Islam & Christianity, Cultures in Conflict: History & Teachings

[0:00] Last week we kind of only got to the beginning of the conquest of Arabia, so I'm going to kind of move forward from there. And what I decided is it was supposed to be sort of divided into history and teachings of Islam.

[0:13] So what we're going to do is look at the conquests, and then we're going to actually go into the teachings about jihad. Because we really just can't cover everything, it would take many hours.

[0:25] So we began to talk about how things did not go so well for Muhammad in Mecca when he began to share these new ideas.

[0:39] And again, keeping in mind that everything that we have is very much second and or third hand, that a lot of the information came, you know, it's certainly about his life.

[0:50] The first biography came, you know, 100 years after, and then all the following ones added a whole bunch more details that you go, well, where were they getting those details at this point?

[1:02] So this is as best it can be pieced together, and there'll be different versions that include different things, or maybe we'll dispute certain aspects of things. But this is the general understanding of probably what happened.

[1:15] So he shares things with his fellow Qurayesh tribe members, and they aren't too happy with his condemnation of their idolatry, of course.

[1:27] They place a trade embargo on him and his group. And of course, it's not only his tribe, but there's all the other tribes as well, and the merchant caravans that are coming through.

[1:39] And all of them are part of this polytheistic culture, and his main message is monotheism, which would seem to be a step in the right direction.

[1:54] But he continued to gain followers. However, as they began to experience persecution, some of the followers fled to other cities, including Yathrib, which later becomes Medina.

[2:08] We mentioned that. By 622, the leaders of the Qurayesh tribe and the commercial traders in Mecca had had enough of him, and they were actually plotting to secretly murder him, because he actually did have enough renown at this point that they felt that if they did it openly, it might cause some civil conflict.

[2:29] So they were going to try and assassinate him, but people learned of this, and so he fled to Medina, where he'd been visiting at various times anyway, but he had to relocate. So some of his followers went with him, and they went to what became known as the city of the prophet.

[2:46] It was Yathrib. I think I have... We'll come to... We'll see that on a map later. So... At the time, this city was a mix of Jewish tribes and various Arab clans, and they made him welcome in exile, it would seem, that for the most part he was welcome there.

[3:08] Some of them even treated him as a hero. Certainly, the Jewish tribes went, you know, probably initially thought, well, there's a connection here with the monotheism, but it soon became clear that it was not... it was a very different form.

[3:26] So during this time, he began to dictate his plans based on these surahs that... these revelations he had or created, and as well as this process he went through of restructuring his followers, the ummah, into a fighting band, or an army, whose purpose was to bring, ultimately, various regions under the dominion of the ummah and of Allah and his prophet.

[3:54] What began was a systematic cleansing and conquest of the Hejaz, the whole Arabian Peninsula, including slaughter of the Jews. As I've mentioned already, the teaching about outward jihad, or fighting in the way of Allah, began to develop in the 24 surahs that were revealed at Medina.

[4:12] They were the later surahs. As the story goes, despite his rise in status, he... Muhammad continued to work hard and live simply, giving generously to the poor, and splitting time between the homes of his several wives and many children.

[4:26] In other words, he was a real family man and all-around nice guy. It would... at least according to tradition. Muslim tradition. He was, at the same time, undeniably a cunning political leader, political and military leader, however, who protected and forwarded the interests of this new movement, ruthlessly.

[4:45] So with Medina as his base, over the next decade, he consolidated his political power and position as the prophet. And he saw himself as God's mouthpiece, it would seem.

[5:02] In addition to fighting bands of citizens who opposed him, he sent his followers out to raid and pillage the merchant caravans of the pagan Arabs who were passing through, or even just groups of Meccans.

[5:15] He tended to focus much of his raids on Mecca. And, of course, raiding of rival tribes' caravans was a not-so-uncommon practice in the fragmented Arabic culture of the time.

[5:26] A convenient way of financing and feeding your own group was to just take from others, right? In response, the pagans began guarding their caravans with armed soldiers and full-scale conflicts ensued.

[5:39] So, again, the culture was one of tribalism, of, you know... Was murder wrong? Well, sure, if you murdered your clansman, but it wasn't so bad if you were murdering someone who you didn't know, right?

[5:51] And so these values that he was bringing, as we'll look at later, had certain positive aspects to them. It seemed to elevate the culture to some degree, but, of course, not in the way that the gospel does.

[6:04] It was simply a form of godliness, but without the power of the cross, right? So entire books were written on his military career, or have been written throughout Islamic history, and his devoted followers today treasure the stories of his exploits.

[6:20] Three major conflicts with Meccan leadership were the Battles of Badr, Uhud, and Trench in 624, 625, and 627, all part of the context of the Qur'an's teachings.

[6:32] In 624 AD, the Muslims attacked and defeated a heavily guarded merchant caravan, taking many of the pagans captive. And in 624 AD, the Muslims attacked and defeated a heavily guarded merchant caravan, and the Muslims attacked and defeated a heavily guarded merchant caravan.

[6:46] His followers risked life and limb in these ventures, and for their willingness to die for his cause, he promised them paradise. So here you can see sort of his very initial kind of conquest as he took control of the area around Medina, and the city, and nearby.

[7:09] So this is to 624. So his revelations began in 622, and his whole sort of career as prophet and military leader.

[7:21] And so two years later, that's where things were at. As Muhammad's power and influence grew, relations with the three Jewish tribes of Medina, who were not interested in converting, began to deteriorate.

[7:34] He solved this by expelling two of the tribes from Medina, the Banu Kenuka and Banu Nadir, and then massacring the remaining tribe, who were the Banu Qurayza.

[7:45] Such actions were supported by many teachings in the Qur'an, or in the surahs. And so the question is kind of, again, a chicken and egg, right? So which came first, the surahs, and then those actions which flowed out of them?

[7:58] Or was it to justify the actions that came? Well, we can't be sure, but at any rate, his ideology had shifted from one of defensive and survival when they were back in Mecca, and were in the minority, and were persecuted, to throwing his weight around as he gained popularity and control.

[8:26] And of course, we can contrast this, and we can't spend too much time on these passages, but with Jesus, the Lamb of God, and his deliberate eschewing of any kind of military or aggressive or show of strength, when we know that he could have called 10,000 angels, let alone said to the people, let's go, let's fight, let's respond to these insults and persecution with violence, of course, we see the opposite.

[9:02] So we can't go through the scriptures that refer to that, but I'm sure you're all familiar with them. So the conquest of Mecca in 630. When the Meccans failed repeatedly to crush the small but growing new movement, it was only a matter of time until their own ultimate downfall became a certainty.

[9:16] The Muslims expanded their power through alliances, as Muhammad gradually consolidated the Arab tribes under the banner of Islamic monotheism. Meanwhile, the Meccan leadership dwindled and lost influence.

[9:28] In 628, he marched on his hometown of Mecca in Hajj or pilgrimage. His entourage was denied entrance, but in the Treaty of Hudabia, it was agreed that they could return in pilgrimage the following year.

[9:42] So this was sort of a treaty that was made, which he broke two years later. When yearning to have Mecca under his power in 630, he led a huge force into Mecca in his first jihad.

[9:54] As it turned out, full-scale war wasn't even necessary. As he and his men stormed through the city, most of its citizens switched their loyalties to him on the spot, either converting to the cause sincerely or merely in fear of his power.

[10:07] He swiftly conquered the city, quelling all opposition with relatively little loss of life. In fact, some of his followers were actually a little bit upset with him that he was quite so merciful in how he treated some of the Meccans.

[10:18] But his goal really was not to destroy, but to create an empire and to unite the Arab tribes and take his place as the city's and region's political, military, and religious leader.

[10:32] His other goal was to cleanse the Ka'aba of idol worship and establish Islamic monotheism as the sole religion of the land. In triumph, he publicly declared at the Ka'aba that there was only one God.

[10:43] His name was Allah. Worship of any other God was henceforth forbidden. However, he did apparently permit the tradition of worshipping and kissing the black stone at Ka'aba to continue, at least for a time.

[10:56] He declared his followers must face Mecca when they prayed and no unbeliever should ever set foot in the sacred city, which is a tradition followed to this day. So anyone who gets in there is doing it clandestinely and at risk of their lives.

[11:09] When the Jews rejected his teachings to them, which were still pagan and blasphemous, and his claims to be their Messiah, they were warned to either convert or die. Now, there were different points at which, and you will see statements saying, well, there was no convert or die going on, and of course, they're simply not true.

[11:31] But it was not that in every case, every person was forced to. But there were points at which this did occur. And so it did occur at this point.

[11:41] And many of them chose death. At least 600 were killed, 600 men, and buried in the marketplace in Medina, while women and children were taken as slaves. And Muhammad took one of the beautiful young Jewish girls as a concubine.

[11:55] All non-Muslims were driven out of Mecca and Medina, and it remains so to this day. Muhammad, by the way, in addition to revelations, experienced visions. And in one dream, he was purportedly flown by a winged horse to the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem.

[12:09] And this led to his conviction that Jerusalem itself was a holy city for his people, the Muslims, because of his connection again to Abraham, and in his mind being the true line of promise, through Ishmael.

[12:23] So, of course, Jerusalem has been a bone of contention between the Muslims and the Jews and Christians ever since.

[12:34] It's difficult to know of such stories whether or not did he have this dream inspired by God, Satan, or the work, I mean, Allah, the Satan, or the workings of his own subconscious, and related to his followers who eventually accurately recorded this item of oral history, or, B, he merely claimed to have had such a dream, or, C, a later follower merely claimed that Muhammad had related the dream and entered it into the record.

[13:00] So what I'm saying is, when I give details like that, we're not sure about some of those kinds of details, right? Did he say he had this dream, or did someone later put those words into his mouth?

[13:10] We can't be sure on some of those details. So, oh, there's, okay, so that's the Ka'aba in Mecca today, so we don't really see what it looked like originally, but, so, over the next two years, Muhammad expanded his territorial control over the area to the north of Medina, sending his armies to wage wars of conquest with the pagan and Jewish tribes, and quickly managed to establish himself as the undisputed leader of all of central and western Arabia.

[13:40] He demolished the pagan temples of his defeated enemies, and refused to accept their surrender until they agreed to convert to his new religion. He also, by the way, extorted exorbitant protection taxes from many of those Jews and Christians allowed to keep their faiths.

[13:54] So that was the other way of dealing things, was the jizya, and it was a great way to, again, fund your campaigns, was through tax, right, through an enforced tax.

[14:09] Muhammad's final years were characterized by brutal militant rule. Any who opposed or resisted were executed. In the last 10 years of his life, he oversaw 65 military raids in Arabia and the surrounding region until at his death, all of the Arabian peninsula was Islamic.

[14:24] He became extremely powerful as both a religious and military political leader. Ironically, many of the converted pagan Arabs, not so thoroughly converted as it would seem, began to superstitiously idolize him, saving relics such as pieces of his hair, his spit, his bath water, in hopes that these would affect miracles.

[14:49] And yet, he never did claim that he was a miracle worker. There's no, and Islam does not claim that he worked miracles. So there were no signs and wonders that validated his ministry that you could say, well, okay, how do we, how do the people of Islam validate that this was truly a prophet of God based on one testimony, his own, God told me, right?

[15:15] So, you either accept that testimony or, although you can also look at the wonder of his military conquests and how incredible that was, I suppose you could say, well, there seems to be some kind of power at work here.

[15:37] So, he himself claimed to be a mere mortal, God's prophet and messenger, but a fallible human being nonetheless. And as already mentioned, he promised his followers eternal paradise in the afterlife that they fought for and died for, his cause, Allah's cause.

[15:55] And this underpins Islamic jihad and terrorism to this day, which we'll look at in a moment. So, now we're going to try and just skip through, and here's some, here's some excerpts from the Quran.

[16:09] Oh, you have, who have believed, prescribed for you is legal retribution for those murdered. The free for the free, the slave for the slave, the female for the female. So, you could say, well, is this just like civil, kind of, a civil type of thing, like where, you know, today, if someone takes a life, at least in some places, we say, okay, well, then they should be executed for their murder.

[16:32] No, this is talking about that it is legitimate for you if someone kills your wife to kill their wife. if they kill your slave to, or take, or steal your slave to steal it back, or, you know, it is, it is ultimately the, this is the teaching of eye for an eye, which, of course, Jesus transformed and, in terms of his people and said, love your enemies and pray for those who despitefully use you.

[17:04] Another one is, fight in the way of Allah, those who fight you, but do not transgress, and kill them wherever you overtake them and expel them from wherever they have expelled you and fitna is worse than killing.

[17:14] What he means is civil unrest. It's better for us to kill and bring things back into an equilibrium in society, our society, as we expand, than to have civil strife.

[17:30] So, you put down the civil strife. Do not fight them at, or, sorry, fight them until there is no more fitna and until worship is acknowledged to be for Allah. So, these are, obviously, from the later Medina surahs.

[17:45] And, of course, they contrast with whatever you wish others would do to you, do to them, and how Jesus, when his disciple thought he would defend him, even with violence, rebuked him.

[18:00] And, because his kingdom is not of this world, but the Islamic kingdom is very much of this world, even though there's this sense of this Islamic paradise that is promised if you die in this world, it is a very earthy and human ideology.

[18:23] All right, so, I'm just going to mention a couple of his wives before we go on before we come back to the teachings of jihad. No, actually, I should say, we're going to do a few more things before we get to that.

[18:38] All right, so, Mirj to Aisha. He married his first wife, Khadijah, which I think I mentioned last week. Well, he was just an ordinary Joe, or as I like to say. My janitor's name is Khadijah.

[18:50] She's awesome. No. Well, here's my joke. He was just an ordinary Joe, and then I said, or rather, an ordinary Mo. When Mohamed's first wife died, he married two new ones, and as he grew in status and power, he took on a series of further wives.

[19:07] He married Aisha at age six and consummated the union when she was just eight or nine. Now, this sounds horrific to us, but it was not that uncommon of the day because he was still a product of his own culture as much as he was transforming his culture.

[19:23] So, another marriage worth mentioning is Zainab. Okay, sorry, well, so he, this was the wife of his adopted son, and one day he knocked on the door, and she came to the door in a slip, and he was enamored, and when Zaid learned that he was attracted, his adopted son learned that he was attracted to his wife, he said, well, you can have her.

[19:48] I don't really like her anyway, and he said, well, no, no, no, I couldn't, and then, you know, after a time, however, they decided to divorce anyway, and shortly after that, the power of revelation came over Muhammad, and he received the word that Allah had given Zainab to him in a marriage, in marriage even from heaven, so that this was a heavenly decree, who was he to disobey the voice of God, and it would seem that the strong and long-standing tradition and taboo against marrying a daughter-in-law, even of an adopted son, had been nullified in his particular case, and he was free by divine fiat to satisfy his lusts for Zainab, and of course, it's not put in the terms that I'm putting it, but that it ultimately is consistent with Muslim tradition in the Hadith, so, furthermore, Zainab became his fifth wife, which is in contravention of the limit of four that's actually recorded in the Quran for Muslims, and he ultimately had a total of ten, and just another quick look at this teaching, divorce is twice, and the interpretation of that means you can send your wife away twice, right, you can say,

[21:02] I divorce you, get out, you burnt the dinner again, or whatever it is, I'm displeased, send her out, you can do that twice, then either keep her in an acceptable manner or release her with good treatment, so, again, this was in some ways again, improving in the culture, because at the time a man could just dump her whenever he wanted and say, you know, I'm displeased, get out, and then take her back when he felt like it and then dump her again, and so it was saying you can do that twice, okay, but that's it, the third time, you either decide you're going to make it work, but if you divorce her a third time, then it's not lawful for you to afterward marry her until she's married someone else and then that marriage has ended, then you can take her again, right, and of course, again, how does this contrast with the glory of God's word and the teachings and the way in which Jesus elevated the status of women and the rights of a woman within a marriage and the value that God places on monogamy and everything, so, so, okay,

[22:14] Muhammad continued to build the Islamic nation with his sights set on expanding northward. The final revelations he received were focused on obedience to Sharia law and the propriety of fighting in the defense of the Ummah.

[22:26] Two years later, however, he died mysteriously, it's possible that he was poisoned by a rival and the man who said he often wished, or who often said he wished to die in jihad, died on Aisha's lap in her apartment and was buried there in 632.

[22:40] Tradition says that about age 63, since it was about, he was about 40, it would seem, when he began receiving the revelations. He died the founder of a new religion and a way of life for many nations, but the succession had to be passed on so that the great movement could continue its advance.

[22:59] Okay, the problem was he did not have a biological son survive him. Kind of makes me think of Henry VIII, right? I mean, here this guy has 10 wives, I mean, instead of them being successive, he had various ones together, and he did have some sons who did not make it through childhood.

[23:20] He did have daughters survive him, but despite those wives, God's purposes were fulfilled in that he did not have an heir.

[23:30] But that led to a lot of problems for the growing movement. I think I've covered that, so we're just going to skip ahead to, so there's just an image of a very old Quran, I think, I can't remember which century from.

[23:50] Okay, so we're going to go to the violent succession and the early caliphates.

[24:01] So we mentioned there was no male heir. Some favored his cousin, Ali, to serve as successor because he was a blood relative. Others preferred his father-in-law, Abu Bakr, and they won out.

[24:15] Ultimately, disagreement over his successor, who would be his successor, led to deep division, political and religious schism within the Arab-Islamic world that endures.

[24:27] So the first three caliphs, according to the Sunnis, the majority of Muslims, the first three Rashidun caliphates, or caliphs, sorry, caliphs, were legitimately selected by Muhammad's followers to rule as caliphs.

[24:40] So, Rashidun means rightly chosen, right? So these are legitimate is really what that means by the Rashidun caliphs.

[24:52] Of course, this is not accepted by the Shias, who are maybe about 10% in terms of being the two major groups who've got sort of 80 to 90% being Sunni and somewhere in the neighborhood of 10% being Shia or Shiite, and they do not accept these first three caliphs.

[25:12] Because it is not until the fourth caliph in terms of rulers following Muhammad that Ali takes power and that they consider the first true caliph.

[25:27] So, whatever their ideological significance for Islam, the rule of the first four caliphs or caliphs in the 30 years following Muhammad's death was very important in Islamic history.

[25:39] This period was rife with political intrigue, corruption, assassination, civil war, but at the same time very impressive military conquests. So, the first caliph was Abu Bakr, as we mentioned, who was a close friend and father-in-law to Muhammad.

[25:55] He was voted to become, or sorry, he was voted in, in a sense. His youngest daughter who had married Muhammad at eight or nine, I think this was Aisha, and had been widowed at 10, became queen of the realm and helped her father dictate policy.

[26:10] Some Arab tribes pulled out of the political coalition in the wake of Muhammad's death. Bakr fought to bring them back into submission, and by 633, he had succeeded in bringing the whole previously fragmented realm of Arabia and the Arabian Hejaz under control of the caliphate.

[26:29] And these are just some images of caliphs, some artist images. All right, the second caliph was Umar, a cousin of Muhammad, who had been appointed or voted successor, but I think this was probably a more distant cousin or by marriage.

[26:51] He survived 10 years before he was murdered. In that time, he managed to turn the mobs of the Quresh tribe and the other Arabian peoples into a fierce fighting force.

[27:02] The Grand March and Great Conquest began as they assaulted first the Byzantine realm and then swept into the center of Ptolemaic Egypt. So now they're moving beyond the Hejaz to attack other existing empires and kingdoms.

[27:17] In Alexandria, the great library containing the blasphemous manuscripts of Greek philosophers was torched. Muslims won a decisive victory against the Byzantines at the Battle of Yarmouk in 36, 636, and a major victory against the Sasanians in 37 at the Battle of Al-Qadisya.

[27:38] When he died, the Islamic Caliphate had conquered an empire stretching across Persia, Mesopotamia, Palestine, and Syria and as far west as North Africa. And I don't have the...

[27:52] I don't know why I don't have the... We'll come to the maps in a minute. Uthman was next in line, another early convert who'd been a close companion of Bakr. He promoted relatives and friends to positions of power and wealth, engaging in nepotism, and likewise accelerated the pace and force of Muslim conquest, consolidating control all the way across the North African littoral.

[28:13] Despite their success at annexing more and more territory, the people of Islam were plagued by internal strife, spawning a series of civil wars, and Uthman himself grew so corrupt that some of his opponents started a rebellion or a jihad against him and he was ultimately assassinated by an angry mob in 656.

[28:32] The fourth caliph, as we mentioned, is Ali bin Abu Talib, hence the word Taliban. He was connected by blood, adoption, and marriage, being Muhammad's cousin and adopted son.

[28:47] He married also Muhammad's daughter Fatima. Ali became the next caliph but was unpopular with many and rebellion broke out almost immediately.

[28:57] Ali tried to reverse some of Uthman's corruption and nepotism and removed many of the governors and officials that he had appointed. Muawiyah, a powerful relative of the Uthman who was governor of Syria, demanded revenge on those who had killed Uthman, but Ali tried to compromise and in so doing alienated some of his own followers by negotiating with this dissenter.

[29:25] He was also opposed by Isha, wife of Muhammad who at this point was probably closer to 20. The opposition led to civil war that ended with Ali's assassination in 661.

[29:38] Defeated in battle, he was murdered as he tried to escape into a shrine and thus began the divide between Shiites and who were followers of what they consider the rightful caliph in the Sunni majority.

[29:51] What followed that was the Umayyad caliphate, Muawiyah, I cannot say this name, Muawiyah, went on to establish the feudal style Umayyad caliphate, which continued until 750 with its capital in Damascus.

[30:08] Non-Arabs and even those who converted were treated as second-class citizens. So again, if you didn't convert, there was the jizya, the poll tax, the protection tax really, and just basically the fact that you would have to exist as a second-class citizen.

[30:27] Those who supported all four Rashidun caliphates as well as the Umayyad caliphate became the Sunni Muslims and we already mentioned that. So then we have the Hussein rebellion.

[30:40] When Muawiyah died in 680, his son Yazid succeeded him. Hussein, grandson of Muhammad and son of Ali bin Abu Talib, initially renounced his rights to the caliphate but changed his mind later and launched a massive rebellion.

[30:57] Hussein was killed in the Battle of Karbaya after which his family, including a six-month-old son, was slaughtered. Though most of the women and children were taken prisoner, outrage over his death helped undermine the Umayyad caliphate's legitimacy and rebellion was continued by his son, also Hussein, and rebellions continued to occur periodically in the centuries that followed.

[31:17] For example, a dispute over succession led to the third Muslim civil war that raged for two years from 744 to 746. Violent civil conflict in Islamic countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq continue as we know to this day.

[31:32] And then there was the Abbasid rebellion but I'm going to skip that and just mention the stark contrast between the followers of Jesus Christ and how they died and what happened with the legacy that Jesus left versus the legacy left by Muhammad.

[31:49] There was incredible expansion but at the same time terrible military strife and suffering that went on. And so what we can't do is talk about the Quran itself because we're going to just skip ahead to talk about the teachings of and many other things here we're going to skip over.

[32:18] We need to get to 21.

[32:35] Oh yes. Okay. Actually, no. I want to show you those though. I think I might have missed that one but okay.

[32:48] So here is the spread of Islam to 634. So a short time after Muhammad's death and 640 and 661.

[33:09] so it is pretty incredible what happened in the space of 20, 30 years and 670 and 710 and 733 you can see now already we even have the Iberian Peninsula right by 733 so this is about 100 years later after his death and then yeah ultimately of course here we have the battle at Tours and where they were actually turned back by Charles Motel but again we can't go into those things so I just wanted to show you some of the maps sorry about this there we are okay so the Quran and Jihad so first we're going to look at the soft selling of Jihad from the Muslim perspective or the moderate Muslim as it would be called perspective the word Jihad stems from the Arabic root word which really includes sort of three letters a J an H and a D because of course like Hebrew it didn't initially have the vowels but this word means strive other words derived from it include effort labor fatigue essentially

[34:28] Jihad is an effort to practice religion in the face of oppression and persecution it is said the effort may come in fighting the evil in your own heart or in standing up to a dictator military effort is included as an option but as a last resort and not to spread Islam by the sword as the stereotype would have one believe so this is the Muslim moderate Muslim perspective on what Jihad means the Quran describes Jihad as a system of checks and balances as a way that Allah set up to check one people by means of another when one person or group transgresses their limits and violates the rights of others Muslims have the right and duty to check them and bring them back into line there are several verses of the Quran that describe Jihad in this manner including and did not Allah check one set of people by means of another the earth if he did not do this the earth would indeed be full of mischief Islam again this is giving the Muslim perspective never tolerates unprovoked aggression from its own side Muslims are commanded in the Quran not to begin hostilities embark on any act of regression violate the rights of others or harm the innocent even hurting or destroying animals or trees is forbidden war is waged only to defend the religious community against oppression and persecution because the Quran says that persecution is worse than slaughter and let there be no hostility except to those who practice oppression therefore if non-Muslims are peaceful or indifferent to Islam there's no justified reason to declare war on them so if you don't cause any trouble we'll leave you alone well again I wish we had time to look at everything including the story of Andalusa but so really again the best case scenario for minorities within a Muslim context is if you keep your head down and you keep quiet and you don't make waves and you don't criticize Islam the prophet

[36:20] Allah Muhammad or any of his successive leaders we're fine we're not going to you're not going to have any problems is what the teaching is so that's sort of the best case scenario and that's what really this is saying that's what underlies what it's saying we don't we're not aggressors we you know whether to people or minorities within our own bounds or in terms of starting wars elsewhere but history would speak very differently of that and ultimately this is not an honest view of what is in the Quran as I said you've got the surahs that do seem to say you know if someone's persecuting you try to reason with them try to be nice try to you know try to share the gospel of Islam with your neighbor in a reasonable way but then there are also the surahs that are now sprinkled throughout the Quran as I said they're not in order of chronology but from largest to smallest but so they ended up sprinkled throughout that are very clear clearly teaching the opposite of or something very different from what is being presented here and so what happens is the verses that are consistent with this view this moderate

[37:38] Muslim view those are the ones that will be presented to people outside Islam and even to people who are Muslims themselves because many of them have not read the Quran just like you're going to have Christians who don't really know their Bibles and so again there are probably many people who are Muslims who grow up and their whole lives have never read the whole Quran and if they do of course it is often in translation because they don't know the Arabic in which it is legitimate but or considered legitimate so again the Quran describes those people permitted to fight I don't have that there for you so they are those who have been expelled from their homes in defiance of right for no cause except that they say our Lord is Allah did not Allah check one set of people by means of another there would surely have been pulled down monasteries churches synagogues and mosques in which the name of God is commemorated in abundant measure because again

[38:49] Islam initially saw itself as being consistent with being a sister religion or brother religion to Christianity and Judaism and so it initially had this attitude that it could coexist peacefully and that the Christians and Jews would see the light and would come to Islam and realize that this was the final revelation but when that didn't happen of course the tune changed so these kinds of statements come from earlier on in Muhammad's revelations and yeah so Richard Bailey has written on Islam and on the stages he sees as being the development of jihad in how can I put it there are different ways in which it can occur of course there were times when there were simple conquests they simply went and attacked a region and took it over but there's other ways in which it occurs and so there are four stages that he describes so stage one is when they were as we know living as a persecuted minority and as they may be living as persecuted minority even today in certain areas so at this point of course there's no retaliation and jihad is considered only spiritual and we've already kind of covered that in terms of what their experience was in Mecca initially and there's various verses that support that have patience with what they say leave them with noble dignity and leave me alone to deal with those in possession of the good things of life who yet deny the truth and bear them bear with them for a little while say oh ye that reject faith

[40:37] I worship not that which ye worship to you be your way and to me mine but leave them in their confused ignorance for a time so that was the initial stage stage two was the initial instructions in Medina which were defensive fighting was now permitted several months after they arrived in Medina they began looting the Meccan caravans passing through the area it's kind of hard to understand how someone who claims to be the prophet could adopt the carnal pagan practice of robbing the caravans of other tribes calling this striving in the way of God and how this is non-aggressive but at any rate it was treated as defensive fighting we have to do this we've been exiled we've been persecuted ourselves so really this is justified retaliation and so surahs would be to those against whom war is made permission is given to fight because they have been wronged did not God check one set of people by another and those who leave their homes in the cause of God and are then slain or die on them

[41:42] God will bestow barely a good provision one of the many verses that says don't worry if you fight in the cause of Allah God will reward you and will requite you stage three revised instruction in Medina this was defensive fighting commanded a few months after granting permission to fight in self-defense the command was given making war in self-defense a religious obligation at first the only enemies in the picture were the unbelievers of the idol-worshipping Kureyash tribes in Mecca who had first in a sense declared war on the Muslims as I said starting with the battle of Uhud the hypocrites or Arabs who had claimed to be Muslims but really did not believe began to show themselves to be actual enemies and later the Jews were considered enemies in the beginning of this stage the Jews were not considered enemies however because Muhammad was still expecting them to accept him as the prophet like Moses so here we have slay them wherever you catch them and turn them out from where they have turned you out for tumult and oppression or worse and slaughter again it's treated as they've done it to you now do it back to them that you know you're being commanded here such as the reward of those who suppress faith this is what they deserve if then anyone transgresses the prohibition against you transgress ye likewise against him again eye for an eye so stage four

[43:03] Mecca had been conquered now offensive war at this stage was commanded to kill pagans and humble Christians and Jews the Muslims continued to gain strength until the Meccans surrendered in 630 most of the pagans of the city became Muslims so Muhammad and his followers were able to take over the city cleanse the Kaaba we said at this point a new order was given to fit the new situation by this time it was evident that the Jews would not accept Muhammad's claim to be a prophet so the list of enemies now included all unbelievers including Jews and Christians now it's no longer just defensive fighting but aggressive jihad against all believers that is commanded and since this is the final teaching of the Quran regarding jihad it is what is still in force today in the sense it is but these stages still tend to occur occur and there's another if we get time description that's been given of the more subtle jihad that happens of a culture the cultural jihad where the initial stage is to simply kind of infiltrate and then as you consolidate your position you begin to demand more and more recognition and ultimately begin to impose ideas and so that's happening already in areas of Europe they're already in this algorithm kind of gives

[44:26] I think five stages and Europe is already in stages three, four, and five of that right in terms of as this gentleman here was mentioning earlier in London even areas or in England in the United Kingdom there are areas and in Germany certainly Sweden which is a very high population of Muslims there are areas in which Sharia law is in effect already and it's known it's not sort of just at first it's sort of quietly done under the radar secretly privately within the community where you know it would obviously you would be in contradiction of the laws of the land but more and more it's getting to the point where they can boldly do these things and really not have to worry about repercussion so a very important principle in the teachings of Islam is the law of abrogation or substitution according to the

[45:33] Quran itself God sometimes substitutes a better verse or passage for one that had been previously given thus superseding the first one so while that was for that time but here's this is now the new teachings the new idea and how does this sit with the idea that all these surahs that formed the Quran were the eternal word of God inscribed and enshrined and enthroned in heaven from eternity past and yet there's an admission here that there's not a consistency that this said this and now this supersedes that this abrogates that this substitutes that and so then how do Islamic people then interpret well am I supposed to apply this one now or this one right and of course self-interest human self-interest is always going to apply the one that gets you what you think you want and what is good for you or for your people your power your own interest so all

[46:37] Muslim scholars believe that God replaced some earlier verses by substituting later verses but opinion differs as to which verses supersede which other ones nevertheless most agree that surah 9-5 called the verse of the sword supersedes most of the previous verses regarding jihad which are as many as 111 previous verses so again there's disagreement but the for the most part there's an agreement that this supersedes but again we're not denying the fact that there are moderate Muslim communities that would tend to emphasize the less aggressive verses in terms of jihad in spite of this general agreement many today quote the previous replaced verses in order to validate their perception of Islam being a peaceful religion thus modern liberal Muslim leaders especially here in the west are teaching what could be called the Islam of Mecca with its emphasis on non-violence and tolerance at the same time the

[47:41] Islam of Medina with its more aggressive totalitarian nature is what is being practiced and taught by orthodox fundamentalist Muslims in most parts of the Muslim world to include these okay oh I didn't include these so here are just a couple of other surahs none of our revelations do we abrogate or cause to be forgotten but we substitute something better or similar what it's saying is again not consistent with itself but knowest thou not that God hath power over all things and then God doth blot out or confirm what he pleases with him as the mother of the book and when we substitute then later in another surah when we substitute one revelation for another and God knows best what he reveals they say thou art but a forger you know this wait a second there were people who then go wait a second so you said that and now you're saying this but those people they just don't understand so they just don't get is what it goes on to say they don't realize how

[48:53] God does things so the hadith on jihad two to three hundred years after the death of Muhammad several men devoted their lives to collecting verifiable traditions sahih hadith concerning the teachings and actions of Muhammad as witnessed by his followers and passed on through other reliable believers among the six most respected hadith collections Muhammad bin Ismail bin al-Mughira al-Bukhari's nine volume collection is the most respected of all Dr. Muhammad Musin Khan who translated Imam Bukhari's work into English wrote it has been unanimously agreed that Imam Bukhari's work is the most authentic of all the other works hadith literature in his careful investigation Bukhari accepted as authentic only 7,275 out of the 300,000 hadith that he heard so there was a huge body of tradition that again some accept this some accept that in terms of details about what Muhammad and his followers did and said in those first 20 to 100 years and so this guy is sort of the one who's considered conservative and very scholarly and who sifted through all of those and decided these are the 7,000 that are valid right so if you take his word those are the ones that are and in a sense it's it's like it's been said that you can't say that

[50:31] Jesus and Muhammad are parallels but that the Quran itself is parallel to Jesus in the sense Jesus is the word of God his you know his gospels right and are what we know Jesus by and so he's the word of God and then the Quran in a sense is their Jesus whereas I would compare the hadith in some ways to the rest of the New Testament in the sense that it it kind of goes on and says well this is all the stuff that happened to the Christians right it's sort of the history of what happened and various ways of interpreting Jesus teachings do you see what I'm saying so you've got sort of the Jesus and the gospels and you've got the New Testament well I would compare in a sense the Quran sort of takes the place of Jesus in terms of his word and then and is in a sense this sacrosanct worshipped holy perfect book in their view and then the hadith and sunnah and other writings are a little bit parallel perhaps to the other writings of the

[51:42] New Testament and maybe the church fathers is how you could compare them so we're just about our time here so I'm going to finish with let's read a couple of these hadith Muhammad said the person who participates in Allah's cause and nothing compels him to do so except belief in Allah and his apostles meaning he's doing it because he believes in the cause will be recompensed by Allah either with reward or booty or will be admitted to paradise had I not found it difficult for my followers then I would not remain behind any sariah going for jihad and I would have loved to be martyred in Allah's cause and then made alive and then martyred and then made alive and then martyred in his cause all over again so this is what supposedly Muhammad said about how I just wish I could just die in jihad and come back and die in jihad this is really a wonderful opportunity to serve God but he died quietly on Aisha's lap instead a man came to Muhammad but this is from the hadith so a man came to Muhammad and said instruct me as to such a deed as equals jihad he replied

[52:57] I do not find such a deed and this was not talking about the jihad of the heart or fighting against sin or trying to do all the keep all the Muslim requirements in order to balance out your bad deeds with good deeds and go to heaven Allah guarantees he will admit the muhajid in his cause into paradise if he's killed otherwise he'll return him to his home safely with rewards and war booty Muhammad said my livelihood is under the shade of my spear and he who disobeys my orders will be humiliated by paying jizya jihad so those are all the testimony of the hadith about jihad and there's many others so Islam's teachings include emphatic exhortations for Muslims to go out and conquer the world spreading Islam by any means necessary the impulse to jihad is seeded throughout both the Quran and the hadith Islam's plan for the infidels is a sort of it is ultimately a converter else policy it's just that there's a process obviously if you're not in a position to enforce that you're not going to but once you are in that position

[54:04] I think really you could say it's convert or be quiet or die right so either convert or submit which is what Islam is all about and keep your head down don't speak anything that would disagree and we'll let you live as a second class I'm talking about ultimately in Muslim states but you will in that case of course experience persecution and extortion or the third option is death so those who refuse to confess the faith of Islam and submit to the rule of its tyrannical leaders find themselves paying heavy taxes treated as second class citizens deprived of rights and freedoms if there are any rights and freedoms in an Islamic state subjected to imprisonment and torture or even facing execution not surprisingly Islam was fraught with internal conflict and civil wars because the very nature of this worldview drives men to conflict

[55:07] Islamic states even constrain as I say and abuse their own citizens and enact holy wars of aggression against non-Islamic nations like Christianity Islam claims exclusivity of truth and authority and envisions uniting all nations and people of the world in a single kingdom but of course in a very different way in a very different kingdom the kingdom of Christ of course has a very different approach to holy war as Christians we are called to show hospitality to strangers to unbelievers to those of others faiths to do good to them even when we are mistreated by them or persecuted to share with them the good news of the hope and salvation that there is in Christ so I'll finish there and if you have any questions or comments