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I forgot to tell you that Dr. Sookhdeo is a Senior Visiting Fellow at the UK Defence Academy, a fact that upped my opinion of this tiny brown man cinched up in a three-button suit as he began his lecture with the topic of Islam and the Church. Don't all lectures on Islam have to start with Muhammad? The sanctuary of the big Mclean Presbyterian Church - the campus of which is also home to a branch of Reformed Theological Seminary - was about 3/4 full as Sookhdeo began... Muhammad was born around 570, his "revelations" started around 610 from a spirit that choked and shook him even as it claimed to be the angel Gabriel. Muhammad feared he was demon-possessed but his wife Khadijah - the rich widow who was 40 when he married her at age 25 - devised a test. She would strip in front of the spirit and if it looked at her it must be evil. Koran does not record the answer to Khadijah's test! Muhammad's contact with the spirit began in a cave, but later he would simply appear to go into a trance. [I've read one of his later wives complained, "How come every time we have an argument you get a new revelation and allah always takes your side?"] As the husband of a rich widow Muhammad had leisure to pursue his hobby - religion. Dr. Sookhdeo said Muhammad was probably sincere in wanting to introduce the religion of Abraham to the Arabs but he had one big problem... There were no Arabic translations of the Old or New Testament available in Muhammad's time. The earliest known translation of the O.T. dates to 900 AD and the N.T. is even later, 1271 AD. Muslims claim Muhammad could not read or write, but the word actually used of him, "ummi," means one who does not know the Scriptures. Muhammad had only three poor sources for information about Judaism and Christianity: 1. Some apocryphal books, mostly corrupted translations being passed off as scripture among both Jews and Christians, 2. Christians in Arabia, but the church at this time was "a mixture of orthodoxy and heterodox ideas and cultic beliefs and practices." 3. His family and friends, some of whom were Christians but suffered from the problems listed above. The Koran reflects Muhammad's poor sources of information. Understanding how these sources led to the errors in Koran - and how Muslims themselves have misunderstood what Koran says - can be very helpful in witnessing to them. For example, Koran supports the authenticity of the Bible, but it says some Jews and Christians lie about what Scripture truly says. You won't change the world with this info but the Holy Spirit might use it to change on Muslim friend's heart. I have found one book that documents these problems comprehensively. It is called "Sharing Your Faith with a Muslim" and was written by Abdiyah Akbar Abdul-Haqq, a second generation Christian who worked for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. I quoted from the book in #2 above and I strongly recommend it. You can find it at amazon.com. More to come... |
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