Islam

Islam is one of the controversial topics of our time. Who could forget where they were and what they were doing at the exact moment in time when they found out about the tragic events of 9/11? In the past decade Westerners have become increasingly suspicious of Muslims, and the media has taken full advantage of this and some would say promoted this fear by it's coverage of events such as the Danish Cartoon episode and the Cronulla riots. One Muslim recently responded by posting billboards in Sydney and Adelaide and had civil discussions with Christian leaders on publicchristianity.com and at The City Bible Forum in order to boost and positively influence the public's understanding of his faith.

But ultimately, is there any basis for believing in Islam? This is a question that David Wood seeks to answer- in the negative. Wood is a philosopher and a former atheist who converted to Christianity but then became increasingly interested in Islam as a result of his interactions with Muslim friends. One of his close friends converted to Christianity and then became a ministry partner of Wood's, and so Wood continues his work on Islam.

Go here to download a 90 minute interview with Wood.

The interview covers many topics:

- The Dearborn Arab Festival in the US, in a town where 30% of the population is Arabic, they hold a festival each year. Wood details his exploits and the trouble he's found himself in over the years- semi-interesting but insignificant in the big picture.

- His own background and how he became interested in Islam. Skip the first 20 or 30 mins of the interview- the good stuff comes later.

- Arguments Muslims use for their own position such as the Argument from Literary Excellence which says that the poetry in the Koran is perfect thus it has a perfect source.

- The Koran's claim that the Torah and New Testament predict the coming of Mohammed. Thus, Muslims claim that Deutoronomy 18 and the Gospel of John 14-16 both predict his arrival.

- The idea of abrogation. This is the hermeneutical principle that contradicting ideas are resolved by appealing to a chronological evolution, based on the idea that God would only give a revelation equal to or better than a prior one.

Wood discussed various verses from the Koran-to the effect of "There is no compulsion in religion" and "You have your religion and I will have mine" and contrasts these with later verses on violence and later dictations about the treatment of unbelievers, who were forced to pay a tax or submit to Islam. He argues that the journey of Mohammed's life saw him go from advocating peacefulness when his followers were in the minority, towards negative jihad and then finally towards positive jihad when the numbers allowed it, and that this could help explain why Muslims in the West usually have a more tolerant attitude to unbelievers than do Muslims in Muslim dominated regions. He warns that Muslims may be well meaning and uneducated about their own faith but that the proper use of abrogation (which is funnily enough more popular in Muslim countries, he claims) inevitably will result in negative behaviour towards unbelievers in the long term.

- The need to understand Muslims on their own terms and thus respond appropriately to their arguments with this understanding in mind. He says that no apologetics type books actually do this well enough, and that no apologetics works give the fullest, deepest responses (Although he says Answering Islam by Geisler and Saleeb is the best book answer to Islam that he knows of). He says Answering-Islam.org is the most comprehensive archive or responses to Islam and that it will not fall foul on the charge he levels against the books that are in print.

He gives the example of responding to the Muslim charge that the Bible has been corrupted. He says the first response should be that Surah 6:115 and Surah 18:27 claim that God's word can't be corrupted or changed, that the Koran teaches that the Torah and the Gospel are God's word, and that therefore if God's word cannot be corrupted then the Muslim shouldn't be arguing that the Koran is wrong and that God's word has been corrupted. Then, he says, after making this argument you should go onto make the standard textual criticism type arguments on the basis of manuscript evidence and the like.