The True Relationship Between Christianity and Islam, Part III - The Heresy

Early Christian Writers Recognized That Islam Was A Christian Heresy

Fourth, the early Christian leaders clearly understood how Islam related to Christianity and the relationship between the two. Therefore studying the early Christian philosophers like St. John of Damascus will greatly help to increase the relationships between Christianity and the Muslims. In his work The Fount of Knowledge, St. John explains the relationship between the Church and the Muslims.

1. Muhammed devised his own heresy

“There is also the superstition of the Ishmaelites which to this day prevails and keeps people in error, being a forerunner of the Antichrist. They are descended from Ishmael, [who] was born to Abraham of Agar, and for this reason, they are called both Agarenes and Ishmaelites… From that time to the present a false prophet named Mohammed has appeared in their midst. This man, after having chanced upon the Old and New Testaments and likewise, it seems, having conversed with an Arian monk, devised his own heresy. Then, having insinuated himself into the good graces of the people by a show of seeming piety, he gave out that a certain book had been sent down to him from heaven. He had set down some ridiculous compositions in this book of his and he gave it to them as an object of veneration.”

2. Christ’s shadow was crucified

“He says that there is one God, creator of all things, who has neither been begotten nor has begotten. He says that the Christ is the Word of God and His Spirit, but a creature and a servant, and that He was begotten, without seed, of Mary the sister of Moses and Aaron. For, he says, the Word and God and the Spirit entered into Mary and she brought forth Jesus, who was a prophet and servant of God. And he says that the Jews wanted to crucify Him in violation of the law and that they seized His shadow and crucified this. But the Christ Himself was not crucified, he says, nor did He die, for God out of His love for Him took Him to Himself into heaven.”

3. Christ denied saying, “I am the Son of God and God.”

“And he says this, that when the Christ had ascended into heaven God asked Him: ‘O Jesus, didst thou say: “I am the Son of God and God”?’ And Jesus, he says, answered: ‘Be merciful to me, Lord. Thou knowest that I did not say this and that I did not scorn to be thy servant. But sinful men have written that I made this statement, and they have lied about me and have fallen into error.’ And God answered and said to Him: ‘I know that thou didst not say this word.” There are many other extraordinary and quite ridiculous things in this book which he boasts was sent down to him from God.”

4. Where did Scripture foretell Muhammad?

“But when we ask: ‘And who is there to testify that God gave him the book? And which of the prophets foretold that such a prophet would rise up?’—they are at a loss. And we remark that Moses received the Law on Mount Sinai, with God appearing in the sight of all the people in cloud, and fire, and darkness, and storm. And we say that all the Prophets from Moses on down foretold the coming of Christ and how Christ God (and incarnate Son of God) was to come and to be crucified and die and rise again, and how He was to be the judge of the living and dead. Then, when we say: ‘How is it that this prophet of yours did not come in the same way, with others bearing witness to him? And how is it that God did not in your presence present this man with the book to which you refer, even as He gave the Law to Moses, with the people looking on and the mountain smoking, so that you, too, might have certainty?’—they answer that God does as He pleases.”

5. Where are the witnesses?

“When we ask again: ‘How is it that when he enjoined us in this book of yours not to do anything or receive anything without witnesses, you did not ask him: “First do you show us by witnesses that you are a prophet and that you have come from God, and show us just what Scriptures there are that testify about you”’—they are ashamed and remain silent.”

6. What do the Muslims call Christians?

“Moreover, they call us Hetaeriasts, or Associators, because, they say, we introduce an associate with God by declaring Christ to the Son of God and God… And again we say to them: ‘As long as you say that Christ is the Word of God and Spirit, why do you accuse us of being Hetaeriasts? For the word, and the spirit is inseparable from that in which it naturally has existence. Therefore, if the Word of God is in God, then it is obvious that He is God. If, however, He is outside of God, then, according to you, God is without a word and without spirit. Consequently, by avoiding the introduction of an associate with God you have mutilated Him. It would be far better for you to say that He has an associate than to mutilate Him as if you were dealing with a stone or a piece of wood or some other inanimate object. Thus, you speak untruly when you call us Hetaeriasts; we retort by calling you Mutilators of God.’”

7. On Women

“As has been related, this Mohammed wrote many ridiculous books, to each one of which he set a title. For example, there is the book On Woman, in which he plainly makes legal provision for taking four wives and, if it is possible, a thousand concubines—as many as one can maintain, besides the four wives. He also made it legal to put away whichever wife one might wish, and, should one so wish, to take to oneself another in the same way. Mohammed had a friend named Zeid. This man had a beautiful wife with whom Mohammed fell in love. Once, when they were sitting together, Mohammed said: “Oh, by the way, God has commanded me to take your wife.” The other answered: ‘You are an apostle. Do as God has told you and take my wife.”

In an article published on Dec. 27, 2015, Dr. Thomas D. Williams wrote, “The 13th-century scholar Saint Thomas Aquinas, regarded as one of the most eminent medieval philosophers and theologians, offered a biting critique of Islam based in large part on the questionable character and methods of its founder, Mohammed. According to Aquinas, Islam appealed to ignorant, brutish, carnal men and spread not by the power of its arguments or divine grace but by the power of the sword. Aquinas, a keen observer of the human condition, was familiar with the chief works of the Muslim philosophers of his day–including Avicenna, Algazel, and Averroes–and engaged them in his writings.”

Since Islam was founded and spread in the seventh century, Aquinas—considered by Catholics as a saint and doctor of the Church—lived in a period closer to that of Mohammed than to our own day. In one of his most significant works, the voluminous Summa contra gentiles, which Aquinas wrote between 1258 and 1264 AD, the scholar argued for the truth of Christianity against other belief systems, including Islam. Aquinas contrasts the spread of Christianity with that of Islam, arguing that much of Christianity’s early success stemmed from widespread belief in the miracles of Jesus, whereas the spread of Islam was worked through the promise of sensual pleasures and the violence of the sword.

According to Dr. Williams’ article, Mohammad, Aquinas believed, “seduced the people by promises of carnal pleasure to which the concupiscence of the flesh goads us. His teaching also contained precepts that were in conformity with his promises, and he gave free rein to carnal pleasure.” Such an offer, Aquinas contended, appealed to a certain type of person of limited virtue and wisdom. “In all this, as is not unexpected, he was obeyed by carnal men,” he wrote. “As for proofs of the truth of his doctrine, he brought forward only such as could be grasped by the natural ability of anyone with very modest wisdom. Indeed, the truths that he taught he mingled with many fables and with doctrines of the greatest falsity.”

Because of the weakness of Islam’s contentions, Aquinas argued, “no wise men, men trained in things divine and human, believed in him from the beginning.” Instead, those who believed in him “were brutal men and desert wanderers, utterly ignorant of all divine teaching, through whose numbers Muhammad forced others to become his followers by the violence of his arms.” Islam’s violent methods of propagation were especially unconvincing to Aquinas since he found that the use of such force does not prove the truth of one’s claims, and are the means typically used by evil men.

In Hilarie Belloc’s book, The Great Heresies, he wrote, “There is thus a very great deal in common between the enthusiasm with which Mohammed's teaching attacked the priesthood, the Mass and the sacraments and the enthusiasm with which Calvinism, the central motive force of the Reformation, did the same. As we all know, the new teaching relaxed the marriage laws but in practice, this did not affect the mass of his followers who still remained monogamous. It made divorce as easy as possible, for the sacramental idea of marriage disappeared. It insisted upon the equality of men, and it necessarily had that further factor in which it resembled Calvinism the sense of predestination, the sense of fate; of what the followers of John Knox were always calling "the immutable decrees of God."

Belloc pointed out some important points. How did Islam grow so fast? You can’t kill everyone to convert them. He explained that there was indebtedness everywhere; the power of money and consequent usury. There was slavery everywhere. Society reposed upon it, as ours repose upon wage slavery today. There was weariness and discontent with theological debate, which, for all its intensity, had grown out of touch with the masses. There lay upon the freemen, already tortured with debt, a heavy burden of imperial taxation; and there was the irritant of existing central government interfering with men's lives; there was the tyranny of the lawyers and their charges. There was a need for something or someone to offer a simple solution to the everyday problems of life. So when the Muslims came people listened. Become Muslim and be free from debt, be free from tax, be free from the old government which had run all aspects of your life. The odd familiarity of this heresy offered some hope for the people who were desperate for change. What they gave up was their freedom for their security and what they got in return was neither. Today their descendants have less rights, less freedom, and less say so in their own life than the rest of the world.

Islam Has Many Internal Contradictions

Fifth, there are some very great problems with the general tenets of the Muslim faith.

Jesus was called “The Messiah” by Allah in the Quran and Jesus was even born of a virgin (Surah 3:45-57). Yet Muhammad who had 12 wives, 2 concubines, and insisted on 20% of all of the booties from these raids- is supposed to be the greatest prophet of all times. Along this line both Muslim holy books Quran and Hadith contain commands for Muslims to subjugate the world militarily. Muhammad commanded Muslims to spread Islam through Offensive Jihad or conquest of non- Muslim lands. Muslims are also commanded to take back any land that was formerly Muslim, such as Israel. The only way this would be true is that the Muslim admit their relationship to the Christian Church.

The Muslims teach that somehow Jesus never said that he was the son of God or God while he was here on earth. Did Jesus really say He was God? That’s exactly how Jesus’ original audience seemed to take it when He said, “I and the Father are one.” In fact, the Jews were ready to kill Him right there! Why? “Because you,” they said, “a mere man, claim to be God” (John 10:33). Exodus 3:14 “Say to the Israelites, ‘I AM’ has sent me…”

On another occasion, He used the personal name of Israel’s God–the name revealed to Moses (Exodus 3:14)–to refer to Himself. And He even used the Torah for context, so no one would misunderstand Him: “Before Abraham was, I AM” (John 8:58).

This would be about wild as telling a Muslim, “I am your God, Allah.” Don’t try that in Saudi Arabia! It’s no wonder the Jews tried to stone Him to death. That was the exact penalty for blasphemy under the Jewish legal system. So, he wasn’t saying something like “I’m some other, generic god” like he was advocating polytheism. Not at all. It was pretty clear to everyone there that He was being much more specific… Jesus was saying, “I am Israel’s God.” So did Jesus ay He was God? Not in the way you might have expected him to.  But as Dr. Michael Kruger said, “We should not confuse the directness of a claim with the existence of a claim.”

The historical evidence shows that Jesus actually claimed to be the God of Israel. Indeed, Jesus didn’t have to say the words “I am God,” in order to claim to be divine. But why is this a problem? Look, I don’t have to say the exact words, “I am married” to indicate that I’m married. I can tell you, “I’m her husband,” or “this is my wife,” or “it’s our 16th wedding anniversary.” The question is, what did the people who were actually a part of the conversation think about what Jesus said? For example, he claimed to forgive sins (Mark 2:1-12). While priests and prophets could mediate forgiveness by praying for people, forgiving sins committed against God was something the Jewish scribes believed only God had the authority to do. Jesus also clarified what you could and couldn’t do on the Sabbath. By the way, keeping the Sabbath is one of the 10 commandments. Who’s got the authority to lay down the law when it comes to obeying the 10 commandments? Jesus also called himself the “Lord of the Sabbath” (Mark 2:28).

Belloc explained in The Great Heresies, “All the great heresies save this one of Mohammedanism seems to go through the same phases.” He went on to explain what he meant.

First, they rise with great violence and become fashionable; they do so by insisting on someone of the great Catholic doctrines in an exaggerated fashion; and because the great Catholic doctrines combined to form the only full and satisfactory philosophy known to mankind, each

doctrine is bound to have its special appeal.

What Muhammad did was to simplify all aspects of his religion. He made it easy to dispense justice and have Church in traveling society. A tribal society that moved from place to place could not have elaborate priesthood liturgies, a trained priesthood, or even elaborate court systems. He wanted total obedience and simplicity. Something that would require little or no formal training, little in the way of elaborate ceremony, and provide people with immediate responses.

Thus this form of Muhammad's Arianism insisted on the unity of God, combined with the majesty and creative power of God. At the same time, it appealed to imperfect minds because it tried to rationalize a mystery. You have no questions to answer about different people if you have only one God. The Trinity would be difficult if not impossible to explain to most of Muhammad’s followers, this was not. Calvinism again had a great success because it insisted on another main doctrine, the Omnipotence, and Omniscience of God. It got the rest out of proportion and went violently wrong on Predestination, but it had its moment of triumph when it looked as though it were going to conquer all our civilization which it would have done if the French had not fought it in their great religious war and conquered its adherents on that soil of Gaul which has always been the battle ground and testing place of European ideas.

After this first phase of the great heresies, when they are in their initial vigor and spread like a flame from man to man, there comes the second phase of decline, lasting, apparently (according to some obscure law), through about five or six generations: say a couple of hundred years

or a little more. The adherents of the heresy grow less numerous and less convinced until at last only quite a small number can be called full and faithful followers of the original movement.

Then comes the third phase, when each heresy wholly disappears as a bit of doctrine: no one believes the doctrine any more or only such a tiny fraction remain as believers so little that they no longer count. But the social and moral factors of the heresy remain and may be of powerful effect for generations more. We see that in the case of Calvinism today. Calvinism produced the Puritan movement and from that there proceeded as a necessary consequence of the isolation of the soul, the backup of corporate social action, unbridled competition, and greed, and at last the full establishment of what we call "Industrial Capitalism" today, whereby civilization is now imperiled through the discontent of the vast destitute majority with their few plutocratic masters. There is no one left except perhaps a handful of people who really believe the

Doctrines Calvin taught, but the spirit of Calvinism is still very strong in the countries it originally infected, and its social fruits remain. In fact today, the American political process is debating the needs of the have and have nots for the next Presidential election in 2016.

Now in the case of Islam, none of all this happened except the first phase. There was no second phase of gradual decline in the numbers and conviction of its followers. On the contrary, Islam grew from strength to strength acquiring more and more territory, converting more and more followers, until it had established itself as a quite separate civilization and seemed so like a new religion that most people came to forget its origin as a heresy. Today the vast majority of adherents would be shocked to find out that they actually believed not in a true way but in false and corrupt teaching that long ago was proven to be just mere false heresy. Why would you believe in a shadow instead of the Sun?

Islam increased not only in numbers and in the conviction of its followers but in the territory and in actual political and armed. Less than 100 years before the American War of Independence a Mohammedan army was threatening to overrun and destroy Christian civilization and would have done so if the Catholic King of Poland had not destroyed that army outside Vienna on September 11. Then almost 400 years later on another Sept. 11, 2001, an attack on the United States causes a new round in this ever-escalating battle between religious ideologies.

Since then the armed power of Mohammedanism has increased, as well as the conviction of its followers, have appreciably increased; and as to the territory annexed by it, much of the world has now become Muslim including the cradle of Christianity in the Middle East. And there is another point in connection with this power of Islam.

Islam is apparently so much in control of all aspects of their adherent’s lives that they try to control their very thoughts. What happened to the freedom of the beginning of the heresy?

It has left just like the knowledge of how Islam got started. Today we need to combat Islam with something they cannot defeat- the truth. We need to explain about how Mohammad used heresy to trick people and how this trick has taken away their very own free agency. God did not make us be his slaves, we were created with our own free will to chose him not to be a slave for him. When God created us he created the ability to think, this is what he would like us to do. When we do not and just blindly follow a cause have been fooled-Mohammad fooled his followers with something that sounded good but ended up bringing slavery to an entire population. Can slavery be better than freedom? Can expediency be better than deep and careful thought? Can God’s wrath be better than God’s love? Of course not.

Jesus by definition was the Son of God- according to the Bible and the Quran. The Angel Gabriel God’s messenger to Mary was the same messenger to Mohammad. The only difference is that for the Angel Gabriel to come and visit Mary to tell her that she was going to have the Son of God then Jesus was not just a normal prophet. This logically takes out the entire argument of the humanity of Jesus and the need for Mohammad to be a prophet. The purpose of a prophet was to have his people repent and tell of the coming of the Messiah. Since Jesus was the Messiah- the need for prophets has come to an end.

Clearly, the evidence shown in this treatise points out that Mohammad used heresy to convince people of something that wasn’t true. Here are two great examples. The first shows the Muslim concept toward women. The Prophet said, "Isn't the witness of a woman equal to half of that of a man?" The woman said, "Yes." He said, "This is because of the deficiency of a woman's mind." (Sahih Bukhari 3:48:826)

The second one shows the alleged humanity of Jesus. And when Allah saith: O Jesus, son of Mary! Didst thou say unto mankind: Take me and my mother for two gods beside Allah ? he saith: Be glorified! It was not mine to utter that to which I had no right. If I used to say it, then Thou knewest it. Thou knowest what is in my mind, and I know not what is in Thy Mind. Lo! Thou, only Thou, art the Knower of Things Hidden? (Qur'an 5:116)

The missionary efforts made by great Catholic orders which have been occupied in trying to turn Mohammedans into Christians for nearly 1400 years have everywhere wholly failed. We have in some places driven the Mohammedan master out and freed his Christian subjects from Mohammedan control, but we have had hardly any effect in converting individual Mohammedans save perhaps to some small amount in Southern Spain 500 years ago; and even so, that was rather an example of political than of religious change.

Now, what is the explanation for all this? Why should Islam alone of all the great heresies show such continued vitality? The answer is simple- it allows people to possess absolute power over a population of subjects. This power is addictive and sought after by political leaders and Kings. The ruling class has used this to keep the masses at bay and to keep large segments of society happy with little or no modern needs. Why worry about the 21st century when your population is living in the seventh century? Why worry about providing your society with a modern education when they are perfectly happy with a seventh-century one? Why build 21st-century hospitals or provide modern jobs for all people when one half of the population are treated worse than second class citizens? The answer is simple. The truth is here and the truth has been staring us in the face for 1400 years.

Look at the words of St. Thomas Aquinas where he credited Muhammad for keeping his followers ignorant in order to remain faithful. He said, “That will save them from reading the New or Old Testament lest these books convict him of his falsity.”

Islam is a heresy that is being used by the ruling class to hold their people under control. Ignorance is their main way to keep followers in lockstep belief in a flawed premise. This is not a major religion, rather it is major problem. Next time question this and think about it. Would God allow this if you were allowed to think twice about it? No, the purpose of God is not to make soulless robots it was to make us in his image.