The Islamic Burden

Lepanto – Christendom vs Caliphate

Muslims and Christians both like to look at each others sacred text.  The two faiths share a lot in common.  Both believe in one God, though the nature of God is disputed.  Both believe that God sent many Prophets and revealed sacred texts.  Whether these texts have been corrupted is a matter of dispute.  Both believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah and born of the Virgin Mary.  That’s quite a lot in common.  However, when Christians look at the Quran, they look at it very differently than how Muslims look at the Bible.

The Christian looks at the Quran and Hadith in a very interesting way.  First of all, Islamic scriptures have about as much to do with the Christian faith as the Hindu scriptures.  A Christian can study the Quran, the Hadith, the Sira literature, early commentaries, early Islamic history and basically accept it all.  The only thing that we’d say is that Muhammad was wrong about the God of Abraham revealing this book to him.  Apart from that, we can accept the account of early Islamic origins essentially as they are.  We don’t need to have to find hidden messages or hypothetical redactions in the Quran that make it a “Christian” text.

The Muslim on the other hand isn’t given that option.  He can’t look at Jesus, the Gospels and the early Christian community for what they are.  The Quran rewrote the history of Jesus and his early followers.  The Quran talks about the Injeel(Gospel) revealed to Jesus.  The Quran puts words into the mouth of Jesus that were unknown until the seventh century.  Not only were these words unknown for 600 years after Christ, they flat out contradict the words of Jesus recorded in the first century.  The Quran also forces Muslims to find Jesus prophesied in the four Gospels.

The Quran forces Muslims to contradict all of history and believe that Jesus never died on the cross.  This is the one fact of Jesus that Christians, Jews, atheists and ancient Roman pagans such as Tacitus agree on.  The Quran burdens itself with contradicting this clear fact of ancient history.

The Muslims need to find the Islamic Jesus in first century.  What do they do?  They grab every bit of liberal scholarship that could be used to support their claims while inconsistently ignoring other liberal scholarship that contradicts Islam.  They grab ahold of atheist literature that tries to use mythicism and say that the Jesus story comes from previous pagan gods such as Adonis or Osiris.  They try to use Jewish counter-missionary arguments to say that prophecies about Jesus in the Old Testament aren’t true, although I don’t know what they accomplish by this.  While using this tactic they try to find Muhammad prophesied in the Biblical text, none of which the Jewish counter-missionaries or liberal scholars that they quote would even entertain for a second.

Regardless, no Islamic apologist has found the Islamic Jesus in the first century.  He simply doesn’t exist.  The Quran prevents Muslims from actually knowing the historical Jesus.  They’re forced to try and find their version of Jesus in the first century.  It’s actually kind of sad watching Shabir Ally debate Christians and he’s forced to say that Jesus was hung on the cross, didn’t die though appeared to be dead, was taken down from the cross while barely alive though appearing to the people as dead, received no medical attention and was laid in the tomb from where he was supposedly assumed into heaven.

All of these contortions is what false religion makes people do.  I’m not burdened with that as a Christian.  I can look at the Quran without having to torture a secret Christian message out of the text.  How can Muslims get around this obstacle?  The only answer is to convert to the Christian faith.  The burden will be lifted and they no longer have to be part of an ahistorical religion.