Transcription
Sorry Muslims, but you can't have Jesus. Well, you can have Jesus, but you need to leave Islam for that. I'll tell you about it later. In the meantime, I dare you to refute what you're about to hear in this video. Any 50 of you, any thousand of you, take the shot and prove me wrong. You see, Jesus just doesn't fit into your religion. Trying to make Jesus fit into Islam is like trying to make science, logic, or basic ethics fit into Islam. You can pretend, but it's not a good fit. Can this mug hold a star? Can a garbage can contain the sun?
I should point out, however, that there's a part of me that really likes the fact that you really, really want Jesus on your side. Everyone wants Jesus on their side, which is a pretty big compliment to Jesus. After all, besides you, who wants Muhammad on their side? Child marriage advocates? So, on behalf of Christians everywhere, I thank you for adding your voice to the global chorus of non-Christians who praise Jesus. We'd be happy to return the favor, but we can't because of Muhammad.
Now, for you non-Muslims who are watching, since you clicked on this video, it's safe to say that you have an internet connection. If you have an internet connection, you've probably heard that Jesus was a Muslim. As world-renowned historical Jesus scholar Sneo said, "Jesus Christ was a Muslim." Sneo's expert testimony is echoed by a chorus of daag gists who declare, "Jesus was a Muslim. Peace be upon Him. Jesus was Muslim. I am way closer to the teachings of Prophet Jesus as a Muslim than I ever was as a Christian. Jesus is a Muslim. Jesus was Muslim and worshiped Allah, not himself." And who can forget the Muslim Cowboy?
Jesus is a Muslim, not a Jew. But what evidence do our Muslim friends have that Jesus was a Muslim, exactly? There is none. So, if there's absolutely no evidence that Jesus was a Muslim, and if all of the evidence we have tells us that he most certainly was not a Muslim, why are Muslims obsessed with claiming that Jesus was a Muslim? Because Muhammad said that Jesus was a Muslim. Of course, Muhammad also said that Dhu al-Qarnayn, a.k.a. Alexander the Great, was a devout Muslim who traveled so far west he found the place where the sun sets, and that the sun sets in a muddy pool. Muhammad said that stars are missiles that Allah uses to shoot demons. He said that semen forms between the backbone and the ribs. He said that nothing can make water impure. He said that Adam was 90 ft tall. He said that Jews call Ezra the Son of God. He said that Mary, the mother of Jesus, and Miriam, the sister of Aaron and Moses, were the same person, even though they lived many centuries apart. He said that Satan urinates in people's ears and hangs out in people's noses and passes wind to keep from hearing the call to prayer.
Why would we believe anything Muhammad said, unless he happens to be giving a tutorial on how to manipulate people into believing anything you say, no matter how insane it is? Because he would be an expert on that. Muhammad is the least reliable source of information in history on history. Why? Because he was a caravan robber. And I'm not criticizing him for being a caravan robber; I'm drawing attention to the fact that he had the mind of a caravan robber—someone who sees something he likes and takes it, even if it doesn't belong to him. That's what Muhammad did in life, and it's what he did in religion. Those camels are hauling dates. I like dates, so I'll just take them, and they'll be mine. Christianity has Jesus. I like Jesus, so I'll just take him and make him part of my religion.
And once Muhammad decides to rob a religion, his followers join the robbery by twisting scripture and committing fallacy after fallacy. Here's Eddie from The Dean Show imitating his Prophet by robbing Christianity: "Jesus fasted like Muslims do for Ramadan. Jesus was a Muslim. Jesus fasted like Muslims do for Ramadan." How do Muslims fast for Ramadan? They gorge themselves with food twice per day and call it fasting. Now, I'm not here to judge another culture, but what Muslims call fasting is what the rest of the world calls feasting. Jesus didn't feast for 40 days; he fasted for 40 days. Jesus did not fast like Muslims fast for Ramadan, and Jesus told his followers not to fast in order to be seen by others. He told his followers to fast in secret. Do Muslims fast in secret? No, they make a big show out of it and announce to the world that they're fasting, even though they're feasting. Jesus condemned Islamic fasting.
How can daag gists claim with a straight face that Jesus was fasting like Muslims fast? Because they see what they want to see, and all they want to see is whatever Muhammad told them to see. Here's another from our good friend Eddie: "Jesus prayed the same way Muslims pray to God because Jesus was a Muslim submitting his will to God." Wow! Jesus didn't just fast the same way Muslims fast; he also prayed the same way Muslims pray. In John 17:1, Jesus lifted up his eyes to heaven and said, "Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son, that the Son may glorify you." Is this how Muslims pray—lifting up their eyes to heaven, speaking to their Father in heaven? No. But again, Muhammad's followers see what they want to see, and all they want to see is whatever Muhammad told them to see.
So they don't go to John 17:1; they go to Matthew 26:39. As Eddie says in his little graphic, "Jesus worshiped Allah this way." Matthew 26:39: "And going a little farther, he fell on his face and prayed." There you see, he fell on his face and prayed. That's how Muslims pray. I guess Jesus must have been a Muslim after all. Oh wait, maybe we should at least finish the verse: "And going a little farther, he fell on his face and prayed, saying, 'My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will, my Father.'"
Is Jesus the Son of Allah? Is Allah the Father? I wonder what the Quran says about calling Allah Father. Oh, here it is: Surah 19:88-93: "And they say, 'The Beneficent hath taken unto himself a son.' Assuredly, ye utter a disastrous thing whereby almost the heavens are torn and the Earth is split asunder and the mountains fall in ruins, that ye ascribe unto the Beneficent a son when it is not meat for the Majesty of the Beneficent that he should choose a son. There is none in the heavens and the Earth but cometh unto the Beneficent as a slave." When people say that Allah has a son or that Allah is a father, the universe almost falls apart. Why? Because it's the sin of shirk—associating a partner with Allah. Shirk is the worst possible sin in Islam. Surah 4, verse 48: "Lo, Allah forgiveth not that a partner should be ascribed unto him; he forgiveth all save that to whom he will. Whoso ascribe partners to Allah, he hath indeed invented a tremendous sin." Allah can forgive anything else, but he can't forgive associating a partner with him. He can't forgive calling someone the Son of God.
Now, since Muslims believe in a doctrine called Ismat Alania—Allah's protection of the prophets from falling into major error—Jesus obviously couldn't have committed the worst possible sin if he was a Muslim, right? And those who were around Jesus wouldn't have gotten the impression that he was the Son of God because he wouldn't have given them that impression, right? And there's no way that God and angels and prophets would identify Jesus as the Son of God, right? So we know what we're definitely not going to find if Jesus was a Muslim prophet: we're not going to find tons and tons of shirk from Jesus and from those around him.
Let's see if our expectations are confirmed by the evidence. Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist, and in Matthew 3, when Jesus comes out of the water, the Spirit of God descends as a dove, and a voice out of the heavens proclaims, "This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased." A voice out of the heavens says, "This is my beloved Son." This was the voice of the Father. But how do we know that the Father was referring to Jesus? How do we know he wasn't talking about John the Baptist or someone else? Well, the Holy Spirit descended from heaven and landed on Jesus. Notice the Father and the Holy Spirit together identify Jesus as the Son of God.
And Jesus repeatedly identifies himself as the Son of God. At his trial, for instance, in Mark 14, the high priest asks him, "Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?" If Muslims are right, this would be a really good time for Jesus to say, "What? You're crazy! Son of the Blessed? Whatever gave you that idea? I'm just the prophet of Islam." Instead, Jesus answers, "I am, and you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of power and coming with the clouds of heaven." This is where our Muslim friends miss the part about Jesus calling himself the Son of God, and they say, "But look, he called himself the Son of Man! You see, he was just a man."
And this is where it helps to have some clue what you're talking about. Jesus called himself the Son of Man coming with the clouds of heaven. He was claiming to be the mysterious Son of Man prophesied in the book of the Prophet Daniel 7:13-14, where Daniel says, "In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a Son of Man coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. He was given authority, glory, and sovereign power. All nations and peoples of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed." The Son of Man coming with the clouds of heaven is the Divine Son of God.
So, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are in total agreement that Jesus is the Son of God. In Luke 1, the angel Gabriel says to Mary, "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God, and behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High." Jesus is to be called the Son of the Most High, according to the angel Gabriel.
What about the prophets? John the Baptist was a prophet according to both Christianity and Islam. In John 1, he tells his followers about Jesus and says, "I have seen and have borne witness that this is the Son of God." That's the testimony of the prophets. How about Jesus' apostles? In Matthew 14, Jesus walks on water during a storm. After stepping into the boat, the wind stops, and his disciples bow down and worship him, saying, "Truly, you are the Son of God." In Matthew 16, Jesus asks his disciples, "Who do you say that I am?" Peter answers, "You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God."
Now, if Jesus was just a prophet and his disciples, who were Muslims according to the Quran, were completely misunderstanding who he was, this would have been the perfect time to rebuke Peter and to say, "No, Peter, I'm just a prophet of Islam." Instead, Jesus says to him, "Blessed are you, Simon bar Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven." That's strange. Jesus says that the Father revealed that he's the Son of God. Why wouldn't the Father reveal that Jesus was merely a human prophet of Islam? And why does Jesus even call him "my Father" when that's the unforgivable sin of shirk in Islam?
But it's not just his male followers who call him the Son of God. In John 11, Lazarus dies, and Martha, the sister of Lazarus, meets Jesus on his way to raise Lazarus from the dead. We read, "Jesus said to her, 'Your brother will rise again.' Martha said to him, 'I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.' Jesus said to her, 'I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?' She said to him, 'Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God who is coming into the world.'"
Martha and the apostles and John the Baptist were all Jews who believed in Jesus. But even the Jewish leaders who rejected Jesus admitted that he was claiming to be the Son of God. At his crucifixion, they mocked him and said, "He saved others; he cannot save himself. He is the King of Israel; let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him. He trusts in God; let God deliver him now if he desires him, for he said, 'I am the Son of God.'"
So whether they believed him or didn't believe him, the Jews of his time acknowledged that Jesus was claiming to be the Son of God. And even some of the Romans called Jesus the Son of God. When Jesus died by crucifixion, there was an earthquake, and the Roman centurion and those who were with him shouted, "Truly, this was the Son of God." Even demons would call Jesus the Son of God as he was casting them out of people. We read in Luke 4, "And demons also came out of many, crying, 'You are the Son of God!'"
Now think about the witnesses we have: the Father identifies Jesus as the Son of God; Jesus identifies himself as the Son of God; the Holy Spirit identifies Jesus as the Son of God; the angel Gabriel identifies Jesus as the Son of God; the prophet John the Baptist identifies Jesus as the Son of God; Jesus' apostles identify him as the Son of God; Martha identifies him as the Son of God; Roman soldiers identify him as the Son of God; demons identify him as the Son of God; and people who certainly didn't believe that he's the Son of God publicly proclaimed that he was claiming to be the Son of God. Seems like a pretty good lineup of witnesses.
So what's the problem? Well, about six centuries after everyone who could possibly identify Jesus as the Son of God identified him as the Son of God, an illiterate Arabian caravan robber named Muhammad—a man who married a six-year-old girl, a man who married the divorced wife of his own adopted son after causing the divorce by lusting after her, a man who bought, owned, sold, and traded black African slaves, a man whose first impression of his revelations was that they were demonic, a man who believed he was a victim of black magic, a man who repeatedly tried to hurl himself off a cliff—this guy comes along and tells his followers that Jesus isn't the Son of God and never claimed to be. And his followers believe him. They believe the least reliable person in the history of humanity, the most obvious false prophet ever, instead of believing the unparalleled cloud of witnesses who affirmed that Jesus is the Son of God.
And since they believe Muhammad and not the unparalleled cloud of witnesses who affirmed that Jesus is the Son of God, they're forced to cherry-pick and to lie and to completely distort and misrepresent what Jesus says in the Bible. What does Jesus actually say in the verse Muslims point to when they want to show that Jesus prayed like a Muslim? "My Father." What did he say in John 17:1? "Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son, that the Son may glorify you." Did Jesus pray like a Muslim? No. According to the Quran, the way Jesus prayed in the Gospels would be the unforgivable sin of shirk. Jesus would be a mushrik.
How do Muslims look at a passage where Jesus, according to Islam, is committing the worst possible sin and somehow see proof that Jesus is a devout Muslim? They see what they want to see, and all they want to see is confirmation of anything Muhammad said. So they're not really going to the life of Jesus and finding out that Jesus was a Muslim; they've already decided that Jesus was a Muslim, and they go to the Bible with their minds already made up and cherry-pick verses and twist them to get them to line up with Islam. The number of fallacies they commit along the way is truly mind-boggling.
When your Muslim friends try to convince you that Jesus was a Muslim, they're going to give you a strange mixture of cherry-picking, equivocation, the emical fallacy, the M and Bailey fallacy, and the fallacy of the undistributed middle, just to name a few. Cherry-picking is going to the evidence and only selecting the evidence you can use to support your claim while ignoring all the evidence that refutes your claim. Muslims will go to the Gospels where Father, Son, Holy Spirit, the angel Gabriel, John the Baptist, and so on all identify Jesus as the Son of God. Muslims will ignore all of this and fixate on something like Matthew 26:39, and they'll even cherry-pick the part of the verse that they can use. They literally can't finish the verse they're twisting because simply finishing the verse would refute them.
Equivocation is using a word that has multiple meanings and switching the meanings in the course of your argument. Muslims will say Jesus was a Muslim, but when you challenge them by showing that Jesus condemned some of the core teachings of Islam and repeatedly committed what would be the worst possible sin in Islam, they'll say, "Hey man, a Muslim is just someone who submits to God. Jesus submitted his will to God, so he's a Muslim." So he's a Muslim, even though he condemned some of the core teachings of Islam and committed the worst possible sin in Islam. What are they doing here? They're switching between different meanings of the word "Muslim."
We could also call this the emical fallacy, which is a specific form of equivocation. You commit the emical fallacy when you're using a word that people understand because the word is commonly used, but then when challenged, you revert to some original or earlier meaning of the word. So, for instance, the word "Hindu" originally referred to the people who lived beyond the Indus River and was then used to refer to people from India. Much later, it was applied to people with certain religious beliefs. If we wanted to be like the daag guys, we could say that Zakir Naik is a Hindu, and when Muslims challenge us and say, "Why are you calling Zakir Naik a Hindu? He's not a Hindu but a Muslim," we can reply, "But the word 'Hindu' used to mean someone from India, and Zakir is from India, so he's a Hindu."
This would be pretty silly, but it's exactly what Muslims do when they say Jesus was a Muslim. We can show them that Jesus can't possibly be a Muslim in the normal sense of the word "Muslim," where "Muslim" means a follower of Islam. So they reply, "Ah, but the word 'Muslim' technically means someone who submits to God. Jesus submitted to God; therefore, Jesus was a Muslim." It's easy to expose them when they do this. You can just say, "Oh great! So the Apostle Paul was a Muslim because he submitted to God. Christians and Jews are Muslims because we submit to God. The Pope is a Muslim because he submits to God." Suddenly, your Muslim friends will start insisting that to be a Muslim, you have to submit to God in the Islamic way. But that destroys their claim that Jesus was a Muslim because Jesus did not submit to God in the Islamic way; he submitted to the Father as the Incarnate Son.
We could also say that they're committing the M and Bailey fallacy here. The mot is some sort of stronghold or fortress, like a tower; the Bailey is the surrounding area, which is more difficult to defend. You commit the mot and Bailey fallacy when you make a controversial claim, but then as soon as you're challenged, you retreat to a less controversial, easier-to-defend claim. Suppose someone says, "Biological males who identify as females should be allowed to compete against biological females in women's sports." That's a controversial claim. Suppose you challenge the claim, and the person says, "Hey, I'm just saying that all human beings have rights." That's a less controversial position. There's a fallacy here because the person is pretending that he's defended the controversial claim, the Bailey, when he simply retreated to an uncontroversial claim, the mot.
What do Muslims say? "Jesus was a Muslim." That's controversial; it's claiming that Jesus was an adherent of the same religion as Muhammad. But when you challenge them on this controversial claim, they retreat to, "We're just saying that Jesus submitted to God." M and Bailey fallacy.
But we can't leave out the fallacy of the undistributed middle. To explain why it's called the fallacy of the undistributed middle, I'd have to go through the rules of the syllogism and the requirements for distributing what's called the middle term. I'll save that for a different video. It's easier to spot the fallacy by using examples. The fallacy of the undistributed middle usually goes something like this: "All A's are C; B is C; therefore, B is A." This may look confusing; it's not. "All C cats are mammals. My dog is a mammal; therefore, my dog is a cat." Pretty stupid, right? "Elvis liked peanut butter and banana sandwiches. I like peanut butter and banana sandwiches; therefore, I'm Elvis." Really, really bad.
You can instantly get Muslims to see the problem by arguing, "The pagans took a pilgrimage to Mecca. Muhammad took a pilgrimage to Mecca; therefore, Muhammad was a pagan." For some reason, if you presented this argument to a Muslim, he would instantly see that there's a problem. He might not know what the fallacy is or why it's a fallacy, but he would see that there's a problem. And yet, when a daag gist uses the exact same fallacy to argue, "Muslims pray; Jesus prayed; therefore, Jesus was a Muslim," suddenly they think the reasoning is airtight and irrefutable. If you were to use this fallacy against Muhammad, your Muslim friends would use their God-given critical thinking ability to spot the fallacy. But when a daag gist uses the exact same fallacy to support something Muhammad said, your Muslim friends turn off their God-given critical thinking ability so they can continue believing Muhammad.
Putting all of this together, on one side we have an unparalleled cloud of witnesses affirming that Jesus was most certainly not a Muslim because he's the Son of God, and he can't be a Muslim if he's the Son of God. On the other side, we have an unparalleled cloud of fallacies. My Muslim friends, if defending your prophet forces you to cherry-pick, forces you to twist scripture, forces you to commit an endless array of fallacies, and forces you to turn off your critical thinking ability, you need a different prophet. The truth doesn't need cherry-picking. The truth doesn't need scripture twisting. The truth doesn't need fallacious reasoning.
If you want Jesus on your side, you can have Jesus on your side, but not by lying about him and twisting his words. If you want Jesus on your side, you have to reject Muhammad, the most obvious false prophet in history, and believe that Jesus is the Divine Son of God who died on the cross for sins and rose from the dead. There's no way to reconcile the Jesus of the Quran with the Jesus of the Bible. You think you can fix your problem by saying, "Oh, but the Bible's been corrupted." We still use it when it's convenient, but when the Bible refutes us, we'll just say it's been corrupted.
Fortunately for you and your salvation, your God and your Prophet blocked that escape when they affirmed the inspiration, the preservation, and the authority of the Jewish and Christian scriptures. If you'd like to see how your God and your Prophet block your escape and how the truth leads you out of Islam, be sure to check out my videos "99.8% of Muslims Don't Know Says This About the Bible" and "What the Quran Really Says About the Gospel." And when the truth sets you free, let me know in the comments section. [Music]