Islam

Hajj is one of the five pillars of Islam. During Hajj, there is an expectation for physically and financially able Muslims to travel to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, at least once in their lives. Meaning “pilgrimage” in Arabic, Hajj is an event that unites Muslims worldwide as they shed social status and celebrate equality in a holy city. As Christians engage in conversations with their Muslim friends, knowing the background and purpose of the spiritual pilgrimage of Hajj can help equip us to be ready to encourage our Muslim friends toward a saving hope in Christ.

In 2009, when Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi walked away from a United States detention camp in Iraq, he warned his former captors: “I’ll see you guys in New York.”

Just five years later, in 2014, this same man became the leader of ISIS.

After Tuesday’s terror attack in New York City, the deadliest since 9/11, al-Baghdadi’s words seem more ominous – and relevant.

This week, CNN noted the resilience of New Yorkers. Yet, we deceive ourselves if we go on with our lives and dismiss Tuesday’s attack as another senseless atrocity carried out by a “lone wolf.” (After all, the alleged attacker wanted to display the ISIS flag in the hospital while he recovered, and the militant group claimed him as a “soldier of the caliphate.”)

What motivates ISIS to commit such carnage? Radical jihadists such as al-Baghdadi are more than psychopaths perverting Islam. ISIS wants to usher in the apocalypse.

Here are four things you need to know about ISIS from the research of Jim Denison, author of Radical Islam: What You Need to Know:

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In a recent interview with The Christian Post, a woman detailed her journey of converting from Islam to Christianity after Jesus came to her in a vision and encouraged her to follow him.

There’s something else that’s taken place over the last three decades: Each and every year for the last 29 years, during the season of Ramadan, the most holy period for the Islamic calendar, a group of Christians led by a prayer guide have together prayed for Christ to draw Muslims to Himself. Ramadan is a very good time to keep our Muslim neighbors and Muslims around the world in prayer.

Police in Pakistan have found a 14-year-old Christian girl who was allegedly kidnapped and forced to marry and convert to Islam, but a court on Thursday rejected her family’s attempt to recover her, ruling that Islam gives mental capacity more importance than age in such cases.

In a world racked with natural and man-made disasters, what is the way forward for the gospel?

There appears to be a steady increase in the number of people leaving Islam, especially among the youth. Here are several reasons why people are leaving the Islamic faith.

A Muslim couple is suing a Chicago-area school and claiming that a former history teacher helped their daughter convert to Christianity.

Christians and other religious minority groups participated in the annual "Black Day" protest against the 1988 constitutional amendments that establish Islam as Bangladesh's official state religion.

The five-year prison sentence on a man who reportedly shared a carton on social media blaspheming Islam’s prophet has been upheld in Algeria.