"No God But One" - Session 3 Recap

On Tuesday April 18th, 2017 we met for our third session to study Nabeel's book No God But One. We started off by reviewing last week's quiz, taking a second quiz, and then looked at the sections on "The Quran or the Bible?" and "Jihad or the Crusades?".

The class was recorded and the video is available here. A written recap summary of the session is provided below. 

Our next meeting will be next week, April 25th, 2017. Hope to see you all there!

Quiz

After reviewing the answers from last week's 5-question quiz, we checked out the leader boards. Everyone was given a baseball team's name as an alias and right now the Mets, Yankees, and Orioles are all at the top with 5/5! We then spent a few minutes working on a second quiz from the previous meeting's material.

Part 4: The Quran of the Bible?

We open this section by looking at a short news clip documenting the riots that took place at a UN building in Afganistan in 2011 in response to a Florida pastor burning a Quran. Afghan Muslims were outraged that the Quran was burned and turned their anger towards the closest Western entity, a UN building, where 12 innocent people were killed. In contrast, there rarely ever fear that Christians will riot in reaction to Bibles being burned. What is the difference? 

 

The Quran has a different place in the hearts and minds Muslims than the Bible does in the hearts and minds of Christians. To Muslims, the Quran has a divine nature, the closest thing to God incarnate. Burning it is a holy offense. To Christians, Bibles are simply ink and paper collections of divinely inspired communication.

 

The Quran is composed of Surahs (books) and ayat (verses). It was revealed to Muhammad over a 23 year period. "Quran" literally means "recitation" and so it was initially orally transmitted, being recited by Muhammad. He recited it all in Arabic and so, to Muslims, it is the Arabic itself that contains mystical value, being understood as the language of Allah. 

 

Quranic verses eventually were written down but intra-Muslim controversy grew as conflicting recitations began to emerge within 20 years from Muhammad's death. To end the controversy the 3rd Caliph, Uthman, recalled all Quranic manuscripts, destroyed them, and issued an official standardized copy. This will become important in later meetings as we look at the reliability of the Quran's transmission compared to the Bible.

 

Part 5: Jihad or the Crusades?

When Christians criticize Jihad the common retort is, "But what about the Crusades?" The idea is that Christians are just as guilty as Muslims with respect to violent battles so that cancels out the critic. But this is not enough. First, the historical context of the Crusades needs to be better understood and second the traditions each faith's "founders" regarding violence needs to examined.

 

Historical Context of the Crusades

We watched the first few minutes of a video that shows a dynamic map of Islamic battles after Muhammad. The map shows that Islam spread through battles immediately after Muhammad's death and continued well up to the time of the Crusades.

Just before the Crusades, Seljuq Turks conquered Nicaea from the Christian Byzantine emperor. At that point in history two-thirds of the Christian world had been captured by Muslims. And so it was for defensive reasons that the Byzantine emperor asked Pope Urban II for help and the Crusades were initiated.

Tradition of the Founders

It is without question that the early expansion of Islam was through battles. This however was in accord with Muhammad's life and actions. In fact, the last major Surah to be revealed to Muhammad is Surah 9, the most violent book of the Quran. One example ayat will suffice, "Fight those who believe not in Allah" (9:29). Allah's final marching orders are violent in nature.

Promoting pacifism is Jesus who says to love your enemies and turn the other cheek. His final marching orders are in the Great Commission, to go and share the good news of God's love and mercy.

The point to be made is this. Regarding violence (Jihad or the Crusades), the life of the founders matter. One must divert attention from Jesus to justify violence in Christianity; one must divert attention from Muhammad to argue that Islam is a religion of peace.

Conclusion and Next Time

Much more was discussed so check out the video (or at least audio) of the entire session. Next time we will begin to answer the question, "Can we know whether Islam or Christianity is true?"

Our next meeting will be Tuesday April 25th, 2017, 6:30-8pm in the Fellowship Hall (basement) of Mt. Zion UMC. Hope to see you there!