Understanding Islam A Guide for the Judaeo-Christian Reader

“Crucial to the vitality of any religious community is its ability to attract and engage descendants and converts. By this measure, notwithstanding the proliferation of mosques and Islamic organizations, the Muslim community in America is not doing at all well.” This rather sober assessment motivates Dr. Lang to address, in this book, the alienation from the Mosque of the great majority of America’s homegrown Muslims. In Losing My Religion: A Call For Help, the author comes to terms with many of the queries put to him by Americans of Muslim parentage and converts to Islam since the publication of his book Even Angels Ask in 1977. Lang asserts that to effectively respond to the general malaise of American-born Muslims, the Islamic establishment in America needs to be willing to listen to the doubts and complaints of the disaffected. This entails engaging in open discussions on issues with which many in the Muslim community will be uncomfortable, but Lang avers that such open dialogue will be of more benefit to young American Muslims struggling with their faiths than the covert and uniformed discussions that often take place or no discussion at all. For this reason, Lang feels it is important and beneficial “to be candid and objective and not evade controversy, for to inadequately state the case for or against a specific position, especially when it challenges convention, only serves to further alienate the sceptical.” In addition to examining questions of theodicy, hadith authenticity, and moot practices within the American Muslim community, the author includes many testimonials and inquiries that make this book informative. Dr. Lang is Professor of Mathematics at The University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas. He is the author of two best selling works: Struggling to Surrender and Even Angels Ask: A Journey to Islam in America. Both books have been translated into other languages.

This monumental study examines issues of anthropomorphism in the three Abrahamic Faiths, as viewed through the texts of the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, and the Qur’an. Throughout history, Christianity and Judaism have tried to make sense of God. While juxtaposing the Islamic position against this, the author addresses the Judeo-Christian worldview and how each has chosen to framework its encounter with God, to what extent this has been the result of actual scripture and to what extent the product of theological debate, or church decrees of later centuries and absorption of Hellenistic philosophy. Shah also examines Islam’s heavily anti-anthropomorphic stance and Islamic theological discourse on Tawhid as well as the Ninety-Nine Names of God and what these have meant in relation to Muslim understanding of God and His attributes. Describing how these became the touchstone of Muslim discourse with Judaism and Christianity he critiques theological statements and perspectives that came to dilute if not counter strict monotheism. As secularism debates whether God is dead, the issue of anthropomorphism has become of immense importance. The quest for God, especially in this day and age, is partly one of intellectual longing. To Shah, anthropomorphic concepts and corporeal depictions of the Divine are perhaps among the leading factors of modern atheism. As such he ultimately draws the conclusion that the postmodern longing for God will not be quenched by pre-modern anthropomorphic and corporeal concepts of the Divine which have simply brought God down to this cosmos, with a precise historical function and a specified location, reducing the intellectual and spiritual force of what God is and represents, causing the soul to detract from a sense of the sacred and thereby belief in Him.

This is the thoroughly researched response to the Christian offensive against Islam in India. This book lucidly reviews the authenticity of the Bible and succinctly summarises the main errors, distortions, and contradictions in and between the Old and New Testaments of the King James Version. Furthermore, the doctrine of the Trinity is refuted; a doctrine that Isa (AS) never taught.

This book, internationally recognized as one of the most authoritative and objective studies of the Bible, was originally written in Arabic under the title Izhar-ul-Haq (Truth Revealed) by the distinguished 19th-century Indian scholar, Rahmatullah Kairanvi, and appeared in 1864. The book was subsequently translated into Urdu, and then from Urdu into English by Mohammad Wali Raazi.

This Book Contains among four Parts as Following:

Part 1

The Book of The Bible
Part 2

Contradictions and Errors in The Biblical Text
Part 3

Distortion and Abrogation in The Bible
The Trinity Refuted
Part 4

Proof of The Divine Origin of The Qur’an and The Authenticity of The Hadiths
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​Arabic Version of This Book is also available

Maulana Rahmatullah Kiranvi was born in India in 1818 CE. He was a great Sunni Hanafi scholar. He learned Arabic and Persian. Later he moved to Delhi where he studied different disciplines including mathematics and medicine. Working as a Mufti and Sharia teacher, he founded a religious school in Kariana.

In 1837 the Church Mission Society appointed Karl Gottlieb Pfander, described by Eugene Stock as “perhaps the greatest of all missionaries to Mohammedans”, to Agra in Northern India, where in 1854 he engaged in a famous public debate with leading Islamic scholars.

Maulana Kairanvi’s intention in his book (Izharul Haq) was first of all to show that the Bible cannot in any way be considered as a directly revealed book. He does this very effectively by means of his voluminous and authoritative knowledge of the Jewish and Christian scriptures. He demonstrates beyond doubt that the Books of the Old and New Testaments have been altered, almost beyond recognition, from their original forms. The work is even more notable in the light of subsequent Jewish and Christian scholarship and the various discoveries that have since been made in this field which all bear out the truth of Kairanvi’s thesis.

In the wake of the manifest inauthenticity of the Bible, Maulana Rahmatullah goes on to demonstrate by contrast the indisputable and absolute authenticity of the Qur’an and the Prophethood of Muhammad ibn ‘Abdullah, may peace and blessing of Allah be upon him.