Islam and apologetics

Submitted by dhimmi no more (United States), Aug 16, 2020 at 07:12

You wrote:

>Christianity's first 300 years was as a persecuted minority religion. Therefore, it developed the art of apologetics ie of explaining and expounding the faith to non-believers while countering criticism.

Agree

> However, Islam began as the official religion of an empire. Outsiders were put under extreme pressure to join, not so much by argument as by the carrot and stick policy, while non-Muslims were prevented by persecution from proselytizing Muslims.

This did not stop outsiders, in the very erudite Christian communities in the Middle East be it in Syria Egypt or Iraq,.the likes of John of Damascus and The Christian al-Kindi (his book is available on line) that wrote very interesting and sophisticated apologetics with very critical examination of the message of Islam.

>The result was that Islam has little in the way of a system of apologetics,

Well, the author of the Qur'an's main message is polemics mainly against Trinitarian Christianity and Judaism and total rejection of everyone else. And this is why we see responses from the likes of John of Damascus and al-Kindi as well as Maimonides (he called Muhammad a crazy man). Also, notice that the Islamic literary sources provide, some good and some really bad, Islamic apologetics

> and when Muslims arrive in a free country, they do not know how to react to criticism except by the traditional one of trying to silence it. But when that fails, the advantage goes to the non-Muslim.

Well, Muslims moving to the West believe that Islam is the truth and with very little effort every one in the West will be reciting the Shahada and then they realize that there is very powerful criticism of Islam in the West. Some leave Islam and some become more religious. There seems to be no happy medium.

The internet, no doubt, opened the flood gaits of very critical examination of Islam, the Qur'an and the Islamic literary sources. Credit must go to the Egyptian priest Zakaria Botros. He is a native Arabic speaker and he was able to read the Islamic literary sources in Arabic and through the medium of the internet he was able to deliver scathing critique of Islam. His message was clear and I'm paraphrasing: Are Muslims aware of the literary disasters in their books the likes of the "breast feeding of the adult"? and in response to the Islamic claim that the Bible is corrupted but not the Qur'an, Botros asks: And how about the "stoning verse" and how come it is not included in today's Qur'an? This is the verse that we are told is not in the Qur'an because the palm leaf that was used to write the verse was eaten by a hungry goat. And these are only two examples, and again through the medium of the internet millions of Arabic speaking Muslims in the Middle East were listening to his message.

Young Arabic speaking Muslims started to read their Islamic sources, because the internet brought the library to one's computer screen at home. And now the Arabic language internet is very full of Islamic apologetics, some is good but most is really bad.

What does the future hold? Only Allahu A'lam.

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