Com­mon Mis­con­cep­tions About Mus­lims and Islam

Mohd Elfie Nieshaem Juferi

1. Mus­lims do not believe in Muhammad(P) as God or ven­er­ate and wor­ship him as God. We believe that he is a Mes­sen­ger of God, just like Moses(P) and Jesus(P), and that he brought God’s Words to us. He nei­ther con­ceived his own con­cep­tion of God nor did he told Mus­lims to estab­lish Islam with force.

2. Mus­lims do not believe that Muhammad(P) is the Mes­si­ah. We believe that Jesus(P) is the Mes­si­ah. The only thing that we do not agree about him with Chris­tians is that Jesus(P) is a Liv­ing God and/​or a part of the Trin­i­ty along with God (The Father”) and the Holy Spirit.

3. Mus­lims do believe that the real” Torah (Tau­rat) did pre­dict the com­ing of Jesus(P) as well as Muhammad(P).

4. Mus­lims do believe that Jesus(P) did pre­dict the com­ing of Prophet Muhammad(P) and it was writ­ten in his Gospel (Injeel).

5 — Mus­lims do not believe in wor­ship­ping idols or moon gods. No Mus­lim believes that the rea­son why the Cre­sent is the Mus­lims’ sym­bol on their flag is because Muhammad(P) had tak­en the reli­gion of the moon god and call it Islam”. That is a fab­ri­cat­ed lie about Muhammad(P) and the ori­gins of Islam. The rea­son why the Cre­sent is the sym­bol on our flag is because we start our fast­ing month of Ramad­han when the Cre­sent appears, and we end that month when the full moon appears after 30 or 31 days of the Cres­cen­t’s appear­ance. The Cres­cent is not a holy symbol”.

6. Mus­lims do not believe that Jesus(P) was a false Prophet. We believe that Jesus(P) was a Mes­sen­ger of God who came down to earth and revealed God’s words to the peo­ple of Israel he was sent to, just like Moses(P) did, and he was born to Mary, cre­at­ed with the Word and Spir­it from God with no mor­tal father what­so­ev­er. We believe that Chris­tians mis­con­ceive the notion of Jesus(P) being God in flesh when he said he was the son of God.

7. Mus­lims do not view Muhammad(P) as a Holy Fig­ure that they wor­ship. Mus­lims only wor­ship and pros­trate before All?Almighty (God) and no one and noth­ing else. 13 of the entire Holy Qur’an talks about the One­ness of God and how God will pun­ish those who wor­ship mul­ti­ple Gods and idols.

8. Mus­lims do not view the Bible as a man-made lie. We (Mus­lims) view the cur­rent Bibles of today as mod­i­fied books, orig­i­nal­ly writ­ten by dis­ci­ples of Jesus(P) that can now no longer be trust­ed. The Bibles of today had been tam­pered with and can­not be traced back to its orig­i­nal authors. We also believe that the Gospels that Chris­tians cur­rent­ly have is not the one giv­en by God to Jesus(P) in the first place.

9. The Holy Qur’an does not tell us Mus­lims to fight Holy Wars” against non-Mus­lims to force them to accept Islam. Mus­lims are only allowed to fight in defence of Islam if we are per­se­cut­ed with force and to retal­i­ate with the equal amount used against us. In the Qur’? we read that :

Fight in the cause of Allah those who fight you, but do not trans­gress lim­its ; for All?loveth not trans­gres­sors(Qur’an, 2:190)

Sim­i­lar­ly :

And if you take your turn, then retal­i­ate with the like of that with which you were afflict­ed ; But if ye endure patient­ly, ver­i­ly it is bet­ter for the patient.” (Qur’an, 16 : 126)

10 — The Ara­bic word JIHAD is often mis­trans­lat­ed as Holy War”. There is no such thing as a Holy War” in Islam, nor does such a term exists in the Qur’an the authen­tic Hadith col­lec­tions or in the ear­ly Mus­lim writ­ings. JIHAD is actu­al­ly lit­er­al­ly trans­lat­ed as strug­gle”. The word for war” in Ara­bic is HARB.

11 — We Mus­lims believe in the Glo­ri­ous Qur’an as the Rev­e­la­tion from Allah (God) giv­en to his Last Prophet Muhammad(P). The valid­i­ty and the authen­tic­i­ty of the Qur’an also do not depend on the con­fir­ma­tion of mod­ern sci­ence or any of its human expo­nents in it. What is human is fal­li­ble while the Qur’an being the word of God is infal­li­ble and eter­nal. Thus, even if the find­ings of sci­en­tif­ic facts in the Qur’an are inval­i­dat­ed, that does not detract from the beau­ty and rare force of this Divine Book, for a read­er of the orig­i­nal in Ara­bic imme­di­ate­ly expe­ri­ences its beau­ty, pow­er and grandeur with­out resort­ing to the use of ratio­nal analysis.

And only God knows best !

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