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 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.
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