Not Peace but a Sword: The Great Chasm Between Christianity and Islam (12 page)

Jesus is not the last of these prophets or their seal; nor is he the greatest among them. (The Qur’an actually counsels against ranking the prophets according to greatness.) For all his striking particularities, for all the singular privileges Allah inexplicably gave his penultimate prophet rather than to the “seal of the prophets,” Jesus is merely one in a chain from Adam to Muhammad.

Prepare ye the way for Muhammad

Nonetheless, in the Qur’an, one of Jesus’ primary missions is to prepare the way for Muhammad and to announce his coming: “And when Jesus son of Mary said, ‘Children of Israel, I am indeed the Messenger of God to you, confirming the Torah that is before me, and giving good tidings of a Messenger who shall come after me, whose name shall be Ahmad.’ Then, when he brought them the clear signs, they said, ‘This is a manifest sorcery’” (61:6).

“Ahmad” is etymologically related to Muhammad; both mean “Praised One.” And so, Muslims understand Jesus to have proclaimed the coming of Muhammad, correcting the biblical account of Jesus’ words about the coming of the Holy Spirit (John 14:16-17). The word “Paraclete” is from the Greed
parakletos,
meaning counselor—very similar in sound to
periklytos
, which means “famous” or “renowned.” Hence, some Muslim scholars claim that the original text read
periklytos
and was then changed to
parakletos
by Christians who hated Muhammad or had some personal gain in view by effacing Jesus’ reference to him. In this vein, the twentieth-century Islamic scholar Abdullah Yusuf Ali, author of one of the most popular translations of the Qur’an into English, explains that “‘Ahmad,’ or ‘Muhammad,’ the Praised One, is almost a translation of the Greek word
Periclytos
.” Almost! He explains that “our doctors contend that
Paracletos
is a corrupt reading for
Periclytos
, and that it would apply to the Holy Prophet.”
⁹⁶

In reality, there is not one New Testament manuscript containing the word
periklytos
in that passage. However, documentary evidence, or lack thereof, generally leaves Islamic apologists unmoved. The view that Islam is a correction of the false teachings of Christianity about Jesus is mainstream in Islam. Muslims even see the multiplicity of divisions among Christians as evidence that Allah is displeased with them over their distortion of his prophet’s message.

Enmity and hatred

Indeed, Muslims to this day point to the huge number of Christian sects as confirmation that Allah has stirred up “enmity and hatred” among Christians for “forgetting a portion of that they were reminded of.” There is a related idea among many Muslims that Christians (and, indeed, all non-Muslims) actually know better: They know Islam is true but refuse to accept it out of a desire for personal gain or from sheer perversity.

Muhammad’s first biographer, Ibn Ishaq, whose biography is more fanciful hagiography than sober historiography, but nonetheless records a great deal that is illuminating about (among many other things) Islamic beliefs and assumptions, reports that at one time a group of Christians, including a bishop from southern Arabia, journeyed to see Muhammad. Along the way, the Christians argued among themselves, in keeping with the Qur’anic assertion that Allah had “stirred up among them enmity and hatred.” However, Ibn Ishaq is none too clear about the nature of the disagreements. He says that they “differed among themselves in some points, saying [Jesus] is God; and He is the son of God; and He is the third person of the Trinity, which is the doctrine of Christianity.” When they go in to meet Muhammad, he challenges them to draw down the curse of Allah upon those who are speaking falsehood. They ask for time to talk amongst themselves privately. During this private meeting, one of the Christian leaders says:

O Christians, you know right well that Muhammad is a prophet sent (by God) and he has brought a decisive declaration about the nature of your master. You know too that a people has never invoked a curse on a prophet and seen its elders live and its youth grow up. If you do this you will be exterminated. But if you decide to adhere to your religion and to maintain your doctrine about your master, then take your leave of the man and go home.
⁹⁷

Resuming their meeting with Muhammad, they present Christian doctrine to him and proclaim themselves to be true worshippers of God. Muhammad responds bluntly: “You lie. Your assertion that God has a son, your worship of the cross, and your eating pork hold you back from submission.”
⁹⁸
These are, in other words, manifestations of perversity, not conviction. The Christians decline Muhammad’s challenge, thus confirming his assertion of their insincerity. The Qur’an makes a similar charge: “And when God took compact with those who had been given the Book: ‘You shall make it clear unto the people, and not conceal it.’ But they rejected it behind their backs and sold it for a small price—how evil was that their selling!” (3:187).

There are all too many Muslim clerics who agree with the Saudi Sheikh Abd Al-Muhsin Al-Qadhi, who several years ago harshly criticized Christianity in line with mainstream Islamic beliefs about Christ and Christianity:

Today we will talk about one of the distorted religions, about a faith that deviates from the path of righteousness . . . about Christianity, this false faith, and about the people whom Allah described in his book as deviating from the path of righteousness. We will examine their faith, and we will review their history, full of hate, abomination, and wars against Islam and the Muslims. In this distorted and deformed religion, to which many of the inhabitants of the earth belong, we can see how the Christians deviate greatly from the path of righteousness by talking about the concept of the Trinity. As far as they are concerned, God is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost: three who are one. . . .

They see Jesus, peace be upon him, as the son of Allah. . . . It is the Christians who believe Jesus was crucified. According to them, he was hanged on the cross with nails pounded through his hands, and he cried, “My God, why have you forsaken me?” According to them, this was so that he would atone for the sins of mankind. . . . Regardless of all these deviations from the path of righteousness, it is possible to see many Muslims . . . who know about Christianity only what the Christians claim about love, tolerance, devoting life to serving the needy, and other distorted slogans. . . . After all this, we still find people who promote the idea of bringing our religion and theirs closer, as if the differences were miniscule and could be eliminated by arranging all those [interreligious] conferences, whose goal is political.
⁹⁹

“Love, tolerance, devoting life to serving the needy, and other distorted slogans.” Those who have wondered why there has arisen no Muslim Mother Teresa, no Muslim St. Francis of Assisi, no Muslim who has ever won renown for his charity or humility, need look no further.

Jesus saves us—from
Christianity

In Islamic theology, the person who will correct the Christians’ “distorted and deformed religion” is Jesus himself. Muhammad prophesies a vision of the end times that has the Muslim prophet Jesus actually making war against Christians and Christianity: “The Hour will not be established until the son of Mary [Jesus] descends amongst you as a just ruler, he will break the cross, kill the pigs, and abolish the Jizya tax. Money will be in abundance so that nobody will accept it [as charitable gifts].’”
¹⁰⁰

He will break the cross because it is an insult to Allah’s transcendent power to suggest that one of his prophets could have been victimized, that Jesus was God in the flesh who died and rose from the dead for our salvation. He will kill the pigs because they represent the failure of the Christians to accept Muhammad’s new revelations and their attendant dietary restrictions; at this point, the world is to be conquered and Islamized entirely, and so no one will have any use for pigs at all.

He will abolish the
jizya
tax, which is the hallmark of the subjugated status of the People of the Book as mandated in the Qur’an (9:29). There will be no need to collect it anymore, because the People of the Book who remain alive at this time will all have converted to Islam. “Money will be in abundance,” as a true era of peace and happiness dawns upon the world, presumably amid the corpses of millions of pigs and Christians who refused to convert and were duly killed by Jesus himself.

“During his time,” says Ibn Kathir, “Allah will destroy all religions except Islam and Allah will destroy Al-Masih Ad-Dajjal (the False Messiah).”
¹⁰¹

And thus the true age of peace will dawn: when Jesus has saved the world by destroying Christianity.

5

Are We All Muslims Now?

The Qur’anic “correction” of biblical stories, as we have seen, makes over Moses and Jesus into prophets whose teachings were congruent with those of Muhammad. But the Islamic critique of Judaism and Christianity doesn’t stop there.

One of the least-noted aspects of Islam is its thoroughgoing historical revisionism, aimed at the complete and utter delegitimizing of Christianity. Muslim spokesmen in the West routinely point to Jesus’ status as a prophet in the Qur’an as an indication of Islam’s ecumenical broad-mindedness. In reality, however, Islam treats Christianity as a perversion of the original teaching of Jesus (which is identical to the message of the Qur’an and Islam). This robs Christianity of any legitimate manifestation; to Islam, all Christians are essentially apostate Muslims.

In the Qur’an, not just Moses and Jesus but all the biblical figures who appear are presented as Muslims. Abraham, for example, of whom the Qur’an says: “No; Abraham in truth was not a Jew, neither a Christian; but he was a Muslim and one pure of faith; certainly he was never of the idolaters” (3:67).

It may seem preposterous to non-Muslims that the Qur’an makes this claim, since Abraham lived millennia before Muhammad. But actually, the claim presents no problem of anachronism for Muslims, because they consider Islam to be the original and true religion of all true prophets. Thus, any deviations from the substance of Islam in the message of a true prophet (such as are found in Christian and Jewish scriptures) are simply evidence that the followers of that prophet altered his message.

Note the clear contrast with the way Christians view Judaism. Christianity originated as a sect of Judaism. The Jews at its foundation, Sts. Peter and Paul, and all the other New Testament authors except for St. Luke, read the Old Testament as Scripture. They understood it differently, particularly in regard to the messianic prophecies, than did the leaders of the Jewish people, but they wouldn’t have dreamed of claiming that its text had been tampered with, or that it was not reliably the word of God. Rather than re-writing Judaism to accommodate itself, Christianity has sought to harmonize its teachings with its Jewish roots.

In contrast to this accommodating and inclusive view, Islam views Judaism and Christianity as distorted and renegade versions of the true messages of Moses and Jesus. The people who originated them and the people who follow them today are perverse, rejecting the true faith even though they know it to be true. Islamic doctrine holds that the true teachings of Moses and Jesus corresponded to those of Muhammad, and that they delivered to the world written revelation—the original, unadulterated Torah and Gospels—that reflected this correspondence. These original texts have been lost, but fortunately, Muslims contend, the Qur’an contains the substance of their true messages.

The corruption of Scripture

In the Qur’an, the Christians have not so much fabricated as forgotten what Allah told them through Jesus. Despite the Qur’an’s dependence upon biblical material as one of its most obvious sources (and the only source that makes coherent much of what it says about Jesus), the Qur’an criticizes the Christians for not faithfully preserving the revelations they received: “And with those who say ‘We are Christians’ We took compact; and they have forgotten a portion of that they were reminded of. So We have stirred up among them enmity and hatred, till the Day of Resurrection; and God will assuredly tell them of the things they wrought” (5:14).

These charges are much milder than those the Qur’an levels against the Jews, who have not only “forgotten a part of what they were reminded of,” but also are busy “perverting words from their meanings,” which apparently amounts to a charge that they were willfully misinterpreting the Scripture: “So for their breaking their compact We cursed them and made their hearts hard, they perverting words from their meanings; and they have forgotten a portion of that they were reminded of; and thou wilt never cease to light upon some act of treachery on their part, except a few of them. Yet pardon them, and forgive; surely God loves the good-doers” (5:13).

Yet the Christians’ corruption of their own scriptures, according to the Qur’an, goes beyond simple forgetfulness. The Qur’an also asks of the Jews and Christians, “And who does greater evil than he who conceals a testimony received from God? And God is not heedless of the things you do” (2:140). Apparently, then, the Christians have not just forgotten a part of divine revelation, but are deliberately concealing some of what Allah told them. This implies a moral guilt that all Christians carry—or, if it is restricted only to the perpetrators of this corruption, at the very least the Christians of today are misled and ignorant of the true teachings of Jesus.