The Bible and the Quran: Queens, NY, June 25, 2009, Openings

Opening Greetings and the Call to Speak Truth in Love

Welcome. It is truly a pleasure to see all of you here this evening. We've pretty much packed this place out. And it is a pleasure to see all of you here. I thank you for coming. And of course, most importantly, I thank Imam Shamsi Ali for being here with us this evening as well.

I begin in the name of the Lord Jesus, creator of all things. We gather this evening not to compromise the truth, but to honor the truth. I stand before you as one who believes that every person, the sound of my voice, is a creature of God, the creator, made in his image.

The greatest respect that I can give to my fellow creatures is to speak the truth to them. You do not show love for others by compromising the truth. You show love for God and for your fellow men by speaking the truth in love.

With the assistance of the spirit of God and by his grace, I will seek to speak truthfully with you this evening. And I pray you will understand that in so doing, I seek to show you true Christian love and respect.

Now Christians are instructed by their scriptures to speak the truth in love. This is a commandment to every believer in Jesus Christ. And it is interesting to me that one of the 99 beautiful names of Allah in Islam, I believe it's the 51st in most lists, is Ahak, the truth.

We live in a day when our shared commitment to truth based upon divine revelation and God's unchanging character is not shared by many in our culture. In fact, we ourselves are likely to be deeply influenced by the degradation of the secular society around us.

Yet there can be no mistake about this one fact. Christians and Muslims believe God has spoken. He has not left us in darkness. He has not left us without guidance, without light. And so we must honor his truth even when that means honestly disagreeing with one another.

I trust our dialogue this evening will honor God by honoring his truth and that it will show the world that Muslims and Christians can disagree yet do so peacefully and with grace. In the brief time we have this evening, we can only present a foundation for further dialogue.

You, the audience, will continue the discussion tonight and in the coming days. Two major world religions, their scriptures are definitional to their entire worldview and, interestingly enough, to their relationship to one another.

The Quran, the Bible, and the Question of Divine Revelation

Both religions believe their sacred scriptures are divine in origin. Christians believe the scriptures are sufficient in and of themselves. Sunni Muslims believe the Quran and the Hadith are given for our guidance.

Both the Bible and the Quran present laws by which man is to live, which express God's creative purpose and his will for us. So what are the differences and how are they relevant to the resultant claims of both Islam and Christianity?

Well, let's begin by looking at the Quran. Muslims believe that these are the direct words of God. They are not the words of men. The Quran says that many books, plural, Qutubi, have been sent down to men through prophets.

The Quran acts as a guard, a muhaiman, over the preceding books. Some believe that means a corrector rather than a guard. That's something we might be able to discuss. Now, the Quran presents to us a government-controlled textual transmission, beginning with the Uthmanic revision of the third of the caliphs.

This results in a generally unified textual history, as you would expect, in light of the control of the transmission of the text. The 1924 Egyptian edition viewed by most as the official version in Arabic.

I would imagine there are a number of the Arabic Qurans here this evening, and that's seen by most Muslims as the official version. In contrast, the Bible, 40 different authors over the course of 1 ,500 years, two major languages, Hebrew and Greek, and one minor language.

It's about 12 chapters of Aramaic in the Old Testament, primarily in Daniel. The textual history of the Old Testament, different than that of the New Testament, primarily because the Old Testament, or as the Jews refer to it, the Tanakh, the Torah, the Nevi 'im, and the Ketavim, is passed on through the nation of Israel.

So it has a different textual history than the New Testament. The key translation of the Old Testament is called the Greek Septuagint. That's what Christians use. Most of the citations of the Old Testament in the New Testament are found to be taken from the Greek Septuagint.

Hebrew and Arabic are both Semitic languages based upon mainly triliteral roots. Many of the terms in Arabic are familiar to someone who reads Hebrew because they come from the same roots. Now, the New Testament is written in Koine Greek, the common Greek of the days of Jesus.

It's a very accurate language capable of in-depth exegesis. The New Testament demonstrates what I call multifocality. Now, what is multifocality? Well, multifocality is the fact that the New Testament was written by multiple authors from multiple locations to multiple audiences at multiple times.

From its inception, the New Testament, being a collection of books, was beyond the control of any one person or group. This means the early copies of the New Testament were distributed far and wide, resulting in multiple streams of transmission.

As a result, we have a rich early textual history that protects the text from controlled, centralized editing and change. Let me illustrate with a graphic. The initial Gospels and Epistles of the New Testament were written at various places at various times.

Some were written for distribution within the community, such as the Gospels, and others were epistles sent to specific locations. Then copies would be made and sent elsewhere. Often, Christians traveling from one place to another would encounter a book that they had not heard of before, and hence would make a copy of it and bring it back to their own fellowship.

And though a graphic that would represent how many different lines of transmission there were and how often they were interconnected would rapidly become useless due to the number of manuscripts that would be on the screen, the fact of that complex history of transmission should be kept in mind.

Over time, single books would be gathered into collections. This was especially true of the Gospels and the Epistles of Paul, hence we have P66 and P75. These are Gospel collections, and P46 contained the Epistles of Paul, all dating from the middle to the end of the 2nd century.

These collections would then come together until finally, after the Peace of the Church in 313, you could have entire copies of the Scriptures, such as we find in Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus.

But the important point to note is the multifocality of this process. Multiple authors writing at multiple times to multiple audiences produced a text that appears in history already displaying multiple lines of transmission.

This results in the textual variance we must study, but it also results in our confidence that we continue to possess the original message of Christ. Christians are very open about their Scriptures and the history behind them.

Here is a screenshot showing my electronic edition of the Nessie Olin 27th edition of the Greek New Testament, together with the information on textual variance provided therein. Any Christian who desires to know where variance exists in the manuscript tradition has a wealth of information available today.

Numerous critical editions of the Greek New Testament have been published since the 16th century. In fact, one of the texts I have on my desk there in the orange cover is a diglot with the New English translation and the Nessie Olin 27th edition of the Greek New Testament.

It's a goldmine of information, and so I have brought another one, and I would like to give it as a gift to Imam Ali. Now, there is a major difference between the centralized governmental control of the collation and transmission of the Quranic text and the non-centralized, non-controlled transmission of the New Testament.

Early Islamic Sources on the Compilation and Editing of the Quran

Let me read some important citations from Islamic history to illustrate the point that I'm making here. Most of you, especially Muslims, are familiar with this text from Sahih al-Bukhari. Abu Bakr then said to me, Umar has come to me and said, Casualties were heavy among the qura of the Quran, i .e. those who knew the Quran by heart.

On the day of the battle of Yalmama, and I am afraid that more heavy casualties may take place among the qura on other battlefields, please note, whereby a large part of the Quran may be lost. Therefore, I suggest you, Abu Bakr, could order that the Quran be collected.

So I started looking for the Quran, and collecting it from what was written on palm stalks and white stones, and also from the men who knew it by heart. So I found the last verse of Surah al-Tawbah, Surah 9, with Abi Qasami al-Ansari, and I did not find it with anybody other than him.

Then the complete manuscripts, or copy of the Quran, remained with Abu Bakr till he died, then with Umar till the end of his life, and then with Hafsa, the daughter of Umar. Then in the very next section of Sahih al-Bukhari, section 510 we read, Hudayfah was afraid of there, the people of Sham and Iraq, differences in the recitation of the Quran.

So he said to Uthman, O chief of the believers, save this nation before they differ about the book, the Quran, as Jews and the Christians did before. So Uthman sent a message to Hafsa, saying, send us the manuscripts of the Quran, so we may compile the Quranic materials in perfect copies and return the manuscripts to you.

And so the process went on, and then later it says, and when they had written many copies, Uthman returned the original manuscripts to Hafsa. Uthman sent to every Muslim province one copy of what they had copied, and ordered that all the other Quranic materials, whether written in fragmentary manuscripts or whole copies,.

Be burnt.

This is a key issue in regards to the Ithmanic revision taking place about 20 years after the death of Muhammad. Now here is another interesting quotation from the ancient sources. Ibn Abi Dawud wrote, many of the passages of the Quran that were sent down were known by those who died on the day of Yamama.

But they were not known by those who survived them, nor were they written down, nor had Abu Bakr, Umar, or Uthman by that time collected the Quran, nor were they found with even one person after them.

This is one of the early statements that is made. Now this area of discussion is not new between Christians and Muslims. Barely 200 years after Muhammad, a Christian wrote a defense of his faith, and took note of the issue of the early history of the transmission of the text of the Quran.

Al-Kindi wrote, then the people fell to variants in their readings. Some read according to the version of Ali, which they found, which they follow to present day. Some read according to the collection of which we have made mention.

One party read according to the text of Ibn Masud, and another according to that of Ubay ibn Ka 'b. When Uthman came to power, and people everywhere differed in their reading, Ali sought grounds of accusation against him.

One man would read a verse one way, and another man another way, and there was a change in interpolation, some copies having more, and some less. When this was represented to Uthman, and the danger urged a division, strife, and apostasy, he thereupon caused to be collected together all the leaves and scraps that he could, together with the copy that was written out at the first.

But they did not interfere with that which was in the hands of Ali, or of those who followed his reading. Ubay was dead by this time. As for Ibn Masud, this is very interesting, they demanded his exemplar, but he refused to give it up.

Notice that Al-Kindi gives very much the same information regarding the motivation of the Uthmanian revision that is found in al-Bukhari. He likewise makes reference to Ibn Masud's refusal to give in to Uthman's demands.

Tradition relates differing stories about the relationship of Ibn Masud and Uthman, but as we will see, the readings of Ibn Masud remained in the manuscript tradition of the Quran for many years, hence, it seems quite logical that given Ibn Masud being identified as one of the premier Qur 'an by Muhammad himself in the Hadith, he would not have given up his copy of the Quran, but would rather have given his life and compromised in such a fashion.

Just one more citation from that time period. It is reported from Ismail Ibn Ibrahim, from Ayyub, from Nafi, from Ibn Umar, who said, Let none of you say I have acquired the whole of the Quran. How does he know what all of it is when much of the Quran has disappeared?

Rather let him say I have acquired what has survived. Now, many Muslims believe the Quran has no meaningful textual history, that the Quran they possess today is a mere image of Uthman's revision. But the fact is that there are textual variants in the early copies of the Quran and evidence of an early editing process seeking to remove Ibn Masud and Ubay Ibn Kab's influence from the Quran.

Let's look at a few examples so that we have solid facts upon which to base our discussion this evening. Here is a variant found in Surah 3, verse 158. Here is the actual text. I like to blow it up because my eyesight isn't as good as it used to be.

Here is the text under consideration which speaks of Allah surely gathering those who have died to himself. Here is the same text from Quranic manuscript 328 found in the National Library of France in Paris.

This is dated to around 100 years after Hijra. But as reading Hijazi text is hard even for those who read modern Arabic, let's expand the text out a little bit so that you can see it more clearly. Now, what you can see is that the Paris manuscript has an extra olive, not found in the modern printed Quranic text, but in this case that extra olive completely changes the meaning.

In the ancient text it says that those who die will not be gathered to Allah, while the modern 1924 printed text says they will surely be gathered to Allah. Now please make sure you understand why I point this out.

I am not saying we can't figure out the original reading, but I am pointing out how important it is to have a full, unedited, widely dispersed manuscript tradition with which to make such determinations.

The fact is that there were competing readings in the earliest centuries of the transmission of the Quran, specifically the tradition of Ibn Masud as well as that of Ubaid Ibn Ka 'b persisted in the earliest manuscripts long after the Uthmanian attempt to enforce a particular set of readings.

This can be seen in the earliest Islamic tradition, for example in reference to Surah 1793, where Abd al-Razzaq mentions a tradition from Mujahid. We did not know what a house of ornaments, Zukruf, was until we saw in the Qira 'ah of Ibn Masud a house of gold, Dahab.

Well, here again is the specific text before us, and then we blow it up so we can see it a little bit more clearly, and then we bring up the current reading up at the top, found in the Uthmanian version, and the current 1924 Egyptian version speaks of a house of ornament, Zukruf, while the Ibn Masud reading has a house of gold, Dahab.

Once again, without the materials destroyed by Uthman, how does one logically and truthfully determine such issues of early variance? Surah 2, Al-Baqarah, verse 222, provides another example, this time based upon the Fawg's palimpsest manuscript.

A palimpsest is a manuscript where the original writing has been washed off and another version, or a completely different work, written on the washed leather. Using ultraviolet light, we can often read the original writing.

When we read the original text in the Fawg's manuscript at Surah 2, 222, which I have here on the top, and compare the current edition, we see not just variation, we see wholesale editing. Words are changed, the word order is changed, verbal forms are altered, grammatical terminations changed, etc.

This is clear evidence that the continued attempt, at least a century after Uthman, of writing the Quran, of the readings of Ibn Masud. This is why Sufyan al-Fawri's relatively short tafsir, for instance, can list 67 variant readings, 24 of which are attributed to Ibn Masud.

Now the existence of these textual issues has been well known to Muslim scholars for centuries, but has fallen out of general Islamic recognition, especially in our lifetimes. Here is just one page of many to be found in the 2007 Turkish publication of the Taqtapi manuscript, listing variations between the major early Quranic manuscripts.

These lists are produced by Islamic scholars, not Orientalists, and not Christians. And so the first contrast is between a centrally controlled process, Uthman vs. Ibn Masud, etc., and the non-centralized, widespread congregation of the New Testament text, together with the constant search for earlier and earlier manuscripts.

Authorship, Consistency, and the Trinity

Now as time is short this evening, the second contrast is related to the authorship of the Quran and the Bible. The Quran claims to be the very eternal words of Allah given through an angel to Muhammad.

But at the very least, we can say the Quran has one human intermediary that we can identify, and that would be the man Muhammad. But the Bible has around 40 authors, covering a span of 1500 years. The New Testament has 8 authors, addressing a number of different audiences over a span of 30 to 50 years.

Now the multiplicity of authors negatively introduces issues of consistency, allegations of contradiction, well doesn't Paul contradict James, things like that. But positively, it provides a tremendous witness to the spirit-born harmony and consistency of the scriptures when those alleged contradictions are examined and answered.

And may I personally say that I can testify to you that after two and a half decades of study of the Christian scriptures, and defense of them against leading opponents of the faith, the consistency and harmony of the biblical text is one of the most compelling reasons why I believe.

The single authorship of the Quran raises questions for me as a Christian relating to the claim that the Quran has eternally existed in heaven. For example, the origination of Surah 33, verses 37 through 38, and Muhammad's marriage to Zaynab, the divorced wife of his adopted son Zayd, is just one example that we could look at.

That a Christian would look at this and go, how can this be something that was eternally found in heaven when it seems to be so very much connected to events upon earth. Likewise, since the Quran has only one author, how do we handle those Quranic teachings that Christians would reject as being incompatible with all preceding scriptures?

Does the author of the Quran show an accurate knowledge, for example, of the doctrine of the Trinity? Now this is an important question, for me anyway. For we must honestly admit this evening that most Muslims understand the Quran to soundly condemn the central elements of the Christian faith, in particular, the Trinity and the deity of Christ.

Such beliefs are described as blasphemy by the Quran, an excess in religion, shirk, unbelief, and those who believe such things will experience the fire. Note the words of just one section of Surah Al-Maidah, ayah 72 and 73.

They do blaspheme who say, Allah is Christ, the son of Mary. But said Christ, O children of Israel, worship Allah, my Lord and your Lord. Whoever joins other gods with Allah, Allah will forbid him to guard, and fire will be his abode.

There will for the wrongdoers be no one to help. They do blaspheme who say Allah is one of three in the Trinity. It's literally the word three. For there is no god except one, Allah. If they desist not from their word of blasphemy, verily a grievous penalty will befall the blasphemers among them.

Now these are strong words, so it is quite proper and necessary to ask the simple question, does the Quran ever accurately define the Trinity? Having examined all possible texts related to the subject, I must conclude that it does not.

And some passages, such as Surah 5, verse 116, seem to present a completely erroneous understanding of the doctrine of the Trinity. Note the words found in that text. And behold, Allah will say, O Jesus, the son of Mary, didst thou say unto men, Worship me and my mother as gods in derogation of Allah?

He will say, Glory to thee, never could I say what I had no right to say. Had I said such a thing, thou wouldst indeed have known it. Thou knowest what is in my heart, though I know not what is in thine, for thou knowest in full all that is hidden.

Now, many Muslims believe that the Trinity represents God the Father begetting a child by Mary. Ahmed Didat many times misrepresented the Trinity in this way, assuming Christians believe Jesus is an offspring of God, a separate God, one God amongst three.

Nothing could be farther from the truth. And one thing is quite certain, what Christians believed about the Trinity was well known in the year AD 600. So, even if one disagrees with the Trinity, surely what it is, is just as knowable and understandable as what Tawheed is to a Muslim.

So, what is this text talking about? That is a subject that we must discuss. But time is fleeting, so our third contrast, and that is the person of Jesus. Jesus appears in the Old Testament prophetically, long before his advent.

He is the central character of the New Testament as the eternal Logos made flesh, as we see in John 1 14. The Incarnation is a key difference between us. Christians believe God, who created all things, can enter into his own creation for his own purposes and his own glory.

The Incarnation is definitional to the Christian faith, but it is rejected a priori by Islamic theology. Yet it was plainly taught in the earliest Christian scriptures, and was surely a part of the angel that Christians are exhorted to believe and judge by in such places as Surah 5 47.

Jesus' ministry is firmly rooted in history. His crucifixion and resurrection formed the very cornerstone of the faith. The Christian proclamation has always been that Jesus died at a particular point in time before many witnesses and rose again the third day.

This is not just a myth, a religious story. It took place in history, and every single source rooted in the first hundred years after the crucifixion verifies that claim. The titles given to Jesus in the New Testament include Son of God, the only Son who is God, the monogamist Theos, John 1 18.

The I Am, the Alpha and the Omega, the Lamb of God, the Lord of Glory, the King of Kings, and the Lord of Lords. Muslims often express the idea that Jesus did not view himself as anything but a mere prophet, a mere Rasul.

Yet in the Gospel of Mark, at his trial before the Jewish authorities, Jesus drew from the Jewish scriptures and said about himself, quote from the Gospel of Mark, again the high priest was questioning him and saying to him, Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed One?

And Jesus said, I am, and you shall see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of power and coming with the clouds of heaven. The Jewish leaders reacted with immediate charges and blasphemy.

Why?

Because they knew the source of Jesus' claim in the prophecy of Daniel. Daniel chapter 7, beginning of verse 13, I kept looking in the night vision to behold what the clouds of heaven, one like a son of man, was coming.

And he came up to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him. And to him was given dominion, glory, and a kingdom that all the peoples, nations, and men of every language might serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion which will not pass away, and his kingdom is one which will not be destroyed.

That is why the Jews understood what Jesus was saying to him and accused him of blasphemy. The crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus becomes the very center point of history itself in the New Testament narrative.

In the cross, God glorifies himself by redeeming an undeserving people unto himself. Jesus voluntarily goes to the cross. He gives his life freely so that those who believe in him may have eternal life.

His perfect sacrifice frees those who believe in him from sin and gives to them eternal life. For the Christian, Jesus as the God-man is prophet, priest, and king. As our high priest, he ever lives to make intercession for his people, guaranteeing to them the benefits of his death.

The Bible teaches we are united to him in his death, burial, and resurrection so that his resurrection becomes the guarantee that we too will rise and enter into the rest of God all due to what he has done on our behalf.

This is why Christians seek to live holy lives, not to earn salvation, but to glorify out of a heart of love the one who has saved us. Now, looking at the Quran, Isa appears 25 times in the Quran by name, only once in an identifiable location when he is speaking from his cradle.

Most scholars believe that that story in Surah 19 is from the Arabic infancy gospel originally written in Syriac in the 5th or 6th century. He is virgin-born. He works miracles. He is, however, not the son of God in the Quran, nor does he die upon the cross.

In fact, as Cambridge scholar Tarif Khalidi has written, the Quranic Jesus is in fact an argument addressed to his more wayward followers, intended to convince the sincere and frighten the unrepentant.

As such, he has little in common with the Jesus of the Gospels, canonical or apocryphal. The Quran's denial of the crucifixion is particularly troubling historically as there are few events in history so compellingly witnessed to.

Only one ayah in all the Quran denies the crucifixion, a total of 40 Arabic words with no commentary in the Hadith. No Muslim for over 200 years after Muhammad remembered a single thing he ever said about Surah 4157.

I find that striking as the Quran and Hadith are clear in their commentaries about other areas of difference with Christians, yet on this one topic all is silence. Surah 4157 has engendered many different interpretations amongst Muslims and is in itself hardly mubinun, it is hardly clear.

This is a very important issue as well. So, in conclusion,.

Muslims and Christians,.

What We Need to Discuss in Dialogue

What do we need to discuss? We need to discuss the text of our scriptures. Christians invite open examination of the history of their text while at the same time rejecting mere naturalistic explanations and materialistic scholarship.

We as Christians and Muslims share a worldview that is not limited to the merely natural. We should be very careful to draw from scholarship both in the defense of our own faith and in the criticism of the other's faith that which is consistent with a supernatural worldview.

I have often noted that much of modern Islamic writing about the New Testament, for example, draws from atheistic or secularistic scholarship, Bart Ehrman for example, rather than from scholarship that would be consistent with an Islamic worldview.

This situation should not prevail in our discussions with one another. We should also discuss the authorship of our scriptures as well as the relationship that exists between them. Remember, the Quran makes reference to the Torah and the Injil.

And finally, we need very much to discuss the person of Jesus and especially the Islamic denial of well-founded historical realities regarding Jesus' teachings, his crucifixion, and his resurrection.

And so, we begin our dialogue this evening by focusing upon the key issues. We as Christians and Muslims have an opportunity to demonstrate for the whole world that we have the ability to dialogue with respect, to dialogue with grace toward one another without compromising the truth while focusing upon what is really important.

And I cannot tell you how exciting it is to me to see this room filled with people. And I think it's very obvious filled with a majority of Muslims this evening. And so, I am honored that you are here.

I am honored that Imam Shamsi Ali is here. And I hope that our time will indeed be a blessing to all who have gathered. Thank you very much for being here.

Greeting the Audience and Introducing the Debate Topic

In the name of God, our Creator, most gracious, most merciful. Let me begin by greeting you all with the peace greetings, the greetings of our Prophet, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad, peace be upon them all.

As-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. It is indeed an honor for me to be a part of this evening discussion.

Especially.

As my.

Friend, Dr. James White had debated over 70 times his opponent. And I have to acknowledge that this is my first time. The topic of our tonight's discussion, or you may call it debate, is Al-Quran and.

The Bible.

I am certain that any religious belief should be based on, solidly,.

On its holy book.

Our case as Muslims,.

We do believe.

That every single religious act, every single of religious practices in our.

Religions, is.

Based on the Quran.

And the interpretation of.

Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him.

We do pray five times a day, we have fasting, zakat, charity,.

Hajj. All these are based on the holy Quran.

And I hope that our.

Christian friends' religious practices.

Also are based on their.

Bible. Because.

If you don't find the best in the Bible.

Of what you do in your churches,.

Then how could you justify that these are religious.

Practices? Before going.

Into my specific points on the subject,.

Let me remind ourselves again that Muslims.

Will not be Muslims without believing in Jesus as one of God's mighty prophets. And believing in the book which was revealed unto him, called the Injil, the Gospel. In fact, we find beautiful stories of Jesus and his mother in the holy Quran.

And I would like really to suggest.

My Christian friends to read, especially.

Chapter number 3.

And chapter number 19 of the holy Quran.

According to Jesus Christ,.

I would like to mention just one of the verses.

In the holy Quran.

God says, and God mentions to us, that when the angel came to Mary, to tell her, that soon you are going to conceive, you are going to be pregnant.

She said,.

Lord, as the American people today.

Say, God, oh gosh, that's just a change of word, God, gosh, these days. Oh God,.

How come I'm.

Pregnant?

No man ever touched me. So the angel responded to her, and he said, that is very easy for your Lord. If you wanted to do something, you just simply say.

Kun, and it is.

And then,.

The angel described.

Jesus Christ to Mary with these.

Verses. He said,.

And God will teach him the book and the wisdom,.

The law and the gospel.

And as a messenger, a Rasul,.

An apostle, to the children of.

Israel, with this message, the message of Jesus, I have come to you with a sign from your Lord, in that I make.

For you out of clay, as it were,.

As Dr. Jim mentioned, the maritals of Jesus Christ.

And I heal those.

Who walk blind and the lepers. And I quicken the dead by God's permission. And I declare to you what you eat and what you store in your houses. Surely there is a sign for you.

If you did believe.

And I have come to you to confirm the law which was before me,.

And to make lawful to you.

Part of what was forbidden to you. I have come to you with a sign.

From your Lord, is what Jesus said. So fear.

God and obey me. It is God, Allah, who is my.

Lord and your Lord. Then worship.

Him. This is the way.

That is straight. This is what the angel.

Told to his mother, that this is.

Jesus Christ is coming to tell the people. Now regarding his mother,.

I'm not going to recite the whole ayah.

Talking about her. But the Quran says.

كانت صديقه.

His mother was a woman.

Of truth. And of course.

Regarding the angel, it is very clear and mentioned many times in the.

Holy Quran. But one.

First I would like to mention in surah number three, chapter number three. God says, and He set down the Torah and the Gospel prior to these, prior to the Holy Quran, as a guide to mankind. And He set down the criterion, that's the Quran.

Now my.

Friends, brothers and sisters,.

Muslims and Christians, haven't said that.

Our Quran is the.

Criterion that we call.

For upon. It's very.