The Muslim Jesus?

In the post below, Robert Spencer ably refutes a sly article which seeks to assimilate Jesus Christ into the Islamic tradition. I'd like to augment Mr. Spencer's comments with a few of my own:

The main absurdity in the Philip Jenkins article (reproduced below following Mr. Spencer's comments) is that the author presents supposed sayings of Jesus taken from non-canonical Christian sources, mixed in with supposed sayings of Jesus taken from Islamic sources. Jenkins states:

This degree of similarity is amazing given the chronology. All the Christian examples date from the second or third centuries, none of the Muslim examples is recorded before the ninth century. Yet they breathe exactly the same atmosphere.

Actually, there is nothing amazing about such similarity at all. In a very real sense it is the comparison of fabrications and heresies in order to imply a link between Islam and the real Jesus. The non-canonical "Christian" texts are non-canonical for very good reasons. Yet the unwitting Jenkins appeals to their ancientness, dating them to the second and third centuries. That puts them anywhere from 100 to 250 years older than the Gospels in the New Testament, and rejected by the Christian Church as outside the Apostolic tradition. (Spencer has more to say on this below.)

Further, Jenkins and the Muslim author he is deriving his thesis from appeal to similarities between sayings of the Islamic Jesus and the Synoptic Gospels:  "In perhaps 30 cases, the resemblances to the Synoptic gospels are overwhelming."

But such "overwhelming similarities" in no way help his thesis, as one can also find tight parallels and even direct links between the Quran and Zoroastrian texts, or between the Quran and the Jewish Talmud.

Such similarities rather reveal the Quran as a syncretistic patchwork of snippets from numerous spiritual traditions. When one looks behind Jenkins' assumptions, one finds that Islam is a fraud, Muhammad borrowing for the Quran from whatever struck his fancy. This also explains why the Quran so completely scrambles every Old Testament character and event which it recapitulates (most famously confusing Miriam the Mother of Jesus with Miriam the sister of Aaron, even though they are separated by centuries).

In filling in the gaps of his incomplete understanding of the Hebrew scriptures and traditions, Muhammad made things up, or rather, the demon which attended him fed the illiterate "prophet" lie after lie, distorting and confusing every Biblical account, from the Creation to Abraham to Noah to Moses to Jesus and so on. When subsequently rejected as a false prophet by the Jews and Christians of his day for his incoherent fables, Muhammad turned in pride and fury on them, accusing them of corrupting their scriptures, and unleashing the global jihad which continues to this day.

Significantly, Jenkins resorts to the thoroughly discredited "Q Theory" to make his case:

Scholars agree that the earliest records of Jesus took the form of sayings, or sequences of sayings, with very little of the narrative that we know from the canonical gospels. One such (hypothetical) sayings collection was “Q,” which was a critical source for both Matthew and Luke.

Actually, scholars "agree" on no such thing. For an in depth discussion of the post-modernist "Q" theory and the related question of early Christian oral tradition, all of which applies to Jenkins' exercise in mythmaking, see my 2013 article:  Refuting Reza Aslan’s ‘Zealot - The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth’. 

Ultimately, the question, posed by Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels, remains unchanged: "Who do men say that I am?" Since Peter's divinely inspired response, the Church has been established on the rock of his confession that Jesus is "the Christ, the Son of the Living God." Those who deny Jesus Christ, or seek to twist and appropriate Him for their own agenda, will use every subterfuge, academic "proof," and sophistry to do so. Some even resort to claiming direct revelations from God. We are never surprised nor thrown off balance by the deceits of the enemy of mankind. For we know that our life is in Christ, and that "no one comes to the Father but through Him."

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The Muslim Jesus?

by Robert Spencer, Jihad Watch — July 1, 2014

Another exercise in mythmaking.

Aleteia has published an extraordinarily irresponsible piece by Philip Jenkins, entitled “The Muslim Jesus.” Jenkins is the politically correct professor who has claimed to have found that “the Islamic scriptures in the Quran were actually far less bloody and less violent than those in the Bible.” In this new piece he claims that the Islamic tradition has preserved some sayings of Jesus that could be authentic — basing his argument on the fact that they sound rather like other sayings attributed to Jesus, particularly in their exhortation not to value this passing world. He produces six sayings to support this, three from Islamic tradition and three from Christian non-canonical sources, claiming that the impossibility of distinguishing them from each other supports the authenticity of the Islamic sayings.

This is, of course, palpably absurd. Otherworldly sayings can be found in all manner of non-Christian traditions. The fact that they’re otherworldly doesn’t mean that Jesus said them. What’s more, his own argument cuts against itself, for he says: “Such words would have been treasured by Eastern Christian monks and hermits, in lands like Syria and Mesopotamia. We also know that from earliest times, some Christian monks and clergy accepted Islam. The Koran reports how their eyes filled with tears, as they prayed, ‘We do believe; make us one, then, with all who bear witness to the truth!’” If such words were treasured by Eastern Christian monks and hermits, and only some but presumably not all Christian monks and clergy accepted Islam, why is there no trace of these sayings in Eastern Christian traditions? It just happened that all the Christians who had preserved these sayings converted to Islam?

And even if these are authentic sayings of Jesus that have been preserved only in Islamic tradition, what are we supposed to get from that? What is Jenkins’ point? There is nothing in the supposed Islamic sayings of Jesus that he quotes that adds anything to our understanding of Jesus, or to the font of the world’s wisdom. Also, significantly, Jenkins does not bother to inform his readers that the Qur’an says that those who believe in the divinity of Christ are unbelievers (5:17, 5:72), or that Jesus was not actually crucified (4:157), or that those who say Jesus is the Son of God are accursed (9:30), or that Muslims should wage war against Christians until they submit to Islamic hegemony (9:29). He makes no mention of this notable hadith:

Narrated Abu Huraira: Allah’s Apostle said, “By Him in Whose Hands my soul is, son of Mary (Jesus) will shortly descend amongst you people (Muslims) as a just ruler and will break the Cross and kill the pig and abolish the Jizya (a tax taken from the non-Muslims, who are in the protection, of the Muslim government). Then there will be abundance of money and no-body will accept charitable gifts. (Bukhari 3.34.425)

Breaking the cross and killing the pig signifies abolishing the false Christianity, the Christianity that holds that Jesus was crucified and does not keep food laws. By abolishing the jizya, this Muslim Jesus is destroying the dhimma, the “protection” that Christians have when they submit to Islamic rule, thus leaving them with the choices only of converting to Islam or being killed.

This supremacist and violent vision is at the heart of the Islamic idea that Christianity in all its forms, Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant, is a twisting and hijacking of the original religion of Jesus, which was and is Islam. This is replacement theology par excellence, and renders all current forms of Christianity renegade and illegitimate. This idea is at the core of the Muslim persecution of Christians worldwide, from Nigeria to Libya to Egypt to Syria to Iraq to Pakistan to Indonesia. But Jenkins makes no mention of that escalating persecution, either. The thrust of his piece appears to be that sure, they’re killing Christians and dismissing Christianity as a mutant version of the teachings of Jesus, but look, they have some of Jesus’ original sayings! It thus appears as if his article is designed to render Christians uncritical and complacent in the face of the advancing jihad.

The Muslim Jesus: Jesus sayings we never thought we had

by Philip Jenkins, Aleteia, June 30, 2014:

Around the year 1600, the Indian emperor Akbar built a splendid ceremonial gate at Fatehpur Sikri, and on it he inscribed words attributed to Jesus, son of Mary: “The world is a bridge: pass over it, but do not build your house upon it.”

It’s an evocative saying, one of many attributed to Jesus in the Islamic tradition. But is there any chance that such words might have any authenticity, any connection with the historical Jesus? Actually, the chances are greater than you might think, and like a good professor, I am going to illustrate that with a short quiz.

The Koran includes a good deal of material about Jesus. [None of it accurate.] More relevant for present purposes are the many stories and saying gathered by Muslim sages over the following centuries, which have been collected by modern scholar Tarif Khalidi in his book The Muslim Jesus: Sayings and Stories in Islamic Literature. Khalidi argues that together, these constitute a whole Muslim Gospel.

A New Mega Mosque Rises… in Orthodox Christian Alaska

Alaska is where Orthodox Christian missionaries — monks from Valaam Monastery in Lake Ladoga, north of St Petersburg, Russia — first brought the Orthodox Gospel of Jesus Christ to America in 1794. By the grace of God working through the faith and sanctity of St. Herman, Elder and Wonderworker of Alaska, the Priest-Martyr Juvenaly and others who followed them in the 19th century, Alaska continues to have a vibrant Orthodox presence to this day.

Make no mistake, this new mosque project is not a wonderful fruit of 'multiculturalism' (which, like Islam, is always out to destroy Orthodox Christianity), but as with all mosques, is an early stage of jihad, a frontier outpost in Islam's efforts to dominate the globe.

As you read this article, keep in mind that four separate studies over the last fifteen years consistently show that upwards of 80% of all mosques in the United States teach, preach or support jihad, and the replacing of the US Constitution with Sharia law, documenting also the foreign funding of mosques by Saudi Arabia and other sources of Islamic extremism. Links to the studies and more mosque info here.

A New Mega Mosque Rises…in Alaska

Creeping Sharia, August 19, 2014

via A New Mosque Rises—in Alaska | WSJ.

On the edge of this northern outpost an unfamiliar sight is emerging: twin minarets. Alaska’s small but growing Muslim community is building the state’s first newly constructed mosque.

All too familiar for anyone watching the death and destruction Muslims are bringing wherever they go.

“This is our future,” said Osama Obeidi, one of the Muslim-Americans leading the building effort for the Islamic Community Center of Anchorage. “We have second-generation Alaskans now, and new people coming all the time. We need a place to call home.” 

The 15,000-square-foot mosque, taking shape near a Sons of Norway Viking Hall, will eventually include a Sunday school and a community center. Heated floors will make worship in the bitter winters more comfortable. 

The mosque is perhaps the clearest sign yet that Islam in the U.S. is rapidly pushing beyond traditional population centers such as Detroit and Los Angeles. As the number of American Muslims grows through both immigration and higher-than-average birthrates, domes and minarets are sprouting in areas as varied as the eastern mountains of Kentucky and Louisiana’s parishes.

Raymond Ibrahim: Sharks and Islamists: Equally Misunderstood?

"We need to respect their ways and be tolerant... it’s our fault we get attacked."

by Raymond Ibrahim, August 19, 2014

I recently spent some time watching Shark Week on television.  Being fascinated with large predatory fish, I’ve watched many shark programs throughout the years.  And I’ve reached one conclusion: the “liberal” response one is accustomed to when the topic of Islam and Islamists come up—that they are misunderstood, that we need to respect their ways and be tolerant, that it’s our fault we get attacked—has become so embedded in the Western psyche that it now colors our understanding of the animal world as well.

Almost every shark program follows the same pattern: the large predators are portrayed in all their grandeur, roaming the seas; then we hear of several anecdotes of shark attacks on humans, often with the survivors recounting their experience.

The prevalent theme is this: it’s not the shark’s fault that it attacked and maimed this or that surfer, swimmier, or kayaker.  Rather, humans are responsible for entering the shark’s domain, the ocean.  If anything, then, it’s the human’s fault for getting attacked.  Even great whites, so we are assured, only attack humans by mistake, never intentionally. Finally we get the speech about how sharks are in fact the one’s being mistreated by humans, etc.

To those familiar with the way liberal talking heads constantly whitewash the violence and intolerance of Islam, does this not all sound familiar?  From the notion that “it’s our fault” we got attacked, and we “had it coming,” to the idea that we need to be more “understanding and respectful,” the “progressive” memes are all there.

Senator James Inhofe: ISIS developing means to ‘blow up’ a US city

by Martin Matishak, The Hill — August 21, 2014

The top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee said Sunni militants are working on the capability to wipe out a city inside the United States.

The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has long threatened to carry out a catastrophic attack on American soil, with a spokesman recently boasting that the militant group would fly its flag over the White House.

Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) said ISIS members are “rapidly developing a method of blowing up a major U.S. city and people just can’t believe that’s happening.” 

“Yes, it’s really significant what’s happening,” he added during a local television interview on Wednesday.

Interview with Rick Wiles of TruNews Radio

I was honored to be Rick Wiles' guest for a lengthy and far-ranging interview on TruNews Radio earlier today. Links below to play in browser or to download.

We discussed the Muslim persecution of Christians, Orthodox Russia, Obama as the anti-Constantine out to repeal the Edict of Milan, and issues of eschatology and prophecy. Rick and I immediately struck up a great rapport, and I believe it was a good opportunity to introduce an Orthodox Christian perspective to his large listening audience.

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Topic : 

Is Barack Obama repealing Emperor Constantine’s Edict of Milan that stopped persecution of Christians? Orthodox Church blogger Ralph Sidway tells Rick Wiles what the ancient church has to say about the religion of Muhammad.  

Air Date:

Friday August 22, 2014 

[Download]

[Play in Browser]

Beheading in the Name of Islam

Our friend and fearless scholar of Islam, the Mahdi and Islamic eschatology, recently sent me this article of his, nearly a decade old now, which sheds light on the bloody penchant for beheadings embedded in Islam's DNA. This helps mightily to explain why the Islamic State Caliphate and other devout Muslim groups "strike the necks" of their victims.

by Timothy R. Furnish, Middle East Quarterly
Spring 2005, pp 51-57

Timothy R. Furnish holds a PhD in Islamic History and is an author, analyst, and consultant to the US military who specializes in transnational Islamic movements, eschatology and Mahdism. His website is www.mahdiwatch.org.

An ISIS jihadi joyfully displaying his victim's head, July 2014.

Images of masked terrorists standing behind Western hostages in Iraq and Saudi Arabia have become all too common on Arabic satellite stations such as Al-Jazeera and Al-Manar. Islamist websites such as Muntadiyat al-Mahdi[1] go further, streaming video of their murder.

The February 2002 decapitation of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, true to its intention, horrified the Western audience. Chechen rebels, egged on by Islamist benefactors, had adopted the practice four years earlier,[2] but the absence of widely broadcast videos limited the psychological impact of hostage decapitation. The Pearl murder and video catalyzed the resurgence of this historical Islamic practice. In Iraq, terrorists filmed the beheadings of Americans Nicholas Berg, Jack Hensley, and Eugene Armstrong. Other victims include Turks, an Egyptian, a Korean, Bulgarians, a British businessman, and a Nepalese. Scores of Iraqis, both Kurds and Arabs, have also fallen victim to Islamist terrorists' knives. The new fad in terrorist brutality has extended to Saudi Arabia where Islamist terrorists murdered American businessman Paul Johnson, whose head was later discovered in a freezer in an Al-Qaeda hideout. A variation upon this theme would be the practice of Islamists slitting the throats of those opponents they label infidels. This is what happened to Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, first gunned down and then mutilated on an Amsterdam street,[3] and to an Egyptian Coptic family in New Jersey after the father had angered Islamists with Internet chat room criticisms of Islam.[4]

The purpose of terrorism is to strike fear into the hearts of opponents in order to win political concession. As the shock value wears off and the Western world becomes immunized to any particular tactic, terrorists develop new ones in order to maximize shock and the press reaction upon which they thrive. In the 1970s and 1980s, terrorists hijacked airliners to win headlines. In the 1980s and 1990s, the car bomb became more popular; Palestinian terrorists perfected suicide bombings in the 1990s. But what once garnered days of commentary now generates only hours. Decapitation has become the latest fashion. In many ways, it sends terrorism back to the future. Unlike hijackings and car bombs, ritual beheading has a long precedent in Islamic theology and history.

Islamic Hatred and Persecution of Christians Is Imported into European Refugee Centres

"The International Society for Human Rights (ISHR) explains that attacks against Christians are far from isolated cases and that all Christians and Christian converts arriving in Germany are victims of harassment, threats, pressure" and physical violence from Muslims.

by Enza Ferreri, August 17, 2014

Christians persecuted by Muslims in Islamic countries who think they are escaping their fate by fleeing discover that the same treatment awaits them in Europe, which after all has simply imported Islam's barbarism by opening its doors to large numbers of Muslims.

The German daily newspaper Die Welt reports on the terrible exclusion and violence suffered by Christian refugees at the hands of Muslims in Germany's asylum centres.

Germany is the second country in the world, after the US, for number of asylum applications received, with 13% of them last year, and the first in Europe, with 23.2% last year.

Silent Holocaust: The Persecution of Christians in the Middle East, and What We Can Do About It

• Houston meeting to bring together Orthodox, Coptic and Syriac Christian communities.
• Congressional representatives invited.
• Learn how you can help.

via Fr. John Whiteford, August 19, 2014

More details will be forthcoming, but on September 5th, 2014, at 7 pm, the Orthodox Clergy Association of Houston and Southeast Texas will have a meeting at St. George Antiochian Orthodox Church, in Houston to discuss the persecution of Christians in the Middle East. 

We are inviting all the members of the Orthodox, Coptic and Syriac Christian communities in the area to participate. We are also asking all the members of the congressional delegation of the Houston area to come. We will have speakers who will talking about what is going on, we will have questions and answers, and we will be talking about what we can do about it.

Contact your congressman and ask them to come and participate... and if you don't know who your congressman is, or if you know, but don't know how to get in touch with them, see this web site: http://www.fyi.legis.state.tx.us/Home.aspx

Visit and bookmark this page for more info and to contact Fr. John Whiteford.

Raymond Ibrahim: The Siege of Constantinople

"Ever since the Muslim prophet Mohammed sent a message in 628 to the Byzantine emperor Heraclius, summoning him to Islam, with the famous assertion, aslam taslam — that is, “submit [become Muslim], and you will have peace” — and the summons was refused, Constantinople became Islam’s arch-enemy."

by Raymond Ibrahim, August 15, 2014

Editor’s note: To mark the August 15 anniversary of the second Islamic siege of Constantinople, we republish the following article, which appeared a year ago on National Review Online:

Seige of Constantinople, from the Constantine Manasses Chronicle

Today, August 15, marks the anniversary of Constantinople’s victory over Muslim invaders in what historians commonly call the “Second Siege of Byzantium,” 717–18. Prior to this massive onslaught, the Muslims had been hacking away at the domains of the Byzantine empire for nearly a century. The Muslims’ ultimate goal was the conquest of Constantinople — for both political and religious reasons.

"Constantinople — from [Islam's] theological perspective — simply had to fall."

Politically, Islam had no rival but the “hated Christians” of Byzantium, known by various appellations — including al-Rum (the Romans), al-Nassara (the Nazarenes), and, most notoriously, al-Kilab (the “dogs”). The eastern Sasanian Empire had already been vanquished, and Persia subsumed into the caliphate. Only the “worshippers of the cross” — as they were, and still are, disparagingly known — were left as contenders over the eastern Mediterranean basin.

More important, Constantinople — from a theological perspective — simply had to fall. From the start, Islam and jihad were inextricably linked. The jihad, or “holy war,” which took over Arabia and Persia, followed by Syria, Egypt, and all of North Africa — all formerly Byzantine territory — was considered a religious obligation, or, as later codified in sharia law, a fard kifaya: a communal obligation on the body of believers, to be adhered to and fulfilled no less than the Five Pillars of Islam. 

"The jihad is a religious duty, because of the universalism of the Muslim mission and the obligation to convert everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force..."

As the famous 14th-century Muslim historian Ibn Khaldun put it: “In the Muslim community, the jihad is a religious duty, because of the universalism of the Muslim mission and the obligation to convert everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force. . . .  Islam is under obligation to gain power over other nations.”

This concept of jihad as institutionalized holy war was first articulated and codified into Islam’s worldview by “warrior-theologians” (mujahidin-fuqaha) living and fighting along the Byzantine-Arab frontier (such as the mujahid Abdallah bin Mubarak, author of the seminal work Kitab al-Jihad or “Book of Jihad”).

The prevalent view was that, so long as Constantinople stood, the Cross would defy the Crescent. This is a literal point: Symbols played a great role in these wars. Less than a century earlier, at the pivotal battle of Yarmuk (636), where the Muslims crushed the Byzantines, leading to the conquest of Syria, one Muslim complained to the caliph, saying, “The dog of the Romans [Emperor Heraclius] has greatly frustrated us with the ubiquitous presence of the cross!”

Indeed, one cannot overemphasize the religious nature of these wars — which, if still codified in Islam’s sharia, has become all but alien to a Western epistemology that tends cynically to dismiss the role of faith. That the primary way of identifying oneself in the old world was based on religious affiliation — not race, ethnicity, or nationality, all modern concepts — is indicative of the central role of faith. Even useful terms such as “Byzantines” are ultimately anachronistic; “Byzantines” identified themselves first and foremost as “Christians.”

For these reasons, the conquest of Constantinople would take on increasingly apocalyptic proportions in Islamic literature. Ever since the Muslim prophet Mohammed sent a message in 628 to the Byzantine emperor Heraclius, summoning him to Islam, with the famous assertion, aslam taslam — that is, “submit [become Muslim], and you will have peace” — and the summons was refused, Constantinople became Islam’s arch-enemy. Mohammed even prophesied that the Christian capital would — indeed, must — fall to Islam, with blessings and rewards to the Muslim(s) fulfilling this prophecy. Fall the great city would — but not for some 800 years, in 1453, giving an inchoate Europe the needed time to mature, strengthen, and unify.

Islamic State vows to ‘break the American cross’

This specific language has clear apocalyptic implications, as per the hadith cited by Robert Spencer below. I cite a complementary hadith (Sunan Abu Dawud, Book of Battles, 37:4310) in my book, Facing Islam, in discussing Islamic eschatology and its belief that Isa (the Islamic Jesus) will return to destroy Christianity and establish Islam throughout the world:

In Islam, Prophet Isa is expected to return, but to condemn the Christians’ misunderstanding of him as divine and to literally destroy Christianity and judge all non-Muslims... The Prophet Isa will be a “good Muslim,” and will direct his followers to the Mahdi, the Muslim messiah, before taking a subservient position somewhat behind the Mahdi. Isa will “fight the people for the cause of Islam. He will break the cross, kill the swine and abolish jizya” and establish the rule of Allah throughout the world. (Facing Islam, p. 80)

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Islamic State vows to ‘break the American cross’
Jihad Watch — August 19, 2014

Islamic State targets the White House.

The Islamic State jihadis think of the U.S. as a Christian nation, and so they think of destroying it as breaking the cross, which language is also reminiscent of this:

Narrated Abu Huraira: Allah’s Apostle said, “By Him in Whose Hands my soul is, son of Mary (Jesus) will shortly descend amongst you people (Muslims) as a just ruler and will break the Cross and kill the pig and abolish the Jizya (a tax taken from the non-Muslims, who are in the protection, of the Muslim government). Then there will be abundance of money and no-body will accept charitable gifts. (Bukhari 3.34.425)

“Islamic State vows to ‘break the American cross',” Reuters, August 19, 2014:

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Islamic State, the Sunni militant group which seeks to establish a caliphate in parts of Iraq and Syria, released a video on Tuesday that gave the strongest indication yet it might attempt to strike American targets.

The video with the theme “breaking of the American cross” boasts Islamic State will emerge victorious over “crusader” America. It follows a video posted on Monday warning of attacks on American targets if Washington struck against its fighters in Iraq and Syria.