What Are The Foundations Of Islam?

In 1908 Dr. Samuel Zwemer underestimated the Muslim challenge when he said Islam would die out in a hundred years under colonialism. At that time, there were 230 million Muslims in the world, with only twenty-eight Christian missionaries working among them. A century later, the Muslim population has multiplied seven times to include well over a billion people. That means there are two Muslims for every born-again Christian. According to modern trajectories, those who practice Islam will surpass the total population of Evangelicals, Pentecostals, and Catholics by 2050. Thus, Islam will become the largest religion in the world. Today there is only one Christian missionary for every 420,000 Muslims. Forty percent of all non-Christians practice Islam, and most of them have never heard the gospel of Jesus Christ.

The Qur’an (commonly called the Koran) as interpreted in the life of Muhammad, who lived from AD 570–632, is the foundation of Islam. The book and the prophet’s biography are also the principle sources of history and Islamic law (Sharia) located in prophetic hadith (encyclopedic compilations of what Muhammad said and did) or sunnah. Today these sources of authority are the foundations to which Muslims turn for their religious authority, which applies to all aspects of life. ISIS and twenty-six other radical Islamist groups adhere to the teachings therein.

Islam is primarily a religion of law, anti-Christian polemic, Da’wah (Islamic Mission), jihad, conquest, and apocalyptic expectation. Islam means “submission to Allah,” and a Muslim is “one who submits” to Islam.

One does not understand Islam simply by reading the Qur’an because it is elliptical. Only after having read the earliest biography of Muhammad alongside the Qur’an might one understand Islam, for the Qur’an purports to be the “word of Allah” given to the prophet in episodic revelation over the last twenty-three years of his life. But as would be the case were the red words of Jesus in the Gospels isolated from their context, the “book of Allah” isolates Allah’s words in one book: the Qur’an. The biography of Muhammad gives the context regarding how and why the revelations from Allah fit into Muhammad’s life.

Muhammad lived from AD 570–632. Importantly, the earliest surviving biography about the prophet was written 135 years after the time of Muhammad’s death and survives in Ibn Hisham, which was written over two hundred years after Muhammad.

This is quite late when compared to when the Gospels about Jesus Christ were composed. Jesus died around AD 30. Paul wrote from about AD 45–60. John, the last of the Gospel writers, died in AD 95. That means that all of the New Testament was penned between fifteen and sixty-five years of Christ’s earthly ministry. Eyewitnesses of Jesus were still living when the Gospels were written, circulated, and preserved among a persecuted community motivated to preach and keep the early testimony of their Messiah. In the case of Islam, on the other hand, historian Ibn Ishaq (AD 767), was a great-grandchild of Muhammad’s generation. His time and the prophet’s were separated by the chaos of conquests; his words lacked any surviving eyewitnesses, and, in many instances, they included contradictory oral traditions. Sahih al Bukhari is the most authoritative compilation, but it was written in AD 870—that’s over two centuries removed from Muhammad’s death. The book drew from 600,000 traditions, which Bukhari cuts down to 7,397. That means he rejected 592,603 traditions.

The four earliest surviving Muhammad biographies (penned by Ibn Hisham, Wakidi, Ibn Sa’d, and Al Tabari) record eighty-six battles. The first biography is replete with accounts of killing, assassinations, beheadings, mutilations, stealing, taking wives, concubines, lying, slavery, torture, forced conversions, and rape. Indeed, nearly 75 percent of the 815-page “Life of Muhammad” covers the Muslim battle campaigns (maghazi). In these, Muslim armies killed one million Christians—as well as Jews, pagans, and Zoroastrians—in the first ten years of the Islamic Conquests. Within a century, fifty percent of global Christianity was under Islamic rule, including the Middle East and Northern Africa.

Islamic violence flows directly from the 164 Jihad verses in the Qur’an:

S. 9:5 “Slay the idolaters wherever you see them.”

S. 9:29 “Fight those who believe not in Allah.”

S. 47:4 “When you meet in battle those who disbelieve, then smite the necks …”

S. 2:216 “Fighting is prescribed for you.”

In the Life of Muhammad by Guillaume, battle narratives include the facts that 600–900 Jews were beheaded (p. 464), Abu Sufyan had to accept Islam or lose his head (p. 547), a female poet was assassinated for being critical of Muhammad (p. 676), Muhammad gave permission for Muslims to tell lies in warfare (p. 367), and mutilations were approved (pp. 322, 387).

Muslims attack the Bible, Christian theology, and the historical foundations of biblical faith. This is done with the understanding that if the Bible is true, the Qur’an and Islam cannot be. The Qur’an challenges the Bible on many key points. It insists that Jesus is not the “Son of God” (S. 4:171), was neither “crucified nor killed” (S. 4:157), maintains that salvation is by “works” (S. 5:9, 42:26), notes that Jesus said “not to worship him” (S. 5:116), and teaches that God is not a Trinity. Sura 4:171 says, “Say not, ‘Three.’ Desist, it is better for you; Allah is only one God; far be it from his glory that he should have a son.”

The ninety-three verses about Jesus in the Qur’an were written approximately 632 years after his earthly lifetime. Simply put, no credible historian would use the Qur’an as reliable testimony for the life of Jesus because the book appeared 600 years after he did. Nevertheless, peculiar stories about Jesus from the Qur’an make their way into pop culture. These include the baby Jesus speaking from the cradle and Jesus creating clay birds that he makes come to life. The Jesus Islam paints never existed.

Notably, the Qur’an says that none can change the words of Allah (S 6:115; 18:27). Yet in Arthur Jeffery’s book Materials for the History of the Text of the Qur’an, approximately 10,000 variations in the early pre-Uthmanic Qur’an codices from Islamic tradition are detailed. One researcher detailed 900 intentional textual variants in the earliest Qur’an manuscripts. There is not one Qur’an appearing within the first 400 years of the religion that lacks textual variants.

Eighty-three different regions worldwide are home to at least a thousand Muslims each who have become Christians. One hundred Christian churches have been planted among them, and over four million former Muslims have become Christians in the last twenty years.

The biggest problem in the world, then, is not radical Islam, but nominal Christianity. The answer to the spread of global Islam is a trained church that loves and compassionately shares Jesus.