Is Islam a Christian Heresy?

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You know, after 9 -11 and everybody far from far from these claims of Islam and Muslims being persecuted in America after 9 -11, it's just been the opposite.

00:11

Americans have bent over backwards to be welcoming and open to Muslims. I mean, so much for I mean, they've been so open minded about it.

00:17

Their brains have fallen out. Sometimes I feel.

01:20

And welcome back to your Calvinist podcast. My name is Keith Foskey, and I am your

01:25

Calvinist. So thankful to have you with me on the show today. And I'm looking forward to introducing you to today's guest.

01:32

But before I do that, I just have a few announcements that I need to make. Many of you watch our Friday Night Live show, and, you know,

01:39

I've been talking about our new Bible reading program that we put out for 2025. It's a chronological reading through the

01:45

Gospels. We're going to do a walkthrough, a walking with Jesus through 2025, reading through the Gospels three times, twice chronologically and one straight through Matthew through John.

01:55

And you can find that at my website, KeithFoskey .com. Also, if you have questions you'd like for me to address either on our

02:02

Friday Night Live show or on our new show, Theology from a Golf Cart, you can also send those questions in to KeithFoskey .com.

02:10

Last thing before we move on is my reminder to you that this coming weekend,

02:15

I'm going to be at the Reformation Conference, which is being hosted by Paramount Church here in Jacksonville, Florida.

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Pastor John Fonville is putting this on. He's going to have a group of terrific speakers talking about the five solas.

02:29

And he's offered me the opportunity to come in and interview his speakers. So I'm looking forward to that and sharing those interviews with you.

02:36

And if you're in the Jacksonville area and you want to participate in the conference, you can get all of the information about it in a description in the link below.

02:44

I'm also going to be showing a video on it a little bit later in today's program. Hey, guys,

02:49

I want to take just a moment to remind you about the sponsors that we have for today's show. The first one is our longest running sponsor, tinybibles .com.

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You can go and find the smallest printed Bible on the market. It's available in King James, New King James, and very soon in the

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03:55

All right, guys, let's get back to the show. Guys, my guest today is Dr. Timothy Furnish.

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He is a Lutheran Christian with a Ph .D. in Islamic world and African history from Ohio State.

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He's a former U .S. Army Arabic linguist and later a civilian consultant to the

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U .S. Special Operations Command. He's author of books on the Middle East and Middle Earth, history professor and sometimes media opiner.

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He has been on Fox News is war stories fighting ISIS. And he's also a huge Shakespeare fan, occasional thespian.

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And he fences with a saber. And he says, usually left handed. Dr. Furnish, thank you for being on the program today.

04:38

Thank you, Pastor. I hope there's some Princess Bride fans in the in the in the audience.

04:44

Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. I have a quick thing I wanted to mention about that.

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As I was reading your description, I actually, as many people know, I teach karate, but I also have a training in a martial art called

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Modern Arnis, which is a Filipino stick and and machete fighting art, which is similar to fencing, has some of the has some of the same principles.

05:07

And my teacher's teacher was a man by the name of Remy Precious. He was from the Philippines. And someone once asked him, you know,

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Professor Precious, if you were in a real fight, what would you do? And the first thing he did was he put the stick in his left hand because he was left handed.

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And he said, if I was really doing it, I would put it in my left hand because it throws everybody off. He knew something you didn't know.

05:30

What's that? He knew something you didn't know. Oh, yes. Yes, exactly. Yeah, he was left handed. Sorry.

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Yeah. Channeling an Ego Montoya there from the movie. So, yes, absolutely. Absolutely.

05:43

Well, sir, I want to thank you again for being on the show and coming in to talk about something that you specialize in.

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I even mentioned that you were going to be on the show from the pulpit recently because I was talking about I mentioned

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Islam in one of my sermons for. I don't even remember the reason, but I said, I'm looking forward to having an expert in Islamic studies come in.

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And I noticed in your in your bio, I didn't say it, but I noticed as I was looking at it that you received your your doctorate in 2001.

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Which obviously is a very important, significant year, because that is also the year of 9 -11.

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And so I have a question just to kind of get things started. I know that after 9 -11, there was a huge spike in Islamic interest around the world because it was considered an

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Islamic terrorist attack. People saw that as a as something that was Islam's hatred of America or whatever, how people felt.

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And people wanted to know more about that. And there was this huge spike. But you obviously were studying

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Islam long before that event. So my first question to you is just what made you want to pursue that study, which obviously began in the 90s?

06:55

Right. Well, it really began in 1983 when I enlisted in the army at the height of the Cold War. I'd gone and done my excuse me.

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I'd gone and done my undergraduate degree. I tried a year, actually a semester of law school, and I hated it hated it with a white hot burning passion.

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So I thought, since I didn't have these nice loan forgiveness programs that we now see from the federal government, like how can

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I get my loans paid back and do something useful with an American Studies undergraduate degree? And I had thought about being

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ROTC, and I just had never done it, because at the time I had a beard which wasn't white and I didn't want to shave.

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It was one reason was kind of vain, but I was 21. So excuse me. So I decided to enlist in the army.

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And at that time, when you enlisted for the intelligence job, which was interrogator, which I signed up for, you did not get to choose your language.

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Some of the some of the jobs you could choose your language. Electronic warfare intercept jobs where the guys have the headphones and listen to the radios and such.

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But but we didn't get to choose our language. I don't know why the infinite wisdom of the of the DOD. So. So you

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I went through basic training with your interrogation school and then went out to Monterey, California.

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It's still Defense Language Institute, still the gigantic language training facility for all the

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DOD, as well as a lot of the a lot of the three letter agency folks go there now. Excuse me.

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And so there were 15 people in my interrogation class. 13 of them got

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Russian. Nineteen eighty three was the height of the Cold War, of course. One guy got Korean.

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And I was the only person that got Arabic, which was interesting. I mean, now, of course, the percentages are much different now.

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I mean, last time I checked, a huge numbers of people were in Arabic and Persian and things like that. And of course, Korean is now also very, very valuable.

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But it was sort of a sort of a backwater language back then. But anyway, so that's how

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I learned Arabic. And then after my stint in the army enlisted, I wanted to go to grad school.

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And by the way, speaking of more movies, I actually thought about going to grad school in archaeology. And I got in the

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University of Chicago, which, of course, is where Abner Ravenwood taught Dr. Jones's mentor.

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Well, I found out that if you go to grad school, Chicago, a you probably have to mortgage your entire future and sell several organs and B.

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And B, they don't issue a fedora and a whip if you get an archaeology degree with with a diploma.

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So I thought, well, what the heck? So Ohio State said, hey, you can come here on a fellowship and we'll pay for school and give you just enough money to eat, to live on.

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And I thought, well, that might be more useful anyway. So that's when I'm doing my doctorate in Islamic history at Ohio State.

09:37

Nice. And yeah, I imagine there's a lot of people who got into archaeology because of those movies. And we're quite disappointed to find out that it's not quite what you see.

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Right. You're not always fighting Nazis and and arguing with your dad, probably. Sure.

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Now, you know, I mentioned earlier about, obviously, how the world changed in in 2001.

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That's that's the year that I would I say I received my call to ministry was in 2001.

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I got saved in two years earlier in 99. And I preached my first sermon on the Sunday after 9 -11.

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There's a long story that goes along with that. But certainly it was life changing for me looking back.

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Not only did it change the world, but it changed what what God was doing in my life or at least what I perceived

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God doing in my life. And I remember those first few years, everybody was talking about Islam.

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Everybody wanted to read the Koran. Everybody wanted to talk about, you know, what what would cause people to do the things that were done.

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And did you find yourself a hot commodity? I know that's a strange way of saying it. And I hope nobody is offended by that.

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But I mean, with those specialties, did you find yourself now at the forefront of people's what people were looking for and and and people asking you questions and stuff?

10:56

Yeah, quite a bit. I mean, I was on Fox. You mentioned one. I was on Fox News quite a bit that Fox hasn't had me on about six years since.

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And I think part of it is what you you're talking about. I guess, you know, the world just kind of moved on. And jihadist

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Islamic terrorism became just another staple of life and not anything striking. Well, since they weren't killing as many

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Americans, at least in one fell swoop. And I think a lot of it, too, that the ideological lens, particularly from the government change.

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But we can talk more about that later if you want. But yeah, for there for a while there. I mean, interestingly, the year before 9 -11 in 2000,

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I had published an entry in the Encyclopedia of Islam on Al -Qaeda on a fundamentalist

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Islam. Specifically, it was on fundamentalist Islam back when you were allowed to use that term now that you have all these sort of camouflage terms they use for it.

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But I had published it. I actually I don't want to interrupt you, but I am kind of interested in how

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YouTube is going to handle this video. I've thought about that today and I'm going to publish straight out. I'm not going to change anything.

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But but I am wondering how like with the words that we're using, obviously, we're talking about Islamic fundamentalism, you know, words like that.

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Yeah. Is it going to is it going to is that going to pick up on the algorithm? But, you know, I'm just glad to get to talk to you.

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But but you're right. Words change and how people interpret them and now don't want to hear them. For sure.

12:21

Right. And, you know, the prescribed list grows ever larger. I mean, maybe that's starting to reverse, but it has been.

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But no, you're right. For the for again, I'd publish that article. And one of the one of the people

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I talked about in that article 2000, of course, before this all broke was Osama bin Laden and hitting the group called

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Al -Qaeda. And I mean, when I saw like a lot of people, you know, the first plane you see hit, do you think, oh, well, it's some sort of pilot passed out.

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Something happened. Something's wrong. Second plane hit. You're like, no, no, that's intentional. There's no way that's not intentional.

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And I told my wife, I called her work and I said, it's bin Laden. I bet you a dollar to a donut. That's bin

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Laden. So, yeah. So there for, I don't know, five or six years, actually, probably up until let's see when

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I was on when Greta used to be on Fox. She had me on a couple of times. And then there was that Ali Nour's war stories that you alluded to earlier, which which which was talking about ISIS.

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And I think that ran in 2014, 2015, something like that, 2016, maybe.

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But that's the last time. I used to also appear with Catherine Herridge, you know, Catherine Herridge, who was a reporter at Fox.

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She went to CBS. She recently was in the news because because they wanted her to reveal her sources for some stories, her journalist sources, and she refused to do it.

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And and she she was in some legal issues about that. And anyway, but Catherine had me out.

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Remember Hassan, Major Hassan, that killed the people at Fort Hood, the army physician who was the

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Palestinian American guy. And actually, she had sent me. And that was what I think, 2011.

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She had sent me his his so -called his so -called manifesto. And I and I broke it down.

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And and she used a lot of that material on air. So, yeah. So for a decade or so, it was

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I was on quite a bit. And then and then that was about the same time.

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I see 20, let's say 2008 to 2014. I worked at Special Operations as a as a civilian consultant down at Middale Air Force Base in Tampa.

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I would fly down there every so often, quite regularly and work mostly open source analysis. That is to say,

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I was dealing with open. I was dealing. I'd go. They say we need some research on this group. And I would just do open source what

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I could find online. I'd go here. I live in the Atlanta area. I'd go to the I'd go to the Emory Middle East Collection, Emory University and look stuff up.

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And and then plus I have a lot of stuff myself. So I did a lot of open source analysis for them. And then and and then

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I think this is if you want me to finish carrying on with this. There became there became there, there developed this.

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At some point there developed this prohibition. I mean, Bush wasn't too bad about it, although we saw it somewhat with Bush, too.

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Remember Bush's famous Islam as a religion of peace thing. Yeah, but but it it became, you know, it quadrupled, at least under Obama.

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So and I think this bled back into the media, too. So I had two other part time jobs that I that I was doing in this period.

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One was I was well, both of them were lecturing jobs. I lectured at Joint Special Operations University, which is also in Florida.

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And it's a facility where a higher enlisted and certain officers in the special operations community go for specialized training on different topics.

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And we also bring in foreign officers from foreign countries to come, you know, allied countries,

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Egyptians, Pakistanis, a lot of those guys would come. And so. That job at one point,

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I regularly like two, three, four times a year. And by the way, said Gorka, you know, Sebastian Gorka, who was who was on media and was in the first Bush administration, excuse me, the first Trump administration forbid

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Sebastian Gorka and I lectured right after one another on history terrorism.

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And I did this for a couple of years, and then I was told that I wouldn't be brought back anymore. And I said, well, why?

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Well, then they wouldn't tell me. And I said, look, come on, I've been coming here for years. Tell me the straight story. Well, the foreign

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Muslim officers are complaining. You're talking about Islam too much. I'm like, well, you tell me to talk about the history of Islam, the history of terrorism.

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Of course, most modern terrorism is Islamic. I mean, if you go look at the U .S. State Department list right now, foreign terrorist organizations, 53 of 68 are

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Muslim. And again, that's not designations that, you know, President Trump or Sean Hannity or or, you know, some

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Christian pastor came up with. That's what the State Department says. So 78 percent of the world's terrorist groups, according to our

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State Department, are Muslim. I would be remiss if I did not talk about those. But, you know, I also talked about other stuff.

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I talk about the French Revolution, terrorism. I talk about Vlad the Impaler. I talk about the 5th of November, the gunpowder plot in England.

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So it wasn't that. So anyway, but but they were offended. So so I think with the government, you get a lot of we can't offend our

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Muslim allies. So which I guess makes some sense. But on the other hand, who are the main victims of Islamic terrorism?

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There are other Muslims. Yeah, you know, Muslims mainly kill other Muslims in these jihadist attacks.

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A lot of it's Sunni and Shia violence and vice versa, but mainly Sunni and Shia. So so that was one basically.

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Basically, that was that was what happened with that. And then the other one was I had a regular lecturing job at the

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Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, which is down in Glencoe, Georgia, down past Savannah. It's the main training facility for Homeland Security Transportation Security Agency.

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A lot of FBI guys go there and women. So it's a main training facility for domestic law enforcement and FBI related groups.

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So I'd lecture there for a couple of years. They invite me down every so often. I'd spend an entire afternoon lecturing about same sort of stuff history.

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I do history, but they want a history of Islam. I do history of terrorism. And again, I I didn't just talk about Islamic terrorism, and I would always make a point of saying, you know, hey, not all

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Muslims are terrorists, not even remotely. Most Muslims are terrorists. Thank thank the Lord. And but however,

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I was told at one point, well, you won't be coming back anymore. Why? Well, this was during the

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Obama administration. Well, the Obama administration has sent the edict down from on high that any any counterterrorism lecture that uses the word jihad will no longer be employed.

18:54

Wow. So so we we can't we can't talk about jihad, which is what the people engaging in it themselves call it.

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Yeah. So so, you know, I guess, you know, Barack Obama and Eric Holder and his coterie know more about Islam than Muslims themselves do.

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So I think with them, I think some of it is not offend our allies. But I think a lot of it's ideological, a lot of anxiety, ideological.

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And it comes from the left. It comes from the universities. And this is also, by the way, to more directly address your question.

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This, I think, bleeds a great deal into the journalistic ranks, because journalists, as we know, are almost not entirely, but mostly left of center.

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They have a left of center worldview, the left or center worldview. Unfortunately, in the last decade or two, has become not just traditional liberal

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Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, even Bill Clinton liberal. It has become Marxist. And one of the key tropes of Marxism, of course, is, well, oppressor and oppressed.

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Well, who and then they have their hierarchy of oppression. And on the global scale, who's who's who do they consider to be the number one victims?

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Well, Muslims. And a lot of this is it's just it's so two dimensional and ridiculous.

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Muslims are victims because they have brown skin. I'm like, do you know anything about Islam? First of all, many of the world's

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Muslims don't have brown skin. So I've been to Iran. The people in Iran are whiter than I am.

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And that's saying something, you know, so it's just it's just this two dimensional sort of thing.

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And a lot of it, a lot of it become became ideal. It is ideological.

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It wasn't just pragmatic, like I'm saying, well, OK, we don't want to offend our Saudi allies or our Egyptian allies.

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Sure. OK, I can understand that. But, you know, if I have a friend that has a problem, you know, if I have a friend pulls up in his car and his engine is knocking,

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I don't know whether or not to offend him, go, hey, you know, you have a crappy car. No, I say, hey, buddy, you might want to get that engine fixed.

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I mean, I tend to think maybe that's maybe that's just, you know, naive of me.

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And that doesn't work at the highest levels. Although, you know, probably work for somebody like Trump. But but with someone as sophisticated as President Obama, I don't know, we're not going to do that.

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We can't tell our friends they have problems. We're going to pretend like like they don't. So anyway, a lot of this,

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I still think, bleeds over into the media. The media, it becomes it becomes sort of synergistic, right?

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The government, if you have a particular the Democrat administration, although some Republicans are guilty of it, too, you have a

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Democrat administration says, well, don't say anything bad about Islam because Muslims are peaceful or, you know, in fact,

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I'm just working on some. I'm giving I'm giving a class this weekend at a local church. Pastor asked me to do it on.

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The question is, is Islam a religion of peace? So I was putting some of that stuff together earlier today.

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And it's reminding me some things like, for instance, you know, Pope Francis has repeatedly said Islam is not violent.

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I'm like. What? But you get that trope repeated. The media repeats it.

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The government says it, particularly someone is esteemed, particularly by the media, as Barack Obama. But George Bush said it, too, to be fair.

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It's a religion of peace. And then and then and then the media latches on to that because that reinforces their preconceived notions, which is that all religions teach basically love your neighbor.

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I'm like, no, actually, they don't. They don't do that. So so it becomes a sort of self -reinforcing thing where where that becomes the overriding narrative.

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And then, of course, what feeds into that is the stuff from the universities. I mean, you know, again,

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I started my Ph .D. I started my doctorate in ninety one. I finished in 2001 and and.

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You know, back then, though, you could say things. It wasn't as bad, but you could see where it was going.

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You you weren't you could still say things like Islamic fundamentalist, which is what these people are.

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I mean, this literally what they are. They read the Koran and go, oh, I'm going to do exactly what it says in the Koran. That makes them a fundamentalist.

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Anyway, we can get that more in a bit, I guess. But but but now it's gotten to the point where in universities and and even at the undergraduate level, not just graduate level, you can't speak honestly about this topic.

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I give me a quick example, Pastor, a week or so ago on Twitter. And if you see my

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Twitter feed, I reposted on this. There's a guy following Twitter that said, why does all academic writing refer to Mohammed as the prophet?

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And I responded to him, and then I posted on it, I said, well, I said, I said, it's not just academic writing.

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I run into this with undergraduates. I teach world history surveys to undergraduates and I cover

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Islam. And, you know, I don't disparage Islam. I don't run Muslims down, but I talk about it honestly.

23:45

OK, Mohammed engaged in jihad. You can't pretend he didn't. The Islamic sources say he engaged in jihad, a little different than Jesus.

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A little different than Buddha, too. But that's you know, that's that's on the other side of the theological discussion. But I mean, you want to compare

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Jesus and Mohammed. One guy engaged in jihad in order to his enemies killed. And the other guy did the opposite.

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But I said, what you get is, first of all, the textbooks, the undergraduate textbooks without fail refer to Mohammed as the prophet with a capital

24:14

P. Wow. And then and then I think that's that's a big part of it, especially for undergrads.

24:21

But but I teach master's level classes in non -Western military history, and I find graduate students doing it, too.

24:29

One reason is the textbooks say that. And the other one is because Americans, as I said in my my ex, whatever the verb form is of X, my tweet,

24:36

I said, Americans basically you confuse me for a second. But yeah, you're right.

24:41

I don't know. Yeah, it's it's a I still say tweet. Sorry, let me interrupt.

24:46

But yeah, no, I know. In my tweet, I said the other part of this is that Americans basically have been inculcated.

24:53

Actually, I use the term browbeaten. Americans have been browbeaten into being nice about Islam. Don't say anything bad about Islam.

25:01

Don't, you know, respect their like. Look, and I tell my students flat out in class, you don't have to refer to Mohammed as the prophet unless you're a

25:08

Muslim. If you're a Muslim, fine. I understand you want to do that. I refer to Jesus as the

25:13

Christ because I believe it. You believe it. That's fine. But if you but but I don't tell Muslim students to refer to Jesus as the

25:19

Christ. Christian students or secular students should not have to refer to Mohammed as the prophet.

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But a lot of them do it. And I tell them not to. It's like it's because it's so in the zeitgeist.

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It's so everywhere that Mohammed's the prophet. I'm like, no, he's not not a prophet unless you're a Muslim. He's not my prophet.

25:38

So anyway, I'm sorry. That was a long winded way of trying to answer your question. But I know I want to I actually want to go a little deeper because you said you were going to be at a church this week.

25:48

How often do churches and especially, I guess, since 9 -11, but but even in even more recently, how often are you being invited in to talk to Christians about these things?

25:59

It sounds like most of what you've done is has been through military and police and things like that.

26:04

Right. No, no. I've done quite a bit, you know, particularly in the conservative Lutheran circles. They would throw holy water on me at the

26:11

ELCA. But if they had holy water, I'm sorry. For those of you that don't know, there's a couple of major divisions of Lutheranism.

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The ELCA is the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, which is very, very, very liberal and basically indistinguishable now from the

26:26

Episcopal Church. And then there's Missouri Synod and Wisconsin Synod, which are smaller but still substantial, which still still dress like the guys who

26:35

Pastor Foskey does, the Lutheran on the on the videos. Drink beer before church.

26:41

No, just after church. Yeah. No, I know I do quite a bit.

26:46

I wonder if you don't mind me asking, what are you? Missouri Synod? Missouri Synod. Missouri Synod.

26:53

Yeah. Do you know Hans Feeney? I follow him. Yeah. OK. Yeah. Yeah.

26:59

I mean, I don't know him personally. You know, what's funny is he does those.

27:04

He does those Lutheran satire videos, right? Yeah. So my sons both went to Catholic school.

27:10

My sons went to evangelical school K through eight. Well, actually, they went to our we had a

27:15

Lutheran. We had a K through three at our Lutheran church for a while, and then it died during the pandemic or thereabouts or somewhere.

27:21

I don't before that, actually. So my sons went to a went to a basically a it was basically a

27:27

Baptist K through eight. And then they had a very small high school. I mean, like 90 kids.

27:33

And we're like our kids wanted to play football. And so we didn't want them to go there. So excuse me.

27:39

So they went to local Catholic school and played football and wrestled and things like that.

27:46

But they went to Catholic school. It was funny. I'm getting ahead of myself, but I just thought of this because. Well, let me tell you

27:52

Hans Feeney real quick. So one of my son's first because you have to take four years of religion in Catholic high school.

27:58

So my son, my older son, he comes home and he goes, oh, yeah, we watch this video today about the Trinity.

28:04

I'm like, yeah, he goes and he pulls it up. It was a Hans Feeney video about the Trinity. And I'm like, oh, so so the priest that's teaching this class is using

28:12

Hans Feeney stuff. It was really funny. That's awesome. But but real quick, I would tell you, when we applied to go to that school, we visited

28:19

Blessed Trinity here in Roswell, Georgia. We went through the tour and I think there were like wound up being like two

28:26

Lutheran families in the whole whole place. Most of them are Catholic, but there were some Baptists, but there were some Baptists on the tour with us. And and the priest came out, talked to us.

28:35

Real nice guy. Father Rita, he came out, talked to us. I think he's Dominican or something. But anyway, he came out and and he said, any questions?

28:44

And I said, yeah, father. I said, if my kids come here, do they have to promise not to nail anything on the front door?

28:51

And he started laughing. So I kid you not, one of the Baptist fathers leaned over to me and goes, what are you talking about?

29:01

Well, there is. Obviously, I'm a Baptist, but I know that sometimes within within Baptist circles, there can be a very limited knowledge of church history.

29:12

So I'm sorry. That's just really funny. So no, but I but I I've been to, let's see,

29:17

Lutheran churches, some Orthodox churches, some actually some actually some

29:25

Methodist churches, mostly Lutheran, because the circles, the pastors know me.

29:30

But but but, you know, I've been I've done quite a bit of that. So so sorry, sort of to correct the misperception, perhaps, that I gave from earlier.

29:38

And it hasn't just been it hasn't. And I actually sorry, trying to say too much.

29:44

It hasn't just been military and government circles. And I also been been to a couple of Lutheran conferences.

29:50

And I also some years ago went up and gave a talk on this at Concordia Seminary, which is the main

29:57

Missouri Synod Seminary in St. Louis. So so anyway, I've been and in our district, our district, our district president, basically bishop, but we can't say that word

30:08

Missouri Synod, you know, they'll throw holy water on you. Went down to Orlando, which is where our district,

30:14

Florida, Georgia district headquarters is. And I've given some classes down there on that. So so so it has been in church circles, not just in government circles.

30:23

Of course, you know, a little different approach. Hi, my name's Justin Johnson. And I'm Josiah Stowe. And we are

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But click the link below, make a free discovery call now. Thank you. Where I want to go to now,

33:44

I do want to talk about some of the theological side of Islam and some of the questions

33:50

I'm going to ask. I may already know the answer to, because I've done a little study myself, but some of it may just be me clarifying some things, but also for the audience sake, you know, you, you being an expert,

34:00

I like to pick, pick your brain a little bit. You wrote an article called the past, present and future dangers of the

34:07

Islamic belief in the Mahdi. I think I'm saying that correct. And you called

34:12

Islam a Christian heresy. And you actually quoted a,

34:17

I think it was a sixth or seventh century or seven or eight century church leader who, who also identified it as a heresy.

34:24

And you said that Martin Luther identified it as a Christian heresy and a few others. Why is it a proper classification to say that Islam can be can be included as a

34:38

Christian heresy? Yeah. And again, remember that's not original. Man, that St. John of Damascus first came up with that.

34:44

Yes. He was an expert. He lived under Islamic, after Islamic conquest, under Islamic rule. Yeah. Why is it a

34:52

Christian heresy? I mean, that, that, that has long been a trope. That has long been a belief in, in a lot of Christian circles, particularly

34:58

Catholic circles until, until Vatican II in the sixties, when it became unfashionable to criticize

35:04

Islam thusly. Well, if you just look at it, I mean, just because B follows

35:10

A doesn't mean A caused B. But if you look at the religious, religious beliefs of Islam, they sure look like a lot of them were just copied from Christianity.

35:21

And, and, and, and not just also, not just for mainstream Christian. I mean, there's some Islamic beliefs that look like they were taken from some of the apocryphal gospels.

35:28

You know, the gospels that didn't, for instance, the gospels, writings that did not make it into the new Testament because they didn't, they, they, they didn't meet the standards for canonization.

35:39

Like there's a story in the so -called gospel of Thomas in which Jesus does things like creates little clay birds.

35:46

You probably know this creates little clay birds and throws them up in the air and they fly away, right? Well, that story verbatim is in the

35:52

Quran. So unless Muhammad just somehow came up with that story on his own.

35:59

Uh, nah, I'm not buying that. It sounds like to me, like you probably copied that from somebody probably because there may have been heretical

36:06

Christians, which is what the group that, that, that put that together were, uh, living in the deserts of Arabia.

36:12

And, and, and, and even the Islamic sources say there were, there were Christians living in, uh, not just some in Mecca, Muhammad's first wife,

36:19

Khadija was a Christian. Um, but, but there was a substantial, and I done some work years ago on, uh, early

36:26

Christian communities in the Arabian peninsula, there was substantial community Christians in Najran, uh, which is, which is in now in Southern we're talking about Saudi Arabia, what is now

36:35

Saudi Arabia. So, but, but the big thing is if you just look at the beliefs, I mean, it's the timing and the beliefs and the locale.

36:44

I mean, it just makes sense because it says there's a God and Muslims claim that that Allah is the same

36:51

God that Jews and Christians worship. Their big claim is what they worship the same God, but that Jews, Jews were given the revelation, what they call the

37:00

Talra Torah, they call the Talra with Moses, but then after 1200 years, they messed it up.

37:05

So then Jesus came with what Muslims call the Injil, which is their corruption of the term gospel evangel.

37:13

Uh, um, and then Jesus, uh, then had to fix things. And then of course it only took

37:18

Christians, according to Muslims, half as long to screw it up because in 600 years they had to send Muhammad and he's the final arbiter, the final revelation to mankind, uh, of, of what is right.

37:29

But it just, you know, it's just so much of it is clearly, I think, clearly aped, copied from Christianity, belief in one

37:37

God, um, uh, uh, you know, prophets, uh, some sort of eschatology, uh, angels and demons.

37:45

And of course the intermediate thing of Jinn, which Christians don't have, but they have, which is clearly interjection from pre -Islamic

37:51

Arabian belief systems, polytheistic belief systems, excuse me. So I just think if you look at it, it looks, it's, it looks like, and there's been a lot of work on done on this by some early historians of Islam, uh, who are of course, uh, whose names are anathema in the field, because, uh, although, you know, 20, 30, 40 years ago, 30 years ago, when

38:15

I first started studying Islam, Patricia Crone and Martin Hines and people like that, uh, their work was considered kind of, uh, you know, uh, uh, groundbreaking and really interesting.

38:25

They would look at the early Islamic sources and they'd look at the early Christian sources in Syriac and things like that and say, well, look, this is the, this, this clearly comes from here.

38:33

I mean, this Muhammad or whoever put together the Quran and most scholars worth their salt do not believe for a second

38:40

Muhammad, but the Quran together, um, uh, say, well, you know, this clearly is borrowed from these sources.

38:47

And then there's, you know, all these discussions about cognate languages and such, which we probably don't have time to go into. And I'm not an expert on anyway, but I just think if you just look at it overall, it looks, it's a monotheistic system that resembles

38:59

Judaism and Christianity, particularly Christianity in many, in many aspects, but yet changes things just enough so that it's a new religion.

39:08

At least they claim it's a new religion. So I just think based on that, it's clearly, basically what

39:14

I think happened is Muhammad came along and I didn't think Muhammad was a real historical figure. I know there are people that have been trying, there have been books written, uh,

39:21

Robert Spencer in particular wrote a book and there've been others, but saying that, well, Muhammad, it's not a real historical figure because we actually don't have any hard data about him.

39:29

You know, I always tell this, my, my, my, my, my, my students in world history class, you know, we have solid evidence that Jesus existed on these internet atheists, atheists is always trying to say,

39:39

Jesus is made up. Just crack me up. I mean, golly, can you betray how ignorant you are anymore? I mean,

39:45

Roman historians wrote about Jesus who weren't Christian, right? Tacitus, Suetonius, Josephus, who was

39:51

Jewish. These guys wrote about Jesus. Um, so Jesus is a real historical figure. We have corroborating data and we have lots of corroborating data.

40:00

Also, we're getting more and more as time goes on for early church and for, for things in, in Jewish history, right?

40:06

Like David's been attested. We have, we have epigraphic evidence of King David. Um, so, um, you don't have that with this law.

40:15

There is no evidence outside of the Islamic sources. As some guy named Muhammad ever existed. You just didn't.

40:21

Now, do I think you're not, you're not, you personally are not questioning. Is this, is you're just saying that's why people hold up?

40:28

No, that's why people say that because you don't have any attestation, no corroborating data, right? The Islamic sources say there was

40:33

Muhammad, but we don't have anything. The Byzantine sources don't say anything. The Sasanian Persian sources at the same time, don't say anything.

40:40

You know, if this guy was so important, how come they don't mention it? Um, so, but no, I think he existed, but I think he devised a new religion in order to unite the warring

40:53

Arabs, a new ideology here, you know, I guess he could have become Christian, but you know, then, then he would have had to probably be subservient to, or join up with the

41:03

Byzantine, the Eastern Roman empire, which was of course the primary, uh, Christian power at that time.

41:09

Um, and he could have become Jewish, but there had been an earlier Jewish kingdom actually down in Yemen called the

41:15

Himyarite kingdom, uh, which had been crushed by the Ethiopians, interestingly enough, the King of Ethiopia, who was

41:21

Christian had sent an army over and crushed them because they were persecuting Christians, interestingly enough. So I think, you know, geopolitically, once it makes sense, try to join up with something that exists, uh, with an ideology or religion that already exists, an ideology or religion, that's not really very powerful in the area or come up with a new one at which you can become the leader and the prophet, and then wind up with 11 wives and, you know, other fringe benefits, shall we say.

41:50

So as, as we talk about heresy, um, obviously the, there's a definition for that and, and the earliest heresies typically, typically revolved around the person and work of Jesus Christ.

42:05

Who is Jesus? Was he fully God, fully man? And we know that the first ecumenical councils and things dealt with the

42:13

Arianism and Nestorianism and issues like that. Sure. Absolutely.

42:19

When we get to the seventh century and we get to Islam, now we're dealing with what, what, but again, you, you mentioned those who have identified

42:30

Islam as a Christian heresy. What is it that they teach about Jesus that would be heretical?

42:36

And is it similar to any of the previous heresies? Well, the main

42:44

Islamic teachings about Jesus are that he's just a man. He was born of a virgin.

42:50

Islam does teach that. Um, but he's just a man. He's a prophet. Um, he is in some ways the greatest prophet because according to the

42:58

Quran, Jesus did miracles. Muhammad didn't do any miracles. Jesus, there, there, there are some accounts in the

43:04

Quran of Jesus, you know, healing them. They aren't as specific as in the gospels, but the, it may, it will mention like Jesus healed the blind or things like that.

43:12

Uh, which of course, none of which Muhammad did where, where Muhammad outranks Jesus, according to Islamic thinking is he comes last, right?

43:21

He's the Hatim al -Ali, Hatim al -Aliya, the seal of the saints. He is the, like I said earlier, he's the final messenger to mankind.

43:30

Uh, and so therefore he thus maybe not personally, but his message outranks that of Jesus because it's corrective to what

43:37

Christian screwed up. Um, but Jesus is a prophet. He's a great prophet. He did not die the

43:44

Quran. And then there's also some, there's also ancillary data and what are called the Hadiths.

43:49

The Hadiths are sayings of Muhammad's, um, that, and there's multi -volume collections of these things.

43:56

Uh, there's like thousands or tens of thousands of them. And, oh, I had to deal with a bunch of them writing my doctoral dissertation and kind of make your head hurt.

44:04

Um, but it's a whole, whole corpus of data that adds on to what the Quran says.

44:09

It is not as authoritative for Muslims as the Quran, because the Quran is believed to be literally the word of Allah, whereas the

44:15

Hadiths are the word of Muhammad, but it's sort of like one in one day. It's pretty close. The problem with the Hadiths and even

44:21

Muslims will tell you this, the experts in, in Hadiths, the Muhaddithun, the experts in Hadith tell you, the problem is they don't know which ones are legitimate, which ones aren't.

44:30

And there's a ranking system for these things, basically reliable, good, and kind of unreliable.

44:37

And the problem is Muslims don't know really which are which. Um, anyway, um, the data on Jesus comes mainly from the

44:45

Quran, but there's also stuff about him in the Hadiths. And so the Quran flatly, the

44:52

Quran says flatly, Jesus did not die. Um, he was taken to heaven that they thought they were crucifying him and he was taken to heaven, uh,

45:04

I guess sort of like Elijah or something. And then one that was made to, it's kind of tricky how to translate the

45:11

Arabic, but it says basically something along the lines of one that was made to look like him was crucified in his place.

45:17

So somebody got crucified. It doesn't really explain who, now there's some further stuff in the Hadiths where Muslims have identified that it was

45:25

Judas. Judas was punished for betraying Jesus by actually being crucified and Jesus was taken to heaven.

45:32

Um, and then, and then it says again, in other places in the Quran and Hadiths, Jesus will return. Jesus will return at the end, before the end of time and get this, getting to eschatology, but he'll come back and he, he will join up with the

45:45

Mahdi, uh, who is, which literally means in Arabic, the, the rightly guided one, the divinely guided one, uh, who is a man, uh, who, uh, and Muslims have their different beliefs, whether you're

45:59

Sunni or Shia about who exactly the Mahdi is, but whether it's Sunni or Shia, he does the same thing. He basically works with Jesus who, the returned

46:06

Jesus to take over the world for Islam, and then they will establish a, a universal caliphate, planetary caliphate, and everything will be hunky dory from an

46:16

Islamic point of view. And then, but, but both of them are just men. I mean, Jesus and the Mahdi are just mortal men, just like Muhammad was, and they will eventually die.

46:26

And then, and then the Islamic caliphate, the universal Islamic caliphate will fall apart.

46:31

And then later on, bad things will happen. And then, and then the last judgment will come, but that's further down the road.

46:38

But the main things about Jesus are. Almost sounds like pre -millennialism in one sense, Jesus comes back and then there's this, this millennium.

46:45

And then, but at the end, there's going to be another battle and those things. Yeah. Yeah. Because Jesus coming back in the

46:51

Mahdi doesn't fix things sort of like cosmically. It fixed things in history on this planet for a brief period of time.

46:58

And it's, it's fuzzy. Is it some of the Hadiths say seven years, some of the Hadiths say 40 years, some give an indefinite period of time.

47:07

Yeah, it's, I mean, it's millennial in the sense that there's a timeframe on it, but it's not, but the actual thousand year millennium is not really operative in Islam, but, but, but that's the big thing.

47:17

Jesus was not crucified. He's, there's no Trinity. So he's not the son of God. He's not the incarnation. He, he wasn't crucified and he wasn't resurrected.

47:25

So there's no atonement. So that's the big problem. This is where you see these things. Do Jews and Christians worship, excuse me, do

47:32

Christians and Muslims worship the same God? Well, I would say no, of course not, because then all, because if that's true, that Allah sure can't make up his mind because you know, the new

47:42

Testament says, says Christ is crucified once for all for us and atoning for our sins and he's resurrected and he'll come again, the judge of living and the dead.

47:51

Well, the creed says that, but the Bible implies it, right? But the

47:56

Quran says basically the opposite. No, he's just a man. I mean, basically the, the only, the real only points of agreement between the

48:06

Quran and the Bible on this are that Jesus was indeed a real person and he was born of a virgin and he did some miracles, but I mean, those are all important, but they're not as important as the crucifixion, the resurrection, the incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection, all of which the

48:22

Quran denies. And so I, there's no way we worship the same God. Yeah, no, amen to that for sure.

48:31

What do you think if, and I know this is a, this, this could do a whole nother podcast, but I, but I, I had a few questions

48:39

I thought of right before the show. And I, I, this was one of the ones that was just would interest me.

48:45

If I were to ask you, what do you think most people, and maybe, maybe the best way to say this is we'll, we'll start with Christians and then general people.

48:54

What do you think most Christians misunderstand about Islam? At this point in history?

49:02

I think what most Christians misunderstand is just, I'm sorry, how intrinsically violent the teachings of Islam are.

49:08

It just is. Yeah. I, you know, I think they have been, you know, after 9 -11, we started out, talking about 9 -11 quite a bit, very important thing.

49:19

And everybody far from, far from these claims of, of Islam and Muslims being persecuted in America after 9 -11, it's just been the opposite.

49:29

Americans have bent over backwards to be welcoming and open to Muslims. I mean, so much for, I mean, they've been so open -minded about it.

49:36

Their brains have fallen out. As my wife often says about the ELCA. Yeah.

49:42

I mean, we, before 9 -11, there were about 900 mosques in America.

49:48

Now there are over 3 ,000. By some counts, 3 ,500. Now, some of these are storefront mosques with 12 people, granted, but I mean, you know, 10 miles away from me in Alpharetta, Georgia is a gigantic new mosque,

50:02

Ottoman style. It's lovely to look at. The teachings come out of there might bother me a little bit.

50:08

And again, again, let me make sure everybody understands, Pastor. Islam is violent. Does that mean all

50:13

Muslims are violent? No, most Muslims aren't. Here's the thing, however, if you go read the

50:18

Quran and the 164 Jihad verses in there and the verses about, I mean, yeah, there may be some verses.

50:25

There are some verses, I should say may. There are some verses in there, for instance, where it says Mohammed, or the

50:32

Quran says, nearest to you in belief are the Christians, for instance. Okay. But there are other verses that basically counterman that and overrule it.

50:44

There's a passage in the Quran, Surah, Surah means chapter, Surah Al -Tawbah verses 9 and others.

50:52

No, I'm sorry, Surah Al -Tawbah, which is Surah 9, verse 29 and others say, basically to attack the unbelievers and force them to convert.

51:04

And if you can't force them to convert, kill them. It basically says that. Now, what

51:09

Muslim apologists will say is, well, that's balanced out by, as I said, these earlier verses which purport to say that you should be friends with Christians, except that Islam has this doctrine.

51:23

There's a Quranic interpretation doctrine called Naskh, N -A -S -K -H in Arabic, which means abrogation or supplanting or overruling.

51:31

And Naskh is a doctrine that the Muslims came up with many years ago because they had a problem, the satanic verses.

51:39

That wasn't just a book by, you know, by a Pakistani writer some years ago. What was that guy's name?

51:45

The satanic verses, Salman Rushdie. I don't know if you remember this or not. I mean, this is bad. I remember the name.

51:51

I don't. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Salman Rushdie, who was a Pakistani, a British Pakistani writer, wrote a fiction book called

51:57

The Satanic Verses and offended a lot of people and got a death penalty from the

52:03

Ayatollah and he had to go into hiding. And then somebody tried to actually try to kill him at one point. The satanic verses is a real thing.

52:11

The satanic verses, there are passages, and I forget, I have to look it up, which chapter of the

52:17

Quran it is. But, you know, Muhammad started preaching in Mecca, and according to him, he had visions from either the angel

52:27

Gabriel or Allah himself appeared and didn't appear to him, but spoke to him.

52:33

And and then he was going out and preaching this, excuse me. And he'd been doing this for a while.

52:41

We're not sure exactly how long, some months or maybe longer in Mecca and wasn't making much headway.

52:48

And then suddenly one day, Muhammad shows up and preaches, oh, besides Allah, it's

52:53

OK to worship a couple of other gods from the pre -Islamic Arab pantheon. Yeah, a lot, which is the feminine version of Allah.

53:01

Anything that ends in T is feminine Arabic, Al -Uzza and Al -Manat, there were like three other gods and goddesses you could worship besides Allah.

53:11

And people were like, wait a minute, you've been preaching that there's only one god to worship. Now you're saying there's four.

53:18

Well, then Muhammad rapidly received another revelation and this revelation said, oh, that was not

53:25

Allah or the angel Gabriel downloading to Muhammad. That was Satan.

53:31

Oh, wow. Satan, that's where that's where the term satanic verses come from. So the Muslims have this problem because there's this there's this there are these passages right in the middle of the

53:41

Koran that say, hey, it's OK to worship three other gods besides Allah so much for that strict monotheism.

53:48

Well, again, how do they explain that away? Because it wound up in the Koran. What they did, they came up with this doctrine of mosque abrogation, which is that, well, stuff that Muhammad, alleged revelations that Muhammad received later in his life.

54:08

Chronologically outweigh ones earlier and ones earlier, I'm like, well, right away, I would be like, how do you believe that religion?

54:14

Because you're saying the whole thing is the word of God. Now you're saying there's like a gradation. OK, some are more authoritative than others.

54:22

I'm like, hmm. Anyway, so so that's where they came up with this doctrine of mosque to deal with that.

54:27

It has since been applied to other things. Again, as I was getting at, it has been applied to this idea that, well.

54:35

You know, some outweigh the others. Well, here's the problem with that, though, the Surat al -Tawbah, the one

54:40

I mentioned a minute ago, by most Muslim scholars is to be is believed to be the last one of the last, if not the last alleged revelation

54:50

Muhammad received from Allah. So it outranks everything that came before it. And what does it say again?

54:57

Actually, hang on one second. I guess I actually have the text here because I had it up in this other thing

55:02

I was looking at. Fight those who do not believe in Allah or in the last day and who do not consider unlawful what

55:08

Allah and his messenger have made unlawful. Fight them until they give the jizya willingly. That is, the jizya is this is the the state of the faith, right?

55:18

No, no. The jizya is the oppression tax. The jihad is the jizya is what you do to Jews and Christians under Muslim rule.

55:27

They have to pay a special tax and, you know, ride on the back of the camel and they have to know their place.

55:33

And, you know, it's basically second class citizenship. That's the jizya tax. So, again, and this this is how you wind up with all this jihadist terrorism.

55:42

One of the main reasons, because what happens is ISIS and al -Qaeda and all these other groups, what the reason you it's almost impossible to delegitimize them is they say, look, we aren't doing anything.

55:55

We're doing what the prophet said. We're doing exactly what that sir that I just read to you said to do.

56:01

We're the good Muslims. You Muslims that aren't doing this are the bad Muslims. So that's why it's almost impossible to theologically refute these.

56:11

I mean, Obama or I don't care whoever Pope Francis or anybody can try it out and say, well, that's not true

56:16

Islam. Yeah, it is. Now, the good thing is most Muslims are like,

56:21

I got better things to do with my life than worry about chopping somebody's head off. You know,

56:27

I got to make a living. I got to raise my kids. I don't have time for that stuff. But the problem is when there's one point six, one point eight billion people, all you if one percent of them believe that help me, that's 16 to 18 million people.

56:42

I'm a historian. I'm not good with numbers, but that's 16 to 18 million people. Yeah, one percent.

56:51

Yeah, no, absolutely. Absolutely. And we see the byproduct of that. We see the fruit of that around the world.

56:58

And that that you mentioned earlier that, you know, the mosques are popping up everywhere.

57:06

We have obviously some I'm in Jacksonville, Florida. We have pretty large mosque on the other side of town. And I'm sure there's some other other meeting areas around town.

57:14

But that's the one that it has the domes on top. And it's very ornate and obviously can be seen from the highway.

57:22

Very big. And I recently had a conversation with a Muslim. He actually visited our church because there was a person in our church who had befriended him at work and they had begun to talk about their faith.

57:36

And he he asked his friend, the person who comes to our church, could he could he just come and watch a service?

57:45

And so he did. And he sat the whole time. He did not participate in in any act of worship.

57:50

He didn't stand when we sang or anything like that. But he just he sat there and afterwards he waited patiently because he wanted to talk to me.

57:58

And when he talked to me, it was it was about a two hour conversation. I mean, he he he really wanted to dive into this.

58:07

The person that had brought him had been having a conversation. And I really think that he was trying to I think he was trying to take that person and show them that, you know,

58:18

Christianity was wrong because the arguments he was making towards me were very, you know, very argumentative.

58:25

You know, he wasn't he wasn't ugly or rude, but certainly he came with a, you know, a purpose. And one of the things that he said that was it was a surprise to me because I didn't realize why he would start with this.

58:37

But he said when we first sat down, he said, I don't understand why you believe what the what the

58:45

Bible says about David sinning. David did not sin. He was a righteous man.

58:50

And his the things the Bible says about him are not true. He did not commit adultery. He did not have someone killed.

58:58

And I only bring that up because that was a surprise to me that he would start with that rather than, you know, maybe the crucifixion of Jesus or something else.

59:06

It was his argument to me was the Bible lies about man's sin.

59:12

Is this something you've experienced? Yeah, well, no, not that David thinks specifically, but I mean, that's a key approach of Muslims.

59:21

I mean, what's their key tenets, as I said earlier, which is that the Bible is corrupted and the

59:26

Koran fixes. So he doesn't believe the story about the biblical story about David. And yeah,

59:32

I mean, there's no there's also not original sin in Islam, too. I guess the larger question is that there's not original sin.

59:39

It's very much, you know, you're going to go to heaven. It's very much a works righteousness religion. You're going to go to heaven by carrying out by performing the five pillars, you know, shahada, the profession of faith, zakat, almsgiving, make the hajj to Mecca once on your life if you can.

01:00:00

The other I need more coffee, but the five the five pillars, you have to practice the five pillars.

01:00:06

And and if you don't salat prayer five times a day. And what am

01:00:12

I forgetting? Boy, sorry, middle of the afternoon. But but you have to you have to perform those.

01:00:19

And if you perform those for your whole life assiduously and you go to mosque regularly and you you read the

01:00:25

Koran and do all that stuff, you might get to heaven. Maybe depends on the whims of Allah. I mean,

01:00:31

Allah might not bring you to heaven. You know, he's rather capricious, you know, you don't know for sure.

01:00:38

But but that's a major approach is that, you know, any if the Koran agrees with the

01:00:43

Bible, then they'll accept it. But but, you know, born of a virgin. OK, they'll accept that. But they pretty much don't accept anything else about Jesus.

01:00:50

And as I said, some miracles. Yeah. So not only is there heresies related to the person and work of Christ, but also the nature of man, because they believe that men have that capacity within them to attain righteousness outside of the work of God through grace in the

01:01:07

Lord Jesus Christ. Right, right. There is no grace in Islam. They're just not. It's it's

01:01:12

Allah is just not a very nice deity, to put it mildly. Yeah, for sure.

01:01:19

I mean, not, you know, I mean, nice in the sense of don't fall into the C .S. Lewis era there. Christianity is not just being nice.

01:01:25

But but but he's not very better way to say it, I guess he's not very loving or forgiving. I mean, again, there's no way of making sure you have any forgiveness in Islam.

01:01:36

You just and really forgiveness is not a major factor. It's obedience. The big thing is obedience.

01:01:42

What does Islam mean, by the way, is the word Islam means submission. Submit. You are you are

01:01:49

Allah's slave and you better, you know, mind your P's and Q's and do what you're told. I mean, you know, you don't refer to you don't refer to Allah as Abba, father.

01:01:57

No, that doesn't happen. You know, he's a distant he's a distant deity who is who just, you know, he he's the sinners in the hand of an angry god deity.

01:02:08

And that's all he is, though. You know, that's it. There's nothing beyond that. And you better hope you better hope and pray that he, you know, cut you some slack at the end because there's no guarantee.

01:02:21

Gotcha. Well, if and I think this might be a good place for us to draw draw in, because as a person who is an expert in this and who has dealt with people in various situations, obviously, you spoke to Muslims, you've translated, done things.

01:02:36

Have you ever in your time speaking to Muslim? Have you ever found that there was a way that that reaching them with the gospel seemed to be more effective?

01:02:49

You know, I know there's tons of people who talk about if you're going to talk to Muslims, talk about this or talk about that or this.

01:02:56

The day I sat with that Muslim for two hours, I kept pointing him back to his sin, pointing him back to his need for a savior.

01:03:02

I kept pointing him back to the fact that if he faced God in his sin, none of the righteous deeds that he had done are going to atone for one of his sins.

01:03:08

That was my point. But I didn't know if in your experience, have you had, you know, this is something that has gotten their attention?

01:03:18

Maybe that's the question. The best thing is what like you're saying, and then follow up by saying, you know, there is one way of knowing that you're forgiven.

01:03:26

It's by knowing Jesus and knowing that he was indeed crucified and resurrected for your sins and that covers over your sins, not the need to follow all of the dictates of Islam and hope, you know, the minuscule hope you have at the end of time, whenever judgment comes, that Allah will be merciful to you.

01:03:46

I mean, it's funny because they keep, you know, they refer to Bismillah, Rahman, Al Raheem, Allah, the merciful, the benevolent.

01:03:53

I'm like, he's not merciful at all. I don't see any acts of mercy anywhere in that Quran. So by the way,

01:03:59

I'm curious, how did he respond when you told him that? He would not admit that his sin was worthy of condemnation.

01:04:10

He said he believed himself to be a righteous man. And I kind of pulled a little bit of a

01:04:15

Ray Comfort on him, kind of started going through the commandments, talking about, you know, have you done this? Have you broken this law?

01:04:20

Have you broken this law? Trying to show him his sin. And it was always very diminished. His view of his own sin was, it's not,

01:04:28

I'm not, I'm not, I'm not condemnable was kind of, I think the way he saw himself.

01:04:34

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, part of that is that Islamic triumphalism that, you know, we have the right religion, we have the true

01:04:41

God. I mean, you know, I know we Christians fall into that sometimes, right? You know, we have the right belief.

01:04:46

We have the right draft and pick, pick, pick your denomination. You're an expert on this, but we, you know, we, we got it right.

01:04:54

And the rest of you guys don't. Superior theology. It's right there. There you go. Except, you know, no cigar and no sweater vest.

01:05:01

Well, maybe a cigar, no bourbon though. Um, but, but, um, that there's very much this idea that Muslims are inherently superior just based on the fact of being

01:05:14

Muslim. And unfortunately you see a lot of that. Maybe some other day we can talk about this more, but you see that, you see that when

01:05:21

Muslims come into countries, they come into these foreign countries. You said, I just saw a video the day I was in Ireland, Ireland, they're bringing in all these

01:05:28

Muslim immigrants and they're complaining about the water and the food. And then there was a complaint.

01:05:34

It was either in England or Muslim or England or Ireland that, um, uh, Muslims are offended that people are walking their dogs.

01:05:41

And so therefore you need to stop walking your dog. Cause it's right. I'm like, this is part of this triumphalist thing where, you know, we are superior by virtue of being

01:05:49

Muslims and you know, it's not exactly what you're talking about, but I think it stems from that theology where, where, where everybody, where we go, you know, it's a bit of a bitter kowtow to us because we are the superior human beings.

01:06:04

And again, not just the theology, we're superior as human beings, but clearly the basis for that,

01:06:10

I think is the theological claim that, I mean, it's kind of, it's almost, it's almost schizophrenic in some ways, however, and one on one hand, our sins aren't really sins, you know, uh, and you particularly see this with, with, and Again, you see this with what's going on, what's gone on in England and this stuff about the rape gangs and so on and so forth.

01:06:32

Boy, that'll get us flagged on YouTube, won't it? You know, you can't. I mean, but that's what they are.

01:06:38

That's what they were. That's hopefully were not are, but God willing. Anyway, this idea that that sexual sins really aren't sins because we're

01:06:49

Muslims. But on the other hand, if you actually read the Koran and look at it, because I think a lot of these people, they're like,

01:06:55

I would say in some ways they're I'm not sure they actually read the Koran. They just they just go to the mosque on Friday and listen to what the what the what the imam says.

01:07:05

And, you know, he may not preach on the whole thing. Probably doesn't. But on the one hand, sins aren't that bad.

01:07:11

On the other hand, Allah is not forgiving. Well, I know I guess you could sort of reconcile that if you're a Muslim and say, well, my sins aren't that bad.

01:07:18

So Allah doesn't have that much to forgive. So so but but I think you're onto something there because Muslims aren't told they need that they're that they they're inundated with sin and they have a sinful nature.

01:07:32

I mean, that whole thing again, going back to going back to original sin or whatever you want to call it, original sin, ancestral sin, sinful nature, the old man.

01:07:40

They're not taught there's an old man. They're like the old man's fine. Yeah. And that, again, goes right along with what we're talking about, the fact that it's that's a heretical view of man.

01:07:51

That's a heretical view of God. It's incorrect view of man. Yeah, it's just not right. Yeah, you're right. It's heretical because it's incorrect.

01:07:58

Right. That's right. That's right. That's right. Well, Dr. Furnish, I want to thank you for coming on the show today.

01:08:04

And I'll give you a minute or two if you have anything you want to add, any thoughts as we draw to a close or anything you want to tell people about.

01:08:13

Maybe you have a website or something that you'd like to point people to like to give you that opportunity as we get ready to draw to a close here.

01:08:21

Well, thanks, Pastor. I would just say, I would say, again, keep in mind,

01:08:28

I'm not saying that all Muslims are terrorists. I'm saying that Islam, if you wish to commit jihad, wage jihad, commit, wage it.

01:08:36

I mean, Muhammad himself did. Most Islamic leaders throughout history, one of the criteria for being an

01:08:41

Islamic leader was the ability to lead jihad. So that and then violence against non -Muslims, the idea that non -Muslims should become, should come under the sway of Islam willingly or unwillingly.

01:08:59

That's all in the Quran. That's not something made up. That's not something that's not something that was foisted upon Islam by people that don't like Islam.

01:09:07

It's there. And, you know, go read it for yourself. And by the way, speaking of reading it for yourself, look at, if you want,

01:09:17

I'm a regular writer over at The Stream, which is a conservative and Christian site, conservative

01:09:23

Christians. We have, you know, Protestant, Catholic writers. I think there's one or two orthodox people that right there, but it's basically conservative folks in the

01:09:31

Christian world right there. It's political. It's not just religious. And I think

01:09:36

I just had my 152nd article over there last week. So if you want to look at my stuff, you go over to The Stream and there's a lot of other good stuff there too.

01:09:46

So I would highly recommend taking a look at that. Well, good deal. Well, I'll be happy to link anything in the description if you want to send me something.

01:09:54

I am going to link the article that we talked about earlier, because I'm sure people will be interested in reading it.

01:10:00

Yeah, that was at The Stream. So that's good. Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you again. Thank you. Also, I know this sounds funny, but thank your family for giving us to you for this, or giving you to us for the last hour or so.

01:10:12

And I appreciate you taking the time of being with me. Thank you, Pastor. Appreciate it. Yes, sir. I want to thank you guys for being a part of the show today.

01:10:19

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01:10:26

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01:10:33

Thanks again for listening to Your Calvinist Podcast. My name is Keith Foskey, and I've been your Calvinist.

01:10:39

May God bless you. And I feel my troubles all melt away.

01:11:07

Oh, it's Your Calvinist Podcast with Keith Foskey.

01:11:14

It's and bow ties, laughs till sunrise.

01:11:23

It's Your Calvinist Podcast with Keith Foskey. He's not like most

01:11:33

Calvinists. He's nice. Your Calvinist Podcast with Keith Foskey, striving for superior theology and denominational unity, one joke at a time.