Ali Ataie – Moses, Jesus & Muhammad Three Brothers in Faith
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
So I wanna begin by talking about
who is Allah?
Who is God?
So this is obviously
a major topic.
But once in a while, you know, we
turn on the television and we hear somebody
say something like, you know, Muslims, they worship
Allah, and Allah is the moon god.
Right? Very very common type
of polemic.
There's a panel there and they say, well,
what do you mean by that? They say,
it's very simple.
Muslims, they use a lunar calendar.
Right? Of course, Jews use a lunar calendar,
I mean they practice intercalation, they have a
leap month every 3 or 4 years, but
it's still a lunar calendar
for this type of thing.
So instead of, you know, kind of listening
to these caricatures,
Muslim theologians actually have a working definition of
Allah.
Obviously, there's no way to define Allah. There's
no way to define god. God is infinite,
and language and articulation is finite.
So it's impossible to be adequate in our,
in our, description or definition of god. But
for the sake of saying something, I'm gonna
have to say something. Right? So they say
that that Allah is
a proper name denoting the essence.
The one who has
necessary
existence,
the necessary existent.
The one who is deserving of every type
of perfection.
And the one who is free or transcendent
of every type of deficiency
or weakness.
Right? So this is
who Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is and we
say
meaning transcendent
and exalted is he. You know, it's really
interesting because there's been a paradigm shift.
In the 1st 3 centuries of the Christian
era,
there was a lot of propaganda
spread about, the Jews. There was a Christian
Bishop named Marcion, a Christian scholar
who said things like, you know, the Jews
they worship a different god, they worship a
lesser god, the god of the old testament
is a different god, he called him the
demiurge or.
And Marcionism,
it was very popular, I mean, in Rome
it was very popular. It was so popular
that Tertullian of Carthage, who was a 2nd
century Christian apologist, he actually wrote a 5
volume
refutation of Marcionism.
Right? So that type of paradigm has now
shifted where we see elements within Judeo Christianity
now saying the same things about
the God of Islam,
about Allah
That Muslims, they worship a different God. That
Muslims have nothing to do with Judeo Christian
morals and ethics. Their theology is completely out
of whack, this type of thing. So we
have to recognize that.
So Allah
Allah
is the god of Abraham,
Moses,
and Jesus.
In Hebrew, it's pronounced,
So there's a verse in Deuteronomy
3217.
So this is the 5th book of the
Torah. It's called the
in Hebrew,
in which it says,
that describing pagans
that they,
sacrificed to shaydim shayateen,
to demons,
and not to Allah or elo.
In Aramaic, it's pronounced Allah.
This is according to the BDB, the Brown
Driver Briggs,
Hebrew English Lexicon which is pretty much the
standard,
at the graduate school level. What's interesting is,
there's a translation
of the new testament
into Syriac.
Now, Syriac or also known as late Aramaic
was the language of the prophet Jesus Christ
peace be upon him, whom we call, And
so the new testament originals are in Greek,
but in the 4th century, Christian scholars translated
the Greek manuscripts back into the language of
Jesus, back into the vernacular
of Jesus. It's called the
and this replaced the Tatians,
the
And Matthew 59,
Jesus is reported to have said in his
own language
blessed are those who make peace
for they shall be called the children
of Allah.
And children of god is actually a very
common expression in 1st century Palestine.
It does not denote anything literal. Right? This
is something that's
spiritual, like god is our father in the
sense that he loves us, he takes care
of us. Jesus in the lord's prayer for
example, which is from the q source document,
Matthew and Luke recorded, he says,
Our father who art in heaven, hallowed be
thy name. All of us. Right? So this
type of thing.
So he uses the word Allah for God
according to this 4th century
Aramaic
manuscript.
Jesus is recorded in the Quran as saying,
It is Allah who is my lord and
your lord. Worship him, this is the straight
path.
You know, it's interesting
when we compare the first miracle of Jesus
in the Quran and in the New Testament.
The first miracle of Jesus recorded in the
New Testament is in John chapter 2, so
obviously, John was the last of the canonical
gospels to be written according to the consensus
of scholars, so New Testament scholars.
But chronologically,
right at the outset
of Jesus' ministry when he was 30 years
old, he performs his first miracle. John chapter
2 records it. He's in, a place called
Cana,
it's a wedding and they're out of wine.
So his mother comes to him, Mary, and
says, we're out of wine. And Jesus responds
by saying,
What is it to me or you, woman?
Right? Which is a common expression in
Hebrew, What does it have to do with
me and you? Right?
So then eventually,
he turns these waterpots into wine
and people drink the wine. That's his first
miracle in
the New Testament tradition.
The first miracle of Jesus Christ, peace be
upon him, as recorded in the Quran,
is when Mary brings
the infant Christ into the site of her
family.
And Muslims
believe in the virgin birth by the way.
And at this point, Mary is maybe 11
or 12 or 13 years old. According to
church tradition, according to documents that are outside
the Christian canon like the proto gospel of
James, Mary was 12 years old when she
was married to Joseph the carpenter. According to
Greek Orthodox tradition, Mary was 11 years old,
and Joseph was in his nineties.
So he actually had it's yeah. It's very
strange for us today,
but that was the culture back then. We
have to have sort of a historical consciousness.
So he had he had grandchildren that were
actually older than his wife.
So she brings the infant Jesus within the
side of her family and they begin insinuating
things about her. So you can imagine,
I mean, I don't care how
saintly you think your sister is, there's nothing
she can say,
right, that's going to exonerate her. I heard
some voices and
said, no. No. No. No. Something happened. Right?
You did something. Right? So the Quran says
that she pointed to the baby.
They say, how can we speak to one
who is an infant,
a child in the cradle?
And by a special miracle,
Jesus spoke.
His words are recorded in the Quran.
He says, indeed, I am a servant of
God. He has given me the book and
has appointed me as a prophet and has
made me blessed wheresoever
I am. And has adjoined on me prayer
and charity
as long as I live. This story is
actually told in a chapter in the Quran
called
chapter Mary. There's a chapter in the Quran
named after the mother of Jesus Christ,
peace be upon
both of them. Right? Chapter 19.
And what does the Quran say about Mary?
God says in the 3rd chapter of the
Quran, verse number 42,
That, oh, Mary,
god has chosen thee and purified thee, chosen
thee above the women of all nations.
Above all nations, Mary was chosen.
In Arabic orthography,
which is like spelling conventions,
whenever a patronymic is written or a matronymic.
If the first name is not mentioned, the
guttural alif
on the
the phrase son of
is retained. For example, if I write the
name, Ibnu Abbas
in Arabic, I'd write alif Banun.
Right? Three letters. But if I mentioned his
first name, Abdulah
bin Abbas, the alif will drop. The guttural
alif will drop. This is true in every
single case
except when the name of Jesus is mentioned.
So Jesus in the Quran is called,
Jesus, the son of Mary.
And the exegete say this is for several
reasons,
but one of the major reasons is to
refute the idea
that Jesus Christ, peace be peace be upon
him, is the literal or begotten son of
God.
The other reason
is to
emphasize
as it were
the absolute noun Mary. That Jesus comma who
is the son of Mary.
Right? So,
Mary is not just great by virtue of
her son, but Jesus is also great by
virtue of his mother.
That Mary has an exalted status
in the Islamic tradition.
In fact, there's a story in the Quran,
the story of Zechariah
who was a he was a priest in
the temple, and he was the caretaker of
Mary according to the Quran,
and
the Quran says that every time he would
walk into her prayer chamber,
he would notice there was food next to
her and food that he did not give
her. Right? So you'll read things like this
as well in, the proto gospel of James
again which is outside the Christian canon. It's
not in the new testament, but we have
to remember that the canon at least in
the Catholic tradition
was not totally closed until the council of
Trent which is like in 15th century. So
this was written in the 2nd century. It's
mentioned in the gospel of James, proto gospel.
So back to the Quran, so he sees
this food next to her and an exeget
named
he says that it was fruit out of
season.
So he says,
Oh Mary,
where did you get this from?
This is from God.
God gives to those who ask without measure.
And Zechariah alaihis salam, Zechariah
was, like I said, a priest. He's considered
to be a prophet according to our tradition,
and he was a very old man at
the time. So he has a wisdom of
age, he has the title of a and
he has the office of prophecy.
And he was very old and after a
time, you know, he wanted a son and
after a time he kind of forsook his
supplication. He's too old now. God didn't give
him a son.
But what does the Quran narrative tell us
at this point? That
as soon as he heard those words from
Mary, who again is a 12 year old
girl, 13 years old at this time, maybe
younger,
Immediately,
Zechariah
turns in supplication
one more time to God with this renewed
sense of certitude
that he learned from a 12 year old
girl. This is a priest and prophet, an
old man.
Right? So he prays to god, give me
a good son or good progeny, he says.
Right?
Verily
you
are
the
one
who
hears
supplications.
While he was yet standing in the prayer
chamber,
the angels called out to him.
God gives the glad tidings
of John the Baptist,
Yahya alaihis salaam.
So this demonstrates the exalted status of Mary
in our tradition. Now going back to the
name Allah. So the the name Allah is
very unique.
There is no natural gender. So Arabic names
also in Hebrew and in Greek, although in
Greek there's the neuter, we don't have that
Arabic and Hebrew,
but
nouns in Hebrew and in Arabic are are
genderified.
Each have a gender assigned to them.
Sometimes, it's based on its natural gender.
Right? Like the word for boy in Arabic
is walad and walad is going to be
masculine because a boy is masculine.
But the word for girl, bint,
a girl is feminine so it's natural gender,
the word is feminine. But the word for
the sun, for example,
What is the gender of?
Does anyone know?
It's feminine.
There's nothing in the word to tell you.
There's no outward sign.
Right? Nothing like that. There's no outward sign
to tell you that this word for sun
is feminine. You just have to know it.
There's
no natural gender, the sun is not male
or female,
but lexically
it's female. So when we say the name
Allah and we say, hoo Allah, he is
God, we're talking about
his
lexical gender. God is not a male nor
a female,
okay, in our tradition.
Right? So
And this name, it cannot be made diminutive,
it cannot be made plural or dual. As
soon as you say the name, your tongue
will prostrate. You say, Allah,
Allah, your tongue prostrates. I see some people
practicing right now. Even your tongue will prostrate.
It's made up of 4 Arabic letters. When
you take off the first letter, the alif,
it becomes
for God.
When you take off the next letter, the
lamb, it becomes
for
him. When you take off the next letter,
the lamb, it becomes
him.
Right? It's a very interesting,
word. So in Hebrew, the the form
is usually pluralized
Like in the Hebrew bible, you read
or Elohim.
Elohim, the is a plural.
It's a plural of respect.
Right? Like it says in Genesis 11,
In
the beginning,
literally, gods
created the heavens.
Right? So this does not denote a plurality
of some sort in the godhead or in
the essence of god. That's not how Semitic
peoples understand it. This is called a plural
of majesty, a royal plural. Like the queen
of England will say, we declare.
Right? But the queen is only 1 person.
However, in the Quran, the word Allah cannot
be made plural. It's very unique. But there
are pronouns
in the Quran referring to Allah that are
plural.
We are closer to man in the generic
sense
than his, again in the generic sense, jugular
vein. We are very close to the human
being.
Right? We, but god is an absolute unity
according to our tradition, so this is called
the the royal plural.
And by the way, anytime you see the,
the word
in a in a name, that's the name
of god. It's a theophoric name. Like the
name of
the prophet Ishmael is pronounced Ishmael
in Hebrew. We say Ishmael which is an
Arabic sized way of saying it, but its
origin is Hebrew,
Right? And unfortunately, today we live in an
age where if you go to the bookstore,
you'll find a lot of polemical literature
that's degrading and denigrating and insulting
Arabs and the Ishmaelites
and people that are claiming to have PhDs
are saying,
Ishmael means
this in Hebrew and it's something terrible.
No. I don't maybe they're just all these
people just profligates, right, just trying to get
money and things like that.
But if they've done the research,
comes from which means to hear.
Right? Like in Hebrew in in Arabic. So,
the
here is a prefix of the present tense.
Yeshma, he hears. Who *? Who hears?
Yeshma'el.
God hears.
God will hear. This is a theophoric name.
It's very exalted. So Muslims will look at
that and say that god
hears and will will continue to hear
the prayers of Ishmael and his progeny. And
of course, the prophet Muhammad
peace and blessings of God be upon him,
is from the progeny of Ishmael.
He is a direct descendant just as Jesus
is a descendant of Isaac,
peace be upon both of them. The prophet
Muhammad, peace be upon him, is a descendant
of, Ishmael. Or like the name Elijah. Right?
Eliyahu.
My god is Yeah. My god is Adonai,
the Lord.
Right? Yeah is a shortened form of the
tetragrammaton in the old testament,
which is articulated by some Christians but there
are Jews here so I'm not going to
attempt to articulate it out of respect for
the Jews that are here, but they read
Adonai instead of articulating
the Right? That's how I'll read it. So,
Eliyahu, my god is Adonai.
Or like Gabriel.
Right? Gabriel,
the name of god.
Michael.
Right? Elroy.
L Ron Hubbard. No. I'm just joking.
I I apologize if there's any Scientologists.
I couldn't help myself.
Elmo.
So
now
hold on to your hats and to your
hijabs and your hairpieces when I say this
next part is that Muslims believe that Moses,
Jesus, and Mohammed, peace be upon all of
them, were all Muslims.
What do I mean by that? It's a
misnomer to say that Mohammed, peace be upon
him, founded
Islam.
We believe that he perfected the religion
of Islam. So the word Muslim
comes from
or
meaning peace. It's an active participle on the
4th form, a causative form. The one who
causes there to be peace.
So the exact cognate in Hebrew
is on a verbal stem called hifiel. It's
that's how you say Muslim in Hebrew. So
if we go back to,
Matthew 59,
right, where Jesus says, blessed are the peacemakers.
Is not a very good translation
because in the original Greek, it's one word.
It's a participle.
Right? Literally, a maker of peace. But when
they translated it into Syriac, they said literally
a maker of peace. It's more of a
phrase.
But if we translate this, and I've seen
a translation into Hebrew,
he says,
blessed are
the which is the accusative
plural. So
Muslims believe that Jesus actually uses
this term.
And to demonstrate my point, I hope I
don't offend anyone with this, it's good that
we can have
open and frank discourse.
That's part of the beauty of living in
America. Right?
So,
if Moses were to walk into this Islamic
Center and I had the honor and privilege
of speaking to Moses, Moshe,
Musa alaihis salaam. And I said, oh, Moses,
are you a Jew? Right?
He would say, no. I'm a Levite. Why
would he say that? Because he never heard
the word Jew in his life.
He never heard the word Jew,
except
in reference to a descendant of Judah.
Right? But Moses is not from Judah. David
is from Judah.
Moses is from Levi, another son of Jacob.
So he would think that I was actually
referring to a tribal distinction,
But I'm not talking about a tribe, I'm
talking about a religion, a faith tradition. But
if I asked him further, I said if
I said, are you a practitioner of Judaism?
He would have no idea what I was
talking about because the word Judaism wasn't coined
as a faith tradition
until 700 before the common era, some 7
or 800 years after the death of Moses,
peace be upon him, when the when Palestine
was divided into the Northern and Southern Kingdom,
and the Assyrians came and wiped out 10
of the 12 tribes, the only 2 tribes
that remained basically were Benjamin and Judah in
the South. Judah is the older brother, so
they call themselves,
the Jews.
Right?
Now, I would expect Moses to say that
my religion is submission unto god. I submit
my entire being unto god, and that's called
Islam.
Right? Shalom. Islam.
If Jesus Christ, peace be upon him, were
to walk into this Islamic center, and Muslims
believe in the second coming, it's mentioned in
our orthodox
creedal articulations.
So it's it's very conceivable that he might
actually, in the future, come into this Islamic
center, and I had the honor and privilege
of asking him,
oh, Jesus,
are you a Christian?
Now if you believe Jesus have has omniscience,
then he would know what I was talking
about. But Muslims don't believe that he's omniscient,
so he would say no
because he's never heard of this. The book
of Acts tells us that believers in Christ
were being expelled from the synagogues,
and this was actually,
used as a derogatory term
for the disciples of Jesus initially
because the first Christians were Ebionites, Ebion,
or Nazareans.
These were Jews that believed that Jesus was
the Messiah according to history.
So I would expect him to say, my
religion is a religion of submission unto God.
This is what he says, Whoever does the
will of God is my mother, my brother,
and my sister.
Right?
So we would say that these prophets taught
the same
theology,
and they believed in the same theology, and
in a word,
that concept in Arabic is called
which comes from oneness.
Oneness of god, the uniqueness of god, that
God is radically
transcendent.
There's a radical monotheism.
The Quran says,
There's nothing like the likes of God. There's
nothing even close to God. Abu Bakr as
Siddiq
who is a disciple of the prophet Muhammad,
peace be upon him, he said,
He
said, your inability
to comprehend God is your comprehension of God.
And Augustine said the same thing. Basically, if
you comprehend something,
it is not God. Right? But Muslims will
take it a step further.
Muslims, according to our theology,
we assign god certain attributes.
There's a a group of attributes known as,
negating attributes.
These are things that,
that negate anything that could potentially be unbecoming
of his greatness and majesty. So one of
the negating attributes of god is
that he is completely
and utterly
dissimilar
to his creation in every way. Completely dissimilar.
So Muslims will say that this is not
a new idea or concept,
that this is something that's been taught for
1000 of years
from the ancient prophets, the ancient
Israelite prophets, for example.
So if we look at the decologue, right,
the 10 words, the 10 commandments,
which are recorded in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy
5, the text in Exodus seems to be
the more ancient text from the e source,
if you believe in the sources, I mean,
it's a different debate.
But Exodus chapter 20 begins by saying,
I
am the Lord your God.
The one who brought you out
from Egypt, from the land of bondage, from
the house of bondage.
And then he
says, you shall not have any other gods
before me. Number 3, very important.
He says,
You shall not make unto thyself
the image or the likeness
of anything
in the heavens above. The
or the earth below. The
or the waters beneath the earth. In other
words,
god is nothing
like his creation.
God is nothing like his creation. God is
not in his creation. God is not in
the temporal
world. God is not in the world of
matter and substance.
God is not matter nor substance.
Right? And this is the message also of
Deutto Isaiah. If you're familiar with, the Hebrew
prophets, I encourage you to read Deutero Isaiah,
which basically says that as soon as we
bring god into the temporal world, as soon
as we bring him down into the temporal
world, we make an idol out of him.
That this is the actual definition
of idolatry.
And when we do that, his radical uniqueness
and transcendence becomes
compromise. So obviously, Muslims don't believe in things
like divine incarnations,
divine avatars.
Right?
You know, Subhanahu,
transcendent is God. Muslims don't believe in this
type of thing, like the Hindus believe divine
avatars, Christians believe that Jesus is a divine
incarnation.
You know, I'm kind of a strange guy,
strange Muslim, I like to listen to Christian
preaching a lot. So I'll be flipping through
the channels
and I'll hear a preacher and I'll start
watching.
And there was this one time, my daughter
who's 8 years old at the time, she's
sitting at the dinner table doing her homework,
and like a great father, I'm flipping channels,
right?
And I'm flipping the channels and, there's this
Christian preacher, he's an evangelical Christian preacher. And
he was talking about how God came to
the earth and so on and so forth.
And I remember my daughter, she was doing
her homework and she looks over like this
and she says,
god, earth, negative.
So like in Hosea 119,
I am God
and not a man. Right?
So again, obviously that Muslims don't believe
in for example,
the doctrine of the trinity, a belief in
a triune God. The Quran addresses
this directly.
Don't say trinity.
Is better for you.
For your god is an absolute
unity.
Muslims will actually say that this is the
trinity is actually not the teaching of Jesus
himself. This is part of our belief about
Jesus that Jesus did not teach this belief.
So just a few dates to run by
you,
for the note takers, 325
of the common era was the first
ecumenical church synod at Nicaea,
and so this is the Greek episcopate at
the time was basically split in half.
There were followers of Athanasius of Alexandria
and some followers of Arius of Alexandria.
So Arius and his adherents said, Jesus is
not equal to the father.
He's
he's the best of creation,
but he's
he's caused by the father. Therefore, he cannot
be equal to the father. Whereas Athanasius
and his adherence said, no. Jesus shares an
essence with god. That's to put a orthodox
position. So they met at Nicea in 325
and they voted on the issue. Very democratic
process. They voted
and it came out to be that Jesus,
yes, indeed, is equal with the father. That
happened in 325, the common era at Nicea,
modern day Turkey presided over by Constantine.
A few years later in 3/81,
they met again at Constantinople,
presided over by Theodosius
and they voted again and the Holy Spirit
was also given the title of god, shares
an essence with the father and the son,
421 at Ephesus, I mean, there are many
many councils, right? These are just a few
of them. 421 Council of Ephesus,
they voted that Mary is Theotokos,
is the mother of God. 451,
another vote, Chalcedon,
Jesus has a dual nature. He's 100% god
and 100%
man.
So
classical Trinitarian Theology wasn't defined
until about this time, 4th 5th century, not
until Augustine of Hippo wrote,
not until the Cappadocian church fathers dealt with
Arianism and articulated
the trinity not until the ratification of the
Nicio Constantino Polygon Creed in 381 and so
on and so forth. So Muslims don't believe
that this is a teaching of Christ.
Now, an interesting in the synoptic tradition,
is in Mark chapter 10 verse 18
and Luke in 18 and Matthew 1917.
So it's in 3 gospels. It's it's triply
attested. It's called the synoptic tradition.
So I'll quote from the one in Mark
because Mark according to scholars is the more
ancient of the gospels written around 70 of
the common era. So Muslims will actually use
this verse as a proof text
that a scribe comes to Jesus and he
says, good master,
right?
And this is the Greek. Again, Jesus, we
don't know what exactly Jesus, peace be upon
him, said in his own language of Syria,
but this is what the the Greek,
manuscript say. That this man came to him
and said, good master. Jesus
says,
and the construction here in Greek is very
interesting.
He brings the object,
the before the verb to emphasize
the object.
Why
me do you call good? As if to
say, how dare you call me good?
And then he says,
There's no one good but one,
and that is
god.
So,
another verse in the Torah,
this is the sacred Shema.
Right? So Deuteronomy 64,
You are Israel, the lord our god, the
lord is 1. Right? This is the sacred
Shema, is Hechad.
Now, in Mark 1229,
a scribe comes to Jesus and says, what
is the greatest commandment?
Right?
What is the greatest commandment? And Jesus actually
will quote verbatim from the book of Deuteronomy.
He quotes verbatim.
The Quran says that Jesus said,
That I have come to confirm
the Mosaic laws with respect to theology,
I confirm that theology.
Right? So Jesus says to this scribe,
And then he continues,
he continues. And you shall love the lord
thy god with all thy heart, all thy
soul, and all thy strength.
Right?
So Jesus confirms
this message. Now the Quran says,
Right? This is something that our imam, may
Allah bless him, recite it during the prayer
just now.
Say he is god, the uhad.
And Moses uses
and Jesus uses
and Muhammad uses uhad. It's the same exact
word.
Allahu Samad. God is Samad, which is hard
to translate.
It basically means that god is an entity
upon which every entity, every other entity is
dependent upon, but he is totally independent of
every other entity.
Right?
He does not begat
nor begotten nor is he begotten in the
literal sense.
And there's nothing
like unto god whatsoever. This is the meaning
of
Now, a common polemic
against,
Muslim Theology, Islamic Theology
is that the God of Islam is is
is impersonal.
Right? He's he's too far removed.
He's not imminent.
You can't have a personal relationship
with him. Right? We hear this a lot.
Right? You can't have a personal relationship with
Allah,
right, this type of thing. So that's not
our theology, that's what the Neo Platonists believed
that god is removed and there's emanation and
and collection and all these types of things,
and it was involuntary. Muslims don't believe that.
That's what the deists believe. Like, the founding
fathers of this country, most of them were
deists,
which basically is a offshoot of Neo Platonism,
which means that, you know, god sort of
was up there admiring himself and then there
was this involuntary
emanation or spillage that created the rest of
the world,
but god doesn't really know what's going on
in the world, he just knows, general ideas,
he doesn't know particulars, and it's up to
man to actually
be like god on earth and to carry
out things and so on and so forth.
Muslims don't believe that at all. The Quran
says, I quoted
this verse earlier,
that we are closer to the human being
than his jugular vein in reality,
not in distance,
not spatially, not in flesh and blood. Ultimately,
it's a mystery. We we can't comprehend it,
but definitely not
physically close to us. He's close. He's imminent
in a in in a in a essential
type of way.
The Quran says,
When my servants ask you, oh Muhammad, concerning
me,
say, I am kareeb.
Kareeb means very close.
The Hebrew cognate of this is kareb.
Kareb in Hebrew means an internal organ.
What's closer to you than an internal organ?
That god is closer than your jugular vein,
your life support, than your heart, than your
lungs. That's how close is. He is imminent.
He is close to us.
The prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, used
to pray at least a third of the
night, even into his sixties,
and it got to a point where his
feet would be swollen red.
And his wife, Umar Muqminin
Aisha
his wife Aisha
said, in meaning, oh messenger of god, why
do you do this? You know, you're the
beloved of god. He said,
shall I not be a grateful servant?
In another transmission,
shall I not be a grateful, loving servant?
The title of the prophet is Habibullah in
our tradition. The beloved of God. That's his
title. That's what we call him. The beloved
of God. Definitely,
without doubt, the god of Islam, who is
the only god, the god of Abraham,
is close to us. We have a personal
relationship
with god because Muslims emulate the practices
of the holy prophet Muhammad, peace be upon
him. So he is transcendent,
but he's also
imminent, not physically in his knowledge, in his
mercy, and in his love.
Now,
get ready for another bomb bombshell.
Intellectual,
not not the not a real bomb.
Don't don't write something. Don't misquote me on
that.
That Muslims love
Jesus,
Moses, and Mohammed
more than our own selves, more than our
mothers, more than our children, and it's not
just lip service.
We love
these people, real love.
So love,
this is for some people, this is a
strange concept that love is absolutely foundational
in the Islamic tradition.
Love. One of the names of God in
the Quran is Al Wadud,
the all loving.
And the prophet peace be upon him, he
used different similitudes and analogies
to demonstrate divine love. One of the most
powerful ones,
is during one of the military expeditions of
the prophet,
there was this woman that was running around,
after one of the battles and she had
lost her young son who was a toddler.
And she's running around frantic and she's hysterical.
My son. My son. And And they're trying
to find her son and she can't find
her son. And finally, she sees her son,
and she picks him up, hugs him, and
kisses him, and begins to breastfeed him.
And the prophet said to the companions that
were there, can you imagine this woman throwing
her son in a fire?
Can you imagine that?
My
god, we can't. He said,
Allah
Allah is more
merciful to his servants than this woman is
just now to her son.
Right? So there this type of analogy, this
parental analogy,
if it's if it's,
if it's allegorical, that's fine. But when we
start talking about things that are literal, that's
when the Muslim has to take a step
back. Because the prophet, peace be upon him,
likened the divine love to parental love. And
what's also interesting is that 2 of the
names of god in the Quran,
Al Rahman,
Al Rahim.
You see, before a Muslim decides to do
anything worth doing,
he or she will sanctify that action by
pronouncing this sacred formula,
In the name of god, the infinitely good,
the most
merciful.
Right? So this word, these two names of
god,
comes from which
means mercy.
And this word comes from which
means the womb of a mother. Right?
In Hebrew.
So there's a there's a subtleness that cannot
escape us here. We know that the purest
type of love on earth is the love
that a mother has for her child,
But god is.
He is infinitely more loving
to his servants than this mother is to
her child.
There's a hadith which is a a prophetic,
tradition
of a Bedouin who came to the prophet,
and the Bedouin were kind of rough around
the edges.
Right? So Bedouin would come and he, you
know, grab the prophet and call him by
his first name and and you know, ask
him all these questions and so on. It's
kinda rough around the edges. Says, Bedouin came
to the prophet and he said, yeah, Muhammad.
Said, oh, Muhammad, peace be upon him. When
is the hour of judgement?
When is the hour? When is the day
of judgment?
Right?
And our teaching teaches us that no one
knows the day or the hour.
Right? Like when Gabriel came to the prophet,
tell me about the hour.
The one being questioned knows no more than
the questioner.
The Quran says, yes.
They ask you about the hour. When will
it be established?
Say to them, this knowledge is only with
my lord.
Right? Jesus says in 3 gospels,
of that day knoweth no man,
not the angels,
not even the son, but only the father.
So anyone who gives you a date, there's
this guy in California. I don't know if
you heard about this guy. The May 21st,
I saw the billboard.
It's gonna happen,
oh, October
21st.
And then 1994, you know, William Miller 18,
whatever it was, whoever gives you a date
is a con man. Hold on to your
wallets and purses.
Okay? No one knows the hour. Jesus doesn't
know the hour. Mohammed doesn't know the hour,
peace be upon him. Right? So this bedouin
says, matasa'a,
when is the hour?
Right? And the prophet, he asked him a
question, a better question.
What did you prepare for the hour?
Nothing
except his obligatory acts of worship. He prays
5 times a day and he gives his
charity. He makes his pilgrimage
very basic, just the
the obligations.
But then the Bedi one said,
but I love
god and his messenger.
And the prophet said,
a person will be with those whom he
loves.
So this is very interesting
because again, there's a very common misunderstanding
that Muslims
believe
that they can work their way towards heaven.
Right? You do enough good deeds to offset
the bad deed,
5149,
you just made it. But if you're the
other way, 5149,
you just missed it. Right? Muslims don't believe
that. That's what a group of Muslims that
are not orthodox called the
That's what they believed, and there was a
very small group and they're gone. But Sunni
orthodoxy
as well as Shia, they don't believe that.
Muslims believe
that
salvation is given through grace,
through mercy,
through the love of god. Even the prophet
said,
no one is justified
by their works. This sound hadith, a sound
tradition. And they say,
not even you?
You've
perfected
and You've perfected worship and servitude. Not even
you?
Except that my lord envelops me in his
mercy.
Mercy is the thing that saves mercy.
So this idea that,
you know, because the Quran talks about scales
and things like that, people who are very
literals get the wrong idea. The Muertesilites believed
that, you can do some research on that.
The were highly influenced by Aristotelian
philosophy and neo Neo Platonism and so on
and so forth. What Muslims believe is through
grace,
through love of god.
So the Quran says,
Whoever is averted from punishment on the day
of judgment is only from the mercy of
God. Let's go back to the concept of
love. The prophet said in a sound hadith,
He said, none of you,
believe
none of you truly believe
until you love
for your brother what you love for yourself.
And a great hadith scholar, Imam Nawawi,
he says that in this hadith, the word
for brother which is akh, which is for
in Hebrew and in Arabic,
it doesn't simply mean your Muslim brother.
It means your brother or sister because the
male gender encapsulates
the female gender in the Semitic languages.
Your brother or sister in the children of
Adam, in
If we go back far enough, we're all
brothers and sisters. That's his interpretation and that's
the normative
interpretation of the verse. None of you truly
believe until he loves or she loves for
her for his brother or sister and the
children of Adam what he loves for himself.
The religion of Islam is a universal
religion.
It's a cosmopolitan
faith. The prophet is a universal messenger.
The Quran says This is kind of like
our equivalent to John 316.
Surah 21, ayah 107.
21107.
We did not sent you, oh, Muhammad,
except as a mercy into all the worlds.
1 out of 4 human beings on earth
is Muslim.
People don't really realize this. Yeah. So, you
know, it says in the pamphlet here, there
are 30,000,000 Muslims in China. There are actually
200,000,000 Muslims in Indonesia.
200,000,000 Muslims. Not a single Muslim soldier
ever stepped foot on the soul on the
soil of Indonesia. How do you get 200,000,000
Muslims? Because if you again, you listen to
the
the warmongering, the profligates,
Islam is gonna take over the world, they
conquer by the sword.
Study history,
Indonesia,
200,000,000 Muslims. If The Arab world doesn't even
equal 200,000,000 people. Right? But in Indonesia, there's
200,000,000 Muslims.
The majority of Albania, these are people with
blue eyes and blonde hair. The majority religion
is Islam.
20,000
Americans every year become Muslim.
I'm sure many of you, your cousin, your
brother, your co worker,
and that's what we're that's what we're saying
is actually sit down and speak with these
people. If you see a Muslim, ask them
questions.
Right? Don't go turn on the boob tube,
right, and listen to some we won't name
drop Bill O'Reilly,
and listen to these guys, Pat Robertson.
We're not gonna name drop or anything.
And, you know, oh, wow. Muslims oh my
god, but Abdul
at work seems so nice.
I can't believe it. Wow, he's really out
to get me,
This type of thing. 1 out of 4
human beings is Muslim.
Right?
So we have to realize.
So But with that said, Islam is not
a monolith.
Okay?
So it's another common misconception.
Indeed,
there is a great cohesiveness
with respect to our theology. Muslims are very
much united
theologically.
But when it comes to cultural things, to
methodology,
to politics,
The religion is very very very vast. It's
not a monolith. I was in a church
a few months ago and I was talking
about love and Islam like I'm doing now,
and an older gentleman, he stood up, caucasian
gentleman, it was in a Lutheran church, and
he said, how do you explain
sectarian violence
in some city in South Pakistan? The Sunnis
and Shias are killing each other. How do
you explain it?
Right? I said, oh, put me on the
spot.
So I asked him, I said, why why
would you even think I'm in a position
to answer that question? I don't even know
what Muslims are doing in the next town
over. I don't even know why my wife
is mad at me half the time. How
am I supposed to answer what Muslims in
South Pakistan are doing? I mean, seriously. He
said, well, aren't you Muslim?
You know, it's it's like the it's like
the comedian, Maz Gebani. He's an Iranian comic.
Have you heard of Maz Gebani? It's this
funny joke because he's he's from Iran and
he's at work one day and he's sitting
in his cubicle and he says that some
of the non muslims that work with him,
they come to him and say, so, Maaz,
what's going on with the gas prices?
So, I don't know. Oh, aren't aren't you
Iranian?
It's like it's like there's some worldwide
it's not a monolith. I have no idea
what's going on. Right? Muslims are vast.
Right? So I asked this gentleman, I said,
how do you explain
Catholics and Protestants killing each other in the
streets of Belfast, Ireland a few years ago?
He's all He said, I'm not Irish.
Okay. There you go.
And I don't think it clicked with him
immediately, but
I don't expect him to know. So Christianity
is very vast. Islam is very vast. There's
a group of Christians
and unfortunately
they have a lot of influence in America
that believe it is in fact their duty
to tame the Ishmaelite.
Right?
That they're about empire building,
they have imperialistic
aspirations.
I encourage you to read a book by
an American Christian, Chris Hedges, called American Fascism,
which he talks about these these elements within
Christianity.
It's by a Christian man, Chris Hedges,
Harvard Theological Seminary
because Christians, Jews and Muslims believe that God
has a preferential aspect,
right? That God is not with those who
are dropping bombs on innocent civilians.
God is not with the one who's exert
exerting a strong hand. God is with the
downtrodden.
God is with the poor. God is with
the subaltern.
God is with the one who's been rejected
by the society.
There's a preferential aspect according to all three
religions. Right? Like when Jesus is in the
synagogue
in Luke chapter 4, when he announces his
messiahship,
he reads from the scroll of Isaiah. What
does he say? He says, the spirit of
God, the spirit of the Lord is upon
me.
In order to anoint in order to anoint
in order to anoint the poor,
heal the broken hearted,
free the oppressed.
Right? Social justice. The prophets were social reformers.
Right?
So my point here is that
every religion is vast. And if you have
1 out of 4 on earth that are
Muslim,
invariably you're gonna have a few nutjobs.
1 out of 4 human beings is like
2,000,000,000 people. Right?
Another hadith of the prophet he says,
Very beautiful hadith. None of
you will enter paradise until you truly
believe. And none of you truly believe
until you love one another.
Shall I tell you of something that will
increase your love? They said, yes.
Spread peace amongst yourselves.
Spread
peace amongst yourselves.
I got invited a few months ago to
do a interfaith,
talk at a church and there was like
15 speakers.
So I I was given 5 minutes. I'm
thinking what can I say in 5 minutes?
Right? I just quoted this one statement of
the prophet. And the organizer of this event
was a was a young woman. She was
a PhD student at a Christian seminary.
And
right after the event, she she was crying
and her arms were open. She's running towards
me to give me a hug. She said,
I had no idea that you guys even
believed in love.
I mean, this this is almost a PhD
in theology, mind you. Forget a god bless
the if such are the pastors, then god
bless the congregation as they say. Right? So
she's running and she's give me a hug
and of course I can't touch her because
there's, you know, so I'm trying to slip
my way out and I'm trying to find
a sister. I'm trying to give her a
detour.
Right?
So it's this very interesting because our Orthodox
Jews, they don't touch either. Right? It's called
Shomer Nagaya,
the guard against the touch. Like if this
is why I wanted to before I shook
anyone, tried to shake anyone's hand, I wanted
to give this talk that if I don't
shake your hand, it's because I respect you.
I can only touch like my wife, my
mother, my daughter. Right? That's part of our
tradition.
So I was this is something that is
really
it's been a puzzle for me for many,
many years because it's always almost offensive to
people. So I asked one of my teachers,
he's a rabbi, Rabbi Mendel. I said, how
do you do with the Shomer Nagaya? What
do you say to the woman who puts
her hand out and then you have to
tell her, I can't shake her hand and
she's embarrassed, she's offended? So he gave me
advice. He said he said, do this. Put
your hand over your heart
and say,
I salute you from my heart.
So, wow,
that's good.
So
so the first opportunity I got, this girl
put her hand out to me
and I went like this, and I said,
I salute you from my heart. And she
kinda giggled and I was like, yes.
So then I went home and I told
my wife. I said, look, this is what
happened, I did that, she giggled, she said,
why are you flirting with her?
So concerning
I'm running out of time, I wanna save
some time for questions. I'll probably take another
5 minutes inshallah.
Concerning Jesus peace be upon him, what does
the Quran say? The Quran says that he
is a prophet of God, legitimate prophet, messenger.
He's the messiah. What does it mean for
him to be the messiah, the messiah?
We can talk about that. The Quran says
that he performed miracles by the permission of
God, that he's the word of God.
Is that the same as the logos? Like
it says in John 11, n r k
n halagas.
Is it the same thing? I would say,
no, it's not the same thing. What is
the difference? That's a
dissertation in and of itself.
So this is what Muslims believe.
Right? The Jewish
view of Jesus is vast but generally,
I won't quote from the Talmud, generally it's
unfavorable.
But probably the most congenial opinion you'll get
is that he was a very great rabbi,
but certainly not a prophet, nor the Messiah,
certainly not God. Muslims say that he's a
prophet. He's a Messiah. He's a messenger of
God. He's a blessed man. Like the verse
I quoted earlier
that Jesus is quoted to have said and
he has made me blessed
wherever I am.
Now interestingly,
this is another major difference of opinion and
it's gonna be kind of a shock I
think for people to hear, but Muslims don't
believe that Jesus was crucified.
Right? Muslims don't believe that. The Quran categorically
rejects the crucifixion.
And we can also talk about that. But
what's also What's interesting about this is, remember
I was talking about the names of prophets?
There are certain mysteries in the names of
prophets.
Right? So Jesus' name according to Aramaic sources
was Yeshua.
Yeshua
HaMashiach.
Yeshua Bar Mariam.
Right?
And it's interesting because this word Yeshua
is from a trilateral root word like all
Semitic words.
To save or to deliver.
However, the scale
of this name
is passive.
It's a passive participle,
not active.
Not save your,
but saved
passive.
Means
the one who is saved
by God.
The Quran says,
I know it's kind of hard to hear
sometimes.
That he was not killed nor crucified
but it was made to appear so unto
his enemies that he was.
For a surety they killed him not.
And just as Christians will use certain places
in the Hebrew bible, like Psalm 22, Isaiah
chapter 53, the suffering servant, as proof text
that Jesus was crucified,
the Muslims will say that this idea that
Jesus wasn't crucified is actually more in line
with pre Christian, messianic,
Jewish expectations.
Like David writes in the Psalms, it's very
explicit,
Psalm 20 verse 6. He says in his
own language, in the Hebrew language, he says,
I know that God,
the the Lord
saves
his Messiah.
Is the active participle for the Lord
saves who?
His Messiah. That God saves his Messiah. And
in 1945, they discovered
Because for for the longest time, for 1300
years, the only scripture that made this claim
was the Quran. The only religious
tradition that made this claim that Jesus wasn't
crucified
were the Muslims. But in 1945
at Nag Hammadi
in Egypt, they discovered Christian treatises and gospels
and apocalypses
like the 2nd treatise of the Great Seth,
the Coptic Apocalypse of Peter, the Acts of
John was later discovered that actually state that
there were indeed Christian denominations
before the advent of the prophet Mohammed that
denied
the crucifixion.
This predates Islam. This actually predates the formation
of the New Testament canon.
Right? And Ignatius of Antioch,
his letter to the Trelians, he also mentions
that there are Christians who deny
the crucifixion.
So
this was my
master's thesis
was on topics like this, in particular the
book of Galatians in the New Testament.
So, you know, Paul wrote the book of
Galatians and he accuses
the Galatians of believing in,
Heteron Euangelion,
another gospel.
Right? And according to Christian exegetes
like F. C. Bauer, which is the standard
opinion when it comes to Galatians,
Paul's enemies that he's denouncing are actually missionaries
sent from James,
from Jerusalem.
These are disciples of Jesus
that are being sent into Jerusalem
to correct what they consider to be Paul's
deviant teachings. So Paul unleashes on them. He
calls them false apostles, super apostles,
sarcastically. He calls them dogs,
enemies of the cross,
right? Things things of this nature. He's vehemently
opposed to them. I mean, there's there's a
fundamental difference of opinion between,
these missionaries from James who are Syriac speaking
Nazarean Christians. We would say that there were
Muslims
who believed that Jesus was the Messiah,
that you follow the sacred law,
and that they believed in our theology which
is tawhid, the absolute transcendence
of God. What's also interesting is that James,
the letter of James, which was not liked
by Martin Luther for obvious reasons, he called
it a letter of straw. He actually proposed
that we remove it from the canon. Right?
James, who was a successor of Jesus, according
to history, the book of Acts,
he has one book out of 27 in
the New Testament, whereas Paul has 14
more than half of the New Testament. Right?
James' name in Hebrew is Ya'akov Had Sadiq.
Ya'aqov
Had Sadiq, which is very interesting because the
successor
the name of the successor of the prophet
Muhammad
was also Had Sadiq,
Abu Bakr as Siddiq.
Right? The truthful one, the the trustworthy one.
Right?
So it's interesting because
after the vote at NYCEA in 325,
history tells us by 360,
360,
which is a few years after Nicaea,
the majority of the bishops in the empire,
they believed in Ebionite theology.
They believed that Jesus
was not God, that he was a created
entity.
Then Paul talks about in Galatians, the Ishmaelites
and he denigrates the Ishmaelites. He denigrates
Hagar, the mother of Ishmael,
you know, this type of propaganda.
He denigrates them and then he says that
I came from Arabia. This is what Paul
says. This is very interesting.
Why is he saying that? Why is he
talking about the Ishmaelites? Why is he talking
about Arabia? I'll be done in 1 minute,
InshaAllah.
My contention is that these missionaries
from James,
they told the Galatians
that
the final messenger of God
would come from Arabia and that he would
be an Ishmaelite. And the Quran quotes Jesus
as saying,
Jesus says, oh, children of Israel, I am
the messenger of God sent to you,
confirming the Torah which came before me and
to give you glad tidings of a messenger
to come after me whose name is Ahmed
which is the superlative form of the name
Muhammad.
So, they're they're giving me the
the stop sign here.
So, at this point I have a few
more things I wanted to say. There's some
prophecies in the bible
that I wanted to quote that I believe
refer to the prophet peace be upon him,
but maybe next time when I come inshallah,
I'll have to ask doctor Zaki
if I'm welcomed back.
I hope no one was offended.
It's it's very important that we have this
kind of Socratic speech.
This is America. This is not some fascist
country. Right? This is America. We have freedom
of speech. We should be we should be
able to listen
and disagree and to have a discourse.
Right?
So I thank you for your lack of
outbursts
and your your lack of throwing food at
me.
And I hope I hope I just gave
you something to think about a little bit.
We have to keep thinking. Right? We can't
live in a bubble.
I mean, we have to sort of broaden
our horizons.
There's a whole other world out there. Right?
We have to keep learning. Complacency is something
that is a terrible thing. Don't be satisfied
with yourself.
Keep striving to learn, to broaden your mind,
to learn a different culture, whatever it is.
So that was the point of my talk.
I hope it was beneficial for you.
And I'd like to entertain any comments or
questions that you may have.
We
have
5. Please get a quick one answer.
Hello?
Testing. Alright.
Anybody has question?
That means they all agree
and they understood everything I said
and did a great job.
Please ask question.
Yes, ma'am.
Thank you for a very lovely talk.
I'm here from the Jewish community
and,
I appreciate it very much,
you're pointing out so many of the similarities.
And, of course, between Hebrew and Aramaic and
Arabic,
we share much in terms of language as
well. I'm wondering if you can address a
little bit some and and I understand that
the Quran, like the Jewish texts, are very
wide and have very wide ranging views on
a lot of things. But can you talk
a little bit about,
the existence in the Quran of the idea
of the dhimi,
of the status that is given to Jews
and Christians in Muslim society.
Yes.
So it's a very good question. I direct
you Islam, Aikam.
This is not a question. This is just
at, looking into, King James.
Mhmm.
James chapter
4 verse 7.
When I go and speak in churches, I
says, but this is telling you to submit.
It says,
submit yourself
therefore to God
and reject the devil.
So when we say Islam, we say submission,
and that's what Muslims do. Just submit yourself.
He's created us all,
and he
does not need anything from us more than
for us to obey him,
respect him
and submit ourselves.
And here Jesus, peace be upon him,
saying, submit yourself
therefore to God and reject the devil. And
this is If you wanna remember James chapter
4
verse
7,
I do When I speak in churches,
I bring that out and many people because
you read the Bible, you'll see
that submission
is the word. He needs to answer the
Okay. So let let me
answer Assalamu alaikum. The sister's question before we
take any more questions, please.
She asked about the status of a dhimmi,
which is a non a protected non Muslim
living in a Muslim country.
So the Quran,
addresses in its sacred law,
different types of faith based communities.
The Quran allows for religious pluralism.
If you study the history again, I mean
if you look at the world today, you
have a bunch of post colonial
puppets and it's it's it's really easy to
get confused.
But if you study history, Muslim Spain, Al
Andalusia,
the golden age of Judaism,
where Islamic Sharia
and Christian common law and Jewish
were all practiced
freely as long as it did not,
contradict the laws of the empire, it's fine.
You look at some place like,
the the the city of the prophet Muhammad
peace be upon him in Madinah. There were
several Jewish tribes living in Medina
and his first order of business
was to,
construct or formulate the Madinan constitution.
Right? Which stipulates very clearly because again, you'll
hear from the profligate,
the Muslim hater, the bigot, that the prophet,
he
he didn't like the Jews and he killed
all the Jews, he exiled the Jews. His
first his first order of business
in the Madinan constitution, he says, the Jews
shall
have access to their temples and they shall
worship god without being molested or harmed in
any way. That's what he says in the
actual document.
So there's a verse in the Quran, Surah
Al Hajj, ayah number
so chapter 22 verse
38
in which it says 39.
Permission is given to those
permission has been given to those to fight
against whom war is made. So there's always
a defensive aspect. This is in the passive
voice. Right? Because you'll hear different translators that
are orientalist
say that this is an active voice, that
go fight people, right? This isn't a passive
voice. That if you're being fought, you have
the permission to defend yourself And this is
what Thomas Aquinas said. This is the just
war theory of Augustine of Hippo. This is
nothing new to, you know, Maimonides, to Jewish
Judeo Christian tradition.
And then he says,
they are those who have been expelled from
their homes in defiance of right. For no
other reason that they said, our lord is
god. Did not god check one set of
people by means of another? They would surely
have been pulled down and destroyed.
Monasteries,
churches,
synagogues,
and mosques in which the name of god
is commemorated. This is the most ecumenical verse
I've ever come
across. So a dhimmi, a non Muslim
living in a Muslim land,
is protected by the Muslim polity. That's how
it's supposed to be. I don't know what's
going on in the world today. It's a
big mess. Don't even,
you know, like that man who asked me
about South South Pakistan. I don't know.
I know how what the Sharia says, what
the sacred law says, that a non Muslim
is protected,
in a Muslim country to the point where
if a group of Muslims
in that country decide to attack that Christian
or Jewish community, it is upon the Muslim
government to attack those Muslims who are trying
to attack the Jewish and Christian community.
Right?
This this is according to our sacred law.
This is what our law says. The Prophet
peace be upon him says,
The prophet says, whoever kills a dhimmi, a
non Muslim
living in a Muslim country, or a dhimmi
can also mean a non Muslim living in
a non Muslim country between which there is
a peace treaty. Whoever kills that dimmi won't
even get the width of paradise, won't even
get a scent or smell of paradise.
So even people like Norman Geissler who wrote
this book called Answering Islam, now it's a
big website, and in 1993 he wrote a
book called Answering Islam.
He actually says that this is addressing this
issue of spread by the sword.
Right? That he said, if you look in
North Africa,
right?
He says if you look in North Africa,
he said the majority of people in North
Africa
became Muslim
willingly
because of Islam's low taxes
and its stress on brotherhood. That's what he
that's what Norman Geissler says. He says, this
sword thing is a myth.
Obviously, it's happened from time to time. 1
out of 4 human beings on earth, again,
you're gonna have a nut job. It's just
you're gonna have a nut job every so
often. That's how it is. Right? But that's
not what the religion teaches.
So he actually says that in his book,
Answering Islam. He says, because of the low
taxes, because the Byzantium Empire were charging their
Christian subjects
something unbelievable when it came to taxes.
But that's what Norman Geissler says. I mean,
he's not willing to entertain
that these people actually believed
in Islam. No. No. No. That can't be
the that can't be the reason why. There
must be some monetary
incentive of some of some sort. Right?
But that's that's what it is in a
nutshell. Obviously, this is a a major topic,
right, but the Quran is an ecumenical scripture.
It recognizes,
the rights of non Muslims living in living
in a Muslim country,
and,
and codifies
those those rights. And the thing about Sharia,
what I want to mention, because we heard
the word, you know, Sharia law. They wanna
implement Sharia. Right? Sharia.
Right? We hear that all the time. The
fear mongering. Right? Sharia linguistically
means a path towards cold water.
Right?
Every Muslim follows Sharia. It's an indispensable part
of the Muslim identity. What is Sharia?
That's the point. We have to define our
own terminology.
When we let others define our terminology and
speak our narrative, that's very dangerous.
Edward Said says, that's the most powerful form
of imperialism
is when you when you define
the other.
Right? Because if you say, if your definition
of Sharia
is a draconian
law code, a draconian penal system,
then if that's accepted, then there cannot be
a single Muslim in America.
If that's accepted, there cannot be a single
Muslim in America, and that's not America. That's
something else.
Right?
Because when a Muslim prays, he's following Sharia.
When a Muslim smiles at someone, he's following
Sharia. When a Muslim goes to the mosque,
when he gives charity,
everything, it's an indispensable aspect of a Muslim's
identity.
Right? So
it's very important for Muslims
to speak their own,
narrative.
Right?
I hope I've
answered the question. I mean, if you look
at the Muslim world, historically,
there's churches in in Egypt
that claim to have the Christians in Egypt
claim that their church was founded by Mark,
the evangelist.
When Islam came to Egypt, it did not
do away with the church. There are 20,000,000
Coptic Christians.
If Islam
has no
regard for non Muslims
and believes in the indiscriminate
killing,
perpetual state of warfare,
which less than 1% of 1% of scholars
have ever endorsed in our tradition, that these
churches would not be standing.
The Assyrian church in Iraq founded by Thadeus,
a disciple of Jesus, according to those Christians.
Almost every single Muslim country, you'll find a
every single Muslim country, you'll find a church
except for Saudi Arabia.
But here's my contention with that. Will you
find a Protestant church in the Vatican?
Will you find a mosque in the in
the Vatican? No. Because that's considered sacred land
and so on and so forth, and
so we have to sort of put things
in perspective.
I'm getting this sign again.
He's directing me like I'm a Boeing.
So inshallah, can we just take one I
only answered one question, can we take one
one more question if there's a pressing issue?
Yes. I'm I'm creation of, Adam diseases.
What's that? Creation of Adam to Jesus. Oh,
okay. That's a good question. So
there's a comment about me, speaking of about
the creation of Adam with respect to Jesus
or comparing the creation.
So,
the Quran says,
The similitude of Jesus with God is like
that of Adam.
We
created him,
he created him from dust,
and then he said to him, be
and there he was. So
this idea that Jesus is the literal or
begotten son of god,
Muslims do not accept.
Right?
I mean,
I guess someone has to sort of explain
to me what that means
because you'll hear this a lot from Christians
that Jesus is the son of god by
virtue of the virgin birth. So the Muslims,
they're hesitant to comment about that.
The the Muslims will say that the creation
of Jesus was a miracle,
that Jesus is a prophet and it was
one of the signs.
It's from the Muurajizat,
from the miracles that God gave to Jesus,
a sign that he's a prophet of god.
And the Quran makes mention of Adam in
the same vein that Adam didn't have a
mother or a father.
Right? Isn't that greater? But it's all the
same to god. Creation is easy for god.
God can create
fire
out of he can make ice burn. He
can make fire cold.
He can do anything.
Right? That's conceivable
according to then we get into a theological
discussion again. Can he warm up a burrito
that's too hard, hot for him hot for
him to eat and so on and so
forth? We won't get into that issue. Right?
But the virgin birth of Jesus is seen
as just a sign that he was sent
from god, not that he's the belittoral or
begotten
son of god. Because in the old testament,
Israel is my son, even the firstborn.
Right?
David, this day I have begotten you. In
the new testament, Adam, Luke in the genealogy
says, Adam is the son of God.
Right? In first John, it says, whoever believes
that Jesus is the Christ
is the son of God.
Paul says in Romans chapter 8, that whoever
is led by the spirit of God is
the son of God. This is obviously metaphorical.
Right? That means they're beloved of God. That's
what that means. And the prophet Muhammad peace
be upon him used the same analogy to
show the love of God. But we start
talking about Jesus as the literal son of
God. Begotten not made, this type of language.
Right? That's when the Muslims,
No. We don't speak about god like that.
The similitude of Jesus is like that of
Adam. God created everything from dust, for human
humanity from dust, and then he said to
him, be, and there he was.
So it's just another miracle.
We're out of time.