Archive for category: Islam

I continue a series that had reached twenty one installments back in April, received one more installment a few weeks ago thanks to a guest blogger, Alan Kurschner, but still requires that I complete the work, specifically, that of responding to the article posted at the Islamic Awareness website by MSM Saifullah and Hesham Azmy, “Is the Bible In Our

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Gunmen fired on a car carrying a newlywed couple and their families on Friday, killing the 23-year-old bride and wounding the Iraqi army captain she had just married. Eleven other people died in violence nationwide. Ooh, brave soldiers, shooting up brides. Just like last week and the brave bomber who killed a bunch of kids and a

The following appeared in the San Diego Union-Tribune Wed., July 13th. You probably didn’t hear much about this in the mainstream media. You should have. The article is by Toby Sterling, Associated Press. AMSTERDAM, Netherlands — The Muslim extremist on trial for the slaying of filmmaker Theo van Gogh confessed yesterday, saying he was driven by religious conviction. “I don’t

It has been way too long since I continued this series, and I apologize for that. One of our regulars in channel, DeoVolente, (Alan Kurschner) asked me to remember to do so, and I said, “Hey, feel free.” So, he did! And so, here’s the twenty-second in the series in response to our Islamic apologists and their comments on the

A couple of times during my talks on the doctrine of election while in Italy I noted the constant biblical fact that all God does in salvation is “in Christ.” And in conjunction with this observation I commented that the Father does not draw His elect people to anyone but Christ, including Buddha, and Mohammed. But whenever you speak about

   ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – A Pakistani man accused of desecrating the Koran was shot dead Wednesday after being chased by an angry crowd.    Ashiq Nabi, in his thirties, was accused of being disrespectful to Islam’s holy book and had been in hiding since Monday, a senior police official said.    “Today, a mob spotted him and shot him dead,” said Mazahar ul

It’s been a few weeks since my last installment in this series. As you can see, I’ve been a bit busy with other topics. As we return to the lengthy quotation from Bentley on a, we recall that we have already documented the less-than-accurate perspective offered by Bentley (which is probably why our Muslim authors chose this citation). This continues

Today on the Little Green Footballs blog we read:    According to Robert Spencer, National Review decided to cave in to pressure from the Council on American Islamic Relations because they were “choosing their battles.”    While it’s definitely true that National Review has done a great deal to expose the agenda of radical Islam, and I’m not going to stop reading

In their attack upon the Christian scriptures, Saifullah and Azmy began their lengthy citation of Bentley’s work on Sinaiticus by mocking William Campbell’s emotional response upon seeing a in person when it was, at that time (1983) located in the British Museum. I, too, had the opportunity of seeing a, which is now housed in the British Library, and unlike

By this point we truly have grounds for questioning the accuracy and purpose of Bentley’s review, and we surely understand why it is found useful by Saifullah and Azmy! The bias goes on, In Matthew’s Gospel Codex Sinaiticus contains another suggestion about Jesus which conflicted with the theological views of later Christians and was therefore suppressed. Speaking (in Matthew chapter

Immediately after misrepresenting Sinaiticus through misrepresenting the textual variant, Bentley then simply misrepresents it by gross and unexplainable error. He begins a section where he is alleging purposeful editing of the text of a by scribes for theological reasons. He rightly notes that Westcott and Hort and Tischendorf continued to hold a high view of Scripture, and quotes W&H as

My apologies for the time since I last continued the examination of Saifullah & Azmy’s article on the transmission of the text of the New Testament, and in particular, at this point, seventeen articles in, their lengthy citation of Bentley’s Secrets of Mount Sinai regarding Codex Sinaiticus (a). Life, at times, is so very distracting! Once again we encounter a

The following appears on numerous news websites, etc.:    Ziwar Muhammad Isma’il, a Christian convert from a Muslim background, has been shot and killed for his faith, according to Middle East Concern.    The tragedy seems to be part of a growing hostility towards Christians in the country as the threat of military action increases.    Ziwar, who worked as a taxi driver

Very few Christians have ever read the Qur’an, but the interest in the topic has grown steadily since 9/11. We have been looking at some passages from the Qur’an and comparing them with God’s Word, the Bible. One will find a great deal of the most important passages relating to Islam and the Christian faith in Surahs 4, 5, and

James Bentley uses very poor, or at the least, misleading language, in his description of the text of a. He writes, “Persistently and disturbingly, the codex from Mount Sinai omits cherished sentences of Holy Scripture. In Matthew chapter 17, the disciples of Jesus fail to cast out a devil from an epileptic. Verse 21 in the received text gives Jesus’s

The next variant noted by Bentley in reference to Codex Sinaiticus (a) is that found in Luke 24:51. The original reading of a does not have the phrase “and was carried up into heaven.” D likewise omits the phrase, as does a wide spectrum of Latin sources and the Sinaitic Syriac. The 25th ed. of the Nestle-Aland did not place

We continue responding to Saifullah and Azmy, and their very, very lengthy citation of various portions of Bentley’s Secrets of Mount Sinai. The next portion cited is in reference to the pericope of the adultress, John 7:53-8:11. Bentley inaccurately comments, Some well-loved stories also disappeared in the text so carefully and long preserved on Mount Sinai. The eighth chapter of

Surely Allah does not forgive shirk (associating any partner with Him); and may forgive sins other than that if He so pleases. This is because one who commits shirk with Allah, does indeed invent a great sinful lie. (Surah 4:48, F. Malik Translation) One of the greatest stumbling blocks to communicating the gospel of grace to the Muslim is “designed

Few conservative Christians have ever read the Qur’an, and as such, it remains a closed and mysterious book to them. But even if you have read it, it likewise remains a closed and mysterious book, for it is not written in such a fashion as to communicate with much clarity to the vast majority of the human race, and apart

Bentley (as quoted by our Islamic writers) writes, What really outraged men like Dean Burgon was principally that, however learnedly Codex Sinaiticus was edited, it revealed a text of the Bible that again and again differed from what they had revered and loved as Holy Writ. Take, for example, the Lord’s Prayer. Generations of Englishmen had been accustomed to the

Christianity Today has an important interview with this Islamic authority. It begins: Islam is the final revelation, therefore those believing in it submit to Allah—the only One worthy of obedience in every sphere of life. To understand 9/11, we must go back to Tawhid— the exclusive worship of God in every sphere—religious, political, social, etc. Every human action must relate

This article from the New York Sun reminds us of how much we take the freedom to speak the truth about Islam for granted, and how these Muslims hate the gospel of Jesus Christ with a passion most do not begin to understand. The image to the right is part of one of the banners on this website. Note the

We continue with out response to Saifullah and Azmy on the subject of the transmission of the New Testament. It has been a while (15 days to be exact, my apologies) since our last installment. Our Islamic authors are providing a massive string of quotations from James Bentley’s 1986 work, Secrets of Mount Sinai: The Story of Finding the World’s Oldest

And yet another reason to avoid PalTalk like the plague.

We noted in our last installment the presentation of twenty some odd pages of citation regarding the textual integrity of a (Codex Sinaiticus) by our Islamic authors. They tip their hand (as if we were any longer wondering about their bias) when they introduce this material, taken from James Bentley’s Secrets of Mount Sinai: The Story of Codex Sinaiticus, by

For the past few weeks we have been examining an article posted early in December embodying an Islamic attack upon the Christian Scriptures (and, by so doing, a defense of the Qur’an), co-authored by Saifullah & Azmy. One of the reasons I took up the challenge of the article was that the article includes twenty-two pages of a book on

Saifullah and Azmy quote the less than conservative Interpreter’s Bible in saying, “It is safe to say that there is not one sentence in the NT in which the MS tradition is wholly uniform.” This is simply untrue, and most especially in the context in which it is offered, it is grossly misleading. First, there is a vast difference between

At this point our authors return to the issue of isnad, and in the process demonstrate an accute ignorance not only of the irrelevance of the topic given the history of their own Scriptures, as we have noted, but likewise the fact that to follow their reasoning is to abandon the existence of any historical records of antiquity at all.

The fundamental misunderstanding of Saifullah and Azmy regarding the science of textual criticism vitiated any serious challenge to be offered by the entirety of their article (we respond to it, however, due to the fact that most evangelicals are utterly unfamiliar with the most basic elements of the field as well, and hence might find the willy-nilly citation of obscure

We continue our response to Saifullah and Azmy by noting their listing of various ecclesiastical traditions (Protestant, Roman Catholic, and then much smaller ones, such as Coptic, Armenian, etc.) and their statement “They all contain a different number of books. Again the scriptures are demonstrably not the same today as in Muhammad’s time.” Notice the massive (and unwarranted) leap between

I mentioned briefly a few days ago the decision by Australian Judge Michael Higgins condemning a seminar, newsletter, and website article posted by Catch the Fire ministries. You can read more about it here at the Free Republic website. Here is the actual document recording the initial decision. The judge will be releasing a lengthier decision in the future. Reading