Islam

Islamic orthodoxy teaches that Jesus, while he was Israel’s Messiah, was only one of many national prophets to Israel and that God never intended the Christianity of Jesus to become a universal religion. Islamic orthodoxy teaches that Muhammad was the only prophet sent by God to the entire world, and that it is Islam alone that God intended to become a universal religion. However, if one studies the Koran carefully, he will discover that it seems to say the very opposite. It represents itself as a book written in Arabic for those who spoke Arabic[1], and that it was intended primarily for Mecca and its environs[2]. Arthur J. Arberry surely appears to be right when he observes that the Islam of the Koran is fundamentally an Arabic religion, reflecting and intended for the seventh-century culture of Arabia. (9) On the other hand, the Koran emphatically states in Sura 3:3 and Sura 6:92 that God revealed the Mosaic Torah and the Christian Gospel for the light and guidance of all mankind.

Inaccuracies/Contradictions

The Qur'an states that it is a perfect book preserved on tablets in heaven (Surah 85:21-22).  If the Qur'an is a perfect book from Allah, then there shouldn't be any contradictions in it. 

All quotes from the Qur'an, unless otherwise specified, are from Yusuf Ali and can be found at the Qur'an online.

1.  What was man created from, blood, clay, dust, or nothing?

   1. "Created man, out of a (mere) clot of congealed blood," (96:2).

   2. "We created man from sounding clay, from mud moulded into shape, (15:26).

   3. "The similitude of Jesus before Allah is as that of Adam; He created him from dust, then said to him: "Be". And he was," (3:59).

   4. "But does not man call to mind that We created him before out of nothing?" (19:67, Yusuf Ali). Also, 52:35).

   5. "He has created man from a sperm-drop; and behold this same (man) becomes an open disputer! (16:4).

2. Is there or is there not compulsion in religion according to the Qur'an? 

   1. "Let there be no compulsion in religion: Truth stands out clear from Error: whoever rejects evil and believes in Allah hath grasped the most trustworthy hand-hold, that never breaks. And Allah heareth and knoweth all things," (2:256).

   2. "And an announcement from Allah and His Messenger, to the people (assembled) on the day of the Great Pilgrimage,- that Allah and His Messenger dissolve (treaty) obligations with the Pagans. If then, ye repent, it were best for you; but if ye turn away, know ye that ye cannot frustrate Allah. And proclaim a grievous penalty to those who reject Faith," (9:3).

   3. "But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the Pagans wherever ye find them, and seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war); but if they repent, and establish regular prayers and practice regular charity, then open the way for them: for Allah is Oft-forgiving, Most Merciful," (9:5).

   4. Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued," (9:29).

3. The first Muslim was Muhammad?  Abraham?  Jacob? Moses?

   1. "And I [Muhammad] am commanded to be the first of those who bow to Allah in Islam," (39:12).

   2. "When Moses came to the place appointed by Us, and his Lord addressed him, He said: "O my Lord! show (Thyself) to me, that I may look upon thee." Allah said: "By no means canst thou see Me (direct); But look upon the mount; if it abide in its place, then shalt thou see Me." When his Lord manifested His glory on the Mount, He made it as dust. And Moses fell down in a swoon. When he recovered his senses he said: "Glory be to Thee! to Thee I turn in repentance, and I am the first to believe." (7:143).

   3. "And this was the legacy that Abraham left to his sons, and so did Jacob; "Oh my sons! Allah hath chosen the Faith for you; then die not except in the Faith of Islam," (2:132).

4. Does Allah forgive or not forgive those who worship false gods? 

   1. Allah forgiveth not that partners should be set up with Him; but He forgiveth anything else, to whom He pleaseth; to set up partners with Allah is to devise a sin Most heinous indeed," (4:48).  Also 4:116

   2. The people of the Book ask thee to cause a book to descend to them from heaven: Indeed they asked Moses for an even greater (miracle), for they said: "Show us Allah in public," but they were dazed for their presumption, with thunder and lightning. Yet they worshipped the calf even after clear signs had come to them; even so we forgave them; and gave Moses manifest proofs of authority," (4:153).

5. Are Allah's decrees changed or not?

   1. "Rejected were the messengers before thee: with patience and constancy they bore their rejection and their wrongs, until Our aid did reach them: there is none that can alter the words (and decrees) of Allah. Already hast thou received some account of those messengers," (6:34).

   2. "The word of thy Lord doth find its fulfillment in truth and in justice: None can change His words: for He is the one who heareth and knoweth all, (6:115).

   3. None of Our revelations do We abrogate or cause to be forgotten, but We substitute something better or similar: Knowest thou not that Allah Hath power over all things?" (2:106).

   4. When We substitute one revelation for another,- and Allah knows best what He reveals (in stages),- they say, "Thou art but a forger": but most of them understand not," (16:101).

6. Was Pharaoh killed or not killed by drowning? 

   1. "We took the Children of Israel across the sea: Pharaoh and his hosts followed them in insolence and spite. At length, when overwhelmed with the flood, he said: "I believe that there is no god except Him Whom the Children of Israel believe in: I am of those who submit (to Allah in Islam). (It was said to him): "Ah now!- But a little while before, wast thou in rebellion!- and thou didst mischief (and violence)!  This day shall We save thee in the body, that thou mayest be a sign to those who come after thee! but verily, many among mankind are heedless of Our Signs!" (10:90-92).

   2. Moses said, "Thou knowest well that these things have been sent down by none but the Lord of the heavens and the earth as eye-opening evidence: and I consider thee indeed, O Pharaoh, to be one doomed to destruction!"  So he resolved to remove them from the face of the earth: but We did drown him and all who were with him," (17:102-103).

7. Is wine consumption good or bad? 

   1. O ye who believe! Intoxicants and gambling, (dedication of) stones, and (divination by) arrows, are an abomination,- of Satan's handwork: eschew such (abomination), that ye may prosper," (5:90).

   2. (Here is) a Parable of the Garden which the righteous are promised: in it are rivers of water incorruptible; rivers of milk of which the taste never changes; rivers of wine, a joy to those who drink; and rivers of honey pure and clear. In it there are for them all kinds of fruits; and Grace from their Lord. (Can those in such Bliss) be compared to such as shall dwell for ever in the Fire, and be given, to drink, boiling water, so that it cuts up their bowels (to pieces)?" (47:15).

   3. Truly the Righteous will be in Bliss: On Thrones (of Dignity) will they command a sight (of all things): Thou wilt recognize in their faces the beaming brightness of Bliss. Their thirst will be slaked with Pure Wine sealed," (83:22-25).

For some of the Koran’s historical inaccuracies see:

Gleason L. Archer, Jr., A Survey of Old Testament Introduction (Moody, 1994), 549-552;

St. Clair Tisdall, The Source of Islam, translated and abridged by William Muir (T & T. Clark, n.d.) and Abdal Fadi, Is the Koran Infallible? (Villach, Austria: Light of Hope, n.d.).

Women

Nor will I address Muham-mad’s teaching that the husband may beat his disobedient wife (Sura 4, "Women," verse 34), or his belief that he was to "make war on the unbelievers…, and deal sternly with them" (Sura 66, "Prohibition," verse 9; see also Sura 8, "Spoils of War," verses 13-17; Sura 9 [virtually a declaration of war against unbelievers], "Repentance," verse 14)

Jihad

Al Bukhari (a collection of the sayings of Muhammad), volume I:25, asks: “What is the best deed for the Muslim next to believing in Allah and his Apostle?” Answer: “To participate in Jihad in Allah’s cause.” The reader should compare this “second Muslim concern” with Jesus’ declaration that the second commandment, after the first that requires loving God with all one’s heart, is to love one’s neighbor as one loves himself.

5.1 The most basic war that the believer ever wages is his personal struggle to submit to the will of God.  This Jihad is the most difficult of all, because the true Muslim must accept God’s will no matter the cost to himself or those he loves.

5.2 Muhammad accommodated himself to the Arab Bedouins’ tradition of raiding the non-Arabs: “Know that, whatever booty you take, the fifth of it is God’s, and the Messenger’s, and the near kinsman’s, and the orphans’, and for the needy, and the traveler . . . ..” (Koran VIII:40)

5.3 This aggressive position evolved into the concept of the Holy War, the Jihad: “When you meet the unbelievers, smite their necks, then, when you have made wide slaughter among them, tie fast the bonds; then set them free, either by grace or ransom, till the war lays down its loads. So it shall be; and if God had willed, He would have avenged Himself upon them; but that He may try some of you by means of others. And those who are slain in the way of God, He will not send their works astray. He will guide them, and dispose their minds aright, and He will admit them to Paradise, that He has made known to them.” (Koran XLVII:4-8)

5.4 Thus the most certain way to go to heaven was to die in a Jihad. This doctrine gave great impetus to their conquests.

5.4.1 “So let them fight in the way of God who sell the present life for the world to come; and whosoever fights in the way of God and is slain, or conquers, We shall bring him a mighty wage.” (Koran IV:75)

5.4.2 “God has bought from the believers their selves and their possessions against the gift of Paradise; they fight in the way of God; they kill, and are killed; that is a promise binding upon God in the Torah, and the Gospel, and the Koran; and who fulfills his covenant truer than God?” (Koran IX:110)

5.4.3 “Surely the godfearing shall be in a station secure among gardens and fountains, robed in silk and brocade, set face to face. Even so; and We shall espouse them to wide-eyed houris (Houri: a black-eyed woman 1. any of the beautiful nymphs of the Moslem Paradise, among the rewards of faithful Moslems 2. a seductively beautiful woman), therein calling for every fruit, secure.” (Koran XLIV:52)

5.5 To retreat before the enemy in a Jihad, unless it was for tactical reasons, was an absolute guarantee of instantly going to a burning hell: “O believers, when you encounter the unbelievers marching to battle, turn not your backs to them. Whoso turns his back that day to them, unless withdrawing to fight again or removing to join another host, he is laden with the burden of God’s anger, and his refuge is Gehenna—an evil homecoming!” (Koran VIII:15)

Paradise

Mohammed’s fixation on the eternal fire awaiting the Jew and the Christian, and the sensual paradise of gardens, feasting, and sexual pleasure that awaits the Muslim (Sura 36).

Islam teaches that in Paradise even the lowliest Muslim man will enjoy seventy-two black-eyed youthful girls (houris) especially created for his sexual enjoyment, with the moment of his sexual pleasure prolonged to a thousand years and his faculty of sensual enjoyment increased a hundredfold.

Jesus Christ vs. Mohammed

Islamic orthodoxy teaches that Jesus, while he was Israel’s Messiah, was only one of many national prophets to Israel and that God never intended the Christianity of Jesus to become a universal religion.

But what did Muhammad teach about his relation to Jesus? Did he not see himself as superior to Jesus? Well, it is true that, according to Sura 61, "Battle Array" or "Ranks," verse 6, Muhammad does state that Jesus taught that "an apostle...will come after me whose name is Ahmad [a variation of Muhammad]." Of course, Jesus taught no such thing. He taught that God the Holy Spirit whom he called the Comforter (parakletos, John 14:16-17, 26; 15:26; 16:7-8, 13-14), whom he would send from the Father, would come after him. And he taught that the Spirit/Comforter when he came would glorify him, Jesus the Christ. Apparently, Muhammad, or perhaps the compilers of the Koran after his death, confused the Greek word parakletos with the Greek word periklytos, meaning "famed, praised," for which the Arabic would be ahmad (Muhammad), and accordingly he taught that Jesus taught that he, Muhammad, was to be the last and "seal" of God’s prophets.

The Gospels, however, make it clear that Jesus taught that revelational history reached its culmination in him and that his chosen apostles completed God’s revelatory activity (2 Timothy 3:16-17). For instance, in his parable of the wicked farmers, found in Matthew 21:33-45, Mark 12:1-12, and Luke 20:9-19, Jesus tells the story of a landowner who leased his vineyard to some farmers and then went into another country. When the time arrived for him to receive his rental fee in the form of the fruit of the vineyard, he sent servant after servant to his tenants, only to have each one of them beaten or stoned or killed. Last of all he sent his son—Luke says his "beloved son"; Mark says "yet one [other], a beloved son"— saying: "They will respect my son." But when the tenants saw the landowner’s son, they said: "This is the heir; come, let’s kill him and take his inheritance." This they did, throwing his body out of the vineyard. When the landowner came, he destroyed the tenants and leased his vineyard to others.

God who spoke at many times and in many ways in times past to the fathers by the prophets has in these last days spoken to us by his Son whom he has appointed heir of all things, through whom also he made the worlds…[and] if the word spoken [then] proved steadfast, and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompense, how shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation, which…[was] spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed to us by those [apostles] who heard him? [Hebrews 1:1-2; 2:2-3].

The Koran, it is true, affirms that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah and a true prophet of God, that he was virgin-born and performed many miracles. Therefore, Muslims believe today, because the Koran teaches these true and proper things about Jesus, that Christians should be lauding them and regarding them accordingly as friendly to Christianity. But the Koran also teaches in Sura 5, "The Table," verses 17 and 72, that it is unbelievers who say that Jesus is God. And in verse 116 the Koran teaches that Jesus denied that he was deity:

Then God says: "Jesus, son of Mary, did you ever say to mankind: ‘Worship me...as god beside God?’" "Glory be to you," he answers, "I could never have claimed what I have no right to. If I had ever said so, you would have surely known it." [See also Sura 5:75.]

Well, in Sura 4, "Women," verse 157, Muhammad denies that Jesus was crucified. He writes: "[The Jews] did not kill him, nor did they crucify him, but they thought they did." According to Muslim tradition the Jews crucified a man who resembled Jesus, perhaps even Judas. Jesus himself was taken unharmed directly to Heaven (see Sura 3, "The Imrans," verse 55, and Sura 4, "Women," verses 156-158) (14). This means as well, of course, that Islam denies Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. With these denials Muhammad attacks Chris-tianity’s central teaching of Jesus’ cross and resur-rection, both of which are necessary to his substi-tutionary atonement. In Sura 5, "The Table," verse 103, Muhammad teaches that Allah does not demand sacrifices (see also Sura 6, "Cattle," verse 164), which means, by implication, in opposition to New Testament teaching that apart from the shedding of Christ’s blood there is no forgiveness of sin (Hebrews 9:22), that he did not demand Jesus’ sacrificial death either. What God demands of mankind, according to Muhammad, is absolute submission or resignation to his will. The very word "Islam" means "submission," and "Muslim" means "one who submits" to the will of Allah. But this leaves mankind in a hopeless condition, for mankind is unspeakably sinful with the corporate legal guilt of original sin (which Muslims deny (15)), incapable of such submission, and unable to save itself. And all mankind, because of this original sin, bears genuine moral guilt before God. Because of their consequent corruption and inability to please God, all men also deserve punishment, for their sin is not only morally wrong, the violation of God’s law, and therefore, undesirable, odious, ugly, disgusting, and filthy; it is also the contradiction of God’s perfection, cannot but meet with his disapproval and wrath, and damnable in the strongest sense of the word because it so dreadfully dishonors God. God must react with holy indignation. He cannot do otherwise.

Mohammed (570-632 A.D.)

1.1 He was born in Mecca, Arabia, orphaned at the age of six, and was deeply troubled by the wicked deeds done in Mecca, such as burying unwanted daughters alive.

1.2 He married a wealthy widow named Khadijah, who was fifteen years older than he.

1.3 When he was 40 years old he began to go off by himself to meditate in the hills near Mecca.

1.3.1 “According to Moslem tradition, he visited a cave near the base of Mount Hira, a few miles north of Mecca, for days at a time. Suddenly one night (“The Night Of Power and Excellence,” Moslems call it) there rose in vision before him the archangel Gabriel, the Messenger of God.”[3]

1.3.2 After months of uncertainty he began to preach the judgment of God against sin in Mecca at the site of the Ka’bah. His preaching must have been something like this apocalyptic passage from the Koran:

1.3.2.1 Koran LXXXI

“In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate

When the sun shall be darkened, when the stars shall be thrown down, when the mountains shall be set moving, when pregnant camels shall be neglected, when the savage beasts shall be mustered, when the seas shall be set boiling, when the souls shall be coupled, when the buried infant shall be asked for what sin she was slain, when the scrolls shall be unrolled, when heaven shall be stripped off, when Hell shall be set blazing, when Paradise shall be brought nigh, then shall a soul know what it has produced.”

1.3.3 After ten years of little success and much opposition, he traveled to (Yathrib) Medina in 622 A. D. This is called the Hijra, or migration.

1.3.3.1 He was given almost absolute authority over the town. Yathrib was renamed Medina (Madina an nabi, the City of the Prophet) in his honor. Here he built the first mosque, or house of worship.

1.3.3.2 In January 630 he led a force of 10,000 men against Mecca and conquered it. He then did homage at the Ka’bah and destroyed all of the idols and paintings which defiled it.

1.3.4 “Before his sudden death in 632, he knew he was well on the way to accomplishing his divine mission of unifying the Arab tribes under a theocracy governed by the will of the one and only God, Allah.”[4]

Caliphs

Mohammed was succeeded by the Caliphs. Within a century of Muhammad’s death, Islam had expanded well into Europe.

The first Caliph was Abu Bakr (633-634 A.D.); he assembled the Koran.

The second Caliph was Umar (634-644 A.D.). Under his leadership much of the Middle East was conquered by his general, Khalid ibn al-Walid. Damascus fell in 635 A. D.

“The Moslem victories in Syria were decisive elsewhere. Jerusalem fell in 638, and Caesarea . . . in 640. The whole of Palestine then surrendered to the Arabs. Cut off from needed aid, Egypt was the next conquest (639-641), and the Arabs pushed on rapidly through North Africa, to be in Spain within a century. Back in the Near East, the attack shifted to the Sassanids (Persians). First Iraq, with its fabulously rich cities (in 637), and then Persia (from 640-649), were subdued . . .. To the northwest, a twelve-year campaign (640-652) reduced the greater part of Asia Minor to subjection.”[5]

Islamic expansion from Northern Africa into Europe was stopped in France at the Battle of Tours in 732 A.D., exactly a century after Muhammad’s death.

Koran

The Koran begins and stops with Mohammed. The Bible combines endless variety with unity, universal applicability with local adaptation.

Salvation

According to Holy Scripture, Jesus declared that he alone is the way to the Father and that no one comes to the Father except through him (John 14:6). Peter declared: "Salvation is in no one else, for there is no other name under Heaven given among men by which we must be saved" (Acts 4:12). Paul taught that there is only one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus (1 Timothy 2:6). John taught that he who has the Son has life, and he who does not have the Son of God does not have life (1 John 5:12). And they all taught that one, if he would be saved, must repent of his sin of looking to his own or others’ works for salvation and must place his trust in the finished work of Jesus Christ alone. So I would join with their united witness and plead with all my readers to flee now in faith to Jesus and trust him alone for salvation, and to keep forever to him who is the true God and eternal life.

And he who, by God’s doing (1 Corinthians 1:30), comes to know Christ savingly will discover that only in him alone dwells all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Colossians 2:3), that only in him alone dwells the whole fullness of deity bodily (Colossians 2:9), that only in Christ does he have a divine Savior who loved him and gave himself sacrificially in death for him, paying thereby the penalty for his many sins against God, and that only in Christ can one have eternal life.

The psychology of Islam differs from that of Christianity. “Salvation is Obtained by Human Works. It is characteristic of religious Moslems that they are proud or self-righteous to such a degree that it is extremely difficult to get the Christian Gospel of sin and redemption across to them.”[6]

‘”Why is Islam so successful? How can its rapid spread be explained? And why is it so hard to win Moslems for Christ? A Moslem student once asked the present writer why Islam is so much more successful than Christianity. After a moment’s thought the reply was given that Islam is an easier religion than Christianity to live up to; it makes less difficult moral demands upon people. There is nothing in Islam to lead a man to say, “O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” or “I know that in me, that is in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing.” A religion with reasonable attainable objectives fosters self-confidence, complacency and spiritual pride—it leads inevitably to self-righteousness, but it does not give the sinner the anguish of a guilty conscience nor the frustration of trying without success to attain in practical living the requirements of an absolute moral standard. In brief, Islam makes a man feel good, while Christianity necessarily first (and often thereafter) makes a man feel bad. The religion of the broken heart is Christianity, not Islam.’[7]

Ecumenism

Islam’s doctrinal hostility to Biblical Christianity apparently does not bother the Roman Catholic Church, for Rome declared in its 1994 Catechism of the Catholic Church (paragraph 841) that Muslims are included within God’s plan of salvation because they "acknowledge the Creator,...profess to hold the faith of Abraham,(19) and together with [Chris-tians]...adore the one merciful God [Muslims and Christians hardly "adore" the same "one merciful God"]." Never mind that Islam’s Allah is not the triune God of the Old and New Testaments; never mind that Muslims think our Trinity is made up of God, a human Jesus, and Mary his mother, the last two of whom we blasphemously worship along with God; never mind that they deny that Jesus Christ is the divine Son of God and that he died on a cross a sacrificial death for his people’s sin and rose again because of their justification; never mind that Muslims believe that Christians are idolaters because we worship Christ who they contend was simply a human Messiah and a human prophet; never mind that they see no need for Christ’s substitutionary atonement or for that matter any substitutionary atonement at all. According to Rome’s teaching, in spite of their unbelief, Muslims are still salvifically related to the People of God and may go to Heaven as Muslims, all of which shows how serious is Roman Catholicism’s departure from Christianity. (20)

Sects

Sunnis

Representing roughly ninety percent of the population, the Sunnis represent the community consensus in Islam. The name comes from the word for custom, sunna.

In answer to the question of the succession of Muhammad, the Sunnis would say that no one could succeed him, “for the Qur’an finalized and perfected the revelation of divine guidance and declared Muhammad to be ‘the Seal of the Prophets.’” [8]

“The Sunnis gradually developed a comprehensive system of community law, the Shari’a. This provided cohesion within the community while allowing for variance between four orthodox law schools . . . .. Notionally ijma is the consensus of the whole community, though in practice it is that of the legal scholars. The Caliphs were guardians of the Shari’a, but the caliphate was abolished in 1924.”[9]

Two theologians stand out in the development of modern Sunna thought:

• Ash’ari (873-935 A.D.) developed a philosophy of religion which sought to unify the whole Sunna (custom) with reason.

• Ghazzali (1058-1111 A.D.) united the intellectual “scholastic” Sunna theology with the mysticism of the Sufis.

Shi’ites

The Shi’ites are a minority within Islam. They are less than ten percent of the Moslem population and are mostly found in Iran and in part of Iraq.

 “For the Shi’a Muslims the principle figure of religious authority is the imam.” While the Shi’a believe that ‘the cycle of prophethood’ ceased with Muhammad, they believe that he instituted ‘the cycle of initiation’ for the continuing guidance of the community, by appointing as his successor an imam. “The imam was invested with the qualities of inspired and infallible interpretation of the Qur’an.” “The majority of Shi’a, known as Imamis (most of whom live in Iran), believe that the cycle will be completed with the messianic return of the twelfth imam, often referred to as ‘the imam of the period.’ He is said to have been withdrawn into ‘occulation’ since the third century of Islam. His guidance is still accessible through ‘agents’ or ‘doctors of the law’ (mujtahidun) of whom the most senior in Iran are the ayatollahs. It is they who have the right to interpret the Shari’a and to make religious rulings.” [10]

Sufis

The Sufis are a small, mystical sect within Islam.

Holy Sites

8.1 Mecca is the holiest city in Islam.

8.1.1 The Ka’bah (cube) is a sacred shrine with a black meteorite built into one of its corners, “the black stone which fell from heaven in the days of Adam.” This shrine was a center of pagan worship, housing many idols, the chief one being that of a god named Hubal. It is mentioned by the Roman historian, Diodorus Siculus, literature around 60 B. C. From long before the time of Mohammed, Arabs made pilgrimages, Hajj, to the Ka’bah.

8.1.2 Near the Ka’bah is the holy well Zamzam, which is said to have had its origin in the dying child Ishmael’s kicking his feet in the desert sands while his mother Hagar looked for water.

Medina is also holy because here Muhammad took refuge.

Jerusalem is viewed as holy.

Here is the Dome of the Rock. “Somewhere in the sacred enclosure, it was said, Mohammed had met Abraham, Moses, and Jesus, and had prayed with them; nearby he had seen the rock where Abraham had thought to sacrifice Isaac, and Moses had received the Ark of the Covenant, and Solomon and Herod had built their temples; from that rock Mohammed had ascended into heaven; if one but had faith he could see in the rock the footprints of the Prophet.”[11]

The Dome of the Rock is located on the mound where God told the Israelites to build the Temple. While it stands, the Jewish people do not have access to their holiest place.

If Biblical Christianity is anything, it is a redemptive religion. If Islam is anything, it is not a redemptive religion but rather a religion of legalism or works-salvation. Islam demands of people absolute submission to Allah, but it can achieve only a semblance of that required submission by regulating the lives of Muslims and threatening sanctions for disobedience. So in the end Islam teaches that one must attempt to achieve Heaven by one’s good works (Sura 4, "Women," verse 124, et al.), hoping that these good works will outweigh one’s bad works and that Allah will admit one to Paradise. He who finds anything attractive in the Islamic way of salvation simply does not realize his own sinfulness and the wretched inadequacies of Islam in addressing that sinfulness. Islam leaves the world, including the Muslim world, unsaved. This is the reason my heart is heavy when people like Cassius Clay and John Walker-Lindh convert to Islam, and when I learn that Muslim strategists have determined that the black prison population in the United States is fertile soil for converts.