Christianity vs. Islam

Part One: The Existence of Christianity Rules Out the Validity of Islam

By David Wood

Apologetics—whether Christian apologetics, Muslim apologetics, atheist apologetics, etc.—is typically an attempt to show that one’s own worldview is the most coherent position available, and therefore the most believable position.  The strength of a system is demonstrated by the number of things it adequately accounts for.  For instance, Christians and Muslims have a stronger explanation for the existence of the universe than atheists have.  Atheists claim to have the best explanation for the presence of death and suffering in the world.  Christianity provides a more satisfying account of the historical evidence surrounding the death and resurrection of Jesus than any other system.  The more facts a system explains, the stronger it is evidentially.  A system that accounts for everything (scientifically, philosophically, and historically) would be strongest of all.  The task of an honest seeker, then, is to examine and weigh the evidence, and to see how each system sheds light upon the available facts.

While many of the articles on this website are dedicated to this very task, the purpose of this essay is to show that, whereas Christianity can easily account for the existence of Islam, Islam has a weak and contemptible explanation for the existence of Christianity.  Put differently, if Christianity is true, the presence of Islam in the world makes perfect sense.  But if Islam is true, the presence of Christianity makes no sense at all.  This may sound odd at first, but permit me to clarify and defend what I have said.

If Christianity is true, then the following statements are also true:

(1)    People can only come to God through Jesus Christ.

(2)    Satan is a real spirit being who wants to keep people from God.[1]

With these statements in mind, let’s see if we can figure out a little something about Satan.  Now, if Satan wants to keep people from God, and if the way to God is through Jesus Christ, what would Satan’s highest priority be?  His main goal wouldn’t be to get people to lead immoral lives (though he would prefer that we do, since this corrupts God’s created order); instead, his primary aim would be to incite people to reject Christ, for this rejection is what keeps them separated from God. 

But how would Satan convince people to reject Christ?  We should note here that there are plenty of people in the world who simply don’t care about God.  Satan doesn’t have to worry about them, because they aren’t interested in salvation anyway.  Since his goal is to keep as many people from God as possible, we would expect Satan to be more focused on people who are to some extent concerned with religious matters.  There are two ways to keep such people from God.  Satan would either have to convince them that all “religious talk” is nonsense (i.e. by spreading secularism, which we certainly see) or he would have to offer them a substitute for the truth (i.e. a religion that rejects what is necessary for salvation). 

Thus, if Christianity is true, we would expect Satan to inspire religions that reject Christ’s sacrificial death and resurrection, even though these religions may be similar to Christianity in other (non-essential) respects.  Now that we have a clear picture of what we would predict if Christianity were true, let us see how Islam matches up with our prediction.

The message of Islam is something like this:  “Believe in God.  Do good deeds.  If you do enough of them, you’ll get to heaven.  You can even accept Jesus as a prophet if you want to, and you can believe that he was born of a virgin.  But whatever you do, don’t believe that he died on the cross for your sins.  And don’t believe that he rose from the dead.  In fact, the worst possible sin you can commit is to believe that Jesus is the Son of God.”  Notice that Islam rejects Christianity’s essential requirements for salvation while accepting certain other doctrines.  For instance, Muslims are commanded to believe in God, but even Satan and his demons believe in God.  Muslims are commanded to do good deeds, but all religions teach this.  Muslims are allowed to believe certain things about Jesus (such as his prophet status and virgin birth), but these are not required for salvation.  Yet when we come to beliefs that are essential for salvation—the deity of Christ, his death on the cross, and his resurrection from the dead—we find that Islam is violently opposed to these crucial doctrines.[2]  Islam, then, looks exactly like the religion we predicted Satan would form, for it denies what is necessary for people to come to God.

There is, of course, an easier way for us to see that Christianity predicts the rise of Islam.  We could simply look at some of the prophecies in the Bible.  For example, Jesus said that “many false prophets will appear and deceive many people” (Matthew 24:11).[3]  Paul added that some people would “follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons” (1 Timothy 4:1).  The Bible warns over and over again that false teachers and false prophets would come in order to distort the Gospel.  Apparently, few people in Muhammad’s time heeded this warning.

So far, we have seen that Christianity predicts the formation of something like Islam.  Both the New Testament prophesies and our deductions regarding Satan’s work demand the rise of a religion that would lead people away from the Gospel.  But what if the Islamic view is correct?  Would we expect anything like Christianity?  As we shall see, the very existence of Christianity is a tremendous thorn in the foot of Islam.

According to Islamic doctrine, Jesus was one of history’s greatest prophets, sent by God to proclaim the message of Islam.  Indeed, Jesus began preaching Islamic theology the moment he was born:

And the throes (of childbirth) compelled [Mary] to betake herself to the trunk of a palm tree.  She said:  Oh, would that I had died before this, and had been a thing quite forgotten!  Then (the child) called out to her from beneath her:  Grieve not, surely your Lord has made a stream to flow beneath you; And shake towards you the trunk of the palmtree, it will drop on you fresh ripe dates:  So eat and drink and refresh the eye. . . . Surely I am a servant of Allah; He has given me the Book and made me a prophet; And He has made me blessed wherever I may be, and He has enjoined on me prayer and poor-rate so long as I live; And dutiful to my mother, and He has not made me insolent, unblessed; And peace on me on the day I was born, and on the day I die, and on the day I am raised to life (19:23-26, 30-33).[4]

Since Jesus spent his entire life preaching proto-Islam (according to the Qur’an), his message to his disciples must have centered around the basic tenets of proto-Islamic theology.  We can conclude that these disciples became something similar to Muslims, which is exactly what Islam teaches about the disciples.  This, of course, raises an obvious question:  Why have we never heard of any such people existing in the first century?  Using the historical method, we find that there are first-century records of both those who accepted Jesus’ message and those who rejected Jesus’ message; the ones who accepted his message became Christians (who called Jesus both Lord and God[5]), while the ones who rejected him didn’t believe his message at all.  So what happened to all the proto-Muslims?

Well, the reason there were no Muslim-like people after Jesus ascended into heaven is that all of Jesus’ followers became convinced that he died on the cross and rose from the dead.  And where did they get this idea?  According to Islam, they got this idea from Allah, who made it look like Jesus died on the cross.[6]  True, Allah’s goal was to deceive the people who wanted to kill Jesus, but the disciples also fell for the deception, and they concluded that Jesus had died. 

Who started Christianity, then?  According to Islam, God did.  If it was unintentional, then we must conclude that God didn’t realize that he was about to start the largest religion in the world.  If it was intentional, then God is in the business of starting false religions.  God is therefore either dreadfully ignorant or maliciously deceptive.  Take your pick.  Muhammad’s position also means that Jesus was the greatest failure in the history of the prophets.  He spent thirty-three years preaching (again, he began preaching Islamic theology at birth), yet after he died, there wasn’t a single person in the world who even remotely resembled a Muslim.  Those who believed his message became Christians, all of whom were guilty of the worst sin imaginable (shirk), while those who rejected his message were guilty of rejecting one of God’s greatest messengers.  Thus, I ask you, why does Islam consider Jesus to be one of the greatest prophets ever?  It seems he should have been able to convert at least one person to Islam.  But he didn’t.  On the other hand, there are roughly two billion Christians on earth at the present moment, so it seems that Jesus and God are responsible for starting the only religion in the world that overshadows Islam. 

Needless to say, I think the Islamic view is extremely problematic.  It requires us to believe that God either intentionally or unintentionally led billions of people astray.  This could have been avoided if God hadn’t been so intent on tricking people into believing that they had killed Jesus.  But why would God want everyone to believe that Jesus was dead when he wasn’t?  Why not raise Jesus up without giving his enemies the satisfaction of seeing him suffer and die?  This is a difficult pill to swallow, yet Islam forces us to view the origin of Christianity in this way.  Because this view is at odds with any traditional understanding of God’s nature (including the Islamic understanding), Islam is an incoherent religious system.  Christianity, on the other hand, easily accounts for the rise of Islam.  Indeed, Christianity even predicts the formation of such systems.  Jesus warned his followers that false prophets would come.  He also commanded us not to believe them.  One of the ways we can spot false prophets is by carefully discerning when their teachings lead to unacceptable beliefs about God.  God is Truth, and he is Love.  Islam, when carefully examined, would have us believe otherwise.

[2] One may wonder why I have not included belief in God among the doctrines necessary for salvation.  I’m certainly not denying the necessity of belief in God.  However, I do draw a distinction between a necessary doctrine and a necessary and sufficient doctrine.  Belief in God is necessary for salvation, but it is not sufficient to produce it.  In contrast, the Christian doctrines of confession of the lordship of Christ and belief in his resurrection from the dead are necessary and sufficient.  That is, these doctrines are sufficient to guarantee the salvation of the Christian.  Yet it is these doctrines that Islam most vehemently opposes.

[3] All Bible quotations are from the New International Version (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1984).

[4] The Holy Qur’an, M. H. Shakir, tr. (Elmhurst: Tahrike Tarsile Qur’an Inc., 2002).

[5] While the Qur’an denies that Jesus claimed to be the Son of God, its report postdates Jesus by six centuries and is refuted by strong historical evidence to the contrary (see Ben Witherington III, The Christology of Jesus, Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990).

[6] “And their saying:  Surely we have killed the Messiah, Isa son of Marium, the apostle of Allah; and they did not kill him nor did they crucify him, but it appeared to them so (like Isa) and most surely those who differ therein are only in a doubt about it; they have no knowledge respecting it, but only follow a conjecture, and they killed him not for sure” (4:157).  According to Muslim tradition, Allah made Judas Iscariot look like Jesus, so that Judas was crucified in Jesus’ place.