Dr David Wood - Islam's Misconceptions and the Importance of Historical Evidence

Hearts of Oak Podcast

Shownotes and Transcript

Dr. David Wood joins Hearts of Oak to recount his transformative journey from atheism to Christianity. Sparked by profound discussions with Nabeel Qureshi during his time in jail. Focusing on apologetics regarding Islam, he emphasizes the need for Christians to address Islam's global ambitions for dominance and engage with its challenges. The conversation delves into Islam's complexities, including misconceptions, Muhammad's role, and controversial practices, shedding light on control mechanisms within the religion. Highlighting the growing curiosity to critically examine faith, the discussion urges critical engagement with Islam, support for individuals leaving the faith, and challenges foundational beliefs through historical and logical analyses. By comparing Jesus and Muhammad, the dialogue aims to encourage critical thinking and foster open discussions to prompt introspection and reshape perspectives on faith.

Dr David Wood is an American evangelical missionary, Christian apologist and polemicist. He is currently head of the Acts 17 Apologetics Ministry. He is a member of the Society of Christian Philosophers and the Evangelical Philosophical Society.
After converting to Christianity, he earned degrees in biology and philosophy, and a PhD in the philosophy of religion.

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Interview recorded 15.7.24

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Transcript

Hearts of Oak:

I'm delighted to have Dr. David Wood with us today. David, thank you so much for your time.

Dr David Wood:

Hey, how you doing, Peter?

Hearts of Oak:

All good. All the better for seeing you and better for seeing you in London when you're over with the absolutely awesome conference that you and Jay and many others were involved in. So thank you for taking the time and coming over to Blighty.

Dr David Wood:

Yeah, that was fun.

Hearts of Oak:

It was good fun. Obviously, people can find you @Acts17David on Twitter and @ApologeticsRoadshow over on YouTube. Make use of both of those resources. But David, I've followed you for, I mean, quite a number of years on the engagement on Islam. And obviously I've known Jay for back when he was in London. So 17, 18 years ago, I first connected with Jay and was opened up into the world of engaging Islam and polemics and something I didn't understand before. And I've got to slowly understand and marvel at his ability to engage, as is your ability. But can I maybe step back a little bit?

You've put out videos about you being an atheist and becoming a Christian. And I'm curious about that journey before we get on to your engagement on actually deconstructing Islam and taking it apart and destroying it, absolutely. But your conversion, tell us about that.

Dr David Wood:

I grew up as an atheist. I don't remember ever believing in God when I was a kid, but it wasn't really an issue. I wasn't thinking about it. It just wasn't an issue wherever I was. I was probably, I don't know, 13, 14 when I realized I was an atheist and eventually ended up in jail. And whenever I say that, atheists go, oh, you're saying that all atheists go to jail. No, I'm not. That was me. That was me. Okay. That was me. I'm one of the people who had a jailhouse conversion. So I got to jail and I met a Christian in there. This was a guy who had turned himself in for 21 felonies. So he became a Christian, went, turned himself in for everything he'd ever done. I thought that was the most idiotic thing I'd ever heard about in my life. So I started talking to this guy and he enraged me so much that I was, I started studying Christianity just to, just to argue with this guy. And, uh, uh, anyway, a while later, uh, took a while, but I eventually became a Christian, uh, had to serve some time, uh, got out, went to college. And so, yeah, that's, that's, uh, that's, that's the short version. If people want the law, if people want the long version, they can, they can, uh, check it out on my channel.

Hearts of Oak:

It's on your YouTube channel. Absolutely. What is your, cause you kind of think, I mean, I grew up pastor's kids, so very different background. Uh, you're growing up where you, you never went to church, never went to Sunday school. That just wasn't part of your upbringing.

Dr David Wood:

No, the only time I went to church was if I, and I never went to church when I was like little, uh, eventually we moved and we were closer to my grandmother and my aunt. But if I were visiting my grandmother or my aunt then and it was a Sunday then we'd go to church and I just remember I'd go in there and I'd sit right beside the little clock on the wall and I would just stare at that thing for the entire service and then as soon as it was done I would bolt for the door because they would have like donuts or brownies downstairs and so I'd bolt downstairs and grab a bunch of donuts and stuff.

Hearts of Oak:

But it wasn't on your agenda at all no you you talked about being in prison and I've read Nabil Qureshi's book and you touch on that and that having an impact on you, meeting him. And what was that connection like?

Dr David Wood:

Well, we just, we, we became best friends in college. So we were both on the, uh, speech and debate team at Old Dominion University. And, um, we went on, uh, uh, you go to different competitions and stuff. So this is, this is after I was locked up. So I got, uh, once I got out, I went to, uh, school, met Nabil Qureshi and we ended up sharing a hotel room on a school trip.

And of course, you know, I'd been a Christian for several years now. He'd been a Muslim all his life.

And I'm sitting in the hotel room and I see this guy's a Muslim, but I don't, you don't know if he's like a hardcore Muslim or, you know, liberal Muslim or something like that. So I was wondering, I'm sitting there reading my Bible in a year and I pray, I say, God, if you want me to talk to this guy, let him start it because I don't want people to accuse me of attacking the Muslim or something like that. And anyway, little, little while after that, I'm sitting there reading my Bible and he He goes, he goes, so are you a hardcore Christian? I was like, all right. Come on. All right. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. And so we ended up, we ended up talking a lot that weekend about Islam and Christianity. We just became, we just became best friends. We got along really well. We ended up hanging out all the time together and so on. And yeah, so we spent the next basically four years arguing about Christianity and Islam. he eventually became a Christian. And when he became a Christian, I actually thought, oh, cool. I'm done with Islam right now because the only reason I was studying Islam was because my best friend was a Muslim. If he'd been something else, I'd have been studying that. And so, yeah, he became a, he became a Christian. I thought, ah, cool. I'm done with this stuff. I can get back to stuff I'm more interested in, which is almost anything. But yeah, it was actually part, part of the reason I stayed dealing with Islam was kind of watching the stand that he took for the gospel, and I was just like, wow, Muslims make really cool Christians. And by the way, there's a reason for that.

There's kind of a flip side of what's a negative, and it ends up being a positive. But Islam puts all these psychological barriers in front of people, in front of Muslims, to keep them from leaving Islam. So Muslims are told their entire lives that the worst possible sin you can commit is the sin of shirk, associating a partner with Allah. So if you say Jesus is Lord, you've just associated a partner with Allah. That's the worst possible. That's a one-way ticket to hell. So saying Jesus is Lord is the worst thing you can possibly do. Two, they know they have to give up their families if they convert to Islam, or at the very least that their relationships with their families are going to be very, very, very strained. And three, the penalty for leaving Islam is death. Doesn't happen a lot in the West, but you always have to be kind of looking over your shoulder if you leave Islam. So we're Christians. We preach the good news.

And when a Muslim, what a Muslim hears when we preach the good news is, oh, so you're telling me to believe this thing that's going to have to, that'll cause me to have to give up my family and maybe get my head chopped off and it's a one-way ticket to hell. And you guys call this the good news because it sounds like the worst news ever. So that's kind of a negative. Islam makes it very difficult to leave Islam. But the positive side, the positive side, I said there's There's a reversal here. The positive side is that when a Muslim says, you know what? I may have to give up my family and this may get my head chopped off. And I've been told all my life this will get me sent to hell. But you know what? I want to know Jesus anyway. That's someone who will stand up for Christ. And so, yeah, I just ended up sticking with it.

Hearts of Oak:

What was, what were you, before we get into that, what was your interest before? What kind of pathway may you have followed if someone like Nabeel Quresh had not come into your world and you'd understood the importance of presenting Christ to Muslims?

Dr David Wood:

Well, I was more interested in the objections of atheists because that was my background. So I probably would have done that. And that was the other part of it, why I ended up staying with Islam was that as I was thinking about that, like after Nabeel became a Christian, as I was thinking about what I wanted to focus on, it was just like, almost every Christian apologist out there deals with atheism. And back then there weren't a lot of Christians who were dealing with Islam. So you're talking early 2000s, like, you know, shortly after 9-11. If you went into Christian apologetics back then, you were either dealing with the objections of atheists or you're dealing with cults or or something like that, there were not a lot of people dealing with Islam. It was Jay Smith over there in the UK. There was Tony Costa in Canada. There's Samuel Green down in Australia and a couple of people in the US, but it just wasn't an emphasis. And so there was also that point where, okay, maybe I need to not be doing what I'm most interested in and do what's needed. And so I started focusing on that. Fortunately, it's a different time. Lots of people deal with to Islam now. So these are actually good days.

Hearts of Oak:

Well, of course, the starting point is, why would you engage with Islam? Surely Christianity, Judaism, and Islam are all three of the great Abrahamic faiths. So why would you even want to engage on that when someone is following the great Abrahamic faith and therefore is good?

Dr David Wood:

I know you're not serious, but no, it's funny. So you've, we're told, we're told in, we're told in the New Testament what the core of the gospel is. So Jesus spent a few years with his followers. But when you look at the book of Acts, the message they actually went out and were preaching afterwards, this is the takeaway. The main takeaway for them was that Jesus died on the cross for sins. He rose from the dead and he's Lord. So you've got death, resurrection and deity. Those are the points they hit wherever they went. So that was the core of the gospel message for them. And we're also told in the New Testament that false teachers and false prophets are going to come. What are these false teachers and false prophets going to do? They're going to lead people away from that core message. And then you get down to Muhammad, and Muhammad comes along. And Muhammad says, hey, you Christians, you believe in God? So do I. You believe that God sent prophets? So do I. You believe in these revelations, these scriptures? So do I. When it comes to Jesus, you believe that he's born of a virgin? So do I. You believe that he lived the most miraculous life in history? So do I. you believe that he's the word, so do I. You believe that he's the Messiah, so do I. I agree with you on all these things.

But there are just these three things we have to get past. One, he didn't die on the cross for sins. Two, he didn't rise from the dead. And three, he's not Lord. So if we can just get past those things, we'll all be on the same page. And it's like, my goodness, we've been waiting for you, buddy. You are like the perfect, you are the perfect ultimate example of a false prophet. Someone who agrees with us on all these other things and says, yeah, we're this close to being on the same page. Just drop the entire core of the Christian gospel. And so, yeah, we were warned. We were warned about Muhammad and we definitely have to respond to him.

Hearts of Oak:

Now, I want to go into a lot of the issues that you engage with on Islam, and especially the person of Muhammad. But you touched on people focus on atheism and see that as the threat. You obviously see Islam as a threat that's not being focused on. Tell us about that clash, because is it safer to focus on Islam? Is the people are blind to Islam? What is it? Why is the reason why the focus is on one threat and not the other?

Dr David Wood:

Well, it's just it was just atheism was a bigger issue in the West. So in the in the 80s and 90s, when apologetics started becoming more of an issue for people, and it was because you had Christian families and their kids are going off to college and their kids are coming back. Their kids weren't coming back Muslims. Their kids were going off to college and taking some philosophy classes and becoming skeptical. And if your kids had been raised in a church but hadn't really been given any reasons, in other words, they hadn't dealt with apologetics at all, and they didn't know how to respond to issues, and then you were actually challenged on your faith, some of those kids would just leave Christianity and become atheists. So people started focusing on that. And it's the other issue as far as cults where it wasn't Muslims knocking at your door, it was Jehovah's Witnesses or Mormons. So people were responding to what was kind of an issue for them and Islam wasn't really an issue in the 70s, 80s and 90s and so on. So that by the time Islam started becoming an issue.

Christian apologetics was just veered towards completely other things. And so, yeah, so yeah, that's why I started focusing on Islam. But no, it's definitely not, it's definitely not, not, not safer by any means. But as far as, as far as the, why it's so relevant, there's nothing in atheism that tells you one way or another how you're supposed to behave. So you could have an atheist who's, you know, a really mean, aggressive guy. You can have an atheist who, I don't care what people believe. Like my friend, I'm friends with the guy, the apostate prophet. His attitude is, look, I don't believe this stuff, but I don't really care what other people believe. It's not an issue for me. Like I'm an atheist. I don't believe anything happens after death. But if you believe something, what do I care? Right. And that makes sense from an atheistic perspective. So it only makes sense from an atheistic perspective to be concerned about something that's actually like causing you harm in your life or something like that. So he focuses on Islam.

There's one religion out there that wants to execute me because he's an ex-Muslim. So he focuses on that. But apart from that, there's nothing in atheism that tells you you have to subjugate the world or anything like that. And you could have all different kinds of atheists. But part of Islam is the goal of ultimately subjugating the world and making all religion for Allah. law. So even with Muslims, you'll have different kinds of Muslims. So you'll have peaceful Muslims, you'll have very aggressive Muslims, but it's not like atheism where the ideology doesn't tell you what to do. The ideology tells you that your ultimate goal is to subjugate the world. And so Islam is, even with a diversity among Muslims, Islam is always going to be a bigger issue because when people take it seriously, then they have to start taking these issues seriously about confronting other people and, yeah, ultimately subjugating the world.

Hearts of Oak:

Well, that's a concept that doesn't really connect with Christians and those in the West. Generally, they think there's a pluralism and your freedom to believe what you think. And then Islam comes along and seems to be to want that dominance, to want to force its opinion that you can accept anything, but you must accept Islam. You don't have that freedom. I don't think that many Christians, certainly in the UK, probably the same for the US, I don't think they understand that desire to dominate that comes from Islam.

Dr David Wood:

Yeah, they don't. And you have lots of Christians who are, who are, you know, they might be ashamed of the history of Christianity. They might say, oh, well, you know, there were times when Christians tried to conquer people and stuff. So who are we to complain about Islam? Not realizing, well, you're not told, you weren't told to conquer the world. It's just a thing that humans do. too. So anyone might do that. You could have various ideologies where just because there are human beings involved, human beings very frequently want to make our way the way for everyone else. But Islam is different in that it actually calls for it. So as a Christian, if Christians start going around killing people, then you as a Christian could say, you're not supposed to be doing that. Here, let me show you why. Look, Jesus says right here, here. My kingdom is not of this world. He breaks it down to here. He's not fighting for an earthly kingdom. You can explain why they're wrong. You can say, look, it says right here, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. You're not supposed to hate everyone and try to kill everyone. So you have a basis within Christianity for saying, no, you shouldn't be doing that. In Islam, it's the reverse, where if you're peaceful and you just want to get along with people and so on, you can actually say, hey, if you're a Muslim, you need to be looking at what you're supposed supposed to be doing here.

And so, yeah, it's just lots of people think, oh, you know, different religions have had their issues. Islam may just have a little bit of an issue now that you have some aggressive guys in it, but it can mellow out after time. But yeah, when one of the main goals of the religion is subjugating the world, that's going to keep popping up, and we keep seeing it pop up for a reason.

Hearts of Oak:

It is a possibly difficult issue to engage on. Okay, so moving on to um and I don't know if jihadi tears is available on your website because I love the mug

Dr David Wood:

Oh, yeah. Yeah, I have a little online store, because I got this one made for live streams, but people asked where they could get it. So, yeah, they can get it in my little merch store.

Hearts of Oak:

Okay, it's available there. I just want to point that out. all right the so engaging on Islam um many people don't many people are afraid although they don't know they're afraid um where do you start is it then maybe start with the person of Muhammad um that we are told peace be upon him he is a prophet he must be respected and whether or not he exists or not I'm not very sure but how do you let's start with the person of Muhammad because Because I know that my good friend Calvin Robinson here in the UK calls it Muhammadism, those who follow Muhammad. And then you think, actually, is this about him or is it about something else? So how do you begin to tackle that issue of that individual?

Dr David Wood:

Well, yeah, people who call it Muhammadism and point out that it seems to be about Muhammad, absolutely correct. Absolutely correct. Correct. If you look at Islam, I mean, the word, you can learn a lot about a religion by kind of what its name is, like Christianity emphasizes Christ in the name of the religion. Islam, the word Islam means submission, and in its religious context means submission to Allah, refers to submission to Allah.

And so Muslims will use that as sort of a sales pitch. Hey, Christians and Jews, you believe in God. You believe in submitting to God, right? Well, this is just the religion of submission to God. Why would you be opposed to that? Well, Islam doesn't just tell you that you must submit to Allah. It tells you how you submit to Allah. And you submit to Allah by obeying Muhammad in everything. And I'm not making that up. I'm not exaggerating this. Surah 4, verse 65, among other passages, Surah 4, verse 65. Says that Muslims can have no real faith until they make Muhammad judge in all disputes, have no resistance against anything that he decides and submit to him with full submission.

And so here's the religion where you submit to Allah. OK, how do you do that? By mindlessly obeying anything this guy over here says, this guy who's an illiterate 7th century Arabian caravan robber. You have to mindlessly obey everything he says. If you have any doubt about what he says or you question anything, he says, you're not a real Muslim. And so, yeah, the religion is all about Muhammad.

And it would be one thing if he was a really, really great, nice guy. It's something else entirely if he's a guy who calls for the violent subjugation of the world, a guy who says that apostates have to be beheaded, A guy who says that Jews and Christians, because they have true revelations, can accept an inferior status in society and pay tribute money to Muslims in honor in order to not be killed. But everyone else, they either have to be they have to convert or die.

It's just it's just an entirely different category, especially when you look at some of you start getting down to the moral issues with with Muhammad, things like.

A child marriage, he married a girl who was six years old. He consummated the marriage when she was nine years old. And you can look down to today, you have Muslims who are the world champions of defending child marriage. Daniel Hakikachu, you can consummate a marriage with a five-year-old, a six-year-old, a seven-year-old. He argues this, he defends this, he tries to defend it academically. You have Ali Dawa, who said that if his daughter was nine years old and she got her first menstrual, she got her first monthly period, then he said he would tell her she's ready to be married. And keep in mind, the Quran doesn't even require that. Aisha hadn't even reached puberty. So Ali Dawa, as revolting as it is to say, I would tell my nine-year-old daughter she's ready to be married. He's actually better than Muhammad who didn't wait, who didn't wait for a first, uh, didn't wait for a menstrual cycle. And so this is, this is the kind of guy you're dealing with. I mean, Muhammad again, had sex with a nine-year-old girl. He took the wife of his own adopted son after he caused the divorce by seeing her practically naked and started lusting after her and, uh, eventually married her after he caused the divorce when his adopted son's like, Oh, oh, if you want her, then you take her. And so he bought, owned, sold, and traded black African slaves. Those are the guys who institutionalized the African slave trade long before the United States ever existed.

They're just amazing stories about the issues that this guy had. And they're in the Muslim sources. They're right there in the Muslim sources. So I'll just share one story that sort of gives you an idea of what you're dealing with here. Once Muhammad got caught in the bed of his wife, Hafsa, having sex with his slave girl. Now he was allowed to have sex with his slave girls. They understood that they didn't want it happening in their own beds, right? His, his wives didn't want him having sex with his slave girls in their beds. That was the issue. So Hafsa goes out to run some errands. She comes back early. Muhammad is in her bed with his sex slave. She objects to this. She goes and complains to the other wives and then to stop his wives from complaining. Like, what are you, you're rolling around with a slave girl in our bed, the bed that I sleep in. And then I'm about to go to bed there and you were just, you know, in there with your slave girl.

So he, so in order to deal with his wives complaining, he says, fine, look, I'll never, I swear by Allah, I will never have sex with that slave girl again. And so then his wives are, oh, okay, that's fine. And then he gets the revelations in that are the opening verses of Surah 66. Anyone could read these, the opening verses of Surah 66, Allah tells him to break his oath. He said, I didn't tell you, I didn't tell you to break that. I didn't tell you to make that oath. I didn't tell you to swear that to me. And so he says, hey, you break that oath. And so Muhammad went back to having sex with his slave girl. He eventually, that's Mary the cop. That one was Mary the cop. He eventually got her pregnant.

So, but I mean, think about this. This is Muhammad swears an oath to Allah. Allah tells him to break the oath because, well, I didn't tell you to make that oath and therefore you can break it. Well, think about that. Like 99.9999999% of all oaths that anyone ever takes were not commanded to you by God. So that means anyone could just break any oath at any time because God didn't order you to do it. And that's what you actually find in the Muslim sources that Muhammad is constantly being told, here's the justification for this horrible behavior that you're doing. And it comes from God. God is the one who's justifying your behavior right now. And if you look at the justifications, it makes all sorts of really, really terrible behavior completely acceptable.

Hearts of Oak:

So you're telling us that you can come up with voices in your head and then you can announce that is the way according to God to live by. And then you can do whatever you like. I don't know what to make of that.

Dr David Wood:

It is. is if you have enough people following you, if you get enough followers, you can silence anyone who criticizes you. I call this, this is a version of what I call Islam's 99-1 rule. And I usually talk about that in the context of apologetics with, I mean, Islamic apologetics with people like Zakir Naik. Because you sit there and listen to Zakir Naik, if you have any idea what he's talking about, you know, if you understand the issues that he's talking about, you know he's spouting complete nonsense. But the audience he's talking to, they don't know about any of this. They just agree with whatever he's saying And so the rule that has always been part of Islam is, If you're telling a crowd something Even if you're making it up If 99% of the people are just going to go along with what you say and believe you And 1% are going to object and go I'm not sure about that Or no, I know you're wrong about this Or this sounds suspicious to me If only 1% of people are going to object The 99% can silence the 1% So it's always been the way to do things in Islam So if you go out and you convince a bunch of people in Arabia to mindlessly agree with anything you say, and someone objects and says, hey, wait, I think we have a problem here. Well, the 99 can silence the one. And so that's been built into Islam from the beginning. It's the same in Islam now.

Hearts of Oak:

So you approach Islam, and what part of it do you tackle? You've got the Quran itself with its gibberish stories. You've then got the theology and all the books written about it. You've got Muhammad's life story. You've got all the practices that happen. I mean, you look at this range, and it's much more complicated. In Christianity, you have the Bible. You've got Genesis to Revelation. Revelation, you read it. It's fairly simple. You can understand the vast majority, if not the whole of the Bible. Maybe we'll leave a bit of Revelation aside in some of the other books. But I mean, it's simple to understand.

The Islam seems to be much more complicated and convoluted and purposely designed to confuse people. So how do you start with unpacking it?

Dr David Wood:

Islam is extremely confusing. If you just start reading the Quran, you're going to be confused. Like when I see Christians who say, hey, I'm interested in doing Christian apologetics and dealing with Islam and so on. Should I read the Quran? I usually tell them that's going to confuse you at the beginning. Hold off on that. You might want to look up certain, you might want to look up the verses on certain topics that you're interested in. But as far as just sitting down and reading the Quran, you're not going to get anything out of it. You're probably going to give up around midway through surah two you're going to give up and so if you think that's essential to doing apologetics with Islam you're going you're not going to last long because you're going to give up and say this is too confusing uh but yeah the Quran's just it's completely disorganized it jumps around when they arranged it they basically arranged it from longest apart from the opening prayer uh they basically arranged it from longest chapters the shortest chapters so the chapters are completely out of out of like historical order um and so very confusing there You can only figure out.

These passages mean or what the correct order is by going outside the Quran to these massive multi-volume collection of stories called the Hadiths and to the Sira literature and so on. And the impact that that has had on the Muslim community over the centuries is that, keep in mind, when I cited Surah 4, verse 65, that you can't have any resistance against anything Muhammad has said. You can't come up with your own interpretation of things. That's the sin of innovation in Islam. That's a one-way ticket to hell. If you come up with your own interpretation, your own understanding, that's a one-way ticket to hell. So the result of the Quran being very, very confusing and requiring these massive multi-volume collections of other sources and commentaries in order to understand what the Quran is even saying, the impact, the practical impact that it's had on the Muslim community over the centuries is you don't want to just read the Quran for yourself, because if you do, you're going to misunderstand some things and you might fall into some massive sins as far as coming up with your own understanding, misunderstanding passages, and you're actually...

Going against Muhammad's understanding on some of these issues. And so you're actually in a lot of trouble not realizing it. So you don't want to do that. So the impact that this has had is you either need to learn all of it. So you learn the Quran and the commentaries, the Hadith, the Syria, you learn all of that so that you understand the Quran accurately, or sit down, shut up and listen to what your scholar says. The scholar who understands all this stuff, listen to what that guy says. And so your average Muslim, and this is shocking because we think of Muslims as very knowledgeable about their religion because we see them go to the mosque, we see them dressed in a certain way. No, Islam emphasizes that Muslims need to understand these basic practices and they need to do these things. They need to fast during Ramadan. They need to dress a certain way. They need to take the pilgrimage. But as far as understanding their book, it was shocking to me how little Muslims know about their book. In fact, the vast majority of times, the vast majority of times when I'm quoting the Quran to Muslims, they have no clue what I'm talking about because they're just not familiar with it. And that's kind of sad because you're trying to expose Muhammad by quoting these passages and they don't know what you're talking about. But there's a positive side to that as well.

Namely that when you're showing Muslims what the Quran says about all these issues, the question that rises in their mind is, wait a minute, why have I never heard this from my Imam? Why have I never heard this from my Sheikh? Why am I hearing these things from this Christian only? And so there can be a kind of light switch moment eventually like, wait a minute, have they been filtering information from, have they been hiding this stuff from me? Have my leaders been hiding this information about the Quran and Muhammad from me? And why am I getting this stuff from the Christian and so on? So that can actually encourage them to start studying Islam for themselves. And at which point they're going to be on their way out of Islam.

Hearts of Oak:

It doesn't be a perfect setup for a cult because you do something that is only accessible to a few people in a language that only Allah can speak in. That's a bit of a bummer that you have a God that can only speak in one language, but that you've only got one language and the vast majority don't understand it. And therefore, they just do what they're told to do in a robotic fashion. It does seem like a perfect setup for having a worldwide cult.

It is. It's considered a big religion just because of the size of it. If it were smaller, you would consider it a cult. But yeah, cult tactics are at the core of Islam. If you look at the tactics of any cult, that's exactly what Muhammad was doing the entire time.

When you engage with people when they begin to see through the nonsense that is in front of them um and realizing that they are born you're born a Muslim as a Christian you you make a choice later in life but Islam you're supposedly born into it and you're stuck with that when they begin to realize what they're born into doesn't really make sense um it's it's difficult for an individual to walk away because Islam is not just a religious belief, but it's tied to many cultures. And there's a huge difficulty to walk away from that which defines you as a person, I guess.

Dr David Wood:

Yeah this ties into what I was saying earlier about Islam placing these psychological barriers, in the way of Muslims so if Muslim leaves in the west the main issue he has to deal with is okay I might be shunned by my family and when I say family I don't just mean mom and dad I mean aunts uncles cousins your entire community if you are in an area let's say of London where the, you've got the Muslim community and your family is part of the Muslim community and so on you say I don't really believe this. Your life gets very, very difficult. So the inclination would be lots of times to just, okay, I'll just keep going with the flow. I'll deal with this at some point later in life.

That's in the West. If it's in a Muslim country and you're leaving Islam, that's a different story entirely because now you might have to deal with legal authorities. You can have to deal with your family just doing something to you and so on. But yeah, Islam makes it very very, very difficult, regardless of where it happens. Islam always makes it very difficult to leave Islam. And as far as how Christians should respond to this, keep in mind, Muslims are in a position very similar to the first century. If a Jewish teenager heard the preaching of Jesus and wanted to go follow Jesus, well, that might lead to problems with his family if his family rejected Jesus and so on. And so it's kind of a similar situation, but it's interesting because some of the same principles would apply where Jesus tells people that they may have to give up various things, but you're actually getting more. So you may have to give up, you may lose your family, but you're getting a much bigger family. And so Christians actually need to make this common knowledge among Muslims that, hey, if you guys have to give up your family, if you are shunned by your family because you leave Islam, guess what? We're going to take care of you. You have a much bigger family out here waiting for you.

Hearts of Oak:

Tell me about how you engage it. What for you is the big thing? I saw you having a celebration with Jay on the holes in the Qur'an and how that's come out, the different Qur'ans. Then you have the history that Islam teaches, and you find out that that begins to unravel as well. Which part of it do you see as being the main focus maybe at the moment or over the last few years, certainly for your work personally?

Dr David Wood:

Well, I've always been pretty much the same in that you have the arguments that Muslims are using to show that Muhammad is a true prophet. So we want to respond to those kinds of arguments. But also, what are the arguments that are most effective in dealing with Islam? So what are the arguments you use to expose Islam? What are the arguments that are most effective at exposing Muhammad and the Quran? and then how do you respond to the arguments that Muslims use to show that Islam is true. So those are the kind of issues that I've always focused on. And if you look at the arguments that Muslims used over the past several decades, the reason the holes in the narrative.

Talking about the holes in the narrative about the preservation of the Quran, the reason that was such a big issue was that was one of their main arguments, if not their main argument for a couple of decades, was this argument from perfect preservation.

They argued that the Quran has been miraculously preserved, dot for dot, letter for letter, and so on, from the time of Muhammad. I have Muslim apologetics books that say that there has not been one single letter changed in any single Quran manuscript, any single copy of the Quran from the time of Muhammad to the day. It's complete nonsense.

It was a lie. This goes back to what I was calling the 99-1 rule. If If you're going to tell a group of people, hey, the Quran's been perfectly preserved, it's a miracle. Because you might wonder, if you're not familiar with this, you might be wondering, wait, why would a book being perfectly preserved be a miracle? I mean, if I take a copy of some book on my shelf and I find out this book is just, it's never changed or something like that, why would that mean that it's from God? But the reasoning is that if every time someone sits down to copy the Quran, they are miraculously preserved from making any sort of like scribal error or something like that, then this seems like it's god preserving it so that's the idea problem is it was it was just complete nonsense I mean if you if you go to the Muslim sources about the compilation of the Quran you find entire chapters came up missing because uh Muslims didn't recite those enough and they forgot them because early on they were trying to preserve it through memory um you find large passages of the Quran came up missing over 200 verses were lost just from surah 33 because the only people who had those passages memorized died in battle and they actually had a copy but Aisha's sheep He ate the only copy.

So, I mean, you go to the Muslim sources and Allah can't even protect the Quran from a sheep. And you're talking about this perfect, miraculous preservation. So verses are lost.

So that's what you find when you look at the Muslim sources. Then you can examine manuscripts. You can put manuscripts side by side. You find all kinds of differences, tens of thousands of differences when you examine Quran manuscripts. scripts. And then you get to the issue of different kirat in the world today. So there are actually different versions of the Quran that are used in different parts. Since the Ottoman Empire was the main empire of Islam, since that was the caliphate for centuries, their version, the version of the Quran that was popular with them, the Haftz Quran, that became most popular. And that was eventually what was used in compiling the 1924 Cairo edition of the Quran, the Haas version. So for most, for lots of Muslims, they're reading, they're reading that version of the Quran, but they're, that's not universal. You can go to, you can go to other parts of the Muslim world and they use different, different versions of the Quran. And so it was just a, it was just complete nonsense. It was a lie. It was at some point, some Muslim leaders just made this up and they spread the lie. And then people's confidence in Islam is based on this lie. It's the same thing with the scientific miracles arguments where they said the Quran is filled with all these scientific miracles.

It's the same thing with arguing that because of Muhammad's amazing character, he must be a true prophet. No one could be this awesome and amazing if he weren't a prophet. These arguments only work in an atmosphere of ignorance. They only work in an atmosphere where no one knows about any of this. And guess what? That was the situation in the West when Muslim Da'is, their version of evangelists, these are people who invite people to Islam, when their preachers came to an area and started saying, oh, our book's been perfectly preserved, dot for dot, letter for letter. There are all these scientific miracles.

Muhammad's the greatest man ever. No one was in any position to respond to any of this. And so they were able to actually convince people and win converts based on complete total deception. And so one of the main goals of me and many others over the years has been just to respond to these. And fortunately, over time, they collapse. You don't find lots of Muslims using the perfect preservation argument anymore. You won't find any other dawah guys using this anymore, unless they know they're talking to someone who is completely clueless. They wouldn't dare try that with Bob from Speaker's Corner or Chris. They wouldn't dare try that with anyone nowadays, because they know it's a lie and they know it's been exposed. Same thing with the scientific miracles argument. They wouldn't dare use that with any knowledgeable Christian. They would only use that if they walk up to someone, hey, do you know anything about Islam? Oh, you don't know anything about Islam? Oh, let me tell you about Islam. They'll use it there. And so if you know that their arguments only work in an atmosphere of ignorance, because they're based on complete deception, the way to respond to that is to just.

Make an informed population. Make sure that there's always someone around who knows about this stuff. And the dawah, the dawah will never work. So that's one side of it. And the other, the other side is actually challenging Islam, exposing the Quran, giving arguments that Muhammad is a false prophet. And there's just, just plenty of that out there.

Hearts of Oak:

Because again, you grew up in the West and you have criticism of Christianity. If you, I grew up pastor's kid and massive criticism at school and debate and argument. and you have that, Islam seems to be a protected characteristic where you don't have. So your experience with Nabel, talking to him and beginning to expose, most Muslims do not get that. Most kids at school, when they learn about Islam, they learn it's perfect. With Christianity, they may be told, actually, there may be concerns of this or this historical document, and they have criticism early on. Islam doesn't have that. So it is difficult, I'm assuming, for a Muslim to walk away from something that they believe is perfect and their whole world is based on.

Dr David Wood:

And that's why actually responding to the arguments and using arguments to expose Muhammad is so absolutely essential. And fortunately, Christians are catching on to this because back when I was starting, the main response I got from Christians was, look, if you want to preach the gospel to Muslims, just preach the gospel. Don't ever criticize Muhammad or the Quran. That's just going to drive them away. And they had no idea how dangerous that idea was. So I'll just give an example. You mentioned Nabil. Nabil told me after he became a Christian, after he became a Christian, he said, we spent years examining the evidence for the death of Jesus, for his resurrection, for the reliability of the New Testament, for belief in his divine nature. We spent years going over all this. And he said, I was actually thinking, when we would go through the evidence, when we would watch lectures and debates, when we would read books on these issues, he said, I would be thinking.

Wow, Christians have a much better case than I thought they did. They actually have good reasons for everything they believe here. He said he was realizing that as a Muslim, but he said what kept him being a Muslim at that time was he was thinking, but even if they can show me with 99% certainty that Christianity is true, that all these claims are true, even if they show me with 99% certainty that all these claims are true, I'm still 100% sure that Islam is true because of the the scientific miracles, because of the perfect preservation of the Quran, because of the character of Muhammad, because of all these things that were just based on lies. So think about this. You have Christians in the West saying, don't criticize Islam. Don't criticize Islam because that's just going to drive Muslims away when their heads have been filled with lies and they think that they have an airtight case. And so you're saying, hey, don't respond to what they think is an airtight case and is nothing but lies. Don't respond to that. And so what? You're just going to leave them with this 100% confidence in Islam that is based on lies and you don't want to deal with that. So I have to say, by experience, just my experience over the years, I would estimate that probably 95 to 97% of Muslims who leave Islam, it only happened after their confidence in Muhammad was shaken. That's when they were able to take an alternative seriously. So it's really, really important to expose those lies and that deception to show these problems with Islam.

And again, fortunately, fortunately, Christians have woken up to this over the years because back, this is actually kind of funny. When I was starting, so years ago, and I would hear this, don't ever criticize Muhammad or the Quran. That's something you never do. That'll never work. And I'm thinking, wait a minute. I know from experience that works. I know from experience that works. And so I actually tried to figure out where are Christians getting this idea? Is it just because Christians in the West have become obsessed with being super nice? Where's this idea coming from? And I was able to trace it to two sources where they were getting this idea. One, there were Christian missionaries in Muslim countries who would come back to the US because churches back here are supporting their work. And there were Christians who are missionaries in the Muslim world, Saudi Arabia and so on. And they would come back to the the U.S. and you'd say, oh, wow, we've got a missionary to the Muslim world here. Hey, come tell us about witnessing the Muslims. And the Christian missionary would say, yeah, and don't ever criticize Muhammad or the Koran.

Well, that makes sense in Saudi Arabia, right? You have to be careful in Saudi Arabia. That makes sense. It doesn't make sense over here. What are you talking about? In fact, you could say, okay, if it's really difficult to criticize Muhammad and the Quran over there, fine, we can do it over here and we'll put it online. We'll get the message out for you. But the takeaway for people was, okay, just don't ever criticize Muhammad or the Quran. That's just going to lead to problems. So they're hearing that from Christian missionaries. But then the other source was they were hearing it from Muslim speakers at interfaith meetings, right? So they're actually going in there to an interfaith meeting where you have Christians and Jews and Muslims all gathered together. And the Muslim speaker would say, hey, it's great that we're building these bridges here. It's great that we're all getting along. Isn't this great? And as a Christian, you're saying, yeah, it's great. It's great being in a room with Muslims and everyone else. It's great. And so you say, hey, if you want to keep this going, just remember one thing.

Never criticize Muhammad or the Quran because that would just destroy all these great bridges we're building. It would just destroy it all. So remember, never, ever criticize Muhammad to the Quran. That's just going to drive Muslims away. And then you'll never get along with Muslims ever again. And Christians go, oh, okay. And then they tell me this stuff and I'm sitting there thinking, are you serious? You think that the Muslim speaker is giving you accurate information about how to lead Muslims out of Islam? Are you serious? Are you joking? You believe that? You believe that this guy is trying to give you a good methodology for leading Muslims to, are you serious? Are you joking? And so, but that was so common back then that it was just, look, you just, I'm just going to have to show them. And so the, what's happened over the past two decades is basically the, the people who are blasting away at Muhammad and the Quran, that's where everyone sees Muslims leaving Islam. And all the people who say, don't do that, they don't see anyone leaving Islam. And so Christians have just realized over the past couple of decades, wait a minute, this is just, this is very effective. It's actually very effective criticizing Muhammad and the Quran.

Hearts of Oak:

On because of it just to finish off um I mean jay talks always I'm sure you do about the book and the man the book of the man and you look at you compare as a Christian as Christians we want to present Christ because we believe that Jesus actually is a solution actually he is the way the truth and the life and you compare him to Muhammad and you think well you've got this This violent, bloodthirsty warlord that just wants to get his own way and makes up theology because he hears stuff in his head. That's not really the person I would like to follow. So when you compare them side by side, there does seem to be only one option. But yet in many Muslim countries, I guess people have not seen who Jesus is and therefore do not have the option of following him.

Dr David Wood:

Yeah, that's correct. If you listen to, because Muslims have their information filtered for them, they think of Muhammad as this really, really great, wonderful guy who, if you were to put him side by side with Jesus, you'd say, wow, these are both really, really wonderful guys. But that's just because their information has been filtered from them. Lots of Muslims, I mean, lots of Muslim leaders understand that there are all these issues. And so they hide this from Muslims. And so they're not going to hear it from anywhere else. They have to hear it from us. They have to hear this. They have to hear this information from us. What's amazing is there's a radical difference between Jesus and Muhammad, even in the Muslim sources.

Like you could just completely ignore the Bible if you just look at Jesus in the Muslim sources. So he's called the word of Allah. No one else is called the word of Allah. And Muhammad didn't even know what that meant, which we know what that means. In the beginning was the word. The word is with God. God, the word was God. The word became flesh. We know why Jesus is called the word. This has to do with his deity. Muhammad didn't know that. He just thought this was a name for Jesus. But in the Quran, Jesus is the word of Allah and he's called a spirit from Allah. And Muslims haven't thought through the theology of this. But when Allah creates something, he says, be, and the thing pops into existence, right? So a book, be, and something, a book will pop into existence. Chair, be, and the chair can pop into existence. That's how Allah creates. But when you're talking about Jesus, Jesus is the word of Allah That's something spoken out by Allah That's like something that originates from within Allah And Allah's speech is eternal So what? Jesus is the eternal word? What's going on? Are you not thinking about this? And then the spirit, a spirit is something that Allah breathes out Allah breathes out the spirit.

And so here it sounds like Jesus is from within Allah, which makes him different from all the rest of all the rest of creation. So Jesus is the word of Allah. He's a spirit from Allah. He's sinless in Islam. He's called faultless in the Koran. And in the Hadith, you find out that Satan touches every child that's born into the world, including Muhammad. But he couldn't touch Jesus. He was he was prevented from touching Jesus. So Jesus ends up sinless even in Islam. Jesus lives the most miraculous life in history in Islam. Jesus does things like he creates in the same way that Allah creates. This is in the Quran. I'm not talking about Christianity. I'm talking about in the Quran.

Allah creates Adam by fashioning Adam out of clay, and then he breathes the spirit into it, and then Adam comes alive. life. Jesus says, hey, look at this. He does it with a clay bird. He makes a bird out of clay, breathes the spirit into it, and then the bird comes alive. He creates in exactly the same way Allah creates in the Quran. So he's performing all these miracles. He's the Messiah. All these things are unique about Jesus, make him completely different. And you look at Muhammad, even in the Muslim sources, he's awful. He's terrible. So you can actually compare Jesus and Muhammad even in the Muslim sources and making a pretty airtight case that Jesus is superior to Muhammad. When you actually really, really go into the history of Muhammad and you look at the Jesus of the Bible, it's night and day. But Muslims don't know that, and they're not going to ow that until we show it to them.