Shirk: A Basic Definition

The Meaning of Shirk in Muslim Witness

Something you need to understand when witnessing to Muslims, vitally important is a word, simple word, shirk, s-h-i-r-k, shirk. Now, in secular Arabic, shirk is just a word that means to associate.

If you put together a company, for example, you're going to use the same root because people are associated with one another in a company or in a corporation or something like that. But in the Quran, the sin of shirk is unforgivable, and the sin of shirk is associating anyone with Allah.

To associate with Allah is a sin most grievous. Why is this important? Because in the mind of the Muslim, especially the American Muslim, you will actually find a more open mind normally to a presentation of the Gospel of a Muslim fresh upon our shores from an Islamic country than you will an Americanized Muslim.

Why? Because they're a minority here, and so they train their people to resist Christian missionaries and the message of the Gospel. They give them objections. Many of the Muslims coming from other lands don't have those objections.

All they've heard have been some very vague things, but generally, the American Muslim has been trained to try to avoid these things. In the Muslim mind, what we believe about Jesus is shirk. When you are inviting a person to put their faith and trust in Jesus Christ, you are inviting them to commit idolatry.

And the one sin Allah will not forgive is shirk. Can you see why that is a barrier in your witnessing to the Muslim? Here's some text to talk about. Surah 31, 13, Oh my dear son, ascribe no partners. There's shirk right there if any of you are Arabs.

Ascribe no partners unto Allah. Lo, to ascribe partners unto him is a tremendous wrong. Or at the beginning of Surah 6, Praise be to Allah who created the heavens and the earth and made the darkness and the light.

Yet those who reject faith, the kafir, the kafirun, the unbelievers, which is what they believe us to be. The kafirun hold others as equal with their guardian Lord. The kafirun, the unbelievers, engage in shirk.

They engage in shirk, this association. Here's Surah 4, O ye people of the book, that's who we are. Al-kitab, that's a phrase that I take honorably to myself. I like being one of the people of the book.

But the al-kitab, the Jews and Christians, sometimes it's Christians, sometimes it's Jews, sometimes it's both, sometimes we can't tell the context. But according to the Quran, God sent down the Torah and the Injil.

The Torah, the Old Testament law, the Injil, the Gospel. Now Muslims today will argue, well that doesn't mean, that's not the same thing what you have today. I don't think they have any basis for doing that.

It seems very, very clear that Muhammad knew of the New Testament, he knew of the Old Testament, he just couldn't read it. He didn't know what was in it. But he did say, that Allah had not solved, he had sent down those books.

And in fact he told us to believe them. He told us to test him by them. Which, that's what I do, and sometimes I get upset when you do that, but that's what you have to do. And so he believed, Muhammad believed, that God had sent down the Torah and the Injil.

And so you have the people of the book, who have a special place, over against just standard pagans and polytheists. O ye people of the book, believe in what we have now revealed, confirming what was already with you, before we change the face and face of some of you, beyond all recognition, and turn them hindwards, or curse them as we curse the Sabbath breakers.

For the decision of Allah must be carried out. Allah forgiveth not, that partners should be set up with him, but he forgiveth anything else to whom he pleaseth. To set up partners with Allah is to devise the sin most heinous of deeds.

So here, it's plainly said, the one sin, that Allah will not forgive, is the sin of shirk. Is the sin of shirk. O people of the book, commit no excesses in your religion, nor say of Allah aught but truth.

Now what is one of the excesses, according to the Quran? What's an excess in religion? Well, look for yourself. Christ Jesus, the son of Mary, was no more than a Rasul, an apostle of Allah, and his word which he bestowed on Mary, and a spirit proceeding from him, so believe in Allah and his apostles.

Jesus in the Quran and the Apocryphal Infancy Gospel of Thomas

Now, what does Muhammad understand about who Jesus is? Well, we sort of need to put together a number of statements from the Quran about this. Now, there are only 25 ayahs in the Quran that have the name Jesus, but the name Isa appears only 25 times in the Quran.

Most people aren't even aware that Jesus is even mentioned in the Quran, but he is about 25 times. However, I've said many times, the Jesus of the Quran, and I actually stole this from a liberal Muslim scholar, by the way.

The Jesus of the Quran is not a person, he's an argument. The Jesus of the Quran is not a person, he's an argument. Only one time in the Quran does Jesus, for example, speak in a geographical location that we can even begin to understand.

Other than that, he's just a disembodied voice, or just floating around. And the one time he speaks, and you know where it is, because you were mentioning Surah Maryam, Surah 19 earlier today, the one time we can actually identify a location where he was, is the cradle.

According to them, Jesus spoke from the cradle, and where did Muhammad get that? Well, it just so happens it's in 2nd century Proto-Gnostic type Gospels, like the infancy Gospel of Thomas, had Jesus speaking from the cradle, and so it seems that Muhammad believed those later apocryphal stories about Jesus.

And he couldn't read any of them, how could he discern which one was which? But anyway, who is this Christ Jesus? Well, here we're told he's no more than an apostle. He's no more than an apostle. What else do we read?

The Quran's Rejection of Trinity and Sonship

Say not Trinity. Now, this translation, which is the Yusuf Ali translation, which is the most commonly one used by Muslims in the United States generally, says Trinity, and I think he's correct that this is what Muhammad is trying to say, but the literal Arabic word is three, not Trinity.

Do not say three, desist, it will be better for you, for Allah is one Allah, glory be to him, for exalted is he above having a son. Now, again, if you listen to Ahmadinejad, if you listen to the other Islamic apologists who are out there, their emphasis is upon the idea that Jesus, as the son of God, would mean that Allah has, in essence, taken a wife and begotten a child.

Now you might say, they couldn't possibly think that that's what we really mean. Yes, they can, especially if they've not had any conversations with a Christian who can help them to understand the word.

And many of them, certainly Ahmadinejad, travel around the world presenting that over and over again, including the debates with people like Jimmy Spider, and emphasizing that concept. To him belong all things in the heavens and on earth, and enough is Allah as a disposer of affairs.

Christ, disdained if not to serve and worship Allah, nor do the angels those nearest to Allah. Those who disdain his worship and are arrogant, he will gather them all together unto himself to answer.