Posted on 12/23/2004 5:53:32 PM PST by Jane_N
For much of the world, this Saturday, December 25, is Christmas Day. For many Orthodox Christians, however, Saturday, January 7 is Christmas Day. For me, this means I get to write two articles on Christmas with one on New Years in between. This is way cool, for I love Christmas.
Frankly, it really doesn’t matter if we celebrate Christmas on December 25 or January 7 so long as we are celebrating the birth of Jesus the Christ. I mean, that’s what Christmas is about after all, isn’t it? And since we are celebrating Christmas, I think it is worthwhile to take a look at the founder of Christianity, Jesus Himself, and compare Him to Mohammed, the founder of Islam, since there is so much in the news these days about a potential clash of civilizations between Christianity and Islam.
Now, for the record and let me state upfront: I believe that most of our Muslim friends are sincere in their beliefs. But I also believe that they are sincerely wrong.
Jesus of Nazareth and Mohammed were very different. Of course for starters, Jesus claimed to be the Son of God and Mohammed claimed to be the last prophet of their god, Allah. And of course Christians believe that Jesus is the Son of God and that He lived, died and rose from the dead on the third day and that eternal salvation is attainted by believing in Him. This is the central tenant of Christianity. Islam, on the other hand, has a very different belief system.
Jesus, of course, said He was the Son of God and yet never tried to run for political office, never advocated the overthrow of the government, never wrote a book, never commanded an army and never acquired wealth of any sort. As a matter of fact, he said obey the government when he said "render to Caesar what is Caesar’s." And He died on a cross, the death of a criminal.
He chose 12 men to help Him spread his message and many of them died for their faith. It seemed that this faith He proclaimed might die with his followers and yet it didn’t. Not only did it not die, but it grew, especially under the persecution of the Roman Empire. And it grew to the point where today is 2004, because Jesus’ impact on the life of mankind was so great that our calendar is split into two, acknowledging the time before He was born and the time after He was born. The year on the cover of this paper is 2004, not 1424, the Muslim year.
Mohammed, on the other hand, was a very different character. He was born about AD 570 in Mecca, an important commercial city on the Arabian peninsula. His father, Abdullah died before Mohammed was born and he was raised by his uncle, Abu Talib.
In his middle years, it is said that he grew tired of the Arabs’ idolatry and paganism. When he was 40, he claimed to have received a revelation from the angel Gabriel, which he would have known about from reading the Scriptures of the Jews and Christians. The Koran, is, as Mohammed claimed, Allah’s revelation to mankind through him.
Now I make a distinction between the God of the Bible and the god of the Muslims, Allah, because I believe – and Muslims believe the same – that the two are completely different. For starters, Allah did not have a Son named Jesus. In fact, in Islam, to claim that Allah has any familial relations is heretical, punishable by death. Furthermore, it is important to note that al-ilah (the contraction from which we get Allah) means "the god," for Allah was the chief god among the pagan Arabs’ 360 different gods at the Kaaba, an idol temple in Mecca. Allah was simply the one god that Mohammed chose to elevate and make the only god when he started his new belief system.
And since we know how Jesus’ followers spread Christianity, let’s take a look at how Mohammed spread Islam.
If you visit the web site of the Embassy of Saudi Arabia in Washington, DC (which should be an authoritative source on Islam), click on "Country Information," then "Islam," and then "The Rise of Islam." This short history of the beginnings of Islam simply states: "Summoned by its call, the faithful spread Islam across the Arabian Peninsula. Within a century, Islam had swept across the Middle East and North Africa."
Well, not exactly.
Islam spread in its first one hundred years by war. At first, the merchants of Mecca were angry with Mohammed for his doctrine of Allah and submission to him. His ideas upset their businesses and they opposed him. But he gathered his strength and eventually overtook them by the sword. In time, he used the sword effectively in defeating his enemies – pagans, Jews and Christians – giving them the opportunity to convert to Islam. Those who refused, of course, lost their heads.
On his deathbed, Mohammed told his heirs "Let there not be two religions in Arabia." Accordingly, his followers under his successor Caliph Umar waged war against the unbelievers. Within one hundred years of his death, Islam had spread to the borders of present-day France. It is ironic how it is retaking France now without the sword.
There is so much more to this story but the important thing to point out here is this: Islam divides the world into two, Dar al Islam, or the House of Islam, and Dar al Harb, the House of War, which is everyone outside of Islam. The goal of the House of Islam is to defeat and overtake the House of War, either through conquest or conversion. This, they have been doing since Mohammed. And this will be the clash of civilizations.
Jesus of Nazareth and Mohammed of Mecca were two very different men with two very different beliefs. The question for the world today is, will you give your life to Jesus, or will you give your life to jihad?
Jason Miko is a free thinker and the views expressed herein are wholly his own. He can be reached at janos@earthlink.net.
And you forget the main distinction: Jeses was a peaceful preacher and globtrotter, while Mohammed a heinous pedophile, slavemaster, pirate, murderer and rapist.
"Put your sword back in its place,” Jesus said to him, “for all who draw the sword will die by the sword."
I wonder if HE was also referring to the sword of Islam in the second part of the quote... I know that Islam came several hundred years later but there is this remark in Revelation...
“I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty.”
Which indicates the GOD is the past, present and future. So Jesus would have known what was coming in the future with this Islamic movement... Or am I just tilting at windmills.... ?
Actually Muhammad did not write a book. He and his comrades were illiterate. There are no written records of any mention of Muhammad until after Islam had conquered all the way from Spain to India. The Quran was written in Baghdad 200 years after Muhammad from oral hearsay.
http://www.prophetofdoom.net/
The sword will always triumph in confined areas.
God's Son vs the pedophile ping
Excellent post!
Thanks for the ping Jan.
How anyone can even begin to compare Jesus with an illiterate rapist, child molester, genocidal mass murderer and liar is beyond me.
we might as well discuss the differences between Mother Teresa and Hitler... *Sigh*
Thx for the ping Jan...
You're welcome.
You having a good day?
How's everything with you today?
Except that Muhammed was illiterate.
Makes one wonder whether he had been listening to Christian and Jewish preachers or if the Satanic messenger pretending to be Gabriel transmitted some garble rendition of the Holy Scriptures.
I doubt Muhammed had such a careful and detail knowledge (much less a heartfelt understanding) of Christian spirituality.
So what does this mean..?
That only the evil one would have been able to devise such a religion as Islam...and not because he has a detailed understand of God but because he is the very embodiment of the polar opposite position of God.
See my post 14 above.
A better comparison would be Moses and Mohammad, since Moses never claimed to be the Son of God, either, but is still revered as a great prophet.
The Muslim faith is actually closer to Judaism than it is to Christianity.
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Revelation 22:18-19 clearly states what will happen to those that add to the Bible
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Oh, please. The Bible didn't even exist when this scripture was written; no one had gotten around to compiling it, yet.
The Hebrew Bible warns about adding to it as well, yet the NT is one big addition and it contradicts the Hebrew Bible in various places.
Deuteronomy 12
32 What thing soever I command you, observe to do it: thou shalt not add thereto, nor diminish from it.
How can anyone compare Yahweh of the Hebrew Bible who was opposed to sacrificing offspring/children, to the god of the NT that alledgedly sent his son to be sacrificed?
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