Sura’ al-Fati­hah and the Mis­sion­ary’s ​“Straight Path”

As-salaa­mu ala’ man ittaba’a al-huda ;

Some Chris­t­ian mis­sion­ar­ies have the inher­ent fan­ta­sy that Sura’ al-Fati­hah (the first Sura’ of the Qur’an) some­how sup­ports their false pagan doc­trine of the Trinity.

The trans­la­tion of this Sura is as follows :

1) In the Name of Allaah, the Most Benef­i­cent, the Most Mer­ci­ful.
2) All the prais­es and thanks are for Allaah the Lord of the Uni­verse.
3) The Most Benef­i­cent, The Most Mer­ci­ful.
4) Mas­ter of the Day of Rec­om­pense.
5) You Alone we wor­ship, and You Alone we ask for help.
6) Guide us to the Straight Path.
7) The Path of those on whom You have bestowed your grace, not the Path of those who earned your Anger, nor of those that went astray.

The mis­sion­ar­ies, hav­ing an inher­ent dis­ease in their hearts, are unable to appre­ci­ate the Pure Monothe­ism which the Sura expounds. They will first cite the whole ayaat (keep in mind that their main con­tention is with Qur’an, 1:6 — ​“Guide us to the straight path”) and then twist this inter­pre­ta­tion to suit their false doctrine.

It seems to be a com­mon tac­tic which is not alien to Chris­t­ian mis­sion­ary pro­pa­gan­da, as befit­ting the tac­tics of their Satan­ic apos­tle from Tar­sus. Let us now deal with this lat­est polemic in the fol­low­ing para­graphs, insha’allah.

As one Chris­t­ian polemi­cist had claimed :

This is the daiy [sic] prayer recited by the Muslim every time they pray. Everyday, they are asking God to show them the straight way - this wil go on and on the rest of their lives! As I read the Al-Qur'an myself, I then found the Straight Way that they are looking for.

Then the Chris­t­ian mis­sion­ary ​“con­ve­nient­ly” pro­ceeds to selec­tive­ly quote vers­es relat­ed to Jesus alai­hissalam and the imag­ined ​“straight way”. And of course, that ​“Straight Way” the Chris­t­ian has in mind is then trans­posed to the verse in John 14:6.

Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life : no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.

By this erro­neous ​“trans­po­si­tion”, their claim is two-fold :

With such fan­tasies that these Chris­tians have, it is amaz­ing that their stu­pid­i­ty always pre­cedes their pro­found ignorance.

It should of course be not­ed that while the Qur’an does speak favourably of Jesus^(P) and the mes­sage that he had preached, it is always depict­ed that Jesus^(P) is a human Prophet of God and His ser­vant. It is thus quite con­ve­nient for the mis­sion­ary to leave out vers­es which stressed upon Jesus’^(P) human­i­ty in the Qur’an, for example :

“Christ, the son of Mary, was no more than a Mes­sen­ger ; many were the Mes­sen­gers that passed away before him. His moth­er was a woman of truth. They had both to eat their (dai­ly) food. See how Allah doth make His Signs clear to them ; yet see in what ways they are delud­ed away from the truth!“Qur’an, 5:75

More of such vers­es on Jesus^(P) can be found here. It is thus clear that the mis­sion­ary had selec­tive­ly done a ​“pick and choose” on the vers­es that the mis­sion­ary ​“feels” sup­port their Trini­tar­i­an doc­trine. How­ev­er, as the evi­dence dic­tates, this is far from the truth.

Here is a full com­men­tary of Sura al-Fati­hah from Ibn Kathir, specif­i­cal­ly Qur’an, 1:6 — Ihdeena sir­aat­ul mus­taqeem (“Guide us on the straight path”).

On this pas­sage, Ibn Kathir says :

The say­ing of the Exalt­ed, ​‘You Alone we ask for help’: mean­ing that we do not seek aid from any­one but You because the command/​affair in it’s total­i­ty is under Your con­trol Alone, no one else has even an atoms weight of con­trol over it. And in this statement’s fol­low­ing His say­ing, ​‘You Alone we wor­ship’ lies an indi­ca­tion that it is not per­mis­si­ble to put our trust in any­one except the One that deserves wor­ship because no one else has con­trol over the command/​affair. This mean­ing which is indi­cat­ed here is clear­ly explained in oth­er vers­es, like His sayings,

‘So wor­ship Him and put your trust in Him’ (12:123)

‘But if they turn away, say : Allaah is suf­fi­cient for me, none has the right to be wor­shipped but Him, in Him I put my trust’ (9:129)

‘The Lord of the East and the West, none deserves to be wor­shipped but Him, so take Him as the Dis­pos­er of your affairs’ (73:9)

‘Say : He is the Most Benef­i­cent, we have believed in Him and put our trust in Him’ (67:29)

When one reads the com­men­tary, it is obvi­ous that there is hard­ly any men­tion of Jesus^(P) being God or that he is the Son of God ; that all Mus­lims should just con­vert en masse to Chris­tian­i­ty and be Trini­tar­i­an wor­ship­pers. Such allu­sions are sim­ply ridicu­lous, to put it quite bluntly.

Inter­est­ing­ly though, the mis­sion­ary left out the last verse of the Sura. It refers to peo­ple who have earned God’s wrath and peo­ple who have gone astray. So who are those peo­ple that the Sura’ is refer­ring to ? Here is the answer :

The say­ing of the Exalt­ed, ​‘not the Path of those who have earned Your Anger, nor of those that went astray’: the major­i­ty of the schol­ars of tafseer said that ​‘those who have earned Your Anger’ are the Jews, and ​‘those that went astray’ are the Chris­tians, and there is the hadeeth of the Mes­sen­ger of Allaah^(T) report­ed from Adee bin Haa­tim^(R) con­cern­ing this. And the Jews and the Chris­tians even though both of them are mis­guid­ed and both of them have Allaah’s Anger on them — the Anger is spec­i­fied to the Jews, even though the Chris­tians share this with them, because the Jews knew the truth and reject­ed it and delib­er­ate­ly came with false­hood, so the Anger (of Allaah being upon them) was the descrip­tion most befit­ting them. And the Chris­tians were igno­rant, not know­ing the truth, so mis­guid­ance was the descrip­tion most befit­ting them.

It is the Chris­tians ! The Chris­tians are denounced as those ​“who have gone astray”. Obvi­ous­ly log­ic dic­tates that if the Chris­tians are the ones who are denounced in this verse of the Sura, it does not make any sense for the Qur’an to be sup­port­ing any of the Chris­t­ian doc­trines. Thus we see how obvi­ous­ly fal­la­cious the claims of the mis­sion­ary are and with this expo­sure, their argu­ments fall to the ground.

In con­clu­sion, rather than sup­port­ing their beliefs Sura’ al-Fati­hah actu­al­ly attacks their doc­trines and dis­putes their claim that they are the guid­ed ones. The Chris­t­ian mis­sion­ar­ies should thus stop dream­ing that the Qur’an will ever sup­port their lies. It nev­er had and nev­er will. As far as the Mus­lims are con­cerned, Guid­ance is in Al-Huda (Islam), the Straight Path, and it cer­tain­ly does not belong to the Christians.

In the end, we are remind­ed to put our trust in the fol­low­ing verse :

“And they say : ​“None shall enter Par­adise unless he be a Jew or a Chris­t­ian”. Those are their [vain] desires. Say : ​“Pro­duce your proof if you are truth­ful !​“Qur’an, 2 : 111

We are rest assured that the Chris­tians will nev­er be able to pro­duce their evi­dence apart from twist­ing their facts, and their des­ti­na­tion is no doubt the Hell­fire. And only God knows best !