No God but One: Allah or Jesus?: A Former Muslim Investigates the Evidence for Islam and Christianity

by Nabeel Qureshi

  Chapter 37: The Positive Case

  1. Quran 2.23; 10.37–38; 11.13; 17.88; 52.33–34.

  Chapter 38: The Response

  1. Quoted in Toby Lester, “What Is the Koran?” Atlantic, January, 1999, http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1999/01/what-is-the-koran/304024.

  2. Italics original to the article. Puin adds, “This is what has caused the traditional anxiety regarding translation. If the Koran is not comprehensible—if it can’t even be understood in Arabic—then it’s not translatable. People fear that.”

  3. This is disputed on grounds of subjectivity, but that serves to further exemplify the matter at hand: Who is to say whether something is actually the best?

  4. An astute observer might deduce that I have not watched major league basketball since the mid-1990s. He would be correct.

  5. A Muslim might object that Muhammad did not abrogate the Quranic verses so arbitrarily, but that is begging the question. Unless we have good reason to think that he was a prophet, he may very well have done so. That would not necessitate a subversive character; he could have had the best of intentions while abrogating a text such as this hypothetical example.

  6. We will consider this phenomenon explicitly in the upcoming chapter.

  7. Quran 7.12; 15.27; 38.76; 55:15. As a reminder, I do not consider such apparent “contradictions” problematic, either in the Quran or in the Bible. Please see chapter 15.

  8. Brendan McKay, “Assassinations Foretold in Moby Dick!” 1997, https://cs.anu.edu.au/people/Brendan.McKay/dilugim/moby.html.

  9. Abu Ameenah Bilal Philips, The Qur’an’s Numerical Miracle.

  10. Ibid.

  11. Philips continues: “It may be further concluded that the Doctor’s record of data falsification, textual changes and figure manipulation clearly indicate his dishonesty as a researcher and expose the low levels to which he stooped to invent support for his hoax. Hence, nineteen and its multiples may not be used to interpret anything of the Qur’an or Islam and all those sincere Muslims who have publicly propagated this theory in ignorance are Islamically obliged to publicly disown and discredit it, and immediately cease the publication, distribution and sale of books and tapes which support it.”

  12. Sahih Bukhari 6.61.510.

  13. Some Muslims argue here that the variants were only in the vocalization of the Quran, but the vocalizations were not yet recorded in the text. In other words, there would be no reason to destroy the manuscripts because of variant vocalizations. The differences must have been in the rasm, the consonantal text itself.

  14. Sahih Bukhari 6.61.509.

  15. Sahih Bukhari 6.61.511.

  16. In response, some Muslims argue that he had the only written evidence to support what Zaid and others had memorized, but the hadith and earliest Islamic sources simply do not say that. They say only one man had these two verses.

  17. Sahih Bukhari 6.61.510. Some argue that Zaid would not have known to search for it had he not had it memorized, and therefore Khuzaima must have had a written record. That is not what the hadith says, though, and it could just as easily be that Zaid had a vague recollection of it and needed to find someone who was much more familiar with it.

  18. Sahih Bukhari 6.61.550.

  19. Sahih Bukhari 6.61.558. I have removed the words “such and such” from the translation to make the hadith more readable.

  20. Sahih Bukhari 6.61.527.

  21. Some would try to argue that the verse had been abrogated, unbeknownst to Ubay, but that actually proves the ultimate point of this section: The Quran was a fluid composition, and to say it has been perfectly preserved takes faith, not an objective assessment of the evidence.

  22. Sahih Bukhari 6.61.521.

  23. For example, Sahih Bukhari 6.61.512 indicates that a blind man was able to influence a verse of the Quran after it had been revealed, having an exception added to the text. These sorts of phenomena are also disconcerting to those who are not already Muslim.

  Chapter 39: Assessing the Response

  1. Any reference to an Arabic kitab, the word for “book,” was actually an oral text that was handed down through poets and reciters. It was not a written book.

  2. Sahih Bukhari 6.61.513.

  3. This is exactly what 2.106 and 16.101 say: Allah can “cause people to forget.”

  4. There are many records of this, perhaps the best being one that was recently rediscovered: Kitab al-Masahif by ibn Abi Daud. One can also refer to Ibn Nadim’s Fihrist and Suyuti’s Itqan fi Ulum al-Quran.

  5. Ibn Abbas and Abu Musa. See Suyuti’s Itqan fi Ulum al-Quran.

  6. Sahih Bukhari 6.61.521

  7. The details are also found in the sources quoted above: Kitab al-Masahif, Fihrist, and Itqan fi Ulum al-Quran.

  8. Christopher Melchert, “Ibn Mujahid and the Establishment of Seven Qur’anic Readings,” Studio Islamica 91 (2000), 5–22.

  Conclusion to Question 2

  1. To clarify, non-Christian scholars do not believe Jesus rose from the dead, but they concede the facts that are best explained by His resurrection; similarly, scholars do not all concede that Jesus claimed to be God, but the current consensus is that the earliest Christians did believe Jesus to be divine, which I only take one step further by saying that the best explanation for this is that Jesus claimed to be divine.

  Section: Conclusion

  1. The details of Sara Fatima’s final moments differ from account to account, as people can only piece together her story from her online posts and the news reports. My understanding is that, in the days leading up to her martyrdom, she was working on a poem that was a response to a Muslim who was cursing apostates. She finished that poem in her last moments in light of her impending sacrifice.

  Bonus Content

  (Exclusive to eBook Edition)

  Q&A Section

  Q&A with Nabeel Qureshi

  Does Islam really teach peace?

  There are people, like in the sect of Islam I belonged to, who are taught Islam is a religion of love and peace. The slogan of our sect of Islam was “Love for all, hatred for none.”

  When I found out about the attack on September 11, 2001—when I saw the Twin Towers felled—my first thought was, “How could this happen in the name of my faith? Who hijacked not only those planes, but also my faith, making Islam look violent?”

  I began to investigate this matter of violence. There are violent verses in the Quran, but because there are also peaceful verses, I believed at first that their context was defensive fighting. As I went deeper, I realized that was simply not the case. For example, Surah 9 is the last major chapter to have been composed, and it is also the most violent chapter in the Quran. See verses 5, 29-33, and 111 as some examples. These verses are frightening, commanding Muslims to fight and kill non-Muslims, saying that Allah has made Islam to prevail over all religions and that Muslims must slay in battle. It seems that Surah 9, as the final major chapter that Muhammad left for Muslims, was intended as marching orders for the Muslim community, and they certainly treated the chapter that way. That is why, within 150 years of Muhammad’s death, Muslims had conquered one third of the known world.

  In addition to the Quran, there are also the traditions of Muhammad, the hadith. These form the lens through which the Quran is often applied. People go to the hadith to see how Muhammad lived. Because there are so many hadith, people can point to the peaceful ones and say, “That’s how Islam should be.” At the same time, people like ISIS point to the violent ones and say, “That’s how Islam should be.” Who is right? Once again, those who wish to consistently follow the trajectory of Muhammad’s life as found in the hadith end up closer to the position of ISIS.

  That is not to suggest that peaceful Muslims who say “Islam is a religion of peace” are lying to you. They honestly believe it. I believed it. But they haven’t investigated the original sources, or at least they haven’t done so in a way that is faithful to history. Early Islam was, in fact, rather violent. Islam, even during Mu
hammad’s time, did have offensive wars against Jews and Christians. That rendering of Islamic history is what leads people to diligently, or faithfully, live a violent Islam.

  What do you say to the church faced with anti-Islamic sentiment and political campaigns increasingly focused on immigration issues?

  Jesus has called us to love even our enemies. This is a crazy notion, but Jesus tended to say things that were unexpected, even other-worldly. He pushed the boundaries toward the direction of heaven.

  According to Romans 5:8, “while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” While we were fighting against him, he loved us. We were the very ones who caused the nails to be driven into his hands and feet, we caused him to be scourged and killed, and yet he loved us and died for us. Now he calls us to follow him. So what does it mean to follow Jesus when he loved and died for his enemies?

  As Christians—I’m talking specifically about Christians now—we cannot live in fear. We cannot live as if we are afraid of people coming to the West, even our enemies. We have to love them and not be afraid of them. That’s exactly how Jesus lived, and he calls us to follow him, to live as he did.

  I’m seeing a lot of polarization right now in America. I’m seeing a lot of decisions being made through fear. That’s patently un-Christian, especially when it comes to people. We’re not supposed to be afraid of people—we’re supposed to love them, help them, even if they are enemies.

  As Christians we should see our primary identity as followers of Christ; only secondarily are we people involved in politics. I’m not saying politics isn’t important. I’m not saying our country isn’t important, but if we’re Christian and that, to us, is the lens through which we see the world, we should not be afraid. We should not act in fear, and we should be politically motivated only secondarily and subordinately to our Christian faith.

  Yes, be involved in politics. Be involved in matters of the state, but through the principles of the Christian life and what Jesus has called us to, not through fear.

  What can Christians learn from their Muslim neighbors?

  One of the great teachings that we Christians in the West have allowed to soak into us is that we are saved by grace through faith. We receive our salvation through faith, because the Lord has saved us by His grace. That is a fantastic, transformative, and true teaching. It releases us from the chains of self-aggrandizement and pride, as well as the shackles of failure and imperfection. It’s what releases the poison from our hearts: Since God forgives us so freely, we can then forgive others so freely.

  Grace is an important teaching, but some of us go too far, and we think being saved by grace means that we don’t need discipline in our lives, that we don’t need to strive towards a better lifestyle. By contrast, a lot of Muslims, who don’t believe they’re saved by grace, pray many times a day. They fast. They memorize whole sections of the Quran. They live with discipline. I think we can learn from their discipline, their desire to do what pleases God.

  However, we should not be motivated by the same reasons that a lot of Muslims are. Many Muslims are motivated through fear of being sent to hell. Not all Muslims are motivated this way, but many are. This should never be our motivation. As Christians, we don’t have to be motivated by fear, but we should seek discipline out of love for God. Watching our Muslim neighbors can help to spur us toward that end.

  Something else that Christians could learn from their Muslim neighbors is the value of family and community. We’ve become rampantly individualistic in the West. That’s not a good thing. It’s certainly not how Jesus lived.

  If you read the Old and New Testaments, I don’t think faith was supposed to occur in an individualistic context. We’re supposed to see our family and community as part of us, and we’re supposed to see ourselves as part of them. What we do impacts others; we should live in community. We don’t do that any more in the West, so we could learn this from our Muslim neighbors: the value of family and community.

  Should Christians read the Quran?

  The Quran is the foundational document for Muslim theology. That said, most Muslims do not read the Quran the way Christians read the Bible. If you want to understand Protestant Christian beliefs, it’s helpful to read the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of John, followed by the Book of Acts and the Epistle to the Romans and First Corinthians. Reading these will help you understand how followers of Jesus think, or at least what they believe.

  Islam is not like that. Muslims primarily base their lives, whether they know it or not, on the Hadith—on records of the lifestyle of Muhammad—and not even purely on that, but how scholars have interpreted the Hadith for them through generations of tradition in various schools of Islamic thought. Islam is a very authority-based religion. The entire religion is based on the authority of Muhammad, and then the traditions of Muhammad, which come down to us today on the authority of his companions and their companions after them. Today, Muslims receive Islam from their elders and their imams, their authorities.

  If you just read the Quran, you’re skipping past all of those authoritative, interpretive layers. Honestly, if you read the Quran, it will have very little to do with the life of your Muslim friend. In fact, your Muslim friend may not have even read the Quran in such a manner.

  For example, when I was a Muslim, I recited the Quran seven times in Arabic, but I didn’t understand Arabic, and so I didn’t understand what I was reading. I was just reciting the words of the Quran. Muslims do this because they believe reciting the text itself is a blessing. So if a friend of mine had said, “Hey, Nabeel, I read the whole Quran,” I would think, “Wow, this guy wants to dialogue; he has done his homework." But what my friend would have learned by reading the Quran wouldn’t have told him much about my beliefs or lifestyle.

  In summary, I don't think reading the Quran is a good way to understand your Muslim neighbor. The better way to understand them would be to talk to them and see what they think about Islam. Go about it that way, and then, if you want to, investigate the Quran. Unless you’re going to be a student of the history of Islam, the only real reason to read the Quran is to gain credibility. To say "I have read the Quran" will give you a significant amount of credibility, but that’s about it.

  One last thing. When you’re reading the Quran, you’ll notice that it’s really hard to understand. That’s because the Quran wasn’t written in a linear fashion like a book of the Bible. For example, Matthew starts off with Jesus’ genealogy, recounts his ministry, and ends after his death and resurrection—very linear. That’s not the case with the Quran. The Quran jumps about a lot. Two verses next to each other might have been written 20 years apart. You just can’t know when it comes to the Quran.

  Most people who try to read the Quran become quite frustrated. If you want to learn about Islam, my suggestion would be, do what most Muslims do—spend time with Muslims. If you want to learn about your Muslim neighbor, spend time with your Muslim neighbor. Read the Quran only for purposes of historical investigation or credibility.

  What’s the Islamic view of Paul?

  Paul isn’t mentioned in the Quran and is barely mentioned in early Islamic literature, but talking about Paul with some Muslims can become quite polemical.

  The Quran says that Jesus’ original disciples would be “uppermost” until the day of resurrection. In other words, Islam teaches that the disciples followed Jesus and were good people. However, some Muslims realize that Christian teachings became contradictory to Islam very early in Christian history. For example, the Christian teachings that Jesus is God and that salvation only comes by his blood on the cross do not fit with Islamic teachings.

  Muslims who realize this have to believe someone hijacked Christianity very close to its birth. They reason that it was someone with a lot of power and someone who wasn’t an original disciple. That someone could only be Paul.

  We see this view in Reza Aslan’s recent book, Zealot, and in some older scholarship. Even Western scholars, for a short time, began to
argue this view of Paul. The problems with this view are many, such as the fact that Paul submitted to Peter and James and the other apostles, that Jesus would be a failure of a Messiah if his disciples were so easily outmaneuvered, and that Paul’s teachings cohere with Jesus’ teachings in the Gospels. Most scholars have now realized the problems with arguing that Paul hijacked Christianity and are just as confident as Christians that Paul was a follower of Jesus and a faithful member of the early church.

  How should I reason with non-Christians who don’t believe the Bible is the inspired Word of God?

  The Bible truly is the inspired word of God, inerrant and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness. It is the foundation of what we as Christians believe. But it should not be why we believe as Christians. The foundation of our faith is supposed to be Jesus Himself.

  I studied for a time under a scholar named Bart Ehrman. Ehrman was raised as a Christian, loved the Bible, and went to Moody Bible Institute to learn more about Scripture. When he later went to Princeton, he learned some things that challenged his view of the Bible as the inerrant and inspired Word of God. Because the foundation of Ehrman’s faith was the Bible, and not Jesus Himself, he was shaken to his very core. He threw out everything he knew about Jesus because he lost confidence in the Bible.

  But there is much more reason to trust in Jesus than ‘the Bible says so.’ The fact of the matter is, if we come at Jesus from a critical historical perspective, the very best conclusions we can come to about Jesus’ life are that he died on the cross, rose from the dead, and claimed to be God. We can reach these conclusions through extra-biblical resources. We can reach these conclusions without first believing the Bible is the inspired, inerrant Word of God. Again, I believe the Bible is the inspired, inerrant word of God, but we do not need to assume that to believe in Jesus. We can just approach the Gospels as first century records and still arrive at that conclusion.