Adnan Rashid – Questions on Christian History – With Fahad Tasleem.
AI: Summary ©
The speakers discuss the importance of consistency in scripture and the use of the church's tools for research. They stress the need for consistency in scripture to allow for the highest level of spirituality and discuss the use of the title "The respect of the Bible" in Christian apologizing. They also touch on the concept of "by" in English and the potential for confusion when comparing it to "by" in scripture. The speakers emphasize the importance of consistency in scripture for the highest level of spirituality.
AI: Summary ©
Salam alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakato. brothers sisters, welcome to our fifth session of this series known as a Defender Series, where we look at certain key figures within the Quran and certain items that are related to Tao. Now inshallah
Shannon will be joining us in shortly. But before that I wanted to kind of give you an idea about the series a little bit, some of the objectives and maybe introduce today's specific topic, while while we wait for Shannon inshallah, so if you haven't caught up with with the rest of the series, this is a series that myself and Dr. Westphal have, Bob, that we host this series, and it is a in an attempt to have people who are interested in Dawa or even if you're not directly interested in Dawa, but it's to help people get a Gainey connection with the Quran. And mainly because the month of Ramadan is coming, and as we know that the month of Ramadan is the month of the Quran. So if you
haven't checked out the other sessions, we introduced why it's important to connect with the Quran and specifically why it's important to connect with the Quran as a as someone who's interested in Dawa. And so one of the objectives of this series is to introduce these key figures, some of them being profits, some of them not being profits, who will connect us with the Quran and then hopefully, elevate for us a love and a passion for calling people to Islam. And today, I'm particularly excited because first because we're going to be talking about SLE Salaam, and myself living in the in the Bible Belt, I have plenty of interactions with with Christians, and some of
them very positive, some of them not so positive. So it's always it's it's, it's it's really important for us myself, at least, to understand what is a chronic view of SLA Salam? And what does the Quran say about that? And then, you know, what, what does Christianity say? What does Trinitarian Christianity say? And then how do we use that information in calling our Christian Brothers and sisters, to the truth of Islam. And so like I said, today's session I'm particularly excited about because A, it applies to me directly. But I'm sure you'll be able to benefit no matter where you are in the world. I mean, Christianity is the largest religion in the world by way of
numbers. Although I know in Europe and the UK, perhaps the numbers are decreasing in the US.
There is some loss to atheism and the modern secular materialist world. But it's not as bad as it is in the Europe as far as in Europe and the UK, as far as I know. And that can be actually be beneficial. I know in the south here, we don't have to deal with a lot of the the issues you find in public schools, for instance, related to concepts like gender fluidity, post modernism, these types of things, only because the Christians have a political will. That's a little more pronounced in the south. So we benefit from that, although we don't benefit from the Islamophobia they bring with it, but nevertheless, you take the good with the bad. So with that said with that brief introduction
Sharla. I'm going to introduce today, our very esteemed guest, which is none other than Shannon Rasheed Shannon salaam aleikum wa rahmatullah. Raja. Good luck. I hope you can hear me clearly. We can hear you I can hear you clearly. Hum did Illa it's really good to have you. So you are. You are currently in Pakistan? Is that correct? I am. Marshall, Marshall and in Islam on mind you? Yes. Okay. hamdulillah Yeah, actually, I think I mentioned this over text. I went to high school in in sambad. So yeah, I have some famous school you went to really? Yeah, I think after I left, I think someone told me that.
Like, Ben is yours kids went there. But that was
Yeah, I think so. Yes. Love Harlem anyways, alright, let's good. I haven't been there in 20 years, I need to take a trip.
You need to come back and see things changed. I do. Yeah, my brother recently went, my sister did as well. And they were telling Tell me about how things have changed and how certain elements are actually the same, which is, which is good in a certain way. You know, certain elements haven't been touched by the modern world and I'm sure certain elements have for better or for worse. Okay, so I was just mentioning that I'm very excited about today. One is because of the topic itself, but two is because we have you here and I can pick your brains on a number of things because I was looking at you know your your description like a bio for you. Right and I'm not a big fan of BIOS by the way
when people I'm not sure if you are but I what I found was on Twitter, so
You have here Mashallah historian and that's very obvious for anyone who's seen you in the debates that you do with prominent, you know, scholars, activists, apologists, apologists, you know, usually go in unearth their foundations and walk out my Salaam Mashallah to medical law
and then your a numismatist which I thought was interesting because I think most people don't know what are numerous masters. But you'd like to collect coins is that that's correct. Okay.
Yeah, I'm still I build models of stuff that's my hobby, you know, like the models of what's the last thing that I'm currently working on a model of the Batmobile so my interests are very superficial compared to yours, Mashallah.
I believe anyone, anyone who has hobbies
is definitely intellectually very
different to normal people. When I say normal people, I don't mean to
somehow put people down but people have hobbies usually are, you know, involved in things that normal people are not involved in normal people are like your standard nine to five people going to their work and coming back and having a standard normal life but people who are involved involved in hobbies that definitely have extra intellectual pursuits. For example, you solve you make models, I collect coins and manuscripts and books. Right? Yeah, these things are very stimulating, intellectually. They're very stimulated. Yeah, I mean, I think so. I mean, someone who's very close to me said, Man, even your hobbies are boring.
But anyway, I had inshallah, so I'll let him know you said that over Look, man, you know, I'm actually you know, I'm quite the academic anyhow.
Mashallah, okay. So let's, inshallah jump into today's topic, I have a few things that I want to start off with, and then maybe at the tail end, we'll open up for some q&a for some of the audience members inshallah. Hopefully, you're okay with that.
Yes, no problem. Okay. So one of the things I want to do as we start into the topic, is to talk about the mission of SLS alone, and obviously want to compare and contrast the mission of reselect Salaam, according to the Quranic worldview, or the Islamic worldview, versus the mission of SLE Salaam, according to, you know, Trinitarian Christianity, right or mainstream Christianity, you know, comparing both of them what is it that you know, we see about Isa Islam, why was he sent etc, and what do mainstream Christianity See? say about that inshallah? So we're going to start us off with that as an introduction.
So that Mani Rahim, you see, the mission of Jesus, the Christ, or Jesus, the Messiah, is a very contested topic. Of course, mainstream Christianity, when we say when we say mainstream Christianity, I mean, orthodox Trinitarian Trinitarian Christianity that includes Catholics, Protestants, orthodox, Greek, Syrian, and Russian churches. These are the the denominations that believe in this so called mainstream Christianity, right. Their view is, of course, that Jesus Christ came to die for the sins on the cross, based upon the writings of Paul. Paul was the man who actually made this idea popular that the Messiah came, the Messiah was Jesus, He gave His life
willingly on the cross, he died. This was a willing sacrifice to save humanity from ultimate destruction, which is sin, basically. So Jesus came to save humanity from sin. And this was his ultimate mission according to the so called mainstream Christianity today. On the other hand, we have the Islamic view as Muslims we believe the mission of Jesus Christ was to turn the Israelites in particular towards God. He was there to remind the Israelites about the message of Moses that came before him and to to tell them about how he'd true monotheism which they had lost since the the advent of Moses and other Israelite prophets. So his main message was to turn them turn them towards
a law towards God Almighty, the Creator of the heavens and the earth, right so Quran tells us clearly in chapter five Jesus said to the Israelites, all we will live in a shutdown regime his mother in law call mercy or your bunnies right over the law to be or become in the home my usual Bella pocket haram Allahu la Jana Amato, na Ramallah Dolly mean, I mean and thought, to summarize, this particular verse, Jesus came to the Israelites to call them back
To God to worship Him in His true essence rather than misrepresenting him, legally and otherwise. So, Jesus was clearly even According to the New Testament, he was struggling with a bunch of Israelite sects or denominations for example, Sadducees Pharisees mean, you know, mainly speaking these two groups he was dealing with, and he was rebuking them repeatedly. He was calling them things like vipers, hypocrite, adulterous generation, is used very, very harsh titles for these people. And why was he so angry? Jesus was angry because these people had left the true path. And he kept reminding them that God will take this privilege, this guidance away from you and give it to
another people. And he was clearly talking about the Arabs. The Arabs were next door and Jesus will referring to these blessings passed on to other people, if you don't take them seriously. And even the Quran alludes to this amazingly, in a very powerful verse, Allah tells us in the Quran, Allah belemnites you're gonna redeem Laura and Allah de Raka for Roman I have been Bernice rile Allah, Lisa is out, ye seminarium that Allah cursed some of the people of the tribe of Israel who had disbelieved on the tongues of David and Jesus. Amazingly, the Quran confirms this cursing of the Israelites are some of the Israelites on the tongues of these prophets, because they had left the
path. So Jesus came back, or came to take the Israelites back to the true path of pure monotheism, which is what he preached to them here, O Israel, the Lord, our God is One Lord. So islamically speaking, in short terms, this was the message of Jesus Christ. There is another perspective, by the way, which is the historic perspective, what was the mission of historical Jesus if we want to go beyond the religion? And let's say historians, wanted to
historians wanted to talk about Jesus Christ historical Jesus, what was the mission of this historical?
This man called Jesus who lived once upon a time in
first century Judea? What was his mission? Even historians tell us that the mission of this messianic figure, or this prophetic figure, or this revolutionary figure called Jesus will lived in first century Judea was to basically revolutionary revolutionary revolutionize, the Israelites somehow change the Israelites from what they were already practicing. So even historic Jesus was a radical figure, a revolutionary figure, who visited Judea in first century, when Judea was being governed by the Romans. And this figure, there is nothing much historically speaking, strictly speaking, there is nothing much known about him because historians don't necessarily take the
Gospels as truth. To historians. The term gospel truth is an oxymoron. So they don't necessarily take the don't necessarily take the Gospels to be true accounts of or for the life of historic Jesus. So they have to really come up with, you know, some ideas about this figure who is known to have walked
the streets or Judea, or, in particular, the city of Jerusalem in first century. So this is what they have. They have a vague idea about this man called Jesus Christ, who was a revolutionary figure, who was a radical figure who came. And of course, historians, based upon what they have seen in the Gospels and other writings, like the writings of tacitus. And some other references. They believe that he was indeed crucified. We don't believe that. We don't believe that. So historians have no reasons to doubt as to why Jesus wouldn't be crucified, or if he was crucified or he wasn't crucified doesn't really make any difference to them. But because there are reports about him
Christians came to believe that and later on historians reported that belief, historians don't have any reasons to question that we as Muslims have reasons to question that because we believe in a book called The Quran which came from God Almighty, and the Quran tells us he was not crucified.
Right? Yeah, no, this this is a summary of these different views. We can discuss really brilliant summary. So you know, just you reminded me because when I was studying at UT Austin, and as part of my master's thesis
One of the things I was looking at is the connection of Christianity with the modern world. And I was actually looking at Dr. Solomon's argument, where he takes out from suits and calf, and basically tries to connect the birth of secularism by way of the the iniquities of Christianity, right, the problems in Christianity. So when I first wrote my thesis, the first draft, my professor said, there's no academic agreement on even Jesus existing. So you have to write it in different format altogether. So that, to me initially, just kind of in academia was a bit shocking of like, what no evidence, there's no, there's disagreement on it. I was like, Wow, so Pamela, so when you
were mentioning that, I realized that Yeah, there's actually, you know, within academia, they don't really, like you mentioned gospel truth will be an oxymoron, because of their methods by which they analyze history and things like that. And of course, you know more about that, than anyone so.
So the other thing I wanted to actually ask you about, sometimes people would say, like, if the Jews, you know, was the problem with the Jews, were they worshipping other than Allah? And that's why he said, Islam came to call them tawheed. Or were they already there was already a belief in, in God, as, as you know, from the concept of monotheism or what or the term monotheism as it's generally understood. And basically, he said a Salaam came to kind of bring them back to a more central position in terms of not going beyond how they're interpreting the law and becoming too stringent on it. In other words, his message was spiritual and not so much focused on the aspect of
tawheed. Because the Jews, you know, more or less already had that. So what would you say about someone that would kind of mention that and say, it's not really they were already upon a type of monotheism. But what what his message really was, was about bringing them back to a more spiritual
position. When he does a very good question. And this question has been addressed in the Quran, as well as in the Bible. You see,
when I even had him was with the Prophet salallahu alaihe salam. And he had come across this verse of the Quran where Allah says that they had taken the priests and rabbis as Lords besides a law, okay, and Adi who happened to be a Christian in the past, and he converted to Islam, through the prophet sallallahu sallam, he said, Yasser Allah, oh, the prophet of Allah, we never took our priests and rabbis. In the case of the Jews, of course, as gods, we never took them as lords. Then prophet explained sallallahu Sallam that when they made haram halaal for you, he accepted it. And when we when they made halal haram for you, you accepted it. This is how you took them as lot,
right? This is how you made sure. So Allah gave you a law. And then your priests and rabbis twisted the law, they change the meaning of the law, and the change the rulings of the law, by
by extension, this is how you took them as lords. And, you know, Lords besides a lot, and this is exactly what Jesus Christ is seen, to be rebuking and condemning. In the New Testament, even in its current, altered, changed, and corrupted form, the New Testament gives some very, very interesting insights into the life of Jesus Christ, and we have no reason to, to reject those incidents, and doubt the veracity, I believe some of the information which is authentic about the life of Jesus Christ had trickled down to later generations. And then these generations passed on this oral, traditional oral narrative to what became, eventually the gospel authors, who were, of course,
anonymous until the second century, mid second century was the time when these names are given to the Gospels, by the way, right. But I do believe firmly, not only as a Muslim, but as a researcher, as a student of the Gospels and Christian tradition, that some information, some authentic information may have trickled down to these gospel authors through an oral tradition of some form. Right. And that tradition tells us that Jesus was rebuking the Sadducees and Pharisees,
Jewish authorities in the city of Jerusalem for doing exactly that. twisting the Word of God making haram halaal and halaal haram and not taking the law very seriously. If you don't take the Word of God seriously. You don't take God seriously and you appoint yourselves in place of God. And this is exactly how they
had become mushrikeen or politicized by twisting the words of God by putting themselves in the place of God making haram halaal and halaal. Haram. So this is how I mean they were monotheists. I mean, if you spoke to the Pharisees and the Sadducees, in first century juvia, they will say, of course, we believe in one God, we believe in one God only. Right? We don't believe in a trinity. There was no Trinity around at the time. Yeah, Trinity only came about later. Right? We believe in one God. But how did they believe in that? God is the question. They believed in that God.
By conditions, they put conditions on that God, they believed in that God conditionally, so long as you follow their interpretation of the law, then you are a true believer, if you don't follow their interpretation, then you are a disbeliever. So this is how they had become gods, or they have put themselves in, in the place of God Almighty. So this is how Jesus was dealing with them. He was condemning them for this particular form of Sheikh Michelle, I hope that answers the question. No, no, does is right on point is right on point. And that you mentioned was was right on point as well, Mashallah, because a lot of times we tend to, we tend to pigeonhole the idea of monotheism, I think,
and unfortunate, sometimes a lot of the dogs make this mistake as well, when they think, you know, the English term monotheism, just having a belief that God is One is basically sufficient. But of course, I mean, you know, that, that that has a number of issues. Right. And frankly, that's not that's not what the Islamic dow itself is limited to, that's not what the prophets only call to. And I think you articulated it very, very onpoint. Um, let me ask kind of a secondary question related to that, which may be maybe slightly more technical, but just because I have you here, I'm gonna pick your brains on inshallah. So, you know, from a, from the perspective of a historian, some
people, you know, opine that, you know, when you look at something like the Toyota, and the fact that there was no, you know, maybe they had some sort of semblance of an oral tradition. But by and large, when it came to be put into some sort of form of a text, you have the text that was put down, let's say, of the tota. And then you had the commentary, you know, kind of, like, we have like the mutton and the hash of the hacia. Right. And this, the issue was, was that over time, they just kind of mixed in. And so the reason why this is one of the things that's sometimes put forward, the reason why the Jews were able to, you know, come up with things that were or do Daddy, if, as we
know, was by mixing these two things in like, you have like, you know, the mutton and the deaf seed and then you just mix them both in. And one of the one of the the the greatest aspects of the Quran is that we it's been kept separate from the very getgo. So is there some, some sort of credence to this idea that there's a mixing, because of the fact that you had scribes over time that they would, you know, maybe either intentionally or unintentionally, but there could, or there is evidence to see this to show that there is this type of overlapping, overlapping and mixing between the commentary of the text and the text itself. And, and that's why we have some of the the mess that we
have today. Absolutely, there is a lot of credence to this particular idea. And there is a lot of evidence to it. People have scholars have written books on this topic as to how the Old Testament or the Jewish tradition was put together. What we have currently in our position, comes from
the Second Temple period
after the Babylonian exile, okay, without going into too many technical details. There was a Babylonian king called Nebuchadnezzar, who had taken the entire population of
Judea into exile. And the Jewish tradition was since lost, and then the Jewish people or the Israelites, to be more accurate, were able to return after King Cyrus in 537. Three, he allowed the Israelites to return to the land of Palestine, currently Palestine. And these people came back and then the text was rewritten entirely. According to most historians on this particular point.
And when the text was rewritten, no one can, with confidence claim that this is exactly what was there before the Babylonian exile. The Jews because of
the history, chaotic history, their experience in exile, they had lost touch with the tradition.
And a couple of generations were enslaved. And because of that, it impacted the Israelite tradition. So what was put down later
Iran was impacted by directly impacted by the Israelite experience at the time. So you see many, many
influences, chronological influences political influences, historic influences, cultural influences that came from Babylon, in the biblical texts. In fact, some scholars even claim that
code of Hammurabi was directly copied into some parts of the Old Testament, by some of the scribes. Hammurabi was
a Mesopotamian Mesopotamian King, if I'm not mistaken, in the eighth century BC, some of his law was incorporated within the text of the Bible. So the Word of God that was given to Moses was effectively mixed with local legal systems in Babylon, possibly in Syria, and the Middle East at that time, and other traditions for that matter, it is almost impossible to now filter out exactly what was revealed to Moses, we don't even know what language Moses spoke for that matter. We have no idea as to what language Moses spoke
when he lived, whenever he lived, because we don't even know when he lived to before. There are different estimates, according to scholars,
some people say that he lived in the 14th century BC, or anywhere between the 12th century to 15th century BC. So Moses, Moses could have lived in in between this period, and What language did he speak? He clearly didn't speak Hebrew, there is no doubt that he didn't speak Hebrew, because Hebrew language took a lot of influences from other languages around the land of Lamont. Right. So if we don't know what language Moses spoke, and if we don't know what language he received the Torah in, then we can never be sure as to whether this particular Torah or the five books of the the Old Testament, the the first the beginning, the five books, the penta tube, is whether whether this is
the Torah of Moses or not, is not is not a question we can really establish with certainty. Unfortunately, we don't have enough information. And we don't have the language of Moses, we don't even have the originals they have been last since
there is a gap of
almost nearly you can easily say, over 1000 years between Moses and the Babylonian exile, right? So there is a huge gap of 1000 years, so much have much has been lost. So this is a summary of what I think of the text of the new the Old Testament in particular. And this is exactly what most serious academic scholars believe about the text of the Old Testament. It has the Israelite tradition, mixed with local cultic cultural,
religious, legal influences all over the place. Yeah, and I think, where the issue would be compounded is that when you're talking about the language itself, and muscle Islam spoke being lost, but then what compounds issues then when you move to from a spoken language to orthography? Like how do you represent that language on paper and letters and things like that, if you don't have that, then the issues actually it gets compounded. I mean, especially from a you can say, a philosophy of language perspective, when we talk about it from a philosophical point of view, which we won't get into inshallah, but I just think that kind of compounds the problem even more, because it's not that
we speak language only but and especially when it comes to traditions like the Old Testament, and as we'll get to inshallah, the New Testament is that a lot of it rests on the idea of things and scriptures and things that have been written down. So are the orality is given less weight as far as I know, whereas the text itself has given more weight, which, when you look at it from this perspective, compounds the problem, like you have orthography, you have a language being lost languages changing, which can get really complicated, but let's go on and move on to that are
good. To be fair, there are two parallel traditions, the Israelites have preserved
for for centuries, and one is the written law, or the written literature, which is what we call today, the Old Testament or the dinar, in Jewish terms. And the other tradition is called missioner, which is the oral
transmission
coming from allegedly coming from
the elders of Israel, the so called 70 elders of Israel, this oral tradition called missioner comes from them. So there are commentaries on the Tanakh and there are commentaries on this particular
oral tradition called the missioner. And these commentaries written upon the missioner are called one of them is called the Talmud. So the Talmud is like full body, okay. Mishnah is like, say al Bukhari or saharsa of Israelites to give you a parallel tradition in Islam, or something similar for you to understand
the reality of Jewish or Israelite tradition. So the Word of God, basically is the written law. Okay? And then there is an arbitrary tradition called the missioner, possibly something close to the police tradition. And then the commentaries are called the Talmud, like the factual body of the Israelites. Okay, so this is how some of the Jewish tradition has been preserved. Mashallah, that's a good, good analogy there. hamdulillah. Like, you know, for someone that's kind of coming from the Islamic textual tradition, it's like, wait a minute, how do we understand these things is Oklahoma that helps.
So let me kind of shift over to kind of move over to East LA Salaam, and maybe some general dour conversations we might have. So I was having a conversation with someone the other day. And, you know, he, you know, we were talking about the concept of Revelation. And so he asked me a question. He said that, you know, so actually, I think I asked him, I said, you know, you know, you have these authors, and, you know, they claim to be inspired by God. Right? Mark, Matthew, Luke, john, and who knows wells, right? He says, Yeah, well, they were inspired by God, just like your Prophet Mohammed, Salah was inspired by God, you know, inspiration is inspiration. So that got me thinking, when
something like this comes up, I think it becomes kind of important to discuss our concept of what we call Ye, versus how can Christians what is how do Christians define revelation? Because if you took that argument to its logical conclusion, that inspiration is just inspiration, then how do you tell the inspiration between God and the devil, and someone who has inspiration from, you know, somebody else, you know, our true dreams or dreams themselves? So, you know, I mean, so I guess my question is, starting with the Islamic framework, like how do we understand why he, and then is there something that Christians use or some sort of epistemic tools they use to say that this is what we
consider revelation? And something, you know, that, you know, someone may be inspired by on their own personal account? We don't consider that revelation. So how do they make that distinction? And how do we make that distinction? I guess, would be the question. Okay. That's a very interesting question. You see, our epistemic tool has been given to us in the Quran itself. The Quran gives the falsification criteria itself. Okay. The Quran tells us if this book was any other source than a law, then you would have found many contradictions in many discrepancies in it.
How does the worst verse go in the Arabic language?
for luxury, en la CanAm in India de de la Liga doofy if they laugh and kathira alfalah, the Brunello Quran Lacan, I'm in India right? Illa lava Jadoo fie kathira. Okay, if this book was from another source, then Allah, then you would have found many contradictions in it. So this is one of the fortification tests, okay, this is our epistemic tool to measure whether this book can be from God or not. This doesn't mean that any book without contradictions is from God. This doesn't mean that right? What it means is, if there are contradictions in the book, then it is definitely not from God. This is the point here. The point is not that if there is no contradiction in a book, then it's
from God. No, that's not the point. The point is, if there are discrepancies, if there are problems in the text, then it cannot be from God. Right? And even the New Testament tells us that God is not the author of confusion. Right? So this is one question we we we have to look into. This is the Islamic perspective on looking at scripture and what he what he of course, has conditions in Islam, okay? It, it has to be from a prophet of Allah, a true prophet of God, only a true prophet of Allah can receive vahi and a true prophet have signs he assigns to show he has to prove physically and spiritually that he is a true prophet of God. And if he brings a message from God, then that message
is what he and the message has to be consistent with the previous messages God has sent the core of them the essence of those messages, which is la li la. So if a new message comes for example, claiming to be ye
And that tells you that there are five persons in Godhead. Okay, God is one, but he is represented by five persons, God, the Son, God, the uncle, God, the mother, God, the daughter, God, the spirit, God, the God, the watchmen, I'm not I'm not trying to knock the concept of God, but I'm trying to try to simplify things for you. Right? If something comes along, and says there is a revelation that tells us that God is represented by five persons, right, there is one God, but this God is shared by five persons, right? We can't accept that, because that's breaking away from all the traditions that came before, right, that claim to be some dress some divine authority. So this is one of the
criterias we have that this, this this message this way, has to be consistent with the core, the essence of the previous messages that have come from God, and this is where the Quran continues to reference previous scriptures. The Quran acknowledges that there is truth in the previous scriptures, and you can still find that truth in those scriptures, despite the fact that they have been altered. They have been changed, but the truth has remained there in so whatever God has revealed there in judged by it, as the Quran says in chapter five, okay. All the people of NGO judge by what has God revealed there in what is the law talking about, okay, I'm talking about the truth
there in Allah is not talking about the fortifications, and all the errors during, so what he has, when it comes to the Christian tradition, by the way, none of the four gospel authors claim, divine inspiration, by the way, I don't know, if you were aware, none of the four gospel authors actually claim divine authorship or divine inspiration of any sort. In fact, to the contrary,
look for examples is others are writing so am I, right? others are doing a YouTube channel. So let me give it a shot to. Exactly, exactly. And a good attempt. I mean, I hope he had written truth. And later on, of course, these gospels were altered There is no doubt all Christians, scholars of Greek texts are unanimous that the gospels were definitely altered, they were definitely corrupted, they were changed beyond repair, beyond repair, we cannot repair the text now anymore. We can never know what this author of Luke, if Luke ever wrote it, wrote initially we have no idea. So
when it comes to Christian epistemic
methods, in reaching some sort of revelation or inspiration, they have to come up with a criteria themselves, they had to make it up. In the first three centuries, the church fathers, they made up a criteria that we believe in things, and the scripture has to agree with what we believe in. And if the scripture does not believe, sorry, it does not agree with what we believe in, then it cannot be scripture. It is absolutely mad. It is right crazy criteria, the church fathers and by the way, this is not something I'm making up. This is clearly attested in, in scholarly works like Bruce Metzger, is Hannon of the New Testament. He has written a book titled the canon of the New Testament. And in
that particular book, he puts down the criteria used by church fathers in the first few centuries, to determine what may be divine, divinely inspired and what may not, and how did they determine divine inspiration? They determined it by using the text of a given text against the agreed upon doctrine, not the other way around. The doctrine did not come in light of the Scripture. The scripture came in light of the doctrine, ironically, yeah, so I hope that makes sense. No, no, it does. And it's actually where I was going to go to next is that the issue that arises, it seems, is that the theology precedes the text. So instead of somebody, let's say, getting the details of
theology, from the text, the details and the general theological precepts are first given and then the text is derived from there to say exactly include and this is not included, is that exactly, I couldn't put it in better terms. Right, exactly. This is how this is how it was, theology was formed. And then the text was chosen, or the canon of the New Testament in particular was chosen against that theology. Right? This is what Bruce Metzger is saying. This is what people like Lee Martin MacDonald, scholars who have specifically written on the canon of the New Testament, Hmm, that's what they're saying. So one of the like, one of the discussions I had some time ago was that
you know, when we
When we think about the Quran, we say that it is something that not only is, you know is is intellectually robust, but it touches something deeper that is your fitrah. Right? So it is, right. So in a sense, our natural state testifies to the truthfulness of the Quran, right in a sense, but it's not that it's not that you have only one tool that is the fitrah, which may be corrupt or may not be corrupt. And that's it, but then you're adding to that the tool of rationalization. So having the Quran, the Quran is full of wonderful
information. For example, when I say wonderful, I mean, wonderful in spiritual terms. There are prophecies that are factual statements. There are subtleties in the Quran that could not have come from an Arabian shepherd.
You know, and that man was never educated by philosophers in Alexandria, or he never visited the schools or judicial poor in Persia, in her went to any Academy, he had no access to the Jewish people, especially living in Mecca. Of course, there was a scholar called watercop nofo, who was writing and reading in, according to some reports in Hebrew, and, and he was reading Christian, Judeo Christian tradition.
So there are examples like that. But there is no way even if the prophets, Allah Salam wants to get together with what are called be nofal. And the rabbi's in Medina, and all the priests and scholars in Persia, there are subtleties in the Quran, that simply cannot come from,
from from a human endeavor, it is impossible, right? Because these are subtleties. These are subtle points that have been put in the what we call for wide, we're not trying to do the theory we will take for why there are things in the Quran that are you know, not popping into existence, but there they are appearing to people that were weren't detected previously. And using supplant Allah, this is how is this possible? How could a man sitting in Makkah, or in Medina, come up with this? This is not this doesn't make sense, right? I mean, I'll give you a very quick example. Very quick example. Very, very quick examples of a couple of subtleties in the Quran. Okay. One is a very mathematical
one, a very simple one to understand. The Quran states in chapter three, verse 59, that the similitude of Jesus is like that of Adam. Now the Quran is talking about the birds, right? Okay. The Quran is specifically directly talking about the birds, because Jesus was born without a father. But Adam was born without both parents and right, he had neither a mother nor a father. So in that sense, they were both similar. But there is another subtlety in this particular point, which was detected much later. And that subtlety is that both are mentioned by name 25 times in the entire text of the Quran. Okay, exactly the same number. Right now, it doesn't stop there. This could be a
fluke, this could be like an accident. Okay, Mohammed was compiling this book. And he put this verse down. And by accident, both of them were mentioned the same time 25 times each, but it doesn't stop there. When you read from throttle Fatiha to chapter three, verse 59, with a verse is okay, both are mentioned seven times each, from 359 to the last chapter of the Quran, one math book, I mentioned 18 times each. So as if they similarity was mathematically coded as a subtlety in the Quran. So, this cannot be a coincidence, you know, this cannot be a coincidence is and this can even be planned. Even the Prophet had mathematicians working with him, it might be very difficult to, to style this
out. Okay. This is one example. Another example is
john the baptist. It's called the yahia in the Quran,
okay.
It's called yahia in the Quran, and a lot of the questions that come up, and they say, hold on.
By the way, these are provided I'm not doing the theory. These are, these are some of the benefits of the Quran, right? We may detect subtleties, right?
So, john the baptist is called yahia. And the Christians come close that he's not Yeshua. His name was Mike yahia. And this is a this is an error in the Quran. Already. This is inaccurate. He right caught it. He was called. You hadn't? His name was you, Hannah, or you hadn't, right? Hebrew, that would be his name. And in English and Latin, it would be john. Right? So why do you call him you're here. But when we read the Quran carefully when we read the tafsir, the scholars explain that the yahia was born from a barren woman right?
Now she was arguing, not argue with us is an old woman. She's an elderly person, right? But argue that someone who cannot give birth right? So yeah, in the Hebrew language or even in the Arabic language means God gives life or life given by God. right in that sense because he was born of a barren woman. john the baptist was born of a barren woman according to the Quran, he was given this title here, okay.
But then when we go to verse number 13 of surah Maria, where is mentioned, okay, there is a word that refers to you here, and that word is Hannah no mille Laguna. Okay, Allah tells us that he is.
He is Hannon from us. Okay. Hi, Nana Mila Donna. This word Hannon is mentioned in the entire text of the Quran only once. And it only refers to Yaki la Salaam. And canon has exactly the same root word as you, Hannon and you Hannah. So this is a subtlety that can be found in Surah Merriam, which refers to the actual proper noun or proper name of
yahia, les Salaam. So those who raise this question, hold on, that's not his name. Okay. But then in verse number 13, his name is coded in an indirect fashion. And this is a subtlety. There are so many other examples, I can give these things could not I mean, how could the prophets and Elias want to do all this? I mean, or is he a scholar of Hebrew, that he had to put the actual proper name of allah Salaam in a separate verse in an indirect way, right? Use your mind. This, this is, this is mind blowing stuff, right? So there are so many subtleties. This is how we know that this word the Quran, is not doing is not doing of the Prophet, even the committee around him, even the rabbi's.
And the scholars, we had access to them at that time, even all of them, if they got together, like Allah says, produce a pseudo like it, right? And then bring your witnesses, they wouldn't be able to do it. Right? And Allah says, you cannot do it, you will not do it. Right. And Allah knows exactly what he's talking about. Because of all these references, direct and indirect. Yeah, apparent and subtle. All of these references are there for us to contemplate, right. And a lot of Canada has made it very clear that this word is indeed directly from him.
It is preserved in meaning. It is preserved in text, it is preserved in its delivery, it is preserved in his pronunciation.
Its context is preserved, everything is preserved about right. I mean, we can't say that about the Bible. We can't say that about any other religious tradition, fortune. Confidence. No, that's, that's, that's a good point. And that's true. I mean, when it comes to they'll put on, I mean, once you start to see that there's so many layers of they'll put on that it just becomes, you know, you'd really in an honest person who's reading the Quran and looking at the various layers, you're really left dumbstruck. Because if you're going to take the the worldview of the paradigm that this was written by someone, it's a very difficult worldview to hold on to, right, just from the various
layers, you talked about subtlety, there are subtleties in the crown, no doubt, and someone who, who goes to the crown will see that there are, you know, obviously certain factual things. There's even something that I'm researching nowadays, what we call like phenomenology, like the effect of the recitation itself, that has to do with, you know, how people perceive beauty, like, even that has a certain and those things are connected to the meaning itself, right.
And so there's so many different layers and levels, that, you know, when you start to compare it to something like the Bible, it's just, sometimes I kind of think I'm like, how, how would you there's no comparison, like the Bible for me. I mean, you'd have a hard time comparing it to like weak Hadeeth. And that's right, let alone the Quran. Like, there's just not, they're not even mogila.
Like, hello, it's like, even though you can't, so I mean, it's just panelized it's, it's really, really remarkable, Mashallah, okay, so I had a few more questions, and we are kind of running short on our running short on time, we have a little bit of time, but I wanted to make sure I get to these questions. So you know, we A few years ago, before COVID hit, we had put on a
an exhibition related to resell a salon. And you know, what we do is we do training the night before for the dot, and some of the community members so that when people come and speak, they will know what they're talking about. So one question that came up over and over again, was who is Iran so in the Quran, it's mentioned right from
Sooner or later on, okay, then we have the, you know, you know who he was in terms of related to money? Mm hmm. But who is Enron? How do we understand what a moron was? And what does that have to do with the story of SLE Salaam? If you can help us out, Ron, as far as we know, as far as we understand from the office here is one of the ancestors of Maria Maria Salaam, and this Emraan is not the father of Moses and his sister, Mary, and not the father. No, no, this is not the imraan being referred to this. Okay, okay, right, right, right. Okay. You see, and Ron was a very common name. Among the Israelites, the Israelites continued to name the children after profits of the pious
predecessors for that matter, okay. So they would always remember these names. In fact, some sometimes these names were used as a reference to distant ancestors. Okay. So both possibilities are open, but Emraan in this case, as far as I remember, the morpha serene they are of the opinion that Emraan was one of the ancestors, a close ancestor of Maria Maria Salaam, and by that virtue Maria