Challenging Muslims

By John Washahi

One of the long term accusations of Muslims about Christianity is that they always said the Bible is a corrupted book. By that they mean the Bible has been altered from what God said to Jesus or what Jesus originally wrote. The same accusation has been made of the Jews that they have altered what God said to Jews, Muslims accusing Jews of changing the truth. The accusation is made of both Jews and Christian, for example they have deleted the name of Mohammad from the Old Testament and the New Testament, the Torah and Torah.

Firstly. We should notice that Jesus did not write any book. What we have got as the gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) were written by his followers, disciples, Arabic Hawariuon (people who shout), then the Bible was not written by Jesus at all.

Secondly, let us accept for the moment that that Bible, both Toraht and Injill, according to Muslims, has been corrupted. The logical question is where are the remaining copies of the Torah and Injil that survived the corruption process? In other words, according to Muslims if Jews or Christians at one stage started corrupting the Torah or Injil, there should be in existence some copies of unaltered Bibles before that stage. Muslims should produce those original uncorrupted copies or stop making these accusations. Why is it that until now all the archaeological copies of the Bible that we Christians have are the same as today’s version of the Bible? Surely if Christians and Jews started to alter the Bible, they could not have collected all of them and have destroyed the entire old versions. The result of this argument is that the Bible is true and has never been altered.

Thirdly, the Quran itself has been altered. According to many well-known Hadith, the Quran was altered. When Abu Baker, the first caliphate, gathered all the material which the Quran verses had been written on and made them one compilation from them, he then set fire to all that material. This means the Quran is hand-made and it could be full of alterations, for we can never have access to the original Quran to examine these changes.

Fourthly. This was one of the reasons that I converted to Christianity. I went to the British Library and I saw that the oldest manuscripts are the same as today’s version. I could not cheat myself. I accepted the truth without any agony. Without letting the fact that one of my ancestors was one of the well known 50 persons who wrote the original material or memorised it during Mohammad’s time, the Kutab al Wahi, be a barrier between me and the truth. And the Truth is Jesus.

The conclusion is that Muslim accusations are not supported with any evidence. It is clear that the Bible has been kept safe through the ages. I believe this book can only have been kept safe from changes by the hand of God.

Reformation in Islam

By John Vashahi

Islam is the biggest problem of our time. Suicide bombing, promise of virgins in janat, establishing universal khalifa government, suppressing freedom, are all making headlines these days.

I was among the Muslims which thought we could have a reform in Islam, a moderate voice a renaissance, but as we understood Islam more, we found out reform is not going to work with Islam.

The problem was that we were under the effect of western secular writers’ version about what had happened in the renaissance in Europe. That version which is highly accepted even here in the west and it is very wrong, saying secular forces took a power from the church and send Christians home.

It looks like that some forces came under the name secular and disarmed Christianity. But in fact some thing else had happened, Christianity simply returned to its roots. Christian scholars and theologians understood what the real Christianity was and reformed the official wrong beliefs.

In the root of Christianity there was no Vatican earth centred, no power and no forced conversion. It was mercy and grace and kindness of the Lord Jesus. Scholars found out that in the heart of Christianity there are no crusades and all those superstitions.

But the problem with Islam was and is every time we went deeper and went back to the root of Islam we reached nothing just jihad and violence against women and many sharia laws that contradict all modern values.

There was separation of power from the beginning In Christianity, Caesar’s coin was for Caesar, and not like Islam which Mohammad according to all sources the first thing he did was establish a government.

There was some others who shaped the society along side a Christian during reformation, philosophers and writers, but we need to consider this important point that Christianity allowed them to grow up and publish their thoughts. Although they suffered difficulty Christianity did not wipe them out. These philosophers and writers were in reaction to the Christianity and because that western civilisation is based on Christianity. In other word if there was no Christianity there was no such reaction either, but In Islam non Muslim are non believers, no chance for them to grow up.

Nearly 30 years experience of the Islamic regime in Iran proves that democracy and modern values are not compatible with Islam. Islam with heavy sharia law which it got orders from birth to death and how to walk and how to sit and how to breathe, did not leave any space for any other law and development of dialogue culture.

All the evidence shows that reformation in Islam is just a dream. I urge Muslims, especially Arab Muslims, to consider the real water of life. Taste it and feed their hunger with bread of life. I invite them to following of Jesus based on my experience.