Confessions of an Arabian Man-God

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z364hC_MIEc

In recent weeks and months, several apologists have been producing a lot of material showing that the god of Islam is not a spirit like the God of the Bible, but a very anthropomorphic man-god with actual physical body parts.  These apologists are David Wood, Sam Shamoun, Anthony Rogers, and Vocab Malone.  In my opinion they’ve done a very good job in bringing this to light.  I wonder what Deedat would have said about this if he were alive.

I mentioned in my last post that the Quran has a very poor understanding of the Trinity.  Surah 5 is the best example but there are others as well.  One verse to look at is Surah 6:101 which reads:

Originator of the heavens and the earth—how can He have a son when He never had a companion? He created all things, and He has knowledge of all things.

The reason why Allah cannot have a son is that he doesn’t have a companion.  He needs to have a companion to have intercourse with to produce offspring.  This verse shows us quite a bit how the Quran thinks.  Let’s think about this for a bit.  Why would the Quran be saying this?

The Quran is emerging from an Arabian tradition and trying to piggyback on the Biblical tradition.  In this transition it brought in a man-god mentality.  Now, the authors of the Quran probably thought that the Christians and Jews believed in a man-god with physical body parts as well.  This is why the Quran argues the way that it does.  It has no concept of a Son that eternally pre-existed like the Bible portrays.

Now, most of the information about Allah’s body parts come from the Hadith.  The mainstream Hadith collections are compiled well over 200 years after Muhammad dies.  By this time, the Muslims have emerged far beyond the deserts of Arabia.  They are ruling over areas where the majority of the inhabitants are Christians.

When Christians heard this objection, they probably laughed.  Christian theology was highly developed at this point.  There were multiple ecumenical councils where numerous creeds were produced.  The wording of these creeds were so specific that they spent long hours debating what words to use in certain parts.  The best example would be homoousios over homoiousios.  The arguments against the Trinity in the Quran simply wouldn’t work.

While early Christian polemists against Islam certainly had a strong knowledge of the Quran and many Islamic practices, they are less familiar with the Hadith.  In the days of St. John of Damascus, the Hadiths were probably only in oral form as the main collections wouldn’t come into existence for a century.  St. John probably would have thought they were inauthentic upon hearing them.

This is where the confusion took place.  The Muslims thought that the Christians had the man-god conception of God and therefore the Trinity didn’t make sense.  The Christians didn’t take the Quranic criticism seriously since it was like trying to fight smog with a crowbar.  The were working with two completely different concepts of God.  The Quran criticism would have only worked if Christians believed in an Islamic style man-god.