After posting our video, Do Christians Know the True Name of God, we received quite a few strange responses from our missionary friends. One such response is as follows:
Apparently, missionaries do not understand what, “In the Name of Allah,” means. I honestly do not know what is difficult about that sentence. It literally tells you what the name of God is. There’s no way anyone can be confused about it, but here we are looking at a screenshot with that exact problem. The funny thing is, the Christian was educated enough to know about the 99 names of Allah, but not to the point he knew that those names are referred to as the names and attributes (asma wa sifat) of God. Even the Qur’an says:
And to Allah belong the best names, so invoke Him by them. And leave [the company of] those who practice deviation concerning His names. They will be recompensed for what they have been doing. – Qur’an 7:180.
If there’s any missionary out there willing to fill me in on what the source of confusion is, I’d really appreciate it.
Many Christians often assert that one of the reasons people should accept Christianity is because it offers everyone a chance to develop a personal relationship with God. One of the problems with this idea is that this personal relationship has not been able to solve the problem of knowing the true name of God. This is perhaps one hot area of contestation in Christianity.
Br. Zakir Hussain has issued a public debate challenge to Dr. Michael Brown on the topic of, Is Muhammad (peace and blessings of God upon him) in the Bible? See the debate challenge here:
Many people are familiar with Dr. Michael Brown and Matt Slick of CARM. They are after all, Christian apologists. Knowing God’s name is a pretty straightforward topic, not so for Christianity. Matt Slick writes:
For people to say that Jesus’ real name is Yashua or Yahusha or Yahushua, etc., is Jesus’ real name is just a statement of pushing an agenda and not believing the New Testament text.
Interestingly, Dr. Michael Brown accuses Matt of being wrong on knowing the true name of God. In a discussion with Br. Mustafa Sahin of Australia, Browns says:
What can we learn from this? Brown considers people like Matt Slick who argues that Jesus is God’s real name are incorrect and wasting their time. On the other hand, Matt considers people like Dr. Michael Brown who argue that Jesus isn’t God’s real name are pushing an agenda and not believing in the New Testament text.
The question is, since Dr. Michael Brown rejects that Jesus is God’s real name, is Matt Slick correct in referring to him as a disbeliever in the New Testament?
There are a lot of people who believe that Islam is the only faith facing issues with extremism. The reality is, any large group of people will statistically always have at least one bad apple or more. Unfortunately, a Christian missionary by the name of Richard Huckle committed sexual abuse of over 200 children, both boys and girls. The abuses happened in the Muslim majority country of Malaysia, where the missionary specifically targeted underprivileged children.
Huckle, a practising Christian, first visited Malaysia on a teaching gap year when he was 18 or 19. He then went on to groom children while doing voluntary work.
Investigators uncovered numerous indecent pictures and videos Huckle took of himself abusing girls and boys. More than 20,000 indecent images were found on his computer.
Huckle wrote a paedophile manual called “Paedophiles And Poverty: Child Lover Guide”, as well as a series of notes in which he detailed rapes and various sex acts.
The intent of this post is not to demonize Christians or the Christian faith, but to highlight the fact that all faiths have adherents in their congregations that commit acts of extremism. In this case, sexual extremism in the form of child abuse. I’m not going to call on representatives of the Christian community to condemn this missionary, but I do expect them to learn from this situation that not all adherents of a faith, faithfully represent their faith.
There’s been a surge in commenting within the last two months or so, our previous policy was to approve each comment individually. However, that takes a lot of time to read through and approve. This policy was initially introduced after receiving aggressive, obscene and insulting comments from angry missionaries. However, the community on Calling Christians seems to have moderated themselves and the discussions have become very pleasant and respectful. With that in mind, the previous commenting policy has been rescinded and users no longer need individual comments to be approved. What this means is, if you’ve had a comment approved at least once then when posting, your comments no longer need approval. They’ll be automatically approved.
While comments will be automatically approved, if the moderators see it fit to remove a comment, they will do so. We ask that users be respectful in their dialogue and to adhere to expected standards of decorum.
While checking out a few book shops today, by happenstance I came across a Bible entitled, Baby’s First Bible. My curiosity got the best of me and while flipping through the pages I came across a pretty interesting page. On the last picture below, the publishers describe the Bible as the greatest story book ever! I cannot disagree, the Bible has stories that rival those of Cinderella, Game of Thrones and even Harry Potter.
Case Cover
Book Cover
Title Page
Page After Title Page – Greatest Story Book Ever
It’s good to see that publishers are educating kids by being honest about the veracity and reliability of the Bible.
I’ve been busy the past few days and had not noticed that Br. Yahya Snow published an article and created a video about me. The article can be read here and concerns debate challenges and the glib behaviour of some missionaries.Br. Yahya states:
Now I must say, it’s curious to see Jonathan angle for a debate with Yusuf Bux after he intimated Yusuf’s arguments are dated and weak. Admittedly, I do have reservations about some of the arguments that do come out of SA. Nevertheless, the point here is why would Jonathan decide to target Yusuf for a debate while Jonathan continually avoids Ijaz Ahmad’s debate challenges. Ijaz is a hardened apologist and debater who chooses to involve himself in technical discussions about Christian theology – it’s what he specialises in.
You see, Jonathan has come off really poorly in his interactions with experienced Muslim apologists. He struggled in his debate with Shabir Ally and struggled in his debate with Yusuf Ismail. Ijaz Ahmad and myself have corrected him and refuted him on many points over the last few months – at times on some very basic stuff highlighting his inability in dialogue with Muslims who are more experienced and aware apologetically.
We’ve corrected Jonathan McLatchie a number of times, here are some examples:
I actually have quite a couple more screenshots of never before released mistakes by Jonathan. However, they will not be posted. There’s a difference between correcting a public figure and caricaturing someone, and I do not want to cross that line. On the other hand, Br. Yahya also produced a video with me responding to some missionary claims regarding the speech of God, the preservation of the Qur’an and of Jesus’s nature:
I’m not particularly fond of seeing my name and face mentioned this much. While I am thankful for the efforts many brothers have made, it’s still a bit unsettling to see my face and name everywhere. In this case though, it is a video debate and so there’s no choice but to show my face. I am appreciative of Br. Yahya’s comments regarding me and for the video he’s made. I pray that many can benefit from the work that our little community of Muslim apologists, bloggers and du’at do.
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