Ali Ataie – Comparing & Contrasting Christianity and Islam
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
This week,
our presentation will be on the
relationship between Islam and Christianity.
Our speaker last week,
touched on this in terms of, you know,
the Christian and
and,
Old Testament and New Testament figures that were
in the Quran, that were mentioned in the
Quran, you know, are not just mentioned, but
actually, really fully discussed in the Quran.
And then so
we'll be bridging bridging between that and next
week's discussion, which will be on interfaith relations,
to discuss, okay, what are the similarities between
Christianity
and Islam? What are the differences between the
two?
What is the relationship?
Both
you know, we know what the relationship is
now, but what has been the relationship historically?
So that is what our speaker
today will be discussing. And our speaker,
get his name correct,
is doctor Ali Ataygi.
Right?
It's listed here he had that he's a
PhD candidate, but I just realized he just
told me that he is a PhD graduate
now. At GTU in Berkeley.
And he is now a professor at Daytona
College in Berkeley, which is I just started
this morning. He's a first Muslim liberal arts
college in
and educator on religion. So please help him
in welcoming doctor
Thank you very much for having me. I'm
a great honor to be here.
Just a little bit about me first before
I get into the topic.
I do have a PhD as was stated.
I have it in something called Islamic Biblical
Hermeneutics.
I did my dissertation on a a Sufi
interpretation of the gospel of John.
I have a master's in,
new testament.
I focus on biblical languages.
So I'm going to be talking about,
as was stated, the similarities and differences between
the song Christianity
and kind of looking at it historically as
well
and the sort of presentation,
of Christianity that's given in the Quran.
So I wanna begin by, telling you what
I think is
something that we have in common,
Muslims and Christians and Jews for that matter,
what I believe is the heart of the
Abrahamic tradition.
So there's a story about a rabbi in
the 2nd century. His name was Hillel.
He's a great phariseitic rabbi
and saint.
He was asked, what is the Torah
in a nutshell?
Right?
So
he quoted 3 verses.
He quoted Deuteronomy 64,
Deuteronomy 65,
and Leviticus 1918.
We'll talk about those. And then he said
everything else is commentary,
which is not to say it's not important,
but he's giving you the essence of of
the Torah. And it's interesting because,
a century earlier, according to the gospel of
March chapter 12 verse 29,
a Jewish scribe comes to Jesus
and asks him, what is the greatest commandment?
Right?
And what does Jesus do? He quotes these
three verses.
Right? So Mark records them in Greek, but
Jesus said that
because he's quoting the old testament.
And in the Quran, Jesus is quoted as
saying that I confirm the theology
of the Torah.
So Jesus
said,
Hear hear, oh Israel, the Lord our God,
the Lord is 1. And then he continues.
And you shall love the Lord thy God
with thy heart, soul, and strength.
And then he says, love your neighbor as
yourself. No other commandment is greater than these.
Right?
So this is the essence of the Abrahamic
teaching. Now the prophet Muhammad, as you probably
are familiar with him a little bit now
at this point, this is the 3rd week.
Muslims believe he's the final messenger of God.
He has many hadith attributed to him. It's
one of the words that you should be
familiar with. Hadith, h a d I t
h. Maybe you've had this term in the
past. Something attributed to the prophet.
And there's a hadith attributed to him where
he said,
Translation.
None of you,
will enter paradise until you truly believe.
And none of you will truly believe until
you love one another.
Right? And then he said, shall I tell
you of something that will increase your love?
And his companions, they're called sahaba in Arabic,
his disciples, if you will, they said yes.
And he said,
spread peace amongst yourselves.
Spread peace amongst yourselves.
So this this is extremely important. This is
the heart of the perdition.
There was a theologian named
Fafradine Abbazi. Everyone say, on the screen.
He was a a Persian. He's very famous.
Abbazi. Imam Abbazi,
Arazi, r a z I for those taking
notes.
And he was asked, much like Halal was
asked, what is the essence of Islam?
And he said, al Islam.
He said, al Ibadatulilkhadeqorahmatulilkhadeq.
He said, Islam is
worship of the creator
or adoration of the creator
and showing mercy towards his creation.
Right? So there's a lot of misconceptions that,
you know, Islam is a the the god
of Islam is a different god. For example,
you hear that a lot. Muslims worship a
different god.
Now I would say, in principle, it is
the same god. I think just a cursory
glance or reading of the Quran makes it
clear that at least the claim of the
Quran
is that the revealer of this text is
the God of Abraham.
Right?
So in principle, I would say, however, when
you get down to sort of the theological
nitty gritty of things, there are differences
between
Jews, Muslims, and Christians.
It's interesting. There was a 2nd late 1st
century, early 2nd century,
Christian,
sect called the the Marcionites or Marcionism.
The founder of the sect, Marcion, he proposed
this idea that
Christians worship a different god
than the Christian,
than the Jewish God. That the Jewish God
is an inferior God.
He called him Jeldeboath.
He was vehemently anti semitic.
He was a docentist. He was a bi
theist. So it was kind of trendy in
Rome in the in the beginning of 2nd
century.
But that the proto orthodox church fathers, like
Justin Martyr and Iravenaeus,
and many others,
they vehemently opposed this type of theology because
they said, no.
It's the same God. It's the God of
Abraham.
Christians all worship a different God. Right? So
they rejected that type
of polemic
but we theologize differently.
Right?
For example, they would say that
it's the same god, but we believe that
this god revealed himself in a unique way.
Right? So I would say the same thing.
I would say that I would say that,
Muslims, Christians, and Jews, they worship the same
God
in principle, but there are differences
when you study theology, how how we theologize
about God.
The name of God in Arabic is Allah.
Allah is simply,
well, in terms of opinion, that's the etymology
of that name.
Some believe it's just the God because al
in Arabic is a definite article.
So alpida became
Allah.
But that's a minority opinion. The dominant opinion
is that the first two letters of the
name Allah, which are alith and lam
in Arabic
are cognate to the hebrew
Alif Lamed.
So El. So the word El in hebrew
means God. A God. A deity. So there
there are names in Hebrew that are called
theophoric names.
So names that have the name of God
embedded within them
as a suffix or a prefix. For example,
Gadriel
or Gabriel
or the strength of God or Michaael,
Michael.
And the name Michael is a rhetorical question.
Who is like God? That's what his name
means.
Who is like God? Micha'il.
Elijah. Eliyahu.
My god is yahoo. One of the names
of god according,
to rabbinical scripture and the in the tenacity
Hebrew bible. Anything that has a l in
it, l right? L Ron Hubbard. I'm just
joking.
I'm sorry. I couldn't help myself.
Sorry about that.
Just a joke. You have to be careful
with. They'll they'll sue you.
You have to be careful.
Yeah.
So so, this is an ancient Semitic name
of God. So all Semitic languages, they called
God
some variation of this aleth and lamed. So
the Hebrew bible, you find eil.
Right? For example, in Hosea 119,
says, indeed, I am God and not a
human being.
Sometimes
is used as sort of a
more emphatic form like in Deuteronomy 32 17
I believe.
It says, you know, the pagans
they,
they
sacrificed to shayatin
to demons
and not to eloh not to god. So
eloh an emphatic form of el is used
in the in the tanakh as sort of
juxtaposition of false gods.
Elo is el with emphasis.
And then you have the very common Elohim
at Genesis 1:1. The very first verse of
the Torah says,
Right? In the beginning,
God
with a plural
created the heavens and the earth. So,
Muslim exigence of the bible, Muslim biblicalists, if
you will, I'm one of them.
And Jewish scholars will say that this plural
is a plural of
of not numbers,
but
a royal plural.
It's called a plural pluralis magistatis
in Latin.
Right? It's kinda like when the Queen of
England says, we declare,
but she's only one person. But she's speaking
from a vantage point of authority, apparently, maybe
not anymore because we know England, but,
but God does.
So God uses the plural for Elohim.
Right?
And then and that's in Hebrew. Now
most scholars believe that Jesus,
peace be upon him,
spoke a language called Syriac,
and he was probably very multilingual.
I mean, the official language of the Roman
Empire was Latin, but in that area in
the ancient Near East, it was coined a
Greek.
Right? So he probably knew some Greek. Paul
is the first author of the New Testament.
He wrote in Greek. The 4 gospels are
in Greek. Right?
The language of the general populace was Syriac
or sort of sometimes called late Aramaic, Christian
Aramaic.
And then the language of the synagogue liturgy
was in Hebrew.
So he probably knew
several languages.
Right?
But when he would communicate to, you know,
the people in Galilee, he'd give his sermons.
He probably did that in Syria.
So Christian scholars in the 4th century,
they translated
the Greek
manuscripts,
the 4 gospels, into Syriac,
going back to the original language
of Christ,
because the originals aren't Greek.
And this 4th century translation into Syriac is
known as
a. In Arabic, it's called the, which means,
like, simple simple Syriac.
And this replaced,
the the dictation.
So in the 2nd century, a student of
Justin Martyr, he actually harmonized all 4 gospels
and put them into a single narrative. He
wrote it in the Syriac.
So that was quite popular. In fact, was
was popular
even,
into the Middle Ages in the Middle East
churches.
But,
most Christian scholars wanted to keep those gospels
separate. So it was translated into Syriac. Anyway,
in Mark, Jesus says,
according to the pashita,
he says
He says the hour
has been fulfilled.
The kingdom of God, malkutha dah Allah.
The kingdom of god is at hand.
So in Syria, the language of Christ,
the word for god is
And this is the same the cognate is
Allah in Arabic.
Right? So the
Muslim claim
this is where I'm gonna get a little
maybe a little touchy.
The Muslim claim is that all the prophets
were Muslims
because the word Muslim does not mean,
does not literally mean a follower of Mohammed.
Right? If you read ancient or not ancient,
but orientalist literature about
Islam, oftentimes,
Muslims are called Mohammed.
Mohammed.
Meaning that they follow Muhammad. I don't necessarily
have a problem with this term.
However,
the Quran does not use the term Muhammadin.
It uses Muslim, and the prophet himself was
a Muslim. So the term Muslim is an
active parcel
of Islam.
So Muslim is to Islam as Christian is
to Christianity.
So I'm I'm mentioning that because I can't
tell you how many times I've been asked,
are you Islam?
I said, wow. That's a deep question.
I'm not Islam. Wow.
I don't care. Maybe.
Awesome.
So the word Muslim means someone who submits
to God's will with the intention of creating
peace.
So the word Muslim is actually related to
the Hebrew shalom.
Salam Shalom. Right? Have a common etymology Hebrew
and Arabic and Syriac. All these languages are
sister languages.
They have common etymology.
So Muslims will say that Abraham was a
Muslim,
that Moses was a Muslim,
that David was a Muslim,
that Jesus and Mary
were Muslims.
And that Mohammed was a Muslim.
So the Quran also has a very clear
criticism
of Christian theology.
Right?
Now there's a difference of opinion about the
state of the new testament.
Like, what is the Quran actually saying about
the Christian scriptures?
There's some ambiguity there.
It's sort of an enigmatic relationship between the
Quran and the Christian scriptures the recognized Christian
scriptures. Most scholars would say that the Quran
is saying
that the Christian scriptures have been corrupted in
its text.
There are different versions of them. The scribes
went in.
They falsified
things.
Right? There is an element of truth within
them.
But
the Quran has been preserved and the Quran
will
confirm those authentic aspects
of the new testament.
The minority opinion is that the new testament
is sound in its text.
Right? However, the quote unquote corruption comes
in the post apostolic,
Christian exegetical tradition,
interpreting certain things, for example, the gospel of
John, through the lens of trinitarianism,
which Muslims do not believe is a teaching
of Christ.
For example,
I'll give you an example.
Jesus says in John 10:30, the father and
I are 1.
Right?
He
says,
The father and I are 1 in Greek.
Right?
This sort of standard
normative, if you will, Muslim position regarding that
is well, Jesus could never have said that
because that's a claim to deity and Jesus
was a prophet.
And it's inauthentic.
That's the most kind of popular way of
dealing with the text or a lazy way
of dealing with the text.
However,
there is an opinion, again, like I said,
that the Quran is actually saying that the
text in the New Testament is sound.
So there isn't a problem with the text.
There's a problem in the exegesis
of the New Testament.
So father Ira 1, Muslims will confirm that
text and say, well, what does Jesus actually
mean when he said that?
Right? Is he talking about, you know, an
ontological
oneness with God?
What is he talking about? So we read
the,
the context. Jesus is referring to the disciples,
and he says, you know, no one can
* them out of my hand, his disciples.
And the father who is greater than all
is watching over them. No one can *
them out of his hand. The father and
I are 1.
So Muslims will say here Muslim biblocists who
engage in this type of hermeneutic of the
new testament,
they will say that in other words, entertaining
the text is authentic.
They will say the meaning of this passage
is that Jesus and God are of one
will. They have they have they're one in
their intention.
That there's
a mystical union
between Jesus
Jesus and God. Not ontological
union.
Now,
and evidence of that is found in the
Quran.
For example, there's a verse in the Quran
that says in Arabic it sounds like this.
The translate literal literal translation is whoever obeys
the messenger of God is obeying God.
Right?
So this does not mean that the messenger
is ontologically the same person as God, that
they share a being. Right? They share divine
attributes.
It means that the messenger is a sanctified
agent of God, That he speaks with God's
authority.
Right?
So if we look at something like John
the prologue of the gospel of John, where
Jesus is called Theos.
Theos means God.
Right? But it's interesting because
a contemporary of John's gospel, Philo of Alexandria,
in his life of Moses,
and Philo was obviously a Jew, he refers
to Moses as Theos.
So what's going on here with with Greek
during this period?
Why are writers referring to men as Theos?
So what Philo means there is that Moses
is a divine agent with the lowercase v.
Right?
That
Moses is the revelator of God's will, that
he's in mystical union with God,
that he only does those things that are
pleasing to God, That when he speaks, it
is as if God is speaking because he
is the sanctified agent of God.
So when we read something like,
John 1:1, for example, it says,
in the beginning was the word.
And the word was with the God.
Is a definite oracle.
So my convention is every time the gospel
John uses
or any any gospel for that matter in
the new testament,
when there's a definite article that's a reference
to the father,
And the word was with the god father.
And then it says,
And a god,
a,
was the word.
No definite article. And that's exactly
how Philo uses that term in reference to
Moses,
that Jesus is
a divinity with a lowercase d. He is
a sanctified agent of God. He reveals God's
will.
At the end of the prologue, it says
something very beautiful. It says,
no one has at any time seen God.
Then it says, manongues taios.
Right? Mano what the one of a kind
divine agent.
The unique
sanctified
agent of God. Manongenes
chaos.
That who is in the bosom of the
father
the bosom of the father, meaning he's in
the heart of the father, meaning he's beloved
of the father.
That one exegesato
in the Greek. That one exegetes him.
Right? So no one has at any time
seen god, but there's this person called the
unique sanctified agent of God who's beloved of
the father and that one reveals the father,
you know, gives us what's in Arabic is
called
an intimate knowledge of God.
In Hebrew,
Like, Jesus is that.
To be honest with you, if, I wasn't
Muslim, I would probably revile Islam if that's
all I knew about if that's the only
type of information that was being presented to
me about the religion.
So I don't blame a lot of people
for having misconceptions and hostility. I would also
have hostility if I believed that what they
were saying was true.
So I think the key then is education.
You know? So wisdom with academic rigor. As
the Quran says.
And also with the exegete say what, you
know, beautiful exhortation with, like, good with a
good attitude, with with good comportment.
Right? And then
and then engage with them. And,
you know, jigar, it can be translated as,
you know, debate or discourse,
academic inquiry to be critical.
Right?
Some people, you know, have a misconception again
that, you know, Muslims are not allowed to
be critical about their own text. You can't
engage with textual criticism or higher higher Qur'anic
criticism. No. That's something that our scholars definitely
engaged in. In fact, there's in fact, they
would say that the Quran itself invites
upon itself this type of higher criticism.
The Quran says,
which means don't they penetrate the meanings of
the Quran? Tadab or Arabic means to really
analyze something extremely
closely.
Right?
So engage with people in ways that are
good. You can translate it good. You can
translate it better.
You can translate it beautiful. Engage with people
in ways that are beautiful.
So this is what I think we need
to do. I think we need to engage
with academic sophistication and civility.
And,
we need to,
the goal, I think, is not necessarily to
agree,
but to at least understand the position
of the the so called other.
So,
the other point I wanted to make is
from a historical standpoint,
you know, what is the Quran saying then
about Christianity?
So the Quran is,
like I said, is critical of Christian theology.
That's
kind of across the board amongst Muslim scholars,
unless one is a perennialist, which is sort
of a new thing. But most traditional authorities
would say that the criticism of Christianity in
the Quran
are really of Christian theology. And whether it's
criticized in the text of the new testament
or not, like I said, there's a difference
of opinion.
So the Quran, for example,
will explicitly
repudiate the trinity.
Right?
And exegetes will say, for example, that, you
know, the verse that says, don't say trinity.
God is 1.
That,
this was a historical development within the church.
That's not the teaching of Christ. Also, the
idea of a of Christ being a divine
incarnation.
Right? So Muslims believe, and similar to Jewish
theology,
that God is utterly transcendent
of space, time, and materiality.
This does not mean that God is an
imminent in some sense. Right? So the god
of Islam is not some removed
deity of Plato or Aristotle,
or he's basically an absentee landlord.
Right? He never collects the rent. Just do
whatever he wants and I'll never check up
on you. He doesn't reach out to humanity.
No. The god of the song is an
imminent deity. The Quran says,
It says, we are closer, oil plural, we
are closer to the human being than his
or her jugular vein.
Right?
So closer than an an internal organ. So
God's imminence is there. God's mercy and love
are imminent,
not God in physicality.
As Muslim scholars would say that,
that God incarnating into
flesh and blood as it were is inconceivable
because nothing is like God whatsoever.
So there's a difference of opinion there.
Also, I mentioned earlier that the God of
Islam is a merciful God. This is evident
again if you read the Quran. Every chapter
of the Quran begins
with the refrain
in the name of God.
The,
the indiscriminately
compassionate,
the intimately loving.
So, rahman is one of the most common
names of God in the Quran.
Rahman.
Right? And in Hebrew, rahaman.
And at least in
rabbinical literature.
And this word is related to racham. Racham
in Hebrew means the womb of a mother.
So one of the greatest names of God
in the Quran related to the word for
womb.
So exegetes have struggled with that connection, and
they've said that things like the purest type
of love on earth between human beings is
the love of a mother for her child.
Right? And,
the name of God, is on a form
in Arabic, a grammatical form that is
a type of superlative.
That God is infinitely more loving towards his
creation
than a mother is to her child. Right?
Muslims also believe that people are saved by
grace,
not by action. This is also a very,
very common misconception that's perpetuated
by non Muslims.
That Muslims believe that,
you know,
that if you're 51% good and 49%
evil, oh, you just made it into heaven.
I mean, 41 for 51% evil and 49%
evil. Oh, you know, you're gonna go to
*. You just missed it.
So so salvation is by grace. I mean,
there was a sort of,
rationalist
movement with an early Islam called the Muertazimah
movement, and they actually took the caliphate for
some time,
which is not considered, you know, normative or
orthodox by Suni,
orthodoxy,
that didn't believe in sort of a tit
for tat,
you know, literal sort of weighing of deeds
on the day of judgment and
God sort of becomes this huge cosmic calculator
in the sky.
But there are many many hadith of the
prophets,
which
demonstrate that Muslims believe that salvation is through
grace, that no one is worthy of paradise.
Right? It's only through grace.
For example,
there's a hadith of the prophet where he
says that,
that God
he he called the 2 men out of
hellfire.
Right?
The 2 men come out of the hellfire.
They come towards God as it were. Again,
God does not occupy physical space, but this
is just sort of a teaching moment that
he's using.
And God says to both of the men,
okay. Go back to *.
So one man reluctantly turns around
and starts walking back but keeps looking over
his shoulder at God.
The other man turns around immediately and starts
sprinting towards *.
So God says to the man who keeps
turning around and God knows better, obviously, because
God is all knowing. But the prophet is
trying to make a theological point here.
So God says to the man who's turning
around. Why do you keep looking at me?
And the man says, well, you called me
out of *, and I was hoping I
didn't have to ever go back.
And God says, you're right. Go to paradise.
And And then he stops the man sprinting.
Why are you sprinting towards *?
And the man said,
my whole life I disobeyed you.
But this time I really want to obey
you.
And God says, good. Go to paradise.
So ultimately,
the the decision is in God's hands. Even
the prophet said, you know, one time he
was picking up some firewood.
This is mentioned in a hadith. And he
said, you know, to the companions that were
there, he said, you know, no one has
entered into paradise by their deeds.
And they said, not even you?
They said, not even me, except that my
lord envelops me in his mercy.
Right? So this is the dominant position. This
is the quote unquote I can use these
terms in here because I'm not in the
academy. This is the orthodox
normative
position
of Islam. The vast majority of Muslims. This
is what they believe that salvation is by
grace.
So and then God is personal. So at
this point let's see. You know what we're
doing here.
I think I'll stop yapping
and take some questions. Yes, sir.
Does the Quran
address the death of Christ?
Good question. Yes. That was on
my mind here. Yeah. So the Quran,
according to the dominant opinion,
categorically rejects the crucifixion of Jesus.
So the Quran says,
so the children of Israel did not kill
him nor crucify him. So the dominant opinion
is that Christ wasn't crucified, that somehow God
saved him. Now the Quran does not go
into details as to what happened and neither
does the prophet.
So later, muslim scholars, they have these sort
of theories
as to what actually happened.
So the most dominant theory again, this is
not the definitive answer. There is no definitive
answer as to what actually happened.
But the most dominant theory is that
a disciple was transfigured to look like Christ,
and he was the one crucified.
Now
if you look at Christian history, we know
that there was a group in the 1st
century called the Basilidians,
who actually believed that Simon of Cyrene was
crucified
instead of Christ. It's obviously
a pre Islamic belief
prevalent in the Christian
community.
End of the 1st century, early 2nd century.
Who's Simon of Cyrene? Well, if you read
the 4 if you read the 3 gospels,
synoptic gospel, it says that when they were
gonna crucify Jesus,
for some reason,
they the Romans pulled a man out of
the crowd.
Right? And,
Christian tradition teaches that Jesus was just so
exhausted he couldn't carry the cross. Right? They
mentioned that in the New Testament. So it's
quite enigmatic. But for some reason, they pull
this man out of the crowd, the Simon
of Cyrene, and they compelled him to bear
the cross.
Right? There was a group of Christians in
the 1st century who said Simon was in
fact crucified because they saw the death of
the messiah as sort of an oxymoron.
How can the messiah die?
This was the main reason why
most Jewish elements did not believe in Christ.
Because according to their understanding at least of
the old testament, the messiah cannot be killed.
He won't dash his foot against the stone,
as it says in Psalm 91.
And, interestingly,
none of the passages in the old testament
that Christians will use as proof texts of
the death of the messiah. The most famous
of which, of course, Isaiah 9 Isaiah 53,
the suffering servant. The word messiah does not
appear in any of those texts.
So the interpretation is somewhat open.
But in Psalm 20 verse 6,
very interestingly,
David writes in Hebrew, he says,
David says, I know that God will save
his messiah.
He shall hear him,
from his holy heaven
and save him with the saving power of
his right hand.
Right? So this is, so I would say
that the Muslim belief about
the messiah is,
in line with sort of pre christian Jewish
expectations
of the Messiah.
So that's a dominant opinion that he wasn't
he wasn't crucified or killed.
There's
there's other
opinions that it might have been Barabbas. So
if you look at early
Alexandrian manuscripts in the gospel of Matthew,
we're actually given the first name of Braavas.
You know? So this whole incident of,
you know,
Pontius Pilate
releasing a Jewish prisoner, this seems to be
sort of unhistorical.
You know, you have 2 sort of you
know, on your own kippur, you have 2
lambs, you kill 1, you set 1 free.
It's sort of something going on like that.
But if we just entertain the story for
now,
apparently, the Romans had this custom where they
would release the Jewish prisoners and act of
goodwill before Passover.
So they bring out 2 prisoners. 1 is
named Barabbas, 1 is named Jesus of Nazareth.
Right?
So according to the the popular story in
Matthew,
you know, who shall I release to you?
And the crowd cheers, and they release
Barabbas, and they crucify Jesus. Right?
And what's interesting is the word Barabbas
is not his name. It's a title.
Barabbas in Aramaic is Barabbas.
Barabbas means the son of the father.
So Barabbas is not so ordinary brittan.
He is a messianic
claimant.
He was from Galilee the Galileans were known
for 2 things, fishing and zealotry,
or as the Romans would say, fishing and
terrorism.
Right? Because they would they would organize these
insurrections against the Roman occupiers.
Jesus is from Galilee.
You know, the Galileans also had this sort
of
accent that was
very,
noticeable.
You know, sort of like
if someone, you know, speaks, you know, if
someone is from the south or something and
they start speaking to all these guys. It
was very noticeable.
And the rest of the Jews, at least
the Jews in Judea, would sort of characterize
them as sort of peasants. You know, they're
just they don't know anything and they're all
violent and, you know,
that's why it says in the gospel of
Matthew that Peter spoke in Judea
and Jerusalem
from his accent. They said, are you are
you Galilean?
So that's why they said, no. You're you're
his disciple then. Just the way he spoke.
But, anyway,
so Barabbas is an messianic claimant. Now early
as I said, early manuscripts of Matthew actually
give us Barabbas's first name.
Does anyone know what his first name was?
It was also Jesus.
So why did later scribes remove
Barabbas' first name
in the gospel of Matthew? Because there might
have been some confusion, maybe. Who was actually
crucified? As you can imagine, what is Pilate
actually saying now? Who shall I release to
you? Yeshua
Bar Abba,
Jesus the son of the father,
or Yeshua
Hamashiach,
Jesus who is called Christ.
It's the same name and the same title.
You know, release Jesus and kill Jesus. What?
So
many scholars believe that
the first name of Ramesses was removed for
preferential reasons, but it could be that there
was confusion amongst the people in Jerusalem at
the time as who was actually crucified.
However, there is a minority opinion
that Jesus was in fact killed amongst Muslim
scholars. It's a minority opinion.
There's a good book on this by Todd
Lawson.
He's a he's a good scholar. Todd Lawson
saw a crucifixion in the Quran.
And his contention is
the first exeget ever to say
that Jesus was replaced
on the cross, which is called literal docetism,
by the way. The first exigent ever to
say that was a Christian exigent, not a
Muslim exigent.
It was a man named John Demosene,
who was an 8th century Christian scholar who
lived in Damascus.
He was the first one to write a
systematic reputation of Islam.
So his interpretation of that text is that
someone was replaced
and then it seems like Muslim scholars will
follow suit after him.
There is a minority opinion that
the meaning of the verse, they did not
kill him nor crucify him, but was made
to appear so unto them, is that Jesus
might have been put on a cross, but
he did die from his injuries, that God
seized his soul
while he was on the cross and then
returned it to him possibly 3 days later.
This might explain why Pilate and the gospel
of Mark was so surprised
that Christ had died already.
You know, in gospel it's only mentioned by
Mark. They come back to Pilate and say,
he's dead. And he says, already?
And he marveled, it says. Because he was
a he he made he was his his
whole business was crucifying Jews.
Right? And,
Josephus says that at one point, that he
ran out of lumber in Jerusalem because they're
crucifying
so many Jews. So he knew what it
took to crucify someone happened, what it took
to kill them, yet he marveled.
And this might explain, father, into your hands
and commend my spirit.
It seems like he's sort of willingly giving
up the ghost or knows it's gonna be
taken from him and then returned to him.
So there isn't any like that because there's
other places in the Quran,
where Jesus
where God says to Jesus, for example, and
the you can very easily translate that as,
oh, Jesus. I'm going to take your soul
from you.
You don't have to you don't have to
twist
the text. I mean, that's that's a primary
definition of that active participle.
You know, you don't have to perform what
I call,
what do I call it?
Hermeneutical
wire boarding.
If you if you choke the text enough,
it'll say whatever you want.
Right? So I would say there is a
genuine difference of opinion as to what the
Quran is saying about the crucifixion.
The dominant opinion seems to be is not
seems to be. The dominant opinion is that
Christ was not crucified. What happened? Nobody knows.
There's a minority opinion that he might have
been killed, but his soul was returned to
him
by God. And his resurrection is proof that
he indeed was the messiah.
Right? And then he commissioned his disciples to
go and spread the gospel.
Both positions are correct according to the Koran.
In my opinion, I mean, there I think
there would be some Muslims that would disagree
with me on that.
Yes? I'm afraid she's gonna say we're out
of time. Oh, okay. Good. I'm sorry.
I I tend to go on.
Long and mid friends. This is great. I
noticed you called the god
oh, sorry. You called the god of Islam
he
Yeah.
Want an explanation?
Well, Muslims believe that God has a white
chromosome. No. I'm just joking.
I'm just kidding.
So in Arabic as well as Hebrew, there's
something I have to understand about the grammar.
So every noun in Arabic and in Hebrew
has a gender assigned to it.
Every noun.
Sometimes it's obvious what's known as natural gender.
And, again, this is also a point of
contention contention nowadays.
But, traditionally,
a boy was masculine.
So
is the word for boy or Hebrew.
So the,
the ismul isharah what was that? The demonstrative
pronoun
would be masculine.
Right? So even the pronoun demonstrative pronouns in
Arabic and in Hebrew are genderified.
So I would say This
is masculine a boy.
Right? Or in Hebrew, I say
This is a boy. Natural gender. But sometimes
there is no natural gender.
Right? For example, the moon.
No natural gender.
So Arabs in the distant past and Jews
in the distant past, they would just assign
a gender.
We don't really know why they would assign
male or female, but they would just assign
gender. So they decided the moon is masculine
and the sun is feminine in Arabic.
Right?
So
God does not have a gender.
The Quran says.
There's nothing like god whatsoever.
There's nothing like god.
So nothing in creation resembles God. So if
we're male and female, if we're black and
white, if we're made of matter, if I'm
standing on something, if I'm breathing, none of
these things apply to God. God is completely
dissimilar to his creation, essentially.
But the word Allah
is grammatically
masculine.
It's grouped. So it has a lexical gender.
So because it has a lexical gender of
masculinity
assigned to it, in the Quran, it says,
hua. He is.
He is. Right? It doesn't mean God is
male.
And anyone who says God is male, Muslim
scholars would say
that's anathema. He's,
that position is not acceptable.
They would consider that blasphemy to say God
is male
or female.
But God uses a masculine pronoun
because the word Allah has grammatical gender.
The grammatical gender of the name of God
is masculine. It does not mean that God
has a natural gender.
Yes. How about the image remain in the
image of God? Is that Yeah. So that's
interesting,
because that is in Genesis 2, and there's
also a hadith of the prophet. So it's
not in the Quran, but there's a hadith
of the prophet
where it says
Basically, God created Adam.
And here Adam does not mean
the person Adam. It's generic. The human being.
Right? God created a human being in his
image.
Right? So Muslim scholars and this, you know,
Maimonides
also deals with this first. Maimonides does not
believe in divine incarnation.
He is anti anthropomorphism.
Maimonides says the meaning of this as well
as
They both
say that the meaning of this is what
is this image of God? The image of
God is the ability to reason.
That's
God's image. God doesn't have a physical image.
So God created a human being with the
ability to reason.
Just as God has infinite knowledge, he's qualitatively
omniscient.
Human beings also have that ability. This is
our differentia
to use Aristotelian
nomenclature.
What what makes the human being different from
the animals?
It isn't my physical strength.
You know, put me in a room with
a a line. I'm done. Right?
It's not our, you know, my eyesight.
An eagle can spot fish the water from
2 miles up in the air. So what
makes us different? Why can we build
skyscrapers and do trigonometry?
It's because of our intellect.
So
that's the so called image of God according
to Maimonides
and according to,
Imam al Hazabi who's,
sort of the Maimonides or Aquinas of Islam
because God doesn't have a physical image. It's
the ability to reason.
Yeah.
Of course, there have been
anthropomorphists
in Islamic history that believe God has limbs
and he sits on a physical throne and
things like that.
But it's considered a deviant position, at least
according to the normative Sunni and Shia understandings
of
theology. Yes.
Doctor Lee? Oh, yes. Thank you.
I I believe I heard you say that,
Muhammad, peace be upon him, is considered the
final messenger. Yeah. Can you expand upon that,
please?
Yeah. So
there's a distinction that Muslim scholars make between
a prophet and a messenger.
So a prophet in Arabic is or
in Hebrew. A messenger is called the Rasul.
So the difference, on a very basic level,
is that a prophet,
is someone who,
is guided by god
to reaffirm
the previous,
that Aaron is a prophet.
Right? But Moses is a messenger. So Moses
is receiving
a a a revelation.
Right? Receiving the words of God.
The law of God.
And Aaron supports him.
Right? So
so if
if looking at it through that type of
way, then every messenger is a prophet, but
not every prophet is a messenger. So the
prophet Muhammad is the final messenger, which makes
him the final prophet of God. The final
one who's going to bring
a direct revelation from God.
Right? And if you look at history, I
would say that really the the last major
religion
was Islam. I mean, there have been other
things
since then. One can argue for Mormonism or
Scientology.
But that
was the last major that made such an
incredible
impact on the world. That does not mean
that there are not prophetic
figures that come after him. I would say,
for example, that Martin Luther King was a
prophetic figure, but I wouldn't call him a
prophet.
Right? So Muslims have a very technical
definition of a prophet.
They have to sort of fall between
parameters of time. They have to have certain
characteristics.
However, the Quran says that every nation received
a profit.
So the most,
some,
25 or so prophets are named in the
Quran,
but that's not, by any means, an exhaustive
list.
So, you know,
the jury is out about Confucius,
about Buddha,
you know, Krishna. These could have been prophets.
They fall within
Aristotle or Plato. Probably not Plato. No. Not
Plato. Definitely. Kind of strange
kind of.
The ancient Greeks don't.
So,
but the prophet said that there's no prophet
between Jesus and me.
So, again, the disciples
are prophetic
characters,
and the Quran phrases them.
Right? But the definition of a Nabi, a
prophet,
and Judaism and in Islam is very technical,
very specific.
So the dominant orthodox opinion on the Jews
is that prophecies close with Malachi.
Right? So
the prophet Mohammed is is not a prophet
according to the dominant opinion in Judaism,
because
according to that, he doesn't sort of fit
the criteria of what they believe to be
a prophet. One of those criteria is a
prophet must
completely confirm the Torah.
Right?
So, also, this is it seems to be
one of the reasons why they deny Christ
prophecy,
is that Jesus, even according to the new
testament,
seems to sort of
make amendments
and addendums
to the Torah at times. Right? And for
them, that's blasphemy.
Right? So that Jesus, you know, he heals
a man on the Sabbath.
And they say, you you can't do that.
That's that's impermissible. And he says,
well, you know, if one of your animals
fell into a hole, you pull it out.
It's okay to do good things on the
Sabbath.
He's
he's sort of,
he's revising things. He's ameliorating
the law. He's making it easier, and that's
what the Quran says he's doing that Christ
is doing.
So the best opinion you'll get about Jesus
from a Jewish perspective is that he was
a great rabbi.
But he's certainly not a prophet. He's not
the messiah
according to them.
The the most congenial opinion I get about
Mohammed from a Jewish perspective
is that he was a,
which means, like, a redeemer or someone who
who was guided by God, but he's not
a prophet. He sort of prepared the world
for monotheism.
He was an Arab, a prophet maybe, but
he's not a universal prophet.
Maimonides actually writes, you know, what is the
what is the purpose of Christianity in Islam?
He says it's to prepare the world for
the coming of the Messiah. They're raising awareness
about the Messiah.
But Jews do not believe that Jesus is
the Messiah.
We in this room
have decided that we're gonna become
followers of Mohammed.
What teachings in the Quran
are we gonna have to
find the biggest barrier
to
acceptance in the in the faith? What teachings?
I don't know. Maybe dietary restrictions.
If you like ham and eggs, I mean,
I mean, you have to pray 5 times
a day. It doesn't it doesn't if, you
know, there are, 1 out of 5 human
beings on earth is Muslim, and I seriously
doubt I want to pray 5 times a
day. So it doesn't invalidate one's Islam. Right?
You can't say, oh, you're a non Muslim
because you don't pray 5 times a day.
But if one wants to be a devout
follower, then they fast during Ramadan. That seems
to be
I mean, in the first couple days, you
got, like, a, like,
a massive migraine.
You kinda just want it. But but then
after a couple weeks, you kinda get used
to it.
So it's a 30 day fast.
And, of course, if people are safe or
pregnant mothers or children, they're exempt from fasting.
People that have illnesses,
you know.
Frank, but not today. The dietary restrictions. I
don't see what else could be
hampering.
Yes.
Perhaps one of the things we share
is,
poor treatment of women,
which is prevalent in the New Testament in
my opinion.
But
the Islam does not have a good
feeling to me on that score, and I'd
appreciate it if you talk about that.
Yeah. And, you know, I don't have a
good feeling about talking about women issues when
I'm not a woman, to be honest with
you.
So I always encourage if there's is there
a Muslim sister in the house?
No?
So I always encourage women to speak for
themselves.
But I would say that,
certainly,
there are Muslim countries,
Muslim majority countries,
where women are
treated as sort of
well, less than less than men. They're considered
they don't have all the rights of men.
So
this comes down to a fundamental understanding of
of sacred law of Sharia.
Right? What is Sharia? What is
Sharia? Right? One of those words that people
are scared of.
Sharia. Jihad. Right? Oh, no. So Sharia
a former Rick *.
For Rick *, he gave an he gave
a impassioned lecture on on the dangers of
Sharia law and how it debases women and
things like that.
Long, you know, hour and a half lecture.
And very good actually,
I guess.
But then after the lecture,
a Muslim college student approached him and said,
understand,
Do you know the 5 maqasid of sharia?
Do you know the 5 aims of the
sharia? Which is like sharia 101.
And he said,
So that's like the equivalent of me giving
this sort of critical deconstruction of Aquinas' summa
theologica
From a breaking down the Latin. Over here,
he's wrong because of that. But here, he's
out of his mind. And then a Christian
stands up and says, what are the 4
gospels? And I say, John, Paul, George, and
Ringo.
So Sharia is, you know, it's it's it's
interpreted
in vastly different ways. So some Muslims interpret
sharia,
in a way that oppresses women.
Saudi Arabia, which is our ally, by the
way,
and a contributor to the Clinton Foundation. Anyway,
they they interpret
they interpret the Sharia as being that women
can't drive cars.
That's the only country that does that. Maybe
except for Afghanistan.
If you go to Iran,
half the,
you know, one of those other words. Iran.
The axis of evil. Right? If you go
to Iran, half of the physicians in the
hospitals are women, and 60% of college students
are women.
If you ask the authorities in Iran, why
is this so? They'll say, look, Sharia.
The prophet
said,
The,
the acquisition of knowledge is an obligation upon
every male and female Muslim.
That's what they'll say. You go across the
border to Afghanistan,
you'll go you'll see villages where women never
leave their homes, ever.
They're in their house.
And if you ask the authorities, why do
you do this to women? They'll say, this
is sharia.
So you have you have,
you know, these
completely
polarized understandings
of sacred law.
You know?
So,
I would say that,
you know, speak speak to Muslim women.
Ask Muslim women how how they feel about
it. If they feel like they're oppressed. And
Muslim women wear hijab,
you know, in America,
oftentimes,
are opposed by their family members
because the sort of assumption is who's forcing
you to wear that? Do you have some
father or brother that's forcing you?
Actually, they say, no. Actually, my my father
is opposed to it. This is what I
chose to do.
Right?
So,
I would say that
that it depends on how one interprets the
sharia. Certainly,
culture comes into play a lot in the
Muslim majority world. Like, honor killings has nothing
to do with Islam.
There's nothing anyone can bring. No proof. No
hadith. No Quranic verse that says, you know,
you that killing someone, an innocent person is
honorable.
That's purely it's cultural,
and it's and it's done in in Middle
Eastern cultures, amongst Christians, amongst Hindus, and amongst
Muslims. It's totally cultural. Female genital mutilation is
not according to Sharia.
That is a cultural practice. It has nothing
to do with Islam.
Right? Alright. So we have we have time
for 2 more questions. How do you spell
sharia?
S h a r
I k
h.
Oh.
Yeah. I mean, there are things in Jewish
law. Jewish law is called halakat.
You know? And if you get if you
if you study Jewish law, you'll read about
stonings and amputations.
But there are Jews in America that follow
Halakhla.
You know? So how do they interpret the
law, their law, and how do the constitution?
Well, there's a principle in Jewish law that
says
that if you're living in a non Jewish
country,
you have to follow the laws of those
country,
of that country. And by doing so, you're
actually following Jewish law.
And it's interesting because people, they bring that
argument up about Muslims that the Sharia and
constitution,
they just they're not compatible.
Right? But that same principle isn't
Islamic sacred law. Now if you're living in
a non Muslim majority country
and there's something lawful in Sharia
but unlawful in that non Muslim majority country,
then you must abandon the Sharia and stick
to that the law of the land. And
by doing so, you're actually following the Sharia.
The same as what they're saying when they're
interpreting
as they're interpreting the New Testament, that interpretations
are incorrect
Yeah. That's why I think people need to,
they need to study
Muslim tradition.
You know, a rejection of tradition becomes
violent. You know, we've seen this I mean,
I don't mean any
disrespect, but the problems of information led to
massive bloodshed all across Europe because of rejection
of tradition.
You know? So I think there's an educational
crisis amongst Muslims,
all around the world.
People don't know what the traditional positions are
on things.
So what they do is they try to
interpret the text by themselves and have requisite
knowledge.
And it's absolutely
Islam 101 that if someone is going to
give
some sort of
teaching on anything on the Quran, they have
to have a teaching license.
Just like if, you know, if someone wants
to perform open heart surgery on someone, you
have to have credentials.
You know? So it's not enough to say,
you know what? Like, when Jesus was in
Jerusalem, the rabbi surround him and say, under
whose authority are you doing these things? They
wanna know the name of his rabbi.
Who is your rabbi? And then Jesus in
the gospels has this really interesting way of
getting out of slippery situations.
So he says, who's John the Baptist? Is
he a prophet or not? And they go,
we don't know. And he says, I'm not
gonna tell you under whose authority I do
these things. It's like when they bring him
to denarius and say, you know, should we
pay this to Caesar?
Render unto Caesar. So the brilliant answer, what
he has, what he says there. So this
idea of what's called
or
transmissional
knowledge.
Right? It's very important in Islam
that I have a teacher
who gave me a teaching license. Who had
a teacher. Who gave him a teaching license.
That goes all the way back to the
prophet.
So this ensures
sort of the weeding out
of these sort of freelance
or so called pseudo scholars
who stand on the pulpit and just
interpret the Quran incorrectly.
You know? So we have to be very
particular about
our religious knowledge and who we take it
from. Letters of you know? So this is
the one of the major problems with Paul,
according to the new testament. Paul says in
one of his letters, you know, he says,
I don't need letters of recommendation.
I have my apocalypses of Christ.
Right? So according to the exegesis,
Christian exegesis,
James,
who is the
the head of the Jerusalem episcopate,
he would send apostles of Jesus in Paul's
wake to correct Paul's teachings
with letters from James.
Like, I am I have a teaching license.
Paul doesn't so Paul, he has this uncanny
way of turning a weakness into a strength.
So he says, I don't need a teaching
license. I had my vision of Christ.
Right?
And he might have had that, but that
doesn't give one authority to teach. So someone
comes up to me, for example, and says,
I want to talk, like, in a mosque
and says, I want to give the Friday
sermon today. So I asked him, what are
your credentials? And he says, well, I had
a dream last night.
And, you know, I I was speaking with
a prophet in my dream. That might be
true, but you you can't give the sermon.
You need to go against credentials.
Or someone comes up to me and says,
if I need open heart surgery, and they
say, I'm a I'm a heart surgeon. Oh,
where did you do your residency?
Last night.
The finer points of vascular surgery were revealed
to me.
I would say, maybe that's true, but, no,
you're not gonna operate.
So transmission of knowledge is very, very important,
and I think that's something that Muslims today,
and I think people in general because the
whole sort of way of the world now
is sort of reinvent the wheel, think for
yourself.
Certainly, you can think for yourself, but as
one of my teachers said, you should have
your left hand on tradition, and you should
write with your right hand. You know the
tradition.
You you know what it is. You know
how to interpret it. You don't transgress
against it because then you're you're left with
people that just have no requisite knowledge. They're
saying whatever they want.
Right? So
So we have time for one more question.
Yeah.
The licensure that you're that you're speaking of,
we we might call apostolic succession.
Yeah.
Not to harp on on something, but something
that hits us all the time
in the news reports.
Yeah. In the real news reports.
Oftentimes,
you mentioned Saudi Arabia,
the Wahhabism.
Yeah. And could you could you address a
little bit of that? Because I think that's
what we oftentimes
get
deluged with this. Yeah. You know? And we're
difficult.
Yeah.
Yeah. Well, havism is,
it's a kind of puritanical, a very exclusive
interpretation
that really wasn't around,
200 years ago.
Relatively new sect.
The reason why Wahhabism is oftentimes presented as
being the dominant position or the normative position,
is because Mecca and Medina are in Saudi
Arabia.
Right? And also,
there are, you know, Wahhabi,
full time propagandists,
You know, travel the world,
you know, visit mosques
and try to indoctrinate
different Muslim mosques and
different Muslim communities with their brand of Islam.
And they also, obviously,
Saudi Arabia is very rich. They get money
from oil and from pilgrimage, you know, 1,000,000,000
of dollars,
every year. So I would say that it's
very problematic
interpretation
of things.
And that,
you know, it's not I don't consider
within these sort of parameters of traditional Islam.
Traditional Islam is Sunni Islam is four schools
of thought. They're called the Hanafi, the Madiki,
the Shafi'i, and the Hanbari.
And for, you know, 1200 years,
every Sunni Muslim belonged to one of these
schools of thought. It's like a university.
And then suddenly now we have this
this other school that rejects
many of of the positions of those traditional
schools and sort of again reinvests the wheel
and has very strange positions on things
that Muslims find very disturbing,
to be honest with you.
So,
you know and of course, you have,
you know, I would again, I'm not much
of a well, maybe I am a little
bit of a conspiracy theorist,
but I I think I think one of
the previous speakers said this before me that,
you know, there's media bias and an agenda.
I think that's obvious.
And,
so,
you know,
justifying,
you know, invasion of Muslim countries is difficult
to get the the public behind you to
do that.
So if you sort of aggrandize
this
this threat of Wahhabi Islam I mean, it's
it's one country,
and it's by no means the dominant. It's
it's very small
ideology compared to global Islam.
But if you sort of aggrandize that and
say, well, this is, you know, everywhere.
Most Muslims believe in this type of ideology,
then it sort of justifies, you know, action.
Perpetual action in the Middle
East, but not in Saudi Arabia apparently
because, you know, there's Trump hotels and
They can't be all.
Alright. So,
join me again in a round of applause.
Thank you for being a great audience.
I apologize if I offended anyone.
Thank you very much, and God bless.