Dr. John Ankerberg with Jay Smith ATRI Publishing Chattanooga, Tennessee

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2 6 Deadly Questions of ISLAM Dr. John Ankerberg with Jay Smith ATRI Publishing Chattanooga, Tennessee

3 2016 by John Ankerberg Published by ATRI Publishing. All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication, including the artwork, may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise except for brief quotations in printed reviews without the prior written permission of the publisher. First Printing, 2016 Unless otherwise noted, Scripture is taken from the Holy Bible, King James Version, public domain. Additional quotations from the Holy Bible, New International Version. NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved. ATRI Publishing, Chattanooga, Tennessee Printed in the United States of America Ankerberg Theological Research Institute P O Box 8977 Chattanooga, TN

4 6 Deadly Questions of Islam Dr. John Ankerberg with Jay Smith Program 1 Introduction Today on the John Ankerberg Show, we will show you how to answer the 6 deadly questions of Islam. The 6 deadly questions of Islam are those questions which Muslims usually ask Christians, because they think Christians cannot answer them. We will not only answer these 6 questions, but show you how to use the Muslims own holy book, the Qur an, to do so. The 6 deadly questions are: According to the Qur an, is Jesus greater than Muhammad? Can God have a son? Can God become a man? Don t Christians believe in three gods? Was Jesus really crucified? Can God die? Doesn t Islam really ennoble women? What is the role of women in Islam as compared to the role of women in the Bible? Today we will start with question: Is Jesus greater than Muhammad according to the Qur an? Join us for this special edition of the John Ankerberg Show. John Ankerberg: Welcome to our program. I m John Ankerberg, thanks for joining me. My guest today is one of Christianity s foremost apologists, polemicists, to the Muslim world. His name is Jay Smith, and he lives in London, England. Jay has debated many of the world s leading Muslim scholars, and yet this Christian intellectual also takes the time every week when he s home in London to go into Hyde Park, to Speakers Corner and to actually talk and discuss Christianity and Islam with those that are there, sometimes 30, sometimes 50, sometimes 500, sometimes more. It s something to see. And today we re going to compare Jesus with Muhammad. And, Jay, I m really glad that you re here. This is a key topic. I know that when I m in the Middle East, when I ask people What do you think about Isa, okay, they all want to talk about Him. I ve found them very open to talking about Him, because the Qur an says certain things about Jesus that they must believe. We want to talk about that, but we want to compare the Isa of the Qur an with the Jesus of the Bible. Start us off. Jay Smith: Well, even before we get into that, John, thanks for giving me this platform because it s so important. We ve talked so much already in our previous shows about the book and the man, the book and the man, looking at the fact that Islam starts from that paradigm. So do we; we start from the same paradigm. We re just like them: we start from a book and a man, a book and a man as well. And now we re going to go to the man. We re 6 Deadly Questions of Islam page 4

5 going to talk about that man and how much greater He is than their man. Now, those are fighting words. And what we re doing is we re going to be using polemics. Now, let me define terms, because for some of your viewers they may be confused. What do we mean by these big words you ve used, polemics and apologetics? I find the best definition for these two terms is to look at a football game or what you call soccer here in America, we call football in England. On a football team you have two different teams. Ankerberg: Right Smith: You have your offense and you have your defense. And your defense makes sure that the others don t score against you, don t have touchdowns against you. In soccer, or football as we have in England, we have a defense too; they make sure the others don t score against them. You have your goalie and you have your defensive line. They re absolutely important, because if you don t have a good defense, you lose the game. In Christianity, or when we re dealing with other religions, the defense would be apologetics. Smith: So, you need your apologists. And I would suggest that in almost every Bible school, in every seminary, there is a course on apologetics; maybe there is even a curriculum on apologetics. We do very well with apologetics. Interestingly, we don t do very well with Islamic apologetics. Do you know of any Bible school or any seminary where they actually teach Islamic apologetics? Ankerberg: There s one or two. Smith: And that s why we re here. You re actually going to be engaging in Islamic apologetics. That s what we re going to be doing, John. And that s why it s so good we re able to do this, because this is not being done almost anywhere else. But here s the problem. You have a football team; you don t just win games by defending against the other team. You also have to have an offense. They re the ones that actually score against the others. They re the ones that win the game. They re probably the most popular players, they certainly are the best paid, and they re certainly the ones that are in the news all the time. In soccer, or football, the Lionel Messis, the Cristiano Ronaldos, those are the names you hear about. Why? Because they are on the offense. They score against the other team. Now, in Christianity, our offense is non-existent when it comes to Islam. Ankerberg: Right. Smith: And the offense would be polemics. In fact, I would suggest that most of the people listening to this program have not even heard that word. It just doesn t exist. We don t have any classes on polemics. It doesn t exist. And yet that s what I am, I m a polemicist. I m not asking you to be a polemicist; I m not asking anybody who s watching this to be a polemicist; there s very few of us that should be doing polemics. There s very few in the New Testament that did polemics. Now, there s many who did apologetics. In fact, if you look at the disciples, they all did apologetics; Jesus did apologetics. How many did polemics? Well, Jesus actually did polemics. Look and see what He did in the temple when He overturned the tables, that s polemics. Look at Matthew 23:13-33, where He s 6 Deadly Questions of Islam page 5

6 confronting the Pharisees: You hypocrites, you den of vipers, you white sepulchers, the entire chapter is full of attack. Attack that is polemics. So Jesus could do both apologetics and polemics. When Nicodemus came to Him in the middle of the night, that was apologetics; He defended, He explained, and He also gave him the scripture and gave him the gospel. Ankerberg: And the apostle Paul. Smith: But Paul was probably my best example. I like Paul. And, see, Paul was a unique individual because before he was Paul, he was Saul. Saul was a Jew; but he wasn t just any Jew, he was also a Pharisee. But he wasn t just any Pharisee, he belonged to the Shammai school. That is the school that not only wanted to reform Judaism from within, but they also wanted to confront anything from without. So they wanted to destroy the Roman hegemony, they wanted to confront the Christians. Saul was there at the stoning of Stephen; he held the clothes of those who were stoning Stephen. He was on his way to Damascus to bring back the Christians in chains and to kill any that resisted. And Saul did kill Christians, that s polemics. But God met him in a dynamic way there on the road to Damascus and made him from Saul into Paul. Now, take a look at Saul and Paul, what had changed? Well, when you take a look at Saul and we look at Paul, there s not much difference between the two, except, it s interesting, he still knew his scriptures. Saul was one of the best of his day. He knew his mind. That s why God chose him; He wanted a man who knew his scriptures; he quoted his scriptures; he was able to go into any one of the synagogues. If you look at Acts 15 to Acts 18, there, especially up to chapter 19, there in Laodicea and Cappadocia, in Berea, in Ephesus, in every city he went, he went right to the Synagogue. He confronted the Jews with what they had done to the Messiah. That s polemics; that s polemics. There s an example of polemics right there, and he could do that because he knew the scriptures. He knew exactly where the Jews were coming from; he used to be one of their best, their brightest. But he didn t just stop with the Jews. Look at the Areopagus there in Athens. Take a look and see what he did there. He went to the Epicureans, the Stoics; he was able to argue with the best there in Acts 17. When he was there looking at the name of the Unknown God, they realized that this was a completely foreign God that he was talking about. He was able to introduce who the Unknown God is that they didn t know. And more than that, when he confronted them, what was fascinating, he confronted the Jews right on there in chapter 19 of Acts in Ephesus. And for three months, it says, he confronted them. They finally gave up on him, and he went right down to the lecture hall of Tyrannus. He left the synagogue and he went to the secular institution, a debating chamber. And for two years, it said, he preached the gospel so that everybody in that entire land heard the gospel because of Paul. That is polemics. You debate polemics. Now, we ve lost that. We don t have our Pauls anymore. Where are our Pauls? Where are our Pauls who caused a riot there in Ephesus, who was stoned almost to death twice? Both times when he was almost stoned, he just got up, brushed the dust from his clothes, then went to the next town and did it all over again. Finally they killed him in Rome. You don t get stoned, you don t get thrown into prison, you don t get beaten, you don t cause riots 6 Deadly Questions of Islam page 6

7 from just apologetics, that s called polemics. And, you see, we don t have people like Paul anymore. Well, I m like Paul. I model myself after Paul. I do what he did. I like what he did, because we re missing that today. Because now we re up against another religion that is very similar to what Paul was up against in the first century. In the 21 st century we have people that are just like that. In fact, let me give you an example of Saul and my good friend Abdul, okay? Both of them are radical: Jew over in this case, Saul was a radical Jew; Abdul is a radical Muslim. Saul wanted a theocratic state, so does Abdul want a theocratic state, called the Islamic State, called the khilafah. Saul was based on Mosaic Law; they built a whole hierarchical system with rules and regulations for every area of life, how you walk, talk, eat, drink, sleep. It was all dictated and delineated there in the Mosaic Covenant. Well, Abdul is very similar. He calls his law Sharia Law, based on four schools of fiqh, called the Hanbali, the Maliki, the Shafi i, and the Hanafi school. Very much like Saul s. So you can see the parallels there. Smith: Saul wanted to kill those who confronted Judaism, and that s why he was there at the stoning of Stephen. He was there on his way to imprison the Christians and, yes, even kill them if need be. So does Abdul on my side over here. Abdul wants to destroy anybody because his scripture is very clear, Slay the unbeliever wherever ye find them. So you can see the parallels there, lots of parallels. Saul became Paul. Once Saul became Paul, look and see what changed. No longer did he use the sword, he didn t use the sword anymore. He didn t need to because he had this sword [the Bible]. This became his sword. Ankerberg: The word of God. Smith: The word of God. That s why you don t see him using the sword anymore. But he didn t stop using his ability to reason. He used his ability to use polemics. He still was able to argue with the best and the brightest. He was able to go toe-to-toe with those, using scripture; he always used scripture. He always quoted from the Old Testament. He quoted also from the philosophers, the Epicureans, the Stoics, he even named the Unknown God there in the Areopagus. He was telling them exactly what they were missing. That s why I like to use Paul. We re missing that model today. We don t have that; we don t teach that anywhere in any of our Bible schools and any of our seminaries. You do it on this show here, and that s why you had Dr. William Craig here earlier, because he is a polemicist. He is also an apologist; he brings the two together, he brings those two giftings, both the offense and the defense simultaneously, in almost every one of his debates. Ankerberg: Right. Smith: And that s why we need to get back to that model. That s missing today. Because we re up against something very similar to what the early church was up against and very similar to what Paul was up against. We re up against a religion that wants to control every area of life. It s not just a religion; it has brought the mosque and state together. We separate the two, and the church over on this side has a different responsibility than the 6 Deadly Questions of Islam page 7

8 state. The state goes to war; we don t go to war. The state protects and maintains civil liberties; we don t do that, we bring people into the kingdom. And this kingdom is not just in this world, this kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, which means we need different skills, we need different tools. And the tools we need are all right here. Ankerberg: Let s apply it to Jesus now. Let s come back to, the fact is, Muslims believe certain things about Jesus because the Qur an tells them to, and you go to those points. Smith: Well, now we re going to come back to the whole paradigm... Ankerberg: Right. Smith: of what this kingdom s about. See, this kingdom over here is not a kingdom based on rules and regulations that the state does. In fact, did you notice Jesus didn t spend much time at all with the Romans? He didn t spend any time with Herod even when His cousin was in prison and his disciples came to help him. He said, Go back and tell John what I m doing. Let s go look at Jesus and let s see how He then applied His ministry. And let s look at the apologetics and the polemics He used, and let s unpack that for the people listening; because when you come to Jesus He is not only the model, He is also the answer for every Muslim I know. Let s look at Jesus real quickly and see: Did Jesus ever use weapons? No, He never did. Did He only ever use arguments? Yes, He did. Look at Muhammad; did Muhammad use weapons? Muhammad used weapons right, left and center. We know exactly what he did from 624 up until 632, the last eight years of his life. Look at his biography and you will see he was involved in 29 different battles himself and planned another 39 on top of that. His whole life was imbued in violence. Jesus said to put away the sword. There s a comparison right there of looking at the model of Jesus Christ. We re going to unpack a few more. We re going to show you how much greater Jesus is and how much more relevant Jesus is for today and show you that the model that Jesus gave us back in the first century is just as applicable as it is in the 21 st century. Ankerberg: Alright, there are seven things that the Qur an talks about Jesus doing that Muhammad didn t do, couldn t do. Right now I want you to compare Jesus with Muhammad. How do you start when you re talking with Muslims? Smith: You know, that s a great question. I was in Detroit not too many years ago. I was at the big Arab Festival and I was walking down the street with all of these Muslims around me. And I saw a fellow holding a placard, and he had Jesus and Muhammad, we love them both. So I went up to him, and I said, I m so glad you have Jesus above Muhammad. It s so good that you keep Him above Muhammad because He is by far much greater than Muhammad. Don t ever bring Him below it. And, of course, he started objecting to this, No, no, no. They re both equal. And I said, No, no, no. They re not equal. And what I m going to do, I m going to use your own Qur an. I m going to start with the Qur an; I m going to show you seven areas where Jesus is greater than Muhammad from your Qur an. I m not going to even start with my Bible. I m going to use your own book; that s your authority, it s not my authority. And let s go ahead and let s start with surah 19 ayah 20. Surah 19 ayah 20. And he knew of the reference, and I said, That talks about the virgin birth. 6 Deadly Questions of Islam page 8

9 Smith: And I want to say from the very beginning at His birth He was born of a virgin. That means He had a miraculous birth. Was Muhammad born of a virgin? Or miraculously in any way? And he said, No, not at all. Well, then obviously you see there s something significant about His birth. I said, Why should He be born of a virgin? He had no answer. I said, Well, what happens when you don t have an answer? Who are you supposed to come to? In surah 10 ayah 94, in surah 21 ayah 7, it says if you have any question come to the people of the book, come to us. You re to come to me. Let me tell you why the virgin birth is significant. And I m going to tell you very quickly, to find out why the virgin birth is significant, you need to go back to Isaiah 7:14. Seven is the perfect number, double that is 14; I ve made it nice and simple for you. Go back to Isaiah 7:14 and it says very clearly, This shall be a sign. That means, you, wake up; this is a sign. A virgin will conceive. Now, hold on a minute, in my world virgins don t conceive. And they don t in your world as well. So when a virgin conceives, that means this is a miracle, this is something special. Wake up, this is the sign. And what is the sign? Isaiah says very clearly, a virgin will conceive and bear a son. That s significant: not a daughter but a son. Go all the way back to Genesis 3:15 and you ll see why. Will bear a son, but who is this son that she s going to bear? It says it right there in the same verse, And he shall be called Immanuel, God with us. So when the virgin, her name is Mary, she s right there in Surah 19 ayah 20, she s in your Qur an when she bears a son, Isaiah says, that will be God with us. God s with us at that time. There s the significance. Ankerberg: That s number one. Smith: That s number one. Then I said, Go to surah 3 ayah 46, because this baby then speaks from the cradle. Now, not in my Bible but in your Qur an, this Isa that you claim to be Jesus, speaks from the cradle. Can Muhammad, or was he able to speak from the cradle? No, he wasn t. Ankerberg: No. Smith: So, number two, He s already superior to Muhammad. Three verses later in verse 49 you have the reference to this Isa, this little child, taking some mud, fashioning them in the form of a bird, blowing on them and they fly up into the air. So here He s able to create, out of nothing, some birds. So He creates out of nothing. Could Muhammad create anything? Ankerberg: No. Smith: No, not at all. That s number three. Right after it says He gives sight to the blind and He is able to heal the leper. There s number four and five. Could Muhammad heal anybody? Not at all. Could Muhammad give sight to anybody? No, he did just the opposite. So that s five things now that Jesus could do that is better than Muhammad from within your own Qur an. Smith: And then we get to number, the one that comes after it, and He resuscitates the dead. Still the same verse, He resuscitates the dead. That s number six. Could Muhammad resuscitate anybody? No, he usually put them to death, just the opposite. So here we have 6 Deadly Questions of Islam page 9

10 Jesus, Isa, your Jesus, Isa is born of a virgin, He can speak from the cradle, He can create birds out of nothing, He can heal the sick, He can give sight to the blind, and He can resuscitate the dead. Muhammad can t do any of those six. Already we re seeing within three verses six different abilities of Jesus that Muhammad could not do. Now, we re going to come back to Surah 19 again. Let s start with verse 19, the verse before 20. Take a look and see what it says. And it says there very clearly, that Jibril, that s Gabriel, comes to Mary and says to Mary: I m going to give you a righteous son. What does righteous mean? Sinless. Now Muslims have always, and I said to this man by this time a crowd had formed, a big crowd had formed I said to the Muslim, What is the biggest problem you have with Jesus taking on human form and coming as a man? I know you hate the idea that God would take on human form. And the reason why is because you believe He would be corrupted, He would be sinful, because all humanity is sinful. If He took on human form He would be like us, corrupted like us. I said, Your Qur an has just answered your question. Your Qur an has just eradicated any notion that this one man, this one prophet, this one Isa, actually was sinless. He was the righteous one. I want you to show me anywhere in the Qur an where any of the prophets are sinless. Every prophet in the Qur an sins. He said, No, no, Muhammad didn t sin. I said, Yes, he did. Go back to surah 48, I want you to go back to surah 48, I want you to read the very first two verses. In surah 48 ayah 1 and 2 it s very clear that Muhammad is to ask forgiveness for the sins he has done and the sins he has yet to do. Even as a prophet he s going to continue to sin, proving that on both sides of his prophecy he was sinful. Jesus is the only one in the Qur an that does not sin, the righteous one. So, He is superior to Muhammad in His birth, He is superior to Muhammad in His childhood, He s superior to Muhammad in His ability to raise the dead, to give sight to the blind, to heal the sick and to create out of nothing. And He is superior in the notion that He is the only sinless one. I said, I haven t even gotten to the Bible yet. We ve just used the Qur an. Smith: And we ve seen seven areas where Jesus is superior to Muhammad. Then I said, Let s just go one step further. Let s go on and look at this name, Isa. I said, What does it mean? He had no idea. He said, Well, it means Jesus. I said, No, it doesn t mean Jesus. In fact, Isa is not even Arabic. And yet you always tell me whenever I read the Qur an I m supposed to read it in Arabic, and that s why I always keep a Qur an that has Arabic next to the English, next to it, beside it, so you can read the Arabic. But you can t read it anyways, because 85% of the Muslim population cannot read Arabic. Ankerberg: Can t read Arabic, right. Smith: That means only 15% can read Arabic, and if you tell me that I can only read God s holy word in Arabic, that means only 15% can read His word, 85% cannot. And what that suggests to me is that whoever wrote this book, whoever revealed this book, only intended the Arabs to read it, because you say that this can t even be translated. 6 Deadly Questions of Islam page 10

11 And that s true. The interpretation of the meaning of the Noble Qur an is what it says cannot be translated, it can only be interpreted. Well, that s the beautiful thing about my Bible. My Bible, the gorgeous thing about my Bible is you can read it in every language. What, we have it in 2,500 languages now; Ankerberg: Yes Smith: 93% of the world s population can now read the Bible in their own native tongue. Within 60 years every known language will have the New Testament in its native tongue. That tells me that the God behind this book comes down on my level, speaks my language. That means I can read about Him in every language, which tends to suggest to me that this [Bible] is the universal God, and this [Qur an] is only the God for the Arabs. But let s get back to this name Isa. Smith: Because you say it s pure Arabic, it has to be in Arabic, and therefore Isa must be an Arabic name. Isa is not the Arabic name for Jesus. Ask any Arab speaker, especially a Christian Arab speaker, and they ll tell you what the real name in Arabic is for Jesus, and it s Yeshua. It has always been Yeshua. For 2,000 years it s Yeshua. In fact, you will not find the word Isa before the Qur an. The word Isa does not exist until the Qur an introduced it. So that is the Qur anic name for Jesus. So where did the Qur an get it from, or where did Muhammad get it from, since he spoke, supposedly, pure Arabic? Smith: Well, he couldn t read or write; we know that. So whoever wrote it down wrote the wrong name. You ve got the wrong Jesus. Well, I ll tell you the answer. We pretty well know the answer now, we didn t for many years because we always thought maybe this is Esau the brother of Jacob, they probably got confused, maybe the Jews gave them the wrong name as a joke. Nonetheless, they should ve had; if it was a true prophet, if Muhammad really was a true prophet, why didn t he know God s name? And why didn t he also know Jesus name in Arabic? Take a look at the Qur an and you will find that Isa is referred to about 93 times; 93 times all the way through. How many times is Muhammad referred to in this book? Ankerberg: Four times. Smith: Four times, that s it. So who would you think is more important? Now, all the way through in the book it does talk about the messenger and the prophet, the messenger and the prophet, but it doesn t give him a name. Muslims have to put that in parentheses in the English translation or whatever translation; they have to add that to the text. It s not in the Arabic. His name is not there except for four times. Whereas Isa s name is all the way through, it s replete; 93 times you ll get Him over and over again. Many times Isa ibn Maryam. Isa ibn Maryam means Isa, son of Mary; 25 times He s the son of Mary to show His humanity. But I still want to know why Isa is there. If you take a look at all the stories about Him, and they re all there, there s lots of stories about Isa. And over and over again you will see the stories are not the same as in my Bible. They re foreign to my Bible, they don t make sense. 6 Deadly Questions of Islam page 11

12 We ve already referred to some already: He s there speaking from the cradle, that s not in my Bible; He s making birds out of clay and blowing on them and they fly up in the air; His mother and He get hungry and so He orders His mother to shake the tree so they can eat food, that s in surah 19, that s not in my Bible. So where did these stories come from? They come from Syriac sources, these are Gnostic writings. We know where every one of them are. They are sometimes the lost Arabic books of the Bible. These are the sectarian writings written in Syriac. Written in Syriac. And the name in Syriac, if you re going to borrow the story, you ll also borrow the name. The name in Syriac is Yasu; when you take Yasu and put it into Arabic, it becomes Isa, proving that the Isa they have in the Qur an is nothing more than a Gnostic Jesus, a much later Jesus, a second and third century Jesus. He is a heretic Jesus; He s not the Jesus I know. No wonder He does these things as a child and spends all His time as an adult denying His divinity, and spends much of His time supporting Muhammad. Those really are the only two functions He has: to deny His divinity and to support Muhammad. That s not the Jesus I see in this book at all. They ve got the wrong Jesus. We re going to show how hopeless the Jesus they have, and we re going to show you some of the things, some of the questions that Muslims are coming out about Jesus. We re going to unpack this book and show you what we now know about Jesus. And it s not the Jesus I know. It s not the Jesus Muslims need to know. That s why we need to bring them home; bring them home to the real Jesus. Ankerberg: Jay, for Muslims who are listening to you right now, and they re thinking about what you are saying about the real Jesus, what would you have them do? What s the next steps? Smith: I want to talk to Muslims specifically on this, and this is for you. You realize now that there are some problems with your Qur an concerning who Isa is, concerning who Jesus is. Now you know the name s wrong; you know that also Jesus is superior to Muhammad. There are some other problems, and we re going to unpack them for you. We re going to show you just how difficult a time it is you re going to have to know who really Jesus is. We want to show you the real Jesus, the Jesus that s much greater than Muhammad, who is, yes, the Son of God, who is the Son of Man, He is the Messiah, and He is Yahweh, those four. We re going to talk about those, unpack them and show you what a great Jesus we ve got. Ankerberg: Folks, this is really important, and you need to be taking notes on what Jay is saying; because we ve got Muslims all across America, all across Canada, all across Europe and they want to know. I ve found Muslims are very open to talking about Jesus, but you need to have the evidence. So, Jay, I m really glad that you re here. Next week we look forward to another program where we re going to talk more about Jesus. 6 Deadly Questions of Islam page 12

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