Month: April 2019

In the competing markets of ideas it can be easy to be blown about by every wind of doctrine unless you have a firm grounding in what you know and why. There is nothing wrong with investigating challenges to the Qur’an, but you do need to be thorough and not allow yourself to be manipulated by emotional “arguments” and deceitful tactics.

The article I mention in the video can be found here: https://carm.org/abraham-fiery-furnace-quran-and-jewish-mythology

//

And those before them rejected.
And they attained not to one tenth of what we gave them
But they rejected my messengers.
And how was my rejection?
Say thou: I but exhort you to one thing:
That you arise for God in twos and alone
Then reflect.
There is in your companion no madness
He is only a warner to you at the time of severe punishment.
(34:45-46)

Will they then not consider the Qur’an with care!
If there be locks upon their hearts:
Those who turn their backs after the guidance has become clear to them
The shayṭān has enticed them
And reprieved them
Because they said to those who are averse to what God sent down: We will obey you in part of the matter.
But God knows their secrets.
(47:24-26)

Say thou: Then bring a decree from the presence of God that gives clearer guidance than these:
I will follow it if you be truthful.
And if they respond not to thee, know thou they but follow their vain desires.
And who is further astray than he who follows his vain desire without guidance from God?
God guides not the wrongdoing people.
(29:49-50)

//

The most detailed pre-Islamic version of this appears in Midrash Rabbah Genesis:
“R. Hiyya said: Terah was a manufacturer of idols. He once went away somewhere and left Abraham to sell them in his place. A man came and wished to buy one. ‘How old are you?’ Abraham asked him. ‘Fifty years,’ was the reply. ‘Woe to such a man!’ he exclaimed, ‘you are fifty years old and would worship a day-old object?’ At this, he became ashamed and departed. On another occasion, a woman came with a plateful of flour and requested him, ‘Take this and offer it to them.’ So he took a stick, broke them, and put the stick in the hand of the largest. When his father returned he demanded, ‘What have you done to them?’ ‘I cannot conceal it from you,’ he rejoined. “a woman came with a plateful of fine meal and requested me to offer it to them. One claimed, “I must eat first.” Thereupon the largest arose, took the stick, and broke them.’ ‘Why do you make sport of me,’ he cried out; ‘have they any knowledge?’ ‘Should not your ears listen to what your mouth is saying?’ he retorted. Thereupon he seized him and delivered him to Nimrod. ‘Let us worship the fire!’ he [Nimrod] proposed. ‘Let us rather worship the water, which extinguishes the fire,’ replied he. “let us worship the water!’ ‘Let us rather worship the clouds which bear the water.’ ‘Let us worship the clouds!’ ‘Let us rather worship the winds which disperse the clouds.’ ‘Then let us worship the wind!’ ‘Let us rather worship human beings, who withstand the wind.’ ‘You are just bandying with words,’ he exclaimed; ‘we will worship nought but the fire. Behold, I will cast you into it, and let your God whom you adore come and save you from it.’ Now Haran was standing there undecided. If Abram is victorious, I will say that I am of Abram’s belief, while if Nimrod is victorious I will say I am on Nimrod’s side. When Abram descended into the fiery furnace and was saved, he [Nimrod] asked him, ‘of whose belief are you?’ ‘Of Abram’s’ he replied. Thereupon he seized and cast him into the fire; his inwards were scorched and he died in his father’s presence. Hence it is written, ‘and Haran died in the presence of his father Terah'” (Midrash Rabbah 38:13).2

//

Original video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wceYxDWdZyc

Death defines us. What are we going to take with us? What will we have on our balances before God on that day? This is the question – and our response to it – which defines who and what we are, and who and what we will be in Eternity.

//

Every soul will taste death
And you will but be paid in full your rewards on the Day of Resurrection.
And whoso is removed from the fire and made to enter the garden:
He has attained.
And the life of this world is only the enjoyment of deception.
You will be tried in your wealth and in yourselves
And you will hear from those in possession of the law before you and from the idolaters much hindrance.
But if you be patient and in prudent fear:
That is among the determination of matters.
(3:185-186)

Those who heed warning fight in the cause of God.
And those who are indifferent to warning fight in the cause of idols.
Then fight the allies of the shayṭān.
The plan of the shayṭān is weak.
(4:76)

He it is who created you from clay
Then decreed a term.
And a named term is with him.
Then do you doubt.
(6:2)

And the weighing on that day is the truth.
Then whose balance is heavy:
Those are the successful.
And whose balance is light:
Those are they who lose their souls because they wronged our proofs.
(7:8-9)

And they return with grace and bounty from God.
Evil touches them not when they seek the approval of God.
And God is one possessing tremendous bounty.
But that: the shayṭān puts his allies in dread of it.
But fear them not.
And fear me if you be believers.
(3:174-175)

And Ayyūb:
When he called out to his lord:
Adversity has touched me
And thou art the most merciful of those who show mercy.
Then we responded to him
And removed what of adversity was upon him
And gave him his household and their like with them as mercy from our presence
And a reminder for those who serve.
And Ismāʿīl
And Idrīs
And him of the pledge.
All were among the patient.
And we made them enter into our mercy.
They are among the righteous.
And he of the fish:
When he left in wrath
And supposed that we had no power over him
Then he cried out in the darkness:
There is no god save thou.
Glory be unto thee!
I have been among the wrongdoers!
So we responded to him
And delivered him from distress.
And thus do we deliver the believers.
And Zakariyyā:
When he cried out to his lord:
My lord: leave thou me not alone
And thou art the best of inheritors.
Then we responded to him and gave him Yaḥyā and made right his wife for him.
They all competed in good works
And called to us in hope and fear
And were humble towards us.
And she who guarded her modesty:
We breathed into her of our Spirit
And made her and her son a proof for all mankind.
This your community is one community
And I am your lord
So serve me.
(21:83-92)

And those who emigrate in the cause of God
Then are killed or die:
God will provide for them a goodly provision.
And God
He is the best of providers.
He will make them enter by an entrance with which they will be satisfied.
And God is knowing, forbearing.
(22:58)

If you avoid the enormities of what you are forbidden
We will remove from you your evil and make you enter at a noble entrance.
(4:31)

//

Original video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gncMs7TzGRM

Traditionalist Islam criticises Talmudic Judaism for deserting the Torah in favour of the inventions of men, yet that is precisely what Traditionalist Islam does with regard to the Qur’an on the basis of Hadith.

//

• Listening to a lot of rabbinic Jews: listen long enough, some of their arguments seem to make sense
• Same arguments made for “oral Torah” as made for the hadith
• For example, the Torah tells those of the covenant of Abrahim to circumcise their sons, but it doesn’t say how to
• The oral Torah supposedly has all the “details” – sound familiar
• The oral Torah is a question for bani Israil to decide – but Traditionalist Muslims criticism rabbinic Jews for falling away from the Torah in favour of what their own hands write – something which the Qur’an accuses them of
• Al baraqah: God tells you to sacrifice a heifer

And when Mūsā said to his people: God commands you to sacrifice a heifer.
They said: Dost thou make mockery of us?
He said: I seek refuge in God lest I be of the ignorant.
They said: Call thou to thy lord for us that he make plain to us what she is.
He said: He says: She is a heifer neither old nor young
Middling, in between.
Then do what you are commanded.
They said: Call thou to thy lord for us that he make plain to us what her hue is.
He said: He says: She is a yellow heifer
Bright is her hue
Making glad the beholders.
They said: Call thou to thy lord for us that he make plain to us what she is.
Heifers seem alike to us
And – if God should will – we will be rightly guided.
He said: He says: She is a heifer neither broken to plough the earth
Nor to water the tilth
Perfect
No blemish on her.
They said: Now hast thou brought the truth.
Then they sacrificed her
But they had hardly done it. (2:67-71)

• Another argument is keeping the sabbath. In the Torah breaking the sabbath is a capital offence; so you need to know how to
• Problem is two-fold:
o One is that even with the oral Torah / hadith there comes a point where the application of reason becomes required; not every outcome can be handled. There comes a point where itjihad becomes required. The question is only a matter of when: before you start making stuff up and adding it to the revelation of God or before it?
o There is nothing wrong with a leadership creating laws. That happens anyway under both systems. The problem is in saying that these laws come from God.

So woe to those who write the law with their hands then say: This is from God
That they might sell it at a cheap price.
So woe to them for what their hands have written
And woe to them for what they earn. (2:79)

Again, I am not arguing against the creation of a legal system with specifics. But that system must be based on eternal principles and not arrogate to itself the same status – i.e. to claim to come from God – as those principles.

//

Original video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RL-E3RRV344

How to live a meaningful life and make the best choices: begin with the Day of Judgment in mind and work backwards from there.

//

And the companions of the garden call to the companions of the fire:
We have found what our lord promised us true:
Have you found what your lord promised you true?
They say: Yea.
Then cries a crier between them: The curse of God is upon the wrongdoers
Those who turn away from the path of God and would make it crooked
And are deniers of the hereafter!
And between them is a barrier
And upon the elevations are men recognising each one by their mark.
And the companions of the garden call out: Peace be unto you!
They have not entered it
But they desire to.
And when their eyes are turned towards the companions of the fire they will say:
Our lord: place thou not us with the wrongdoing people. (7:44-47)

//

Original video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NV4nG69EowU

Addressing the competing Jewish and Christian conceptions about “the messiah” and rejecting both on the basis of clear Qur’anic statements.

//

From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messianic_Judaism
Pre-19th century
Efforts by Jewish Christians to proselytize Jews began in the first century, when Paul the Apostle preached at the synagogues in each city that he visited.[25] However, by the fourth century CE, non-biblical accounts of missions to the Jews[c] do not mention converted Jews playing any leading role in proselytization.[26] Notable converts from Judaism who attempted to convert other Jews are more visible in historical sources beginning around the 13th century, when Jewish convert Pablo Christiani attempted to convert other Jews. This activity, however, typically lacked any independent Jewish-Christian congregations, and was often imposed through force by organized Christian churches.[27]

19th and early 20th centuries
Main article: Hebrew Christian Movement
In the 19th century, some groups attempted to create congregations and societies of Jewish converts to Christianity, though most of these early organizations were short-lived.[28] Early formal organizations run by converted Jews include: the Anglican London Society for promoting Christianity among the Jews of Joseph Frey (1809),[29] which published the first Yiddish New Testament in 1821;[30][verification needed] the “Beni Abraham” association, established by Frey in 1813 with a group of 41 Jewish Christians who started meeting at Jews’ Chapel, London for prayers Friday night and Sunday morning;[31] and the London Hebrew Christian Alliance of Great Britain founded by Dr. Carl Schwartz in 1866.[32]

The September 1813 meeting of Frey’s “Beni Abraham” congregation at the rented “Jews’ Chapel” in Spitalfields is sometimes pointed to as the birth of the semi-autonomous Hebrew Christian movement within Anglican and other established churches in Britain.[33] However, the minister of the chapel at Spitalfields evicted Frey and his congregation three years later, and Frey severed his connections with the Society.[34] A new location was found and the Episcopal Jew’s Chapel Abrahamic Society registered in 1835.[35]

In Eastern Europe, Joseph Rabinowitz established a Hebrew Christian mission and congregation called “Israelites of the New Covenant” in Kishinev, Ukraine in 1884.[36][37][38] Rabinowitz was supported from overseas by the Christian Hebraist Franz Delitzsch, translator of the first modern Hebrew translation of the New Testament.[39] In 1865, Rabinowitz created a sample order of worship for Sabbath morning service based on a mixture of Jewish and Christian elements. Mark John Levy pressed the Church of England to allow members to embrace Jewish customs.[37]

In the United States, a congregation of Jewish converts to Christianity was established in New York City in 1885.[40] In the 1890s, immigrant Jewish converts to Christianity worshiped at the Methodist “Hope of Israel” mission on New York’s Lower East Side while retaining some Jewish rites and customs.[41] In 1895, the 9th edition of Hope of Israel’s Our Hope magazine carried the subtitle “A Monthly Devoted to the Study of Prophecy and to Messianic Judaism”, the first use of the term “Messianic Judaism”.[42][43] In 1894, Christian missionary Leopold Cohn, a convert from Judaism, founded the Brownsville Mission to the Jews in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, New York as a Christian mission to Jews. After several changes in name, structure, and focus, the organization is now called Chosen People Ministries.[44]

//

Original video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vr1wdN3QTvg