Author Archives: Ijaz Ahmad

One Christian Scholar’s Dilemma with Christian “Logic”

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The following quote is from Professor Dale C. Allison Jr.’s, “The Theological Christ and the Historical Jesus” (Kindle Version). It pretty much sums up the Islamic problem with the New Testament. His articulation of this Christian scriptural issue is so well put, I just had to share it:

Ephesians and the Pastorials are after all probably pseudepigraphical, and why would anyone refuse to preach on a word dubiously ascribed to Jesus yet preach on a word dubiously ascribed to Paul? What, moreover, should those of us who cannot decide whether Paul wrote Colossians do when a passage from that epistle shows up in the lectionary? Should we expound the text or not? Above all, what happens to the Bible as a whole if history and authorship become a criteria for determining theological authority? What, for instance, should we do with the so-called “historical books” of the Old Testament, which contain so much that is not history? And what should we do with the paragraphs and chapters that come to us under the name of Isaiah or some other prophet but which, according to critical scholarship, were instead produced by persons forever unknown?

What should we do? That’s a question each and every Christian should ask. Professor Dale clearly demonstrates that Christians as a whole, need to reconsider the rationale, the logic, the theological concepts they construct to develop their faith, in light of all the historical evidences which clearly contradict the New and Old Testament’s many scriptural, authorship and historical problems.

Would any Christian like to respond to the Professor? Comments are open for all……

and Allaah knows best.

Samuel Green’s Appeal to Pseudo-Scholarship

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Pastor Samuel Green loves talking and writing about the history of the Qur’aan. He often quotes many persons and deems them to be ‘scholars of the Qur’aan’. In this discussion, I had posted a quote from a book I was reading at the time about the pseudopigraphical texts of the New Testament. The goodly Pastor then sought to question my use of Prof. Dale C. Allison as an authority, in like, I asked him to prove his use of a blind Egyptian secularist as a scholar of the Qur’aan, an authority on the Qur’aan. As the photo demonstrates, it’s been 5 months, we’re into a new year and the Pastor still can’t justify his claims:

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Hey Pastor, when will you remember to reply?

and God knows best.

Abrogation means Allah cannot make up His “mind”!

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Another common, yet silly claim. Before I explain the nature of abrogation in Islam, we can easily demonstrate that God also abrogated laws in the Bible.

  • In Genesis God commanded Adam and Eve’s children to intermarry.
  • Christians today consider a brother and sister’s sexual relations to be the sin of incest.

Did God command Adam and Eve to do a sin? No, according to Christian (and Jewish) beliefs, sexual relations between a brother and sister only became a sin known as incest due to the 7 Noahide Laws. Another easy example is:

Lastly, anyone can read where Christ alters several of God’s laws (God changing God’s laws!?)  in Matthew 5. From this, we ask the Christian, can’t your God make up His mind as well? Surely they are being hypocritical in their speaking. However, from the Islamic perspective, Allah says in the Qur’aan:

We do not abrogate a verse or cause it to be forgotten except that We bring forth [one] better than it or similar to it. Do you not know that Allah is over all things competent? – Qur’an 2:106.

Before the revelation of the Qur’aan, each message sent with a Prophet was specific to each peoples the Prophet was sent to. For example, the Torah was sent to the Children of Israel during Moses’ time, whereas the Injeel was sent to the Children of Israel during Christ’s time. This is simple to understand, each people had different cultures and so God sent commandments to deal with the people of each culture. By this, we can understand that it isn’t that God kept changing His “mind” over the laws, rather He sent different laws to deal with the beliefs, attitudes, actions (habits) and culture (norms and values) of each tribe, nation of peoples. However, with the revelation of the Qur’aan, God has sent a law for all of mankind.

Unlike previous nations were entire groups of peoples existed without communicating with each other or knowing of each other’s existence, today I can call Japan and speak to a Geisha, or go on YouTube and see angry Christian missionaries screaming about Muslims, in this age of globalization, there is no need for a revelation to be sent to each and every nation individually, rather one message can now reach all nations of the earth with the click of a finger – one message for all of mankind.

In conclusion, it is not that God changed His mind about anything, rather it is that God sent a laws to cater to each tribe/ group/ nation of peoples according to the state of belief they were in, so that they may be guided. One common example is the prohibition of alcohol in Islam. Gradually alcohol was prohibited, rather than one command prohibiting it completely – in this way, the people developed the habit of consuming less alcohol and thus stopping consumption of it became drastically easier for them.

and Allaah knows best.

If Allah is so powerful, why can’t He become a man?

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At first glance, this seems like a pretty strong argument. God in both Christianity and Islam is defined to be all powerful. So if God is all powerful, why does Christianity say He can become a man and Islam say He cannot? The Christian’s argument does not include a deep study on the nature of God and due to this, it is very simple to debunk this argument.

Defining God

Both Muslims and Christians believe that God is an all powerful being.

God’s Nature is Absolute

Both Muslims and Christians believe that God’s nature does not change, He was all powerful, is all powerful and will always be all powerful.

Man’s Nature Differs 

Both Muslims and Christians believe that mankind is not all powerful.

Muslim Response

If God is all powerful and man is not all powerful, can God’s nature of being all powerful, change to becoming not all powerful? How can an all powerful God become less powerful?

Conclusion

  • God is all powerful.
  • If God gains power, then by definition He was not all powerful before and thus cannot be considered a God.
  • If God loses power, then by definition He is not all powerful and thus cannot be considered a God.

Since a Christian believes that a God can become a man, and a man is not all powerful, how can God remain all powerful yet be unable to defend himself (Christ was allegedly subject to Roman torture) and unable to eat (so hungry he cursed a fig tree)? If God is all powerful, no being should be able to overcome him, since Christ was overcome, then he clearly was not a God. So the simple answer is: Whereas God is always all powerful, man is not.

A Christian apologist may argue Jesus ‘chose’ to take all of these things unto himself, that would still not change the fact that he chose to take on an attribute of weakness by becoming a man, thus meaning he cannot be God because God is always all powerful, and does not change. So by no longer being all powerful, he is no longer God, and the very fact he changed and took on a new nature, when God does not change and always is, also again means he can’t be God.

and Allaah knows best.

[Updated: More Conversions] 125 Filipino Christians Convert to Islam

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Great news, Br. Ismael Espanol (pictured with the group below) has announced that 125 Christians from the Philippines have converted to Islam and have left Christianity behind:

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God has certainly guided the Filipino people who are accepting Islam in great numbers, freeing them from the Cross, and delivering them with freedom in Monotheism to worship the Creator as He should be worshipped.

Update:

Br. Tariq Aziz has posted photos of another mass conversion of Filipinos:

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wa Allaahu ‘Alam.

Christians Commit Genocide Against Christians in South Sudan

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South Sudan Christians Under Watch of the Army

According to several internationally reputed sources, Christians are massacring each other over power and control of the new country in South Sudan. Pictured above, South Sudan is known to be a majority Christian nation which ceded from the populous north earlier this year.

Several sources have condemned the Christian populous nation for its infighting during the last week, the BBC UK reports:

World Christian leaders have called for a ceasefire in South Sudan, where the population is mainly animist or Christian.

The Vatican and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, issued a joint statement calling for the country’s weak and poor to be “spared the trauma of conflict”. “Let us not yield to fratricidal tendencies in the name of our ethnic differences (which is what God created us to be),” they said.

SUDAN-UNREST-SOUTH-ABYEI

Rebel Christians Destroy Village in South Sudan

The UN according to another article by the BBC UK, has declared that thousands may already be dead due to the violence:

Thousands of people must have been killed in the past week of violence in South Sudan, the top UN humanitarian co-ordinator there has told the BBC. Toby Lanzer, who is in Bentiu in northern Unity state, said it had been “a devastating week for South Sudan”.

The UN also said on Tuesday that it had reports of at least three mass graves. One was in Bentiu in the north, and two in the capital, Juba. Mr Lanzer told the BBC’s Newshour programme: “I think it’s undeniable at this stage that there must have been thousands of people who have lost their lives.

“When I’ve looked at the hospitals in key towns and I’ve looked at the hospitals in the capital itself, the range of injuries, this is no longer a situation where we can merely say it’s hundreds of people who’ve lost their lives.” Mr Lanzer also said that the number of people seeking shelter from the fighting was “tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands”.

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Armed South Sudan Christians

Christian Girl Loses Composure When Questioned About False Persecution Stories

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My last post on false Christian persecution stories was based on a conversation I was having on a Christian friend’s Facebook post. Unfortunately, a Christian girl did not like the queries I was making, or the fact that I was questioning the obviously crass sob story that was being circulated. I got a notification that someone else had commented on the post and this is the out come.

Christian Girl Loses Composure

Christian Girl Loses Composure

It’s the Christmas season, you’d half expect these individuals to show some love, compassion, open mindedness, yet here I am being faced with insults, taunts and mockery, not because I insulted her beliefs, but because I merely questioned the authenticity of a persecution story when the evidences clearly did not add up or or make sense.

While writing this post, it occurred to me that it made sense that this particular Christian was emotional. To begin with, she was the individual from whom the article about alleged persecution was shared, so already she had preconceived and negative connotations about Muslims, it made sense then, that she’d be emotionally endearing in her manner of speech and behaviour. It makes sense therefore, that when questioned she’d obviously respond emotionally and without concern for her fellow man. Sadly, this is type of Christian is what Western Christianity is surviving on. Highly emotionalized and sensitive young Christians who see anyone or anything remotely unChristian-like to be a threat to the survival of their religion.

As you can see, in my response to her, I was cordial and quite pleasant, I did not need to insult her, no need to call her religion false, no need to mock her beliefs. I merely responded with Biblical references which call her not to be hypocritical in her manner of belief and treatment towards others, while conveying some factual points using references from her own scripture. I don’t expect her to reply in kind, but God willing, my cordial words to her will cause her to lessen her aggressive stance.

wa Allaahu ‘alam.

Non-Syrian Christians Fabricate Massacre for Sympathy and Donation Monies

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Sadly, a known Christian fantasist and propagandist is misusing the Syrian civil war to promote discord between the Muslim and Christian communities worldwide. Recently, Raymond Ibrahim and various anti-Muslim, pro-Christian sympathy fishing websites have been touting the possibility of a massacre committed by ‘Jihadists’ against an ancient Christian town. The article that is being spread is located here.

However, upon closer examination, the evidences simply do not add up to a coherent whole, but seem to be a collection of erratic videos with no consistent narrative or apparent association. To begin with, one of the videos is provided by Syrian State TV, the problem with this video is that all that we can actually extract from it, is that bodies are being retrieved from a well. We can take any video, post-battle and attribute to it any narrative we want. The fact that Syrian State TV is endorsing the footage and their associated context with it, is enough to cast doubt on the veracity of the video itself.

Another purported video shows rebels shouting Allaahu Akbar, or God is Great after fighting and winning a battle. In the video, the context provided is that these were innocent Christians who were massacred in cold blood. To the contrary, the video itself demonstrates that the rebels were insistently referring to the deceased as Shabiha, a term used to specifically refer to Shi’a Assad Thugs. Why didn’t they once refer to the deceased as Christians? If they were proud of killing Christians, surely they’d atleast mention the deceased to be Christians in some way? Since this isn’t the case, and they’re referred to as Shabiha repeatedly, we must ask Christians, what evidence is there that the deceased were unarmed Christians? The truth is, there is no such evidence to substantiate that claim.

Syrian Christian Fighter

Syrian Christian Fighter

Let’s for the sake of argument, accept that Christians were killed and intentionally so. Rationally speaking, Christians from inside Syria and outside of Syria have joined the civil war on both sides. Since Assad’s army, which now includes Christians, have been bombing Masjids and towns indiscriminately. In fact, Christian brigades have also publicly joined the rebels against Assad, see here and here. Christians are known to use sympathy for preaching and faith empowerment, claiming victimhood is nothing new to the Christian religion. Let’s however, for a moment forego emotion and think logically.

Christians will die in the Syrian civil war. Muslims will die in the Syrian civil war. Why? It’s because Christians and Muslims are both joining the Assad army and the Rebel armies. If Assad’s armies which are publicly known to be comprised of Christians and Shi’a Muslims are bombing Masjids and massacring the rebels, shouldn’t the Christians who joined Assad’s army not expect reprisals against them for their role in aiding the government’s draconian and barbaric attack on civilians? I don’t see a single Christian website condemning the Christians in Syria for supporting Assad, whose army is known to have committed numerous atrocities, yet these same Western Christians are using the deaths of Christians fighting on behalf of Assad’s army to claim victimization from ‘Muslim Jihadists‘.

One does have to ask, how lowly and desperate can Christians be to sink to such moral lows, for the sake of defaming a religion and forsaking their own dying brothers and sisters, simply to promote an anti-Islamic view? Is hating Muslims and fearing Islam (see Argumentum ad Baculum), so important to the Ministries of some Western Christians, that they must shelve any sense of moral responsibility, to use the dead and dying in this game of emotional puppeteering?

Emanuel Ionescu

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I’ve received a touching testimonial of one former Christian’s Journey to Islam, please do share this man’s journey to the truth:

My name is Emanuel Ionescu. I reverted to Islam in 2011 at the age of 21. The reason I say revert and not convert is because Muslims believe that we are all born with Islam as our faith, but as we get older, if we are not in a Muslim family we may be raised cc-2013-quranreadingto believe something else and in my case I was raised as an Orthodox Christian. Throughout my life I was interested in religion and as I got older I was reading more and talking more about religion with people. I always defended Christianity as the true faith even when people would tell me it is a corrupt faith. I would tell them that if Christianity was really corrupt, God would not let us believe in something corrupt without correcting it. Little did I know at the time that in fact God did so by sending the final Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) to correct us where we went wrong and bring us back to the original truth. I should note though that many people I spoke to about Christianity were Atheists and from some other religions but I had never met a Muslim to speak to them about religion while I was Christian.

I had to discover Islam on my own and I am glad I was able to. Maybe I would have been Muslim earlier if I had contact with Muslims but then again, sometimes I think that if a Muslim would try to convince me that Christianity was wrong I probably would not have accepted Islam because I would not like other people to tell me that my faith is wrong as others already did. I believe it was Allah’s purpose for me to come to Islam in my own and that this was the best way for me to understand Islam as I will detail further on.

I knew very little about Islam while I was in high school and I tried to look into it a little more only for the reason that I knew they believed in the same God that Jews and Christians did. I was interested to see what they say about Jesus (pbuh) in the Quran and when I found out that they say he was not the son of God nor crucified I refused to believe that and so for some time I kind of left Islam aside, but I was being unfair really because all I did was read the verses about Jesus and not the entire Quran to see why they said this. As time went on though Islam seemed to always be in the back of my mind. I do not know why because as a Christian I was fine with everything they taught, except that I believed that Jesus (pbuh) was the son of God, not God himself but other than that I had no doubts about Christianity.

I should also note though that as I grew older I stopped calling myself Orthodox Christian and I was only calling myself Christian. The reason for this was that I was disappointed to see thousands of denominations in Christianity and it bothered me that they were all saying that they were the only correct path to heaven. I believed that Jesus (pbuh) did not teach us to separate into different sects and that to be a true Christian was to follow the Bible and what Jesus (pbuh) taught.

Anyway, so Islam was always in the back of my mind for reasons I can’t really explain since I didn’t agree with what they said about Jesus (pbuh) but I respected their devotion to Allah through their 5 daily prayers and that they were dressing modestly and believed in the same God Jews and Christians did. The turning point in my life with regards to Islam was in the summer of 2011 when I went to visit my godfather in Cyprus. He was living near the border of Northern Cyprus which was the Turkish part. I would go there daily and I went to visit the mosque and was intrigued at how they did not decorate the mosque with images or statues of Prophets, which I liked. I also heard the Athan for the fist time and that was a very nice thing to hear. When I returned home I finally decided to give Islam a more serious look by watching some documentaries to get a better idea of the history of Islam. After watching those I was interested even more and began to actually read the whole Quran this time and not just some verses.

I finally truly accepted Islam after reading the whole Quran and if it wasn’t for one specific verse in the Quran, I would probably still not have accepted Islam. The verse that I believe my whole reversion rested upon was Surah 2:79 which spoke of previous scriptures being corrupted. It was a sudden understanding in my mind which I had no doubts about what I had just read and it made me fully understand why they said Jesus (pbuh) was not the son of God or crucified. The reason was that the scriptures were corrupted and that they lied about Jesus (pbuh) and many other things. My whole idea that Christianity was the truth because God did not tell us otherwise was finally revealed to me that God did in fact speak again through Muhammad (pbuh) who did in fact tell us that the scriptures were corrupted as mentioned in that verse. A person may wonder, why did I accept that verse so easily and not investigate to see if what it claims is true? Well I did investigate, but not because I had any doubts, but just to reaffirm what I had now believed as the truth and to increase my knowledge and understanding of why the Quran claimed this thing, and my beliefs were found to be true with my investigations.

In the end Islam made sense because it taught the belief in the one true God, which Jews and Christians also believe in, it also taught to believe in all previous Prophets send by Allah from Adam (pbuh) to Muhammad (pbuh) which made more sense compared to the Jews who stopped at Moses (pbuh) and the Christians who stopped at Jesus (pbuh). Why stop and not also believe in the final Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) too? To believe in all prophets was like a complete belief, from beginning of revelation to the end of revelation. Islam also taught that the original scriptures such as the Torah and Gospel of Jesus were true but were corrupted as I noted earlier and it made sense with what I learned about them after reading that in the Quran. Now when people ask me I why believe Islam is the truth I can say to them the same thing I said when I was a Christian and that is that if Islam was corrupt, Allah would tell us and bring us back on the right path, but for 1400 years there were no more revelations and no need cause Islam truly is the final revelation. Islam completed the whole revelation of Allah with a book that was not changed as previous scriptures were and this in itself is a big proof for Islam as the true faith. Allah did not allow anymore corruption to take place and preserved it to this day.

I had no problem with my Christian beliefs UNTIL I read the Quran. I would like all Christians to read the Quran for themselves and really ponder upon what it is saying. Christians and all other people of other faiths may be OK with their current beliefs but there is something better out there and that is ISLAM.

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