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Christians are being urged to stand up against what a visiting author says is a Muslim push to take over the world.
Pastor Stuart Robinson, Australian author of the book Mosques and Miracles, has drawn about 200 people to a conference in Greenlane this weekend aimed at revealing what he says are the true dangers of Islam.
Meanwhile, rebel British left-wing MP George Galloway is expected to attract about 450 people to a rival meeting in Freemans Bay tonight to condemn Mr Robinson's "islamophobia".
Mr Galloway, who was expelled from the British Labour Party in 2003 for opposing the invasion of Iraq, has been brought here by the Residents Action Movement, which plans to campaign against islamophobia in October's local body elections.
Mr Robinson's two-day Mosques and Miracles conference has been organised by missionary groups Open Doors, Middle East Christian Outreach, Asian Outreach and Interserve, with support from the Vision Network of evangelical churches. The programme said Mr Robinson "pioneered church planting among Muslims", working for 14 years in a predominantly Muslim South Asian country he would not name.
He said most Westerners did not understand that Islam taught that peace would prevail in the world only when the Muslim religion predominated.
"Their books teach that they [Muslims] are the best of all people, that they want to rule over the whole world," he said.
"One can't object to that. Christians also are on a mission from God to make disciples, but we make disciples of Jesus, who was quite a different entity from the example of Muhammad."
He said Muslim theology "teaches that war has to be prosecuted against the infidel until the day of judgment when Jesus Christ returns".
Unlike Christianity, which offered salvation simply through faith, he said Islam taught that the only sure way to paradise was to die as a martyr for the faith. "That becomes an enormous recruitment device for a lot of the suicide bombing that we see," he said.
But Mr Galloway, a Catholic who has backed the Palestinian cause for 32 years, said New Zealand's 45,000-strong Muslim community was moderate and law-abiding and had never carried out any terrorist acts.
"Have you seen any signs of New Zealand's Muslims launching a jihad [holy war]?" he asked. "Of course you haven't. These people [Mr Robinson's followers] are trying to place fear and hatred in the hearts of ordinary New Zealand people against peaceful neighbours."
He said statements at a Mosques and Miracles conference in Wellington on Wednesday that good Muslims must kill Christians and Jews would be illegal under a British law passed last year to ban religious hate speech. New Zealand does not have such a law.
"One of the reasons we have it in Britain is the prevalence of this kind of anti-Muslim hate propaganda which becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy," he said. "If you generate hatred against Muslims, you will get a reaction from young Muslims seeking to defend their community."
Mr Galloway's public meeting is at the Auckland Girls Grammar School Theatre, Howe St, at 7.30 tonight.
The Mosques and Muslims conference is closed to the public but Mr Robinson will preach at the venue, the Greenlane Christian Centre, at 9am, 10.45am and 7pm tomorrow.
