Search for religion or religion news and what comes up is usually Christianity related.

The only time you see something different is during the Ramadan, if the Sultan of Sokoto or Emir or someone highly placed in the Islamic world makes a statement.

This is really sad considering the fact that Nigeria is dominated by two religions, Christianity and Islam.

Worldwide, Islam is the second largest religion with 1.3 billion, as documented by The Register.

According to a new report, this number is only going to get bigger, since Islam is going to replace Christianity as the World's most popular religion in 53 years!

With all of these, why is there barely anything related to Islam in the Nigeria online space?

I took this concern to my friends, who are Muslims, and we came up with these three reasons.

1. Muslims do not rely on the Internet for religious knowledge: According to my friends, the Internet is not where Muslims go to for knowledge. Rather, they turn to scholars, Imams, Qu'rans and other Islamic texts. This implies that no serious Muslim is going to turn to Google for answers, when they have other, better ways.

2. The need to verify and state your sources: With Muslims, there is a need to know the source of your information. This means you can not just say anything without having proof. I learnt that every Hadith (sayings of the prophet) can still be traced to the prophet Muhammad himself, who lived about 1400 years ago!!!! Wow. So, you have to be able to prove what you are saying.

Also, anything that is said has to be backed by scholarly opinion because Muslims regard scholars as the successors and inheritors of the prophets. Abu Darda reported: The Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, said, “” This long chain of transmission of knowledge, combined with the need to be completely sure, definitely prevents the Internet from being overly jam-packed with information.

3. The fear of online bullying: My friends say that there is nothing as scary as not getting something wrong in Islam. This is because the religion is very structured, leaving little room for personal opinion. Jabir ibn Abdullah reported: The Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, would praise Allah in his sermon as He deserves to be praised and then he would say, “Whoever Allah guides, no one can lead him astray. Whoever Allah sends astray, no one can guide him. The truest word is the Book of Allah and the best guidance is the guidance of Muhammad. The most evil matters are those that are newly invented”

This means everything HAS to be based on the Qu'ran. When this is not the case, the person will be seriously criticised. In the words of my friend, "there is an eggshell approach to addressing Islamic issues." This means the fear of being criticised/bullied is strong enough to prevent anyone from saying or writing just anything on the Internet.

Basically, this is why we do not have enough Islam online presence as compared to Christainity.

Is this a bad thing? I don't think so.

I wish we had some of this kind of structure with Christians, then maybe we would not just have churches anywhere and everywhere, or people, who can just come with their own version of Christianity, which is usually different from what Jesus Christ stood for.

ALSO READ: 10 times South African pastors have embarrassed Christianity

Kudos to Muslims for doing their very best to stay true to the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad.

What do you think?