Christianity and Islam, Session 2

The Quran as a Physical Book and a Debate Object

I'm going to pass a book around, sometimes I have trouble getting it back, but I'm going to pass an Arabic Quran around in case you have not had an opportunity to look at an Arabic Quran. This is, I'll just tell you a quick story.

One of my sources that I have studied for a long time, listened to, is Sheikh Yasser Khadi. Yasser Khadi grew up in Houston. If you'd like to hear a Muslim presenting Islam, I would recommend to you his 16 CD set called Light and Guidance.

And once, listening to a lecture by Yasser Khadi where he was speaking to his students, normally he can just simply quote a text from the Quran in the Arabic and then the English just like that, but all of us have those days.

When I was debating in the East London Mosque, I cannot tell you how many times I have quoted John 1 -1 in Greek in my life in debates, it's just an arcane, it's just second nature. But some days that doesn't work, the way my mom used to put it is you get your tongue in front of your eye teeth and you can't see what you're saying.

And I ended up speaking in TBN tongues during this debate. And this sort of happened to Yasser Khadi and he just couldn't get this one verse out. So he stops and he says, well it's in surah, whatever the surah was, on the right page at the top.

Now for you and I, we couldn't do that. I can't say it's on the right page at the top because we all have such completely different translations of the Bible. This is so common amongst Muslims that you can get away with it because that surah was short enough, it was on the right hand page at the top.

So it was actually a valid reference. This is a 1924 Egyptian printing and so I'm going to pass this around and trust that you all will return it to me in one piece. Take a look at it. It is, Arabic of course is a Semitic language so it's written from right to left, not from left to right.

So the beginning of the book is the back of the book, in front of the book is all the rest of that kind of stuff, just as it would be with a Hebrew text of the Old Testament. And so take a look at that and pass it around to the audience if you would be so kind to do that.

Debates in South Africa and the Reality of Mosque Settings

On the screen right now is a picture from South Africa. This is my debate with Bashir Varnia. This was the first debate that I did once I got to South Africa in the mosque in Linasia. The room was packed out.

We had people standing outside the room at the windows, looking in through the windows as we debated the issue of can God become man? And Bashir is a very kind gentleman. Two nights later he hosted me and my host, Rudolf Buschhoff, in his home and his wife cooked all sorts of wonderful Indian foods for us and we could only be there a certain amount of time.

It was a shame because we were having such a nice time and conversation with one another. So that is in Linasia, South Africa. That was the first debate we did. And then this was the picture that I told you about before.

This is probably of all of my adult ministry the most amazing picture that I possess right now. That is inside the masjid in Erasmus, South Africa. You can see over here, you can see just a little bit of the Arabic right here.

This is called the Qibla. So we had been there during the prayers beforehand and so the imam was standing where I was standing except he was facing the Qibla and everybody was in lines behind him, bowing down and praying.

The majority, you don't see much of the audience because they're sitting on the carpet. They're not in chairs. I didn't know that I was going to have a table, it turned out to be nice. And yes, I am in stocking feet because shoes are not allowed in the masjid.

So it's definitely the first time I've ever debated in stocking feet. But seated across from me is the moderator right here, that's Yusuf Ismail. Yusuf is with the IPCI in South Africa. He's sort of taken over from probably the most, well still to this day, the best known Islamic speaker in the world, Ahmed Didat, who started the IPCI down there in South Africa.

And you can see just beyond him in the kufi right there, there is Shabir Ali. And we are debating sin and salvation in the masjid. You can see someone up in the ladies area, sort of watching from up here.

But as you can see, it was all recorded and will be available eventually. And that was an incredible, incredible experience to be able to do that on the other side of the planet, quite literally. So at least what you're hearing today is not from the hallowed halls of academia and has never been taken into the field.

You don't get much more in the field than this, debating sin and salvation in the masjid itself. Oh, I warned you, I'm having some problems with my Mac. Just strangely, these pictures of this darling cute little baby just pop up in the middle of things.

I don't know where, but yeah. Oh, am I supposed to be doing something? Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't know I was supposed to be doing something right now. Her name is Clementine, and I had nothing to do whatsoever with her middle name, which is James.

J-A-Y-M-E-S. So Clementine James, C .J., or as we call her Ban Kwee Kwee. I don't know, don't even ask. You know, when a mother is sleep deprived, those first few weeks, not getting much sleep, all sorts of funny names suggest themselves.

So Ban Kwee Kwee, I'm Grand Kwee Kwee. You know, it's sort of funny how that all worked together. But that's a little Clementine there. All right, let's get to work, because we have some work to do. My understanding is we're going to have a question and answer period.

Now, ironically, the Q &A period is going to come before the primary theological material, which will come in the third session. But hopefully you'll still have some questions that we can work with at that particular point in time.

Then this afternoon, we'll have the primary theological material between 1 .30 and 2 .30. And then between 3 and 4, it's going to be story time with Uncle Jim. Basically, what I'm going to do is narrate a number of hadith to you.

I'll explain what the hadith are here in a little while. But they are the stories and actions of Muhammad and his companions, which really form the fabric of Islamic theology. Now, obviously, when we saw the little video on Hajj, you may recall that the narrator talked about how Abraham and Ishmael had founded the Kaaba.

In Islamic tradition and lore, the Kaaba was founded by Abraham and Ishmael, not Isaac, for obvious reasons. And, of course, historically, there's absolutely no evidence whatsoever that Abraham ever went as far down as Mecca.

And, in fact, there are real questions as to whether Mecca, as a meaningful location, even existed prior to the time of Christ. But, from the Islamic perspective, that place of worship was originally founded as a place of monotheistic worship.

And then, over time, became corrupted into the polytheistic worship that existed in the days of Muhammad, many, many, many years after the days of Abraham. And so, by tradition, there are like 360 idols in the Kaaba in the days of Muhammad in the beginning of the 7th century.

His prophethood begins in 610 AD. So, we're talking over half a millennium after the time of Christ is when you have the origination of Islam. Now, from the Islamic perspective, that's not the case. From the Islamic perspective, the Islamic religion predates all the rest of us.

They do believe, people always ask, do we all worship the same God? Well, the Quran says that Allah is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. But, a well-read Muslim will recognize that Christians and Muslims do not worship the same God.

As long as they recognize that the doctrine of the Trinity is not just something you put on, you know, sort of add on and can take off. Sadly, many of the Christians that Muslims interact with are barely Trinitarian at all.

And, in fact, I would say most evangelicals in Western societies are primarily monotheists, not really Trinitarian. I mean, let's be honest. If we were to give a quiz, if I were to give you a quiz right now, anybody getting nervous?

If I were to give you a quiz right now, if we were to give a quiz to our people Sunday morning after church, how many of them would fall into the errors of modalism, confusing the Father and the Son? How many would be able to explain the relationship of the Father and the Son?

How many would have any knowledge of why the Eastern Orthodox split off in 1054 over a phrase called the Filioque? What does it mean for the Holy Spirit to proceed from both the Father and the Son, or only from the Father?

What did Jesus say, what did Jesus mean when he said, I and the Father, we are one? It's a plural verb in the Greek, by the way. It's not, I and the Father is one. It's, I and the Father, we are one. Basic Trinitarian theology is, unfortunately, something that a lot of evangelicals are very uncomfortable about.

And, as a result, the Trinity is normally not something we talk about. And since it's not, then you can understand why many Muslims are confused on that particular subject, because they very rarely encounter Christians who can give a meaningful answer for the hope that is within them.

And that is a tragedy, and I certainly have encountered that many, many, many times. Well, anyways, that sermon was for free. Now, basically, Mecca exists in a location where it cannot support itself.

It has to be supported by caravan trade up into Christian Syria. You can simply not provide the type of food and sustenance that you would need to maintain even a small-sized city, given the climate and where they are there.

And so there's a tremendous amount of caravan trade up into Christian Syria, and this is where we first encounter Muhammad, according primarily to the Islamic sources. I'm primarily giving you the Islamic perspective here.

Let me just mention briefly there are people that are putting books out. Robert Spencer put out a book recently basically saying Muhammad did not exist. There are a number of scholars, even a Muslim scholar in Germany recently came to the conclusion that Muhammad probably did not exist, etc., etc.

I think he's in hiding now, but that's another issue. But I don't think there's really any reason whatsoever to question the existence of Muhammad as a historical person. I believe the Hadith literature is one of the strongest evidences of that.

There's just simply too many lines of tradition to not believe that there was someone named Muhammad. Now, at the same time, I'm not so naive as to think that the stories of the Hadith are actually all 100 true about the life of Muhammad and all the amazing things that allegedly took place.

In fact, it's fascinating. The Quran never attributes a miracle to Muhammad at all. Some people say, well, there's one verse about the splitting of the moon, and that has something to do with Muhammad.

But the Quran's message is the only miracle that Muhammad presents is the Quran itself. You cannot imitate the Quran. You cannot produce anything like it. It's inimitable. But when you get into the Hadith, all of a sudden there's miracles all over the place.

And interestingly enough, many of them parallel the miracles of Jesus, providing food in a miraculous fashion for his followers and things like that. But since the Hadith are not collected for 200, 300 years after the time of Muhammad, it's something obviously that grows over time.

And so when I say I'm using primarily Islamic sources here, I'm primarily giving you the Islamic perspective. And I'm not getting into the stuff concerning whether Muhammad did or did not exist and some of the liberal scholars that make that.

I think we need to be very careful, by the way. Christians need to be very, very careful. You will find all sorts of books against Islam. Find out who wrote them. Many of them are written by atheists.

And they will be utilizing the very same standards that we reject when they attack our faith. As a result, we cannot use their material in dealing with Islam. One of my biggest concerns is that we must be consistent.

I am constantly telling my Islamic apologetic opponents that Muslims use different standards when they are dealing with my Bible than they do when they're dealing with the Quran. And when you use different standards, that is indication that you are not speaking truthfully.

Well, we need to be careful then. We need to use the same standards in analyzing the Quran and Muhammad that we would utilize in looking at anything else. We cannot utilize naturalistic materialism on one hand and then turn around and say, oh, but you can't do that in looking at the New Testament.

We need to be very, very careful about that. And I'm afraid, unfortunately, a lot of people fall into that trap. So we need to be very discerning. So the first encounter we have with Muhammad, basically, is that he is a young man who is going up on caravan trade into Syria.

He would have encountered Jews and Christians at that particular point in time. And he proved himself to be a rather honest individual. And so he actually, whoops, go back there one. It's not really catching real well there.

I'll skip it. I'll just tell you that he became known as a rather honest young man, honest in his dealings. And so he ended up marrying an older woman, Khadijah, who was fairly wealthy. He had been involved in her caravan trade business workings and so on and so forth.

They married. And he was want to go off into a cave, a cave right outside of Mecca, and to contemplate. And many people would say he never worshipped the idolatrous gods. He was never one who engaged in shirk.

He was not a mushrik. His parents were. His parents died as idolaters. That will come up a little bit later as we talk about that. And so around 610 A .D., he has an experience in the cave. And in that cave, the angel Jibril comes to him.

We would call him Gabriel. And he says to him, recite. And Muhammad says, I can't recite. According to the standard Islamic understanding, Muhammad was illiterate. That's a little bit difficult to believe, that he was involved with all this business stuff, which would have involved some written documents, receipts, things like that.

The idea that he couldn't have any knowledge of written language is a little bit difficult to believe. But that is what they say. And the angel grabs him and squeezes him until he thinks he's going to die.

And then he releases him. And he says, recite. This happens three times. And finally, after the third time, then the angel begins to recite to him the first portions of the Koran. Now, as the Koran is being distributed or passed around the audience here, one of the things that if you had an English Koran that you would note is that there is no chronological order to the Koran.

If you ever decide to read the Koran, the Koran is only about 56 the length of the New Testament. It's about 14 the length of the entire Bible. It's a relatively short work, and hence certainly manageable.

But if you try to read the Koran from beginning to end, it will not make almost any sense to you whatsoever. It is next to impossible to exegete the text of the Koran the way that we exegete the text of the New Testament.

There are entire sections of the Koran where we just simply don't even know what the background is. In other places where we think we know, we know that only because the Hadith tells us so, which can be questionable in and of itself.

And so we're on very different ground when we're dealing with the text of the Koran than we are with the New Testament. If you ever do decide to read it, do not read it from beginning to end because it won't make any sense to you at all.

The first surah, Surah al-Fatiha, is a seven-verse opening prayer. Then Surah al-Baqarah, the surah of the cow, is the longest surah. That's surah number two. Surah three is a little bit shorter. Surah four is a little bit shorter.

And it's done on the length of the surahs. So you get up to 114 surahs. Those last few surahs are only a few verses long. And so if you read it from beginning to end, you're bouncing back and forth, back and forth between different major periods in Muhammad's life.

And so even if you have the background information I'm going to be giving you, it's going to be next to impossible to follow that through the Koran. And so in my book, Whatever Christians Need to Know About the Koran, there is a chart.

I forgot which page it's on. But there's a chart that gives you sort of the best guess that we can come up with as to the chronological order of the surahs themselves. It's toward the front of the book.

And if you follow that, at least you'll have a little better chance of making heads or tails. And you'll also sort of be able to follow the development of Muhammad's thought over time. But I should mention, from the Islamic perspective, there is no development in Muhammad's thought in the Koran because there is none of Muhammad's thought in the Koran at all.

The Muslim believes that the Koran was written on tablets in heaven eternally. Sunni Islam, this is not the view of the Shiites, but Sunni Islam eventually developed the orthodox perspective that the Koran is as eternal as God himself.

This raises all sorts of theological questions, actually. But the Koran is uncreated. And since it is uncreated, then there is nothing of Muhammad in it at all. It simply comes down from heaven. It's given to Jabril.

Jabril dictates it to Muhammad. That's it. What Muhammad understood is irrelevant. And so what we do with our Bibles, when our ministers open the word, hopefully good ministers open the word, we talk about the backgrounds of Paul.

We talk about the church at Corinth. We talk about the language that was used, the political situation at the time, what was going on with the Roman Empire, the idolatry that was in the city. We provide all this information as we look at passages like 1 Corinthians 8 and its statement that there is only one true God and the use of the Shema.

We bring all that stuff together. You can't do that with the Koran. It's just not possible to do. And it's a violation of the Islamic view of the Koran to ask questions like, when Muhammad met with the Christians from Najran toward the end of his life, how did that impact the text of the Koran?

Did he grow in his understanding of Christianity? Irrelevant. Not even allowed to be asked within orthodox Islam. Now, those questions are asked in liberal Islam. But I've often wondered, if you're a liberal Muslim, what's it like to embrace religion where you know that if you were to say what you actually believe, in nations where your religion is the legal religion of the land, what's it like to know that they would kill you for that?

What's it like to know that you would minimally be imprisoned, kicked out of the country, or killed for believing the things you believe? I find that to be something that my liberal Muslim friends need to consider just a little bit.

So, anyways, as you look at the Koran, you'll see that it's in that kind of an order. And what that means is, these first words of the Koran are not the words of Surah 1. They're actually the words of Surah 96, Ayahs 1 through 5.

The surahs of the chapters, the ayahs of the verses. Ayat is the plural. Proclaim or read in the name of thy Lord and Cherisher who created man out of a mere clot of congealed blood. Proclaim, and thy Lord is most powerful.

He who taught the use of the pen taught man that which he knew not. So, these are the first words that come from the angel Gabriel. Now, Muhammad's response is very, very interesting. He goes home and he tells his wife to wrap him up because he thinks he's been attacked by a jinn and he's demon possessed.

And then after that, when the angel doesn't show up again with further revelation, he more than once attempts to throw himself off of a cliff to kill himself. And the angel has to show up and say, you're a prophet of God.

Now, that again is directly from Islamic sources. I'm not making that kind of thing up. I would not do so. It does have importance for me because his reaction to this initial encounter is not the reaction of any of the prophets of the Bible.

And one of the issues that constantly comes up in my debates with Muslims is the assumption on their part that the author of the Quran knows what is in the Bible. I have found no evidence in multiple readings of the Quran and in reading of the Hadith literature that Muhammad had any first or even meaningful second-hand knowledge of the contents of either the Old and the New Testament.

He knew more of the stories of the Old Testament. He knew almost none of the stories of the New Testament at all. And so the Muslim operates on the assumption that the Quran is the final authority. But the reality is the Quran is written by someone who had next to no knowledge whatsoever of the books that came before him even though he claims that his message is consistent with what is found in the Torah and the Injil.

This results in the apologetic issues that we face today. And we'll expand upon those things a little bit more as we get through the material here. Now, I'm going to have to, since I can't see what's coming up, I'm just going to have to click, click, click, and we'll do the best we can from there.

Now, he begins his ministry in 610. Between 610 and 622, he is a minority prophet in Mecca. What do I mean by minority? Well, he's teaching monotheism while everybody else believes in polytheism. And so he is abused, he is persecuted, his few followers are persecuted.

One of the Hadith stories, and let me just mention what the Hadith are because I'm going to be, in the last hour, talking much more about this. But the Hadith, as I've said, are the stories, sayings, and actions of Muhammad and his companions.

They were collected between 200 and 300 years after the time of Muhammad. Some collections began a little bit earlier than that, like the Muwatta of Malik and things like that. But the Sunni have six authoritative Hadith collections.

Some are more authoritative than others. They are called Sahih collections. Sahih means sound. There is an entire realm of Hadith study. I have listened to many lectures on the subject of how to analyze Hadith.

They are, without a doubt, some of the most boring things you'll ever listen to in your life, but I felt it was necessary, I needed to know these things. I've thought of the irony. I live in Phoenix, Arizona.

I do most of my studying on the back of a bicycle. I listen to these things. That's how I combine my passion for cycling and my study. I would not get nearly as much done in study and preparation if I did not ride.

Four-day week this past week, I had 13 hours and 22 minutes on the bike. Listening to books, I get through one and a half to two books a week, aside from debates and things that I'm listening to. Since I live in Phoenix, if you're riding in June, July, August, you're riding at 2, 3 o 'clock in the morning.

That's the only time you can ride. If that big, glowing, bright thing, which you all don't have here, but we have it down there, if that big, glowing, bright thing is in the sky for more than about an hour, you are turned into a crispy critter.

I'll be out there at 3 o 'clock in the morning, and I've stopped at a few stoplights a couple times and thought, you know, if I ever get hit by a car out here, they're going to pick up my iPod and start listening, going, call the government.

We've got a problem here. Because I'm listening to lectures on how you determine Hadith studies. But anyways, there are two collections that are the most primarily authoritative amongst Sunni Muslims in the world, and that is Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim.

Bukhari is nine volumes, English, Arabic. Muslim is eight volumes, English, Arabic. And yes, I've read all of Bukhari and all of Muslim, and that's the sources I'll be drawing from as I tell you some of those Hadith stories later on in the afternoon.

But those Hadith stories become the background, the history. It becomes the very milieu in which the Quran is interpreted. It comes from the Hadith as well. And so most of the sermons that you will hear, the khutbahs in the mosque, these exhortations are primarily drawn from the Hadith literature.

And so the Muslim is very accustomed to hearing these stories being told within that context. And so one of those stories relates how Muhammad was prostrate in prayer in Mecca during this particular period of time.

And his enemies came along and dropped on his back the entrails of a camel. So the guts of a camel. And so he just stayed in that position until his daughter Fatima came along and pulled the entrails off of him, and then he finished his prayers.

Now what is interesting to note is that every time that that story is told in the Hadith literature, I just happen to notice, these are things that Christians would notice as they're listening to this, I just happen to notice that each of the stories then mentions the specific names of the people who did this and mentions that after Islam arrived, they were all killed.

So you don't have the same concept of the forgiveness of your enemies. You have the retribution that actually comes upon them is what is emphasized at that particular point in time. Now, finally, in AD 622, you have what's called the Hijra.

This is when Muhammad and his followers leave Mecca and they go to a little town called Yathrib, which is renamed Medina, the city of the prophet. And this is the beginning of the Islamic calendar, is AD 622.

Now you can't just make a straight transfer over, by the way, because remember, they're using a lunar calendar, so their years are shorter than ours. So figuring out what year it is in the Islamic calendar really takes a computer, which thankfully we have now.

But 622 is the beginning of the Islamic calendar with the Hijra and the going to Medina. And so now you have a new reality. The new reality is Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, he is, instead of a minority prophet, he is the head of an army.

He is now in charge of the defense of a city. The Meccans come against the city a number of times. You have the Battle of Badr, the Battle of Uhud, the Battle of the Trench, all between 624 and 627. In Badr, the Muslims are victorious at Uhud.

They are not victorious, and at the Trench, it's sort of a stalemate. But the Meccans realized that Muhammad's strength and power was growing. He was unifying many of the desert tribes, the Bedouin tribes, together.

And they knew they had a major problem with this new power that was developing in that area. And so after one of these battles, there were a number of Jewish tribes in Medina. And after one of these battles, the Banu Quraizah, a Jewish tribe, was accused of betraying Muhammad.

And so once the battle was over, they then surrounded the Banu Quraizah. The Banu Quraizah surrendered. Muhammad oversaw the enslavement of the women and children, and then personally was involved with, in one day, the beheading of over 700 people, 700 men, from the Banu Quraizah tribe at this particular point in time.

Again, Muhammad is a warrior. He is a politician. He is a statesman, first and foremost, in a rather violent and difficult area of the world and needs to be analyzed within that context. The problem comes when Islam makes him not only the final prophet of Allah, but the best of all of mankind, so that everything he did related to us in the sunnah of the life of Muhammad becomes the basis for which Muslims take God's revelation.

So, for example, the Hadith literature contains incredible instructions as to how you live your life, down to the most minute elements of things. You never, for example, offer your left hand to a Muslim.

You only offer the right hand to a Muslim. If you don't have a right hand, you don't offer him anything at all. The left hand is the hand you use to clean yourself after you go to the bathroom. That's what you're supposed to do because that's what Muhammad did.

So, you never offer the left hand. You're only supposed to use an odd number of stones when you clean yourself. Thankfully, we don't need to do that anymore. That's what the Hadith says. When you eat figs, you only eat an odd number of figs.

You eat one fig or three figs or five figs, but you never eat four figs because that's not what Muhammad did. It is that elevation of Muhammad to the position of being the final example that really is problematic in certain areas that we could get into, including how he treated the Banu Qurayza.

Finally, in 628, Muhammad marches his army to Mecca. The truce of Hudaybiyyah is worked out at that time. Many of his followers thought they were going to get to go on Hajj, they were going to get to visit the Kaaba.

It didn't happen that year, but Muhammad used this as a victory, and it did eventually lead to the fall of Mecca. When the Islamic armies took over Mecca, there was actually very little bloodshed. In fact, the main people who died were poets.

Muhammad took poetry very seriously, and there were a number of poets that lost their lives because they dared to criticize Muhammad over the years. They take over Mecca in 630. They've now unified most of the Arabian Peninsula at that particular point in time.

He dies back in Medina in 632 AD. His ministry only goes from 610 to 632, for about 22 years as the prophet. Then you have all the big issues about who is to be in charge of Islam. This is where the major division in Islam begins.

That is that the Shiites believe that Ali should have been his immediate successor. Instead, you had Abu Bakr became the first caliph, and then Umar, and then Uthman, and then Ali. But the division between the Sunnis and the Shiites, then under Ali, you have civil war, and the division takes place at that time.

That leads to a lot of things we don't have time to get into today. But he dies in 632, and the Islamic State then, very important in history to remember, that between 632 and 732 is the century of Islamic expansion.

It goes from a religion in Saudi Arabia to going all the way up to the Holy Land, into Iraq, into Pakistan, all the way up toward the Byzantine Empire, all across North Africa, across the Straits of Gibraltar, into Spain, Portugal, and it's only finally stopped by Charles Martel, the Battle of Tours in 732.

So for 100 years, this became one of the most dominant empires in the medieval world. Most of those lands had been at least nominally Christian up until that point in time. So this is where the beginnings of the conflict really take place during that particular century.

Muhammad, Aisha, and Zaynab: Marriage, Adoption, and Qur'anic Revelation

Now, some of the key theological events in Muhammad's life. Muhammad and Zaynab bin Josh. Now let me mention something. Let me just ask a question of you. How many of you know, merely by my enunciation of the name, who Aisha was?

Anyone know who Aisha was? Put your hands up because it's dark out there to me. How many of you do not know who Aisha was? How many of you did not bother to raise your hand at all? Okay. I always appreciate the folks who just sit there and go, no, I'm not.

I don't care if you ask me. Someone might see. Why? I'm just asking. Anyway, Aisha was the child bride of Muhammad. Aisha was the favorite bride of Muhammad. Khadijah died, and Muhammad then married a number of women.

Even though the Quran had limited the number of women that a man could marry to four, he was given a special dispensation to where he could marry more than four women. And Aisha was Abu Bakr's daughter.

Abu Bakr was his closest friend and confidant. He became the first caliph. Aisha was six years old when the marriage was arranged and nine years old when it was consummated. And Muhammad was 54 at the time of that particular marriage.

Now, as a result, there are a lot of people who run around calling Muhammad a pedophile and everything else. The fact of the matter is that if we're fair, the reality is the Quran shows not the slightest bit of embarrassment about Aisha.

And none of the early sources do. It was a commonplace thing. In fact, if anything, Aisha is seen as even more important because of that, because she's the only virgin that Muhammad married. And so the Quran shows no hesitation and no embarrassment whatsoever about the situation with Aisha.

I think the Aisha story is a non-starter for Christian apologists, personally. There's a far more important story, actually, that the Quran does show great embarrassment about, that the vast majority of Christians, Christian apologists, and unfortunately Muslims know nothing about, and that is Muhammad and Zaynab bin Josh.

Zaynab bin Josh was Muhammad's first cousin. And he had married her, he had given her in marriage to his adopted son, Zayd. Now Zayd was a freed slave, and Muhammad had adopted him, and there was a close relationship between them.

To make a very long story short, Muhammad once visited Zayd's home. Zayd was not home. Zaynab was there, and somehow Muhammad saw Zaynab in some state of semi-dress. And was absolutely smitten with her beauty.