For 1,400 years, Christians have wondered how to defend their faith to Muslims. While Islam accepts Jesus as a prophet, it denies his divinity. And as for his sacrifice for sin on the cross, the Quran denies crucifixion and by extension resurrection, asserting instead that God took him straight to heaven.
Christian responses have often been polemical, seeking to invalidate Muhammad’s message and morality. They have also apologized, sometimes employing legal arguments that Muslims view as man-made and mutable – thus lacking authority to decide questions of eternal importance.
Baptist pastor Suheil Madanat instead seeks to anchor the authenticity of the gospel story in Islam itself. In Evidence of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ examined by Islamic lawFormer President of the Jordan Baptist Convention (2016-2022) consults relevant Sharia expert compendiums and scholarly works to learn the Sharia criteria for validating relevant evidence, including eyewitness accounts, confessions, expert opinions and circumstantial evidence, and examines New Testament accounts. against.
Endorsed by scholars from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Fuller Theological Seminary, and Jordan Evangelical Theological Seminary in Amman, the book is a new resource for Muslim apologetics and comparative religion. CT interviewed Madanat about criticism of liberal sources, discrepancies in resurrection accounts, and his ultimate hope for Muslims who read his book.
How does traditional Islam view the Bible?
In principle, they accept the Old and New Testaments as the word of God, but they believe they have been largely corrupted. Although they admit that some stories read today still contain some truth, they do not accept the Bible as authentic. This is especially the case for those parts that contradict Islam, primarily the divinity, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus.
How do Arab Christians tend to respond to these objections?
Most of what I read in Arabic is polemical rather than apologetic in approach. They are more concerned with attacking the ethics of Muhammad and the teaching of the Quran than defending the Scriptures. I haven’t seen much done to justify the authenticity of the Bible, although it is done in academic circles.
But I must add that Muslim scholars do not provide solid, verifiable evidence to argue against. The Bible is said to be corrupt, but what is the alternative? The Quran speaks of preserving the divine text, but where is the authentic text then? How did God allow this? When exactly did the corruption occur? Sure, they tell a story of alleged corruption, but that contradicts the obvious historical facts.
They do not give objective answers to these questions, inviting polemical response.
Is this why you wanted to defend the Bible through an Islamic framework?
My task here is not to defend the Bible as a whole but the reliability of the crucifixion and resurrection accounts, the backbone of our Christian faith. Western libraries are full of conservative responses to criticism from liberal sources and other criticisms, but they mean little to most Muslims. Since the Quran says the Bible is corrupt, they ask: Why should we care about intra-Christian conflict?
But when I say that I want to examine the evidence for Christian claims through the filters of divine Islamic law, that immediately gets their attention.
What is your method?
Islamic law has established strict criteria for reviewing eyewitness accounts, but those who experienced Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection are long dead. Their proof only exists in documentary form: the Gospels. These must first be authenticated, so they can be equivalent to live eyewitness accounts, and then examined.
The problem is that Islamic law, unlike Anglo-American common law, has no criteria for authenticating ancient documents. Nevertheless, the primary divine sources of Islamic law, the Quran and Sunnah (traditions recorded about the words and deeds of Muhammad), are themselves ancient documents. What standards do Islamic scholars use in their literature to defend its authenticity?
I have reviewed this literature and it makes a compelling argument against Western liberal critiques. I am convinced that the Quran is largely authentic, written by Muhammad, with only minor variations. This criticism, however, is similar to that leveled against the Bible and often cited by Muslim scholars in their anti-Christian claims. So I simply ask Muslims to be consistent and fair.
How do you proceed?
The first step uses existing apologetic material to establish that the New Testament accounts were written by eyewitnesses. I examine the textual purity of ancient manuscripts, as well as the dating of the gospel accounts and their internal evidence which includes incidental details of personal names, dates, and geographic locations.
For example, when Jesus fed the multitude, it is said that they were sitting on lush grass. But if we pay attention to the chronology of Jewish holidays, it corresponds wonderfully to the only season where the fields are still green today, both in Palestine and Jordan.
Once the gospels have been proven authentic, the next step is to run the Christian evidence through the filters of Islamic law and see how it reacts. Here I remind Muslims that since they believe that Sharia law is immutable, sent by God, they must trust it.
This is how I began my research and, surprisingly, the Christian evidence passed the test of Islamic law. par excellence.
What are these filters?
One concerns the required number and gender of eyewitnesses. Credibility usually depends on two men, with a woman’s testimony worth half that of a man, because a well-known tradition in Islam says that women are deficient.
The biblical testimonies were written by eyewitnesses: Matthew, John and Peter, direct eyewitnesses to the crucifixion and resurrection. Paul also saw the resurrected Christ, and his confession – as well as that of James – met the criteria of Islamic law. But we also have indirect witnesses, which Islam accepts in the event of a death noted within the community. Mark, Luke, and several ancient non-Christian writers fall into this category, with Luke further established as an expert witness.
Each witness must also meet several strict criteria, both when witnessing the event and when testifying. All of this was applied to every Bible witness, and they all succeeded. Among these is, for example, the criterion that there must be no trace of personal advantage. And we know that the disciples died as martyrs for their faith; they had nothing to gain by deception.
Another criterion is that a non-Muslim cannot testify against a Muslim. But the Quran calls the disciples of Jesus:Hawariyyun in Arabic, righteous men who therefore count as Muslims. Eyewitnesses must further be able to reason clearly – which written accounts establish – and cannot be blind, deaf or mute. They must also be free men, not slaves, and have reliable memories.
Are there any objections to the divergent details of the gospel accounts?
This is another criterion, that the testimonies are consistent. But Islamic law presents numerous cases demonstrating that if there is a possible scenario to explain the apparent differences, it must be accepted. Christians have long created the harmonies of the gospel, and with the exception of minor details, the major events of the crucifixion, burial, and resurrection pass the test.
However, the Quran says that Jesus was not crucified, but simply appeared to them as such.
This statement makes no sense. This is the view that prevails in 99 percent of the Muslim world. But we must remember that Mohammed never saw the New Testament to examine its account for himself; it was not translated into Arabic until the second Islamic century.
The principle they rely on is that God would not allow his distinguished prophet to suffer such humiliation, and so God replaced Jesus with someone else. But when? If it was just before the crucifixion, it was Jesus who was still suffering the humiliation of his unjust trial and public flogging. If it was before or during the trial, then certainly the unfortunate man in Jesus’ place would have screamed and testified during the trial that he was not Jesus.
What do you think will happen if open-minded Muslims read your book?
If this simply raises doubts about the claim that Jesus was not crucified, that would be enough. But once a person begins to think about questions about their received faith, they may begin to doubt the whole story. Why does the Quran deny a narrative, they might ask, that Islamic divine law establishes through credible testimony?
This might prompt truth-seeking readers to seek additional evidence. My ultimate hope is that they come to believe.
