The Sean McDowell Show - Assyrian Christian Asks 7 BIG Questions To Muslims

Episode Date: April 15, 2025

What are the best questions for Muslims to consider about their faith? What questions should Christians share with their Muslim friends? Whether you are a Christian, Muslim, or something else, we discuss some of the most important spiritual questions. We hope you will respond and let us know what you think. If you are a Muslim, please invite other Muslims to respond. Author and speaker Alan Shlemon is here today from Stand to Reason to guide our discussion of the top questions we hope our Muslim friends will consider.READ: The Ambassador's Guide to Islam (https://amzn.to/4kpG9Yj)*Get a MASTERS IN APOLOGETICS or SCIENCE AND RELIGION at BIOLA (https://bit.ly/3LdNqKf)*USE Discount Code [SMDCERTDISC] for 25% off the BIOLA APOLOGETICS CERTIFICATE program (https://bit.ly/3AzfPFM)*See our fully online UNDERGRAD DEGREE in Bible, Theology, and Apologetics: (https://bit.ly/448STKK)FOLLOW ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA: Twitter: https://x.com/Sean_McDowellTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@sean_mcdowell?lang=enInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmcdowell/Website: https://seanmcdowell.org

If you are a Muslim, what questions would you like to ask a Christian? My guess is that you have some questions about the character of God, the Bible, and specific Christian teachings. In this video, my guest and I, Christian apologist and author Alan Schliemann, have seven questions for you about the Quran, Islamic teachings, and Muslim theology. We hope you'll take these questions seriously. Let us know what you think and consider inviting other Muslims to engage as well. Alan, are you ready to go?

I'm ready, Sean. All right, well, let's jump in. Question number one is this, and then you're gonna comment on it and tell us what you think, Alan. Why trust a document like the Quran that denies Jesus's crucifixion, one of the most well-attested facts about Jesus?

Yeah, so I think there's really four categories of reasons why this question, I think, Muslims have to answer. First reason, real quick, is that, look, the Quran was written 600 years after Jesus lived. So that's a long period of time after the details of a person's life have been produced and of course talked about and written about. But now the Quran comes around 600 years later and says something very different than kind of the typical narrative. The second kind of category of reason why I think this raises a concern for Muslims is that there are documents that are written by eyewitness testimony of the crucifixion.

Now, of course, these are the gospels, and we know that Matthew and John were eyewitnesses of the crucifixion, and then Mark and Luke, of course, relied on reports from other people who were eyewitnesses of the crucifixion and then Mark and Luke of course relied on reports from other people who were eyewitnesses. So you have these gospel documents that attest to the fact that Jesus was crucified and killed. You also have extra biblical sources around the time of Christ. So you have, you know, historians like Josephus, who was a Jewish historian, you have the first century historian Tacitus, and many other people who wrote at the time who were not Christians who attested the crucifixion. And then the fourth category in terms of

evidence that Jesus was crucified is from just modern day scholars. You know, in short, it's interesting because a lot of Muslims I talk to love to cite Bart Ehrman as a resource for skepticism against Christianity, right? They're always pointing to him because he of course rejects Christianity and he's a skeptic of Jesus in the Bible and so on and so forth.

But even Bart Ehrman will tell you that the best attested event of Jesus' entire life is his crucifixion by the Romans Also John Dominic cross and who who maybe some of your viewers know was a member of the Jesus seminar Not a Christian, right this guy. I mean he claims to be a Christian, but he denies essential doctrines of Christianity, right? he he says that after Jesus was taken down from the cross, his body was probably put in a shallow grave and his body eaten by wild dogs, right? So clearly, this isn't the guy who we would say, yeah, orthodox Christian. But even John Dominic Croson says that he was crucified is as sure as anything historical

can ever be. So virtually everyone who is an eyewitness of Jesus, friend or foe, historians of Jesus's day, scholars who study the question today, all affirm that Jesus was crucified. The only one who denies it is the author of the Quran. So that's why I asked, why would you trust this document, the Quran, when it denies this very well-attested event? It's a very fair question. It's interesting because there are certain criteria of what are called authenticity or historicity that many Jesus scholars use. One would be like multiple attestation.

If you have multiple sources cited in historical event, it's more likely we can confirm that it's true. And you just cited multiple sources, Christian, non-Christian, first, second century. So it fulfills that criterion. There's the criterion of embarrassment, that if something is really embarrassing, it's not likely made up by the author. That's not the kind of thing we invent.

What the crucifixion was not only embarrassing, it was shameful. Why event a historical figure, namely Jesus, and attribute a crucifixion to him, the most shameful, dishonorable death imaginable? It passes that criterion. But for all these reasons and more, there's actually a criterion of crucifixion that some historians use, meaning the crucifixion is so well attested historically that if you have a hypothesis about Jesus and it doesn't align with the crucifixion,

then you need to get another hypothesis. And for Bart Ehrman, John Dominic Crosson, and others who also agree with crucifixion, historically speaking, I would venture to say we are on as firm of ground that Jesus was crucified as anything in the ancient world. So I love that you raised this question. Let's go to question number two. Okay.

The most common objection by Muslims when talking to a Christian is that the Bible and specifically the Gospels, is corrupted. Why is this the number one objection when not only is it not taught in the Quran, but the opposite is affirmed in the Quran, and the opposite, namely that the Gospel is uncorrupted? Yeah, so I've noticed, Sean, a significant distinction between two things and that is what Muslims say

and what Islam teaches. Right? So Muslims say all the time, I mean, this is not just, I think, the number one objection that I hear, but I think it is the number one objection that Muslims raise. Muslims say that the gospel, now just let me back up here for a moment. The Quran identifies four divine revelations. The Quran, the Torah, the Psalms and the gospel. So it literally names those as four divine revelations. Now it affirms that there's other divine revelations, but those are the only four names. Now I'm as a Christian most interested in what the Quran says about the Gospel, because of

course this is where the life and story of Jesus are found and his message of reconciliation. But although Muslims will tell me that the Gospel is corrupted, what I've discovered is that the Quran, which is their highest authority, teaches the opposite. And in fact, let me tell you why I think this is the case, because I've discovered when I read the Quran, it affirms three things about the Gospel. Number one, the Quran affirms that the Gospel is a divine revelation of Allah.

Number two, the Quran affirms that the Gospel was in existence in Muhammad's day in the seventh century. So in other words, people could read it and have access to it. And number three, the Quran affirms that the gospel is authoritative, which means it must be believed and obeyed. Now, those three things are not drawn

from some isolated esoteric, you know, surah or verse in the Quran. Like this is the overall verse in the Quran like this is the Overall teaching of the Quran and in fact, I have over a dozen passages that affirm all this and by the way If you wanted just one passage that affirms all three of those points I'd recommend surah 5 verses 46 to 47 Which all three of those elements that the Quran is a divine revelation of Allah, it was available in Muhammad's day and is authoritative, meaning should be believed and obeyed, is found in those two verses.

So here's my contention. This is kind of a hypothetical, but imagine there was a Muslim who had never read the Quran, who had never heard of the Bible or the Gospel, and had never been biased by any other Muslim or any Imam or scholar. And you were to ask that Muslim to read the Quran from start to finish and ask them, tell me what you think Allah has said about the Gospel. The only conclusion that person would walk away with is that the Gospel is this wonderful revelation from Allah that is a guidance, that is a light, that is to be looked at, to be uplifted and to believe and obey.

And I mean, so if that's the case, why is it then that virtually every Muslim I run into will tell me that the gospel is corrupted and yet their highest authority of the Quran teaches the opposite? That is such an interesting question because you cited Bart Ehrman earlier who critiques the transmission and reliability of the text and says it's been corrupted. I have had a number of Muslims specifically cite Bart Ehrman, which is to back up their claim that the gospel has been corrupted. But your point is not the external challenge, but if you just take the Quran internally on its own merits, it holds up the gospel as being reliable and trustworthy. And can you say we know this is referring to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John? Like do we have that confidence when you say the gospel is held up in the Quran?

Yeah, that's a good question because of course, some Muslims will claim that what the gospel is referred to in the Quran is some document that is given to Jesus. But remember, the Quran was written, allegedly, according to Islamic sources, in the seventh century. Well, in the seventh century, what were Christians, because it refers to Christians who are reading the gospel, what were they reading? It was Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. That was the only gospel in existence, right? So, I mean, we could make an argument, I think that we can make an argument that when the Quran refers to the Gospel, it's referring to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. But I will admit that, yeah,

if you talk to a Muslim scholar, they'll say, no, no, no, what this referred to is a document that was given to Jesus, you know, during his lifetime from the angel Gabriel. And it was that document, you know, in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, or something else, right? But remember, in the seventh century, when the Quran is talking about the gospel and the people of scripture and talking about the Jews and the Christians, and talking about the revelations that they can read and look to, and were commanded to obey and read, the only thing that was in existence at that time was Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. In fact, we had Codex Vaticanus, Codex Synacticus, right? These were codexes of the entire Bible, virtually the entire Bible,

but definitely the New Testament, and definitely the Gospels. And they were in existence for hundreds of years before Muhammad even came around. So anyways, I think an argument could be made that that is what it's referring to. Now, of course, we're gonna get to the apocryphal Gospels that of course the writer of the Quran was aware of but you're saying by the seventh century there was copies of the

canonical Gospels that were read and there were Distinctions between what was in them and what was in the Apocryphal Gospels by that time already So that's an important point to draw in. So if your contention is right that the Quran teaches that the Gospel is reliable and trustworthy, then rather than going to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John of the Gospels and looking for errors and corruptions that line up with some preconceived theology,

then I would invite Muslims to go to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John and ask what do they teach about the identity of Jesus. Did he do things that only God could do? Did he make claims about his identity and his authority that only God could do? Now we're having a very different conversation. All right, excellent. Let's shift to question number three.

Many Muslims claim the Quran they read today is an exact duplicate of the one in heaven and there's been zero corruption in it. No variance at all. Do you believe 1400 years of oral and written transmission has led to zero variance? Especially given what Islamic sources themselves have said about it. Yeah, I think there's really two areas of concern that this question raises. One is, I mean, there's multiple, but the two I'll mention are compilation and transmission. So when it comes to compilation, we actually, I mean, I think the only data we have about

the compilation of the Quran comes from Islamic sources. So as I've studied this question, and as I teach on it, I'm only drawing upon Islamic sources to tell me what happened to create the Quran, right? So it begins with the claim that the Quran exists in heaven, you know, with Allah. So Allah created it, it's on tablets in heaven for all eternity past. And this Quran is dictated word for word by the angel Gabriel to a man named Muhammad between 610 and 632 AD. Okay, now, of course, that's untestable. We can't evaluate that because that's just a claim. But let's just let's just take it for granted at this point. Okay. Okay. Muhammad has it. And he of course, tells it to other people, he recites it to others, other people memorize parts of it. It's written down on on stones on pieces of leather, on on bones and other things like that, which of course is not a great reliable way to keep track of this significant document. And so Abu Bakr, who was the first Khalif, the first successor to the Qur'an, was killed by the Muslims. And so he was killed by the Muslims. And so he was killed by the Muslims.

And so Abu Bakr, who was the first Khalif, the first successor to the Qur'an, was killed by the Muslims. And so Abu Bakr, who was the first Khalif, the first successor to the Qur'an, was killed by the Muslims. And so Abu Bakr, fear that massive portions of the Quran are now lost. And so Abu Bakr, who was the first Khalif, the first successor to Muhammad, he orders

someone to compile the Quran. So take all these bits of the Quran that are on leather and stones and bones and the people have memorized, put it all together. Let's create it somehow, put it all together so that we don't lose it. So he does that. I think it's completed like a couple years later 634 AD. And then they're like, Okay, we got it, let's move on. And so they're expanding the Islamic Empire, they're moving out to all different parts of the of the Middle East. And years later,

they discover that different people are reciting different Quran's around the different all the different parts, find out the different recitations, create an authorized version, and then get this Sean, they burn all the variant of the Quran, and then they get the Quran, and then they get the Quran, and then they get the Quran, and then they get the Quran, and then they get the Quran, and then they get the Quran, and then they get the Quran, and then they get the Quran, and then they get the

Quran, and then they get the Quran, and then they get the Quran, and then they get the Quran, and then they get the Quran, and then they the different parts, find other different recitations, create an authorized version, and then get this Sean, they burn all the variant copies, and all the great editions of the ones that don't fit this authorized version. They make like five or seven copies of this one, authorized one, and they send it out to different parts of the Islamic Empire. Okay. So and then so that's kind of how they compiled it, right. Again, to me this doesn't inspire a tremendous amount of confidence that it was done well and

when you look at the Islamic sources and you read authoritative scholars and people who commented and who were around at the time, they say things like, wait a minute, we've lost parts of it. So for example, Ibn Abu Dawood, now, Ibn Dawood, Ibn Abu Dawood is was the son of a hadith compiler. And hadith, we'll get into I think one of the other questions is simply written traditions of what Muhammad said or approved of and One of the guys was Abu Dawood his son Ibn Abu Dawood said this He said many of the passages of the Quran that were sent down

Were known by those who died on the day of Yamama. That was that battle I told you about But they were not known by those who survived them nor were they written down nor had Abu Bakr Umar with men by that time collected the Quran, nor were they found with even one person after them. So here's a guy saying, Look, we've we've, we didn't write this down, we've lost it. Another quick example, Sahih Muslim. So Sahih Muslim is another person who collected hadith, collected these traditions of what Muhammad said. And he says, we used to recite a surah, which resembled in length and severity to surah Ba'at. I have, however, forgotten it with the exception of this, which I remember out of it. And then he cites the part of the hadith that remembers, but he's like, we've lost the rest of it. And then the second Khalif in Islam, Umar, Abdullah ibn Umar, he said this, let none of you say, I have acquired the whole of the Quran.

How does he know what all of it is when much of the Quran has disappeared? Rather, let him say, I've acquired what has survived. So just looking at compilation of the Quran from authoritative sources in Islam, we have an indication that the process wasn't super neat and we have people from Islam saying, no, we've lost much of it.

So that's just a compilation. The other point I would bring up is the transmission. And there's several things about transmission that can be said, but I know we don't want to belabor this too long. But I'll say this. If you look at the scripts that were used to write down the Quran, in the seventh and eighth and ninth century. There's a couple of different scripts that were used.

There was a Hadjazi script. There's a Kufic script. But if you look at images of the script, which by the way, I have pictures if you want to see them. What you'll notice if you compare those scripts to today's Qu'rans, is there are no diacritical marks. Now diacritical marks are the little dots you see above and below the letters and the words of Arabic. And those letters, I'm sorry, those dots are not just flourish, they're not just decorative, they literally change the meaning of words. And so the early Qur'ans did not have these diacritical marks, but you look at modern Qur'ans, they did.

So hundreds of years later, they added these, which of course creates new meaning, changes meaning, whatever. So this alone is a significant question in understanding the transmission of the Qur'anic text, because it started without diacritical marks, and now it has it. And then the other part of transmission that I'll mention is when it comes to variants, which of course, are

really well known in the Bible and have been studied and so on and so forth. And this this is really kind of a new area study in the Quran. But back in 1973, there was a mosque that was being renovated in Yemen in the city of San back in 1973, there was a mosque that was being renovated in Yemen in the city of sauna. And as they opened up a wall in the mosque, they discovered some scrolls. I mean, this is kind of like a story almost like the Dead Sea Scrolls. Sounds like it. Yeah. Yeah. So they find these scrolls, they

dig them out, they look at them like, oh, these are like, really old Quranic manuscripts. Now, they can't most people can't read them very well. So they had to hire a German orientalist named Garrett Pooin. And the country of Yemen contracted with this German orientalist to study these and to give back the information to the country of Yemen. Well, what they discovered is these Quranic materials are composed of what's called polymphests. Now, this is a strange word, but basically what's happened is someone has taken a parchment or whatever writing material,

they've written Quranic text on it, then they washed it off and then wrote new Quranic material years later. Well, to the naked eye, you can't really see that, but with modern technology, we're now able to use these tools to see both the upper layer that you can read and see with your eye, as well as the lower layer of the Quranic text. And what we've discovered is that those two versions have variants between each other. They're not the same. And there's, and when you put all the information together about these different manuscripts, what we discovered is that there's been a deliberate attempt to standardize or create a authorizer, a standardized version of the Quran.

But that presupposes that there have been variants, there have been changes made over years. So anyway, so this was published and there was a scholar who's doing work in England, Keith Small, he actually died prematurely, but he wrote a book called Holy Books have a history. And his very modest claim is simply look, if you you got thousands of years of copying a text, you're going to have variants. And so he documents lots of variants, both in the Bible and in the Quran. Now, for us as Christians, this is not a big deal because as Christians, our claim is not that there are no variants in any of the manuscripts.

That's crazy. But there's also a field of discipline called textual criticism, which I'm sure you've talked about maybe on your channel at some point, which is able to look at these variants and these these differences and be able to reconcile them through a very scholarly process. Well, of course, there's also variants in the Quran, right? And so that's the whole point that he makes in his book, holy books have history. So, again, Muslims are the ones who are making a more audacious and bold claim that there are zero variances, zero changes, and it's just not true. So I just would encourage

my Muslim friends to reconsider this claim and to be more open to considering, well, okay, so what are the variants? What are these missing seras, these missing chapters and stuff? So technically, a Muslim could approach textual criticism the way Christians do and say, all right, can we reconstruct the original? Has this changed? How do we resolve these variants? And then we could ask, how well do we have the original Quran

as it was written down. Christians do that, but the problem is that the claim is made that we have it exactly like it was written down and it was written in heaven, it's eternal and it's precisely the same today with zero corruption. You've shown that's empirically false, so you would encourage your Muslim friends

to walk that back and at least look into it and reconsider that claim. Yes, yeah. Excellent. All right, let's shift to number four. I'm really curious, we're gonna take this one because it kind of gets to the heart of the question that Christians and Muslims may differ on.

The question is, what evidence could you provide that would convince a non-Muslim that Muhammad was a prophet of God? And I would qualify this by saying an open-minded non-Muslim willing to follow the evidence where it leads that Muhammad was a prophet of God. Yes, and I mean the principle here really is just the principle of the burden of proof, right? If you're the one who makes a claim, you bear the burden to provide evidence and reasons why that claim is true. And so Muslims are ones who are making the claim that this man, you know, Muhammad, who lived between 570 and 632 AD, was prophet of of God. And I would suggest that whatever evidence you think would be convincing to an open-minded non-Muslim would be the kind of evidence that is external and objective, meaning it could be something that we can evaluate to see if it's true.

Now, whenever I ask a Muslim this question, the most common answer I get is they'll say, well, the evidence that Muhammad is a true prophet is the miracle of the Quran. And what they mean by that is they say, look, the Quran claims that Muhammad was illiterate, he couldn't read or write. So how could it possibly be that this illiterate man composed the Quran? This you know 114 chapter document that they'll say is the most beautiful poet, poetic, and written document that has ever existed. In fact, they'll go on to say look you know for 1400 years, I have this quote here, it says, no one's been able to compose words

that equal or even approach the order, grace, beauty, and splendor of the glorious Quran. So really what they're doing is they're making an appeal to kind of in a subjective assessment about what they believe is this beautiful, glorious, poetic, and splendorous kind of document. And again, I'm like, well, it just feels really subjective. I mean, I might even push back and say, well, okay, how about Psalm 23? Psalm 23, I think, is a pretty beautiful Psalm, right?

The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures, you know? He leaves me beside still waters. He restores my life. He restores my life. He restores my life. He Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. You know, he leads me besides still waters. He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his namesake and you know,

talks about the valley, the shadow of death. I mean, it's a very beautiful poetic song poem and which is in the Psalms and it it it contains deep theological truths about God being with us and giving us comfort in that. I mean, maybe I could say, well, geez, Psalm 23 seems to be an example of something that's written that equals if not surpasses a part of the Quran. But this is often the way many Muslims tell me is they say, look, the Quran even makes the challenge that no one can produce even one chapter as beautiful as you know, what's in the Quran, and I'm like, I don't know, there's a lot of beautiful things that have been written. So it just feels like this is a very subjective way to do that. And so again, I would just I would ask, you know, what, what objective evidence do you have that would satisfy a non Muslim who's open to following the evidence that Muhammad was a true prophet of Allah?

It is interesting that when the Apostles are proclaiming the message, they're appealing to fulfilled prophecy. They're appealing to miracles. They're appealing to the resurrection and we can look at and examine and consider those claims based on the merit and some of the smartest lawyers and historians and detectives in history Analyzing this as objectively as they can have been convinced. Of course not everyone but it invites Objective investigation within itself. You're saying this is subjective. Now I know you believe that beauty itself is objective. If somebody said to me, hey, here's a pound of dirt, and here's a Mount Everest, we'd be able to know that Mount Everest is more beautiful.

But just because there's clear cases of objective beauty like that, doesn't mean the test held up here is equal to it. So are you aware of anyone who said, let's take as objective of a measure as we can of beauty. Apply it, and there's different ways people analyze this, the rhythm and the language, and there's different details.

You could try to set up an objective test. Like as somebody who's not a Muslim, maybe an atheist who's not a Christian, just looked at this and said, let's compare it. Now of course the challenge is, you and I can't really do this assuming you can't read Arabic, so we can't even engage in this test. A big segment of the world is ruled out right away and told, hey, trust us, we know this is more beautiful. So that's a problem.

But has anybody tried to do this? If not, I would love an atheist or a skeptic or an agnostic to take Shakespeare, take Psalm 23, come up with metrics by which we judge beauty in literature. Compared to the cron, I'd be fascinated to see what they found. Are you aware of anything like that? What do you think? No, I'm not. But I would add to what you just said, that is, there are millions of Arabic speaking

Christians who do read, who can read the Quran and can read the Bible in Arabic. So they could kind of do a assessment of what they perceive to be a beautiful, poetic, theologically profound kind of understanding of those two documents. So I don't know. But yeah, I think your question is a fair one. I don't know of anybody who's done that, but that is interesting. Let's shift now to question number five. And here's the question we want to ask our Muslim friends. And here's the question we want to ask our Muslim friends. Are you concerned that one man, Imam Bukhari, who lived from 810 to 870 AD, single-handedly canonized the words of Muhammad

220 years after Muhammad died? Yeah, Sean, this is really, this is kind of interesting. And my contention here really is that the most important person in Islam outside of the Quran is this guy Bukhari and maybe people have never thought of it this way but to me it seems that this is the case and here's the reason why I think we mentioned before the concept of hadith or hadith literature and again just to restate it hadith literature is simply hadith or hadith literature. And again, just to restate it had these literature simply written traditions of what Muhammad

either said or approved of. And these traditions could be a sentence long, a paragraph long, or even a page long. And they're they're traditions about what Muhammad said about marriage and divorce and fighting and pilgrimages and all kinds of things. Okay. And these traditions, these hadith traditions have two components to them, they have what's called the is not which is a chain of transmitters, meaning like if I was to say, Oh, I heard from Sean McDowell, who heard it from Bob who heard from Steve who heard from Philip, who heard, you know, George say x, y, and z. It's like, okay, so this is there's an oral chain of transmission to to me from the person who said it. And this is what we have in the hadith, we have this chain of transmitters, and they go back from, you know, from Mohammed saying something

all the way to the person who's eventually documenting this down. And the second part of the Hadith is called the Matin, which is the actual statement by Mohammed. Now, this guy Bukhari, who was a Persian, he 200 years, 220 years after Muhammad dies, he goes and single handedly memorizes 600,000 alleged hadith traditions, 600,000, he allegedly memorizes them. And then he decides which ones are authentic, like that Muhammad actually said, and which are not authentic. So and he rules out percent. So of those 600,000 hadith traditions, he dwindles down and gets down to only 7,653. It says only these are authentic. So this is why I say here you have a person by himself who allegedly memorized 600,000 traditions, single-handedly deciding what Muhammad actually said or didn't say. And this is why I say he he basically canonized the

words of Muhammad and since Sharia law is based on a lot of hadith, he also probably affected you know so much of Sharia law. This is why I say Bukhari is perhaps the most significant person in Islam outside of the Quran, right? Now, when you hear of that process, you're thinking, gosh, 220 years after the fact, this guy single-handedly memorizes all that and rules out 98%. I don't know. Can I be confident that this process worked well? Well, when you read the hadith, and by the way, I have Bukhari here and all kinds of other hadith, there are a lot of bizarre and contradictory hadiths from Bukhari. And by the way, Bukhari is considered to be the most authentic and reliable hadith of all the different hadith traditions. For example, Bukhari says that Muhammad claimed that Adam, as in Adam and Eve, was 60 cubits

tall. Now, a cubit is the length from your elbow to the end of your middle finger. So 60 cubits is like 90 feet. So Muhammad said Adam was 90 feet tall. There's contradictions in the Quran, in the Hadith. So how long did Mohammed stay in Mecca before he fled to Medina? One Hadith tradition from Bukhari says 10 years, another one says 13 years, another one says 15 years. How many times do you in do you wash your wash parts of your body in ablution before you worship? Some say once

some say twice some say three times. There's a story in Bukhari where he tells a story about Moses who was always reluctant to take a bath outside in public where other people could see him. And many people had suspected he had some sort of deformity. And anyway, so the story goes, according to Muhammad, that Moses was taking a bath outside. He had taken his clothes off, put them on a stone, and all of a sudden this stone runs away

with Moses' clothes. And Moses ch sudden, this stone runs away with Moses' clothes. And Moses chases after this stone. And because of that, everybody was able to see Moses naked and be like, oh, I guess he's not doesn't have any deformities. But then eventually Moses catches up to the stone and beats the stone with a stick. And it says in Bukhari that this the marks from that beating are still on that stick are still on that stone stone Yeah, so

Muhammad even said at one point in the Bukhari says if a fly lands in your drink Make sure you submerge the fly entirely in your drink because one of the wings of the fly has a poison The other wing has the antidote so you don't know which is which so you just submerge it poison, the other wing has the antidote. So you don't know which is which. So you just submerge it. So again, you have these kinds of things and you ask, really, am I going to put this much weight in Bukhari's account? Because this man literally single handedly canonized Muhammad's words. And the analogy would be basically like, look, George Washington lived about 220 years ago, or he died 220 years ago. Could somebody today single-handedly,

with the tools that were available to somebody like Bukhari back in the ninth century, could they single-handedly memorize 600,000 phrases of George Washington and then decide which are authentic and not. Now maybe today we could because we have the internet, we have access to thousands of scholars, but Buhari in the ninth century

is just kind of going on his own efforts. Maybe under the efforts of a few other people, but I don't know, because of what he's produced, it just makes you skeptical that this process was really reliable one. It's interesting that he's able to do this because when it comes to the New Testament scriptures, no one would have been able to do this.

I mean, there's no way because they were copying the letters of Paul and the gospels and spreading them so widely. Somebody could not have gone and gathered all of them and then just chosen which ones were canonized and which ones were not. So of course that brings some of the differences in textual tradition that we need to work out.

But the mere fact that this fellow Bukhari had the ability to do this, and one man did it two centuries later. I think he's very suspect about the reliability of the ones that were selected. I think that's a very fair historical question to raise. Two more questions. Question number six. Are you troubled that the Quran appropriates

apocryphal gospels, Jewish folklore, and Mishnah and passes it off as divine writ? Yeah, so Sean this is, you know, I know this is a sensitive challenge or question but it has to do with source criticism, which is a which is a discipline that lots of scholars do with all kinds of written works. Okay, so I think it's a fair question to ask about the Quran. Now keep in mind the nature of what the nature of the claim about the Quran is. It's a very different kind of claim than what we Christians make about the Bible. When we talk about the Bible, we say the Bible is the inspired word of God. And the doctrine of inspiration is very specific. What it teaches is that

God inspired human authors to write down certain things using the human personality, style, grammar, language. And what these human authors wrote down is exactly what God intended them to write down. So the Bible, we claim, is a kind of joint human divine product. This is not the claim that Muslims make about the Quran. They say the Quran is a entirely and wholly a divine product that was produced before any human even existed. Okay, so keep that in mind as we consider this question about source criticism. Because when you look at the Quran, you see that it seems to have appropriated existing written works from before. Now, there's a whole bunch of examples of this. And I'll and I'd point out that it seems that the Quran has appropriated some apocryphal gospels,

some Jewish folklore and some Jewish Mishnah, right? So let me just give you an example from one of each. Sure. In Surah 19, there is a story in the Quran where Jesus has now been born, but he's still a baby in a cradle. And yet he begins to speak in full on sentences. And in fact, Mary points to Jesus, who's in the in the cradle. And the people around her are like, and they say, Wait, how can we talk to someone who's a child in the cradle? And then Jesus says, he starts speaking, I am indeed a servant of Allah. He has made me a prophet. Jesus goes on spouting all this Islamic theology. And I'm like, hmm, that's odd. I don't remember anywhere in the gospel accounts where Jesus is speaking in full on sentences, as a baby in the manger or in a cradle.

So you say, well, I wonder where the Quran got that from? Well, it turns out there is a second century or maybe it's a third century, but either way, it's an earlier document called the First Gospel of the Infancy of Jesus Christ, which is a well known document. You can read it online. It's an apocryphal kind of gospel, if you will. And it tells this story. It tells a story. And it says, Jesus spoke even when he was in the cradle and said to his mother, Mary, I am Jesus, the Son of God.

And Jesus goes on and starts speaking in full-on sentences. Doesn't sp't spout Islamic theology but still it's almost the same kind of story like oh that's interesting did did the Quran draw upon that here's another example after this is the birth of Jesus you know Mary. Mary conceives Jesus and this is in sort of 19. Jesus, I'm sorry, Mary goes to the trunk of a palm tree and sits down under the palm tree and she cries in anguish and she's like, oh man, I wish I could have something to eat and drink and turns out that from beneath the palm tree, there's a river or a stream, a rivulet, it calls it and the palm tree itself kind of bends down and shakes and gives her some fruits and dates. You're

like, man, I don't recall this story ever being in the Gospels. Well, it turns out there's another apocryphal writing called in the Lost Books of the Bible, also I think second or third century. And you read the story and it's almost identical. You have Joseph and Mary going underneath the shade of a palm tree. It talks about fruit, specifically dates that they're able to eat.

It says that below the palm tree, there is a stream. The palm tree bends itself down towards Mary and gives her access to some of the fruit. Like wow it's like the same exact story and so you know I keep thinking well these apocryphal Gospels or the the stories of them must have been circulating around at the time and the Quran has appropriated them as part of its thing. And then the third example which is perhaps to me the one the most interesting ones. This is in Surah five. And it's the context is the story of Cain killing Abel. And after Cain kills Abel, I think Allah sends a raven to help Cain like hide,

hide the evidence that he killed his his brother. And, and Cain is all troubled by this is like, man, I, you know, this raving and do a better job than I can do kind of thing. And then in the next verse, it says this, on that account, we ordained for the children of Israel that if anyone slew a person, unless it be for murder or spreading mischief in the land, it would be as if he slew the whole, whole world. And if anyone saved a life, it would be as if he slew the whole world. And if anyone saved a life,

it'd be as if he saved the life of the whole world. So this idea of like, if you kill one person, you've killed all the world, but if you save one person, you saved all the world, okay? And what's interesting is if you read the Mishnah, this is Mishnah, Sanhedrin 4, chapter 4 verse 5, you see a Jewish rabbi writing commentary on that story in Genesis. And he's taking, this Jewish rabbi is taking notes and commenting about the use of the

plural or singular of the word blood from the blood that Cain spilled when he killed Abel. And the Jewish rabbi comments, he says, it does not sayeth he hath blood in the singular, but bloods in the plural. Now, I'm not sure I even agree with that assessment of the commentary, but it's irrelevant. Notice what then this Jewish commentary includes.

It says, that was created single in order to show that to him who kills a single individual, it should be reckoned that he has slain the whole race. But to him who has preserved the life of a single individual, it is counted that he's preserved the whole race. So you have that same parallel phrase, you kill one person, kill the whole world, save one person, you save the whole world. So it seems that the Quran has, I don't know if it was intentional or not, but it has taken this Jewish commentary, which I don't even think is good commentary, about that passage and included it in the Quran. And then passing it off and saying, look, this is the words of Allah that have existed from eternity past.

Now, again, it wouldn't be a problem except for the fact that the claim about the Quran is that these are just the words of Allah created before anything else was written. So anyway, so this just goes to the issue of source criticism. There's a whole bunch of other examples, but that makes me just wanna ask my Muslim friends, well, what do you think about this? Because it doesn't seem like that's consistent with the Islamic theological doctrine of how the Quran was created.

So the problem is not just with the Quran citing these documents, because the Bible, Paul cites other poets in Acts 17. We have other books in the Old Testament that are cited. But when the stories are taken and referred to as being true, and yet we know these are say fictional accounts in the case of Jesus and not reliable, that raises questions for the Qur'an's incorporation of such a text and its own reliability and authority. That's a question that you're raising that I think is very fair.

Let's shift to the last question number seven and a few of these that you've raised so far have been historical questions, evidential questions. This last question is somewhat existential and personal but also theological and here's the question number seven. Are you 100% certain you're going to heaven? And if not, would you be interested to know how you can have 100% certainty? Yeah, Sean, this is my favorite question to ask my Muslim friends because it gets really at the heart of really what I'm most concerned about and want my Muslim friend to consider. So just quickly back up here.

Islam has a Muslim friends would know this a meritorious based system of salvation meaning whether you go to heaven or hell is dependent upon the works that you do to satisfy and please Allah and the Quran talks about in Surah Chapter 7 these scales that are that exist and at the end of time Every human being will be resurrected and will be judged according to their deeds and All their good and bad deeds will be put on the scale and if your good deeds outweigh your bad deeds you go to heaven If your bad deeds outweigh your good deeds you go to hell as

heaven. If your bad deeds outweigh your good deeds, you go to hell. As a result of this, when I ask my Muslim friends, hey, are you 100% certain you're going to heaven? And by the way, Sean, notice I'm asking the question, are you 100% certain? I'm not asking, are you confident you're going to heaven? Or are you sure? I'm asking, are you 100% certain? To this day, I've never had a Muslim say, yes, I'm 100% certain. And by the way, I'm not surprised that they that they say that because they how can they know what good and bad deeds will be brought on these scales? How will they know the number of good and bad deeds? How they know the weight of these respective good and bad deeds that we put on a scale.

And so that's why my follow-up question then is, well, okay, if you're not 100 percent certain, would you like to have 100 percent certainty? Now, at this point, Sean, I'll tell you, I get a couple of different answers, but basically it's like, well, sure, I'd love to have 100 percent certainty, or a lot of Muslims are just kind of skeptical.

Like, okay, what is this Christian going to say? Like, what possibly are you going to tell me that's going to give me 100% certainty? Well, this is where I always want to encourage them to look and see what does Jesus say about this question? What does Jesus offer? And of course, Sean, you know that it's not by virtue of anything that you and I or any Christian or the Pope has done or can do to give anyone 100% certainty, but it is based upon what Jesus has done and can do. And I always encourage my Muslim friends to read Jesus and Muslims of course consider Jesus a prophet So they certainly revere him. I know they don't agree with our Christology, of course, but they do they do revere Jesus as a prophet and

I'm pointing them to the gospel which in the Quran as we mentioned is actually affirmed to be Authoritative should be believed and obeyed. And listen to what Jesus says in John 3, 16 through 18. He says, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in him, Jesus, shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send the son into the world

to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through him. He who believes in him is not judged. He who does not believe has been judged already because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten son of God. And so Sean, the reason why this is such good news, Remember the word gospel means good news. The reason why this is such good news for the Muslim is because Jesus addresses both sides of that Islamic scale. So think about this. Through Jesus's work on the cross, he will use the fancy word atones for sins, which basically means Jesus wipes

away all of your sins. Jesus wipes away all of your bad deeds, which means the side of the scale that would normally hold your bad deeds is completely eliminated. It's completely unweighted. There's nothing to weigh it down. But Jesus doesn't just wipe away your bad deeds. Jesus also imputes his righteousness, which is just a fancy way of saying his good deeds, his perfect life, his credit is given to you. You are given his worthiness, his perfect life is given to you. So the side of the scale that would then normally contain all of your good deeds is weighted with the perfect life is given to you. So the side of the scale that would then normally contain

all of your good deeds is weighted with the perfect life of Christ. So with no bad deeds and all of the perfect life of Christ's good deeds on the scale, the scales tip in your favor with 100% guarantee that you're going to come out favorable in the eyes of God, not because of your righteousness, but because of Christ's righteousness. So that's why I say, you know, if you don't have a hundred percent confidence that you're going to heaven, look to see what Jesus says there

in John 3, 16 through 18, because he addresses both sides of the Islamic scale for the sake of you. In Islam, Jesus is the virgin-born sinless miracle-working prophet. The earliest words we have about Jesus, some of the earliest words, are some of the very ones that you mentioned that can be traced back to his lifetime, centuries before the Quran came. Now, what is interesting in 1 John 5, it says we know that we have eternal life. How do we know this? Because our confidence rests in what Christ has done for us,

not our own efforts. That's how we can know this. I thank God that my salvation is not rooted in my own efforts because I know I could always do something better. I could pray more. I could give more away. I could read more, study more. There's always more that we can do. But if our confidence, and you said certainty,

is rooted in what Christ has done, who lived a sinless life and paid our debt, then we can have such confidence in our salvation. Alan, these are great questions. I really appreciate you taking the time to put them together. If you're a Christian and you happen to watch this, we invite you to share this with a Muslim friend and just say, hey, what do you think?

Which question you think was toughest? Which question was new to you? How might you respond? You don't have to have a debate, just have a conversation. If they give a response you haven't heard, you say, you know what, let me check into this and get back to you,

and we'll give you resources in a minute. Keep the conversation going. If you're a Muslim and you're with us at this point, I am actually super honored, just so you know that, that you would watch this and take these questions seriously. Comment below, let us know what you think. Maybe share it with another Muslim and say, hey, how would you answer this?

Give us your thoughts of how you might respond to these questions, we would love to know. Now, Alan, for people that wanna follow you or get your book and say, you know what, I wanna look into this further, maybe tell us about your ministry, your book and one or two others that you think behind this support some of the questions that you raised. Yeah, so I work for Stand to Reason. Our website is str.org, str.org. And you can find a lot of my content as well as my colleagues content on the website. We have articles, we have courses, we have videos, we have everything is all made free.

Of course, we sell books as well. So if you want a book, you have to pay for it. But I did write a book, a short book, it's only like 64 pages. It's called the Ambassador's Guide to Islam, to understanding Islam. So if you want to read it, you can go to the website. pay for it. But I did write a book, a short book, it's only like 64 pages, it's called the Ambassador's Guide to Islam to understanding Islam. So if you want to learn more about my thoughts on Islam, it's there or just go to our website. And I have, you know, dozens and dozens of articles on the

subject of Islam and reaching Muslims. The other book I'd recommend is a friend of a former friend of mine and a former friend of yours, Nabil Qureshi, I say former because he passed away at a very young age in his 30s. But before he passed away, Nabil was a Pakistani Muslim. And then eventually began to consider the claims of Christ, converted to Christianity, and then wrote a book about his life and incorporated a lot of these kinds of questions that I've raised here in his book So I recommend his book. It's called seeking Allah finding Jesus and it seems very consistent with kind of what we just talked about right now

pointing to Jesus as the person who Whose work is what can justify us in the eyes of God. So That's the book I'd recommend in addition to mine. Great suggestion. We appreciate your partnership at Biola that you went through the Biola Master's program that you will teach for us at Talbot School of Theology. If some of you are watching going, man, this guy knows his stuff and he's done good research. We'd love to have you join us in an apologetics

or philosophy program here if you're a Christian to get trained not only how to defend the Christian faith but also how to just graciously engage others who see the world differently. Information is below. Alan, really appreciate it and we'll have you back again soon. Thanks for coming on.

Thanks, Sean. I appreciate it.