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Behold! how they invent a lie against Allah! but that by itself is a manifest sin! Quran,4:50

WombRaiders:
Quran (8:12) - "I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them"

[b] In order to gain a proper understanding of many verses in the Holy Quran, it is important to understand and know the historic context of the revelations. So many revelations in the Holy Quran came down to provide guidance to Prophet Muhammad (peace be on him) and the fellow Muslims based on what they were confronting at that time. The verse 8:12 is one such verse which is misinterpreted.

This verse and the verses before and after were revealed about the Battle of Badr, which occurred in Arabia in the early seventh century. A battle in which the pagans of Makkah traveled more than 200 miles to Madinah with an army of about 1000 to destroy Muslims. Prophet Muhammad (peace be on him) and fellow Muslims had suffered severe persecutions and torture for 13 years in the city of Makkah. Despite signing peace treaty with them, they still went ahead to break it Surah Al-Anfal, Verse 56: Those of them with whom thou madest a treaty, and then at every opportunity they break their treaty, and they keep not duty (to Allah).
And now that they had fled Makkah and found a sanctuary in the city of Madinah, they were once again threatened. Muslim Army was only about 300 strong. God Almighty gave the order to Muslims to fight to defend their lives and faith. The enemy came to them with the intent to kill Muslims. It was a war to defend themselves and their Faith. It was a war imposed upon Muslims.

However, even during the war, Islam has the highest moral law of war. You don't kill children, women or any one who is not fighting with you.

In that same surah that you ignoratly tagged as a terror surah muslims are ordered not to fight if the enemy wants a peace treaty:

Surah 8, Verse 61:
But if they incline to peace, incline thou to it as well, and place thy trust in God: verily, He alone is all-hearing, all-knowing! [/b]

There is a lot of commonality between the Qur’an and the Bible. Both Scriptures share many similar stories about the Prophets and also overlap in many areas of creed such as belief in one God, the existence of angels and the Day of Judgement. Muslims put all such similarity down to continuity in the messages of various Prophets whom were all sent by God Almighty. Some critics of the Qur’an offer a different explanation. They claim that the author of the Qur’an copied much of the content of the Bible, and so any similarity is down to plagiarism.

Although Muslims believe that the original Torah and Gospel given to Moses and Jesus respectively, peace be upon them,were divinely inspired and perfect, what we have today of these Scriptures is not the same as the original revelation. Indeed when we examine the modern Torah and Gospels in detail we find that there are numerous issues in the texts. One of the names of the Qur’an is Al Furqan, meaning “the Criterion between truth and falsehood”. So the Qur’an not only confirms the Scriptures that came before it, but also corrects the mistakes that have entered them:

“And We have revealed to you, [O Muhammad], the Book in truth, confirming that which preceded it of the Scripture and as a criterion over it. So judge between them by what Allah has revealed and do not follow their inclinations away from what has come to you of the truth…” [Chapter 5, verse 48]

In this article we are going to look at some examples of how the Qur’an corrects the Bible.

[size=15pt] 1. God did not grow weary after creating universe. [/size]

The Bible makes the claim that God Almighty rested (and was “refreshed”) after creating the heavens and the earth:

It will be a sign between me and the Israelites forever, for in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, and on the seventh day he rested and was refreshed. [Exodus 31: 17]

The original Hebrew word used for “refreshed” is ‘naphash’,which means “to take breath, refresh oneself”.

According to the Qur’an, God does not display these human attributes of weakness and fatigue, for He is truly Omnipotent. Hence, He does not need rest or to refresh Himself. This false claim is corrected in the Qur’an:

And We did certainly create the heavens and earth and what is between them in six days, and there touched Us no weariness. [Qur’an 50:38].

Notice how the verse in the Qur’an matches, nearly word for word, the verse in the Bible. This surely must be considered a divine rebuttal.


[size=15pt] Jesus is not God. [/size]

There are some ambiguous parts of the New Testament which are interpreted by Trinitarians to mean that Jesus is God:

The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created:things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him. [Colossians 1:15-19]

When we examine the Bible holistically, we find that the attributes and personality of Jesus and God are so juxtaposed that they cannot be the same God. This is because Jesus lacks many of the attributes of God such as Omniscience and Omnipotence.

The common way that Trinitarians attempt to resolve this paradox is to say that when God took on flesh in the form of Jesus on earth, He had a human nature alongside a divine nature. So the person of Jesus had two natures such that he was both fully man and fully God at the same time. Therefore in becoming man, God was subject to the limitations of human beings because of the human nature of Jesus. Once Jesus was crucified, resurrected and ascended back to God, he took on a new glorified, spiritual body. Now that he has taken up his place on the throne at the right hand of God, he is free of all the limitations he had when he was here on earth.

Now there is a real problem with this explanation. The Bible explicitly states that God Almighty has an eternal and unchanging nature:

Your throne is established from of old; you are from everlasting . [Psalm 93:2]

I the Lord do not change . So you, the descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed. [Malachi 3:6]

So as you can see, this explanation creates more problems than it attempts to solve. You can’t have an eternal and unchanging God on the one hand, and a ‘person’ of Him, Jesus according to Christians, that is changing. If Jesus took on a dual nature, that is, a limited human nature alongside his divine nature, whilst at the same time still being God, then the implication is that in becoming man, the nature of God changed. When Jesus then ascended and took on a glorified,spiritual body, whilst still being God, then the nature of God changed once again. This conflicts with the knowledge from the Bible that God is eternal and unchanging.

The Qur’an resolves these paradoxes and theological problems by portraying Jesus in the correct light:

They have certainly disbelieved who say, ”Allah is the Messiah, the son of Mary” while the Messiah has said, “O Children of Israel, worship Allah, my Lord and your Lord.” Indeed, he who associates others with Allah – Allah has forbidden him Paradise, and his refuge is the Fire. And there are not for the wrongdoers any helpers. [Chapter 5, verse 72]

So, the reality is that Jesus is a Messenger of God, not divine.

[size=15pt] 3. Jesus was not crucified. [/size]

All the writers of the New Testament unanimously state that Jesus was crucified. The Qur’an claims the exact opposite, Jesus was not crucified but rather God saved him from this grisly fate:

And [for] their saying, “Indeed, we have killed the Messiah, Jesus, the son of Mary, the messenger of Allah.” And they did not kill him, nor did they crucify him; but [another] was made to resemble him to them. And indeed, those who differ over it are in doubt about it. They have no knowledge of it except the following of assumption. And they did not kill him, for certain. [Chapter 4, verse 157]

The Qur’an states that those who believe that Jesus was crucified “differ about it” and are “in doubt”. In other words, the claims of the New Testament about these events surrounding Jesus are not reliable. It would be truly remarkable if the Qur’an’s claims about the reliability of the New Testament were proved to be correct, when not only is the Qur’an in direct opposition to multiple eyewitnesses of the Crucifixion (as the New Testament claims), but the Qur’an was also revealed much later than the New Testament.

Since the Crucifixion and Resurrection are the bedrock of the Christian faith, one would expect the information presented about these events in the New Testament to be in perfect harmony. When one analyses the various New Testament accounts of the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus, we find that they are filled with irreconcilable contradictions and inconsistencies. One very famous issue is known as the “Mary Magdalene Problem” .

If the writers of the New Testament can’t even get the details of this significant event right, then it casts doubt on their credibility as inspired writers, and therefore the reliability of the New Testament as a whole. Why should anything that they recorded about Jesus be accepted as a reliable account? Mankind should rely on the Qur’an as an accurate and reliable source of information about the life and teachings of Jesus,peace be upon him, because the Qur’an is free of contradictions.

[size=15pt] 4. Joseph’s unfulfilled dream. [/size]


Prophet Joseph had a dream about his family prostrating to him:

Then he had another dream, and he told it to his brothers. “Listen,” he said, “I had another dream, and this time the sun and moon and eleven stars were bowing down to me.” [Genesis 37:9]

It’s important to note that the moon in his dream represents his mother Rachel. The problem is that before Joseph’s dream is fulfilled, his mother passes away:

So Rachel died and was buried on the way to Ephrath (that is, Bethlehem). [ Genesis 35:19]

His brothers do eventually prostrate to him near the end of his story:

When Joseph came home, they presented to him the gifts they had brought into the house, and they bowed down before him to the ground. [Genesis 43:26]


Notice that Rachel is not alive to prostrate to him. The dreams of God’s Prophets represent visions of the future that will come true. So this is a prophecy of God that is unfulfilled in the Bible.

In the Qur’an, there is no such issue as his mother is alive to bow and fulfil the dream:

And he raised his parents upon the throne, and they bowed to him in prostration . And he said, “O my father,this is the explanation of my vision of before. My Lord has made it reality… [Chapter 12, verse 100]

[size=15pt] 5. An impossible Exodus. [/size]


The Bible makes a claim about the number of Israelites that escaped Egypt with Moses (known as the “Exodus”):

The Israelites journeyed from Rameses to Sukkoth. There were about six hundred thousand men on foot, besides women and children Many other people went up with them, and also large droves of livestock, both flocks and herds.
[Exodus 12:37-38]

The Bible also states that the Israelites were important to the Egyptians because as slaves they were the workforce of Egypt:

When the king of Egypt was told that the people had fled, Pharaoh and his officials changed their minds about them and said, “What have we done? We have let the Israelites go and have lost their services!” [Exodus 14:5]

This would mean that at the Exodus, ancient Egypt suffered a catastrophic loss of most, if not all, of its labour workforce.
According to the Bible there were 600,000 Israelite men that came out of Egypt. If you factor in women and children that figure would be closer to a few million. The problem is that there is absolutely no evidence of this historical event. There are no ancient Egyptian records of the sudden disappearance of millions of their people. There is also no physical evidence of settlements out in the desert where all these people and livestock encamped. From a purely practical point of view, how did Moses wake up and mobilise millions people in the middle of the night without being detected by the Egyptians?

The Qur’an’s account of this event is far more historically accurate and realistic as it says that it was actually only a small group of Israelites that escaped from Egypt:

[color=red] And We inspired to Moses, “Travel by night with My servants; indeed, you will be pursued.” Then Pharaoh sent among the cities gatherers [And said], “Indeed, those are but a small band” [Chapter 26, verses 52-54]

This is in line with what modern historians say, if there was an exodus then it couldn’t have happened on the massive scale that the Bible claims..

TO BE CONTINUED

[b] OLAADEGBU

What the Quran mean is that Moses, David and Jesus (peace and blessings be upon all of them) all got their individual revelations in their original form (probably meaning as an oral message). The Quran maintains that the books of the Jews and Christians have been corrupted, altered and edited over time. When the Quran talks about the Torah, Psalms and the Gospel it is speaking about the original versions revealed unto Moses, David and Jesus. It is not talking about the current Torah, Psalms and the Four Canonical Gospels we have today.

You may want to argue this, then join me here. https://www.nairaland.com/2172133/question-did-jesus-read-bible/15 "IT has often been said, that anything may be proved from the Bible, but before anything can be admitted as proved by the Bible, the Bible itself must be proved to be true; for if the Bible be not true, or the truth of it be doubtful, it ceases to have authority, and cannot be admitted as proof of anything." [/b]

Dharniel:
bawa ko, tatase nii... it's Jack Bauer...

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