The Worst Apologetics Book Ever Written: Truth Revealed

St. Paul the Apostle

In the 19th century, a rabid anti-Catholic pseudo-scholar wrote this terrible book which included slanders against the Catholic faith.  This work is such a joke that it makes John Foxe look like Edward Gibbon.  Here are some of his statements against Catholicism:

According to a recently expressed opinion of the Christians, Mary’s mother also conceived her without any sexual union with her husband.

Mary is the mother of God in the real sense of the word.

Catholics can obtain certificates of salvation from the Pope and his deputies for payment. It is strange that the people do not demand acknowledgement of the dead, confirming their salvation, from the Pope who is believed to be “greater than God”. He should be able, through his divine powers, to get attestations from the dead that they have attained eternal salvation.

 Since the Papal powers are increased day by day through the blessings of the Holy Ghost, indulgences were invented by Leo X and were sold to the people by him and his clergymen. 

I could go on but one can see that these arguments are absolutely pathetic.  Who wrote this book?  Some Baptist Pastor from Georgia?  Not quite.  It’s none other than Rahmatullah Kairanawi from his book Truth Revealed.

We know that the Quran contains many arguments against Muhammad’s opponents.  For the most part Muslims don’t use these arguments.  How did Islamic apologetics go from these Quranic arguments to its modern day incarnation of uncritically accepting conclusions by any liberal Biblical scholar they can find and hurling it at the Christian position hoping that it sticks.  Of course when these Biblical scholars say something that goes against Islam, their opinions all of a sudden become absolutely worthless.

Well, it all started with this book.  Islam never had much for apologetics before this.  Ibn Hazm and Ibn Tamiyyah wrote some works but they’re not used anymore by the average Muslim.

Catholics aren’t the only victims of this book; it goes after Protestants viciously as well.  There is an entire section with supposed contradictions in the Bible.  I tried going through them but after about five I gave up as I couldn’t bear to read this poor scholarship any longer.  Any Muslim who would use these supposed contradictions wouldn’t get anywhere in a debate.

I’m happy to say that we Christians have done our homework in refuting these attacks on our faith.  The tradition that this book started has been in use ever since.  Contrary to the impression that I might give, I have no problem if Muslims want to hurl objections from liberal Biblical scholars against the Bible, though I won’t condone lying as seen from the statements above about Catholicism.

But no, liberal quotes don’t bother me in the slightest.  I also don’t mind if they use their arguments against our text.  To this, I say bring it on.  What I have absolutely no respect for is using this scholarship then saying that Muhammad is the Paraclete of the Gospel of John or the Muhammadim in Song of Solomon or other similar things.  Another shameful argument is that Hebrews 5:7 refutes the crucifixion of Jesus Christ when the entire book of Hebrews is about Christ’s atoning death.

In that way, I think Islamic apologetics has gone downhill since the days of Kairanawi.  It’s only going to get worse as well.  However, I hope this lesson was helpful as it shows where modern Islamic apologetics was born.

If you want to check out this book in English, it can be found here.  Enjoy…if that’s even possible.

https://web.archive.org/web/20110713062151/http://www.islam4all.com/newpage71.htm

He’s one last quote from this disgraceful book:

Paul through his clever deception deprived all the Christians of their original faith, because he found their understanding so weak that he deluded them quite easily into believing anything he wished. By this means he totally abolished the original Pentateuch.