Two Former Muslims Reveal Islam Unveiled

Issues – October 2010 – Grace & Truth Magazine

TWO FORMER MUSLIMS REVEAL
Islam Unveiled

Ergun and Emir Caner are brothers who were raised as devout Muslims, but as teenagers accepted Jesus as their personal Savior. In 2003 they wrote a book entitled Unveiling Islam: An Insider’s Look At Muslim Life And Beliefs

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to give readers a look at Islam from the inside, not to write a diatribe against it (pp. 11, 20). To accomplish their purpose, they refer often to Muslim scriptures.

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However, the page references in this article are to the 2009 second edition of their book.

What Is Islam?
Islam is a religion founded in Arabia by Muhammad. It is based on the Qur’an which is said to have been transmitted to him from Allah via the angel Gabriel during Ramadan, Islam’s holy month. “He believed the angel Gabriel called him as the last and most authoritative prophet” (40). Islam proclaims Muhammad as “the messenger of God” (128). The Qur’an is the highest authority in Islam, but second to it are the hadiths which contain “what Muhammad did and said” (94).

Rules And Practices
The Caners point out that “the lure of Islam is that it is a faith which gives believers strict, concrete rules and practices to which they can adhere” (121). One of these is that one must memorize the words of its creed (shahada) in Arabic and repeat them daily (122). The creed in Arabic is Ilaha Illa Allah. Muhammad Rasul Allah. In English this means “There is no God but Allah. Muhammad is the messenger of Allah” (145).

Another of the rules is “the absolute necessity of prayer” (145). Unlike our prayers, the prayer of a Muslim “is not a personal conversation between a human and God ... but rather an external practice saturated with formal procedures and required customs” (124). It is a “type of mantra, invoking the power of Allah, but does not request anything” (110).

Other parts of the “Five Fundamentals of Faith” (122-130) are almsgiving, celebrating Ramadan, and the pilgrimage to Mecca (hajj). Muslims believe that “a person who performs hajj properly will return as a newborn baby, free of all sins” (130). How different from the truth of the Bible which says, “If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thy heart that God raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved” (Rom. 10:9 KJV).

Islam is a fatalistic religion of works (30). Muslims make “every effort to please Allah and thereby obtain heaven ... but fate (kismet) in the hands of the all-powerful Allah will decide the outcome” (144). The Caners point out that “one of the fundamental doctrines of Islam is the absolute sovereignty of Allah to the point of determinism” (109). God “decrees everything,” even to the point of being the “cause of evil” (109).

Christianity And Islam Incompatible
Muslims and Christians do not worship the same God as some think. Christians worship the triune God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – but “the Qur’an explicitly denies Trinitarian teaching” (240). While Muslims have “a high view” of Jesus, that “does not necessarily mean a correct view” (212). They will proclaim that “no Muslim is a true Muslim unless he believes in Jesus” (211). They believe that “He was a prophet ... virgin born and preached the truth” (219, 212), but do not accept “the importance of the cross in salvation” (212). In their wrong view, “Jesus had the same beginning as Adam ... and therefore, was a mere man and not the eternal Son of God” (214). While they respect the Bible (86), they insist that “the Bible was corrupted by lies and distortions” (87), and therefore the Qur’an is “the final, complete and exact revelation of Allah” (87).

In Islam “one must love Allah in order to be loved in return” (30), whereas “in Christianity God loved people first in order to secure their salvation” (30). “Every Muslim fears the scales of justice, which weigh his good deeds against his bad deeds” (18) and “continually fear that Allah will judge ... and send them to hell” (144). How unlike the salvation by grace we know! Hence, “for the Muslim who fears that the scales may be weighed toward his eternal damnation, jihad provides the only eternal security” (195). Why so? Because “Allah promises jihad martyrs eternal forgiveness and blessing in paradise” (195).

What Is Jihad?
Do not be misled: “Jihad does not refer primarily to a struggle of personal piety,” but to “combat on the fronts of politics, warfare, and culture” (185). Religion is intertwined with the state and “religious laws are as much a part of society as are civil laws” (207). The Caners explain that “Jihad is a strategy for expanding the faith” (173). “In both the Qur’an and the Hadith, the infidel (kafir) must be converted or conquered” (184), and thus for the Muslim “war ... is the main vehicle for religious expansion” (77). Also, many Muslims “see Western culture as destructive to Islamic culture and beliefs ... and therefore they have no choice but to go on the offensive” (77). Hence the terrorist attack on New York in 2001 is just a part of this war. Yes, there is a war! “On February 23, 1998, five Islamic caliphates signed a fatwa (religious decree) declaring war on the United States” (181).

Other Religions Discouraged
“For all their rhetoric about tolerance, not one Muslim-controlled government offers comprehensive religious freedom” (176). People who were “either born Muslim or are converted to Islam ... have no right to convert to another faith ... according to the Qur’an and the Hadith ... They must die for committing treason against Allah” (249). Recall the prophecy of our Lord: “The time cometh when whoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service” (Jn. 16:2). Indeed, “offenses against Christians ... in the name of Allah are now occurring in some nations” (178).

Reaching Muslims For Christ
To the Caners this topic is so important that they devote a whole chapter to reaching Muslims for Christ. In so doing, our viewpoint should be that we are not trying to get people to “switch religions” but to experience “God’s gracious act of redemption” (16). They suggest the following three steps:

1. Show “a loving interest in their lives and in their culture” (241, 153, 223). Realize also that Muslims believe that “the rampant sexual immorality, drunkenness, drug use, and crime” in socalled “Christian” Europe and America “illustrate the vanity of the Christian religion” (205). Muslim beliefs are fostered by what they have been “taught in the mosque” and by “the images they see on television” (242).

2. Make “a clear presentation of grace” because “Islam has no concept of grace” (242), and show that “grace is not the same as mercy” (242). We should be aware that “the finished and atoning work of Jesus Christ on the cross speaks powerfully” to them (227), because it means “liberation from works and the fear of the scales” of judgment, and it provides forgiveness for all sin including the payment of it. “Grace ... is a magnificant doctrine!” (227). In speaking, be aware however of using terms like born again, saved, lost and atonement, because “for the Muslim such words are foreign vocabulary” (227).

3. Finally, have “genuine patience. It often takes years for a Muslim to embrace Christ.” Why? Because “it is difficult for Muslims to understand why Jesus would save them when they do not merit salvation.” Contributing to their hesitation is that often “salvation is accompanied by the loss of family, friends and sometimes by the loss of everything” including maybe life itself (242).

In short, “Islamic scriptures affirm that Allah hates sinners” (29), but we affirm that God loves you even if you are a sinner (Jn. 3:16; Rom. 5:8). We can preach to Muslims that God loves them and offers them life eternal and free!

END NOTES
1. Caner, E. M. and Caner E. F.; Unveiling Islam: An Insider's Look At Muslim Life And Beliefs; 2003, Kregel Publications.
2.The Caners give many quotations from Muslim scriptures taken from the well-accepted interpretation of Mohammed Marmaduke Piethall with the disclaimer that “only the Arabic text is accepted as the actual text by Muslims” (37).

By Alan H. Crosby