Editor’s Note: This is the second response to Samiul.  Please see Violence in the Bible: A Response to a Muslim for the first discussion. 

Samiul wrote a follow-up email from Hong Kong:

now give me also 1 answer what is the origin of trinity .Is it told by any followers of jesus christ !!!!! answer is noooooooo .It has been created 3 century later at the conference of nicea at 325 on the basis of vote not on the the basis of what jesus said.U christian people tal about killing innocent people by muslim !!!! when the history said that christiany killed millions of people ,even burned them,thrown them on the mouth of lion when some1 differ from their thought.when ariyan differ from the thought at 325 he was bruttaly killed.n alll of his followers were slaughtered.Is it is yr religion all about to kill even yr own people when they differ their thought. Now u have created a religion judeo christianity ,but b4 it i like 2 ask if all of u belived that christiany was on the basis
of judaism then y all of u killed bruttallyy millions of jewish people.N the whole world knows how all of u killed thousands of innocent muslim n jewish people during crusade.So i dnt think this is worth to talk about muslim the way that u talked.now the question about who was the real heir of prophet abraham!!!! whom the land was promissed.If u really want to knw this go to this then go to the following site.http://www.bible4islam.com/html/s08-01.html
here it is clearly mention that who should be the real heir by the verses of bible in a clear way.i expect answer from u after when u will read the link.!!! i also want that if u fail to counter that links argument than u all should stop the hoax “we r the chosen people .” that was our chosen land.is that clear.Now the word come whether jesus was crucified or not .then just go to the following link .there it was clearly mention that was a CRUCIFIXION OR CRUCI-FICTION .http://www.jamaat.net/crux/Crux1-5.htmland as i talked about trinity .Go to the following link.There u will clearly find
the origin and history of trinity theory.http://members.aol.com/IslamTeam/trinity1.htmLook after reading all the articles i dnt think there will b much problem for u to understand y there is some differences in thought between muslim and christian people.Prophet mohammed 1400 years b4 just mentioned about these facts that as i talked in this mail.At that time there wasn’t enough oppotunity to cross check.then how he able to get this knowladge.is it from any source other than god that u can say !!!!! All the facts n differnces that prophet mohammed (pbuh) told now has been scientifically proven.I want an reply from u about the link i posted.There may be a lots of grammatical mistakes.sorry for that.allah hafez

My response:

Dear Samiul:

Let me paraphrase your questions:

1. Why do Christians insist on the doctrine of the Trinity? Wasn’t the idea invented 300 years after Jesus?
2. Why did I emphasize the violence in Islam in my History of Islam blog posting when Christian history is replete with examples of Christian violence?
3. Why do I insist that the Jews were the children of the promise instead of the Muslims?
4. Why do I insist that Jesus was crucified?  Wasn’t the story of the Crucifixion really a Cruci-fiction?
5. Where could Muhammad get his ideas, if not from God? Aren’t Muhammad’s teachings now scientifically verified?

These are excellent questions and I acknowledge that wiser men than myself have provided excellent responses to some of them.  I’ll attempt to answer some and will defer to others where appropriate.  Please keep in mind that I am a layman; I’ve never studied the Scriptures in their original languages so, like you, I must rely on translations and commentaries to some degree.

1. The Trinity is one of the most mysterious of Christian doctrines.  Let me state at the outset that my worship of the Creator leaves room for His nature to be beyond my fullest comprehension.  To say that I fully understand Him would betray arrogance on my part.  Your faith includes a similar attitude toward Allah when you fail to comprehend his actions: “En sh’ Allah [Allah wills it].” 

I want to point out a couple of interesting things that support the concept of the Trinity:

Even in the earliest chapters of Genesis, God refers to Himself in the third-person, i.e., “Let us make man in our image.”  There are many more examples throughout the Old and New Testaments, so it is disingenuous to suggest that the Trinity was a fabrication by the institutional church of the fourth century.

Interestingly, I have read many passages in the Qur’an that directly quote Allah.  I see a consistent pattern where he refers to himself in a similar fashion – and your translators use capital letters for the pronouns. For example:

“We will turn away their hearts and eyes from the Truth since they refused to believe in it at first. We will let them blunder about in their wrongdoing. If We sent the angels down to them, and caused the dead to speak to them, . . . and ranged all things in front of them, they would still not believe, unless God willed otherwise. . .  Thus have We assigned for every prophet an enemy” (Surah 6:107–12).

The reference to sending angels cannot be a reference of a partnership between God and Muhammad, since Muhammad did not have spiritual powers of this nature.  So how does Islam explain the plural nature of God’s character as seen in passages of this sort?

2. Yes, there are terrible examples of misguided bigotry carried out in the name of Christ.  The historical record of our respective religions includes countless examples of the the worst inhumanity that men are capable of.  All I can say is that it affirms the fallen nature of mankind (a key concept in God’s plan of redemption).  Each of us is capable of the worst imaginable atrocities.  But as I stated in my previous response to you – Christians who act that way repudiate the very Gospel they claim to be defending.  In his book, Jesus and Muhammad, Mark Gabriel says it best:

“We cannot look to Christians to learn what Jesus taught, nor can we look to Muslims to determine what Muhammad taught.  We must not focus on the actions of those who call themselves Muslims or Christians.  It does not matter how many terrorists call themselves Muslims, and it does not matter how many Nazis or Crusaders called themselves Christians.  Instead, we must look directly at the teachings and actions of Jesus and Muhammad as they are recorded in the most reliable sources.”

3. I suspect the only agreement we can come to on this point is that we wll disagree.  The Muslim mindset embraces the principal of abrogation – that Muhammad reserved the right to contradict anything from the Judeo-Christian Scriptures.  Interestingly, he also applied the principal of abrogation to anything previously revealed to him if it suit his purposes.  Muslims claim that Allah is superior to logic and to constrain him with the expectation that he be consistent diminishes his supreme authority.  So he reserves the right to be capricious.  In this way, Islam makes him more like the Pagan gods of Arabia, Greece and Rome than the God of Abraham.  In contrast, the Judeo-Christian view of God is that he is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow.  His consistency is demonstrated in his creation, which operates according to rigid physical laws.

If Isaac was a usurper, why were Ishmael’s descendents silent on the matter for 2,500 years?  If Ishmael was the true son of the Covenant, then why did Muhammad not reject everything else from the Hebrew and Christian Bibles, since from his point of view, they were built upon a tragic farce?

4. Your challenge to the New Testament has its foundation in Muhammad’s reported visions.  In spite of the fact that he fails all the tests established in the Old Testament for authentication of prophets, and that he never prophesized future events that came to pass, Muslims revere his words as unimpeachible revelation.  We have no basis for debate on this point.  Although Christianity welcomes challenges to Christ’s diety and teachings, Islamic law will not tolerate even an honest appraisal of Muhammad’s character flaws – let alone the inconsistencies in Islamic theology as laid down by him.  In fact, this paragraph is sufficient to earn me the death penalty in most Muslim countries and torture in the remainder. 

To speak frankly to your criticism, Muhammad was influenced by his wife’s cousin, Waraqa bin Neufal, the pastor of the largest Ebionite church in Mecca.  The Ebionite brand of Christianity rejected the deity of Christ.  Waraqa was the first to encourage Muhammad that his visions were not demonic, but were prophesy from God.  So, Muhammad’s rejection of Christ’s deity may have been more influenced by Ebionite rebelliousness than by his revisionist ‘revelations’ from Allah.  In general, Muhammad’s ideas are an amalgamation of the pagan, Jewish and heretical Christian cults that abounded in Arabia during his lifetime.  However he adopted his views, the challenge to Christ’s diety sprang to life centuries after the events and are based upon his faulty assumptions about the true nature of Christianity.

I will commend the writers of the web sites you referred me to.  Their textual criticism is presented with a flourish, although they disguise their logical fallacies throughout.  To one lacking an understanding of the historicity of the Judeo-Christian Bible, their arguments would be very persuasive.  Here’s an excellent website that does a good job of countering the writings of Sheikh Ahmed Deedat and others you quoted: www.answering-islam.org/index.html

5. Where indeed?  As noted above, Muhammad was frightened by his first visions and concluded that he was demonically possessed – a dramatic contrast to all Biblical prophets.  In spite of Waraqa’s affirmation of his prophetic role, a long gap in his visions affected Muhammad’s mental health.  He later said that he became, “so sad… that he intended several times to throw hmself from the tops of high mountains and every time he went up to the top of a mountain in order to throw himself down, Gabriel would appear before him.”  How confident can you be in a religious leader who acted upon suicidal impulses on numerous occasions? It should be emphasized that no prophet prior to Muhammad criticised or contradicted previous prophetic writing. Muhammad broke with this tradition in a dramatic way, yet still affirmed many Old and New Testament passages. Therefore, I encourage you you examine what the Scriptures teach about the tests to be applied to anyone claiming divine revelation. You will have to agree that Muhammad failed these tests. Since the purpose of the tests was to validate both the messenger and his message, you must conclude that Muhammad’s message was invalid. Therefore, he must be relegated to the category of false prophet and the Qur’an is irrelevant.

Even if you dispute my previous statement, you must question whether the Qur’an you have is even a close approximation of Muhammad’s ‘visions.’  Within twelve years of his death there were already many variations of the Qu’ran. Uthmān ibn ‘Affān, the third Caliph, gathered the conflicting texts and burned all but one. This calls into question the reliability of the surviving text. 

Interestingly, during renovations of the Great Mosque of Sana’a in Yemen in 1972, early Qu’ran manuscripts were discovered. The manuscripts have not seen the light of day.  Five Muslim scholars were imprudent enough to voice honest concerns about the what these texts might reveal regarding the authenticity of the ‘official’ version that has been venerated for 1,400 years.  Those scholars have been assassinated, exiled, or have disappeared.

In short, Islam does not invite serious debate – scientific or otherwise - about the legitimacy of Mohammad’s visions, or the written record thereof.  I have read the Muslim pamphlet titled, “A Brief Illustrated Guide to Understanding Islam” which touts examples of scientific validations of Mohammad’s sayings, but honestly, it is pretty elementary and has some very ridiculous ‘proofs’ of the authenticity of the Qur’an.  You can find an online copy here.
 
By the way, if you are interested in scientific validation of the Judeo-Christian Bible, I encourage you to visit the Reasons To Believe website. In contrast to the pamphlet noted above, this organization engages in serious scientific research.

Samile, thank you for the opportunity to discuss your questions.  I pray that you will have eyes to see and ears to hear.

Liam Roberts

Other blog entries you may find interesting:

The New Dark Ages: A Long Eurabian Night
Hand-Wringing Diplomacy: Mideast Peace is an Impossible Goal
Islam: What the West Needs to Know
A Woman’s Place in Islam
Islamic Law Requires Breast Feeding of Male Co-workers
What is the Qur’an? Archaeological Find Invalidates Islam’s Holy Book
Love Your Enemies and Pray For Those Who Persecute You
Madrassah Schools: Why They Pose a Threat to Western Civilization
Violence in the Bible: 1st Response to a Muslim
Validity of Scripture: 2nd Response Presents The Bible as Superior to the Qur’an
The Historic Alliance of Christianity and Science
DNA and the Flood: The Biblical Account is Written in Our Genetic Code
Jihad.com: Islamofascists Are Recruiting Via the Internet
A Brief History of Islam
Submission: The Movie That Led a Muslim to Assassinate Theo Van Gogh
Honoring America’s Fallen Warriors
Profile of A Reluctant Hero: Why Christians Should Defend Themselves
The Enlightenment of Atheism