Islam Presentation

Worldview Class - Steve West

Islam Presentation

Good morning everyone! I get the pleasure today to be presenting on Islam. 

My goal of this project is to have a better understanding of the religion myself, so that I can be better equipped apologetically in a culture around us that is increasingly muslim, especially the closer to Toronto you get. Not to mention the fact that Islam is the second largest religion in the world next to followers of Jesus. 

I have had the opportunity to speak with a handful of Muslims both in the spontaneous aspect as well as in a sort of formal conversation / debate style. So I would like to lead with a some specific and interesting things that I learned from those experiences. 

I first had an opportunity down-town Toronto on an urban missions trip I was leading two years ago with my youth group… We were tasked to be evangelizing, and we saw a little booth handing out Quran’s and a sign that said ask us about Islam… so myself and a few brave high school guys approached and started a conversation. 

We ended up talking for over an hour — and what I realized the further into the conversation we got was that I knew basically nothing about their religion — and that they knew quite about lot about my own. 

Although I didn’t find any of their arguments convincing — obviously, it did encourage me to do some more studying of my own into not only my own religion — but theirs as well.

2 Cor. 10:4-5 says “We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God…”

So we ought to do this research as Christians to destroy the pagan arguments against the God of the Bible. One of the most prevalent in our day being Islam.

2. Brief History of Islam

So here’s a super quick overview of how Islam started.

We’re in 6th–7th century Arabia. Muhammad grows up in Mecca, and according to Islamic belief, everything changes in the year 610 AD when Muhammad receives his first revelation from the angel Jibril — or Gabriel.

A little later, in 622, he and his followers leave Mecca and migrate to Medina. That move, called the Hijra, is such a defining moment that it actually becomes the starting point for the Islamic calendar.

From there, Islam grows fast. By 630 AD, Muhammad returns to Mecca with a large following, and after his death the movement keeps spreading all across the Middle East.

Muslims believe the Quran was revealed to Muhammad over the span of about twenty-three years and that it is literally the word of Allah. Christians believe that Humans were divinely inspired by God, Muslims believe the Quran to be literal actual words of Allah.

An interesting thing that I learned is that at first Muhammad thought he was on the same page as Christians and Jews — He thought that it was these big three against all polytheists… so he actually liked the Christians and Jews, and believed the himself to be the prophet Ahmed that the OT as well as Jesus specifically said would be coming from Arabia… (Spoiler alert that never happened) 

So Muhammad actually believed that he would go to Israel and they would all gladly accept him as a prophet because it was so clear in the scriptures that he is this new prophet from God. (Another spoiler, they don't accept him as a prophet) So Muhammad comes to the conclusion — that the Jews are evil liars… we should probably kill all of them. 

It did not take long for the christians to reject him as well — and just like that it has become Islam vs errybody. Especially Jews and Christians.

Pretty quickly after Muhammad dies, there’s a major disagreement about who should lead the Muslim community. That’s what eventually develops into the Sunni–Shia split. 

(Sunni = No central authority — believe that muslims should choose a successor Shia = Strong hierarchy  — believe leadership should stay in prophets direct lineage)

Fast-forward to today: Islam has around 1.9 billion followers worldwide, and while it started in Arabia, it’s now incredibly diverse across different cultures, languages, and countries.

3. Islam According to Sire’s Eight Worldview Questions

Alright, so now I want to walk through Islam using Sire’s eight worldview questions. This is basically their core belief system in a nutshell.

First: What is prime reality? For Muslims, prime reality is Allah. He’s absolutely one, completely indivisible, totally transcendent. He’s all-powerful, all-knowing, perfectly just, perfectly merciful — the Creator of everything. But they also believe He’s ultimately unknowable in His essence.

And honestly, when you first hear that, Allah almost sounds like the Christian God. There’s a reason for that — Muhammad was very aware of the God of the Bible, and early on he genuinely thought that Jews, Christians, and what would become Muslims…

But the big dividing line is Tawhid (Taoheed) — the absolute oneness of God. Anything that even hints at God having partners or plurality is the worst possible sin. So Islam strongly rejects the Trinity or the idea of Jesus being divine. That’s called shirk, and it’s considered the unforgivable sin within Islam. 

In fact, Surah 5:116–117 directly pushes back against Christian beliefs about Jesus. (Jesus claiming on judgment day that of course He did not tell anyone to worship Him or His mother because He is not God)

Second: What is the nature of external reality? Muslims believe the world was created by Allah, it’s ordered, it’s purposeful, and it’s basically good. There’s no idea of a fallen creation that is very prevalent in Christianity. 

Third: What is a human being? Humans are created by Allah to be His servants — that’s the word abd — and also His vice-regents on earth, or khalifah. In Islam, people aren’t born sinful. They’re born spiritually neutral, and then they choose obedience or disobedience.

Fourth: What happens at death? After death, it’s either Heaven — Jannah — or Hell — Jahannam. Judgment is based on your deeds being weighed on a scale, plus whatever mercy Allah chooses to give. So in Islam you never truly know if you’re saved.

Fifth: Why is it possible to know anything? Knowledge comes from Allah revealing it. That includes the prophets, most of which are ones we would recognize from the Bible — ending with Muhammad. 

And the religious texts, mainly the Quran — which literally means ‘recitation’ — and the Hadiths, which record what Muhammad did and said as he lived (spoiler alert, Muhammad was a really bad dude.)  Reason is permitted, but revelation is the highest authority.

Sixth: How do we know right and wrong? Morality comes from Allah’s commands, which form Sharia law. So ethics is basically about obedience, not inner transformation like we see in the New Testament. Strictly obedience.

Seventh: What is the meaning of human history? History is basically a long story of people either obeying or rebelling against Allah. Humanity’s job is to submit to the guidance He gave through the prophets. And history is moving toward a final judgment.

Eighth: What personal commitments flow from this worldview? The core commitment is submission — that’s literally what ‘Islam’ means. Muslims live this out through the Five Pillars: the shahada, prayer, giving alms, fasting during Ramadan, and making the pilgrimage to Mecca. And there’s a huge emphasis on belonging to the ummah, the global Muslim community.

So that’s Islam through Sire’s eight questions — basically the backbone for this worldview.

Now we have the critique of Islam using Nash’s three tests.

1. The Test of Coherence — Is it internally consistent?

First, coherence. Does Islam remain consistent within itself? And man, are there are some real problems here.

Potentially the biggest one is this: the Qur’an teaches that the Christian Bible is God’s revelation… but at the same time Muslims say the Bible is corrupted. Those can’t both be true.

And the problem gets bigger when the Qur’an says no one can change the word of Allah — that’s in Surah 6:115 and Surah 10:64 — yet Islam claims the Bible, (Specifically the Torah and the Injeel (Gospel), which it affirms as revelation, somehow got changed. That’s a direct contradiction immediately. 

And even historically, we have hundreds of manuscripts of the Gospel that go back way earlier than the Qur’an. So the Qur’an says the Gospel is from God, but Muslims say it’s corrupted… but then their own scripture says God’s word cannot be corrupted. So again, that doesn’t line up.”

Another coherence problem: Allah is described as absolutely unknowable in his essence — totally transcendent — but at the same time he gives very specific commands and guidance. If he’s unknowable, how do we know anything about him with certainty? That’s tension there.

Also, Allah is said to be a father to no one. Yet Muslims are commanded to follow the Injil — the Gospel — which is full of God as Father and Jesus as Son.

And from a personal standpoint… when I’ve talked with Muslims, this is exactly the issue I’ve seen. When they want to appeal to the Bible, suddenly it’s reliable. When they want to get around a tough Christian doctrine, suddenly it’s corrupted. There’s a lot of shifting going on depending on the argument.

Needless to say I have hardly scraped the top off of all of the inconsistencies that lie within Islam and its religious texts. 

2. The Test of Correspondence — Does it match reality?

Next is correspondence: does Islam’s teaching match the real world?

Historically, Jesus’ crucifixion is one of the most widely attested events in ancient history — Christian, Jewish, Roman sources all agree on it. But Islam denies that it happened. When approached with this topic, the Muslim will just say “No it just looked like it happened, source — trust me bro”  So that’s a major disconnect from reality.

Second, human nature. Islam teaches that people are born spiritually neutral, basically good. But that doesn’t match what we see in ourselves or in the world. We don’t have to teach kids how to sin — they come with it built in. Christianity lines up more naturally with observable human behaviour: we’re broken, and we need saving. Simple as that!

3. The Test of Practice — Can you actually live it out?

Finally, practice. Is this worldview livable?

In Islam, salvation is based on your deeds being weighed on scales — and you never know if you’ve done enough. That creates insecurity, not assurance. You’re always hoping your good outweighs your bad.

And in societies where Sharia law is practiced fully, you see real challenges: things like extremely limited freedom for women (women testimonies in court count less Quran2:282 — if a man suspects his wife is unfaithful he can beat her. — women get half the inheritance of male relatives — men are encouraged to marry minors and have 4 wives )

harsh penalties for apostasy, (behead adult males — imprison and beat women and children until they “repent” (Sahih al-Bukhari 9:83:17 — “Whoever changes his religion, kill him.)

 and struggles with human rights entirely — straight up kill people who dont agree with you:

Sahih Muslim 2922 (also found in other hadith collections)

“The Day of Resurrection will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews, and the Jews will hide behind stones and trees, and the stones and trees will say: O Muslim, O servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him…”

This is why if you have a Muslim and a Jew sitting at the same table — the Muslim will have no problem saying out loud that he wants all the jews dead. I saw an interview where that happened

So when you run Islam through Nash’s tests — coherence, correspondence, and practice — it comes up short in all major ways.

I don’t have time to go through all of my discoveries of how to evangelize muslims and I’m sure that there are a million other people that you can talk to at this school that have a better idea than I do — but I would like to present one last thing that i found interesting. I got this from David Wood, a popular Christian apologist against Islam — but I also found this to be true in my conversations with some top-tier Muslim scholars…

This is a list of all of the main argument points that Islam has against christianity — if you're arguing with a muslim you almost are guaranteed to hear these.

The main muslim objections to Christianity

The bible is corrupted, can’t trust it

The trinity doesn't make sense

Where does Jesus say “I am God, worship me”?

How can God die?

How can God punish one person for the sins of another person?

If Jesus died for your sins can’t you sin all you want?

So if this is the case and Islam is the single most popular worldview in the world that is leading people to hell, we should, as christians, study up on these things and be ready with a response.

Thank you.