Same God 1

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Apologies, we got here and discovered we had a technical snafu, and even when we thought we had that fixed, it still didn't work, so we're going with the backup plan here.
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And for this particular presentation, I need to be able to show you things and play things for you and stuff like that, so just had to have it.
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And for some reason, traffic doesn't move really fast around here.
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I'm not really sure what that's all about, but I guess it moves at Hawaiian time and Hawaiian speed, and so it took us quite some time to get back to the hotel and get stuff, but we're here, and I will do my best to get us back on time by talking really, really fast.
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Obviously, I'm very impressed that you're here on a Saturday morning. There's lots of things you could be doing, but hopefully, over this time,
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I'll be able to get your interest going. We didn't actually arrange, I don't think we really thought it would necessarily be available, we didn't actually arrange to have my new book here.
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Maybe Shane would be kind enough to hold it up at some point and show people, and I do have a new book called
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What Every Christian Needs to Know About the Quran that will be a good follow -up to this presentation. This is the first time
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I've actually spoken on the subject since the book came out, so that's interesting.
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There it is now, yes. Can you do the Vanna White thing? There you go, all right, thank you.
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Surprised that I ever did this. This would never have crossed my mind when
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I first started studying apologetics, that this would be an area that I would be getting into. It's not because of 9 -11, honestly,
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I began studying Islam because I was studying the persecuted church, and you cannot study the persecuted church without encountering the subject of Islam in our world today.
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And as I have dealt with the issue and hopefully continue to grow in my understanding of it,
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I think starting studying a world religion this late in life means
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I will always be a student thereof, certainly never an expert therein, because there's so much to know and so much background information.
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But I am absolutely convinced that a massive chasm exists between our two communities.
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How many of you here have read the Quran? What was that?
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Did you raise your hand? I always get somebody that says, parts, you know, and a little bit, you know.
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Did you read it in Arabic? No, okay, so from the Islamic perspective, no one here, including myself, has actually read the
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Quran, because the Quran only exists in Arabic. You may read a translation of the
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Quran, but that's not actually the Quran. Now, remember that only 16 -19 % of the world's
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Muslims are themselves Arabic. The largest Muslim country in the world is, of course,
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Indonesia. And so the vast majority of Muslims, from their own perspective, have actually never read the
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Quran in its original language. And if you were a group of Muslims, and I were to be asking them how many of you have read the
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Bible, the percentages would be about identical as to how many of them have read the
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Bible. That means we don't, almost everything we know about each other's faith, we know from what we were told by someone else.
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And what's the major source of information for most evangelicals on Islam?
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Fox News, which is better than MSNBC, significantly better than MSNBC, but it's still
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Fox News. And that means, and unfortunately, for most Muslims, it's the exact same kind of thing.
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I have a, there's a Muslim scholar that I've gotten to know a little bit, and he will contact me sometimes and he'll say, what's the difference between this group and this group?
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Because put yourself in their shoes, looking at us, it would be a bewildering thing to try to figure out, well, what's the difference between a charismatic and a
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Baptist and a Presbyterian and an Eastern Orthodox? And especially when you end up with charismatic
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Catholics, you know, or something like that, you start getting the mixtures together and it's very, very difficult for them to understand where we're coming from and all the differences that we have.
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And we know, I bet you most of you in here, what are the two major sects of Islam?
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Sunni and Shia. Most of us have heard that. How many of you have heard the Druze? How about the
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Ahmadi? Again, there are smaller groups. But why do the Sunnis blow up the
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Shiites and the Shiites blow up the Sunnis? These are all issues that go way, way, way back, and by the way, they're issues that no amount of travel by Hillary Clinton or John Kerry will ever solve,
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I assure you, given they've been going on for 1 ,400 stinking years so far. These differences are lost on most of us.
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And then even amongst the Sunni, there are all sorts of different groups. You have the Salafi or the
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Wahhabi, which we hear about in Saudi Arabia and in Egypt. The Salafi would, in essence, be the fundamentalist
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Muslims. But then you have folks who live here and they haven't come from another country and they're not nearly as conservative in certain areas.
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They have different views and things. So there's all sorts of different perspectives out there. The result is we normally are talking past each other.
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We have difficulty communicating with one another because we're talking past each other because we don't know much about each other's communities.
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The result of that, my friends, is that most of us fear addressing a Muslim. I mean, let's be honest.
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If I were to ask you, if you're sitting on an aircraft and you got stuck in the middle seat, sorry about that, those of us who have frequent flyer miles, we're very sorry about the fact that you get stuck in the middle seat.
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But we don't care because we don't end up there anyways. And you've got a secularist on the aisle and a
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Muslim at the window. Which one are you going to be more likely to talk to? Probably the secularist because you're concerned.
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You might have valid concerns about doing something that's offensive to the Muslim because you don't know what necessarily offends
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Muslims, but you do have a vague idea that Muslims can be rather easily offended. And you're just not used to those issues.
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There's a fear. There's a fear. And if we have a fear, then we will very frequently hesitate.
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And hesitation frequently results in the inability to actually end up bearing testimony. And so what
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I want to try to do in the time we have together is to just sort of get you thinking, give you some foundation, and hopefully challenge you to think about really praying for the
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Muslim people. One of the greatest things that the Lord has allowed me to do over the past about year, year and a half or so is to develop some friendships with some of the men that I debate.
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That's pretty unusual. That's resulted in some very interesting insights from my perspective.
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And it's helped me certainly to be, I think, a better representative of Christ to these individuals.
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Most of us don't know many Muslims, or we only have very brief interaction with them.
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And because there's often very deep cultural differences, we tend to be very standoffish.
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Hopefully, I'll be able to help you to understand the Islamic mindset and at least help to get you a little bit more prepared if you have the opportunity.
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Beyond all of that, you might say, well, I'm just not sure there are that many Muslims in Hawaii, for crying out loud. Well, okay.
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Do you watch the news? Are you influenced by world events? Do you wonder why it's so dangerous that someone like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is getting nuclear weapons?
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We, as Christians, want to interact with what's going on in the world from a Christian worldview. And in the process, we need to know something about Islam.
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My grandparents didn't know much about Islam, and it probably didn't have much impact on them. We don't live in a world like that anymore.
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We don't live in a world like that. So I would challenge you to listen very carefully. And by the way, I've just got to say this.
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Did you know, sir, that you look very much like George Bush? Every time
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I just scan through the audience, I go, man, we've got one of the former presidents of the
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United States amongst us. Well, you know, he might just be hiding out in Hawaii for a while, you know.
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This is great, you know. I ditched my secret service agents at Waikiki Beach, and here I am at Central Baptist.
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So I just had to say that. Nothing personal intended. It has nothing to do with politics.
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You just look like George Bush to me. Anyhow, you need to understand the five pillars of Islam.
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Now, I will primarily be addressing Sunni Islam because you have about a 90 percent chance of running into a
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Sunni Muslim. The percentages are about 90 percent, 10 percent.
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As far as Sunni Shia, actually it's about 88 percent, 10 percent. And then you've got some very interesting groups in the middle.
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I mentioned the Ahmadi Muslims and people like that. The Ahmadi, by the way, from a
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Sunni perspective, to sort of give you a parallel, would be like Jehovah's Witnesses are to us.
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Jehovah's Witnesses say they're Christians, but we would say they're not because they deny fundamental, definitional aspects of the faith.
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In the same way, the Ahmadi have had a prophet after Muhammad. So, from the Sunni perspective, right out.
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Even though they have the Quran, they do the five daily prayers, etc., etc., etc. So, the five pillars of Islam.
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The first is the Shahada. Now, let me ask. Of the Christians who are here, assuming that most people here are
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Christians, how many of you made your profession of faith in either Biblical Hebrew or Koine Greek?
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Anyone? No? Really? Really? That's shocking to me. Actually, I've never had anyone say yes, even when
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I've been lecturing at seminaries, which had me a little worried that some of the professors might go, well, I did, that type of thing. The Shahada is the statement that there is only one true
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God or one God worthy of worship, Allah, and Muhammad is his messenger.
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But you can say that until you're blue in the face in English, Spanish, French, German, Hawaiian, if you can even come up with commensurate terms in Hawaiian, and it will make absolutely no difference whatsoever.
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To make a proper Shahada, which is how you become a Muslim, you have to say it in Arabic.
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So, you have to be led through it pretty much syllable by syllable by someone who knows how to say la ilaha illallah wa muhammadun rasulallah.
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And so, they take you through that slowly, and then you say, ash hadu, I confess that, and then you repeat that again.
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How many of you have ever seen someone become a Muslim? Okay. I really enjoy showing this because it bothers most
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Christians to no end. Now you say, see, I've heard that about you. You like doing that, but it makes people wake up and realize what's going on.
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This video is from a seminar that took place in Sydney, Australia.
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One of the primary reasons I chose it, other than clarity, is when
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I first started studying Islam, I would be listening to videos by men like Zakir Naik and Ahmad Didat and people like that, and I would say to my dear, patient, loving wife, who some of you got to meet last year when she got to come out with me, hey,
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Cal, listen to what Didat says here, and I'd fire something up on my computer, and she'd stand there for about 10 seconds, and she'd look at me and go,
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I have any idea what he's saying. Because many of them are from another country, they have an accent, she just couldn't even begin to follow, and she'd wander off.
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Well, this guy, his name is Khalid Yassin, is from Brooklyn. So, fairly easy to understand.
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And what he's done, I've obviously listened to the entirety of his presentation, is he's spent a couple days presenting
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Islam, but primarily in an anti -Christian fashion. He has made incredible errors concerning the
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Bible, the history of the Christian church, just all sorts of things. I mean, it's just horrible information.
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But this is basically an Islamic altar call. This is calling people forward.
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This took place in Sydney. In fact, I had the opportunity of lecturing at Moore College a couple years ago, and some of the students in the class
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I was teaching had actually been at this themselves. And so this is taking place in a
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Western culture. And he's calling people forward to become Muslims. So let's watch as people become
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Muslims. Can you stand for me quickly?
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Just stand for me. Come right here, please. Well, that's not working. Well, just listen,
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I guess. I apologize. What?
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I want to make this... I can't. I suppose
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I could try to play it, but it's playing in Keynote, and it's just never ever had an issue.
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Can you stand for me quickly? Just stand for me. Come right here, please. I want to make this transition, or this transaction, because this is what it is.
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These are human beings that are making a transaction with God. They're not making a transaction for us.
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They're making a transaction with God and a transition in their lives. So I want to make this easy for them.
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We have a gift for them, and we're going to give them this gift. Now, the gift that we're giving to them is something that will help them on their way.
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One, it's a copy of the Quran with the transliteration of the meanings.
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Secondly, it's a short, easy -to -read, authentic biography of the
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Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him. Thirdly, it is a set of seven books.
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It is a set of seven books that have in it lessons for new
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Muslims. Now, your acceptance of Islam is your acceptance of God, not your acceptance of me, or not your acceptance of these people, nor your acceptance of the political dynamics in the world, because it has nothing to do with that.
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It's just your acceptance of God. And this gift is to help you make that transition.
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I want you to say with me the simple words. And these words are nothing more than what
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I have explained. There's no trick, no curve, and we don't have a pool in the back for you to dip in.
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But let's say the words. Let's just go over the words called the
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Shahada, the bearing of witness. And I'll tell you what it is.
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It is essentially, it is the saying of that there is none to be worshipped except almighty God, and that Muhammad is the messenger of God.
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Saying that word, and then adding to it, I testify, or I declare, or I announce, that there is none to be worshipped except almighty
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God, and that I testify, or I declare, or I announce that Muhammad is the messenger of God, brings you all into the transition of Islam.
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From that point, it's your sincerity, it's your acts of worship, it is your commitment that will make the difference.
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Now whatever you owe God of something you did that only you know and God knows, after tonight, your board is clear.
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Because God is the forgiver of those that come back to him. But whatever you owe somebody, money, rent, a loan, you still owe that.
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Is that fair? Okay, please, just say after me the words.
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There is none to be worshipped except almighty
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God. Muhammad is the messenger of God.
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I testify that there is none to be worshipped except almighty
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God. And I testify that Muhammad is his servant and his messenger.
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Peace be upon him. Amen. Well, at least now you have heard people becoming
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Muslim. I apologize for that. Again, not sure why that's happening.
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Obviously there's some conflict between the systems. But anyways, as you see, they had to be taken through the saying of the shahada, syllable by syllable.
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And they didn't know what was actually being said. It had been explained to them. They had to trust him. That's what they were saying.
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But that is how you say the shahada. It has to be done publicly. It has to be done in front of witnesses. And that is how you become a
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Muslim. I think it should, I personally think that,
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I think honesty would demand that you probably should explain to folks that there's no way out of this.
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That the universally accepted Islamic law, sharia, for a person who becomes a
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Muslim and then ceases to be a Muslim is death. I remember very briefly one of the television networks did a thing with a
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Muslim family in Dearborn, Michigan. And they showed someone doing the shahada. And Islarists thought he did it rather lightheartedly.
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But no one explained to him that this is lifelong. This is it. And the only way out of this is rather important.
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Anyway, so the first is the shahada, the first of the five pillars. When it says there's only one true
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God, that is an expression of the most important aspect of Islamic theology, which is called tawhid. Tawhid is the oneness of Allah.
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If that's the most important, if that is for them what the trinity is to us, tawhid, there is only one true
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God. Now we, of course, believe there's only one true God as well. They don't think we believe that, but that's another issue we can get to a little bit later on.
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But if that's the center of Islam, then the denial of that, idolatry, associating anyone or anything with Allah is called shirk.
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And shirk is the unforgivable sin. If you die as a mushrik, a person who dies on the sin of shirk, having committed it and not having become a
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Muslim to receive forgiveness, Allah cannot forgive you. He can forgive anybody else, but he cannot forgive a person who dies as a mushrik.
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That person will have the hellfire for eternity. Then we have number two, the salat, the prayers, the five daily prayers in some
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Islamic nations. You don't even ask someone, are you a Muslim? You ask them, do you say the prayers?
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And that's more than enough to identify you. As a Muslim, there are five prayers.
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Fajr, for example, is before sunrise. Dur, Asr, Maghrib, and Isha.
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Isha is after sunset. The others are divided through the day, the noontime, afternoon, evening, and nighttime prayers.
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And I have a video, but if it's not going to display, I'm going to skip it.
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Let me see if it comes up at all or it's just blank. Yeah.
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Well, it's not even playing, which is really odd. I've never had that happen before either. So we will skip that and move on from there.
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You also have the concept of saum or fasting, the month of Ramadan, which you may hear about.
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I remember I first heard about Ramadan during the NBA Finals. Some of you might remember why that was.
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A number of years ago, the Houston Rockets were in the NBA Finals. And who was the big star player for the
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Rockets back then but Hakeem Olajuwon, a practicing Muslim. And the Finals fell during Ramadan.
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And during Ramadan, the observant Muslim cannot eat or drink from before sunrise until after sunset each day during the month of Ramadan, which is the ninth month in the
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Islamic calendar. The Islamic calendar is based upon a lunar year. And so that means it's about 11 days shorter than our calendar is each year, which means everything keeps moving forward 11 days.
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So Ramadan is now in July. Now, can you imagine what it's like to live in Saudi Arabia and not be able to even drink water from before sunrise until after sunset?
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Amazing. But studies have shown, however, that Muslims take in more calories during Ramadan than any other month of the year because you're basically up all night eating.
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But that is the month of fasting. And according to Islamic belief,
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I rarely mention this, but some reason we're going to have to skip most of my videos so you get some other extra stories here.
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There is a special night called Laylat al -Qadr, the
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Night of Power. And Muhammad taught that if you pray during the night on Laylat al -Qadr, that your prayers will have thousands of times the efficacy that they would have at any other point during the year.
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And forgiveness of sins and all these things. But Muhammad didn't tell you anybody which night was
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Laylat al -Qadr. In fact, according to the Hadith, and the Hadith are a collection, a huge collection, of the sayings and actions of Muhammad and his companions.
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The Sunni have about six collections of Hadith. There's more than that, but they're considered particularly authoritative.
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The two most authoritative are Sahih al -Bukhari and Sahih Muslim. These are nine and eight volume sets together.
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Many, many thousands of sayings on many, many different subjects. I've read all of Bukhari. I'm just about done with Muslim.
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And one of the Hadith stories is that Muhammad was about to tell the people exactly which night of Ramadan Laylat al -Qadr was.
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But when he came out of his house, the Muslims were arguing with each other, and because they were arguing with each other, he was caused to forget which night it was.
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And so, by other Hadith, it's either the 21st, 23rd, 25th, 27th, or 29th, if you can get that far.
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But those odd -numbered nights of the month of Ramadan, that's when
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Laylat al -Qadr is. So many observant Muslims will stay up all night on those nights praying, because one of them is
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Laylat al -Qadr. That takes place during the month of Ramadan.
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Then you have what's called Zakat, the giving of alms. In an Islamic context,
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I'm not going to spend much time on this, but it's 2 .5 % of anything you possess for more than a year is how it breaks down.
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That would be given to the Muslim state, but since there aren't very many states even claimed to be fully compliant with Sharia law, people give that to help build mosques and things like that.
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Finally is the Hajj. If you're as old as I am, you remember, you knew about Hajji.
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Remember Hajji in, what was that? Johnny Quest. Johnny Quest. Thank you very much. You just demonstrated yourself to be a geek.
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Between that and saying roll back the thing, you're obviously an engineer of some kind. But yes,
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Johnny Quest had Hajji. And a Hajji is simply someone who's gone on Hajj, which you're supposed to do at least once during your life, if you are physically and financially able to do so.
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The irony is, clearly Muhammad was not looking too far down the road, because today, given the number of people that the
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Saudi Arabian government allows into Mecca and Medina to do the
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Hajj pilgrimage, if you look at the world's population of Muslims, technically, there's no longer, the
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Muslim population is too large to fulfill the fifth pillar of Islam any longer.
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Even if you wanted to fulfill that fifth pillar, not enough spots are open for all
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Muslims to do that any longer in the world, which is rather interesting. I'm going to see if this is going to, maybe one will work and one won't.
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Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca is compulsory for all Muslims in good health and with sufficient funds to make the journey.
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The Hajj is the foremost of all Muslim rituals, even if less than 10 % of all
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Muslims ever manage to complete it. The Hajj's importance lies in its allowing the believer to approach the center of the world, as well as the place where the
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Quran's divine revelations began and continued for about 12 years. The performer of Hajj does not only reenact
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Muhammad's ritual, he or she also recalls acts of important people in Muslim history.
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The rituals performed around the Kaaba reenacts when Prophet Abraham and Ishmael transformed the
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Kaaba into the sacred place of worship and peace. In spite of some physical hardships, pilgrims who complete the
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Hajj consider it one of the greatest spiritual experiences of their lives. Many Muslims regard the
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Hajj as one of the great achievements of civilization because it brings together people from around the world and focuses them upon a single goal.
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So there's that. One of the things, you've probably seen the
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Kaaba. I don't have pictures of it because it was in the videos, but the
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Kaaba is the house there in the Grand Mosque in Mecca, black, cube -shaped building.
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Most people think that Muslims pray toward that specifically. That's actually not the case, that the
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Kaaba itself is not sacred. The idea is, from the Islamic perspective, that Abraham and Ishmael, not
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Abraham and Isaac, Abraham and Ishmael actually built the original Kaaba. Of course there's no historical evidence that Abraham ever went that far south by any stretch of the imagination to that area, but be that as it may, the idea was that they built it as the first house of worship to God and then in the days of Muhammad, there were approximately 360 idols in it and it was
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Muhammad who cleansed the Kaaba and returned it to its original purpose of a house of worship of the one true
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God founded by the founder of the Abrahamic faith. But the building has been destroyed and rebuilt a number of different times, so it's not actually what
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Muslims are praying toward. You may see Muslims, now obviously it's real easy,
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I even have an app on my phone that allows me to fire it up and it will aim me toward what's called the
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Qibla. I should have done this beforehand, but keep track of how many
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Arabic words I use this morning. You cannot discuss Islam without using Arabic words.
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I've already talked about Tawhid and Shirk and the Shahada and the
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Muslim prayers and Ramadan. It's amazing. It is very, very, very deeply associated with the
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Arabic language. The Qibla is the direction toward Mecca. And so if you were to go into...
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Do you have mosques nearby? Is there a mosque over near University of Hawaii? There is a mosque over there.
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If you were to go visit it, you would see that if you go into the prayer room, there is a...
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It all points toward one area. And it would be pretty tricky to figure out exactly...
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I wonder if you're closer... Which way around the world? I would imagine you'd be closer the other way around the world to Mecca than in the
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United States, I would assume. But anyways, they figure out the most direct line to Mecca.
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And that is where they face when they pray and the architecture of the building or the room, if they can't do anything about the building, the room will be pointed toward that area.
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Like I said, you now have apps that will allow you to figure that out for yourself and see which direction Mecca is from where you are.
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What they're actually bowing toward is what's in the picture here, and that's what's called the
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Black Stone. The Black Stone. And the Black Stone is embedded in one of the corners of the
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Kaaba. And allegedly when it fell from heaven, it was white. It's turned black because of the sins of men.
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You can see there's Muhammad Ali peering at the Black Stone there. When you go and do
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Hajj, what you'd like to try to be able to do is you circumambulate the
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Kaaba seven times in the Grand Mosque. What you want to try to do is get close enough to the
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Black Stone to touch it or to kiss it. I can't imagine the biological stuff that could be found on that Black Stone, but anyway.
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And I actually saw a couple years ago during Ramadan, I saw an article by an engineer, a hydraulics engineer, as I recall, who was basically explaining how you want to enter the mosque based upon flow dynamics to allow the crowd to get you as close to the
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Black Stone as possible. Because it's just, the crowds are amazing.
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Only a few years ago, back in 2006, over 4 ,000 people were trampled to death during Ramadan in one season.
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They've done some major changes to stop that. But it was not uncommon in the past.
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And so what they're actually bowing toward is this Black Stone that you see there embedded in the
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Kaaba. Now, there are also six articles of belief of Sunni Islam. There's belief in Allah, belief in all the prophets and messengers.
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Muhammad is the last, but there were many, many before him. I've heard as many as 100 ,000 were sent by Allah before that.
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Many of the biblical prophets are considered to be prophets and messengers from the
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Islamic perspective, including Jesus, who they believe to have been a Muslim. His disciples were
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Muslims as well. Belief in the angels and the jinn. The jinn are people, well, not people, they are creatures made of smokeless fire.
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And there's really a parallel universe of jinn. I did not realize this for a number of years, but at least
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Salafi Muslims, the conservative Muslims, believe that there are Muslim jinn,
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Christian jinn, Jewish jinn. I can't imagine there would be atheist jinn.
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But the jinn are stronger than we are, they're faster than we are, but they're not as smart as we are.
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Which sounds very much like a description of a teenager in a Camaro, personally to me, I don't know. Strong, fast, not so smart.
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Yeah, that's about right, that's how it works. But that's what the jinn are.
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And if you remember, I Dream of Jeannie, that's where it comes from.
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Jinn, Jeannie, that's where it came from. Belief in the books, Ketuvim, plural, sent by God, which includes the
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Torah and the Injil, the law and the gospel. According to the Quran, as we're going to see, the
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Torah, the law, and the gospel were sent down by God and they contain light and guidance. Now, you need to understand, almost every single modern
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Muslim today believes those books have been radically altered since they were originally given. And that's why they don't, that's why the
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Quran takes precedence over them. But we'll maybe have time to look at that a little bit later on. Belief in the
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Day of Judgment, there is far more discussion of the nature of hellfire and eternal punishment in Islam than there is anywhere in Christianity.
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It is truly amazing, the clarity and the description of these things.
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And I may have time to narrate to you some of the Hadith that illustrate that.
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And then belief in destiny or Qadr. Now, Qadr can be rendered as predestination.
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There is a very strong strain in Islam, very clearly found in the
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Hadith and the Quran, that basically says that at 40 days of gestation, an angel comes and writes for each person, whether they'll be a male or a female.
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Now, we all know that's a little bit late for that actually, but anyways, this is Muhammad, this is a long time ago. Male or female, successful or not successful,
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Muslim, non -Muslim, Christian, Jew, whatever they're going to be. Rich, poor, long life, short life, day of their death, all of it is written down for them at 40 days during gestation.
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And so, everything is fixed. The day of your death is fixed, the day of your birth. And you might say, well, what's the difference between that and a strong view of God's sovereignty?
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The fundamental difference is that Allah is so transcendent that there is no personal interaction of Allah in regards to his decree and his interaction with human beings.
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I mean, Muslims just can't even begin to grasp what we believe is the truth in regards to the incarnation, for example.
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That God would be so intimately and personally involved with his own creation. And so, from our perspective,
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God's sovereign decree includes his own personal interaction with his creation resulting in his own glory.
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That's very different than fatalism, which is really what you've got here where, you know, the most standard phrase we hear from most
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Muslims. Now, there are Western Muslims that are what we would call Armenian. Free will all the way type of thing, but they have to interpret a lot of things in a rather intriguing way.
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But the most common phrase we hear amongst most Muslims around the world is, Inshallah, Inshallah, if God wills, if God wills.
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And in many Muslim countries, especially in the
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Middle East, people will tell you, you have a very difficult time getting anyone to work very hard.
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The workday is rather short. And it's just difficult because people say,
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Inshallah, if God wills, I'll get to it, if God wills. And it has led to a, let's just say they don't exactly have a
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Puritan work ethic. It causes a problem. That's not everybody, but it is there.
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Now, we're going to have to, again, do some listening here. I, again, apologize for the video.
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But this is from one of my debates. This is the first debate I did with a
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Muslim, but I was not studying Islam yet. So, I was defending the doctrine of the
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Trinity. And this was from the audience questions. And this gives you an idea of a
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Muslim from a Muslim country who's come to the United States. And how he has heard what
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I've said. And what he considers to be a very strong, valid objection to Christianity.
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So, listen to our interaction. And as you're listening, ask yourself the question.
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How would I respond to this Muslim? Now, you're going to hear my response.
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Of course, mine's a fairly brief one because it's audience questions. But ask yourself the question, how would
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I respond? Before you hear how I did respond to this particular individual.
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Yes, my question to the doctor. I heard you repeating many times saying he's a creator about Jesus.
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Because we Muslims believe in Jesus, the mighty prophet of God. I heard you many times saying he's the creator of everything and all things.
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So, I want you to explain to me if it's possible, if he's a creator of everything.
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When Jesus was awoken by the fake tree with his companion.
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The fake tree with his companion. And he wants to eat some fig.
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And they told him, master, the fig is not in season. So, if he was
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God, how he don't know if he created the tree. How he doesn't know if what's in season or what's not in season.
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If he created everything. And if the fig was not in season and he's
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God. First of all, we don't accept God to be hungry. He wants to eat. But you Christian, you said
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God choose to do so. So, that's your faith. But I'm saying, even if he was
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God and fig is not in season. Why he couldn't order the tree to bring fig? Okay, thank you.
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Isn't that God the one create everything? Okay, thank you. To the doctor. He did so because the fig tree represented the people of Israel.
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And he made the application to the people of Israel. Look like they have fruit, but they do not. It was a clear application that he made.
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Secondly, he did eat food because the word became flesh. He became hungry. He became tired.
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Because as the New Testament, as it was written, clearly indicates. Jesus Christ was the
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God man. The eternal Logos became flesh and dwelt among us. He was a true man.
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He ate food. He became tired. He slept. He grew, etc., etc. Christians have always believed that.
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Why? Because we believe all the New Testament teaches. Okay, so I'm going to pop out for just a second.
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And see if maybe I can do something here. That might fix things.
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Let me see if. Yes, my question to the doctor.
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I heard you repeating many times. He's saying he's a creator about Jesus. Be some blessing be upon him.
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Because we Muslims believe in Jesus. There's the line of people waiting to ask the questions. I heard you many times.
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He's saying he's the creator of everything and all things. Okay, just while he was saying that, something crossed my mind that said,
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You know, when I plugged this in, it completely changed my video settings. So let's change the video output and see if it fixes it.
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So I apologize you didn't get to see some of the other. Let me actually do show you at least one here.
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So you can actually see the Kaaba and stuff. Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca is compulsory for all
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Muslims in good health and with sufficient funds to make the journey. The Hajj is the foremost of all
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Muslim rituals, even if less than 10 % of all Muslims ever manage to complete it.
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The Hajj's importance lies in its allowing the believer to approach the center of the world, as well as the place where the
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Quran's divine revelations began and continued for about 12 years. The performer of Hajj does not only reenact
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Muhammad's ritual. He or she also recalls acts of important people in Muslim history.
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The rituals performed around the Kaaba reenact when Prophet Abraham and Ishmael transformed the
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Kaaba into the sacred place of worship and peace. In spite of some physical hardships, pilgrims who complete the
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Hajj consider it one of the greatest spiritual experiences of their lives. Many Muslims regard the
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Hajj as one of the great achievements of civilization because it brings together people from around the world and focuses them upon a single goal.
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Okay, so there's that one, and then just so you have it in your mind, what it looked like, just a few seconds of this.
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Can you stand for me quickly? Just stand for me. Come right here, please. Okay, so there was the shahada, so at least you have an idea now what that was all about.
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Now, going back just briefly to the question that was asked.
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Did you understand what his objection was? His objection was if Jesus was God, he could just say, first of all, he should have known when figs are in season, and secondly, he should have just been able to say to the fig tree, bring forth figs, he's
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God, it'll come forth, and thirdly, God wouldn't be hungry anyways. Now, some of you are going, wow,
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I think the Jehovah's Witnesses are a little better than that, but those are objections.
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We may chuckle at those objections, but that doesn't mean we're answering those objections.
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And from their perspective, those objections make perfect sense, because God can't become a man,
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Allah would never do these things, God can never be hungry, and as we'll see, these are actually
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Quranic objections. They are objections found in the text of the Quran itself. So I'm going to show you a couple more clips here, then we'll take a brief break, not the full length we were going to take, because we got started a little bit late.
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We'll take a brief break, I'm going to try to run through as much of this as I can in the time that we have, and I'm going to try to leave some room for some questions toward the end.
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But this next clip that I want to show you is from my debate with Sheikh Jalal Abu Alrub.
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Sheikh Jalal is a Palestinian, and you just get the feeling that the term chip on the shoulder is somewhat descriptive at this particular point.
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Let's take a look. Oops. Is there the last hour?
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This is only the father. You remember my opponent, he said that Christians don't consider Jesus the father.
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Well, then he doesn't know about the last hour, because he's not divine. Oh, but he is in complete harmony with the father.
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Really. One of them died, and the Holy Ghost and God had no idea what's going on.
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One of them died. No, the one who died is an addition, not a subtraction. Come on, people.
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Offer the creed the same way Abraham gave it to his people. Did he ever say anything like this? We're angry here,
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I was insulted twice here. The terrible stuff my opponent said about Muhammad, taking stuff out of context and using fabricated words.
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And secondly, calling a son to God is the greatest offense to us
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Muslims. So don't think that you can come here and act angry, because we are angry, because Allah doesn't have a son.
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He told you so. Jesus never said, I am Lord, I am divine, I am the God, the Creator.
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Worship me as you worship God. The Holy Ghost is God. Adam didn't say it, Abraham didn't say it,
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Noah didn't say it. They must have known another God, a new one, the one you know. I ask
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Allah to open your hearts and minds, because Jesus said it in so many ways that he's not
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God. You just want to stick it to him no matter what. You just want to stick it to him no matter what.
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That was a very interesting debate. It's all available on YouTube if you'd like to see the whole thing, because I think it's a little bit more representative of the kind of encounter you'd have with most street -level
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Muslims in regards to these particular issues. But I don't want you to get the idea that the only objections to our beliefs from Muslims are like Sheikh Jalal or the fellow from the initial debate.
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So this next clip is from the debate that I did at Biola University in 2006.
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This really was my first serious Islamic debate. This was with a man by the name of Shabir Ali.
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Listen to this portion of our cross -examination period from Biola University.
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There were about 2 ,500 students there that evening. They found it to be a very interesting evening.
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Is there any way that you can give to us this evening to explain to us how we can determine what is still inspired in the
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New Testament and what is not? Well, I believe that Muslims have a simple answer to this in saying that whatever is in the
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Koran, that would be a judge of whatever is there in the Bible. So whatever the
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Bible agrees with the Koran, that obviously is inspired. What is contradictory is obviously not from God.
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And that which is neutral, neither in agreement nor in disagreement, may be treated with some bit of silence.
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Usually the classical scholars have recommended silence. But I believe that Muslims who are quite familiar with the
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Gospels and familiar with the development of the text over time can make some judgments, though these judgments will be tentative.
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So everything about the cross, resurrection, atonement, deity of Christ, Jesus is the son of God, the
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Holy Spirit is a divine person, not an angel, Gabriel. All of that stuff is uninspired and a corruption of the original intention of the
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New Testament in light of the Koran. A Muslim would say that the Koranic revelation is here now, is the pristine word of God, that teaches us that there is only one
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God, that Jesus is his Messiah, but nevertheless a servant, a messenger of the one true
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God. And so anything that is contrary to that, something that teaches, for example, that human responsibility as described in the
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Koran is to be somehow evaded, that would be contrary and would be thought to be a later development.
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Now, of course, that could be studied from another angle. One can look at the history and development of Christian teaching over time, one can look at the
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Gospels even without Islamic presuppositions, and it seems to me that many biblical scholars are coming to conclusions which are very close to the main conclusions which
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Muslims insist on, that Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet, like the prophets of the
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Old Testament. He preached the belief in God, similar to the belief that was known from the
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Jewish prophets since he himself was Jewish, he lived in a Jewish milieu. You mean people like the Jesus Seminar, John Dominic Cross and Marcus Borg.
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It doesn't have to be them, the scholars are so numerous, it would be hard for us to list them and to name them now.
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Is there any New Testament book that Mark, for example, which you've referred to many times,
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Mark clearly identifies Jesus as the Son of God, puts words in his mouth that you would never be able to accept as a Muslim, isn't that correct?
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Well, it is clear that even Mark must have suffered from a similar sort of phenomenon that we described in the case of Matthew, and John Bowden has made specifically that point in his book,
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Jesus, the Unanswered Questions. If we look at Mark 1, verse 1, which in many Bibles begins the beginning of the
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Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, it is noted in the NIV, for example, that the title, the
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Son of God, in this particular verse is not found in some of the most ancient and reliable manuscripts.
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So, I'm not saying that the Gospel according to Mark does not present Jesus as the Son of God, but we have to be aware of scribal changes that have affected the
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Gospel according to Mark in places as well. And, in fact, we are working with the Gospel according to Mark not only as it has come down to us, knowing the history of scribal changes, we would not be out of our grounds to wonder if, in fact, we do really have the original
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Markan Gospel. Would you admit that you do not have any hard manuscript evidence from the first or second centuries that gives to us a
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New Testament that looks like a Muslim would expect it to look like? We do not have such a document. We do not have such a document was the last thing he said there.
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Very, very quickly, one last clip since we're running behind. Had an excellent debate in Sydney, Australia, University of New South Wales less than two years ago with Abdullah Kunda.
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And we debated a subject that's vitally important and that is can God become man, the incarnation?
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And here is a portion of our interaction. Now, it's a little bit difficult to understand Abdullah. The sound wasn't real good, but he is an
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Australian with somewhat of a German accent. So you put all that together, and it's very, very interesting. But here is just a portion of that interaction.
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I would really, if you want to listen to a debate online, this is one I would recommend that you listen to or watch on YouTube.
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Mr. Kunda, I think we have to really focus. When I say the central question is this, and your response is that I have diminished capacity,
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I think we're talking past each other somehow at this point. So let's look at that question again.
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I asked the question, does God as creator have the power, ability, or capacity to join a human nature to himself if he pleases to do so?
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Now, did I understand in your rebuttal that you likened that to can God create another
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God? Yes, that's correct, that's what I likened it to, or any of the other illogical fallacies that I mentioned.
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Okay, can you explain how that question involves a logical fallacy?
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Well, from a Muslim perspective, obviously not from a Christian perspective, but from a Muslim perspective, as I said,
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God has certain attributes which we consider essential and which only apply to him.
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So for example, without a beginning and without an end are two of these attributes. Now, these are not possessed by anything else in creation, they're only possessed by God.
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So we say that for God, or even if we were to entertain the argument that there's three persons of God, that for one of those persons who is apparently co -eternal and co -equal with the other two, to then give up one of these essential attributes for us would be an illogical fallacy.
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Because for us by definition, if God doesn't have one of these attributes, he's not God. What essential attribute do you see the question assuming when it says, does
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God as creator have the power or ability or capacity to join a human nature to himself if he pleases to do so?
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What essential element is being abandoned? Well, all of them. Because human nature by definition, we're dependent upon things,
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I'm dependent upon three dimensions in space that I exist in, I'm dependent upon time, I'm dependent upon sustenance.
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So it immediately removes him from being self -subsistent. I do not have independent knowledge.
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I acquire my knowledge from other people or from books, et cetera. So it denies him having knowledge. I cannot see beyond the walls of this building, so it denies him having universal sight, so on and so on.
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So it was a very, very, very interesting encounter. It really helps to understand the mindset of a very bright young Muslim.
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He's one of the few Muslims that I sent in my book on the trinity. He actually read it and attempted to alter his arguments to respond to what
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I said in my book. And you need to understand that's extremely rare. Most Muslims just do not do that.
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They have a set of arguments, and whether that actually interacts with what we believe or not is a completely different issue.
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But Abdullah has twice now, when I've contacted him, when I've been teaching classes on Islam, been willing to get up at an outrageous time there in Australia to join my class on Skype.
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And I've had my students in my class asking him questions and interacting with him on video from Australia.
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So he's a real nice young man, and I hope to have more debates with him and more encounters with him in the future.