In the name of God
A Closer Look at Christianity
by Mohamed Qasem
This booklet may be freely reprinted and copied, with the condition that the text in the booklet is not altered in any way.
Reproduced with permission by the
Ahlul Bayt Digital Islamic Library Project team http://www.al-islam.org
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Introduction ........................................................................................................ 3
Was Jesus Sent to be Crucified ........................................................................... 6
Willingness of Jesus Christ to die for our sins ................................................ 6
God answered the prayers of Jesus Christ ..................................................... 7
The post crucifixion prophesied events never happened .............................. 7
Why would Jesus have to die on the cross? ................................................... 9
Is Jesus the Same as God? ................................................................................ 11
What about all these verses? ....................................................................... 15
Is Jesus the Son of God? ................................................................................... 18
Was Jesus the only begotten son of God? ................................................... 18
Was Jesus the only born son of God or the only son of God? ...................... 19
What does begotten mean? ......................................................................... 20
Who was Jesus if not the literal son of God? ............................................... 21
Oneness of God ................................................................................................ 22
Are Jesus and God the same? ....................................................................... 23
Let us see what Jesus himself says ............................................................... 23
The Absolute Oneness of God from the rest of the Bible ............................ 25
What about worshipping God through Jesus? ............................................. 28
Who is Jesus? .................................................................................................... 30
Who was his mother? ................................................................................... 30
How was Jesus born? .................................................................................... 32
Who was Jesus sent to? ................................................................................ 33
Did Jesus have a heavenly book? ................................................................. 34
What were Jesus’ miracles? ......................................................................... 34
Was Jesus crucified? ..................................................................................... 35
Is Jesus coming back again?.......................................................................... 35
What is My Responsibility Now? ...................................................................... 36
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Introduction
Since I was young I always loved discussing religion with others. I always wanted to know where the truth lay. The more discussions I had the more I learned about Islam. More and more I found Islam to be a truly great religion.
In 1988 I went to the United States of America where a new world of religious information was available to me. I found Christianity. A religion that encompassed the greatest number of people around the world. I wanted to talk to other people about it. I wanted to learn more about this religion. That was when I met a Christian group that invited me to their home. They were a very kind group of people.
Their aim was to invite me and my friends into Christianity, and I thought it would be a great opportunity to learn more about this religion. At the dinner table they started talking to us about the Bible, and started to give us some idea about Christianity. The person who was talking had a Bible in his hand, so I asked if I could take a look at it.
I remember flipping through the Bible until I reached an objectionable point. I stopped with amazement! I couldn’t believe that the word of God could have such a problem. (I don’t recall the details of the problem.) I started discussing the point with one of the hosts. A few minutes into the discussion and he was cornered with no way of responding. His face turned red and he got very upset! Nevertheless, every time a Christian couldn’t respond to objections I raised after that, I would either be told that I would have to believe in Christianity, and thus be inspired first in order to understand it, or the version of the Bible I was using was not the proper one for discussion.
So I found out I would have to believe in Christianity before I could believe in it! This was a dilemma! Then I reflected on this situation and with more research on the Christian community, I
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found that there were hundreds of denominations holding different and quite opposite views from one another. The strange thing was that many members of most denominations were talked to or inspired by God. Yet these messages were contradictory. I couldn’t understand why God delivered a message to one denomination telling them that Jesus was His son and only His son, another that Jesus was Himself, and another that Jesus was neither. All these people swore wholeheartedly they were talked to by God.
I finally decided I should really look at the Bible closely and decide with the power of my own God given mind. I, therefore, started to listen to tapes and preachers, read the Bible, and discuss different topics from the Bible with Christian Fathers, Brothers, Preachers, and laymen.
As far as the other objection in relation to the version of the Bible, I couldn’t find a real solution to the problem. If I talked to someone using one version he told me to use another, and if I used the other I was told to use another, and so on. I even asked a Brother, my teacher of religion in a Christian university, if he would direct me to the most accurate version of the Bible. He said, "Do you want the most accurate historically or the most spiritually uplifting?" I responded, "If the most accurate historically is not the most uplifting then we have a problem!", and we both laughed. That’s when I decided to use the most common and widely accepted version of the Bible, the King James version. It dropped most of the objections raised with regards to the version.
Most Christians (and I admire this quality in them) are very emotionally involved with Christianity. They love their religion and are moved by some of its ideas. However, most Christians don’t know very much about their own religion. It is not because they lack any capability to learn, but they always depend on preachers to deliver the different concepts to them, never question the Bible, and look at Christianity from one angle only.
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This was why I wrote these few pages. I wrote them not to provoke the feeling of anger but to heighten the sense of awareness in my Christian brothers. These few pages include the net experience of my discussions that which cannot be refuted. I have tested these ideas in many discussions, and I have even posted them on the Internet where I had to confront lots of people responding to the points I made. None was successful in refuting a single one of these points, and I hope they will make sense to you. I also hope that after reading these pages you will make real steps towards learning more about Islam, the final religion to humans handed down from God Almighty.
Mohamed Qasem
