What Every Christian Needs To Know About Islam!

This is what everyone, what every Christian needs to know about Islam. I'm at the point in my life where I really kind of mean that. This is not a good time to be ignorant about what Islam teaches. Not every Christian needs to know a ton about Islam, but some of the basics, I would say, need to be common knowledge among Christians.

I have found that some Christians are pretty resistant to the idea of learning anything about Islam. I would make a video titled "Three Quran Verses Every Christian Should Know" and there's a reason for that. There's a reason why Christians should know those couple of things, right? Islam comes after Christianity and it has a lot of responses to Christianity; it's kind of in the system to attack Christianity. Just as a Muslim is growing up learning about Islam, he's learning certain criticisms of Christianity. It seems to me it would be pretty helpful for Christians to know what Muslims think about it if they are going to have any sort of interactions with Muslims. It seems obvious to me that you would want to know what issues might come up in discussion or what Muslims believe about you.

Most Christians do agree when I post something like that; they'll watch it and say, "Hey, you know this is helpful." However, there is a minority of Christians who will say, "No, I don't need to know anything about that religion. I've got something superior. I do not need to know anything about that religion." What I'm hearing is that we're supposed to cultivate an atmosphere of ignorance here about Islam, and that is very, very dangerous.

Just to be clear, you may have a Muslim friend who may be the nicest, friendliest, most honest person in the world. A lot of the people who preach Islam—the dawa guys—they thrive in an atmosphere of ignorance. They will go into an area and figure out anything you like, anything that is prized in your area, and they will tell you that Islam is the source of that or that Muhammad was the champion of that. If they walk into an area and people believe in the importance of women's rights, the message of Islam becomes that Muhammad was a champion of women's rights; he’s pretty much the greatest feminist who ever lived.

You guys are laughing. I'm glad, because there are times when people would not laugh because they didn't know any better. It’s good that it's starting to become common knowledge that claims like that are not true, but those are claims that I had to deal with a lot 10, 12, 15 years ago.

If a Muslim preacher goes into an area like the West, in general, where science is valued, it's "Oh, the Quran is a scientific masterpiece; it's filled with scientific insights that couldn't have been verified during the time of Muhammad and are only being verified today." It boggles the minds of scientists how the Quran could be so accurate. Well, if you don't know what the Quran actually says and how absurd that is, guess what? People convert based on that. People convert because they hear that, and no one around them is in a position to correct any of that.

Consider the spread of Islam in the African-American community in the 1960s, when you had people like Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali converting. Well, first it was to the Nation of Islam, which is more of a cult, but then to ordinary Islam. The message that was being preached was, "Christianity is the white man's religion; that's why they enslaved black people. Islam liberates people." If you know the history of who bought, owned, sold, and traded black African slaves—Muhammad did, and his followers who institutionalized the African slave trade—you know how absolutely ridiculous that is.

In fact, if you connect it all, if you put it all together, in Europe, Christians eventually ended slavery. Just at the beginning, when Christianity started taking over, there were cities where 80% of the population were slaves. Fast forward several centuries; there are no more slaves around. Christians just kept freeing their slaves. If someone had slaves, you buy the slave and free the slave. They just kept doing this until there were no more slaves or no more slave markets in Europe.

What did that mean? It means if you were starting something else in some other place, like you're starting in the New World and you wanted a cheap source of labor and you wanted to get some slaves, where do you go? You can't go to Europe anymore; you can't get them from Europe anymore. So you have to go somewhere else. Where was the slave trade thriving? In Africa. Why not Christianity?

If no one knows how to respond to that—keep in mind in the 1960s, no one was in a position to respond to that. They didn’t know that the Hadith collections hadn't even been translated; no one knew that Muhammad bought, owned, sold, and traded black African slaves. No one knew that, so no one could correct it. That allows a religion to spread in an atmosphere of ignorance. You can't really blame them; they didn't have the sources back then. But now the sources are all around us. Anyone who wants to go on Amazon and buy the sources can buy them. Anyone who wants to just go on the internet can find the sources. What's the excuse now?

To find certain Christians that I don't know, who think ignorance is some sort of virtue—I don't know when that happened, but I disagree. If you're here, I'm assuming you disagree with that as well. I would say that we have reached a time in history when Christians need to understand what we’re dealing with here. That takes away what in the world right now is Islam's most powerful asset, and that's that there are still lots of people who don't know what they're dealing with here. If that changes, they've lost their most powerful weapon.

I will say if you're in a position where you actually know some Muslims—maybe you work with a Muslim, or you have a Muslim friend, or you’re at school and you know a Muslim—it's actually better to start like that, to start having discussions with Muslims that you can get along with and have discussions with. Because if you just interact with Muslims online, you're going to get pretty hostile pretty quickly. They might be bombarding you with insults every time you disagree with them, or if you say you disagree with what they said, you might start getting threatened and so on. It gets really, really negative. Then when you actually meet a Muslim, you might think, "Oh, he's like those internet trolls." He might not be.

I'm sure most of you probably know this; this is how I got involved in Islam. I had one Muslim friend before Nabil. It didn't last long. We were weightlifting partners, and this was shortly after I converted to Christianity. We would have discussions about Christianity and Islam while lifting weights. It did not go well—lots of testosterone all over the place, lots of insults and so on. But I did learn from those exchanges.

Later on, of course, I met Nabil. He tells me how amazing and wonderful Islam is; that Islam is proven true by history and logic and mathematics and science, and so on. We got into, of course, a series of discussions. But back then, my interactions with Muslims were with Muslim friends because I would hang out with Nabil, his family, his friends, his cousins, and so on, and started learning about Islam that way. I was kind of learning on the go because Nabil would make a claim, and I would say, "All right, I want to read that. Where's that at?" I would go back and study, and I’d come back and say, "Hey, why’d you leave this part out?" We just kept going on like that for years. Eventually, Nabil became a Christian.

This is his baptism, and that's me in the background thinking, "Cool, I am done with Islam." It didn't work out that way, in large part because after watching "The Stand" Nabil took for Islam, I realized, "Wow, Muslims make really cool Christians." Some of the most troubling aspects about Islam that place obstacles to Muslims being able to understand or accept the Gospel—the flip side is that they can help Muslims be really, really cool Christians.

In other words, Muslims are taught from the day they're born that the worst possible sin you can commit is shirk, the sin of associating a partner with Allah. Well, guess what? That includes calling Jesus Lord. So, in Islam, the worst possible sin, the one-way ticket to hell, is saying Jesus is Lord. In Islam, the penalty for apostasy, leaving Islam, is death. Ideally, from an Islamic perspective, that's supposed to be in an Islamic state, so it doesn't get enforced much here in the West. But as Islam spreads, it's always got to be in a Muslim's mind, "If I leave Islam, maybe someone's going to come along and carry out the penalty according to Muhammad." At the very least, Muslims understand that if they leave Islam to become an atheist, become a Christian, whatever, their entire social framework is about to break down.

What you usually hear from ex-Muslims after they inform their family that they have left Islam is either the family says, "Get out." Sometimes there will be a period where they try to reconvert them—maybe a couple of days, maybe a year or something like that—where they try to convince the person to come back to Islam. But eventually, it's either "Stay away from us; don't come back here until you are a Muslim again," or it's just a really high-tension environment from then on.

As a Muslim, you understand that that’s what’ll happen to you if you leave Islam. So keep in mind, Christians, we preach the good news. We've got the good news. When we preach the good news, what a Muslim is hearing is, "Oh, I'm supposed to believe that Jesus is Lord, which is a one-way ticket to hell. I'm going to have to give up my entire family and maybe get my head chopped off." Call it good news? Because that sounds like the worst news I've ever heard in my entire life. Why would I believe that?

As I pointed out, there's a flip side. When a Muslim says, as Nabil did, "You know what? I've been told all my life that this will get me sent to hell and I may have to give up my family and I may get my head chopped off, but I don't care because I want to know Jesus," that's someone who will lay down his life for Jesus. That's why they make really cool Christians.

If Christians would actually learn the basics of Islam and then eventually move on to being able to respond to Muslim arguments and be able to defend Christian claims with apologetics, I think we could change the world with that.

Alright, so we're going to go through a kind of crash course right now. If you've been following my videos for a long time, you'll already know a lot of this, which is cool, because it means you've absorbed the information over time. But I'm going to assume that there are people here who know nothing or next to nothing, so we're going to start from the ground up—a crash course on the basics of Islam.

If I were to make a list of the basics that should be common knowledge among Christians, that's what we'll be going through right now. Alright?

So, we’ll go through a couple of definitions so there's no confusion. Then we'll look very briefly, and this will be rapid fire, at what Islam teaches about God, what Islam teaches about Jesus, what Islam teaches about Christians, what Islam teaches about the Quran, what Islam teaches about Muhammad, some common Muslim objections to Christianity, and some common Muslim arguments for Islam. All of these issues you can go into in way more depth, and we will—at this conference, we will be going into some more depth on some of this—but this is kind of the core about what Christians need to know.

As far as definitions, Islam's Arabic word means "submission." In its religious context, it refers to submission to Allah. The Quran explains a little bit about how you submit to Allah; you submit to Allah by obeying what Allah says in the Quran and by obeying Muhammad. You have to obey Muhammad; that is a requirement. You have to obey Muhammad's commands as well. So that's Islam—means submission.

A Muslim is a related word, but it means "one who submits." This is a person, and if it's a woman you're talking about, then it's a "Muslima." A Muslim is a person who submits—so a person who submits to Allah by following Allah and Muhammad. Allah is basically the Arabic word for God. It's apparently a contraction of "Al," which is the article "the," and "a," so you put them together: Al + Allah. That just became a common word for a monotheistic God.

There are Arab Christians who refer to God as Allah. Then there's Muhammad; he is the prophet of Islam. So Allah is the God, the deity, and Muhammad is the messenger or the prophet. He's the one who receives the revelation and delivers it.

As far as the time frame, Muhammad was born around 570 AD. For the first 40 years, he lived as a caravan trader, got married, things like that. But in around the year 610, he starts receiving what he believed were revelations. For the next 22 or 23 years, he receives revelations and delivers them to his followers. He dies around 632 AD.

The Quran—it's an Arabic word that means "recitation." The Quran is supposed to be something that is recited, but the Quran is not really like the Bible. It is supposedly the direct speech of Allah. This is a Quran, and in fact, this is a Quran in English and Arabic with commentary.

Notice this isn’t terribly big; the Quran is about two-thirds the size of the New Testament, so shorter than the New Testament. Supposedly, that is the direct speech of Allah. Muhammad has no input; he's just the mailman, basically. He receives the message and passes it on. He’s not inserting his own ideas into the message as far as what Islam teaches.

But the Quran also says that Muslims have to obey all of Muhammad's decisions and that Muhammad is the pattern of conduct for Muslims. So Muslims have to go outside the Quran to find Muhammad's decisions and to see what Muhammad did in various situations. That’s why people go to what are called the Hadiths.

The Hadiths are very frequently these massive multi-volume collections of stories about Muhammad. They're usually arranged topically. So there will be a section of one of the books that's about marriage, and it will just be everything Muhammad said about marriage in that section. Those are kind of the basics that are needed for understanding discussions about Islam.

Now, what does Islam teach about God? You don’t need all of these references; if you see anything particularly interesting, you can jot down those references. But most of this is just to understand where we have some common ground and where we disagree. If I mention a reference that I think is particularly important, I'll just tell you. I'll say, "Hey, this would be a good one. This would be a good one to know."

According to Islam, Allah is all-powerful, Allah is all-knowing and wise, Allah is just and merciful, and Allah is the creator of the universe. That would sound a lot like the God of the Bible, and that’s not a coincidence. Muhammad knew about what Jews and Christians believed during his time.

Early on, he always believed that he was in line with the prophets of the Bible, and at first, his view was that it was going to be Jews, Christians, and Muslims all united against polytheism. He spent the first 12 years in Mecca, and during that time, he was preaching. There were no Jewish tribes there. During that time, he was preaching, "The Jews know the Torah, and I’m mentioned in the Torah!" Muhammad believed that he was mentioned clearly in the Torah—a complete description of him as an Arab prophet who would arise in Arabia.

He believed that he was in the Torah, and for years, he told his followers, "When we get to an area that has lots of Jews, the Jews will tell you they know who I am." So he was preaching this for years in Mecca that the Jews will confirm him as a prophet. He eventually moved to Medina, where there were three Jewish tribes, and they almost laughed him out of the city when he claimed to be a prophet.

This was very, very problematic. I can’t emphasize to you enough how problematic this was. He had spent years saying, "Those guys are the authority. They’re the authorities on matters of the Torah; they know their scriptures." Since their scriptures supposedly repeatedly reference me and give a description of me as an Arab prophet who would arise, "When I get there, you’re going to see how quick they are to accept me as a prophet." They got there, and the Jews rejected him as a prophet.

But Muhammad still believed and was convinced that the Torah has all these clear prophecies about him. So what’s that mean? The Torah is filled with clear prophecies about an Arab prophet who’s going to arise named Muhammad. What's going to happen here? They reject him. What does that mean?

Well, if it's that clear and they're rejecting him when they see it, that just means they’re evil liars. You see Muhammad's position on Jews, who he initially thought were going to be allies, change until it becomes, "The Jews are really bad. They need to be subjugated and silenced." Eventually, in the Hadith, you find Muhammad saying that the end will not come; the judgment's not going to come until you fight the Jews to such an extent that they’re hiding behind rocks and trees, and the rocks and trees are crying out, "There’s a Jew behind me! Come kill him."

So the goal before the judgment is to exterminate Jews. Why? Because they rejected him, and it was a pretty huge embarrassment. At that time, it became, "Well, it's Muslims and Christians who are going to be united against Jews and polytheists." He encountered some Christians who also rejected him, and then it became Muslims versus everybody.

But Muhammad did draw a lot from the Judeo-Christian concept of God, and so you see a lot of similarities—some differences. As far as what Christians believe, according to Islam, Allah is not a Trinity. By the way, these would be some good references to familiarize yourself with. Allah is not a Trinity (Sura 51:116-117).

This passage is actually humorous because it’s the only time Allah actually tries to explain what the Trinity is—and it's Allah, Jesus, and Mary as separate beings who are kind of working together. Ever heard of anyone who believes that as a doctrine of the Trinity? Great, no one has. But that's what Allah thinks it is.

You can actually make arguments out of this. You can go to that passage with your Muslim friends, read that and say, "Okay, that’s not the doctrine of the Trinity." So either Allah doesn't know what the doctrine of the Trinity is, in which case he’s ignorant, or he does know and he’s lying about it, in which case he’s deceptive. Which one is it?

Allah is a father to no one. This is relevant to Jews and Christians because God is referred to as a father in the Old Testament—the father of Israel. We think of God as heavenly Father; in Islam, Allah is not a father in any sense. Forbidden! Allah has got 99 names—father ain’t one.

In fact, Surah 19—the reference there (Surah 19:88-93) is pretty interesting. In this passage, Allah flips out and says that the universe is about to be ripped apart because they say Allah has a son. That’s the same passage that says no one will ever come to Allah as anything other than a slave. The highest relationship that you can have with Allah is a slave-to-master relationship; you don’t have any other relationship.

Of course, Surah 3:32 says that Allah does not love unbelievers. If you reject Muhammad, if you refuse to believe in Muhammad, Allah specifically says he has no love for you. Lots of passages in the Quran talk about all the people that Allah doesn’t love. He doesn’t love the proud, he doesn’t love the boastful, he doesn’t love the mischief-makers; he doesn’t love all kinds of people.

But that’s very different from passages like Jesus when he says to love your enemies, and he specifically says, "So that you may be like your Father in Heaven." These things are kind of connected, and they’re connected to the realm of ethics. If you think about your relationship with God as described as a child to his father relationship, we know from human relationships a parent just automatically—unless there’s something wrong with the person—automatically loves his child.

The child doesn't have to earn that love. Things start off with the parent loving the child. Someone doesn't automatically love a slave. Someone might eventually come to love a slave if the slave is really good and you might say, "I love this slave." You don’t just automatically love a slave.

What you end up with is Muslims trying to show that they are the best slaves. You can approach Allah as a really good slave, in which case he’ll like you and he’ll love you in that situation, or you can be a rebellious slave. But under no circumstances are you something more than a slave to Allah.

This, of course, is connected to Allah not loving unbelievers. If you’re born as a slave to Allah and you don’t do what you’re told, why would he love you? You’re a bad slave.

Now, what does Islam teach about Jesus? So interesting things here. According to Islam, Jesus was born of a virgin, and some of this common ground is interesting. How many people agree with Christians that Jesus was born of a virgin? Muslims do! Jesus was born of a virgin.

Jesus performed many miracles; in fact, in Islam, Jesus lived the most miraculous life ever. He’s healing lepers; he’s raising the dead; he’s giving life to clay birds. Jesus is the Messiah in Islam. They don’t understand what it means. You can ask 100 Muslims what the Messiah means, and they have no clue. But he is, according to the Quran, the Messiah.

Jesus is Allah’s word; it’s described as the word of Allah. That one’s interesting because it’s a situation where Muhammad apparently heard Christians calling Jesus the word and didn’t understand that that’s got something to do with his divine nature. But Muhammad didn’t know, so he thought this was a title for Jesus. Other people, other prophets, aren’t called the word of Allah—just Jesus.

You can actually help Muslims think through this because Allah’s speech originates from within Allah. He speaks it out. As opposed to other things where if Allah wants something, if he wants to create something, he just says “be,” and it pops into existence. But Jesus is spoken out by Allah.

Of course, the same verse says Jesus is a spirit from Allah. Now keep in mind, just because you see those things in Surah 4:171 doesn’t mean that Islam agrees with Christianity on all kinds of other things. That same verse is filled with denunciations of Christian beliefs, but it’s just interesting because you have all these teachings about Jesus, including that he’s sinless.

Jesus is the only one who’s sinless in the Quran. In the Hadith, Muhammad said that Satan touches every child that’s born into the world except Jesus; Satan couldn't touch Jesus.

So, Jesus is unique in all these ways, and one interesting area of discussion—because Muslims will bring these up, right? They’ll say, "We love Jesus! Look at all these things that Islam teaches about Jesus."

It’s a pretty easy follow-up question: Why is Jesus so different, even in Islam? All these differences: Jesus born of a virgin, Jesus living the most miraculous life ever, he’s the Messiah, he’s the word of Allah, he’s the one who’s sinless—not Muhammad. Muhammad is told to repent of his sins; Jesus is sinless.

Why is Jesus so radically different in Christianity? Why is he so radically different in Islam? If it’s not just the case of Muhammad copying things and not understanding them, these can all lead to some very interesting conversations.

But even though we have some of that Common Ground over there, according to Islam, Jesus did not die on the cross. By the way, I have to add a qualification there: there are Muslims who interpret that verse differently.

So there are Muslims, usually Shia, who interpret that verse differently. But the vast majority of Muslims in the world today and down through history have believed that Surah 4:157 is denying the death of Jesus by crucifixion. And of course, since he didn’t die, the very next verse states he didn’t rise from the dead; Allah takes him up alive.

So, he didn’t die, so he wasn’t resurrected, and of course, he wasn’t divine. I find this stuff fascinating when you think about the Bible talking about warnings of false prophets and false teachers who are going to come.

You can look at the book of Acts. Jesus spent years with his followers teaching them, and you go to the book of Acts and see what the takeaway message was. When these guys went out and preached, they preached Jesus died on the cross for sins. He rose from the dead, and he’s Lord.

That was the takeaway for them. That’s the core of the good news—the gospel proclamation; that’s the core of it right there: death, resurrection, and deity. And we’re told false prophets are going to come. What are false prophets going to do? They’re going to lead people away from that.

If centuries later, Muhammad comes along and says, "Hey, you Christians! You believe in God? I do too! You believe that God has sent prophets into the world? I do too! You believe that God revealed scriptures? I do too! You believe Jesus is born of a virgin? I do too! You believe he lived the most miraculous life in history? I do too! You believe he’s sinless? I do too! You believe he’s the Messiah? I believe that too! You believe that he’s the word of God? I do too!" In fact, there are just three little things we have to disagree on: he didn’t die on the cross; he didn’t rise from the dead, and he’s not Lord.

Now, if we could just get past those, we’re good to go. The Christian response there should have been, "My goodness, we’ve been waiting for you. This is like the ultimate false prophet—agreeing with you on everything except for the core of the gospel! And then, of course, I have to fight you over it."

So that’s the basics of what Islam says about Jesus. And then we have what the Quran says about Christians. So Christians have scripture from God. We’ll be talking about this a lot more tomorrow morning right here. Christians are nearest in friendship to Muslims.

Now, it’s a very nice thing to say; unfortunately, it was not the last thing. This is in that middle period where, at first early on, it's going to be Jews, Christians, and Muslims united against the polytheists. Then Muhammad moves to Medina; the Jews reject him; then it’s the Jews and the polytheists who are united against Muslims and Christians.

Christians are our best buddies, and of course, the Christians rejected him. So that changed, but it’s still there in the Quran. Of course, Christians are compassionate and merciful because Allah made us that way according to the Quran. But it doesn’t stay all nice for long.

Christians who believe in the deity of Christ are unbelievers. Christians who are unbelievers are the worst of creatures (Sura 98:6). Muslims must not be friends with Christians. Pass some of these passages. By the way, it includes Jews (Sura 5:51). Do not take the Jews and Christians as friends; they are friends of each other.

Christians are to be fought and subjugated because of their unbelief (Sura 9:29). Fight those who do not believe in Allah, and it goes on to specifically refer to the people of the Book—that’s Jews and Christians—as people who have to be subjugated. We have to pay tribute money for the right of continuing in our religion.

But it’s not like you actually get to go and preach it; you can remain a Christian or a Jew paying tribute money to acknowledge your inferior status. That sounds rough. Keep in mind, we do have it better than like polytheists or something like that. Polytheists or atheists or anything else, their command was “convert or die.” Jews and Christians were allowed to—because according to the Quran we have revelations from Allah—we were allowed to continue being Jews and Christians, provided we acknowledged our inferior status and were willing to pay tribute money.

Now, what does Islam teach about the Quran? The Quran, just a little book right here, is unsurpassable in literary excellence. It’s a claim over and over again in the Quran that as far as you have Muslims who use various arguments for Islam—the arguments that the Quran uses—this is one of the most common. The Quran over and over again talks about how its unsurpassable literary excellence proves that it’s from Allah.

The Quran is free from error and contradiction, and Allah protects the Quran from corruption. That’s how Muslims interpret Surah 15:9—not entirely convinced that’s what the verse is saying, but that is the interpretation.

Now, what does Islam teach about Muhammad? Muhammad is the pattern of conduct for Muslims (Surah 33:21 of the Quran). That’s a verse that might come in handy at certain points. So, Muhammad is set up as a pattern of conduct. The Quran says that Muhammad is an excellent pattern of conduct that people should follow.

That becomes exceptionally problematic when you read the Hadith and you go through some of the things that Muhammad did. Muhammad was the seal of the prophets. Their understanding of what that meant changed over time, but now Muslims believe that it means that Muhammad was the last prophet of all.

In Islam, the actual picture you get from reading the Quran is that Allah sent prophets into every part of the world, and the last people to get the revelation were the Arabs. So, once the Arabs had their prophet speaking their language, then it became, "Well, it’s done now; everyone has their prophet."

Of course, earlier prophets spoke about Muhammad, so supposedly the Torah and the Gospel contain prophecies about Muhammad. Jews and Christians are supposed to recognize Muhammad when they encounter him. But now, even when we read our scriptures, we’re supposed to find out about Muhammad. Anyone remember reading about Muhammad in your Bible?

Some of you might be thinking, "Yeah, Jesus said, 'Beware of false prophets,' or something like that," but yeah, that’s not what they’re talking about, supposedly these descriptions of Muhammad in the Bible.

Now, common Muslim objections to Christianity—always, always, always find Christians who they think that Muslims are going to have 487 different objections to Christianity, and they think there’s no way they’re going to be prepared for all these different objections that the Muslim is going to have. That’s silly because Muslims don’t have 487 objections; they have the same five to six over and over and over again.

There are going to be different forms of them, but it’s the same objections over and over again. So these are the most common if you’ve had a discussion with Muslims; you’ve heard these over and over and over again. You haven’t heard much beyond this because these are things that come up over and over again.

So, the Bible has been corrupted— that’s what we’ll be talking about tomorrow morning, I think at the 9:00 session. These are the Muslim objections to Christianity that you’ll hear 98 to 99% of the time—some version of these.

The Bible’s been corrupted; you can’t trust the Bible. The Trinity doesn’t make sense; it’s confusing. How could it be true? Where did Jesus say, "I am God, worship me?" You can type that one into YouTube of a video that’s called exactly that. Just because it was an interesting situation years ago, someone, I don’t even know who, was going around training every Muslim to ask Christians, "Where did Jesus say, 'I am God, worship me'?" in those words, no other words.

So I made a response to that, but Muslims got trained to ask that. How can God die? You Christians, you believe Jesus is God, but you believe Jesus died on the cross. You believe God died on the cross! How can that possibly make sense?

So, you probably need to understand the doctrine of the Trinity and the Incarnation and be able to explain that. How can God punish one person for the sins of another person? By the way, if you’ve seen responses to these issues and debates on these issues, you know how easy it is to respond to some of these claims. In fact, some of these claims, if you learn how to respond to them, they leave the door absolutely wide open for the gospel.

Them bringing up an objection becomes an opportunity to show them that they don’t know what they’re talking about with Islam, that they don’t know what they’re talking about with Christianity, and then leads right into a gospel message. You can pick one of these; you can pick one of these—it’s over and over again.

So, that question—how can God punish one person for the sins of another person? Muslims will ask that. It doesn’t make any sense; it’s horrible; it’s unjust. They’re thinking of Quran verses like Surah 6:164, which says, "No bearer of burden shall bear the burden of another," and it's talking about a burden of sin.

“No bearer of burden shall bear the burden of another.” No one is going to bear someone else’s burden of sin, according to how they interpret those verses. There are a bunch of those verses that say the exact same thing.

But think about how—and this will be quick; you can go into a lot more detail on this. If you understand how to respond to some of these and a Muslim brings that up—which will happen almost inevitably—it’s inevitable that some of these are going to come up. But all of these will come up in various contexts talking to different people. How can God punish one person for the sins of another? That’s evil; that’s wicked; that’s unjust.

They’ll compare this; they’ll say, "That’s like you saying, 'Oh, you murdered ten people! No problem; we’ll kill that baby for you and then you’re good.'" Doesn’t make any sense! So you can actually go through this—again, especially if you’re familiar with some of these issues—but when a Muslim brings it up, you can point out a few other things along the way too.

Even in the Quran, it will say no burden, no one can bear the burden of another. But you have other passages that say that people will pay for what other people have done. For instance, false teachers—if you let other people astray or something like that—there are situations where you have to pay for at least some of that other person’s burden.

But you actually find contradictions in the Quran on this issue. So, that’s one issue to bring up. Two, Muhammad had followers, some of whom had done really, really bad things in life, and he said in the Hadith—Sahih Muslim—there are multiple passages on this.

So this is Muhammad; he speaks for Allah. Muhammad said, "You can have sins as heavy as a mountain when the Judgment comes. Allah is going to deliver to every Muslim, Jew, or Christian and say, 'This is your ransom for hellfire!' Then the angels are going to unload the mountains of sins from the Muslims and put them on the Jews and Christians who are going to pay for the sins of Muslims in hell."

All you have to do is go to what Muhammad said. You can go to those passages—Sahih Muslim 6665, 6666, 6667, 6668. Check out the passages, and they say Allah is going to punish Jews and Christians in hell for the sins of Muslims. Now, what were you saying, my Muslim friend, about this being wicked and immoral? Because you just condemned Muhammad, and I think you’re an apostate now!

It’s very easy, but notice: even after that— I said these things can lead right into gospel presentations. You point that out and say, "Wait! According to how you understand what the Quran says, you just condemned your own prophet there! You can’t trust him now!"

But think about what the verse actually says; they think it means no one can bear the burden of another. The actual quote is, "No bearer of burden shall bear the burden of another." In other words, no one who has a burden of sin is in a position to bear someone else’s; they’re under their own judgment. They’re not taking other people’s punishments upon themselves. What does that leave the door wide open for?

Someone who has no burden of sin—and who has no burden of sin? Not just according to Christianity—according to Islam: Jesus! No burden of sin! What were you saying? What were you saying about this now making us having a problem here?

So how can God punish one person for the sins of another person? And if Jesus died for your sins, can’t you just sin all you want? Jesus died for your sins! You’ve got some responses from the Bible that you can give in response to that sort of thing.

So these are the most common Muslim objections to Christianity. You don’t have to worry about 487 different objections to Christianity—you’ve got the list right here. Learn responses to those; you can learn responses to these in a few hours. Imagine if Christians in general just said, "Huh! Since we know exactly what objections are going to come up, why don’t we all learn responses to these?"

I really can’t figure out why this doesn’t happen; I don’t know. These are the most common Muslim objections to Christianity. I encourage everyone to look up responses to these. Again, we’ll go through the corruption of the Bible tomorrow because if you can defend against that one, the others can fall into place.

In other words, if you want to answer how can God die by explaining the Incarnation and a Muslim says, "But I don’t believe that because your Bible’s been corrupted," well, guess what? If you can defend that the Bible has been corrupted, then you’re kind of good to go on these other issues as well.

So we’re going to focus on that one tomorrow morning. Finally, we have some common Muslim arguments for Islam. There are more than this; these are the ones that keep coming up.

The argument from literary excellence—because that’s what the Quran says as one of its main arguments. What’s interesting about a lot of these arguments is they’re flawed on multiple levels. Like the argument from literary excellence: suppose the Quran was the absolute best book ever written. Would that make it from God? No, it would just mean the author of the Quran was the best writer of all time!

Notice—it’s like saying, "If you can’t write plays like Shakespeare or symphonies like Mozart, you have to admit that plays of Shakespeare are the word of God or that the music of Mozart, the symphonies of Mozart, are the inspired music of God." Doesn’t make any sense! Even if you had someone who’s the absolute best, that wouldn’t mean it’s from God.

So it’s flawed as far as what the claim is. Then, if you actually read the Quran, I’m just going to be honest: it’s the worst book I’ve ever read in my life! I’m not saying that because I disagree with it in so many ways. I disagree with a ton of stuff in Plato’s Republic—a brilliant book, one of the greatest books ever written; I disagree with a ton of stuff in Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion—a brilliantly written book.

I would agree with Anthony Flew—some of you might remember him—he was one of the most prominent atheist scholars of the 20th century. He eventually became somewhat of a deist before he died. After he announced that he actually believed in some sort of designer in nature, he was asked if he would ever consider converting to something more specific like Christianity or Islam. He said no, he didn’t think he would.

He was asked to compare and contrast Christianity and Islam. This is a guy who spent his life doing a lot to attack Christianity. But his comparisons were interesting. He said, “If you compare Paul and Muhammad, Paul is a brilliant scholar; he spoke multiple languages, and so he’s like, 'Muhammad's definitely not that.' So Jesus is an incredibly particular figure; everyone wants Jesus on their side; Muhammad, not so much.

Then he said the Bible is an amazing work of literature; even atheists can appreciate the Bible and should know it. He said to read the Quran is to do penance. Some of you young people might not know what that is. Penance is where you punish yourself for your sins. Yeah, that’s what it’s like!

So it’s a pretty rough book to get through. It’s interesting because even you can expose this just in conversations with Muslims. Say, “Hey, what did Muhammad mean here when he said, 'Fight those who do not believe'?” “Oh, he means only fight.” And I mean, “What did Allah mean when he said ‘Fight those who do not believe?’” “Oh, he means only fight in self-defense."

Well, why didn’t you say it like that? Why did you say it in this way that sounds like you’re supposed to go around fighting people for not believing? Why do you say it like that?

According to them, it’s really, really unclear—really hopelessly unclear book, even according to what Muslims say. If you factor in a bunch of other issues, like it’s completely disorganized and some of the passages abrogate other passages, but since it’s out of order, you don’t know which passages overrule other passages. Can’t know that without going to these commentaries and so on. It’s like, “Okay, just arranging it chronologically would have helped a lot.”

So there are all sorts of problems with this claim. But anyway, so again, they’re flawed on multiple levels. You have the argument from perfect preservation, once again flawed on multiple levels. If a book has been preserved perfectly, does that mean it’s from God? If the Da Vinci Code is preserved perfectly, does that mean it’s from God? No!

Who says this? You actually go through the history of the Quran and entire chapters were lost because people were too lazy to recite them. The early Muslims couldn’t even agree on which chapters were supposed to be in the Quran. Muhammad’s companion Ibn Mas’ud said there were supposed to be 111 chapters. His companion Ubayy ibn Ka'b had 116 chapters in his Quran. The Quran we have today has 114 chapters. Chapters were lost; large passages were lost because the only people who had those memorized before it was in book form died in battle.

Verses were supposedly eaten by a sheep! You can look it up, Sahih al-Bukhari, Hadith 1944. There are verses that are supposed to be in there, and Aisha said she had the only copy, and while, after Muhammad died, a sheep came in and ate the only copy—they’re not in the Quran. Where are you getting perfect preservation from? It’s nonsense!

This is why I said these arguments only work in an atmosphere of ignorance. Then you have the argument from scientific accuracy. The Quran is filled with all these scientific claims.

Of course, the Quran claims that the sun sets in a muddy pool way out west. The Quran claims that stars are missiles that Allah uses to shoot demons when they try to sneak into heaven and hear his messages. The Quran claims that semen is formed between the backbone and ribs—not the most scientifically accurate book I’ve ever seen in my life!

And of course, the argument from Biblical prophecy—that the earlier scriptures contain references about Muhammad.

Then the argument from rapid growth. That’s just a simple one. This came out a few years ago when Pew Research did a study and concluded that Islam is the fastest growing religion. Muslims interpreted this without actually reading it as, "Oh, Islam! Everyone’s converting to Islam!"

What the Pew study actually said was that Muslim countries have the highest birth rates. If you investigate why they have the highest birth rates, it has a lot to do with Islam’s impact on women— not giving women a lot of opportunities in life.

So people are married off young, and by the time a woman in the West is in school and starts her career and has her first kid at 28 years old, a young woman in Afghanistan is on child number eight or nine or ten. That’s why Islam— that’s the reason that Islam is growing rapidly!

I don’t know how you take that as proof that your religion is true. Now, fortunately, I have to say, and then we’ll close out, some of these arguments are now being abandoned by Muslims.

So the argument from perfect preservation—the biggest part was T. The younger generation showed up at speaker’s corner in the UK where Muslims were preaching perfect preservation: only one Quran, not one letter’s difference between any two Qurans ever. T showed up with 26 different Arabic Qurans.

I don’t mean 26 different translations; I mean 26 different Qurans in Arabic, showing them they have different versions in Arabic! It was a 20th-century where they sort of tried to make one official Quran, and then since most Muslims were familiar with that one Quran—they started making up the idea that it’s been perfectly preserved.

No, some regions did not adopt that new official Quran, and so you can still go to different areas of the Muslim world and find different Qurans. I rarely hear this anymore, even though you go back just six or seven years, this was the main argument that I heard.

The argument from scientific accuracy—from the 1970s up until about three or four years ago—was another of the main arguments for Islam. They say, "Some of you saw the Ali Dawa clip where he said it’s complete nonsense, and if you don’t agree with me, ask why none of the other guys in Dawa—that’s their version of Evangelism—is going to challenge me on this because we all know it. We all know the argument was bogus; it was made up; it was deceptive, and yet they had people converting based on that."

Fortunately, some of their most popular arguments over the past several decades are now being rejected. They admit it was all deception. They’re going to have a little bit more trouble rejecting some of these other ones, like the literary excellence or the biblical prophecy because those come from the Quran itself. If you announce, if you decide that those are bad arguments, then you’re saying Allah used bad arguments.

But we’re going to make them reject them anyway—that’s how it works. So, it looks like we’re out of time. I would encourage everyone to take some of this basic information and to expand upon it. You do not have to know everything about Islam to start getting into discussions with Muslims. You don’t!

People, for some reason, think that. I learned on the go. I would talk to Nabil, and he would say something I had no idea how to respond to, and I would say, “I’ve never looked at that; I have no idea how to respond. I’ll get back to you.” There’s no shame in that!

You can actually learn on the go like that. I’m convinced right now that, I mean, my goodness! We are—and if you have a heart for reaching Muslims with the gospel, you are living in the greatest generation that has ever existed! Fourteen centuries of Christians could not have dreamed about the opportunities we have right now for reaching Muslims with the gospel and for exposing Islam.

I look at it as, “Wait! All of a sudden, we get all your sources so we can expose everything you’re saying.” All of a sudden, people that were in areas of the Muslim world where they kept insulated from hearing any of this for 14 centuries—now we have access to anyone in the world who has an internet connection!

I can sit on my phone and have a discussion with a Muslim in Saudi Arabia right now on Facebook or something. The Lord has delivered this ideology into our hands!

Catch you all later!