Muhammad and the Jews of Khaybar

In "The Real Muḥammad: In the Eyes of Ibn Isḥāq," I seek to summarize the most ancient biography of Muḥammad accurately. Muḥammad imposes Islam by any means possible -- this is reality. But, is there room for religious liberty to make place for itself?

From the prologue: "Muḥammad, at one point in speaking to the Jews of Khaybar, says to them: 'Do you find in what He has sent down to you that you should believe in Muḥammad? If you do not find that in your scripture then there is no compulsion upon you.' As we will see, this is an exception among all the words and deeds of Muḥammad. Yet, hopefully, these words can serve the freedom for Jews, Christians and Muslims as we look at the nature of Moses, Jesus and Muḥammad each on their own terms. And also, in helping us all grasp the nature of the Hebrew Bible, Christian New Testament and the Qur’ān."

Why I Wrote a Book on Muhammad

In my studies about Islam across the years, I have read various biographies of Muhammad, and the most ancient, authoritative and extant biography is that of Ibn Isḥāq, written in the second century A.H. (eighth century A.D.), about 100 years after Muhammad's death.

Ibn Isḥāq is an honest historian, but also working with various sources, some trustworthy, and some he questions. But in recording the primary sources that come from a known chain of custody back to Muhammad and his companions, Ibn Isḥāq gives us the profile of Muhammad that Muslims have patterned themselves after for some 1400 years.

My priority as a minister of the Gospel is to serve religious, political and economic liberty for all people equally. And such freedom is only possible -- for all people -- if first rooted in a true definition of terms. In the Garden of Eden, Yahweh Elohim gives us the choice between the fruit that is good and serves life and freedom, and the fruit that is evil and leads to death and slavery.

My purpose in this new book, The Real Muhammad: In the Eyes of Ibn Isḥāq, is to let this candid profile of Muhammad become accessible, and thus serve people's freedom of informed choice. It is profile of a violent and imposed religion according to Ibn Isḥāq, but too, this he believes, in the eighth century, is how it should be.

But does such a religion truly satisfy the human soul -- Muslim or otherwise?

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The Real Muhammad: In the Eyes of Ibn Ishaq

Today I publish and begin to advertise my new book on Muhammad. Here is the content of the back cover:

Can Muhammad satisfy the Muslim thirst for freedom?

I believe all people are hardwired by the one true Creator for full religious, political and economic liberty. Muhammad is the prophet of Islam, and his way of life, or Sunna, determines every detail of a Muslim’s life. He is the measure of the Islamic understanding of the social order and politics. But how well do Muslims, or any of us, know the real Muhammad?

In these pages, we will look at:

1. A summary of Ibn Ishaq’s biography, or Sira, of Muhammad’s life, person and character. Ibn Ishaq’s Sira is the most ancient, extant and authoritative source we have for Muhammad’s life.

2. How Ibn Ishaq’s narrative represents Muhammad as fulfilling and transcending the Hebrew Bible and Christian New Testament;

3. A presentation of appropriate biblical texts in the footnotes; and

4. In the epilogue, a brief biblical perspective on how to serve religious, political and economic liberty for all people equally – Jewish, Christian, Muslim or otherwise.

The crux of the issue is this: Islam is historically a one-way religion. It is rooted in Muhammad’s person as the prophet of Allah, bringing forth the Qur’an. Whether a person is born into, chooses to enter, or is driven into Islam, he or she is prohibited from leaving it. Muhammad builds and enforces this assumption over the course of his life. His right hand man, and the first caliph after Muhammad’s death, Abu Bakr, puts it this way: “Allah sent Muhammad with his religion and he strove for it until men accepted it voluntarily or by force.”

Is this what any or all Muslims embrace today? Is this what any person in any religion wants to embrace?

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What is the Speed of Darkness?

Of course darkness has no speed, since it has no atomic existence. It simply eviscerates in the presence of light. At the prior and theological level, we see the proactive power of light in the first words of God in Scripture, "Let there be light" (Genesis 1:3). And in John 1:5, we read, "The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood (or overcome) it."

The apostle John is speaking of Jesus as the Light of the world, and in his first epistle, John also says, "The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil's work" (3:8).

Since light is proactive, and darkness is reactive, the way Jesus as the Light destroys the work of the prince of darkness is by letting the light shine. Darkness, by definition, always flees.

The apostle Paul reflect this understanding of light versus darkness, in the ethical realm, in Ephesians 5:11-13: "Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. For it is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret. But everything exposed by the light becomes visible.

We do not need to focus on evil in order to overcome it. Live in the light, love God, love our neighbors, and realize that our only warfare is against the devil and his minions in the heavenlies. Then the devil's work will be destroyed in our midst.

This biblical centrality is at the core of the mission of the TEI. To embrace the power to love hard questions in the presence of skeptics is to also embrace the power to live in the light.

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A Question I Posed of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia

Today I had opportunity to listen to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. He was speaking to the Federalist Society in New York City, on a tour for his new book: "Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts." Questions were submitted to him on index cards. My question referred to James Madison's concern that if laws becomes too “voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood,” then our republic is in danger.

I asked how soon we might reach such a point. Justice Scalia, in his answer, mused in diagnosis of the situation that "we cannot afford to devote our best minds" to work "that produces nothing." He then added, "We're probably at that point now" and we "need to simplify the law ... but how, I do not know." We do need to devote our best minds, in the name of the Gospel, to such a task. And that is exactly the purpose of the Pre-Partisan Caucus (www.prepartisan.us).

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First the Gospel, Then Politics ...

In May, 1982, I was taking a shower -- which is not to say I have not done so in the meantime. I was having a shadow-box debate with then Massachusetts Governor Edward J. King, and the once and twice future Governor Michael S. Dukakis. They were competing in the Democratic Party primary.

Though not politically wired, the issues mattered, and while a student in seminary, I was paying attention. After a lull in this debate, I said to them: "Gentlemen. Don't you realize that for everything you say you care about, the answers are in the Gospel of Jesus Christ." Silence.

So I prayed: "Lord, don't these gentlemen realize that everything they say they care about is found in the Gospel of Jesus Christ?" As if the Lord had any other opinion -- I was just ratifying it in classic rabbinic dialogic prayer.

So I continued, in a life changing surprise turn: "Lord, you need some theologically educated people in politics." His answer came to the depth of my soul at one of those moments of utter clarity: "John -- good idea. Any suggestions?"

I threw my hands in the air and said, "Lord, you know I would never go anywhere where I would have to compromise my faith." I had some deep assumptions that politics continually swallow up the integrity of people who join its world. But the Lord answered with the same clarity: "Maybe your faith is not big enough."

So, in the 30 years since, I have sought to grow my faith enough to make it "first the Gospel, then politics ..." And the word "politics," from the Greek polis, refers to the walled city in which culture and social order is maintained against external disorder. Far more than just government, but fully inclusive of it.

What is the ratio of order versus disorder in the United States and the rest of the world today? And where is the Gospel being lived and taught in such a way to make a difference? "For lack of guidance a nation fails, but many advisers make victory sure" (Proverbs 11:14). What biblically literate advisers are in the loop in today's political world?

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Ellie, Sweet Ellie

Ellie Victoria Rankin lived for about 1 hour and 45 minutes, Saturday, March 24, 2012. My eldest son Chad, and his wife, Christiane (pronounced with a long e), have now lost their first two children. Ellie was healthy and strong, but an infection invaded the cervix, it opened prematurely and could not be healed. With weeping and prayers, we committed little Ellie into the hands of her Savior.

I am so proud of Chad, a godly man, a strong, loving and gentle husband, a grieving father able to see how Ellie's impact will be great and good. I am forever changed, in ways only initially sensed.

I held her in my arms, or I should say, in both hands -- as did all of us in the family able to be there. So beautiful, so finely crafted, family traits easy to discern. Psalm 139:13-16 resonates as never before. I could see in her person what she would have been like as a young woman -- strength and character in her beauty, a profile of godliness.

In 1987 I wrote a journal article on "Nephesh and the Status of the Unborn." In Genesis 2:7, as the first man is formed from the dust, Yahweh Elohim breathes into him the breath of life and he becomes a nephesh hayyeh." That can be translated as a "person alive," a "soul alive."

In the Hebrew, nephesh refers to the breathing functions of the neck and throat, and in the Bible, this is always in conjunction with the goodness of the human body as given in the order of creation. Nephesh also indicates our hunger, our thirst, our eagerness for life. Or another way to define nephesh is needfulness, of dependency on the original creative breath of Yahweh Elohim and the ecosphere upon which we depend every day. This is where true and original strength is found. We need our Creator, we need each other as fellow image-bearers of God, in giving we receive.

The unborn are fully embodied, biologically from the moment of conception. They are quintessentially needful, and we all started out likewise. I am forever changed by sweet Ellie, our sweet Ellie. Tenderness and mercy toward all, yet too, no more hesitancy to name deliberate evil. I have always grasped the willful evil of the human abortion industry, where overwhelmingly it is due to men who get women pregnant and refuse the responsibility and dignity of marriage and fatherhood.

But now too, raw emotions. We have a sitting president who dares to state, jokingly, that the humanity of the unborn is above his "pay grade." Even as he advances the human abortion industry with every fiber of his political muscle, with every coercive agency at his disposal, and pushing the extreme of the partial birth abortions of healthy newborns -- I say "No more!" Is not all he does above his pay grade?

The apostle Paul said: "For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish arguments. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ (2 Corinthians 10:3-5).

Paul is writing this to the church, and there are many depths to the context of his concerns. The battle is with the demonic powers that manipulate human beings for evil purposes. Such people need to be delivered. But even as they may yet refuse, we labor for their well-being. We are empowered by the Spirit of the risen Lord Jesus Christ to demolish every pretentious argument.

Trotz dem alten Drachen.
trotz des Todes Rachen.
trotz der Furcht darzu.

"I defy the old serpent,
I defy the jaws of death,
I defy fear, too!"

I defy the president, any politician, any academic, any judge or lawyer, any media pundit, any scientist or medical doctor, any activist, any person alive, to justify the tortured thinking of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing human abortion. Show your temerity. Sit with me in front of the camera, or stand with me before any audience of your choice at the Ivy Leagues and well beyond. I will tear down every pretentious argument that tears apart the flesh of the most vulnerable in our midst, that tears at the nephesh of any and all human beings.

As I took my morning walk Sunday, March 25, slowly with a heavy heart, by the end I was not focusing on the suffering and evil of any death. Rather I know that whether we are granted 2 hours as was little Ellie, or 92 years as was my father, we all come from God and will return to God. Thus, in the face of a sin-stained world, suddenly I see the Lord's loving sovereignty in a new and richer way.

Ellie was his ordained gift to us, she returned to God so quickly, and we are humbled so much more, clothed with tenderness toward all, and equally angry with the ancient serpent and his agenda to kill and destroy.

As my daughter and I drove to the hospital, my wife already there, another son on his way, my brother too -- we passed through the ripped up forests from last year's tornado, and some verse came to me. The first four words of the poem that emerged were already in place before I learned that my daughter-in-law named her Ellie because of its derivative from "light" ("Helen" in the Greek).

And there was light
nephesh was given --
eagerness, hunger and thirst for the breath of life.

Yet by crafty design
the prince of darkness stepped in
and all forms of suffering followed.

Ellie, sweet Ellie
born 19 weeks too soon, unable to draw breath
you were still eager for all 105 minutes.

Now -- greater than now -- you run in heavenly fields
delicious air in your face and charcoal hair
yes -- we will dance and sing with you one day.

You blessed us with your so brief earthly life
we barely had time to say hello
and praise God, all eternity awaits proper introduction.

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