I don’t want to make enemies of the Muslim community, but they are the ones who are teaching that the Qur’an is the word of God.
Is it?
In order to broach such a sensitive topic as one’s religion, we must take care not to offend, but the truth is the truth, and it’s the truth we are after in this week’s Camp Shiloh blog.
In high school through the late ’70’s, in a school of 1200 kids, everyone I knew was either Protestant, Catholic or agnostic. No atheists, no Muslims, no Buddhists, not even a single Mormon. Yet, kids today are surrounded by many religions, which can be confusing when trying to figure out which one is true.
Let’s use the written, printed verses of the Qur’an – being very careful not to take anything out of context.
Muslims believe that the Qur’an came from God through the prophet Muhammad (Sura 39:1-2) and that it is the inspired word and revelation of God. However, the Qur’an is not the word of God, nor did it come from God when you consider that Muhammad himself believed that the message he received from an angel choking him was actually a demon. How’s that for an opener? It gets even more alarming…
The Sunni authority, Abu Hanifa, expressed the orthodox belief that “the Qur’an is the word of God, and is a necessary attribute of God – it is not God, but still, it is inseparable from God. It is written in a volume and to be read as a language, but God’s word is uncreated.” [1]
If anyone can make sense of that statement, I’d really love to hear from you…
Already, there are problems… if God is love, why would he send a demon masqueraded as an angel to choke Muhammad when delivering his message, as though he was ostensibly shoving His words down his throat? The violence of this cult is a crimson thread throughout the entire garment of Islam from beginning to end, and it begins early on with Muhammad’s own account of ‘receiving the word of God’.
Muslim biographer M. H. Haykal wrote colorfully of Muhammad’s life-long plague that he was demon-possessed: “Stricken with panic, Muhammad arose and asked himself, ‘What did I see? Did possession of the Devil, which I feared all along, come to pass?’ Muhammad looked to his left and then to his right and saw nothing. For some time, he stood there trembling with fear and was stuck with awe. He feared the cave might be haunted, and that he might run away still unable to explain what he saw.” [2]
More important, the Qur’an contradicts the Holy Bible on essential teachings. We already have strong evidence that the Bible is the only Word of God. Consider this small sampling which predicts with complete accuracy that the Messiah, Christ Jesus would be born:
– Of a woman (Genesis 3:15)
– Of the line of Abraham (Genesis 12:1-3; 22:18)
– Through the line of Judah (Genesis 49:10)
– As a son of David (2 Samuel 7:12-13)
– In the City of Bethlehem (Micah 5:2)
– Of a virgin (Isaiah 7:14)
– And suffer and die for our sins (Isaiah 53) at about A.D. 33 (Daniel 9:24-26)
– And rise from the dead (Psalm 16:11, Psalm 2:7-8)
Even the severest critics of the Bible admit that these prophesies were given 200-several hundred years before the time of Christ, which completely eliminates any guessing, manipulation by men throughout the centuries, or consideration given to any of the trends of the times.
Furthermore, these prophesies are very detailed and incredibly specific. They give the ancestry (King David), place (Bethlehem) and time (Daniel 9) of Christ’s coming. NO OTHER RELIGIOUS BOOK offers anything even close that can compare with these supernatural predictions, each of them completely fulfilled. No other book in the history of the world has authors who were confirmed as Christ was throughout the Old Testament (John 3:2, Luke 7:22, Acts 2:22, Hebrews 2:3, 2 Corinthians 12:12). Of all the world religious leaders, neither Confucius, nor Buddha nor Muhammad – not even Joseph Smith were confirmed by miracles verified by contemporary and credible witnesses. The Bible alone proves to be the only Word of God written by prophets and apostles of God who were confirmed by special miraculous acts of God.
We know that contradictory claims of truth cannot be true. For instance, the Qur’an says that Jesus did not die on the cross and rise from the dead three days later (Sura 4:157-158), but this is one of the essential and often repeated truths of the Bible (1 Corinthians 15:1-19).
Additionally, though Muhammed recognized that prophets before him were confirmed by miracles of nature, he himself refused to perform any miracles to confirm his claims as a prophet! How convenient. (Sura 3:181-184).
Unlike the Bible, the Qur’an offers no specific, multiple, and long-term predictions that will come to pass without fail in the history of mankind. The only supposed example of a predictive prophecy is about the Romans avenging a defeat (Sura 30:2-4) but this was not only vague and indefinite, it was already humanly predictable.
The Qur’an also contains contradictions and scientific errors, such is in its assertion that Adam was made out of a “blood clot” (Sura 23:14). Here’s another contradiction: the Qur’an claims that there can be no change in the Words of God (Sura 10:64) which, for Muslims, is the Qur’an; “there is none that can alter the Words and Decrees of God.” (Sura 6:34). Yet the Qur’an teaches the doctrine of abrogation by which later revelations annul previous ones! Sura 2:106 speaks of “revelations…. We abrogate or cause to be forgotten…” and then it turns around and declares that “we substitute one revelation for another,” admitting in the same verse that Muhammad’s contemporaries called him a “forger” for doing so…
The Qur’an teaches an inferior view of marriage (namely, polygamy) and of women. Muhammad allowed four wives for his followers (Sura 4:3) but said that God made an exception for him to have many more (Sura 33:50). He had as many as 12-15 wives at one time. As for the treatment of women, the Qur’an allows men to “scourge (beat) them” if they even ‘suspect’ them of unfaithfulness (Sura 4:34).
Lastly, like all cults, they are noted for carnality. When a Muslim man dies, he goes to a ‘Muslim paradise’ to be served for eternity by 72 virgins. I’ll try to soften the language here, but Qur’anic commentator Al-Suyuti (died 1505) and Orthodox Muslim theologians such as al Ghazali (died 1111 CE) and Al-Ash’ari (died 935 CE) graphically elaborated sensual pleasures attributed to Muslims in paradise”. Al-Suyuti wrote, “Each time we sleep with a Houri we find her virgin. Each chosen one [i.e. Muslim] will marry seventy houris, besides the women he married on earth, and all will have appetizing ‘features’, as will he”.
Let’s think about this for a minute… Eternity is a very long, long time… Wouldn’t a man tire of rotating though ONLY 72 women for all of eternity? And what of the women? Like, this would be a paradise for them – to be at this man’s beck and call forever? According to the Quran, once in Jannah, believers are wed to virgins with “large eyes” (Suma 56:22) and “full grown”, “swelling” or “pear-shaped” breasts (Sura 78:33) .The Quran provides a physical and personal description of the houri and denotes them as rewards to believers.
When measuring the Bible against the Qur’an, or any other ‘religious book, or belief’, for that matter, the reader needs to look for continuity, prophesy and fulfilment. Only the Bible proclaims that it is the only word of God (II Timothy, 3:16) and only Christ is referred to as being One with the Father from the beginning of time (John 1:1). So, if Christ is equal with the Father, and more than this, they are One, along with the Holy Spirit, then what value do the writings of a ‘prophet’ – terrified of ghosts – have when he denies that Christ died on the cross for our sins and raised Himself from the dead?
Since this is only a short blog – written only to get folks to think – I can’t go into much more, other than to say that as young people – do not so easily take ‘the word’ of others. Get into the material. Read it. Make your own minds up. Do the research. Bottom line is that the Truth will always, always set you free!
[1] see Kitab al-Wasiyah, 77. Cited in Abdiyah Akbar Abhul-Haqq, ‘Sharing Your Faith with a Muslim’ (Minnesota: Bethany Fellowship, 1980), 62. Also see Al-Maturidi’s defense of the orthodox position against the Mutazilites in John Alden Williams, ed., ‘Islam’ (New York: George Braziller, 1962), 182.
[2] see M. H. Haykal, ‘The Life of Muhammad’ (Indianapolis, Ind. American Trust Publications, 1976), 74.]