Who Was Muhammad?

[Gregory Matthews]

Doug Hardt, a current SDA pastor has written the book: Who Was Muhammad?  An Analysis of the Prophet of Islam in Light of the Bible and the Quran.

The book that he has written is 327 pages in length.  You can read a short section of the book at:

http://searchhim.com/books/9781479605439PREVIEW.pdf

I have not read the book.  But, I believe that it will challenge.  And based upon the short part placed on the Internet I believe that it may be controversial. 

It can be purchased from the publishers at:    http://www.teachservices.com/search.php?search_query=Who+Was+Muhammad&x=0&y=0: 

Depending the edition, at the above, it can be purchased for prices ranging from $6 to $18.

It is also available from many other sites.

In addition it is widely available on the Internet at various prices.

 

[Gregory Matthews]

Here is a short statement as to why the book was written:

If God has raised us up as a remnant church to prepare the way for the second coming of Christ, has He not gifted us with the Holy Spirit? One of the jobs of the Holy Spirit is to help us discern between good and evil spirits (1 Cor. 12:10). It begs the question then, “How can we be so sure that he was a false prophet when we have not conducted a thorough study of his ministry and writings?” For the average Adventist layperson in North America this question is not one that gnaws at him/her daily. However, for Adventist Church workers serving in a Muslim context this question is absolutely essential to carry on an effective work. Such questions as, “Should we use the Quran to begin a Bible study with Muslims?” “Should we call God ‘Allah’?” “Can we have Adventist ‘Muslims’ in contexts where it is impossible to register Christian organizations?” “Should we pray with Muslims in a mosque?” all affect an Adventist’s ministry on a daily basis. All of these questions depend on the answer one gives to the question, “Who was Muhammad?” As I write this book, there are entire world church divisions that can’t even begin to formulate a statement on Adventist/Muslim relations because they do not agree about the inspiration of Islam. Therefore, there is no agreement about how Adventists should relate to Muslims. Unfortunately, too many Adventist workers and ministries have already experienced the bitter consequences which division and misunderstanding bring to any organization. Therefore, I have taken it upon myself to get the conversation started. I understand that this book will be controversial. But, in a sense, that will be good. I can’t think of a time when God tried to move His people to a new land or new understanding of Scripture that was not engulfed in controversy. In fact, if the “great controversy” theme that Adventists preach is true (and I believe that it is), there almost certainly will be controversy if we are following God. My main sources for this book will be the Bible, Spirit of Prophecy, and the Quran. I have used some other sources in the writing of this book, but mainly for historical and critical viewpoints regarding Muhammad and his time. There are many sources I could use by authors who have written about the Bible or about the Quran, but I believe as an Adventist that we should abide by the Protestant principle that the Bible is its own interpreter. This is especially true in Islam since Muslims believe that the Quran is the direct revelation of Allah to mankind. In this study I will give direct translations from the Quran. They will be from the Yusuf Ali translation of the Quran unless otherwise noted. Muslims teach that the “true” Quran is only in Arabic and that all translations are just that—translations—they are not the Quran. So when it is necessary I will refer to the Arabic and give a transliteration of the Arabic word to help clarify the original meaning of the Quran.

 

[Gregory Matthews]

The following is another reason why the book may be of value to people:

Even though this is not a dogmatic theology of Islam, I have taken great pains to allow the Quran to explain itself, just as Protestants do with the Bible. We have all seen what happens when Christians don’t follow the hermeneutic of working from the clear to the unclear texts of the Bible and allowing the Bible as a whole to speak on a topic. Hence, we have popular doctrines raging through Christianity that are built around a few texts that have been taken out of context. One can do the same thing with the Quran. If a few controversial texts are taken out of their context and analyzed without the help of other texts in the Quran, one could come to some appalling conclusions. For this reason I went verse-by-verse through the whole Quran and assembled a simple concordance, ordered by topic, to attempt to show a complete picture of what the Quran teaches on any given topic. The reader may reference the concordance in Appendix A to answer questions on most topics in the Quran.

 

[Gregory Matthews]

Exactly.

We have to know our enemy--if we want to call them that.

In military science, officers are trained to understand and to know what the enemy was going to do.

If you are going to use a JW Bible or Mormon Scripture, one must know what they teach and not misrepresent them.  All to often people have little understanding of what Islam teaches and that little knowledge is based solely upon what others have said.

 

[Gregory Matthews]

Doug Hardt said below:

I use one that has been prepared by Islamic scholars as to what the Quran teaches.

 

For this reason I went verse-by-verse through the whole Quran and assembled a simple concordance, ordered by topic, to attempt to show a complete picture of what the Quran teaches on any given topic.

[Samie]

In the Bible, the first miracle by our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ was done when He was around 30 years of age: turning water into wine in Cana. In the Quran, His first miracle was when He spoke as an infant in the cradle. see Quran 3:46; 19:29-31.

[Samie]

42 minutes ago, The Wanderer said:

I dont know much about the Muslim beliefs at this point in time but if I were sent out to do a "Bible Study" with a Muslim family, say tomorrow, I would take the time to find out what they believe, on a given topic, and then find a common denomnator in the Bible to build on. Its actually not hard to do such things without giving up any of our own beliefs

For me, the common denominator would be what I understand as Bible truth that all of Adam's descendants are my brethren in Christ. Like me, they were also born in Christ. They are not just aware of it. They may not even believe it. But when God so decides it is high time for a non-Christian to know about Christ and Him Crucified, then He will send a Philip to him (see Acts 8:26-40). It is God's work for anyone to believe in the Son:

KJV John 6:29 Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent.

And just like me, they too will be rewarded according to what they have done when Jesus comes again (Matt 16:27; Rev. 22:12; see also Rom 2:1-11).  This is why the command to repent resounds all over Scriptures, from the OT to the NT (see Ezek 18:30; Acts 17:30). The command to repent is the same command the Savior made when He preached the gospel of the kingdom of God (Mark 1:14, 15). The same gospel He wanted preached to the world just before He comes again (Matt 24:14).

[Kevin H]

I read the book "Islam Reconsidered" a number of times when I was younger. I understand Mohamad to have been very impressed by Judio-Christianity, understood that Christianity goes beyond Judaism and wanted to deal with Jesus. But that he also saw the church as corrupt and like Luther tried to reform it.  There were two major differences between him and Luther. Luther lived in a larger society so there was greater socialization. Mohamad was living in the desert with a very harsh life and small villages and warring tribes. They both worked on applying their reforms to their everyday life, and the differences between their everyday life has made a big difference. Sadly, (especially among radical Islam) they want to apply everything to the world of Mohammad. That what was right then will always be right.

The second major difference is that Luther trusted the Bible. Mohamad did not know how much of the church's corruption had creped into the Bible. So he would read the Bible with one eye seeing it as the word of God, but with his other eye looking for anything that he thought might be a corruption of the text and throw those portions out and try to guess at what the uncorrupted text said.

I have a sneaking suspicion that if we could trade the people of Mohamad and Luther into the other's world, that history would not be much different.

I also think in a prophetic way as we look at the powers leading to the climax of history that we have Catholic Europe in 4 sections: The Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, A reformation that did not trust the Bible, and one that did trust the Bible. This was the world for many (in some cases centuries). Your church was where you were born. You were the true people of God everyone else were heretics and you killed each other. Church and state was together.

Then came a major change to the world; two revolutions in the 18th century. The American revolution based on freedom through good laws and (even though the words did not come until later) a nation UNDER God. A nation that would limit it's people's allegiance to  liberty of conscience. People were free to worship (or not worship) as they understood and their conscience allowed them. The different faiths all had equal say and people could listen to different views and join the faith they find the most logical.   It was a place that had both church and state but they were separated. It was a country based on the individual in the individual's pursuit of happiness but working together with other individuals in their pursuit of happiness and them worshiping according to the dictates of their conscience.

The other Revolution was the French revolution based on freedom being the absence of law. They had the state but the state rejected God and would not submit to God and thus you were to submit to the state. Since they lived in a world where the model was Catholic Europe, they also, like Catholic Europe had a religion that everyone was to submit to, that religion was the state and secularism. The result was the reign of terror, then Napoleon  who held the French Revolution's view of freedom being an absence of law. But that most people cannot handle freedom so the few elite were to be free but force the others to comply. This evolved into Communism.

Much of current politics is to either make America into Catholic Europe, or to make us French Revolution Europe.

[Gregory Matthews]

In a previous statement, I stated that I used a concordance of the Quran and The Wanderer asked how he might obtain one.  There is a formatting error in his quote of mine.  I made that statement, not Doug Hardt.

My statement was poorly worded.  What I actually use is a Subject Index, rather than a concordance.  The one that I use is   an integrated part of the Quran that I use and therefore was prepared by the Islamic group that published that Quran.

For the person who speaks English and not Arabic, a Subject Index is probably of more value than would be a concordance.

However, there is much posted on the Internet regarding a concordance of the Quran. For an extensive discussion of such, see:

http://www.oxfordislamicstudies.com/article/book/islam-0520043278/islam-0520043278-miscMatter-10

It looks to me like the above is an on-line concordance that one register in order to use.

However, Amazon will both rent ($88) and sell (starting at $107) you a 1,487 page concordance.  If interested see:

https://www.amazon.com/Concordance-Quran-Hanna-Kassis/dp/0520043278

There are possibly other sources of a concordance of the Quran.  But, I have not checked them out.

[Gregory Matthews]

The copy of the Quran that I use has a 47 page subject index, as it is called.  If I want to see what the Quran says about "unbelievers"  I can find 31 listings of passages in the Quran, some of multiple verses, that address that subject.  In addition this subject index also in a limited way serves as a concordance.  If I want to see the verses where the Arabic word transliterated as " thamud" is used, I can find listed 16 places where it is used, again some with more than one verse.

The version of the Quran that I use consists of three sections, which are printed on each page.  One is the Arabic, the second is an English translation and the third is a commentary that explains the meaning of the verse.  As I do not know Arabic, the English is critical and I consider it to be important the the English comes from an approved Islamic source, as does mine.  But, I also consider the commentary to be important.  With my 21st Cent. Western, social context, I am  little prepared to understand the context in which  the Quran was produced.  Without the commentary, I face the potential of misunderstanding even the English.

The Quran that I use is:  The Holy Quran: English Translation of the Meanings and Commentary.  

It has been revised & Edited by: The Presidency of Islamic Researches, IFTA.

It is published in 2011 by: The Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Fahd Complex, For the Printing of the Holy Quran.  P.O. Box 3561, Alllll-Madinah Al-Munawarah.

Amazon sells it for $60.

There are also English Qurans published in earlier times (e.g. 1998) by slightly different titles, but I prefer a more current one.