To loop back to the original question - one answer, and the dominant thinking in this field by the West, is that Islam doesn't really produce murderers - radical politics does, and it just so happens the Islamist movement has found an extraordinarily powerful tool in certain sects of Islam. That is, radical Islamist political ideology produces murderers, and those murderers are first recruited by, and then use Islam as a justification for their violence. I have made a post about the gradual development of Purist Salafism into the violent Jihadist Salafism we know today in another thread, if you're interested, but I'll go over some of those ideas again in this reply. Islamism, despite what it's name might prompt you to assume, is a political movement, not a religious movement. It's a political movement born out of the revanchist emotions post-fall of the Ottoman empire, that seeks to return to the "Old Days" where the Muslim world was a dominant world power. They conceive the way to return to the glory days is to "revive" Islamic practice to a time when God favoured them, and institute a fundamentalist regime with no separation between church and state. As one would expect, such a political ideology needed a conservative, literalist sect of Islam to champion old Islamic values and practices. In doing so the Islamist political leaders took academic and structural control of a conservative branch of Sunni Islam called 'Salafism', which believes in a very strict adherence to the Quran and traditional Islamic practice, and gradually reformed it. Originally Salafism spoke against political participation, as politics risks corrupting Islam. We now call this "Purist Salafism". The new, politically active Salafism we call "Activist Salafism", and it's still the largest group in the Salafi movement. After the Islamist movement failed to achieve political success, and began to suffer serious political repression from secular political interests, the Islamist movement turned violent. The violent radicals reformed the Salafi movement again, producing what we now call "Jihadist Salafism", which teaches the violence some now associate as inherent in the Quran. Jihadist Salafism is a growing (was a growing? I haven't seen recent numbers) Salafist sect, but it's still a minority view, and it's believed around 1% of Sunni Muslims follow some form of Jihadist Salafism. For some that wasn't enough, and so they found a near-dead 18th century Salafi heresy called "Wahhabism", that, in some readings, can be used to preach death to both Non-Muslims and Muslims. Political extremists fishing for a religious justification revived this sect and brought it to new popularity, as it conveniently permits their most violent tactics - including killing fellow Muslims. Salafism has proved to be a great recruitment tool for young, theologically passionate Muslims - and Islamist groups then steer those impressionable youths towards the violent sects of Jihadist Salafism and Wahhabism. Using money and political power they control certain academies of Islamic thought, and use Islam and sympathetic clerics to teach their political ideology to the next generation. Imagine a hypothetical where Hitler took control of Christian churches and began teaching Nazism in church. It would be Nazi doctrine creating evil, not Christian doctrine. In that sense it's not really Islam producing killers, it's radical politics producing killers. Islam is just a very meaningful vector for this particular extremist political movement, but it's born out of a political desire, not a religious revelation.
If I'm reading this correctly, you're making a distinction between "Islam" (which you identify as a religion) and "Islamism" (which you identify as a political, but not religious, movement). Does history support such a distinction? Or is Islam a combined, political-religious movement? I don't usually rely on Wikipedia, but it's handy and on point in this case; it states that the political aspect of forcible expansionism began with Muhammad's leadership and continued throughout the centuries. The Wikipedia article says, The early Muslim conquests (Arabic: الفتوحات الإسلامية, al-Futūḥāt al-Islāmiyya), also referred to as the Arab conquests[4] and the early Islamic conquests[5] began with the Islamic prophet Muhammad in the 7th century. He established a new unified polity in the Arabian Peninsula which under the subsequent Rashidun and Umayyad Caliphates saw a century of rapid expansion. The resulting empire stretched from parts of Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent, across the Middle East, North Africa, the Caucasus, and parts of Southwest Europe (Sicily and the Iberian Peninsula to the Pyrenees)...the Muslim armies in the space of a hundred years were able to establish one of the largest pre-modern empires until that time...In late 620s Muhammad had already managed to conquer and unify much of Arabia under Muslim rule... This pattern of behavior (political/military conquests done in the name of Islam and to spread Islam) persisted throughout the religion's history. They invaded places like Spain, Constantinople, Afghanistan, and everything from India to Africa's eastern shore. The political aspect (hegemonic growth) and the religious aspect (spreading this false faith) worked hand-in-hand, fully intertwined. Only at times when other political powers successfully beat back the Muslims, or could potentially conquer them, did Islam present the image of a peaceful religion as a means to pacify and lull their adversaries into a false sense of security. If we are to say that the main thrust of those conquests was political and that the religious aspect was only used as a tool for achieving political ends, then we have to acknowledge that Islam, false religion that it is, has no more merit than to serve as a tool for the power-hungry. Islam certainly does not glorify the true, Trinitarian God; it denies the Lordship of Jesus Christ and deceives its followers with false beliefs. Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son (1 John 2:22). Islam is a false religion which denies the Father and the Son, it is devoid of spiritual merit, and it is not worthy of a Christian's moral or intellectual defense.
I'm simply saying Islamism is a political, not religious movement - that's not a meaningful defense of Islam, it's an attempt to understand what is producing terrorists so we can best address it. You are obviously right that it's impossible to separate early Islam from the Muslim Caliphates' political objectives, but that's not the world we're looking at today and doesn't help us resolve why Islam produces murderers today. It would be extraordinarily difficult to separate the crusades political objectives from its religious objectives in a meaningful sense, but an analysis of the crusades doesn't help us understand why Christianity produces murderers in Uganda via the Lord's Resistance Army. We need to look at the political instability of Uganda to understand why they do the terrible things they do, not to any Christian doctrine or history. Islamism is a political movement that we only really see existing post-WW2, and which has clearly distinguishable non-religious objectives. Violence, in that context, is a tool to obtain political power, not relevant to worship.
Ironically, the very verse you cited doesn’t apply to Muslims at all, as the Qur’an repeatedly affirms that Jesus is the Messiah, and the later Nicene theology of divine sonship hadn’t been worked out yet when 1 John was written. I would hardly call a religion that eradicated idolatry in favor of worship directed solely to the God of Abraham to be “devoid of spiritual merit”. And you may not recognize the greatness of Muslim thinkers like Ibn Sina, al-Ghazzali, or Ibn Rushd, but without their appropriation of Greek thought that was inaccessible in the medieval West at the time, St. Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, and others, could not have written what they did. They certainly felt that at least some aspects of the thought of their Muslim intellectual predecessors was “worthy of defense.” You paint with too broad a brush.
What do Muslims say? "Allah has no son." They deny the Father and the Son. Are you really trying to suggest that because the "theology of divine sonship hadn't been worked out yet," the "Father and the Son" don't apply to God the Father and Jesus the Son? I think you're overlooking the divine inspiration of the Holy Spirit who caused John to think of the wording he used, and God certainly knows His theology better than anyone! Besides, who else would it apply to if not to God the Father and God the Son?
Actually we should also recognise that we have some common ground. The Muslims say 'There is One God' Christians say 'We believe in One God' Clearly there are a great many differences, however a strong monotheistic thread is something we have in common. The great emphasis of the Holy Roman Empire was couched in territory and political power, cost a lot of lives, and was really not onsong with the message of Jesus. We may well want to differentiate those matters, as much as Islam may want to divorce itself from the radicals. What doies the Lord require, but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God
I do not subscribe to dictation theories of inspiration, nor is there anything in the Anglican formularies that would morally require me to do so. The point I was making is that Muslims deny neither God nor that Jesus is the Christ. There are indeed other Christian teachings that they do deny, but those are not among them. And yes, it is anachronistic to read 4th century polemics back into late 1st century texts. The author of 1 John specifically equates “denial that Jesus is the Christ” with “denial of the Father and the Son”. It’s not a metaphysical statement, but rather a historical one. Who in the late 1st century denied that Jesus is “the Christ”? The context of the passage makes it clear that the author of 1 John was referring to specific events in his own time - apparently concerning other Christians (perhaps of a Gnostic persuasion) - and assumes that his readers would have known what he was referring to. It has nothing to do with Islam.
Sorry, there is NO common ground between Muslims and Christians in a spiritual sense. Christians are redeemed from the penalty of their sins, but Muslims are lost in their sins and need to receive the Redeemer, Christ the Son of God, by faith.
You wrote: Who in the late 1st century denied that Jesus is "the Christ"? The answer: everyone who was not a believer in and disciple of Jesus. This included unsaved Jews, people who (like the Muslims) believed in one God. It also included all the other people, be they worshippers of Diana, Baal, Zeus, or nobody. To acknowledge Jesus as 'the Christ' means to believe that He is the anointed one who was prophesied to come and provide salvation for God's people. Muslims don't believe that. They believe Jesus was a prophet, all right, but they also believe he will 'play second fiddle' to the Mahdi. Many Muslims believe that Jesus will return, but that He will command all Christians to become Muslim, and if the Christians do not convert they will be done away with. One does not have to subscribe to 'dictation theory' (I don't) to believe that the words John penned were both foreordained and inspired by God. I think some people use 'dictation theory' as their 'whipping boy' for their failure to believe what is written in the Bible.
Christianity and Islam are both monotheistic faith traditions of Semitic origins, and along with Judaism, we all celebrate Abraham as a Patriarch in the faith. I am not for one moment suggesting that there are no differences, there clearly are. I am suggesting that like Islam, there have been periods in our history where have have forgotten that this is a battle for hearts and minds, and have expressed it in terms of a battle for land and territory.
You're simply wrong here. I've pointed out why, but the facts don't seem to matter. There's not much more I can say there. No, if you will read the very passage you quoted, in context, you will see that the author of 1 John is referring to people who themselves claimed to be Christians. In any case, the passage cannot be referring to Islam, as Islam didn't exist for another five centuries after that epistle was written, and the topic was clearly something contemporary that the readers were meant to understand. This is 100% correct. I don't for the life of me understand why these simple facts are so hard for some others on here to grasp.
No disagreement from me. Certainly, John was writing to people who claimed to be Christians, but that doesn't force every statement he made into your narrow interpretation that they all must apply to those people to whom he wrote. Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son. This is a broad statement with wide-reaching application. It is possible that those who departed from the believers' fellowship were deniers, but nothing in the statement limits its application to those departed ones alone; the language in verse 22 sounds much more broad and inclusive than that, and verse 23's language continues in the same broad vein by referring to broad categories of people: No one who denies the Son has the Father. Whoever confesses the Son has the Father also.
The same could be said of Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, Christian Science adherents, the Jim Jones cult, and all of the violent extremist Muslim groups. By the same logic, would you maintain that Christians have common ground with the above?
I don't know enough about the Jim Jones Cult to comment. None the less despite their failure to to embrace orthodox Christian Teaching, there is some common ground in all these teachings. We can be very quick in Christian circles to distance ourselves a great deal from people where we actually have more in common than we like to admit. The JW's are a contemporary expression of one of the early Christian Heresies, namely Arianism. It is a mistake to think that Arians are not Christian, they are simply not Nicene Christians. There are a number of stories in the Gospels, and perhaps I could highlight the Woman at the Well in John 4 and the Good Samaritan narrative from Luke 10, there we find the Jews have created an enormous divide between themselves and the Samaritans, despite some significant proximity in the faith traditions, and the common ancestry. I think that part of the message of Jesus is about recognition, respect, and reconciliation.
Well said. It’s even more than that, though. If we were to steal the time machine from Doc Brown and go back in time to 1st century Galilee, we would find that the daily religious routine that Jesus would have practiced looked a lot more similar to Islam today than to Christianity (a fact noted by the famed traveler Richard Burton nearly 150 years ago). Remembering that Arabic and Aramaic are cognate languages, it should come as no surprise that the word for God in Aramaic is ‘Alah’ (pronounced similarly to the Arabic ‘Allah’). That is thus one of the words Jesus would have used when referring to God in his native language, just as Arabic-speaking Jews and Christians today refer to God as “Allah”. Strict monotheism, along with the well known Islamic emphases on ritual purity (viz., regular washing), avoidance of certain foods, set prayers at fixed times of the day, and regular pilgrimage to a central shrine, etc., were all also core essentials of the 1st century Palestinian Judaism that Jesus is reported in the Gospels to have practiced. Nor was Jesus a pacifist; in one passage he instructs his disciples to buy swords (Luke 22:36-38), at least some of the disciples attempted to use violence in his defense on the Mount of Olives (believing no doubt that this was Jesus’ own intention), and Jesus in some of his own parables and apocalyptic sayings indicated that he expected his future rule to be imposed with violence, as did his early followers (cf., e.g., the Book of Revelation). Heaven and Hell are depicted carnally by Jesus - as eating and drinking in the case of the former and as inextinguishable fire and torment in the latter - as they are in the Qur’an, and angels and the Last Day figure prominently in the sermons of Jesus just as they do in standard Islamic teaching. There are important differences as well, to be sure. Jesus never made pilgrimage to the Ka’aba. There is no priesthood or system of sacrifices in Islam as there was in 1st cent. Judaism. The Lord’s Prayer, as Muslim scholars have noted, has some distinctly un-Islamic features. The Islamic notion of the Messiah is more that of a prophet-Messiah than a king-Messiah. Even so, there is enough overlap to render any suggestion that the religion of Jesus has nothing in common with Islam laughable. Of course they have things in common, and we wouldn’t expect otherwise. That the hajj serves basically the same function for Islam as the Eucharist does for Christianity - as a public sign of unity - is no accident, the Last Supper being the ritual climax of the pilgrimage from Galilee to Jerusalem for the Passover. There are plenty of connections like these, hiding in plain sight.
I stand by my earlier statement that Christians and Muslims have no common ground in a spiritual sense. That two religions would have some features in common is not surprising. If we studied the features of various false and evil religions, I'm pretty sure we could find some points of commonality between those and Christianity. So what? Big deal. On the other hand, being a born-again, Spirit-indwelt child of the living God and a member of Jesus' spiritual "body" on earth is not a matter of religion, but a matter of spiritual renewal by the power of God. A true Christian and a Muslim are as far away spiritually as the east is from the west, and as light is from darkness.
I'm going to contest this (I should contest the pacifism bit too, but I'll leave it be for now). The gospels report repeatedly the Jesus did not follow the practices of 1st century Palestinian Judaism, and has explicit verses contradicting at least two of the practices you mention. In fact he often preached to fellow Jews to stop their practices. Which is why Christians do not follow the old Jewish traditions, while modern Jewish communities still do. Regular washing Now when the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around him, they noticed that some of his disciples were eating with defiled hands, that is, without washing them. (For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they thoroughly wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders; and they do not eat anything from the market unless they wash it; and there are also many other traditions that they observe, the washing of cups, pots, and bronze kettles.) So the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, ‘Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?’ He said to them, ‘Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written, “This people honours me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines.” You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.’ ~ Mark 7.1-8 Avoidance of certain foods Then he called the crowd again and said to them, ‘Listen to me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.’ When he had left the crowd and entered the house, his disciples asked him about the parable. He said to them, ‘Then do you also fail to understand? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile, since it enters, not the heart but the stomach, and goes out into the sewer?’ (Thus he declared all foods clean.) ~ Mark 7.14-19 I'm also not sure 1st Century Jews had a popular practice of fixed prayer at certain times of the day, I think it was more reserved for the priesthood and members of devout cults/sects (similar to Christianity today). Jesus certainly followed the practice though.
This is simply not historically correct. Classic and/or works that address this issue on the basis of the biblical evidence itself include those of Klausner, Frederiksen, Vermes, N.T. Wright, and E.P. Sanders (e.g., the latter’s Jesus and Judaism), to name a few, among many others, and I refer you to them for a full discussion of the passages you raised (which don’t really present a problem once they’re situated in their original context). Disagreements among 1st cent. Jews were quite common, but they were also “in house”, as it were. No serious scholar today questions that Jesus kept the Jewish law, a fact which the Gospels themselves testify to in abundance. Baptism itself was derived from the practice of mikveh, which was not done just one time, but on a regular basis, in 1st cent. Jewish practice, just as it is done in Jewish practice to this day. Jesus did not abolish Jewish law, nor did he claim to have done so (quite the opposite in fact, and I’m not sure why anyone today would bother arguing to the contrary), and the reason we do not keep it today is because we are Gentiles. If we were to go back in time to 1st century Palestine, we would find that Jesus’ everyday practice, on the whole, in many ways looked a lot more similar to Islam in some important respects than it would to what Christianity has become. That’s not a criticism of Christianity, just an observation based on what we know about Jesus in his 1st cent. Jewish context. I don’t think that’s controversial in the light of historical scholarship, and it’s something thoughtful Christians should take into consideration when engaging either Judaism or Islam.
Perhaps then you could paraphrase those works rather than directing me to read the (possibly multiple?) works of 5 different authors to rebut two commonly understood passages that have always been understood to be a rejection of Jewish tradition. We do not keep it today because we are Christians. A close friend of mine is ethnically Jewish, was circumcised at birth, had a Bar Mitvah, etc. He's also a Christian convert (to a baptist church, not the Anglican church), and he does not keep Kosher law, and is not directed to by his priest. The passage reads a rebuke to the pharisees: "You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition", not "Thus he rebuked the disciples for eating with unclean hands, and told the disciples to listen to the Pharisees". It's unclear what possible historical evidence historians could rely on for the life of Jesus that supersedes the Gospels. The Gospels are pretty clear there are many cases where Jesus broke Jewish traditions; He worked on the sabbath, permitted his disciples to work on the sabbath, did not wash, directed people to eat forbidden foods, and did so again after the resurrection, touched unclean people, shared with sinners, shared with Samaritans, and I'm sure there are a dozen more examples. He was a rebel who regularly broke the Pharisees rules - where Jesus and the old Jewish law collide, we follow the example of Jesus, gentile or not. We've had this dispute before around the definition of fulfilment and abolishment of the law, and just as then I could not possibly see how you could read "You have heard “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” But I say to you, if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also" as anything other than a repeal of an eye for an eye; I cannot possibly see how you could read "Thus he declared all foods clean" as anything other than a repeal of purity laws on unclean food.
There are several different issues at play here. One is the question of the continuing validity of the Mosaic Law, or Torah. Another is the relationship between the “written” Torah (i.e., the Pentateuch), and the “oral” Torah (i.e., the traditions formed around the written Torah and which later became the halacha enshrined in the Mishnah and Talmud, then codified in laters works, such as the Mishneh Torah, the Shulchan Aruch, etc.). Another is the relationship of the 1st cent. Pharisees to what later became halacha. Another is the relationship of Jesus to both the written Torah and the oral Torah. For the sake of this discussion, let’s set aside questions of higher criticism and focus our attention on the canonical form of the biblical texts as we have them today. The written Torah states numerous times, and unequivocally, that it is an everlasting covenant. A covenant is not simply a serious of promises; it also consists of binding obligations. These obligations are the commandments given by God specifically to the Hebrews. Any interpretation that denies this is doing actual violence to the text, and the New Testament - particularly in the Gospel of Matthew, Paul in the Epistle to the Romans, and James - shares this perspective. The Torah is clear that the commandments it contained would not be abrogated, and the New Testament does not claim that they were. If Jesus was not only a perfect man but also a perfect Jew, we can assume that he at least kept the commandments of the written Torah. The written Torah commands, among other things, ritual washing on and for various occasions. Some of these commands were directed to the priestly class, and some were directed to the people as a whole. Some of these commands were also quite vague with regard to how they should be carried out. The purpose of the ‘traditions’ was to carry out these commands in such a way as to prevent any accidental violation. All practicing Jews in the 1st century would have been concerned about this. The Pharisees, additionally, were not only concerned to answer these questions but also to prevent the essence of Judaism from being the sole province of the priestly class in faraway Jerusalem. They therefore took many of the priestly commandments and prescribed ways that ordinary people could participate in them, to enhance their sense of belonging to the Jewish nation as a whole. There were differing schools within the Pharisees as to how this should be done in particular instances, and there were those who differed from the Pharisees (e.g., the Qumran community), as well as those who opposed the contemporary (and collaborationist) priestly regime in Jerusalem. Given that debates over what the written Torah meant were absolutely unavoidable in 1st cent. Palestinian Judaism, when a complete and accepted tradition of interpretation did not yet exist, we would expect Jesus to have taken sides on what the oral Torah should be, or elaborated new positions of his own. And, when we read the Synoptic Gospels, this is exactly what we find, and the overall picture they paint is quite conventional rather than innovative, given the range of opinion that existed at the time. The written Torah, for example, never mentions the resurrection of the dead. Belief in the resurrection was nevertheless part of the oral tradition of the Pharisees, but was denied by the Sadducees. Jesus sided with the Pharisees on that question, and employed a characteristically Pharisaic or ‘midrashic’ mode of interpretation to make his point. Although the written Torah allowed divorce, there were nevertheless some Pharisees who did not allow it for their followers (e.g., the “school of Shammai”), while other Pharisees continued to allow it for theirs (e.g., the “school of Hillel”). In his own treatment of the issue, Jesus clearly sided with the school of Shammai against the school of Hillel. These are just two examples. Each of the examples you’ve raised in your previous posts were not instances of disobedience of the written Torah by Jesus. They were rather instances in which Jesus took a particular stand on what the correct interpretation of the applicable commandment(s) should be. He did not consistently side with one school against another. When it come to moral commandments, though, he usually tended to side with the stricter school of Shammai, and when it come to what we would call more “ritual” matters, he tended to side with the more lenient school of Hillel (e.g., when and how to wash). The Gospels never say that Jesus ate pork, for example, or refused to maintain the ritual purity required by the written Torah. His baptism alone refutes the latter notion. Baptism (mikveh) was another one of those commandments applying in special cases, that groups like the Pharisees expanded to include the common people, as well as situations not covered by a literal reading of the written Torah. The fact that Jesus participated in such practices at all tells us that he was a maximalist when it came to the application of the written Torah; he simply did not always agree with his Pharisaic interlocutors as to the specific application. Although Jesus was not a Pharisee himself, either as a disciple of a particular school or a teacher “licensed” by one of them, his teaching was much more at home within the overall Pharisaic mindset than any of the alternative approaches in 1st cent. Palestinian Judaism that wr have any records of. All of that points toward his strict observance of the written Torah. Once Jesus enters Jerusalem, the Pharisees quietly disappear from the narrative and play no role in his arrest, trial, or execution. Some even tried to warn him of the trouble he would face from the priests. In his theological pronouncements, Jesus consistently sided with the Pharisees against the Sadducees (e.g., the canon of Scripture, immortality of the soul, resurrection of the dead, etc.), and his ire was particularly directed at the Temple and the priestly hierarchy that collaborated with Rome. Indeed, he was arrested by the Temple police for threatening violence against the Temple and using violence against the lenders (whose practices made the sacrificial system possible), and he was executed as an insurrectionist. I could go on but I think I’ve made my point. Jesus was fully at home and immersed in the world of 1st cent. Palestinian Judaism, and no serious scholar today questions that he was a fully observant Jew. If you want to read about it further, there’s probably no one alive today who knows more about the subject than E.P. Sanders, so I would suggest starting there if you’re interested in exploring the subject further. His Jesus and Judaism is an excellent treatment of the subject, but he’s written plenty of other books on the subject that are also worth reading.