Answering Yahya Snow

Islam Questions, Christianity Answers : Answering Yahya Snow · HGL's F.B. writings :Some Muslims simply WANT TO find fault with Christianity

This post I am answering now is very much shorter than "40 Questions".

Yahya Snow

The Facts About Islam : Advice For Muslims On Dealing With Christian Anti-Muslim Sentiment...
http://thefactsaboutislam.blogspot.com/2017/10/advice-for-muslims-on-dealing-with.html

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Came across this, and am taking a pause from the n QQ Christians can't answer or whatever.

Yahya Snow

Part of an email advising somebody who was being run down by evangelical Christians attacking Islam:

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Nice to know original context of the text.

Yahya Snow

These people actively look for people who are all jittery when it comes to their emotional polemics against the Faith. They can sense who lacks confidence and self-esteem especially in person (body language) and even on the net with the way somebody is interacting.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

It is possible some of them do so, and as we are told to comfort the weak, they are feeling charitable - much like YS is telling the friend to feel such against Evangelical missionaries.

Btw, I am not a missionary, I am an apologist. I don't depend on how someone looks or seems to feel, I depend on finding written texts by my opponents (including Muslims, but also incluing Atheists or Evangelicals etc) available on the Internet, so I can answer, calmly. And they can read calmly.

Yahya Snow

There’s a lot of psychology behind evangelical Christian missionaries who try to rob Muslims of faith in the Revelation of Allah. They actively look for people who struggle with English because they think they are easier targets for various reasons (i.e. the Christian can conflate the West with Christianity and thus misappropriate secular Western achievement to Christianity, it’s easier for them to dominate and manipulate a conversation if the other person has a weaker command of the language and we both know that there is an undercurrent in the West which portrays people not educated in Western institutes as lesser thinkers), their ideal is those with inferiority complexes – inferiority complexes when it comes to the West and folks who have elements of self hate within them. A great way to deal with these missionaries is to go head on and use the premises in their arguments against them.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

If in an oral situation you are quick enough to do so. I obviously recommend this approach against Islam.

P1 God can preserve his community and is faithful and therefore will do so (this is how Muslims explain that the Ummah of Muslims is perpetual to Doomsday);
P2 Mohammed was sent because the Ummah of Christians had entirely apostatised after Jesus, like the Ummah of Jews had entirely apostatised after Moses and before Jesus was sent;
Conclusion : Islam contradicts itself on attributes of God, since the faithfulness invoked with Muslim Ummah in mind had been lacking with the Jewish and Christian Ummah before it.

Objection : Christianity poses the same, since they say Judaism is an Apostate religion.
Answer : Christianity and what is now called Judaism are BOTH successors to the community once serving the Temple. Judaism claims rabbis have determined how certain Temple rites should be replaced as long as Temple is down (which it has been for nearly 2000 years), Christianity claims Jesus came to replace the sacrifices, so God himself has determined how they are replaced. Apostasy of Jewish community happened by rejection of Christ and His Church which had already started inside it and was partly already validated by it (rabbis and priests in Temple praising Jesus when He was 12, his second cousin and forerunner being the son of a Cohen, engendered while he was serving as Cohen Gadol, and all three - the Cohen, his wife and their son - honoured as saints in Christianity).

So, no, we do not pose that Jews had falsified the Torah and Jesus came to correct it.

We do not, except for very minor passages, pose Jews have falsified the Torah at all (some of us think the genealogy gives correct years in a LXX version and not in Masoretic version of Genesis 11:10-end - with Masoretic years, Jews can pretend Melchisedec was Shem, with LXX years it is impossible - however, Masoretic chronology is not considered illicit, it is a matter for free debate - but Melchisedec was not Shem).

Objection : Evangelical Christianity poses the same thing with regards to Catholic Christianity. Answer : so does Mormonism. This is why Protestantism, Mormonism and Islam are false.

Btw, not true of all Evangelicals, since Ruckmanites, theologically less insane, but historically less probable, claim a "kind of" Protestant continuity. They do not consider themselves Protestant, but consider Protestantism as approaching them - but as being still too Catholic.

Yahya Snow

For instance, they will talk about the Prophet being involved in war and put it alongside the Jesus of the Gospel (A Jesus who was never the head of a state nor of a group large enough to wrestle control of the region away from the oppressive Romans so it’s the fallacy of false comparisons although if that’s what they want to do, be their guest and compare Prophet Muhammad with Trinitarian Jesus!).

Hans-Georg Lundahl

It is not just a question of war, but of unjust wars of conquest.

Yahya Snow

The premise here is somebody using violence and warfare cannot be from God. Point at the Prophets in the OT – Moses – who used violence and warfare (e.g vs the Midianites in Numbers). But go further, talk about the Trinity idea teaching Jesus is the 2nd person of the Trinity thus Trinitarians essentially believe Jesus ordered the killing of women and children (1 Samuel 15:3).

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Yes, we do.

Why? Bc Amalekites were a very evil people and God had not prepared Jewry back then as He has prepared Christians much later for slowly converting such very evil peoples. Also, while a kind of faithful may have lived outside Jewry, it was in Jewry that the Revelation was preserved, and Israelites were a small people, hence it was essential that no Amalekites should live on to harrass them. Or corrupt them.

Note also, this order was exceptional. Here is a comment by bishop Challoner on the verse, after citing it:

Now therefore go, and smite Amalec, and utterly destroy all that he hath: spare him not, nor covet any thing that is his: but slay both man and woman, child and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.

[3] "Child": The great Master of life and death (who cuts off one half of all mankind whilst they are children) has been pleased sometimes to ordain that children should be put to the sword, in detestation of the crimes of their parents, and that they might not live to follow the same wicked ways. But without such ordinance of God it is not allowable, in any wars, how just soever, to kill children.

(Incidentally, this comment gives a view on child mortality in England or Europe in the days of Challoner - unless the words in parenthesis are borrowed from a source at another time or place).

Yahya Snow

Likewise, for the issue of polygamy, tell them Jesus did not forbid it according to Biblical Trinitarians and appears to allow it (Exodus 21:10) and he even says he GAVE David his wives according to Trinitarians (2 Samuel 12:8). In this instance you can also point to one of the sparks for their breakaway church movement, Martin Luther. Luther is on record saying nothing in Christian scripture forbids polygamy. [It will be a really Westernised Christian who brings the issue of polygamy up and he/she may find this very difficult and thus jump at the One Flesh verse (Gen 2:24) – they believe MOSES wrote such yet he had more than one wife so clearly the author’s understanding of the one flesh verse could not have been a proscription of polygyny].

Hans-Georg Lundahl

If you compare Genesis 2:24 with Mark 10:6, you will find that polygyny, whether simultaneous or successive by divorce and remarriage (which Mark 10:6 especially has in view) was a temporary dispensation - the part of divorce being validated under Moses, as for simultaneous polygyny a bit earlier under patriarchs, but that Christ then and there abolished that dispensation, so after He said so, polygyny is no longer licit.

No longer licit as per divorce and remarriage, follows directly from text, no longer licit simultaneously, understood by universal tradition.

Yahya Snow

Let’s talk about female slaves, they will bring this up. They may have even been taught to say Muslims are allowed to rape female slaves. Of course this is a prurient lie as part of their propaganda of demonisation (but the Christian you’re speaking to may not know this, so be gentle). To respond,say, “OK clearly you believe in the rights and well treatment of slaves, especially female slaves, I respect that as that is what we as Muslims are taught. But before I show you our teachings I want to share what Trinitarians believe Jesus allowed with respect to slaves, this may sound shocking so do look it up and think about it when you have some time later on, he allowed the severe beating of female slaves as long as they got up after a couple of days (Ex 21:20-21). Female slaves were taken as captives of war and married in the OT. There are some secularists, and perhaps liberal Christians, who say this was rape in the Bible but for me I don’t believe God allows rape as we are taught in the Quran (Quran 4:36) to treat slaves well and the Prophetic teaching (Sahih Muslim) is that one cannot even slap a slave – clearly rape would transgress those teachings thus cannot be allowed.”

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Exodus 21:20-21 does not say such a beating is altogether licit, it only says it is not considered and punished as murder.

As for female slaves being first captive and then married, it nowhere states that even a slave captive could be married by force and especially not that a slave woman could be sexually used by her master unless a matrimonial arrangement be made first.

Yahya Snow

Notice, what we’ve done my dear, we’ve started planting seeds and educating the Christian friend.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

If he's just as ignorant as you would like him to be, well, yes.

Yahya Snow

Don’t say any of this aggressively to them, say it how an educator would. You’re the teacher here. You’ve got to be the guide here. This Christian is in severe spiritual danger and his reckless elders may have effectively nudged him on to the precipice of leaving Biblical Christianity and the Abrahamic tradition.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

What a horrible overbearing attitude!

"You’re the teacher here. You’ve got to be the guide here."

I've met it from Muslims and from Evangelicals. Btw, I am not in such a danger, since I am a Catholic.

Yahya Snow

Remember, if they come to you, your demeanour is key, you MUST be confident. Don’t be all jittery, they will sense it and that’s what they want to see. Speak with clarity and purpose. Be smart and informed, if you’re not, they will pick up on it and they will not be influenced as much by you, in fact they will take it as a cue to start influencing you!

Hans-Georg Lundahl

More of this "confidence" game, which is why I prefer writing.

Yahya Snow

Be sophisticated and focussed, don’t bang on about America bombing Iraq like some emotional wreck – that’s not the time or place. The number of Muslims I see rattling on about Iraq, British and American imperialism in these discussions is staggering, to be honest it’s neither helpful nor relevant. It can come across as cringe-worthy and embarrassing. The Christian did not come to you as a representative of America, in many cases the Christian is not even American and is against Trump, Bush etc..

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Great advice. I am in fact partly of Jewish origin, and I am against Zionism as such. Note well, to me Zionism and Muslim domination are both evil in Holy Land. Christian Palestinians are the key to the peaceful and correct solution.

Yahya Snow

It’s a theological discussion, not political. There’s a time and place for remonstrating against the bombings of innocent people in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Sudan, Pakistan etc. and the contentious issue of Palestine...this discussion is not that time or place.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Once again, thanks for that.

Yahya Snow

Take on the role of the educator in the dialogue. The evangelical missionaries have been set up to try and rob you of your faith using secular arguments – their leaders saw how the secularists decimated Christendom in Western Europe and now they have borrowed that polemical style from them because it was effective against their own faith! The only reason why it was effective was because the Christians had been conditioned to think of Western civilisation and Western laws as the pinnacle thus the Church ended up allowing divorce (their teachings do not allow divorce except in the case of adultery), staying silent on sex before marriage and even inviting Bill and Bob, and Jill and Jean, to come into their churches to get “married”. They did all this to appease their congregations who became Westerners at heart rather than true Bible believers.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Actually, Catholics stay so far firm on opposing "gay marriage".

Also, actually, I am also against a certain secularist rhetoric.

Yahya Snow

They’ve lost confidence in their Book. Don’t allow them to try and do the same to you with respect to Islam.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

As I am a Catholic, I have NOT lost confidence in my Book.

Yahya Snow

ALWAYS REMEMBER: These evangelical Christians have been conned, they’ve been conned by “Christian” folks who have given them a load of polemics against Islam which, if applied consistently, would mean the Christian would reject Christianity and Biblical teachings. These Christian missionaries, once they wake up and start thinking about what they’re saying, are in danger of leaving the Abrahamic tradition because their Christian leaders was set them up to stumble. The evangelical Christian NEEDS you in this instance. You can be a light for them and a light for their nations. But you’ve got to be smart, sophisticated, educated, confident and concerned. YOU can do it.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Or it is more like a Catholic they need, but they are as likely to realise that as Mr. Yahya Snow, that is not very likely, bc they are, like Muslims, Machists and in a "confidence" game - sensing who seems less socially confident etc.