The Perfect Book Problem
The street claim that the Quran is preserved to the letter while the Bible is corrupted, tested against Islam's own canon and manuscripts. The copies are excellent; the absolute claim is what fails.
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The street claim that the Quran is preserved to the letter while the Bible is corrupted, tested against Islam's own canon and manuscripts. The copies are excellent; the absolute claim is what fails.
Islam fought a fifteen-year inquisition over whether the Quran is created, and a Christian monk posed the decisive dilemma a century earlier. What the createdness controversy opens up for a conversation about John 1.
The three questions every Christian eventually hears from a Muslim friend, answered from the sources: the corrupted-Bible claim, the three-gods claim, and the challenge that Jesus never claimed to be God.
The Quran denies the crucifixion in a single sentence written six centuries after the event. What happens when that sentence meets the method historians use to establish any ancient fact.
Islam's doctrine of abrogation from inside its own sources: what Quran 2:106 establishes, how far classical scholars said the sword verse reached, and what happened to the one reformer who tried to reverse the order.
Every serious attempt to reform Islam from inside, and its documented fate: a hanging, an assassination, a constitutional excommunication, a collapse. Why the survivors all live in the West.
Before any Muslim army moved, Rome and Persia spent 26 years destroying each other, and Arabia was already full of Jews and Christians. Part 1 of a sourced history: what Islam actually spread into.
One Arabian city in 632; an empire reaching from Spain to the Indus by 750. What the documented record of the Islamic conquests actually shows, and what popular history gets wrong in both directions.
The Islamic Golden Age was real, and so is the question of attribution. Syriac Christian translators, Sabian scholars, Persian and Central Asian scientists, Jewish physicians, and Abbasid patrons all belong in the ledger.
What primary sources and working crusade historians actually establish about the First Crusade: the real provocation record, the charter evidence on motive, the massacres of 1096, and the sack of 1099.
The Islamic world's slave systems moved millions of people over thirteen centuries, from the Sahara to a fishing village in Ireland. An honest accounting, with numbers that survive hostile fact-checking and a ledger that indicts Christendom too.
In 1000 AD, Córdoba and Baghdad led the world; by 1800 the reversal was nearly total. The two explanations Christians usually repeat are myths. The real story is institutional, and it is more hopeful.
From the Dome of the Rock to Hagia Sophia to the church for sale down the street: what the historical record actually shows about conquest and holy places, in both directions.
How many Muslims actually live in America, where their families came from, and why the country on a passport tells you less than you think. Part 1 of the Your Muslim Neighbor series.
A practical guide to sharing the gospel with Muslim friends: the common ground the Quran already grants, the fault line you can't soften, and the table manners that keep the conversation alive. Part 2 of the Your Muslim Neighbor series.
Nine questions Christians can ask Muslim friends, why each one works, and where the conversation goes — from assurance of paradise to the Sana'a manuscript.
Roughly one in four Americans raised Muslim no longer is. Where the leavers go, what leaving actually costs them, and what a church has to get right to receive a convert well.
What the Quran is, how Islam says it was compiled, what the earliest manuscripts actually show, and an honest comparison with the New Testament that neither side's apologists will love.
The five daily prayers aren't in the Quran. A guide to the hadith canon — the Six Books, isnad chains, what 'sahih' certifies, and what the most authentic collections actually contain.
What can actually be known about Muhammad: the 7th-century witnesses that establish he existed, the 200-year gap behind his detailed biography, and his military career stated exactly as Islam's own sources report it.
Sharia, fiqh, the five law schools, the five ruling categories, and the real Pew numbers: a precise, sourced answer to what the word means before anyone argues about it.
Sunni, Shia, Sufi, Salafi, Ahmadi, Ismaili, Quranist, cultural, reformer. A sourced map of Islam's internal divisions, and why the fates of its dissidents show where each tradition's center of gravity sits.
The Quran honors Jesus as virgin-born Messiah and coming judge, yet denies the incarnation and the crucifixion. Why Jesus is the original fault line between Islam and Christianity, and why he is also the door.