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

by Nabeel Qureshi

At minimum, what would need to be true in order for the Christian message to be true? Conversely, what would need to be true for the Islamic message to be true?

For Christianity, we found the answer in Romans 10:9: “If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (NIV). Here we found the entire gospel message formulated as the minimum requirement for saving faith. It has three components: (1) that Jesus died, (2) that he rose from the dead, and (3) that he is God.1 Thankfully, each of these three components can be tested from a historical angle. Did Jesus die on the cross or not? As we just saw, this is a fundamental teaching of Christianity that would have happened in history, so we can open the pages of our historical records to see if they support or rebut Jesus’ death. The same is true for his resurrection. Although it would be a supernatural event, it would still have happened in history, so we can investigate the historical records to see if they corroborate the truth claim that Jesus rose from the dead. Lastly, do the historical records indicate that Jesus claimed to be God or not?

One very important matter to note about the core of the Christian faith is that Islam rejects all three components. The Quran explicitly denies that Jesus ever claimed to be God (5.116), and it also explicitly denies that he died by crucifixion (4.157), thereby implicitly denying that he rose from the dead.

to distill Islam down to its essence, we found the answer clearly in the shahada: “There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is his messenger.” At minimum, one must believe that Allah is God and that Muhammad is his appointed messenger in order to be a Muslim.

But is Allah, the God of Islam, the one true God?3 And is Muhammad truly a messenger of God? To investigate these, one must turn to the Quran and the records of Muhammad’s life. The Quran, being Allah’s self-revelation and the “why” of Muslim belief, must be carefully scrutinized. Similarly Muhammad, being the only direct recipient of the Quran and a presence in the shahada, must be critically examined to determine whether he actually is a messenger of God. If we can determine that the Quran is the Word of God, or if we can determine that Muhammad is a messenger of God, then we have good reason to accept Islam. Unlike the Christian case, where all components need to be true to build the case, defending the prophethood of Muhammad vindicates the inspiration of the Quran and vice versa. The case for Islam should therefore, in concept, be easier to establish, as only one point needs to be well defended: either the prophethood of Muhammad or the inspiration of the Quran.

study these five points: Jesus’ death by crucifixion Jesus’ resurrection from the dead Jesus’ claim to be God The prophetic authority of Muhammad The divine inspiration of the Quran Together, these five points constitute the case for Christianity and the case for Islam.

Missing from this list, perhaps conspicuously, is the divine inspiration of the Bible. Although David and I had investigated the Bible, and its inspiration was very important for Christian doctrine, we both realized that it constituted the “what” of the Christian faith, not the “why.” Wanting to focus on the minimal requirements for Christianity, we had to exclude many matters that were very important but not central to the case, and the inspiration of the Bible was one such matter. Theoretically, even if the Bible had never been written, Jesus could still have died on the cross for our sins and risen from the dead, making the Christian message true. The inspiration of the Bible is not central to the case for Christianity.

Repeatedly, at least five times, he offered the divine origin of the Quran as the reason why people should trust Islam. By contrast, when the early Christians proclaimed the gospel, the primary proof that they pointed to was the resurrection of Jesus, not the text of the Bible.5

The Quran and Jesus are the analogues in the two faiths, not the Quran and the Bible.

Gerd Lüdemann is a German scholar who so doubted the Bible that he infamously said, “The person of Jesus himself becomes insufficient as a foundation of faith.”1 Yet even he did not mince words when it came to Jesus’ death. In his book, What Really Happened to Jesus, Lüdemann critically reexamines the life of Jesus from many angles, often dismissing the traditional Christian position outright. But in his section titled “The death of Jesus,” he spares only two sentences: “The fact of the death of Jesus as a consequence of crucifixion is indisputable, despite hypotheses of a pseudo-death or a deception which are sometimes put forward. It need not be discussed further here.”2 He then moves on, as if lingering on the matter were pointless. Paula Fredriksen, another well-known scholar who frequently challenges Christian beliefs, also concludes similarly to Lüdemann, positing, “The single most solid fact about Jesus’ life is his death: he was executed by the Roman prefect Pilate, on or around Passover, in the manner Rome reserved particularly for political insurrectionists, namely, crucifixion.”3 The matter was stated most succinctly by perhaps one of traditional Christianity’s most evocative critics, John Dominic Crossan, who says, “There is not the slightest doubt about the fact of Jesus’ crucifixion under Pontius Pilate.”4 As if that were not emphatic enough, he elsewhere states, “That he was crucified is as sure as anything historical can ever be.”5