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Here starts the auto-generated transcription of Answering Muslim Objections to Christianity with Dr. Daniel Janosik

Okay. This week on truth about Muslims is our part 2 session dealing with, addressing Muslim objections to Christianity. And those of you that have listened for a long time know I’m not the biggest fan of apologetics. At times, I am. At times, I find that I’m not convinced that it’s effective.

But I have a good friend that, engages in a in a style of apologetics that I think most people aren’t really sure how effective it is. And I think it’s because they’ve never taken the time to ask somebody that does this, how does it work? And so here’s just a brief sound sample of what that looks like. We know who that name is. We know who God.

Once again, Muslim terrorists. A terrorist A terrorist Islamic extremist now. These are terrorists of the country. They have random justice and brutal endeavors. News flash America.

These Muslim extremists are, are alive and well. They are not dead, and their video is not gratuitous, and it certainly is not irrelevant. It is a warning. Welcome to the truth about Muslims podcast, the official podcast of the Swimmer Center For Muslim Studies, where we help to educate you beyond the media. Here are your hosts, Howard and Trevor.

Alright. So I’m here again, Howard and I with doctor Daniel Janosic. You guys just heard, Daniel trying to explain the trinity in Speaker’s Corner in London. It just sounds like chaos. So help us understand how is this an effective means of addressing Muslim concerns.

Actually, before you do that, can you describe because they can’t see what we just saw. So describe what was happening because they’re just gonna hear a bunch of shouting and all this kind of stuff. So so what is the scene? What is it like when you walk in? Oh, it’s very disorienting.

I’ve only done this a few times with Jay Smith. He is an old pro, and he’s done it, since the nineties. So for over 20 years, he’s been going out on Sunday afternoons and he has a great effect. I’ll get back to why he has a great effect and influence in that area. But it is very chaotic.

You get up on a ladder, a stepladder, and, so you can be up above the people and really you’re trying to engage the people in the middle because right in front of you, you’ve got the hecklers and they can be very intimidating and disruptive and it’s hard to have a constant, consistent stream of thought. You you have to, speak in sound bites. You have to kind of keep your concentration and not let them bother you, which is very hard at first, but you’re talking to the middle of the, of the pack because that’s where people are actually listening. Like on the fence. People that are on the fence.

People on the fence and they wanna know and so that’s where Jay has Jay Smith has been very effective and, there’s some great stories of of what goes on there. But, here, I was trying to I I told Jay I wanted to talk on the trinity And, what a mistake. You mean you mean you mean shout shout on the trinity. Shout on the trinity. From the literal soapbox, he was gonna give the explanation of the trinity.

That’s what’s so exciting about it, though, is I picture the soapbox like you’re standing up on a soapbox and trying to shout over these people that are literally heckling you. Yes. They are. And this is in London. This is in London.

It’s at Hyde Park. There’s a corner of Hyde Park called Speaker’s Corner. And for the last 100 years, it’s been a a free speech zone. And how many people were there at that time? Oh, you get hundreds of people.

Really? Just to listen to this? Yes. There are hoards of, Muslims, especially Sunday afternoon. They come and they listen to their preachers go to law.

So they’re listening, there there are big crowds of, Muslims listening to other Muslims, you know, talk about politics, talk about the the religion. And then Jay Smith shows up. And they all come on over because they wanna be there for the show. Wait. Wait.

Muslims come over to hear Jay Smith because they’re Yes. Wow. So this is like a a a standing debate, like an ongoing debate Ongoing debate. That happens every Sunday. Every Sunday.

And so Jay is there bringing up, the different things that, that have occurred in the news, the current events, and he will kinda unpack it and try to challenge the Muslims to think about what is going on. Now this is all part of a ministry, the Hyde Park Christian Fellowship, and they get together at All Souls Church earlier that day, that afternoon, and they will talk about, the current events, what’s going on. They’ll have, some special guests. I’ve I’ve spoken there a number of times to this group and then they will pray together. They will pray for their effectiveness.

And then as they go up to the corner, there’ll be maybe, 50, 60 in the summer. There’ll be well over a100 who will be part of this fellowship. They’ll go up there. They’ll engage with the Muslims. Some will go on and, they have certain Muslim friends and they’ll get together and say, oh, let’s go out and have lunch.

They won’t even stay there. They’ll just meet up at that point and they’ll go out and they’ll have tea or they’ll have lunch and they’ll talk about the the gospel. And so it’s a a a place for friendship evangelism for most of the people. This is a a place of engagement. So what’s the atmosphere like?

Is it, is it Oh, it can be very tense. The yeah. Like, is it is on the brink of, like, violence or, like, anger or hatred? Let let me tell you one one story that that just kind of encapsulates what’s going on there. Yes, please.

Jay was, talking about, some current event, and one of his Muslim, friend slash enemies, came up and and and challenged him. They loved to to hate Jay. You know, it’s kinda the the thing to do. But this tells a different story. And so this other Muslim came up.

He he disagreed with what Jay was saying. He said, I I need to debate you. So he brought his ladder over, and so they were standing there on their ladders debating the issue, going back and forth. And, of course, that draws a huge crowd. Well, there’s this one, German guy, tall guy who’s, not very pleasant and he’s an atheist and he doesn’t like the gospel at all.

He doesn’t like Islam or Christianity and he’s always heckling and saying, nasty things. Well, he was there and after this, debate, Jay and, and and and the the Muslim guy, was getting pretty pretty, active in his, debate, and he pushed Jay off the ladder a couple of times. Jay What? And that’s you’re not supposed to do that. I mean, in the past, Jay has been beat up and the police are there Woah.

Around. So, Jay is a pacifist. He’s a a brethren. That’s just He’s like the loudest pacifist I’ve ever seen in my life. He is a pacifist.

He will not, he will not fight. But, he wants the truth out there. He’s he’s, speaking the truth. So anyway, they they had their little, little debate and, the Muslim guy got off his ladder and he was walking away, you know, the crowd was dispersing. And this German atheist came up and said, oh, I hate that, Jay.

Don’t don’t you just hate him, and and, I’m glad that you had a chance to debate him? And the Muslim looks at him and says, what do you mean? Jay Jay believes in god. You don’t believe in god. Jay believes in in, the the good moral principles, and you don’t believe in this.

Jay is my friend. He is my brother. And a German guy is just looking aghast. What’s going on? And then, you know, Jay’s walking by and and the Muslim goes over and said, hey, Jay, come here.

And he puts his arm around Jay and says, Jay is my friend. He’s my brother. Oh, man. And it just blew away this crazy guy. Yeah.

Because Jay gets together with these Muslim guys afterwards. They go to the restaurant. He’s there. They come over and they give him back rubs. They say, boy, Jay, you gave us a hard time out there today.

They’re friends. This is like the the the behind the curtain. Behind the curtain. Yeah. A lot of it is drama, But Jay has seen some of these leaders, Muslim leaders, who were up there speaking for Islam on their ladders become Christians.

In his 6 months, I I remember this one story of, this one, Muslim leader who, listened to Jay week after week after week, and he came to Jay and said, I I I need to become a Christian. What you say is just so persuasive. I can’t get away from it. So he became a Christian. He became he was discipled for for months, and then he came out and he put up his ladder and he was preaching Christ.

And you could imagine his Muslim friends, how angry they were at that. And and that’s pretty dangerous, you know, when you are a convert. Right. Even in even in London. Even in London.

So he had to be careful. But it shows the the power of what’s going on in that, scenario. Now is there, are there rules like ladder height? I just have all these questions going around in my mind. You meant, like, real rules, ladder height?

Well, I’m just thinking, like, if I were gonna I would have to be a very tall ladder. I was thinking about megaphone, actually, if if that’s legal. Yeah. Can you You cannot use megaphone. There are rules.

Well, Jay’s voice sounds like a megaphone. Jay has trained his voice. Yeah. That’s obvious. And and it’s like a Baptist preacher.

Yeah. And he’ll lose it sometimes after he’s there. You know, that evening, he’ll be hoarse. But he drinks a lot of water while he’s there. He’s learned how to use it well because you have to project.

You cannot use a megaphone. You have, yes, certain heights of the ladder. I think 3 rungs or something like that. See? Hey.

He’s laughing at me, but there really are rules to the height of the ladder. Well, remember, it used to be soap boxes. Wooden soap boxes that you would stand on, and that was, you know, get on your soap box and say whatever you want. Now there are some crazy people there at the the at the corner, and you go and you say, where did they crawl out of? Really?

Like, crazy as in, like, the way they talk, the way they act, their beliefs? Their beliefs. I I mean, you know, they’re they’re talking about their aliens or, you know, aliens are talking about. So anybody can speak. You don’t really have to schedule.

No. You just get over there and you Sunday afternoon, you can all through the week, you can do that, but Sunday afternoon is a big time. So the the All Souls Church, you said, more than a hundred kinda come out on Sunday in the summer. Yeah. That’s the meeting place.

And on Sunday afternoons, if you’re in London, go to All Souls Church. Go for the morning service. It’s a great place. And and is that, is that the the people that are on, like, Jay’s side kind of thing? Do they partake in or is it just a big crowd of Muslims that are, like, listening to Jay and Oh, no.

No. The Christians are there also listening. What what I have often done is I’ve been in the crowd is that I will try to sidle up to one of the big hecklers and I’ll I’ll, say, well, you know, that’s that’s interesting. What do you think about that? And we’ll try to dismantle them, try to separate them from that.

Diversion. And then I’ll say, well, I can’t hear very well. Let’s go over here and talk about this. So I’ve pulled them away, from the heckling crowd, far from the heckling crowd. Sounds like a Thomas Hardy novel.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But, then this is the key. There are relationships that are built there And so the ones who who pull away, talk to these other Muslims, find those that are interested.

There’s some that are not interested at all. Sure. But you find those that are interested and you go off and you have tea, you have lunch, you you meet them week by week after week, and and you engage them in a bible study in in in an evangelistic time. So it’s a friendship evangelism. Right.

So you automatically have this place that lends itself to questions. People go there, they listen to somebody, and they have questions. Right. And then so you build that relationship on that. The relationship and you build respect.

They respect Jay. They they hate him in the the Muslims. The Muslims respect him because they know that he is talking, he’s speaking the truth, and they can understand that. Well, he doesn’t sound disrespectful either. I thought, you know, like all these fire and brimstone because we have these at universities.

Oh, yeah. They come around and they they call everyone names and say all these table things, but I didn’t hear that from this video clip. He’s, he’s very careful about that. He wants to keep to the issue and, and talk about the Quran, talk about the bible. Now with the particular debate that you heard the segment of when I was trying to deal with the trinity, didn’t get very far, on the the trinity.

I was trying to make it very simple. But, afterward, there were 2 guys who were giving me the hardest time saying, oh, speak within the Bible. Speak I’m giving all these verses in the Bible. They’re not listening. They’re just trying to say things to disrupt me.

But afterwards, I got down. I started speaking to these 2 guys. And right away, we had a rapport. They knew where I was coming from. They knew what I believed that I was a believer, and that I was not afraid to show that.

And so we had a mutual respect right from the beginning, and they were asking good questions. And I I wish I had been, you know, living in London because I would have said, okay. Let’s get our, phone numbers and let’s get together and let’s talk and let’s have meals together. Because that is the place where you make the contacts. What type of questions were they asking?

Were they asking questions to prove you wrong, or were they asking questions out of curiosity? Both. They would, of course, come up with their own Muslim questions and answers, but they’re also asking beyond that. And that’s where it becomes so powerful and where apologetics becomes so important. Because with with apologetics, it’s it’s a a widespread array.

You’re dealing with dialogue with apologetics. You’re you’re dealing with defending the faith. You’re dealing with polemics which would be refuting error. So as I look at apologetics, really, it falls into 3 areas. The first is to understand.

Understand what you believe. Understand what they believe. You need to really know what Muslims believe in order to, refute what they’re saying, and then you need to be able to defend what you believe. So that’s apologetics. Hey, ladies.

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Yep. You’re like, I’ll be so embarrassed if you’re not there. Right. I mean, they’re gonna have legitimate questions that you should be able to give, you know, reasonable answers for. So the one that comes up the most often is probably the Trinity.

So do like, do you have a couple other parts that’s a understand? Understand, defend, and refute. And refute. So understanding, let’s start let’s let’s use that model. Sure.

What do Muslims believe regarding the Trinity? Okay. They have a lot of misconceptions. Like for instance, the Trinity could be made up of God the father, God the mother, and God the son. You have that verse in the Quran where, Jesus is basically going to be asked, did, you ever say worship me and my mother?

And Jesus would reply, I’d never said anything like that. Wouldn’t have associated any partner with God. So they have a misconception about who the Trinity actually is and the persons first. Right. And that’s found in Quran, Surah 5 verse 116 where, Jesus is being asked about that by Allah and he said, glory to thee.

Never could I say that I had, that Jesus is the the son of Mary and that men should worship me and my mother as gods. So that is the misconception that many Muslims have because it’s told over and over and over again, and they don’t hear from Christians. And that’s why Christians need to speak to Muslims and explain what Christianity really believes about the Trinity. The other big thing is that, they believe that Christians believe in 3 gods and they they and I’ve heard this many times. They’re at the corner many times here in the states.

When you even bring up the trinity and they think, how can you believe in 3 gods? I mean, look at the math. 1 plus 1 plus 1, how can it equal 1? That doesn’t make sense, and they will talk about the illogical view of the the trinity. They don’t understand that Christians have always believed that there’s only one God.

And so there are ways to to approach that. So, what would you say? What would you say to a Muslim? He said, because okay. So we understand what the Muslims think.

Right? So then you said the second part was to defend. So how would we defend the idea of the trinity? Okay. One thing is that I would go back and say, let’s look at, let’s look at scripture.

Then they will say, well, wait a minute. Your Bible has been corrupted. We’ll say, let’s put that on the shelf for the moment. Let’s just look at what scripture says because you need to understand, what Christians really believe. Really quick though, Daniel, how would you address that first objection?

Your Bible’s been corrupted. Because I think a lot of folks are thinking, well, a lot of people won’t just shelf it. I think they will. I think you’re right. If you just say let’s just set that aside for a second.

I don’t think the Bible’s been corrupted. That might be sufficient. But is there a sufficient answer that you found effective when they say your Bible’s been corrupted? Well, the the best thing is to to go back to the manuscripts and say, look, the manuscripts that we have go all the way back to the 1st century and we have very good evidence that shows that this has not been changed. Think of this for a moment.

The Bible that Mohammed had, if he had any bible to look at, would have been the exact bible that we have today and it’s the same Bible that they had in the 1st century, the time of right after Christ. There are no major changes. No changes in the view of, the the Trinity. The word is not used in the Bible but neither is which talks about the unity of Allah, is it used in the Quran. And yet they say that, they believe in the unity of Allah.

So we had one guest that her her apologetic, which I thought was very clever, was just to literally have a look of shock on her face and she would say, are you saying that God cannot protect His word? What on earth? What kind of accusation is that against God? Even the Quran says no changes can there be in the words of God and you’re saying that God’s word’s been changed? I can’t is that what you’re saying?

And they’re literally like, no, no, no. That’s not what I’m saying. Jesus is outraged. It’s awesome. Yeah.

So so getting beyond the objection to the word of God, how are you gonna explain this this concept? Because we’re we’re really curious ourselves. I don’t think I could use that particular, format, but I Trevor actually sounded like her. He actually sounded like her. And if she’s listening, sorry for the poor, impression.

Yeah. But but usually, they’re looking for more. And so I just asked them to sideline that for the moment. Let’s just accept it because Mohammed, also had to accept it. That’s what he had.

It hasn’t changed, really. And, so then I would say, Christians have always believed that there is just one God. And this is my challenge to Muslims in many ways. I say, do you really wanna know what Christians believe about this? And I say, yeah.

Do you wanna know the truth about, what Christians believe? And, they’re usually very open in, in that way. So now I say, okay. Christians believe and have always believed there’s only one god. You look at, the old testament, you look at, Deuteronomy, and, there that you have the Shema where they say there’s only one god and, Deuteronomy 64.

Hear, oh Israel, the lord our god is one lord. And that’s what Christians believe, the the very same thing. And yet, when you go to the new testament, which kind of expounds on the old testament, you find a further revelation. You find that this one god is also called father, in Matthew where the you have the lord’s prayer. Starts off with our father.

All through the new testament, Jesus refers to, god as father or, so you you have God referring being referred to as, in the person of father. You also have god being referred to as the spirit, holy spirit. So in acts, for example, acts 5, we have the story of Ananias and Sapphira selling their land and bringing the money to the to the, disciples and saying here we we’ve sold our land and we’re giving it to to feed the poor and so on, which was fine except that they lied about it. And Peter, for some reason, was led by god to, to challenge Ananias. Sapphire wasn’t there at that moment, and he said to Ananias, wait a minute.

You have, lied to god. You said that you sold the land and this is all the money. It’s not. And, Ananias was shocked and god chose this to be a time to give a, a lesson. So, Ananias died right there on the spot because he lied against God.

And then 2 sentences later when, Sapphire comes back and, you know, he’s Peter is explaining what happened and, he said this happened because he lied against the Holy Spirit. So you conflate those together. He called, he said, you lied against god, you lied against the Holy Spirit, they’re 1. So, Peter there is saying that the Holy Spirit is God. And then, of course, you have many verses like John 1:1, which talk about Jesus being god.

And you have, for example, one that I like is John 8, 58 where, Jesus is being challenged by the Pharisees and they said, well, how do you how do you know Abraham? Because Jesus said before Abraham came into existence, he saw me, he knew me, and, they wondered. Well, Jesus then followed up and said, well, before Abraham even existed, I am. He used the term which refers back to the burning bush, the the eternal word or the eternal name of god. I am that I am, the Yahweh.

And they knew that he was calling himself god. They picked up stones to stone him for blasphemy because was saying I am god. I am the very god of gods. And they only believed in 1 god. Christians have always believed in 1 god and yet when you look at the new testament, you see that, this one God is further revealed as being God the father, God the son, and God the holy spirit.

Now that starts opening the the door, only opening the door because then they have a lot of other questions. Right. I think the Muslim will probably come back with something along the lines of, you know, the the spirit of God is often, at least in the Islamic theologians, will say that’s the angel Gabriel, and Jesus being the, you know, he’s the Rehulah, the Spirit from God, and he is also the kalema, the the titles of Jesus, a word from God. But they’ll say that we’re stretching it when we say he is a word of God. Their argument is typically that he’s a word from God, a a prophet and a messenger, and also he comes into birth through a virgin birth through the command of the spoken word of God.

But it does seem a little bit strange, almost like there’s a little bit of a trinitarian sort of system in the Quran as well with the spirit and the word and the God the creator. Have you used that at all with Muslims and is it benefactors? Yes. And and that’s where John in Damascus first used that when he was saying, you have called us associators for associating Jesus the son with, with god himself. And, he said in a in return, you Muslims are really mutilating the the, God because you’re pulling away the word and the spirit because the Quran says that, Jesus is the word and the spirit of Allah.

Well, how can Allah be perfect from the beginning if he hasn’t created his word yet and he had his hasn’t created his spirit which is found in Jesus. So this was an argument that, that John used and it’s still effective today. When you mean when you say effective and I guess this kinda goes back to the area in London where you guys do the arguing and and debating. Speaker’s corner. Speaker’s corner.

Yeah. It just slipped my mind like Shouters. Shouters Corner. You you use the word effective, and I’m just wondering, like, what kind of fruit have you seen? I I get I don’t think we’ve actually had we didn’t have closure even on the speaker’s corner part as far as, what convinced you?

And then, with, John of Damascus when he was, using that as an argument to refute Muslims, how did that show in effectiveness? Well, first of all, with Speakers Corner, as I said, a lot of it is for show. Jay is there to bring the Muslims over to get the Christians who have been praying, to, to pair up with the Muslims and go off and do friendship evangelism to really develop a friendship, develop a a a a platform where they can go ahead and answer questions. But Jay does a lot of that, there from the from the, speakers platform as well. So that’s where the real evangelism and ministry takes place.

So it was it’s like, in partnership with So the this the apologetic portion, the speaking, the the drawing out the questions, that’s coupled with the relationship and the evangelism. And Sure. And so they work together. And so we’re seeing, people come to the Lord that way. Yeah.

But also remember that apologetics is very much part of, the the further ministry as they sit down with their Muslim friend and they’re sitting around eating. The the the Muslim’s gonna come up. How what do you say this? Why do you say this about the trinity? I can’t understand this.

1 +1+1 cannot equal 1. They’re going to bring that up. Right. They’re going to bring up the question, how can you say that Jesus is God? Look at Jesus.

He he said that, the the father is greater than I am. He said I cannot I do not know when the time will come. And so the Muslims will look at that and say, well, Jesus cannot be God because he does not know everything. And he, and and beside, he died on the cross. If he died on the cross, then how can god die?

Right. Who was in heaven? Who was taking care of things? They’ll they’ll ask those questions and you need to use apologetics to be able to answer those questions. Well, wasn’t that the original question of Arion?

If Jesus dies on the cross then did God die? And that’s where you have the sort of birth of the Arianism and the Arian heresy that Jesus could not have had a divine nature and a human nature because you can’t crucify the divine nature. Yeah. And so there’s that early heresy right there in the beginnings with Islam and it gets played out again and again later in Mormonism even. Sure.

Same same heresy. And that’s why Nothing new. And that’s why we need to know the answers and that’s what apologetics is. Giving an answer. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you for the reason for the hope that you have.

That’s what apologetics does. We’re giving reasons to Muslims to understand true Christianity and understand why it is logical. The Trinity is logical. It may not be fully understandable because you you on a human level it’s beyond us, but yet it is still logical. We’re not saying one god and 3 gods.

We’re not saying one essence and three essences. We’re saying one God in 3 persons: Father, Son, Holy Spirit. They have different roles and that’s why I like to use the triangle, illustration. In the triangle illustration, you draw a triangle. You have one triangle.

It has 3 sides, but it’s still there continuous. They make up that one triangle. And at the, vortices of those, of the triangle you have, father at the top, son I usually put on the left, and holy spirit on the right representing the 3 persons. In the middle, I write the word God and then I I draw a line to to God from the 3 vortices and I put the word is on each of those lines because the father is God, Jesus is God, and the Holy Spirit is God. But on the outside of the triangle on the, actual sides, I put the word is not.

The father is not the Son. The father is not the Holy Spirit. Jesus is not the Holy Spirit. They have different roles. Jesus died on the cross.

The father didn’t die on the cross. So if they say, well, if Jesus died on the cross, then who’s in heaven? Well, God is in heaven. You know? Father, holy spirit, he is still and Jesus as God is still in heaven because Jesus as God did not die.

He cannot die. Jesus, the human, the god man, the hypostatic union comes in there. He died, but as a human he died, not as god because god cannot die. And they look at me and say, what do you mean? And that just stimulates further explication.

Alright. So this show wouldn’t be possible without sponsors. And at this point in the show is where, if you wanna partner with us, we would put your ad. So if you wanna be a part of the show, you like partnering with us, you like what we’re doing, you wanna be on our team, what have you, bringing this show to the world, then email us and let us know. And this is where I use a story that really helps someone, a Muslim, who is a thinker and it’s really good for a college student or, because I work with a lot of, Muslims down here at USC and, you know, PhD students and so on and so I bring in the story of, Flatland.

Have you ever heard of, Flatland? I’ve I’ve heard of Flat Stanley, the children’s story. No. No. This is, by a by a philosopher, Abbott, and he wrote a story called Flatland.

I take it from a one dimensional Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

When they turn sideways, you can’t see it. Right. It’s a 2 dimensional world. So and and I use this in order to help them understand that when we talk about the trinity, we’re talking about a god who is multidimensional, far beyond our dimension. So basically, with the flat land, you have 2 dimensions.

You have width and and and, and length. You don’t have any depth. So you’ve got a character there, I call him Alexander Square. So you have this little square in the on the, the the the dimension there, the flat flat land. And Alexander Square is minding his own business.

He has friends and so on and, he sees in the distance, there’s a a dot that that arises just out of nowhere and that dot gets bigger and then he sees an arc because all he can see it’s really a circle there in his 1 to 2 dimensional world. It’s a circle if you’re looking at it from the top because we can see much more than what he can see. But we see a circle appearing there. He can only see the side, the arc and that’s what he represent represents as, his friends who are circles also. So and it it gets bigger and bigger and bigger and then it, comes up to him and and pushes him away.

So there’s force there, and he’s astounded. What is this? He he has never experienced anything like this. Then it retreats and gets smaller and smaller and smaller and becomes a dot and then disappears. And he wonders, what in the world has happened?

So he goes to all his friends in Flatland and he tells a story and he asked them, what do you think is going on? And he realizes he does not have the words to really explain adequately what he has experienced because it’s not in his vocabulary. It’s not in his understanding. He has experienced a three-dimensional object, a sphere, a ball, let’s say, going through his two dimensional world, and he does not have the apparatus to deal with that. So we bring that back to our three-dimensional world, and now we’re talking about a god who is on 10 or 11 or 12 dimensions beyond our world.

If you, read about Hugh Ross and his multidimensionality, it’s really good. So we’re talking about a God who can be 3 in 1, not in the sense of our three-dimensional world, but in a multidimensional way. You know, it’s good because I think a lot of our explanations of the Trinity end up becoming heresy. We don’t even realize it. A lot of our analogies that we come up with, it’s we try.

But, you know, when we make god an egg or an ice cube or something like that, it becomes very much heresy. Yeah. But okay. So you’re a scientist. I know you’ve you teach science as well as apologetics.

I’m curious if you’ve looked into, quantum theory, quantum physics at all in the concept of an atom being in 2 places at one time, same essence, same atom, but they’re actually able to put an object in 2 different places. And then there’s entanglement between the object, so that it can move in 2 different places at the same time when one makes the other act. And I have no idea if there’s a whole lot of accuracy to the way in which I’m explaining this, but that’s how I understand it. And it reminds me of the scripture when it’s Christ talking about acting in accord with the Father, and doing everything according to the Father. Is there is there anything there?

Have you looked at any of the quantum theory with regards to atoms being able to be in 2 places at the same time? Well, actually, it’s they’re not quite in 2 places at the same time. It’s just because of See? It’s heresy then. Never mind.

But it but it does give you at least an analogy of understanding, like the the triple, point of of water where it can be at the same time liquid, gas and solid. But you’re able to to say yes you can have something that, can represent 3 things and yet is one thing, water in 3 states, but they fall short. Right. Because it would you’d have to have a closed system where they could simultaneously exist. Otherwise, you have modalism.

Like Right. You can’t have ice and water at the same time. You have to have either one of the other. And modal and modalism is what? Where basically the son is existing when the father is not existing and the spirit existing when the Spirit Okay.

It’s it’s one God existing in 3 separate individual persons, but not simultaneously. Yeah. So Old Testament is the the Father, New Testament is Jesus Right. And the present church age is the Holy Spirit. Yeah.

That’s not that’s not the trinity. Okay. So we have to understand how those things work. They can help. But that’s why I like at least the triangle will let people visually see that, you have father, son, holy spirit, 3, and yet one God, and the father is not Jesus Christ.

They have a different role. And when you go into the the theology, we talked about John in Damascus, He saw the need to put together the, a compendium compendium of orthodox Christianity. So he wrote this, this treatise, this this, doctrine of orthodox faith. And a lot of it was because he wanted to counter the, the Islamic views and, show the Christians that they had something great to believe in. And in there, he wrote a lot on the trinity and, he talked about the this idea of perichoresis.

I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of the word. It’s a Greek word, perichoresis, or it’s, sometimes talked about, the the the the the, the dance of the Trinity, where you have the father, son and holy spirit revolving or together in this in this type of Like cosmic dance? A cosmic dance. I’m every one. CS Lewis says some of his arguments on the Trinity, I think, are are Raymond Lowell uses something similar.

I don’t know what you guys are talking about. What do you mean about cosmic dancing? What dance are you talking about? Well, think of it this eternal perpetual state of love and a reception of love between father son The relation the relational part And, perichoresis is is just talking about this, this circumincision or circum ambulation of, the father always beginning the son and, the spirit being sent from the father and, that this takes place continuously and it shows relationship. This is the important part that’s picked up today.

Yes. Gregory Anissa was the one who, and and Gregory of Nazianzus, who John faithfully read, used this idea. He was the first one, and then John spoke of it, and then Raymond Law later took that on. And, of course, CS Lewis and others have, picked up on this. But it talks about the relationship and you cannot have true love from god if there’s no object of love.

And so the father loves the the son, and the son loves the holy spirit. There’s that relationship whereas in Islam, you cannot have that. If if Allah is a singularity, then who was there to love in ages past before he created the world? No one. So what does he know about that, that love if it was not always existent in god himself?

Only in a trinity can you have the community through the relationship? Wow. My mind is full. Howard’s stuck on the cosmic dancing. You have a picture in your head about a cosmic I know.

I am imagining he dances. There’s a song called Dance With Me, and it’s very romantic. And I’m like, that happens. It it is a bit odd to talk about God in that sense. It probably makes us a little bit uncomfortable, but there’s certainly, an eternal relationship between father, son, and holy spirit that exists before man.

And I think that that is one of the strengths of the Christian faith because, ultimately, God does not need us, in order to be a God of love. He can be a God of love because he does have a recipient of his love before our creation. One of the interesting things that Muslims have tried to figure out is the whole concept of God’s word. Is it eternal? Is the Quran the eternal word of God?

And if it is eternal, then we could really do something with the concept of God speaking the world into existence there in the beginning of creation and that Isa or Jesus is a word from God. Muslims aren’t all in agreement on this. Some would argue that the words of God are eternal, they’re written on tablets up in heaven with God. Some would argue they’re not eternal, that they came to being at one point. Some would argue that they’re in the mind of God, but it’s a debate even in the Muslim world as well, the idea of the Word of God and its eternity.

Its eternalness. Mhmm. Yes. But that brings us back to the whole idea of understanding, defending, and refuting. We need to understand what we believe and that’s why it’s so important to get a good education so you can understand the trinity in its background.

You can understand what we mean by the deity of Jesus because that’s going to come up. You can understand what we mean about, the authenticity of the scriptures, to be able to corroborate and to support the whole idea that what we have today in the Bible is what was written in the time of, shortly after Jesus by the, the disciples, by Paul, that they were not, corrupted as the Muslims believe. That we understand, that, Jesus did die on the cross. The crucifixion is the, the best, attested historical event in the 1st century. Gary Habermas does a wonderful job in his book, Case for the Resurrection, in showing that, with the minimal facts that, almost all scholars, Christian and atheist even, would say, yes.

The the crucifixion happened. Therefore, Jesus did exist. And yet, Islam denies that with one verse. What is that? 4157?

Yeah. 5 150 44157. 4157. And it appeared that he did not die but somebody else in his place. And really quick on that, it’s very interesting because that sounds exactly like docetism.

Yes. The Jews boast that they killed the Christ, but they killed him not. Nay, it only appeared that they crucified him. Yeah. The idea of it appeared to be crucified was very much a Gnostic idea, docetism, that it appeared as though Christ had a human flesh, but he didn’t.

He only had a divine nature. A lot of this stuff goes right back to the very beginnings of early heresies. Early heresies and why was that brought into the Quran? Now today, most Muslims look at that verse and they say, oh, somebody else was substituted. Judas was substituted or Simon of Cyrene carry who carried the cross.

They were the ones that were crucified. Jesus was just taken up into heaven because then you have later in that, in in Surah 5 where he’s taken up and that’s where he said, Oh, I did not say to them that Mary was also to be taken as a god. But you you have to understand what we believe and then you need to understand what the Muslims believe in order to defend what we believe. And that’s where apologetics really helps in giving answers so that you can relate those answers. And you have to listen to your Muslim friends.

Understand what what they do believe because they don’t all believe the same thing. They come from different backgrounds, and you need to plug into that and understand whether they’re they’re, Sunni or whether they’re Shia, whether they’re, Ahmadine or or even in those particular branches, what they’ve been brought up with, what country they’re coming from. Understand what they believe so that you can, 0 in and help them through to understand what Christianity is saying. Because they are not dealing with true Christianity. And that’s why I like to bring up with them the the the challenge.

Do you want to know what true Christianity says about this? What we believe about the trinity? And you need to be able to explain that. What do we believe about the deity of Christ that he is God himself? You need to know the verses that point to that and, about the the crucifixion and and what, sources you go to, what verses you would use.

I teach a course on the resurrection, a whole course on that, and we go through, Gary Habermas and Mike Lacona and NT Wright, excellent sources to to give background. And, so it’s always important to be well versed in these things. I know you’ve worked a lot with, Ravi Zacharias Ministries and some of their academics, studying Islam. What do you think of this quote that love is the most powerful apologetic and tying that together with all of your defense? Well, I think Ravi is probably the foremost apologist in the world.

He looks at the questioner. He answers the questioner, and it’s because he wants to show them that he loves them, he respects them. He’s going to listen and answer their particular question. And above all, you’ve got to reach out to that person, answer their questions, be ready to answer their question because if you truly love them, you want them to know the truth because we believe that the truth will set them free. And Jesus says in, John 146, I am the way, the truth, and the life.

No one comes to the father except through me. If we believe that as Christians, then we need to act upon it and we need to be able to defend what we believe in truth and love. Well, doctor Daniel Janosic, thank you so much for, spending the morning with us. Man, my brain is full. I’m looking through, some of the books that you had mentioned.

I’m like, man, these guys are really smart, all these people. So, I’m gonna be reading, some of these books that you guys had mentioned too and, really glad that you guys got there. You got to come and share this topic with us. Howard, you should share the story about when we were in Trafalgar Square doing our soapbox ministry back in the, late nineties. Well, we we did have a one experience in London that was quite exciting because, we were working with a ministry too that, did open evangelist.

Same church. I don’t remember. Yeah. All Souls does ring a bell, but, it was, you know, kind of a smaller church. But, one of the things that we wanted to do was go to Trafalgar Square.

And, you know, there’s all these acts. Like, you know, people would come sing or do, you know, whatever. We had we had dramas in the Youth With A Mission 19 seventies fashion. But my wife had written a drama, which ended up saving us. Because the first the first Friday we went out there, there was, you know, hundreds of people around.

And we did this drama, old 19 seventies drama, and they booed us, laughed at us, heckled us. I mean, like, it really caused deep anxiety to me. And Trevor too, like, our whole team was so distraught. We didn’t know what to do, but we were scheduled to come back the next Friday and do something again. And so we were like, oh, no.

This is gonna be terrible. We get there, and first off, there was a riot. The riot police came in, shoved everyone out. There was an anarchist. They were anarchist group and, like, we’re, like, wow.

This is just, like, what’s gonna happen tonight with us. Meanwhile, we had been praying for a huge crowd. Right. Not not for a riot, but a huge crowd. You’re right.

Not a riot. That. And so yeah. After the right police left and kicked out everybody, the anarchists, then, you know, this huge group comes in of people. You know, I guess the news had traveled so they all wanted to come and hang out.

And so we do this drama that my wife wrote, and praise God she wrote it. And it was really, like, a really dramatic drama. Like, there’s, like, abortion in it. There’s, like, suicide in it, abusive. Like, there’s all this stuff in this drama where Jesus comes and saves.

And there are 100 of people literally sitting down on the sidewalk or on the on the on the square just listening and watching this drama. And then people were coming up to us and being prayed for. We were talking to people, a bunch of people, and I was just staggered. And, I think that was the last experience I’ve ever had with, like, a speaker square or open air, like, that type of place, like, where we’ve ever been heckled or even close to heckled. Because, you know, most places we go, there’s no heckling.

People are like, oh, drama. They run around. They don’t care if it’s from 19 seventies. But London, those those guys, they don’t play. They heckled us and it broke me, man.

It broke me. So that’s it’s pretty courageous what you guys, do and did in the speaker square. You have to get out of your comfort zone. Oh, man. Let the Lord work.

Oh, man. Don’t we know it now? I I think I’d be a good heckler. I don’t know if I have the voice to stand up and shout from the Yeah. You mentioned that, I was in, Amsterdam with a friend, and we were at the Remberan Square.

And we were walking through it. I had longer hair then. And, anyway, it seemed like every other person was either wanting to sell dope to you or or or buy it. We got across the square and almost stumbled over some people who were down on the ground sitting there, and and I noticed their eyes are closed. Oh, they’re praying.

And I looked around and there are all these little groups of people. And this was a square across from Rembrandt Square. And I thought, what in the world is going on? You know, it’s a Christian group and and, obviously, and something happened. Well, it was youth with a mission.

They had they had gone Wow. There, and they had, performed a drama. Apparently, it was pretty moving because there were all these people praying with others who had just accepted the lord because of that particular drama right across from what was going on, with Rembrandt Square with all of them. Amsterdam. This is Amsterdam.

And I was Way to go, YWAMers. Yeah. Yeah. I bet that was probably Floyd McClung. Wasn’t he on the devil’s doorstep in Amsterdam?

And what what year was this? This was 1980. Oh, yeah. He probably would have been there. Yeah.

Yeah. And you had long hair. You’re a hippie, weren’t you? Oh, I was a hippie. Oh, yeah.

That’s why we like you. That’s why we like you. Tail end. Tail end. Yeah.

Alright. Be sure to leave reviews on iTunes, and thanks for listening. See you next week.

The official podcast of the Swimmer Center For Muslim Studies, where we help to educate you beyond the media. Here are your hosts, Howard and Trevor. Alright. So I think we tend to believe that Muslims and Christians started interacting on 9:11, but reality is we’ve been interacting since the very beginnings of Islam In the, 7th 8th 9th centuries, there’s quite a, robust relationship going on between Muslims and Christians. But it’s not one it’s not a lot of history that we’re aware of.

Right. That’s something that I never learned in school. Yeah. Not a whole lot of sermons preached about the days of John of Damascus. The the only thing I knew about, Muslims, actually, now that I think about it before 911 was, being involved in missions work.

Mhmm. Yeah. So I have a a good friend, doctor, Daniel Genosic. He is a he has an undergraduate degree in biology and English and there’s an MDiv and as well as a master’s degree in Islamic Studies or Muslim Studies from the Zwemer Center. He also, did his doctorate degree on John of Damascus.

So That that’s quite the gamut. Yeah. So, you know, he’s the guy to ask and so he gives sort of a background of this, relatively unknown, person in Christian history amongst most people. Unless you study this point in history, you wouldn’t know much about him. And it’s pretty interesting, some of the things that he brings up.

Well, who was John of Damascus? It’s a name from the past. It may bring some recollection of, times in early Islam, but John had a great role to play in Islam. But there are also stories of John of his, demise and his trouble, his, difficulties. One of these is when he got in trouble for, going against the caliph who was Abdul Malik at that time, And John was his right hand man, and yet he was a Christian.

And so this was perhaps a way to get back at the Christians at that time. But what happened was that, there was supposedly a letter from a Christian leader from the Byzantine Empire who sent the letter to to the caliph, Abdul Malik, and this letter implied that John of Damascus was plotting to assassinate the caliph. And so this was, something that was very, horrible in the eyes of the caliph. So he had his men bring in John of Damascus, accuse him of treachery, and they cut off his right hand and put him in jail. And then they were going to, to kill him after that.

But when he was in prison, he asked for his hand to be brought back to him, and so they did that. And during that night, he prayed to the Virgin Mary that she would, bring about a miracle and reattach his hand. And lo and behold, in the morning when they came to get him, his hand was reattached. It worked fine and the miracle just, amazed the the people. And the caliph relented and realized that, he must be mistaken because this was an obvious miracle.

Now, of course, this is folklore that did not happen in John of Damascus, but this shows the honor and the respect and the the memory of a man that, in many ways, gave us a picture of Islam in the early days. Alright. I think that that’s poly folklore. You know what? I was kinda wondering, like, why?

Like, there was already the assumption there that this didn’t happen. Is it because, Well, that’s what he said. He said, you know, he that he thought it was folklore. Yeah. I am just wondering myself.

Like But I I do I do, I do feel you. I I I that would be really a really cool story, a testimony to God. Well, he he did mention that the the source of the story comes several, you know, decades, maybe a 100 of years After afterward. Right? After.

So there’s some yeah. It’s a little skeptical. Right. Nevertheless, it’s interesting to see the relationship that John of Damascus does have with the, caliph of Islam of the Islamic Empire right there in the beginnings in Syria. John lived in the first 100 years of Islam.

He was actually born 675, died 7 50, gives you a place mark there. He worked under the caliph Abdul Malik who, reigned from 685 to 705. But John was the grandson of the man who apparently surrendered the city of Damascus to the forces of Islam when they came up in 635. So very early in the, the immigration of the, the Arabs to the north, the city was given over. So his his grandfather was the mayor of the city of, Damascus.

And in order to, to save lives, he relented, surrendered the city. It had been a a peace relatively peaceful time for decades, and, John’s grandfather was restored to his position. He was, called the Logosetes, which is kinda like the chief tax collector, especially for the the Christians. And at first, the Christians were glad that the, the Arabs came in because the Byzantines, who had been rulers before, had exacted, pretty high taxes. And it was getting pretty onerous, so their new, masters were much more easy on them in regard to the taxes.

And these Arabs really lived outside in Garrison Town so that they did not bother the Christians so much at that time. Alright. So this show wouldn’t be possible without sponsors. And at this point in the show is where, if you wanna partner with us, we would put your ad. So if you wanna be a part of the show, you wanna partner with us, you like what we’re doing, you wanna be on our team, what have you, bringing this show to the world, then email us and let us know.

So when maybe for context, for understanding, it’s kind of like it sounds similar to the New Testament where you have Roman rule, but you also have, the Jews living under Roman rule and you had Jewish tax collectors that were essentially employed by the Roman Empire to collect taxes from the Jews living under the protection of Rome, Pax Romana. There’s sort of this, overarching, political power structure that that the Jews live under. So is that a good comparison when Islam comes in, to Damascus, they shift the power from from Mecca to Damascus and then the Christians live under a Islamic rule, but they still utilize, Christian leaders to collect taxes and deal with their own people. That’s a very good analogy, in fact, because the John’s grandfather was that, particular person to collect taxes in Damascus. And then when, the empire settled there in Damascus, that was the central city, John’s grandfather was still the the chief tax collector.

He gave that job off to his son, John’s father, And then in time, probably around 700 AD under Abdamalik, John of Damascus, became the chief tax collector of the Logothatas, chief financial officer of the empire. Yeah. I see how it’s a lot like Rome and, of course, Israel at this time. But, it also reminds me of Byzantine, what we kinda talked about last week. Right.

How the Byzantine Empire set up the sort of set the stage so that Islam could come in and fill that void. Right. And then when they came in, they charged taxes, but maybe it was much less than what they were used to pay. Right. And it’s not it’s not like the Muslims were purely motivated.

He does bring up an interesting point, regarding why the Muslims needed to work with the Christians. Well, from the sources that we have, John’s family was in a lot of favor. They they were a strong Christian family, a Melkite Orthodox Christian family. His father was a friend of the former caliph and, so they got along well. They were respected.

They were needed at that time because all the record keeping, the the financial record keeping was in Greek. And so that is why they had favor with the Arabs. The the Arabs needed them to to maintain the the status of the whole empire or the budding empire because it was just coming into being at that time. So John was very much needed. He spoke Arabic.

I mean, his his actual name was John Mansur. Mansur is a an an Arab name. It means Victor, victory. Wow. And so, you you usually know of him as John John of Damascus and, Yati had that Arabic link.

So he knew Arabic. He knew Syriac because Syriac was the, religious language of the church and he was very good with Greek. He’s known for his Greek writing. And, so he had a very good education, and yet he was serving in the court of the caliph at that time and respected and he seems to have respected Abdul Malik, who he was working for. So, you know, in the beginning, it’s actually a pretty good relationship between Muslims and Christians.

Right. They need each other, kind of. Right? Because the rules and the the laws, all that stuff is in Greek. Yep.

John of Damascus speaks Arabic. He also can read and write in Greek. Right. In Syriac, which is pretty I don’t even know what that is, but that’s pretty cool. And, but it doesn’t always stay that way.

Shortly after John served, the language, requirements changed. The the Muslims had more of a more control. They wanted to have the financial control so they made it so that all the people in leadership, even if they were Christians, needed to know Arabic. Arabic became the official language. Yeah.

So it sounds like there was a really good relationship between John of Damascus and the caliph. Right. But the the problem is it’s not going to remain that way. What started off well would not finish well as far as it goes between the relationship of the Muslims living in Damascus and, John of Damascus. I I see some parallels with today when you have, areas where there are where there would be a large percentage of Christians or non Muslims, and the Muslim, population would be small at first.

And then there’s more of a, congeniality, working together. But as the Muslims develop more power and more influence and more population growth, There seems to be a change, and that seems to be have happened in the early 700. You have, the governor of Iraq, Al Hujaz, who was a good friend of Abd Amalek coming in, and he made a lot of new proclamations. That’s where Arabic became the official language and, there was more of a a sense that, they were putting pressure on the Christians from war taxes, and that’s when the jizya, the so called head tax, came into effect in the early, 7 100. So there was a change in the tenor of the government.

The Arabs moved into the cities. They started taking control of the cities, and that’s where you also had an exodus of Christians out of the area because they were being, persecuted. It sounds like when the Muslims started to change everything, that it was cutting out the Christian. Like, they they switched everything to the Arabic language which, made it so that they didn’t actually need any of the Christians anymore. Yeah.

I mean, that’s one way of of looking at it. The other the other perspective would be, they set up a system that really favors their own people. Right. Which wouldn’t be an inherently Muslim idea. Right.

That’s a human human thing. Right? It tends to be what we still do. We want to, live in places with people like us and vote for people that will most benefit us, and that is a human issue, not necessarily one that’s inherently Muslim. Right.

It reminds me actually of, the Exodus with pharaoh and the Jews or the immigrant community living there. Remember how we were talking a few weeks back about immigration? Right. Immigration issues when you start having these, Christians living under the Islamic Empire, there’s concerns about why do we they’re not converting, you know. Let’s raise some taxes.

Let’s, cause life to be harder on them and shouldn’t be as hard on us. I mean, this is our empire. We’re providing the protection. This is an Islamic empire, not a Christian one. And so you see how that kinda happens.

And then eventually, it’s, you know, just like, Daniel Dinosick was saying that the the Christians start to leave. Yeah. There’s a a a mass exodus of Christians, but not all Christians. There’s still those historians that stick around. So what happens to John of Damascus after all of this?

Well, eventually, he leaves and he retires into a monastery where he begins doing a lot of his writing. In in the process of joining the monastery, there was an interesting story that that Daniel shared, about his first interactions with the abbot or the sort of head monk of the monastery. It’s it’s very interesting. When John decided to become a monk, he, was set up in a monastery at Saint Sabas and the, the the chief, abbot appointed a strict master over him who really wanted to get John in line. John was known for his, brilliance, his intellectual brilliance, and so this master monk decided to break him down.

And so he wanted to, have him do humiliating things. And one of those things was to to, take baskets and, go into Damascus and sell these baskets as a a, representative for trade. Well, Don did that with, a joyful part. He went in. He took these baskets, and, of course, people looked down on him.

But then, one day, there was a a friend of his who was very wealthy and came and saw John’s predicament and ended up giving him, buying all the baskets. And John was able to go back and praise the praise God for his good fortune. And in time, this master monk relented and, gave John the benefit of the doubt and gave him better quarters and and, more freedom. He the the the irony was that, this master monk did not want John to write, and yet that was his great gift. And this is just an interesting story of the difficulties that he may have had, in his early time.

So is that the end of the story? He just has this quaint little life in a monastery and that’s it? Basically, no. No. It’s here while he’s living in the monastery that he writes his his work, both his theological works for Orthodox Christianity and also really his polemics against the what he would consider to be the heresy of the Ishmaelites.

What are some of the differences that John really, focuses in on that he would say that this is a Christian heresy? Okay. Well, first of all, you have the, the sense that, the Arabs, the Muslims did not accept the trinity. At first, there was a difference. You have on the Dome of the Rock, which was built in the 6 ninety’s by Abdemalik, the phrases do not say 3.

In other words, don’t talk about 3 gods, which of course the Christians never believed in 3 gods, but there were these admonitions against those types of ideas. Do not put Jesus Christ as God himself or the Son of God. So these ideas were becoming more and more prevalent in the, in the time of Abd Amalek, in the time of John of Damascus. And so when he went away to the, to the monastery and wrote, we have a lot of, works by John written in Greek, mostly his works on Orthodox Christianity, but also on, 2 treatises where he talks about his time with Muslims, what he learned. One is called the heresy, the Ishmaelites.

He called them Ishmaelites. He never called them Muslims. He never referred to the Koran, though he does talk about the writings of Mahmed. He doesn’t call them Muhammad, but he calls them Mahmed. And at that time, he’s and this is about 743, he died in 7 50, so it is before, before his death, as he’s writing his big orthodox faith, which is a composite of the 8 centuries of Christianity, where it seems like he’s trying to leave something for the Christians so that they will not fall away from the faith.

He sees that, there are a lot of Christians who are going over and converting to Islam. Others are leaving the country. He stayed. It’s obvious that John of Damascus is writing with a certain audience in mind. Right.

I mean, people, as he’s getting ready to point out, are are leaving, Christianity for Islam, and so he’s having to give a credible defense for a reason to stay in the faith. He said that, Muhammad or Mohammed was a false prophet and the religion was one of coercion and that it was, leading to the antichrist. Not that it was the antichrist, but it had the hallmark of the antichrist. And so he saw difficulties. One of those was that they denied the trinity.

Another was that they denied the deity of Christ. They saw him as a prophet. They had great respect for him. And that’s where it seems like the early, movement that became Islam, came out of a respect for Christ, but a deficient view of Christ. And then they also came up with the view that the Bible was corrupted.

You even see that in the writings of John where he felt like they would not accept certain things that he would say biblically because of their views of the Christian scriptures. So I don’t know. Today in our language, we don’t really come down on heretics like that. And so with the way John, of Damascus spoke, it you know, it’s kinda starting a little startling a little bit. Yeah.

It seems a bit harsh at first glance. I mean, I get it in this time of, you know, this day and age or at this time when he’s writing. You know, it would be very, you know, he would be very cutting to, heretics or people he perceived to be heretics. And he would have to give a credible defense of the faith while discrediting Islam. And that’s what he does in his writings.

And he was writing primarily to the church. This wasn’t really for Muslims. He’s not he’s not enter entering a debate with them. You know, I think that’s one of the things that I’ve always wondered about John of Damascus. I’m not sure that this is meant to be an evangelistic strategy.

Oh. Sometimes, we think of apologetics and evangelism It’s 1 and the same. Yeah. And I think John of Damascus has a particular audience in mind, and that is Christians that are wondering, should I stay within the Christian faith or should I convert to Islam? Hey, ladies.

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Yeah. I’m a winner. I’m a winner. Yeah. Oh, wow.

That’s nice. He just leaves paint. Luke paint. Luke. Alright.

CIU educates people from a biblical worldview to impact the nations with the message of Christ. You wanna read that again? Yep. You’re like, I’ll be so embarrassed to make your mouth here. I mean, it’s fascinating to sit and ask questions of somebody that’s dedicated a good portion of their life to looking at one individual, John of Damascus, and his early interactions with the the Muslims there in Damascus, Damascus, Syria.

Right. And, it seems like, it’s starting to cross, pertinent for us because today, we’re dealing with some of these things like, people converting, both ways. Right? And then, of course, refugees, you know. And then, you know, it’s power changing, people losing favor, people becoming secondary citizens.

Right? We have that happening in the Muslim world at this moment. We have that happening in the Muslim world where, Christians are being, driven out by radicals. We have it happening in the Western world where Muslims are looking for refuge and to be treated with justice and mercy and because they’re Muslims, some people don’t want to. The irony behind all of this is that we are still talking about the same place, Syria.

Yeah. And this is Damascus. Right? And so one of the questions that, you know, I had to ask was, so how what would John of Damascus say to us as Christians today watching what’s happening in the world, and would John of Damascus have relevant words for us? Well, I think this is a great opportunity.

Muslims are coming to us. They want, they have a lot of questions. They’re questioning their own beliefs. They are seeing what ISIS is doing and realizing that that is Islamic. They are following the Quran and, yet they are having second thoughts.

So this is a time of great opportunity for Christians to really show the love of Christ, to reach out to these to to these, refugees and, see this as, perhaps, a way that god is breaking down the walls as he has in in so many, Muslim countries already with the dreams and the visions and the the, miraculous things that are happening. I mean, god is on the move and this may be another way that god is moving and opening us to the opportunities. We can see from the life of John how things changed even during his lifetime. Early on when the Arabs came came in, they took over Damascus. There was, a sharing of responsibilities.

There was a respect for the Christians, a need for the Christians because they spoke Greek, they they took care of the economic financial matters but, as time went on, the persecution grew and, that’s why I think that John decided to give up his, his life as a civil servant. He knew Arabic so he could’ve continued, in that service. But, around 7 15, 717, he decided to go off to the monastery, became a priest in Damascus under a very famous, priest there and then moved off to, Saint Sabas monastery outside of Jerusalem. He had a friend who was a monk there in Damascus and this friend just got to the point of rebelling against Islam and so he went out into the square and proclaimed blasphemy against Mohammed, against Islam. And of course, he was taken, captive.

His, tongue was cut out. He was beat, to a pulp and then, turned turned loose, exiled. But he didn’t survive, very many days. And I think John took that, very, very deeply. It was something that affected him and you find that in some of his writings.

But, that’s what was going on. And so he wrote in Greek and he wrote against Islam in his later years. The heresy of the Ishmaelites, another dialogue, the disputation between a Christian and a Saracen. And these were apologetic treatises. They brought out the differences between Christianity and, Islam.

And he had great insight into what was going on. But he also saw that, these were troubled times. It was not what started off in the early days. Yeah. I like how he says that that these are huge opportunities that God is, at work in using the wrath of man to praise him in moving peoples all over the world and particularly Muslims into areas where they might hear the gospel.

Yeah. And that’s kinda what we talked about with the refugee episode. Mhmm. It is an amazing opportunity. And, you know, talking with Daniel Donacek was really cool about the, him, you know, knowing so much about John at Damascus.

It’s encouraging that he would say that this is what John at Damascus would say. Absolutely. Yeah. Because, for me, when I look back on on history, sometimes I think that maybe other people didn’t have that perspective of reaching people with the gospel. You know, no matter the cost, no matter the circumstance, looking above and beyond, what seems like in the natural.

But here we go. I mean, this is, Daniel Janosic, who’s an expert on John and Damascus, and I thought that was pretty encouraging. Yeah. And he’s also, he gives a little bit more that we’re gonna have to put into another episode regarding the Trinity. And so he gives a nice explanation of John of Damascus, how he would argue and defend the the trinitarian beliefs of Christianity and also goes on to explain sort of the basis of apologetics.

We’re gonna have to put that into another episode. Well, thanks for listening this week. Again, iTunes, we have a lot, so far, but we would love to see more and more. It makes a difference. Right, Trevor?

Oh, absolutely. It helps us, know that people are listening. 38 people that have left reviews listening, and we love those 38 people. But That’s how we do it. It is a lot it is a lot of work, and it’s almost been a year.

So we will do our 1 year anniversary show here in a few weeks and, what are we doing? I don’t know, that may be the last show of our existence if we may just wrap it up in a year, so we’re still in Islam 101, 101 episodes of Islam. Yep. I don’t know why you keep saying that. Alright.

We’ll see you next week.

Alright. So the year is 630. The Byzantine Empire is in full swing, has just defeated the Persian army after a 25 year struggle. The emperor Heraclius is making his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, returning the true cross of Christ to Jerusalem that had been captured previously by the Persians. Wait.

True cross of Christ meaning, like, the the wood cross? I was narrating the intro to the alright. Wait. Wait. Wait.

Let’s clarify. No. We’re gonna get there. We’re gonna get there. The wood cross.

Like, the cross that Jesus died on. The cross. They had it. They saved it. I’ve never been I’m I don’t know.

I mean, I’m just telling you what they say. I can neither confirm nor deny that this was the actual cross of Christ. I’m a bit of a skeptic. Yeah. Yeah.

I find it highly suspect considering the thousands upon thousands of people crucified and the reuse Yeah. Of crosses by the Roman Empire. However They’re not gonna retire that cross. Back to the story. Oh, wait wait wait.

But time out, wasn’t there that place in Tennessee that we went to and they literally said they had the piece of Noah’s Ark? They had discovered it. It was in the middle of Tennessee. It was like this country town. There was like some fake museum set up and they had a piece of the Noah’s Ark.

Buddha’s tooth in Sri Lanka or I have In Turkey, there’s Paul’s hair or something like that. They have Abraham’s staff in Istanbul. Hey. They have, I have seen Peter’s bones at Saint Peter’s Basilica. Now that one is actually a little more.

Actually, you know, in Peru recently brought those out and I do do you wanna tell that story at some point. Well, in Peru, the missionary was telling us at that cathedral in the in the square in, the capital Lima, they have Peter’s bones. But he says it’s a fake. That’s a fake fake. The real one is there at Saint Peter’s Basilica.

I saw it. But he said people believe it. In the capital of in Lima, Peru, why would they have Peter’s bones in a cathedral? I’m sure there’s an elaborate story as to how they got there. Sure.

So as emperor, Heraclius has his triumphal entry into Jerusalem to return the true cross of Christ, I don’t think he had any clue that within 5 years, this Byzantine Empire that was now, the sole rulers and now conquered Persia was about to be overrun by the Muslim world. I don’t think at that point in time the emperor had even any clue about who the Muslim were who the Muslims were or who Mohammed was. He had been so focused on the Persians that it’s almost as though Islam, rises out of the abyss and just shows up on the scene and takes over what is known as the Eastern Roman Empire in a few short years. Once again, Muslim terrorists. A terrorist.

Islamic extremists. These are the total terrorists of the country. They’re random terrorists and brutal endeavors. News flash America. These Muslim extremists not irrelevant.

It is a warning. Welcome to the Truth About Muslims podcast, the official podcast of the Swimmer Center For Muslim Studies, where we help to educate you beyond the media. Here are your hosts, Howard and Trevor. Okay. So it’s it’s important to understand how the stage is set for Islam to come in.

And before there is an Islamic Empire, there really is, several 100 years of Christian imperialism, particularly in the east with the Byzantine Empire. So the Byzantine Empire is really just the Eastern Roman Empire and Constantine is really the one who sets that up. But even before we get to Constantine, we have to understand how this whole way of looking at life through the emperors comes into play, and it’s happening right there in the Bible. Howard, do you remember the story? I believe it’s in Mark 12 and also in Matthew 22 where the Pharisees try to corner Jesus and say is it okay to pay taxes to Caesar?

Mhmm. We think of this passage as very much just a, really a passage about the IRS and our responsibility to pay income tax. You’re talking about an application for us today? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. But but it’s really more complex than that. When he asked for the tribute coin or the denarius, he says, whose whose inscription whose face is on this coin? Right.

Caesar. And, it’s really, Tiberias. And then he says, in whose, inscription? And, really, if you don’t know what that coin looks like at that point in time in history, you miss a really important part of the story. The coin on the front would have been the picture of the Emperor Tiberius and then on the back it would have said, son of the the divine and chief priest.

What? Son of the divine and chief priest. That’s what the coin would have said. Wow. So that changes it, doesn’t it?

It it it makes the question so much more interesting than at first glance. Maybe, what the question is really doing is maybe Jesus is saying something about whose picture is that and whose inscription. Maybe they should have said, well, it’s Caesar’s picture, but it’s your inscription. You’re the son of God. You’re the son of the divine.

You are the chief priest. Maybe, the people right then and there would have been trying to get Jesus to claim to become son of God and overthrow the emperor right then and there, hoping that they would hear about it and and crucify him then and there. The whole concept of this idea of the son of God, exists there right in the middle of when Jesus comes on the scene. And it starts with Julius Caesar. After he dies, his adopted son, Octavian, declares Julius Caesar is divine, which, of course, makes him what?

Son of the divine. And then when Octavian dies, his son declares Octavian divine, and way the way that they would do that is they would give them the title of Augustus. They would be Caesar while they’re living, and then they would retain the title of Augustus when they died. So their children would say, oh, yeah. My father, he’s now an Augustus.

He is divine, and I am a son of the divine. I am a son of God, and my father is God. And this emperor worship was going on when Jesus comes onto the scene. This emperor worship, though, was it genuine? Did they really think that they were God?

I believe that the emperors believed they were God. I don’t know if anybody else believed they were God Alright. Wholeheartedly. Right. Right.

Right. Well, there’s eventually an emperor named Diocletian that comes on the scene and Diocletian, around 285 divides the Roman Empire into 2 and he gives a Western Empire and an Eastern Empire and he makes an emperor for the East himself and an emperor for the West. Okay. And then, they take on the titles of Augustus, meaning they have divine status while they’re living. Now this is a new idea.

Oh. And then they have their own, sort of emperors underneath them that have the titles of Caesar. So they’re sons of God. And they’re the gods. The god of the east, the god of the west, and Roman Empire.

Really? Yeah. And they’re trying to unify the Roman Empire by really consolidating the religious belief under paganism, and that’s why you have with Diocletian this extreme persecution that goes out against the church. I mean, he is known to be one of the biggest persecutors of the early church. Because he wants everyone to worship him.

Yeah. Emperor worship and paganism will unify the empire, and these Christians are messing it all up. The only problem is with persecution of Christians, something strange happens, and they keep spreading. And that’s why you have, like, Tertullian saying this the blood of the martyr is the seed of the church. It keeps spreading and growing and growing and growing.

So it’s not really working, this whole idea of persecuting Christians. So, eventually, this eastern part of the Roman Empire and this western part of the Roman Empire gets reunified under one particular emperor who makes a bit of a shift in the religious allegiances of the Roman Empire, and that’s Constantine. Oh, that’s when he comes into the picture. Right. And so, Constantine, comes onto the scene and he takes over the western part of the empire, and then eventually he takes over the eastern part of the empire and he unifies the 2.

And right there in the middle of that story is that dream that he has, this is when he’s going to conquer the Western Empire, reconquer Rome, reclaim Rome. He has a dream and he sees a sign in his dream, and it is the chi rho, the Greek alphabet. It looks like an x and a p. Yes. This is the first two letters of, Jesus’ first name in Greek, Christos, or not Jesus’ first, but the Christ Christos.

Christ is his last name. Yes. So, you have Cairo and they paint this on their shields and then after the victory, he decides that he will issue an edict in, the 4th century, 312 12, the edict of Milan, that there would be no more persecution of the Christians. So Constantine does not make it a Christian empire necessarily by any particular edict, but he has a vision for a Christian empire. And he goes to the east, and he sets up the city of God, Byzantium.

And he changes Istanbul to Constantinople. You’ve heard the song. Right? Istanbul, it’s Constantinople, now it’s Istanbul, not So, Constantine has this idea that he is going to set up a city of God that will become sort of the beacon for the Christian Empire of the Roman Empire. And, his mother, Saint Helena, St.

Helena makes a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and she finds the true cross of Christ And she brings back this true cross of Christ to, Constantinople and sets it up there at the city with a wonderful statue of Constantine holding a scepter. Apparently, the nails were were brought into Constantine’s crown, the nails from the crucifixion, and the true cross of Christ stands right there next to, Constantine at the city gates, proclaiming this to be the new Christian city of the new Christian Roman Empire. Wait, wait, wait. So, Constant Constantine at this point had become a Christian? So that’s the debate.

A lot of folks don’t think he ever was a Christian, that he was just using faith as a means to control the empire. Some folks say he was, baptized on his deathbed. That’s what I heard. That’s what I heard. That’s the truth.

That would be a bad strategy to control your empire through Christians or by proclaiming Christianity, wouldn’t it? Because the powers that be would be pagan. Well, the powers that be were most certainly for the Roman gods, but guess what? You can just eliminate them, and then all of a sudden you are the sole ruler. God’s divine ruler here on Earth.

I mean, it really did make sense. So he just wiped them all out. Yeah. It’s quite the the stories of the emperors during that time are are it’s like a daytime soap opera where you have, husbands killing their own wives, killing their own sisters, marrying their sisters off to other emperors and other people in different areas to consolidate power. It’s it’s quite disturbing.

So they basically did whatever it took to put them in the place that they wanted to be? Sure. And and this idea of Christian relics is huge. I mean, they have the literal baskets where the loaves and the fish were gathered, by the disciples there. You have the building of St.

Peter’s Basilica, the original one there in Rome, by St. Helena. You have the Church of the Holy Sepulchre there, in Jerusalem. You have the true cross of Christ. It’s just a very, it’s a huge shift in world history where it goes from pagan Roman emperor worship to the syncretism of the church in the Roman Empire, and Constantine is presiding over the church in some way.

Some would I know some people that are Constantinian scholars are like, no. He didn’t preside over the church, but he did provide preside over the Council of Nicaea and call the Council of Nicea in 2025. Right. And when they disagreed, right, he forced them to come to some kind of agreement or something like that. Well, we have the we have the Hadithine creed.

He had a lot of influence. Of course. Yeah. He is the emperor. What a what a stark, contrast that image would have been with him and his statue with a scepter and then the true, you know, the so called true cross of Christ.

Yeah. Like like that would be the, like, the exact, like, model of syncretism. I mean, it’d be a great image of syncretism right there. Yeah, especially when Jesus seems to be pretty clear at least that, you know, my followers are not of this world. If they were of this world, they would fight.

Right. And here now we have sort of the king, the emperor, and we have the cross of Christ. And eventually, you have, more and more Christian influence and there are some monks that are involved with Constantine and pushing this and then there are some monks that are saying, nope, this is wrong and they’re withdrawing to the monasteries and even protecting the pagans as the pagans are being persecuted by the Christians eventually. So it’s just a mess. So it sounds like today.

Hey, ladies. I’m from, truth about Muslims podcast. Have you heard of it? Yeah. Okay.

So we want you to read an ad for us. Can you do that? You’ll be famous, like, world famous. It’ll be amazing. C I u?

C I u. C I u. C I u. C I u. I’m Kevin Kekaisen.

Kevin. Yeah. Oh, wow. Nice. You just lose faith.

Luke faith. Luke. Alright. CIU educates people from a biblical worldview to impact the nations with the message of Christ. You wanna read that again?

No. I feel like I’ll be so embarrassed to be out there. Like, there’s all these ideas of of, you know, right, how we should move forward in, pushing forward our faith or, you know, like, in our in our government. Right? I know people out there probably gonna disagree with me.

But in the US government, some people are, like, you know, we need to be political. We need to, put in a Christian president. We need to make all the laws Christian. All the legislation’s Christian. You know, like, that kind of stuff.

And some others are like, no. We don’t want anything to do with this. Let the let the, you know, give unto Caesar what is Caesar. Let the government do what it wants to do. That we’re we’re done with that.

Definitely a huge division within the Christians. And so this is kinda what’s happening in the the very first situation of Christians actually having to deal with this. Yeah. Go ahead. It is.

And and right there in the very beginnings you have the disagreements happening. You’re right. You have those that feel like that we should be using the government to, spread Christianity. Right. And there’s there’s taxes put against people that are not Christian.

The Jews are treated quite poorly actually under Constantinian Christianity. Another emperor will come along eventually named Justinian who writes a code of law. I think it would be very interesting to look at the sort of setup of a theocratic law under Justinian and how when Islam comes in, look. Wait. Wait.

His law was the theocracy? Everything about the Eastern Empire would have been looked at as theocratic because it was the Christian Empire. Wow. So all of the laws had to do with what the Bible had said? Well, that would be the basis for a lot of them.

Yeah. I’m not of the mindset that that they were correct interpretations of what the Bible had said. Right. They did have to make real interpretations and so it would be like the Sharia law that we’re, you know, that people are so concerned about, but it’s the Christian version. I do think that there is a Christian version.

Yeah. And we see it there in the in the Byzantine Empire. And so I’m assuming that it came out pretty, twisted. There’s some parts of it that are good and they’re still being used in today’s, civil law, and then there’s some parts that were quite corrupt. Treating people differently based on faith and based on ethnicity is, in my mind, not a good way of operating justice.

But that was quite common during the day. So think about it in this sense. What does it matter for the setting of the stage of Islam? If you have at 325 this council where all the bishops have to come together and work out the idea of the the nature of Christ and there’s a lot of fighting going on and I mean some of it’s quite visceral this fighting between bishops. Wait, fighting like the fist fight?

No. A lot of its, you know, power of the pin type fighting, but there’s also a few, within the church there’s some infighting that gets quite violent as well and there’s there’s a lot of things going on. But I I don’t wanna characterize the whole thing as just being Right. Wicked. There was some intellectual discussion about the nature of Christ and the Council of Nicaea is where this really gets worked out.

And the and the question, really gets fleshed out over the nature of Christ and, of course, Arius and his views, is that Christ is not divine and you have the views that no, he is divine and eventually, Arius loses. Arianism is declared a heresy and it’s no coincidence that the belief that Christ was not divine, that he was just a prophet and a messenger of God is floating around at the time of Mohammed because it’s quite popular, at that point in time in history to believe that Christ was not divine, that he was only a prophet of God. It’s an early Christian heresy that’s dealt with in the 4th century at with Constantine at the Council of Nicaea. Mhmm. Now later you have another debate that’s happening with this whole concept of the theotokos, the mother of God.

Now you have the whole concept of, is did Jesus’s mother, Mary, did she give birth to God? And the historian the historians was and the stories would say, no, you cannot call her the mother of God. She gave birth to his human nature. And so where was his divine nature? And that’s where the debates come about where is the divine nature of God?

Where’s the human nature of God? Eventually it gets worked out right 100% man 100% God. It’s very clear. Okay. So I just think they’re arguing about ensoulment.

When did God’s divine soul enter or spirit enter into the the human Jesus? You have, the concept of adoptionism that Jesus becomes fully divine at his baptism and the the Spirit of God descends upon him, the divine spirit and joins with his flesh. You have the gnostic arguments of docetism where, they believe that Jesus only appeared to be in the form of a body Right. But he was really fully divine. Yeah.

And it makes sense when you hear stuff in the Quran like it only appeared as though they had crucified Christ, but they crucified him not. Right. Very much in line with a docetic view of the divine nature of Christ or the Aryan view of he’s not God he’s just a prophet very much articulated well in the Quran. So the the Christian heresies are really setting the stage is what I’m trying to to say. That makes sense?

Setting the stage for Islam to enter and take over. Right. Because you have these revelations from Mohammed that say things like, Jesus, son of Mary, did you ever say to mankind worship me and my mother as gods beside me? And Jesus will reply, glory be to you. I could have never claimed what I have no right to and that’s Surah 5.

Woah. So there Islam is seeing itself as a correction of Christian heresies that are birthed out of an imperial Christianity of the third and 4th century. And so these these heresies, how prevalent are they in this time in this Byzantine Empire at this point? Very. So they’re just dominating the conversation.

They’re exiled from the Byzantine Empire, they just simply float into the, Arabian Peninsula and even after Arius was declared the loser, the the Aryan heresy still carried on quite well. And that’s where they went. Mhmm. Now, I wouldn’t say it’s totally like today in a sense that, 1, a lot of Christian theologians aren’t, you know, ex communicating people the way that they once did. And 2 That’s true.

We’re not gathering up people by the tens of 1,000 into the hippodrome and and persecuting and killing them if they don’t convert. Right. There there was a certain amount of pressure that came from the Christian Empire against the pagans that, in my opinion, was quite shameful and really fits Wait. Wait. Causing the pagans to convert to Christianity by force.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it’s not it it doesn’t come under, Constantine necessarily. It’s not until later that Christianity is declared the official religion of Rome, meaning if you’re not Christian you’ll be persecuted.

Constantine set the Edict of Milan which would allow Christians not to be persecuted, but there’s another edict that comes later that allows that actually makes Christianity the official religion of Rome. So he he just basically started turning the tide at that point. Right. Right. So imagine imagine that you are there when eventually you have this war that breaks out between the Persians.

The Persians controlled Jerusalem in 6 14 and then you have this 25, year war that’s going on. Woah. The war was 25 years? Between the Persians and the Byzantines. Yeah.

Wow. But in 614, the Persians controlled Jerusalem and then eventually they win it back. About 15, 16 years later, Heracles Heraclius goes in and returns the true cross of Christ to Jerusalem. They won Jerusalem back. This all comes right before Islam is on the scene.

This is exactly the same time that Mohammed is passing away and Islam is about to take over. And so how big is Islam at this point? I don’t know numbers or demographics, but it’s not big enough that they should have won. And that’s one of those things where a lot of Muslims will look and claim the same thing that a lot of Christians will see. Yeah.

That God is obviously on our side. Yeah. And they do have some things that happen that are, to them, miracles. You know, sandstorms that come out of nowhere, small armies that are able to defeat large armies. Now the Arabs were known as being very effective mercenaries at that point in time, and that’s the only sort of interaction the Byzantine and Persian Empire had is they would hire the Arabs to go and, fight battles on the ground.

Big enough to to conquer an empire. No. I don’t think so. That’s one of the things that Muslims would argue that that’s that’s the miracle of Islam. Now what about the weakness of having a 25 year war with the Persians?

That that, of course, is my answer as a as a Christian, and and I’m totally unbiased here, you know. So but the whole concept is if you have a 25 year battle going on Yeah. And you have a constant argument over the nature of Christ, and you’re not sure who you’re supposed to align with, and you have constant taxation from this Christian empire, and you have constant bickering and infighting among, the people, they are exhausted. Right. They are literally exhausted.

And, I mean, the amount of death that they had experienced during the 25 years prior to Islam coming on the scene. If Islam comes on the scene and they say, hey, we’ve worked out the whole nature of Christ thing. He’s just a man. We’re more than happy to come in. We’re gonna, take over, run shop here.

We’re gonna offer some low taxes to you guys that are Christian. If you’re Muslim, you wanna convert it to an even lower tax. To be to be honest, I think Philip Jenkins, writes it well in his lost history of Christianity. He talks about the, burden or the yoke of, the incoming Islamic empire was much lighter than the former Christian empire. Yikes.

So there’s already the stage is set. So Justinian’s law, Sharia fits right in there, have a law, a theocratic law. Yeah. They were primed and ready for that that type of government. And the theocratic law, quite honestly, from the Muslim perspective, was much lighter than the theocratic law of the imperial Christian empire.

Which is insane. Yeah. It is. If you if you think about it in terms like you know, because a lot of people do want a Christian government, you know, the United States to become a Christian government. Right?

What would that look like? Theocratic law, what would that look like? You know? And, we don’t I don’t know if we go that far to even think about because it could be pretty, you know, corrupt and messed up. And, of course, I mean, it’s gonna be run by humans.

Yeah. Not not could be. It would be. Right. Historically, we’ve seen that movie, and I don’t you know, got the t shirt, been there, done that, got the t shirt, don’t wanna go back.

Yeah. Yeah. I’m I’m not convinced that would be the best strategy. But but do you see how the stage is set Yeah. For Islam?

They’re primed and ready. Yeah. And so when you have this, you know, this first four sets of caliphs and they shift the focus out of Mecca into Syria into Damascus and they begin to overrun this Byzantine Empire, it really didn’t require a whole lot of there’s a lot of arguments people say, yeah. Well, they conquered by the sword. They really didn’t need much of a sword.

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Then email us and let us know. Alright. So you can see how the stage is set, Howard. Let just sum it up for us. What is it that you’re seeing here?

The stage being set for the coming of the Muslim empire. Alright. I’m gonna give it my best shot. Okay? And you can jump in and correct.

I will. Don’t worry. But, you know, audience, I’m listening and learning just as you guys are. Okay. So this is what’s happening.

The Muslims were, a baby religion at this point. Mohammed had just passed away, recently, I guess. And then Byzantine, on the other hand, you know, where it’s Turkey, I guess. That area, they were really kind of unhappy. They were a Christian, empire.

Yeah. The entire Middle East all the way across North Africa up into Rome. I mean, the Roman Empire. And they were there was a lot of fighting in between and there was not very much peace and, of course, there was this this yoke that this Christian government or this empire would put on the people. So there was, like, a lot of taxes and, pagans were getting killed left and right, or forced to convert.

So it was a really unhappy place. Yeah. Not not warm feelings towards Christendom. Right. Right.

And so that’s kinda setting the stage. So then when, Mohammed passes away, then all of the Muslims start to, come over and they’re about to wanting to take over the Byzantine Empire? Is that what their goal was? Absolutely. Spread Islam.

And and to the people, the common people of the Byzantines, Right? It would have been a very it would look like a blessing. Yeah. Like, it would be like their yoke is a lot lighter. Their taxes are less.

They’re kinda clearing up all of the the the theological arguments that everyone is having, and they’re gonna allow Christians to operate within government positions, maintain sort of status as Christians. They’re not gonna force us to convert to Islam. So are we get special titles that we now look at as quite negative, but at that point in time it wouldn’t have been such a bad thing to have this dimmy status, the second class citizen that we often hear like that. That was a common theme. Right?

I mean, if you have a theocratic government and you’re not of that faith, it’s not gonna bode well for you. And Christians can’t boast that Christendom treated the Jews well. Yeah. Right. And so all of this kind of was happening, in spite of the fact that we, I guess, in modern times, we think that the Christians were just being slaughtered.

Muslims were coming in to slaughter, but that that wasn’t always the case. Often sometimes, like in this case, there was actually a happy change, a change that they wanted to happen. Is that is that, accurate? Is that pretty good? I think so.

I mean, there’s some points in history where Muslims and Christians get along quite well. There’s other points in times in history where there’s unhappy feelings, not so warm. But the important thing to realize is that the Constantinian sort of imperialistic Christianity set the stage. Constantine presented the city there’s one mosaic that that kind of tells the story where Constantine is presenting to the it’s the mother of God and Jesus sitting on her lap. Constantine is presenting the City of God and Justinian is presenting the Church of God because he builds the Hagia Sophia, the church that has become, you know, church mosque church mosque.

Right, right, right. There in Turkey, modern day Turkey. So it’s it’s really important to understand that context or else we’ll get into the, throwing rocks living in a glass house mentality. So Yeah. What is that what is that saying?

Those that don’t know history are doomed to repeat it. Yes. I don’t even know who says that, but but I think it’s true. Yeah. So this might be this series might be a little bit heady.

This is a part of our Islam 101. Yeah. It’s the early development of Islam and the early relationships between Christians and Muslims. Right. We’ll get into the trinity and all that stuff too.

Right. And as time goes on, you will see how pertinent this is to us, modern day. So do you want to hear my, Peter’s bones story? Yeah. Okay.

So You’re like good. Yeah. We were living overseas and we didn’t we couldn’t go home for Christmas because our mission agency really wanted us to stay out for the 1st couple years without returning home so that we could really get used to the culture and not just run home for the 1st Christmas break. So we decided we would go to Rome and, Rome in the winter is really cheap actually. It’s very affordable.

Is it cold? Very. And everybody was dressed so nice. We were in our blue jeans and sweatshirts. Just looked like total bunch of Americans.

Yeah. So anyway, before we went, my wife had decided that she would write to the Vatican and ask for special permission to visit the catacombs. Nuh-uh. Yes. She really did this?

I totally imagine Katie doing this right. She writes to the, the Vatican because she had heard, she had read a story somewhere that if you ever go to the Vatican write special She told them how we were missionaries, how we had a deep affection for Christ and that you know, we didn’t say we were Catholic, just Protestant missionaries and that we really would appreciate a tour of the catacombs to see this early part of church history. I thought it was a bit, you know, of a stretch. Like, really? We’re gonna write the Vatican and ask for permission?

But, nevertheless, they wrote her back and said, absolutely. Here’s your tour, date and time. Be there. So we show up again wearing jeans and sweatshirt. So you went to the Vatican?

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And, they had special guards. The, what is it?

The Swiss guards that they have. Mhmm. I’ve seen pictures. Yeah. They’re dressed kind of funny with the funny hats and the tights and they carry like spears and stuff.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. They were there. So they’re, they let us in. We write down some information and then we join a tour. We are the only non priest on the tour.

Well, they’re all priests in the group? Yes. They’re all priests in the group and this is like their pilgrimage, right? This is their, important they’ve come to the Vatican. They’re going to the catacombs.

So we had heard that they had the bones of the Apostle Peter in the catacombs And that’s what we were really excited about seeing. Like, what is this story? What is this, we don’t know what it is at this point other than they say they have the bones of Peter. So they began taking us through the catacombs showing us these early early tombs of Christians and it was amazing. What did it look like?

Was it really dark in there? Yeah. Dark dank. What you would imagine a catacomb looking like is what it looked like. And the guy That’s kinda scary.

It was a little bit creepy. And, the guy that was giving the tour was from Ohio. Okay. He was a priest in training, and, he was telling us the history of the catacombs, in particular, people who had been buried in different places and how when Saint Peter’s Basilica now remember from the story that Saint Helena had first Saint Peter’s Basilica built over the the grave of Peter. Okay.

Now, that basilica was torn down and rebuilt into the current Saint Peter’s Basilica, But they were doing, some sort of renovation, and, apparently, there was somebody that was mopping the floor and something fell from a ladder and a piece of the, floor went down underneath the ground. And that’s when they began excavating these catacombs and realizing that there were all these catacombs underneath the current Saint Peter’s Basilica. As, the guy goes on telling the story, they realize that, they come to one catacomb and they think, man, I wonder if we could find the burial place of the apostle Peter because, historically, it’s supposed to be over the top of his grave. Uh-huh. So they start looking and they come across this one catacomb where it says something along the lines apostle Peter the Rock, the cornerstone of the church type writing.

So then they begin digging up and they’re like, oh, man. We found it. And they dig up and they dig up. They get these bones out and they test them. And you know what they were?

What? Animal bones. They were animal bones. And so they were like, what? This isn’t the apostle Peter’s bones.

So somebody stole them? Well, there was a piece of the puzzle that was missing, some part of the writing that they couldn’t quite decipher because something was missing from it. And it turns out that the if I remember the story correctly, that it came and it went to a pope’s desk and basically operated as a paper holder or something like that. And somebody one day finds it and then goes back down and says, here’s the missing piece. It sounds right out of Indiana Jones.

Yeah. Yeah. I was gonna say, this is Indiana Jones. So they eventually figured out that they had intentionally buried animal bones in case somebody wanted to come and try to steal Peter’s bones because there was a big emphasis on Christian relics. Remember talking about Constantine?

Right. All this is happening during, the World War where Hitler is also very interested in He’s looking for relics too. Right. So they’re having to hide all of this while they’re doing it so that Hitler doesn’t come in and steal or try to steal. If they find out that they’re looking for Peter’s bones, he will come and try to find them and get them himself.

This is crazy. So they have to hide this whole process and eventually, they figure out that the bones were actually buried. I believe it was in the wall of the catacomb and they go in and they decipher the message. They go in. They find these bones.

They lay them out and it’s a man of a certain height and stature that would have fit Peter’s descriptions. His feet are missing, and as the story goes, he was cut from the cross because he was crucified upside down. Right. Cut down from the cross in a hurry, his feet and his hands missing, and the bones fit the description. And so they said they found the bones of the apostle Peter.

So they left his hands and feet on the cross as they removed his body? Yep. Oh my gosh. So they show us this x-ray of these bones, and they’re right there. I mean, you can’t touch them or anything.

They’re right there. You can see them. You’re 5 feet from them. Them. They’re in this ornate box, and they show us this x-ray, man.

I just got I had goosebumps all over me. I was like, what? This is unreal. So then I went, afterwards, and we just had a moment of just, like, you know, just sitting and thinking, wow, is it is it real? You know?

One thing’s for sure. We were walking on the roads that are the same roads. We are among the early church here in the catacombs. At the moment when it was being told in the story, I felt that it was real. I mean, I think it just seemed so intense.

It wasn’t until after I left that I realized that there’s a lot of controversy surrounding the bones as to whether or not they are actually the bones of Peter or if this is just one more Christian relic story. And so it wasn’t until recently that they actually left the Vatican as the Pope brought them out into Saint Peter’s Basilica into the courtyard and showed them to the world inside of this box. And I thought, I’ve seen that, been there, done that, got the t shirt. That’s a that’s a crazy story. I got chills too.

Did this is kind of an off question, but did they bury his wife with him too? Because I know that I think she was crucified too upside down. Yeah. And the story goes, she was calling out to him or and, he was calling out to her. Remember the Lord.

Remember the Lord. I don’t I don’t know if she was, buried with him buried with him. Mhmm. What a crazy story. Well, regardless, man, that that’s really cool.

So I did I did see on our reviews that we had a Catholic priest, write us a very kind review. Right. I was very excited about that. And if you’re still listening, maybe you could call in and kind of clarify for us the story. Maybe I’ve messed up a few pieces.

I don’t remember. This was 20 years ago when we did this. No 15 years ago when we did this. So my memory is not, so sharp to think that I got everything right in that story. So if that Catholic priest is still out there listening, give us a call.

Help us understand. Do we or do we not have the bones of Peter? What are your thoughts? Just curious. Alright.

Well, thanks guys for listening. This is Truth About Muslims. This is Howard and Trevor signing off. We’ll see you next week.

Here starts the auto-generated transcription of Muslims in America with Roy Oksnevad and Mike Urton:

And I’d share them, and and he would say, my goodness. You understand us quite well. And I just sort of asked him. I said, okay. You are at this mosque and you’ve gone and others.

What’s going on? And come to find out, he was at a very conservative mosque and he was sort of forced out by the leadership there because, he didn’t have this very conservative anti western mentality. So he went to another mosque and found there that there was a growing conservativism that was taking place and en route in that mosque and he left that mosque. And now he’s currently, founded Sufi group which is much more open. He’s not sort of focused on this religious aspect of things and we have these really good honest conversations about family, his children, my children, but a real genuine friendship that has gone on.

And as I’ve done that, I’ve been able to be very honest with him, he, with me, and the bridge of trust that has been built has been to the point where I can say things flat out to him. And it he doesn’t flinch in regards to it. He knows that I love him. And I really am seeking the best for him. I’m not trying to push something over on him.

So it’s been a really good friendship. I still love to see him come to know Christ. I still at one at one point, I find frankly just told him and said, listen, your answer is not in religion. It’s in Jesus. And just really laid it out to him.

And he but that didn’t affect the relationship at all because there’s that personal relationship that is there. He seeks me out. I seek him out. It’s an ongoing relationship. And I think that if we have those kinds of general genuine relationships we can share our faith uncompromisingly.

And it will be received genuinely and I think that’s where we need to be rather than sort of, let me hit him with the gospel and and lead type of thing. Well, Once again, Muslim terrorists A terrorist. Islamic extremists now in control of the country. They’re random, dumb, and brutal, and dangerous. News flash, America.

These Muslim extremists are are alive and well. They are not dead, and their video is not gratuitous, and it certainly is irrelevant. It is a warning. Welcome to the truth about Muslims podcast, the official podcast of the Zwemer Center For Muslim Studies, where we help to educate you beyond the media. Here are your hosts, Howard and Trevor.

Hi, Trevor. Hi, Howard. Hey, Mike. Hey, Mike. Nice to meet you.

Nice to meet you. You haven’t I’ve listened to a couple of your guys’ podcast already. I’ve enjoyed them. Great. Nice.

We don’t normally use the phone, but for some reason, Skype is failing us miserably. Okay. Can you guys just go ahead and, briefly introduce yourself to Howard so we can do a a sound test real quick? Okay. It’s Roy Akshamad, director of Muslim ministry here at the Billy Graham Center.

Mike Erton, Muslim ministries coordinator at the Muslim ministry department at the Billy Graham Center For Evangelism at Wheaton College. That’s my full title. Do you have to take a breath in between just giving your title there? Had to get classes and control breathing to be able to get all that out. Well, we we just did a podcast with Dave Cashin, and he was asking us to drone with him while he engaged in some sort of Sufi chant, and I nearly passed out from not being able to breathe.

Alright. Well, let’s go ahead and get started. We’ve got, Roy Oksanovad and Mike Urton on, on the phone today. Roy is the director of Kama, and Mike also works there alongside of Roy with Kama. And, Roy, just give us a heads up.

What is what exactly is COMA? And what does it stand for? And is that how you say it? Because we’ve heard people say it, coma. And I just thought that doesn’t sound right.

Yeah. Exactly. I’ve had a number of people say coma, and I said, sorry. We are really alive and well and kicky here. Comma is spelled with 1 m and comma with 2 m’s.

So, definitely, they’re not the same. Okay. So we’ve cleared that up. It is Kama. So what exactly is Kama?

Kama is a coalition of ministries to Muslims in North America. And, just sort of I can give you a little brief history on that. We had been missionaries overseas, came back to the United States, and, overseas basically, we were working in a very small country. Anyone in any mission group, we all worked together because there just weren’t enough of us. And we knew what was going on and we also knew what was happening on a much broader level, particularly in the Francophone areas.

So, coming back to the United States, I wanted to continue involved in Muslim Ministry and wanted to know, who was working where, what was going on, could we just have some history of what’s going on at all and found out that there was nothing like that. So, back in 1998, 97, 98, pulled together a bunch of people and said, wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could just meet together and talk about what we have done and what’s going on and who’s doing it where? And out of that, they said, yeah. We should do that, and we ended up with, our first meeting in 1999 and decided to call ourselves COMMA. And for my position, it was a onetime event, and everybody enjoyed it so much they wanted to continue on.

So that’s how COMMA began. So it was supposed to be a weekend event, and here you are how many years later and still still running this thing. How how often do you guys meet together? Accama has got several different layers to it. On a national scale, we meet together every other year.

So starting in 99 all the way up until, this year, 2015. Wow. So every other year we meet, pulling people together. And so the primary scope is North America, reaching Muslims in North America. Correct.

There are conferences and other events that talk about reaching Muslims worldwide, but there is a very significant number of Muslims here in North America. In fact, we have more Muslims here than some Muslim countries. Wow. So, nobody was considering, this really as a field and, our focus was, well, let’s talk about what’s happening in North America. So how many people are are gathered in at at your meetings about?

Our meetings have been as high as, almost, 280 Woah. To a low of a 150. That’s amazing. There are a lot of various groups and organizations that are doing Muslim awareness seminars and all kinds of organizations are doing that and they sort of think that comma might be the same kind of thing, and and that’s not what it is at all. We do personally these kinds of seminars which I would call sort of Islam 101.

For those wanting to know about Muslim ministry, wanting to know what’s happening in the United States, just sort of out of curiosity. Cono is formed to be a place for people who are engaged with and working with Muslims, either on a part time basis or a full time basis. It’s not for the curious. It’s not for in the sense the novice of saying gee, you know, I’d like to know something. This is sort of an area of interest, but I will not talk to Muslims type of thing.

I have no contact with Muslims at all. This is really for those who are engaging in ministry to come together to talk about what we are doing. So this is a consultation, not a meet together, network together, and even out meet together, network together, and even out of some of these things of new networks and various other things have, been produced out of this kind of meetings. Does that, make it sort of clear? Yeah.

Much more. And these aren’t just folks that are, like you said, interested maybe in learning something about Islam, but they’re actually practitioners. They’re engaging with Muslim communities here in heart already for reaching Muslims. A lot of them I think I was at the meeting in LA. That was the Pasadena, if I’m if I remember correctly.

Correct. So, yeah, what I noticed was that a good majority of the folks there had all probably had a significant amount of overseas experience as well. Yeah. There’s a growing number of people who are being, for one reason or another, having to leave the the field, whether that be a Muslim country or Muslim minority country. And still have a real heart and a calling of God to reach out with the love of Christ to Muslims and have come back to United States and said, is there a place for me to do this type of work?

And, Thomas says, sure. You can share, this kind of information on our network that we have, information, connect with people, find out where there are needing people to do more ministry and get connected and involved. And right now as you guys know the Muslim community in the United States is still fairly young, but it’s it’s growing. The latest Pew Research has projected this is back in 2010, they projected that the Muslim population would double in the next 20 years. So we’re looking to go 6,000,000 or so Muslims, in the United States.

Wow. Now whether that will happen or not, you know demographic predictions are very hard to make, but at least it’s a growing community. And so really now is the time, for us, as as believers, as followers of Christ to get involved with the Muslim community here in the United States and and in Canada. Alright. So I’m curious.

Mike, Roy, you guys, I’m assuming, have a good sense or a pulse on the Muslim communities here in the United States. You get to meet with all of these different folks all over North America that are working with Muslims. Can we talk for a little bit about what is the pulse right now of the Muslim community in America? The Muslim community in in North America is dealing with its very serious PR problem, which is almost nightly on the news where it highlights another bombing, another attack, ISIS, this type of things. And because of that, they are very much wanting to reach out to the community to say that we are not these terrorists.

We don’t believe in this type of thing. In fact, we don’t think that they have anything to do with Islam. They’re wanting very much to do dialogue, interface type of things so that they can, show the community that, they are not what, the media has been showing that they are. They’re starting to get involved a lot more with community issues whereas before they were very much by themselves, sort of an insular community. Somewhat afraid of exposing themselves and their families to American culture which was viewed particularly in their own home country as being decadent and, they would lose their children if they have ever did so.

But, that has changed and they recognize that basically the American community is much more in tune with the same values and principles that they have than, say, the ISIS groups or these Muslim radicals. So they’re they’re coming out of that insular type of mentality and wanting very much to have contact with the American community. In fact many of them are being much more aggressive, in what you would call dollar or their evangelism type of things because they want to show that they are not at all what, the media has been portraying them as. And and one of the things I think we need to understand about the Muslim community United States, it’s not a monolith. The community here is very diverse and we talk about different Muslims around the world.

And you’ll probably find just about any type of Muslim, any kind of, socio religious background here in the United States as well. So anyone from the really, conservative to the really liberal, you’re gonna find them here, living in the United States. Hey, ladies. I’m from, truth about Muslims podcast. Have you heard of it?

Yeah. Okay. So we want you to read an ad for us. Can you do that? You’ll be famous, like, world famous.

It’ll be amazing. C I u? C I u. C I u. C I u.

CIU. I’m Kevin Kekaizan. Kevin. I’m a winner. Oh, wow.

Nice. He just leaves fame. Luke fame. Luke. Alright.

Wow. CIU educates people from a biblical worldview to impact the nations with the message of Christ. You wanna read that again? Yeah. I feel like I’ll be so embarrassed to be honest with you.

How are they, getting their voice out there in their communities? Is it just by being, like, involved in their schools or, even politics? Like, what are they doing to get their voice out? A lot of them are sort of taking the lead from what they’ve seen the Jewish community do. So they’ve tried to use the political arm to get the message out.

But, some of the local mosques are doing much more, trying to raise funds for kids, disadvantaged kids in public schools. But, yeah. There the community centers, this type of thing, they’re they’re really trying to be something more than just sort of a Muslim community to themselves. Yeah. After the the burning of churches here in South Carolina following the, Charleston mass shooting, we saw that there were a few Muslim communities that were actually doing fundraisers to help, raise money to rebuild these churches that were burned.

And I thought, well, this is an interesting turn of events. Yeah. Yeah. And I would say a lot of that changed at September 11th, when back in 2001 and all of a sudden terrorism had hit the United States and they go, we’ve made to shift our rhetoric. We need to shift the way that we’re talking.

I was in one mosque, and this was something that I found very interesting. The person that was doing the presentation to the group that we had, He said, you know, the problem that we have had as Muslims is that, we have created a utopian understanding of our historical past And because of that, we’re losing so many of our people to the sort of radicalization that’s taking place. And because they’re giving the same rhetoric of this utopian understanding that Islam will bring in. And he said we’ve got to get away from that utopian understanding. I thought that was the first time he had had ever heard that and this was one of the largest significant mosques here in the Chicago area.

One of the other things they’re also doing, they’re taking some pages from the evangelical playbook and doing some kind of mass, Dawah campaigns. Here in Chicago, just outside O’Hare off of a 294, a huge billboard, that would say something like game peace and give a 1 800 number where you could actually call someone and ask questions, and they would, send you a free Quran, and some other literature as well talking about what Islam is. So that’s what you’re talking about when you said, kind of evangelism. They’re actually trying to reach out to people that are not Muslim and bring them into Islam? Oh, very much so.

And they’re using various events at the mosque to do that type of thing. We’ve had a, during the summer, a town celebration, and you’ll see the Muslim set up a a booth there to talk about Islam. So very much wanting to be out there and engaging in this type of stuff. And what are the responses? Are are they are they, you know, disdained by the community?

Or are they just accepted? Like, this is just something new? Or, like, how do the how does the community perceive them? Communities really don’t know what to do with them, because, lack of information. I had talked with a funeral director and he was sort of, somewhat upset with all of the rules and regulations that had to take place for burial and he found that, they weren’t very easy to deal with.

The police themselves have been somewhat, not knowing what to do with them because, sometimes the mosques will have some vandalism that’s done to them and they would cry this is anti Islam. This is more of a racial event, failing to realize that, hey, the churches have get tagged by gangs all the time, and it’s not against the religion. It’s just the gang activity and various other things that bust out windows, but they would take it as you know a hate crime. And so that the relationships at times have been somewhat tenuous because of that type of of reaction. And you guys know from being, in the southern part of the United States, there have been, like and so like such as, in Tennessee where the Muslims haven’t been particularly well received Right.

In some communities, and that’s that’s sad. And I’m always grieved to hear that. One of the things, this is an older study. It was done in the mid nineties. It was pre 9 11.

So you have to take a little little bit of grain of salt, but it was done by Muslims and it was on conversions of folks here in the United States. And essentially what that study bore out is about 2 thirds of those who convert to Islam here in the US eventually leave Islam. So they have kind of a revolving door problem as far as, converts are concerned. Right. Yeah.

I had a, I had a a friend in Rwanda that was asking, you know, how do we keep our our children from converting to Islam? And we need some some teachings on how to keep kids from leaving the church and going to Islam. And I thought, you know, Muslims have the same problem except they’re not as you know, they’re actually wondering how do we keep our kids from leaving Islam for secularism. And, you know, Nabil Jabbour mentioned how many millions had left Islam in Egypt for secularism. And so there’s a revolving door, kinda, that is shared by both of us as communities of faith where, you know, you’re seeing even the next generation and wondering how do you keep them in a faith in a society that is so secular.

And so I’ve actually had a few interesting conversation with Muslim parents about that. And I thought, that’s an interesting, conversation. I never thought I’d be having that one with a Muslim, wondering, you know, how do you keep your kids in Christianity because they’re trying to keep their kids in Islam. Oh, yeah. And it’s kind of interesting.

A new generation, the 2nd gen, Muslims have come out with a movie that is called Unmasked, A documentary just on what is taking place in the mosques and how they have been driving their own people away from mosques. And it a lot of it happens to be gender issues, also with leadership that’s coming in from overseas, not knowing at all the US culture and sort of imposing, clothing restrictions and various other things that they have had from overseas onto the mosques here, and there’s just certain repercussions sort of driving people away from that. And this is sort of a way of documenting what’s going on. And I noticed that in a couple of months, they have changed leadership, from the old guard to a new guard which is much more sensitive to American culture, much more understanding, and much better at communicating with people rather than sort of taking an old world stand. I started this one guy is Pakistani.

Very strong Pakistani mentality. And we were had a discussion in the mosque, and you could see the young people just sort of cringe every time we talked. So, you know, they There’s some churches with that problem. So what they’ve done is they’ve tried to to move this kind of old guard out and bring people that are much more sensitive, who speak English well, understand the culture, can be much more relevant, and they see that as a real particular need within the mosque. That’s interesting.

Trevor, as you were also, pointing out, I’ve had the same kind of conversations with Muslims about being concerned about the secular society they find themselves in. And they actually see us as as evangelicals, those who take their faith serious. Seriously. As people who they wanna be talking to and be friends with because they see something in us. They see in themselves.

I’ve actually, had, one Muslim friend say, I didn’t know there are people like you here in the United States because they’re so used to interacting with those who are secular who think religion isn’t important. Right. It’s funny that you’re saying all these because, I I’m a youth pastor in a Korean church and, they invited, the youth to come to the adult revival service. And they had this guy who was supposed to speak to everyone, the adults and the kids. And, the majority of our kids don’t speak Korean very well, at least not fluently.

And, he the first thing he said was you’re, you’re not Korean or you’re not Korean enough if you don’t speak the language. And I looked around and all the kids just shut down just like immediately. And it just kinda reminded me, like, what what, the Muslims are dealing with with, the old guard and not being sensitive to. And I don’t know. It just kinda hit me viscerally.

I, like, I felt it. I’m, like, oh, yeah. I know exactly what you’re talking about in that in that regard. That’s so that’s so interesting. You know people are people no matter where they are, and we have very much the shared kind of experiences.

And for the Muslims they’re looking and wondering where are the Christians and, I know that this one particular mosque, has done interfaith type of thing and well, for them anyone who’s got faith is a person of faith, so they ended up with a Unitarian church, a mainline denominational church, and a Jewish group and we were doing a talk in a in a mosque and this was a real bible believing fellowship and we talked and shared and there was much more robust discussion on faith. And he pulled me aside and said, my goodness. I need your people to come to my church or my mosque because, these people don’t believe in anything. Oh, man. Ones that believe in something.

That’s crazy. I you know, Roy and Mike, I have gotten 2, emails from from friends, reliable friends, mutual friends, actually. One of them was about a mosque in Toronto, and, the sign outside the mosque, said, everyone is welcome and no one is told he’s a sinner. And that was on the mosque in Toronto. And then the other one was up in Connecticut, and that one said, Friday night meetings, bring your own beer.

This was at a mosque. And so I just thought and and I’m just picturing the imam in a in a set of skinny jeans, a little goatee, and the black glasses kinda metro, you know. I can reach the next generation type, you know, and and it’s really kind of a little bit humorous, sad at the same time, but humorous that we’re a lot of dealing with a lot of the same things. So have you have either one of you guys participated in some of the interfaith dialogue, and how’s it gone? I have participated in interfaith dialogue, and I would say that there has been a shift.

About 10 years ago, it was I’m gonna use the word, of a former guy in South Africa, Ahmed Diddot, and he did a lot, produced a lot of videos. A lot of the Islamic bookstores, would have all of these tapes that were very much polemic, anti Christian. And, in this interfaith dialogue, all of the did not one of these were there and they just took this as a great opportunity to bash christians. And I had a friend of mine in a halal meat shot say, okay. We’ve got these dialogues at our mosque.

Come with me, failing to realize I had already been at these. He went there and then he afterwards, he said, I am so embarrassed. I will never ever go to this type of thing again. Fast forward now, I’ve been involved in in some of these type of things and it’s no longer bash the Christians. It is let’s sit down and talk.

Let’s talk about faith. That one guy just was a friend of mine. He just said, Roy, you talk to us. And I had a wide open opportunity, and I said that, I know that you guys are going through a very, very difficult time in your history right now. And, we are sorry that you’re going through that type of of circumstances in your in the history of Islam.

And I said we as well are going through a very difficult time in our faith, history. And I said there are 2 things in particular that we as Christians can help you in this time of crisis in your in your history. 1 is reconciliation, and the other one is forgiveness. Because we’ve been reconciled with God and we received that reconciliation. We can now give that kind of reconciliation forgiveness to others, and we understand that that is central to our message.

That is what, in essence, our message is, and we would like to help you because we know that if you don’t have reconciliation and you don’t have forgiveness, you will have this continuing event of discussion that’s taking place. And, I said we would like to help you. They thanks to me for that message because I didn’t bash them, but I was there willing to help them. I would never have had that opportunity 10, 15 years ago. And to piggyback on what what Roy is saying, one that I was a part of is actually a Bible Quran course at a local mosque.

And this is a wonderful opportunity to to interact with Muslims. I had many opportunities myself just to share straight from the Bible. And, Muslims afterwards, after sessions, wherever would say all they said to me was thank you. Thank you for sharing, right from the bible, with us. And it just showed to me that we as evangelicals need to have a seat at the interfaith dialogue table and authentically represent what we believe.

You know, the man who is the Muslim man who is leading the the sessions, you know, presented Islam honestly. Talked about things like we don’t believe Jesus died on the cross. And that’s what Islam teaches. You know he doesn’t need to have any apology for that. That’s what Islam says.

The The same way we can come and we can present who we are, what our distinctives are, what we are passionate about, what we believe. I mean, passion resonates with Muslims. They you’re not passionate about what you believe, they think you don’t really believe it. So So what was the this is a real opportunity for us. What was the sense in the mosque when you were teaching the bible?

Were they, guarded or were they open? What was the expressions on their faces as you taught what the Bible taught, teaches? They were incredibly open, and the reason was they were there because they wanted to know what the Bible said. They they weren’t saying, hey, I’m coming because I’m having doubts about Islam or something like this, but I really don’t know the Bible. I don’t know what it teaches.

I don’t know what Christians believe, and I really wanna know. And they were really excited. One of the last weeks was actually Palm Sunday. And, I brought, some Jesus films with me as gifts for the class. I came with 20 of those.

I left with 5. As soon as I announced them, one Muslim man tapped me on the shoulder and said, please may I have one. So they were just very open. And I think a lot of times the fear that we have of, offending Muslims because we want to authentically represent who we are and what it is we believe just is a false a false belief. It’s a false fear.

Do do you find oh, I’m sorry. Do you find that the church is as open if, if a an imam would to come into a church or teach a bible study? Would you think the Christians would be as open to hearing what the Quran taught? I think it depends on the church. It’s gonna depend on the leadership of that church.

And, unfortunately, I think at this point in our our history, we as evangelicals are not necessarily known for being as open. Yeah. Wow. Alright. So this show wouldn’t be possible without sponsors.

And at this point in the show is where if you wanna partner with us, we would put your ad. So if you wanna be a part of the show, you like partnering with us, you like what we’re doing, you wanna be on our team, what have you, Bringing this show to the world. Then email us and let us know. It’s hard to pick up on that, at our consultation that’s gonna take place this fall. One of the plenary topics is dealing with, interfaith dialogue, and the title on that one will be from interfaith dialogue to multiphate engagement.

Therein is the shift. Before I’d say that the, interface dialogue stuff was really dual monologue. Muslim would get up and talk, and Christian would get up and talk, but they’d never talk to they talked at each other, and they didn’t talk with one another. And now we’re the the circumstances have changed and there’s much more of an openness. There is an ability for having people share, their faith without visceral reactions.

So there can be this multi faith engagement with each other rather than, I’m close to you. I’m right period and I’m just going to sort of attack you in regards to that. So, yeah, things have changed and it’s going from interfaith to, to some engagement that can take place rather than, dual monologues. Now how is that affecting people coming to faith in Christ Jesus, through good relations with Muslims, and Christians? I think that I mean, we’re not seeing large numbers of people coming to faith in Christ at this point in time.

But in these type of circumstances, there are people who are hearing the true message of the gospel for the first time and are intrigued by that. It sets them down the road, and in some of these areas significant people have come to know Christ. And for the folks that I’ve been involved with who have, come to Christ, you’re thinking usually in terms of years, not usually in terms of weeks or months. Right. And just walking with those people through their questions, you know, their struggles, their objections and what’s this going to be like for me and these kinds of things.

So it’s really it’s a journey you have to take with them, not, it’s it’s probably not gonna be the first time you present the gospel to them, but it happens. So it sounds like you’re saying it’s not necessarily like a method for evangelism. It’s actually just having life, sharing life with Muslims and being their friend and and, even having open dialogue about each other’s faith. I think sharing more of, of their life. Oh, very much so.

And instead of being in our insular communities and behind our walls, we need to be out there. And and frankly before it has been much more of, what we’d call the more liberal version of Christianity that was open to that type of thing, and there would be a compromise in regards to the message because of wanting not to offend Muslims, And I think that, we’re sort of moving past this whole thing of offended offending Muslims. We can be authentic. They’re looking for authentic faith and we can share our faith authentically without these visceral reactions we’ve had in the past. Right.

And we developed a whole, actually DVD curriculum, 6 week DVD curriculum called Journey to Jesus Building Christ Centered Friendships with Muslims, that models exactly Howard what you just talked about, kind of life on life, walking with people and and being a part of their journey, towards towards coming to Christ. But but do you have, like, a 3 step model that that we could just, you know, if we meet them or something in 1, you know, 30 seconds, 3 step model, you know. I feel like that’s what a lot of people an elevator pitch that you can do, and everyone will accept Christ from that. Right. That’s that’s all we’re looking for.

I don’t know if that’s too hard to ask. It’s amazing. We we think gospel blends are particularly effective. So it does sound like some encouraging things are happening despite what it seems like right now. The pulse of the American church is is you know, there is a lot of fear.

I mean, granted, we’re down here in the South, but it does seem, you know, pretty widespread. There’s a lot of fear, a lot of concern. And as you guys mentioned, sort of a turning inward, becoming very insular, and not wanting to reach out. Do you have hope that the church is going to shift from this place that we’re currently that it seems that we’re in to a place where we’re really seeing that the Muslims that are coming here to the United States are actually it’s a wonderful thing because now we have access to share the love of Christ with them. You know, I think there’s a real shift that’s taking place within the Christian community.

There are all kinds of relief organizations like World Relief, Catholic Charities and others who have brought a lot of refugees in. And many of the churches are, engaged in trying to help and partner with these, relief organizations in helping the new people come. And when they do, they realize that my goodness, these people are not the ones on TV. They are caught in a very difficult time of their life. They’re very needy and, need help, through these types of things.

And through those personal interactions with, real life people that are realizing, okay, this religion isn’t the only aspect to the person. They happen to be real people and they have life hitting them and we can share these life experiences and from our faith uncompromisingly, without worrying about some kind of backlash. And just using my own church as an example, I think fear is a problem as you guys have said. Sometimes I wonder if it’s less of a problem, than we really think it is in the ministry community. Because sometimes I think it’s it’s an issue of getting people face to face.

So in understanding American culture. You know, American culture is a planned culture, is an organized culture. A lot of times if you, you know, just give people information and tell them, you know, the Muslims are out there, go get them. It’s not gonna work. But if you say, hey.

I met this guy at a grocery store named Mohammed. He needs to go to the doctor at 8 o’clock on Tuesday morning. People will look at their schedule, and they’ll say, yes, we’ll do that. We had a Somali family that moved pretty close to us. My wife actually taught them ESL.

They had 8 kids, 9 kids. And coming from Somalia, they don’t the parents aren’t educated. They’ve left they’ve left civil war and they really need help, with people tutoring their kids. So we put this out of our church. Shaina’s a Somali family.

They need help with with tutors and we got volunteers and people who are excited to do it because it was something they could think about how do I schedule that, how do I organize that. So some of that I think might be us needing to do a little bit more thinking about how does American culture interact with, this need to reach out to Muslims as well. Hey. Well, tell us for comma, not coma, comma, how, how can people be involved? Particularly the event that you guys have coming this year.

Yeah. This year we have a theme for our conference which is called, emerging Muslim communities, how radical Islam is changing ministry among Muslims. And a part of the discussion will be just sort of tracing, pre 9 11 the discussion in Muslim literature to present as to what has taken place. In regards to Muslim ministries, whether or not acute stress and post traumatic stress disorder, are the people that are coming here going through this and how that impact our ministry, move us to Christ around the world. How is that taking place?

So we’re trying to deal with issues such as, growth of Islam within the Hispanic community, and Islam within the prison system in North America, and we have a chaplain who will be dealing with that. So we’ll be talking about some of these topics as well as some of the more personal ones, sort of what you’ll be doing on mapping Muslims in your city using Facebook, conversations of 2nd generation Muslims, what are their issues they’re dealing with. So, you can go to our comma website which is www.comanetwork.com, and there on our front page, you will see the consultation, comma, 2015, And, you go to that link, it’ll give you the more details of where the venue is, the the specific dates, as well as the topics that will be covered. I’m really excited about the, post traumatic stress and acute, stress discussion because it sounds like even, Mike, from your story with the the family from Somalia, a lot of these folks are coming from very, traumatic situations. They’re coming to the United States looking for rest in some sense and opportunity.

And a lot of them are coming with a lot of, a lot of baggage. And so it would be great if we had more Christians that understood how to counsel in a godly way and be able to sit with Muslims that are coming from these areas and just be Christ to them. And I think that we will see more and more people come to know Christ that way. Amen. Yeah.

And and one of the topics is also on, we have 2 topics dealing with engaging Muslims on campus particularly in response to the large number of close to over 70,000 Saudi students who have come here to the United States and as I’ve gone throughout the United States, a lot of people that are on campus and campus ministries have seen this influx of of Muslims onto campus and, sort of the response that we need to have towards that. Well, Roy and Mike, thanks so much for being with us today. Roy, is it, is it true you have finished your doctorate and your thesis is complete? That is true. Congratulations, my friend.

And you’re working on yours. I understand. You you could say that, I guess, working on it, very diligently. Yeah. I am diligently working on it.

Yeah. It’s it’s quite a undertaking. And every time I see someone finish, it gives me a little bit more hope. Yeah. And now I’m working on trying to finish a book.

Oh, well. Well, everyone, listening, thank you so much for, tuning in. You can find us again on iTunes. Also check out, comma at www.comannetwork.com, and, keep those review reviews coming in. Thank you so much for listening.

We’ll see you next week.

Here starts the auto-generated transcription of Islamic History: The Crusades are Only One Link in the Chain – Part 3:

Welcome back to Truth About Muslims podcast. That was so cheesy. Stop. We got, Peter Riddell in the studio, and Trevor is always making fun of my intro. Yeah.

It’s, part 3 guys in a 3 part series and, really this is the this part of the series where we ask, so what? Yeah. You know? Because a lot of people don’t understand why why study history. Right.

And I think this is the most exciting part. Yeah. It might not be the most exciting story wise, but I think as far as practical application, I think that’s important. And I wanna know what history should, you know, how it should inform how I act or think towards Muslims today. Yeah.

And I think it’s helpful, like, doctor Ruddell has laid out for us so far that as Christians, it is helpful to look at, people of other faiths and their their religion and their history and then also our interactions. And so, this episode really, helps us to understand what’s going on today in the context and the in the chain of events as we’ve been talking about over the part this 3 part series. The chain of events that, you know, came be what came before a particular link and what comes after. And And so anytime you see something on the news, recognize that particular event has a chain that goes before it, and that particular event will affect the links coming after it. And I think that’s a really neat way to look at history.

Right. Well, we hope you enjoy. Well, once again, Muslim terrorists. A terrorist Islamist and demon extremists down the middle terrorists of the country. Their brand of justice is brutal and deadly.

News flash America. These Muslim extremists are are alive and well. They are not dead, and their video is not gratuitous, and it irrelevant. It is a warning. Welcome to the Truth About Muslims podcast.

The official podcast of the Swimmer Center For Muslim Studies. Where we help to educate you beyond the media. Here are your hosts, Howard and Trevor. Do Christians need to ask, for forgiveness for the for the crusades? Is that part of our reconciliation with with Muslims and and decreasing that tension?

What would you say? Well, I’m a great believer in repentance and reconciliation. What at the same time, I believe that if you have 22 communities that have a history of conflict between themselves, then both sides need to jointly repent and involve be involved in reconciliation. Because if only one side involves itself in the reconciliation, it risks the other saying, you see, we were right all along. You guys did the wrong thing.

So I think Christians and Muslims should meet together, talk about history, to discuss history, and each account for how they’ve contributed to the problems of the present day. So I read a recent, scholar that we’re both familiar with, say, it seems a bit silly to didn’t word it this way necessarily, but it seems a bit silly to ask forgiveness for crusades and then just to keep doing them. And this this came from a Middle Eastern scholar that is a believer in studies Islam as well, but says, you know, we we can apologize for the crusades, but they just keep coming. So what’s the point? And he obviously was, referencing the United States and its foreign policy and that he sees that and that the Muslim world sees that as just an ongoing crusade.

What are your thoughts about that as a good Australian? I think my my my first response would be to say, well, let’s not accept at face value the comparison. If you’re going to compare things, you wanna make certain that you’re comparing like with like. And the crusades were sanctioned by the Pope in Rome. He issued forgiveness to any people who took part, a remission for their sins.

There was definitely a theological, a huge theological dimension to the whole crusade project in the Middle Ages. That’s quite different to what’s going on today. Now that’s not to justify, issues of today, but for me, that kind of statement is comparing apples with oranges. I don’t think it’s that helpful. I think if you’re gonna make a comparison, not helpful to make sloppy comparisons, and for me that’s a sloppy comparison, to be honest.

I kinda had an Australian question. Something in Australian history that’s really interesting to me is Anzac Day. Mhmm. The Australians had this huge battle with the Turkish the Turkish. Right?

The Turks. Mhmm. But then they I’ve I’ve heard of reports where they actually celebrated. I think it was during World War 2 or something like that. They actually celebrated they were on the same side, the Turks and the Australians in this point.

And they actually celebrated Anzac Day together, honoring one another for for their bravery because it was a crazy battle. It was a crazy bloody battle. But they didn’t hate each other. They didn’t hold that. And I know maybe you can’t say anything to this, but, you know, as an Australian, like, Americans, we just don’t do that.

So what what would you say is different about the the in that situation? Why would, you know, a battle like that and it was bloody, lots of loss on both sides. How can they come together and still be, you know, they they’re they’re buying each other beers and stuff and just, you know, like enjoying each other’s company and how does that happen in in today’s world? Yeah. When I was growing up, Anzac Day was celebrated then as it is now.

But when in in the days when I was growing up, Anzac Day was clearly a day to remember the Australian involvement along with the British and and others Indians. Australian involvement and Australian loss. So in other words, to, yeah, to commemorate what was actually a military defeat for the Australians and the Brits and the Indians, but nevertheless, to to commemorate our loss. Now what’s happened since then, and I I’m talking there in the, you know, sixties seventies and so forth. What’s happened since then is, there has been a the development of very large Turkish community in Australia.

So no longer were the Turks this foreign group over there in Turkey, but we have a large Turkish community in Sydney, large Turkish community in in Melbourne with mosques and so forth. And so they also for them, the attack on Gallipoli is very significant, and they are also Australian. So all of a sudden, the the memory of the campaign at Gallipoli, fighting between Australians and Turks, is relevant to both Anglo Australians and Turkish Australians. So the memory of Anzac Day has metamorphosed over the years. So, for example, we’ve we found this year that, the centenary celebrations of Anzac Day that were held in in different parts of Australia and over in Turkey, there were Turkish speakers, there were Anglo Australian speakers commemorating the joint experience of of battle and loss.

It’s very healthy in a way. So it it’s it it goes along with kinda what you’re saying, knowing individual stories, knowing people, not just stereotypes. Yeah. Absolutely. I don’t know.

I just find that that would not happen in the US. We have large groups of Muslim population in the US, and yet they’re still separated. They’re so still so different. There was that other thing, and that happened on Australia was, the come ride with me hashtag come ride with me campaign, where somebody was, or it was during the cafe hostage situation. And, somebody had posted on Facebook their story or Twitter their story of this, Muslim woman that was on the train or the bus, subway, something like that, but public transportation, and they were watching the news.

And it was about the hostage situation. And the woman just pulled off her head covering and just started weeping. And the woman felt really compassion. The one who’s writing this on the Twitter, sat next to her and said, you know, I’m here with you. I’ll ride with you.

Don’t take this off. Put it back on. You know, just kind of in camaraderie standing next to her. You know? And, when she got off the bus, the lady gave her a long hug and then wandered away.

Never put her, her head covering back on. And then after that, it was just, like, a 100 and 50,000 tweets of a hashtag I’ll ride with you. Just like saying, hey. If there’s any Muslims, that need don’t feel safe in public transportation, I’m at this bus stop. I’m this and just tweeting all over the place.

But that was in Australia. I don’t see that happening in the US. Yeah. I mean, I can’t comment on the US. I I don’t know the situation as well, but that was quite a famous, series of incidents surrounding that Lindt Cafe, and the hostage situation.

Right. Ironically, I mean, it was tragic because 2 people were were killed in that hostage situation and and yet that loss led to, some warm relationships between Muslims and and non Muslims in other ways. It’s it’s tragically ironic. I guess I just wanna know, your thoughts just because, Australia seems to be doing some things, you know, much better than the US as far as when it comes to Muslim relations. So And and that’s what we see in the news.

Is that is it a fair assessment? Are you guys doing well with your Muslim immigrant communities? Is there good relationships or is it, does it have as much tension as what you see here in the United States? Because you’ve been here a few times and seen and, you know, we talk and you’re aware of the ongoing tension here with the immigrant communities and Muslims. How is it in Australia?

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CIU educates people from a biblical worldview to impact the nations with the message of Christ. You wanna read that again? Yep. You’re like, I’ll be so embarrassed to be out there. Well, it varies.

You get you get many cases of, of joint activities, you get dialogue groups, dialogue groups. You get joint cultural activities. So there are some very good things going on. And but, of course, we also have, as Britain is having and as, many European nations of having, we have a minority of, Muslim radicals in Australia. Australia’s got, by recent accounts, the proportion of young Muslims who’ve left Australia to join ISIS is one of the highest proportions in the Western world.

Wow. So that’s causing concern. So it’s a mixed story, you see. Now, having said that, the a number of young people have been detained at airports on the trying to exit the country to go and join ISIS in Syria, and they’ve been detained because of tip-off to the security authorities from other Muslims as well. So you see it’s a mixed story.

So we do have a problem with Muslim radicalism, but, some other Muslims are helping out in dealing with the problem. So, yeah, we we we’ve got problems, but we we’ve got some good things happening as well. So, looking looking at the whole of history, the entire chain Mhmm. The rise of political Islam, what are some of the main turning points just looking back that we need to at least spend a little bit of time swimming in those points of history in order to understand current day trends within Islam. Yeah.

Another, are there for me, there are a number of myths in history. I suppose I should preface what I’m about to say by just reminding our listeners about the difference between statements of opinion and statements of fact. One of the things one has to do in history is to present statements of opinion, but we should indicate that that they’re opinion, not facts. So for example, if I say that, you know, New York is, is a huge city, that’s a statement of fact. If I say New York’s the best city in the United States, it’s a statement of opinion.

Probably depends who you ask. Probably. So with with, with history, we often have to make statements of opinion but we should indicate that they are our opinions. Now where where is this leading to? In my view, in my opinion, the rise of political Islam in recent times is merely a rerun of what has happened at different points of history.

Sometimes you hear commentators say radical Islam, political Islam is a 20 20th 21st century phenomenon. I just don’t agree with that. What I see is, the history of Islam is like a wave. It’s like a chain, but it’s also like a wave with peaks and troughs. And what strikes me when I look at the history of Islam over the 14 centuries of its existence is that when after a peak, after a period of glory and greatness, and you hit a trough, at the period of the trough, you find a a call to return to the text, to the basics, or a call to return to Islamic law, to return to the example of the prophet, to literally follow the call of the text.

Now that happened, in 1200 when, the great Islamic empire was destroyed by the Mongol invasions, and all of a sudden you found these writers emerging in the 12, 1300, who sound very much like the radical writers today. I’m thinking of particular names, for for the purpose of your listeners who may know people like Ibn Taymiyyah and Ibn Kathir and so forth, these are these are radical writers in their own day. Likewise, in the late 1700, you find a period of decline, and so the Wahhabis emerge. The Wahhabi movement emerges in that period. In the 1900, you find the radicals emerging, as we have seen in our own day.

And so for me, they’re they are you’re talking about turning points or key moments in history. The the troughs in Islamic history are key because that’s when the radicals emerge, and it they they emerge in response to perceived weakness of Islam at the time. So that does kind of answer our questions about, whether Islam is on the rise or or, decline, when you look at the troughs if they do come back to radicalism. But I guess the same could, again, could be said about Christianity too because we do have that kind of text. The US needs to repent.

We hear that kind of stuff all the time. Mhmm. If this is because of the abortion or because of homosexuality or Prayer in schools. Oh, yeah. Prayer in schools.

This is the judgment of the Lord, you know, coming down in the US. But it seems it it feels kind of ethnocentric, to me in that regard. But in terms of Islam, it makes sense. So what is the, the first trough and the first rise? Would you point back to the argument with the Mu’tazilites in is it the Kartagites that that really is the sort of beginnings of this and this is just that same argument being replayed throughout history?

Well, yeah. I mean And you gotta give some explanation to some background to these 2 groups. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I’m you mentioned the Kharijites. They were, the Kharijia. They were crucial. In a sense, they were the first radicals in Islam, and they emerged in this middle of the 600 because in their view, the Islamic caliph at the time was taking well, he was taking part in a process of negotiation and compromise that they did not accept. Their view was, to dismiss anybody who didn’t adopt their view as unbelievers.

So they dismiss other Muslims who were of a different viewpoint as as unbelievers, as apostates, and they they wanted to effectively kill them as a result. So they were the first radicals in the early 600, and that was a period although Islam was rising, in their view, it was in decline because it was taking part in the process of negotiation and compromise. So key moments were that period, 600, 1200, 1700, 1900. And if you go to individual regions, you find variations on the theme, so you’ll find peaks and troughs in individual regions as well. So in an overall scheme of things, the Islamic wave of history consists of rises and troughs.

But then if you look at a particular area like Southeast Asia, it’ll have its own process of rises and troughs as well. It’s interesting when you say the the the radicals that are coming in. I wonder how much social media or globalization really plays a part in, perceived decline or perceived, compromise by these radicals. Because, you know, back in the day, they would hear about maybe the chaos ruling ruling or the pope’s ruling or whatever and then have these, you know, kind of ideas by pamphlet. But today, it’s not like that at all.

I mean, it’s it’s immediate and you’re depending on what website you go to or what news media outlet you go to, you have a different total perception of what’s actually going on. So I wonder if that this kinda nullifies that idea that the the radicals will show the decline because there there’s just gonna be radicals everywhere because of, you know, just the options that they have. Mhmm. The viewpoints. Yeah.

Yeah. It’s a good point. I think the whole the whole ease of access to mass media and to the the distribute dissemination of knowledge and so forth is has cast a completely different context on on the question of, the tussle for power within well, different worlds really, but we’re talking about the Islamic world, of course. So will the radicals of the 21st century, will they have the same impact that they had that the Wahabis had for example in the in around the turn of the 1800? Possibly not because non radicals are able to track them and oppose them in a way that was not so easy to do in around 1800.

So it’s a completely different context. You know, we’re seeing the Islamic State in the Middle East, we’re seeing, such radical groups flourish in certain limited contexts, But all those who oppose them have, immediate access to what they’re doing, and therefore, they they have immediate much more immediate ability to stand against them. So we’ll see where it leads. Right. True.

Because, it used to be with these Islamic radicals, if they were violent, that would be their main, you know, weapon, per se. But, now they have to fight battles online too. ISIS is doing that really well or, you know, trying to radicalize, you know, people from all over. And but but at the same time, who who is it we were talking to about, deradicalization? Was it it was No.

It was Matthew Stone. We haven’t released that episode yet though. That will be this week, but, yeah. That that’s, it’s like a whole different front. It’s not just, a gun, you know, or a sword or what whatnot.

You know, it’s more than that now. Well, yeah. I mean, it’s the the I think the most sort of momentum they can gain is it’s not difficult to show up at least a perceived threat, an Islam under attack. And I’ve looked at a few, of the recruiting videos and they’re they’re not just, you know, slick in their production. They’ve actually got some compelling arguments that they make and they’ll even go back all the way to the early councils of the church and talk about the nature of Christ and how, you know, Christianity got it wrong and they made Jesus.

And so they’re actually making some theological arguments and then they’re making some sociological arguments and so they’re taking the full breadth of of what’s going on in the world and using it to make compelling arguments to recruit people and, I think it’s actually quite interesting that they’ve not just looked at it as well, we have to recruit people theologically. They’re looking at it from a political means, sociological means, historical means, you name it and they seem to be using it for recruitment. Yeah. Yeah. They certainly are very sophisticated.

They’ve got some very, you know, knowledgeable people there. There’s no doubt about it. And their whole campaign through the Dubich Magazine and and other online promotions is quite quite impressive in many ways. Though horrifying in another way. But where where it strikes me that the situation is different in this phase of radicalism in Islam is that on the one hand, as you say, ISIS are doing they’re putting out that putting out that slick advertising.

And if all that if that was all they were doing, they might attract a whole lot more support. But at the same time, other Muslims are able to see the reports of the beheadings of the slave markets of the Yazidi women, the most horrifying side of what they were doing. So that is a kind of that insulates some Muslims about from being besotted by the kind of advertising that’s going on by by ISIS. Right. It just seems like the most, the people that it will mostly reach will be the most desperate, or violent minded, which are probably I mean, maybe for ISIS is what you want, but as for a to win over the general population of the world, for your cause, it’s not gonna work.

Yeah. I don’t know if they have hearts and minds at the core of their recruitment, but, I I think that there has to be people that are wondering and they want want this question to be asked. You mentioned, the troughs and the peaks. And that when they head down the peak towards the trough, there’s a return to the text. You are a textual guy.

Your Koranic exegesis and so are they returning to the right interpretation of the text? The right interpretation of the text. Somebody’s like, yes. He asked it. Well, one thing I will say from the outset is that as a non Muslim, I am not going to tell Muslims what is the right interpretation of the text.

Bottom line is I know lots of Muslims, and I hear from those Muslims different interpretations of the text. So it’s not my role to tell them what’s right and what’s wrong. Nice sidestep. Yeah. That’s that’s what Howard always says to me.

It’s like you’re sidestepping. I’m not sidestepping. That’s that’s reality. I mean, it it is well, it is true because we we don’t like it when they do that to us when somebody says to me, well, you know, Christianity really teaches this and I’m thinking, woah, wait a second, you know, this is a very diverse, you know, religion and religious interpretation from the scripture. You know, there’s a historical context.

There are different viewpoints, and I don’t like it when somebody sort of just pigeonholes it and makes it a one sort of, you know, one trick pony. Is that the right analogy there? Yeah. Well, I I agree with you both. I agree with what you’ve just said, Trevor, but I was right in saying it was a nice side step.

I used to play rugby, and that’s where I learned to learned to do the side step. Alright. So this show wouldn’t be possible without sponsors. And at this point in the show is where if you wanna partner with us, we would put your ad. So if you wanna be a part of the show, you wanna partner with us, you like what we’re doing, you wanna be on our team, what have you, bringing this show to the world, then email us and let us know.

Peter, aside from your own books which we’re gonna put links to in the show notes, any particular reads, looking at the history and the relationships between Christians and Muslims or just Muslim history in general that you think our listeners would really benefit from? Look, there’s a lot of stuff out there. I think, some of the writing Ira Lapidus’ monumental study of Islamic history is it’s been around for a while now, but still a very good read, to be honest. I think, both Christian writers of Islamic history and, secular writers have produced a lot of good stuff out there. I’d point people in his direction in the first instance.

What are your thoughts about Karen Armstrong’s books? She’s written a lot, and she seems to be quite controversial. Yeah. It’s more on a popular level. Yeah.

But, worth worthwhile reads or Well, again, it’s I mean, I don’t, I think if I was if Karen Armstrong and I were having a discussion, it would end up being a debate in many kinds of ways. However, I, again, with my students, I ensure that when they’re reading materials for their studies, I have a range of materials and I recommend her material as part of that. I think hers is an important voice. I disagree with it in all kinds of ways, but that’s irrelevant in a sense because students need to read a range of viewpoints and to process that information themselves and to reach their own conclusions. Thank you so much, Peter, for coming in, flying in all the way from Australia.

Yeah. That’s right. Just for us. We didn’t even do our Australian accent. That’s because we don’t wanna be insulting.

But, thank you for taking the time, being in the studio. We know that your time is precious. You’re here teaching, at at school, and so, thank you for doing that for us. Okay. Favorite musician as a bass guitarist?

Because I I’ve heard you play the bass. I don’t actually know it to be true. It’s just rumored around. Alright. Is it true first of all?

Do you really rock the bass and, who’s your favorite musician? Actually, well, I’m gonna have to answer that in a slightly unexpected way from your perspective in that I’m first and foremost a 6 string guitarist, actually. I I do bass because that’s what they need at church, but I’m more a 6 string guitarist and, yeah. Jazz guitarist, I love, George Benson, Barney Kessel, Joe Pass, some of the older ones. Great great players.

Got it. So not like Eddie Van Halen, 6th string. Sure. Okay. Yeah.

Thanks, Peter. We really appreciate it. Pleasure. Great to talk.

Here starts the auto-generated transcription of Islamic History: The Crusades are Only One Link in the Chain – Part 2:

Do on occasion. What? Go back to part 1 and listen to that and then, and then check back here. You could even start this show in the middle just fast forward. Alright.

Thanks. Oh, once again Muslim terrorists. A terrorist Islamic extremist. Extremist is not irrelevant. It is a warning.

Welcome to the truth about Muslims podcast, the official podcast of the Zwemer Center For Muslim Studies, where we help to educate you beyond the media. Here are your hosts, Howard and Trevor. How helpful is it when people kinda make up their mind about the history of a religion before having even met somebody from that religion. Because I find that that’s typically the case is that people kinda have their minds made up about the history of Islam and the history of Mohammed and the, revelations and sort of the development of the history of Muslims, Christians, and Jews and then you realize they’ve never actually even met a Muslim. Is that helpful?

I mean, would you discourage people from sort of making up their minds about what’s going on historically or do you like the idea of dealing with, you know, some of the history in line with also some relationships with modern day Muslims that believe different things? Yeah. I mean, in a sense, I have a I have a vested interest because I’m a historian. But this is where I think it’s important for people to study Islam. If if they’re gonna be meeting Muslims and, you know, engaging with Muslims, I think it’s important that they know something about Islam, its theology, its doctrine, its history.

These are all door openers really. They’re they’re bridges to to engaging with Muslims. So I I think it’s important that people do know something and not make up their minds based on the odd passing comment that they might see in the newspaper article somewhere that’s usually written by a journalist who’s pulled it together in 2 hours of quick research on the Internet. Yeah. Wikipedia.

Hey, ladies. I’m from, Truth About Muslims podcast. Have you heard of it? Yeah. Okay.

So we want you to read an ad for us. Can you do that? You’ll be famous, like, world famous. It’ll be amazing. C I u?

C I u. C I u. C I u. C I u. I’m Kevin Kekaisen.

Kevin. Yeah. I’m a Kekaisen. Oh, wow. That’s nice.

You just Luke Fain. Luke Fain. Luke. Alright. CIU educates people from a biblical worldview to impact the nations with the message of Christ.

You wanna read that again? Yep. I feel like I’ll be so embarrassed to be thrown out, man. Before we get into the crusades right? Because, obviously, we’re gonna probably have to talk about that a little bit.

But what what other, Trevor, you said turning points? Turning points were, bringing the, the the tension, you know, to a a boiling point before the Crusades? What what other things were there? Yeah. Well, when we study Western history Mhmm.

European history, we study the great empires. You know, obviously, we study Rome. We study what came after Rome, Eastern Eastern Roman Empire, Byzantium, and so forth. We study the dark ages. We study the age of colonization and so forth.

And what you find is of colonization and so forth. And what you find is that if you study Islam in the same way, the great Islamic empires, actually, the the interaction between the great Christian periods and the great Islamic periods was was quite noticeable, and that shaped relationships at that time. So for example, following Mohammed, there was a period of Islamic leaders that really expanded the Islamic empire. So there was an an initial empire that lasted for a 100 years that was a kind of age of expansion, and it expanded in interaction with the Christian world at the time, often military interaction between the 2. Then there was another empire that followed, the great Abbasid Empire.

That was a kind of period of flowering of the arts and imperial grandeur and so forth and building. That’s worth studying. Again, it was interacting with Christians all the way through. So I would be advising students who are interested in history to study the moments. 1st, be aware of, in general terms, of the great empires, but then be asking the question, how did they interact with Christians?

And in terms of today, how does that influence the relationship today? Because one of for me, when I teach history to to my students, I never simply teach history in terms of dates and events. I’m always asking the question, this event happened, how does that impact the relationship today? How did that feed into the developing Christian Muslim relationship? Because I firmly believe that Christian Muslim interaction in the 21st century is the, child of centuries of interaction between the two faiths.

Therefore, we need to understand something about those centuries of interaction in order to really get a handle on what’s going on today. So it it sounds like you’re saying everything didn’t start on 911. Quite funny about that too. It’s a little further back. You mentioned that first empire.

Give us some ideas about where these empires spread, that first sort of Islamic movement goes where? So with with the death of Mohammed in in 632, there was a period of about 30 years when, there were a series of of leaders, and that first 30 years was really important for the growth of Islam. So Islam moved out of the Arabian Peninsula. It, spread into into current present day Iraq and Syria. Damascus, which was a great Christian city, fell to to to to Muslims, so did Jerusalem.

Islam expanded into Egypt during this period, and it also expanded into, Persia, which was a different religion, Zoroastrian at the time. So those first 30 years were very important for the expansion of Islam. Looking at that, I mean, it’s gotta shock a lot of people though because this is really the cradle of Christianity at this point. So how do you look at that from a historical perspective that the the cradle of the Christian faith within 30 years of after the death of Mohammed essentially changes to an Islamic empire? Well, that’s left, a a legacy, among both Muslims and Christians.

It’s important to understand that one of the reasons a key reason, I think, that Islam was so successful in expanding in that early period was that the Eastern Christian Empire and the Persian Empire had been fighting each other for 100 of years, and they were exhausted. So the 2 great empires of the region had exhausted themselves fighting each other. So in comes Islam as a new force, and they they encountered very brittle resistance, so they expanded very rapidly. They were fired up by new enthusiasm about their faith. So that initial period was was crucial.

But, of course, the loss of, Jerusalem, the loss of Damascus, that left a legacy of bitterness, among Christians, and it would that was the first stage on the lead up to the crusades and onwards. So in a sense, relationships are being formed in that very early period, relations based on on on conflict and and conquest and so forth. I think what’s interesting because Islam, the Islamic empires were based so much about, their faith, that, they didn’t fade like other empires would have. Right? So, like, you have a Roman Empire, which wasn’t really based on faith.

It was, you know, very militaristic, powerful. And I know that Islam has had that kind of history as well. But, but it seems like, the Christendom and is this Islamic empire just continually, were swelling. Right? And, competing, fighting, on the edges and trading too.

Right? Mhmm. And and that just continued on and on and on and on. So even though there were empires that were falling, right, the the Islamic, regions of the world still stayed Islamic. Right?

And then, Christendom in in the west or more of the west, I guess, still stayed. So I’m just wondering, did that is that what had, really built up the build bitterness over the years? Whereas in maybe, like, Romans and the Germanic tribes, there’s still no there’s no bitterness between Romans and Germanic tribes today because they just don’t exist where you have Christian and you have Islam still here. Would that be a contributor to this buildup? Yes.

Well, the the in in the contest between the Islamic empires and and the and Christendom, you have a contest between in all different sorts of ways. It’s a contest for power. It’s a contest for territory. It’s a contest for religious belief. Mhmm.

And, you know, Rome and the Germanic tribes, they know they don’t no longer have a contest for for religious belief because they the whole area eventually became is, Christianized. Right. Whereas in the case of Islam and Christianity, the the territories that distinguish them were also marked by religious differences, which we find today. So that’s a kind of ongoing basis of of rivalry. Islamic empires the the the territory that was that became Islamic through expansion and conquest, had reached its maximum point virtually pretty much by about 7 50 AD.

Wow. That’s that’s soon after. Yeah. But there were some subsequent expansions, but nevertheless, that period of 120 years was essential for Islam’s expansion to its furthest point. And subsequent to that, that that area of land did pass from empire to empire within the Islamic in Islamic terms.

Right. Right. Different Islamic different Islamic empires. Some came, some went. So you found some empires raised, rose, some fell, but it remained Islamic.

And that’s the thing. Once that area of land has become Islamic, it’s not ceased to be so except for the period of the Crusades and more recently. Yeah. And I think that we have to take into consideration that there are many Christians that would look at the rapid expansion of the church in the 1st century and that would be a great testimony to the validity of their faith. Muslims have the same sort of testimony.

Many Muslims I’ve talked to have used that as sort of a test for the authenticity of Islam is look how quickly this spread. Absolutely. Yeah. That’s a very common idea among Muslims that, their their view is that God blessed Islam which is why it expanded as it did, which is interesting for later history because when Islam had periods of decline, Muslims then asked the question, why has God stopped to bless us, stop blessing us? And the answer has typically been because we were bad Muslims, so we need to get back to the original kind of faith, which tends to be more a literalist kind of faith.

And we we see that in Christian circles as well in the past. I I just hear, like, these stories from, church history, I think I remember, where, Muslims would come and conquer a town and they would all convert to Islam, And then that town that used to be Christian is no longer Christian, or that region was Christian, is no longer Christian, was wiped out. So it’s interesting. Well, I think, you know, there’s it it there is, like, that that shift towards fundamentalism in a sense that we’ve abandoned the faith and we need to go back to the the true, you know. And there’s that that narrative that exist in a lot of countries, our own country included, in a lot of historic Christian areas.

But a lot of people aren’t aware that going to Spain today that you’ll see a lot of mosque and a lot of architecture that is directly related to that early Islamic empire and then all the way up into Baghdad, the next empire that talk to us a little bit about the so called golden age of Islam that seems to be a another huge turning point. Yes. Well, after the fall of the, really, the empire of expansion, they were called the Umayyads, and they they lasted until 7 50 AD. That was a period really of military expansion. You then had 500 years of empires where a number of empires and sub empires in the Islamic world, where the arts flourished, where the sciences flourished.

There was a lot of translation of Greek works. There was a period of stability, relative stability, especially in the 8 100. And during that period, sometimes Christians and Jews row rose to positions of prominence in the administration of the empire. And, that was that particular empire called the Abbasid Empire, it was based on Baghdad. Meanwhile, over in Spain, another empire was was flourishing.

So in the 8 100, you had a, I suppose, a kind of glory period. One based 1 empire based in Baghdad, 1 empire based in based in Spain. And, this was the period, of course, when the Europe European areas had entered the dark ages. There was a massive decline. So this was definitely the period of, Islamic rise and glory and European decline.

And if you look at if you think of history as a series of waves, what you often tend to find is that as the wave of Islam rose, the wave of European Christianity declined. And as one rose, then yet later on you find that the Europeans rose through, colonialism and at a time that the Islamic wave had declined as well. So it tends to be a sort of balancing kind of wave to some extent. So that that for me, it begs the question, today, are we in decline? It depends on who you ask.

Christians are in decline or, or or we are on our way up. You know, some miss, some really hopeful missiologists are like, we’re we’re doing it. We’re finishing the job. You know? We’re finishing the task.

But then a lot of scared Americans, you know, like, what what would you say? Or is Islam in decline? Or, or Who who is riding the wave? Yeah. Who’s rising?

Yeah. Well, you know, since, since 1900, Muslim, sort of reformist kinds of writers have been have been asking the question again, why are we colonized? Because in 1900, much of the Muslim world was under colonial control of non Muslim powers. So they asked the question, why is that? And the answer was, we’ve been bad Muslims.

Therefore, many Muslim groups have tried to revive Islam by going back to what they considered to be the basics, and we are still seeing that process today. So groups that you see whether it’s the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, which tend to be, you know, then then non jihadi or some of the jihadi groups, The message is we need to get back to the basics in Islam and implement Islamic Sharia law, and that will help Islam rise, go up the wave again. What about the West? Is the West rising or declining? Well, you know, we can discuss that among ourselves.

Alright. So this show wouldn’t be possible without sponsors. And at this point in the show is where if you wanna partner with us, we would put your ad. So if you wanna be a part of the show, you wanna partner with us, you like what we’re doing, you wanna be on our team, what have you, bringing this show to the world, then email us and let us know. I’m curious even before, even before the 1900 before colonialism pre colonialism, we have the crusades, which is a little bit where we started the conversation.

How was the response from the Muslim world going from this golden age, this sort of Pax Romana? I don’t know what the Islamic term would be for this sort of peaceful reign where they’re flourishing in art and they’re flourishing in medicine and science and, astronomy. And, you know, we’ve we’ve heard so many different things that were coming out of this, period in Baghdad. And what what what was the response when what comes next is essentially the Crusades? Well, yeah, in a sense, what we’re seeing is what history has shown about every empire.

From the death of Muhammad to 632 until about 1100 AD, Islam had been going through a period of great flourishing, great success, but then the decline set in inevitably. So in the 900, the Islamic Empire and empires, they were they were declining. So by the time that that the crusades happened, the Islamic empires were brittle. They were they had declined considerably. There was certain amount of decadence in certain kinds of ways.

And, so they were vulnerable to to, attack from other areas. The crusades, they represent a kind of counterattack in a sense, a counterattack after 450 years of Muslim expansion. So from the death of Mohammed, there had been this expansion. Christianity had been in retreat. So the crusades that started in 10/95, 10/96 represented a kind of counter attack at a time that the Islamic Islamic empires had declined.

And so the crusades were successful in setting up a series of little kingdoms in around the area of present day Israel, Lebanon, and so forth. And, as Islam was declining and it was facing a lot of pressure in that way, it was also beginning to face pressures from other parts of the world that eventually led on to the great Mongol invasions of the 1200. So, Muslims look back to the Crusades as with bitterness, as an event, a series of events that brought about, huge loss among the Islamic nations. But, of course, going getting back to my original point, you can’t measure the Christian Muslim problem from that period because there had already been 450 years of Christian Muslim conflict and rivalry before the crusades. So that’s why, for me, the Crusades are a link in the chain of history.

So in the dark ages, was there much interaction between Muslims and Christian, like, in trade or anything? It just seems like what the paint the picture that you painted, Islam was flourishing, kinda like the Renaissance, you know, for the West. So, I just it made me think that the Christians were just kinda in their caves. Or the Christians were in their monasteries, you know, just hiding. Yeah.

Yeah. No. There there wasn’t. There was certainly interaction. We have to remember that during that period, there were still lots of Christians living under Islamic rule in the Middle East.

Okay. I didn’t think about that. And during the period of Islamic greatness, some of those Christians rose to positions of prominence in the Islamic empires. So there was Christian Muslim interaction there within the world of Islam. But in addition, there was continuing Christian Muslim in interaction beyond the borders as well.

There were, for example, ongoing pilgrimages from, by Christian groups coming from Europe going down to Jerusalem to visit the holy sites. There was trade going on, of course. So, yeah, it was going on. Christian Muslim interaction was happening in different ways. So what was the initial spark that started the Crusades?

Well, the, there had been it was a new Muslim group who came on the scene actually. When you think of the Middle East, you think of a number of different major people groups. You think of the Arabs, you think of the Persians, you think of the Turks. And it was really the arrival of the Turks around 1000 AD that represented a whole new, element in the Islamic equation. As the king as the Islamic empires were declining, this new group of people arrived, and the Turks started to assert themselves within the world of Islam.

And they also started to push into, present day Turkey. The present day Turkey that had originally been Christian, of course, as we know from from the bible. So the arrival of the Turks, meant that they were it was increasing conflict between Christians, in the Byzantine Empire and the newly arriving Turks. There was a big battle in 10/71 in, in Eastern Turkey, where the Christian armies of the Byzantines was heavily defeated. And, that defeat meant that more pressure was being applied on the Eastern Christian city of Constantinople.

And so the cons the ruler of Constantinople, the emperor of Constantinople turned to the pope in Rome and asked for help, ask for assistance to face up to the new Islamic threat of the Turks. And that 25 years later, they gathered together an army and they then responded to to this new threat, the new threat of the the Turks. Alright. That was Peter Riddell. As always, he’s masterful in his intellect and his content.

This one was pretty exciting because it’s building up the conflict, between Muslims and Christian relations, which is a lot of what we’re living in today. Right, Trevor? Right. Well, I mean, it’s it’s good to realize that this isn’t anything, new. We tend to view the world through, you know, our our own experience and forget that there’s a history there.

So we’ve got, you know, 1400 years of ongoing tension, not always tension, sometimes, good relationships, sometimes poor relationships. And it’s good to hear him sort of outline the ebb and flow, and and I’m looking forward to next week where we really break this down into, so how did this all come about and what we see today? Right. And we need to know what to do with it. So this is, history at its finest.

Yeah. Look forward to part 3 next week. Yep. So come back.