ISLAM

The Issues With Islam

By Monthir Abdullatif

(Brother Abdullatif is an Iraqi-born evangelist, an Arab, who lives in the Detroit area and is doing a good work among the many thousands of Arabs living in the area.)

Since I have come to America and I have seen how Islam is growing here, God has put a burden in my heart to reach my people and to educate Americans about Islam, especially after the attacks of September 11, 2001, and what happened to this country.

I want to read some verses from Acts, chapter 26:

“Whereupon as I went to Damascus with authority and commission from the chief priests, “At midday, O king, I saw in the way a light from heaven, above the brightness of the sun, shining round about me and them which journeyed with me. “And when we were all fallen to the earth, I heard a voice speaking unto me, and saying in the Hebrew tongue, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks. “And I said, Who art thou, Lord? And he said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest. “But rise, and stand upon thy feet: for I have appeared unto thee for this purpose, to make thee a minister and a witness both of these things which thou hast seen, and of those things in the which I will appear unto thee; “Delivering thee from the people, and from the Gentiles, unto whom now I send thee, To open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in me.”—Vss. 12–18.

I want to speak to you about some important points concerning Christ in the book of Islam. But first, I would like to give a short testimony about my conversion so that we can appreciate the freedom in our country here in America.
We are glad to live in America, the country of freedom. Many people come to this wonderful country to escape oppression and tyranny elsewhere.

In many countries when one accepts the Lord Jesus Christ, he will pay a very high price. But in America we have a freedom to preach, a freedom to plant churches and a freedom to evangelize other people. In other countries, it is very difficult for a Muslim to convert to Christianity. A lot of people suffer, especially in the Middle East, because of their beliefs.

I am a native of Iraq, the country known in the Bible as Mesopotamia (meaning “country of two rivers”). Iraq is now a very strong Islamic country.

Growing up there, I began to learn about religion when I was seven years old. I went to public school, and in the public schools in Iraq they teach Islam as an important subject. They ask the student to memorize verses from the Koran as homework. In the Middle East, the religion works with the government, and they practice Islam in the government. It is different from here in America.

My father was a very strong Muslim. He started to take me with him to the mosque and Islamic temple to pray every Friday.

I started at the age of twelve to read the Koran, the holy book of Muslims. The Koran is written in very difficult language. As I started to read the Koran, I asked my father about many things I could not understand.
The most important things I paid attention to in the Koran had to do with the position of Jesus Christ. Muslims show some respect for Jesus Christ. They consider Him a prophet, a messenger from God, but to them He is not the Son of God. He is not the crucified and risen Christ. They don’t believe Jesus could be crucified because God could not allow His Son to be crucified.

Many things written about Christ in the Koran really touched my heart even when I was Muslim. There are four very important points about Jesus Christ which I discovered when I was Muslim.

The reason I want to share this with you is this: I believe the most important and effective way to reach the Muslims is to go to their book and tell them about what their book says in regard to Jesus Christ.

Most Muslims today think Christians have corrupted the Bible. The Koran itself does not say that, but they think we have changed many things, because most of the Islamic leaders tell them so. The leaders of Islam do not want Muslims to read the Bible.

Of course, we do not believe in their book, because we believe the Bible is the full and final revelation from God. We believe that Jesus is the Alpha and Omega and all the prophets who come after Him are false prophets.

We believe in the Bible, but you can still use their book to show them what it says about Christ. I want to teach you so when you meet any Muslim you will be able to tell him so he will understand who is Jesus Christ.

Mohammed was a friend to a priest in Mecca, and that priest told him many things about Christ in the Gospels. At the time when Mohammed started the religion of Islam, there were many churches and many synagogues of the Jews there.
The priest in Mecca told Mohammed many things about Christ, and Mohammed wrote a lot of them in the Koran. I want to share with you these four important things so you can share them with Muslims. Muslims cannot deny something that comes from their book.

The Virgin Birth
The first thing I want to show that was written about Christ in the book of the Muslims is His birth, the virgin birth. The virgin birth is a very important point in the Koran. Muslims believe that Jesus Christ had no earthly father; that’s why when you read of Christ in the Koran it says, “Jesus, the son of Mary” or “Christ, the son of Mary.” Muslims believe that the Spirit of God came to the womb of Mary and Jesus was born.

That is very similar to what we as fundamental Baptist churches believe about the virgin birth. Why do we believe in the virgin birth? We believe in the virgin birth because we believe Jesus is God. The virgin birth is related to the divinity of Jesus Christ. If we take the virgin birth out of the Bible, we cannot believe Jesus is God, because He would be born as a sinner like we are.

The big difference between us and them is that the Muslims don’t believe the Holy Spirit is a divine Person or that Jesus is God. Muslims believe that Jesus is equal to Moses or to David or to Mohammed, the prophet of Islam. They believe He is just a prophet, a good teacher, a messenger from God, an apostle of God or something like that.

So we try to share the truth of the virgin birth with the Muslims in a different way. For example, we ask them, If God wanted to enter our world, how could He do it? He must enter our world in a different way than we do.

All of us are born through the union of a man and a woman. From the beginning of the creation, this is the only way. The exception to this is Jesus Christ; a virgin birth has not occurred in any other case.

Muslims believe in the virgin birth, but they don’t believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ. We can explain to the Muslims how the virgin birth shows that Jesus is not like anyone else in the history of the world.

We can ask them: “If Mohammed, the prophet of Islam, had a father and a mother and David had a father and a mother and Moses had a father and a mother, why did Jesus have no father? You believe in the virgin birth; then why was Jesus born in this way?” There is a reason for that!

The virgin birth is a very important thing to share with the Muslims. They do believe in it because it is written in their book (the Koran).

His Holy Names
Second, I want to point out what the Koran says about the holy names of Jesus Christ. Muslims call Jesus Christ by many holy names. They call Him the Word of God, the Spirit of God, the Advocate in the Day of Judgment, the Righteous and the Pure One. These names are given to Christ; they are not given to the other prophets.

They never call Mohammed the Word of God. The only name in the Koran for Mohammed, the prophet of Islam, is “the seal of the prophets.” That means he is the last prophet. But they never call Mohammed the Word of God. They do call Jesus the Word of God.

If we go to the Bible in John 1:1, we find the same thing—that Jesus Christ is the Word of God. That means God spoke to all mankind through Jesus Christ. Everything that was said by Jesus Christ was said by God.

And the Muslims believe that Jesus is the Word of God. We need to explain to the Muslims why Jesus has this holy and godly name in the Koran, why He is called the Word of God.

Also, the Muslims believe Jesus is the Spirit of God. But to say that Jesus is the Spirit of God means He is God Himself.

In Islam there are two main branches: the Sunni and the Shiite. The Shiites are the minority, and the Sunnis are the majority. The Shiites live just in Iran and in the south of Iraq and the south of Lebanon.

Many years ago, Khomeini was the leader in Iran. He was considered a very important man in the Shiite branch. One time Khomeini told his people, “I am the spirit of God.”

Most of the Sunni Muslims in the Middle East, Egypt, Syria and Jordan became very angry at him. How could Khomeini say, “I am the spirit of God”?

Mohammed V, the king of Morocco at that time, challenged Khomeini and told him, “You are not the spirit of God. Jesus is the Spirit of God.” I remember very well that this was published in many newspapers in the Arabic world.

So you see that Muslims believe Jesus is the Spirit of God. One of the leaders of the Sunni branch, the king of Morocco, accepted that Jesus Christ is the Spirit of God.

Then Muslims also believe that Jesus is the Advocate in the Day of Judgment; that is, in the Day of Judgment He will come and be their Advocate. And they believe that He is the Righteous One, the Pure One without sin.

We need to show Muslims what those holy names given to Jesus Christ in the book of the Koran reveal about Him.

His Miracles
The third thing written in the Koran about Jesus has to do with His miracles. The Koran says that Jesus raised the dead and gave sight to the blind and healed the lepers. If we ask Muslims who has the power to raise the dead, they will say God. They never write about Mohammed that he had the power to raise the dead.

Mohammed claimed that he began receiving revelations from Allah in 610 when he was forty (he was born in a.d. 570). His family stood against him, and one day his tribe challenged him. They said, “If you are a prophet from God, show us a miracle.”

Mohammed answered them: “I am a weak man. I cannot perform miracles.” This is written in the biographical sketch of Mohammed. But in the Koran we do read that Jesus raised the dead.

We also read in the Gospels that Jesus gave sight to a man who was born blind from the womb of his mother. This same thing is written in the Koran—that Jesus met a man blind from his birth and gave him his sight.

Many years ago we had a man in our ministry who was sixty-five and was completely blind. We used to bring him from his home to come and play music for us. He had trained at a Baptist college by correspondence in Braille. He was a very good man, and the people of the church loved him very much.

One day I asked him, “How did you become blind?”

He answered, “I was born blind.”

Later I asked a doctor friend of mine, “If somebody is born blind, can you do surgery and give him vision again?”

He said, “When anyone is born blind, he will continue to be blind for all of his life.”

But Jesus Christ, our Lord and Saviour, did a wonderful miracle with this man written about in the Bible: He gave sight to him again. Why? Because He is God Himself!

And this same miracle is written in the book of the Muslims. We need to ask how they explain that Jesus raised the dead and gave sight to one who had been blind from his mother’s womb.

Why did God give these miracles to Jesus and not give them to Mohammed, if he is the last prophet and the chosen one? He did no miracle, but Jesus raised the dead and gave sight to the blind because He is God.

His Sinless Life
Many other things are written about Jesus in the book of the Muslims—including His sinless life. According to the belief of the Muslims, Jesus lived without sin.

When we read the Koran, we find Mohammed confessing with his mouth many, many, many times that he is a sinner, and he prays to God, “Forgive my sins!”

So which one is better than the other? Is it Mohammed who was a sinner and cannot perform miracles and is never called the Word of God and was born like any other person through a father and mother? Or is it Jesus Christ, He who is without sin?

There is a book called The Life of the Prophets written by Ivan Hushaiim that explains everything about the life of Mohammed—what he did, how many people were killed, how many wives he married. If we read his life, we would be very surprised.

There is a big difference between Mohammed and Jesus Christ. The Koran says that Jesus was without sin, but Mohammed confessed that he was a sinner.

These four points: the virgin birth, the holy names, the miracles and the sinless life of Jesus cannot be denied by Muslims. They are written in the Koran.

Personal Testimony
When I was a Muslim and read about Jesus Christ in the Koran, I was very surprised. I started asking my father, the family leader, who Jesus Christ was. Is He a prophet? Is He God Himself? Is He a teacher? I was very confused when I was a Muslim.

One day when I was reading the Koran, I found a verse encouraging me to read the Bible. The Koran indicates that any Muslim who cannot understand something in the Koran needs to go and ask the Jews and Christians.

It says if you have a doubt in a matter, it will be revealed to you by the people who read the Scriptures before you. Who are those people who read the Scriptures before and can explain them to the Muslim? The Jews and Christians!

As a Muslim, I was confused at that time. I decided to read the Bible. I went one day to the Bible Society in Baghdad and purchased a Bible. I brought the Bible home and started to read it every day.

When I read the Bible, I found that Jesus Christ said wonderful words which I had never heard before. He said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6), and “I am the door” (John 10:9). I found that Jesus Christ always used “I am,” and I compared that to Mohammed. Mohammed never said, “I am the way to Heaven,” or “I am the door to Heaven.”

The most important thing that touched my life was when I read that Jesus Christ said, ‘When you believe in Me, I will give you eternal life, as a gift.’

When I was a Muslim, I believed that the most important thing in my life was to commit good deeds. A Muslim believes that in the Day of Judgment, God will weigh the good works against the bad works in scales. He will put the good works on one side and the bad works on the other side. God will make His decision toward that person based upon which side is heavier.

But that’s against our teaching in the Bible. If we depend on our good works, all of us will go to Hell, but we thank God that we are saved by the grace of God only.

That’s the difference between Christianity and Islam. When I read in the Bible that Jesus Christ is willing to give eternal life to everyone that believes in Him, I rejoiced in my heart, because when I was a Muslim, there was something missing in my life.

It is missing in the life of every Muslim: the assurance about forgiveness of sins. They do not know how their sins will be forgiven. They believe in the Day of Judgment God will look at the scale of their good deeds and bad deeds to see which there are more of.

If I went to a Muslim and asked him, “If you die today, where will you go?” he would answer right away, “This is up to the will of God. If God wants to send me to Heaven, He will send me.”

There is no Muslim in the world who says, “I will go to Heaven.” Why? Because the Koran does not give any assurance about eternity to any Muslim!

Muslims have no hope in their religion. They have no hope in their prophets. The religion of Islam does not give any hope to any Muslim because the Koran does not give any assurance about forgiveness of sins and about eternity.

Many years ago I went to the only evangelical church in Baghdad, and when I say evangelical, I mean it’s not Catholic or Orthodox. It was a Presbyterian church, but the Presbyterian church there is different from the Presbyterian church here.

The Presbyterian church in Iraq always invited Baptist speakers from Lebanon, from Jordan and from Syria. They would come and have revival meetings for maybe one month, maybe two months, and thousands of people came. There are today two independent Baptist churches in Baghdad.

But at the time when I accepted the Lord, there was just a Presbyterian church. I started to go there and ask the pastor many things about the Bible and about the differences between Islam and Christianity. Day after day I learned many things about Jesus Christ.

I started to hear about Him on the shortwave radio, and one day that church in Baghdad invited a speaker from Jordan. The pastor asked me to come. I went with a big desire to know Jesus Christ more and more. His message touched my heart that night. I felt the Holy Spirit convicting me, and Jesus Christ came and became my Saviour that night.

I will never forget that night! That was November 17, 1971, when I accepted Jesus Christ. He changed my heart, changed my feelings, put a hope in my heart and gave me the joy of salvation.

After that I had a lot of problems. I lost my job as a police officer. I was put in prison twice. It was a very difficult time for us to continue in our faith in Iraq. God opened the door for my wife and me to go to Lebanon and be baptized in a Baptist church. Then we came to Germany and contacted the American ambassador about coming to America.

By God’s grace, I left for America and was able to attend Midwestern Baptist College. I started to ask God what He wanted me to do, and He told me to go to my people and open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light.

We started our ministry in Detroit with one Bible study in our home. We continued to meet in our home for three years, until the Lord opened the door and we found a church building. We started to have our services there.

My family and I continued to serve the Lord for many years, even though we had many tragedies. Our daughter went to be with the Lord in 1997. The Devil tried to attack us in many ways to destroy our ministry, but by God’s grace we have victory over him.

God gave us four independent Baptist churches planted among Muslims. I believe it has been a miracle from God to bring Muslims to the kingdom of God and baptize hundreds of Muslims in Detroit!

God gave us a ministry on the radio every Wednesday to preach the Gospel in Arabic, and God gave us a ministry in the Middle East through television. Since 2004, we have a television program and reach all over the Middle Eastern countries. When I travel to the Middle East, the people in the churches know me because they see me on television.
Last year we started a television program in Detroit with ABN, the Arabic Broadcasting Network, and our program goes into all fifty states, Mexico and Canada.

But I want to challenge your heart about ministering to Muslims. We need to confess that many years ago we never thought about reaching the Muslims in America. We never thought that they would grow and have many mosques.

I think the church was asleep, and what happened on September 11, 2001, was partly because we neglected to reach the Muslims. We never thought something like that could happen, but it can help us to learn many lessons.

We need to pay attention to the Muslims and win them to Christ, because Islam has blinded their minds. They do not know the truth. They are without Christ, dying and going to Hell. But we need to open our eyes to see that the field is big. We need to reach the Muslims in our community.

We have neglected them, but I want to encourage you to read about Islam and use any opportunity you have to witness to them in your community and win them to Christ. Instead of thinking they are our enemies, we need to love them and have a zeal and burden to reach them.

I travel to the Middle East. We need prayers for protection from God, because it is not easy to go to the Middle East and preach the Gospel. But I thank God that the Lord has given us a good ministry in many countries there.

God has given us a ministry in the north of Iraq. I was just there in May. We planted four independent Baptist churches in different cities in Kurdistan. We have a good opportunity to plant many churches there, but this opportunity is not available to us in any other Arabic country.

Kurdistan became autonomous from the Iraqi regime after the Gulf War of 1991. I have made two trips there, and on the last trip we were able to teach Bible doctrine, and they agreed to become involved in the Baptist movement. We need your prayers.

As you know, many of the Iraqi people fled and moved to Syria and Jordan because of the situation in Baghdad. There are one million in Jordan and two million in Syria. In 2003 I began working with a man with an Islamic background in the Baptist church in Damascus and Aleppo. We have two missionaries in Syria to work among the two million who are there.

Muslims live everywhere in the United States. There are now ten million Arab Muslims. Do you know how many Islamic temples have been built in America? There are three thousand of them today! In every city and town they build a temple.

I hope that all of you will have a vision to reach Muslims. Muslims need you. They need your love, and they need your compassion to help them understand that Jesus is the only way and the only door to Heaven. Let us work together to preach the Gospel to the Muslims, because they need Jesus Christ.

	Author	Topic: ISLAM (Read 1191 times)
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