While Robert is right in requesting that we abstain from incendiary comments about Mohammedans that’s easy to misconstrue, I agree with your views that for Muslims to accept the words of their texts about other people’s religion is beyond the pale.

infidelpride on April 1, 2008 at 2:01 AM

Infidelpride,

I do find this aspect of Islam particularly malignant. As you say, to start a new religion doesn’t require that one denigrate other religions so directly.

Also, it speaks volumes that every powerful Muslim who is educated enough to speak out against this obvious falsehood doesn’t. I can only speculate at their motives, but the most obvious one seems to be power over the Muslim masses. Can you actually say to me that a Tariq Ramadan or a Sheik Qawadari doesn’t know that the Koran is wrong about the Jewish and Christian scriptures? Please. It takes a special kind of ***hole to let these BS stories live on as doctrine when they know better.

You’re quite right. Islam believes Christians deified Jesus and Mary, who were ordinary human beings, albeit sinless (and Jesus born of a virgin).

See Qur’an 5:116.

Not so. Islam is against the elevation of Jesus as a divine being. Hence he is a prophet, according to Islam.

The monotheistic concept of G-d is equivalent in Judaism and in Islam.

I don’t think I said it quite right. I know that they believe that there’s one God without any other aspects, and that no one but God is divine.

My understanding is that they have a fundemental misunderstanding of the the Christian three-in-one Trinity of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. They think we worship God, Jesus, and Mary (no mention of the Holy Spirit) as the Trinity, elevating both Jesus and Mary to divinity and equal status with Allah, which is the most grevious sin you can commit (the whole assigning partners to Allah thing).

Again, Robert can correct me if I’m wrong here.

IIRC (and Robert can correct me if I’m wrong), Muslems have a fundemental misreading of the Trinity. They think it’s God, Jesus, and Mary, and that Christians have elevated Mary (the partner of Allah) to god-status.

crazy_legs on March 31, 2008 at 10:58 AM

Not so. Islam is against the elevation of Jesus as a divine being. Hence he is a prophet, according to Islam.

The monotheistic concept of G-d is equivalent in Judaism and in Islam.

See The Islamic Encyclopedia: The God of Islam.

For a detailed Jewish perspective, see G-d’s Incorporeality.

…different adherents of different religions should be free to believe what they like if they have a self contained set of scriptures that spells out what they need. However, since Islamic texts are unique in that they take the texts of 2 other religions and then grossly twist them, I do think that Muslims have earned that negative characterization.
infidelpride on April 1, 2008 at 2:01 AM

In order to respect Islam, one must insult every other religion.

If you don’t want to believe in Jesus, then don’t believe in Jesus. But Muslims don’t let it go at that; they claim to revere Jesus as a “prophet.” Oh, yeah… except for all those lies he told about being the son of God. And to top it all off, the Koran goes and corrects all the massive series of typographical errors in our Bible for us.

Now I hear somebody telling me that referring to Muslims as “illiterate camel-humping pedophiles” is somehow disrespectful? Nonsense; that’s the highest of praise. And it is very, very well deserved.

I don’t think anyone can say that Islam isn’t a personally restrictive religion. It makes a lot of demands on its adherents.
logis on March 30, 2008 at 9:36 PM

It really doesn’t make very strong demands on it’s adherents at all. There is no rule that can’t be ignored if the Muslim simply decides he doesn’t want to follow it. Some rules allow the Muslim to defy them if defying them helps the cause of Islam. The terrorists of 9/11 are just one example of how a Muslim can act any way he chooses if his motives are pure.

Take the Five Pillars: the most important is the one that makes a Muslim a Muslim. All you have to do to be a Muslim is to declare, to no one in particular, that “There is only one God and Mohammed was His Messenger”. That’s it. You’re a Muslim.

Ramadan is another Pillar. Do you know what Ramadan really is? It’s a farce. It’s a month long “fast” where the Muslim is not supposed to eat, smoke, or have sex from dawn to dusk. There are many exceptions to it, such as menstruating, pregnant, and breastfeeding women, or anyone with any kind of health problem that prevents them from “fasting”. Fasting? Going from dawn to dusk without eating? Puhleeeeze. That’s my average day. They have a nice meal every night, and a big feast at the end of it. Fast my ass.

Then there is the alms giving Pillar. Another farce. Every Muslim is supposed to give a certain percentage of his wealth to charity. There is no universal standard on what it is supposed to be. I read many pro-Islam sites and it differed as to what they are supposed to give. One site said it should be 1% of his annual income minus his house, car, and work tools. I make pretty good money and for me that would average out to about $2.95 a month. Oh, but get this: Muslims are not supposed to TELL anyone how much they give to charity because it is considered bragging and is frowned upon. AND, the DESIRE to give is enough to satisfy this Pillar. Yup, that’s right. A Muslim does not have to actually give any money to charity at all, if he decides he really can’t afford it, as long as he really wants to. (Ever wondered why the richest land on this earth is controlled by rich Muslims while the vast majority of its people live in squalor? Now you know.)

The pilgrimage to Mecca. This Pillar only has to be done once in the entire life span of a Muslim. And only if he is healthy and can afford it. So just put it off until you’re old and can’t go and you’re off the hook on that one. Besides, how much of a hardship is the Haj if you don’t mind crowds?

Praying five times a day. Nope. They don’t have to do that, either, if it’s inconvenient. Despite what the Flying Imans said, a Muslim does not have to pray five times a day if it’s not practical.

Beyond the Five Pillars, there are the Hadiths. The Hadiths cover just about every scenario there is. I call them “strings”. One will start out with a “narrator” or a “reporter” or a “witness” and then it goes in a string like this:

Abdul narrated that Allah’s Messenger, Peace Be Upon Him, said that stealing is always wrong.

Achmed reported that Omar said that stealing is always wrong unless it’s for a good cause in Allah’s name.

Marwan witnessed that Karim confided that the infidels and unbelievers were expected to be stolen from.

That’s a bad parody of it, but you get the idea. They really are like that.

Normally I’d avoid characterizing adherents of any religion one way or another based solely on their texts: imo, different adherents of different religions should be free to believe what they like if they have a self contained set of scriptures that spells out what they need. However, since Islamic texts are unique in that they take the texts of 2 other religions and then grossly twist them, I do think that Muslims have earned that negative characterization. If you had a religion (and you do – Buddhism, Shintoism, Hinduism, et al) that have nothing to say about Abraham, Jesus, Moses et al and neither endorse nor contradict Christian and Jewish claims about these characters, they wouldn’t be worthy of the same disrespect.

But Islam seems to be unique in this aspect, even though it was neither the last nor the only religion that was exposed to other religions which it came into contact with. After all, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism all were offshoots of Hinduism, and none of them went on to negate Hindu claims about the Hindu pantheon: instead, they abandoned that and formed new and different philosophies. While Robert is right in requesting that we abstain from incendiary comments about Mohammedans that’s easy to misconstrue, I agree with your views that for Muslims to accept the words of their texts about other people’s religion is beyond the pale.

Mohammed claimed that he received the Koran from the angel Gabriel, but in Luke’s Gospel, “the angel Gabriel was sent from God” to Mary, and announced to her that “you shall conceive in your womb and bear a son…he will be called the Son of the Most High”. (Luke 1:26-32) So, we’re left wondering whether Gabriel told Mary one thing and Mohammed the opposite (do angels really lie or change their minds?), or did Mohammed just make up the Koran and attribute it to Gabriel to give himself credibility, and not know what Gabriel had told Mary?

The Muslim answer to this is that the New Testament account is corrupted.

This is the major problem with Islam–Muslims are told that Mohammed is God’s ONLY prophet…

No, Muslims aren’t told that Muhammad is the ONLY prophet. They’re told that Abraham and Moses and Jesus and Noah and Hud and Idris and all sorts of others were also Allah’s prophets. However, it amounts to the same thing, since the Qur’an is, they’re told, the only uncorrupted message of any of the prophets.

I find the Koran’s treatment of Mary, the mother of Jesus, very puzzling–most Muslims tend to revere Mary (even more than Jesus), yet in the Koran, Mary is sent away to give birth alone, with no one to care for her, while the Gospels of Matthew and Luke show Joseph to be a very gentle and caring husband, despite his own predicament of explaining to his neighbors Mary’s pregnancy before their wedding.

The Koran’s insistence on denying that God could have a son is also extremely puzzling, and is never really justified. Mohammed claimed that he received the Koran from the angel Gabriel, but in Luke’s Gospel, “the angel Gabriel was sent from God” to Mary, and announced to her that “you shall conceive in your womb and bear a son…he will be called the Son of the Most High”. (Luke 1:26-32) So, we’re left wondering whether Gabriel told Mary one thing and Mohammed the opposite (do angels really lie or change their minds?), or did Mohammed just make up the Koran and attribute it to Gabriel to give himself credibility, and not know what Gabriel had told Mary?

This is the major problem with Islam–Muslims are told that Mohammed is God’s ONLY prophet, so that everything is based on one man’s word, and no fact-checking is allowed. The New Testament was written by at least eight different people (the four Evangelists, Paul, Peter, James, and Jude) who describe each other’s actions, as well as thousands of other witnesses who could corroborate their writings, and they were familiar with the writings of the Old Testament prophets regarding the Messiah. Despite the writings of all of Jesus’ witnesses (who had died by Mohammed’s time), Mohammed had the perfect answer–proclaim himself to be God’s only prophet, deny the divinity of Jesus, and kill Jesus’ messengers. The battle continues to this day.

The problem appears to be that knowledge of the Bible was rare in Mohammed’s time, so Mohammed made a number of errors that obviously contradicted the Bible he claimed to respect. This was not a problem when Islam was a backwater with no scholars, but as Islamic scholarship grew, the scholars had to confront the fact that the new prophet contradicted all the old prophets he claimed to accept. Of course, by this time it was in the Koran, so the only real alternative was to argue that the Jewish and Christian scriptures were corrupted.

But there’s a huge problem for Muslims in this, because the Jewish and Christian scriptures of today are the same as the ones of Mohammed’s day.

So historically speaking, the Koran fails one of the most basic tests of scripture.

Of course, since all Muslims know the Koran contradicts itself, I suppose the historical problem doesn’t weigh on the Muslim mind much.

So Jesus’ being born of a Virgin and Jesus’ returning at the Last Day and Jesus’ being sinless do not, for Muslims, mean that Jesus was greater than Muhammad or any other Prophet. These are just singular features Allah willed to give him. But Muhammad is still the greatest prophet because he received the perfect book, the Qur’an.

Still, many Christian evangelists throughout history have used the Islamic Jesus to try to show Muslims that there is something singular about Jesus, and to introduce in that way the Jesus of the New Testament.

Robert Spencer on March 30, 2008 at 6:19 PM

So they recognize something like 30 Jewish prophets, as well as John the Baptist and Jesus, who they say spoke on the day he was born, was miraculously conceived by a virgin, never did any wrong, and is coming back to earth one day, but their prophet is the greatest prophet. Convenient.

From a Christian perspective, it’s striking how many of the old superstitions/traditions about Jesus and Mary that were never part of the Bible were incorporated in Muslim “scripture.” The Koran at times has almost the feel of the apocryphal gospels that were widely rejected as not inspired, like the so-called “Gospel of Thomas.”

In other words, Muslims would argue that Christianity is a polytheist religion because of belief in “the father, son, and holy ghost.”

IIRC (and Robert can correct me if I’m wrong), Muslems have a fundemental misreading of the Trinity. They think it’s God, Jesus, and Mary, and that Christians have elevated Mary (the partner of Allah) to god-status.

The idea that Allah has begotten a Son is “most monstrous”

Is it me or does this keep repeating over and over and over again? It would appear that Mo really had problems with Christian belief and had to continually hammer this part home. The whole “associating partners with Allah” thing being the most grevious sin you can commit (as opposed to, say, sawing someone’s head off) is really telling as to how much of a threat Mo saw Christianity to be. He’s really going out of his way to attempt to discount it.

Well, my rhetoric may be colorful, but, when you combine the IQ rankings with the Arab state literacy rates of near 70%, along with Indonesia and Pakistan, two of the largest non-Arab Muslim populations, also having a combined literacy rate of ~70%, “illiterate half-wit” isn’t too far off from the technical description of a typical Muslim. Again, I acknowledge there’s a bit of emotional color thrown in.

venividivici on March 31, 2008 at 6:13 AM

You’re gonna get your head chopped off if you keep on equating Muslims with famous fashion models and Hollywood personalities.

Judaism and Christianity have, for the most part, backed off from the literal interpretation of the nonsense found in Leviticus, Judges and some other places in the Old Testament to settle on allegorical interpretations. (Of course, this leaves them with the difficulty of determining what’s real and what must be interpreted.)

Annar on March 31, 2008 at 8:17 AM

Speaking as a Torah observant Jew, I can assure you that we have never reinterpreted any of the laws and edicts you are referring to. Not a single one of them.

The ability of their application today is all that is relevant. We have none of the difficulties you allude to.

Judaism and Christianity have, for the most part, backed off from the literal interpretation of the nonsense found in Leviticus, Judges and some other places in the Old Testament to settle on allegorical interpretations. (Of course, this leaves them with the difficulty of determining what’s real and what must be interpreted.)

For me it is clear that Islam is a fabrication concocted by Muhammad and later codified, with modification in spite of what the believers say, into the form that is known today, between Muhammad’s death and the tenth century.

What is important today is finding a way to convince those who follow this cult to accept an interpretation that rejects Allah’s seemingly direct commands. I see no easy way to accomplish this but one has to hope that eventually the message will be heard.

But to conclude from that that every believing Muslim is a half-wit is a huge and unwarranted leap that assumes that every believing Muslim has examined this evidence or even has access to this evidence, which is by no means the case.

Well, my rhetoric may be colorful, but, when you combine the IQ rankings with the Arab state literacy rates of near 70%, along with Indonesia and Pakistan, two of the largest non-Arab Muslim populations, also having a combined literacy rate of ~70%, “illiterate half-wit” isn’t too far off from the technical description of a typical Muslim. Again, I acknowledge there’s a bit of emotional color thrown in.

By no means does every Muslim have access to this evidence, and, indeed there would appear to be every sort of institutional roadblock put in the way of the average Muslim, to shield him from these very damaging facts. However, when evidence in this vein (i.e. historical philology) is made available to Muslims, their reaction is rather, say, non-scholarly, as in the story of the students who threw their professor out a window for suggesting the Koran had a manuscript “history”.

Out of deference to your role as the blogger, I’ll keep my rhetoric more toned down if I make any future comments on your threads.

Good call, Jet. I always let my friends watch my DVD of that movie, it should be mandatory viewing and shown on LifeTime (the Man Hater Network) every day.

The guy who played the husband was on Jimmy Kimmel talking about his role in Spider-Man 2.

Jimmy said “Do people recognize you?”

He said “One day a guy came up to me and said ‘Were you in Not Without My Daughter?’ Well, I thought, this is nice, I have a fan. Yes, that was me. And then the man punched me right in the face! … That was the best compliment I ever got!”

I know wanted to do that too! What a great actor (the Brits always have the best actors).

starring Sally Fields (of all people)

Ironic, isn’t it?

God is without an associate ~ inscription on the Dome of the Rock

In other words, Muslims would argue that Christianity is a polytheist religion because of belief in “the father, son, and holy ghost.”

Interesting to see that Muslims view their story as a continuum of Christianity and Judiasm, and as evolution, especially at this time of the oral-traditioned Arab culture transferring to paper-history.

This is ot but I hope you will answer.

8:17, the verse about Allah entering the body of the believer at the moment they kill an unbeliever while Fighting in the Way of Allah.

I’ve read that it is to cull pride in a warrior and give the gory glory to Allah.

Has it also been used to soothe the troubled souls of those who have had to chop a thousand heads from dawn to dusk while “making a great slaughter in the land” before dividing up the booty?

Jaynie59 on March 30, 2008 at 7:06 PM

Jaynie, I agree with what you’ve said, in your earlier post as well.
As for the women, born and raised in islam and living under threats of violence or death if it’s even rumored they’ve done something, that’ll keep most in their places.

It really is perfect. You get to do whatever you want. You can ignore anything you don’t want to do. And you get to go to Paradise in the end…
Jaynie59 on March 30, 2008 at 7:06 PM

I don’t think anyone can say that Islam isn’t a personally restrictive religion. It makes a lot of demands on its adherents.

Yes, the dictates of Islam include a lot of “outs.” But they’re not based on whether or not you happen to feel like it; they all relate to the ultimate GOAL of Islam: territorial acquisition.

Slaughter of innocents, lying, theft, etc. are strictly prohibited by the Koran – except when doing so will further the prime dictate of Islam: gaining land, slaves and converts.

Even now, when we’re finally seeing some public discourse among Muslim leaders critical of terrorism, listen carefully to the words they use. I very often hear the word “adventurist” bandied about.

That’s nothing even remotely like the kind of language one would use when renouncing criminals. It’s more like listening to the board of directors of an investment firm criticizing a partner who is trying to expand too quickly. They’re all working toward the same end goals. It’s not that terrorism against infidels is “evil” per se; it’s just that the strategy is becoming too risky in the current environment.

…I have friends that were under the impression that mohammed lived BEFORE Jesus and that the koran is older than the New Testament…

Talon on March 30, 2008 at 9:00 AM

A wise man once said, “The highest price we pay for as a society is ignorance.”

I find myself in agreement with that assessment. This is why Mr. Spencer’s work is so important.

Spread the knowledge.

I appreciate that many here, through these posts by Mr. Spencer, are discussing this subject intelligently. This is what blogging should be about.

Doug on March 30, 2008 at 1:58 PM

Well stated

So Jesus’ being born of a Virgin and Jesus’ returning at the Last Day and Jesus’ being sinless do not, for Muslims, mean that Jesus was greater than Muhammad or any other Prophet. These are just singular features Allah willed to give him. But Muhammad is still the greatest prophet because he received the perfect book, the Qur’an.

Did Muhammad himself ever make any claim to being greater than Jesus, or is that just the interpretation of his followers?

Is there any explanation in the Qur’an for why God chose to give these extraordinary features (e.g., the virgin birth, sinless nature, triumph over Satan at the endtimes, etc.) to Jesus, and not to some other prophet (such as Muhammad)?

You’ve warned us before not to reason from truths to a particular conclusion; is that a specific teaching of Muhammad, or is that an interpretation of his followers?