Islam

Islam is a monotheistic religion that claims Abraham as its founder, recognizing his son Ishmael instead of Isaac as the son of promise, saying God's covenanted people are the Arabs instead of the Jews.

They affirm prophets such as Moses and that the Jewish people did receive divine revelation in the Torah, the first five books of the Bible, and claim Jesus was a prophet who lived a perfect life, but deny any claims to deity of Jesus. Though Islam initially affirms the Jewish scripture, it claims that they have been corrupted over time.

Islam believes that these prophets culminated in the greatest prophet, Muhammad, who received direct revelation from Allah (God in Arabic) that later became the Quran.

Islam is based on 5 Core Pillars

1. Shahada (profession of faith)- the declaration that Allah is the only God and that Muhammad is his sole messenger.
2. Salat (prayer)- This is the daily completion of five periodic prayers towards Mecca.
3. Zakat (almsgiving)- giving to the impoverished a percentage of your wealth throughout your lifetime
4. Sawm (fasting)- This is the act of fasting while the sun is up during the month of Ramadan
5. Hajj (pilgrimage)- completing a pilgrimage once in a Muslim's life to Mecca

One day, Allah will judge everyone on the Day of Judgement, in which he will enact perfect judgement, in which everyone's deeds will be weighed out as good against bad. If the good outweighs the bad, they will pass into paradise (Jannah), and if the bad outweighs the good, they will pass to punishment (Jahannam).

Muhammad was said to have been born in 570 AD in Arabia and to have been orphaned at a young age, being entrusted to the care of his uncle. He grew up in a polytheistic culture in Arabia, and at the age of 40 began receiving his revelations for the Quran.

These revelations begin when he enters a cave and is attacked by an "angel," leaving him in great fear and distress, and he flees to his home. Early Hadiths, biographies of Muhammad's life, claim that he journeyed to the top of a mountain to throw himself off in despair after the encounter, only to be stopped by the same angel, who claimed to be the Angel Gabriel, who then gave him the teachings for the Quran.

Mohammad begins publicly preaching his revelations in Mecca and is under scrutiny from the tribal leaders, but is granted protection due to his uncle's status as a tribal leader.

After the "year of sorrow", the year in which his wife and his uncle died, the tribal leaders persecuted Mohammad and his followers until his eventual flight to Medina.

While in Mecca, Mohammad had the night journey to Jerusalem. This night journey occurs when a winged horse takes him to Jerusalem; this is where Islam claims the furthest mosque was, which is now the Dome of the Rock. There he bodily ascends to Heaven, meeting Adam, John the Baptist, Jesus, Joseph, Idris, Aaron, Moses, and Abraham. He then comes into the physical presence of Allah, where he is commanded to pray 50 times daily, and, upon Moses's advice, repeatedly asks to have it reduced to 5 prayers, which are still practiced today, known as the Salat.

When Mohammad flees to Medina, he is welcomed as a leader who unifies the warring tribes of Medina and the local Jewish population. As Mohammad consolidates power, he wages war against Mecca in a series of back-and-forth battles, eventually emerging victorious. When he returns to Mecca, he purges the city and the Kaaba of idols.

Mohammad performs the farewell pilgrimage, where 100,000 Muslims are believed to come to Mecca to listen to his final sermon, and Mohammad dies in 632 of illness.

It is important to remember that in the Qur'an 69:40-47:

"Surely it is indeed the word of an honorable messenger. It is not the word of a poet- little do you believe! Nor (is it) the word of an oracle-giver little do you take heed! (it is) a sending down from the Lord of the worlds. If he had forged any (false) words against Us, we would have indeed have seized him by the right (hand). Then we would indeed have cut his (main artery, and not one of you could have defended him from it."

Mohammed described his death as a pain that his aorta, the main artery, was being cut, describing his death as the punishment that Allah would deal with a false prophet.

Islam is built upon Mohammad, the Qur'an, and the city of Mecca, with significant claims made about these three. As we evaluate these claims, several fallacies emerge.

Mecca is the most important city in Islam, and is claimed to be amongst the oldest cities in the world, predating Jerusalem by 40 years. It is extremely sacred in Islam, as a pilgrimage to it is required among the 5 pillars of Islam; it holds the Kaaba and the legendary black stone, which is claimed to have come directly down from Jannah and will testify to all who touch it with sincerity. Every Mosque in the world uses the Qibla to point to Mecca, so that when Muslims complete the Salat, they are properly facing Mecca.

Allah ordered the Salat during the night journey of Mohammad, and the Qibla for all Mosques must point to Mecca. By 600 AD, this was by no means a difficult task to set the direction correctly. Yet, the earliest Mosques in Medina, Iraq, and Egypt do not have the Qibla pointing towards Mecca but instead towards Petra.

Mecca is also described as a major trading hub, yet there is very little evidence for this claim. No surrounding cultures refer to Mecca before 500 AD. Byzantine trade maps do not mention Mecca, despite detailing the Arabian region. There is no known trade route through Mecca that would have been profitable relative to the arduous desert journey, and a better trade route in the Red Sea is available, which would have significantly cut costs. Petra, on the other hand, was a major trading hub, which matches the description of what the Quran says is Mecca.

The physical description of Mecca and the Quran mentions figs, olives, and cultivated land, which are present in Petra but not in Mecca. The Quran refers to an uncultivated Valley near Mecca, but no valley exists near Mecca; it does exist near Petra.

Archaeological studies of Mecca could easily disprove this, yet the Saudi Arabian government does not allow non-muslims into Mecca or for meaningful Archaeological work to take place. Every historical city in the world prioritizes archaeology and advancing knowledge of ancient culture to verify our understanding, yet Mecca, which is supposed to be older than Jerusalem and more important than Jerusalem, does not allow this process to take place.

The city of Mecca is integral to the faith of Islam and its historical claims, but too many fallacies exist to accept the claims in their entirety.

Jannah is the reward for the faithful Muslim upon death: a beautiful garden and the perfect fulfillment of all desires. The most notable are the created beings in Jannah, the Hur Al-Ayn, who are the sensual female companions of the faithful Muslim.

The Hur Al-Ayn are described as virgins who will be devoted to whomever they are assigned (Quran 55), they are not human (Quran 56), and are " full-breasted companions of equal age (kawaaiba atraaba)" (Quran 78).

The Quran is very sparse on the reward a woman would receive in Jannah, and every time there is a verse addressing spousal reunion in Jannah, its meaning is unclear, as it could simply refer to a wife or a companion, the Hur Al-Ayn.

The Islamic faith has several instances where it uses lust to motivate men into the faith, such as the allowance of 4 wives (Surah 4), Paradise being sensually motivated. Allowance for sexual relations with any woman that the man would "possess" (Quran 4)- this would typically mean enslaved women, but could be interpreted more broadly.

Mohammad had thirteen wives in his lifetime, and the one who has attracted the most attention among those who have been skeptical of the Islamic claims is Aisha, his third wife.

According to Sahih Bukhari's Hadith, Aisha states:

"The Prophet married me when I was six years old, and consummated the marriage when I was nine."

At the time of the marriage contract, Mohammad was 53 years old and would have consummated the marriage at 56.

Islam emerged from a power vacuum during an exhausting war between the Roman and Sassanid empires. In the process, the tribes of Arabia unified. While they had been accustomed to centuries of raiding other tribes, they could now focus outward, and with the two greater world powers of the time having dealt significant damage to one another, an opportunity arose. Islam also offered the belief of lesser Jihad, which allowed one to serve Allah through armed conflict that was in defense or expanded Islamic governance, creating exceptionally willing soldiers. Within 150 years of Muhammad's death, the Islamic empire spread from Portugal to North Africa to Central Asia.

Another reason that the Islamic conquest was so effective was that the approach was for the Islamic forces to contact the city they were about to attack and offer conversion, dhimmi status with the Jizyah tax, or war.

The Quran itself addresses conflict and at times takes a very contradictory approach, with verses that condemn killing and encourage peace; however, there are other verses:

"When the sacred months have passed, kill the polytheists wherever you find them, capture them, besiege them, and sit in wait for them at every place of ambush." (Quran 9:5)

"Fight those who do not believe in Allah or the Last Day, nor forbid what Allah and His messenger have forbidden, nor follow the religion of truth from among those who were given the Scripture — until they give the Jizyah willingly while they are humbled." (Quran 9:29)

We see modern-day Islamists continuing this violence in many areas of the world, using terrorist events to attack the Christian West. These events include such things as the 9/11 terror attack, the Boston Bombing, and the Pulse nightclub shooting. In the last 45 years, there have been a recorded 70,000 Islamic terrorist attacks (Blankley, 2025) killing at least 250,000 people.

Islam, in large part, affirms the Bible itself and affirms the books of Abraham, Moses, the Prophets, and Jesus:

Say, ˹O believers,˺ “We believe in Allah and what has been revealed to us; and what was revealed to Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, and his descendants; and what was given to Moses, Jesus, and other prophets from their Lord. We make no distinction between any of them. And to Allah we all submit.

Quran 2:136

Even with this understanding, Muslims claim that the Bible is selectively corrupted and point to the Apostle Paul as being the one to corrupt the Bible and that the eyewitness accounts of Christ, the gospels, have also been corrupted since they were written.

The difficulty of this claim is that the manuscript history of these writings is significantly stronger than the counterclaim of the Quran. The entire New Testament was written within 60 years of Jesus' death, with our earliest New Testament manuscript dating to 125 AD, within 100 years of Jesus' death. We also have the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which date before the Roman occupation of Israel and show an unchanging manner of the Old Testament.

The Quran itself was believed to be compiled between 632 and 634 AD, within 2 years of Mohammad's death. The reason for the writing of the Quran was due to the large-scale loss after the Battle of Yamama, in which many who knew the oral tradition of the Quran died in battle. Between 644 and 656, Uthman Ibn Affan commissioned a standardization of the Quran. Variant copies of the Quran had been created, and Uthman went through and destroyed all copies outside of the standardized version. Yet there is evidence that the Uthman standardized version has a compromised history and may have been written as late as 200 years after 644. This is supported by inconsistencies in the language itself (Luxenberg, 2000) and by the lack of external documents that corroborate the creation of the Quran (Wansbrough, 1977). Even the earliest manuscripts discovered have been found to have been washed over, meaning that something was written, washed off, and rewritten, known as palimpsest layers. While the New Testament has over 5,000 Greek manuscripts, the Quran has only 20-30 due to standardization.

The Bible itself and its early manuscripts proliferated across cultures, languages, and countries very early on, so even if one culture influenced or abused scripture, it could be cross-referenced against others to determine what is and isn't true. This means that because we find mistakes in manuscripts, we can find the truth in others, showing that there wasn't a conspiracy to corrupt the Bible because no one at any point could have contained the entire manuscript of the New Testament, as there are over 5000 Greek manuscripts and an additional 15,000 across Latin, Coptic, Syriac, Armenian, and other languages.

When it comes to the Quran there wasn't a proliferation of these manuscripts there were held by a single person, who would take the written sayings of Mohammad, often on slat stone, palm leaf ribs, shoulder bones of camels, pieces of leather, and wooden boards, corroborate with two witnesses who lived during Mohammad's lifetime and add it to the Quran. Within 20 years, it was restandardized, showing that there are two events in which the entire manuscript history is brought down to the influence of a single person.

In Islam, the path to eternal paradise with Allah comes through Tawhid, the recognition and submission to Allah and his messenger, Mohammad. The Christian claim that Jesus is God breaks Tawhid, as there is no room for a triune God within Islam.

The Christian belief is that God, YHWH, is a triune God, meaning 3 members of God's head who serve distinct roles yet remain 1 unified God. This is represented in the God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, and these three figures are very notable across the scriptures. In the Old Testament, you have King David, whose spirit is upon him (1 Samuel 16), the presence of God in the tabernacle (Exodus 40), and God still ruling in the Heavens (Psalm 103). These point to the presence of God in 3 distinct manners, 3 distinct roles, and all being God. Another great example comes in Proverbs 30:

 I neither learned wisdom nor have knowledge of the Holy One.

Who has ascended into heaven, or descended? Who has gathered the wind in His fists? Who has bound the waters in a garment? Who has established all the ends of the earth? What is His name, and what is His Son's name, if you know?

Proverbs 30:3,4

Even the opening verse of the Bible, Genesis 1, uses a plural noun of God, Elohim, with a singular verb, created, meaning that multiple completed one action, pointing to the Trinity of God.

In the New Testament, Jesus is God incarnate and does make several claims to his deity.

• He claims to be older than Abraham, who was 2000 years older than him (John 8:58)
• He uses the "I AM" statements, which are recognizable as the same name that God uses to identify himself to the Hebrew people enslaved in Egypt (John 6,8,10,11,14, and 15).
• He is given the name Emmanuel, meaning God with us (Matthew 1)
• He is worshipped as the Son of God (Matthew 14)
• Jesus forgives sins, something only God can do (Matthew 9)

The Quran itself has several historical fallacies.

• Places Haman, a Persian advisor from the book of Esther, as an advisor to Pharaoh in Egypt (Quran 40)
• The Quran claims Jesus was not killed or crucified (Quran 4). Yet we have the entirety of the New Testament, with first-hand witnesses who recorded it, and even non-Christian historians, such as Tacitus and Josephus, who recorded the event.
• The Quran claims that a Samaritan caused the golden calf incident during the Jewish exodus; the error here is that the Samaritan people did not exist yet and would not for several hundred years after this event (Quran 20).
• The Quran describes the creation of the world as occurring in 6 days, while in other parts it claims an 8-day period (Quran 7, 41).
• The Quran claims that a human embryo has a developmental sequence of bones rather than flesh. At the same time, modern embryology has consistently shown that flesh and bone in the embryo are developed simultaneously (Quran 23).
• The Quran maintains that sperm comes from between the backbone and the ribs (Quran 86), when in reality it comes from the testes.
• The final contradiction is of the Quran itself as it says: "We do not abrogate a verse or cause it to be forgotten except that We bring forth one better than it or similar to it." (Quran 2:106)

Yet the Quran is considered the perfect, eternal word of Allah, so how can it require changes?

The claims of Islam are clearly regularly refuted. They are extremely shaky ground, between a manuscript history heavily influenced by a limited number of people, clear errors in the Quran, a claim to Quran being the perfect word of Allah but also saying it can contradict itself, clear problems in the historicity of Mecca, a history of inappropriate relations with children, incorrect claims about the Bible, and a history of egregious violence.

Islam rejects the truth of Jesus Christ, claims to be the continuation of God's work in the Jewish people without explanation of how the Arabs became the focus, manipulates the Bible to protect itself, and is very clearly reliant on people not asking these questions to stay compliant in the Islamic fate which is why Muslims who have converted to Islam have regularly been the target of honor killings with upwards of 9000 Christians killed by Islamists every year (Perry, 2025).

Those who follow Islam will be rejected by God because they rejected Jesus. Those who follow Islam will go to Hell, unless they repent of their sins and submit to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.