In this episode, we have a special guest on the show, Gerald Morgan, who is a Christian-turned-Islamic apologetic. Gerald is an expert in the field of Islamic apologetics and Christian apologetics. He has been a long-time member of the Christian apologetic community, and has been involved in the creation of many anti-Islamic videos. In this episode we discuss the differences between the lives of Jesus and Muhammad, and how they can be compared.
00:00:04.000So, for those of you who don't know, and I hate that it sounds egotistical for me to bring up my previous work, but I've done some videos on Islam up on YouTube, or you can go to ladderwithcrowder.com and see these, where really I just take quotes from the actual Quran or the Hadith, from Muhammad's life, or...
00:00:21.000I guess historical accounts, the canonized texts, and used them and said, listen, what do you folks think about this?
00:00:29.000Challenged people to read five pages in any direction anywhere in the Quran.
00:00:34.000And tell me if their opinion has changed.
00:00:36.000Listen, my assertion is that it is a book of power, of violence, and of hatred as compared to the New Testament where it was kind of about loving and being good to your neighbor.
00:00:47.000With the exception of Jesus kind of going, you know, going a little bit crazy in the temple.
00:01:05.000And if ever you say anything that's remotely critical about Islam, you will be flooded by armies of online Islamists downvoting your videos, trying to get it removed as hate speech.
00:01:16.000I've had to go to YouTube several times and say, listen, this video is not hate speech.
00:01:21.000So there's a video up now from talkislam.org with a character who is trying to rebut all of my arguments, arguments I made, taking quotes directly from the Koran.
00:01:31.000And he really thinks he's gotten the better of all, I guess, people critical of Islam through me.
00:01:37.000So we're going to bring on, actually, somebody who helps me source a lot of these videos, a very educated man, a guy who actually teaches these courses at churches as it relates to Christian apologetics and Muslim apologetics across the country, Gerald Morgan.
00:02:30.000Because both of them are prophets of Islam.
00:02:32.000And for that reason, I will respect both because they were the best of men to walk this earth.
00:02:37.000So that's the first quote we have from this gentleman, by the way, who was very offended at me for being pro-Jesus and not necessarily pro-Muhammad.
00:02:53.000No, and I have respect for a people of every faith, except for this one specifically, because we found a guy here in Muhammad who's really going out and lying to people, and he's one of the most nefarious characters in history.
00:03:07.000And I'm not trying to dog him because I disagree with the ideology.
00:03:11.000There's a lot of things that I disagree with in life, but I'm really going after him because you cannot compare the sinless life of Jesus Christ To somebody who told his followers to kill Jews.
00:03:22.000To somebody who told his followers to go out and commit these atrocities if people don't convert.
00:03:26.000There's just absolutely no way that you can make that comparison.
00:03:30.000Not with a straight face, but with his accent.
00:03:56.000In regards to your first allegation of Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, marrying a minor, all I can say is that Islam is the only religion to actually prohibit the marriage of minors who have not reached the age of puberty.
00:04:10.000The truth is, in different times, in different places, in different contexts, the age for marriage varies.
00:04:16.000Let's leave it at that with a question.
00:04:18.000Now, of course, this was in response to me talking about the fact that Mohammed, for those of you who don't know, married a six-year-old chick named Aisha.
00:04:26.000To be fair, he may be consummated when she was nine.
00:04:34.000He just tries to blur historical contexts.
00:04:39.000No, actually, he goes one step further than that, and he admits that even in the Quran, it says not to marry a minor.
00:04:45.000I don't know if maybe Muhammad wasn't paying attention when he wrote that, but he turned around and did just that, and married a six-year-old.
00:04:55.000I mean, there's a word, and maybe I shouldn't use it on the air, but there's a word that we have for people of our age group.
00:05:01.000I mean, we would call somebody who married a six-year-old today a pedophile.
00:05:05.000That's exactly what that person would be called today.
00:05:44.000Since this is Jesus versus Muhammad, let's compare it to the context of Jesus.
00:05:50.000With none other than the best of women to have walked this earth, Mary, the mother of Jesus, she got married to Joseph, who was 90 years old when she was only 12 years old.
00:06:03.000I've searched for this high and low, Gerald, and I can only find very small fringe websites, usually pro-Islamic websites, that use that argument.
00:06:11.000Is there any kind of historical backing that Joseph was 90 years old?
00:07:12.000Now, I guess he's sort of extrapolating from the fact, and you've talked about this before, that Joseph is portrayed in some Christian works of art.
00:07:20.000It didn't really take place until after the 4th century.
00:07:22.000He was maybe portrayed a little older.
00:07:24.000Yeah, yeah, and it was in kind of a misguided attempt.
00:07:26.000They didn't want people to associate Joseph as being the biological father of Jesus.
00:07:31.000Not because he was and they were trying to cover it up.
00:07:34.000It was just because they were trying to kind of put a point on the divinity of Christ.
00:07:38.000So they started to kind of portray him Even so, I mean, it's not like Mary was a perpetual virgin her whole life, right?
00:07:54.000No, no, she had more children, which again, and I, you know, I mean, goodness, you know, kudos to Joseph.
00:08:00.000If he was 90-some-odd years old, popping out six more kids or five more kids, Another thing you mentioned, jihad.
00:08:19.000And as much as you say that the Bible doesn't have verses on jihad, After church today, pull out your Bible and look up Psalm 137, and you'll see that our own text has passages that can make us uncomfortable.
00:08:33.000And Islam teaches jihad too, and we don't shy away from it.
00:08:36.000Okay, so jihad is a word that gets people pretty uncomfortable, right, Gerald?
00:08:41.000And again, he doesn't seem to deny anything that's been said in any of my videos or anything that I guess critics would say.
00:08:48.000He just tries to blur historical context.
00:08:51.000That's what you're seeing here, saying, well, it's kind of like liberals with Barack Obama.
00:08:57.000Muslims go, well, Christians did it too!
00:09:00.000Tell us about jihad, and is there anywhere that Christians could interpret something like that from their texts?
00:09:06.000No, and that's, I guess, the big point for me, is that yes, there are accounts of historical violence in the Bible and in the Quran, right?
00:09:13.000That's not what we're talking about here.
00:09:15.000And let me just really quick, Psalm 137 is absolutely 100% not talking about jihad.
00:09:22.000It's talking about a people who have been taken captive by the Babylonians, saying, God, when are you going to judge these people for all the atrocities they've done for us?
00:10:01.000Okay, so we were talking about, before you left, the jihad quote, which we did.
00:10:04.000We'll run this on LadderWithCreditor.com, where this gentleman says that jihad can be found in Christian, in the Old Testament texts, that it can be really interpreted that way in any religion.
00:10:17.000I say no because the entire Bible, the message is a God who lovingly pursues you, right?
00:10:23.000And then basically at the very end says, look, one day you're going to be accountable for the decision that you make, but until that day I'm going to do everything that I can to show you who I am and to show you that I love you.
00:10:33.000That message is not in Islam, the religion of peace, quote-unquote, right?
00:10:38.000Basically, it says either you convert right here, right now, by some verbal thing, which has nothing to do with your heart, if you've got a sword on the back of your neck, and you've got to convert or die, right?
00:10:49.000That's the message of jihad, die or convert.
00:10:53.000And that's where you go into, if you don't convert or die, there's the dimitude, there's Sharia law, where you want to talk about people feeling like second-class citizens here in the United States, because maybe they're in some kind of a minority group.
00:11:05.000Try being non-Muslim in any Muslim country.
00:11:07.000If you're still alive, by the way, it usually doesn't make it to dimitude and putting you in a role that is submissive to Muslims in society.
00:11:17.000Really, it's the overarching message of whether, again, whether you're a Christian or not, even if you're an atheist, you have to appreciate the concept of a God that's about love, the concept of a God about forgiveness, or at least it's part of the concept, and a God that's about power and killing.
00:12:32.000It would be great if anyone actually adhered to them in war, right?
00:12:37.000So this is a great list to throw out there, but unfortunately, if it's just a list that doesn't do anybody any good, because, you know, there's tons of human shields that have been used.
00:12:45.000I mean, recently with Gaza, that's been one of the claims that we've had to deal with, and, you know, their treatment of women as human shields as well.
00:12:52.000I don't understand where, and this one, if it wasn't so said, almost made me laugh that it said, That Islam has ethics of war.
00:13:00.000With everything that we see going on right now in Islam, and all the wars that have been going on in the Middle East forever, Where are the ethics?
00:13:08.000I have no idea what he's talking about.
00:13:31.000Long before any Americans got involved, or even if you want to talk about Israel, Hamas, there are far more Islamic groups.
00:13:38.000I mean, you look at Syria killing other Muslims.
00:14:30.000Again, Gerald, the most important thing, I think, the takeaway here is this is a guy who, I guess by all measurable barometers, or at least he claims to, or at least talk Islam, thinks this guy is qualified enough to do so, has the credentials to defend Islam.
00:14:44.000This is the guy who's come out, a video that's been watched, I think, almost a million times.
00:14:48.000And yet I've never really seen any kind of counter arguments to the arguments that I put forth in the video.
00:14:54.000And by the way, my arguments aren't unique.
00:14:56.000It's the same arguments that people have put forward against the Koran and Muhammad and Islam for years.
00:15:00.000And the best, it seems as though he has, correct me if I'm wrong, is, well, Christians do it too.
00:15:05.000And here's a verse sort of blurring the historical context.
00:15:10.000No, he doesn't address any of the issues.
00:15:12.000I mean, really, this guy should be a left-leaning Democrat.