We have blogged earlier about the phenomenon of “temporary marriage” in Shi’ite Islam, which sanctions sexual immorality by allowing a man to “marry” a woman and then “divorce” her after a one-night stand. Now a mosque in Iran is, in effect, setting up a prostitution ring, including in its offerings children as young as twelve. Here is the official announcement:
In order to elevate the spiritual atmosphere, create proper psychological conditions and tranquility of mind, the Province of the Quds’eh-Razavi of Khorassan has created centers for temporary marriage (just next door to the shrine) for those brothers who are on pilgrimage to the shrine of our eighth Imam, Imam Reza, and who are far away from their spouses.
To that end, we call on all our sisters who are virgins, who are between the ages of 12 and 35 to cooperate with us. Each of our sisters who signs up will be bound by a two-year contract with the province of the Quds’eh-Razavi of Khorassan and will be required to spend at least 25 days of each month temporarily married to those brothers who are on pilgrimage. The period of the contract will be considered as a part of the employment experience of the applicant. The period of each temporary marriage can be anywhere between 5 hours to 10 days. The prices are as follows:
· 5 hour temporary marriage — 50,000 Tomans ($50 US)
· One day temporary marriage — 75,000 Tomans ($75 US)
· Two day temporary marriage — 100,000 Tomans ($100 US)
· Three day temporary marriage — 150,000 Tomans ($150 US)
· Between 4 and 10 day temporary marriage — 300,000 Tomans ($300 US)
Our sisters who are virgins will receive a bonus of 100,000 Tomans ($100 US) for the removal of their hymen.
After the expiration of the two-year contract, should our sisters still be under 35 years of age and should they be so inclined, they can be added to the waiting list of those who are seeking long-term temporary marriage. The employed sisters are obligated to donate 5% of their earnings to the Shrine of Imam Reza. We ask that all the sisters who are interested in applying, to furnish two full-length photographs (fully hijabed and properly veiled), their academic diplomas, proof of their virginity and a certificate of good physical and psychological health which they can obtain through the health and human services of the township of their residence. Please forward all compiled material and send to the below address by the 31st of the month of Ordibehesht, 1389 (May 21st, 2010).
Attention: For sisters who are below 14 years of age, a written consent from their fathers or male guardian is required.
via Pajamas Media » Pimp Your Mosque!.
Again we see how legalism begets loop-hole hunting and immorality, while maintaining self-righteousness.
NOTE: I should clarify, as a Muslim commenter points out, that only Shi’ite Muslims practice “temporary marriage.” Sunni Muslims, who make up 90% of the faith, strongly reject this. It’s one of the reasons they are so opposed to the Shi’ites.
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This was an eye-opener for me. I was not aware of temporary marriages before. Wow.
To be fair prostitution and religion have a long history in that region. There is nothing new.
My first reaction was to be shocked. Upon further reflection, this fits rather consistently with the muslim view of marriage. It is not limited to one wife, and it only continues until the man divorces the woman. Thus a muslim can marry and divorce withing five hours and everything is within the rules. It is only logical. What better way for a pious man away from home to find comfort than through “temporary marriage.”
Why do we find this offensive? I don’t mean that as a sarcastic, “we shouldn’t find this offensive.” I mean it as a serious question. What is it about this that makes us recoil? Is it the polygamous or the temporary nature of such marriage? Is it “marriage” at all? Does a man who does this commit adultery or make himself guilty of divorce? (Hmm. In Islamic law, would the wife be entitled to a share of the estate if the man died during those five hours?)
That got me to thinking, if you will pardon the glaring irony of “actions speak louder than words:” Is Christianity the only religion to teach that marriage is “’til death do us part?” In spite of the behavior of professing Christians and the condoning of many churches, Christ’s teaching that “what God has joined, let man not tear apart” is at the essence of marriage. While a marriage can be broken, it cannot be broken without sin. how distinctive is this from what other religions actually teach?
Dan, I believe that most Asian nations’ belief systems more or less agree that marriage should be till death do us part–to the point of Hindus formerly burning widows on their husbands’ funeral pyres. John Paton, a missionary to the South Pacific islands, reported about the same thing among those he met there prior to their conversion.
Well said regarding Islam, however; the uncertainty of a husband keeping a wife no doubt has a lot to do with the way things work over there. (interestingly, the provision–apart from temporary marriage–also has a place in Talmudic Judiasm, if I’m informed correctly)
As Shahla Haeri revealed in her 1989 book, Law of Desire (published in the UK by I B Tauris), many temporary marriage contracts in Iran are transformed into permanent, loving relationships. Contrary to popular myth, it is usually not men but women, particularly divorcees and widows, who seek muta marriage. Haeri’s extensive survey showed that many older women approached “young men, particularly handsome ones, directly and frequently”.
Incidentally, under the law, the children born of temporary marriages are legal, legitimate heirs, and receive support.
No surprise here to folks who read a bit and/or travel. The fact is that countries ruled by Sharia law are some of the most oppressive and backward nations in the world. In Saudia Arabia, for example: Property cannot be bought/sold by a woman, women are not allowed to drive, and the testimony of a woman is only worth half the testimony of a man in court. Guess who wins rape lawsuits? I suppose at a certain level this is their own business, but I think we all need to make it very clear that our nation stands against and will not tolerate this kind of injustice. This would be a great segue into how our energy policy has compromised our morals, but I won’t go there.
I also found the pajamas media post interesting in that their take on this–probably a typical western take–was of sophistry and hypocrisy. I don’t think that is true at all. They are not being hypocrites–just consistent muslims.
All religions do NOT believe the same things.
hass, #5 & 6,
Are you a muslim? You seem to have a deeper grasp on the workings of muta marriage, and I think the perspective you bring is very important: This is really not “prostitution” under the cloak of another name, but a very different understanding of marriage.
There is a difference between a Sunni Muslim and a Shi’a Muslim. Shi’a are a small minority amongst Muslims, totaling around 10% of Muslims. Many of the Shi’a opinions have no basis from the Qur’an, and are rejected by Sunni Muslims. This marriage format (what they call Zawaj Al-Mut’ah) is no exception.
I realize that this website is preaching to the choir, and many people jump at the chance to hate Islam more whenever they can, but be objective and don’t paint the whole of Islam with one brush due to the ignorance of a deviant minority.
Sunni Islam (90% of Muslims) rejects this form of marriage.
Mazin Jilood, #10,
Thank you for that clarification. It is difficult for those outside of Islam to understand some of those distinctions.
Tell me, What would be the Sunni understanding of marriage? My understanding is that multiple brides are allowed and divorce is permitted under sharia law. Still, both marriage and divorce are serious matters. Is that correct? I would assume, then, that Sunni Muslims consider muta marriage to be a cloak for behavior and not a serious marriage at all–they are essentially “planning” to be divorced.
Mazin Jillood, Sorry I misspelled your name!
Hi Dan,
Yes, you are correct that 4 wives are permitted in Islam, as is divorce, and both matters are large responsibilities on the man both in this world and on the Day of Resurrection.
One of the explicit conditions of marriage in Islam is that it must not be agreed on as being temporary. If there is even a hint of the marriage being agreed on as temporary then it is null, and any intimate relations are equivalent to fornication.
Let’s see: “In order to elevate the spiritual atmosphere…”, “we call on all our sisters who are virgins”, “bound by a two year contract”, “their academic diplomas”, “Attention: For sisters who are below 14 years of age, a written consent from their fathers or male guardian is required.”
I can definitely say that this, combined with a pricing schedule, definitely “elevates” the spiritual atmosphere. I don’t get the virgin thing, though, as they are talking about a two year contract, and after the first temporary marriage the virgin part is out the window anyway, isn’t it? What, exactly, are the academic qualifications required for this spiritual post? And, I am relieved that those girls under 14 need their father’s permission. Very proper of them.
Mazin,
Thank you for your answer. One more question, if you are willing: I know that the responsibility of a Muslim man to care for his wife and family is very serious and not taken lightly. I also know that divorce is permitted. Are there specific causes that are allowed or not allowed for a divorce, or is it left to the man to answer for his decision?
Hi Dan,
Islam places no restrictions on reasons for divorce, but a man is still accountable for his actions, including the consequences of hurting others.
The Prophet of Islam (peace be upon him) said (in meaning of the translation): “From amongst the permitted actions, the most displeasing to Allah is divorce.”
Mazin Jillood,
Thank you for your comments and your education on this topic. In the system of plural marriage are the wives accorded any rankings or differentiations? What I mean, is there a head wife/
Also, is the first wife allowed input on the addition or divorce of wives 2-4?
Thanks.
Hi Joe,
It is not permitted for the man to give any of his wives any sort of superiority over another. The Qur’an is explicit in that the man must do everything he can to treat them all equally, otherwise he is not permitted to marry more than one.
It is very important for each member of the family to have input on any additional members, although Islam does not obligate this (meaning that the husband can marry a second wife even without the approval of the first, but this would be unwise). This is because the family is a unit, and must be protected, and introducing an unwanted new member would lead to friction and instability. Again, since we are all accountable for our actions, the husband would be accountable for the consequences of his poor choices if he makes them.
The issue between Islam and the West hardly turns on such minor matters as temporary marriage. Rather, it turns on the parts of the Koran that contend in a Manichean way that the world is divided between believers and infidels. The radical Islamic jihadis can find ample proof for this in such a verse in the Koran as Sura 2:161. Slay them wherever ye find them and drive them out of the places whence they drove … Believers! Make war on the infidels who dwell around you. …
I’d be interested in Mr.Jillood’s comment on this verse.
Mr. Jillood, thank you for your point that Sunni Muslims reject this practice. I added a special note about it on the post. Can you tell us about other differences between Sunni and Shi’a Muslims that can be similarly confused? I know that the fundamental difference is on the question of the succession of authority after the death of the Prophet, but my impression is that there are other differences of doctrine and practice that we should be aware of.
I really appreciate the note on the original post, Gene.
Peter, as for those verses, they fall under the topic of Jihad, and Jihad is the foreign policy of the Islamic Caliphate. Just like every country must have a policy in place to defend it’s national interests at home and abroad, the set of laws related to warfare in Islam is called “Jihad.”
For example, the verse “Kill them wherever you find them, and expel them from where they have expelled you,” is referring to the Islamic legislative warfare policy in relation to lands that were under the authority of the Islamic Caliphate, and have been occupied by an invading force; the invasion must be expelled at any cost.
The reason why things seem like such a mess today all around the world with Jihad and some Muslims misunderstanding it’s applications is that there is no Islamic Caliphate today to implement Jihad properly (the last Islamic Caliphate was destroyed on March 3rd, 1924), and therefore there is no one unified authority to lead the Muslims.
As for the other differences between Sunnis and Shi’a, there are many, but I would rather not list these differences, since I do not like to point fingers at specific groups. Additionally, the Shi’a are very divided, and it is nearly impossible to find any one group that follows one single cohesive viewpoint. Many Shi’a believe in temporary marriages, but entirely forbid it’s practice in their daily lives.
So, if there is any one specific thing you wanted clarity on, I can try to help where I can.
Wow, I mistakenly wrote “its” as “it’s” two times. I wish there was an “edit” button here : )
Mr. Jillood: Peter, as for those verses, they fall under the topic of Jihad, and Jihad is the foreign policy of the Islamic Caliphate.
Correct me if I’m wrong, the Koran is not stated as policy of any Caliphate; it is stated as the word of God as transcribed by his prophet and secretary on earth, Mohammed. The Caliphate policy of Jihad is based on the Koran, not vice versa.
Also, you’re right that Western nations have policies of their own to defend their national interests, though these policies are not stated in the Manichean way of “believers versus infidels.”
To return to MY original question, (#3), what are the differences between the teaching of Christ on marriage and the teaching of Islam?
It seems to me–and I am very thankful to have Muslims on this thread who are willing to clarify–that the “sin” of divorce in Islam is essentially ethical. A Muslim man is responsible for the decision and the results that follow. If there is cruelty or unwarranted abandonment, then the man will have to answer for that.
The teaching of Christ is that the marriage itself is a sacred creation, apart from the ethical result. “The two shall become one flesh. . . what God has joined together let no man put asunder.” The act of tearing apart a marriage is not only against God, but it causes a fundamental damage.
Is it possible that the promiscuity of our culture and the explosion of divorce is blinding many Christians to the true teaching of the Church on marriage?
To Mazin Jillood,
I appreciate you helping us to understand some of the distinctions within Islam.
Christians, also, are frustrated when false teachings are proclaimed in the name of the Church and are understood to represent Christianity. It is appalling to think that so much of the decadence and immorality of western culture is seen by the Islamic world as representative of a “Christian” nation.
Hi Peter,
What you said about the Caliphate is not very accurate. Islam is a complete set of laws related to all aspects of life, including personal matters, acts of worship, the social system, the economic system, the penal code, government structure and institutions, foreign policy and education, and the Caliphate (in Arabic: The Khilafah) is the name of the Islamic State, as first established by the Prophet of Islam (peace be upon him).
In other words, both Jihad and the Caliphate itself are ordained by the Qur’an and by the Prophet of Islam (peace be upon him). Jihad is the foreign policy of the Caliphate, and the Caliphate is the system of governance that implements all societal laws of Islam.
You can try to attribute the source of the Islamic legislative system to some Persian beliefs (your choice of Manichaeism), but that is no more valid that people attributing the miracles of Jesus to Greek Mythology.
The fact of the matter is that, if the true purpose of life is that the Creator of the Universe is testing us humans humans on whether we choose to do good or choose to do evil, and choose to believe in Him or choose to reject Him, then – regardless of some Persian guy talking about “similar” things – the true meaning of life is “believers vs disbelievers,” especially if disbelievers have proven themselves to consistently harbor animosity towards the believers throughout the ages, and attempt to turn them away from the truth.
Peter said (@23), “Western nations have policies of their own to defend their national interests, though these policies are not stated in the Manichean way of ‘believers versus infidels.’”
Oh, would that you were correct, Peter!
And yet, what was it that President Bush said on September 20, 2001? “Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.”
Perhaps you can agree, belatedly, that this rhetoric was wrong, and wrong-headed?
Just on the off chance that tODD does not balance his commentary @ 27:
“Every nation has to either be with us, or against us. Those who harbor terrorists, or who finance them, are going to pay a price.”
Senator Hillary Clinton (Democrat, New York)
During an interview on CBS Evening News with Dan Rather
September 13, 2001
http://freedomagenda.com/iraq/wmd_quotes.html#Sw8leOyTFo
http://www.wavsource.com/news/20010911a.htm
http://youtube.com/watch?v=DbYGYiGjpUs
“Every nation has to either be with us, or against us. Those who harbor terrorists, or who finance them, are going to pay a price.”
Senator Hillary Clinton (Democrat, New York)
During an interview on CBS Evening News with Dan Rather
September 13, 2001
http://youtube.com/watch?v=DbYGYiGjpUs
Of course, my comment above is directed at tODD’s rather unbalanced comment @ 27, which pointedly ignores the context of the times, just days after over 3,000 Americans unjustly lost their lives on American soil.
and we followers of Christ are trying to ‘nice’ to these deceivers because why?!!
C-CS
Also, it is hardly true that merely seeing the world as divided into two groups, believers and unbelievers, amounts to Manichaeism. For one thing, that’s a ridiculous oversimplification of what Manichaeism actually believed, and, more importantly in this context, Jesus himself spoke this way: sheep and goats, wheat and tares, “Whoever is not against us is for us”, “He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters.”
Obviously, the question is not: is the world divided into believers and unbelievers, the faithful and the unfaithful? Both Christianity, Islam, and a whole host of other religions teach that it is.
The question, rather, is what are the criteria for being in one group or the other. More to the point at hand, Mr. Jillood (@26), if we take as a given that God is testing us, what is one to do if he looks at his own life and realizes that he has chosen to do evil, over and over? That his life is one of stumbling from selfishness to lust to laziness to not caring for those around him to egotism to anger … and so on? If I am honest, even if my friends and those around me might call me a good man, I know in my heart that my life is very much like that, and hardly characterized as one in which I have “chosen to do good”. What then can be said about me? Is there any hope?
Dan (#24 and 25),
The main difference between the view of Islam and that of Christianity on marriage and divorce is that Islam defines it as a solution to a problem. Men and women have desires, and the Creator of the Universe only allows those desires to fulfilled through marriage. Marriage protects society, women, children and all other connected institutions. Included in this is the fact that divorce is also a solution to another problem: two people who realize – after marriage – that they are not compatible and do not like each other.
At the end of the day, what we believe is based on the Books that we follow, and only through verification of authenticity can we be sure that what we are following is truly what the Creator actually commanded us to do.
Don (@28-9), sorry, but tu quoque (or, in this case, Hillary quoque or liberal quoque) is still a remarkably poor debating tactic.
Yes, Clinton said that. And what of it? Am I supposed to recant because, liberal that I am supposed to be, I deeply love any and all Clintons and therefore stand behind what she said? Is that what the straw man that looks like me is doing?
Even if we leave aside for the moment the question of whether she was right to say so (and, you might notice, I’m most certainly not saying that), I was replying to Peter’s factually incorrect statement that the foreign policies of “Western nations … are not stated in the Manichean way of ‘believers versus infidels.’” They most clearly were! No “context” will change that fact.
Besides, Bush (and Clinton, though you might notice that her proclamations as but one Senator carried a little less weight regarding foreign policy than did Bush’s) was factually wrong. Plenty of nations have not taken a clear side in the war on terror, and not a few have taken both sides, though not usually in an explicit manner.
As to Carol’s question (@30) of why “we followers of Christ are trying to ‘nice’ to these deceivers,” I believe it has something to do with “loving our neighbors”, even our “enemies”, though I forget who said that. Maybe you know?
tODD @ 34: I wasn’t debating, just “providing context”, which has become all the rage recently.
I don’t disagree with your comments, and, in particular, appreciate your comment @ 32. But it’s odd, given your professed neutrality, that it is always Bush who comes in for your criticism. Just coincidental, I’m sure. Especially since it is Hillary Clinton’s worldview that is considerably more important than ex President Bush’s at the current time.
Mr. Jillood: Jihad is the foreign policy of the Caliphate, and the Caliphate is the system of governance that implements all societal laws of Islam.
Are you saying that the Koran/Caliphate policy of JIhad conforms to Sura 2:161. Slay them wherever ye find them and drive them out of the places whence they drove … Believers! Make war on the infidels who dwell around you. …?
Todd. Pres. Bush made clear after 9/11 that his policy distinguished between moderate and radical Muslims. In no way did he argue that it was against the Muslims.
Mazin, #33,
“Islam defines [divorce] as a solution to a problem.”
I am understanding correctly, then. Marriage is at one level a social institution, and Islam consistently treats it as such. Fair enough. “What we believe is based on the Books that we follow,” as you say.
Christianity, while acknowledging the social institution of marriage, elevates it beyond something that protects families and benefits society to a divine act in and of itself. It was the Creator who made them male and female and who said, “for this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be united to his wife and the two shall become one flesh.” It was again the Creator, Jesus Himself, who said, “What God, therefore has joined, let no man put asunder.” A Christian, therefore, has a higher obligation to the integrity of marriage, even if the social consequences were not a factor.
Indeed, the Christian scripture speaks of marriage as a picture of the union between God and His people, the Church! Christian marriage, therefore, is not only a social contract, (it is certainly that), but a committment of unconditional love that can only be broken by the ultimate curse of death. This unconditional committment is a picture of the Lord’s committment to His promise–a promise that will NEVER be broken, not even by the curse of death. Marriage for a Christian, then, is not only a matter of public life and that which is allowed or forbidden, but it is an expression of their faith and piety.
I thank you for your discussion of this, Mazin.
Hi tODD (#32),
The viewpoint Islam explains is that each action is separated from all other actions. A person doing one bad deed is not evil, and a person doing one good deed isn’t necessarily good.
Each deed is accounted for individually in Islam. If you do a bad deed, you shouldn’t stop doing good deeds. The Prophet of Islam (peace be upon him) said (in meaning of translation): “Truly, good deeds nullify bad deeds.”
The only time Islam condemns someone who is doing bad deeds and tries to do a good one is when he commands people to do things he himself is not trying to do. For example, someone who drinks alcohol (forbidden entirely in Islam) sees another person drinking and tells him he shouldn’t be drinking. Now, if the person giving the advice is trying very hard to quit and keeps slipping back, then it is ok for him to advise others, but if he isn’t trying and is going around preaching about things he himself does not implement, then this is a reprehensible act that Islam forbids.
So, Islam clarifies that the Creator is extremely merciful to those that try to obey Him. If you do a bad deed, repent. If you forget about a good deed, do it when you remember. If you are stuck doing a bad deed that you can’t stop, overwhelm it with many other good deeds, and hope that the Creator will forgive you. This does not mean that He will forgive you, but there is always hope that He will.
The Qur’an says “Allah does not forgive polytheism, but He forgives all other sins aside from that for whomever He wills.”
We all do bad deeds. Every single one of us. Each good deed is for you, and each bad deed is against you. As a Muslim, you are simply racing/fighting against your own weaknesses, and hoping to make it to death with enough good deeds/good intentions to please the Creator enough for Him to forgive your bad deeds.
Don (@35), as for your claim that “it is always Bush who comes in for [my] criticism”, I’m sorry you’ve missed the times when I’ve criticized or disagreed with the current administration, but perhaps you will take the time and ask yourself: who was President for most of the time I’ve been discussing here?
More specifically, which of the two September 2001 quotes do you think had more bearing in terms of stated foreign policy (which was, you’ll remember, the context of Peter’s claim, @23, to which I replied)? Was it the one said by the junior Senator from New York in a TV interview? Or was it the one said by the President and Commander-in-Chief in an address to a joint session of Congress? Do you believe those two quotes had equal weight when it comes to statements of American policy?
Peter (@36), “In no way did he argue that it was against the Muslims.” Do try to keep focused on your own argument here. Nobody’s saying that Bush was arguing for a war “against the Muslims” (though they might be forgiven, perhaps, for making that assumption). I’m simply showing you that you are wrong when you claim that Western “policies are not stated in the Manichean way of ‘believers versus infidels.’” They were. And are.
Peter (#36),
Yes, I already explained the context of this verse. If a Muslim land is occupied, then all the lives of all occupiers is open to warfare, since they are occupiers. “Kill them wherever you find them (on your occupied land), and expel them (from your land) as they expelled you (from your land, when they first occupied it).” It’s very straightforward.
For example, imagine some South American counties invade the southern USA. Would you not fight them and remove them from the lands they occupied? Would the US policy towards them not be “fight them wherever you find them, and kick them off US soil, the same as they kicked you out of your homes”? Yes, obviously.
And Dan (#37),
The main point I would bring up here is that the Christian view on marriage contradicts reality. It is a very nice and romantic idea, but in everyday application, it contradicts the fact that people have to choose their spouses, and our spouses are not divinely appointed to us. This leads to bad choices, and, in many cases, negative feelings towards each other. In Christianity, the answer is: “This is a divine institution, and you are, for the rest of your life, imprisoned in a miserable marriage that you no longer want to be a part of.” (haha, I’m being a bit comical here). In Islam, it simply allows you out if things go bad, and we all know how marriage can go bad, sometimes even within weeks.
tODD @ 39: Yes, I’m sorry too….;-)
So, if I understand you correctly, you knew governing politicians of both parties made the same statement during that crisis period, as they were desperately trying to marshall reluctant leaders to their side to deal with this urgent terrorism threat, but rather than reference the totality of those statements, you zeroed in on just Bush’s, because he was president, and therefore more powerful, and then singled him out in your comment as being “wrongheaded”. But it was just because he was president, mind you.
C-CS @ 31, there’s not one good reason to be unkind to the particular Muslim discussing things with us here, Mazin Jillood.
If we want to discuss the particulars of Islamic societies, then our discussion will be smarter if it’s based on what those particulars truly are – not what we wrongly imagine them to be, or have been wrongly informed they are.
Don’t we love unbelievers and want to see them come to the knowledge of the Truth? How will that happen if we don’t talk to them? Especially about Jesus – who He is and what He did.
Mazin Jillood,
I have quite appreciated your comments. Thank You.
The Christian faith is to be understood as a lifestyle of primarily being devoted to God and his teaching and, consequentially, loving our neighbor as ourselves. Out of our devotion for God we are to love our spouses and actively work to promote a healthy, vibrant and loving marriage which reflects our faith in God. 1 Corinthians 7 is one of the chapters in the Bible teaching upon Christian responsibility and ideals in marriage.
Sadly, Christians, 1) sin, and 2) don’t follow our beliefs wholeheartedly/truthfully and the marriages may result in divorce or an unhappy life.
This was not what God intended and our scriptures teach that; divorce was allowed because of the hardness of our hearts, which cause us to choose not to follow God and to not love our wife as we ought.
If we (and that’s a big if) wholeheartedly follow after God, as God intends, we will not have (totally) unhappy marriages. We must work at our marriages but simultaneously we view marriage as a gift from god to be enjoyed that, as Dan said, reflects the intended relationship between God and the Church.
The trick with Christianity is not to confuse the teaching with the practices of its adherents. Some are more faithful to the tenants of Christianity and our God and some who claim to be Christians are actually not Christians.
Chris
The polite banter shown to the Muslims here is great… for the blogosphere. The reality of the situation is, however, much more “hard and fast”.
1. Islam, as a whole, is a false religion founded by a delusional and possibly demon possessed pedophile. If you gasp at the last part of that sentance then read some honest history on the development of Islam.
2. The reality of marriage is defined by God, who happens to be the Triune God, who happens to lay out a clear theology of his views in the Old and New Testaments. I don’t play the postmodern game of “This religion has this view, and , wow, did you know that this religion has this view for this reason?”. It’s either the truth of the matter, or it’s not. Islam’s view is a perversion of the created order, and divine revelation. I know, I don’t play well with post-moderns…
3. I have taken courses on Islam, from former Islamic scholars who have seen the grace of God in Christ, and as a military chaplain I keep up on the details of Islamic activity. Muslims, such as the ones on this blog, will attempt to obfuscate their sins by complex explanations, such as those given here. It’s not unusual by any account. However, that does not change the reality of the sin. What has been described in this article is indeed nothing less than religiously sponsored prostitution. However, the legalism of Islam will continue to fail in providing defenses against the flesh (without the work of the Holy Spirit this is a futile endeavor), and therefore must continue to come up with a causistry rivaling even that of the Jesuits. The Gospel, the power of God in Christ, is the only remedy for the rotten fruit of this false religion.
In the meanwhile, I have no problem in encouraging our men to bear God’s Sword of justice against the disease of this false religion. The cowardly murders against children, the elderly, women, and that even of their own people, needs to be reigned in. Whoever allows Islam a foothold into their country are not a wise people.
Mr. Jillood (@38), thanks for your reply. Though I must admit to being confused. On the one hand, you paraphrase what I presume (after some Googling) is from Sura 11:114* as “good deeds nullify bad deeds”, adding later that you hope to have “enough good deeds/good intentions to please the Creator enough for Him to forgive your bad deeds.” But you also paraphrase (I think) 4:48*, saying that “Allah … forgives all other sins aside from [polytheism] for whomever He wills.”
I guess my confusion stems from your use of the word “forgive”. Does Allah forgive sins because “He wills”, or because we have done “enough good deeds”? Or do you somehow see those as the same? Is forgiveness merely the acknowledging of a debt that has been paid (one good deed cancels one bad one)? Because that would not seem “merciful”, but rather, just. Isn’t mercy when we get something we don’t deserve?
I also can’t help but notice that, in your last paragraph, you contrasted “good deeds/good intentions” with “bad deeds”. What about bad intentions? Do those count against me? After all, not a few of my deeds that looked quite good on the outside (giving to charity, being nice to strangers) were accompanied by intentions that were less than pure — typically, an egotistical orientation and a desire to be praised by others for my good deeds. I guess it doesn’t seem fair to me that actual evil deeds could be outweighed merely by intentions, if evil intentions don’t count against me.
But even if I need only worry about my bad deeds, I still have reason to worry. I’m far from sure that I have enough good intentions and deeds to outweigh the bad I have done — at least, if I’m honest with myself. And even if I do have enough, according to you, as you say, “This does not mean that [Allah] will forgive [me]“. One can, it would seem, only wish that Allah will forgive you.
Which makes me wonder, if you don’t mind my asking: have you done enough good deeds? Will you be forgiven by Allah? What is your status with him?
*Sorry, but I don’t really know the accepted way to cite the Quran.
Mr. Jillood, your interpretation that Sura 2:161 refers only to “occupiers” is dubious. The last sentence, … Believers! Make war on the infidels who dwell around you. … makes the meaning clear. Read carefully that passage refers clearly to a distinctionn between believers [of the Koran] and infidels [including Christians and Jews].
Sura 98:51 as follows makes this even more clear: The unbelievers among the People of the Book [Christians and Jews] and the pagans shall burn forever in the fire of hell. They are the vilest of all creatures.
The truth is that Islam is the only religion founded by a warrior. It is no accident, as Samuel Huntington remarked in The Clash of Civilizations</i, that of all civilizations Islam since the Eighth Century has had by far the bloodiest borders.
let’s look at what their book – Qur’an- actually teaches-not what they say it teaches-one of the most concise video-take I have ever seen:
http://carolmsblog.blogspot.com/2010/07/creeping-sharia-three-things-about.html
I do believe that they can find the TRUTH-CHRIST-
we – though- have forgotten to study the enemy’s handbook…
we’ve been ‘nice’…
C-CS
Psalm, my response to you is that I wonder what it is called when a person believes in the pacifist Jesus as the Bible explains, but then joins the military.
For example, Islam forbids heroin. I don’t know about you, but I personally don’t think I am allowed to work in a heroin factory in this situation, motivating the heroin factory workers to make more heroin, but “love God” while they make the heroin.
You are not a follower of Jesus. You are just another close-minded extremist that uses a religion (any religion, in your case, the religion of your parents) to give your cause some sort of divine validation.
Your words are harsh and rude, and typical of the likes of those who do not study other viewpoints objectively. Do you have any evidence that Paul wasn’t delusional and simply hallucinated seeing Jesus? Do you have any evidence that the Bible wasn’t edited by polytheists to add in a “triune god” version to fit in with their love for polytheism, and this is the version you follow? Do you have any evidence that the Matthew, Mark, Luke and John in the Bible are actually disciples of Jesus, or are you just “trusting” some people you never met from around 2000 years ago.
You should respect your lack of ground to speak from, and at the very least speak with more respect to your opponents, especially when your opponent has a Book that has not even had a letter changed in over 1400 years of its existence.
The Qur’an claims to be a linguistic miracle that no man could have written, and it has held up entirely to this claim. That itself should be grounds for respect and research.
What I’m trying to say is that you, unknowingly, might be insulting the actual final Prophet of the Creator of our universe, due to your close mindedness and cliquey attachment to the religion of your parents. You should check the authenticity of the Qur’an before you jump to such dangerous insults.
BTW-why are we allowing this to happen!?:
http://carolmsblog.blogspot.com/2010/07/two-christins-thrown-out-of-state.html
CAIR would have been all over this if it had been Muslim students…
C-CS
Psalm 35:1-9 Muslims, such as the one[s] on this blog, will attempt to obfuscate their sins by complex explanations, such as those given here. It’s not unusual by any account.
Sadly, this is true. For an incisive essay on the Arab tendency to obfuscate have a look at Understanding Taqiyya ― Islamic Principle of Lying for the Sake of Allah including the introductory paragraph:
Lying and cheating in the Arab world is not really a moral matter but a method of safeguarding honor and status, avoiding shame, and at all times exploiting possibilities, for those with the wits for it, deftly and expeditiously to convert shame into honor on their own account and vice versa for their opponents. If honor so demands, lies and cheating may become absolute imperatives.” [David Pryce-Jones, “The Closed Circle” An interpretation of the Arabs, p4
Peter (#46),
I think you might be confused about which verse you are referring to. The verse that speaks of “Kill them wherever you find them” is verse 2:191 and it says (in meaning of the translation): “And kill them wherever you find them, and expel them from where they have expelled you. And Al-Fitnah (attacking people in order to turn them away from their religion) is worse than killing. And do not fight them in (Makkah) unless they fight you there first. But if they attack you, then kill them. Such is the recompense of the disbelievers.”
I don’t know where you are getting this statement “Believers, kill those around you from the disbelievers.” Could you verify the reference?
The same goes for 98:51. There is no 51st verse in chapter 98. I think you might be referring to 98:6: “Those who disbelieve (in Islam) from amongst the People of the Book and the polytheists are in the Hellfire, and will stay there forever. They are the worst of creatures.” This verse is referring to people who see that Islam is the truth, and reject it. Yes, those people would be the worst of creatures, to reject the truth just because it’s not the religion of their parents, or not what they “want.”
The children of Israel rejected Jesus because he wasn’t what they wanted. This is the same rule.
Peter (#50),
Taqiyyah is another Shi’a belief that Sunni Muslims reject entirely.
The Prophet of Islam (peace be upon him) was asked if a Muslim would commit the sin of fornication, and he said yes. When asked if a Muslim would commit the sin of stealing, he said yes. But when he was asked if a Muslim would commit the sin of lying, he said no.
Lying is forbidden in Islam. But the Shi’a made up this Taqiyyah rule for reasons that would take me too long to explain.
Mr. Jillood, the author of the article doesn’t limit Taqiyya to the Shia. He claims that it is rooted in Arab tribal ways. He writes:
Falsehoods told to prevent the denigration of Islam, to protect oneself, or to promote the cause of Islam are sanctioned in the Qur’an and Sunna, including lying under oath in testimony before a court, deceiving by making distorted statements to the media such as the claim that Islam is a “religion of peace”. A Muslim is even permitted to deny or denounce his faith if, in so doing, he protects or furthers the interests of Islam, so long as he remains faithful to Islam in his heart. [emphasis mine]
Like many Islamic practices, taqiyya was formed within the context of the culture of Arab tribalism, expansionary warfare, Bedouin raiding and inter-tribal conflict. Taqiyya has been used by Muslims since the 7th century to confuse, confound and divide ‘the enemy’.
Peter,
Yes, I know what he said, and he is wrong. This is simply anti-Arab propaganda. Similarly, the Nation of Islam (black movement in the US) said that white people are devils, and corruption is rooted in their history. Just because some guy says something, doesn’t make it true.
Taqiyyah was formed by the Shi’a, due to the unanswerable question: If Ali (the man they claim was divinely chosen to succeed the Prophet in rule over the Islamic Caliphate) was really chosen and he knew this, why did he say nothing in protest of this injustice when it was not given to him? And the only answer they can come up with is “He did not want a fight to break out” and they call this Taqiyyah. This form of lying is exclusive to the Shi’a Muslims, and the Sunni Muslims reject it entirely.
The author needs to research the source of words before writing his articles.
Again, the Qur’an and the teachings of the Prophet (peace be upon him) are explicit in forbidding lying. The author of that article is wrong and should stop writing about things he barely understands, or maybe he should curb his enthusiasm in spreading anti-Arab, anti-Islam propaganda, and check his sources first.
Another part of that article states:
Sheik Hilali and the late Yasser Arafat are both on public record as (a) ‘condemning’ the 9/11 attacks, in ambiguous terms, to the Western media and (b) praising suicide bombings, or “ martyrdom operations”, to their Arabic speaking audiences .
Islamic spokesmen will rarely unequivocally condemn a specific act of terrorism and direct questions will be skillfully evaded.
What is your view of the 9/11 attack by Islamic jihadis from Saudi Arabia?
I am all for this (strangely enough).
The more honest Muslims are about their theology and practice, the better it will be for the whole world.
Another point in this discussion is that, while Christian nations by and large are tolerant of moderate Muslims and allow them to build mosques, in some Arab nations including Saudi Arabia Christian churches are not allowed and in most others Christians suffer a certain dhimmitude that makes life difficult.
Bat Yeor’s definition of dhimmitude is:
As for the concept of dhimmitude, it represents a behavior dictated by fear (terrorism), pacifism when aggressed, rather than resistance, servility because of cowardice and vulnerability. The origin of this concept is to be found in the condition of the Infidel people who submit to the Islamic rule without fighting in order to avoid the onslaught of jihad. By their peaceful surrender to the Islamic army, they obtained the security for their life, belongings and religion, but they had to accept a condition of inferiority, spoliation and humiliation. As they were forbidden to possess weapons and give testimony against a Muslim, they were put in a position of vulnerability and humility.
Mr. Jillood gets a fair hearing here. I doubt that any Christian would get a fair hearing inmost Arab countries.
Peter @ 57: Your point is well taken. Would that this open conversation between two major world faiths could freely occur in those Muslim countries.
Peter (#57),
I’m sometimes surprises when some people still do not understand the current political situation in the Muslim world (and not just the Arab world). Are you really unaware that the Muslim governments – each and every one of them – are traitor, tyrant regimes that only serve Western interests? Even the fake Islamic government of Saudi does everything it can to serve US economic demands and is well-known for being the worst in terms of torturing Muslim political activists. Egypt receives $3 billion a year to obey the US and they are one of the most tyrannical governments in the world. Muslims are persecuted for praying in mosques “too often” in most Muslim countries, and if you dare discuss Islam as a political system in the Muslim world, 95% of all those governments would sentence you to 20 years in jail with a side of torture for the duration.
Not even a Muslim gets a fair hearing in most Arab countries.
And let’s not forget Guantanamo Bay or the Toronto 11 who did not receive a fair hearing. When the “Christian” West decides that they stand to lose something by giving people a fair hearing, then the fair hearing will be thrown straight out the window.
Or what about how Sweden banned the building of mosque minarets, or how France banned the Hijab (headscarf), or how Denmark banned the face veil and the headscarf, or how Canada/Quebec is working to ban wearing the face veil. These nations are not really Christian nations anyways (secular atheist with a bunch of hypocrite Christians running them), but seriously…cut the worthless slogans of who is tolerant and who is not. Reality speaks volumes against your argument.
The West (the so-called Christian nations) are only tolerant as long as it suits them. When it stops suiting them, the tolerance ends.
Mr.Jillood, Switzerland, not Sweden, passed a law against minarets for two reasons. First, in relation to the Turkish premier, Erdogan’s remark that The mosques are our barracks, the domes are our helmets, the minarets are our swords, and the faithful are our army and second that the minarets were aesthetically harming the Swiss landscape.
Of course, America influenced Egypt, Saudi Arabia, et al during the Cold War financially to defeat the Communist Soviet Union and at present to defeat the radical Islamists. Nevertheless, America and the West by and large allow Islamic people who reside in our lands freedom to voice their religious views, something that Muslim countries rarely allow.
As to Guantanamo, the Americans detain the worst of the cold blooded
Islamic terrorist killers who are reasonably classified as unlawful enemy combatants without benefit of Geneva Convention rights. These Islamic savages who routinely kill innocent Western and Islamic civilians have no right to free speech.
Actually, Americans want peace with the Islamic people. We are really not interested in any sort of colonialism or empire.We do of course have national security and other vital interests that we fully intend to defend.
I was thinking Switzerland and typed Sweden lol.
And I have to say that the funniest comment of the year has to be “Actually, Americans want peace with the Islamic people. We are really not interested in any sort of colonialism or empire.”
Has anyone told you that Santa Claus doesn’t actually exist? He really doesn’t, I swear.
The same goes for the tooth fairy.
Mr. Jillood, America is involved in a determined fight with extremist Islamic militants, not with the people of Islam. We don’t have the slightest interest in annexing any territory in the Middle East.
Mr. Leavitt, you are clearly politically inexperienced and have a very weak understanding of what is happening in the world.
The US is run like a company that must expand and protect its economic interests. Their greatest economic interest is oil fields. The world’s best oil fields are on Muslim lands (including Africa and Asia). Islam is an independent political system that can (and will) replace Capitalism, and is the single greatest threat to US long term political and economic stability. The US knows this, and therefore they cannot allow Muslims to ever become strong, otherwise they will remove all US presence from Muslim lands. Therefore, they fund and protect tyrant regimes that keep Muslims subdued, weak, hungry, and fighting amongst each other.
I’m guessing you take all your political analysis from your preachers/priests/pastors, and you are living in a cocoon of misinformation and misunderstanding.
The US wants to completely dominate the world economy, and will invade/kill whoever stands in their way. If you don’t realize this, then you might need to stop listening to whoever is brainwashing you with la-la-land fantasy fairytales, and go read a real newspaper.
Mazin,
I’ve enjoyed observing this discussion. You’ve been quite tolerant, forgiving, and informative to the Christians posting here. I’ve learned much. But this is too much:
“Islam is an independent political system that can (and will) replace Capitalism, and is the single greatest threat to US long term political and economic stability. ”
This is silly. The political injunctions of Islam have yet to create an economically prosperous nation. This is not coincidental, with or without American manipulation and intervention.
I quite agree with you that American intervention has left much of the Middle East in disarray, but Islam lacks the political capacity to engender an economic regime capable of supplanting capitalism. You will recall that Marx posited a similar historical determinism for his theory of communism.
If anything supplants the corporatist capitalism of America, it will be the even more corporatist capitalism practiced by China. The Third World will soon be exchanging one master for another.
And do you believe that China will be a kinder master?
*I do not condone the economic imperialism of America.
(I think my last post didn’t work because I had a website link in it. I’m going to dodge the censor, and I hope this is ok with the moderator).
Cincinnatus,
Islam ruled 1/3 of the known world for almost 1000 years. The Islamic Caliphate ruled from Spain to Indonesia, and was one of the most successful empires (socially, economically and politically) the world has seen. The Islamic Caliphate invented the concept of zero, most modern math equations are rooted in Islamic research history, Islamic economics gave birth to many previously unknown systems of organization and implementation, and knowledge flourished under its rule.
The main reason people today think Islam cannot be applied in a modern setting is due to the fake attempts to “implement Islam” by people who intentionally wish to make it look “outdated.” Saudi Arabia, Iran, Nigeria, Sudan and Turkey are all guilty of this. They never had any intention of implementing Islam, and whatever they do implement, they find the harshest laws and implement them much more harshly to make it look unreasonable. An example of this is that old woman in Nigeria who was to be stoned to death for pre-marital sex. She swore in the name of Allah that she did not fornicate, not to mention that the event took place something like 50 years prior to the accusation. She was being used as a sacrificial lamb to be slaughtered for the gods of Secularism.
First of all, the Islamic punishment for fornication is 100 lashes, not stoning to death. Second, if anyone, man or woman, is accused of fornication and they swear in the name of Allah that they did not commit that crime, then they are released and will be dealt with by Allah on the Day of Judgment (a far worse spot to be in than being whipped 100 times, especially for swearing in the name of Allah while lying). And third, the event took place decades ago, and those accusing her must bring 4 witnesses that have seen the act take place directly in front of their eyes.
That is just one example where an Islamic law was taken, misapplied, and made Islam look unreasonable.
As for the Islamic economic system, this is a topic I studied for about 5 years, and I know, without a doubt, that the Islamic economic system is far superior to the Capitalist system in every way. There is too much for me to explain here, but a good book that I explains the system in great detail can be found here: www ( dot ) hizb-ut-tahrir ( dot ) org/PDF/EN/en_books_pdf/economic_system ( dot ) pdf
Socialism/Communism is just as viable as Capitalism, and if it wasn’t for the arms race, Communism might have won. Their failure had nothing to do with their viability as a way of life…it was only about Capitalism successfully bankrupting Communism through the arms race.
Islam is the only complete system that doesn’t contain the flaws of the other two systems. I realize that the fact that you are Christians will make you auto-reject this idea, but try reading up on the actual solutions Islam offers for society and the economy and then make an fair, objective judgment.
Trying this as a last test.
None of my posts are making it through. I’ve tried to post 5 times, and nothing comes up.
Let’s see if a shorter post works.
Cincinnatus,
Islam ruled 1/3 of the known world for over 1000 years. The Islamic Caliphate ruled from Spain to Indonesia, and was one of the most successful empires (socially, economically and politically) the world has seen. The Islamic Caliphate invented the concept of zero, most modern math equations are rooted in Islamic research history, and knowledge flourished under its rule.
The main reason people today think Islam cannot be applied in a modern setting is due to the fake attempts to “implement Islam” by people who intentionally wish to make it look “outdated.” Saudi Arabia, Iran, Nigeria, Sudan and Turkey are all guilty of this. They never had any intention of implementing Islam, and whatever they do implement, they find the harshest laws and implement them much more harshly to make it look unreasonable. An example of this is that old woman in Nigeria who was to be stoned to death for pre-marital sex. She swore in the name of Allah that she did not fornicate, not to mention that the event took place something like 50 years prior to the accusation. She was being used as a sacrificial lamb to be slaughtered for the gods of Secularism.
First of all, the Islamic punishment for fornication is 100 lashes, not stoning to death. Second, if anyone, man or woman, is accused of fornication and they swear in the name of Allah that they did not commit that crime, then they are released and will be dealt with by Allah on the Day of Judgment. And third, the event took place decades ago, and those accusing her must bring 4 witnesses that have seen the act take place directly in front of their eyes.
That is just one example where an Islamic law was taken, misapplied, and made Islam look unreasonable.
As for the Islamic economic system, this is a topic I studied for about 5 years, and I know, without a doubt, that the Islamic economic system is far superior to the Capitalist system in every way. There is too much for me to explain here, but a good book that I explains the system in great detail can be found here: http://www.hizb-ut-tahrir.org/PDF/EN/en_books_pdf/economic_system.pdf
The failure of Communism had nothing to do with their viability as a way of life…it was due to Capitalism successfully bankrupting Communism through the arms race.
Islam is the only complete system that doesn’t contain the flaws of the other two systems. I realize that the fact that you are Christians will make you auto-reject this idea, but try reading up on the actual solutions Islam offers for society and the economy and then make an fair, objective judgment.
Just a quick note on that link. I tried looking at it through my web browser, and it came up with errors, but there were no errors when I downloaded it. So, if you want to read that book, download the pdf file, and read it from there.
Actually, Mazin, I greatly admire aspects of the Muslim economic system. I find it quite ethical and perhaps “sustainable” for local economies.
I’m only disputing your hubristic pretense (and hubris is the reason I cited Marx: only hubris could lead someone to make the claims he did about communism; and yes, given the conditions of the world, communism is intrinsically flawed) that the Muslim economic “system” has the capacity to “take over the world” and “replace capitalism.” I say this as a critic of the current instantiation of capitalism (as distinguished from the free market)–or rather, of corporatism, which is what we have now for all intents and purposes.
Islamic economy will not sweep the globe–at least not in this epoch–for one simple reason: Islam forbids the use of interest. No country is likely in the near future to adopt a system like this that will so depress wages, living conditions, production, etc. I’m not arguing that interest is preferable, good, virtuous, desirable, or positive; only that any economic system that precludes interest as a first principle cannot “take over the world” at this time.
By the way, it’s easy to say that Islam boasted a flourishing economy in the Middle Ages because that was during a time when the Christian world (Christendom) also prohibited the collection interest.
I suppose I wish you well in your endeavor of Muslim supremacy, but such things don’t usually work out. Good luck with that.
I find it strange that you think that the world cannot function without an interest-based economy. Why do you believe that the world is so dependent on interest? Why couldn’t a new system appear that simply refuses to deal with it, and offers interest-free loans/subsidies/solutions to its citizens? Sure, the wealthy elite will reject this alternative, since it threatens their control over the 95% share of the world’s wealth, but what about the masses? Wouldn’t they be happy with interest-free loans and the ability to buy a $250,000 home without paying $450,000 by the end of the mortgage?
Furthermore, if one might say that the wealthy elite will simply withhold their wealth and harm the economy, this is easily dealt with in Islam. The Islamic currency system is, and must be, entirely based on the gold and silver standard (4.24g of gold per Dinar, and 11.75g of silver per Dirham), and therefore, if the Islamic Caliphate’s economy begins to grow, the current Fiat Standard currencies will devalue at a rate that the elite will be unable to recover from, and will be forced to trade in their currency for gold and silver.
Like I said, the Islamic economic system has thousands of checks and balances that are all inter-dependent to establish balance. You cannot take a few Islamic laws and try to apply them in Capitalism and then see that they would fail. You need to understand the Islamic system fully, then determine whether it would be a viable whole alternative. And I know for a fact that it is not only viable, it is vastly superior, to the extent where I am surprised at why Capitalism doesn’t even borrow at least a few systems that would resolve many of their economic woes, such as adjusting land-laws, changing taxation systems, and setting a marginal reserve of a precious mineral for the Fiat Standard currencies to curb inflation. But, of course, they won’t because it would lead to them having to share more of “their” wealth with the masses, and that is something they refuse to do.
Well, at least we know you’re an Islamic imperialism, Mazin. Thanks for disclosing that fact.
Question: How is Islamic empire better than capitalist/corporatist/Roman/Nazi/Chinese/fill-in-the-blank empire?
As for me, I abhor all world-systems. Americans should be Americans where they are, Muslims be Muslims where they are, etc.
Unfortunately, power of all types–economic, cultural, political, religious–abhors a vacuum (which we don’t currently have, by the way). I’m not sure I would prefer Mazin’s preferred masters to the ones I already have. Since Islamic economy comes with the bonus baggage of Shariah law, etc., I am quite certain that I would not prefer his masters.
That answer is simply in the fact that Islam is, and has always been, a complete system for every aspect of society. The laws are set, and are unchangeable, and they resolve even the most complex situations we face today, not through vague, general morals, but through specific, detailed solutions. You need to study the Islamic systems to understand what I mean.
The Roman and Nazi empires were based on a human man determining what is legal and illegal. The Capitalist and Communist systems are based on a group of human men and women determining what is legal and illegal. That is their fatal flaw. Humans are weak, biased and very prone to corruption.
All Islamic laws are based on the Qur’an, and the Qur’an is the unchangeable, wholly preserved final message from the Creator of our universe. So, the only error we can fall into is in implementation, but the laws themselves are free from any “bad choices.” I realize you don’t believe in Islam, but this is what Islam sets as its premise for all its systems and laws.
As for me being an imperialist, it would be silly of me – after believing that this truly is the final message of the Creator of the entire universe, and that it is a complete system for all aspects of society – to not want this system implemented on all of humanity.
What kind of a fool would choose the guidance of a bunch of humans over the guidance of the One who created all matter?
While I normally enjoy discussions of political systems (and, to a lesser degree, economics), they really aren’t the salient feature of Islam. Islam is, ultimately, a religion, but it is as a religion that it ultimately fails.
If Mr. Jillood’s statements on Islam (@38) are correct, then Islam really has nothing to offer people, though it does provide a framework by which people may wish that they will be forgiven and go to heaven. For, as Mr. Jillood wrote, “This does not mean that [Allah] will forgive you, but there is always hope that He will.” So you can try your best to do good, but even if you are a supremely good person, all you are left with in this life is the ability to wish that Allah will forgive you for what you’ve done. And that’s just if you’re a really good person! But I know that I’m not! Sure, my friends might say nice things about me, but I know what’s going on in my thoughts, if not also in my words and actions. I know that, though I do good deeds, I am not, in the end, a good person. I am selfish, among a whole host of other problems I could name. Even if I were to live for a very long time, there is no way I could do enough good to overcome the bad I have already done — and that is assuming that the rest of my life were not as full of evil as it has been so far, a not very likely assumption! And this is why Islam has nothing to offer me. What could a Muslim say to me? I know my heart. I am not a good person. They would only tell me, it would seem, that I could wish that Allah would forgive me, in spite of myself, though there is no guarantee that he will.
tODD, you seem to have this idea that either you are an entirely good person, or an entirely bad person. Maybe you didn’t word it that way, but that is what you seem to be implying. I know that you are pushing things in this direction in order to push the idea of “See? So if you cannot ever save yourself from your own sins, accept Jesus as god because etc etc.”
But you don’t seem to understand how Islam clarifies how this works. Islam says that a bad deed is worth one bad deed, and a good deed can be worth up to 70,000 good deeds, depending on how sincere your intentions. There is only one way to earn a bad deed, and that is by committing the bad deed, but there are endless ways of earning good deeds, and multiplying their value through sincere intentions and hard work.
For example, looking at a woman that is not your wife with desire is one bad deed and equals one bad deed if committed. But illness (headaches, fever, colds, etc) are described by the Prophet (peace be upon him): “When a believer is sick, his bad deeds fall off his left shoulder like a waterfall.” Or if you are walking down the street and see some broken glass on the sidewalk, and decide to clean it out of the way, the Prophet (peace be upon him) said: “Removing harm from a walking path is equal to freeing a slave.”
So, our Creator has given us a small door to enter towards sins, and millions of large doors to enter towards good deeds. Added to that, there are millions of ways that our bad deeds are forgiven, as long as there is sincere intention with it.
So, yes, according to Islam, you can save yourself, and it’s not a “near-hopeless” feeling that our Creator might forgive us, nor is it some symbolic killing of a symbolic human being, where suddenly our sins mean virtually nothing, but rather it is a natural lifestyle of choice to do good and bad, and the promise of consequence, whether that means reward or punishment.
As for your claim that Islam has nothing to offer the world, that simply means that you have never studied the systems of Islam, and are just talking based on a very shallow and biased misunderstanding that you have been fed by the media and anti-Islamic propaganda that surrounds you.
If you want to be sure of what you are saying, you need to study the systems of Islam, and judge them for yourself. Again, read that book I linked. It is a good start.
Mr. Jillood, the Western Civilization has for the most part evolved to a political system of representative democracy and an economic system based at best on a on a free flow of capital, labor, and trade based on scientific, technological and industrial development. The system overall has provided the West with a largely effective political system and compared to other civilizations a high level of material prosperity for most of its people.
On the spiritual and intellectual level the West is fundamentally rooted in Jerusalem and Athens. While at present, we have developed an unhealthy overall balance of secularism, over time this imbalance will probably be righted.
Western scholars of Islamic civilization including Toynbee and Lewis claim that it was vital and creative from about the eighth through the thirteenth centuries, after which it declined. Lewis sees signs of decline beginning in the eleventh century. The causes of the decay were many and are debated, though religious interference with scientific and humane learning along with tight combination of religion and the state.
SamuelHuntington in Clash of Civilizations quotes Daniel Pipes as follows:
To escape anomy Muslims have but one choice, for modernization requires Westernization…Islam does not offer an alternative way to modernize. Secularism cannot be avoided. Modern science and technology require an absorption of thought processes which accompany them; so too with political institutions. Because content cannot be emulated no less than form, the predominance of Western Civilization must be acknowledged so as to be able to learn from it. European languages and Western educational institutions cannot be avoided, even if the latte do encourage freethinking and easy living. Only when Muslims explicitly accept the Western model will they be in a position to technicalize and then to develop.
Mr. Jillood’s view that Islam will surpass the West is absurd, dangerous, and futile for his people.
The West is little more than a leeching virus with a population in denial of the fact that their entire standard of living is based on keeping 70% of the planet in a state of slavery and poverty.
Do you think Canada and the US would be even half as prosperous if it weren’t for forced cash crop fields throughout Africa and Asia, and virtual slave labor?
The one and only reason why Islam declined in its history is that the Muslims’ understanding of HOW to implement Islam declined, and by the end of the Ottoman Empire, their understanding of Islam was little more than a “reference” to Shaykh Al-Islam (the “official scholar of the state).
Nothing has changed in the validity and applicability of Islam. It is the best set of solutions for humanity, and only an emotional attachment to Christianity, or a dislike for religion in general (secular atheists), or simply a lack of information would lead a person to reject Islam as a viable alternative to secular democracy.
Islam will surpass the West, that is a guarantee. We have a superior way of life, a significantly better age demographic, we are approximately 1/4 of the world, we reside on the wealthiest and most strategic lands on the planet, we do not require police to force us to obey our laws (unlike the West), and most importantly: It was promised, as a guarantee, in both the Qur’an and in dozens of narrations of the Prophet (peace be upon him).
And it is a good thing, whether you see it now or not. Islam is the only way this globe will achieve just distribution of wealth, where all people of this planet will be 1st world nations, and not just a select few who deem themselves more worthy of a quality lifestyle.
The West has failed the world in bringing about global justice and stability, and things are only getting worse. It is only a matter of time before a sincere Muslim movement finds the political vacuum needed to bring about political change in some part of the world (most likely the Muslim world by overthrowing one of the puppet regimes there).
Newt Gingrich made an important speech Thursday at AEI on the subject of the radical Islamic goal of establishing Shari’ah law. Andy McCarthy in an article It’s About Sharia including:
It makes no sense to dismiss our enemies as lunatics just because “secular socialist” elites, as Gingrich called them, cannot imagine a fervor that stems from religious devotion. We ought to respect our enemies, he said. Not “respect” in Obama-speak, which translates as “appease,” but in the sense of taking them seriously, understanding that they are absolutely determined to win, and realizing that they are implacable. There is no “moderate” sharia devotee, for sharia is not moderate. Gingrich noted that in response to global outcry against the prospect of death by stoning for an Iranian woman, Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, convicted of adultery, the mullahs’ great concession appears to be that she will be hanged instead. Islamism is not a movement to be engaged, it is an enemy to be defeated
The truth is that, while America respects moderate Muslims, the radical jihadi ones are serious and determined to impose Shari’ah law on the West. Mr. Jillood is likely a minor and confused but rather telling voice on this matter. He will obfuscate by pointing out that Iran is a Shiite country, though virtually all of the 9/11 Islamic savages were Sunni Muslims. The problem of Islamic savagery that kills innocent civilians can’t be pinned simple-mindedly on the Shiite Muslims.
Andy McCarthy in an article It’s About Sharia writes:
It makes no sense to dismiss our enemies as lunatics just because “secular leftist” elites, as Gingrich called them, cannot imagine a fervor that stems from religious devotion. We ought to respect our enemies, he said. Not “respect” in Obama-speak, which translates as “appease,” but in the sense of taking them seriously, understanding that they are absolutely determined to win, and realizing that they are implacable. There is no “moderate” sharia devotee, for sharia is not moderate. Gingrich noted that in response to global outcry against the prospect of death by stoning for an Iranian woman, Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, convicted of adultery, the mullahs’ great concession appears to be that she will be hanged instead. Islamism is not a movement to be engaged, it is an enemy to be defeated.
We need to realize that these radical Islamic fighters are a serious enemy that needs to be squarely faced and fought hard.
“Mr. Jillood is likely a minor and confused but rather telling voice on this matter. He will obfuscate by pointing out that Iran is a Shiite country, though virtually all of the 9/11 Islamic savages were Sunni Muslims. The problem of Islamic savagery that kills innocent civilians can’t be pinned simple-mindedly on the Shiite Muslims.”
Those are some pretty big assumptions there. I’m actually 31 years old, a university graduate, and have studied Islamic legislative procedure (Fiqh and Usool Al-Fiqh) for over 10 years, but thank you for the condescension.
And I am in no way trying to confuse or redirect. It seems that, in your view, if anyone ever clarifies – and refutes – anything that bolsters your version of an argument, they are automatically “obfuscating.” This is a dishonest and an arrogant way of discussing with others.
The fact of the matter is that some people in this world are simple minded. They see things ones and zeros. They see things as “with us” or “against us.” Either it was the Sunnis to blame or the Shia. Either they are “moderate” Muslims or “extremists.” This is why the world hates the US. You people are so arrogant that you define the world in pre-schooler terms, and demand that everyone fit into your narrow definitions that do not apply, in order to force people to be what you want.
Islam is a very deep, complex, legislative universe. Men have spent their entire lives dedicated to deriving Islamic legislation from the Qur’an and Sunnah (actions/speech of the Prophet), and they still had more room for growth in knowledge and expertise. The world is not simple, as much as you Americans wish it to be so, or maybe I should say: as much as your government tells you that it is. You judge entire nations based on a few moments of television coverage, or based on a dangerously biased speech by your economically-driven government administration.
You believe that you cannot be wrong. You believe that God is with you. Is God with a nation that usually doesn’t even care enough about the country they are bombing that they barely even know the name of the country itself? Is God with a nation that starved half a million children in Iraq to death (as Madeline Albright admitted in a live CNN interview) in less than 10 years of sanctions, and then said “it was worth it”? Is God with a group of hypocrite Christians that support the US government, even though the Bible teaches to turn the other cheek?
Did you know that Hitler was a Christian, and was supported by the Christians of Germany? Did you know that the Romans believed that God was with them, and that they were doing good for the world? And did you know that the one common characteristic of all tyrant, racist empires that spread death and destruction around the earth like a disease and claimed that they were good and just…the one common characteristic between them all is that their people never bothered to study or verify WHY they were attacking their enemies; they simply trusted their leaderships’ judgment.
You people are no different.
Mr. Jillood, another point in Andy McCartyhy’s article is that in this battle with radical Muslims, moderate Muslims, both living in the West and the Middle East who embrace the West’s freedom culture are our allies. It’s not clear from your comments whether you are a radical or moderate Muslim.
McCarthy states this as follows:
Most significant, there is sharia. By pressing the issue, Newt Gingrich accomplishes two things. First, he gives us a metric for determining whether those who would presume to lead us will fight or surrender. Second, at long last, someone is empowering truly moderate Muslims — assuming they exist in the numbers we’re constantly assured of. Our allies are the Muslims who embrace our freedom culture — those for whom sharia is a matter of private belief, not public mission. Our enemies are those who want sharia to supplant American law and Western culture. When we call out the latter, and marginalize them, we may finally energize the former.
Mr. Jillood, my post at 78 was not initially accepted; that’s why I wrote both 79 and 81 before reading your 80.
As to 80, having studied Bernard Lewis’ and Arnold Toynbee I am well aware of the rich virtue and complexity of Islamic law and civilization, especially during its classical period from about 700 to 1300. Both of these scholars are in part puzzled as to exactly how such a rich and fruitful civilization declined.
While I have carefully thought out views of this matter, I don’t regard these as a simple matter of wrong. I try to be open to new information knowledge. I am well aware of being an ordinary fallen human being and am far from viewing God as being with me or my nation.
As to Hitler, he was born a Christian but became a hard-edged Nietzschean nihilist who worshipped totalitarian power. He is on record in his table talks that, after dealing with the Jews, Slavs, et al, he intended to effectively destroy the Christian leadership and churches and reduce what remained to at best an acolyte of the Third Reich.
Also, Hitler viewed most Arabs as Semitic trash, far below the status of his imagined Aryan superiority. Had he won the war, the Arabs would likely have been reduced to the status of an inferior people.
I should be most grateful if you would answer the question at post 81.
It’s like you didn’t read anything I typed in my last post.
So, either I’m a secularist “moderate Muslim” or I’m a “radical” Muslim? Do you even have a clear definition of what a “radical” Muslim is?
I’m a Muslim that believes that the whole of Islam should be implemented, exactly as the Creator has commanded it be implemented in the Qur’an and Sunnah.
Anyone who selectively picks and chooses which laws of the Creator he prefers to apply, and discards the laws that don’t suit him, is a fool and probably doesn’t even really believe in the Creator in the first place.
Either you do exactly what you believe, or you compromise on what you believe (aka be a hypocrite). If the definition of a “moderate” Muslim is someone that compromises on what he or she believes, then I’m obviously not a moderate Muslim.
These terms “moderate,” “extremist” and “radical” are false and misleading. The correct words that should be used are “sincere” and “hypocritical,” or maybe “consistent” and “willing to sell his/her beliefs to please the secularists.”
Which one do you fall under, Mr Leavitt? Are you the type of person who is willing to “bend” the words of your book in order to earn the praise of secularists and people who hate your religion?
Western civilization has a correct tradition of distinguishing between black letter law and moral law. Our legislators, while aligning civil and criminal law with biblical precepts, leave it to the Judeo-Christian and other religious bodies to pronounce upon moral law. This tradition goes back to Roman Law and has served Western civilization well, as it allows pluralistic religious groups to interpret and practice their own forms of moral teaching. While Jews and Christian’s believe devoutly in the Ten Commandments, we are sensible enough not to force them and other precepts on the rest of the world. Until the radical Muslims can respect pluralism in religion and politics, they shall have to be fought hard and defeated.
I take it that you believe essentially in some sort of universal shari’ah law that needs to be imposed upon the West and the rest of the world. Read Andy McCarthy’s essay linked to above that the radical Muslims who wish to establish Shari’ah law by force on the world are at the root of the issue between the West and radical Islam. The West has little problem with Shari’ah law practiced by devout Muslims, though we hardly wish to give up our own law and traditions.
I’ve been waiting for a while to break out this old classic cliche:
The sort of Islamic universal empire espoused here–and perhaps by Islam generally; I don’t know enough about what constitutes “orthodox” Islam as opposed to its numerous permutations–is a classic case of “immanentizing the eschaton.” Islam is a gnostic religion, apparently.
Christianity believes in world empire as well, but it shall happen only by God’s timing and efforts, not ours. The orthodox Christian has no pretensions to the construction of a global Christian theocracy. Christ was a messenger of peace to be achieved only in another world. Muhammad, apparently (if I am reading you correctly, Mazin), was a messenger of war sent to establish temporal, immanent empire.
Would that be correct? How do you propose establishing a universal Caliphate?
I’m not sure why Andy McCarthy’s opinion is so important to you. It sure isn’t important to me.
The biggest issue here is that it doesn’t matter what I say here. You believe in the Bible blindly, without any basis for verifying its authenticity, and you have an emotional attachment to it, not an intellectual one. So, for example, Islam could be the most peaceful book in the world, and the Bible could be the most violent book in the world, and you would then turn around and speak of war as virtuous and condemn “brainless pacifists.”
At the end of the day, the Qur’an has a claim to authenticity, and that is the sentence structure of its words. It claims that it could not have been written by a human being, and it is impossible for a human being to write using the same sentence structure. It is not an issue of “beauty” but rather it is about composition (for example poetry vs prose, but in this case, poetry vs prose vs the Qur’an). It claims that no matter how much or how long people study the structure of the Qur’an, they will never understand how to write using the same sentence structure.
This is why we believe in the Qur’an, and obey it completely. If you can prove this premise false, then Islam is finished. All you anyone would have to do is meet the challenge of the Qur’an: A word composition of at least 10 words in at least 3 verses that uses the same sentence structure of the Qur’an. A very, very simple challenge, right?
So, none of us care about Andy McCarthy’s opinion, or about your claims that Jesus is what he never said he was, or about some human moral analysis. If the Qur’an is the truth, we must all obey it, and if it has no claim to validity, then we must all reject it.
The current version of the Bible has literally nothing to substantiate it’s validity except for some Christian claims that they have had some sort of spiritual experience (and most other religious people have had similar experiences, so this is no basis).
This is why I do not believe in the current rendition of the Bible, and accept the Qur’an. One is wholly preserved, unchanged, and impossible for man to replicate, and the other is just like any other book – changed, inconsistent, and the more you read it and think about it, the less you believe in it.
Mr Jillood, We believe that the Bible canon was written by men principally influenced by the Holy Spirit, though they were not secretaries who transcribed His exact Word. Also, the evidence that Christ was the resurrected Son of God is based on eyewitness accounts that many theologians and historians believe to be accurate.
The point, however, is that devout modern Christians and Jews do not wish to impose their views by force on people of other faiths. As Cincinnatus points out well at 85, we believe that God/Christ at the time of the Eschaton will reveal His divine plan. Further our view is that it is presumptuous and dangerous for any religious group to presume that it has the ability to understand and execute Eschaton.
We, also, have the excellent comfort of knowing that through faith that our manifold sins have been forgiven through the Cross. Christians, while trying to obey God’s moral law, do not involve themselves in any sort of religiously legal system that guarantees entrance to paradise.
While the Judeo-Christian God requires justice and is capable of wrath, we are taught by our Bible that He is fundamentally a God of love who requires people to be understanding and forgiving of fallen, sinful men. In the name of this God we cannot understand radical Muslims who in cold blood kill civilians and, if necessary, we shall these fight savages as hard as we can.
Having read through the above as ought to have been done earlier, please excuse the infelicities of language.
Mr. Jillood: I’m fascinated by your post @ 86. I had never before heard that the claim for authenticity of the Qu’ran is based on its sentence structure, and that humans are incapable of writing such a document using similar structure. I will be interested in researching that claim further. I admit that I have little knowledge of the Qu’ran, which is one reason why, though I have been reading this discussion with interest, I have not been actively participating.
On the other hand, I’m also interested in this statement you made: “This is why I do not believe in the current rendition of the Bible, and accept the Qur’an. One is wholly preserved, unchanged, and impossible for man to replicate, and the other is just like any other book – changed, inconsistent, the more you read it and think about it, the less you believe in it.” How much have you studied the Bible, to form such a conclusion as to its innconsistency and inauthenticity? And what inconsistencies are your particularly concerned about?
Peter (#87), without getting into the question of whether 9/11 was even perpetrated by Muslims, but your US government has killed millions of innocent civilians over the past 60 years in cold blood in the name of economic gain. Why aren’t you fighting them “as hard as you can”?
And DonS (#89), I own a computer store in a predominantly Christian town, and I have discussed with their young, old, beginners, and most knowledgeable Pastors, nearly on a daily basis. I have studied the Bible thoroughly, and there are a number of things that I have found inconsistent in the Bible, or in Christian beliefs of the Bible:
- The statement “My Lord, my Lord, why hast thou forsaken me?” is simply impossible for the Creator to say to Himself. Did he forget that he is the Creator? Did he forget that he was (according to Christians) sent for this very purpose? Regardless of what sin was being poured on whom, we are talking about the all-powerful Creator of the Universe complaining to Himself.
- Jesus never once says that he is God, or to worship him, but Christians have all but forgotten the “Father” and dedicate their entire lives worshiping Jesus.
- Jesus never once says that he is the son of God in a context different than how he calls the other prophets sons of God, or even how all people are children of God
- Christian scholars are unsure of who wrote the Gospels. They have no verification that any of those books were written by the Disciples themselves, and are only guessing. Even the words “according to Matthew/Mark/etc” were added into the Bible at a later date.
- The Gospel of Barnabus is just as authentic as the other Gospels, but it was rejected from the final Bible simply because it says that Jesus is not the son of God.
There are many other issues, but these are the most fundamental issues I have with the Bible. I look forward to your feedback.
I have absolutely no doubt that the sentence structure of the Koran can be replicated. I’m also fairly certain that no devout Muslim would want to try. Have you tried to do it, Mazin Jillood – and tried your hardest, more than once? If not, why not?
“There are many other issues, but these are the most fundamental issues I have with the Bible. I look forward to your feedback.” – Mazin Jillood @ 90.
But not as a sincere inquirer, I’m sure. You know all the counter-arguments to your objections, and are ready with another set of tired, old objections.
Shakespeare, in relation to Jillood. A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
This fellow is a Muslim fanatic beyond sense or reason. He and his kind need to be opposed with main force.
End of discussion.
Tom (#91), I’m curious about why you would say “I have absolutely no doubt that the sentence structure of the Koran can be replicated.” How can you have “absolutely no doubt” about something you literally know nothing about? Did you know that it has been over 1450 years that people have tried to reproduce the sentence structure of the Qur’an, and they have failed? Did you know that the entirety of Islam hangs on this one single thing? The Qur’an says “…if you fail, and you will fail (at reproducing something like the Qur’an)…” and, since the Creator cannot ever be wrong, all you would have to do is reproduce something like it, and Islam is destroyed.
As for me/Muslims trying to do this, of course we have tried. This is something we study in Arabic school. One of the sections is for us to try to write something like the Qur’an. Schools teach the sentence structure of the Qur’an, because it is the epitome of all Arabic linguistics.
And this point here really is the main difference between Islam and Christianity. We are pushed, and obligated by the Qur’an itself, to verify everything we believe. We are commanded to think about everything we are taught, and seek more education until we die. It is actually a sin to believe in something you have not verified to be 100% authentic. Christianity, on the other hand, teaches that you shouldn’t think, and just accept what you are told (aka blind faith). How else could you get people to believe in something that the mind rejects? How else do suicide cults or Scientologists get people to accept their wacky beliefs without a shred of proof for what they claim? “Don’t think about it. Just have faith,” right?
Andy McCarthy, prosecutor of the blind Sheik, instigator of the first World trade Center attack, presently in jail for life:
On this last point, Gingrich offered a salient insight, one well worth internalizing in the Sun Tzu sense of knowing one’s enemy. Islamists, violent or not, have very good reasons for the wanting to destroy the West. Those reasons are not crazy or wanton — and they have nothing to do with Gitmo, Israel, cartoons, or any other excuse we conjure to explain the savagery away. Islamists devoutly believe, based on a well-founded interpretation of Islamic doctrine, that they have been commanded by Allah to kill, convert, or subdue all who do not adhere to sharia — because they regard Allah as their only master (“There is no God but Allah”). It is thus entirely rational (albeit frightening to us) that they accept the scriptural instruction that the very existence of those who resist sharia is offensive to Allah, and that a powerful example must be made of those resisters in order to induce the submission of all — “submission” being the meaning of Islam.
Somehow McCarthy, to you, is the be-all and end-all of all Islamic analysis. It’s very silly, but either way, I wanted to just address this one thing he said: “…they have been commanded by Allah to kill, convert, or subdue all who do not adhere to sharia.” This is just plain wrong. This man is an idiot if he honestly came to this conclusion after properly studying Islam.
Islam forbids forcing anyone to convert to Islam, and even more so forbids killing people to motivate the masses. The Prophet (peace be upon him) was extremely careful to always instruct all military expeditions that the elderly, women, children and non-combatants must all be protected and not hurt.
I almost feel like his statement is so idiotic that it doesn’t even deserve a reply, but I just wanted to make sure the other readers know that this is entirely false and was probably said by him in order to sell more books/get more interviews.
If you want to learn about what Islam says and doesn’t say, read the Qur’an yourself and stop referring to people that have financial motives to say one thing or another.
Mazin: Though I’m familiar with the Qur’an, I’m unfamiliar with how Muslims regard it. Could you clarify what it means when you say that its sentence structure is inimitable?
On the one hand, I’m inclined to believe that anything is susceptible to imitation. On the other hand, scholars have been trying in vain for centuries to imitate Shakespeare, etc., as well.
I don’t say this to cast doubt upon the authenticity of th Qur’an. But how, exactly, does one determine that a certain sentence structure is absolutely incapable of being imitated? That sounds a bit like a logical fallacy to me: just because something hasn’t been done does not mean that it cannot be.
But anyway, I’d just like some clarification of this matter.
“Schools teach the sentence structure of the Qur’an, because it is the epitome of all Arabic linguistics.” – @ 94.
If it can be studied and understood, it can be reproduced. Unless by “sentence structure” you mean something other than sentence structure.
Jillhood: The Prophet (peace be upon him) was extremely careful to always instruct all military expeditions that the elderly, women, children and non-combatants must all be protected and not hurt.
Tell that to the families of the some three-thousand innocent men and women who were viciously slaughtered by radical Islamic killers on 9/11. Or tell that to the innumerable families of men, women, and children who have been mutilated by the Islamic suicide bombers. No religion on earth comes close to authorizing the savage brutality of these radical Islamic killers. Think about the couple who holding hands jumped from the 90th floor of the World Trade Center on eleven September 2001.
Tom (#98), that is exactly the point. That is what makes a miracle so amazing. It makes you think “but that is impossible” or “how can that be?” A man walking on water? A man splitting the sea and walking between the two walls? Impossible.
You said: “If it can be studied and understood, it can be reproduced,” …unless the Creator sent His last message in this format, not only to prove it is really from Him (a miracle/breaking of the laws of nature), but also to protect it from ever being changed again, and therefore removing the need to ever send another messenger to fix what people have changed until the Day of Judgment.
Cincinnatus (#97), feel free to cast all the doubt you want on the authenticity of the Qur’an. I am more than happy to see you try to prove this claim false (if you wanted to).
First of all, people can, and have, mimicked Shakespeare’s sentence structure. Maybe they haven’t made it “as beautiful,” but the Qur’an isn’t asking us to meet such a subjective goal. The goal is very logical and simple: If someone asked you to write a poem, you would write a poem using certain poetry sentence structures. If someone asked you to write a haiku, then you would use a haiku structure to comply. The same for a Qur’an. All you have to do is figure out how the Qur’an is structured, and write something using the same format. Simple.
The verse in the Qur’an that establishes this challenge is (in meaning of the translation): “If you have any doubt in what We have sent to our (Messenger), then write one chapter like it, and call your witnesses from other than Allah if you are indeed truthful. If you fail, and when you fail, then fear the Hellfire that is kept alight by people and stones, prepared for the disbelievers.” [2 : 23-24]
The shortest chapter (the verse mentions the word “chapter”) in the Qur’an is Surat Al-Kawthar (chapter 108). It consists of 10 words, in 3 verses (so 3 words, 3 words and 4 words = 10 words). That is the challenge to meet. If you can simply write a little poem this small using the sentence structure of the Qur’an, you have proven the ENTIRE Qur’an to be false.
I don’t know if you realize the gravity, and stunning simplicity of this challenge.
There are many other points related to the sentence structure that further astonish the mind, but I will explain that in another post, since this post has gotten too long already.
Peter Leavitt, seriously, please, give me a break. The US has killed MILLIONS of non-Americans in its disgusting 76 year reign as a superpower. They killed 500,000+ children in Iraq alone, as admitted by Madeline Albright on public television.
The Crusades are more than enough of an evidence against your naive view of the world.
Just because religious people commit acts of violence does not mean that the religion CALLS for it.
Spare me your misleading emotional slogans. I’m not falling for it, nor should any of the readers.
You have a child-like, sheltered view of the world. You need to get out more.
So, the Koran is epitome of all Arabic linguistics, because ever since it was written, it has been declared the epitome by believers, and – as such – influencing Arab linguistics for 1,450 years. Got it.
@#101 (sorry, I meant to say the US’s 46 year reign as superpower)
Tom, you can be as condescending as you want, and come to as many misnomer conclusions as would help you sleep better at night while ignoring this serious question.
The Qur’an was revealed to polytheist Arabs. They tried to kill the Muslims and the Prophet (peace be upon him) and destroy Islam many times. They could have written something like the Qur’an, but they didn’t, because they knew it wasn’t possible.
The exact original Qur’an exists today. Every single Qur’an on earth is identical. You can go to it yourself and analyze it yourself. University professors in Arabic linguistics are available throughout North America, some Muslim and some non-Muslims, and you can look for them and ask them yourself.
Or you can just sit there, do no research at all, make condescending conclusions you pull out of thin air with no study whatsoever, ignore this tiny little challenge, and keep telling yourself that you can’t be wrong. Right?
Mazin, you’re not really answering my question. What is so impossible about writing a 10 word poem of 3, 3, and 4 words?
Asserting that Muslims and their scholars believe the book to be inimitable doesn’t make it so. Why is it so? Many Christians claim that the Bible is verbally inspired by God and inerrant, etc., but that doesn’t make it so. If you claimed that Muslims accept by faith that the Qur’an is inimitable, etc., then the argument would be over. I’m not here to challenge your faith. But you’re making an evidentiary, empirical claim that demands proof and that ostensibly has proof of some kind: you’re arguing that the Qur’an is the word of Allah because it quite literally cannot be copied. And so I ask you for the proof that such a claim demands.
Why is this so? Upon what grounds do you make this claim? What is the basis for its inimitability? Again, saying so does not make it so.
Can you provide links? A book (by someone other than the Muslim equivalent of Andy McCarthy)? Anything? At this point, I’m with Tom: if a book can be studied, understood, read, parsed, and generally be made the subject of human inquiry, it can indeed be imitated. If we understand its sentence structure, how can we say it is impossible to replicate?
In short, I would like to read up on this. Sources would be helpful, as I am genuinely baffled.
I’m not really sure how I can further clarify this point. If a book claims that you will never be able to mimic the sentence structure, the “proof” would be in scholars of the Arabic language studying, understanding, reading, parsing, and generally making it the subject of human inquiry, and then either proving that it is imitable, or is not imitable.
If it were inimitable, then it would be a deviation from the laws of nature, since every man-written book can be studied by another man, and deciphered. The Qur’an was not written by a man. It is as simple as that.
Maybe if I put it this way: If someone made the claim that they can stay awake for a whole year and not sleep or rest even once, how would you “prove” this to be true or false? You put him in a laboratory, and watch him for a year, making sure he does not rest or sleep. Simple.
The Qur’an challenge to mankind is similar. It makes a claim, and leaves it up to those that are interested in seeking the truth to verify this claim. If you don’t care about the meaning of life, then you will ignore the claim and ignore your Creator, and answer for it after you die.
I hope that helps a bit :p
Your “proof” is false, MJ, because the “voice” of every human author is unique to some degree, and cannot be replicated perfectly by anyone else. (This fact is what makes it possible to reveal fakery in literature.)
No one said that you have to replicate the Qur’an perfectly. You simply have to replicate the sentence format.
If I asked you to write a poem, does that mean I’m asking you to write a perfect poem? No. I’m just asking you to write a poem…even a BAD poem, but just write something in a poem format.
So, write something in Qur’an format. It doesn’t need to be a flawless wonder of linguistic masterpiece, just simply a piece of writing that matches the type of word structure.
I can’t explain things any simpler than this.
“I can’t explain things any simpler than this.” (@108). Oh, but you can! Let’s use your poem example. If you told me to “write a poem”, and I didn’t know what that was, well, first, you’d have to figure out what you meant by “poem format”. But, assuming you’d settled on a fairly traditional definition of that, you’d then proceed to tell me that “poem format” involves lines using both a rhyme and meter structure. You’d explain, further, that rhyme involves lines ending in similar-sounding syllables, and meter involves syllable count and stress patterns. And this could go on further, with explanations of the terms involved, or other concepts like assonance or metaphor, etc.
But what have you told us about “Qur’an format”? Nothing, that I’ve read, except that it can’t be duplicated. Um, okay. This is certainly true in my case, as it has yet to be explained to me.
Not that any of this matters, of course. It may be interesting, but at the end of the day, you believe the Qur’an because of your faith, not because of any infallible objective proof. How else could there be non-Muslim Arabic professors familiar with the Qur’an (as you say there are), or Muslims who have converted to Christianity?
Rather than me explaining what a poem format is, I would give you a book with 600 pages of poems, and you can learn from that. When you studied it enough, you will be able to write a poem.
The 600+ page Qur’an is available for all to read, and attempt to replicate.
And all of this does matter. I don’t believe in the Qur’an because of “faith.” I came to Islam when I was 19. I hated all religions, and was sickened by even the idea of believing in an organized system of lies that control the masses into doing stupid things. But when I studied the Qur’an, it was entirely different. It was irrefutable. I had absolutely no choice but to believe in it. It is the truth, and it has undeniable proof.
As for Arab non-Muslims, it is the same reason why many people here are coming up with all sorts of conclusions before even bothering to being studying the Qur’an in the first place. You just don’t want to believe. It is amazing the lies a man can convince himself of believing.
And Muslims who convert to Christianity are simply people who were never taught Islam. That I am now sure of. Every single Muslim that converted to Christianity that I have met was uneducated, and simple minded. They had never read the Qur’an in Arabic, they were never taught Islam properly by their parents, and nearly always lived amongst terribly ignorant Muslims that hardly understood anything Islam taught. The people around them were usually nationalistic, racist, harsh and rude, and this was due to their poor upbringing, and not Islam.
You can go on and convince yourself otherwise. I have a good Christian friend that visits my store regularly. He told me of a Muslim that came from somewhere in Africa that converted to Christianity, and I asked him if I could go with him to meet the guy. He laughed and said “no way!” hahaha…when he asked me if I would be willing to take him with me to meet a Christian that converted to Islam, I immediately said yes and invited him to come meet 2 brand spanking new converts.
You see, the difference between us is that I know that Islam is the truth, because I have proof, and people who convert to Islam do so because they also know that Islam is the truth. Christians, on the other hand, convert people with offerings of living arrangements, material comforts, and emotional reasoning. A new Christian is terribly fragile, because the reasons for their acceptance of Christianity is baseless and emotional, whereas a new Muslim is usually a rock that knows exactly where it stands and exactly why it is standing there, and this is simply because Islam has proof of everything it claims.
I’m sorry if I worded this a bit bluntly. I hope I have not offended anyone : )
Oh dear, so many typos and grammatical mistakes. I clicked Submit before remembering to double check my post for errors. lol
“I hope I have not offended anyone” – Mazin Jillood @ 111.
Why would anyone be offended by your statements?
“You are not a follower of Jesus. You are just another close-minded extremist that uses a religion …” – @ 48.
“Did you know that Hitler was a Christian, and was supported by the Christians of Germany? … You people are no different.” – @ 80.
“You believe in the Bible blindly …” – @ 86.
“The Gospel of Barnabus is just as authentic as the other Gospels …” – @ 90.
“Christianity, on the other hand, teaches that you shouldn’t think, and just accept what you are told (aka blind faith). How else could you get people to believe in something that the mind rejects?” – @ 94.
“Every single Muslim that converted to Christianity that I have met was uneducated, and simple minded.” – @ 110.
Hmm. A Muslim (@111) submitting before checking fully for errors. Kind of a slow pitch, isn’t it?
Mr. Jillood has clearly identified himself as a radical Muslim who wishes to impose Shari’ah law on the West and the world. These radical Muslims have directly attacked the U.S. many times for over thirty years and are presently involved through stealth tactics in establishing Shari’ah law in the U.S. and Europe. Some American judges have bowed to it in cases involving Muslim people.
The radical Muslims are implacable enemies of Christian Western civilization and seriously intend to bring it down. They will bring it down unless people in the West wake up. Most people in the West are rather somnolent about this threat in a way similar to the period from 1933 to 1941 when secular leftists and isolationists were in denial about Hitler.
The main fronts in the war against radical Islam are the U.S. itself, Europe, and the Middle East including Iran and Saudia Arabia, Iraq, and Afghanistan. The war like the Cold war will take a generation or more to be prosecuted and won.
Last Thursday Newt Gingrich gave a historic address at the American Enterprise in which in a distinctly Churchillian manner he provided clear and compelling evidence that these radical Muslims are engaged in a war fully as threatening in the long run as was the wars against totalitarian fascism and communism.
Those who disagree that this is not a serious threat should take the time to listen to Gingrich’s remarkably thoughtful address.
Mr. Jillood may on the surface be viewed as a merely feckless, fanatical devotee of Islam, though in truth he is a part of a seriously threatening movement that needs to be faced and defeated.
From a secular point of view, only “radical” Islam is a threat. From an orthodox Christian point of view, all of Islam is a threat to souls (but not to the continuation of the Church). Muslims definitely should not be allowed to proselytize on Christian sites without being firmly opposed. Mazim Jillood has crossed that line. I gave him the benefit of the doubt @ 42, but he’s proven he’s no “inquirer.”
Boy. I’ve been lurking instead of participating because I was unavailable when this conversation got started, and because it developed in a lot of different ways such that I could not respond to them all. But I’ve noticed a few things.
The first is how much easier it is to set up Islamic straw men to knock down than it is to debate with an actual Muslim in person. This is particularly true when the Muslim lives among Christians and is practiced in defending his religion.
Next, since so few of us have actually had conversations like this one with real Muslims, we are pretty unfamiliar with Muslim apologetics. Mr. Jillood makes an argument in favor of Islam being true (e.g. the linguistic structure of the Qur’an), and most of us (myself included) don’t know what he’s talking about.
Also, ad hominem arguments against Muslims are matched by Muslim ad hominem arguments against the West/Christians. In a world of sinful men any adversary (Muslim, Christian, or otherwise) will have plenty of faults to point out. None of which will prove his religion wrong.
And also, Islam sems to be at least as open to individual interpretation as Christianity. According to Mr. Jillood, Muslims all over the world, from heads of state to uneducated Nigerians, have misinterpreted it. And I believe Mr. Jillood may be correct in saying so, as he writes as one who has studied his subject matter.
Mr. Jillood, thank you for joining us here. You have certainly given me much to think about. I don’t know how much longer this thread will go on, but I look forward to hearing more from you if you care to continue discussing religion here.
@(#114) Feckless? haha, really? Have you been watching that TV show “Sleeper Cell”? Hilarious. You are so dramatic. It’s funny that you call me feckless after that little post there. Such grand statements of open warfare…what are you going to do? Join the army and unite with the other hypocrite Christians that ignore the Bible’s teachings?
It is so ironic that you condemn Muslims perpetrating acts of violence, but you clearly seem to support the “Christian West’s” acts of violence against the rest of the world.
Either way, I already made it clear that I do not support any violent means for change, as a Muslim, and I do not condone any violent acts against US civilians (or any other civilians, for that matter).
As for Islam being the Christianity’s enemy, this depends. If you are Secular Christians, then yes, we are absolutely your enemy, because we reject the idea of humans forbidding God from legislating in societal matters.
We believe that God is the Legislator and the Owner of the Legislative Procedure. Secularists believe that God should be marginalized, and it is somehow OK to “ban” Him from having any say in legislative procedure.
But aside from that, we do not believe in forcing anyone to leave their religion, so if it is merely a matter of living under Islamic law, the we are not your enemy, and Islam allows you to keep your religion and practice it freely under the rule of the Islamic State.
Anyways, I believe this discussion has reached its end, since it is now veering into impotent slogans and evangelical gibberish. I’ve clarified things as much as I can. Thanks for having me.
Hi kener, I really enjoyed the discussion here. Although it has become a bit blunt coming from both sides, I have learned some good things and I hope I helped clear up a few things about Islam.
Let me know if there is anything else you wanted to discuss.
Mr. Jillood @ 90:
Thank you for your response to my query @ 89. I concur with Kerner that this has been a most useful discussion in assisting me in better understanding the point of view of those who practice Islam, both theological and political, and I appreciate your contributions to this thread.
Of course, that which you identify as a primary “inconsistency” in the Bible (“The statement “My Lord, my Lord, why hast thou forsaken me?” is simply impossible for the Creator to say to Himself. Did he forget that he is the Creator? Did he forget that he was (according to Christians) sent for this very purpose? Regardless of what sin was being poured on whom, we are talking about the all-powerful Creator of the Universe complaining to Himself.”) is the very essence of Christianity. As John 3:16 says — “For God so loved the world, He gave His only Son, that whosever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life”. As you probably know, having studied the Christian Bible, the great contrast between Islam and Christianity is that Christians know, from Holy Scripture, that it is impossible for man to be saved in his own strength. We cannot possibly erase the sin that is innate in us because of Adam’s original sin, no matter how many “good” deeds we do, and therefore are doomed to eternal punishment, apart from God. But God’s great love for us resulted in His Son, Jesus, giving up his Godhood, for a time, and becoming the Son of Man here on earth. He had to live life on earth as one fully human, imbued with all of our human weaknesses, and to live that life sinlessly, so that He would be a suitable Sacrifice, the unblemished Lamb, to forever erase and obliterate all of the sins of man, for all time. This is why God, the Father, had to forsake God, the Son, at the point of His Sacrifice, because He was bearing our sins, and God the Father could not look upon them. So, contrary to your view that this is an important inconsistency, to we Christians it was an Act of ultimate love, done for us. A free Gift, for all who believe. Because of this great Act, and Christ’s ensuing resurrection, and ascension back to the Throne of God, once again restored fully as the Son of God, we Christians do have full assurance of salvation. There is no guesswork, uncertainty, or doubt as to where we will spend eternity. Only peace, given to us by our Lord, in His love.
The Gospel will fall on deaf ears in MJ’s case. He believes Law will save him.
DonS, the main issue I would have with your explanation is that God created us humans with free will, and He created us weak to our emotions. It is absolutely guaranteed that we will sin, because every single human sins. It would be unfair and unjust for the Creator to create us, and somehow have a rule that sins are unforgivable, period.
It makes even less sense for Him to wait for tens of thousands of years of people sinning and Him not forgiving their sins, sending tens and even hundreds of Prophets (I guess for nothing, since people’s sins are unforgivable anyways), and then He decides that the only way He would be willing to forgive people’s sins is to send (according to Christians) Himself to kill Himself, and when he reaches the moment of sacrifice, He complains about it and asks why he was abandoned, even though he was sent for this very purpose.
To top this all off, this sacrifice was not undertaken by holy men, or honorable men (such as Abraham being commanded to slaughter his son), but rather a criminal lynch mob of disbelievers in a horrific act of murder. So, God is going to forgive everyone’s sins by validating one of the greatest sins in existence: murder, and treating it as a “good Friday” event?
The story, in my opinion, contradicts the magnificence and divinity of the Creator of the Universe. The Bible describes God as unforgiving and relentless, unless an act of murder takes place, and not just any murder, but the murder of the (according to Christianity) the holiest man to ever live.
The Qur’an describes God as “the Most Forgiving” (Al-Ghafoor) and “The Most Merciful” (Al-Rahman). He forgives all sins, as long as you are sincere in your repentance. If a mother can forgive her child for disobedience if the child simply says an honest “sorry,” would you prefer a mother demands that her child go kill a kitten in order for her the disobedience?
Hm. My comment about ad hominem arguments may have come too late.
It appears that you are leaving us feeling insulted, Mr. Jillood, and I truly regret that.
But your parting comment includes one thing I can’t let pass. Under Islamic rule we would not, as you suggest, be free to practice our religion. An integral part of Christianity is preaching the Gospel. Which would include exposing all other religions, including Islam, as false, and doing everything we could to convert Muslims to the Truth of Christianity. It is my understanding that, under Islamic rule, this would not be tolerated. So, on the off chance that you return to read this Mr. Jillood, if you really want us to live under Islamic rule that would in any way seek to prevent us from preaching the Gospel, you are indeed our enemy.
@121:
Welcome back!
But if God is perfectly just and righteous, on what basis can He forgive sin when no penalty has been paid? Sure, mothers will forgive their children anything. But they aren’t being just when they do so. And yet, if He is perfectly merciful and forgiving, He must find a basis on which to forgive.
Thus, He pays the penalty Himself. He is truly just AND merciful.
Which brings me to another question. You say you believe in the books older than the Qur’an, and I realize you believe they have not been preserved in complete accuracy, but as near as I can tell, Islam is completely devoid of the concept of a redeemer (or messiah or however you choose to name Him). The need for a redeemer an integral component of the Old Testament, and is fulfilled in the New Testament. Even the Jews of Jesus’ time recognised this, although they of course they had misinterpreted it. But if Islam really accepts the earlier books, how is it that it rejects one of their most prominent themes: the need for a redeemer from God?
kerner (#122) “But your parting comment includes one thing I can’t let pass. Under Islamic rule we would not, as you suggest, be free to practice our religion.”
This is incorrect. Once again, I remind you that you need to always take your understanding of a religion from the source. The media is filled with lies about Islam, and enemies of Islam will doubtfully speak the truth of it.
Islam absolutely protects the rights of all religions to practice freely. The Qur’an is very clear: “There is no compulsion in (believing in Islam). The truth has been made clear from falsehood.” [2:256]
When the second ruler (Umar Bin Al-Khattab) of the Islamic State after the Prophet (peace be upon him) conquered Palestine around the year 640, he was invited to pray in one of the Christian churches. He had to decline, and said “If I pray in your church, the Muslims will say ‘Umar prayed in this place’ and they will convert it into a mosque.”
Islam, throughout its 1450 year rule, protected non-Muslims and their religious practices. We do not need to force anyone to believe in Islam. It has more than enough evidence for the mind to accept, and the lifestyle it offers is entirely wonderful.
As for allowing Christians to preach their religion, yes, there are restrictions. The State needs to make sure that people are not being tricked or taken advantage of. Please don’t take this offensively, since I’m sure it doesn’t apply to most people here, but Christians are infamous for going to starving illiterate people, giving them food, and then giving them a Bible. This is something we must protect people from. People must come to the truth through the mind and not through taking advantage of their financial needs.
The Islamic State will allow open debates between religions, and allow all sorts of forums for public discourse between religions. But we will not allow religions to simply take advantage of the uneducated or the weak to trick them into an emotional attachment to something wrong.
@121 again:
I notice your reference to killing a kitten as an atonement in your last paragraph. It doesn’t make a lot of sense, in isolation, does it? Even in context, what sense does it make? Why would God demand that His people sacrifice sheep? Even on the first passover, why would an Angel need lambs’ blood to be on the doors of the Israelites to know who was who? Couldn’t God have kept the angel informed some other way? And yet we know that God DID command blood on the doors and temple sacrifice for all those centuries. But why? Our answer is the He was reminding His people of the ultimate sacrifice that was to come. The sacrafice that He Himself would make. What is your answer?
haha @ “welcome back”
I don’t mind staying and discussing, but if the discussion is going to deviate into a “You are evil, and a terrorist, and we must fight you, and we shall defeat you!” then it’s just getting silly.
kerner, two points:
- Why is it just to demand an act of murder in order to forgive man’s sins? When a man is feeling weak, and looks at a woman with lust – and this is very easy to fall into, and we were created weak to such a thing – why is this “unforgivable” unless God sets up the murder of a holy man at the hands of criminals?
- As for the need for a redeemer, there is no logical reason why we need a redeemer. The Qur’an states that the coming of Jesus was stated in the Torah, and the coming of Muhammed was stated in the Bible (the Comforter) by Jesus. Maybe one thing that might look like a redeemer-type event (although he isn’t considered a redeemer in this context) is the return of Jesus to earth. We believe that Jesus will return to earth (he was never crucified, he was simply raised to God and is with Him now), after the Islamic State is re-established, as a Muslim and fight with the Muslims against the Dajjal (what you might call the Anti-Christ).
Each person, in Islam, is responsible for their own actions and their own free will. We will be accounted, and God will determine who tried hard enough to earn His pleasure, and who did not. Free will is not eliminated, in Islam, but the death of anyone. If we seek forgiveness, the Qur’an tells us that God is the Most Forgiving.
kerner (#126), you might notice that all the acts of sacrifice of sheep and blood were all demanded FROM us humans, as an act of obedience and subservience to God – as a test of who will obey God and who won’t. The crucifixion was not an act demanded from believers, but rather an event that took place as an act of disobedience from criminals.
Persecution of Christians. A nice corrective, from reality, to MJ’s Islamic utopianism.
@#128 – 404 Page Not Found
:p
Second try. Go to “5. Current situation (1989 to present).”
Mr. Jillood @ 121: I understand your objection to the message of the Christian Gospel, coming from the law-based viewpoint of Islam. But, the inconsistency that you see in Christianity is not an internal inconsistency. Rather it is an inconsistency with what YOU think the Creator God should be and do. Our Bible teaches us that man was created and intended to be perfect and sinless, in perfect harmony with God the Creator, but chose to sin of his own free will, based on very bad advice from a fallen angel, Lucifer (Satan). The “guarantee” of our sin only came into being after Adam’s original sin. So, there is nothing “unfair” about God’s condemnation of us, revealed to us through the Law. This is the fundamental difference between our two faiths — Islam views the Law as a means of potential salvation, based on human ability to obey it sufficiently to satisfy the Creator. Christianity views the Law as a means of allowing humans to understand that they are condemned, apart from the Grace available to us through the Sacrifice of Christ on our behalf.
“Please don’t take this offensively, since I am sure that it doesn’t apply to most people here, but Christians are infamous for going to starving illiterate people and giving them food, and then giving them a Bible.”
No offense taken at all, but I’m pretty sure it applies to most people here, and I can only hope it applies to me. Christ pointed out that the first great commandment was for us to love God with all our hearts, souls minds and strengths; and the second great commandment was for us to love our neighbors as ourselves. All Christian charity is based on loving our neighbor. And love is an active verb. We as God’s people, show the poor and hungry that God loves them by feeding them in His name. Sure, we cannot love them as much as God does. But we must love them as best we can. Because we love them, we do not let them starve. And because we love them, we tell them that God loves them and wants them to join Him in Heaven. We can only give them food, but God gave them his own suffering and death. This isn’t our own idea; a pr trick. It is Christ’s command. “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.” Matthew 5:16
It’s not a trick, Mr. Jillood. We really care about those starving people, and we don’t want them to suffer; neither here, nor in the afterlife.
DonS (#131), I just wanted to address one thing before I go on. You call Islam “law-based” and this leaves me with the impression that you think Islam is cold and calculating, and that we enter heaven through our actions. This is incorrect.
There is just as much in Islam about God’s Mercy and Love for us as there are laws. One does not enter heaven through one’s deeds, and only enters it through God’s Mercy. But one earns God’s mercy through trying one’s best to obey God and dedicate one’s self to God. Something as simple as a single good deed or a single deeply sincere intention may please God so much that all of that person’s sins are forgiven.
Also, the fact that God forgives our sins if we sincerely ask for forgiveness is no less “merciful” than your idea of God sacrificing his son for our sins. If anything, it is far more merciful for God to simply forgive us when we sincerely ask for it, than to leave us unforgiven for thousands of years, and then have no choice but to kill Himself in order to forgive us at the near-end of time.
As for God “intending” for us to be perfect and sinless, are you saying that God made a mistake? Did he not design every bit and piece of our consciousness and psyche? Does He not see the future, and could have accounted for the fact that, not only will we commit sins, but it is virtually IMPOSSIBLE for any one of us to live a life with absolutely zero sin unless He directly prevents us from sin? We are designed weak towards our desires. Did God not include this in our design? Did he not realize that this is how He designed us? If He included this in our design (which He did), then why would He then decide to make such an integral and inevitable feature in our design unforgivable?
Islam says that God designed man weak, and that is the whole point of free will, to fight your weaknesses and do your best to be good. Those who slip are given 2nd chances and forgiven, as long as they repent fully and sincerely, because God is Merciful. Those who are solid and keep themselves under control are rewarded immensely. And those who give in to their weaknesses and desires are accounted for their behavior and dealt with justly.
@126
You’re right, the conversation was getting silly. And I am glad you overlooked it and came back. I have a meting in 15 minutes, so I’ll be gone for a bit. Be back later.
“One does not enter heaven through one’s deeds, and only enters it through God’s Mercy. But one earns God’s mercy through trying one’s best to obey God and dedicate one’s self to God.” – MJ @ 133.
The difference between “deeds” on the one hand, and “earns” and “trying” and “obey” and “dedicate” on the other is – what?
Mr. Jillood at 117 …I already made it clear that I do not support any violent means for change as a Muslim, and I do not condone any violent acts against US civilians (or any other civilians, for that matter). This is a clever statement, since you still haven’t given a clear answer to the question as to your view of the 9/11 attack by radical Muslims.
The truth is that radical Muslims, following certain passages in the Koran and hadith, routinely attack innocent civilians. Further, very few moderate Muslims speak out clearly against this savagery.
James Arlandson in an American Thinker article, Muhammad and Massacre of the Qurayza Jews writes:
Muslim polemical and outreach websites often assert that Islam promotes human rights. It is impossible to see how they can say this honestly and at the same time appeal to the origins of their religion. This whitewash is deceitful at best and dangerous at worst, if or when Islam gets a foothold in a region on the pretence of ‘peace and love.’ Maybe sleepy Westerners and others will accept this benign version of Islam—in fact too many do, right now. But what happens later when hard—line Muslims (not to mention nonviolent and violent fanatics) cite the numerous brutal verses in the Quran and passages in the hadith to inflict barbarity on people, especially on Jews?
…It is time for Muslim leaders to renounce violence clearly and specifically, not vaguely: ‘Yes, we denounce all forms of violence’ They must go deeper than this. They must stop denying the dark past, found in the Quran itself and in the example of their Prophet. They must, instead, be clear. ‘We denounce these specific verses and passages in the Quran and hadith that are violent. These specific acts and words happened in the seventh century (and later centuries), and we have moved beyond all of them. We now want peace.’
href=”http://www.americanthinker.com/2006/02/muhammad_and_massacre_of_the_q.html “>Muhammad and Massacre of the Qurayza Jews
I understand that legitimate warriors have every right to defend their nations security interests, though not the slaughter of innocent civilians by Islamic radicals who are unlawful combatants.
Peter, will you please stop trying to drop little accusations of me trying to come here to deceive everyone and act like I’m someone I’m not? I have been very open about all my opinions, and I have not watered down anything, even when it was necessarily blunt.
If you want to ask me about my view of 9/11, ask me. I condemn the actions of the people who flew those airplanes into the WTC towers. I believe it was forbidden by Islam for them to do so. I also do not believe that Muslims were the masterminds behind it, but that is another story.
Moderate Muslims (a mindset that I do not subscribe to) spend nearly all their time apologizing and condemning the events of 9/11, to the point of pathetic begging for the West’s approval and forgiveness, even after the West retaliated by killing 50,000+ innocent Muslim civilians during the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq.
Are we clear now?
As for the massacre of Banu Quraydha, they, as a unified tribe, agreed to betray a political treaty they made with the Muslims, and plotted with Quraysh to help them kill all the Muslims and take their women as captives. The Prophet (peace be upon him) besieged them and after forcing them to give up, he allowed THEM to choose their mediator for terms of surrender. They chose a man who used to be from amongst them and became a Muslim, and he decided that all the men were to be killed and the women and children be taken under the authority of the Muslims. The Prophet (peace be upon him) approved of his decision.
Although I realize that this is not a lovely happy story that you people will like, but that is why the question in Islam is the authenticity of the Qur’an. The Creator is what He tells us He is, and not what we want Him to be.
If the Creator decides that the way to protect the world from longterm bloodshed is to set an example of people who betray the Muslims, then that is exactly what we must do.
Mazin @ 133:
Thank you for clarifying the “law-based” point. So, if I understand it correctly, under Islam, one who dies is judged according to the law, but is potentially eligible for a merciful commutation of the judgement they deserve, based upon their efforts to obey God and do their best to please Him.
With that in mind, a better statement of the differences between Islam and Christianity would be to say that whereas, under Islam, God’s mercy causes Him to sometimes overlook man’s shortcomings under the law, depending upon the person’s efforts to do good, under Christianity, God’s mercy erased the law as a standard of judgment. Because Christ’s Sacrifice obliterated for all time every sin committed by those who, by faith, have received God’s mercy, the person’s deeds according to the law are not reviewed. On the other hand, those who have not believed on Christ are judged according to the law, and even one sin will cause them to fall short and be eternally damned.
God intended us for full fellowship with Him, and created us for that fellowship. It was man who voluntarily, using his free will, disobeyed and brought sin onto the entire human race. It is this sin, and our resultant fallen natures, which cause us to be weak. God had nothing to do with any of the bad things that occur to us in this fallen world — we brought it on ourselves when we disobeyed Him.
This statement of your’s @ 137 is illuminating: “The Creator is what He tells us He is, and not what we want Him to be”. This is true for Christianity also. We can try to use human wisdom to discern what and who an all powerful Creator God should be, but our fallible minds are simply not capable of such discernment. Why God allowed us, through the free will He gave us, to disobey Him cannot be fully known in this life. Why He loves us all (Christian, Muslim, and all others) enough to sacrifice His Son to pay the penalty for our sins can also not be fully known in this life. That is where faith comes in. We Christians believe that we cannot, in our own strength, reason ourselves to saving faith in Jesus Christ.
Oh, and I forgot to mention something.
The example of Banu Quraydha has nothing to do with the treatment of the Islamic State of non-Muslim citizens, because Banu Quraydha were not citizens. They were a neighboring “country” that betrayed a political agreement of non-hostility (an agreement that Muslims always honor) by conspiring with the regional superpower (Quraysh) to destroy the Muslims.
Islam treated it’s non-Muslim citizens well, and protected their rights. The only time non-Muslim citizens were treated with hostility was when they (similar to Banu Quraydha) conspired to harm the state or betrayed the state by assisting an enemy in harming the state.
I asked the following question at 55, What is your view of the 9/11 attack by Islamic jihadis from Saudi Arabia? You finnally answer it at 137, and qualify it by the remark that you object to moderate Muslims who apologize for 9/11 and accuse the U.S. of retaliating by killing 50,000+ innocent Iraqi civilians.
Yes, thousands of Iraq civilian were killed in the Iraq war, though not intentionally by Americans or their allies. They were killed partly by the Americans through collateral effects and mostly through tribal conflict between the Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds.
The radical Islamic killers intentionally kill civilians including the some 3,000 on 9/11.
You claim that Muslims treat its non-Muslim citizens well and protect their rights. Bat Ye’Or who has studied this matter writes that vanquished non-Muslims are treated as dhimmis. She writes:
The concept of [Muslim] toleration is linked to a number of discriminatory obligations in the economic, religious and social fields, imposed by the shari’a on the dhimmis. The transgression by the dhimmis of some of these obligations, abolished their protection, and threaten them with death or slavery. Dhimmis suffered many legal disabilities intended to reduce them to a condition of humiliation, segregation and discrimination. These rules, established from the eight to nine centuries by the founders of the four schools of Islamic law, set the pattern of the Muslim’s community’s social behavior toward dhimmis.
Hirsi Ali, an apostate Muslim,characterizes Islam as “the new fascism”. “Just like Nazism started with Hitler’s vision, the Islamic vision is a caliphate — a society ruled by Sharia law — in which women who have sex before marriage are stoned to death, homosexuals are beaten, and “apostates like me are killed.” Sharia law is as inimical to liberal democracy as Nazism.” In this interview, she also made it clear that in her opinion it is not “a fringe group of radical Muslims who’ve hijacked Islam and that the majority of Muslims are moderate. [...] Violence is inherent in Islam — it’s a destructive, nihilistic cult of death. It legitimates murder.” [Wiki source]
I’m not buying your honeyed words about Islam. The truth is that the radical Islamics, following passages from the Koran and hadith, are involved in a vicious, implacable war of terror against the West.
Jeepers. Do I have to wait for eighty-two comments before I get an answer to my question @ 135? (I don’t ever expect to hear an apology for the statements I listed @ 112.)
Tom (#141), DonS understood the answer I gave to your question, and explained it well in post #138.
As for an apology:
- Any Christian that joins any army is a hypocrite and is not a follower of Jesus. Make all the excuses you want. Those are the facts.
- The comment “you people are no different” that you so dishonestly placed right after the comment about Hitler was referring to people following their leaders blindly, not to Hitler killing innocent people.
- You DO believe in the Bible blindly. This is something Christians openly admit.
- Why would the statement about the Gospel of Barnabus be offensive? Have you ever studied how they authenticated the Gospels? The Gospel of Barnabus was on-par in terms of authenticity with the other Gospels. That is a fact. They rejected it because it was “inconsistent,” which was because it clearly states that Jesus is not the son of God as Paul claimed. Go study the history of your own religion, for God’s sake.
- Christianity does teach people to not think. How else could you get people to believe in the trinity, and in God sending himself to kill himself and forgetting who he is when he kills himself? Seriously.
- And what I said about Muslims who converted to Christianity is a statement of fact, based on my experiences. They were all uneducated, very simple minded, hungry, poor immigrants that needed a home. I have never met a Muslim convert to Christianity that even had an acceptable basic understanding of the Qur’an.
So, I don’t see what you want an apology for. I am more than happy to apologize if I said something wrong or unfair.
Peter@#140,
Wow, I guess if Hirsi Ali says so, it must be true. I mean, you clearly don’t need to ever study anything from the source, as long as you can quote all the people that fit your agenda as you can fit into a post, right?
Have you ever even studied Islam directly for yourself? Or do you just surf the internet for other people’s opinions, and never actually formulate your own?
If you have a claim to make against Islam, then prove it with texts from Islam, otherwise I seriously could not care less about people who have earned both book sales and fame through spewing hate about Islam.
For example, Salman Rushdie’s book is a literary joke. I read it. He is an average writer, at best. His book is uninteresting, but because he is attacking Islam, he wins prizes for a book that would, in any other situation, be mocked into oblivion.
Once again, either bring texts from Islam to support your opinion, or I’m just going to ignore your copy-paste posts from now on.
I didn’t ask DonS to answer my question @ 135, MJ. I asked you. I’d like to hear it in your own words.
As I said, I didn’t expect to ever hear an apology for the statements I listed at @ 112.
Tom, I already explained it. I’m officially appointing DonS as my representative in this matter. Please refer to him for any further correspondence in this affair. Thank you and please leave a message after the beep.
And if you order a hamburger from a restaurant, for example, and the cashier says “your change is $0.02,” does it make sense to say to the cashier “I never expected to hear an apology anyways”? An apology for what? For the truth?
To tell you the truth, if it were not for the terrorist attack against the West, I couldn’t care less about Islam. I have read a lot of Toynbee and Lewis, both of whom have extensively studied primary Islamic sources. I’ve also, read some of Ye’or’s and Ali’s books and find they make a compelling case for their view.
Judging from your crude though at times amusing understanding of Christianity, as evidenced by your remarks passim on this thread, you either haven’t read primary Christian sources or poorly understood them.
@142, you said: “Any Christian that joins any army is a hypocrite and is not a follower of Jesus. Make all the excuses you want. Those are the facts.”
This is not necessarily true. Care to defend this statement? Though I have pacifistic inclinations, it is quite a leap in logic simply to assert that “those are the facts.” Many theologians have made quite elaborate arguments legitimating the use of force in defense of certain ends. Thomas Aquinas and Augustine both prescribe a formula for “just war”–amongst many others. And, after all, what about the centurion whom Christ welcomes into eternal life?
Just as some of the commenters here (*cough*Peter*cough*) are attacking a Muslim straw man where more subtlety is necessary, you seem to be constructing and then attacking a straw man of Christianity. You keep telling us that there is a diversity of Islamic sects, beliefs, and ideas. The same applies to Christianity. If you had succinctly defined what it means to be a “follower of Christ” such that you could accurately determine who is “in” and who is “out,” you would not be the first to claim that you had, but you would be the first to be successful.
The life of Christ is not a checklist. It’s not a matter of balancing good deeds and bad deeds that cancel one another out on a ledger. We work out our salvation with fear and trembling, but not from the terror of leaving something “undone.”
p.s. I’ve decided to forgo a further inquiry into a) your Islamic political supremacy–it is what it is and I think we can all judge for ourselves the true colors of that argument now–and b) your argument for the structure of the Qur’an–you’ve admitted that you accept it on faith alone; the bit about its structural irreplicability is a post hoc justification that is neither credible nor necessary.
So, you’re not going to man up, Jill, and answer me yourself? Okay. As for the cashier analogy, I was actually going to order a pork sandwich. And eat it with relish in front of you.
“any Christian who joins any army is a hypocrite and not a follower of Jesus…”
Come on Mazin. You must have said a dozen times that we should look to Muslims for an explanation of Islam. Do us the courtesy of acknowledging that we understand our own religion.
It’s a minor point, but Jesus did not require his followers to be extreme pascifists. When soldiers asked Jesus what to do, He did not direct them to leave military service, He said, “Don’t extort money and don’t accuse people falsely – be content with your pay.” Luke 3:14
As for the “Gospel of Barnabas”, better check your own sources, amigo.
http://www.answering-islam.org/Barnabas/
I hope I posted that link correctly. But of course the Church, in the Old Testament and the New, have had to address writings that have been “inconsistent”.
The Bible is not the work of a single author. It is the compilation of the writings of over 40 people written, as we believe, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, in numerous different countries in at least 2 different languages over a period of about 1,500 years. Far more miraculous that the gramatical structure of the Qur’an is that the Bible has achieved any consistency at all. Of course, during that time, and after, many false prophets (Muhammad among them) have tried to present to the world “something new”. To me, one of the most clear, and uncontrovertable proofs that Islam is false is that it claims to be a continuation of the former prophets, when in fact the Qur’an is totally inconsistent with the “books” that preceded it. I am not as familiar with the Qur’an as I wish I were, but nothing I have read here so far has convinced me that the Qur’an could possibly be the next step in prophesy after the New Testament. I know the Muslim explanation for this is that all these prior writings were corrupted over time, but Islam doesn’t have mere superficial discrepancies with the Old and New Testaments. The differences are fundamental. For the Muslim view to be true, the writings of the former prophets would have to have been so corrupted as to be unrecognisable, and totally unreliable. As such, they couldn’t be considered sacred books at all. Yet, Islam tries to maintain some sort of logically unsupportable connection to them, as if Muhammad were afraid to claim that he had pretty much made the whole thing up from whole cloth (which is what I believe he did) and needed a bogus connection with the writings of the actual prophets to give his words credibility.
Tom (#148) “Jill”? Are you trying to be rude? I won’t be replying to you anymore, that’s for sure.
Cincinnatus (#147), I do not accept the proof of the Qur’an by “faith alone.” The Bible has literally no way of verifying its authenticity as being exactly what Jesus taught 2000 years ago, and you have multiple versions of your book, and there is endless disagreement of what Bible is the most authentic, or even authentic at all, so you accept the book to be accurate by “faith alone.”
For me, I have a Book that claims to be unchangeable and inimitable, and has held up to its claim for almost 1.5 millennia. I have a Book that has existed for over 1450 years, and every single copy of it today is identical, and memorized front to back by hundreds of millions of Muslims. And I have a Book that was revealed over the span of 24 years, and while being the greatest masterpiece of Arabic literature ever written, not one single edit to its grammar was made over the 24 years (no writer can write a 600 page masterpiece over 24 years without even one weakness or error).
I do not have “faith alone” in the Qur’an. I have proof.
kerner (#149), you used the words “logically unsupportable connection to (the other two Books)” and I find that odd. Maybe I’m misunderstanding what you mean.
The Qur’an explains that the history of mankind started with Adam (peace be upon him), and after him came later generations to whom Messengers (men with new laws from the Creator) and Prophets (men who came to correct changes made by people to the previous message) were sent over the ages. Included amongst them are Noah, Jonah, Abraham, Solomon, Lot, Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed (peace be upon them all). The logical connection between all their messages and prophethood is blatantly obvious.
The reason why the Torah and the Bible contain similar stories is because they were both sent by the same Creator. And, as you noted, people changed their books, editing out things that didn’t suit them, and adding things that suited them.
We believe that people added the “son of God” story into the Bible for the exact same motive/reason as why the Children of Israel worshiped the calf while Moses was with God for 40 days and 40 nights. They want something more “tangible” to worship. This is why you people spend all of your time worshiping “the son” and not “the father.” It’s the exact same thought process.
This is why verification of the authenticity of the narrators of the Bible is so important. How are you sure the Bible has not been corrupted by the same type of people that worshiped the calf? You can’t. You have to spend your entire life forcing yourself to have “blind faith” in something you can never be sure of.
My wife converted from Christianity to Islam on her own. She paid her own way through Bible college and was extremely dedicated to God. And after she studied how the Bible was compiled and researched the inconsistencies in the Bible, first hand from Christian scholars, receiving no answers for the serious questions that required answering (because there are no answers except “have faith”), she left Christianity.
This is why I say: The more you think about Islam, the more you are convinced by it. The more you think about the Bible, the less satisfied you are with the answers you receive.
Mazin Jillood,
You are discussing the error of fideism. There are some Baptists and whatnot who actually do believe faith is totally blind, but here you are mainly talking to believers from a more historically rooted part of Christianity called “Lutheranism”.
We believe God grants us all spiritual blessings, including salvation, through faith alone. He even creates this faith in us. However, we are not blind to the fact that our faith is rooted in history. With the exception of some very late Latin translations of the Bible, all the early New Testament manuscripts line up nicely with each other. The Koran suffered from variations, which was why an Authorized Version had to be put out in 650, and the others were rounded up and destroyed. How bad were the variations? We don’t know because we don’t have the destroyed copies. So Muslims today are asked to trust Uthman’s version of the Koran without being able to compare variants as Christians do. The Muslim version of Scripture asks for a lot more blindness than the Christian version.
It is very clear to us that you are under a severe weight of legalism. You have been deluded to think that you can earn your way with good works. But if you ever feel guilty, you will be led to doubt this ability. Next time you feel guilty, ask a devoted Christian what they do when they feel guilty. Try it and see for yourself.
“‘Jill’? Are you trying to be rude?” – Mazin Jillood @ 150.
I’m goading you – trying to get you to man up and answer my question @ 135 yourself.
“I won’t be replying to you anymore, that’s for sure.” – @ 150.
You’re slip is showing. And since you’re not replying to my question @ 135 anyways, what difference does your not replying to me “anymore” make?
Jason,
I often feel guilty, since we are all susceptible to slipping into smaller bad deeds/sins, and when I feel guilty, I increase my efforts in performing good deeds and seek God’s forgiveness.
One difference between Islam and Christianity is that Christianity makes everything all about us humans. It insults the prophets and messengers (Solomon disbelieved in God, Lot got drunk and committed incest, etc) and God kills himself for us (again, all about us) because our sins were, for some reason, unforgivable, despite the fact that He gave us free will and made us weak towards sin.
In Islam, it is all about God. He owes us nothing and we are here to struggle for Him. He chose and honored the best amongst us as prophets and messengers – all of whom were sinless – to use as a medium to transmit His divine messages, to both test us in who will believe and to teach us what He wants from us, and the test of life is for us to obey or to disobey. We were created to obey Him and be tested by Him. It is all about Him in Islam.
So, what does a Christian do when he feels guilty? It seems to me that he remembers that the Bible teaches him that God loves us so much that – rather than just forgiving our sins, or putting us straight into heaven – He sends a human version of himself to be unjustly murdered by a mob of criminals, and that somehow expiates the sins of all mankind. Therefore the Christian stops feeling guilty here, because he is absolved of all his sins.
I don’t know if you notice it, but this version of the story makes God seem helpless. He can’t forgive our sins without killing himself for us and he was so hurt by the event that he forgets who he is and complains about it to himself.
Christians always bring up this point about guilt when I discuss with them, as if it is a point of superiority that you don’t have to worry or feel guilty. But to me, it is another point that proves to me that the Bible has been adjusted by human desires. No human enjoys feeling subservient 100% of the time: always watching his actions, always watching his intentions, always wanting God’s mercy and fearing God’s punishment. Islam remains unchanged, and therefore we remain in that state of subservience to God 100% of the time, but the Bible – according to the Qur’an – has been adjusted, so now you can relax and lay back, because you believe that your sins are auto-forgiven by simply believing in just one thing. It’s all about you.
I’ve been trying to make a post for about an hour now. I’m not sure why it isn’t going through. I tried shortening the post or editing it, but it simply won’t post.
Are there conditions I don’t know about?
JS @151 suggests that the Qur’an wasn’t standardized until 650 AD by Uthman, who had all varying versions destroyed. He provided no source, so I found this one:
http://www.answering-islam.org/Green/uthman.htm
It does not appear to be very scholarly, but it does seem to be quoting ancient Muslim texts (hadiths) in support of his conclusions. Wikipedia said that the oldest Qur’an available today could not have been written earlier than the 8th century AD, and that parts are missing from it.
These sources do seem to indicate that the Qur’an is not in the position Mr. Jillood claims it is, and that its accuracy must in some measure be accepted on faith.
What of this, Mr. Jillood. Are the quotations of the hadiths correct? If so, does that mean that there is a gap in the proof you rely on? Is your confidence in your book really less reliant on faith than our confidence in our Book?
I guess I will try to post my reply to Jason later, after I figure out why the post is not being accepted.
kerner (#154), none of the evidences quoted in that article have any significance on the current authenticity of the Qur’an. I don’t have enough room here to go through them all, but I will summarize, and you can ask about any one narration in particular if you want.
Most of the narrations mentioned are referring to the seven recitations of the Qur’an that were approved by the Messenger himself during his lifetime. The differences in narrations are interesting, and are clearly a part of the Book’s design. For example, in the Opening Chapter (Al-Faatiha), one recitation says “…Owner of the Day of Resurrection” (Maaliki Yawm Ad-Deen), and another recitation says “King of the Day of Resurrection) (Meliki Yawm Ad-Deen). In contrast, the different versions of the Bible came into existence AFTER Jesus departed this earth and not during his lifetime, and have been in dispute since then.
Other narrations on that website talk about Muslims differing on whether they should compile the Qur’an into a physical book, since the Prophet (peace be upon him) didn’t do such a thing. But due to the new Muslims from Persia and non-Arabic-speaking lands making mistakes in memorization and recitation, they decided that it was necessary to do so. The other “books” that were burned were to ensure that there was absolutely no room for new Muslims, or the enemies of Islam, to ever start any movement for division based on a so-called “Qur’an” that contained errors.
All of the 100,000 companions of the Prophet (peace be upon him) memorized the Qur’an front to back. None of them disputed amongst themselves after the death of the Prophet (peace be upon him) of what was or wasn’t Qur’an. The only dispute was between them and the new Muslims that had made mistakes in memorization.
All of the narrations quoted on that page revolve around these two points.
Again, if you have anything more specific, feel free to point it out.
Twenty comments and counting. Come on, Jilly. If someone else can answer the question for you, it ought to be the simplest thing in the world for you to answer it in your own words. What’s the difference between “deeds” on the one hand, and “earns” and “trying” and “obey” and “dedicate” on the other?
Jason (#151),
Wow, this is a long message. Sorry about the excessive length, but I feel most of this is important to mention.
I often feel guilty, since we are all susceptible to slipping into smaller bad deeds/sins, and when I feel guilty, I increase my efforts in performing good deeds and seek God’s forgiveness. I depend on the Mercy of the Creator.
One difference between Islam and Christianity is that Christianity makes everything all about us humans. It insults the prophets and messengers (Solomon supposedly disbelieved in God, Lot supposedly was secretly intoxicated and slept with his own daughters, etc), and God kills himself for us (again, all about us) because, for some reason, he couldn’t forgive our sins, even if we repented, asked for forgiveness and did good deeds for the rest of our lives. All this is despite the fact that He gave us free will and made us weak towards sin.
In Islam, it is all about God. He owes us nothing and we are here to struggle for Him. He chose and honored the best amongst us as prophets and messengers – all of whom were sinless according to Islam – to use them as a medium to transmit His divine messages, both to test us in who will believe and to teach us what He wants from us. The test of life is for us to obey or to disobey. We were created to obey Him and be tested by Him. It is all about Him in Islam. So, what does a Christian do when he feels guilty? It seems to me that he remembers that the Bible teaches him that God loves us so much that – rather than just forgiving our sins, or putting us straight into heaven – He sends a human version of himself to be unjustly murdered by a mob of criminals, and that somehow expiates the sins of all mankind. Therefore the Christian stops feeling guilty here, because he is absolved of all his sins already.
I don’t know if you notice it, but this version of the story makes God seem helpless. According to the Bible, God can’t simply forgive our sins unless he physically kills himself for us, and he was so hurt by the event that he forgets who he is and complains about it to himself. This contradicts the Divinity and infinte power of the Creator of the Universe in our opinion.
Christians always bring up this point about guilt when I discuss with them, as if it is a point of superiority that you don’t have to worry or feel guilty. But, to me, it is another point that proves to me that the Bible has been adjusted by human desires. No human enjoys feeling subservient 100% of the time: always watching his actions, always watching his intentions, always wanting God’s mercy and fearing God’s punishment. Islam remains unchanged, and therefore we remain in that state of subservience to God 100% of the time. But the Bible – according to the Qur’an – has been adjusted, so now you can relax and lay back, because you believe that your sins are auto-forgiven by simply believing in just one thing. It’s all about you.
Your Book teaches you that God is here to prove His love to you. Our Book teaches us that we are here to prove our love to Him.
Mr. Jillood, how do you explain the contradictions in the Koran that seem to stem from Mohammed’s early weak period in Mecca and later strong period in Medina after vanquishing his tribal enemies including the Jews?
For example:
In surah 73:10 God tells Mohammed to be patient with his opponents “Be patient with what they say, and part from them courteously.” While in surah 2:191 God orders him to kill his opponents “Kill them wherever you find them, and drive them out from wherever they drove you out…”
Peter (#158), this is because (and this is one area I have the most experience with, since I am very involved in the work to re-establish the Islamic State that fell in 1924) Islam forbids violence as a way of establishing the Islamic State.
The work of the Prophet (peace be upon him) and his companions in Makkah was targeted at establishing an independent political entity, which was achieved in Madinah after 13 years. After this, Jihad was revealed, which was set as the foreign policy of the Islamic State.
Mr. Jillood, could you give us a brief outline of what you mean by an Islamic State?
haha @ Peter #160, that is a huge topic, because to define it properly to you, I need to identify what the Islamic State is while clarifying exactly why the current Islamic-looking governments are not Islamic States, which means I have go into the history of how they came about.
But, simply put: The Islamic State is the land that is ruled by a government whose laws are entirely derived solely from the Qur’an and Sunnah, without the use of any external legislative source – including the mind’s perception of benefit or harm – except in matters that Islam has permitted man to formulate laws on his own (certain areas of medicine, technology, science, engineering, etc), regardless of whether the populations of the land is predominantly Muslim or if they are a minority.
The first Islamic State was established by the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) in Madinah, and his position of ruler was succeeded by his companions Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman and Ali (may Allah be pleased with them).
After them, the next “dynasty” was called the Umayyad (Amawis in Arabic) State, followed by the Abbasids (Abbasiyyeen), and then the Ottomans (Uthmanieen). The last Islamic State dynasty fell in 1924 at the hands of the British after WW1, with the help of Mustafa Kamal Attaturk, who helped instill feelings of nationalism in the Young Turks (and the Arab “leaders” started the idiotic Arab League). Since then, we have been colonized by proxy, through our own puppet rulers. Some of these rulers chose to rule with an iron fist (Saddam Hussein for example), and some chose to rule with a Halloween costume (Saudis), but all had the same goal: to preserve the interests of the colonizers.
In other words, ever since March 3rd, 1924, the Muslims have been trying to re-establish the Islamic State, and the West (Britain and France, and now the US) are spending trillions of dollars to prevent this from ever happening again).
This is what I, and tens of millions of other Muslims, are working towards, and it is very close, by the Will of God. It took us 100 years to take back Palestine from the Crusaders, and hopefully it will take us a few years less this time around ; )
“… when I feel guilty, I increase my efforts in performing good deeds and seek God’s forgiveness. I depend on the Mercy of the Creator.” – Mazin Jillood @ 157.
Apparently, the mercy of Jillood’s god depends on the deeds of Jillood – on whether or not they’re good enough. Which, apparently also, they can indeed be. So the standards of Jillood’s god can’t be very high when it comes to justice and holiness, which leads me to the conclusion that Jillood’s god can’t be very just or holy himself. Therefore, Jillood’s god doesn’t need to be extraordinarily merciful. Good enough is good enough.
The main problems I see with Islam — as explained to me by you, Mr. Jillood — are these:
1) Islam does not take sin seriously
2) Allah is not actually holy
3) Allah is not actually merciful
4) There is some ambiguity as to whether we merit forgiveness/mercy/heaven or not
5) Islam is full of people fooling themselves about how good they are.
1) Islam does not take sin seriously. Christianity teaches that sin — any sin, no matter how small — merits death. Not only physical death, but also eternal death, which is to say separation from God, or Hell. “whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it” (James 2:10) and “the wages [that is to say, the consequence, the 'earnings'] of sin is death” (Romans 6:23) and “the soul who sins is the one who will die” (Ezekiel 18:4). That is taking sin seriously!
In contrast, as Mr. Jillood explains, in Islam, “a good deed can be worth up to 70,000 good deeds” (@75). Indeed, he paraphrases Muhammed as saying, “When a believer is sick, his bad deeds fall off his left shoulder like a waterfall” — mere involuntary sickness is enough to rid one’s self of sin! I mean, every sin I do is voluntary, but sickness is involuntary? Can anyone claim, therefore, that Islam takes sin seriously? “Yes, you sinned much yesterday, but today you have a cold, so it’s a wash. We will call you sinless.”
No, this turns sin into a balancing act, and a rather imbalanced one at that: “Removing harm from a walking path is equal to freeing a slave,” Mr. Jillood paraphrases Muhammed as saying. How is that taking sin seriously?
2) Allah is not actually holy. This necessarily follows from point #1. Any god who ignores tens of thousands of sins because of one mere “good intention” is a god who willingly associates with sinful people — indeed, with sin itself. Allah is such a god. He associates with the sinful, and therefore cannot be holy, because to be holy means to be perfect. Allah cannot be perfect. Were the Islamic paradise to exist, it would be more full of sins than of good deeds, according to the bizarre calculus hinted at by Mr. Jillood. What sort of paradise is that?
Indeed, Allah shows that he is no different from a human. For I forgive my son without requiring him to pay for his sins, but I myself am a sinful human. I forgive others because I realize my own sorry state. I am in authority over my son, but I am no less sinful than he. So when he sins, I say, “I forgive you, not because your sins are paid for, but as a fellow sinful being. Try not to sin again.” This is how Allah treats sins. The Christian God, however, does not tolerate sin. He is truly holy. No one who is sinful — even with only one “tiny” sin on his record — can enter his presence. Every sin merits death — physical, spiritual, eternal. In Heaven, there is no sin.
… More in a bit. I’ll break this up.
Continued from above (@163) …
3) Allah is not actually merciful. The fact that the Qur’an calls him such does not negate the fact that he demands that his forgiveness for sins be conditional on a person’s deeds (or even mere intentions). If I loan you $1,000,000 (interest-free, of course
) and then you pay me back the loan, I am not being “merciful” in announcing to you that you no longer owe me anything. I am merely stating the truth, I am justly adhering to our agreement. This justice is the Islamic view of what “mercy” is: paying off your debts.
So we see Jillood saying things like “the Creator is extremely merciful to those that try to obey Him” (@38), and “He forgives all sins, as long as you are sincere in your repentance” (@121), and “God will determine who tried hard enough to earn His pleasure, and who did not” (@126), and that a Muslim’s life is one of “hoping to make it to death with enough good deeds/good intentions to please the Creator enough for Him to forgive your bad deeds” (@38). There is no mercy, only paying off what you owe, to some degree. Even that is uncertain, as Mr. Jillood notes: “hope that the Creator will forgive you. This does not mean that He will forgive you, but there is always hope that He will.” But the point is that you have to do something to be forgiven.
Contrast this with the Christian God, who “demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). And not only does the Bible say we were sinners, it even says we “were dead in our transgressions and sins”, going on to note that “God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved” (Ephesians 2:1-10). The Christian God does not wait for us to appease him, he forgives us while we are in our sins, while we are spiritually dead, even while God counts us as his enemies (Romans 5:10)! This is true mercy: acting because He wills, not because we did something to appease him. My forgiveness is not conditional on what I have done, but solely on God’s work, His love alone.
So we see that the Christian God is more merciful than Allah could ever be, because he acts while we are unable and unwilling to act. And yet, the Christian God is also holier than Allah could ever be, because he does not treat sin lightly, but demands full payment — death — for it. He does not demand for his forgiveness a mere sweeping of glass off the street or even getting a cold, but death. And this price was paid for, not by us, but by Himself, by Jesus. Again, this shows God’s mercy, because, though he demands sin be taken seriously, yet He does so for us.
To be continued …
tODD (#163), I think we might have differing definitions of sin. I’m talking about an everyday act of disobedience, such as God commands you to not speak harshly to your parents, but one day you are really stressed and exhausted and your mother keeps bugging you, and, in a moment of emotional weakness, you yell “WHAT!?” to her. That is a sin.
If we are talking about the same thing, then Islam takes sin very seriously, and Christianity has made sin virtually meaningless. I mean, how do you not see the irony in your statements there?
Islam defines life as an arena of free-will, choices, and testing. Good deeds and sin are the basis for the testing and final analysis. Islam says that this is the measure of which a person passes or fails the test.
Christianity, which you claim takes sin SO seriously, has removed all practical application of sin, because you think God has “died for your sins,” and now it does not matter if you sin or don’t sin, because your sins have been forgiven. You might have this fantasy idea that a Christian doesn’t sin once he accepts the crucifixion, but that contradicts reality, since every single person reading this has sinned since believing in whatever religion they follow. That is the nature of man.
As for Allah being holy or not holy, this is just a silly argument. You are first imposing your own definition of sin, taken from your Bible, on the discussion, and then you are defining God by this biased definition.
A God is not defined by how YOU determine what sin should be. We do not define God, God tells us what is and what isn’t. The question is whether or not your version of what sin is, and your version of how God perceives sin is accurate, and this goes back to the validity of the Bible. Since your Bible is unreliable, therefore everything you define according to it is unreliable.
Furthermore, there is nothing in the “laws of existence” that states that sins “cannot be forgiven,” except your book that makes this claim, upon which you are basing this entire argument. Sins are acts of disobedience, just like how a child disobeys his or her parents. A parent is full of mercy for their child, and gives their child many chances to be a better person. If a child spends his entire life hating, insulting and attacking their parents, then their parents will die displeased with them, but if that child comes and begs for forgiveness because they realize how bad they have been, the parents are full of mercy.
Our Creator is merciful, and DOES forgive sins. Your book misleads you into hopelessness, pushing you to worship a man that never once – not in your book and not in any other book – tells people to worship him, nor does he ever claim to be God, nor does he ever claim to be the “begotten” son of God. These are all fabrications made up by Paul. Paul is your prophet, not Jesus.
Those (@163, 164) were my main problems with Islam, as especially expained by you, Mr. Jillood. But as to your own explanation, I find some inconsistency:
4) There is some ambiguity as to whether we merit forgiveness/mercy/heaven or not. Mr. Jillood notes (@133) that, in Islam, “One does not enter heaven through one’s deeds, and only enters it through God’s Mercy.” But immediately after that, he turns around and says that “one earns God’s mercy through trying one’s best to obey God and dedicate one’s self to God.” Let’s use the transitive property, shall we? “One does not enter heaven through one’s deeds, but only enters it through trying one’s best to obey God and dedicate one’s self to God.” Clear. As. Mud.
Actually, it’s clear to me from the numerous statements of Mr. Jillood that one does enter heaven through his own deeds, with the added caveat that Allah may not accept them, anyhow. But if you’re in Islamic paradise, according to Mr. Jillood, it will be because of what you did, or at least what you “tried” to do (as if that were worth much).
Mr. Jillood may claim that is not fair, that I am being misled by some anti-Muslim fanatic (perhaps Peter Leavitt
), but I am only reading Mr. Jillood’s words in coming to this conclusion: “good deeds nullify bad deeds” and “the Creator is extremely merciful to those that try to obey Him” and “If you are stuck doing a bad deed that you can’t stop, overwhelm it with many other good deeds, and hope that the Creator will forgive you” and “hop[e] to make it to death with enough good deeds/good intentions to please the Creator enough for Him to forgive your bad deeds” (@38). “When a believer is sick, his bad deeds fall off his left shoulder like a waterfall” and “our Creator has given us a small door to enter towards sins, and millions of large doors to enter towards good deeds. Added to that, there are millions of ways that our bad deeds are forgiven, as long as there is sincere intention with it. So, yes, according to Islam, you can save yourself” (@75). Let me say that again, quoting Mr. Jillood, “yes, according to Islam, you can save yourself”. And yet, remember, “One does not enter heaven through one’s deeds, and only enters it through God’s Mercy” (@133).
I could go on quoting Mr. Jillood. Suffice it to say that, if there is any confusion on this point, it is from the person explaining Islam, not the non-Muslims who are listening.
tODD (#166), it’s simple: One does not HEAVEN through one’s deeds, one only earns God’s pleasure through one’s deeds. You can only enter heaven through God’s mercy, because no amount of deeds earn you heaven, but good intentions and good deeds earn you God’s pleasure.
Just like cleaning your room can earn you your parent’s pleasure, but cleaning your room doesn’t earn you a private jet. Simple.
Mr. Jillood, good luck to you in reestablishing an Islamic State. The Ottoman Empire declined, as most do, due to the people and Sultans growing soft and corrupt. The British and French were able to defeat Ottoman rule due mainly to its internal weakness and an inability to embrace modern science, technology, and industry.
Todd has given you an excellent analysis of the weakness of the religion of Islam. I would add that Christianity by and large has come to terms with modern science, technology, and industry, while the Muslim world has by and large mulishly resisted this. Another point is that much of the Middle East is still mired in tribalism.
You are mistaken in your analysis of the fall of Islam as attributable mainly to European and American perfidy. Yes, the Europeans made a mistake in formally colonizing the Middle East, something they and America now quite understand. America has a vital interest in a stable and peaceful Middle East, not in any sort of colonization. You are rather paranoid in your understanding of American vital interests.
I’d be glad to see the Middle East become a thriving, peaceful region with devout Muslims practicing their religion in an Islamic State. However, until the Muslim world comes to terms with modernity and stands up to the global Salafi jihadists, who have involved themselves in a savage attempt to impose Shari’ah law via the terrorist sword, the notion of a serious Islamic State is a fantasy, however pleasant.
“The British and French were able to defeat Ottoman rule due mainly to its internal weakness and an inability to embrace modern science, technology, and industry.”
This is wrong. The only reasons the British and French defeated the Muslim State are:
- Muslims lost the understanding of how to derive laws from Islamic texts
- Muslims dealt with Western intellectual attacks by apologizing and twisting Islam to fit the Western lifestyle (just like how Muslims today make excuses for Jihad and the penal code in Islam)
- Muslims fell into the trap of nationalism, which took Britain over 100 years to finally succeed at instilling it in Muslim hearts, separating Arab from Turk from East Asian. This was cemented with those stupid flags that mean absolutely nothing to us.
tODD has given nothing more than a biased and invalid argument. He imposes a meaning of sin taken from his book, and then insists that God must abide by this definition in order to be holy and merciful. Please read my responses to him. The flaws in his arguments are really blatant.
Mr. Jillood: (just like how Muslims today make excuses for Jihad and the penal code in Islam)
How do we interpret this? Are you saying that Salafi jihad is correct?
“One does not HEAVEN through one’s deeds, one only earns God’s pleasure through one’s deeds. You can only enter heaven through God’s mercy, because no amount of deeds earn you heaven, but good intentions and good deeds earn you God’s pleasure.” – Mazim Jillood @ 167.
Gosh, I really hate to ask this sort of question again – especially of someone who, as the result of a hissy fit, refuses to talk to me anymore – but what’s the difference between trying to get to Allah Land directly by means of deeds, and trying to get there indirectly by means of Allah’s pleasure in one’s deeds? It’s a distinction without a difference.
Peter, lol, so either I’m a Salafi Jihadi or Jihad doesn’t exist?
Jihad is exactly as I explained about 4 times throughout this discussion. It is the military foreign policy of the Islamic State. It is both defensive and offensive.
I’m not a Salafi Jihadi. Salafi Jihadis are of two types:
1- Those that believe that the Islamic State must be established by waging war on the current rulers of the Muslim world, and overthrowing them through violent means (and I already explained why I disagree with this viewpoint)
2- Those that believe that we must focus on fighting the enemies of Islam (the US, Britain, etc) and free the Muslim lands from their invading forces. The problem with this viewpoint is that it ignores the fact that we neither have our own independent political authority, nor do we have any real political or military unity; this needs to come first.
Oh, and I guess I mistakenly wrote “One does not HEAVEN…” rather than “One does not enter heaven…”
Man, I’m all typos these days.
“Man, I’m all typos these days.” – Mazim Jillood @ 173.
Bad Jillood. Let me know if you catch cold. I might forgive your typos. Not that you count on it. But you’re used to that.
Mr. Jillood (@165) said, “I think we might have differing definitions of sin.” Fair enough, though I don’t think you’ve fully explained your take on it to me. Are sins the same as the “bad deeds” to which you referred? Do bad thoughts or intents count as sin? What about sins of omission, of failing to do what is good? Are those also sins, in Islam?
The Bible calls anything sin that goes against God’s will. So yes, as you note, it would be a sin to be disrespectful to one’s parents. Or to murder. Or to steal. Or to lie. I suspect that we agree on these being sin — most religions of good works do. But Christianity goes further. It is not merely our deeds that matter, but our heart, our thoughts. So if we harbor hatred or even anger in our heart towards another, that is sin. If we think lustful thoughts in our head, that is sin. If we think of another person as less than us, that is sin. If we fail to do the good we ought, that is sin. If we think we are good, that is sin (because we make God out to be a liar when he says that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”, that “there is no one righteous, not even one”, Romans 3). All of these are sin, and while they have varying degrees of impact on our fellow man, to God they are all the same. And all deserving of death, because that is the “wages of sin”, and a holy God cannot tolerate sin in his presence. No matter how “small” or “large” we humans may consider a sin, all sin is the same and merits the same eternal punishment. This is what I mean when I say that the Christian God takes sin seriously. I cannot agree that Islam takes sin seriously if it is so easy to have sin (again, assuming that sin equals “bad deed” for you) forgiven, whether by doing one good deed to wipe away tens of thousands, or by merely getting a cold.
“You think God has ‘died for your sins,’ and now it does not matter if you sin or don’t sin, because your sins have been forgiven.” Has anyone here said this? Or is this what other Muslims have told you Christianity is about? Because it’s flatly contradicted by the Bible, as in Romans 6:
So your misunderstanding is a common one, and old enough to have been addressed several millenia ago by Paul. But it is, all the same, a misunderstanding.
“You might have this fantasy idea that a Christian doesn’t sin once he accepts the crucifixion, but that contradicts reality, since every single person reading this has sinned since believing in whatever religion they follow.” In fact, I do not have that idea at all. I have to wonder where you get your ideas. Again, Paul explains it quite well in Romans 7:
Paul there identifies the very problem you also see. However, Paul furthermore sees what you do not, which is the solution to the problem. Not “try harder to be good, try harder!” as Islam teaches. No, the solution to our continual failing (even after becoming Christians) remains Jesus Christ, who paid for our sins, and lived the perfect life we cannot.
I’m sorry tODD, but some of you answers seem vague and unclear to me.
First of all, your issue of definition of sin, that is now clear. Islam states that God, with the message of Islam, had decided to no longer account people for their inner sins (thoughts, anger, etc), only their intentions WHILE performing a physical deed (including prayer, of course). So, being angry with someone is not a sin, according to Islam, unless that anger manifests itself in an action, such as yelling at that person, not speaking to them, hitting them, backbiting them, and so on. This is just a matter of revelatory abrogation, so it would fall squarely on the question of whether the message of Islam is authentic or not.
Second, and this is where I find the answer vague, I’m not sure how those texts say anything except exactly what I said before. Jesus supposedly saved you from you sins, right? Does that mean you no longer sin? No, because you do. If you say that you never, ever sin, then you are a liar. So, does this mean that your sins are no longer sins, but now are something different? If so, explain. If not, then what? The only thing left is that your sins are auto-forgiven and mean nothing, because Jesus supposedly died for them.
Could you clarify?
Mr. Jillood, my use of the term “Global Salafi Jihad” comes from the work of Marc Sageman who wrote a book on terrorist networks. He is a psychiatrist and a former senior CIA officer. A good summary of his thinking is a statement he made before the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States titled THE GLOBAL SALAFI JIHAD. He argues that there has been an evolution of Islamic strategy that culminated as follows:
The fourth strategy, and primary subject of my research is the Global Salafi Jihad, which was first proclaimed by Osama bin Laden in his 1996 fatwa and reverses the previous strategy. Now the priority is fighting the “far enemy,” the West and specifically the U.S. and Israel, before turning against the “near enemy,” which survive only because of Western support. This strategy has evolved from ending the U.S.’s “occupation” of the Holy Land to engaging it anywhere, as best articulated by Ayman al Zawahiri . The goal is to establish a Muslim state, reinstate the fallen Caliphate and regain its lost glory. As the United States would never allow this to happen, the global jihad must defeat this country. It needs to “inflict the maximum casualties against the opponent, for this is the language understood by the West” and “concentrate on the method of martyrdom operations” as the most efficient in terms of damages and least costly to the jihad. These victories will inspire and mobilize the Muslim masses to achieve its goal. The Global Salafi Jihad includes all the terrorist organizations implementing this strategy. Al Qaida is not the only one as the recent bombings in Bali and Morocco demonstrate.
How would you distinguish your view of an Islamic State from that of the Global Salafi Jihad as described by Sageman?
In continued response to Mr. Jillood (@165) … He said, “A God is not defined by how YOU determine what sin should be. We do not define God, God tells us what is and what isn’t. The question is whether or not your version of what sin is, and your version of how God perceives sin is accurate, and this goes back to the validity of the Bible.” We actually agree on this. But then, of course, Mr. Jillood relies on his utterly unconvincing “proofs” based on subjective judgment, which he considers “undeniable” and “irrefutable”. In the words of a famous philosopher, I do not think those words mean what he thinks they mean.
And yes, again, parents are “full of mercy for their child”, but we are talking about sinful parents. Unlike God, all parents (including me) are not holy. They tolerate all kinds of sin (usually their own). God is merciful, but he does not tolerate sin. It must be punished, it must be paid for. But not in Islam. In Islam, all you need to do is have a cold, to suffer enough. Or you can sweep the street. It’s merely an equation to be balanced. Enough good deeds outweigh the tens of thousands of bad deeds. Islam makes clear that you don’t have to be perfect, just … not too bad.
In further response to Mr. Jillood’s comment (@165). He said, “If a child spends his entire life hating, insulting and attacking their parents, then their parents will die displeased with them, but if that child comes and begs for forgiveness because they realize how bad they have been, the parents are full of mercy.” No doubt legalistic parents would “die displeased” with a hateful child. And there is little question that Islam promotes such legalism. But loving parents — though still sinful themselves and hating sin — could, in fact, love their child in spite of his hate for them. Rather than being “displeased” with their child, they could continually long for their child to see his error, to come back to them. God describes himself in these terms. Of course, he isn’t sinful like we human parents are. But he does long for us — for you, Mazin — to stop rejecting him, to stop hating him. He wants to tell you you’re forgiven (in fact, he has told you this), no matter how badly you’ve screwed up. No matter how many sins you’ve committed. But you reject this forgiveness, preferring to hear how good you are because of your few (and, frankly, paltry) good deeds.
Allah does not “forgive sins”. I will repeat your words: “one only earns God’s pleasure through one’s deeds.” Earns. Allah does not forgive, he merely recognizes a debt repaid (no matter how poorly it has been repaid). Allah keeps records, albeit poorly. The Christian God forgives, not because of what you’ve done, but in spite of it, and keeps no record of your past sins.
As for your final paragraph (@165), Jesus, being God, did tell people to worship Him. And the Bible approvingly records of many who did worship Jesus: the Magi (“On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him”, Matthew 2), the disciples (“those who were in the boat worshiped him, saying, ‘Truly you are the Son of God.’”, Matthew 14), the women who met him after his resurrection (“They came to him, clasped his feet and worshiped him.”, Matthew 28), and the blind man that Jesus had healed (“Then the man said, ‘Lord, I believe,’ and he worshiped him”, John 9). Never once did Jesus chastise these people, for it was right for them to worship him. You’ll notice a lack of quotes from Paul there, by the way.
As for Jesus being the Son of God, you are again poorly informed when it comes to what God says in the Bible. In it, many are recorded approvingly as observing that Jesus is the Son of God. The disciples in the boat (see above) knew it. The writer Mark knew it, when he started his gospel thus: “The beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” Even the demons knew it, because when they saw Jesus, “they fell down before him and cried out, ‘You are the Son of God.’” (Mark 3). And, of course, when the high priest said to Jesus, “I charge you under oath by the living God: Tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God,” (Matthew 26), what was Jesus’ reply? “Yes, it is as you say.” And what did God the Father himself say about Jesus, at the beginning and near the completion of his ministry? “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” (Matthew 3 and Matthew 17).
Sorry, but once again, not a word from Paul to be found in those quotes. Not that Paul cannot be trusted. He was a prophet, a man through whom God spoke. Are you going to tell me we cannot believe the prophets now?
My apologies, Mr. Jillood, for the awkwardness of this discussion, interleaved as it is, with one sentence spawning a dozen sentences in reply, and so on. For what it’s worth, I have little interest in the points Peter Leavitt is trying to make, so I’m ignoring all that. Even so, it is tricky to keep track of things with linear comments. Anyhow, I’m still only up to your comment @167.
You said, “One does not enter HEAVEN through one’s deeds, one only earns God’s pleasure through one’s deeds.” Okay, well this is something new to me! Islam teaches that one can be forgiven — of all one’s sins, as I understand it — and still not enter heaven? What does Islam teach happens to a completely forgiven man who does not enter heaven? Does he go to hell? Or some place in between? Can an unforgiven man enter heaven through Allah’s mercy? Or is there a difference between “earning Allah’s pleasure” and being forgiven? It is a strange dichotomy you have presented.
But it does bring up an interesting question, one which I’d asked before (all the way back at @45) and have yet to hear an answer to: What is your status with Allah? Have you done enough good deeds yet, to earn Allah’s favor? Will you enter heaven? Do you know? Can you know?
Peter, the answer to your question is in my reply in post 172.
So, what he is talking about in that quote are Salafi Jihadis that are a mix of both types.
Also, I forgot to mention that when a person gets sick, his/her sins are forgiven when they are patient with it and don’t complain about it, because they know that this is part of God’s design of how things work. In other words, they are pleased with whatever Allah choses for them.
There is a prayer in Islam that we say: “All thanks is due to Allah, the One who is thanked for even the things we dislike.”
The Prophet (peace be upon him) said: “Everything is good for a Believer. When they receive something good and they are thankful, they are rewarded, and when they are afflicted with something harmful and they are patient, they are rewarded.”
I’ll reply to the other posts in another post.
I’m getting overwhelmed by too many responses!! lol
And in all honesty, we are now drowning in entirely subjective content. It doesn’t matter to me that you think your sins are so important that they require the death of a God. I mean, seriously. I reject your interpretation of the Bible entirely, and I do not believe in your understanding of sin, because I believe in the Qur’an’s explanation of how God views sin.
Added to this, you still clearly do not understand the Islamic viewpoint of sin, and, every post, you spend most of the time jumping to conclusions, attacking as much as you can.
Is it so horrible that God views sin as just an act, and similarly repentance is an act, and a man that commits many sins, if he repents, God can forgive him? You have such an absurd, harsh, and unforgiving definition of sin.
Christians often uses odd analogies, like “if a murderer comes to a court of law, and says sorry, should he be let go,” but this is silly. First of all, we are talking about protecting society. Second, humans are bound of God’s laws, and we must punish criminals, but He is not bound by these laws, and can forgive anyone He wills. Third, a judge cannot see deep into a man’s intentions, but God can, and if a man sincerely repents, then God can forgive him.
Islam teaches us that God isn’t petty. Our actions do not harm Him or benefit Him in the slightest. He can forgive our sins, period, and He does.
You use the word illogical, and that is something no Christian should ever dare to use in an argument. Your entire religion is built on ignoring logic (the trinity, “why has thou forsaken me,” God “begetting” himself through a human woman, God killing himself and forgetting who he is, etc), and insisting on “blind faith” to get past the points that the mind rejects.
Either way, I will answer your last question in #179, and leave it at this point. I will happily discuss other points, but we are running in circles here, and I’m not interested in hearing people insult the Creator of the Universe because they believe in fabrications of a book that has been corrupted by humans.
What is my status with Allah? I am His slave, and I believe in his One-ness. He has no partners, no sons, no parents. I reject polytheism in all its forms, including worshiping his Prophet and Messenger Jesus who cannot help you or even himself if the Creator decides to kill him, which He will one day.
I do not know if I will enter heaven, nor does anyone else. You can convince yourself all you want that you are somehow saved, simply because Paul claimed to have a vision and made up all sorts of lies about Jesus that you people so thoughtlessly eat up, but when death is in the middle of your throat, you won’t be so sure.
It is God’s decision who enters heaven and who doesn’t. I simply try my best, do as much good as I can while I’m alive, be happy with all the harm that might come my way, and wait for death when God chooses to send it my way.
As much as you disagree with the Qur’an, read it one day. You might find some interesting stories in it.
Thanks for having me everyone. I really enjoyed it and learned a lot from all of you.
Mr. Jillood (@176), my apologies if I have been responsible for making things “vague” or “unclear”.
Anyhow, you said, “Islam states that God, with the message of Islam, had decided to no longer account people for their inner sins (thoughts, anger, etc) … So, being angry with someone is not a sin.” This is not surprising, of course, as it would be very hard to have a religion of good works if you had to take into account men’s sinful hearts, their lust and anger, their selfishness, and so on. And yet, it only furthers my impression that Islam does not take sin seriously. As you say quite clearly, Allah “had decided to no longer account people for their inner sins”. Were they paid for? Atoned for? No, it would seem. Just ignored. A holy God would not ignore sin. And I find it all the more intruiguing that you yourself called these dark thoughts “inner sins”. You recognize something as “sin” that Allah ignores. This is strange. I am (sadly) used to Christians ignoring that which God clearly labels “sin”. But this is something different!
Anyhow, it seems to me that Allah uses the same measuring rod we humans do, only going by the outward appearance, the actions that are seen. This would not pass muster with the Christian God, of whom the psalmist says, “You have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your presence” (Psalm 90), and “he knows the secrets of the heart” (Psalm 44). Jesus himself, in the Sermon on the Mount, noted that “your Father … sees what is done in secret” (Matthew 6), and Paul noted that “God will judge men’s secrets through Jesus Christ” (Romans 2). Is it any wonder that the psalmist said (in Psalm 130, my emphasis):
Contrast that to the Allah that does keep a record of sins, and then lets them be paid off with so little, including mere good intentions or attempts at good, and perhaps you will see that the Christian God is both more serious about sin, and more truly merciful, than is Allah.
Or do you think it’s not a problem for men to inwardly hate their brother? Or to inwardly lust after another man’s wife? Or to think of themselves more highly than others? Where do you think the outward sins come from? Jesus himself made clear the problem of unaddressed inner sins in Matthew 15: “out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander.” In choosing to “no longer account people for their inner sins”, Allah has missed the real problem, the root of sin.
I’ll reply to the rest of your comment (@176) in a bit.
Mr. Jillood, I see that you may have already stopped reading this thread before I’ve had time to craft a response to your questions (@176), but I’ll go ahead and answer them, all the same.
You asked, “Jesus supposedly saved you from you sins, right?” Yes, he did, though the “supposedly” is obviously your word, not mine.
You asked, “Does that mean you no longer sin?”, then went on to answer, correctly, “No, because you do. If you say that you never, ever sin, then you are a liar.” In fact, whether you did so knowingly or not, you just paraphrased 1 John 1:8,10: “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. … If we claim we have not sinned, we make Him [God] out to be a liar and His word has no place in our lives.” So far, so good.
“So, does this mean that your sins are no longer sins, but now are something different? If so, explain. If not, then what? The only thing left is that your sins are auto-forgiven and mean nothing, because Jesus supposedly died for them.” Well, you’re phrasing things differently than I would, but you seem to get the idea, all the same. Allow me to explain a bit more.
The question of what happened to my sins is that they are forgiven. Not merely ignored, but forgiven. And not “forgiven because” I did this or that, but paid for by Jesus’ death on the cross, so that I have no need to worry about them. God therefore blots out our sins from our record, washes us perfectly clean, and declares us holy and righteous. All as a free gift given out of His love. Again, recall the words of Psalm 130, quoted above: “If you, O LORD, kept a record of sins, O Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness.” In Isaiah 43, God called himself “I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more.”
To quote from Psalm 51 (it is difficult not to quote the whole psalm, but):
The Bible is, of course, chock full of verses on forgiveness, for that is the main thrust of God’s message to us: that we can freely have full forgiveness from Him, in spite of our sins, because of Jesus’ life and death that makes peace between God and man. As the apostle Peter said about Jesus in Acts 10: “All the prophets testify about Him that everyone who believes in Him receives forgiveness of sins through His name.”
I think one question that may be bugging you is: what happens to the sins of a Christian after he comes to believe in Jesus? But the answer there is the same: they are forgiven! I am a Christian. But I still sin. I turn to Jesus for forgiveness. In light of the mercy God has shown me, I will, of course, endeavor to think and act in thankfulness, but even here, I will fail. Which brings me back to forgiveness from Jesus. You used the phrase “auto-forgiven”, but it is perhaps more correct to realize that, as 1 John 2:2 says, Jesus “is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world” — this applies to all sins, not merely some.
Does that clarify things (assuming you’re still reading) or make them more confusing?
To sum up. Christ is perfectly clear: “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life.” (John 5:24.) Whereas the god presented to us by Mazin Jillood is capricious and offers us no comfort whatsoever: “It is God’s decision who enters heaven and who doesn’t. I simply try my best, do as much good as I can while I’m alive, be happy with all the harm that might come my way, and wait for death when God chooses to send it my way.” (Jillood @ 181.)
Let me ask you a question then, using the example I hear from Christians so much:
If a man murders your sister (may God protect your sister if you have a sister) and is taken to court for this crime, is it just that the only way the court deems this man’s crime to be expiated is by demanding that you now kill your firstborn?
Or another example: If one of your children disobeys you, would it be just that the only way you can forgive this child is by killing yourself?
Do you see the point?
You speak so highly about this supposedly magnificent act of mercy, but it simply is absurd and makes absolutely no sense. It doesn’t expiate anything. People committed the transgressions against God. Why on earth would God deem it just and fair to kill himself, or – as you believe – his son, for your crimes?
It doesn’t matter how much He loves us. This is not justice by any standard at all. Why would God bear the sins of mankind? The transgressions were perpetrated against Him. If anything, God might have demanded that people sacrifice their own children. That might make more sense.
How do you not see how silly your line of argument is? I mean, it’s fine if you want to believe in yet another illogical thing that the Bible has to offer, but you are arguing this as if it actually makes sense.
No, it doesn’t make sense. But what does Love have to do with Reason?
Many people are basing their arguments on justice and “a just God,” and attacking Islam as describing an “unjust God.” So, reason has everything to do with it.
It would be nothing less than ridiculous for someone to present to a court that they are offering to kill themselves in order to free a criminal from prison, as an act of love and a service of justice.
Again, if Christianity sweeps this one under the carpet, just like the trinity and the complaint on the cross, then fine, the world is used to it. But for you (tODD) to attack Islam based on this ridiculous definition of justice is baffling.
“It would be nothing less than ridiculous for someone to present to a court that they are offering to kill themselves in order to free a criminal from prison, as an act of love and a service of justice.” – Mazin Jillood @ 187.
“Nothing less than ridiculous” doesn’t begin to describe it. It would be ridiculous beyond all reasonable belief.
This is how much Jesus Christ loves you, Mazin Jillood. He would take your place, no matter how terrible your crime, no matter how horrible your execution – no matter how right it is that you should suffer death and agony yourself. “Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men …” (1st Corinthians 1:25.) “We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love …” (1st John 4:16.)
Man! I really love this blog, because it forces me to study.
Mr. Jillood:
You have said many times that you don’t see how God’s sacrifice of Himself could fulfill His justice. In ancient times, it was not unusual for one in prison to be freed by the payment of a monetary penalty or ransom, or by another to be held hostage in his place. Even today there are offenses generate a penalty that can be satisfied by a fine or imprisonment. And if you can’t pay the fine, you have to do the commitment. But someone else can pay the fine for you. It’s only an analogy (and therefore by definition imperfect), but our sins require a fine no human could ever pay and the commitment is eternal. So God has paid it for us.
As for the concept of God dying for our sins making no sense, even in the Muslim world, the idea of sacrificing yourself for someone you love must exist. Jesus talked about it.
“Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” John 15:13 and
“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” John 10:11
@181 You described yourself as the “slave” of Allah, and you said that our actions cannot harm him or benefit him in the least. I guess I perceive another difference in the way Christians and Muslims perceive God (beyond the ones you and tODD have been discussing). You seem to perceive God as a lot more distant from you than we do. He is to you this far away being that you hope to impress, but you know you might not. And He doesn’t really care about you very much. I mean, I know you call Allah compassionate, etc., but you don’t believe that he cares about you enough to actually act on that alleged compassion.
I think your concept of God is too limited. We believe that God’s capacity to love (like His capacity to do anything else) far surpasses our own. When God says He loves us, we believe that He is willing to, and in fact did, do truly extraordinary things out of His love for us, and you as well.
We believe that God (as exalted and above our station as He is), who loves us (and you) would literally lay down His life for us. People sometimes say that someone would “take a bullet” for someone else. Well, God took a crusifixtion for all of us.
As for being able to hurt or benefit God. Our sins hurt oursleves. And, as is true of our human parents, when we hurt ourselves, our Father is hurt as well. And if we grow and benefit, our loving Father is pleased, and thus benefits.
You are right when you say that God does not owe us anything. He does not HAVE to do all this for us. He chooses to do it because He really IS compassionate. By allowing Himself to love us, unworthy of it though we are, He allows himself to be be affected by what we do.
Again, it is not “all about us” because we made it so. Sheep are slow, stupid, vulnerable creatures who wander in the wrong direction. And compared to God, so are we (including you). But, through God’s capacity for love, He lays down His life for us even though we are so far beneath Him and do not deserve it (also including you).
kerner, it really is all about you in the Bible. Your last post was pretty much: God has to be my buddy, and sacrifice everything for me, and love me so much that is willing to symbolically die for me, or I refuse to accept that “version” of Him.
You “don’t like” how Islam describes God as your GOD, not your buddy that chasing after your friendship. You are demanding that God be subservient to you. I say this because, in your last post, you aren’t rejecting what I’m describing God as because you question the validity of my Book, you are rejecting it because you want God to be at your level.
And you clearly have no idea how close a relationship Muslims have with the Creator. After coming to Islam, I quickly realized that the relationship we have with Him is unlike anything the other religions have. We spend our nights in prayer, called Tahajjud, and the closeness we have to our Creator is almost overwhelming sometimes. We wake up at sunrise (sunrise just ended a few minutes ago), and pray (the structured, obligatory prayer: Salat) to Him, and then we pray Salat 4 more times during that day, plus all the other tens of optional Salat that accompany the 5 main Salat per day. We spend every moment of our day acting based on His commands: The prayer we say when we wake up, eat, leave the house, enter the workplace, while we conduct business, while we socialize, when we enter our car, when entering and exiting the bathroom, everything has its own prayer. And every action also has its own set of laws, so every moment of our day is spent in worship, and we are constantly attached to our Creator and entirely conscious of Him. The joy and tranquility we receive from this cannot be described. The Qur’an states “And I (Allah) did not create mankind and jinn except to worship Me,” and the Islamic lifestyle makes complete sense of this, because literally every moment alive can be spent in an act of worship as a Muslim.
The relationship we have with our Creator remains that of a slave creation to its Creator, which makes it so much more incredible, because the Creator is so immensely powerful and runs the entire universe, but still has the mercy to pay attention to us little, tiny, insignificant humans, and offer us His love and help throughout our day.
Added to this, our prayers (like when we ask Him for something) are, by default, answered. This is something my wife noted after converting to Islam that she noticed her prayers were directly answered now. As a Muslim, you make a prayer, and it is nearly always answered, literally and directly, sometimes immediately, unless you are not putting in enough effort towards what you are asking for (such as not looking for work while praying for a job). But I have literally seen the world bend around me at times after I asked Allah for something. I’ve seen people people who wanted to hurt me literally flipped (twice) right onto their faces. I’ve seen police officers go blank-eyed, almost mid-sentence, and walk back to their cars and just drive off after prayed to Allah when I realized that I didn’t have my vehicle insurance card with me (big penalty here in Canada). I’ve seen the clouds suddenly change and take almost impossible shapes in front of me when I was marveling at the creation of Allah.
There are many more things I would like to explain about the closeness Muslims experience to the Creator, but this post has gotten too long already.
You simply have no idea what sort of lifestyle we lead. We don’t struggle with belief as Muslims; it is as natural as breathing. We are guided by the laws of Islam, so we aren’t left guessing what is “the right thing to do.” And we have an immensely fulfilling tranquility and recognition of the greatness of Allah that dwarfs all challenges and fears that this world can throw at us. This is why Muslims are so fearless of death, because we know that it is just another part of existence controlled by Allah, and that makes it a good thing.
You people judge Islam from the outside the same atheists judge Christianity from the outside. It looks restrictive and harsh, but it is far better than what they think they have.
You know nothing about Islam and what it has to offer until you read the Qur’an for yourself. There is only so much I can type here. The Qur’an is the final message of your Creator that has come to affirm some things sent in previous messages and clarify other things that have been changed by human hands, ….whether you recognize it yet or not.
I know more about Islam than you think I do, saif eddin. I know all your arguments are a fraud
You accuse Christians of creating a God as we want Him to be, but it is you who have done so. You are not even the first people to create an image of God who is strong, remote and who will make his worshipers powerful if they try hard enough to follow the rules. All the pagans and idolaters see their gods that way. Muslims are not unique or special in that. Other cultures are obsessed with rules for everything. The Japanese have a ceremony for everything, even drinking tea. They also claim that their emperor is a direct descendant from god. But I’m not about to convert to Shintoism because it will give my life structure.
More to the point, yours are not the first people to corrupt the messages of God’s prophets to edit out the central theme of sacrifice and redemption. The Jews did the same thing. In Jesus day the Pharisees had a rule for everything. They had taken God’s laws and made the laws their idols. Following every little rule was their religion; all form, no substance.
A little background: If you read the Mosaic law carefully, you will see that God gave the Jews a ceremonial law (how they should worship in their time, showing the Sacrifice that would come), the moral law (showing moral right and wrong), and the civil law (governmental procedures, health codes, etc.). In Jesus day, the Jews no longer lived under a theocratic system, but (as you want the Caliphate) the Pharisees wanted their theocracy back. They rebuked Jesus for not following the dietary codes, but he said to them:
“What goes into a man’s mouth does not make him unclean, but what comes out of a man’s mouth, that is what makes him unclean”. Matthew 15:11
And he further explained:
“Don’t you see that whatever goes into the mouth enters the stomach and then out of the body? But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and these make a man ‘unclean’. For out of the mouth come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what make a man unclean; but eating with unwashed hands does not make him unclean.”
Matthew 15:17-20
The Jews had become ridiculous. They were worshiping the city health code instead of looking into their hearts for the sin that was there. In their pride they wanted what every man, every culture, wants. (what YOU want); they wanted a set of rules they could follow so they could delude themselves into believing that they had pleased God with their supposed obediance, and they wanted a military leader who would sweep away the foreign occupation and establish them and their country in worldly places of honor among the nations.
But Jesus told them their vain attempts to follow rules were worthless and that the kingdom of God is not of this world. They couldn’t stand it. And (in their personal motives, apart from God’s sovereign plan) they killed him for it. But the truth was out and Christianity rose.
But ever since that old human desire for rules people can pretend to follow and worldly prominence has been there, and people still try to re-legitimatize it. Either by sneaking it into Christianity, or by trying to supercede Christianity, as Islam does. Look at you. Trying to be clean before God by what you eat or don’t eat. Why don’t you just worship the Canadian health code? It would be the same thing.
Again Islam is just like every other false religion: Try to please God by following rules; ask him to exalt you in this world. Only Christianity is different. Only Christianity recognises the true God, coming to us so that we can actually come to Him. Not just pretend that we can satisfy Him by trying hard.
Jillood is here, primarily, to prove Christianity false and Islam true. He’s not to here to explain Islam to Christians, much less to discuss Jesus Christ and Christianity respectfully – though he’s careful to insert claims into his comments that he is. In short: a Muslim troll.
Alright, well, there clearly is no point in discussing any further with you. You are now making nonsensical arguments that apply just as much to Christianity as the “false” religions you are attacking, and the more we discuss, the more baseless your arguments are becoming.
Whether someone believed in a “remote God” before Islam or not, or if you somehow draw similarities between this and idolatry (which is so ironic, since you people are essentially polythesists in denial), has nothing to do with the validity of the idea.
My point from the start is this: Your (and my) definition of God/sin/etc is taken from our Books. Whichever of the two Books is the valid and unchanged message of God is what defines God for humanity. God tells us who He is; we don’t insist on believing in a fabricated story just because it matches what we “want” God to be. You want God to be merciful, to kill himself for you, and to love you even when you don’t love him. I don’t want God to be anything particular, because I’m a worthless ant that was created by Him, and He tells me what He is and what I am. I follow His message based on proof that the message is from Him, because He gave me a mind, I will be held accountable for using it to find truth, not to find what I want.
Which brings me to the core, and only valid discussion point: The validity of The Qur’an vs The Bible. The discussion point is not, and cannot be “which book presents a prettier God” or “…a more merciful God” or anything subjective like that, because then we are pre-defining God and insisting that He must abide by our definition, which is idiotic at best.
The only point we must discuss is authenticity of sources. If you can validate both your book’s claim as a message and your book’s claim of authenticity, despite it’s existence in human hands for nearly 2000 years, then it is valid. If you cannot, then it needs to be look into.
This is where the valley widens between the Bible and the Qur’an. The Qur’an’s authenticity is unquestionable. All arguments against its authenticity are easily refuted by 2 simple points: One, there are no “versions” of the Qur’an today, just a single, unified text read by all 1.6 billion Muslims worldwide. And two, the challenge of producing one chapter like the Qur’an remains standing, and undefeated. Make all the claims you want that it can be done, etc, but none have been able to and none will ever be able to, because it is beyond the writing capabilities of a human being: it was written directly by God Himself.
An interesting side note here: When you read the Bible, you are reading the translation of an interpretation of an interpretation of what Jesus said and did. When we read the Qur’an, we are reading the direct wording of the Creator of the Universe, and therefore we have a very close and intimate view of His “personality,” through His word choices. It is really an amazing thing to have available to us humans.
You got so excited about your definition of “mercy,” “justice” (as ridiculous a definition it is), “forgiving sin,” and your definition of God, despite the fact that ALL of these things are taken from a book that was mostly written by a guy that never lived with Jesus, but somehow you “have faith” that he wasn’t lying about his visions. Seriously. How can you just ignore these things?
Anyways, I really think I’ve made almost everything as clear as I can. Thanks again for giving me the opportunity to explain the view of Islam on these things.
See what I mean? There’s a big difference between explaining the view of Islam and militantly asserting the view of Islam.
Mr. Jillood:
Maybe we can each get off our high horses for just a second. When I suggest that you have created an image of what God is like, it is the same argument you have been making to us. You have said in dozens of ways that we Christians WANT God to be our buddy, to kill himself for us, etc. As though we decided ahead of time that this is what God should be like and invented our belief to suit our preconceived decision.
I don’t believe that’s true, and what I have been trying to do in response is show you that you do, in fact, want God to be the way your Book says He is. So much of your writing here has demonstrated an approval of your concept of God over ours. You say so much of how good your religion subjectively makes you feel. I don’t put much value in the subjective way a religion makes its adherants feel, but it is not completely without value. You would expect a true religion to provide some worldly comfort to believers. The trouble is that false religions can provide some apparent comfort as well.
The other argument I am making is that I believe that Christianity is counter-intuitive. It is not something you would expect people to make up. As you have pointed out. For the creator of the Universe to take the time and effort to be like us ants and die to save us is a pretty extraordinary, and unexpected act. If it were not in my Book, I would never have imagined it. Nor am I as in love with the solution my Book proposes as you think. My prideful nature rebels at the idea that all my efforts to get God to love me are futile. I would not have imagined a situation in which God loves me and you the same, regardless of how well either of us keeps the law. I would, like you, have imagined God to be the remote, all powerful being you think He is. I would fear such a Creator, and I would want desperately for there to be a way, some series of tasks I could perform, that might attract enough of His favor for him not to angrily or gratuitously destroy me.
But this is one reason that I do not find Islam convincing. If I were to imagine a religion, Islam is exactly the sort of thing I would make up. In fact, it is exactly the sort of thing people all over the world have, in fact, made up. Most religions that believe in a personal god, or gods, do exactly what Islam does: i.e. regards the creator as remote and all powerful, comes up with rules or tasks for believers to follow to get on god’s good side, and usually seeks for god to help the believers prosper on earth. Because Islam is so similar to religions that are clearly made up, and Christianity is different ( and so unlikely to be imagined), I believe that Christianity is more likely to be true and Islam is more likely to be just one more made up religion.
You are right when you say that I have not recently or completely addressed the issue of the comparitive validity of our Books. But I’ll have to come back to that.
Very good point, kerner. If we’re going to decide which religion is man-made, the likeliest candidate is the one that [1.] stresses the importance of human reason (everything must fit within its limits) and [2.] stresses the sincerity and good works of men (they in some way gain eternal life for men). This is the religion of Jillood, according to the arguments he’s made here.
Once again, your arguments are entirely based on how you feel about the story, or the description of God, or the description of sin, etc.
I never once brought up as “evidence” that Islam is the truth because God is merciful in the Qur’an, or that God is just in the Qur’an, or anything like that. You did. I only addressed your claims, and tried to show you that even those claims are not correct.
Your entire argument up until now has been entirely based on how you FEEL about what your book describes, rather than asking if your book is even valid in the first place.
And yeah, wow, it’s so hard for someone to come up with a story a God coming down as a human and sacrificing himself for mankind’s sins, so now mankind doesn’t have to worry about their sins and just have to become polytheists to save themselves.
But you know what is actually hard? Putting a book together that doesn’t include physical impossibilities and human bias. In the Bible, God is and isn’t Jesus, God is and isn’t the Holy Spirit and Jesus is and isn’t the Holy Spirit. These verses in the Bible could not be reconciled by your scholars without editing the Bible again to remove these errors in the story’s consistency, so your scholars just invented the “Trinity,” which still makes zero sense, and all Christians openly admit that it makes zero sense. Although in your Book Jesus is also the “Father,” he still forgot who he was on the cross and complained to himself as if he was being oppressed by himself. In the Bible, God created light before creating the stars that produce light. And the amount of time the Bible describes between Adam’s creation and our day today is about 6000 years, which is obviously wrong.
The Qur’an contains none of these human fictitious and inaccurate edits. The Qur’an clearly says that the universe existed a long time before humans were created (Jinn existed long before us). It clearly states that all planets float in orbits. It accurately describes what an exploding star (super nova) looks like. It clearly describes microscopic embryonic development accurately from start to finish. It describes tectonic plates, and how mountains hold them in place. It describes the ocean/sea floor exactly.
Of course, this is not proof that the Qur’an is from the Creator. The fact that it is 100% accurate is simply additional evidence for people to see. The proof is in the linguistic miracle. That is almost the entire basis of belief in the Qur’an.
Your book was written by fallible humans, one of which never lived with Jesus and simply claims to have dreamed everything. Your scholars aren’t even sure who wrote the Gospels of Matthew and Luke (look up the Two-Source Hypothesis, something your own scholars raised). You attribute “divine guidance” to your book’s sources simply because you are told so by your parents/pastors/priests/TV, not because you have any reason whatsoever to believe so. If you are going to quote “inside feeling,” I have that same feeling about Islam, so how do you know which feeling is the right one? Psycho murderers have a feeling they should go around killing people. Are they divinely guided too?
Jokes aside, if you want to discuss the validity of your Book as a text that may or may not have been written/corrupted by humans, then I’m happy to discuss it (and the Qur’an is obviously open to the same scrutiny). But if we are going to keep discussing subjective, emotional, and irrelevant points, I’m just going to read and not bother you guys with my now repetitive posts.
Thanks again.
See? Islam must be the true because it makes sense to Jillood, and Christianity doesn’t. Jillood’s mind is the standard by which all things must be measured.
You had Arabic. Then you had the Koran. Then you had the Koran influencing Arabic to the point where it was considered the epitome. Then the fact that it was made the epitome becomes proof of its divinity. In other words, a man-made process.
Convince yourself of whatever fictional series of events that makes you feel happy.
Just remember that the Qur’an was revealed to the Arab polytheists, who were the greatest Arab linguists in all of history, even their societal hierarchy was based on linguistic mastery, and even they failed to come with something like it, despite the fact that they persecuted and killed the Muslims, and tried everything they had at their disposal to destroy Islam.
An interesting thing Islam explains is that God sends messengers with miracles that the people of his time are masters/specialists in, so the experts themselves can see that what is being done is a miracle and not just “a talented individual,” proving that he is a messenger and not a fake.
Magic was prominent during Moses’ (peace be upon him) time, and he came with a staff that actually turned into a snake that wasn’t magic. Medicine was prominent during Jesus’ (peace be upon him) time, and he came with life/death/healing miracles that weren’t just medicine. And linguistics was prominent during Muhammed’s (peace be upon him) time, and he came with a linguistic miracle that wasn’t just poetry.
Tom, your genius deduction that must be based on years of historical research still doesn’t address the fact that the Qur’anic challenge to write something like it still remains. We humans have had 1.5 millenia to study and master Qur’anic Arabic, and we still can’t do it.
But yeah, go ahead and just scoff at this point. You have it all figured out.
Sorry people, I’m slow in replying, even as the conversation continues …
Mr. Jillood, you still haven’t answered my questions from earlier (@180): What does Islam teach happens to a completely forgiven man who does not enter heaven? Does he go to hell? Or some place in between? Can an unforgiven man enter heaven through Allah’s mercy? Or is there a difference between “earning Allah’s pleasure” and being forgiven? You have made clear that entering heaven is entirely dependent on the caprices of Allah, and not on the “forgiveness” one may have earned through one’s good deeds. To the questions above, I would add: what is the value of forgiveness in Islam? Why is it to be sought?
Anyhow, I still think it’s telling that you complained (@182), “You have such an absurd, harsh, and unforgiving definition of sin.” This is what I mean when I say that Islam — that you — doesn’t take sin seriously. Of course the Christian definition of sin is “harsh”! What else would you expect from a holy, sinless God? But Allah makes the rules for sin fairly easy, not counting men’s evil hearts against them, so that they can tell themselves they’re pretty good people. Of course, saying that Christianity has an “unforgiving definition of sin” is, well, amusing. Forgiveness is something one needs because of one’s sins. And in Christianity, this forgiveness is offered freely. There is nothing “unforgiving” at all about Christianity. But the Christian God’s definition of sin is uncompromising. There is no room in it for sinful men to fool themselves, to tell themselves they’re good, or even better than anyone else. Islam’s definition of sin is too easy. But then, this is what is expected from a religion of good works. You can’t very well tell people to be perfect, because they obviously aren’t. So as long as they try hard, or have good intents, then they are good … enough.
Indeed, such are the standards men set for themselves. Even I find myself routinely saying that I should merely try harder, and things will be okay. That though I am not perfect, I am at least better than those people, because I do this and don’t do that. Christianity holds me to a higher standard (and God achieves that standard for me, since I cannot), while Islam merely confirms my normal tendencies towards legalism.
In so many ways, Islam fits so neatly within our human brains — it almost makes you wonder if the whole religion came out of a human brain. After all, so many things that Christianity teaches are, as you note, “illogical”. The Trinity, Jesus as both God and man, etc. Of course, illogical claims are hardly indicative of truth, but it does make you wonder why you expect the God who created both you and the whole universe would be so easily comprehended by your mind. Does a loaf of bread fully understand its baker? Should we humans expect God to fit in the tiny boxes in our head? If you’re a Muslim, you do. But the Christian God says this to those who question Him (Job 38):
Anyhow, it’s clear you have an issue with Paul (many people who want to reject Christianity do), though it’s equally clear you don’t know much about Paul or what he wrote. I’ve already replied once (@179) to something you blamed Paul for, showing that the Christian doctrines you decried were easily found outside the books he wrote. It appears that Paul is merely a scapegoat you and Islam use to ignore the parts of Christianity you don’t agree with, all the while trying to glom on to Jesus, as so many false religions do. They want Christ without Christianity. And, of course, they want to teach a religion of good works. They all do.
As for the Qur’an, I am highly unlikely to read it, because I don’t know Arabic. Quite the barrier Allah has put between me and his words. Oh well.
tODD, I’m in a rush, but to answer your question quickly: The whole point of God judging people is either forgiving them or not, so if God has left even a single sin unforgiven, that person enters the Hellfire. That is why repentance and exceeding in good deeds is so important.
Islam also describes the Punishment of the Grave, where people may be punished for their sins before the Day of Judgment, saving them from the greater punishment of the Hellfire.
Such a fruitless discussion. A few years ago I had the pleasure of visiting the former Cordoba mosque, built after conquering Christian Spain, on the site of a Visigothic Christian church. Today it has been converted with marvelous justice to a Christian church. Among the great victories of Christendom over the upstart religion of Islam was that of the Spanish reconquista.
Incredibly, a radical Muslim, Faisal Abdul Rauf, CEO of Cordoba Initiative, is proposing to build a thirteen story mosque near Ground Zero where the ashes of some three-thousand people including some Muslims are interred.
This fellow Rauf wrote a book published in America as What’s Right with Islam Is What’s Right with America and abroad as A Call to Prayer from the World Trade Center Rubble: Islamic Dawa in the Heart of America Post-9/11. Dawa, meaning Islamic proselytizing for Sharia law.
I should suggest it is time to take the gloves off with these Muslim fanatics. Allah requires submission, something that his followers including Mr. Jillood wish to foist on the West. The West, whatever its excesses, stands for human dignity and freedom, Islam for abject submission. Time to stand up for Christendom.
“Tom, your genius deduction [@ 201] that must be based on years of historical research …” – Jillood @ 202.
It’s a deduction based on what you’ve said here. Sounds like I hit a nerve.
Mr. Jillood (@195) called Christians “polytheists in denial”, a popular trope with him and Muslims in general. This can only be claimed, however, by a person who doesn’t know what the word “trinity” means. We Christians affirm that “The LORD our God, the LORD is one”, as in Deuteronomy 6. Muslims, who insist that anything they worship fit inside the box in their head, complain that they don’t understand how this can be, reject it (as if one’s comprehension were the measure of truth), and slander Christians as polytheists.
But you are right, in a way, that it comes down to which book we trust in. Unfortunately, your so-called “proofs” in this regard remain lacking. “The Qur’an’s authenticity is unquestionable,” you claim, leading me, once again, to observe that that word doesn’t mean what you think it means. Consider yourself. You openly question the authenticity of the very documents Islam says came from God: the Gospel, for example. You say it became “corrupted”. And yet, you maintain that the Qur’an, which also came from God, is not corrupted. Some things from God get corrupted, others don’t, I suppose. More to the point, though, what you really mean is that the Qur’an’s authenticity will not be questioned … by Muslims. On that we can agree.
We have already discussed the lack of “‘versions’ of the Qur’an today”, though why you think that matters eludes me. How many copies of Quotations from Chairman Mao, all the same, have existed?
So we come back, once again, to your amazement with the Qur’an’s sentence structure. Which, though you may wish it to be some kind of objective proof, is nothing more than a subjective judgment, to be found only among Muslims, which is rather circular, of course. Here’s a question for you, Mr. Jillood: if you ever did see “one chapter like the Qur’an”, whatever that means, would you admit it? No, because you don’t believe that such a thing would ever exist. It’s purely circular. You might as well claim that the Qur’an is true because there is no prettier name than Wilhelmina. “But,” I would reply, “I think Alice is a prettier name.” “You are wrong,” you would reply, “because there is no name prettier than Wilhelmina. This is a challenge! Try it! Give me a name that is as pretty as Wilhelmina, and you will prove me wrong!” … Anyhow, you can see how that argument would go. If you like the name Wilhelmina, go for it, but don’t pretend you’ve got some iron-clad non-circular argument for its superiority.
And you’re back on the Paul thing again, I see, so I really must urge you, if you’re going to make claims about him, you really should at least give a go at reading what he wrote. Which you clearly haven’t. Christian notions of mercy, justice, and sin, are to be found throughout the whole Bible, not just Paul’s writings in the New Testament — including, I might add, abundantly in the Psalms, which the Qur’an says were given by Allah to David, but I guess they got corrupted like so many things Allah gave us. And you should find out what the early Christians thought of Paul, which you can read about in the Acts of the Apostles, written by Luke. They listened to him, they welcomed him, they had nothing to add or change to what he said. But then, you don’t really believe what is found in the Gospels, either, so it’s no surprise you reject Paul. But, really, it’s not about Paul, is it?
“While Christianity can claim more than 5,300 known Greek manuscripts of the New Testament, 10,000 Latin Vulgates and at least 9,300 other early versions, adding up to over 24,000 New Testament manuscripts still in existence (McDowell 1990:43-55), most of which were written between 25-400 years after the death of Christ (or between the 1st and 5th centuries) (McDowell 1972:39-49), Islam can not provide a single manuscript until well into the eighth century (Lings & Safadi 1976:17; Schimmel 1984:4-6). If the Christians could retain so many thousands of ancient manuscripts, all of which were written long before the seventh century, at a time when paper had not yet been intoduced, forcing the dependency on papyrus which disintegtrated, then one wonders why the Muslims are not able to forward a single manuscript from this much later period, when it was supposedly revealed? This indeed presents a problem for the argument that the earliest Qur’ans all simply disintegrated with age, or were destroyed because they were worn.”
More fun facts here.
@199: When you have a moment, Mr. Jillood, would you provide the citations where the Qur’an describes the ocean floor exactly and embrionic development exactly and all the other things you say it does (age of the universe, tectonic plates etc.)? I’d like to read them.
The dialog continues …
Mr. Jillood said (@199), “And yeah, wow, it’s so hard for someone to come up with a story a God coming down as a human and sacrificing himself for mankind’s sins, so now mankind doesn’t have to worry about their sins and just have to become polytheists to save themselves.” I’m unaware of anyone else having come up with this story before the Bible. I mean, you’re the one arguing that the Qur’an must be true because of its unique qualities. So what does it mean that the Bible is the only religious book that tells us that our sins are forgiven and we go to heaven not because of what we did, but rather in spite of what we’ve done, and because of what God did for us? Or, to use your words, “And yeah, wow, it’s so hard for someone to come up with a story in which God tells us we have to be good, but not, you know, inwardly good, just with a few outward actions so we can merit his favor and think we’re better than the other people.”
You continued, Mr. Jillood, “But you know what is actually hard? Putting a book together that doesn’t include physical impossibilities and human bias.” And then proceeded to use your human bias to tell us what, exactly, should be impossible for God, such as existing as the Trinity.
And then you brought up a point that is clearly important for you, so often have you brought it up: Jesus’s words from the cross of “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (as found in Matthew 27). First of all, you appear ignorant of the fact that Jesus is quoting Psalm 22, which is a prophetic psalm about the Messiah that includes many elements that were fulfilled with Jesus’ dying on the cross. In addition to the plain meaning of Jesus’ words, he appears to be pointing his hearers — on that day, and those reading Scripture — to the rest of that Psalm and what it says about him. But even if you ignore all that, you miss what is happening as Jesus says these words. As 1 John 2 notes, Jesus “is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.” These sins were laid on Jesus on the cross. As 2 Corinthians 5 says, “God made Him [Jesus] who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him [again, Jesus] we might become the righteousness of God.” But, as I have discussed earlier, the Christian God is holy. Unlike Allah, he cannot tolerate sin. So while, as Jesus said, “I and the Father are one” (John 10), yet on the cross, the Father turned his back on Jesus as he took on the sins of the world. This was, of course, why he came — to bear the sins of the world (including yours, Mazin). As Jesus said elsewhere in John 10, “The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life—only to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again.”
I don’t expect you to understand these things. They are, after all, deep mysteries that peer into the nature of God himself. And you are just a man.
And though I should end there, yet I will note how ridiculous it is for you to say that “Your scholars aren’t even sure who wrote the Gospels of Matthew and Luke.” You have pleaded, time and again, for us not to confuse Sunni and Shia Islam. You discount large swaths of professing Muslims as not getting it, whose opinions don’t matter (among them, every Muslim leader alive right now). Please do us the slightest courtesy of not being a hypocrite in this matter, and understand that we here no more pay heed to the “Two-Source Hypothesis” than you do.
kerner, go here, and click on section C.3. “Scientific Peculiarities in the Qur’an” for a look at the development of the fetus as portrayed in the Koran.
By the way, a missionary friend, who has spent years among Muslims overseas, cautioned me tonight not to take Jillood’s presentation of Islam as authoritative. Not only are there different branches of Islam, but different factions within those branches, and a multitude of personal views within those factions – a situation that ought to sound familiar enough to any Christian! The difference is, Jillood makes himself out to be a reliable presenter of a monolithic religion (which Islam isn’t) whereas the Christians here are careful to make their individual positions clear, e.g., “I am speaking as a Lutheran Christian” or “This is only a personal speculation.”
Alright, this will be my final post here. While I have enjoyed discussing different aspects of Islam and Christianity here, it seems your hearts and becoming more sealed, understanding less of what I’m saying, and you are jumping to incorrect conclusions based on misunderstanding what I am explaining. I’m forced to write longer and longer posts just to catch up, and it is becoming futile.
tODD, did you know that some Hindus claim to believe in “one God,” but hundreds of thousands of “his attributes”? They are still polytheists.
You believe in the trinity, where God is not one, but three. Not three characteristics, but three separate beings. Jesus speaks of “the Father” not as himself, but as a separate entity. He even says that he (Jesus) doesn’t perform miracles, “the Father” does. You believe in 3 Gods.
So, if the Hindus say “God is ONE, but also God is 300,000! Don’t tell God what he can and cannot do,” does that make them monotheists?
As for questioning the Gospel (and by the way, we believe in the original Bible sent to Jesus, not the Bible fabricated by Paul), and your question about “some of God’s books are corrupted and some are not,” I would have thought you understood this point already. Each message prior to the Qur’an was never meant to be the final message of the Creator, and therefore God chose to leave them “editable” as a further test of whether people will corrupt them or not. The final message necessarily requires that it be unchangeable, since thousands of years will pass without any Prophets to let us know what is reliable and what isn’t, so the Qur’an resolves that by being unchangeable and 100% reliable.
The point I was making about the single version of the Qur’an is that we are free from the doubt Christianity suffers from. There are literally tens of billions of Qur’ans on this planet, and they are all identical. Most of you Christians have never even read the original language of the Bible, all you have is a translation of an interpretation. How reliable is that?
As for the Qur’an challenge, you gave an example that makes me question your intelligence. Are your examples a joke? Did I not explain multiple times that we are not talking about subjective “beauty,” but rather objective formatting? No one said the Qur’an said “bring something nicer than this book” because that would be stupid. The Qur’an claims that it introduced into linguistics a new FORMAT of writing words that has never existed amongst humanity before. It claims that this FORMAT is easily memorized, easily understood, and impossible to duplicate.
So, once again, I repeat: We are not talking about a WORD. We are talking about SENTENCE STRUCTURE. A sentence, it seems you have forgotten, contains more than one word.
Let me elaborate further:
Mary had a little lamb
Its fleece was white as snow
and everywhere that Mary went
the lamb was sure to go.
That is called a poem, which is in verse format. It is different from prose, and different from regular speech. See? Format.
The Qur’an claims to bring a new format into linguistics, but it also claims that the purpose of this introduction is two things: One, to prove that this book is not written by man. Two, to prove to all future generations that are to follow this Book that the Book cannot be tampered with, and is 100% reliable.
So, the Qur’an makes a claim, a claim which you spend too much time finding excuses to ignore, and not enough reasons to simply study. Sure, you can’t speak Arabic, but you can still study other people’s research into this claim. You can also talk to Arabic scholars. What harm can come from this, especially if you can come back here and throw your final discovery in my face. Wouldn’t that be great? Maybe Tom will do this, since he has spent this entire time doing anything he can for attention.
And Tom, as for your last comment: Your description is an exaggeration, which is not unexpected from you. Muslims, despite our disagreements on interpretation of texts, remain very much united. We do not have mosques that hate other mosques and claim that only people who attend our mosque will go to heaven, for example. My mother is Sunni, and my father was Shi’a. We are brothers and sisters in Islam, no matter what disagreements we have.
In Islam, the divisions are as follows:
- Factions: these are groups that are no longer Muslim, but claim to be Muslim, such as Nation of Islam (Elijah Mohammed is a new prophet to them), Ahmadiyyah (they believe Jesus died and wasn’t raised to God alive), and other factions.
- Schools of Thought: These are led by scholars that follow different legislative processes, and all schools of thought are accepted by each other. Even during the time of the Prophet himself there were different schools. This is not considered a division.
That’s it. Either the division is a matter of disbelief in Islam (factions), or a matter of interpretation of texts (school of thoughts), which is perfectly acceptable in Islam.
So, for one last time, I thank you for your time and your reading eyes.
kerner, I guess I will have to send one last post with links to the verses that explain scientific facts that you requested.
Take care everyone.
Jillood, you keep saying you’re done here, but you keep coming back. Either something we’re saying is challenging you, or things are really boring up in Aylmer, Ontario. As for your claim that Islam is one, big love fest: why do you guys keep killing one another? It’s in the news every day.
Fellow Lutherans,
Unfortunately I may be too late in submitting a comment. Afterall, it’s quite difficult to keep up with 200+ posts. But for those still interested, I offer some new insight. Mr. Jillood is naturally bilingual when it comes to the teachings of the Qur’an, and possibly not a native Canadian. But these things don’t really mean anything other than his two languages are obviously English and Arabic. I only mention this because I doubt his expertise on the ancient languages of the original scriptures. Which simply means this:
He is reading the Bible in English.
Now, this doesn’t really pose a problem since the translations are actually very accurate (with the exceptions of some recent heretical editions). But from his perspective, he is being sincere in his argument. Afterall, many people today still quite don’t understand the concept of the Trinity. But perhaps this is due to the fact that the Hebrew language can explain it thoroughly, while the English language is less articulate. First example I’ll give is Deut. 6:4 “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.”
Or more accurately “Hear, O Isreal: Yahweh our Elohim, Yahweh is one.” Yahweh is a specific name for God and used in certain senarios in reference to when God is “dealing” with us directly. Elohim(pl. form of eloah-god) is not to suggest that He is many gods, but to show his complete nature in all of his tasks(omniscient, omnipotent, ect.). I believe Arabic actually has a similar word. But the kicker is the word “one.” In this verse, one is conjugated plural. This is a unification adjective, not just a number.
What I am sadly noticing is both sides of this debate have turned to horrifying stereo types. I completely agree with Mr. Jillood on many of his observations of hypocritical Christians, but there are also many hypocritical Muslims running around out there destroying people like Mr. Jillood’s image. This is making it quite difficult to “Go and make diciples of all nations.” We need to remind ourselves that God also loves this man and genuinely wishes to call him His child. That he too must be reconciled to God(Elohim) through Christ(Yahweh). Please have patience with this man, his eternal life may depend on it. Afterall, he did stumble onto this blog and chose to participate, which is more to say for many other Muslims who do not leave the comforts of their peers…….
Perhaps if needed, I will post more relevant translations of the Scriptures for this debate.
Islam is a religion of Law. Mazim Jillood is certain he’s doing all it’s possible for anyone to do to fulfill the Law. This is good enough for him. He doesn’t feel that either he or anyone else needs the Gospel. Indeed, he is wholly opposed to the Gospel (with which he is familiar) and actively tries to turn others away from it – including the readers of this blog.
What is a Lutheran called to do when someone is comfortable in their sin of rejecting Jesus Christ (as opposed to Jesus the Prophet)?
The reality is that Mr. Jillood is arguing that Christ was a good prophet whom Mohammed superseded and received a direct transmission of God’s Word. Such an argument doesn’t allow any discussion. Based on an extreme form of it, Jews and Christians are infidels who need to be slain. Those who do the slaying shall be rewarded in Heaven by among other delights wonderful sexual pleasures.
Another reality is that stealth jihadists, like Mr. Jillood and militant ones including Bin Laden, wish to defeat Judeo-Christian civilization. They believe that the West has become weak and corrupt, rather vulnerable to a militant Islam.
Westerners need to reach out to truly moderate Muslims who can overlook the militant terms of the Koran and subscribe to the more moderate ones, though the reality is that many moderate Muslims lack the cojones to stand up to the militant fanatics.
We in the West ought not to have illusions about the militant and stealth Muslims who wish to defeat us. Islam is essentially about submission, not about the Judeo-Christian revelation that men at base have been granted freedom and dignity in the image of our Creator, whom we worship, though do not submit to abjectly.
Peter said (@205), “Such a fruitless discussion.” Funny, I thought the discussion was actually quite interesting and informative, at least the stretch of comments from 179–204 (inclusive). But yes, before and after that, there were several bits of fruitless lip-flapping.
Peter, it occurs to me that the reason you’re given to opposing Mr. Jillood so — and not on theological terms, much less with the love for enemies that Christ preached, as you almost completely failed to engage Mr. Jillood with Christian teaching or compassion, preferring to tilt at whatever straw man you could grasp at on some cojones-driven political/cultural level — is that you’re so very like him. You, like the Muslims you so revile, see the world in terms of some grand earthly cultural battle that must be won completely. “With main force.” Ooh!
I mean, do you really not see the irony in such ridiculous statements of yours like “This fellow is a Muslim fanatic beyond sense or reason. He and his kind need to be opposed with main force.” (@93)? Or yet more chest-beating (@114) like “Mr. Jillood may on the surface be viewed as a merely feckless, fanatical devotee of Islam, though in truth he is a part of a seriously threatening movement that needs to be faced and defeated.” And, once more (@205) with “I should suggest it is time to take the gloves off with these Muslim fanatics.”
And look how you describe these so-called “stealth jihadists”: “They believe that the West has become weak and corrupt, rather vulnerable to a militant Islam.” Guess what, Peter? So do you! Let’s review Peter’s view on the West:
I could go on, but Peter hates it when I use his words against him, and then he calls me names and says I have too much time, blah blah blah.
But Peter, for what it’s worth, your saber-rattling does sound very butch. Terribly frightening.
[1]geneveith.com/russian-scholar-predicts-the-usa-will-end-in-2010/_1615/#comment-57868
[2]geneveith.com/family-breakdown-as-victory-for-human-rights/_1398/#comment-54734
[3]geneveith.com/church-of-england-is-debating-evangelism/_1408/#comment-55723
[4]geneveith.com/another-911/_3273/#comment-67647
Mazin Jillood,
A few thoughts:
You said you often feel guilty, even over things “smaller bad deeds/sins”. I was once like that before I could fully take to heart the complete nature of God’s victory over sin, guilt, and the law which enforces right and wrong. When I do wrong, my conscience still stings as I repent, but now I have found a balm to my wound. It doesn’t sting anymore, because:
Your descriptions of Christ’s sacrificial atonement are incomplete. It isn’t about Jesus being dead, it is about his rising to life again in conquest over death. God’s law mandates death for sinners. The soul that sins shall die. Adam (and all of his descendants) would have never died if he (and they) had never sinned. But that law went too far by convicting and executing one who was sinless. The law, having overreached itself, owes submission to Jesus since it went too far in killing him. Jesus one-ups the death penalty by rising from death. But Jesus is not just an ordinary man, he is also the wholeness of divinity in human flesh (by virtue of his birth by a Virgin which resulted from his conception by the Holy Spirit). So death didn’t just wrong one man–it wronged the entire God who made everything. God is “worth” with respect to atoning power an unlimited amount. Now God can justly put death away for all that he pleases without softening his sense of justice.
God could not have remained a just God by condoning sin. If he had simply excused our sin God would have trivialized its offense to his law and even made him a less worthy God for not meaning what he says about repaying wrongs. Think about it. If the president pardoned a notorious serial killer, would he be a just president? Yet all people, like serial killers deserve death for their sins. For reasons that are still a mystery to us, God has chosen to distribute his forgiveness only through faith in Jesus, his Son. The atoning power of God is limited, but God has granted humans freedom to reject it.
I’ve read Islamic propaganda. It is obvious to me that your talking points are very similar to what I’ve read. They always sound phony because they’ve been contrived as part of a scheme to keep people from thinking beyond their little box. Put away those manufactured ideas and consider what the folks on this site as saying more deeply. Please respond directly to them rather than repeating what you’ve heard or read elsewhere.
Thanks,
Jason Schmeiling
Personally, I don’t think Mr. Jillood is actually OPPOSED to the Gospel. Sure, he gives the usual Muslim rhetoric. But his arguments are basically paradoxes, two contrasting points that cancel each other out. If he did not feel the need for atonement, he wouldn’t be working so hard to pay for his own crimes and trying to do better the next time around. This man KNOWS he needs forgiveness or he wouldn’t be riding such a false hope of his god overlooking his sins and maybe giving him a pass.
Islam is a clever hoax designed to lead away billions away from salvation. Christ said in Mark 12:24 “…Do ye not therefore err, because ye know not the scriptures, neither the power of God?” Muslims don’t know the scriptures or the true power of His love. There are reasons they are told not to go back. They are told our scriptures are not to be trusted. So, for them history starts around 610AD and that’s okay with them. It’s very sad, actually. Afterall, no one tries to correct his faulty arithmetic in middle of the equation. You have to go back to the beginning. But they are very hesitant of looking back, and I have yet to meet one who cares about learning Hebrew, Greek, and especially Latin. If they did, they would surely see that the Gospel has been there since the book of Genesis and that the Messiah has always been God.
It’s not possible for the unregenerate to be anything other than opposed to the Gospel. Even the Christian, insofar as the Old Adam still clings to him, is opposed to it.
very true. but you can imagine the chances of true repentance would be significantly reduced due to the lack of historical knowledge.
This is one of main arguments of their faith versus ours.
Todd You, like the Muslims you so revile, see the world in terms of some grand earthly cultural battle that must be won completely. “With main force.” Ooh!
This would be one of your moral relativist arguments. In this case I and others who see clearly that radical Islam [not Islam itself] is a formidable enemy that wishes to foist Shari’ah Law on the world are equivalent to the radical Muslims. The fact is that we have been involved in a deadly war with radical Islam for about thirty years; Islam has been largely at war with Christendom for well over a millennium.
Mr. Jillood has made it amply clear that he despises the West, especially America, and wishes to impose Shari’ah law on a universal basis, either by war or stealth. When one believes that Allah dictated universal law to his “last” prophet, Mohammed, then of necessity this law must be imposed, forcefully if necessary, around the world. While Mr. Jillood speaks rhetorically in irenic terms, he is most probably what the scholar of Radical Islam, Robert Spencer, terms a “stealth Jihadist.”
You might piously think that you are a wonderful Christian having an enlightened theological conflab with Mr. Jillood, though in truth this fellow, following the many passages in the Koran regarding the demonic infidels, is involved in establishing an Islamic State, that, if history foretells, would likely launch a savage attack on Israel and the West.