Recent­ly Sam Shamoun, a well-known bel­liger­ent and provoca­tive Chris­t­ian mis­sion­ary at Answer­ing Islam, issued a chal­lenge” to Mus­lims to prove that Jesus (peace be upon him) did not claim to be God, as per the Qur’an­ic state­ment. His chal­lenge is two-fold :

    (1) Chal­leng­ing Mus­lims to show where in the Qur’an Jesus says he is not God or not the Son of God.

and :

    (2) to bring the Ara­ma­ic phrase where Jesus dis­avows his claim to divinity.

It is obvi­ous, how­ev­er, that his demands are as pre­pos­ter­ous as they are stu­pid. The Qur’an cer­tain­ly quotes or para­phras­es Jesus as say­ing that he is not God.See Qur’an, 5:116 – 117 where Jesus is explic­it­ly quot­ed as fol­lows : And behold ! Allah will say O Jesus the son of Mary ! didst thou say unto men worship me and my mother as gods in derogation of Allah"? <u>He will say: "Glory to Thee! never could I say what I had no right (to say). Had I said such a thing Thou wouldst indeed have known it. Thou knowest what is in my heart though I know not what is in Thine. For Thou knowest in full all that is hidden. "Never said I to them aught except what Thou didst command me to say to witWor­ship Allah my Lord and your Lord’; and I was a wit­ness over them whilst I dwelt amongst them ; when Thou didst take me up thou wast the Watch­er over them and Thou art a Wit­ness to all things.”. So basi­cal­ly the mis­sion­ary has no case since we have here the state­ment of Jesus(P) who denies being God. Whether the mis­sion­ary wants to believe that this is a fic­ti­tious account”, that is not our prob­lem. Our belief is that the por­tray­al of Jesus(P) in the New Tes­ta­ment is most­ly fic­ti­tious, but it is not us mak­ing sil­ly chal­lenges as the Chris­t­ian mis­sion­ary is fond of mak­ing ! and the Qur’an denies that he is a Son of GodSuch (was) Jesus the son of Mary : (it is) a state­ment of truth about which they (vain­ly) dis­pute. It is not befit­ting to (the majesty of) Allah that He should beget a son. Glo­ry be to Him ! When He deter­mines a mat­ter He only says to it Be” and it is.” (Qur’an, 19 : 34 – 35), but in Ara­bic. This is because the Qur’an has affirmed itself to be revealed in Ara­bic textA Book, where­of the vers­es are explained in detail ; a Qur’an in Ara­bic for peo­ple who under­stand.” (Qur’an 41:3), sent down to an Arab prophet, lest its audi­ence uses the excuse that they will not be able to under­stand the Qur’an if were brought down in a for­eign tongue.

Fur­ther­more, unlike the Bible, the Qur’an is not a his­tor­i­cal doc­u­ment writ­ten over the cen­turies by numer­ous scribes who were inspired” and was lat­er com­piled into a book. The Qur’an is an Ara­bic text in nature and has always been in Ara­bic, there­fore there is no need to bring an actu­al state­ment. To demand that the words of Jesus(P) be quot­ed in its orig­i­nal lan­guage would be akin to ask­ing an Eng­lish philoso­pher to quote the words of Con­fu­cius in his orig­i­nal Chi­nese lan­guage to a total­ly Amer­i­can audi­ence who does not under­stand Chinese !

How­ev­er, since Sam Shamoun has brought this need­less issue up, we would like to issue a counter-chal­lenge to the verac­i­ty of his claims. Per­haps we might be inclined to accept his premise, and even acknowl­edge that Jesus is indeed God in the flesh”, as per the Chris­t­ian belief, if he and his mis­sion­ary brethren are able to answer the fol­low­ing question :

    Show us where pre­cise­ly, in Ara­ma­ic, does Jesus say that he is God or the Son of God as in more than a man”?

We are not inter­est­ed in quo­ta­tions found in Greek, as it is gen­er­al­ly accept­ed that the lan­guage Jesus, peace be upon him, spoke was Ara­ma­ic. There­fore, it is not unrea­son­able to demand the exact Ara­ma­ic state­ments from Jesus, peace be upon him, and word-for-word, in invert­ed commas.

Fur­ther­more, we demand that this Ara­ma­ic quote, assum­ing if one exists, is one which all New Tes­ta­ment schol­ars deem authen­tic and agree upon with­out ques­tion, includ­ing all the crit­i­cal schol­ars. More­over, there should be absolute­ly no con­tro­ver­sy whatsover over the inter­pre­ta­tion and, of course, the authen­tic­i­ty of this ver­ba­tim Ara­ma­ic statement.

If the mis­sion­ary decides to quote some­thing in Greek, or any­thing the inter­pre­ta­tion of which is dis­put­ed or the authen­tic­i­ty of which is dis­put­ed, he would fail to meet our chal­lenge. We want, we repeat, a ver­ba­tim Ara­ma­ic quote, the authen­tic­i­ty and inter­pre­ta­tion of which is not at all dis­put­ed, where Jesus says cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly I am God” and where he claims to be the the Son of God”, as in more than a man”.

And only God knows best. A Counter-Challenge to Sam Shamoun and the Christian Missionaries 2

Cite Icon Cite This As : 
. (May 27, 2006). A Counter-Chal­lenge to Sam Shamoun and the Chris­t­ian Missionaries. Retrieved from .

Published:

in

, ,

Author:

Comments

22 responses to “A Counter-Chal­lenge to Sam Shamoun and the Chris­t­ian Missionaries”

  1. yusuf Avatar
    yusuf

    Those vers­es basi­cal­ly speak of Jesus say­ing that his teach­ing /​words he did not orig­i­nate from him­self, but the Father. They dont make him a deity

  2. Esme Avatar
    Esme

    1. Jn 149
    2. Jn 16, 13 – 15
    3. Mt 26, 63 – 65

    No prob­lem at all…

    Can you bring me the proof that Mohamed is a prophet ?

    Esme

  3. mansoor Avatar

    OPEN CHALLENGES TO CHRISTIANS

    1.Can you bring US the Pas­sage where Jesus says I am God.

    2.Can you bring US the verse where Jesus said God is three in One.

    3.Can you bring US the verse where Jesus claims to have dual natures i.e. ful­ly man and ful­ly God

  4. Gajibur Rahman Avatar
    Gajibur Rahman

    Denis Giron is as brain­less as they come. I remem­ber his arti­cle about the islam­ic con­cept of hell and how he believes it is not sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly sound. For exam­ple he says it is impos­si­ble for some­one to burn for­ev­er in hell because the fire will soon run out of fuel or things to burn. If you think i’m mak­ing this up then here’s the quote :

    How can eter­nal fire be any kind of divine pun­ish­ment that one should fear ? You can­not be burned for eter­ni­ty. Your body only offers a giv­en and finite amount of fuel for fire. Even­tu­al­ly there will be noth­ing left to burn.”(Denis Giron)

    What a ridicu­lous argu­ment, Giron seems to for­get that hell is the pun­ish­ment of God and God can do any­thing. He for­gets that mus­lims believe God is all pow­er­ful and can do what he likes, this includes burn­ing peo­ple for eter­ni­ty in hell. God explains in the quran in the fol­low­ing way :

    Those who reject our Signs, We shall soon cast into the Fire : as often as their skins are roast­ed through, We shall change them for fresh skins, that they may taste the penal­ty : for Allah is Exalt­ed in Pow­er, Wise.” (Holy Qur’an Surah 4 verse 56)

    So basi­cal­ly if you believe in an almighty and pow­er­ful God then such pun­ish­ments are not far fetched or impos­si­ble. How­ev­er, if you’re an athi­est then you will believe such pun­ish­ments to be impos­si­ble. Girons whole argu­ment against the islam­ic con­cept of hell stands on one belief, the belief that God does­n’t exist. Giron fails to realise that if God tru­ly does exist then such pun­ish­ments are not impos­si­ble at all. I think Mr Giron will find that his argu­ments will only work the day he proves God does­n’t exist.

  5. Muslimin.org Avatar
    Muslimin.org

    Who invent­ed Trin­i­ty in the first place — is what baf­fled us Muslims.

    Was it Paul, a Jew­ish phar­isee (?), a heretic (?), an agent-provac­teur for the Rome in lead­ing to Jesus being per­se­cut­ed (but not cur­ci­fied because Iscar­i­ot was the betray­er and he was put on the cross)

    Chris­tian­i­ty vs Islaam is real­ly about Trin­i­ty vs TAWHEED

    Mus­lims, if you are both­ered by con­stant Chris­tian’s har­rass­ing your thoughts and intend­ing to pull you into their folds (like is warned in the Quran that Jews and Chris­tians will not be satisi­fied until you become astray, not nec­es­sar­i­ly con­vert­ing to Chris­t­ian but becom­ing apostate)

    Then please try to stop for a while read­ing dis­cus­sions (Inter­net) where these kuf­fars tell lies and deceive your mind. Instead, search for videos, audios, etc from the like of Allah­yarham Ahmad Dee­dat, the won­der­ful speech of Syeikh Khalid Yasin, and myku​li​ah​.com collections.

    We need to debunk Chris­tian­i­ty the way Ahmad Dee­dat did it lillahitaala.

  6. Ahmed Avatar
    Ahmed

    This coment is for Denis Giron and Chris­tians that say that it is clear that NT declares Jesus to be god.

    Just show me where Jesus say Iam God Almighty” thats all. Dont go to read assump­tions and inter­pre­tan­tions and oth­er mean­ings. Dont for­get that being Jesus god is a the very first and the most basic teach­ing of Chris­tian­i­ty, and i won­der how Jesus failed to make ONE only ONE state­ment that he is God„,indeed very weird ! and not only that..Just show me where Jesus taught Trin­i­ty, the word RINITY“ever uteerd from the lips of Jesus?? Did Jesus said to the jews that for example…“Jews from now on your God is a tri­une god ? No!! Jesus said Your God is one God..why did­nt he say your God is 3 in 1 or 1 in 3?? Jesus nev­er claimed that he is God.. so we have :

    1) Chris­tian­i­ty claims that Jesus is God, but Jesus nev­er said that he is God and nev­er teached that

    2) Chris­tian­i­ty claims that God is Tri­une, but Jesus nev­er said that God is Tri­une and nev­er teached that.…..let us accept that Jesus said that He is God(he did­nt for sure) and God is Triune(he did­nt for sure) then most cer­tain­ly he faild to teach and elab­o­rate for Chris­tians or the jews in that times about these issues.