"This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent." (John 17:3)The words of Christ cited above are made up of several easily discernible notions, notions that are just as fundamental to everything Christian as they are contrary to all things Islamic. The disparity that exists here readily appears when a comparison is made between the foregoing statement of Christ and the fundamental confession of Islam, the so-called Shahada: "I witness that there is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah."
This article has been moved to the Answering Islam website. To read the rest of it, go here.
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Rather than leave a comment here in the provided public forum, a Muslim named Muhammad from islamreligion.com wrote me an e-mail where he expressed some disagreement.
Few of his remarks were even in the ballpark of being relevant or of any significance to the thrust of the article, but he did say at least one thing that, if it were true, would have meant a factual error on my part.
Recall that In the article I maintained that the Qu'ran does not mention the formula that Muslim's recite today as the Shahadah, and that certain Muslim groups have used this to bolster their own claim that one should not say it, and that to do so involves one in shirk, the worst of all possible acts that one can commit (according to Islam).
Muhammad first confidently declared that he could give me "tens of verses" on the matter, and then after repeatedly being pressed to do so, finally sent me seven. Of course, I have no complain over the numbers, though it is less than his original boast, especially since, in my exasperation, I lowered my challenge to him to produce just one verse of the Qu'ran that contains "the Shahadah" rather than the ten he said he could produce. Indeed, one clear verse is all it would take to prove a factual error on my part.
The problems with the passages he gave (4:136; 7:158; 24:62; 49:15; 57:7; 64:8; 57:28) are:
1) none of the seven contain anything like a formula;
2) none of the seven are what Muslim's recite today as the Shahadah;
3) some of the passages record what Allah is claimed to have told Mohammed to say to others, and not what others are told to say in response to a call to faith;
4) some of the passages do a lot more than mention Allah and Mohammed and go on to include other messengers, angels, and other scriptures;
5) and, worst of all, the whole lot of them contradict Surah 24:51, which says: "The answer of the Believers. when summoned to Allah and His Messenger, in order that he may judge between them, is no other than this: they say, 'We hear and we obey.'"
So in light of the fact that this is the best criticism he had to offer, aside from one of his other arguments which consisted of "you are pathetic", I entirely understand why he chose not to make a comment here.
Semper Paratus,
Tony
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