 

Meantime, latest reports show that the total Muslim population in Zambia is at least 20 percent.
 

Fr Halemba, who is from Tanganyika Lake, which is close to the borders with Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of Congo, said that Christians had found it impossible to resist financial incentives from Muslims.
 

“There is a strong Islamic influence due to foreign investment,” he said. “Over the past 10 years, an aggressive presence of Islam has been built up in Zambia, a country that is Christian according to its constitution.”
 

He said the Government “did not seem to pay much attention” to the decline in the Christian population, which in his area is split fairly evenly between Protestants and Catholics.Fr Halemba called for a Catholic response to the growing influence of Islam, stressing the need for effective formation of priests and lay leaders in his diocese, which is home to the Mambwe and Lungu peoples.
 

And, he said, “Christians must be able to pray in their mother tongue. That is why we need more translations of religious texts into local languages. But without money, there is not much that the Church can do.”Fr Halemba said he had translated the New Testament into Mambwe and published a collection of Mambwe folk tales both in the original language and in English.
 

His comments are set against a backdrop of increasing economic problems in Zambia, which is beset by AIDS and a collapse in production of the country’s major export – copper.  Last November, President Levy Mwanawasa declared a national disaster after reports showed that more than a million Zambians faced starvation as the country fell into the grip of famine and drought.

For further information please contact the Sydney office of ACN on (02) 9679-1929. e-mail: info@aidtochurch.org or write to Aid to the Church in Need PO Box 6245 Blacktown DC NSW 2148. Web: www.aidtochurch.org

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