40 - Islamic Impact Part 2

Well, I don't think that my wife is responsible for this, but evidently this was delivered to the church this week.

Let's see, two, four, six, eight, sixteen dry erase markers, including eight, shall we say, nonstandard colors, including pink, lime green, and a few,

I got some orange in there, I've got to keep that orange for a while, so instead of just red, green, and blue, now we did have a purple one in there, so, but yeah, alright,

I'm almost not sure if I can open this up, but sixteen dry erase markers, thank you to whoever sent that, evidently that is just further encouragement to me to write things on the board more often than I do, for someone is obviously seeking to encourage me along those lines, but if someone was so kind to send them, we should open them up, shouldn't we?

That could prove the most difficult part, since I didn't bring a knife with me to church.

There we go, oh,

I just, whoever designed them should be whipped.

I want this orange one here, there we go, let's see if it's visible, oh yeah, testing, one, two, three, there you go, alright, well that works, alright, it's dark enough to be seen in the back of the room, that's the important part, that's the important part, alright, something going on that you want to share with the group?

No, not really, okay, alright, I think this is actually number forty, number forty, fortieth lesson, we only did fifty -two in all,

I think fifty -two or maybe fifty -six, in all of the last time I did church history, so, and given we still have the entire medieval period and the reformation to cover, yeah, yeah, we're moving a little bit more slowly, but that's okay, no one minds too much.

Not going to be here next, yes sir, oh,

I showed this to Clementine this morning, we had

Clementine over last night and I showed her my shoes and my tie and she's like, that's beautiful,

I said, got it, alright, I am, once I got the shoes,

I went in the closet and said, oh, hey, wait a minute, I have that fractal tie and that will keep everybody awake, so, oh, you can't see the shoes?

Oh, here, see, see, no, no, thank you, thank you, thank you,

I appreciate that. Hey, if Clementine, if it passes the Clementine test, does it really matter what anybody else says?

Because, you know, no, as long as the granddaughter thinks it's cool, the rest of the world, doesn't matter, alright, so.

Anyway, of course, seeing how she dresses herself sometimes, she came out this morning in that green dress and I said, oh, that's so pretty, she says, my name's

Clementine, I dressed myself, then turns around and walks out. Yes, ma 'am, it's been about, oh, about 28 years since I heard pretty much the same thing.

About 24 years, 24 years since I heard the same thing. I remember this, I remember this,

I know where this came from, so. Anyway, we are studying church history, if you're visiting with us, you're most welcome.

In Sunday school, I did this, I don't know, 25 years ago or more, that was back in the days of real audio.

Boy, if you remember real audio, that shows how long ago it was. But, church history hasn't changed too much since then, except for this one point that we're addressing right now, which is the rise of Islam, we're spending a whole lot more time on it than we did before.

For obvious reasons that things have changed a lot since that particular time period.

But, anyway, I began telling you the story of Muhammad primarily from the

Islamic perspective. Let me just remind you of that as we get started.

I am well aware of the fact that there are alternate perspectives, that there are

Christians and non -Christians who question the stories of the life of Muhammad.

I am not saying that I accept everything that is found in the standard sources of Islam regarding Muhammad, or anything along those lines.

I'm just simply saying, if you want to know what Muslims believe, if you want to be able to communicate with them, it's good to know what they believe.

Just in the same way, when people get an education about Christianity from secular universities, they end up talking to us, wondering what in the world we believe, because they've been so badly misinformed by those secular sources.

Well, same thing here. We need to be careful as to recognizing the difference between these things.

I realize there are people who don't believe Muhammad existed as a person, and so on and so forth.

But, we're looking at the Islamic story, and we defined a bunch of terms last week.

We talked about shirk. We talked about tawhid. Tawhid, the oneness of Allah.

Shirk is the denial of that, the association of anyone and anything with Allah in his worship.

I mentioned that there are three major barriers to our being able to proclaim the

Gospel to Muslims. One of those barriers is that the

Muslim believes that you are inviting them to commit shirk. We saw last week that shirk is unforgivable if you die as a mushrik.

If you die upon shirk, as they would say, there is no hope for you.

I didn't narrate the hadith of the man who killed 99 people last week, did

I? I need to illustrate this for you so you get an idea. Once again,

I'm not cherry -picking the sources here. I had used this particular...

You can never get things back into a package the way they came out. Have you all noticed that? It is just absolutely amazing how that works.

Once it's opened, it's never going back together again. I'm not cherry -picking the sources when

I share these stories with you. I had, for a number of years, narrated this hadith.

Remember, a hadith is a story, action, saying, words of Muhammad's companions that have been passed down.

There are numerous collections of hadith. This hadith, I think, is found in both

Bukhari and Muslim, which means it's extra authoritative. I had been using it for years.

Then I was going to be doing a debate with the imam of the largest mosque in New York a number of years ago.

We were both on a radio station together beforehand. In talking about the differences between us and the subject of salvation, he narrated this hadith before I got a chance to do it.

If the imam of the largest mosque in New York would use this as an illustration of what Muslims believe, then obviously

I'm not misrepresenting them. A number of times since then, even in mosques,

I have made reference to this. Everybody's like, yeah, yeah, we know the story. When I tell you this story,

I give you that so that you recognize it is representative of mainstream

Sunni orthodoxy. I mentioned last week briefly, but we'll talk a little bit more about it.

About 85 % of your world's Muslims are Sunni. About 10 % are

Shiite. Then there's a mixture, obviously. You put the numbers together. There's a few other people hanging out there from various other groups.

The vast majority of the Muslims that you'll encounter are Sunni. As I mentioned last week, the vast majority of them are not

Arabic. Only 16 % to 19 % of the world's Muslims are Arabic. A large majority are found in Indonesia.

What's the hadith? This hadith would be known by the vast majority of Sunni Muslims especially.

When I say different versions, I hope you understand. One of the reasons

I remember the hadith so well is because of the way that I read them. If you're reading a book, if you're reading a nine -volume set of books like Muslim or Bukhari is, and you run across the same story that you've already read, what's the natural thing you're going to do?

You might skim it real quick and move on to the next one. I didn't sit in front of a book and read these.

They're available electronically. I converted them to MP3 and I listened to them on literally thousands of miles on a bike.

What can you not do if you're riding a bike? You can't fast forward.

I use an iPod that's this big. If you're riding a bike, trying to play with the iPod on your shoulder while riding is very dangerous.

It's a good way to die. There's this one hadith.

A woman came to Muhammad, offered herself in marriage to him. He declined. She sits down.

Another man stands up in the group and says, Please give her to me in marriage. Muhammad says,

What do you have to give to her as a dowry? He says, I have nothing. He says,

You don't have anything at all? Do you have an iron ring? Anything?

The guy is destitute. Muhammad says to him,

Have you memorized any of the Quran? He says, Yes, I've memorized a surah, so and so.

He lists off the surahs that he has memorized. He says, Then I give her to you as wife for the surahs of the

Quran that you've memorized. Now, if that, I would say that story,

I'll try to be conservative here. I would say that story is found between Bukhari and Muslim 35 times in those two collections.

So by the time I started hearing it for like the 35th time, I was looking for a saguaro cactus to ride my bike into face first.

I was so sick of hearing that story. But there is this saying,

Repetition is the mother of memory. And so listening to the hadith in that way,

I couldn't avoid hearing them over and over and over again. And so they actually ended up sticking up here in this pathetic brain of mine.

So this particular hadith that I'm going to tell you about, it occurs in a number of different versions.

For example, last week I narrated the hadith of Abu Talib. Remember? Abu Talib was who?

Anybody remember? Uncle! Uncle!

I give up. No, that's not who it was. Abu Talib was Muhammad's uncle who protected him during that period of time when he was a minority prophet there in Mecca.

And was the tribe of which he was a part, which was the Quraish tribe, wanted him dead because he was preaching against the khaba.

But Abu Talib protected him. And as you know, Abu Talib died as a mushrik.

And so Muhammad intercedes for him, prays for him, and as a result he has the best spot in hell.

And I mentioned there are different stories as to exactly what that is. And one of the versions is that he's standing in fire that goes up to his ankles but is so hot that his brains boil.

And the other version is he wears sandals that are so hot. Sandals of flame that are so hot that his brains boil.

The brain boiling part is the consistent part. It's whether you're wearing burning sandals or flame that is the difference.

So that's just the different versions that have been passed down. And so the story is told, this hadith is about, in some versions he's a

Jewish man, in others that's not mentioned, a man who killed 99 people.

We're not talking a war here, we're talking a murderer. And he goes to a priest and he asks the priest if God will accept his repentance.

And the priest says, knowing what he has done, no. And so he kills the priest.

So now he's killed 100 people. And people on the recording are going to hear that there was one person who laughed at that in the audience.

We won't mention who it was, Sean. Anyway, so then he goes to a scholar.

Now none of the stories tell us whether the scholar knew about the priest. I've always wondered about that personally.

But he goes to a scholar and he asks the scholar if God will accept his repentance.

And the scholar, being wiser than the priest, says, go to such and such a city.

And the people there are particularly godly and they will instruct you as to how you are to do your repentance in a way that would be accepted by God.

So as he's going, the time for his death comes. Because in historic

Islamic theology, now there are westernized versions of Islamic theology as well.

And in fact I just did a discussion slash debate in an

Anglican church in Durban, South Africa, about a month ago, with Yusuf Ismail on the subject, and I do think

I put this up last week, of Qadr. And Qadr literally means power, but it is the concept of God's predestination, basically his providence in time.

And there is a deep historical, I mean you can see it even to this day, in the

Muslim who will say, inshallah, inshallah, if God wills, if God wills.

And so there is a concept that you can find in the

Hadith, and there is a Hadith that I attempted to talk with Yusuf Ismail about, that specifically says that 40 days after conception an angel comes and writes for you a certain number of things, whether you're going to be male or female, whether you're going to be successful or not, whether you're going to heaven or hell.

And that same Hadith says that there are people that do the deeds of the people of the fire their entire lives.

In other words, they are rebellious, they sin, until there are hands breathed from entering into the fire, and then what is written of them overcomes them, and they enter into Jannah, paradise.

And then there are people who do the deeds of the people of paradise their entire life. They're righteous people.

Until there are hands breathed from entering into Jannah, paradise, and then what is written of them overcomes them, and they go to hellfire.

So, this is a very well -known Hadith, and some would use the term,

I don't know that you need to know this, but since I have it up here, Mutawatir, which means universally accepted.

Some Hadiths are questionable, there are some things in chains, blah, blah, blah. Some people say it's a Mutawatir Hadith, I've read books where they dispute this, there's a lot of that kind of stuff amongst the

Muslims. But that Hadith about the angel coming and writing for you and so on and so forth, there are certain people who are just like,

I can't accept that. And so, the more westernized, the more likely to sort of go,

I'm not so sure about that. In other words, Islam has its

Calvinist -Armenian divide as well. There have been entire books written discussing the nature of the will, free will,

God's sovereignty. I even, to my shock, discovered that a

Muslim I've debated numerous times within the past number of months has come out basically as an open theist.

That's pretty unusual. Just as it's outside the historic range of Christian orthodoxy, it's outside the historic range of Islamic orthodoxy as well.

But, anyway, they've had their arguments about these things as well.

So, the point is, the day of your death is one of the things that's written down for you. And so, if this guy is going to the city, and it sounds sort of strange to us, the time of his death comes.

Well, the time of his death is predetermined by a law, at least in this

Hadith. How other people would handle that, again, depends on the individual you're talking to.

The more westernized they are, the less emphasis there's going to be on this.

The more Eastern, Middle Eastern, it'd be the other way around.

Anyway, the time of his death comes, so he drops dead. And when you die, an angel comes from the fire, an angel comes from paradise, to argue over your soul.

Now, you would think this would be a slam dunk. Okay, you're talking about a guy who's killed 100 people.

But, evidently, angels also go to law school. Because the angel from paradise makes the argument, well, yes, he was very evil, but he was on his way to find out about repentance.

You've got to give him something. And so, a law decrees, and again, there's different versions of this, but a law decrees that if he's one cubit closer to the city he was going to than the city he's coming from, he will go to paradise.

And then, in some of the versions of the story, he makes the earth to shrink between where the man is and the city he was going to, so he's one cubit closer, so he goes to paradise.

So, here's the idea, is that any sin, being a mass murderer, can be forgiven by Allah if he chooses to do so.

At the same time, I can give you Hadith, where people who mistreated animals go to hell, despite having done everything else they were supposed to do.

Some of the companions of Muhammad, on their deathbed, were in tears, because they did not know whether they were going to heaven or to hell.

There is a major level of ambiguity, uncertainty, and arbitrariness, in the

Hadith, and in the Quran, as to how Allah will, the

Quran says over and again, Allah is most merciful, most forgiving, most gracious, says it a lot, but to whom and upon what basis?

Good question. Muhammad engaged in warfare, and I have an entire book, yay thick, just of the military campaigns of Muhammad.

And sometimes, upon defeating an enemy, he would show mercy, might defeat a city, and bring the inhabitants out, and one person is brought before him, and Muhammad restores to him his goods, and sends him on his way.

The next person, in the exact same state, personally beheads him. After the defeat of one particular

Jewish settlement, that Muhammad felt had betrayed him, during one of the major Islamic battles, after they go to Medina, in 622,

Muhammad was personally involved, in one day, in the beheading of 800 men. And he was chopping away, just like everybody else was.

So, he's a military leader, and you restore the one, you behead the next.

Arbitrary. No way of knowing. No way of knowing. And that's one of the major, major, major issues that I try to bring up, and I use this illustration of that hadith.

From the Islamic perspective, 100 people murdered, yet you go to heaven.

Which means God's law, against murder, is left unfulfilled.

His justice, unsatisfied. The Muslim does not understand why we believe in the necessity of atonement.

Because in Islamic theology, God's justice can be separated from his character. He can just simply forgive.

And they'll say, well you can do that, right? Well I'm not God, and my character is not demonstrated by my holy nature.

I'm not the one who gives law. And so, when you have that as a background, if you watch the debate

I did with Shabir Ali, in the mosque in Erasmi, in the Abu Bakr Asidic mosque in Erasmi, South Africa, in 2013.

It was on salvation, and what I emphasized, in that context, was the fact that God's law, and God's nature, are not two separate things.

His law reflects his nature. So if you can leave his law unfulfilled, you are dishonoring his nature.

That's why we have to have atonement. I'm trying to explain to Muslims who are sitting on the floor, because realize, in a mosque, you don't have tables and chairs.

If you watch that video, and you see anybody sitting on chairs, those are the Christians. Because they were kind enough to bring chairs in for the wimps, who cannot sit on a floor for two hours, or three hours, as the

Muslims can't. The Christians can't pull that off. So, it's interesting to note that.

But anyway, I'm trying to help them to understand, because they've never heard of this stuff before.

They've never understood. What's the necessity? It's like what

Yasir Qadhi asked me in the mosque in Memphis earlier this year. The second question he asked me in the mosque was, why did a part of God have to die?

Why did a part of God have to die? And we're not used to answering questions like that. Especially if you've grown up in the church.

And so, understanding these Hadith certainly helps me anyways to communicate to them,

I understand where you're coming from. Let me explain what the necessity is in light of what you've been told.

Helps out a lot. So, if a guy who's killed a hundred people can be forgiven, but if you commit shirk, you cannot be forgiven.

Can you see how that is a huge barrier to the gospel? Because they think you are inviting them to commit shirk by believing in Jesus.

So, you see why it's important for a Christian to be able to explain, the doctrine of the Trinity does not involve the association of any created thing in the worship of God.

Our worship of Jesus is not shirk, which means you have to be able to demonstrate what? That Jesus has eternally existed as the second person of the

Trinity. And that you are not worshipping a merely created being. And let's just be honest, how many

Christians feel much confidence in addressing that subject? Especially with a Muslim person.

People ask, why aren't we making a lot of inroads amongst the Muslims in the United States? A, we're not trying, that's the first thing.

And B, the few of us that do are often afraid that we're going to struggle to answer questions like that very one.

So, shirk, big issue. One of the three barriers to sharing the gospel with Muslims.

I'll get to the other two. And if I forget and move on, someone put your hand up and say, by the way, you forgot to do that.

We'll get to it. Let's finish off Muhammad's life anyways in the time that we have left.

I mentioned to you in 622 that we have a major event and that is

Muhammad goes to Medina. And this is also, in the

Quran, if you ever do read it or anything like that, let's use another color we've not used before.

Thank you. Ed suggests you can sit up front.

I second the motion. I've got a second. Oh, no, I'll go there.

In the Quran, you have the

Meccan surahs and the

Medinan surahs. So, he's in Mecca at first, so from 610 to 622.

And then he's in Medina. And one of the things

I did in my book on the Quran is I gave a chart, which is sort of the best guess we have, of the chronological order of the surahs.

So, if you ever read the Quran, remember it's only 14 % the length of the Bible. It's not long.

If you ever read the Quran, then reading it in order like that will be helpful because you see a clear progression.

When he's in Mecca, you have much more of a focus upon monotheism over against the polytheism of the

Meccans. And there's much more of a plea for religious toleration and stuff like that.

But then once he is in Medina and he becomes the head of Medina and then he's the head of the

Islamic armies and he's now the prophet and so on and so forth, you see a less than subtle change.

And so, you get much more of an emphasis once you get toward the last one to be written, which is surah 9.

Again, they're not in order. That's where you get the verse of the sword and fighting the kafir, the infidel, that's us, and others.

And you have this development that takes place in reading through the

Quran. So, he is there, dies in 632.

And there are numerous battles between these. The Battle of Uhud and the

Battle of the Trench. I'm not going to go into all this. If you want to have a little bit more in -depth information on the battles and how they're relevant and how they show up in the

Quran, I did a series of lectures down in New Orleans a number of years ago. If you look up Islam A -Z is what they named it, it's available on YouTube.

But, eventually, there is the conquering. The Medinans are sending armies to try to conquer

Muhammad, who's raiding their caravans. At first, it's all defensive.

Eventually, this movement grows so much that now Muhammad is able to march on Mecca.

The first time he goes, it results in some sort of a treaty that allows them to come into Mecca and to circumambulate the

Kaaba, remember, engage in the religious rites there. But very shortly after that, he conquers

Mecca, fairly bloodlessly, actually. Only a few people were actually killed, according to the sources, anyways, in his taking of Mecca.

And so Mecca and Medina become the heart of this growing Islamic alliance and power there.

And what's going to happen after, well, after Muhammad dies, the big question is, who's in charge?

Who's in charge? Every religious movement has to have a strong second -generation leadership, or it fizzles.

And so when you think of the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, you've got

Russell and Rutherford. When you think of the Mormons, you've got Joseph Smith and Brigham Young.

When you think of one that has fizzled out, the Way International, Victor Paul Weirwill, second -generation, hang apart, fractured into a thousand little teeny tiny splinters.

So the question then becomes, who's going to lead this movement? And the leader of the

Muslims is called the Caliph. So the

Caliph or the Caliphate is when you have an Islamic leadership of the

Ummah. The Ummah is the Muslim people all around the world.

And so initially during Muhammad's life, the concept of jihad had developed and it was defensive.

And there are still Muslims today who try to say it can only be defensive. Obviously ISIS and others disagree with that.

And the idea of jihad was initially to defend the

Ummah against attacks from outside, particularly the Meccans. But that expanded over time and exactly how far it's appropriate to expand that is where all the controversy and argument is today.

And so who's going to be the Caliph? Well, I guess

I do need to address this too. So many things. The closest associate, the man who stuck around with Muhammad almost more than anyone else, was looking for other colors here just to see people in the back complain about them too.

I'm not going to mention anybody, but just to see what happens. Really you would say his closest companion was

Abu Bakr. Abu Bakr.

Abu Bakr and Muhammad were the last ones to flee Mecca for Medina and Abu Bakr stuck with him.

So Abu Bakr becomes the second, well really the first Caliph after Muhammad, depending on how you do these things.

Abu Bakr had a daughter. Sounds like a nursery rhyme.

Could one of the two of you keep control of him? Can't be done. Can't be done? Oh, okay.

Yeah, could you change places, Kelly? Because that way I can keep a little closer eye on her and your comments won't be caught by the microphone.

That's why people tune in, is to hear you? Oh, okay. Took me numerous lessons to find out why people are actually listening to the

Church History Series. That's good. Alright, Abu Bakr had a daughter named

Aisha. How many of you have heard of Aisha? How many of you have not heard of Aisha?

How many of you just ignored the question completely because you just don't want to participate? This is a very sensitive subject.

Because if you want to blow up a conversation with a

Muslim, start talking about Aisha. That doesn't mean that Aisha should not be discussed, but Aisha needs to be discussed very, very carefully.

There are a lot of Christians, this is the first thing they'll talk about. Because they want to blow up the conversation.

They want warfare and literal physical violence to start immediately. Because they think that's how they serve

God, is by getting their lights punched out or whatever else. I can point to certain people who illustrate this on YouTube.

According to the vast majority of Islamic sources.

Now there are a few that have slight differences. But according to the vast majority of Islamic sources, when

Aisha was six years of age, she was betrothed, engaged to Muhammad by agreement with her father

Abu Bakr. Those same sources indicate that that marriage became consummated at age nine.

Now there is no question that in days when life expectancies could be in the thirties, that you got an early start.

It was the only way for people to survive with the infant mortality rates and so on and so forth.

So it was not unusual in the ancient world. Some people would even argue that Mary was probably maybe fourteen.

When visited by the angel. We don't know. We don't have specific dates or anything like that.

But in the ancient world, if you're eighteen, you're getting toward the end of your productive years.

And probably going to be a spinster the rest of your life. If you weren't married and having children already by that particular point in time.

But no matter how you cut it, nine is awfully young. Especially when Muhammad would be in his early fifties at this particular point in time.

As a result, you can go online and find just as you can imagine entire websites dedicated to pretty strong and strident accusations against Muhammad based upon his relationship with Aisha.

And like I said, if you want to stop a conversation, if you want to get out of a conversation, start a war, fight, something like that.

Say just the obvious things about this particular situation. Now, there are issues concerning child brides in Islamic countries.

There's lots of things we can talk about regarding marriage. Islam is a step backwards from Christianity when it comes to marriage.

There's no question about it. I've had Muslims actually argue against me that the

Christian view of marriage is absolutely untenable and therefore demonstrates Christianity is wrong.

The idea of only being married to one woman for life, that's ridiculous. And so, remember one of the key issues when we look, if you've ever listened to my debates, even probably during these lectures the last two weeks,

I've referred to the author of the Quran. You'll hear me say, the author of the

Quran. Why do I do that? Why do I not just say Muhammad? Because from, well, first of all, from the

Islamic perspective, Muhammad's not the author of the Quran. God's the author of the

Quran. Muhammad is just a completely passive element. He's nothing more than an MP3 recorder. Nothing more.

There's no interpretation about what is being said. Nothing in the Quran represents

Muhammad from the orthodox Sunni perspective. And so, one of my primary arguments against Islam is that the author of the

Quran did not understand the revelations that came before him. Had no direct access to them.

There was no full translation of either the Old or New Testaments. Well, not the New Testament. There might have been

Old Testament. Probably not in Arabic at that particular point in time. And Muslims tell us that Muhammad was illiterate anyways.

He was called the unlettered prophet. There's some question about that. But, what is obvious is, whoever wrote the

Quran did not have direct literary access to the

Old Testament or the New Testament. Doesn't know what's in it. And hence misrepresents it numerous times.

And so, the Quran itself claims that it is a part of a chain of revelation.

That Allah gave to Moses the Torah. To Jesus, Jesus confirmed the

Torah and was given the Injil, the Gospel. And then to Muhammad is given the

Quran, which confirms the Torah and the Injil. But he's now the final prophet.

So there's a chain in Surah 5, Ayahs 44 and following. So, if in fact the

Quran misrepresents what came before, that is clear evidence that the Quran has a human author, not a divine author.

Because Allah would know what was in the Old and New Testaments. It would not misrepresent that. So this is, for me, a key issue that must be addressed.

And that I think my Muslim friends struggle to address. This particular subject.

Now, when we look at the Quran, Aisha, Aisha is considered by the

Sunnis, Aisha is not liked by Shiites. But she is the mother of the faithful for Sunnis.

A large portion of the Hadith comes through Aisha. She becomes a leader amongst the

Muslims. She is considered to be extremely important because she is the only virgin that Muhammad marries.

Every other wife that he has, has already been married to someone else. There is no evidence that the author of the

Quran found this relationship embarrassing. The Hadith, the

Quran, there is no evidence whatsoever, that in that day, people are like, there is another situation though, that the

Quran shows real embarrassment about. And that's why I've been attacked for this mercilessly by people who throw

Aisha around like a baseball bat. I think that Aisha is important.

I think there are things to talk about about Aisha. But I think you need to really lay a foundation before you can really get anywhere in discussing that.

And I think it would be much better to go into this from the issue of marriage, and the proper nature of marriage, than it would be to just throw it out there like a hand grenade and use it in that way.

I think there is a far more important issue. And I'm just mentioning this, and we'll get back to Abu Bakr, we're going to run out of time here.

But Zaynab bint Josh. Zaynab bint

Josh. Real quickly, Zaynab bint Josh is Muhammad's cousin. First cousin.

And again, the same sources tell us that one day, Muhammad gave

Zaynab in marriage to his adopted son. Muhammad had adopted a son, and gave

Zaynab in marriage to him. One day he came over to visit, his son wasn't around, but Zaynab was there, and according to their own sources, she wasn't fully dressed.

And Muhammad was smitten. Now, I don't know how he hadn't noticed her before, you know, they're first cousins, they would have grown up together and stuff, but he is smitten.

Make a long story short, once the story gets out that he is smitten with her, she's no longer happy with her husband, and he offers to give her up and divorce, and Muhammad's like, no, keep your wife.

But then a revelation comes, which ends up in the Quran. There's an entire section of the

Quran that comes down from heaven to do nothing more than to give Muhammad permission to marry

Zaynab. So that there would not be a problem with the divorced wives of your adopted sons.

Yeah, that was a big problem. What the real problem was, is in Arabic culture, you could not marry the divorced son of an adopted, the divorced wife or spouse of an adopted person, because that was considered incest.

And so an entire section of the Quran has to come down to change that cultural taboo to allow

Muhammad to marry Zaynab, and she's the only woman named by name, or person named by name, woman named by name of Muhammad's wives, specifically commanded for Muhammad to marry.

And she let the other wives know that too. And she was, evidently, a stunning woman.

So he marries Zaynab bin Jash against the cultural taboos of the time.

But the Quran shows clear embarrassment, and there's a huge result of this. The huge result of this has been the massive diminishment of adoption in Islamic countries.

Because basically, the Quran says, don't call yourself son of Muhammad if you're adopted.

Call yourself by your original father's name, even if you... It basically destroyed adoption in Islamic countries.

A beautiful, beautiful thing that had long pre -existed, and it existed in Arabic cultures, destroyed by Muhammad's desire for Zaynab bin

Jash. That's, to me, far more important. Because this is, allegedly, an eternally uncreated revelation, is this absurd section about giving this man permission to marry the divorced wife of his adopted son.

Yes? Is that where Arabia has their law that to be a citizen, your father has to be a

Muslim, or something like that? I don't know about that. Where the adoption thing comes in, where you can't prove he's a

Muslim if you're adopted, necessarily? I don't know anything about that. So, two issues that may come up.

You may hear about the Aisha thing. Just be very, very, very, very careful in how you handle that. But, all of this to get back to Abu Bakr.

Abu Bakr is the first caliph. How he is elected, and who the next few caliphs are, up to a guy named

Ali, is the whole reason why we have Sunnis and Shia. So, make a note that that's where we need to pick up next time, because the

Sunni -Shia split is obviously very important today. Because the Sunnis blow up the Shiites, and the

Shiites blow up the Sunnis, especially in Iraq, which is really three different nations. And, it all goes back to this.

So, if you want to know where all the Sunnis and the Shias came from, that's what we'll talk about next time around. Okay? We're out of time.

Let's close the Word of Prayer. Father, again, we thank you for the freedom we have to look back over history.

We ask that you would help us to remember these things, make us better servants of yours as we seek to present your truth to others, and to see how those in the past have dealt with these issues as believers as well.