Saturday, June 27, 2020

Acts17apologetics are vexed; Quran calls Christians polytheists?

In answer to the video "Quran Contradictions: Are Christians Polytheists? (Anthony Rogers)"

No it doesnt, Muslim may even intermarry with Jews and Christians, contrary to Idolaters. In Islam, spirituality is the prime quality of selection for marriage. Fornicators are therfore forbidden to marry other members of the Muslim comunity, just like the idolaters with whom intermariages are prohibited 2:221. The Bible reflects that notion too in Deut7:3,Ezra9:13,2Cor6:14. The Torah further teaches that if a Jewish man marries a gentile woman, he must divorce her, send her away, and send the children who resulted from this illegal union as well.

Spiritual affinity is an important factor to consider in human ties, especially marital ties, since in the Quran, marriage is a source of serenity on all levels
30:21"And one of His signs is that He created mates for you from yourselves that you may find rest in them, and He put between you love and compassion".
Faith should be the first criteria of selection
25:77,34:7,49:13"Verily the most honoured of you in the sight of Allah is he who is the most righteous of you".
Because they are not distant from Muslims spiritually, as opposed to idolaters, the Quran has allowed intermariages with the people of the book 5:5. But it also delivers a stern warning to guard the principles of faith very cautiously against the influence of a non-Muslim wife. There is complete silence as to whether a Muslim woman is allowed to mary a man from the people of the book, this cannot be taken as a prohibition since the Quran has explicitly denied other intermarriages, such as with idolaters. This silence could be due to the fact that in the Muslim society, let alone society worldwide, it is the man that asks for a woman's hand and the Quran in this verse is addressing Muslim men 2:221.

Shirk, meaning partnering or more specifically in religion, the act of giving to an entity or concept besides God or along with Him, any independant attribute, authority, power that otherwise belongs to God alone, is a sin that can vary in severity. The Quran attributes this sin to Muslims and non-Muslims alike 12:106,16:100,41:6-7.  However the appellation mushrikin, which denotes a persistent, willful behaviour, open acknowledgment of associating separate deities to God, is never used to define any of them, Muslims or people of the book. Only those guilty of the highest degree of shirk, knowingly and openly attributing divinity to entities other than the One God, and treating them as separate deities, are called mushrikin. This isnt the case of Trinitarians, the majority sect among Christians who, although technically accused of associating with Allah 5:72,9:30, view themselves as monotheists. Their shirk is not based on conscious intent, but rather flows from their "overstepping the bounds of truth" in their veneration of Jesus 4:171,5:77 and so the Quran uses a subtle device to separate between declared adherents to polytheism (the Idolaters of Arabia) and those who were adverse to polytheism yet had become involved in it. It refers to the polytheistic practices of the People of the Book with a verb; never are they referred to in the form of an adjective, ie mushrikin, which, as said earlier, denotes a wilful mindframe.

Again, that appellation is a particular Quranic terminology and we should look at the Quran to know who is called a mushrik. The Quran does not use this term for the Jews or the Christians. Instead it invented for them the term "people of the book" and clearly seperates between the two
5:82,22:17,98:1"Those who reject (Truth), among the People of the Book and among the mushrikin.."
In the times of the prophet Muhammad, when a Christian delegation came to him from Najran to inquire of his message, they were received at his mosque, where they prayed and resided. In 3:64 it tells them to
"come to a word that is just between us and you"
with this commonality being
"that we will not worship except Allah and not associate anything with Him and not take one another as lords instead of Allah"
meaning that they openly declare the correct tawhid and yet cannot perceive that they corrupt it in several ways, which the Quran came to correct and reform.


Some have argued that the people of the book stand excluded from the marriage law in 5:5 based on 60:10 saying Muslims may not remain married to those guilty of kufr and verses such as 9:28-33,5:17 and others qualify the people of the book as kuffar. However, the term in the Quranic language carries a wide range of understanding, from "non believer" to "active enemy of Allah" to "non adherer to the law of Allah, although not necessarily out of the fold of Islam" as in
5:47"And whoever does not judge by what Allah brought down, then those are the kafirun".
Words with wide ranges of meaning are understood, in Arabic as in any language, in their proper context. When read in context, the kuffar of 60:10 are the polytheists with whom marriage is forbidden, not the people of the book. This verse is universally known as having been revealed in a specific context, that of the treaty of Hudaybiya which involved Muslims and pagans. This is the typical error of those trying to approach the Islamic texts hastily, in their bid to draw their quick conclusions.

The exegisis of every verse in the Quran isnt done in a vacuum, but must firstly correlate with other verses on the same topic elsewhere in the Book, then must agree with the multifaceted subtlties of the Arabic language, and finally with the vast corpus of historical and prophetic traditions. 

All these areas fly far above the head of the likes of this youtuber.

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