I attended the seminar on Islam at South Canyon Baptist Church tonight and it was what I expected: some of the same info covered when Dr. Richard Wells did this seminar at the beginning of the summer, but with a lot of new stuff as well. He said the seminar will be continuing for the next two weeks, concluding on Oct. 21.
Below are the notes I took at the seminar. I haven't cleaned them up much, as I'm a little short on time and energy right now, but they're still pretty good. Most of what I wrote are exact quotes of what Dr. Wells said, or very close paraphrases. In either case, I believe it will be pretty faithful to what he said. It was very educational and informative, with Dr. Wells often reading from the Qur'an and books written on Islam by Islamic scholars. I would highly recommend anyone in or near Rapid City attend the next two week's installments. Tonight's event was held in the church gym with a lot of tables set up, and still they ended up lining the walls with chairs, so it was very well attended.
Here are my notes...
Dr. Wells said Islam is not just another world religion. Wells taught World Religions as a college professor, and among all the religions, there is none that quite has the historical impact as Islam.
The community response the first time the Islam seminar was taught a few months ago told Wells they needed to do it again and expand on it. This seminar began where the original seminar did, so that the attendee gets all the background.
Some of the most important reasons for studying Islam are:
1. Islam today and for the foreseeable future is the single greatest threat to America. Within the last month, bin Laden has issued another video. In that video he called for us all to convert to Islam. Many Americans probably don't think they're serious, but they are deadly serious.
2. Many public leaders including our president have made a distinction which to them seems very important, but in fact does not really exist. That is between Islam and Islamism. There are some Muslims who are more extreme than others, but what most people don’t fully realize is that this distinction is a very Western, Christian distinction. It is almost impossible to find Muslims who will condemn the actions of Osama bin Laden.
A study which came out May 22 entitled “Muslim Americans” by the Pew Research Center, and it will get your attention. It’s a survey of mainstream, middle class Muslim Americans and what they believe. The survey found that the younger they are, the more open Muslims are to the radical elements of Islam.
3. Most Americans, even though they know there is such a thing as Islam and that it’s a threat, know very little about Islam. They might remember that there was someone named Mohammed, but the average citizen in America can’t even name the four Gospels of Christianity.
4. Islam has a long history which is well remembered. Americans typically don’t know much about the Crusades, but Muslims have not forgotten them. Osama bin Laden chose Sept. 11 for his historic attack because it had great significance.
Islam begins with Mohammed. Mohammed was basically a camel driver who married into money by marrying a rich widow many years his senior. He lived 570-632 AD. He had appointed no successor when he died, leaving a lot of strife over who his successor should have been.
Mohammed was illiterate. He began to have visions, and details about these visions were written down by others in what we know as the Qur'an. There is no such thing as a legitimate translation of Qur’an because Muslims say the real Qur’an is in God’s language: Arabic. The Qur’an isn’t arranged like the Bible, more or less chronologically, but is arranged from the longest chapter to the shortest, and these chapters are called surahs. Mohammed never wrote anything about his visions but others made recordings of them based on what they were told about them. Most of what we know about Mohammed was written 100-300 years after his life.
Surah 97 refers to the night on which the prophet received his call and the first verses of the Qur’an. Mohammed at first things he’s going mad when he receives his first visions, but his wife assured him he was not.
Between 632-732 the world saw the most meteoric rise of any empire it has ever seen. It took all the Middle East up into southern Russia, central Asia, into India, North Africa, and was knocking on the door of southern Spain and France.
For about the last 100 years, the re-biblization or renewal of Islam has been occurring. After the defeat of the Ottoman Empire around the end of WWI, the Islamic empire fell to it’s lowest point in history. A good book on history of Islam recommended by Dr. Wells is Bernard Lewis, recognized as the finest scholar of Islam in the Western World: “What Went Wrong” It helps answer the question, “Why do they hate us so much?”
Is Allah the God of the Bible? The answer Wells gave at the last seminar was “Yes and no.” Yes, in the same sense as the Elohim of Mormonism is the God of the Bible, or the Jehovah of Jehovah's Witnesses is the God of the Bible. Or the God of the Moonies Unification Church is the God of the Bible. "Cults are the unpaid bills of the church." There is a sense in which Islam is a Christian cult. All cults by their nature begin with the God who has already been revealed. The nature of evil, as CS Lewis pointed out, is not to create something new but to distort something that already exists. Cults always take truth and distort it.
In the minds of many Muslims and even many Christians, Allah is the God of the Bible. But also, in many of the ways he is described he sounds like the Christian God of Adonai, Elohim, the God we know from the Bible. Of course, we’ve all heard the politically correct statement: “We all worship the same God, we just worship him in different ways.”
On the “No” side, the god of Mohammed doesn’t come incarnate to man, so there is no intermediary as there is in Jesus in Christianity. There are lesser intermediaries, however, and they are the genies or gen that are spirits who work good or ill for Allah. There is no reference for Allah as “Father.” He does not beget, and he is detached from the petty worries and annoyances of man. (This is from Caesar Farah’s “Islam” book). In heaven, Muslims believe, there is a sacred, ideal copy of the Qur’an and it was dumped on Mohammed. The true Qur’an can’t be translated because it wouldn’t be a faithful copy of the original in heaven.
Allah is a provincial god, the God of the Bible is a universal god. In Christianity, there is no requirement that the Scriptures be in a specific language, but in Islam everyone must speak Arabic to properly receive his word.
Allah is unhistorical. Allah doesn’t know much about history. There are some unbelievable examples in the Qur’an where the Qur’an misinterprets history. The God of the Bible reveals himself over centuries. Seventy five percent of the Bible is narrative with God telling the story. God revealed himself in the history of the world. He shows himself in the way he rules in the lives and affairs of people. There are visions in Islam, but no prophesies, and certainly no fulfilled prophesies regardless of how you classify the visions. With Allah, you only have a claim with no evidence of validity.
Allah loves conditionally. When you read the Qur’an , one of the things that will strike you is that the mercy of Allah is only for those who already believe. If you don’t believe, there is no mercy. That is why bin Laden can read the Qur’an and blow up the World Trade Center. That isn’t radical Islam, that’s just the Qur’an . “For Allah schemes against the unbelievers and Allah is the best of all schemers,” the Qur’an says.
With Allah, there is no plan for redemption. There is no recognition of the need to address the problem of human sin. There is no cross, there is no sacrifice for sin, it’s not even on the radar. All Allah does is what all pagan gods do: just demands obedience. He doesn’t offer hope or encouragement or strength, just demands obedience.
In some ways the most distressing difference is that Allah is detached from the worries and annoyances of man, but as the Bible tells us, "We do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin." Allah cannot be known, only feared.
Tonight's seminar was entitled IS ALLAH THE GOD OF THE BIBLE. Next week comes IS THE QU’RAN THE WORD OF GOD.
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Sunday, October 07, 2007
Islam Seminar at South Canyon
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