Refuting Islam | Nabeel Qureshi and David Wood

Hey everyone, thank you so much for joining me. This is the Seeking Allah Finding Jesus series. Um, it's basically just me sharing with you some of the things that I have learned over the course of my journey from Islam to Christianity. And so, even though I'm going to be sharing through the lens of my story, my hope is that you'll be learning things that you can apply while reaching out to Muslims. Or if you yourself are a Muslim, you don't have to reinvent the wheel. You don't have to start from the very beginning as you're researching. You know, when I was, uh, Muslim, looking into the things of Christianity, a large part of that had to do with my friend David here, who's going to share in just a moment.

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Google had just come out. People were just posting stuff on websites. If you wanted to read the Hadith, you could just now start finding translations. No one was really posting compilations or anything. So when I was starting out my search on the truth of Islam and Christianity, it was a very difficult journey. There was a lot that we had to, to do for the first time. People hadn't done it before. But praise God, that was, you know, 16 years ago that I started. And now people have done this quite a bit. And so my hope for you in these short videos is to, to learn some of the things that I learned the hard way, but to share it kind of briefly and to give you some quick insights.

Yeah, we we both had to, uh, learn a lot of things, um, along the way. Um, back when Nabeel and I started, uh, talking, I was much more interested in dealing with the, uh, arguments and objections of atheists. That was my background. So, um, you know, I was interested in dealing with the problem of evil, things like that. And, uh, then ended up being best friends with a Muslim. So for years, I was, I started studying Islam and responses to Muslim objections to Christianity. But my, my main goal was just that my best friend was a Muslim. If he had been a Buddhist, I would have been studying Buddhist, Buddhism and Buddhist objections to, uh, Christianity. But, uh, my, my friend was a Muslim, so I was studying that. And then, um, you know, as time went on, and this is something you should get into a habit of, as time went on, I would learn more and more and more because I'm constantly interacting, uh, with my friend. So he would come up with some new argument or new objection, whether against Christianity or for Islam. And I was in the habit of going and studying. So he would give some argument based on the Hadith, I would, I went out and bought Sahih Bukhari so I can start looking at what he's quoting there. And then that allowed me to start going back to him. So that is a good habit to get into. There's no learning everything in in one sitting with with Islam. Uh, so it's a good habit to develop to, uh, sort of respond to the situation you're in, whatever someone is asking you. And by the way, there is, we both understood this back then, there is absolutely no, um, harm or shame in saying, "That's an interesting point. I haven't thought about that carefully or studied it." Um, so I'm going to go look that up. I'm going to tell, can we, you know, meet again next week or something like that to talk about that more? And then go back and studying it. But then you learn in that process. And then in the future, when you're talking to someone else and the same objection comes up, now you're already prepared. So you're constantly, constantly building up, um, the, your, your knowledge and your understanding.

And so when we talk, this, this was all new for us. We, there were, we didn't have like guidebooks on, um, how to, um, how to interact and so on. We, we, we read books as we went along and so on. But we still had to learn a lot as we went on. And so again, as Nabeel pointed out, uh, if, if you're interested in dealing with Islam, no need to reinvent the wheel here. You will have to learn things as you go along, but you can listen to people who've, who've been there, who've been through, um, very, a variety of situations and learned things. Can tell you what to expect. And this is really a crucial time for this. I mean, we, we've got about 1.6 billion Muslims in the world. And the reason I continued with this is because there's, there's not much of an emphasis on this in the Christian world right now. Um, I mean, compared to what the interest should be. And what I mean here is that after Nabeel became a Christian, I was thinking that I was, I was done with Islam. I might continue on with it for a little while, but I, I could get back to things that I was more interested in. And it, it, it took a while, but I finally realized, you know, there are lots of Christian apologists dealing with the objections and arguments of atheists. There are lots of Christians who are focusing on arguments for the existence of God. There weren't a lot of apologists who were dealing with Islam in a very serious fashion, studying the Muslim sources, studying the Hadith, studying the Quran, studying the Sira. There wasn't a lot out there. And so eventually I got to the point where it was, I'm more interested in other things, but this is something that's really, really needed right now. And that's why I continued. And so I understood the need, the need that's out there. And if you're watching this, we're assuming that you, you, you've caught on to the need as well. And so you're, you're probably interested in, uh, in reaching Muslims or responding to Islam for various reasons. And we're here to share what we've learned. Or on the flip side, you yourself might be a Muslim, and you might be interested in hearing what we have to say.

Um, the impetus for, for this video series, um, some of you may have noticed, um, I'm bald. Um, I, uh, I was diagnosed with cancer last August. Um, and I haven't been able to travel and teach the way I have in past years. And so, uh, what I did was I asked people if they wanted me to teach online. Uh, and a lot of people have said that they want me to teach online and they, they want to support me in my ministry through online teaching. And so I was, I was considering, you know, what, what series can I do to start off, to kick off my teaching? I realized that my friend David was going to come visit me. And for those of you who don't know, I was a devout Muslim. I was raised in a devout Muslim home. And I was trying to share Islam with my friend David. This is when I met him back in 2001. I was absolutely convinced that Islam was the truth. I believed in all the arguments that I had been taught at my local mosque, that the Quran had never been changed, that Muhammad was the greatest man who ever lived, that Islam was the perfect religion, having been delivered for mankind. You know, it's a lot of supporting arguments as well, for example, that Islam is the fastest growing religion, and that Islam is the religion of peace. All these things I had been taught from a very young age, and I truly believed them. And I truly believed that Islam was the way that, you know, God had sent messengers and prophets throughout time, but Muhammad was the culmination of the prophets, the seal of the prophets, as the Quran calls him. And that his message, Islam, was the true final religion. Though Jesus came and he was a prophet, and he taught Christians what, what to do, that was for a specific time and place. Same thing with Moses, though he came and he had the Torah, and he taught Jews what to do. And so the, the Torah was holy scripture, and Moses is a holy prophet. That was for a certain time, for a certain place. Muhammad is the culminating truth. And so that's what I was trying to share with my friend David back in 2001. That was the beginning of my journey. And I chronicled that in this book, Seeking Allah Finding Jesus. Um, some of you, uh, have, uh, may have read this book. Um, and, and this is the, the story of my journey from Islam to Christianity. A lot of what we're going to be discussing in this series, the Seeking Allah Finding Jesus series, is going to come from the main outline of this book. So much more is found in the book. And so this is by no means a substitute. And if you find what you hear in these series to be interesting, I would highly suggest you take a look at the book.

I later then went and investigated, after I became a Christian, I investigated with much more depth some of these main issues. For example, the deity of Christ. My doctoral research at Oxford, uh, was before I was diagnosed with cancer, uh, was focusing on the marketing Christology, the early Christology of Jesus, and how he's viewed in Mark's Gospel to be divine. Some of that stuff got incorporated into this book. My Master's at Duke University, my thesis, for example, was on the Quran and the composition of the Quran. A lot of that information is incorporated into this book. So if you're interested in the facts and the argumentation and the evidence that made me go from Islam to Christianity, and that I've studied since then, I became a Christian in 2005. But the stuff that I studied at universities like Duke and, and like Oxford since 2005, a lot of that research is in here. And in this video series, we won't be able to replicate it, but we'll be giving you some insights into it. Uh, and then you can go and study more on your own. Um, so that was one impetus for, for doing this video series. But the other impetus for doing this video series is over the last, I'd say three days, I've received about 200 messages on Twitter from Muslims, uh, criticizing my pinned tweet. If you're, if you're on Twitter, uh, you know that you can pin a tweet to the top, and that's the tweet that everyone will see when they come to your page. Well, my pinned tweet said, "I left Islam because I studied Muhammad's life, and I accepted the Gospel because I studied Jesus' life." And, and that's my story. Um, and from that one tweet, I've gotten hundreds of criticisms. Now, if you zoom into the past, about, you know, 12 years, I would have made the exact same criticisms. I, I completely understand where those people are coming from. A lot of them are very rude. A lot of the people that say I deserve my place in hell, and that's fine. They're zealous for their faith. I see where they're coming from. But a lot of people are very cordial, and they actually believe Islam is true, and they honestly do. And they honestly believe Christianity is false, and they think I'm misleading people. And that's where I was 12 years ago. And then I dedicated my life to studying this issue. I was in medical school. I actually graduated medical school and became a physician. And I was looking at, do I continue on this path as a physician, make a good amount of money, have a respectable degree and a respectable career path, or do I give that up to go into ministry where, honestly, uh, my first year as a minister, I, I made within the four figures. I didn't even break the five figure range, uh, with medical school debts, which were in the six figure age. Um, you know, am I, am I willing to sacrifice all that much? And my conclusion was absolutely. Given what I've learned about Islam and Christianity, how zealous I was for Islam in the past, and now after tons of research, this is what I learned. People need to know it. And that remains true now, 12 years later, after I've become a Christian. People even today desperately need to know this information that I want to share. And so it's, it's not just, hey, this is a video series that, uh, you know, you can reach out to your Muslim friends with. If you are a Muslim, and you honestly want to hear why people are leaving Islam and becoming Christians, here's the reasons why. I hope to share that with you. And I'm absolutely honored to do that with my friend David, who reached me with the Gospel back in 2001. I was trying to convert him to Islam, and he said no. I was an atheist, and I became a Christian based on the evidence. Let me share that evidence with you. We went back and forth for years, and ultimately I came to the realization that the evidence for Christianity, that evidence is far more solid than the evidence for Islam. In fact, it's more solid than any other worldview. And that's how I ultimately became a Christian. So David had an integral role to play in that. And so we'll be sharing some stories, um, hopefully in, in this video series, and he'll be sharing his insights as well.

Do you have anything to add, or should we close it out?

Um, no, just, just to know, um, coming up, we've got, uh, insights about, uh, learning what you want to do if you're a Christian, you want to reach out to Muslims. There are lots of different ways to do that. We'll be talking about that. Um, there are different kinds of Muslims, so you want to think about, uh, who you, you know, who you want to reach. There are different ways you can do it. Um, you know, whether it's social media or interpersonal communication. And there's what you need to know, the, the, the information that you need to know about Christianity and about Islam. We'll have, uh, we'll have, uh, everything you need. All right, guys, so thank you very much. Looking forward to sharing the rest of this series with you. Next, we're going to move on to different approaches of reaching out to Muslims and different ways of doing ministry.

Hey everyone, it's Nabeel and David again with the Seeking Allah Finding Jesus, uh, YouTube series, unofficial. Um, we are just going through some points, especially from the books Seeking Allah Finding Jesus, that we hope will be helpful to you as you are reaching out to Muslims. Or if you are yourself a Muslim considering Christianity, or the truth of Christianity and Islam, and you think you already have it figured out, you just want to hear what the opposition might have to say. Or if you're actually looking into this to learn what the truth is, we're glad you're here. Uh, we're hoping to share some information with you. This video in particular, though, we're going to go a little bit back into our past. I think it's absolutely critical when you're talking with anyone and trying to share with them your heartfelt beliefs, that you develop a relationship with them. I think, barring extraordinary circumstances, your goal should be to develop a relationship, develop a friendship. In the context of a long-term relationship, you can then discuss these things. You know, and emotions will flare at times because you're talking about things that are sensitive to people. But the, but the relationship can bear the burden of those kinds of emotional flare-ups. And so, um, in this video, we're going to talk about our relationship and the importance of relationships in general. And this is the reason it's important to bring up is, uh, you know, we, we do public debates, we make videos, we, we post things. And, uh, it's easy if you're, if you're watching a debate to say, "Oh, this is the preferred approach." Um, whereas what we're about to talk about now is our preferred approach, right? You, you can't, uh, you know, you can't do something like this on YouTube. In other words, you know, if you're, if you're talking to people on YouTube and you know, reaching tens of thousands of people, you're not building friendships with all those people. If you're, you know, if you put out a book, um, you're not building friendships with all of those people. What we're saying is, if we could choose any, any, uh, approach as, as the best possible approach, it would be, um, building up a friendship over time. And, and that's important because, as Nabeel pointed out, if you're talking about people's most heartfelt beliefs, you're going to get, if you're seriously talking and not actually just avoiding things, if you're actually communicating your views on these topics and you disagree, um, that can lead to some very heated exchanges. And if you have a friendship, if you have a friendship that can endure that, then you can bring those things up. And I'm saying this because, you know, Nabeel and I talked about the most sensitive issues you can talk about between Christians and Muslims. The information about Muhammad, we talked about those things. But, you know, if you're just talking to some Muslim you met for the first time and you say, "Hey, Muhammad had sex with a nine-year-old girl," or something like that, it's not, it's not going to continue. He's going to think, "Oh, this person hates me." Not the best approach. Yeah, by the time we're talking about those things, if I bring those up, Nabeel, no matter what else he knows in life, he knows I don't hate him. He knows that when I'm bringing something up, it's because I believe he's wrong and I'm trying to show him. And when he brought up a point about Christianity, I understood it's not because he hates me, it's because he wants me to be on the right path. So we're doing this out of mutual concern. We want what's best for you. I want to reiterate something that David said too. It's, you know, a lot of the people you see online are, are debating, um, they're presenting arguments, they're doing things that look very, you know, cold and mechanical. The reason why, though, is because that's what you can capture on YouTube. And so that's what people see. And so people see me and my presentations on Islam, like, "Why do you hate Islam so much?" Um, you know, "Why are you constantly coming after Islam?" And it's, well, you can't, you don't see the recordings of me having friendships with Muslims and talking about things with them over the context of years. Um, same thing with, with David. You know, he's got a ton of debates, he's got a ton of videos, and, and he believes everything he says in those videos. He's, it's not that we're trying to disown those, but that's a small part of a much bigger picture. And so we're trying to give you a little bit of insight into the bigger picture. What we both believe is the preferred method of discussing these kinds of issues, and that's in the context of a relationship. Um, and so, just to give you a little bit of background, um, I met David, uh, in 2001. We were on the public speaking and debate team. This is right about the time of the September 11th attacks. So, yeah, I would say, um, became a very interesting topic very quickly. Yeah, I'd say about three weeks before 9/11 is when we met for the first time. And then, you know, you see someone in a class, you don't immediately become friends with them. It was over the course of a few weeks that I started becoming friends with David. And at the same time, 9/11 happened. And, you know, immediately, as a Muslim who is, who believes that Islam is a religion of peace, who believes that Islam is the true religion, you're kind of pressed into a corner. Um, of course, you're pressed into the same corner everyone else is pressed into, which is, are we vulnerable? Are we, as Americans, vulnerable? Is our way of life going to change? Now, all Americans were pressed with that question, but Muslims in particular were pressed with another question, which is, do I now have to choose between my identity as an American and my identity as a Muslim? Or if not, and for almost everyone, the answer was no, you don't have to choose. How do I navigate between the two? Do I disown any violent Islam, or do I somehow explain the violent Islam? Do I embrace the violent Islam? And of course, the vast majority of Muslims would say no. We don't, at least Muslims in the West. And so that was the position that I was put in at roughly the same time I was meeting David. And so I remember you, uh, you, uh, after that, you like spread an American flag over your car. Oh, man, people know. We were, we were, we were scared as a, you know, as a Muslim family. Um, just all of a sudden being in the crosshairs of America. Did your parents tell your sister to like, take her hijab off, just so she wouldn't be identical? They told her to come home and stay home. Um, they, they told us to both come home, but especially my sister, because she would wear the hijab when she was out in public. I remember my dad went to Home Depot and tried to buy every American flag they had. We had American flags in our yard, on our cars, on our windows, just to let people know, hey, we support America. I mean, my dad was a 24-year US Navy veteran. So he wasn't just saying that, he actually served the military for 24 years. Um, I remember him going out to sea to defend our country. And so that was through and through who my dad actually was. And so, you know, in this moment of crisis, not only were we dealing with the same crisis all other Americans were dealing with, we also had to deal with the crisis of telling our countrymen, our fellow Americans, hey, we're a part of you, while at the same time defending our Islamic identity. And so that was, that was, you know, pretty difficult. And, um, David wouldn't make it any easier on me. We'd be watching CNN. Oh, yeah. Well, this is after, this isn't like, you know, first day stuff. This is like, uh, after we became friends, but we became friends so quickly that, uh, uh, yeah, would, uh, of course, be showing Osama bin Laden on TV. And I would, you know, "Hey, Nabeel, your uncle's on TV." And he would run out, "What, what, what's this?" And then, uh, it would be Osama bin Laden. And then, yeah, so he would say, "Well, Hitler's your grandfather." And then I would run out and go, "He got fired back!" Nabeel called my grandfather Hitler. You all see this? Yeah. So that's David. So that's, I mean, so as you can see, we were, we were real friends. Um, we, we became real friends in the course of these conversations. It wasn't just about, you know, the religion. Like, of course, that is where it started. It is the way it started. I mean, we met when you, when you came to join the team, but we didn't really, we didn't really talk. We, uh, we went to win on the first trip and then ended up sharing the hotel room. And I was actually over there praying because, again, this is, this is 9/11 time. Um, even, even back then, it's more so now, but back, even back then, you had to worry about being called a, you know, a bigot or something like this if you start talking to Muslims and start, and start, you know, criticizing what they believe. But, um, I was over there, Nabeel's putting his stuff away. And all, all I knew about him then at that point was that his name was Nabeel Qureshi. So I knew he was a Muslim. And, uh, at that point, I don't know if he's secular or what. And so we're sharing a hotel room. And then I see with my peripheral vision that he's, he's pulling out his, putting away his prayer rug. So, okay, he's at least devout enough that he's taking his prayers seriously, even on a school trip. Um, but other than that, I was over there, I was doing my Bible in a year reading. And, uh, I was praying, "God, if you want me to talk to this guy, please let him start it because I want people to say that I started it." And, and so, please let him start it. And, uh, very soon after that, you said, "So, are you a hardcore Christian?" And, uh, that because he's reading myself. Now, I, as a Muslim, had never seen somebody read their Bible in their free time. Like, I knew Christians read the Bible, but I figured it was something they did out of obligation or something they did through cultural heritage. Now, actually, you've got a few minutes free at the end of the day on a tournament that you've been busy all day, and, and so you pull out your Bible. I've never seen anyone do that. And so I figured, you know, David's a special kind of Christian, like he's a, you know, hardcore Christian. And I had been taught my whole life the Bible had been changed, right? So as a devout Muslim in the West, you're going to be raised with an inoculation basically against Christianity. It's, it's not passive, it's very active. Muslims in the local mosques generally speaking, of course, we're generalizing, we have to generalize when you're talking about a whole religious group, but generally speaking, in the West, Muslims who are devout are not just taught, "Hey, this is how you were, you were to be a good Muslim." They're also taught, "This is why you're not supposed to be a Christian," or "This is why Christians shouldn't be Christian." "This is why their religion is ridiculous." And by the way, I often heard those terms, "Christianity is ridiculous," in multiple contexts, not just in the mosque I went to, but other mosques as well. And that's a whole other discussion for another day, but we truly believed it. Part of the reason why we believed it was because we believe the Bible had been changed, that it had been corrupted over time, and it no longer says today what it used to say. And so, uh, we, we spent that first weekend, uh, arguing and really messing ourselves up for, from staying up, uh, all night discussing these matters. But, um, Nabeel explained to me everything he believed. He shared his criticisms. He shared his view of Islam. He told me that Islam was proven true by history and logic and science and mathematics and everything. Everything points to the truth of Islam. All you, if, if you actually examine it with an open heart, you, you can't miss it. And, you know, even though we were, uh, stating our beliefs and disagreeing with each other, that wasn't the end of it, right? We didn't part ways. "Oh, we, you know, we really disagree with each other. There's no way we can get along here." Uh, we realized, "Hey, we're, we're, we're both in this for the, for the same reason, right? We, we both want to know the truth about God." And so, uh, didn't end there. We, uh, we spent years, but years studying. I would say at the end of the night, what was accomplished was that I had met a Christian who had investigated these questions. The average Christian that I had encountered up until that point in time, if I were to ask him a question about the reliability of the Bible and specifically textual integrity, has it been changed or not? They would have nothing to give me. Maybe they would have a name to give me, "Hey, read Josh McDowell's stuff." But they would have no evidence themselves, no argumentation themselves. And so I now encountered someone who not just had thought about these things, but had thought about them enough that he was able to on the spot share with me some reasons why he thought the Bible was reliable and some other issues as well. And more than the argumentation itself, the sheer fact that a Christian had studied it and was willing to stand up for it, the sheer fact, uh, was powerful to me. Like, "Oh, wait a minute. There, there actually is something to consider here." Again, I didn't think it was significant. I didn't think his argumentation was powerful. I just thought, "But wow, there is something here." And that was quite a bit of a shocker for me, believe it or not. You know, I today know tons of Christian apologists in various fields. I'm talking media studies, philosophy, historical studies, archaeological studies. I, I know Christians who defend their faith in a variety of fields. But there's a first time you encounter it, right? And that was my first time, and it was an eye-opener for me. And, uh, so it was, it was, uh, it was a little after that that I realized that we were actually becoming friends because, you know, we spent, we spent the weekend, uh, arguing and staying up and having a discussion. And, uh, it was later. So we, we, we left that tournament. We left. That's important to briefly comment on because you might be thinking, "You argued all night. How did you become friends?" Yeah, uh, the reason why was because I realized his faith was important to him, and my faith was important to me. So we were arguing because of common values. Now, now his were Christian, mine were Muslim, but that, that bonded us. And so I understood him. I understood him a lot more than I would, you know, a Western liberal, new age, um, you know, person, uh, um, you know, in college, here was someone who, who had strong morals, who had a belief in an absolute God. And so I understood that, and we were connected. And, uh, matter of fact, along, along those lines, uh, at the first night of the week that we spent, uh, uh, arguing and discussing these things, after Nabeel had explained his view of Christianity and Islam, I, I asked him, I said, "All right, I know what you believe now. You've explained what you believe. If you're wrong, you want to know it." And that's an important question to ask because some people don't want to know it. I, I would say roughly half of the atheists that I talk to, when I ask that question, say, "No, I don't want to know the truth about your God. I don't like your God." Something, something along those lines. Nabeel said, "Yes and no." He said, "Yes, because I would want to know the truth about God." But, "No, it would, it would crush my family. It would just, it would destroy my family." And so that was, that was a glimpse into the, uh, importance of family relationships in Islam, which I, I actually had to struggle with that over the years. I could have told my parents I'd become a Martian Buddhist. It would have made a huge difference, as long as I was being good, right? That would, that would, that's all that's, that's what they really cared about. Um, but, you know, this, this family bond, even after that first trip, we went away for, we were away for like two or three days or something like this. We came back to the airport, and your mom hugged you at the airport for like five or ten minutes straight. And I was thinking, "I got into prison, my mom didn't hug me for five minutes straight." Right? And you, you're going for it for a two or three day trip. The reason I say I had to struggle with that over the years is, I mean, I'm, you know, we're constantly discussing and, and arguing about things, but in the back of my mind, seeing how close Nabeel and his family were, how close he was with his, his mom and dad and sister, it's always in my mind, if, if, if belief in Islam is really as big a deal as it seems right here, if this guy ever listens, uh, to what I'm saying, if he ever considers an alternative to Islam, that is really going to crush these people that he really, really loves. And so, you know, that, now I'm saying this because, you know, lots of times in the West, we tend to think that, you know, non-Christians, you know, they're like drug dealers and prostitutes, and their lives are all messed up, and they're, they're, they've got horrible lives. And then they're going to become a Christian, and everything's going to, going to be better, right? You're going to be better once you know Jesus, you're going to be better once you're involved in a good church, and life is going to get better for lots of people. Life, life does. Life got way better for me after, after I was a Christian. But, you know, for lots of Muslims, it's, it's not like that. I mean, it's better in the sense that he mentioned that he would know, you know, the truth about God. But at least at first, I mean, your whole, your whole system comes, uh, crumbling down. So I was seeing that even on those first couple of days when we were meeting, and then, you know, later in the, in the airport, and then of course, we got back, and we have our first meeting afterwards. And I was having a dispute with my partner, a duo partner. We do duo presentations, and we really just did not get along. Again, for the public speaking and debate team. Yeah. And I, I didn't want to continue and stuff. So I told her, I said, "I don't, I don't want to continue this." And she went and told, like, the president of the team. And because they were friends and stuff, and the president of the team, instead of addressing me directly, stands up and announces to, to the entire team, "If someone has a working piece and is winning awards, you should never break up with that partner. And anyone who breaks up with a partner when you're winning awards and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." And all of a sudden, Nabeel was brand new. It was brand new, right? I mean, these people who were already there knew each other. Nabeel, who was brand new, and whose, of course, reputation is still in the balance, stood up and says, "Well, I think if anyone has a problem with a certain person on the team, you should go to that person, talk to that person instead of blurting everything out in the middle of a room." And so I was, I'm sitting there like, "Whoa, I'm the, I'm the big mean guy. I'm not the one that everyone, people don't come to my defense, right? People don't, don't come to my defense." I was, you know, I was honestly, uh, you know, kind of surprised that this is the way things would be handled on a communications team. Again, on the team that's based in communications, right? You think they'd be better. If it was very clear, this, this girl had a message for David, but she was so passive aggressive that she would rather announce it to everyone, angrily, than just talk to him about it. And so, for me, I'm a pretty straightforward guy. If you have an issue with me, come talk to me. So anyway, that was, that was cool. I think, okay, this guy, you know, he doesn't just believe in Islam and like to argue a lot. He's actually, he will actually stand up, uh, for what he believes is right. So, so that was cool. And then, um, just briefly, um, David said something about having been in prison. There's a whole story, but David was a sociopath, I could even say murderous sociopath, before he came to Christ. You can watch that. You can type in "Why What" if you're looking at the description box. I will, I'll link to his, his testimony. Um, and, and by the way, that, that's, that's why I had already known something about the origins of Christianity and apologetics when I met Nabeel, because I'd gone through similar problems. An atheist ran into a Christian, similar story. First Christian I'd ever seen, just sitting there reading the Bible, this is in jail. Started arguing with him, and that's how I got started. And so it was David's atheism that led him to be a murderer, sociopath. I had mental health problems. Just be clear, I had mental health problems. So that, that's, it was, it was the combination of those two. It was that, me having mental health problems, violent urges, and then nothing in my worldview that would that would provide. But, but I mean, and that is true. But if the average person was able to divorce themselves from their emotions and just follow atheism to its logical extreme, they would come close to what you did. Well, I mean, they might not be fine. I'd say what, what you would, what you would come down to is, do whatever you feel like doing, and whatever you can get away with. And if you happen to really feel like being a nice person, then do that. If you're, you're angry and you don't like people and you want to, you know, bash someone's head in, then why not? Why not do that? If you, you know, if you think you've got a chance of getting away with it. I didn't get away with it. So, short tangent. I just wanted to make sure we dropped that. I did not put that in Seeking Allah Finding Jesus because it would distract from the flow of the story, mess up your flow. Um, and David hadn't publicly released that information during the first iteration of the book. This is the second iteration of the book. After it became a New York Times bestseller, Zondervan gave me a little bit more leeway to add stuff that I wanted to put in here. So there's 10 expert contributions in the end of the book that they let me put in here, which wasn't in the original version, plus an extended epilogue. Anyway, one other thing that I put in here was a link to David's YouTube video about his testimony. Definitely worth the 40-minute watch. So anyway, um, we became friends after that. And so David had a bit of a criminal background to him, and he was introducing me to crime. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I learned very quickly not to, uh, commit a crime with little goody-two-shoes here. It was something small. I was sitting in the, uh, forensics and debate room office one day, and Nabeel steps into the office, and, uh, he's giggling. And I go, "What are you, what are you giggling about?" And he goes, "I just passed a sign that said 'Academic freedom isn't free.'" And I thought it should say, "Nor dumb, right? Freedom, yeah. You're going to say freedom ain't free. You should say it's not nor dumb, right? You need to do it. You can't just include the free, you have to include, include the dumb." So, uh, he's just giggling about that because he's laughing at himself. He likes stupid, like wordplays and things like that. So, but, but, you know, we're friends by that. That's why I go, "It can say that." I got a Sharpie right here. And so, so we walk back out there. Now, I don't want to be defacing, yeah, I don't want to be defacing school property here. So I say, "Look, there's only one direction that a professor could come by here, so it's around that corner. So you stand on the corner and give me a signal if someone's coming." So I go over there and I start writing in the Sharpie, you know, making it match and stuff. I'm writing "Nor Dumb." I'm sitting there, I'm doing this. And then a professor walks right in front of Nabeel, right over to me, looks at me, sees me writing, and walks and goes, walks out. And I go to Nabeel, like, "What, what is your problem?" He goes, "I've never done anything like this before." Like, I froze. I didn't know what to say. Totally, totally froze. Even in retrospect, I don't know what I could have said. Something like that, right? Any sort of signal, something, anything. I would have taken, I would have taken the hit. Freezing is not, is not the, uh, so no crimes with Nabeel. And don't take classes. Oh, yeah, that was a bad idea too. So when, when we met, um, I found out that he was doing biology, and I was doing pre-med. And it's so perfect, right? Here we are, good friends, we can take classes together, be study buddies, it's gonna work out. So we, we, uh, took genetics together. And I would say, probably a bad idea. Yeah, somehow, I think you absorb some information. I learned. I mean, we had to be in class, but I did not learn anything from the actual talks. I would go back and read my book for the test and so on. But, uh, in class, uh, no, didn't happen. Uh, yeah. And I, I had already studied genetics on my own. I was just really interested in genetics. And so the classes weren't doing that much for me. But we made it through the class, we built fat A's. Um, and so the decision was that the following semester, we would do, uh, evolutionary biology together. Um, so, or was it vertebrate zoology? I don't know. It was, it was the professor who taught evolution. I don't remember if that was the evolution class. But, uh, uh, she had this, uh, really spiky, weird hair to look like a hedgehog, like a Sonic. It looked like it was going to attack you. The hair was about to come out and get you. So we sit down on the first day of class, and, uh, Nabeel starts writing, "The evolution of Dr. Kilburn's hair." On the same name. Oh, whoops. It's okay. That was true. It's true. In her name, any likenesses to humans actually existing is entirely incidental. Um, but no, no, to be, to be fair, um, she was definitely, uh, antagonistic towards theism. Oh, yeah. Yeah. In her classes, in her classes, she would talk about, it was even answered in order to answer a test question correctly, you would have to deny, like, theistic views and so on. And she had a big Darwin fish in her, in her, uh, and so I was, I was like, "What's her issue? Like, teach what you want to teach, but don't bring theology into it unless you're open to discussing both views, right? And you're open to letting other people present their views. Don't, like, force a certain theological view down somebody's throat in a biology classroom." And so that didn't work out very well because, uh, with her spiky hair. So I kept making these comments. We realized, yeah, we weren't gonna, we would have still, we would have still, we would have still aced the class. We would have made it. But I mean, it was, it was not a good idea. It's a huge waste of time. I was not gonna be able to pay attention. Yeah, we would just crack each other up in the back of the class. And yeah, it is, yeah. So we, uh, we stuck through that and, uh, actually met my, my future, what, my present wife now, but, uh, uh, my future wife while we were, uh, arguing about the resurrection. We were going on another school trip and talking about, talking about, we're arguing about the resurrection. The people's arguing that Jesus didn't rise from the dead. I was arguing that he, that he was. That's what we were studying at that time. We would go over Nabeel's house, lay out our arguments. We would write them out, and then we would go through them point by point to see who had the, the stronger case. And we went on the trip and we're arguing in the, um, we're arguing in the airport. And a new girl on the team should just joined the team. Well, she was going on the trip to see if she wanted to, uh, join the team. She wanted to go see what, what it is we do. And Nabeel and I were arguing about the resurrection. She steps up and said, she starts telling us that we're both right. And what she meant by that was, what she meant by that was that, you know, all religious views are sort of equally valid. Um, you know, whatever, when somebody says that, it means all religious views are equally invalid. Yeah. Um, well, she, yeah, she was an agnostic. But it's basically, you know, whatever is, you know, whatever you believe, that that's true for you, sort of thing. But it's interesting because Nabeel and I both turned on her. Instead of arguing with each other, it was, "What are you talking about?" Like, he's saying Jesus rose from the dead. I'm saying he didn't rise. The only two possibilities. How is that equal? Someone's right, someone's wrong. Under no circumstances are we both, uh, right here. And, uh, anyway, I enjoyed arguing with her so much that eventually married her.

Well, that's an interesting, um, case study. It's, you know, Islam and Christianity are in a lot of ways much closer to each other on the theological spectrum than, than further apart. Uh, you, you of course have very important differences. And my friend Abdu has coined a phrase, I that I think he coined it, but he said, you know, "The differences make a difference." And it's absolutely true. There are differences, though differences are important. But that said, if you're comparing Islam to Buddhism, Christianity is going to be much closer to the side of Islam on that comparison. If you're comparing, you know, Islam or Christianity to atheism, Islam and Christianity.

Can be much closer. Um, they're, they're actually very close in the theological spectrum. Yeah, monotheism, monotheistic faiths. You're already, you're already dealing with, with just a few. And they're monotheistic faiths who, that, that proclaim that, that God has sent prophets and messengers and, uh, revealed scriptures to the world. Um, that's an even smaller number. And then if you're agreeing with all kinds of things about Jesus, that Jesus is born of a virgin, that he's Messiah, that he lived the most miraculous life in history, uh, you're, you're down to Islam and Christianity as far as having that much, um, income.

Now, Christianity has other things in common with, you know, like Judaism has a ton in common with Judaism. But as far as that kind of, uh, overlap on, on, you know, Jesus and the things he did, um, lots, lots of common ground there with, uh, with Muslims. But the, the areas of disagreement just happen to be the core doctrines of the gospel. And the apostles go out and preach the gospel. It's, Jesus is Lord, he died on the cross for sins, he rose from the dead. That's the core. That was the takeaway message, according to the apostles of Jesus.

And if you go to Islam, Muhammad's coming along preaching, it's, "Hey, you Christians, you believe in one God? So do I. You believe that God sent messengers into the world? So do I. You believe Jesus was born of a virgin? So do I. You believe he lived in the most miraculous life in history? So do I. You believe he's the Messiah? So do I." They're just these three little things we can't just, we can't agree on, uh, that you need to change. Uh, Jesus isn't Lord, he didn't die on the cross for sins, and he didn't rise from the dead. If we could just get those out of the way, then, uh, then we're good again.

Uh, just to reiterate what David said, tons of things in common between Islam and Christianity. But the three things, I, I'd say the three things that stand out the most that they disagree on are the death of Jesus on the cross, his resurrection from the dead, and the fact that he is God. Those three things are the most important beliefs in the Christian faith. And so if you're talking about, if you're comparing Islam and Christianity now, as far as, you know, before investigating them, you've got, since they don't teach the same things on core doctrines, they can't both be true unless you are declaring yourself Aristotle's nemesis or something like this and going against the law of non-contradiction. You basically have three possibilities: either Islam is true and Christianity is false, or Christianity is true and Islam is false, or they're both false.

And if you're looking at that, if you're just looking at those three doctrines and comparing them, you basically have either Christians for centuries leading up to the time of Islam got their most fundamental, basic doctrines wrong. They were raw about the takeaway message of Jesus, somehow the core message they messed that up. They got the part right about him being born of a virgin, according to Islam. They got the part right about him being the Messiah. They got the part about his miracles being right. They got all that right, but they got the core message of the gospel, they got all that wrong. Somehow it was corrupted over, over time. It's either that and Islam is true, or Islam is a corruption of Christianity. In other words, Islam picked up some things, and the reason it has things in common is because it absorbed those from, you know, Middle Eastern Christians and Jews and so on. Um, but it's actually a corruption. Either an accidental corruption, like Muhammad was just listening to some weird Christians or something darker and more sinister.

And the reason you might want to think that is because if you, if you, if you look at the New Testament gospel and you pay attention to the message about false prophets coming and so on, I mean, you couldn't come up with a more perfect example of someone who, who says, "Guys, I agree with you on almost everything, just these three core issues of the gospel." The Christian response, and Muhammad, if Christianity is true, here then the Christian response should have been, "My, we've been expecting you, right? We've been expecting you, Muhammad, because you are the perfect example of someone who's come along to, uh, change the gospel." So if you Muslims out there, those are the two, those are the two possibilities. If you're, if you want to say Christianity or Islam, uh, or are on the table here, either Christians got their fundamental doctrines wrong somehow, or Islam got the doctrines wrong.

So if you're going to investigate these things and have a fruitful investigation, and I think that's important, I think the foil of having two different people is important, um, because, you know, every time I ran up against a hard truth, uh, when it came to Islam, and we'll talk about some of those in the videos following, um, if I were by myself, I would just drop it and walk away. But if I have a good friend who's there who says, "No, no, you can't just drop this and walk away. This is important. You need to, you need to answer it. You need to figure this out, and I'm going to keep coming back until you do." So I think you need to have a dialogue partner when you're going for the truth, especially if the truth may potentially be a hard truth for you.

But if you're going to do that, you have to have a relationship. You have to have a relationship in order to be able to do that. There were times when David and I would literally slam the door and walk out on one another and say, "We're never going to talk about this ever again." Uh, right. I, I remember that happening. We got pretty mad, uh, on a bunch of occasions. Yeah, I remember that happening. No, I remember it happening on two occasions. But, uh, for some reason, I actually remember too, but I feel like it happened and more than that. Um, but we had to, we had to get back together because we were going to class together, or we would drive together, or, and there's, there's, there's, if you're talking about Christians and Muslims, again, going back to the, to the similarities, uh, when, when both believe that God, that God is sovereign, that God ordains things, that God puts us in positions for a reason.

If you're a Muslim and you're in a room with a Christian, and you become best friends, you have to be thinking, "Maybe Allah put me here to talk to this guy." If you're a Christian, right? You're a Christian, you're over there praying, "You know, God, if you want me talking to this guy, let him start it." And then he starts it. You have to be thinking, "Maybe we're put together for a reason." And so you can't just, that's not the sort of thing that, that you, you can give up lightly, right? If I believe that, that God put us in a hotel room together so that we can get to the truth, that's not a relationship you just casually cast aside when you, when you get on each other's nerves. And that's something that, that you should, should keep in mind if you're a Muslim with Christian friends, you're a Christian with Muslim friends, uh, that should be in your mind, that, you know, you guys aren't atheists here. You guys aren't atheists and thinking that you're just, you know, friends by coincidence or something like that. That, that God can put people in certain places for a reason. So you should, you should, uh, encourage each other to be, uh, obligated to, to, to get to the bottom of things and to, to, to let your friendship carry you through, uh, no matter what.

So, um, and I actually believe that that's what Acts 17 says, that God has put us in specific times and places so that we might reach out to him and find him, though he's not far from any one of us. I think that's scriptural. Um, and as a Muslim, I saw it as my honor to be able to tell David about Islam and to share the true monotheism with him. And so that was my emphasis. He's a Muslim, he's a Christian, we developed a relationship. And so, uh, we're going to wrap this up soon. In the next video, we're going to talk a little bit about varying approaches to reaching out to Muslims, if you are a Christian and you're watching this. Um, we're going to keep that one much brief. This is going to be the longest video by far. I just wanted to share some insights into our relationship and how he became friends. We've maintained that friendship for, for 16 years now.

Just to recap, a relationship is the preferred approach, at least as far as both of us are concerned. We, we truly believe that developing a long-term relationship with someone that you're trying to share your beliefs with, uh, is the best approach. Um, yeah, you can do great stuff on a street corner, you can do great struggle stuff on YouTube, in a public debate setting, um, but, uh, by far, the, the best approach would be finding the Muslims in your, in your area, um, and those who intersect regularly with your life, and instead of just ignoring them, which is not good, um, or looking with looking at them, you know, with eyes of scans, which is also not good. Actually engage them, be real friends with them, and share your beliefs in that context.

And just one more brief thing to add to that, you're not loving them for the sake of converting them. Because if that's your motivation, then when they say they're not going to convert, you're going to drop your love for them, and that's called an ulterior motive. That, that's not true love. You, you, you love Muslims because they're, they're created in the image of God. And as Christians, we are called to love everyone, right? So, absolutely. You love them for that. Christ first loved them. And so we love them out of love for our God. We love all people. And so, and, and so you're preaching the gospel because you love them, right? And not because, not, "Oh, I love you because you're, you're a missionary opportunity here." You're preaching the gospel because you, you love them, and you want what's best for them, and you want them to have the relationship with Christ that you have.

And should they say, "I'm not going to convert," which I said to David, of course. Um, and should people say to you, "Hey, stop spending time on this person, they're not going to come around," which people said to you, right? Christians said that to me. Uh, it was, it was Christians usually saying, and I mean, because there's a reason for that, right? I mean, there are Christians who, well, there are Christians who have sort of a Billy Graham crusade, uh, mentality, where you preach the gospel and you preach a 10-minute gospel message, and thousands of people come down, and those are the people who responded. Um, I'm not knocking that. There are people that, that that is effective with. But those the people that is effective with are people who they already believe it, right? They already believe in the Bible, they already believe that Jesus, you know, died on the cross, they believe those kinds of things. They've just never made a commitment. And so they hear a clear presentation of the gospel and they say, "You're right. If I really believe this, I do need to commit." And those are the people who will come down for the most part. There are some people that the Holy Spirit completely turns around and convicts, but for the most part, that's, yeah.

And so if we have it in our mind, "Look how many people, look how many people, look how quickly people can can come to the gospel. Look, you've been spending years talking to this one Muslim. Think about all the atheists you could have been talking to. Think about, I mean, my wife, it was like two weeks. Like two weeks and she was she was a Christian. She was an agnostic. Like two weeks later, she was a Christian." Um, and there are lots of people like that that, you know, it might not be the 10 minutes, but, you know, it's a couple weeks. With Muslims, you might be talking about years. And so the idea is, you know, it's like, uh, it was four years for my good friend Abdu. It was nine years. So the idea is, "This is taking so long, right? You can, you can, you can be doing much more work elsewhere." And my, my attitude again went back to that, "No, I think we're here for a reason." And if we keep having it out, and I, you know, keep showing him that, that Jesus is who he claimed to be, and we're talking about Muhammad, if he keeps coming back, I believe that, that God is, is here in this. And so, um, no, can't, can't back off something like that.

So, and so your relationship should withstand the ups and downs, and it should be for the sake of the person, for the sake of Christ. Uh, that would be my, my last bit of advice. Anything else to add before we go to our next video? All right, thanks guys so much for watching this one. Our next one will be on understanding of the various approaches that might work for you and for the person you're trying to, to, to love and minister to. So thanks so much for watching. We'll see you again soon.

Hey everyone, it's Nabeel Qureshi and David Wood doing our unofficial Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus video series. Um, again, a lot of what we're going to cover, uh, comes implicitly or explicitly from this book, and there's much more in here that you can learn, uh, if you want to get to the nuts and bolts. And so we're sharing this video series to, uh, in order for you to understand, if you're a Muslim, some of the reasons why someone would go from devout belief in Islam, the truth of Islam, because of, you know, hard logical facts, scientific evidence, mathematical evidence, reason, history, philosophy, etc. That was me in 2001, going from that position to taking a look at the evidence and ultimately saying, "Wait a minute, even though I love Islam, even though everyone I love loves Islam, it's just simply not true." And then having to consider the alternative, which in this case is Christianity, and that the evidence for Christianity was in fact much stronger, not only than Islam, but every other worldview, which ultimately led me to accept it. If you are interested in learning about that, this video series is for you. If you're interested in reaching out to Muslims, this video series is for you. And particularly if you fall into that latter group, this video will be important because this video is helping you understand different approaches to ministry.

So I have one friend, for example, in California, sweet lady, uh, blonde-haired, blue-eyed, about five foot two, five foot three. Oh my God. Um, and her approach is to find, you know, a Muslim in, in her vicinity, and you don't have to look far to find one, um, and to go to them and actually care about them and invest in them. Say, "Where are you from? Can I help you with anything? Let me know if you need anything. Here's my number." And she actually befriends them. And for, for many years, she'll spend time with them, and then the matter of faith will come up. Is that the best approach? Or I have another friend named Jay Smith, who gets on a ladder in the middle of a public park and in a very booming, resonant voice, gives all the reasons why Islam is false and Christianity is true. Is that the best approach? You've got my approach, which is to share my story and evidence on, on, on Islam's side and Christianity's side, and after presenting a fair case to say, "Here's why I think Christianity is true." Is that the best approach? And you got David Wood, who makes a variety of videos on, on YouTube of a variety of sorts, political commentary, current events, historical commentary on Islamic Christianity. Is that the best approach? David, what do you have to say?

Um, yeah, and the reason this is, this is important because, I mean, our tendency, if we're talking about, you know, uh, introduction to, uh, reaching Islam and reaching Muslims and so on, is to, is to jump right into the facts. Here's, here's how you respond to Muslim objections, here's how you respond to Muslim arguments and so on. Uh, there is some groundwork to to be laid in in terms of, uh, methodology and different approaches people might take, because over and over again, I've heard that, that I have the wrong approach and that I need to adopt this other person's approach. Um, and, you know, at that point, I have to ask, "Well, why have so many Muslims left Islam after encountering my approach?" In fact, one of the funniest, probably my favorite story of all time, is a guy who was online and said, "David, you're, you're too aggressive with Muslims." And I said, "Well, you know, what do you mean?" He says, "Well, you need to be more like Jesus." And I said, "What? I need to be more like, you know, 'Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites.' I need to be more like that, because I can't be that mean." And he says, "Well, he's the Lord, he can be like that. You need to be more like the apostles." And I said, "What? You mean like the Apostle Paul, who, you know, said to Elimass the the sorcerer, 'You, you son of the devil, you enemy of of righteous.' I need to be more like that, because I can't, I can't talk to Muslims like that, man. I can't be mean like, like the apostles there." And he said, "Well, it's just a fact that if you shared the same information but did so in a very nice manner, in a much nicer manner, Muslims would listen to you more." And I said, "I, I kind of have found the opposite with lots of Muslims, that they actually respond more if you're, if you're, you come right at them with the material. There are Muslims who respond, who respond to that approach better. Those are the guys I'm trying to reach."

And at the end of all this, we went back and forth, and he said, "Look, there's a book you need to read. It's called Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus, and it's about a Muslim named Nabeel who had a who had a Christian friend who stuck with him for years. You need to read about that Christian so you could be more like him." And I, I responded, I go, "Are you joking here?" Because I thought he might be joking, he was just messing with me, right? Like saying I changed over time or something like this. So I said, "Are you joking?" You know, "That's me, right? That's me in the book, uh, that I'm his friend from the book." And he responds and goes, "Oh, no, I didn't know that." And I said, "Yeah, that's me." And so I explained things to him, and he goes, "Wow, now I feel like I just explained the cosmological argument to William Lane Craig." So I, I thought that that was funny. Uh, but, but the idea here is he's looking at that thinking I'm being aggressive. When I mean, was I aggressive when we were having our discussions? Yeah, you were. But it was a welcome aggression, like I was tired of of Christians who didn't have answers or didn't have a backbone. You know, my, my view was that Islam was the truth, and if you think that I need to be, to accept the gospel to be saved, something that I thought was ridiculous, then you better come with reasons. Uh, I have reasons why Islam is true. Let me share those with you. And if you don't share with me your reasons for Christianity, I have no reason to to listen to your message. You can talk about love all day long. I, I don't care. I don't care about love. I care about truth.

And that's not to say that, you know, I was an unloving person. I think it's the exact opposite. I think my parents were loving towards me, my grandparents were loving towards me. I didn't feel a lack of love in my life. And so if someone just came up to me and said, "Love, love, love, love," I'd say, "Great, not relevant. I want to know the truth. Did Jesus actually claim to be God? Because if he did, Islam's false and Christianity is potentially true." So I need, I think I needed that aggression. And it wasn't an angry aggression. It wasn't a, a kind of, you know, negative aggression. It was, let's call it assertiveness. It was, it was an appropriate degree of assertiveness, which to a lot of Westerners can seem like anger and aggression, because it looks the same, right? I mean, if you hate Muslims and you say Muhammad's a false prophet and so on, you could say that out of, you could actually hate Muslims and say that. But at the same time, if you believe Muslims are wrong, and you know that there are lots of Muslims who are more inclined to listen to you if you just say, "This is why you're wrong," and you have a kind of confidence and you're sure of what you believe, um, it can look the same to an outsider.

And this goes back to the previous video. I was, what we just recorded, the second video in the series, is relationships. Like I don't, if I know David and he's my best friend, um, then when he says something like, "And Muhammad's a false prophet," I'm going to receive that differently from some random stranger saying, "Muhammad is a false prophet." I know that he cares. I know that he, he's interested in the truth. I know that he's not just trying to anger me. Um, and so that's why relationships matter. If you, if you listen to this kind of a conversation out of that context, you're going to start asking that question, "Hey, does this person actually care, or is he just trying to incite and invoke anger?" And so you have different audiences that you need to keep in mind. You have different approaches that you need to keep in mind. Some people would absolutely crumble if you came at them and said, "Islam is false, Muhammad is a false prophet, the Quran has been changed over time." They wouldn't be able to handle that. Some people would get absolutely offended if you said that. And so for them, you use different approaches.

But in, in my case, and in the case for a lot of now former Muslims that David has dialogued with online, they needed to hear, "This is why Islam is false, and this is why Christianity is true." And so the, with that said, going back to what we, what we mentioned earlier, that there is this tendency of people to say, "Hey, to look at something we're doing and saying, 'Hey, you know, you should be doing it, taking this other approach.'" It has never crossed my mind to say, "No, you need to take my approach." Right? The, the mentality is, "Here's how my church or my ministry does things, and we've been doing things this way for years, and we've had success doing things this way, and therefore that's what everyone else needs to do." That's never crossed my mind once. Uh, in fact, I would say for the vast majority of you out there, whatever you do, don't, don't do things the way I do. I do things the way I do because I believe something needs, someone needs to do this, and someone needs to do that. Some really sucky, sucky work that, that's really, you, it, it hurts because you get so many death threats and so much abuse heaped on you that I wouldn't recommend it for most people. I would recommend it for, for certain people.

But, but the idea here is Christians are a body, right? And there are different kinds of Christians. So the first, the first thing, if you're, if we're talking about approaches, the first thing I would say is, think about what kind of, what kind of person you are. Um, if you have a sort of, you know, aggressive type of personality where you, you, you like to argue, you like to be passionate, you like to present facts and so on, um, use that and, and try to find Muslims who are, who, who share that, who share that, uh, that, uh, that attitude, that have those characteristics, uh, because there are Muslims who, they run into Christians who don't like to, to have those kinds of discussions, who don't want to have a passionate, uh, discussion, and they just, "Oh, these Christians are so weak. It's because they don't even believe what they're, what they're saying." Um, so if, if you have that kind of personality, that's good. If you have, you can have all kinds of different personalities, right? Uh, some of the most effective people, um, that I know of in ministry are just so incredibly loving. They're not, they're, they're not mean and aggressive. They just love Muslims so much that no matter how much abuse gets heaped on them, um, they just, they, they have such a heart for Muslims that they, they keep pursuing them and so on. So it's, they're different.

By the way, you do get, you do get a lot of abuse heaped on you if you're from all sides. If you're in this ministry, Muslims from Christians who say, "You're doing things wrong," um, from the secular side of, "Why are you guys taking this stuff so seriously and causing all this division?" It's, it's, it's, it's non-stop. It's from in front of you, from behind you, coming from the sides. Everyone's, everyone's, uh, coming at you. And so that's why I say that you, that you, you should have a certain personality. You have to have a personality type to be able to take that. If you're going to be in the situation where you're the sort of person who's going to get kind of attention that's going to lead people to to come at you like that, you have to have the, the, the right sort of personality. So it was one, just sit back and think, "What kind of person are you?" And I'm saying this because I've tried things in the past that I just was not good at. And, you know, we want to try and do things that are outside of our comfort zone because those, those might be good things to do. But things that I tried and tried and tried and just was not good at.

There were people who would take me out, um, because I would be teaching, I would be teaching Christians, uh, you know, how to, how to, how to discuss things with Muslims. But as far as actually, if I don't know a Muslim, I could have discussions with him all day long when he was a Muslim because, because I knew him. Just walking up and talking to someone, um, I'm awful. I'm the worst person in the world. I kept, I kept trying. I kept trying, and I was just awful at it. And so it got to the point where I'd be better off in my room making videos or something like that, or, or, uh, having a debate, something like that. So I just was not good at that because I'm just, I'm just wired in a certain way to not be good at that sort of thing. You may be great at that. Some of the most effective Christian witnesses are people who are good at that sort of thing, who are good at having, uh, having discussions and and reaching Muslims that way. So these are things to keep in mind. One, what sort of person are you? What sort of things are you good at? And you, you know, that, that's, that's your strength. And so you should, you should be aware of that. Uh, so that's one sort of thing.

And two, you would want to think about, um, what are your goals in in terms of dealing with Islam? Because, because of the situation with Islam in our world, you can have different kinds of goals with regard to Islam. You can have different kinds of concerns. There are people who are most concerned about jihad or Sharia, or, you know, the treatment of, of Christians under Islam, or the treatment of Jews under Islam. And so their concern is responding to Islam to show that it's false, to sort of stop that, to sort of stop the, the spread of Islam and Sharia, and hopefully, uh, refute Islam as an ideology. Uh, for that purpose, so that might be the goal. That's something you would need to keep in mind. My goal is, is this, I'm, I'm counter-jihad, or counter-Sharia, or something like that. Something, something to keep in mind.

There are others who their main concern is, you've got one of the biggest people groups on the planet, 1.6 billion people, who there's not a tremendous emphasis on reaching them, and there aren't a lot of Christians who are well equipped to deal with their objections and to respond to their arguments. And so you might want to say, "Hey, I really need to, if that's my goal, then here are the things I need to do." And by the way, that's what we're doing right now. If this, this is for you, this is for those people who want to reach Muslims as this, as this large people group. But I just want is figuring out what your goal is. So figuring out what sort of person you are, figuring out what your goal is. And the third thing, as far as, as far as you are concerned, in the next video, we'll talk about different kinds of, of Muslims. But as far as what, what, what you're going to do, figuring out how you want to do that. Do you want to do sort of street outreach, walking up to Muslims on, on the street or on college campuses? If you're, if you're comfortable with that, you're, you're good at that sort of thing, you might want to take that approach.

If you want to have a longer, longer-term relationship, you actually want to, you know, you're in college or something like that, you have a Muslim friend, you want to develop long-term relationships, um, that, that is a wonderful approach. That's what we talked about, um, in the past video. Um, if, if you want to do debates, you want to become an apologist and deal with those kinds of objections, um, you have those different kinds of things. And then sort of, uh, media that you might use. If you want to go YouTube, you know, you should have a personality, um, that, that would, would be successful. Personalities help on YouTube. Um, uh, you know, you be entertaining along with presenting information, those sorts of things help. Or, you know, you can do things on, on Facebook or Twitter. Are you active on social media? Or do you, do you plan on being a speaker and going around speaking in various places? Do you plan on writing things, putting out materials? Have a need for anonymity? So I have some friends who, you know, have very vibrant, active ministries, but they can't release their name publicly. And so that's something to think about. But yeah, they're writing articles under pseudonyms, um, they're, they're publishing things, uh, uh, in academic journals under pseudonyms, and, and that's something you could do too.

And so when we, when, you know, we're talking about, "Is Jay Smith's approach the correct approach?" Guess what? Jay Smith was built for that, right? Jay Smith has this big booming voice, he loves being in the center of a crowd of Muslims, uh, uh, arguing with them in India, right? So he, he learned the language, he was surrounded by these people, uh, growing up, and he has a heart for them, and that's why he's, he's reaching out to them. And, and they're the, the, the, our friend from California, she, I can't think of anyone who's perfect for what she does. Yeah, she's got this, she just wants to embrace people and love people and walk with them, and so she does exactly that. And it doesn't, it doesn't, it puts me to shame, right? I mean, I sit down and start working on my computer and preparing my next argument for debate and stuff, and then she walks right off, and then she's over there talking to Muslims. And I have to catch her like two hours later because she's, she's sitting down, uh, having discussions with Muslims. So, um, figuring out, figuring out, I'll see her one month. So I'll see, for example, in, in 2012, I saw her in June saying, "Hey, this is my Muslim friend." And then I saw her again in July, and she introduced me the same person as, "Hey, this is a new convert." And it's just like, "Wow, that's amazing." And that's her. She's built for that. Jay Smith is built for what he's built for. David Wood, this incredible cynical wit and sarcasm mixed with truth and love. How do you do that? I have no idea, but that's exactly what his YouTube is. And no one can replicate what David's doing. God placed him there for a reason.

I think, you know, if I invent our friend from California in college, and she is the one that God had paired me with, I don't think I'd ever have become a Christian. I don't think so. I needed David. Um, and so God prepared him for his ministry. My ministry, what is it? I've decided, and I'll be doing a series of videos explaining my philosophical approach to my ministry and whatnot, uh, after this unofficial Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus series. But my approach is, what? Total transparency. Um, explaining things through the lens of my love for my Muslim family. That's always what's playing in the background of my mind, understanding why they see things the way they see things, and yet explaining the truth of Christianity in light of that. That's my method. But no one can replicate that because that's my story. So who has God made you to be? Do that. Minister through that. And, and don't spend your time criticizing other ministers. They get enough criticism as it is. So you are, you have a unique personality. You are equipped for certain things. Now, if you are going to be effective in reaching Muslims, there's going to be things that you need to learn about both Islam and about Christianity. So that sort of applies to anyone who's going to be involved in this. But as far as the correct approach, uh, there is no particular correct approach. Now, again, it's great if you, we've pointed out before, if you can get in a relationship with a Muslim, that is, that would be our, our ideal approach. But as far as approaches to ministry, going out there, uh, uh, that, that depends on you, and that also depends on Muslims, because there are different kinds of Muslims, which we'll be talking about in the next video. Yeah, I think that's a good place to to cut it.

So if you want to reach out to Muslims, consider who God has made you to be. Don't be daunted by this work. It's not, it's not about being a genius. It's not about being the most hospitable person in the world. It's about being humble in your heart, uh, humble enough to say, "I messed up. Let me try again," having learned from the previous lesson. So you keep trying, um, and you, so humility and persistence, you keep trying, uh, after having learned what you learned, and a willingness to learn. Uh, so, you know, coming into this, David didn't know anything about Islam. In fact, I knew a little bit. I didn't know anything from the actual, you know, virtually nothing. He wrote an essay praising Muhammad. Well, yeah, I did. But I took a class on Islam, and my, and the books we read, it was, it was this, uh, abridged Quran. It was only wonderful stuff in the Quran. Everything about Muhammad was all written by, by modern people, and it was, Muhammad really sounded great. Yeah, if, if you take out all the bad stuff, Muhammad is great. That's true about Hitler, though. Well, you don't want to do Muhammad Hitler comparison. Listen, I was just saying, giving you that people get angry. He meant nothing by that. So, um, but if, if I mean, that's what he came with. He had this, you know, very, um, slanted understanding of who Muhammad was. And then over the course of years working together, he learned what he needed to learn, specifically that which I needed to hear, um, and he went back and studied that and came back and brought that information to me, and I would counter it, and we'd go back and forth.

You don't have to be a scholar on Islam. If I suggest, you know, something coming into this, it's, you know, back and forth. The reasons why you are a Christian, and let those be good reasons, not bad reasons. So understand why you're able to read scripture and trust it. Know the, the reason for the hope that you have within you. You know, understand what you believe about Jesus. Be able to explain, if you say you believe in the Trinity, be able to explain what the Trinity is. Otherwise, you don't actually believe it. You're just parroting what you're supposed to believe. Uh, so that's what I would say. You should come ready with an understanding of what you believe, why you believe it. Beyond that, have the humility, the perseverance, the willingness to learn, and God will take you from there. Okay, great. So we're going to do the next video now on understanding different Muslims and your approach to them. Thank you so much, guys. God bless you.

Hey everyone, welcome back. This is Nabeel Qureshi and David Wood with the unofficial Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus video series. By the way, there is an official Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus DVD study, uh, and video series. Um, and that is a resource that I would highly suggest you get. It's designed to be studied in small groups. It's, you know, the length of each session is perfect for small group study. What David and I are sharing here is just little tidbits of information. Um, you'll get much more depth in that and of course in the, in the actual book. Um, so you can all find Jesus. Uh, so anyhow, um, in this session, what we want to talk about is understanding different kinds of Muslims. Now, [Music] one of the most common objections I get anytime I present a case about Islam or, um, whenever I, uh, try to give my reasons for having left Islam, is people are going to come at me and say, "You were from this sect, that sect doesn't represent Islam," and, and they'll just, as if, as if that responds to to all the information that I'm presenting about Muhammad and the Quran and the history of Islam, they'll just point to the sect and say, "That doesn't count within Islam."

You have a tremendous amount of division, a tremendous amount of division. And you may have heard the Sunni-Shia division. There are countries where officially Shia are not considered Muslim. There are countries where officially Sunnis are in the minority, and they're often treated as non-Muslim. You have other varieties of subsects of Islam that, you know, the smaller the sect is, the more regularly it's beat up on by the larger sects. And so you have this diversity within Islam that you need to understand. If you, if you try to approach a Shia, for example, and you present a hadith that was relayed by Aisha, not going to work. They have their, you know, Aisha is considered amongst the Sunnis, so 80% of Muslims believe Aisha is the mother of all believers, and they hold her with a tremendous amount of respect. But if you come to a Shia, and you present a hadith from Aisha, they're going to see her as an immediate, um, traitor. And so it's not going to work.

By the way, I, uh, when I first learned about that, when I was, when I was learning about Islam, I went to a Muslim chat room online, and I was like, "Hey, I just heard this this Muslim saying that he doesn't like Aisha. Is it true that there are Muslims who don't like Aisha?" Because, you know, I was going through Bukhari, and Aisha's everywhere in Bukhari. And so I said it there, I said, uh, uh, "Is it true that there are Muslims who don't like Aisha?" And erupted, right? I mean, everyone started going off. People calling down curses on her, and people calling down curses of the people who are calling down curses on her. And then someone shut down the discussion and sent me a message and said, "Look what you did. We're onto you. Don't try this again. We're blocking you." I was like, I was actually asking. I was trying to learn here. Anyway, so anyway, they take certain issues like that very seriously. Yeah.

And so you have differences among Muslims. If you just see Muslims as a monolithic set of people, um, chances are you probably haven't spent any time with real Muslims, because you realize they're all extremely different. Um, and just the sect of Islam that you're coming from is just one of the tremendous differences. Um, and you can have within a sect differences. So, for example, myself, you know, I was much more by the book than say my sister. My sister would quote Oprah for you, thinking that it was something that Islam taught. Like she, she would, she would quote something about multiculturalism and pluralism, and really it was something that I would have heard from Oprah, and she would have thought that it was from the Quran. Whereas I would quote a hadith, and she would say, "I've never heard that before." Um, and so, and so we're in the same family. And so you have to, you have to.

And one other big difference between Muslims, what I'd say, be the region that they come from. And so if you have Muslims from Saudi, they're going to have a certain background. If you have Muslims from Indonesia, they're going to have a certain cultural similarity to themselves. If you have Muslims from Pakistan, it's going to be very different from Muslims from Bosnia, for example, or Muslims from Morocco. And I would even dare say Muslims in the West. Now, you have, you know, second-generation Muslims who were born and raised in the West, they have their own culture, which is very different from Muslims all over the rest of the world. And so you need to understand the different types of Muslims.

And so it, going along with that, you, it, that's closer to what you said about you and your sister, is that you, you can have these individual personality differences, and you can even have personality differences within the same Muslim over time, right? Muslims can change over time. That's, we often hear about, you know, a Muslim being very radical and then becoming peaceful later on, or starting off very peaceful and then shocking everyone when he runs off to join ISIS or something like it. It's heartbreaking to see these parents crying on TV saying, "My child was raised peaceful. What happened to them?" So, so people can change. People can be different from one another. And then people can be different from themselves, uh, over time. And so, Earl, you know, in the last video, we were talking about, uh, if you're trying to decide what, what, what approach you want to take with Islam, you need to know about yourself, and need to know what your goals are, and when and how you intend on approaching these things. But what we want to talk about now is is knowing the Muslims, right? Being aware of the Muslim you're talking to. And this, this is really on a case-by-case basis. And the reason is important because you might talk to someone, and, and his name might be Nabeel, or something like this, and you think, "Oh, here's a Muslim." But he might be completely secular. He might not care about, about Islam at all, and he could just really, really not care. Or he could genuinely, genuinely believe, but just not make it a, a tremendous priority in his life. So similar, I mean, we know, we're aware of Christians like this. You have all kinds of a spectrum of Christians. Um, so you can have people that don't really care, that don't take it very seriously, and, and you start talking about Muhammad, and they don't really care, and they just want to get away from this conversation because they think you're some sort of, uh, you're some sort of fanatic, and they're not fanatics and stuff. So why would they want to talk to you? Um, and then even, even within, um, within an individual person's life, because I was learning this as we went along with Nabeel. We've mentioned before that, that in our first conversation, where we're talking about this, Nabeel told me that Islam has proven true by science and reason and logic and history and mathematics. Everything, uh, proves that Islam is true. And he was very, "This is the way it is. Let's examine it. If you don't, if you don't believe me." So notice that approach. Um, I love meeting people like that. I love people meeting people who say, "Here's how I know that this is true, and we can examine it to see if it's true." That's my favorite people to run into, because we're very, we're.

Very logically oriented, you know. We want to be able to, this is your claim, let's test it. Like, that's how we were trained to function in the university setting. And so, we can, we can, we can open up the books and we can, we can get to the bottom of this. That was Nabil when we first met.

And as we started doing that, as we started going through this material, I noticed over time that he lost, sort of, some of the confidence in some of those earlier claims that, that he was making. And, uh, it was a couple years later and we were on another school trip, and I remember he just didn't seem to have that same, "Here's everything that proves that Islam is true." And so I, I asked him, I asked him again. I said, "I said, why do you believe that Islam is true?" And he said, "Two reasons mainly. One, it makes sense to me. And two, the people that I've felt the presence of God on most strongly were Muslims." My grandparents.

But it's very easy to miss the shift if you're not paying attention. You can miss that shift that just took place. When he's saying that, that Islam is proven true by science and math and everything else that's testable, we can open up books and see if his claims are true or not. If you tell me that you felt the presence of God on your grandma, there's no way to test that. There's no way for me to prove that's wrong. There's no way for me to examine what you felt. And so it just, we just went from the realm of testable to untestable. And that's within the bill. And I'm pointing this out because there are Muslims in both those categories, right? There are Muslims who believe that Islam has proven true by all these things and we can get to the bottom of it. And there are Muslims who believe in Islam because they believe they felt the presence of God on their grandma, or because Islam made sense to them. It's not actually anything hard and fast that you can examine. It's, it's more feelings-based, or, or it just seems that way to them.

And, uh, and notice the shift was actually because we did test those claims. Um, and over the course of, course of those years, you know, when I'm saying, "Hey, the Quran has never been changed," and I look at how the Quran was changed from day one till at least the 1920s, all of a sudden I don't have confidence in that anymore. "Muhammad is the most perfect man who ever lived. You can look at his life and you'll conclude that he's a prophet." He started looking at his life and finding all these horrible things about him. He's like, "Wait a minute, I can't stand on that anymore."

And so when you're dialoguing someone with someone and they're, they're progressing from one stage to another, um, keep an eye on what stage they're at, but also the reasons why they're getting there, uh, because that's telling you something. Hey, you, you certainly have to pay attention to those because you're gonna have to adapt your, your, your approach. Um, but so I was actually very concerned when Nabil's entire approach changed because, wait a minute, now how do I prove this wrong? Uh, but I realized that, uh, okay, I can't prove that he doesn't feel the presence of God on his grandma, or that Islam doesn't make sense to him, or something like that. But I can continue showing him evidence for Christianity and showing problems with Islam and show that there's great, there's evidence that outweighs the, the, the evidence, uh, on which his, his, his confidence in Islam is, is now based.

So, so we kept going. And then another shift occurred, uh, even later. And that's when, uh, we were, we were talking and you told me that, um, you know, human beings are biased and they're, it's, we don't, we're, we're limited in our knowledge and we only know a fraction of, of what can be, what can be known. And we've been raised to believe certain things and so on. And so there's, so there's so much bias, um, at work here that we just can't know, we just can't know that we've gotten to the truth. It was specifically on the issue of Jesus' deity. And my objection was, at this point, look, I've been raised my whole life to believe that Jesus is not God. Um, I've been, that's been drilled into my head from day one. How could God expect me to believe in that doctrine? To have, have hold of a certain bit of knowledge when I've been trained my whole life to not believe that? Um, how could God expect me to believe that finite bit of knowledge, or else send me to hell forever? Um, I, it's just not fair. Um, but God is fair, and therefore he wouldn't hold you accountable for that sort of thing. That was, that was your reason. God's not gonna, you know, condemn me for something that was my reasoning at the time. He's like, "God, God can't possibly, you know, send me to hell for, for not believing Jesus is God, uh, given my background and what I've been, what I've been taught."

And so now, if I'm looking at this now, I'm dealing with a person who doesn't even trust his own cognitive faculties to get him to the truth about something like this. How do you, how do, if you're trying to give evidence to someone, how do you give evidence to someone who doesn't even trust his own mental abilities to get him to the truth of things? And so it was, it was kind of like a last-ditch effort. I was like, "There's really no way out of this objection." Um, and I also want to give kind of a glimpse of the time lapse here. I met David within the first few weeks of my freshman year of university. This conversation we had as we were graduating, um, I was, I remember exactly where we were. We were parked in the Constant Convocation Center garage, and we had just received awards. We both received Kaufman honors when we were graduating from our university. And, uh, and we were having this discussion because I'm about to go to medical school, David's about to do who knows what. Um, and, and you know, for David, this is, you know, where are we now? We've been talking about this for years. And I was trying my absolute best to not have to face the facts. Whereas for me, it's, I don't know how many opportunities I'm going to have left because we're, we're, we're going to be heading in different directions right now. Uh, we're not gonna be seeing each other all the time anymore. And if he's, if his final takeaway is, "Ah, God's not gonna hold me accountable because, you know, I, I can't, you know, I can't be able to really be there as much."

"Why are you always in my car?" "Why were you always in my car?" "You got a nicer car than I did." "That's true." Yeah. Um, so that was, that was just terrifying. But it's another, it's another shift I noticed. Uh, but keep in mind, you have these different kinds of, uh, stages, even and even in one individual's life. Think about how, you know, how many more different types of Muslims out there. But I mean, as far as just broad categories, you have people who care and people who don't care. You have people among those who do care, you have people whose confidence is, it's evidence-based. You have people whose confidence is more feelings-based. You have to be paying attention to the sort of people you're, you're, you're talking to. And, uh, there are other issues. Even if you're dealing with someone who's, uh, whose approach is evidence-based, there can be other factors involved, which is another, which I learned from you. And I thought was just you, but then I, I met more Muslims over time.

And this is when we were watching, we watched William Lane Craig versus Jamal, oh yeah, that debate. I watched this beforehand, and I saw that Craig absolutely crushed Bottley. And so I really wanted to watch this with Nabil. So let's get together and watch debates between Muslims and Christians, right? Then we would compare that, we'd say who won, and they would explain why. We'd go through their points and so on. Uh, sometimes we would watch them, we would play an opening statement, then discuss it, then play the other person's opening statement, discuss it, and keep going through this. This debate was between William Lane Craig and Jamal Badawi. And Craig, you can watch this, Craig crushed Badawi. Um, he, uh, answered as far as arguments are concerned. Uh, Badawi couldn't answer any of Craig's arguments very well. Craig answered Badawi's arguments very well. Uh, and in the end, there was even a part where Badawi got angry and started yelling. Now, this is where the difference comes in. Because after the debate was finished, I would have scored that like 95 to 5, being generous. That's, that's how one-sided I thought, I thought the debate was. We finished the debate and, uh, I say, "So, what are you thinking about that?" He said, "Well, but we clearly won. But I can understand if someone's a Christian, then, you know, you side with your guy." So he was, uh, he said something along those lines. And I'm, but I'm thinking, you know, what, what were you watching? What, what did you just see on that screen? Because I, I understand that there are people, there are Christians who are just going to side with the Christian debater no matter, even if the Christian debater got crushed. And they're Muslims who are going to side with the Muslim debater, even if the Muslim debater got crushed. But this is not, this is not one of those people. This is a very intelligent guy who's able to follow the arguments, and yet he's concluding that, that Badawi won. It took, it was another couple years after that to really unpack that until he finally was, was breaking everything down to me. When, just for instance, when, when Badawi got angry and started yelling at a point in that debate, most of us, most of us who grew up in the West would look at that and say, "You were yelling because you're angry, you're desperate, you're frustrated, you're losing, you know, you're losing." And so you're, you're so angry that you, you start yelling. Nabil's watching this. He explained later that when he sees Badawi start, he's actually thinking, "You're, you're yelling because you're so passionate for the truth, because deep down he knows he's so confident that he has the truth here, and this other guy is blaspheming God by talking about God in this way." And so he's so passionate that, that he yells. "Something the Christian debater is completely calm because deep down he doesn't even believe this stuff. He doesn't even take it seriously enough to get as passionate as, as the Muslim debater." So we are interpreting just tone and body language in completely different ways. And that's something I had to pay attention to. But again, at that point, I thought that was, that was just Nabil.

Later, after you became a Christian, we started debating. Um, when, when I would would get up and the topic would be whether Muhammad's a prophet, and I would start giving, uh, my reasons why I didn't believe Muhammad was a prophet, there would be like nice little Muslim ladies sitting in the front row. And I really don't want to be mean and hurt their feelings and give them all this mean information about their prophet that they've never heard before. So, but I had to, because it's a debate, so I have to give my reasons. But I would give it to, I would give them the information very gently and say, "Okay, well, this, this is my reason why I don't believe in Muhammad," and so on. And I'm just trying to be sort of timid while presenting the information. And they would walk out of there going, "Ah, the debater, the Christian debater is so weak, he clearly lost." I was like, "What? What are you talking about? This is airtight information about Muhammad." Anyway, later I would get ticked off and I would present the exact same argument, but I would present it differently. I'd go, "How can you believe in this stuff? This is clear nonsense. I mean, oh my goodness." And you know, giving it that way. And there were people, they would walk out of there, "Ah, he's destroying our prophet." Wait, what were you looking at? You weren't paying attention to the arguments, or you were paying more attention to how I was presenting it? And so it occurred to me that you can have different cultures, especially people from different parts of the world, who are paying attention to more than just the arguments. They're paying attention to your tone, to your confidence, to your passion, to things like that. Whereas me, I mean, it doesn't matter. You could, you could be yelling at me, you could slap me in my face. At the end of the day, I'm looking at your argument. And do you have a good argument or bad argument? I might be mad because of something you've done, but at the end of the day, if you've got the best argument, you've got the best argument.

But it's looking at that and realizing, wait a minute, there are Muslims, there are Muslims who are paying attention to different things from the way other, other people would pay attention to them. Have to be aware of those kinds of things because you have very nice Muslims, and you would want to present information very nicely to them. You have other Muslims who actually respect you more if you're, you're, you're more direct, confrontational, "This is the truth." You're passionate, uh, you're, you're, you're fearless, you're, you're, you're ready to, to die if necessary, if threatened, and so on. Uh, there are Muslims who, who are looking at that saying, "Wow, this person is, is so confident that I need to listen to what this person is saying." My, my background was a bit of a bridge because I was raised in the West, I'd gone through Western education systems, Western university, etc. But my parents, particularly my mother, uh, was very Eastern in her worldview and her perspective, and I inherited a lot of that. And so the way I saw the world was heavily colored by an Eastern perspective, though I was raised in the West. And so I would be analyzing a lot of the argumentation through an Eastern lens, but with, you know, some of the Western critical thinking skills. Um, and that was me. And David had to get acclimatized to that. I, I didn't understand him. I was like, "How in the world could you have seen that debate with William Lane Craig and thought that Craig won when Craig was talking about something that was completely irrelevant?" If Craig was focused on the issue of love, um, and, you know, as a Muslim, to me, the focusing, you know, the debate on the issue of love was more or less irrelevant. It's very relevant if you're a Christian, of course. But as a Muslim, why is he spending all his time talking about this? It's like he's being irrelevant, he's being passive, he doesn't care. Um, and, uh, he's clearly not engaging with, with Badawi's, you know, uh, passion. I was like, "How could you have seen this?" So I had to understand his perspective. Uh, the, the cold, calculating Westerner kind of perspective. That was, that's the, the stereotype. And that was kind of more or less true. Um, and again, going back to the second video in the series, relationships are what bridge the gap here. You know, if I didn't know David, and I, and I saw him react that way, I think, "Oh, this guy's just a crazy Christian," and I'd walk out. But I know him. Um, and so how do I reconcile the fact that my good buddy saw this debate and saw, you know, a generous, uh, scoring is 95-5 in favor of the Christian? How do you do that? So that was that was my perspective. But you're going to have Muslims who are raised in the West, um, who have a very Western perspective, who see things as Westerners do, and you'd approach them differently. I would say my sister fell closer to that category. Most of my Muslim friends, I would say, fell closer to that category. By the way, I was one out of very, very few Muslims I knew in my community who would spend time praying five times a day, who would spend time memorizing chapters of the Quran in Arabic, who would spend time going through the Hadith to learn what they say, to read the Seerah in my free time. I knew probably on my two hands a number of other people out of the thousands of Muslims I knew, probably on my two hands, I could count other Muslims my age who are doing the same thing, who had the same level of devotion. And so the vast majority of people you'd meet were just simply not as devout. And that would be a result of probably their Western upbringing. Their parents probably came to the West, tried to assimilate to the West. My mom didn't try to assimilate much at all. Um, you know, my mom, when we were growing up, we spoke the language that my parents spoke growing up, spoke that in the house, even though we were growing up in America and, for a few years in Scotland. We didn't, my mom didn't try to assimilate at all. And so my perspective of the world was different from those Muslims in our Islamic community who were raised in the West by parents who did try to assimilate to the West. And so these differences are going to play out in your relationship, and you just need to be able to understand who it is that you're loving, who is the Muslim that you're sharing with, and meeting them where they are.

Yeah, so, so continuing on along along the lines of, uh, what's, you know, what's the best approach here? That depends on what sort of person you are, but it also depends on, uh, the Muslim you're, you're talking to. Uh, just, just if we're talking about the different personality types and so on, um, like there are lots of Christians who think I, I'm way too aggressive because, you know, I'm so, I'm talking about the most sensitive topics. I know that there are Muslims who are watching this going, "Oh my goodness, he's giving us all this horrible information about our prophet." I know that. But I'm, I'm, I'm interested in talking to Muslims who are really serious about these sorts of things and who can take. If you're a Muslim and you don't want to have that conversation, kind of conversation, you start talking to, "Okay, well, I'll, I'll go, I'll, I'll listen to someone else." Um, and the reason, one of the reasons I've, I've gone in this direction is because there are lots of, there are lots of Christians who will preach the gospel. There are lots of, lots of loving, loving Christians out there, uh, who share the gospel with Muslims. But there are different kinds of Muslims who don't care how nice you are. They don't care how loving you are. They don't care, uh, how sweet you are to them. Um, if they are going to reject Islam, you really have to put it right in their face on why they are following a false prophet. But even along, even along these lines, um, there are different ways of presenting even sensitive information. If we're talking about, uh, pick a very sensitive issue in dealing with, so lots of Muslims, you know, can get upset if you bring up Muhammad and Aisha. Muhammad had a child bride who was nine years old when they consummated the marriage. So, you, if you're talking to a, to a more aggressive Muslim, you might say, "Your prophet had sex with a nine-year-old girl. How do you explain that?" You don't want to say that to a nice Muslim that you're, you know, trying to have a conversation with. But even in that case, you can present the same, same kind of information. But knowing the person you're dealing with, you would present the same information differently. And again, this isn't something you would present in your first encounter or something like this. But it might be something that you might want to share if they believe that Muhammad is the greatest example for mankind and so on. You, you might want to share information over time that, you know, they haven't, they haven't had to, that information has not been presented to them. And the way you would do that is instead of saying, "Hey, your prophet did this or that," you, you say, "Hey, you know, I was reading this, this article online about Muhammad and so on. And, um, you know, I was wondering, what's your perspective on that? I mean, could you read this? Look at the sources? Maybe talk it over with, with your Imam to get his perspective? And could you get back to me next week and tell me what you think about this? Because I would, I would like to know what, what you think about this." And just not so that I'm reading what some critic of Islam wrote, but, uh, actually getting, uh, getting your feedback. And now you're not attacking, you're not blasting someone, you're not making fun of someone. You're asking a person for information, uh, about his or her religion. And lots of people would love to, to share information with you. And so there are different approaches, and that's the point. We, uh, you need to know the basics of Christianity. You need to know basic Christian apologetics. There are certain things you need to know, um, about Islam. But there's, uh, always keep in mind what sort of person you are, what sort of people, uh, you're trying to reach, because that's going to affect how you present things. Anything else to cover on this topic?

Um, no. Yeah. So, um, one quick tidbit of advice, um, if you're engaging with a Muslim, you're like, "How do I even start? How do I know, you know, this is someone I'm just meeting? How am I supposed to engage? Where this person is? Is he devout? Is he not devout? How does he see the world?" Et cetera. I would say the most practical and immediate way you can figure it out is listen to their accent. If they are, you know, don't, don't take a look at their body, their skin, you know, their name, all that stuff. They could be born and raised in the West. They could be, you know, uh, watching Game of Thrones, you know, on their with their free time, you know, that's the kind of, you know, cultural background they have, exactly what the rest of us have, with a very Muslim name, uh, very Muslim-looking, uh, you know, uh, body type, you know, what would you call it, race, ethnicity, uh, that, that's not gonna get you anywhere. But whereas the accent often will. It will tell you if someone has been born and raised in the West or not. So do they have a British accent? When they're a Westerner, do they have an American accent? Treat them as a Westerner. Do they have a, you know, Moroccan accent? Well, now approach them understanding that they're probably seeing the world through an Eastern perspective, probably. Uh, you still can't be 100% certain about any of this, but it's a good place to start. And if you need to make a snap judgment. Yeah.

And, and after that, the, the, the next step would be just, just asking some questions, right? I mean, most Muslims would love to answer the question, regardless of what kind of Muslim they are. We'd love to answer the question if you say, "Hey, I've heard of, you know, I've heard some things about Muslims on, on the media and stuff like this, and on the internet. Uh, I just wonder, could you, could you tell me what, what, what you as a Muslim believe?" And if you start hearing, "Islam has proven true by facts and reason and evidence and logic. Muhammad is clearly a prophet. Islam, I mean, Christianity, Christianity is false, and Jesus, you know," what kind of Muslim you're dealing with, right? And, you know, what you have an idea of what kind of approach to take. If you're saying, if you, if the person says, "Yes, I'm, you know, I'm a Muslim, but, you know, to each his own, we all have our, it's all different paths to God," that just also told you something about what kind of Muslim you're dealing with. So just in the course of asking a few questions, you can know what sort of Muslim you're dealing with, and that will, that will, uh, that will inform your approach.

Great. So thanks for watching. Uh, we're gonna now move on to some of the more informative aspects of the investigation between Islam and Christianity. Um, you know, there's, there's a lot of evidence to consider here. Once again, you'll go a lot more deep if you, if you actually get some of the books on these issues. But so far, we've been talking about stuff that's implicit within Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus. So I hope this book will help you, or the official DVD series that goes with it. Thanks for watching this unofficial video series. Thanks.

Hey everyone, it's Nabil Kareshi and David Wood again with the unofficial Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus video series. Uh, I would highly recommend that you take a look at the official series, uh, that you can get through Amazon, where you can get this book for more details. Right now, we're going to cover the first objection that I brought to David, which when I met him, is what sparked our relationship. And it's one that a lot of Muslims have had drilled into their heads at the mosque, which is that the Quran is perfectly reliable. It's never been changed. In contrast, the New Testament has been corrupted, it's been changed, the Bible no longer says what it used to say. And for this reason, Muslims can can say, "Oh, you know, the scripture is, is holy scripture." And Muslims have to believe that it's one of the six articles of faith of Islam, that the books that have been revealed before the Quran are actually holy scripture. They can hold on to that tenet while also saying, "But whatever your Bible says today is not reliable. I don't have to, I don't have to reconcile what it says with the Quran because it's been changed." Um, that is, that is a common belief of Muslims. It's one that I brought to David when, when I was Muslim. It was the first one that sparked our conversations together. So David, how about you give your insight? I'll add my, my two cents, and then we'll close it.

Yeah, this is, uh, back then when we discussed the reliability of the New Testament, we were thinking in terms of textual criticism. If you're claiming it was corrupted, when, when, when was it corrupted? Who corrupted it? What's the evidence that it was corrupted? What happens if we compare manuscripts? Thinking along those lines. My thinking has changed over time on that issue when responding to Muslims. And what I mean here is because of the things Muslims are required to believe, you might want to give different responses to Muslims in than you would from other people. So, for instance, if an atheist, uh, said to me, "I can't believe in the resurrection of Jesus because miracles don't occur." That would make sense coming from an atheist, and I would respond to an atheist as I would respond to an atheist. I would try to give a case for, uh, for belief in miracles or the existence of God or something like that. If a Muslim said to me, "I can't believe in the resurrection of Jesus because miracles don't occur," I would respond completely differently. My response would be, "What are you talking about? You're a Muslim. What are you talking about? The Quran, the Quran says talks about miracles over and over again. What do you mean you don't believe in the possibility of miracles?" So notice, I would respond to two people giving the same objection very differently based on the things that other things that they believe.

And what's interesting here is when we're talking about the corruption of the Bible, Muslims don't know that it's more in the realm of saying they don't believe in miracles when they say the Bible's been corrupted. In the sense that it's actually contradicting, uh, things they're they're supposed to believe in, but they don't know it. And so that's where it comes into us to point these things out to sort of get them to think more deeply about this. Because the bottom line is Muslims who say the Bible's been corrupted, they've got a problem. They've got a problem on their hands because their texts say that our scriptures haven't been corrupted. Muslims are aware that the, that the Quran affirms the inspiration of the Torah and the Gospel, the scripture of the, the Jews and the Christians. They're aware of that. And that's why they say that our text has been corrupted. If that's why I don't say, "Oh, your Quran's been corrupted," as the main criticism of the Quran, I don't believe it was ever inspired to begin with. So we're not talking about corruption. Muslims say corruption rather than, "Your book was never inspired," because they know that our texts supposedly were inspired by God, but they also know that our texts don't line up with theirs. So they say that our texts have been corrupted. The problem is that the Quran doesn't just affirm the inspiration of the Torah and the Gospel. The Quran affirms the inspiration and preservation and authority of the Torah and the Gospel. So if we're talking about, uh, inspiration, and look up, I'm getting, I'm gonna give the passages, I'll give the references, you can look them up. Chapter three, verses three to four of the Quran say that Allah revealed the Torah and the Gospel as a guidance to mankind. So that's something Muslims, even if they're not familiar with the particular verses, they're familiar with the concept that our scriptures have been inspired. But they believe that our scriptures were subsequently corrupted. That's not what the Quran says.

If you go to chapter seven, verse 157 of the Quran, Allah says that the Jews and Christians of the time of Muhammad, so centuries after the time of Jesus, centuries after the New Testament was written, Jews and Christians were still reading the Torah and the Gospel because this is where we find references to Muhammad in our scriptures. So we have something that's being called the Torah and the Gospel that is still reliable enough that we could get information about Muhammad from those texts. Apart from this, you have a variety of passages in the Quran that talk about no one being able to change Allah's words. And some of these are in the context of books. So chapter 18, verse 27 of the Quran, chapter six, verses 114 to 115 talk about reading the book and saying that no one can change Allah's words. "Recite what has been revealed to you from, from your Lord. There's none who can change His words." And Muslims here will point out, "This is, this is only referring to the Quran," or, "You know, Allah's, you know, will in heaven or something like this." But it is talking about book. And even if it's talking about the Quran in context, it's still saying that it's like the, the reason you can trust what the Quran says is that no one can corrupt Allah's words. But if I believe what Muslims say, then what are you talking about? Allah's words have been changed over and over again. All of the, all of the thousands of prophets Allah sent, his words were corrupted over and over, every time. What do you mean his words can't be changed? Or no one can change his words? So these are some passages we, we want to think about.

But ultimately, it comes down to passages on the present authority of the Torah and the Gospel, and the fact that Christians and Jews, according to the Quran, don't need Muhammad to tell us what to do, which makes no sense if the Quran maintains that our scriptures have been corrupted. So, for instance, chapter 5, verse 43 of the Quran. The historical background is that some Jews come to Muhammad to settle a dispute, and Allah responds in chapter 5, verse 43 by saying, "Why are the Jews coming to you for judgment when they have the Torah?" And again, in the historical background, the historical background is that Muhammad comes and they have like a judgment cushion that the judge of a dispute would sit on. Muhammad comes along and he sits on the cushion, he's the judge, and he tells the Jews to bring me the Torah, and he gets off the cushion, the judgment cushion, and has them put the Torah on the judgment cushion. So the message, according to both the Quran and the historical background, is Muhammad's not the judge, the Torah is the judge. You're Jews, you judge by the Torah. And so Allah says, "Why do they come to you for judgment when they have the Torah?" and goes on to tell them that, that they have to judge by the scripture, the Torah that has come down to them, and if they don't, they're rebels. So that's Allah's message to the Jews. Muhammad is not your judge, the Torah is your judge.

Just a few verses later, in verse 47, chapter 5, verse 47, Allah says, "Let the people of the Gospel judge by what Allah hath revealed therein. If any do fail to judge by the light of what Allah hath revealed, they are no better than those who rebel." So he says, "Let the people of the Gospel judge by what Allah hath revealed therein." So people's gospel, as people who, uh, Christians, we're just talking about Jews, and it switches topics to Christians. We are to judge by the Gospel, and if we don't judge by the Gospel, then we're no better than those who rebel. Now think about these two passages, because if Jews had a corrupt scripture and Christians had a corrupt scripture, these passages make no sense. It should have said, "You Jews have corrupt scripture, you Christians have corrupt scripture. Don't judge by your corrupt scriptures, judge by the Quran because now you have a prophet who's giving you brand new revelation, uncorrupted." That's not what Allah says. He says, "You don't need this new prophet. You've got your original scriptures." Which again, makes no sense if our scriptures have been corrupted.

Goes on in chapter 5, verse 68, Allah says that, that people of the book have no ground to stand upon if we do not stand fast by the Torah, the Gospel, and all the revelation that has come down to us. Here again, it makes no sense if the Torah and the Gospel have been corrupt, have been corrupted, why would Allah say we have no ground to stand upon, but these corrupt scriptures? Makes no sense. And even more so, the Torah and the Gospel weren't just authoritative for Jews and Christians, they were even authoritative over Muhammad himself. Allah says in the Quran, chapter 10, he tells Muhammad was having doubts about his revelations. So he says to, Allah says to Muhammad about these doubts he's having, "If you have doubts about the revelations we have, uh, that we have sent you, ask those who read the book before you." So this is Allah telling Muhammad, if he has doubts about his revelations, go to the people of the book, ask them. So ask them about their revelations. This makes no sense if our revelations have been corrupted. The only way Muhammad's revelations would line up with our corrupt books is if Islam itself were corruption, which would make no sense.

So the Quran is affirming the inspiration, preservation, and authority of the Torah and the Gospel. Now, it's very good to go into textual criticism in a show, historically the reliability of our scriptures. But my first response as a Muslim would be, "If you're saying my scripture has been corrupted, why does your God say something very different in the book you say you believe in?" And I think that's an important point to bring up. When Muslims have been raised to think that the Bible has been corrupted, it's very helpful to point out to them, "Look, the Quran never actually says that." And they'll, they'll try to bring up verses. I'm going off my own experience. I tried to bring up a verse, I said, "Look at this verse here. Here it says that they exchanged the words for a lie." Do you know offhand what verse that is? Uh, there's the most, the most common one is, uh, is sort of two verse, um, what is it, 82 or 60? There's, there's the verse where, uh, uh, it says that the, the Jews sold the, sold their, their scriptures for a small prize and so on. Yeah. And so, and so I would point to that verse and say, "Here's where it says the Bible has been corrupted." Um, but if you take all the verses systematically of, you know, where the Quran is affirming, look, you have the Torah with you, you have the Jew with you, and, and you take those verses which say, which might say, "Oh, the Bible's been changed," you say, "Look, this is one book. It's going to try to say something coherent. It's not going to contradict itself. How do I understand these verses?" Then it becomes pretty resoundingly clear the Quran isn't saying that the Bible has been changed and corrupted. It's saying that the people exchanged the truth of the scripture in their own personal lives for, for paltry prices, for these fees, and for these lies. They didn't follow the scripture that had been given to them. They didn't follow the truth that had been given to them. The Quran isn't saying that the words of the Bible have been changed. Um, and so that was, it's good to point that out to Muslims.

Now, David and I have a disagreement of ways here. David thinks this is a knock-down, drag-out, that's not the right word, a knockout argument. I would say they have a problem, not that it, not that it might convince any particular Muslim, but that as long as your book is saying that I'm supposed to judge by my Gospel, it just doesn't make sense for you to tell me not to judge by my Gospel. My Gospel has been corrupted. And I would, I would agree that that's a problem. I would agree with that. Yeah. So, so I would use it in the context of, this is one problem among others. But it, it is a way because at the end of the day, the reason this topic is important is that any doctrine you're defending that that contradicts Islam, right? If you're defending the deity of Christ, doctrine of the Trinity, Jesus' death for sins, the resurrection, on those doctrines specifically, Muslims have to say your scriptures have been corrupted. If you can show it from the Bible, they have to say, I mean, there are certain things you can bring up and they can try to reinterpret it or something like that. But once you've made an airtight case for some doctrine from the Bible, the only option open to them is to say your scriptures have been corrupted. So that's them on the offensive. And it's normally Christians trying to, ah, let's go back through here and defend, you know, based on the history of the text, the reliability of our text. When the Muslim's objection really has nothing to do with textual criticism or the manuscript evidence, it's your doctrine contradicts Islam, and therefore it must have been corrupted. And so their actual objection to my doctrine is based on what the Quran teaches them. And therefore, I'm saying, well, if your objection is based on what the Quran teaches, you've got a problem because the Quran teaches my scripture is reliable. And so you need to think a little bit more.

My perspective on this issue is there's a different way you can answer it, which I think is kind of a jiu-jitsu move, insofar as you're, you're taking the thrust of their objection and you're applying it in such a way where they realize if they consistently follow out this objection, they're actually establishing a case for Christianity against Islam. And the way I do that, I talk about some of that in, uh, in my book, "No God But One," um, on the issue of scripture. So I forget exactly which, uh, which part it is, um, part four, the Quran or the Bible, uh, is this, I'll address the issue of, of textual integrity. So, has the Bible been changed? No, it hasn't. And I will, I will go through the evidence, the manuscript evidence of the Bible to show, look, this is what it said before. We have manuscripts that go, get whole Bibles that go back to within 300 years of Christ. Uh, you, you have manuscript fragments of Bibles that go within 100 years of Christ. What they said then, they still say today. Um, you have the Dead Sea Scrolls. What it says is what the Bible says still today. I'll make that point. And then I'll go from there and say, "Now, you're not comparing, you're not analyzing the Bible in a vacuum. You're comparing it to your scripture, because you're not an atheist, you're not agnostic. You have your own scripture." And if you're saying the Quran is perfectly preserved, whereas the Bible isn't, then we're not just going to look at the Bible, we should look at the Quran as well. You should look at them both. And then I'll say, "When it comes to the Quran, you have at least one tremendous problem with the history of the Quran. And then beyond that, you have scriptural issues which are so problematic that the Bible stands above the Quran heads and tails."

At the end of the day, the tremendous problem is that within early Islamic history, all the Qurans were burnt because of the differences between them. This is something that's recorded in the Islamic sources. The most trustworthy source of Islamic history, Sahih al-Bukhari, records this in book 61. Um, it's volume 5, if you have the old numbering system. This is number 519, 520. But if you look through it, it actually records the fact that all the early Quran manuscripts were burnt because there were differences among them, and that there was a standard one that was issued. Um, this was something that happened within 20 years of Muhammad's death. And so if you just based on this, and no Muslim that I've ever, no Muslim scholar that I've ever approached on this issue, even the ones that I studied under at Duke University, I had a Quran professor that I studied under, no professor that I've ever studied under, no scholar that I've ever talked to has denied that event. It's so well recorded in Islamic history. So how can you point to the New Testament as having been corrupted when there was never any point in Christian history where someone had the ability to edit the Bible on a massive scale? You didn't have anyone who could recollect all the Bibles, change them, and issue a corrupted version. That was simply never possible. It never happened. There's no recording of it because it couldn't be done. And that absolutely did happen with the Quran. It was all recalled, it was all destroyed, and one official version was sent out. If you're going to point the finger at the Bible, you have to point four fingers at the Quran on the issue of corruption.

But then beyond that, when you follow the, the scripture of the Quran, in fact, the scripture of Arabic, Arabic was being developed at the time the Quran was being composed. It wasn't standardized until the advent of the Quran. The Quran was what standardized Arabic script. And so Arabic had to learn to adapt in order to capture the complexities of verbal speech. Written Arabic did, uh, in, uh, standardized writing. As that was happening, certain Qurans were being considered valid, certain were being considered invalid. Um, you have the time of a man named Ibn Mujahid, approximately 300, you know, years after Muhammad, saying, "Okay, we've got dozens of Qurans out there. We have to limit to seven or ten, depending on the story that you hear." Um, could have first been seven, and then ten? That's what I think happened. Um, but you, you've got this intentional limitation of how many Qurans are valid. And, and that kept happening up until an official Quran. We don't have to say official, but the Islamic world printed its first Quran in the 1920s. When that happened, because it was the first one printed, all the rest of the Qurans that were out there lost favor for the most part. You still have some that are being used. So Hafs an Asim is the name of the Qira'at of the Quran that's currently being used. It is different from, for example, Naafi', the second most common that's being used. And Muslims will say, "Oh, it's just differences in recitation." No, there's differences in meaning. You actually have differences in the, the meaning of the words. J. Smith showed up to a speaker's corner with 26 different Qurans, different Arabic Qurans, actually differences highlighted in red and blue. Here's one, here's the other, putting it right in front of the Muslim saying, "Look, this one says this, this one says that. That is different from that. Are these the same Quran? Is this the exact same thing, letter for letter?" And you're staring at it, and they would still deny it. "There's no change." Yeah.

Well, they would at that moment, but when they go home, they're thinking about it. Um, and so for me, the question of scriptural preservation, textual.

The integrity of the Bible opens up the door to undercut the strongest point of Islamic confidence, and that's the perfect preservation of the Koran. I, as a Muslim, had tremendous confidence in the truth of Islam because I honestly believed the Quran had never been changed. I would say the vast majority of Muslims have that kind of confidence in Islam because of what they believe to be true about the preservation of the Koran.

Um, and it's just simply false. It's, it's, it's a farce when you study the history of the Quran. But they, they don't know that. No one's ever told them that. And so, at the end of the day, their objection presents you with a perfect opportunity not only to defend the Bible but to show them that the reason for their confidence in Islam is explosively faulty. Um, and, uh, and I think that that, for me, is the preferred way to go. Uh, different people, different approaches. No, with me, it's, it's, it's multifaceted, right? It's, uh, it's, here's what your Quran says about my scriptures. Your Quran says this about my scriptures. And he's right, if my scripture, my scriptures are corrupt, you've got a problem. Uh, two, let's look at the history of my book. Here's the history of my book. And as Nabeel said, there's no, there's no place in there, there's no place in there to have the kind of corruption you need for Islam to be true. There's nowhere in the manuscript tradition where you have a Jesus who didn't die on the cross and didn't rise from there. There's nothing like that, right? That's what you need in order for Islam to be true. You don't have what you need. The differences in the manuscripts of the New Testament are not what you need. You could grant every, uh, New Testament variant that people like Bart Ehrman would bring up. Bart Ehrman would say, of course, all of these teach the same thing about the core Christian doctrine. So you never get to what you need as a Muslim. You never get to the level of corruption you need. And then three, if this is what you're saying about, if this, give us the criteria of what counts as a corruption, right? Because you, you, if you're just saying the textual variants prove corruption, well, guess what? They're textual variants in, in the, the text of the Quran. So tell me what you mean, uh, by corruption of the text. At the end of the day, all you can honestly say about the history of the New Testament is that there are lots of textual variants because that's just what happens when people are copying books by hand. There are lots of textual variants. And you can say that in, in deciding the canon, there were some differences, uh, with regard to the minor books, right? Because some people, when Christians could finally get together after being persecuted, and they said, what books are in here? There was widespread agreement. They had some differences on some of the minor books like Second and Third John. So there were differences on that. There were people who had never encountered some of the minor books because they weren't used the same way in all churches. And so some people didn't know whether these are scripture or non-scripture. So at the end of the day, that's all you can say. There's lots of textual differences. And you, there were disputes about some of the minor books. Does that mean corruption? If that's what you say, guess what? You have tons of manuscript differences in the history of the Quran. And you had disputes about chapters of the Quran, not from people who came along later, but from Muhammad's original companions. Had a hundred and eleven chapters. Now, the details, man, we're gonna wrap it up. So Muhammad's own companions didn't agree on what chapters were supposed to be in. So if you're talking about disputes about individual chapters and you're going to use that and say that's what corruption means, fine. The Quran fails that test. So at the end of the day, you have no basis for attacking the New Testament that wouldn't fall right back on the Quran. And therefore, you've got all kinds of problems with your claim. No god but one. Unit 10. The last unit deals in detail with the issue of Quranic preservation and the problem it poses for, for Islam. There's so much more to get into, so many more details. That's why I'm suggesting these books. Um, but let this video just give you some confidence that even the most common objections towards Christianity, when followed to the logical end, actually undercut the evidence for Islam. That's what I found time and time again. That's why I ended up leaving Islam for, for the gospel. So thank you so much for watching this video. On the next one, we're going to cover the next most common objection to the gospel.

Hey everyone, it's Nabeel Qureshi and David Wood, once again with the unofficial Seeking Allah, Fighting Jesus video series. There is an official one. I would highly suggest it, especially for group study. Um, what we're going through, a lot of it was covered in my book, Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus, because these were questions that came up when I was a Muslim, um, and challenging Christianity. Um, they are the common objections, which is now what we're covering. We just covered a very common objection: Has the Bible been corrupted? What we're going to cover now is another very common objection which Muslims often bring up. I brought this objection up with David after we covered the New Testament, the reliability of the New Testament. My argument to David was, okay, fine. If the New Testament is reliable and it still says today what it used to say, I still don't see Jesus claiming to be God. Where does Jesus say, "I am God, worship me"? And it's important to keep that wording in mind because I've talked to Muslims in Europe and all across the United States, from New York to California, and I noticed that they were asking the same question, but in the exact same words. They kept saying, "Where did Jesus say, 'I am God, worship me'?" And I get messages daily from Muslims around the world asking the exact same thing, for the, with the exact same words. And the reason is that they've been trained to ask that specific question. This goes back to Ahmed Deedat. He put out there are many videos indeed online. If you ask your Christian friends, "Where is it? Where does Jesus say, 'I am God, worship me'?" Now, you Christians are watching, where does Jesus say, "I am God, worship me" in those words? He doesn't, right? He doesn't use those words. And that's important because as soon as you start giving a case for the deity of Christ, Muslims set it up, "No, I want the words, 'I am God, worship me.' Those words." And here you get down to the exact words criteria, which is, which is absurd, because you can flip it right back on them. You can say, "Okay, where did Jesus say, 'I'm only a prophet of Allah, don't worship me' in those words? Those words? No other words?" And the fact is, there's, you can all you can demand exact words for anything. Silly criteria. The reasonable criterion here is, where is Jesus claiming to be God? Right? Where is he saying that kind of thing? Where is Jesus making claims that only God should make, uh, about himself? Where is he calling himself God, something along those lines? That's a, that's a reasonable request. But since they're asking, there are lots of different ways, um, to do this. Christians who study apologetics are usually familiar with, uh, the different ways Jesus claimed to be God. One thing I like to do is, in order to block the objection, because as soon as you, you explain some way Jesus is making a claim that only God should be making, they often try to reinterpret what he's saying. And so one thing I like to do is to start with the Quran to get Muslims to see where Allah is the only one who should be saying something, and then to show ultimately that Jesus is saying the same thing about himself, just to block the reinterpretation, right? Just so they can't say, "Oh, you know what he really means." This is something that Allah says he's the only one who would say. So there are lots of examples like this. Uh, one quick one to remember, uh, the Quran, chapter 57, verse 3. So Quran, chapter 57, verse 3, refers to Allah as the First and the Last. These are two of Allah's 99 names. So this is a title of Allah. He is the First and the Last. Nothing that comes before him, he's the First. Nothing that comes after him, he's the Last. Allah is the First and the Last. And this should be familiar to Christians because the Old Testament, Isaiah 44, says the same thing about Yahweh. Yahweh is the First and the Last. You can point out to your Muslim friend, "Hey, the Quran and the, and, and the Old Testament agree that God is the First and the Last." That applies that title to God. And what's interesting is that the New Testament does the exact same thing. And so you can, I usually open to the appropriate passage and hand it to my Muslim friend and say, "Okay, read this for me." And so we open the Bible to Revelation chapter 1 and start at verse 17, where John has a vision. And I ask the Muslim to start reading. And the Muslim will say, "When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. But he laid his right hand on me, saying, 'Fear not. I am the First and the Last.'" Before I stop the Muslim and say, "Who's talking here?" And every time I've done this, the Muslim has said, "Allah or God." Right? They say, "Oh, why?" Because we just discussed that Allah calls himself the First and Last. And according to the Bible, the First and the Last is Yahweh. So here's someone saying, "I am the First and the Last." And who's talking here? Oh, God. Okay, let's keep reading. "Fear not. I am the First and the Last, and the Living One. I died, and behold, I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of death and Hades." So my Muslim friend just told me, "This is God." When did God die? It says right there that he died. And of course, the Christian says, "This is Jesus talking here." So this is Jesus talking. And so by that point, I say, "Okay, you're asking me where to show you that Jesus called himself God. You just said he's God. My Muslim friend, I just asked you who's talking there. It was Jesus talking. I asked you who that was. You said God. So thank you for admitting that Jesus did claim to be God according to the Bible." Now, if you want to talk about the reliability of the Bible, I've already addressed that in part before. But then you can object to that. But as of right now, it, the Bible does say that Jesus is God. And that's, that's a good, that's a good way to start. Again, you have to consider who's the Muslim you're talking to, what is it that they know, what approach should you take? We've talked about that in some of our videos. And a lot of Muslims, just like David said, have been taught to give certain objections. And if they hear a response to an objection that's compelling, uh, it can start them on a track towards further investigation, and they'll come to the truth, uh, in that way. I think this is a very promising, uh, response. This is a start, right? Is that this is, here's an answer to your objection. Now, which way are you going with it? And based on where you're going with it, then, because you might say, "Oh, your Bible's been corrupted," or you might say, "That's Revelation. What about the Gospels?" Which is where I was going to go next. I think the average Muslim who's actually interested in investigating these things, and you're going to weed out a lot, by the way, just with your first-level responses, all of a sudden there's going to be a bunch of people who you find out aren't actually that interested in digging for the truth. They just were looking to give you an objection. But if you find a Muslim who is interested, they're going to read this. They're going to go back and probably understand what the Book of Revelation is. And they're going to say, "Ah, wait a minute. Uh, this was a vision that John had. Um, I want to hear it from Jesus' lips in the Gospels. Where does Jesus say, 'I am God' in the Gospels?" And once again, you have to say, like David said, why do we need to give those exact words? Why do you know? What about just seeing Jesus' deity in the Gospels? I went super deep on this issue because for me, this was the critical one. Did Jesus claim to be God or not? If he did, then Christianity is potentially true. He still needs to rise from the dead to be actually true. If he didn't claim that he is God, Christianity is not true, and Islam is potentially true. Uh, if he did claim to be God, not only is Christianity potentially true, but Islam is false. And so these are critical questions. They're not incidental. They're not peripheral. They're central to both the Christian and the Islamic worldview. And so this, this man Jesus, who existed in the first century, Jews and Christians, Muslims and Christians are on board with that. Did he at any point ever claim to be God? In the first place, most Christians go to answer this question is the book of John, right? At the beginning of the book of John is, is the, the famous prologue. "In principio erat Verbum." If you can quote Greek to a Muslim, they'll be super impressed because that's what they've been taught to do, the original language. But, but here's what it says: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." And in fact, if you read it in the Greek, the emphasis is on God, and God was the Word. Jesus was God. That's, that's what the message is saying right at the beginning of the Gospel of John. And everything you read through the Gospel of John needs to be read through the lens of the prologue. That's the whole point of an introduction. If you read an introduction to a book, it's saying, "This is how you should read the book that follows. Keep this introduction in mind as you read the rest of the book." That's exactly what John's prologue is doing. As you read what Jesus is saying and as you see what he's doing in the, in these 21 chapters, remember, he is God. He was in the very beginning with God, and he is God. And nothing has come into existence apart from him. Everything came into existence through him. "That Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, we have seen God in the flesh. No one has seen God the Father, the only one who has seen God the Father is God the Son." John 1:18, paraphrased. So that is the prologue of John's Gospel. Throughout the Gospel of John, Jesus is constantly doing and saying things that only God can do. He's saying, "I am the way, the truth, and the life." Even within Islam, "I am the Truth" is the word there. Is there another name of God according to the 99 names of Allah in Islam? And so if Jesus calls himself the Truth, he's calling himself one of the names of God. This, by the way, was enough to get Al-Hallaj, who was a Muslim, killed. When, when Al-Hallaj claimed to be Al-Haqq, people said, "Look, you're claiming to be God." Now, within the Islamic community, and so they killed him for it. Jesus said the exact same thing: "I am the way, the truth, and the life." Jesus says in John chapter 5 that you have to honor him with the same honor due to God. What prophet of Allah could ever say, "Honor me with the honor due to Allah"? So Jesus, throughout the Gospel of John, is constantly claiming to be God. The author of the Gospel of John says he is God. The, the prerogatives he claims is that of God. The titles he takes are that of God. And so the Gospel of John clearly promotes Jesus as God. When David showed me this while I was still a Muslim, I then made a case against the Gospel of John. And this was based on the argumentation of one of my future professors, Bart Ehrman. I actually really embraced Ehrman's argumentation while I was a Muslim, specifically against the deity of Christ. And then when I became a Christian, I said, "Hey, Ehrman is, is one of the greatest arguers against the deity of Christ. I want to study what he has to say in the university." So when I studied at Duke University, there was a Robertson Scholar shuttle bus that would take you to UNC. So I made sure to study under Bart Ehrman while I was training as a scholar in, in Christian studies. And what he points out, what Bart Ehrman tries to point out, is John's Gospel is the last of the four Gospels. If you go to the first Gospel, Mark's Gospel, you have a purely human Jesus, and then he slowly elevates from Mark to Matthew to Luke to John. He slowly elevates in Christology to where he becomes more and more divine. And by the time you get to John's Gospel, now you have a divine Jesus. Complete hogwash, total utter nonsense. If you study Mark's Gospel the way it was intended to be read, and Ehrman never did this up until he actually wrote a book on the deity of Christ, and then his position changed a bit, and then his position changed tremendously. Um, you know, Ehrman's out here arguing for years that Jesus isn't God in Mark's Gospel, never actually took the time to study it. And I brought this up to him in class. Um, long story, that's another story for another day. But when he finally did publish a book on, on, on Jesus' deity, he ultimately said, "I was wrong. Jesus was God in all four Gospels." If you read Mark's Gospel through the lens in which it was intended to be understood, and I argue that that's a Jewish lens, if you first understand the Old Testament through and through, you understand the Jewish culture of the first century, you understand the texts that Mark in his Gospel is wrestling with, I actually think Mark's Gospel is a testimony of Peter, once again, another, another conversation for another day. But if you understand all of that, then as you read Mark's Gospel, you can't conclude but that Jesus is Yahweh. Now, there's, there's a bit of a dappled picture. He's, he's obviously Yahweh in some sense, and he's obviously human in another sense, and Mark doesn't reconcile that for us. We get the reconciliation of the two in John's Gospel, but he is obviously Yahweh. And Mark's Gospel, man, I don't even know how much detail to go into right here. But if you start off the very beginning of Mark's Gospel, what do you have? You have the presentation of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, in Mark 1:1. And then starting from Mark 1:2, you have the, the proclamation of John the Baptist coming. And John the Baptist is saying, "Make straight the paths for the Lord. Prepare the way for him." If you read carefully what John the Baptist is saying in Mark chapter 1, he is combining Isaiah chapter 40, verse 3, and Malachi chapter 3. Um, he's combining them to say that God himself is coming to the earth. "I am the one who says, 'Prepare the way for the coming of the Lord,' for God himself who's going to come." This is exactly what John the Baptist is doing. Isaiah 40, chapter 3, Malachi chapter 3, combining them and saying, "I'm saying, prepare the way in the wilderness for the coming of God himself." And then who is it that comes? Jesus comes. Then you have Mark chapter 2, um, following right after Mark chapter 1, and in that, what does Jesus do? In the first part of Mark chapter 2, you have the pericopy of a paralyzed man being lowered through the roof. Jesus does what? He forgives the man his sins, and then he heals the man of his affliction, of his physical infirmity. If, if you have read the Old Testament and you know the book of Psalms, Psalm 103 says that Yahweh is the one who forgives us of all our sins, who heals us of all our diseases. And yet Jesus is doing the exact same thing here, forgiving people their sins and healing them of their diseases. Only Yahweh does that in the Old Testament. Now Jesus is doing it, and the Jewish listeners understood, right? The Jewish woman, when he's claiming to forgive sins, they understood that. They objected to that. They objected to it right there in the passage. And anyone that Mark's preaching to again, Peter is preaching to in this Jewish context, they see it too. By the way, if you're challenging me and you're saying, "Nabeel, how do you know that Mark's Gospel is written with the Jewish audience in mind?" Because there's over 70 references, I think there's 71 references within Mark's Gospel. Every single one of them is a reference to Jewish scripture. Not one of them is a reference to Greco-Roman text. Not a single one in Mark's Gospel. And over half of them, by the way, are Book of Isaiah. Anyway, so you have that in Mark chapter 2, verse 10. And then you have in Mark chapter 2, verse 28, Jesus saying that the Son of Man has, uh, um, is Lord of the Sabbath. Now, if you know the Old Testament, you know that the Sabbath is one of the Ten Commandments, and Jesus is saying that he himself is Lord over one of the Ten Commandments. Nobody is Lord of the Ten Commandments except Yahweh himself. You go on to Isaiah chapter 4, I'm sorry, to Mark chapter 4, and Jesus is able to calm the storms and hush the winds. If you go to the book of Psalms, no one's able to hush the storms and calm the winds except Yahweh. You go to Mark chapter 6, verse 50, Jesus is walking on the water, and he says the words, "Ego eimi." "I am." In the Old Testament, Yahweh God is the one who says, "I am." Read Job chapter 9, verse 8. Only Yahweh is the one who has the authority to walk on water. And yet Jesus is the one who does that in the New Testament. I don't have time to go into this, but over and over and over again, Mark's Gospel pulls out Yahweh from the Old Testament and inserts Jesus, literally one for one substitution on, on Jesus where Yahweh was in the Old Testament. This is the first of the four Gospels. Ehrman's argument holds no water whatsoever. But this is even more true because before Mark's Gospel was written, at least according to scholarly consensus, Paul's writings were written, and Paul clearly says that Jesus is God. All you have to do is read Philippians chapter 2, and "Jesus is in very nature God." Chapter 2, verse 6. "But he did not consider equality with God a thing to be grasped." Did I say Ephesians? I meant Philippians. You said, "I thought you said to me." That's it. Uh, "He's in very nature God, but he did not consider equality with God a thing to be grasped. And so he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being found in human likeness. He humbled himself to the point of death, even death on a cross." What's Paul saying? That God himself lowered himself into this world and was found in human likeness. When we're talking about Jesus, the emphasis is on, this is the image of God found in human likeness, almost focusing more on the, on the divine essence of Christ than on the human essence of Christ. Of course, Christians believe that, that Jesus has a fully human nature and fully divine nature. So this is found, according to scholarly consensus, at every level. If it's found in Paul, and it's found in the Gospels, it's found in the Book of Revelation, it's found everywhere. The deity of Christ is found everywhere. There's no evolution in Jesus' deity. He was divine from the very earliest texts. There's a lot more to go into. There's a lot more covered in this book on the deity of Christ. This is an essential issue for both Christians and Muslims. And so I highly suggest you look into it. Don't let the rhetoric of, "Where does Jesus say, 'I am God, worship me'?" deter you from actually investigating the truth of this question because it's the, it's the question that changed my life. And if you're a Muslim, and you honestly think Jesus didn't claim to be God, I'm telling you, dig, and you will be shocked. Uh, it changed my life forever. So that's, that's where I like to take people on the deity of Christ, not just John's Gospel, not just the Book of Revelation, everywhere throughout the New Testament. It's the common proclamation that shocked the world. It's what made people say, "Wow, God has come among us. God has walked with. Did you see what happened here? God came to us. Who are we that God would come to us? How amazing is this God that he would bear our burdens?" And that's the crux of the gospel message: God walked among us. Amazing, amazing. So look at it. Don't be deterred by, by, um, pithy objections that actually hold no water. Do you have anything else to add to this one? All right, great. So the next objection we're going to come to will be in the next video. Again, we're covering the five most common objections by Muslims to the Christian faith. Thanks so much for watching this one. We'll see you again shortly.

Hey everyone, thanks for watching. This is Nabeel Qureshi and David Wood doing the unofficial Seeking Allah, Fighting Jesus video series. I do have to say that there is an official one, great for group study, that I would suggest you take a look at. And also my book, Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus, where I share the context of where these questions came up, because these objections are not divorced from life. The Muslim who's objecting to you with these objections, or if you are a Muslim, uh, and, and you have these objections, um, you come with a whole host of, uh, background, uh, issues and, and questions and, and teachings that you're bringing with you to the table. And so this book is designed to help you understand, look, these are, Muslims are people, and the objections that they bring up come from a certain background. And one of the objections I brought up with David was the objection we're going to cover now. And this is one of the most common objections you'll hear from Muslims. In fact, this is just basic. This isn't based on any actual, like, uh, studies that I'm aware of. These are just, what are the, what are the most common objections Muslims bring up to me, and anecdotally, and to me too, now, over and over again: Bible's been corrupt, over and over again, "Where did Jesus say, 'I am God, worship me'?" And then this third one, um, "How can God die?" Right? And you can see why this would be a persuasive objection to Muslims. Christians believe in the deity of Christ. We believe that Jesus is God. We also believe that Jesus died on the cross. So if Jesus is God, then God died on the cross. But God isn't the sort of thing that dies. Therefore, we just have an, a completely incoherent belief, according to, uh, according to the Muslim. And if our belief is, is incoherent, we don't really need to even, why are we even investigating it? It's just incoherent and illogical. And so Muslims believe that they have a sort of knockdown argument here. And that's why it's important to respond to this kind of argument. But I, I found from personal experience, if you just start trying to explain Christian theology to the Muslim, the Muslim just isn't going to get it because many Muslims don't want to get it. They've been sort of hardwired not to get it. And so I found something that's helpful is to say something along the lines of, "Okay, I see why you're making that objection. I'll respond. I want to think about it for a little bit, and then I'm going to respond to your objection. Um, in the meantime, I had a question about the Quran. So you've, we've got a Quran here. Let's talk briefly about the Quran, then we'll get back to your objection." Now, um, as far as Islam is concerned, is the Quran eternal, or does it have some sort of beginning? And it's always possible that you could run into a Muslim who has no clue what he's talking about, but what is the correct answer according to Islam? Yeah, absolutely. The Quran is the eternal speech of Allah, according to Islamic theology. If you, if a Muslim says, "Now, the Quran has a beginning," you're, you're either talking to someone who has no clue what he's talking about, or he's a heretic, and you tell him he needs to go talk to his, his Imam to straighten him out. Because according to orthodox Islamic theology, the Quran is the eternal speech of Allah. So the Quran is eternal. And once you've clarified that with your Muslim friend, say, "Okay, well, I've got a Quran here. It says 2002, published in 2002." Now, if the Quran is eternal, how is it published in 2002? This, the Quran had a beginning. This Quran had a beginning. This Quran didn't always exist. The Quran had a beginning in, in, in 2002. And this Quran is paper and glue and ink. This isn't the sort of thing that lasts forever. This is the sort of thing that has a beginning and will eventually fall apart. In fact, there have been times in history when Qurans have been burned. That we've already discussed. The third of the Rightly Guided Caliphs burned all of the Qurans so that he could, he could,

Hey everyone, thanks for watching. This is Nabeel Qureshi and David Wood doing the unofficial Seeking Allah, Fighting Jesus video series. I do have to say that there is an official one, great for group study, that I would suggest you take a look at. And also my book, Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus, where I share the context of where these questions came up, because these objections are not divorced from life. The Muslim who's objecting to you with these objections, or if you are a Muslim, uh, and, and you have these objections, um, you come with a whole host of, uh, background, uh, issues and, and questions and, and teachings that you're bringing with you to the table. And so this book is designed to help you understand, look, these are, Muslims are people, and the objections that they bring up come from a certain background. And one of the objections I brought up with David was the objection we're going to cover now. And this is one of the most common objections you'll hear from Muslims. In fact, this is just basic. This isn't based on any actual, like, uh, studies that I'm aware of. These are just, what are the, what are the most common objections Muslims bring up to me, and anecdotally, and to me too, now, over and over again: Bible's been corrupt, over and over again, "Where did Jesus say, 'I am God, worship me'?" And then this third one, um, "How can God die?" Right? And you can see why this would be a persuasive objection to Muslims. Christians believe in the deity of Christ. We believe that Jesus is God. We also believe that Jesus died on the cross. So if Jesus is God, then God died on the cross. But God isn't the sort of thing that dies. Therefore, we just have an, a completely incoherent belief, according to, uh, according to the Muslim. And if our belief is, is incoherent, we don't really need to even, why are we even investigating it? It's just incoherent and illogical. And so Muslims believe that they have a sort of knockdown argument here. And that's why it's important to respond to this kind of argument. But I, I found from personal experience, if you just start trying to explain Christian theology to the Muslim, the Muslim just isn't going to get it because many Muslims don't want to get it. They've been sort of hardwired not to get it. And so I found something that's helpful is to say something along the lines of, "Okay, I see why you're making that objection. I'll respond. I want to think about it for a little bit, and then I'm going to respond to your objection. Um, in the meantime, I had a question about the Quran. So you've, we've got a Quran here. Let's talk briefly about the Quran, then we'll get back to your objection." Now, um, as far as Islam is concerned, is the Quran eternal, or does it have some sort of beginning? And it's always possible that you could run into a Muslim who has no clue what he's talking about, but what is the correct answer according to Islam? Yeah, absolutely. The Quran is the eternal speech of Allah, according to Islamic theology. If you, if a Muslim says, "Now, the Quran has a beginning," you're, you're either talking to someone who has no clue what he's talking about, or he's a heretic, and you tell him he needs to go talk to his, his Imam to straighten him out. Because according to orthodox Islamic theology, the Quran is the eternal speech of Allah. So the Quran is eternal. And once you've clarified that with your Muslim friend, say, "Okay, well, I've got a Quran here. It says 2002, published in 2002." Now, if the Quran is eternal, how is it published in 2002? This, the Quran had a beginning. This Quran had a beginning. This Quran didn't always exist. The Quran had a beginning in, in, in 2002. And this Quran is paper and glue and ink. This isn't the sort of thing that lasts forever. This is the sort of thing that has a beginning and will eventually fall apart. In fact, there have been times in history when Qurans have been burned. That we've already discussed. The third of the Rightly Guided Caliphs burned all of the Qurans so that he could, he could,

One question that is commonly asked by Muslims is the issue of Jesus Christ being punished for the sins of mankind. How is it fair for God to punish Jesus for the sins of the world? And I actually dealt with this in much more detail in my most recent book, No God But One. I was having a debate in April of 2015 with a scholar named Shabir Ally, and Shabir Ally presented this kind of at the last moment in his closing statement. I wasn't able to respond to it. In a sense of cosmic injustice, you know, God has committed, um, how did he put it? A child, um, I forget the exact words, but he's abusing child abuse, cosmic child abuse, by punishing Jesus for the sins of mankind. How dare he punish an innocent man for the sins of the guilty? The issue with this accusation is that it's not being fair to what the Christian is saying. It's not being fair to Christian theology. In my books, and when I talk with Muslims, I try to do my absolute best to represent Islam the way they are representing it. I'm not trying to represent a caricature, and this is a caricature of the Christian faith. What's actually happening is God isn't punishing some innocent man who's an unwilling bystander to take the sins of the world. God is himself paying for the sins of the world. He's taking the, the penalty that needs to be paid, and he's paying it himself. Now, there are a few different ways to view this. There are two different illustrations I use depending on the situation, the context, to answer the question. One illustration is that of someone who's broken into a shop. Let's say there's a father who's a shopkeeper, and he, you know, he has his shop, it's all, you know, well documented where everything is and how much everything costs. He's taken care of everything, it's his business, it's successful, it's running well. And then his son breaks into the shop, steals an item, uses it, squanders it, later feels bad about it, and comes back to his father and he says to his father, "I've done this wrong. Will you forgive me?" Now, the father, at that point, says to the son, probably if he's a loving father, he'll say, "Look, you've seen the error of your ways, you're repentant. I forgive you of your sin. I forgive you of what you've done." But somebody still has to pay for that object. That thing that was stolen needs to be paid for. The books need to be cleared. And the son probably has no money for it, otherwise he would have stolen it in the first place. He can't pay for it. And so in this case, the father, out of love for his son, says, "I myself will clear this book by paying the penalty for what you cannot pay for." The, the item itself still needs to be paid for, and the father pays for it. It happens all the time. This isn't unjust at all. It's the one from whom, uh, the, the breach was committed, the one who was stolen from, has the right, has the authority to say, "I will step into the gap and pay for this." You can, he can do that. It's well within his rights. That's one illustration. Another illustration that I give is one of, of co-signing, of, of lending. If you are, like me, and you were raised in, in the West, and when you were out on your own, you wanted to finally buy a house or buy a car. In my case, it was a car. And you have no collateral, you have no credit of your own, you can't afford to buy the car on your own. What you do is you take a loan from the bank, and the bank says to your parents, "Will you co-sign for this loan such that if your child defaults and he can't pay for this car, you will be obligated to pay?" At that point, the loan's burden will fall on you, and you have to pay it. Will you co-sign? And then your parents, if they're, you know, loving, supportive parents, will, in this case, probably they don't have to, based on philosophy, whatever, but they will probably co-sign for the loan and they'll say, "Yes, my son defaults, or my daughter defaults, I'll pay for it." This is what Jesus Christ has done for us. God himself, knowing that we were going to default, knowing that we were going to sin, has co-signed on our souls, saying, "I will pay for the penalty, the death that comes at the hands of my child's sin. I will pay for." And so Jesus Christ then pays by dying on the cross, pays the penalty that we ought to pay. This is if you believe in penal substitution, by the way. There are Christians who don't believe in penal substitution. They have another system of understanding what Christ's death on the cross did for them. And so there are other answers to this too. But these are just two very viable answers to the question of how is it just for God to, uh, for Jesus Christ to die on the cross for our sins. The illustration of the shop owner can work, and the illustration of the co-signer on our loans can work. There's another illustration that we actually talked about. Um, I remember the night we talked about it. This was after the, uh, Mike Licona versus Shabir Ally debate. We were hanging out in your car afterwards, and we were talking about, uh, your objection was that this is unjust. This would be like God punishing a baby for the sins of a murderer or something like that. Um, and I brought up, because I've been confused, because if you're a Christian, you look at this as like the greatest thing someone could do for someone else, right? I'm paying the price that you owe. It's not, "Oh, this is some horrible unjust thing." As we look at, is this like the greatest thing anyone could do? But I brought up the book of Philemon, where the Apostle Paul is talking about a runaway slave. There was a runaway slave who made his way, uh, to Rome and encountered the Apostle Paul there and becomes a Christian at some point. And Paul tells him, "You're not going to spend the rest of your life on the run as a runaway slave. You're a Christian, and you're going to go back, and you're going to go back, and we're going to deal with this." Um, and so he sends him back, but with a letter. And the letter is from Paul to the slave owner, Philemon. And apparently Onesimus had stolen some property in order to get away, pay for his journey or whatever. Uh, because Paul, in the letter, says, well, I mean, there's, there's lots on the issue there where Paul is telling him to receive him like a brother and receive this slave like a brother and so on. But, uh, uh, the interesting part for present purposes is that Paul tells Philemon, "Whatever Onesimus owes you, I will pay that when I come there." Now, notice this is Onesimus. He's a runaway slave. He stole property. He spent that property. He does not have that property. He cannot pay that debt. Paul says, "I'm going to pay it for him when I get there." So notice he's saying, "He doesn't owe you anything, right? Don't punish this guy for not being able to pay back the property. I'm going to pay for it when I get there." And he says, "I want you to receive him as you would receive me." Now, notice what Paul just did. He owes you a debt. I'm the one who's going to take care of his debt. I'm taking care of his debt, and I want you to receive him as you would receive me. So notice the notice the switcheroo there. I'm paying his. He owes you a debt. I'm paying it, and I want you to receive him as you would receive me. Now, did Paul owe that debt? No, but Paul's paying that. So as a Muslim, you're going to look at that and say, "Oh, that's, that's evil and unjust." What are you talking about? That is like the best thing that anyone could do for someone else. That, what, what person in the world could have done something like that for Onesimus? Paul says, "I'm paying his debt, and I want you to receive him, this slave, like you would receive the Apostle Paul." That is the greatest thing. And you ask, "Why was Paul like this?" Paul believed in the gospel, where that's what Jesus did, right? So that's the impact that the gospel message had on Paul, that he then goes out and tries to do something similar in, in human terms. Uh, so that's, that's an example. But as far as this particular, uh, objection, I have a, I have an entire video called "How Could God Punish Jesus for the Sins of Others?" If you want to go through all the passages, you can go there. I'll just give you the general idea very quickly. Muslims base this claim, if you ask them, where does it come from in the Quran? It occurs several times in the Quran. You can go to chapter 6, verse 164. That's one. There are many places that say, "No bearer of burden shall bear the burden of another." It's talking about on Judgment Day, and over and over again, the Quran says in the same words, "No bearer of burden," talking about a burden of sins, "no bearer of burden shall bear the burden of another." Another couple problems here. One, the Quran contradicts itself on this point because other passages say that on the day of judgment, some people will bear their own burdens and the burdens of others, referring to like, if you led people astray, then you'll bear some of their burdens in addition to your own burden. So it's not the case that no bearer of burden shall bear the burden of another. The Quran says that some people will bear the burdens of their own burdens and the burdens of others. So one, you've got a contradiction here. Two, you have Muhammad contradicting this passage, at least the historic, the standard Islamic understanding. You have multiple sahih narrations, these are the reliable narrations in Sahih Muslim and other Muslim sources, that say that on the day of judgment, if Muslims, if there are Muslims who have sins as heavy as mountains, they have, they don't have the kind of sins Allah is just going to forgive. They have sins as heavy as mountains. Allah will take those sins and put them on the backs of Jews and Christians who are already going to hell. So those Jews and Christians will pay for the sins of the Muslims who have sins as heavy as a mountain. That's Sahih Muslim 6666. And, and there's a whole section on it. So there are multiple hadiths, uh, in, uh, in that section. So you, you have Muhammad in sahih narration. So now, if you want to object to this and say, "Well, you know, that contradicts the Quran or something like this," now you have to start throwing out, uh, multiple confirmed narrations in Sahih Muslim to avoid this. But notice what Muhammad is saying there: Allah is going to punish Jews and Christians for the sins of Muslims. That's what Muhammad says. And so if you believe it's unjust and immoral for God to punish one person for the sins of another, then according to Muhammad, and sahih narrations, Allah is unjust. So that flips back on you. So you have to, Muslims would have to deal with those passages. But the third thing here, which I think is most interesting, and it's, it's interesting how lots of Muslim objections, once you've gone through them, they actually lead back to a gospel message because think about what the Quran actually says. Think about the words of the actual Quran: "No bearer of burden shall bear the burden of another." It doesn't say "no one." When a Muslim says it, they'll say, "Ah, you see right here, no one can bear the burden of another." It doesn't say "no one can bear the burden of another." It says, "No bearer of burden shall bear the burden of another." So if I go with the exact words right there, I can say, "Amen to that." I can say, "Amen. Of course, no bearer of burden," talking about a burden of sins, "no one who has a burden of sins is going to bear the burden of another." You already have your own sins. You're already under God's judgment. You're in no position to say to God, "God, uh, I'm going to pay for his sins too." You've got, you're already under God's judgment. You're in no position to say that sort of thing. But what would that verse, if, again, if we take it for exactly what it says, what would that leave wide open the door that that would be why leave wide open is someone who is not a bearer of burden bearing the burden for others? Someone who has no burden of sin bearing the burdens of others. That is the sort of person who can say, "I have no burden of sin, but I'll pay for theirs." Uh, and in Christian context, this isn't God just randomly saying, "Hey, here's an innocent person. Let me punish him. Let me punish him." This is the incarnate deity himself doing it willingly. Unlike, unlike, unlike Allah punishing Jews and Christians for the sins of Muslims. I'm not, I'm, I didn't volunteer to pay for the sins of Muslims. What's going on there? But Jesus does come to bear our burdens. And so again, if you, if you look at the Muslim objection, the Quran contradicts itself on this point. Muhammad, if you're accusing God of being unjust for punishing one person for the sins of others, then according to Muhammad, Allah is unjust because that's exactly what Allah does. And then if you look at what the Quran says, if you look at exactly what it says, it leaves the door wide open for someone who has no burden of sin to willingly pay for the sins of others, and that is the gospel message. Anything else you want to add on that point? No, I haven't had more in the video, but that's basically, yeah, David Wood's got videos on this, so you can check those out. And I covered a lot more of this in No God But One and shared the context in Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus. So if you're Muslim watching, I hope this was helpful for you. If you're a Christian who's been watching, I hope that you can take this information and present this to your, to your Muslim friends who will almost certainly object this if they're the kind of Muslim who comes up with objections to Christianity. We've got, uh, one more objection that we want to cover, a very common objection, which we'll be doing in the next video. Thanks for so much for watching. God bless you guys.

Hey everyone, thanks for watching. This is Nabeel Qureshi and David Wood doing the unofficial Seeking Allah, Fighting Jesus video series. I do have to say that there is an official one, great for group study, that I would suggest you take a look at. And also my book, Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus, where I share the context of where these questions came up, because these objections are not divorced from life. The Muslim who's objecting to you with these objections, or if you are a Muslim, uh, and, and you have these objections, um, you come with a whole host of, uh, background, uh, issues and, and questions and, and teachings that you're bringing with you to the table. And so this book is designed to help you understand, look, these are, Muslims are people, and the objections that they bring up come from a certain background. And one of the objections I brought up with David was the objection we're going to cover now. And this is one of the most common objections you'll hear from Muslims. In fact, this is just basic. This isn't based on any actual, like, uh, studies that I'm aware of. These are just, what are the, what are the most common objections Muslims bring up to me, and anecdotally, and to me too, now, over and over again: Bible's been corrupt, over and over again, "Where did Jesus say, 'I am God, worship me'?" And then this third one, um, "How can God die?" Right? And you can see why this would be a persuasive objection to Muslims. Christians believe in the deity of Christ. We believe that Jesus is God. We also believe that Jesus died on the cross. So if Jesus is God, then God died on the cross. But God isn't the sort of thing that dies. Therefore, we just have an, a completely incoherent belief, according to, uh, according to the Muslim. And if our belief is, is incoherent, we don't really need to even, why are we even investigating it? It's just incoherent and illogical. And so Muslims believe that they have a sort of knockdown argument here. And that's why it's important to respond to this kind of argument. But I, I found from personal experience, if you just start trying to explain Christian theology to the Muslim, the Muslim just isn't going to get it because many Muslims don't want to get it. They've been sort of hardwired not to get it. And so I found something that's helpful is to say something along the lines of, "Okay, I see why you're making that objection. I'll respond. I want to think about it for a little bit, and then I'm going to respond to your objection. Um, in the meantime, I had a question about the Quran. So you've, we've got a Quran here. Let's talk briefly about the Quran, then we'll get back to your objection." Now, um, as far as Islam is concerned, is the Quran eternal, or does it have some sort of beginning? And it's always possible that you could run into a Muslim who has no clue what he's talking about, but what is the correct answer according to Islam? Yeah, absolutely. The Quran is the eternal speech of Allah, according to Islamic theology. If you, if a Muslim says, "Now, the Quran has a beginning," you're, you're either talking to someone who has no clue what he's talking about, or he's a heretic, and you tell him he needs to go talk to his, his Imam to straighten him out. Because according to orthodox Islamic theology, the Quran is the eternal speech of Allah. So the Quran is eternal. And once you've clarified that with your Muslim friend, say, "Okay, well, I've got a Quran here. It says 2002, published in 2002." Now, if the Quran is eternal, how is it published in 2002? This, the Quran had a beginning. This Quran had a beginning. This Quran didn't always exist. The Quran had a beginning in, in, in 2002. And this Quran is paper and glue and ink. This isn't the sort of thing that lasts forever. This is the sort of thing that has a beginning and will eventually fall apart. In fact, there have been times in history when Qurans have been burned. That we've already discussed. The third of the Rightly Guided Caliphs burned all of the Qurans so that he could, he could,

Put out an official version of the Quran, so he's burning the Quran. Well, wait a minute. The Quran is eternal. It's incorruptible. It's unchangeable. It's not the sort of thing that can be destroyed. It's not the sort of thing that can be burned. So how are you telling me that the Quran is eternal and unchanging and incorruptible? It has no beginning, it has no end. How are you telling me this when this Quran clearly has a beginning? It will eventually fall apart. Other Qurans had beginnings, they fell apart or were burned. Your claims make no sense. You have, you have a completely incoherent theology.

And I bring this up to the Muslim and let the Muslim eventually think through this, because lots of Muslims haven't thought through this. They don't realize, and realize because they haven't thought through this, that the answer according to orthodox Islamic theology is that the Quran has two natures. It has two natures. One, on one hand, it is the divine, eternal, uncreated, unchanging, incorruptible speech of Allah. As such, it can't be changed. It has no beginning, it has no end, and so on.

But the Quran enters our world, our physical world, in a physical form made of paper and glue and ink, or written on people's hearts and minds. But it takes on a physical form in our world because that's how things exist in our world. And so, why can the Quran be burned by Uthman? Well, because the eternal Quran, according to Islamic theology, the eternal Quran entered our world and had a dual nature at that point. And because it had a dual nature, part of which was a physical nature, it could be burned.

So, according to Islamic theology, it actually makes sense why someone can take the Quran and burn it, even though the Quran is uncreated and incorruptible, because the Quran didn't just stay in its eternal, divine, uncorruptible state. It entered our world in physical form, made of paper and glue and ink, and therefore can be burned. And once my Muslim friend has finally clarified his own theology, then I say, "Okay, now I understand that you don't have a contradiction here. You're not saying that the Quran as it existed eternally was burned. You're saying that the Quran, after entering our world and taking on a physical nature, and then it had a dual nature, was burned because it now had a physical nature." Thank you. I understand your theology now, my Muslim friend.

But I have a question for you. When the Bible says, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God," goes on in John to say, "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us." So, the eternal Word, which is God, uncreated, incorruptible, enters our world, taking on human flesh, then has a dual nature. That dual nature can die on the cross because it has taken on a physical nature. But if the dual nature is put on a cross, you wouldn't say that the eternal God has died, just as if a Quran is burned, even though this is the dual nature, you don't say that Allah's eternal speech has been destroyed or something like that.

Um, what was your objection to Christian theology, and why is it incoherent and contradictory? Because at that point, all the Muslim can say is, "It's not true." He can no longer say it's a contradiction, because Christians aren't saying that God as he exists in himself died on the cross. We're saying that God entered our world, took on flesh, became flesh, and at that point, when he had a dual nature, could die on the cross. And so, how is that a contradiction?

And at this point, if they say we have a contradiction or our theology is incoherent, then they've just shown that orthodox Islamic theology is contradictory and incoherent. They don't want to do that, so they have to change the objection, and now they just have to say that it's not true, or that our scriptures have been corrupted. But if they say our scriptures have been corrupted, then they have to deal with the other responses to questions of the Bible's preservation, in which case they're going to lose that discussion. So, problem either way.

Yeah, I think, and as I explained in my book, "No God But One," there are a lot of parallels between Christ as the eternal Word, the Logos, and the Quran in Islam. A lot of people just assume that there's a parallel between the Bible and the Quran because there are two scriptures. But the place that the Quran holds in Islamic theology is much more analogous to the place that Jesus holds in Christian theology. And we've just seen, uh, some of the reason why, uh, as David has unpacked the two natures of the Quran.

The answer I give is, uh, different. Um, I'm not saying this one's any worse. In fact, I might use this one in the future. It's good. But the answer I give is much more kind of straightforward. I'll ask a person, if they say, "How can God die on this earth? God, God lives forever." I will say, "When you die, do you stop existing? You, as a human, when you die, do you stop existing?" They say, "No, this body dies, but I will exist forever." And I say, "Same thing with God. When God came into this world, he took on flesh, and he himself, in his essence, didn't die. The body died, just like our body will die, but we will continue existing after this body dies." In the same way, Jesus Christ didn't cease existing, uh, when he was killed on the cross. He continues to exist. And it's, it's a simple, straightforward answer. I've seen that work on many occasions. Um, but, uh, and that's one of the answers I provide in here. There's lots of different approaches you can take, just like we said in a previous video. Just figure out who the person is you're talking to, what kinds of things they're thinking about, and address the appropriate response to them. Pray about it, ask the Holy Spirit to lead and guide as you're talking to Muslims.

And if you are a Muslim and you're watching this and you're saying, "Oh, wow, well, I never heard this before." Um, I hope you consider, you continue asking questions, and you continue listening to the answers. Um, you can, you can ask a question just for the sake of objecting. If that's you, none of these videos are going to help you. No conversation is ever going to help you. But if you actually are interested in the truth, and if you actually care about who God is, then, then when you ask these questions, I hope you'll continue to listen to the answers that we're providing, wrestle with them. You might still disagree with them at the end of the day, but I'm thankful that you're listening and you're watching, and I hope this has been helpful to you.

And so, after this video, we're going to come with another common objection to Christianity by Muslims. I hope this has been helping you. Thanks so much.

Hey everyone, this is Nabeel Qureshi and David Wood. The last of the five objections that we're going to cover, common objections that Muslims bring up in this video series. The unofficial "Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus" videos. Uh, there is an official set. I would highly suggest you take a look at it. It's perfectly designed for small group study. Uh, what we're doing here is just getting together, sharing some thoughts, hoping to spur you on.

If you're a Muslim who would probably never get a hand on the "Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus" official video series, I hope this video series will help you understand how a Muslim who believed in Islam truly, madly, and deeply, ultimately became a Christian, though he had these objections. Um, and the objection that we're going to cover now is one that I've heard many Muslims ask. I even asked it. It wasn't a strong objection of mine. It was just kind of one that I kept in the back pocket to toss out there every now and then. Um, but the objection is this: If Jesus Christ paid for your sins, what stops you from continuing to sin once you've accepted Christ's payment for your sins? Why not just continue sinning?

I've heard a lot of people ask me that question. I'll share the answer that I normally give, but David, you have thoughts to share first. I think we normally give similar responses on this, but, um, uh, yeah, and here again, you can see why Muslims would say this, right? We're saying Jesus died on the cross for our sins. Uh, if you're a Muslim, you're hearing this, "Wait, Jesus died on the cross for your sins, so you can just go sin all you want. Jesus already, Jesus paid for it, right? So you can go, uh, you know, spend all your time committing adultery and going to killing sprees, whatever you want, right? Because Jesus paid for your sins."

And there are, uh, there are multiple problems with this objection. But I'll just, I'll just point out two. One, that's completely unbiblical. According to the Bible, if you think like that, you, you're just not a Christian. Uh, if you're not a Christian, then Jesus hasn't paid for your sins there. And so it doesn't apply that way. So, for instance, in the book of Romans, Paul says, "Shall we continue to sin so that grace may increase?" Right? I'm going to go ahead and sin, and then I just get, I just get more grace. And he says, "By no means." And Paul says in Romans, "How shall we who died to sin continue to live in it?" And so there's something there about, about you, you're actually, you're dying to sin.

But also, in the book of First John, according to, according to Jesus' apostle John, if you think like that, if you think, "Oh, now Jesus died for my sins, therefore I can just sin all I want," John says, "You're not even a Christian." So let me go ahead and read a passage. This is from 1 John chapter 2, verse 4. "Whoever says, 'I know him'—so, you know, Jesus—'but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him.'" Whoever says, "I know him," but does not keep his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. So if you say that you know Jesus, but you don't do what Jesus says, you're a liar, right? You might be lying to yourself, you might be lying to others, but you are wrong there.

So the point here is, if you were the sort of person who said, "Jesus died for my sins, therefore I don't need to do what Jesus wants to do anymore. I don't have to obey his commandments anymore," well, he says, "No, you say you know him, but you don't really know him. You don't really know him if you don't know him." Then you're not really a Christian. So according to the Bible, that sort of thinking would rule you out as a Christian. Now, why is that important? Well, according to the Bible, that sort of thinking, "I can now sin all I want because my sins are forgiven," that is condemned. That view is condemned in the Bible.

But in Islam, you have some disturbingly, disturbingly problematic passages that are along the same lines of what Muslims are accusing us of. So Muhammad says in the Hadith that if you go on the Hajj, then your sins are forgiven. If you die in Jihad, you die waging Jihad for Allah, then you are guaranteed a place in paradise. Now think about this: According to that passage, you're guaranteed a place in paradise if you die waging Jihad for Allah. So I could plan to die for Allah in Jihad five years from now and say, "Well, what am I going to do for the next five years?" Well, I'm going to spend all my time committing adultery and all kinds of other things, and murdering people just for fun, torturing old ladies, stomping, uh, cats, you know, whatever I want. And then I'm going to go out and die for Allah, and then I'll go to, I'll go to Jannah, right? And well, that would be perfectly consistent there with what Muhammad said.

And there are, of course, jihadis who do that, right? We keep reading about jihadis who, uh, they were at a strip club the night before and doing drugs, and then they went out and died in Jihad. And then we hear on the news, "They weren't real Muslims." Well, it's, if they're real Muslims, that's perfectly consistent. They could say, "Wait, Allah says I'm going to, so I can do whatever I want right before I get there." So they, there are Muslims who reason that way. If you don't believe that's what Islam teaches, you can work that out for yourself. There are jihadis or actual Muslims who have reasoned that way based on the claims of Muhammad. But in our book, that line of thinking is forbidden.

So if you're worried about that objection, Muslims, "Oh, you can just sin all you want because your sins are forgiven," then Allah says that your sins are forgiven if you die in Jihad, and therefore you can do whatever you want. The objection applies to you. It does not apply to us. But there's more.

Well, in that verse, by the way, is sort of 9, verse 111, or, um, so yeah, I was talking about the Hadith. Yeah. Well, the verse is actually called, or has been called, yeah, the verse of bargaining, or the verse of bartering, where you're trading your, you know, your life in Jihad for forgiveness of sins. That's the bargain you're making. And it's been called that by Islamic theologians classically. Um, and so it's not just Nabeel and David's interpretation of the Quran. This is, you know, what Muslims classically have interpreted. It's been discussed in Islamic theology. It's been practiced by jihadis. Um, whether or not their interpretation of Islam is your interpretation is another question. Even whether their interpretation is valid, another question. I'm just saying, as David has, I'm just reiterating what David said, which is there's plenty of room for that within Islamic theology, classically, and even today.

And also, I want to go over another verse from First John. David referred to First John chapter 2. If you look at First John chapter 3, verse 3, here's what John says. Verse 7: "Little children, let no one deceive you. Whoever practices righteousness is righteous, as he is righteous. Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning." And the reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. In other words, John is saying, "Look, Jesus came to destroy sin." So if you are sinning and you continue sinning, you're coming exactly against the very purpose for which Jesus was here. So you're of the devil. That's what, that's what John is saying. "No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God's seed abides in him, and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God." Very much what David was saying. If you, if you want to sin, if you want to keep on sinning, then you're coming against God. You're not a Christian. You're not born of God. That's literally what John is saying.

And there's good reason for that. Um, when Jesus is giving his proclamation of the gospel, the good news of the coming of God's kingdom, he's preceded by John the Baptist, and John the Baptist was preaching a message of repentance. And Jesus Christ, when he starts preaching, always says, "You have to repent." Um, because the kingdom of God is at hand. That's, that's the way the message is being provided. Now, what does repentance mean? You know, in English, we think repentance can just mean saying you're sorry, like something, or feeling bad, or feeling bad. I heard that from my testimony video. David, you don't seem to feel much. You don't seem to feel bad enough, so you haven't repented. Not what it means. Yeah. It's, it's tied to this emotion or or this, uh, very, you know, singular act of saying, "Oh, I'm sorry." That's repentance. That is not what the Greek word *metanoia* means. The, the word repentance in the Greek, uh, can be broken down into two, and basically what it means is a changing of your mind, a changing of the way you think, the way you process. You no longer want to sin. That's what repentance is. You, you no longer are, have a proclivity towards sin. You want to live for God. You want to please God. And out of love for him, you don't want to sin anymore. That is the necessary prerequisite for becoming a Christian. You have to repent first of your sins in this true meaning of repentance, and then you can accept what Christ has done for you on the cross. Repent first, and then follow Christ. That's, that's the way he taught it. That's the way the Gospels teach it.

Um, and if you say, "Oh, I just want to keep on sinning. Jesus Christ has already paid for my sins." You've excluded yourself. You've disqualified yourself. Um, you're not doing what, what Christ has called us to do, which is to be changed in the way of our thinking first, be renewed in the attitude of our minds by the Holy Spirit. And, and, and that's the point I want to close with. It's the point I made in my book, "No God But One." Ultimately, what the Christian message is, what the gospel message is, is an affirmation to love God with all that you are. To love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, all your strength. Um, and then of course, in that, as you love God, you love your neighbor as yourself too. But, you know, that's another discussion for another day. To love God with all that you are. That's what it means. What's, what the gospel truly means.

And in so doing, you will then follow Jesus, because Jesus is God incarnate. You will follow him. You will obey him. You won't just pay lip service to him. You'll actually want to follow him in what you do. And that means not sinning. It means doing, living the way he lived. That's what it means to follow Jesus. To live the way Jesus lives.

It is a disturbing view of ethics that says the only reason, the only reason that you would, uh, not sin, the only reason that you would not do something bad, is because you want to avoid punishment. So, I mean, if I said to my kids, "Guys, whatever you do today, I'm not going to punish you." Oh, well, now it's okay to just murder a bunch of people, right? In fact, if the only reason my kids were doing the, were doing the right thing and avoiding the wrong behaviors is because they feared punishment from me, that is a very, very, very flawed view of ethics, right? They should be, they should want to do the right thing. They should love me and want to do what I'm saying.

And similarly, I mean, if you say, "If your only reason to obey God is because you want to avoid hell, you want to, you want to get to heaven," then it's kind of, you're obeying out of a kind of a selfishness, right? I want what's best for me at the end of the day. If you think about, if you say, "Hey, there's a little old lady over there. I want to help her across the street." But it's because she might give me some money. Are you, what are you really doing? That's right, right? If you're just out to get something out of it, how, what kind of great thing are you doing? But if you do it just because it's the right thing to do, or just because you love people, well, I would say there, you're actually, you're actually doing the right thing for the right reason.

So you can do the right thing for the right reason. You can do the right thing for the wrong reason. If you're doing the right thing, helping the old lady across the street, but you're doing it for the wrong reason, because you just, you just want to get something out of it, I would question. I certainly wouldn't say that's the best, the best case scenario would be to do the right thing for the right reason.

What, what Christian ethics is, is you're obeying God because you love God. You obey Jesus because you love Jesus, not to avoid punishment. Jesus paid for your sins, and now you obey him out of gratitude and love for what he has done for you. He gave you life, and he paid for your sins, and now you obey him. And, and this is what the scripture says in John chapter 14. Jesus says, "If you love me, you will obey my commandments." It's just part and parcel of loving God.

Um, and so the objection actually shows a lot more insight into the person asking the question. "Hey, if you're forgiving your sins, you can just sin all you want." It's like, "Wait a minute. You're talking a lot about yourself right now. That's your view. The only reason that's your view, the only reason you obey God is to avoid punishment, not because you love God." So, uh, it's another one of those objections that points the fingers back at the, the objectioner.

We've got two more videos. We're going to do, uh, in this, uh, "Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus" unofficial video series. Thanks for joining us. We're looking forward to seeing you for the next one.

Hey everyone, it's Nabeel and David. Welcome back to the unofficial "Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus" video series. There is an official "Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus" video series that you can get through Amazon, which is great for group study. I suggest you take a look at that if you can. In these videos, we're covering some objections, some major issues. Um, and we're just kind of wetting your appetite, hoping to give you a little bit. Uh, if you're ministering to Muslims, if you are a Muslim and you're watching these videos, I hope that you find some kernels and nuggets of truth that will start you on your journey to dig deeper. Uh, I do honestly believe what the Bible says, that when you earnestly seek God with all your heart, you will find him. Um, and so I find that in the book of Hebrews, we find that, the book of Jeremiah, etc. So keep seeking, keep looking. If you honestly love God, I think you will end up believing Jesus Christ as Lord, at least that's what happened to me.

In this video, I'm going to cover some slightly sensitive information. We're going to talk about Muhammad. And this is important stuff. When, when I was Muslim, from a time before I knew my name, my family, my Jamaat, my Islamic community was teaching me about Muhammad and about how amazing he was, how excellent he is, how kind he is, how generous he is, how loving he is, how stately he is, how diplomatic he is, how wise he is. Every single epithet that you can give Muhammad, he deserved it because he was the greatest man who ever lived. Al-insan al-kamil, the perfect man, is who Muhammad is.

You know, Muslims have tremendous respect for a lot of the prophets: Abraham, Moses, Jesus. Their names are mentioned in the Quran, and many, many Muslims will tell you how their names are mentioned much more frequently than Muhammad's name is mentioned. It's not quite a fair statement because Muhammad is often addressed in the second person, so his name is obviously not going to be mentioned in the third person. But whatever it is, true that as far as proper nouns are concerned, Muhammad's name is not mentioned as much as, for example, Jesus' name is mentioned in the Quran. But regardless of that, the average Muslim holds Muhammad in super high esteem, higher than any other human who's ever lived, including Jesus. You know, Islamic sources notwithstanding, that's the view Muslims have of Muhammad.

Um, we have stories that we were told. For example, the one that I was very frequently told was that Muhammad endured tremendous persecution at the hands of the Meccans. And so Muhammad, at the age of 40, started proclaiming that there is no god but Allah, and he started teaching monotheism to these Arab pagans. And because of that, they started persecuting him. They started putting camel entrails on him while he was praying. They would, they would come and violently assault him at times. That there was a boycott placed upon him and the Muslims that ultimately led to the death of his wife and his uncle. Um, in, in battle, the Meccans would eat, would, after killing his relatives, eat the organs out of their bodies. That's how vicious these Meccans were towards the Muslims. And yet, despite all this persecution, when Muhammad finally gained the upper hand over the Meccans, when he came back during, during the conquest of Mecca, he showed all of them mercy, and he forgave them all. This was the great character of Muhammad.

So these were the kinds of stories that we were frequently told. Problem was, these were the stories we were told. When I actually started investigating the written accounts of Muhammad's life, there was a lot more to his life, and in fact, some of these stories didn't quite measure up. So, for example, the story of Muhammad forgiving everyone when he came back to Mecca. Not true. He didn't forgive everyone. There were people that he singled out and killed. Um, and, and he didn't show them any mercy, even if they asked for it.

Um, throughout his life, there were incidents where you would normally give somebody mercy. For example, a woman who was caught in adultery. Jesus, according to John chapter 8, shows this woman forgiveness. And, and these sources are not just found in John chapter 8, but the early church records this story of Jesus forgiving the woman caught in adultery. Muhammad, when he catches a woman in adultery, and what I find fascinating about this is this is often hailed as an example of Muhammad's mercy. Muhammad says to the woman, "Oh, wait and see if you're pregnant." The woman comes back and finds out she's pregnant. Muhammad says, "Well, deliver the child." She delivers a child. She goes back to Muhammad. Muhammad says, "Okay, now nurse the child." And after the child is weaned from his mother, then Muhammad executes her. And, and the story goes to show the amazing mercy of Muhammad that he would wait so long to execute her. And I'm thinking, "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone." I mean, there's, there's much more mercy that can be shown here.

Um, but, but this is an example of the tremendous mercy of Muhammad. Also, the story of, of persecution of Muhammad when he's in Mecca. Not nearly as bad as is often portrayed. Certainly a joke compared to what someone like the Apostle Paul went through. Yeah, Apostle Paul stoned multiple times, caned multiple times, left for dead multiple times, shipwrecked multiple times. Muhammad had some camel entrails placed on him while he was in Sajdah. I mean, not, not that big a deal. And that's not to downplay persecution. Persecution can be rough, but it's not nearly as bad as many Muslims will often say it was. In fact, in the 13 years Muhammad was proselytizing in Mecca, or preaching Islam in Mecca, there were approximately 100 converts during that whole period of time. And of that hundred, um, there are, from, from what I recall, and don't quote me on this, but from what I recall, there are 15 incidents of, of persecution, and only two of them led to martyrdom. Um, I might be wrong in those numbers, but that's what I'm recalling at the moment. It's just, there's no comparison to how bad it's often portrayed. And certainly not, I mean, if you look at what happened when Muslims were in power over the unbelievers, very different story. Yes.

Uh, even when Muhammad is not in power, he says to the Meccans, "I will bring you slaughter." You know, they're trying to just get him to peacefully stop preaching Islam, and he's saying, "No, no, I'm going to come back and kill you guys." I mean, even, even according to, I mean, you know, according to what Muslims are telling us, Muhammad preached, uh, at first, he's just preaching in private, but he's ultimately preaching openly in Mecca, calling, calling, condemning the beliefs of the inhabitants of Mecca openly, publicly, right outside the Kaaba. And he makes it there 13 years. Would I last 13 years criticizing the beliefs of the people of Mecca today? I'm not sure I would last 13 minutes preaching outside the Kaaba today. And the people after Muhammad took over Mecca certainly wouldn't have lasted nearly as long as he did. Yes. It's, it's, yeah, when you put it in, in context, there's a lot to consider here.

Is Muhammad actually the man that Muslims are taught that he is, this great paragon of excellence? The more you study Muhammad's life, the more you walk away scratching your head, saying, "How could he have done that? How could he have done that?" And you start that way as a Muslim, you know, being presented with Hadith from the Sahih literature. So Sahih Bukhari, Muslim, for example, that's where I started. That was the only thing I would accept from David when he would say, "Muhammad did X, Y, or Z." Like, "Don't bring it to me if it's anything but the Sahih literature or the Quran, of course." And so he'd start bringing these Hadith from the Sahih literature. For example, Muhammad marrying a six-year-old girl, consummating the relationship with her when he's 52 and she is nine. How could he have done that?

Now, some people would say, "Well, culturally, it was okay." And that was actually the argument I used in response to David. You know, "In that culture, in that time, it's okay." But David had a very salient response, which was, "Muhammad's supposed to be the example for all mankind." And even today, 52-year-old men are marrying nine-year-old girls and forcing them to have sexual relationships with them because Aisha did it with Muhammad. He's being used as the example. And so you, you see this kind of a thing, and you respond to it, at least I did when I was a Muslim, by saying, "This can't possibly be true. There must be some mistake here."

And in our sect of Islam, we would respond by saying, "Oh, yeah, in those days, people didn't have birth certificates, and so they could be wrong about the day you were born, and they were wrong about age." But the problem is, this was recorded in multiple places, and not only that, but it was emphasized that Aisha was still playing with her dolls when Muhammad took her into her house. That's from Sahih Bukhari. So you see that, and then you start reading other things in the Sahih literature where you're like, "Wow, really?" Muhammad says the best thing you can possibly do with your life is fight in Jihad. If you were to pray unceasingly and fast unceasingly, that's equal to fighting on the battlefield? Really? The Muhammad I know is much more peaceful than that.

Um, then you start seeing the scientific blunders that Muhammad makes in, in the Hadith, in the Sahih literature. For example, Muhammad says that if there's a disease on one wing of a fly, um, the antidote for that fly is on the other, for the disease is on the other wing. You have an MD? Is that correct? Yeah. Oh, well, yeah, I have a medical degree. And absolutely, that's not correct. Um, if, if a fly is carrying malaria, don't just be like, "Oh, I dipped the other wing in, in my tea." By the way, I have the, I know mosquito's camera. I still have the email from you defending that. That's embarrassing. Don't share that. That would make a funny video. Actually, go ahead and share that. Okay. I would be fine. When I'm sharing that email, just, I think, let me see it first. Yeah. First. Um, but I mean, that's just absolutely ridiculous that, you know, if there's a disease on a fly, just make sure you, you dip both wings into your drink because then you won't catch the disease. Um, I mean, I'm trying not to use disrespectful words, but that's, that's just insane.

Um, and the same thing with, um, livestock. Muhammad would say that if, if an animal has died, for example, if a donkey dies in a well, you can still drink the water from that well because water is only impure by nothing. Yeah, yeah. And so he would say, "Drink, you know, drink the water of a well that has a dead donkey in it." No, don't, don't listen to that. Um, camel urine being the, the heel, the healing for a variety of stomach ailments. No, camel urine was not, was not one. I know I defended that one too, and I was almost, yeah, you did. Um, I've got that email too. Um, but, uh, but you start getting more and more of these things that Muhammad has said or done, and they're immoral, or they're just unbelievably wrong on a scientific level. Some of them are spiritually quite unnerving.

So, for example, Muhammad, according to the Sahih literature, was under black magic for a year. He believed that he was doing things that he wasn't actually doing, and it turned out it was because of which had cursed him with black magic. Seriously? This is the prophet that, that I follow. Um, and some of these Muslims will, of course, object to and they'll try to find ways around them. And that's what I kept trying to do. But it wasn't until I found maybe a hundred or so of these Sahih Hadith that I was trying to explain away or just say, "No, this can't possibly be true," when I had to conclude, "Wait a minute, my theology is built in large part on these books, on the Hadith literature."

Now, the average Muslim will say, "Of course, the Quran is the, is the centerpiece of Islamic theology." And at least theoretically, that's true. The vast majority of Islamic teaching doesn't actually come from the Quran. It comes from the Hadith. And even more so, that's true of Muhammad's life. Now, if you are a Muslim, and you are going to claim that Islam is true, you have to say something, and you have to believe something, and that's the Shahada. You have to say, "La ilaha illallah," there's no god but Allah. And the second part of the Shahada, "Muhammad rasulullah," Muhammad is the prophet of Allah, or a prophet of Allah.

Now, in order to say that, you're making a positive assertion about Muhammad. You're saying, "I believe this guy is a prophet." It's not incidental to what you believe. You can't just say, "Oh, I like the Quran and I like Islamic theology, and therefore I'm a Muslim." You actually have to assert, and it is the primary proclamation of Islam, the number one pillar of Islam, and it's also extremely important in, in the theology of Islam, not just the praxis, but the theology of Islam, that Muhammad is a prophet. And if you study his life and you take all these Hadith into account, there's no way you can conclude that this man's a prophet. You might still walk away saying, "Okay, he was a good man, considering the time in which he was a leader and the culture and context in which he was a leader, he's still a good man." But are you going to say he is the exemplar for all mankind? There's, I, as a Muslim, having read the Sahih material, could not conclude that. And that was one thing which led me to walk away.

And by the way, this says absolutely nothing about the Seerah literature. So the Seerah literature is the biography of Muhammad. And a lot of Muslims will say, "Oh, that Seerah doesn't count. It's, you just have to look at the Hadith." The problem with that way of thinking is that the Seerah literature actually predates the Hadith literature. The, the reason why the Seerah literature doesn't follow Hadith methodology is because it came first. It came before the Hadith methodology was ever invented. And the, the, the Hadith scholars eventually won discussions later on about proper methodology, and so then they said, "You have to stick, you can only follow material that sticks to to our methodology." When, by the, you know, at the time of the Seerah, that wasn't set in stone yet. And so it comes before all of that.

In addition to that, the Hadith only makes sense contextually if you have the whole framework of Muhammad's life. And so you have to know, you know, kind of a rough contour of from birth to death, what Muhammad's life was, and you apply the Hadith in that context. And that's what some theologians have been doing from the beginning. And what provides the context for the Hadith literature, usually Ibn Ishaq's Sirat Rasulullah. That is the primary biography of Muhammad's life. It's the first one written that we have in our possession today. It's considered of the Hadith of the Seerah. It's generally considered the most authoritative. Again, not compared to the Hadith, but of the Seerah, it's considered the Ibn Ishaq considered the most sort of earliest and the standard, let's call it the gold standard of the Hadith. There's much longer ones, much bigger ones. You have Tabari's history as well. But if you just read Ibn Ishaq, once again, you're going to get the earliest biography on Muhammad's life, not the 20th-century stuff you're hearing in the mosque from your parents and from your friends and your Imams, but the first one that was written, the first story of Muhammad's life. And it is frankly, at times, appalling.

Muhammad on one day, beheads multiple hundreds of men. He orders a treasurer to, to have a fire kindled on his chest so that he would tell people where the money was hidden. He orders a breastfeeding mother to be to be killed, and she's killed in front of her children while she's breastfeeding. Story after story of just appalling things that Muhammad has done. And this is the, is the basis for, for Muhammad's biography.

You have a significant problem saying the Shahada when you actually study Muhammad's life. And, as far as I've sort of, sort of put all this together systematically here, if someone comes to you and says, "Hey, I'm a prophet," you have basically three possibilities that you should be considering. So if you don't already believe in him, and he says, "I'm a prophet. I have a, I have a message from God." Basically three possibilities that you have to consider: One, that he's getting his revelations from his own mind or surroundings. In other words, his revelations have a human origin. That's one possibility. Two, that he is getting, he's getting actual revelations, but they don't come from God. So they come from, you know, demons, something like that. If you're a Christian or Muslim, you have to consider that as a possibility. We believe that demons can influence people. So I have to wonder, is, is, is something darker at work here? And then the third possibility is, this person is actually a prophet. And so the question would be, why should we believe in this prophet?

And when we, when we do this with Muhammad, we ask ourselves, "Why should we believe? Should we, do we have reason to think that his revelations have a human origin?" Well, in many cases, uh, yes. If you look at, if you look at Islam as a whole, it looks like something that, that came, that sprang up from, uh, seventh-century Arabia. Looks like you rolled everything up into a ball. So you have, you have Jewish monotheism circulating in Arabia there, along with lots of Jewish stories from the Torah and the Talmud and other Jewish sources. You have, uh, stories from various Christian groups, for often heretical Christian groups that were circulating, and, and the documents that they, uh, that they, uh, involved. So stories about, uh, Jesus giving life to clay birds and Mary giving birth under a palm tree. These kinds of stories, stories that are now found in the Quran. These are circulating in Arabia during this time.

So you have Christian elements and Jewish elements, and you have the same Jewish and Christian elements that you, that you find in the Quran, you find in Arabia during the time of Muhammad. You have various pagan practices. So taking the pilgrimage to Mecca, circling the Kaaba, things like that. Well, those are things that the pagans did that are now part of Islam. So the question, this is supposedly a revelation that that came down from heaven, and yet it looks exactly like what we would expect if you took everything that's around Mecca during this time and rolled it up into a ball. And also the Zoroastrians, don't forget the praying five times a day based on the position of the sun. That's what those Zoroastrians did.

One thing I want to emphasize that the, the Sabians even had a Shahada. No. Yeah. You're kidding. Yeah. Sabians, according to Muslim, according to Muslim sources. This is my first time hearing that. But one thing I want to emphasize very briefly about here, first, what David just said, uh, before you continue. Um, some of these stories are made of stories. It's not, it's not just, "Hey, it's okay, Mama, this, you know, is he's preaching to the people of Mecca, and so, uh, it's completely fine for him to to take kind of, you know, the what's found there and to contextualize the message to them." You know, a progressive Muslim might say something like that. Some of these stories are just flat out false and made up.

So, for example, the story of Jesus giving life to clay birds. We know exactly how that story was created. It was created during the second century. We know where most of these stories come from. Yeah. Um, it was created during this entertaining, um, for this entertaining piece. Um, why is the name escaping me right now? Infancy Gospel of Thomas. You have, uh, uh, in this story, you've got, you know, child Jesus being mischievous, and, uh, he kills people, and then when their parents get upset for for having killed him, he brings them back to life. Or, um, he will, he will, you know, be very disrespectful to a teacher, and the teacher will say, "How dare you disrespect me?" And then Jesus shares with him divine wisdom.

So you've got a naughty, mischievous baby Jesus, or child Jesus. One of these mischievous things he does is he plays with with clay. He makes clay birds on the Sabbath. And on the Sabbath, you're not supposed to do any work. And so people are saying, "Jesus is being mischievous. He's playing with these clay birds on the Sabbath." And Jesus blows life into them and watches them fly away because you can play with live birds on the Sabbath. It's not doing work. And so once again, Jesus is using his, you know, divine powers to do mischievous things. Um, it's, it's a made-up story. But yet Muhammad doesn't realize it's a made-up story and it's included in the Quran. Same thing with Jesus talking at the cradle from, I think it's Surah 18, might be Surah 19. Jesus is speaking. Uh, yeah, Surah Maryam. Jesus speaks as soon as he's born. Where does that come from? Uh, well, that comes from the Arabic Infancy Gospel, where Jesus is the Word, the eternal Logos. And so when he's born, metaphorically, it's showing him being able to speak right away, the truth about being the eternal Word. Muhammad takes that and puts it in the Quran as if baby Jesus can actually speak in the cradle.

Just a misinterpretation. You see this time and time again. Um, and so it's not just, "Hey, here are some stories that he contextualized into the Quran." It's these are false stories that he doesn't realize are following his claims are coming down from heaven, and yet he's getting from the surrounding culture. And by the way, even in the Quran, he's repeatedly accused of this over and over again. He's reciting some revelation, and people go, "These are fables of the men of old." In other words, they're saying, "We know these are fables, Muhammad. What are you talking about?" Even, even the pagans knew that these stories were, were very often, um, made up.

So if we're talking about, do we have reasons to think that that these revelations had a human origin? Of course, you have that. And then, of course, you have, uh, the very morally convenient revelations. When Muhammad would tell his followers, according to the Quran, "You can have no more than four wives." But Allah tells him in chapter 33, verse 50, that he can have more. Muhammad had at least nine wives at one time, at least. Um, and so why? Because he got a special revelation giving him special moral privileges.

Muhammad once got caught, uh, having sex with his slave girl in his wife Hafsa's bed. Hafsa got very upset about it. Muhammad, uh, asked her not to tell Aisha. She did anyway. So Muhammad's in trouble. He takes an oath to his wives that he'll stop having sex with his slave girl. And so he took an oath, and that was okay. But then he received a revelation, chapter 66, verses one through two of the Quran, where Allah comes to him and says, "I didn't tell you to, I didn't tell you to make that oath, so you can break that oath." And so this was, this was Allah telling Muhammad, "Why did you promise?"

Your wives, you were going to stop having sex with your slave. I didn't tell you to say that. So you go right back to having sex with your slave girl, and he got her pregnant. Her name was Mary the Copt. So this is Allah, this is Allah telling Muhammad, uh, it's okay to break an oath to his wives about having sex with his slave girl, which he was doing in his wife Hafsa's bed. Uh, you start. This happens over and over again. This is in the Quran. Yep, right. It's not like in the Seerah. This is in the eternal word of Allah for all people to read and memorize and recite during the month of Ramadan. Seriously. And so you see this sort of thing over and over again in the Muslim sources that Allah seems to give Muhammad very convenient revelation. I actually even noticed this. She's the one who said, uh, my Lord, your Lord hastens to satisfy your wishes and desires. She notices every time Muhammad wants something, Allah gives him a revelation, uh, saying it's okay. So the point here is this looks awfully suspicious if the one receiving the revelations keeps getting revelations that give him and him alone these special moral privileges. So we have a lot of reason to think that these, uh, revelations have a human origin. Uh, Nabeel already brought up the second possibility, um, of of something darker at work, talking about Muhammad, um, being a victim of black magic. We find things like this. Muhammad, uh, his first impression of his revelations was not, oh, I have encountered an angel. Muhammad's first impression of his revelations was that he had been attacked by a demon. He, he left the cave, he tried repeatedly to commit suicide and was stopped by whatever had appeared to him. Um, so if you're looking at that, you, you encountered something, you think it's demonic, and you repeatedly try to kill yourself, not usually your reaction to, you know, encountering. So it went on after that. Muhammad received the, the infamous Satanic Verses, where he claimed that he, uh, had received a revelation from God. He's delivering the revelation to his followers, and he tells his followers it's okay to pray to Allah, Al-Uzza, and Manat, these three goddesses, because they will, they are the exalted cranes, meaning that they're like birds who can carry your prayers to Allah. So you're really praying to Allah, but you're praying to them, and they will take your prayers to Allah. So you have intermediaries. So Muhammad delivers this revelation to his followers, he bows down in honor of the revelation, and even the pagans, the polytheists of his tribe, bowed down with him, and they proclaimed that Muhammad has finally favored our religion. And so word spread that the polytheists had now converted to Islam. They're accepting Muhammad as a prophet. Uh, problem was, Muhammad came back a little later and said, the devil made me do it. The devil tricked me into delivering those revelations. And now I, when I heard this as a Muslim, I said, you know, this is not true. This is, you know, something. I have 37 Muslim sources on the Satanic Verses. Now, 37 Muslim sources on this story. And the basic principle is the principle of embarrassment. This isn't that sort of thing Muslims are going to invent. In all these sources, there had to be some historical basis for this. But in addition, there was a scholar at, was it Yale or Harvard? Um, yeah, he was, he went to school at either Princeton or Harvard, and then he taught at the other. Okay, yeah. Um, so Ivy League scholar, Muslim. That's where I got the 37 Muslim sources. He compiled them. Oh, I see. And his dissertation is about how this is true, this is a true story. So just, um, so when I think about this, according to the early Muslim sources, Muhammad couldn't tell the difference between a revelation from God and a revelation from Satan, and Satan could actually trick him into delivering revelations from Satan. Not very encouraging if this guy's the last, uh, the last and final messenger. And then, of course, the, uh, the Muhammad thinking that he's, uh, a victim of black magic and doing weird things, having delusional thoughts and false beliefs, and then coming back and saying a magician had cast a spell on him. He put all of that together. We have, and, and apart from that, from a Christian perspective, the fact that we're told false prophets are going to come, that there are spiritual forces at work, and that they're going to come and corrupt the gospel. And then, as we mentioned in a previous video, that Muhammad looks exactly like what we're told about, that someone's going to come along and corrupt the gospel. Muhammad comes along and agrees with Christians on so many things that no one else agrees with us on, and then says, oh, but we do have to deny Jesus' death, resurrection, and deity. Exactly the three things that are the core elements of the Christian gospel. So we look here, uh, we look here and we say that we have plenty of reasons to question this person's spiritual reliability. Well, but I was looking at it from a Muslim perspective, and I was like, you know, I, I have to assert at the end of the day my own belief, right? Nobody is responsible for what I believe except me. And so, uh, you know, I can't go before God on the final day and say my parents told me to believe this. That's not going to fly. So, am I going to continue as a Muslim? And I entered into this believing that Islam was absolutely true, proved by history, philosophy, science, etc. Islam is, is the truth. And when I started studying Muhammad, there was this natural resilience or resistance to any of these objections that kept coming up. But I kept going because I had somebody forced me to keep going. And he's like, you can't just sweep this under the rug. How do you deal with this? Uh, and, and it just kept building and building and building and building. And when I had about a hundred Hadith, Hadith that I could not respond to, and you put on top of that the Seerah literature, which is unbelievably appalling at times, some of the stuff that he just shared, can I then walk away saying that this man is not just a prophet, but the greatest prophet who ever lived, my exemplar, uh, and the exemplar for all mankind? I could not in good conscience do that. Uh, and so for me, that was almost the, the nail in the coffin for Islam. Uh, what came after that was the, the Quran itself. Uh, the, the problems with the preservation of the Quran, that's what really did it for me. But, but this was, and, and, and the reason for that is that the only way you could deal with all those problems is if you had greater evidence for that third point, that you have evidence that this is actually from God. And then, but then when you examine the, the arguments that you've been given that supposedly outweigh any of these sorts of problems, it doesn't work out. I mean, the main argument of the Quran is that the Quran is, is such a literary masterpiece, it must come from God. And that's one of the silliest arguments. I mean, one, if even if it were, that would, that would not be proof that it's from God. If it were, if no one could write anything like the Quran, that wouldn't prove that it's from God. That's like saying if you can't write a, you know, symphony like Mozart, it must be from God. That's not true. That would just mean that Mozart had a great style or something that can't be imitated. Uh, when you actually read the Quran, uh, my good Anthony, uh, flew said that, uh, uh, to read the Quran as a penance rather than a pleasure. Uh, so one, this argument is, even if it were, even for, even if the Quran were what it says, the argument would fail. And the Quran just doesn't live up to what it says. I mean, reading the Quran is, I'm not saying this because, you know, I disagree with. I think reading the Hadith, many, many sections are very interesting. I think reading lots of the passages in the Seerah literature are very interesting. I think reading Plato is amazing. I don't agree with Plato on a lot of things. I think reading Plato is a has has some amazing writings. The Quran is just, I mean, the worst book I can imagine, reading, seriously. So to claim that it's, it's just so wonderful that it, that it could only be from God, very strange argument. The other main argument of the Quran is that Muhammad is a prophet according to the Bible. Why do Muslims have to? One of the reasons Muslims have to say that the Bible's been corrupted is because Muhammad is a false prophet according to the Bible. So the book he tells us to go to to confirm his status as a prophet calls him a false prophet. And so these are the main arguments, and these fail. And the other is the preservation of the Quran. So once you find out the actual history of the text of the Quran, now all the reasons that you've been given for believing that you have evidence that outweighs any of these problems disappears, and all you have are problems, problems, problems, problems, problems. You have no reason to believe that this man's a prophet. You have very good reasons to think that at least some of his revelations have a human origin, and maybe some of them have a, you know, demonic origin, but no evidence that, uh, that he's actually a prophet. And with that, I would say confidence in Muhammad should rightly crumble. I would, um, I mean, I, I would say that, uh, what we have done is not, and this is the way most Muslims would immediately react when they hear this stuff, like, why are you coming after our prophet? Why are you trying to smear his name? Uh, you're an Islamophobe. Your prophet started it. I wouldn't go that route. But what I would say is, you know, in my story, I was trying to find the reasons why I should be Muslim. And in order to be Muslim, I have to assert that Muhammad is a prophet. When I study his life, I cannot do that. I cannot conclude that this was a man sent by God to be the greatest exemplar for all mankind. And so this isn't, this isn't a matter of coming against Islam with a smear campaign. This is a matter of saying, what's your positive case? What, what do you have to say in order for Islam to be true? Oh, you have to say that Muhammad is a prophet. Well, here's the problem with that. So it's, it's not saying, hey, I'm just hatefully coming after you. It's, you know, if you honestly believe Islam is true, how do you handle all these things? Because I couldn't handle it when I was a Muslim. I, I could not see the way to explain it. And even today, I don't think there is a way to explain it. Muhammad is not a man that I would want to follow. No hatred towards Muslims here. No hatred towards, you know, a different ideology. I was Muslim when I came up to that conclusion. But when I studied, I'm not talking about accepting blindly what my parents taught me, what the mosque, you know, teaches, not that. When I use my God-given brain and the historically given sources to see what Muhammad's life was like, I can't follow this man, and therefore I can't be Muslim. So that's, that's the reasoning behind, um, kind of my conclusion on Muhammad. A lot more of that is found here. No God But One, part nine, is on Muhammad. So take a look at that if you want to learn more. Uh, to be quite honest, I go extremely gentle on Muhammad. I understand what he means to most Muslims. Again, I'm thinking through the lens of my family when I'm criticizing, um, you know, I mean, that's, well, let me use the word critiquing Islamic theology. I don't want to offend people unnecessarily. So I go very gentle. There's so much more that can be said. I go less gently. So you can find a lot of, a lot of stuff on David's website, Act 17 Apologetics, Answering Muslims.com. Both of them, you'll find a lot more on Muhammad if you're interested. So thanks so much for watching this video. We're just going to do a quick short wrap-up on this unofficial series on seeking Allah, finding Jesus. Love you guys. Thanks. Hey everyone, welcome to the final video of the unofficial seeking Allah, finding Jesus video series. Uh, there is an official one. I would suggest you take a look at that, um, on Amazon or wherever you can find it. This YouTube version, this is the, this is the YouTube primer for you to, uh, whet your appetite, to consider looking into these things further. If you're a Muslim, to, to have some answers to these questions that you might have that would otherwise be somewhat inaccessible. Also, I'm going through a lot of the stuff that we find in in my book, Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus. Take a look at that for a lot more detail. In this final video, what I want to, uh, end with is kind of what I start with in in my book, No God But One. Um, so if you're interested in the evidence between Islam and Christianity, this one is less story, more investigation, more facts. But part number one in there is taking a look at the core message of Islam and the core message of Christianity. Now, ultimately, the message of Islam boils down to this, that mankind has been living in ignorance, and that Allah has sent guidance through his prophets, culminating with Muhammad and Islam. And so if you follow Sharia, if you follow the Islamic way of life, then you will live in such a way that not only will it please God, but it will, you will fulfill the way you were created to live. Um, and, and that's the ultimate message of Islam. Follow Sharia through the teachings of Muhammad, by by following Allah, by, you know, reading the Quran regularly, etc., etc. All that Sharia teaches you to do, and you will earn the favor of Allah, ultimately, hopefully, if Allah would be gracious upon you, then you will enter into Jannah, paradise, on on that last day. That is the message of Islam, fairly straightforward. Uh, I'm not, I'm not here to criticize that directly. Uh, what I want to share with you is the Christian message. I want to share with you the Gospel. And the word Gospel was something that predated Jesus. We actually find on the, uh, what's it called, the Praeneste inscription from approximately 7 BC, that when a new emperor was crowned, a Gospel was proclaimed throughout the empire, that the Son of God had come to liberate the empire from any fear of the enemy. So this is how Romans would announce the coming of the emperor. The emperor was considered a deity, and, uh, once the emperor came, it was, wow, here comes the Son of God to liberate us from the enemy and the kingdom of the enemy. When the true Son of God comes, when Jesus Christ himself comes, he uses the exact same word, the Gospel, the good news, to proclaim his message. And he says, this world has been held captive by Satan. Satan has come to steal and kill and destroy. But I have come, I, the Son of God, the true King, Emperor of the universe, I have come to let you know that I've come to bring life and life to the full. Death has had its time. The enemy has had its time. Now I am here, and I will destroy the enemy for you. This is the message of the Gospel, that you don't have to go and work your way into God's good graces. You don't have to learn a code of living to say, God, will you accept me now? You don't have to jump through hoops to say, God, if I fast enough, if I memorize enough verses, if I do enough good deeds, will you then look on me and smile? You don't have to have that question burning within you, God, have I earned your favor? You know that you can never do anything to be perfect enough to earn God's favor. Look, heaven is by definition a perfect place. That's what heaven is. And if you are imperfect, you can't go to heaven because it's perfect. And the moment you step in there as an imperfect person, you have made heaven imperfect. You have to have perfection to step into heaven. There's no way you can earn that for yourself. I don't care how many good deeds you can do. If you've broken one law, you're guilty of all. And so you have to have some way in order for God to win this battle for you. You can't do it as a human. And this is the good news, the Gospel message, that Jesus provides. Yes, Satan came and he caused you to stumble, and you have fallen, and you are now bound to death. But I, the Son of God, the true Emperor of this universe, have come to liberate you from death. I've come to bring you life and life to the full. John chapter 10 verse 10. This is why Jesus says that anyone who believes in the Son will not perish but will have eternal life. It's because that's what he's come to do. This is why First John chapter 3 says that Jesus came to destroy the works of Satan. He came to bring life, whereas Satan kills, Jesus brings life. You can't do it. There's nothing you can do for yourself to earn that perfection. Jesus lives the perfect life. He lives the life that we ought to have lived, and he gives us that life. He ascribes his righteousness to us. We are given the righteousness of Christ. And then he dies the death that we deserve to die. He lives the life that we ought to have lived, and then he dies the death that we deserve to die. This is our God. This is the Gospel message that you have been saved. That God has come among you. What God decides when he sees his people suffering? What God says, rather than stepping back and watching you suffer, I'm going to step in with you. I'm going to roll up my sleeves, enter alongside you, and walk with you, my child, as you suffer. Right? I, I've been diagnosed with terminal cancer. I've got stage four stomach cancer, a non-curable, non-treatable illness. How do I get through this? How do I not point my finger at God and say, God, I'm preaching your word, I'm a minister of the Gospel, I'm trying to live my life to please you, and then you hit me with stomach cancer? How do I not do that? Because I remember the crucifixion of Jesus, and I remember that there's no suffering that I can go through that's greater than what my God went through for me, a million times over. I would take this stomach cancer than have to be crucified. And imagine the Creator of the universe being nailed to a cross by the very people he's coming to save, I mean, the very people he loves, and he's praying for them, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. This is the love of our God. This is the message of the Gospel, that God is willing to suffer alongside us. He's willing to take our punishment so that we can go to heaven, so that we can live with him. But he can suffer on our behalf, and we can live with him eternally. So we can be liberated from the law of death and enter into the gift of life. This is the Gospel message. Now, the Islamic message, not going to knock it, it is what it is, but there is nothing that compares to this Gospel message, and that's what it all boils down to. You and your Muslim friends, you can, you can argue with them about Jihad. We didn't even talk about Jihad in this session. I have a book called Answering Jihad. Maybe someday David and I will go full, fully in depth on on on that. We can do a special on Answering Jihad, but we're not talking about that right now. Um, you know, you can, you can talk about, you know, the intricacies of the Bible versus the Quran, important stuff to talk about. You can talk about the life of Muhammad, the life of Jesus, again, important stuff to talk about. But what it all ultimately boils down to is, what is this world? Who is God? What has he created us to do? How has he created us to live? What is our destiny? What is our meaning in this life? And the Gospel message tells us we have been redeemed. Our meaning is eternal. That our sins haven't just been overlooked, they've not just been forgiven, but God can work through our sins to liberate others. That he can redeem our sins for the sake of the well-being of others. This is the beauty of the Gospel message. And so this is what I leave with you. This is what it's about when you're talking to your Muslim friends, or if you're a Muslim who comes with objections and that is what it is, that you're interested in answering these objections or seeing if there are good answers. I'm telling you, ultimately, this is what it's about. Who is God? What has he done for you? How does he consider you? What does he think of you? And I'm here to tell you, you're his child, and he's come to redeem you, and he loves you. You don't have to jump through hoops to earn his favor because he knows you can't. He loves you regardless, as a loving father loves his child. I don't care if that child is is a criminal and has made all kinds of mistakes. Yeah, the father might punish him for his own well-being, but it's out of love. And that's our Father. He loves us. He loves you. Will you not treat this as an academic exercise? If you're a Christian reaching out to your Muslim neighbor, don't treat this as as academics. Don't treat this as a battle. You know, this is a matter of their soul and their heart. Love them. Share this with them. Embody the love that Christ had for us, for while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. And Jesus says, as I have loved you, so love one another. Right? We're supposed to love people even to the point of dying for them while they are yet sinners. Love your Muslim neighbors because I'm telling you, most of them aren't your enemies. They, they, they're your friends. So love them. This is what it's about. If you are a Muslim and you're watching this, this is what it's about. It's not about arguments. It's not about who wins at the end of the day. It's about who you are and who your Father is and what God has done for you. And so, um, the, the, the Gospel that Nabeel has shared, that's the Gospel that's been preached for, uh, for nearly 2,000 years, and Christians down through the centuries have done their part to bring this Gospel around the world. One of the most unreached groups with, uh, one of the most unreached groups is Muslims. And that's why, uh, we want to help those of you who want to reach out to Muslims, uh, as much as we can. So we started off by sharing some, some information about how you can figure out what you want to do, finding your place in, uh, in this work, finding your place in the body, to carry on this Gospel, because there are different kinds of people, different kinds of Muslims. And then we gave, we gave you the most common Muslim objections. These are the most, these are the objections that almost every Muslim brings up with me. And if you get those five objections, uh, down and understand some basic responses to them, the Muslim is going to be shocked because he's been told Christians don't have answers for these questions. And so when you start answering those questions, those objections, it's like a light switch goes on. When they realize, wait a minute, I've been told they can't answer these questions. I've been told wrong about that. What else have I been told wrong about? And so hopefully that makes the Muslims start looking into these things, uh, a bit more carefully. And we address Muhammad, and we chose these. There are plenty more topics that you can address. Certainly want to understand, you know, Muslim sources and Islamic theology if you want to go into detail or spend a lot of time on this. We've given you the basics that if you were going to interact, I would say Christians in general, given our time in history, need to learn these basics that we've shared. This needs to become common knowledge in Christian churches because there are so many Muslims now coming with the same objections. Why would Christians not be prepared for those objections? So the question now is, where do you want to go from here? I would say, if, if you're not making, you know, we, if you, if you've watched this series, I assume you have some interest in in reaching Muslims. If you just wanted a general idea, then then you're, you're pretty good. You're pretty good with the information we've shared. You can, you can take that. If you're doing other things in life, you have other areas of ministry, you just wanted a basic idea, you, you're fine with what we've given you. If you want to go into into more depth, take things to a deeper level, multiple ways you can do that. You can go through, you can go through Nabeel's books. Great places, great place to start. I would start with this if you just want to get an idea of the Muslim mindset. And then once you want to, you know, learn the arguments back and forth, here you go. Uh, great websites out there. If you, if you're in an area where you're, you're not going to be able to order books or something like this, the Answering Islam website, that's answering-islam.org. I bring that up because so many Christians who deal with Islam write for that site. We have articles on that site. Almost everyone we know of who deals with Islam writes for that site. And so I, I would encourage you to figure out what direction you want to go from there. If you want to go into more detail, it's, it's all out there. Yeah. Um, again, check out the, um, Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus video series as well. And, uh, continue to follow David if you're interested in some of the, uh, some of the evidence. Also, some commentary on political issues and current event issues within Islam. David, David handles more of that stuff. Sharia in the US, these Jihadi attacks, he'll handle a lot of that stuff. I handle some of the more of the historical religious stuff on the history of Islam, the origins of the Christian faith, and also the origins of the Judaic faith as well. That's kind of what I've studied and where I am. So feel free to follow us. And, uh, remember that you're, you're in the middle of a spiritual battle. This, this world is, is not what it looks like. Christ has taught us that there are forces at work that are beyond what we see. And you are an integral player in God's story. He has crafted you and created you for this time to reach people around you, to be a part of his eternal story. So you are a world changer, eternally conceived in the mind of Christ, and placed on this earth to do eternal good. Remember that's who you are, and this is the story you're in. Thanks so much for watching, guys. We love you and we can't wait to do the next series.