Islam

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The descendants of Ishmael practiced Judaism until Jesus was born. Then, many of them, like many Jews and others, believed Jesus was the Messiah (Savior) and followed Christianity, while others of Ishmael’s descendants continued to follow Judaism. That is until Muhammad discovered Islam in the seventh century AD.

Things went on like that for Ishmaelites until Islam was born. [a]Muhammad founded the religion of Islam. It deviates from Judaic and Christian teachings, making it a stand-alone religion – not an extension of Judaism or Christianity. Even though Muslims are descendants of Abraham, they don’t practice the faith of Abraham which is Judaism.

As a result, it doesn’t stand on the integrity and age of the Judeo-Christian Scriptures. It stands on its own merits.

Compared to Judaism and Christianity (the other two Abrahamic faiths), which both have very dependable written documents that have been preserved to the original very meticulously, Isalm and the Quran are very suspect.

The Writings of Islam Are Questionable

“In his liesure time Muhammad retreated to a cave on Mount Hira…In 610, at age forty, he received a vision from [who he described as] the angel Gabriel…[who] told him to recite.”

“From 610 to 622, the angel brought more revelations. Over time these were collected and became the Quran. [b]

The Muslim scriptures. Muslims claim that the writings are faithfully reproduced from the originals, but the originals weren't written down until 40 years after they were given in the cave. How accurate can they be? Do you remember details about something you learned 40 years ago?

Tradition holds that Muhammad was illiterate and that his followers rememberd his preachings and codified them into the Quran by 652 AD, some twenty years after his death”. [b]

We have a question: “Why did God send an angel to give this message; why not tell Muhammad himself as He talked to Moses?” Scripture tells us that satan comes disguised as an angel of light. We ought to be careful to check this out.

Major Concerns About The Doctrines Of Islam

According to this tradition (the history of Islam was not written down as it happened), Muhammad only recited the messages he got in the cave. The Quran deviates so much from the character of God depicted in Judaic Scripture, and the messages given by this angelic being is so different in character from the Scriptures passed to Moses that the “angel” who gave these messages to recite, is in question as actually being Gabriel. Christian Scripture points out that “Satan disguises himself as an angel of light”.

It wasn’t until twenty years after Muhammad’s death that his followers, who “remembered” his messages that they wrote them down for the first time. Nobody but Muhammad saw this “angel Gabriel” and he never wrote down the messages because he was illiterate.

A depiction of the "angelic being" that gave Muhammad the "recitement".

From message to written document, took 42 years, and it was all from memory. Do you recall the details of a complex message given to you verbally 42 years ago? It was undoubtedly the same for Muhammad and his followers who put those messages in the Quran.

On the left is an artist’s depiction of Muhammad’s visitation in the cave.

Was the angelic being a devil? Did the being really visit Muhammad? He was an enterprising person and a natural leader. He was a descendant of Ishmael and felt his people got the short end of the stick when Isaac received Abraham’s inheritance. It seems likely that Muhammad could say anything he wanted to and claim it was from an angel. And he wanted Ishmael’s descendants to be vindicated. The whole religion could be based on an altered message or a message from an evil source.

Background of Muhammad

In 610 A.D., a man Muslims consider a prophet named Muhammad had a “visitation” in a cave by “an angelic being” that produced a different philosophical idea about the story of God, departing from Judaism and Christianity even though Ishmael’s descendants were from Abraham and practiced both of those faiths before Muhammad.

It combined some ideas from Judaism and some ideas from Christianity. It rejected some of the philosophies in both religions, and it had a new concept that Ishmael was the rightful heir of Abraham’s inheritance and that the descendants of Isaac stole the inheritance and that Islam would police the world and rid it of unrighteousness.

Muhammad in his cave seeing the angelic being.

How do you build faith in ideas from other beliefs when you consider portions of those beliefs wrong? Who decides what is right or wrong? Before Muhammad, they accepted the tenets of Christianity or Judaism as entirely right. It’s like they crumpled up the Scriptures they believed and started over, writing it all to favor Ishmael’s descendants.

But why would God have such a character change? And why so late in human history? And why would God Almighty need the Ishmaelites to police the world and do it so violently and hatefully?

A Motivation to Change the Religion the Ishmaelites Followed

Ishmael was Abraham’s oldest son, born to a servant girl, not Abraham’s wife. The inheritance went to Isaac, Abraham’s second-born because he was born to Sarah, Abraham’s wife.

Abraham sending his son Ishmael and Ishmael's mother away from their camp because Sarah was jealous.

The resentment and jealousy of Isaac had continued all that time in Ishmael’s descendants and when Muhammad declared the “angel of God” told him that Ishmael was the true one to receive the inheritance from Abraham, Ishmael’s descendants took a turn away from both Judaism and Christianity and formed Islam.

Pictured above is Abraham sending his son Ishmael and Hagar the servant girl away from their camp. Abraham’s wife Sarah is inside the tent with Isaac.

Abraham loved Ishmael and wanted God to bless Ishmael with the inheritance because he was Abraham’s firstborn son. But God wouldn’t do that. He could not move forward with Abraham’s promise to be the father of many nations by blessing a son who was born in sin.

God went against the tradition of giving the inheritance to the first son because He is unwilling to tarnish His name. To do otherwise would go against God’s character and would have glorified Abraham in sin instead of God in His righteousness. Ishmael was Abraham’s son, born in a sinful act of adultery. Isaac was Abraham’s son of promise, who was born in righteousness, and the son God had in mind when He promised Abraham he would be the “father of many nations”.

Interactions Between Abraham’s Two Sons

It’s easy to see how this would cause resentment from Ishmael’s descendants toward Isaac’s descendants, doesn’t it? God prophesied it Himself.

This resentment grew in Ishmael’s descendants until Muhammad came along and got a message while alone in a cave. He initially felt the visitation was from the devil, that would teach hatred and give an outlet for justifying that hate.

The Qur’an doesn’t teach that all humans are sinners needing salvation. It teaches instead that anyone who doesn’t accept Muhammad’s cave message is an “infidel”. It doesn’t instruct us to love one another and treat each other as we want to be treated – it teaches its followers to convert people to Islam and enslave unrepentant infidels or, as a last resort, to kill them.

Because Ishmael was outcast and prevented from getting Abraham’s inheritance, Islam has been at enmity with Jews and Christians since that time. The religion of Islam was formed on all of these factors.

Footnotes

How does Islam grade against our criterion?

We mentioned earlier that a religion that surfaced a long time after the beginnings of man was not a good candidate for study. This is simply because God would not have waited that long to communicate his purpose for creating us if He had planned to interact with us.

Abraham lived approximately 3000 BCE. Moses received the first written Scriptures directly from God around 1570 BCE, and they contained the creation story. It followed human history right up to the day and time of Moses. It is estimated that Islam came a minimum of 3,600 years after the beginning of humanity.

Islam qualifies for that “distance from the beginning” concern.

It is interesting to note that Islam recognizes that God reached out to His creation instead of us reaching out to God. It acknowledges that God guides them (though it is questionable if it was God’s guidance with Muhammad in the cave). And Islam acknowledges a time before the written word.

While the Qur’an and Islam meet some of our criteria, it is automatically disqualified for being so late on the historical scene that it would appear to be a self-interested system of beliefs that justifies a people group rather than explaining humanity’s existence and God’s genuine purpose for creating us.

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