Stories That Go Nowhere

As I walked along the road near Regent's Park Mosque in London, listening to my new Muslim friend explain the Islamic (revisionist) history of salvation, I began to feel like I was listening to Grandpa Simpson telling one of his long-winded, farfetched stories from his youth. It wasn't that it was just crazy and unconvincing. It was a story that just meandered on and didn't go anywhere.

You see, the counterfeits of God's Word are easy to spot, and I praise God for making this so. Islam is supposed to be the greatest rival to Christianity in the monotheistic religion business, but its account of salvation history is akin to an amateur trying to copy the Mona Lisa. You see some resemblance, but clearly it is not the work of a Master. God's people hear his voice, and are not fooled by the voice of another. Sure, you could probably make a syllogistic argument to differentiate the two, or provide quantitative measurements of the geometric disparities between the two, but that's rather superfluous, isn't it?

Islam could have at least taken advantage of the head start the Bible gave it, and simply copied and pasted portions of the biblical account. But it didn't, and what remains of various biblical stories in the Quran is, um, interestingly edited. I realized this as my Muslim friend was relating the Quranic account of Adam and Eve to me. OK, Adam and Eve sinned, but there was no Fall, my friend assured me. Huh? The story seems kinda pointless with no Original Sin or Protoevangel to account for evil or provide hope of salvation from it.

So, according to my friend, God forgave Adam and Eve and they were sent on their way out of the garden after Adam repents. That's it. An utterly pointless story. And on it went, down through many of the biblical prophets, with Jesus and Mohammed being last in line. The Quranic Jesus (Issa), of course, was not a Savior or Messiah, just another prophet. The message of these prophets? "Try harder," I guess. Then, supposedly, God would forgive you.

Essentially, the Quran tries to gut the biblical accounts of the Gospel, while upholding a form of the Law. The stories so-gutted, however, plain old don't make any sense since the biblical stories exist to speak of how God has, is, and will save His people, not just trumpet a shallow moralism. In the Quran, all elements, figures, and types of substitutionary atonement are gone. Those things which give the Bible unity, coherence, and Christocentricity are gone, so the stories themselves lose their meaning and become trite, meandering Grandpa Simpson tall tales. The Quranic account does not rise above the level of a trivial morality tale.

Bare moralism, however, cannot account for the pervasive and fundamental evil and suffering in our universe, much less provide a theocentric answer to the Problem of Evil: the Gospel. It doesn't understand the problem, much less provide a solution. No solution, no hope.

What happens when there is no hope? Well, Muslims respond by making up crazy stuff. In the photograph above, Muslims are seen on their holy pilgrammage (Hajj) to Mecca. There, they purge themselves of their sin by throwing rocks at pillars that represent the Devil. Sadly, 345 of these folks died this week because the crowd stampeded to these pillars to do their rock-throwing.

Dr. James White responds:

Pelting rocks with stones purges you of sin? And this from the religion that has
spawned the modern generation of apologists who mock the cross? The article
likewise notes that similar stampedes took place in 1990 (1,426 people dead) and
2004 (244 dead). Thousands dying in a mad rush to throw stones at the devil? The
contrast again is tremendous: in Islam you throw stones at the devil; in
Christianity the very Creator enters into His own creation and gives Himself as
the sacrifice that brings forgiveness to all those who are vitally united to
Him.

Category: Theoblogia