III.
Muslim misunderstandings about Christianity

Please accept this as an outsider's view. These are misunderstandings that as a Christian I have encountered personally, many of them in this very town.

A.   Many Muslims view all Westerners as Christians for at least three reasons.

1. I think that since culture and religion are so intertwined in Islam, some Muslims have a hard time realizing that all Westerners are not Christians.  The West has a Christian religious heritage, but many people in our society have left that heritage to pursue a more secular course.  Religion in the West has been moved out of much of public life and is considered to be a mostly private affair.  Crime, immorality, drug abuse, and drunkenness are not things that Christianity promotes or allows.  It is adamantly opposed to them for the sins that they are in themselves, and for the hurt and tragedy they foster.  The people who claim to be Christian and yet are involved in these sins are doing them against God in spite of Christianity and the Bible, not because Christianity teaches them or permits them to do these things.

2. Many Muslims have a hard time understanding that all countries in the West do not allow the Church or any religion to have dominant political power.  Muslims can tend to confuse Jesus with Muhammad and think that He left a law and political agenda similar to Muhammad's.  Jesus didn't do these things.  The law He left is the Law of love summed up by what is called the Golden Rule: "So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets." (Matt. 7:12, NIV).  It is this teaching, which still operates to a great degree in the West, that is behind people being allowed freedom of speech, even to the degree where Muhammad is insulted in the Danish cartoons, and Jesus is degraded in The Last Temptation of Christ.  This also contributes to why the West views it as wrong for even blasphemers to be injured or killed.  Christians are also taught to love their enemies and pray for their repentance.

3. Also, Muslims tend to misunderstand that, according to the Bible, becoming a Christian is primarily a personal decision, and is only secondarily a cultural or family identity.  No one is born a Christian.  Everyone must decide for themselves whether or not they will trust in Jesus' death for them on the cross for the forgiveness of their sins.  Jesus Himself emphasized this where He said, "For God so loved the world that he gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." (John 3:16)  A culture becomes “Christian” only secondarily after many people choose Christ and obey His teachings, and it affects the way they live.

B. Many Muslims assume that the Bible has been corrupted, that is, that it’s content and meaning have been intentionally and radically changed at some point in its history.

A claim of this magnitude concerning anyone’s holy book is of such importance that it should not be treated lightly but should be investigated with extreme care and objectivity.  Christians and Muslims both claim that their holy books contain the truth that will lead a person to eternal life.  Yet they disagree fundamentally with each other on how this is accomplished.  A choice between the books must be made.  Here are three issues that are commonly misunderstood by Muslims concerning the Bible:

1. The existence of so many different translations of the Bible means that there are many different Bibles. This is wrong. There is only one basic Bible, in the original languages of Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek.  There are many different translations of this one basic book because of the nature of language.  Language changes, so translations need to reflect these changes.  Language is also rich in meaning.  Additional translations bring out nuances that might be missing in others. The basic meaning in all these translations is the same.  This situation is the same as is found with English, German, Persian, Malaysian, Turkish and Urdu translations of the Qur’an.  They are different translations of the same book.[1]

2. It is often remarked concerning the Bible that since some variations exist in the old manuscripts that the text must be corrupt.  I have found that most Muslims do not realize that for their own book, the Qur'an, there is a similar situation.  In the most reliable Islamic traditions it is recorded that many of the companions of Muhammad had collections of the Qur'an that differed from each other.  Many of these differences have been preserved.  The Qur'an collections differed in many respects, for example, the number and order of Surahs, the spelling of words, and the use of different words in the exact same contexts.  If one examines these variations fairly, they will realize that the situations for the Bible and the Qur'an are very similar. These variations in detail don't affect the general reliability of the text.  There are small areas that are in doubt as to the exact reading, but none of the variant readings affect the major doctrines in Islam or Christianity.  The significant difference between the two books is in their messages, not their textual histories.  It is false to believe that one has been corrupted beyond reliability in the transmission of its text while the other has not.

3. Also, Muslims are often ignorant of the history of the transmission of the Bible that bears this out.  The Hebrew Bible has been the Holy Scriptures of the Jews since before Jesus, and they still are to this day. The books of the New Testament have been the Holy Scriptures for the Christians, together with the Hebrew Bible (the Old Testament), since the days of the Apostles of Jesus.  In the five centuries preceding Muhammad this same basic Bible that we have today was the Scripture of the Christians.  Manuscripts that survive from the early centuries demonstrate that the content and meaning were not changed either before Muhammad or after.

C. Many Muslims believe Christians have made Jesus out to be God, that is, that they have elevated a man to deity.

All that Christians believe about Jesus being God comes from Jesus' own words and actions in the Gospels, and the testimony of Jesus' closest disciples as preserved in the New Testament. Christians have not made Jesus out to be God.  We have only accepted what Jesus Christ revealed about Himself.  Christians are as sensitive to blasphemy as any Jew or Muslim. We have only accepted Jesus as God by examining the evidence left by Jesus Himself that is recorded in the Gospels of the New Testament. And we consider that this evidence has proven itself to be more historically accurate and reliable than any later sources concerning the life of Jesus.

These are some of many areas where I have found Muslims could be better informed.