بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
السلام عليكم ورحمة الله وبركاته
Recently I have been discussing Islam with a Christian (Seventh-day Adventist) pastor. To protect his identity, I will call him Kris.
Our discussions started when I attended one night of a biblical prophecy seminar that he was conducting in a rented Church building. His discussion centered on the Sabbath and its importance in Christianity. He claimed that the Apostles of Christ (عليه السلام) kept the Sabbath just as the Jews before them did. After the presentation I approached him with some contradictory information. The Bible implies that the Sabbath is no longer obligatory.
One text that demonstrates this is the narration of the rich man. A rich man approaches Jesus (عليه السلام) and asks Him what must be done to enter the kingdom of heaven. Jesus (عليه السلام) replies that he must keep the commandments. The man asks which commandments Jesus (عليه السلام) is referring to. He lists off the commandments that are most important to keep and the Sabbath is not one of them. The rich man exclaims that he has kept all of the commandments and Jesus (عليه السلام) replies by saying that he should go and sell his possessions to give to the poor. The man is saddened and leaves. What is important from this narration is that the requirements for entering the kingdom of heaven are listed. They are to avoid murder, adultery, theft, giving false testimony, defrauding people, and dishonoring your father and mother. The last requirement is for the rich man to sell all of his possessions, give to the poor, and follow Jesus (عليه السلام). It was this last requirement that the rich man lacked. Clearly Jesus (عليه السلام) never required an observance of the Sabbath for one to enter the kingdom of heaven. Additionally, there is evidence from the Acts of the Apostles that the Apostles of Christ (عليه السلام) themselves did not observe the Sabbath as strictly as the Kris would have us believe. Yes, there are narrations that state that such-and-such Apostles went to the Synagogue on the Sabbath, but such narration is always followed by “as was his custom”. Sabbatarian Christians like to overlook the fact that there is a discernible difference between doing something out of custom and a religious requirement to do something. Contrarily, there is a narration that speaks about the Apostles gathering and “breaking bread” (i.e. partaking of communion/Eucharist) on the first day of the week; Sunday.
Nonetheless, Kris expressed his desire to meet with me in private to discuss such things. I agreed and several weeks later he visited me at my residence. We talked a lot about what was going on in our lives, our recent experiences, and other things. However, we never once broached the subject of religion until it was nearly time for him to leave. The Sabbath was never brought up. Kris thought that it would be a good idea for him to return weekly and to discuss my religious beliefs; Islam. He believed that he could prove Islam to be false and Christianity to be true. Naturally, I cannot back away from such a challenge so I agreed. Our first topic would be the Qur’an and its reliability.
For this discussion I created a PowerPoint presentation (which can be viewed here — please forgive the bad formatting; it lost its formatting when I converted it to a web document) that I thought would be rather comprehensive. However, Kris attacked several points that I had tried to make. First were the scientific issues. For example, he does not believe that the universe will collapse in on itself and thus be recreated as the Qur’an (as well as modern day cosmologists) tells us. Rather he believes that God will end the world in a literal “Book of Revelation style” apocalypse. An additional point of contention was the prophecy about the coming of a servant that was described in Isaiah 42:1. He claimed that, despite the fact that Jesus (عليه السلام) did not match the description of the coming servant at all, Jesus (عليه السلام) was the one that was foretold. He showed me a narration from one of the Gospels where the author of that particular Gospel had connected this prophecy to Jesus (عليه السلام) due to some of His sayings. I tried to make the point that the Gospels were written several decades after the death and supposed resurrection of Jesus (عليه السلام) that fine details about the exact words that were used would have been impossible. Kris disagreed. Thirdly, he attacked the prophecy of a coming Prophet in Deuteronomy 18:18. Again, this prophecy was claimed to be about Jesus (عليه السلام). It was attempted to point out that “from among their brethren” could be interpreted as from the Israelites themselves. The other points were not particularly touched on apart from the fact that Kris does not believe that God’s own words were put into the mouth of Muhammad (صلى الله عليه وآله). The final point that Kris attacked was my claim that there are zero contradictions in the Qur’an. He claimed that there were many.
The first contradiction he attempted to show was the creation of the earth in the Qur’an. In verses 7:54, 10:3, & 11:7 of the Qur’an, the creation of earth is described as taking place over a period of 6 days. However, in 41:9 it is claimed that the earth was created in 2 days. I saw no contradiction here because verse 10 of Surah 41 states that the mountains took 4 days to be created. If you add 2 and 4 together, you get a total of 6 days. Although I do not believe that the earth was created in 6 literal days (or that the mountains took 4/6ths of creation), the Qur’an is clearly not contradicting itself here. You merely needed to read to the next verse. Kris, however, saw it differently. He said that ayats 9 and 10 were totally unrelated and that by connecting them I was “stretching it”. I, to this day, disagree. Reading the verse immediately after isn’t “stretching it”. It is looking for context.
The second contradiction brought up was who the first Muslim was. Was it Muhammad (6:14), Moses (7:143), Abraham (3:67), or Adam (2:37)? My answer would be that all of them were the first. Adam (عليه السلام) was the first Muslim on earth. However, after the truth of God’s religion had died out, Abraham (عليه السلام) was the first Muslim. After the truth died out again, Moses (عليه السلام) was the first. After the truth that Moses (عليه السلام) brought had died out, Jesus (عليه السلام) was the first Muslim. And yet again, after the truth that Jesus (عليه السلام) brought was removed from the earth, Muhammad (صلى الله عليه وآله) was the first to believe. Kris said that you can’t try to rationalize the contradiction that way because “comparing verse to verse without any context, it is a contradiction.” Personally, I find this ridiculous. There are thousands of contradictions in the Bible but a lot of them can be resolved by context. However, when I bring such a fact up, Kris repeats the same line that “we are not talking about the Bible right now; we are talking about the Qur’an.”
The third contradiction that Kris tried to show me was that the Qur’an is not clear on what humans are made from. One verse (I cannot recall which verses he used; if you know, please leave them in the comments below) stated that before humans were created, they were nothing. Another verse states that humans are made of water. A third verse states that God created humans from dust/clay. Another verse states that we are made from a drop of sperm. Yet another verse says that we were created from a clinging form like that of a leech. Kris believed that this was the nail in the coffin for the Qur’an. Clearly the contradictions could not be reconciled. However, I still do not see the contradiction. Before humans were created, we did not exist. Therefore we were nothing. That does not mean that we were created from nothing. The verse merely states that before we were created we were nothing. Secondly, when God created the first humans, Adam and Eve, he created them out of the dust or clay of the ground. Thirdly, humans apart from Adam and Eve are created through sexual reproduction of which we are familiar with. This starts with a drop of semen fertilizing an ovum. Therefore we are created from a drop of sperm. After the ovum is fertilized, the human embryo begins to develop. This embryo looks like a leech shape. Therefore, we grew into what we are today from a clinging form like that of a leech. Finally, our bodies are between 70-80% water so we are indeed made up of water. There is no contradiction. The Qur’an does not say that water magically created us, nor that nothingness randomly created us, nor that a clinging form magically created us, nor that dust/clay magically created us. Rather all of these statements are correct as long as they are placed within their own context. Kris, however, refused to see it my way. He believes that you can’t add context to anything and that “verse for verse” these are contradictions. He clearly does not understand that a book from God can contain facts from various stages of human development. <sarcasm> Clearly he believes that human development is monolithic and we are created from a single substance at a single moment and that is the end of it. </sarcasm>
After this point he devolved into attacking Muhammad’s (صلى الله عليه وآله) honor and that sanctity of Islam. He claimed that Islam is a religion of violence and that the Bible is free from violence. He claimed that the Qur’an contains a vast among of commands to kill disbelievers and, I’m nearly positive that, he won’t accept any sort of context. He said that he will bring ahadeeth that prove his point that the Qur’an is completely false and that the Qur’an we have today is not the Qur’an that Muhammad (صلى الله عليه وآله) “wrote down with his own hand/invented,” I told him to bring sources from Shi’i books such as al-Kafi and only bring narrations that have been graded as Saheeh (authentic) by the scholars of rijaal. He said that he would bring whatever source he can find and that I would have to accept it because scholars are wrong in determining what is authentic and what is not. Apparently anything that is against Islam is authentic and anything that isn’t against Islam is isn’t.
Needless to say I am rather annoyed with his methodology because he refuses to even have an open mind as we are doing this. If this discussion was about the Bible I can guarantee you that he would find ways to contextualize and explain every issue I had with it yet for some reason he refuses to grant me the courtesy to even use the very next verse in the Qur’an as a context.
Are all Christians this arrogant?
في أمان الله
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