In answer to the video "Muslim Problems? Muslim Polemics!"
Lot whom Judaism does not consider a prophet but was certainly among the most God-fearing in his nation, had incest with his daughters who begat his children Gen19:30. Yet this only righteous man among his decadent and sinful people was just extracted from a nation destroyed because of sex related crimes. What is more intriguing is that according to the Hebrew text, once his eldest daughter got him drunk and finished the sexual act with him, he realized what had happened but nevertheless got drunk again the same night and had incest with his second daughter.
That is besides the issue of God not preventing the misdeed of those He had just saved. He could have simply told them that there were other men in the town of Zoar they had just reached. The reason given by the scribes that the daughters worried about the extinction of the human race, thinking no men were left upon the earth, is further discredited considering the simple fact that they certainly interracted with the people of Zoar to get the alcohol that got their father drunk with, or the nearby settlement of Abraham Gen19:28.
Regardless, this surreal tale has the 2 daughters eventually begetting 2 boys, Moab, and Ben-ammi. Moab is the ancestor of the Moabites and Ben-ammi the father of the Ammonites who just so happen to be the competing kingdoms to the west of Judah. Thus is explained the origin and inferiority of non-Jewish neighbours. This by the way is one of the known patterns of the HB where the sins of others, in explain God's disapproval, cursing or punishing of others. Instead of being Abrahamic tribes and thus equally entitled to the land as the Israelites, the Moabites and Ammonites became foreign invaders with no rights to the land. That the whole tale is a retrospective account aimed at portraying negatively a certain people, is seen from the anachronism of having Moabites or Ammonites in the patriarchal period, while there were none.
In answer to the video "Muslim Problems? Muslim Polemics!"
Assuming the Quran and Muslim tradition allow all the reprehensible things Islam's critics have attributed to the prophet, how does it in anyway discredit Islam or its prophet, especially coming from Christians? They use that angle of attack to imply that he couldnt be a prophet based on his evil deeds. What is the biblical criteria for a true prophet and does it include any of those charges, including "not marrying pre-pubescent kids"? There is a reason why nothing at all is said about uprightness of character in the biblical criteria for prophethood.
In fact one needs turning to the Quran, not the Bible, to see among the criteria of a prophetic envoy, impeccable morality as one of the primary requirements. Looking at these Christians' own bible, the characters and deeds of its most prominent prophets, then, simply based on behavior, even if one would accept every single calumny the Christ-loving evangelists have been throwing, then adding many more on top, it would still do nothing to erode Muhammad's credibility even an iota. None of the individuals the bible calls "prophets" ceased being prophets while premeditating their murders, committing adultery and debauchery, hoarding wealth and enslaving nations, idolatry, capturing countless virgins in their holy genocidal wars. Some repented and others never did, and even those that did, never repented for all of their "evil deeds". But it is besides the point.
These Judeo-christian critics lack consistency and intellectual honesty; Condemning a man as a false prophet while the book they stand for approves of prophets whose deeds should give them a heart attack if they find the supposed charges against Muhammad offensive. That is why no Muslim is bothered by such dishonest criticism. They can only hope to trouble Muslims if they argue from the angle of the Quran's standards of the prophets as sublime examples of morality, then showing that the prophet Muhammad's supposed deeds are in conflict with those standards. So long as the accusers keep the bible as a standard of morality of the true prophets, these attacks self-destruct. By the Quranic standard, one that is extremely high in comparison to the Bible, as well as the accepted standards of morality, Muhammad did not commit a single inappropriate deed for a prophet. Finally, it is interesting to note that the prophet, whom those critics claim invented the Quran, as well as committed every possible misdeed under the sun (misdeeds that still make him look like a saint in comparison to the true prophets of the Bible) went out of his way to establish a pattern of morality among the prophets that contradicts his own. He had every reason to not change a single thing of what is shamelessly attributed to the Biblical prophets, so that he might justify his supposed misdeeds all the while claiming to be a prophet of God, in line with those very prophets of the Bible.
As a final observation, among the most outspoken Christian polemicists on that particular issue, many admit, knowing the lowly moral standards of those described as true prophets in their Bible, that should one prove Muhammad's prophethood then they would not object to him marrying Aisha as described in the hadith. Here lies their dishonesty, they will defend the authenticity and veracity of the information in those particular ahadith, but will reject other reports from the same books with no slightest bit of controversy as are found as regards Aisha's age, describing Muhammad as a prophet of God, receiving revelation, experiencing miracles, either as the direct agent or indirectly, making prophecies, giving information of the unseen.
In answer to the video "Muslim Problems? Muslim Polemics!"
The 2 processes are miles appart. There was never any canonization process and debates, revisions over what the Quran's contents had to be. This is exactly what occured with the Bible with different canons over time. Nothing in the history of the Quranic text, even by the furthest stretch of imaginaton and revisionist fantasies, can be compared to the tumultuous 400 years following Jesus' death, which marked the canonization process of the Bible. During that period numerous canons of the bible were produced, each combining different gospels, rejecting and adding things from the HB and adding to the NT. Even today, the Protestant, Roman Catholic, Anglican, Greek Orthodox, Coptic, Ethiopic, Syriac churches boast their different bibles as God's Word.
According to some estimates, early Christians wrote at least twenty gospels that weren't included in the bible. The apocryphal Gospels were rejected because of many reasons including doubtful authorship yet the canonized scriptures arent that much more authentic. Some books are considered apocrypha by the western church and scripture by the eastern church. When comparing the canonical and apocryphal writings, it isnt a case of first-hand versus second-hand information. It is merely a choice between doctrinal points of view, with the choice being made by men with a doctrinal bias. Some have been partially preserved such as the Gospel of Thomas. It is different than the infancy gospel of Thomas, and lacks any mention of crucifixion or resurrection. It is considered by some scholars to be the or one of the initial documents out of which developped the other more elaborate gospels. This Gospel of Thomas was for the first 2 centuries considered holy scriptures. The same with the gospels of Matthaias or the "The Twelve", Acts of Andrew or Acts of John, Epistle of Barnabas, the Shepherd of Hermas. The last 2 books were still included in the codex sinaiticus, which is the earliest complete copy of the NT that is dated to around the year 350.
There is also the Didache and the Apocalypse of Peter. On the other hand rejected by the early church fathers were Paul’s letter to Philemon, the 2nd and 3rd letters of John, the 2nd letter of Peter and the General Epistle of Jude, all part of the canon after Christianity became the state religion. Nobody ever found the books from which the writers of the NT are sometimes quoting, as in Jn7:38,Lk11:49 or James4:5,Jude1:14-15.
The Book of Revelations was considered apocrypha for the first 200 years of the Christian Church and then suddenly became God-inspired. However even as late as the 4th-century, many Christians either rejected it in favor of the Apocalypse of Peter, or believed that they should both be included in the canon. Revelations is a book of warnings to the deviant churches that were being absorbed by paganism, and consolation to those that remained distinctively Christian, containing retrospective prophecies betraying its restricted historical context ie the Roman empire, using mythical and pagan symbolisms, sometimes gross caricatures in its references to heaven/hell, God, Jesus, the angels or Satan, as well as symbolisms from certain passages of the HB. It has no relevance to modern times or in predicting events that are still awaiting fulfillement, contrary to the countless fruitless attempts of later Christians who have all failed in taking the book out of the historical context for which it was meant in their bid to instill fear and hope in their congregations, as well demonize whoever was/is seen as a major threat.
The Epistle of St James was ignored for centuries until the Council of Trent put it in the canon in 1563. That book received a cool reception, obviously as it appeals greatly to JEwish scriptures, rejects the Pauline concept of "faith alone".
In the 2nd century, Marcion who claimed to have known Paul, composed the first NT, calling it "Evangelicon" which he attributed to Paul himself, and appended ten of Paul's epistles to it. He rejected all of Jewish scriptures, based on YHWH's cruelty versus Paul's loving god. One can argue he was right in a sense, nothing could be further in terms of similarities than the Gods and their plan for creation than the Gods of the HB and the NT.
