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Islam (part 2)

January 06, 2008     Time: 00:23:14
Islam (part 2)

Summary

Conversation with William Lane Craig

Transcript Islam (Part 2)

Kevin Harris: Dr. Craig, in speaking of Islam, there are profound political differences and profound theological differences. So we have problems in two major and very emotional areas. As I understand Sharia Law, it doesn’t allow much freedom to non-Muslims who are under Muslim control. So were they to take over, we can kiss our religious freedom good bye.

Dr. Craig: I think there is a lot of truth to that. In countries that were under Islamic control, Christians and Jews were permitted to exist and practice their religion but they were called dhimmi – they were persons who were rather second class citizens. They were subservient. So they certainly were denied certain rights. That is true in, for example, Muslim Spain when they controlled the Iberian Peninsula as well as in other countries such as Syria where there were significant Christian congregations. This subservience of other religions to Islam is a simple fact of history and you are absolutely right that were they to take over control, our freedoms would be significantly curtailed.

Kevin Harris: Am I to understand there is even a tax imposed on the non-Muslim?

Dr. Craig: Yeah, that is absolutely right. There is a sort of alms tax that the dhimmi had to pay that would substitute in a sense for their converting to Islam. If you convert, then you don’t have to pay the tax.

Kevin Harris: A good benefit there.

Dr. Craig: Yeah, all sorts of incentives.

Kevin Harris: The violence that we’ve seen among terrorists – the beheadings – that have just so disturbed the nation. Suddenly we can, for the first time in history, have access to actual videos of these things. That is kind of a cyberterrorism in one way in that you are so disquieted by those images and by that murder being captured and then spread where millions of people – teenagers, children – see it. Is there something within the genesis of Islam that facilitates that kind of violence?

Dr. Craig: I, myself, have not viewed and would not view these sorts of videos. I think that would be inappropriate. But I think it certainly is true that within Islam itself there is an injunction to use violence in the propagation of the faith. Jihad is not simply a moral or spiritual struggle, it is also a military struggle to bring all the world into submission to Islam. I’ve been told by folks who work with Muslims who are familiar with Muslim culture and so forth that these beheadings are actually done in the way in which an animal would be sacrificed. It is a kind of ritual offering to slit the throats of these victims in this way. So this is a sort of religious act that is being performed when these people are sacrificed as it were.

Kevin Harris: I want to touch on that for just a moment. I did not watch those beheadings either that were so prominent on the internet. Millions of people did. Teenagers gathered at one another’s homes and watched them. Radio stations played the audio. One of the reasons that I didn’t succumb to the curiosity or even for investigational purposes is that the radio stations around the building where I work were playing the audio from those beheadings until they finally got enough complaints that they stopped. But I heard them, Bill. And it disturbed me profoundly, hearing the audio. So I certainly wasn’t going to add fuel to the fire by going deeper into the horror of that by viewing it for a morbid reason. But you said it was inappropriate.

Dr. Craig: I think that is right. As a Christian, we are to avoid evil. We are to think on those things that are lovely, true, good, and up-building. To yield to this sort of macabre curiosity is to yield to our lower nature really, Kevin. It is to indulge in a kind of voyeurism that is, I think, very sinister and really wicked. It is not the better part of our nature. So I think for the Christian we need to exercise discipline here as you did and say I am not going to let my curiosity get the better of me and compel me to do things that wouldn’t be up-building to me as a Christian. [1]

Kevin Harris: It would be sufficient to be aware of it without going ahead and then indulging in it or wallowing in it.

Dr. Craig: Exactly. You don’t have to experience it yourself to be aware that this has happened and be aware of what was done. You know, it is the same principle that I don’t go and see slasher movies where people are having their limbs cut off with chainsaws and things of that sort. There is no reason that I, as a Christian, want to fill my mind with this kind of thing. Even pretend, even fake – when it is just fake blood and makeup – much less a real beheading as in this case.

Kevin Harris: What I hear you saying is that when the Muslim is engaging in violence and violent acts, he is being fairly consistent with Islam and with the Qur’an. If the critic were to point to Christianity and say, yea, but look at the Crusades and the Inquisition and look at the violence done in the name of Christ and in the name of God, there is violence there. I hear you saying that the former would be consistent with the teaching, Christianity engaging in violence would be inconsistent with the teaching.

Dr. Craig: Exactly. Jesus would not have engaged in violence as a means of evangelism, or in the use of violence to conquer other people. You always have to go back to Jesus and say, “What would he have done?” Would he have been a guard at Auschwitz. Would he have participated in the Crusades and sacked Byzantium? I think the answer is just evidently no. By contrast, would Muhammad have done these things? Well, yes, he did do these things! He was a caravan raider and participated in campaigns of violence and war, and not just defensive ones either as Muslims might sometimes claim. When he died, he died with plans on the table for attacks upon neighboring nations. After his death, his successors carried out those attacks successfully. So, whereas violence is consistent with Islam and the example and teaching of Muhammad, it is inconsistent with Christianity and the example and teaching of Jesus of Nazareth. That is the huge difference.

Kevin Harris: There seems to be a difference between some of the suras as well – the early suras and the later suras. Some Muslim scholars point out that at first Muhammad wanted to do it the peaceful way. Let’s all get together and by the way I’m right and this is the nature of God and polytheism is wrong. When that wasn’t as readily received as he had hoped, then he went another route.

Dr. Craig: That is absolutely right. What we need to understand is that the Qur’an is not a unified volume. This is a book that is a compilation of materials that was written over quite a long stretch of time. So they reflect different historical realities. When Muhammad began, he was a persecuted prophet of monotheism living in Mecca in a rampantly polytheistic culture. The early Muhammad was a pretty great guy in terms of what he was proclaiming – that there is only one God and that all these false gods are untrue and so forth. One can be very sympathetic with him. In fact, while he was in the persecuted minority, he was very friendly toward the people of the Book – that is to say people who believed in the Bible, Jews and Christians. It is those passages in the Qur’an – passages from that period of Muhammad’s life – that are cited by moderate Muslims to show that the attitude of Islam toward other religions, Christianity and Judaism in particular, is very peaceful and conciliatory and so forth. That is absolutely correct at that early period of Muhammad’s life. But after he moved to Medina where he gained political and military power, then the persecuted minority prophet of monotheism turned into the political machine operative and manipulator and became ruthless and began to persecute the Jews, to kill them, and ultimately issued these commands to bring pagans into submission by violence and even to attack the people of the Book.

Kevin Harris: And that is reflected in the ninth sura.

Dr. Craig: That’s right, in the ninth sura, which is some of the latest, or last, material that was written in the Qur’an.

Kevin Harris: Beleaguer them, lie in wait for them.

Dr. Craig: Ambush them where ever you find them. [2]

Kevin Harris: Muhammad also seemed to have disdain for a version of the Trinity that was circulating at the time. That is he thought that Mary was a part of the Trinity and so it seems like the genesis of Islam is attacking the wrong Trinity.

Dr. Craig: Right. That is also extremely interesting. Muhammad apparently never had any first hand acquaintance with the New Testament. He was getting all of this secondarily by word of mouth. [3]He apparently thought that because Christians at that time were referring to Mary as the Mother of God, as Catholics and Orthodox do today – Mary the Mother of God –, he thought that the doctrine of the Trinity meant that God the Father copulated with Mary, the Mother of Jesus, and that Jesus was the offspring of their union. So the Trinity was composed of God the Father, Mary the Mother of God, and Jesus the Son of God. Well, of course he regarded such a doctrine as blasphemous and sacrilegious. But this is a doctrine that no sane Christian would hold to. So in fact it is a caricature of Christianity that is rejected in the Qur’an.

Kevin Harris: So let’s contrast then the Muslim concept of God and the Christian’s New Testament concept of God. One is a very strict monotheism – only one God. Then the God of the Bible is one God but he is a Trinity.

Dr. Craig: Yes, I would say that both of them are strict monotheisms. They are both committed to the existence of one and only one God. We must not yield to the Muslim claim that we believe in three gods. That is simply not true. We both agree that there is only one God. The difference between Christianity and Islam with respect to God is not monotheism, it is unitarianism. Muslims, or Islam, is a form of unitarianism which says that there is only one person who is God. Whereas Christianity is trinitarian – it believes there are three persons who are God. So the real debate isn’t about monotheism but it is about whether unitarianism is the true concept of God.

Kevin Harris: Which makes more sense philosophically do you think? A unitarian God or a triune God when we think of things like eternity and the attributes of God?

Dr. Craig: On the one hand I think that there is undoubtedly a kind of appeal to unitarianism in that it seems simpler to just say that there is one person that God is. I think that makes unitarianism appealing. On the other hand, I think when you contemplate, as you said, the attributes of God, we have some pretty persuasive reasons to think that God is not simply one person. One of the things I’m thinking about here is that God is essentially all-loving. It is essential to the very nature of God to be all-loving because love is a moral perfection and God is a morally perfect being. If God is all-loving, then whom does he love if this is essential to him? Well, it can’t be just created beings because created beings don’t exist essentially. Creation is a freely willed act of God, not something he had to do. So there are possible worlds – by that I mean it is possible logically to conceive of God existing alone with no creation; he chose not to create at all. In such an empty universe so to speak God would still be essentially all-loving. Even in this world in which God has created persons whom he loves, nevertheless, those persons haven’t been around all the time. They are finite in their existence. A certain number of years ago there were no human beings yet. So it cannot be that created persons are the persons whom God loves essentially. If God is essentially all-loving, then whom is it that he loves? Well, it seems to me there must be a plurality of persons within God himself. It is the very nature of love to give one’s self away – to give one’s self to the other. If God is just a single person indulged in self-love, this would be contrary to the nature of love. It would just be a kind of narcissism. But if God is a trinity of persons, then there is this giving away of ones self in love to the other that goes on between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit from eternity. So I think that when you think about the nature of God as self-giving love, that that gives powerful grounds for thinking that God is not just a single person in love with himself but that God is a trinity of persons.

Kevin Harris: That makes a lot of sense. The nature of love itself – it is reciprocal as well as something that you give.

Dr. Craig: That is true, too. You receive love and so that would also imply a plurality of persons.

Kevin Harris: The God of Islam seems to be rather arbitrary in his decisions. We don’t find that in the God of the Bible. What are the differences there in that arbitrary, capricious nature?

Dr. Craig: It seems to me, Kevin, that what is going on here is in Islam God’s attribute of being omnipotent, or all-mighty, or all-powerful, trumps everything else. [4] That is the way I understand it. In Christianity, we believe that God has a number of essential attributes such as love, holiness, justice, omnipotence, omnipresence, eternity, necessity. All of these are essential attributes of God, none of them can be compromised. They cannot be suppressed one for the sake of another. They are all essential to God and cannot be denied. But in Islam, it is quite different. It seems that in Islam, God being all-powerful or all-mighty trumps everything, even his own moral character. So in Islam, God can deceive people. He can lie to them. He can do things that are morally wrong, even contrary to his own nature, because he is all-powerful. So this results in a sort of arbitrary, capricious God whose shear power knows no bounds, not even the bounds of his own character. So for a Muslim, it is possible that on the Judgment Day, God could say to everybody, “Ah! So you thought that by saying the confession that I am the only God and Muhammad is my prophet that I would save you? Well, it was all a trick. You are all going to hell. In fact, I’m going to save all the Jews instead of you Muslims.” And he would send all the Muslims to hell. That is entirely within God’s prerogative and power on Islam. So there is absolutely nothing to constrain God from just shear arbitrary caprice. It is a sheer will to power.

Kevin Harris: Muslims realize that. They actually treat God and acknowledge God in that way.

Dr. Craig: Oh yeah.

Kevin Harris: They even acknowledge that if you fly your plane into a building in the ultimate martyrdom, you are still not guaranteed.

Dr. Craig: No, there is no guarantee in Islam of salvation because, as I say, at the last minute God could decide simply to damn you or anybody no matter what he has said before because he is not bound by his own word or character.

Kevin Harris: How is that not representational of the Christian God?

Dr. Craig: In Christianity we have the notion that God is essentially loving, he is essentially fair, he is essentially truthful. To say something is essential, in case our listeners don’t understand that, that means it is necessarily so. He cannot go against his own moral character of being loving, fair, truthful, and so forth. So it is impossible for God to do these things. Now that is not because there is some constraint outside of God, but it is because his own character is such that it determines the way he will act.

Kevin Harris: One of the most telling things about Islam is that they don’t regard God as “Father” and Christianity does. Of the 99 names for God in Islam, none denote “Father.” Yet, Jesus said that we should call him Father. Do Muslims not regard God has “Father?”

Dr. Craig: I have never heard God referred to in that way. Now, I don’t know Muslim traditions – the so-called Hadith – well enough to know whether or not it would appear there. But if Jesus could not call God Father, could not be the Son of God, then it would certainly seem impossible for us to do so because that would be to commit shirk again – to put yourself on a plane where you are somehow comparable to God. So God for the Muslim is wholly other. He is quite removed and distant and other than we are. I remember once sharing with a Muslim about God’s love for us and I thought this would appeal to him – to think that God really loves us. And he said for him as a Muslim the thought was just absurd. It would be like my loving ants – in having a love relationship with ants. That is how removed God is from us as people for him except even infinitely more so. So there isn’t that sort of personal relationship with God as your heavenly Father.

Kevin Harris: More like a master-slave, employer-employee?

Dr. Craig: I think that would be appropriate because the notion of Islam is submission. It is this sort of unquestioned, total submission to God as your master. So master-slave wouldn’t be an inappropriate analogy so long as you don’t think of the master as being a cruel master. Islam thinks that God is all-compassionate and all-loving to Muslims; to those who are submitted to him he will be compassionate, merciful, and so forth.

Kevin Harris: How would Allah view non-Muslims?

Dr. Craig: This was one of the most remarkable things that I discovered when I first began to read the Qur’an years ago. I began to notice over and over again in the Qur’an, it says whom God does not love. God does not love unbelievers. God does not love sinners. God does not love the stiff-necked. [5] God does not love the reprobate. Over and over again it described whom God does not love. It was very clear that according to the Qur’an, God has no love for non-Muslims. He has no love for unbelievers. The promise of the Qur’an is that if you come to God, submit to him, make the confession, obey him, and live as a life of a Muslim, then God will give you love. If you live up to his standard, then he will love you. In other words, God only loves those who love him first. It struck me how contrary this is to the teaching of Jesus. Jesus said if you only love those who love you, what more are you doing than others? Don’t even the pagans do the same? And the tax collectors do the same? [6] The love of Allah in the Qur’an rises no higher than the love that Jesus said even pagans and tax collectors exhibit. The God of the Bible – the God of the New Testament – is a God who loves sinners. While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners he died for us. [7] God so loved the world that he gave – the New Testament says. This is I think one of the most startlingly contrasts between the Qur’an and the New Testament. The Qur’an teaches that God only loves those who are Muslims who come to him and love him first whereas the New Testament says God loves sinners so much that he sent his Son to die for them.

Kevin Harris: Dr. Craig, our question of the day: Mark Twain said that faith is believing in what you know ain’t so. What is a good working definition of faith?

Dr. Craig: I think Martin Luther analyzed faith very well into three essential components. First is faith as understanding. In order to believe something, you must first understand what it means. Second would be assent when you agree – “yes, that is true.” The third element of faith would be trust or commitment; where you come to place your trust in something or someone because you have assented to its truth. All three of those elements would be involved in faith in the fullest sense.

Kevin Harris: Would that apply as well to faith in the Christian sense?

Dr. Craig: Oh, yes, I think quite definitely. For example, faith in Christ. First you need to understand the message of the Gospel, then you need to not only understand it, you’d need to assent to it. You do believe that Jesus is the Son of God who died on the cross for your sins and who rose from the dead. But it is not enough just to believe those truths. You need then to make a commitment of your life to him as savior and Lord in order to be related to him by saving faith. So saving faith is not just intellectual assent, it is also that whole soul commitment of the heart to the person whom you believe to be the truth. [8]