When Muslim Apologists Were Actually Muslim

Critique of Christian Origins by Abd Al-Jabbar

I’ve got to give credit to Brigham Young University.  They have a good Arabic program and from this program they have something called the Islamic Translation Series.  Medieval Islamic Arabic works are translated into English.  The publication produces a parallel Arabic text and much commentary.  It’s actually a very well done set of books.  I certainly plan on buying more though they’re not the cheapest books around.

I’m currently reading Critique of Christian Origins by Abd al-Jabbar.  I really like this because its actually an Islamic critique of the Christian faith.  It’s not Shabir Ally or Adnan Rashid’s secular humanist critique with an Islamic mask on.  It’s the real deal.

Another book that I’ve read recently is The Secret History by Procopius.  It’s a very small book but in the introduction it talks about how the Greeks were the experts in the field of history.  This starts with figures like Herodotus and Thucydides and continues throughout the centuries.  We Christians were fortunate enough to have inherited this tradition as much of the New Testament was written by Hellenized figures like Luke and Paul.

Arabs on the other hand don’t exactly match up to that of the Greeks and al-Jabbar is a great example.  He lived in the late 10th and early 11th century.  Islamic Arabs became literate in the 9th century.  Once they achieved this, they set out to write polemics against Christianity, Judaism, and other religions.  By this time, Christians had already written much against the Muslims.

Al-Jabbar tries to employ history in his Islamic critique of the Christian faith.  Let’s see some of his blunders.

In speaking about the Christians, he writes:

The proclaim a devotion that they call the Creed, which was established in Nicaea in the land of the Byzantines, about five hundred years after Christ-peace be upon him.  Constantine, the Roman Emperor (the son of Filatus), whose mother was Helena of Harran, the innkeeper…

The creed is off by two centuries and Constantine has the wrong father.  He continues:

At (Nicaea) about two thousand men gathered.  They made a decision but then rejected it.  Then 318 men gathered, who they call the Fathers.  They made a decision that they call a synod.  They agreed upon this Devotion, which is the fundamental doctrine for all of these sects.

So, the original council of Nicaea had two thousand men but the decision was rejected.  Then the 318 Fathers come and make their council.  Although he doesn’t say it outright, he most likely means to imply that the 2,000 were the Islamic Christians who believed  in Tawheed.  The 318 come and make the Trinitarian Christian confession and this is presumably the one that is backed by Constantine.

A few pages later, al-Jabbar gives a completely horrible description of Christian theology.  He talks about the three major sects of Christianity at the time.  They were the Melkites(Chalcedonian), Jacobite(Monophysite) and Nestorian(Church of the East).  He writes:

According to the three sects, Christ became Christ, god, Creator, Provider, the one who is worshiped, when the angel preached to his mother at the hour of (her) conception of him.

So far, these errors fill up the first dozen pages.  There are far more in these pages that I left out.  There are also many more mistakes after this.  Stay tuned….