6 - Islam, Part 1

Introduction to the School of World Religions and Course Materials

Well, welcome to the Striving for Eternity Academy's School of World Religions. This is our class on a study of the major Western religions. We're glad to have you with us. Oh, thanks for the slide up after I said it, thanks.

But we're glad to have you with us. If you are a student and you have a syllabus, you can grab it. We're going to be going through that. It is helpful to have the syllabus. You can pick one up at strivingforeternity .org.

That's where you can find out more about the Striving for Eternity Academy, the other classes that we teach, as well as ordering the syllabus. The syllabus is about $25 each. We try to keep each syllabus around that price.

And you can go to store .strivingforeternity .org to get directly to the store, or go to the general website, strivingforeternity .org. We'll say that these lessons are based off of a book that I have written called What Do They Believe?

It is something that you can get at our store. But What Do They Believe? It's also available on Amazon. The book here, we will be going through some of the material in that book. If you want to get that book, you're going to find more material than we are going to go over in each lesson, just so you know.

It's a good companion along with this. The syllabus is good because we're going to give you the blanks to fill in, help you with the important issues. And also, what we're going to do that we don't do in the book is we're going to go through a Christian response to each of the doctrines that we look at.

So again, what we're doing is looking at different religions within their authority systems, seeing what it is they actually believe, giving some response, Christian response to it. But primarily trying to be accurate with what they believe from their sources.

We're looking at six major doctrines. What's their authority? What's their view of God? What's their view of Christ? What's their view of sin? What's their view of salvation? And what's their view of end times?

Islam as a Major Western Religion

So those six we're going to be looking at. And this week, we're going to be looking at Islam. We're in lesson number three on Islam. And so that is going to be today's lesson. We will complete it next class, but we will start today.

Give you a background. This is a world religion that has gotten a lot of interest ever since September 11, 2001, where in, well, for a lot of the Western world, it suddenly became aware that there was this major growing religion known as Islam.

And so Islam is the name given to the religion founded by Muhammad of Arabia in the early 7th century. The word Islam is actually derived from a verb, S-L-M, in English would be the letters. But it means to resign or to surrender or to submit oneself.

And so an Islam, okay, means the act of submission. And that is your blank there. The act of submission. That's what Islam means. It means the act of submission and of resigning of oneself. And submission is an important part to understanding Islam and the mindset.

And so you must understand that one who professes Islam is called a Muslim. Again, you see the S-L-M in there again. And so that's the concept there. So one who professes Islam is a Muslim. And that means one who has submitted, okay.

So the Islam is the act of submission. The one who does submit is a Muslim. The word Muslim finds its root in the same word for peace, Salaam. Now that is where many see that people will say Islam is a religion of peace.

They base it on the fact that the root word for Islam is the idea of peace. But though that is the name given to it, it's the idea, you know, submission. And the thought that many have is that true peace will be discovered through submitting to Allah.

Now, we would kind of disagree with some of that as Christians. But that is the idea that they have. And I do, I should, two things I do have to say is sometimes there will be times where I'm speaking because I'm reading from documents.

So sometimes people think that I am condoning what I'm saying. I'm reading from the documents and explaining what Islam will be teaching, alright. But there will be times where I'll try to give some commentary on that.

Muhammad's Life, Early Islam, and the Expansion of the Faith

Now, Islam is one of the youngest of the world's major religions. It started in the 7th century with the life and mission of Muhammad. It was not a totally new religion when it started. The conceptual roots of it are found in Judaism and Christianity.

Muslims see their religion as the continuation, really the ratification of the Judeo-Christian tradition. Muhammad was born in 570 A .D. in Mecca. He was illiterate all of his life. He was an orphaned slave to a wealthy woman whom he eventually married.

By marriage he became a person of importance and was able to find time for uninterrupted meditation on religious matters. He was concerned about idolatry and polytheism of his countrymen. Forced out of Mecca because of his teachings, he and his followers moved to Medina where he developed his teachings more fully.

Muhammad used the teachings of Islam to unite the Arab tribes in warfare against their enemies. Islam won much of the Middle East by force. When we look at the background, the history, I'm going to give some history.

I took an online class on the history of Islam taught by a Muslim. It was very interesting taking it as a non-Muslim, the things that they would see and someone from a Christian background would see things and recognize I would say problems in what they believe.

But let's go through some of the background and I'm going to give you a synopsis. If you want, I strongly suggest you get the book, What Do They Believe? written by Andrew Rappaport. That's me. To be able to see more, I put a little bit more of the history in there.

Just so that you kind of get an idea. But Muhammad originally, let me start with his early life. The earliest accounts of Muhammad's life were not written until about 150 years after his death. They're all Muslim sources.

There's no external evidence supporting the early life of Muhammad. And let's not get too bogged down with that. There's nothing on the early life of Jesus other than some Gnostic writings which we wouldn't see as accurate.

But the idea that much of his life is not written down until after his death could be concerning. And that there are no external documents, external to Islam. With Christ, there was external documents, Jewish and Roman documents, from historians that document the life of Christ that we have.

So there is a difference there. Muhammad was born, as I said, in 570 AD. This was a few months after the death of his father. His mother died when he was six. And his uncle took care of him. He ended up becoming a slave, a very wealthy woman.

Now you've got to keep in mind that in the area they were, much of it was trading, was how people made money. And this becomes important in a historical understanding of Islam. But he became a slave and eventually the woman that owned him as a slave, he ended up marrying.

She was much older than him. She was 15 years older than him, in fact. And when he married her, he was only 25 years old. The marriage produced seven children. All except one died. One daughter was the only to survive childhood.

And we end up seeing that his marriage, as I mentioned, gave him, he no longer needed to be working as hard. He was more of a tradesman now. He wasn't the slave. And he got, he was in contact with different people and would discuss with different people things of religious nature.

Keep in mind that he would be trading in the areas outside of the Roman Empire. So really where he focused was, he was learning and dialoguing with Jewish people and also those Christians that were outside of Rome.

In other words, to be outside of Rome as a Christian at that time meant that you were a heretic. And therefore, he did not come in contact with biblical Christianity but heretical Christianity. We end up seeing that with some of the views he held of Christianity because it's not the views held by the majority view of Christianity nor by anyone that was ever seen as orthodox within Christianity.

So that becomes an important thing when we look at the view. He actually thought, Muhammad thought he was a Jewish prophet. And he did, when he first started his teachings, he saw that there was many people, there was polytheism, there was many, many gods.

At the time that he was... Let's see if I have it in my notes here. At the time that he started out, there were 360 deities that were worshipped. And Allah was one of those deities. He was a minor deity.

He was a deity of the moon. That's why you'd see in Islam the crescent moon. But Allah was a deity that Muhammad ended up saying was the deity. And he wanted monotheism. He saw polytheism as a problem, as it is.

And he was teaching a monotheism. This caused lots of problems. The Arab world at that time was very, very much against his teaching. He used to encourage everyone to pray toward Jerusalem for many years until the Jews rejected him as a prophet.

And then he turned and said, no longer we do to Jerusalem but to Mecca. And so this was a change, not only in those practices but others. And this becomes important. I may mention it later when I talk about the Quran.

But in the early writings, the early times of Muhammad's life, he was very friendly and approving of both Judaism and Christianity until the Jews rejected him. And then feeling that rejection, it seems he turned to be more violent in his wording and language, at least what's recorded in the Quran, toward Christianity and Judaism.

Now, one of the things to keep in mind that the Quran is dealing with a long period of time and therefore when it started out, we often forget that this is a long period of time that is written and people's views change.

When Muhammad started out with teaching on Islam, he really was to gain money being someone that was in the trade and traveling from place to place understood the importance of protecting the tradesmen and their goods from pirates.

And so he was in the business of basically protection. He would travel with them with small groups of armies to protect from thieves. And as he started getting a larger and larger following according to Muslim history, that ended up changing.

I think it's basically because he had too many mouths to feed. It became a real problem that we do end up seeing where there was lots of issues going on and he was needing to deal with his own tribe, kind of, if you call it a tribe.

And what ended up happening was he turned from protecting those trade routes to invading those trade routes. And Muslims became really the pirates of the day. That is, some think, the founding of the pirates.

But Muhammad died in 632 at the age of 62. His first non-family member that was a convert, Abu Bakr. Abu Bakr was a very wealthy merchant and the first non-family member to be converted to Islam. And he succeeded Muhammad.

Under Abu Bakr, Islam consolidated as a stable power and Syria fell to its advancing armies. Now Abu Bakr was succeeded two years later by Caliph Umar who in turn was succeeded two years, sorry, ten years after that by Caliph Umar.

We'll mention Umar in a little while. And during this time, Iraq, Pakistan and Egypt fell in quick succession. And so by 656, the boundaries of Islam had reached Afghanistan in the east, Libya in the west.

And so you end up seeing that the conquest remained actually in North Africa advancing through Spain, France. It was halted in 732 by one of the history's crucial battles, the Turks and Politars. Now, the reason to see that his rapid advance is not hard to find.

There was a fall of the Byzantine Empire and Islam just filled in that gap, just went in where there was a political vacuum. I actually think that you're going to see that again. You see that in Europe and you see that happening here in America as the nations have gone more liberal and are starting to collapse in on themselves as Rome did.

You're seeing Islam fill in those gaps and just suck up into that vacuum. Now there's two main divisions within Islam. You have the Sunni and the Shias. Maybe you've heard this mentioned if you watched the news.

Islam's two main divisions. The Sunni form 90 of the majority and the Shia are basically only a majority in Iran. So that's the only place. And the split originated over a dispute in leadership of succession a little more than 20 years after Muhammad's death.

So there was much activity 20 years after Muhammad's death. There was a lot of conflict and we see it with Muhammad's son-in-law was in the middle of it. So Muhammad's successors were known as Khalif's and I had mentioned some of them already.

So I mentioned his son-in-law. Let me just give you that history real quick. It was not universally accepted his son-in-law Ali he was the husband of Muhammad's daughter Fatima he was not universally accepted as the rightful successor of Islam to fight and they fought over these issues and Ali was murdered in 661 and his two sons Hasan and Hussain continued the struggle.

Hasan was poisoned in 670 and Hussain died at the Battle of Kabbalah in 680 and so Ali's followers Shia Ali the party of Ali became the Shiite Muslims. So those were those smaller the Shia Muslims that are primarily, as I mentioned you only see them in Iran those are a smaller subsect that followed after Muhammad's son-in-law Ali.

The Islamic View of Scripture and the Authority of the Quran

So let's begin by looking at our doctrines that was some history let's start with the authority what is an authority. What's their view of authority within Islam? Let's start with their view of the Jewish and Christian scriptures.

Muslims believe that Allah has revealed his commands to men through the prophets through 104 sacred books and of those 104 sacred books only four remain and they were written by prophets so the first is written by Moses that's your blank there Moses.

Moses wrote the Tanar Tanara or what we call Tanakh in the Torah in Hebrew but it's the Pentateuch those first five books so Moses supposedly wrote those first five books so the first blank there is Moses.

Then you have David. David is your second blank. He wrote the Psalms the Zebrur and my pronunciations may not be accurate. I'm not a native Arabic speaker so please forgive that the third is written by Jesus and that's called the Injil.

Those are the Gospels and the New Testament in general by Jesus. And the fourth blank that you have there is Muhammad writing the Quran. So you have four books. Moses, David, Jesus and Muhammad are the four prophets that wrote the Pentateuch the Psalms the New Testament and the Quran.

Okay so although we know that not all of the writings were written by David or the Gospels Jesus didn't write any of the Gospels physically but we see that they attribute them to those prophets. Now the issue that we have here is that we have to keep in mind that of these 104 writings only 4 exist.

The others have fallen out of existence. It should cause us to have some questions. What happened? Did God not keep his word? Is he not capable of keeping his word? But let's see what their scriptures say.

And by the way when I give this I'm going to give you the Quran. Let's put it up and I'll show you the first one. There we go. That's the first one. So it says Q. Q stands for Quran. 2 is the Surah and then the 136 is the verse number.

Okay it's not a chapter and verse. It's a Surah and a verse just so you know. So you're familiar with how to read the Quran. So you'll sometimes see this worded this way. Q just stands for the entire of the Quran.

There is no other books. Well there's some other documents that could be. So when you see anything referring to the Quran it's going to have that. Now let's read this. It says Say ye we believe in Allah and the revelation given to us and to Abraham Ishmael Isaac Jacob and the tribes and that given to Moses and Jesus and that to all prophets from their Lord we make no difference between one and another of them.

We bow down to Allah. So when you see there's they're saying here are these other prophets. They're written there's no distinction. This is something to keep in mind because this was remember I said the Quran is formed over time.

A lot happens in the history and so you're going to see a change as we go through this you're going to see a change of the early understanding of these scriptures and a later understanding. But let's continue on to the next.

It's 4 4163. Thank you. We have sent three. Oh sorry. We have sent the inspiration as we sent it to Noah and the messengers after him. We sent inspiration to Abraham Ishmael Isaac Jacob and the tribes to Jesus Job Jonah Aaron and Solomon.

And to David we give the Psalms. Let's do the next one. That's 1094 and this one reads if that were to doubt as to what we what we have revealed unto thee then ask those who've been reading the book from before thee the truth hath indeed come to thee from thy Lord.

So be in no wise of those in doubt. Now this is really important. This is leave this up for one second so people can look at it. It's it's surah 10 verse 94. This is one that you want to have kinda in your repertoire.

If you're gonna talk to Muslims. Why. Because as you see it says if we doubt if a Muslim doubts who does the Quran say they should go to the people of the book. Alright. So there's over a hundred and twenty references in the Quran to the scriptures of the Jews and the Christians.

Now they would argue this is testifying of them being genuine revelations from Allah. Because they have this continuation. But the Jews and Christians are referred to as the people of the book. And as you saw in 1094 who do we go to.

We go to the Jews and the Christians the people of the book that becomes really important. Why this is gonna become. Well it's gonna become important because in a moment I'm gonna talk about how they think that the scriptures got distorted.

And the reason this verse is important to keep in your repertoire is because at the time that he's giving this in the six hundreds ok that this is being either explained by Muhammad or written down later when this is explained it's stating that you can trust the people of the book to help you understand.

And therefore you can trust the book that they have. Right. That means that the book that they had in the six hundreds was trustworthy. Alright the people who understood the book were trustworthy at that time in the early time of Islam.

Later that changes we're gonna see in a moment. But the reason that becomes important is because if you could trust that book then we have the same bible. Now we have many more. We have older copies of it older manuscripts and so we can trust it even more.

In that sense I would argue because well when we look at it if it didn't change by the time of Mohammed when did it get distorted. But let's I digress and get ahead of myself. Let's look at the next. It's that lengthy quote.

It's 5 44 46 and 48. There we go. This is a little bit lengthy quote. Let me read this to you. Alright so read along on your screen if you can. It was we who revealed the law to Moses. Therein was guidance and light by the standard we have been judged the Jews by the prophets who bowed as in Islam to Allah's will.

So the rabbis and the doctors of the law. For to them was entrusted the protection of Allah's book and they were witnesses there to. Therefore fear not men but fear me and sell not my signs for a miserable price.

If you if any do fail to judge by the light of what Allah hath revealed they are no better than unbelievers. This is now surah 5 46. And their footsteps. We sent Jesus the son of Mary confirming the law that had come before him.

We sent him the gospel wherein was guidance and light and confirmation of the law that had come before him a guidance and an admonition to those who fear Allah to thee. This is now verse surah 5 48. To thee we sent the scripture in truth confirming the scripture that came before it and guarding it safely.

So judge between them what Allah hath revealed and follow not their vain desires deriving from the truth that hath come to thee. To each among you we have prescribed a law and an open way. If Allah had so willed he would have made you a single people.

But his plan is to test you in what you hath given what he hath given you so strive as a race in all virtues. The goal of you all is to Allah. It is he who will show you the truth of the matters which you dispute.

Now the importance of that kind of lengthy quote there is. So you understand that we see that in the early part they trusted the scriptures. They don't make distinction between that which the Jews and Christians followed as scripture and what was being disseminated at this point.

Alright. And so when we look at this we see that the early scriptures were supposedly trusted. And if you didn't understand what was being explained you go to the people of the book and they would explain.

Remember I said the early years he saw himself as a prophet of Judaism as a continuation not a separation of it which came later. Now the Muslims claim that the Jews and Christians changed and distorted their own scriptures.

So Allah sent the Quran as the final revelation to humanity. The previous scriptures anything prior to the Quran were meant for a limited purpose and their use ended with the revelation of the Quran which abrogated them and exposed their distortions and changes.

And that's why they were not protected from corruption and they went through distortion addition and omission. Now let's look at 5 15 and 16. If you could put that one up people of the book our messenger has come to you making clear to you many things you have been concealing of the book and forgiving you much.

A light has come to you from Allah and a glorious book with which he will guide whoever follows his pleasure in the way of peace and brings them forth from darkness into the light of his will. So you see this is the idea they would argue later in different things the truth was concealed it was hidden it was removed.

Later in history they would write things. So woe to those who write the book in their hand and say this is from Allah that they may sell it for a little price. So woe to them for what their hands have written and woe to them for them making their earnings.

So I four volumes four different translations of the Quran into English and I have one that is in Arabic. I had to pay for all of them just saying the Quran was to be the permanent in their thinking the permanent scripture that replaced all others and they do not consider the Quran to be handled with care.

Let's look at the Quran itself. This is the way they look at the scriptures. Now here becomes a dilemma that I see if God and there is a in surah chapter five it says that God's word cannot change. Now this becomes a dilemma.

If God's word cannot change you can trust the scriptures of the Jews and the Christians. And the scriptures can't change. What do you do with the fact that it did change. It got corrupted and destroyed.

And here becomes the thing how do you know you can trust the Quran. Let's get started with the Quran. It is not written in chronological order. It is really organized and divided into 114 surahs or chapters and they are done by size order except for the first surah.

Surah chapter one is a prayer address to Allah and that is the first surah and after that it is in size order with the largest one. The Quran is the sacred book of Islam revealed to Muhammad by the angel Gabriel in sections and occasionally it was he would disseminate it.

Ok. Now Muslims take the fundamentals attitude of God's word that the Quran holds a place of exalted reverence in their hearts. The Quran is said to have existed eternally in heaven engraved in of stone.

The language of this is in Arabic. They do not accept any translations as being authoritative. It must be in Arabic and therefore the language inherently that must be spoken is Arabic. So speakers of Arabic have a special prestige in the Muslim world.

You must memorize the Quran in Arabic when you memorize it now Mohammed claimed that the Quran was revealed to him when he was under the control of spirits. He testified that he himself was not always certain whether the visions were divine or demonic.

However his wife urged him to submit to the revelations because she was convinced they were from Gabriel. Therefore for 22 years from AD 610 until 632 he received revelations from the spirit that controlled him.

They were collected memorized passed down orally at first. Soon his followers took them from memory started to compile them in written form. Now here's the thing when you speak to someone that believes in islam a question you can ask them is do you believe that a woman's opinion is equal in authority to a man's.

Because if they're going to be honest with the teachings in islam her opinion only counts one fourth of that of a man's. And so here we have a dilemma. Well we don't i think muslims do you see muhammad got these visions and he thought they were demonic.

He did not think they were from god. That's what a man's opinion was that they were demonic. But a woman's opinion was it was gabriel and that they're from allah and therefore he should submit to them.

So you have a dilemma. Muhammad whose opinion should count more than his wife's submitted to his wife's opinion that this was from god and it wasn't demonic. I actually kind of think that i agree with muhammad that they were demonic.

So we end up seeing though that these were written down later they were compiled by remember i said that we said we'd bring him up again. He decided to bring order because what happened was that people started writing down these different recitations that they had from memory things they were called and that were part of the quran and they were being written down.

Now they're being written down and there were different versions of them. And so muhammad decided. This is now 12 years 12 to 18 years after muhammad's dead. He decided to bring order to the situation and had scholars create an official text that was developed between 650 and 656 okay which circulated widely.

And then he ordered that all other versions be destroyed. Now right there you have a dilemma. Because remember what we said about the teachings of islam on the christian scriptures. They believe that god wrote his scripture through moses.

Men corrupted it through david. Men corrupted it through jesus. Men corrupted it through muhammad. And it couldn't be corrupted. How do you know. How do you know if god couldn't keep his word from being corrupted the previous three times.

And all of those other times their followers believe that they are following after the truth on an uncorrupted documents. They don't think it's been corrupted. So how in islam would you be able to say that it isn't been corrupted when we know that there were other versions.

And you say no no no no. Because i've had muslims tell me. No there weren't any other versions. Then what did khalif umthra demand to be burned. He said to have to burn the abhorrent texts. What was he demanding to destroy.

What were the other texts. The other copies of the quran that were wrong. And what most muslims will say. Well they weren't the quran. How do you know they were destroyed. He actually put a decree to collect them.

Have one copy and destroy all the others. How do you know he destroyed the right ones. Because according to muslim history god had this happen three other times and his followers didn't realize that this happened that it was corrupted.

So if it happened three other times wouldn't it make logical sense to assume that it could have happened a fourth time. This is why i hold to the fact that actually the quran is right when it says that god's word cannot change.

It's just that i don't believe the quran is part of god's word. You see because the quran has contradictions. And if it has a contradiction it can't be god's word. What are those contradictions. Well we have one that we're going to look at this week one next week.

One contradiction is just this. God's word is said that it cannot change. As we read referring to the jewish christian scriptures cannot change. It cannot be altered. It is from god. It is no different than any other scripture.

And then later it says it was altered it was changed it was deleted it was added to it was corrupted. Which one's right. You can't have it. Both those two are mutually exclusive. You can't have god's word not being able to change and then having been changed those are mutually exclusive.

That's a contradiction. And that's why i would reject it as being from god because it can't have a contradiction if it was written from god. And so muhammad built his whole system of religion on these demonic revelations adapted and merging various forms and features from idol worship that he had that had existed in mecca.

He stressed the monotheism which was its novelty and ultimately he used it to unify islam. Now let's go into some other authorities to close the sunnah. The sunnah are the writings of the prophet muhammad that he had said did or approved of comprised of hadiths.

Sometimes you hear of a hadith so these are comprised of hadiths short stories which are reliably transmitted reports of muhammad's companions. So in other words you have muhammad's companions writing these things down afterwards they're stating this is what we have what muhammad said or what he did recording it in history.

They're written in these short stories sort of things they're called hadiths and stored into a sunnah. Now that becomes an authority and those are the things that are used for sharia. That's your fourth one.

The fourth authority. So first authority is the scriptures the jewish christian scriptures. Second and most prominent is going to be the quran. Then third is going to be the sunnah which is made up of the hadiths.

Fourth is going to be sharia which means islamic law. And we hear a lot in the news of sharia law. So where in the quran and traditions are silent on particular subjects rules are derived by consequence of religious leaders.

So what you have in the sharia law is leaders that see areas where the quran or the traditions are silent and they fill that in with these laws. And so the combination between the quran the hadiths and then this the sharia law have been used by islamic scholars to create the immensity of detailed body and rules and regulations known as sharia.

Now you have to understand with this is that sharia is a governing system where the quran is the religious. But you cannot separate these. This is the thing that many people don't understand. You cannot separate sharia law from the quran.

In other words you can't separate the political system from the religious system in islam. They are one in the same. So you have both. You can't separate these and this becomes important when we look and study into islam we have to understand that this is something that in america at least we have this notion of a separation of church and state this idea that there is a political power there is a religious power and the one does not dictate to the other sort of.

So we see other countries that have this distinction between the ruling class the religious class. There is a ruling political laws and then laws that are religious in islam. You don't have that. So you have to understand that lets wrap up with their view of god their view of god.

Monotheism, the Trinity, and the Quran's Misunderstanding of Christian Doctrine

Because this is going to be a short one. If you look in your syllabus there paganism is offensive to a muslim. All right islam believes in a strict monotheism. That is your blank there monotheism one god one godism.

Really its the belief that there is only one god. Islam does not accept any god that has multiple persons as a godhead. Now they would believe that to they would believe that polytheism is an error. Islam however thinks that christianity is polytheistic.

Islam denies the trinity because it misunderstands the definition. It defines the trinity as three gods consisting of you. Ready for this. I was going to leave this for next week. But here is the other contradiction in the quran.

The definition of the trinity within the quran is the father allah the mother mary and the son jesus. Now any christian just went. What did you just say. Yeah. Any christian knows that the trinity is defined as three persons the father the son and the spirit as one single god.

Now islam sees them as three separate gods and refers to it as father mother and son. That is another contradiction. That means that if god stated this is that this is the view that christians have that's not the view that christians have.

Christians have never held to that. And and you'll sometimes get some scholars in in islam that will go and do some research and they find some heretical groups that were never part of mainstream christianity never even accepted as anything but heretical that would maybe have mary as being god and it's really poor documentation they have for it.

We don't see evidence of it outside of you know much of much of it's from with within muslim circles. But even the catholic church we just got done studying catholicism and they venerate mary and hold her up and almost worship her.

But they clearly would never claim that she's god. So does the quran say that. Well let's look at some passages. Four seven one seventy one. Thank you. It says this uh surah four one seven one. Oh people of the book commit no excesses in your religion.

Now remember who are the people of the book. Those are the jews. And the christians commit no excesses in your religion. Nor say of allah anything but the truth christ jesus the son of mary who was no more than an apostle of allah and his word which he bestowed on mary this and the spirit proceeding from him.

So believe in allah and his apostles say not trinity deceased. It will not. It will be better for you. For allah is one allah glory be to him far exalted is he above having a son. To him belong all things in the heavens and on the earth and enough allah as disposer of affairs.

Now what do you see. You see that a they have a misunderstanding of what it means to be the son of god. They think he's an offspring. Okay. They're having the same mistake that many uh people make that mistake today and not understanding that son of means essence of not necessarily offspring of uh in a jewish mindset.

And so they misunderstanding there. But you see he's saying stop with the trinity. Remember where muhammad was the trinity was not as well known. Why. Because he most of his interactions were who jews and heretics so that it wasn't the people that would believe in a trinity.