No God but One: Allah or Jesus?: A Former Muslim Investigates the Evidence for Islam and Christianity

by Nabeel Qureshi

Of course, many Muslims disagree with ISIS’s practice, but their reasons are enlightening. An open letter sent by 140 Muslim scholars to ISIS reads, “After a century of Muslim consensus on the prohibition of slavery, you have violated this; you have taken women as concubines.”7 They argue that Muhammad looked favorably on releasing slaves, which may very well be true, but they do not go so far as to say that Muhammad did not allow sex slavery. That is simply not what the records show, and ISIS knows it. Unfortunately for these 140 Muslim scholars and for the rest of the world, ISIS is interested not in the consensus of Muslim scholars one hundred years ago but in the example of Muhammad in the seventh century. ISIS takes not only females captive but also boys. The world was recently horrified by accounts of captured boys being made to remove their clothing and facing execution if they were found to have pubic hair. But once again, this practice was based on Muhammad’s treatment of the Qurayza Jews. Muhammad had commanded that, except in night raids, children could not be killed in war. So when a group of people were taken captive, such as the Qurayza Jews, the boys were separated from men by the growth of pubic hair, and the men were executed.8 ISIS was simply lifting this account from Muhammad’s life and applying it to their own circumstances. Of course, this allowance of Muhammad also explains why the Seljuq Turks and virtually all other Muslim dynasties had no qualms ab...