FIVE QUESTIONS POSED ABOUT ISLAM

[JEM]

FIVE QUESTIONS IF YOU ARE A MUSLIM
or if you know any Muslims to ask
////////////////////////////////////////////////
by Jacob Prasch

Table of Sections

Introduction
How Can Allah be the Same God of the Christians and Jews? .
Is Your Religion Right About Mohammed? ..
How Can an Educated Muslim Believe This? ..
Where is the Ummah? ..
What About Freedom? ...
What About the Promise of Jihad? .
Which book is right? ..

INTRODUCTORY QUESTIONS

"Marhaba. Ismi Yakub.” Hello, my name is Jacob, happy to meet you,
I’ve been meeting a lot of Muslims in Britain and America and other countries and I've been talking to them about their faith. And most of them are quite enthusiastic about sharing with me the beliefs of Islam, the teachings of Mohammed in the Quran, and why they feel I should believe it. Often they will point to things like the moral disintegration of Western society, with which I agree, and they will point out many other things. They will claim we have the same God, and it’s even been pointed out that the Quran speaks more about Jesus than it does Mohammed.

Well, actually I’ve read the Quran; I have a Quran in my hand. And it has spoken more about Jesus than of it does Mohammed, only the things it says about Jesus disagree with what the Gospel say about Jesus. The Gospels, of course, say that He was God, that He died. The Quran says He was not God and did not die.

I’m speaking to you not as an enemy. I'm speaking to you as, I hope, a friend and somebody who wants to know the truth. I've listened to what Muslims have said about Islam, why they feel it’s right, why they feel Christians, Jews, and others should believe it, why it is the true religion.
Now of course there are multiple kinds of Muslims. There are Sunni, there are Shi’a, there are Baha’i, there are Aleywa, there are Achmahdi, there’s the Nation of Islam, and Sufi, and they will disagree on many fundamental points among themselves.

However, the same would be true of Christianity. You’d have Catholics, Protestants – different kinds, Methodists, Pentecostalists – and these would often disagree themselves. But what is broadly called “Christian” will essentially agree on the central points that Jesus was God who became a man to take our sin, that He died on the cross and rose from the dead to give eternal life, and He’s coming again. All people who say they are “Christian” will agree, in essence, on that.

ALL people who call themselves “Muslims” will agree on the five pillars of Islam. They will all agree on the inspiration of the Quran, that Mohammed was the prophet, that in their view there no God but Allah and Mohammed is his prophet, and in the five pillars of Islam. They will all agree on the basic things. Others

will add other things about Ali and so forth, but they all agree on the basic things. The Wahhabi will not accept anything that goes beyond 950 A.D., but they’ll still agree on the five pillars, the five pillars of Islam.
We know that there are people who are culturally Muslim. They’re Muslim because of culture, upbringing, social background, but may not be Muslims by way of personal faith; it’s their culture. In the West we see much of this nominal Islam and its growing. The same is true in Christianity. Most people who say they are Christians are Christians by culture and not by personal faith. I would encourage my Muslim friends to realize what is true of Islam is also true of Christianity – not everyone who says he's a Muslim is really a Muslim by way of personal faith, some of them are only Muslims by way of culture. In Christianity that same thing is true, and in secular society even more so; they are Christians by way of culture.
I don't speak for those who are Christians by way of culture, I speak for those who are what we call “born-again” Christians, those who are Christians by way of conviction – general faith – much as a Wahabbist, a Wahab would speak by way of conviction, that he believes in Islam.

And so I’ve read the Quran and I’ve read the Hadith, I’ve talked to a number of Muslims, and I’ve been from one end of the Muslim world to the other. Over the years I’ve been to Morocco, I’ve been to Egypt, I’ve been to Jordan, I’ve been to Turkey, I’ve been to the Persian Gulf, I've been to Brunei and Malaysia and the Far East. I’ve seen Islam in Africa, I've seen Islam in the Middle East, I've seen Islam in the Far East, I've seen Islam in Britain and in America. I’ve seen it in its Western form, its African form, its Middle Eastern form, and in its Asian form. I’ve been to a lot of Muslim countries; I’ve been to a lot of them. I'm not completely ignorant about the religion or faith of Islam.

I don't speak Arabic very well, but I do speak some Arabic, and I’ve lived in the Middle East for a number of years. And so in listening to what Muslims have told me – some of them have been people that have been business associates of mine, people that I’ve done business with in the tourism industry in Egypt and Turkey, people that I’ve had good friendships with, working relationships with, people who themselves disdain fundamentalism. people who are against terror because it’s destroyed their businesses and forced them to put people out of work. The tourism industry was vital to the economies of countries like Egypt and Turkey, and because of Islamic fundamentalism when tourists stopped coming out of fear, foreign-exchange disappears, tax revenues disappear, jobs disappear.,

I know that not all Muslims are terrorists. I know not all Muslims agree with the fundamentalist agenda. We could make the argument that Islam has been hijacked by fundamentalists who have that agenda and that people will say the moderate Muslims need to take it back. You could make that argument, but I'm not dealing with that argument, I’m simply dealing with my own questions about your religion. So have al-katab and al-quran, the Bible, and the Quran.

[JEM]

How Can Allah be the Same God of the Christians and Jews?
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
The first question I have is the person and character of Mohammed.

According to the Quran and according to the Hadith, Mohammed grew up next to the well of Zumzum. Now today the Zumzum is considered holy water by the Wahab in Saudi Arabia. And in his youth he saw the Hajj, the annual pilgrimage to worship at the Ka’bah. His father's name was Abdullah, the servant of Allah. So the Hajj already existed, the Ka’bah already existed, the well of Zumzum already existed, and even the worship of Allah existed in ancient pre-Islamic Arabia.

There were multiple stones – some would say 360, one for each day of the lunar year in the Ka’bah. Mohammed began his reforms and crusades; he removed all of the stones except one. He said there was one God.
“Allah” is a generic term in Arabic for “god”, but it’s also the specific name; it was the specific name of a moon-god. And of course we see the moon crescent on mosques to this day. That brings the question, was Allah, or is Allah, the same God as Christians and Jews because it is the Arabic word for “God”? It is an Arabic word for “god” – that is without dispute, but there is another word called “El” that we hear little about. Now in the Katub, in the Judeo-Christian Scriptures, God is called – Allah is called – by a name. His name is not called “Allah”, His name is called “Yahweh”. Yes, the Hebrew “Elohim” – “God” can be translated into “Allah”, but “Yahweh” cannot be translated into “Allah”.

If the worship of Allah, the well of Zuzum, the Ka’bah and the Hajj all existed before Muhammad began Islam, how can we say Muhammad began Islam? If Islam itself acknowledges these things existed, was it not something that came from the pagan religions of ancient Arabia? For Mohammed was told of monotheism.
He met some Christians who were black Africans from Ethiopia who used the term in Arabic of puppy dogs opening their eyes. You see a little bit that there’s one God.

Mohammed ventured with his uncle and he learned certain things from the Zoroastrians of Persia, but he saw in those days Jews and Christians did not fight each other because they had one religion.

He lived at a time of tremendous social injustice and he believed if the Arabic nations out-monotheised, they would have the same kind of peace and tranquillity that seemed to happen between Jews and Christians, that Christians and Jews had within their own community. That is what, broadly speaking, the Quran and the Hadith say about Mohammed.

But my first question would be if all these things existed, if Allah was first worshipped as a moon-god, if there was a Hajj – the pilgrimage was already there, if the well of Zumzum was there, if the Ka’bah was there, how is Islam the same religion historically in its origins as Judaism and Christianity? How is it?

I can prove the relationship between Christianity and Judaism – even the Quran acknowledges that. But the Quran is claimed to be a “third testament” correcting the errors in the other two. Even though the last thing it says in the Christian Bible is don’t add to the Word of God, (Rev. 22:18-19) the Quran comes along and has added another book saying it’s a third testament.

My first question to you, my Muslim friends, is this: On what basis can you say that Allah is the same God as Christians and Jews, on what basis can you say it is another manifestation of the same Judeo-Christian, monotheistic belief? On what basis can you say Mohammed began this religion when its institutions, its fundamental tenets and practices – the Hajj, the well of Zumzum, the Ka’bah, the worship of Allah – already existed? I know you believe it does, but examining it historically and examining it in light of the Jewish-Christian scriptures I cannot see how it does. Can you please explain to me how it does? That is my first question, and I say it not to insult you; I say it to ask.

[JEM]

Is Your Religion Right About Mohammed?
///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

My second question is:

Mohammed was the greatest prophet – greater than Jesus, greater than Moses – al-asam so teaches: “There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his prophet”. And Allah claimed, according to Mohammed, that Mohammed was the one who would bring this message that there's no God but Allah and Muhammad is his prophet through the angel Gabriel who appeared in a cave and gave the Quran to Mohammed – “angels” being one of the five pillars of Islam.

So I look at Mohammed and I compare him with the character of Christ. The Quran speaks more of Jesus than it does Mohammed.

And although the other things it says about Jesus are usually in disagreement with what the New Testament says about Jesus – “Isa”, “Yeshua”, the Quran never once faults His moral character. The Quran never once faults the moral character of Jesus. Never once. It says things about Him that disagree with the Judeo-Christian Scriptures, but it never faults His moral character.

The Quran never faults the moral character of Jesus.

In the Hadith, however, we read something that corresponds to Quran Sorah 33:52, where something happened in the life of Muhammad where he was told by Allah, supposedly, it is no longer lawful for you to marry after this unless it is someone you already own like a handmaiden.

What was this to which I refer in the Hadith?
“Fe’el hadith Mohammed, fell hadith Musa, ben tur abo baqir mah allude setah. Fe’el hadith ai-eesha ben tur abu baqir mah allude setah. Fe’el hadith Mohammed ho mubaraq oh fe’el hadith Mohammed orva mutah.”

I don't ask that question to offend you. According to the Hadith, Ayesha the daughter of a Abu Bakr, was six years old when Mohammed married her. He took her virginity at the age of nine according to the teachings of Islam. You had a man, perhaps in his fifties – probably around 54, scholars are not exactly sure – who had sex with a nine year-old girl whom he married at the age of six. And the Quran tells him that Allah was somehow displeased, apparently, and said you couldn’t marry any more after this unless it was a slave or something you already owned. Even if you found a woman attractive you couldn't have any more of them.

In fact, I've had Muslim scholars admit that Mohammed had one of his stepson's divorce his wife so he could take her. The question I asked in Arabic, and I’m only asking the question, is the Hadith right? Was Mohammed blessed of God or was Muhammad a pedophile? I'm only asking was your religion right in what it teaches?

I'm only asking the question; I'm not trying to incite religious hatred, I'm not trying to offend you, I’m only asking the question, “Is the Hadith right?” Did Mohammed marry a six year-old little girl and have sex with a little child? Did he do that? Is your religion right? Is this what he did?

Now if you believe what your religion teaches, if you believe in the historicity of the Quran and of the Hadith, if you believe it is true, then of course you believe Muhammad had sex with a little girl. My question is if it is what you believe, please tell me how you expect me or any other Westerner, any Christian, any Jew, anyone else to believe such a man was God’s greatest prophet?

Even in many Islamic countries today, if someone did that with a girl that young, he would be arrested and criminally prosecuted, conceivably executed in some of them.

Now a few years ago in the United States, it showed some very wealthy Saudi members of the House of Saud, sheiks who were oil-rich arriving in India on private jets. They did not call it “slavery” and they don’t call it “slavery” in Africa, but essentially for as little as $200 they were giving to families of very poor people and taking little girls, some of them quite young like 14, back to Saudi Arabia. When questioned they said, “What’s wrong with it? Our prophet did it.”

These are Wahabbist Saudi Arabians. “Wahab” – fundamentalist Muslims, fundamentalist Sunnis who don't accept any later interpretation of Islam after 950. These are ultra-conservative Wahabbists, they are rigid, rigid Quranists. Yet they found it acceptable to go and do this – and it was on television – because Muhammad did it.

Now I hope you appreciate as a Westerner, although this goes on in Christendom, although there have been a number of Roman Catholic priests who have done it, when they get caught they get arrested. When there’s a conspiracy to sweep it under the rug they get sued. Why is this tolerated in the Islamic world? In Saudi Arabia, the home of Islam, why was this institutional pedophilia in a form of slavery tolerated in the modern world today? And they say, “Because Mohammed did it.” That's what they said on television.

[JEM]

How Can an Educated Muslim Believe This?
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
I have a third question for my Islamic friends, particularly the educated ones, those that have done degrees in law, medicine, dentistry, engineering, science, mathematics in the West. Some have gone to Oxbridge, some have gone to Ivy League universities in America, some have gone to the Sorbonne in Paris, there are educated Muslims in the West, some of them born in the West, some came to study in the West, but there are educated Muslims. We have to remember that when the Western world was in the Dark Ages under medieval Roman Catholicism Islam had its Golden Age. So I appeal to the educated, thinking Muslim, please consider this question carefully.

Islam likes to claim that a 5th Century forgery of the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas – there’s two of them, but the later one, the 5th Century – was the true gospel and the ones that are the orthodox in Christianity – Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John – are false ones. Even liberal higher critics, higher critical scholars who simply study the Scriptures as history and literature do not accept any 1st Century authenticity to that later Thomas gospel. But we also have higher critical scholars in Islam. They are called “Orientalists”.

Now Orientalists are not allowed to teach or to publish in Muslim countries, generally speaking. There might be some exception I’m not aware of, but certainly their lives would be threatened by the Muslim brotherhood or something like this. In Saudi Arabia they would be more than arrested.

These are academic theologians; they are critical scholars; they study the Quran, the Hadith as history and literature with an academic eye, looking for things like source criticism, form criticism, the same tools higher critical scholars have applied to the Judeo-Christian Scriptures. They’re Orientalists. They simply ask questions. They’re not studying the Quran as doctrine per se or as revelation, they’re simply looking at it as literature the way critical scholars look at the Bible, really, as literature.

I know I study the Bible as both doctrine and as literature and history. The Orientalists raise some questions. I’m not talking about Christians phrasing questions or about Jews raising questions, I'm talking about educated, westernised Muslim scholars – professors, people with doctorates in Islam – usually from Cairo, Egypt who are now to be found at Oxford, Cambridge, the Sorbonne, Princeton in America, and so forth, and prominent universities, prominent professors, academically credible scholars, the Orientalists – your scholars.

They ask questions simply about the historicity and literary origin and development of the Quran and Hadith. One question would be, “How can the Quran say that every night when the sun becomes tired it descends into a muddy pit and rises again the next day?”

Remember, during its Golden Age, Islam were the astronomers of the era. Ptolemian astronomy dominated the world and it was largely dominated by Islam all the way until the time of Galileo and Copernicus and Kepler. Certainly if Allah is God, and Allah created the universe, and Allah created the sun, and if Allah told the angel Gabriel to give the Quran to Mohammed, Allah would've known the sun does not set into a muddy pit every night when it gets tired,

This looks like an ancient Near Eastern fable, a superstition, but it’s a question that should be asked. It’s the question that should be answered but that is a question that I will leave to Muslims to answer. My question rather concerns the relationship between the Quran and the Katub, the Bible.

The name of the mother of Jesus was not “Mary” but “Miryam”, and the sister of Moses’ name was also “Miryam”. They were both named “Miryam”. But they live 1,300 years
apart, 13 centuries separated, Miryam the sister of Moses from Miryam the mother of Isa – Yeshua.

And so your scholars, the Orientalists, these academic theologians who study the Quran in Arabic who are at the most prominent universities in the Western world because the Islamic world will not allow them to publish what they teach, ask the question, “If 1,300 years separated Miryam the sister of Moses from Miryam the mother of Jesus – Isa, Yeshua – why does the Quran say they are the same woman?” Isn’t that absurd? I'm not trying to offend you, but isn't it ludicrous? How can the Quran correct the mistakes in the Bible if they’re thirteen centuries apart?

We have other archeological evidence showing that Moses long predates Jesus. Nobody questions it. No Muslim scholar in the world would question it today. The Wahab wouldn't question, yet the Quran says it's true.

According to the book of Esther in the Hebrew Scriptures, Haman was a senior court minister in the ancient Persian court in Susa. He was an Agagite, a descendent of Amalek according to the Hebrew Scriptures accepted by Jews and Christians.

The Babylonian captivity of the Jews was followed by the Persian conquest of Babylon. We’re talking about five centuries before Christ. Yet we are told in the Quran that Haman was a minister in the court of Pharaoh. There were no Pharaohs in the 5th Century before Christ as such. The period of Pharaoh was long over. In the Scriptures Pharaoh goes back to the time of Moses, not forward to the time of Esther and Mordecai.

These are fundamental inconsistencies out of harmony not only with the Jewish and Christian Scriptures but out of harmony with established, recognized history, supported by the archaeological record, things that Muslims today do not believe themselves. Yet the Quran teaches them.

Who dares to raise these questions? Is it me, a Christian? No, I'm simply looking at what the Orientalists say, your own scholars. How can an educated person, how can a dentist, how can a civil engineer, how can a physician, how can a barrister, how can a chartered accountant, how could a computer engineer, how can a mathematician, how can an educated, thinking person who went to a university like Princeton or Cambridge or the Sorbonne believe the sun sets every night when it gets tired into a muddy pit?

I don't believe all Muslims are ignorant fundamentalists. I saw a film on television, a documentary, where there were people in Pakistan – rural Pakistan – whose wives were sick and they would not allow their wives to be treated by a physician unless the physician was a female. And in some cases the women would die for wont of medical care because they would not allow a male physician to treat or examine their wives.

Now of course, in the West, educated Muslims would balk at such things as primitive. I'm not speaking about primitive Muslims on the frontier on the Punjab, I’m speaking about Muslims who live in Birmingham, or who live in Nottingham, or who live in Manchester, or London, or Los Angeles who went to a prominent university who are engaged in a prestigious profession. How can you reasonably believe that Mary the mother of Jesus and Miryam the sister of Moses are the same woman when they are over 1,000 years apart? The Orientalists don’t believe it.

It’s no wonder their publications are banned throughout the Islamic world. You’re not allowed to ask those questions in the Islamic world. If you want to ask academic questions about Islam, you have to come to the free world. I have heard Muslims like Achmed Didot try to pull apart the Jewish Christian Bible based on higher critical arguments used by liberal Christian scholars. I was supposed to debate Mr. Didot in Johannesburg in the town hall, but he had a stroke and I went to his house and I shared my faith with him unsuccessfully. He tried to share his faith with me, also unsuccessfully, but I've heard his arguments. He draws on Christian liberal higher critics.

All I am saying is apply the same standard. Take academic approaches to literary criticism to form criticism, the source criticism, to historical analysis and apply those same tools that Didot applies to the Bible, to the Quran and you will find something that any thinking Muslim would say lacks credibility. You are an educated Muslim. How can you believe this?

[JEM]

Where is the Ummah?
////////////////////////////////////

My next question concerns the teaching of the Quran on “Ummah” – unity among Muslims, that you are one nation and one people. Now Christianity does not require Christians to be one nation and one people, Christianity acknowledges multiple nations. Jesus said, “Think not I came to bring unity but a sword”. (Mt. 10:34) Paul the apostle writes. “There must be divisions among you to prove which is true”. (1 Cor. 11:19)

Tragedy that it is, Northern Ireland can still be allotted for in the Christian belief system. The killing and prejudice cannot be, but the fact that there’s a schism within the belief system can be. The Quran is different. While Jesus prayed that the true believers would be one, He said he came to bring division. There’ll be factions among you to prove what is true, teaches the New Testament, but Ummah says that Muslims are one.

Now in the Katub, in the book of Genesis, we are told that Esau’s sword will always be against his brother and that Ishmael's seed will always be divided. Islam teaches that the Arab nations are descendents, of course, of them. Christians and Jews believe the Messiah, the Saviour, would come through Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Islam takes the Old Testament prophecies that Christians believe to be about Jesus and applies them to Mohammed. Having said that, I have to ask which is right: Is Esau’s sword against his brother? Is Ishmael’s seed divided? Or are Muslims “Ummah”? Are they one nation and one people?

One of the most popular films ever made by the motion picture industry was based on a book about the legendary T. E. Lawrence, Lawrence of Arabia, a British military officer who attempted to unite the warring Arab tribes against the Turks. He tried to unite them from fighting each other to a combined force to attack the Turks who were aligned with Germany. The Turks, who were themselves Muslims, mistreated the Bedouins and virtually enslaved those people who were today called, or call themselves, “Palestinian Arabs”. Lawrence of Arabia tried to unite these people, but they would not stay united. Islam was always looking for a Mahdi figure to unite Islam, but the Mahdi was defeated by the British ultimately despite the Battle of Khartoum and the death of General Gordon. Abdul Gamal Nasser tried to make Ummah, a pan-Arab unity militarily backed by the Soviet Union, but it did not work or did not last.

Many people have tried to bring Ummah. Mohammed was no sooner dead when the Sunni and Shi’a began to fight each other, ultimately in the Battle of Karbala, over who should take his place, Ali or his theocrats. Then there was a third sect, “Khariji”. They said Allah would reveal who was to be the successor of Mohammed on the battlefield. They began to slaughter each other. This hatred and killing went on until the 20th Century in the war between Iran and Iraq. 1.5 million Muslims were killed by other Muslims in a war between Sunni and Shi’a going back to the Battle of Karbala. (We’re going back here to the 8th Century.)

Why has it never worked? Why is there no Ummah? Why is it that the only way it appears to a Westerner that Muslims can be united is if they have a common enemy? Because it seems unless they have a common enemy they will kill each other.
The invasion of Kuwait – raping, burning, pillaging. The Americans and British liberate Kuwait and the Kuwaitis begin pogroms against the Palestinians, murdering, raping, pillaging.
When Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Arabs tried on the Jordanians what they today are doing with the Israelis – Palestinian nationalism – in September of 1970, King Hussein of Jordan systematically exterminated between 15-18,000 Palestinian Arabs in 12 days.

This is Muslims doing it to Muslims. They kill far more of each other than the Americans, the British, the West, or the Israelis ever killed. The West or the Israelis have never done to Muslims what they have done to each other. 1.5 million killed in the war between Iran and Iraq alone? The wars between Yemen and North and South – it goes on – the Polisario conflict in Morocco. I've heard the followers of Arafat saying, “First the Saturday people, then the Sunday people. First we’ll kill the Jews, then we’ll kill the Christians.” Right now they're killing each other. Again, they did the same thing in Lebanon. Without a common enemy they kill each other.
If Allah is God, and if the Quran is true, why is it that Ummah has never been able to deliver what it promised?

Now again, Christendom can allow for schism and division; however, whenever two Christianized nations had a war, one was not a democracy. In the Western Judeo-Christian world, as opposed to the Muslim world, no two democracies have ever had a war. I have heard fundamentalist Islamic imams in Iran sing of the virtues of the English Puritans because of their piety, but they overlook the fact that those same English Puritans, for all their mistakes they may have had, established parliamentary democracy. Not a single Muslim country in the world is a democracy. Not really. Turkey comes the closest but it isn’t.

Not a single Muslim country will give Christians and Jews the rights they demand in Britain or America, but that is not my point or my question. My question is this: Since no two Westernized Christian Judeo-Christian democracies have ever had a war, but most Jihads – and they’ve called them “Jihads” – have been Muslims killing other Muslims, which religion should I believe? Should I believe a religion that has given rise to democratic institutions where no two democracies based on Judeo-Christian principles have ever had a war, or a religion where because of the religion there’s been nothing but war? There is no Ummah.

Historically there has been no Ummah, there never has been Ummah. The book of Genesis seems right. Esau’s sword remains against his brother, Ishmael’s seed remains divided. The Quran and Hadith has clearly been wrong. My question, my dear Muslim friends, and I’m only asking the question, if I have a Judeo-Christian worldview that has given rise to democratic freedom that does not exist in the Islamic world, why should I believe in Islam that cannot deliver the goods?

You only need to drive across the causeway from Malaysia to Singapore; you only need to cross the border at Elath into Jordan or Tabot into Egypt; you only need to take a ferry across the Bosporus or from Algeciras, Spain to the north coast of Morocco. The moment you as an educated Muslim go from the Judeo-Christian world to the Muslim world you see a big change.

You know the air smells different. I just don’t mean the dirt or the grime or the congestion, I mean the freedom, the tolerance. Why have the sciences not bloomed in the Islamic world since its Golden Age when it was dominated by a philosophical Islam controlled by the Turks, not by a fundamentalist Islam controlled by the Saudi Wahab or the Iranian Shi’a imams? It just doesn't work. Why every morning in Terminal 3 at Heathrow are there so many Muslims bending over backwards to get into Britain? Why are they arriving in Italy and France every day of the week illegally? Why are they doing anything they can to get into to the United States via Mexico or whoever?

Why don't they want to stay in the Islamic world? Some would say because they are missionaries for Islam, sent to convert it. These are not imams, most of them, these are economic refugees and you and I both know it; they’re intellectuals coming for intellectual freedom not available; they’re escaping war and conflict between Muslims like they do from Somalia.

Again, my question is since you have no Ummah, since your religion has been unable to deliver what it promised, why should I turn my back on a religion that has and accept one that hasn't? Why should I reject something that has worked in favor of something that has not? Let’s be honest – if it worked, you wouldn't be here.

[JEM]

What About Freedom?
//////////////////////////////////////
But I have another question. Slightly more than half the world's population are women. We all know that in Saudi Arabia a woman can’t even drive a car. We all know that Islam allows up to four wives although Muhammad himself had many more. However, Ghazali the Islamic scholar 700 years ago taught that Islam teaches that marriage is a form of slavery. Razi and Ibn al-Anabi said that by dowry a wife is the property of her husband in the sense of a slave. In Kitob 4:3 we are told that Islam allows women to be kept as sex slaves, and beating and sexual slavery of women and sexual deprivation are acceptable forms of correcting your wife.

I’ve read books by women who escaped harems such as Princess in the West. These are not books written by Western women, these are not books written by Christians or by Jews or by enemies of Islam, they are written by Muslim women. According to the Home Office here in the United Kingdom, every year – every year – there are at least 1,000 known arranged marriages of under-aged girls that are forced, where British girls are taken by family and compelled to marry people, sometimes 30 to 40 years older than them, whom they’ve never met. A 15 year-old girl from Glasgow was compelled to marry a 54-year-old uncle in Pakistan.

The case is not unusual. We’ve seen a few cases on TV of the abductions and women being forced to marry relatives they have not even met by their own families. This is going on in Britain – how much more of that goes on in the Islamic world?

Mohammed owned black slaves, didn’t he? Ask the Orientalists. In fact, even ask the Wahab. Because on that basis it is justified; they don't call it “slavery”, they call it “employment contracts”. They go, of course, to poor black African countries and give relatively small amounts of money to the families and take the little girls back to the harems. It is called “child slavery” by the United Nations, but fundamentalist Islam calls it permissible and it is practiced in Muslim countries.

I have never seen that kind of the injustice in the Western world in my life. The United States fought a war where one of every eight white Americans was killed or wounded to abolish slavery, to put an end to the enslavement of the black man and woman. One out of eight were killed or wounded in the American Civil War.

In proportionate terms it is the most bloody conflict in the history of America and one of the most bloody in the history of the world in proportionate terms. I have never found a single Islamic country that has had a civil war to put an end to slavery, and the slaves are normally black. And so I ask black people of America and Britain who are listening to Louis Farrakhan, given the fact that the first countries to abolish slavery were Christian – as in William Wilberforce and the Earl of Shaftesbury, as in Abraham Lincoln – given the fact that the first countries to abolish slavery were Christian but the enslavement of blacks still exists in the Islamic world, on what basis can you say Christianity is a white man's religion, and that Islam is the faith of Black freedom and upward mobility?

Four wives? The right to beat, sexually deprive? Enslave, according to your own scholars? I’m not talking about what is ancient; I have been to your countries. It still goes on. Even here there’s arranged, forced marriages. On what basis can you expect a Western woman to turn her back on a religion that says your wife is your co-heir in Christ and become one of four, and somebody will have the right to beat and sexually deprive, and worse still?

In the Hadith we read, “Man will say to his brother, ‘Look upon my wife. If you desire her I will divorce her for you’”, that you can divorce her and give her to another. Now these are early writings in Islam, but remember the Wahab of Saudi Arabia only accept the early writings. It still goes on.

How can you expect a woman to turn her back on a faith that says she’s a co-heir in Christ, love her body the way you love your own, with a religion that says she can be sexually deprived, beaten, mistreated, and even divorced and given away, when you allow automatic custody of the children under Sharia Edin? How can you expect a black man to believe that Christianity is a white man's religion when to this day Islam is a religion that has black slaves?

[JEM]

What About the Promise of Jihad?
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
But I have another question. The question is on “Jihad” – “holy war”. Western Muslims like to say, “Jihad is a struggle within oneself to keep the five pillars of Islam within your own life.” It is a holy war within your own self.

But it is still defined in the Quran and the Hadith as a struggle to defend Islam and, the fundamentalists say, to advance it for Mohammed said, “Allah has commanded me to make war against all nations and all people until all say there's no God but Allah and Mohammed is his prophet”.

He organized 65 military campaigns and personally organized 27. To this day the indigenous people of North Africa, the Berbers, are second-rate citizens in their own country; the Kurds are second-rate citizens in their own ancient homeland.

Why is Iran, which as a Zoroastrian nation, Muslim?

Why is Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia Muslim? Why is Turkey Muslim? Why is Iran Muslim? They were invaded and occupied and forced to become Muslim at the point of a sword. That is the history Islam. Everyone knows it. How then can it be a religion of peace?

Now again, westernized Muslims would say, “Jihad is the struggle within oneself”. I accept that there are those who do not agree with it and they will put it in the same category as what the English did to the Irish or what the Europeans did to the American Indians and so forth, but let's look at Jihad.

Whether you interpret “Jihad” one way or the other is not the issue. The Quran says, “Allah will give the Muslim victory in the jihad against the infidel”. Irrespective of your view of Israel and Palestine and whose land is it and who was there first or who has the right to be there, let's just look at the subject “Jihad”.

One Arab leader, one Muslim leader after another – both Sunni and Shi’a – have called the struggle “Jihad”. After six Jihads, surrounding Muslim nations -- just the Arab ones of 150 million plus in population – cannot defeat less than 5 million Jews. There’s 1.2 billion Muslims in the world, only 13 million Jews. Israel, even with the West Bank, consists of less than 1% of the land that is today Arabic-speaking. Less than 1%. It’s small, it’s surrounded, it’s under-populated, and has none of the vast oil wealth found in the Arabian pan handle, or in Iraq or Iran or Libya. Why is it? If Allah is God, and if He will give the Muslim victory in the Jihad against the infidel, that Israel has proven consistently indestructible?

When I’ve asked this question I've been told it’s because of America. I don't believe God is afraid of America or of any nation. If Allah is God, He’s not afraid of America or Russia or China or India or Britain or France. He’s not afraid of anybody, He’s God! On that I think we can agree. But how can it be because of America if Allah’s going to give you victory?

The fact is, under Nassir when the Soviet Union was backing the Arab-Muslim nations against Israel in 1967, America did not begin backing Israel in any significant way until 1973. East Jerusalem, the Golan Heights, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip were conquered in 1967 – June of ’67 – six years before the Americans began backing them. Your argument makes no sense.

Now the Katub – the Bible, says the Jews would return to the land. Jesus said Jerusalem would be trampled down by the feet of the Gentiles until the time of the Gentile was completed. (Lk. 21:24) They go back to Jerusalem. The prophet Zechariah says they would be there and they would be indestructible because of Jesus. Read it. You can read it in Arabic. They’ll look upon Him whom they have pierced. (Zech. 12:10)

When the nations come against Jerusalem He will make war against the surrounding nations.

[JEM]

Which book is right?
////////////////////////////////////
Are you one nation, one people, or are you a divided nation and a divided people who needs a common enemy to create the illusion? Are you really a nation of peace and tolerance? Then why will you not give the same freedom to Christians and Jews that you demand here? You can build your mosques wherever you want. Why can't we build one church in Saudi Arabia or Iran, let alone a synagogue?

If you’re a religion of peace and tolerance, why do you still allow slavery of children and blacks, even though you call it by another name? If you're a nation of peace and tolerance, why do your scholars have to come to France, Britain, and America to publish? If Allah is giving you the victory in the Jihad, how come He’s not giving it to you?

How come the God of Israel has given it to them? In the schism between the Sunni and Shi’a it was said Allah would determine who he favors on the battlefield. So then, by the standards of Islam, God has favored the Jews. Why is it that the West had to liberate Kuwait? You have no Ummah, you have no Salim, you have no victory in Jihad. But the real question is, do you have salvation?

One of the pillars of Islam as you know is “Insha’Allah” – everything that happens whether good or bad is Allah’s will. There is no assurance of salvation. And salvation is obtained by submission to Allah’s will as defined in the Quran. But given the fact that there are so many things in the Quran which cannot possibly be true logically and reasonably, given the fact that the teachings of Islam have not been able to produce the freedom and prosperity that exist in the West, let alone the peace or the justice, how can you be sure it can give salvation?

I’ve considered the claims of Mohammed, of the Quran, and of the Hadith, and I have these five questions. I'd asked them of you. I invite you to e-mail me with your response or write us here in Britain:

Moriel
P.O. Box 201
Maidenhead
SL69FB

I invite you to write me, explain Mohammed’s marriage to Ayesha, explain the Islamic position on slavery and women, explain the findings of your Orientalists, explain why there is no Ummah, no victory in your Jihad. If you can’t answer those questions, how can you be sure Islam can give you salvation?
I’ve considered the claims of your religion. please consider the claims of Jesus. In John 5:24 He says…
“Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life.
He’s promising eternal life if you really believe that He died for your sins, to pay the price for what you did. And I'm reading from the apostle Peter, 1 Peter 1:3…

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ…
…Yeshua HaMashiach…
…according to His great mercy..
No, God does have a Son. Not begotten by sex, but begotten from eternity.

He always existed. According to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled that will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, who are protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in this last time.
I’ve considered the claims of Mohammed. If you are fair and reasonable you will consider the claims of Jesus.

I don't desire your destruction; I desire your salvation. I don't desire to discredit your religion for the sake of offending anybody; I desire to arrive at the truth. I have questions – serious questions – and I've asked them.

If you have serious questions, please answer my questions and then I’ll answer yours.
Rai ees susalam majdon hallelujah Yesu HaMasia. Salam


“Five Questions if You’re a Muslim”, Moriel Ministries Copyright © 2008. Commercial use strictly prohibited. Scripture taken from the New American Standard Bible Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by Permission.