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The Muslim Religion.
The Muslims know
there is a God, and only one God. He is not made of wood
or stone by man’s hand. He is eternal, the Creator of the universe, and the
giver of life. The Muslims also rightly reject multiple lives as a way of
gaining eternal life.
The Muslims
share some common heritage with Jews and Christians, although they believe Jews
and Christians have perverted the Scriptures. The common link is that Muslims
claim Abraham as their ancestral father. The Muslims are believed to be
descended from Ishmael, the son of Hagar. Hagar was the servant girl of Sarah,
Abraham’s wife. The Muslims accept Moses as a prophet, but reject the Bible’s
claim that God’s blessing is through Isaac. The Muslims accept Jesus as a
prophet, but deny He is the promised Messiah.
The Muslims also
reject the Christian concept of the Trinity, one God in three persons. The
Muslims believe Christians worship three Gods instead of the one true God. The
question one must ask is, can the Muslim religion be
reasoned true or false? First, we must examine the practices of Muslims. Every
Muslim has 5 duties:
Notice there is not a lot in these
practices that most of us would find objectionable at first glance. We prefer
to view Muslims as radical fanatics who do not value life as westerners do.
This allows us to make them different from us, and thereby acceptable as
objects of hate for our prejudice. This is not how God views them. God loves
them the same as he does you, and everybody else on this planet, including
Hindus, Buddhists, and atheists.
Muslims would
have others believe that Islam is a religion of peace, but this is problematic
both in view of its past history and its current policies and practices. Under
the Ottoman Turks, scores of Orthodox Christians accepted martyrdom rather than
convert to Islam. In 1821, at the outbreak of the Greek War for Independence, the
Ecumenical Patriarch, Gregory V, was hung from the gates of the patriarchate.
The fierce and even brutal persecution of Christians in Islamic countries today
is well documented — if shamefully ignored (see Paul Marshall's Their Blood Cries Out). Muslims cannot
deny the fact that there are extremists in their midst, and these often have
the voice in the Muslim community. This admission comes from the Islamic
Supreme Council, a Muslim education group that is criticizing Islamic leaders
here in the US for too often “equivocating between implicit support for extremists
and general condemnation of terrorism.” It says that Islamic extremist
organizations often operate in the US under “assumed
identities as non-profit organizations or corporate businesses, hiding their
origins and affiliations” (Religion Watch). The KLA's
ties with Muslim terrorist Usama bin Laden and the
support it receives from the militantly Islamic state of Iran were
widely reported.
As a religion
Islam is deficient in many ways. It does not admit the concept of grace and
makes no provision for redemption of sins. Heavily based upon rituals, it is
legalistic, and pervaded by a sense of fatalism (kismet). Muhammad himself
inspires little confidence in his claim to be a divinely chosen prophet. When
he was still young, he was subject to fits, leading his foster mother to
suspect that he was possessed by demons. His later visions were accompanied by
similar manifestations, terrifying Muhammad himself. Although some of his
followers persist in believing Muhammad to have been sinless, his behavior in Medina was in many
ways disgraceful — he plundered caravans and persecuted Jews. When Kadijah died, he took several wives,
sanctioning polygamy (he himself exceeded the “proper” limit of four wives).
His sexual indulgences translated into his conception of heaven as a place of
sensual gratification.
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