Examining Some Muslim Nonsense at “Examinethetruth”.com
One of the hallmarks of Muslim apologetic efforts which is widely recognised is that they are very poor. Defenses of Islam, and the concurrent efforts at polemicising against other religions, are generally marked by all sorts of logical errors, ranging from non-sequiturs to circular reasoning to outright reliance upon ad hominem. The webpage which I will be deconstructing below is a perfect example of this. The contention found on this page – http://www.examinethetruth.com/hitler.htm – is that Adolf Hitler was a “Bible-believing Christian”. One may surmise that the author of this page, one Nadir Ahmed, has prepared it in an attempt to turn criticism away from Islam with regards to that religion’s traditional and unreasoning Jew-hatred. Instead of defending Islam on this matter (which, given the statements in the Qur’an and the ahadith, would be well-nigh impossible anywise), Mr. Ahmed has opted to “turn the tables” and accuse Bible-believing Christians of harbouring the same beliefs as Adolf Hitler. This is certainly Mr. Ahmed’s prerogative, but as we will see, it is a prerogative based upon wishful thinking rather than sound reason or fact.
Let us begin now to examine Mr. Ahmed’s page and his arguments. My responses will be in italics.
Yes, Hitler was a Christian.
http://www.ExamineTheTruth.comContrary to popular beliefs, One of the most Evil men of our times, Adolf Hitler was actually a Bible believing Christian. Simply reading his book Mein Kampf sent chills down my spine. Many Christians will vehemently deny this, but they are in clear denial of the historical truths and clear facts. Some, will even go so far as to declare Hitler was an Atheist! In fact, Ann Coulter, a Christian extremist who has made hate filled, bigoted comments towards Islam, stated:
“this was the approach of all the great mass murderers of the last century — all of whom were atheists: Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot”
I would like to begin my address of this section by noting that Mr. Ahmed at least, unlike many of his coreligionists (as we shall see later), is able to recognise that Hitler was evil with a capital “E”! 😉
Seriously, however, let us examine what he has said here. Mr. Ahmed has laid the foundations of his argument thus:
- Hitler was a Bible-believing Christian, and
- “Historical truths and clear facts” show this to be true.
What does the actual testimony of history say on this matter? Something quite different than what Mr. Ahmed seems to think. Let us take a look at the *actual* Nazi programme for Christianity in Nazi Germany. William Shirer, perhaps the foremost chronicler of the Nazi regime, after noting that the attraction of the German people to Hitler was based upon the successes which the Nazi regime had in building up the army and reviving industry and jobs, writes thus concerning the Nazi plans for Christianity,“And even fewer paused to reflect that under the leadership of Rosenberg, Bormann, and Himmler, who were backed by Hitler, the Nazi regime intended eventually to destroy Christianity in Germany, if it could, and substitute the old paganism of the early tribal Germanic gods and the new paganism of the Nazi extremists. As Bormann, one of the men closest to Hitler, said publically in 1941, ‘National Socialism and Christianity are irreconcilable‘.”What the Hitler government envisioned for Germany was clearly set out in a thirty-point program for the ‘National Reich Church’ drawn up during the war by Rosenberg, an outspoken pagan, who among his other offices, held that of ‘the Fuehrer’s Delegate for the Entire Intellectual and Philosophical Education and Instruction for the National Socialist Party.’ A few of the thirty articles convey the essentials:”1. The National Reich Church of Germany categorically claims the exclusive right and the exclusive power to control all churches within the borders of the Reich: it declares these to be the national churches of the German Reich.”5. The National Church is determined to exterminate irrevocably….the strange and foreign Christian faiths imported into Germany in the ill-omened year 800.”7. The National Church has no scribes, pastors, chaplains, or priests, but National Reich orators are to speak in them.”13. The National Church demands immediate cessation of the publishing and dissemination of the Bible in Germany…”14. The National Church declares that to it, and therefore to the German nation, it has been decided that the Fuehrer’s Mein Kampf is the greatest of all documents. It….not only contains the greatest but it embodies the purest and truest ethics for the present and future life of our nation.”18. The National Church will clear away from its altars all crucifixes, Bibles, and pictures of saints.”19. On the altars there must be nothing but Mein Kampf (to the German nation and therefore to God the most sacred book) and to the left of the altar a sword.”30. On the day of its foundation, the Christian Cross must be removed from all churches, cathedrals, and chapels…and it must be superseded by the only unconquerable symbol, the swastika.”1
Whatever else one might think about these goals, I doubt that there are very many people who would consider these to be part of a program implemented by “Bible believing Christians”. The Nazis, under Hitler’s direction, wanted to stop the printing and spread of the Bible, and to replace it with Mein Kampf. The Nazis wanted to remove the cross and replace it with the swastika, a symbol steeped in Eastern and Hindu mythology. The Nazis wanted to “exterminate irrevocably the foreign Christian faiths imported into Germany in the ill-omened year 800”, probably a reference to the conquest and “Christianisation” of the pagan Saxons by Charlemagne. Indeed, Hitler stated at one point to Bormann concerning his true attitude towards the Christian clergy in Germany,“I’ll make these d***ed parsons feel the power of the state in a way they would have never believed possible. For the moment, I am just keeping my eye upon them: if I ever have the slightest suspicion that they are getting dangerous, I will shoot the lot of them. This filthy reptile raises its head whenever there is a sign of weakness in the State, and therefore it must be stamped on. We have no sort of use for a fairy story invented by the Jews.”2
Further, Hitler also stated,“It would always be disagreeable for me to go down to posterity as a man who made concessions in this field. I realize that man, in his imperfection, can commit innumerable errors — but to devote myself deliberately to errors, that is something I cannot do. I shall never come personally to terms with the Christian lie. Our epoch in the next 200 years will certainly see the end of the disease of Christianity…. My regret will have been that I couldn’t… behold.”3
This information alone is sufficient to completely destroy Mr. Ahmed’s thesis, since it is quite apparent that the Nazis themselves did not consider themselves to be Christians (let alone Bible believing ones!), nor were they interested in acting on Biblical principles. However, let us continue on to address the rest of Mr. Ahmed’s essay.But not only was Hitler a Christian, but he used Christianity to justify the evil he did against Jews and other people. This is very relevant for today’s time, because this is there are lunatics who are Muslim like Osama “Pajama” Bin Laden who use Islam to justify their acts of evil. Here are some excerpts from Adolf Hilter’s book, Mein Kamph (italics are ours):
Note that the key word here is used. More specifically, he used the *name* of Christianity, while he and his party quite openly rejected what Christianity actually taught, as we shall see soon below. Mr. Ahmed seems to be completely unaware that a person can *say* they are one thing while yet *doing* another. Hitler might well have played himself off as a Christian, or his party as an organisation for Christians, in the early years when he was still groping for power and needed every vote he could get. However, we must also note that the measure of what a person is can be seen in the fruit they bear, not the words they say. We note thus, of course, that if a person is a Bible believing Christian, then they will hold a completely contrary attitude towards the Jews than that which was held by the Nazis.“Brethren, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is, that they might be saved.” (Romans 10:1)”O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee; how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings, and ye would not!” (Luke 13:34)”Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper that love thee.” (Psalm 122:6)”For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh: Who are Israelites; to whom pertaineth the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises; Whose are the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, who is over all, God blessed for ever. Amen.” (Romans 9:3-5)
Paul here even says that he would give himself to be accursed from Christ, if his people Israel could be saved! A Bible believing Christian will demonstrate the same attitude as the Lord Jesus Christ and as Paul His apostle – they will love the Jewish people, pray for their peace, and seek to see them saved and receive eternal life from God through His Messiah. Indeed, one cannot find a single statement in the Scriptures, either Old or New Testament, which commands Christians to hate the Jews. Instead, Christians are commanded to do good unto all men (Galatians 6:10), because God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance (II Peter 3:9) and receive eternal life.
Quite the opposite should be said about Islam, however. Contrary to Mr. Ahmed’s claim that “lunatics” are responsible for the violence attributed to Islam, we can quite openly see that the whole history of Muslim theology and jurisprudence is supportive of waging violent jihad against infidels, and that this was supported from both the Qur’an and the ahadith. The fruit borne by those who take the Muslim religious texts seriously has been anti-Semitism in particular, and violence and hatred against “kufrs” (unbelievers) in general.http://www.hitler.org/writings/Mein_Kampf/mkv1ch02.html
Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.
This is all somewhat vague…..there is nothing specifically Christian in referring to God as “the Almighty Creator” or as “the Lord”. Indeed, both of these terms for God can be found in the Qur’an, and are general terms which any monotheist would probably be comfortable in attributing to God. Nothing here supports the contention that Hitler was a “Christian” because he wrote this paragraph.http://www.hitler.org/writings/Mein_Kampf/mkv1ch11.html:
“Concerning the moral value of Jewish religious instruction, there are today and have been at all times rather exhaustive studies (not by Jews; the drivel of the Jews themselves on the subject is, of course, adapted to its purpose) which make this kind of religion seem positively monstrous according to Aryan conceptions. The best characterization is provided by the product of this religious education, the Jew himself. His life is only of this world, and his spirit is inwardly as alien to true Christianity as his nature two thousand years previous was to the great founder of the new doctrine( he is referring to Jesus Christ). Of course, the latter made no secret of his attitude toward the Jewish people, and when necessary he even took to the whip to drive from the temple of the Lord (John 2:15) this adversary of all humanity, who then as always saw in religion nothing but an instrument for his business existence. In return, Christ was nailed to the cross, while our present-day party Christians debase themselves to begging for Jewish votes at elections and later try to arrange political swindles with atheistic Jewish parties-and this against their own nation.”
Just as the New Testament condemns “being of this world”, or being materialistic, Hilter shows how the Jews are against True Christianity, and Hilter’s Lord, Jesus Christ, made no secret his attitude towards the Jewish People.
My my, it looks like Mr. Ahmed found quite a “gotcha quote” during the course of his studies, does it not? Well, not really.
First, we should note that both Hitler’s statement, and Mr. Ahmed’s argument against Christianity on the basis of that statement, neglect to recognise a very important fact. Jesus Christ was a Jew. That’s the reason for all that “King of the Jews” business in the Gospels. Further, Jesus’ attitude toward the Jewish people is shown in verses such Luke 13:34 above, where He spoke of His desire to protect the Jewish nation (personified as Jerusalem) as a mother hen protects her chicks. Far from indicating a hatred for the Jewish people, the incident in John 2:15 whereby Christ cleansed the temple of the moneychangers shows the zeal of the Lord Christ to maintain the sanctity and purity of the Jews’ temple which was built to God, and in which the poor of the Jewish nation were oppressed by those who exacted usurious rates of exchange for temple offerings.
More to the point, however, is the implied argument that Hitler, because of his claim to be doing so, represented “true Christianity” in his doctrines. Again, we turn to Shirer to note what exactly the Hitlerist regime believed was “true Christianity”,“The party [Kerrl said] stands on the basis of Positive Christianity, and Positive Christianity IS National Socialism…..National Socialism is the doing of God’s will….God’s will reveals itself in German blood….Dr. Zoellner and Count Galen [the Catholic bishop of Meunster] have tried to make clear to me that Christianity consists in faith in Christ as the Son of God. That makes me laugh….No, Christianity is not dependent upon the Apostle’s Creed….True Christianity is represented by the party, and the German people are now called by the party and especially by the Fuehrer to a real Christianity….The Fuehrer is the herald of a new revelation.”4
So much for early Christianity being found among all those Jews and Greeks and Romans and spreading outward from there. According to the Nazi regime, “real” Christianity did not appear until the “new revelation” from Hitler. Further, the party rejected the foundational basis of Christianity, which is that salvation comes by faith in God’s Son, Jesus Christ. Indeed, this indicates that far from being “Christian”, the Nazi creed was in the spirit of antichrist,“Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son.” (I John 2:22)
Clearly, the testimony of the Nazi mouthpieces themselves demonstrates the falsity of Mr. Ahmed’s claims. Mr. Ahmed continues with several more rather non-germane quotations from Mein Kampf,http://www.hitler.org/writings/Mein_Kampf/mkv2ch01.html:
“To undermine the existence of human culture by exterminating its founders and custodians would be an execrable crime in the eyes of those who believe that the folk-idea lies at the basis of human existence. Whoever would dare to raise a profane hand against that highest image of God (Genesis 1:27)among His creatures would sin against the bountiful Creator of this marvel and would collaborate in the expulsion from Paradise.”
http://www.hitler.org/writings/Mein_Kampf/mkv1ch11.html:
“To bring about such a development is, then, nothing else but to sin against the will of the eternal creator. And as a sin this act is rewarded…”
http://www.hitler.org/writings/Mein_Kampf/mkv2ch01.html:
“This is also hurriedly patched on to the whole, should there be any space available for it: until finally it is felt that there are good grounds for hoping that the whole normal host of philistines, including their wives, will have their anxieties laid to rest and will beam with satisfaction once again. And so, internally armed with faith in the goodness of God and the impenetrable stupidity of the electorate, the struggle for what is called ‘the reconstruction of the Reich’ can now begin.”
http://www.hitler.org/writings/Mein_Kampf/mkv2ch10.html:
“Everybody who has the right kind of feeling for his country is solemnly bound, each within his own denomination, to see to it that he is not constantly talking about the Will of God merely from the lips but that in actual fact he fulfils the Will of God and does not allow God’s handiwork to be debased. For it was by the Will of God that men were made of a certain bodily shape, were given their natures and their faculties. Whoever destroys His work wages war against God’s Creation and God’s Will. Therefore everyone should endeavour, each in his own denomination of course, and should consider it as..”
http://www.hitler.org/writings/Mein_Kampf/mkv2ch06.html:
“If these people try to disparage the importance of the spoken word today, they do it only because they realize – God be praised and thanked – how futile all their own speechifying has been.”
Aside from demonstrating for us Mr. Ahmed’s apparent intimate familiarity with the website hitler.org, these quotations do little to actually support his thesis that Hitler was a Bible believing Christian. After all, each of the underlined statements (underlined in Mr. Ahmed’s original text) which have been highlighted for the apparent purpose of showing Hitler’s “Christianity” are again general statements which *any* monotheist of any persuasion would not object to. Indeed, these statements could be said to be Islamic just as easily as they could be said to derive from any “Christianity” on Hitler’s part. This, in fact, would be much more likely considering the ideological affinity and outright collaboration between Nazism and Islam. Please note that the scripture references given in the quotations above are supplied by Mr. Ahmed himself.
Though Hitler was certainly no Muslim, he *did* have an affinity for the Islamic religion, which he compared favourably against the Christianity in Germany. Albert Speer, Hitler’s wartime Minister of Armaments and Munitions, records in his memoirs,“Hitler had been much impressed by a scrap of history he had learned from a delegation of Arabs. When the Mohammedans attempted to penetrate beyond France into Central Europe during the eighth century, his visitors had told him, they had been driven back at the Battle of Tours. Had the Arabs won this battle, the world would be Mohammedan today. For theirs was a religion that believed in spreading the faith by the sword and subjugating all nations to that faith. The Germanic peoples would have become heirs to that religion. Such a creed was perfectly suited to the Germanic temperament. Hitler said that the conquering Arabs, because of their racial inferiority, would in the long run have been unable to contend with the harsher climate and conditions of the country. They could not have kept down the more vigorous natives, so that ultimately not Arabs but Islamized Germans could have stood at the head of this Mohammedan Empire.”Hitler usually concluded this historical speculation by remarking, ‘You see, it’s been our misfortune to have the wrong religion. Why didn’t we have the religion of the Japanese, who regard sacrifice for the Fatherland as the highest good? The Mohammedan religion too would have been much more compatible to us than Christianity. Why did it have to be Christianity with its meekness and flabbiness….”5
This does not, of course, really amount to any more than idle speculations on Hitler’s part. However, they do show that Hitler saw in Islam something which he found more to his liking than what he saw in Christianity. He was attracted by the penchant for violence that is the most outward manifestation of Islamic theology, and as seen in the link above, there was also the common connexion of Jew-hatred which the Nazi party had with Muslim leaders in the Arab world at that time. Indeed, while Nazi anti-Semitism is quite well known, one point which has not been remarked upon as often is that the Nazi hatred of Christianity also stemmed from anti-Semitic roots, due to the belief on the part of Hitler than Christianity (and its “child” Bolshevism) was the result of a deliberate conspiracy on the part of the Jews,“National Socialism and religion cannot exist together….The heaviest blow that ever struck humanity was the coming of Christianity. Bolshevism is Christianity’s illegitimate child. Both are inventions of the Jew. The deliberate lie in the matter of religion was introduced into the world by Christianity….Let it not be said that Christianity brought man the life of the soul, for that evolution was in the natural order of things.”6
Hitler likewise iterated this belief later in that same year,“Originally, Christianity was merely an incarnation of Bolshevism, the destroyer…. The decisive falsification of Jesus’ doctrine was the work of St.Paul. He gave himself to this work… for the purposes of personal exploitation…. Didn’t the world see, carried on right into the Middle Ages, the same old system of martyrs, tortures, faggots? Of old, it was in the name of Christianity. Today, it’s in the name of Bolshevism. Yesterday the instigator was Saul: the instigator today, Mardochai. Saul was changed into St.Paul, and Mardochai into Karl Marx. By exterminating this pest, we shall do humanity a service of which our soldiers can have no idea.”7
As such, the facts hardly bode well for one who wishes to pin the “Christian” label onto Adolf Hitler. His own words, spoken in private and thus without the necessity of assuaging the feelings and beliefs of the masses of the common people, demonstrate his hatred for Christianity. Hence, while Mr. Ahmed may try to snow his readers into believing that a few indeterminately theistic statements in Hitler’s book “proves” that he was a Christian, the words recorded8 from Hitler’s own mouth speak to the contrary.But, the real question is, did Adolph Hitler preach a perverted form of Christianity? The answer will shock you.
Likely it will not, considering we have already seen that the “Christianity” espoused by the Nazi regime not only bears no resemblance to orthodox, Bible-based Christianity, but indeed was *openly hostile* to true faith in Christ. However, as if what we have already seen was not enough, Shirer provides yet more details,“On November 13, 1933, the day after the German people had overwhelmingly backed Hitler in a national plebiscite, the ‘German Christians’ [Ed. note – these were the “blood, soil, and folk” people who went on to establish the “Reich Church” mentioned above] staged a massive rally in the Sportspalast in Berlin. A Dr. Reinhard Krause, the Berlin district leader of the sect, proposed the abandonment of the Old Testament, ‘with its tales of cattle merchants and pimps’ and the revision of the New Testament with the teaching of Jesus ‘corresponding entirely with the demands of National Socialism.’ Resolutions were drawn up demanding ‘One People, One Reich, One Faith,’ requiring all pastors to take an oath of allegiance to Hitler and insisting that all churches institute the Aryan paragraph and exclude converted Jews….”9
Now, the question is “did Hitler preach a perverted form of Christianity?” Obviously, if the Nazi “Reich Church” people, acting at the direction of Nazi leadership (whose fountainhead of thought was Hitler himself, and his book), felt it necessary to *revise* the New Testament to bring the teachings of Jesus Christ into line with the precepts of National Socialism, then yes, Hitler preached a perverted form of Christianity. Christianity existed before National Socialism, and National Socialism felt it necessary to *change* the teachings of Christianity to fit the “new order”. Further, the whole basis of the New Testament, and thus New Testament Christianity, is the Old Testament. The removal of the Old Testament would cast New Testament Christianity adrift without the anchor of two-thirds of God’s Word. So, thus again, we see that the Nazis sought to pervert Christianity and remove it from its Scriptural foundations. Even more so, we see that the demand for churches to exclude converted Jews on the basis of their race is completely unbiblical,“For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:26-28)
When a person gets saved, all the worldly differences that the natural man looks to and uses to divide people from each other disappear. In Christ, there is no spiritual difference in God’s eyes whether a person is a Jew or Gentile by birth, a servant or a freeman, a man or a woman. All who are in Christ are the children of God by faith, and have equally a share in the inheritance of the saints of light.First, it is important to state that Jews do not believe in Jesus Christ. Rather, they believe that he was a false Messiah, or a liar. This is what the Bible states about those who do not accept Jesus:
John 8:
8:42 Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I proceeded and came forth from God; I came not of my own accord, but he sent me.
8:43 Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word.
8:44 You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.
The Bible makes it very clear, that if you don’t love Jesus, your God is the devil. Therefore, the Jews worship the Devil and are evil. This of course, does not apply to Muslims, because Muslims believe in and love Jesus Christ. But at the same time, we don’t believe that the Bible is an accurate record of Jesus Christ, as it has been changed and altered. Therefore, I don’t believe the Jews are “evil” and worship the devil, I personally think that is crazy, but this is what the Bible clearly teaches. I find it amazing, that all this talk about the Mel Gibson movie, Passion, yet, not a single Christian to my knowledge honestly stated what the Bible really teaches about Jews!
Perhaps the reason Mr. Ahmed has yet to hear a Christian “honestly” state what the Bible “really” teaches about the Jews (i.e. what Mr. Ahmed *wants* to hear) is because Mr. Ahmed has completely miscomprehended what the passage he quoted is saying. Mr. Ahmed is playing a little game known as “proof-texting”, whereby a person will pull a verse or two completely out of context and use it to argue a point which is totally contrary to the testimony of the rest of Scripture. This he has done here, as well as simply misrepresenting what the passages says in its simple reading.
Note first that, in context, the Jews being spoken of in this passage are identified earlier in the narrative (v. 13) as “Pharisees”. In other words, Jesus was not haranguing all Jews or making a general statement against the Jewish people. He was, rather, disputing with a single group of religious leaders who were firmly opposed to His ministry, and were not above using slurs and threats of physical violence against Him to try to silence His preaching (as happens in this very chapter).
Further, let us note that nowhere in the passage does it say that those who do not believe in Jesus as their Saviour “worship the devil”. Nor does it say that “Jews are evil”. Rather, Jesus draws on the allusion of spiritual kinship. That those who trust in the Lord and believe His Word are called the children of God is a common enough artifice, in both the Old and New Testament (Gen. 6:2, Hos. 1:10, Mal. 2:10, Rom. 8:14, I John 3:2). As the counterpoint to this, those who choose not to believe God’s Word, which Jesus was bringing to these Pharisees, are those who believe a lie, and thus are in the same spiritual position as the devil, who has rejected and disbelieved God’s Word. Indeed, Jesus Himself states this explicitly just a few verses afterwards,“He that is of God heareth God’s words: ye therefore hear them not, because ye are not of God.” (John 8:47)
This passage is not saying that a person who does not follow Jesus “worships the devil” or has the “devil as their god”. Rather, it is an expression of spiritual affinity – if one chooses to disbelieve God’s Word, that puts him into the devil’s camp, even though that person may very well not even believe in the devil, much less “worship” him.
Mr. Ahmed engages in a little unsubstantiated special pleading when he tries to extricate Islam from the position of being condemned as following the devil’s lies which Jesus’ words put it into. Further, he brings up the typical Muslim saw about the Bible being “changed and altered”. Of course, the fact that the preservation of the Bible is well-attested factually is lost on Muslims who do not bother to investigate the matter beyond the repetitious assertions of their imams and mullahs. Indeed, though Muslims make the claim, I have never yet seen a Muslim provide any sort of evidence to substantiate the claim, such as to show who corrupted the Bible, when was it corrupted, how was it corrupted, and most importantly, the *evidence* backing up these. Indeed, the uniform testimony of every source of evidence, from ancient manuscript to patristic quotation to manuscripts from the Dead Sea Scrolls to the recent discovery of a fragment of Numbers dating to the 7th century BC, shows that the Bible, both Old Testament and New, has remained the same in its substance and reading. Individual manuscripts may vary slightly, but the sum total of manuscripts and other evidences yield at every point, through the systematic application of sound textual criticism, the readings originally contained in the autographs. Muslims have produced no evidence, beyond Quranic assertions, to counter this. The Qur’an, on the other hand, cannot factually make this same claim.Now, let us see what is the Bible’s prescription for “evil” people:
1 Samuel 15
15:3 Now go and smite Am’alek, and utterly destroy all that they have; do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.
Here we see that the Bible openly prescribes genocide! And that is exactly what Hilter did. How is it ‘ok’ to exterminate Am’alek but it is wrong to exterminate Satan worshiping Jews? Therefore, all Hitler did, was take the teachings of the Bible, and logically worked them through. I pose the question to the Christians, how can you condemn Hitler, when your Bible openly condemns Jews as “evil”, and endorses genocide? But thank God, a person like Hilter according to Islam, would be clearly frying in hell, as Islam condemns all forms of terror, please click here.
A few things bear noting here. First, we should note that Mr. Ahmed’s statement here is actually a non-sequitur, since the situation encountered by the Israelites in I Samuel vis-a-vis the Amalekites is vastly different from the situation of the Germans and the Jews during the Nazi period.
The Amalekites had a long history of unprovoked attacks upon Israel. They attacked the Israelites as they were escaping from Egypt, at a time when the Israelites would have been facing rather serious organisational and logistical difficulties (i.e. taking advantage of Israel in a moment of serious weakness). They then made another direct attack on Israel soon after, again unprovoked. The Amalekites continued to oppress Israel at several points throughout the period of the Judges. Finally, their escalating violence against Israel led to even more atrocities committed *against* Israel (before slaying Agag, Samuel mentions in verse 15:33 that the swords of the Amalekites had “made women childless”, indicating devastation committed with enough violence to wipe out whole families). The judgment placed upon the Amalekites by God was most certainly not unprovoked, and indeed was righteously placed because of the Amalekites refusal to repent of their wickedness towards God’s people, and indeed, their *increased* efforts to destroy the people of God as time went on. The Amalekites had a period of 300-400 years in which God showed mercy to them in withholding judgment, but rather than turning from their ways, they actually grew *worse* in their rebellion against God’s authority and promises. Glenn Miller provides a very detailed exposition of this situation, and why this incident cannot rightly be used as a basis for attacking the Bible.
The situation in Nazi Germany, of course, was far different. There, a group of people who had committed no crime against the people of Germany, and who in fact greatly contributed to German society (Many scientists, artists, bankers, musicians, writers, and intellectuals in the Germany of the time were Jewish) were rounded up for industrialised extermination. There was no provocation from the Jews. There were no centuries of repeated attempts to oppress and wipe out the German people. There was no violence committed by the Jews against the Germans, no destruction of crops, no pillaging of wealth and the fruits of labour. The Nazi extermination of the Jews was unprovoked, unheralded, and undeserved.
Mr. Ahmed’s attempt to link a very *special case* of God’s judgment in the Old Testament with the unprovoked systematic murder of innocent civilians (note, the Amalekites, by their repeated deeds, were hardly “innocent”) is completely ridiculous. It only shows both his ignorance of the contextual circumstances in the Bible and his ignorance of the historical facts of the Nazi holocaust against the Jews. Further, it also shows his hypocrisy, since if he wants to complain about “genocide” in the Bible, he must also face the fact of genocide (indeed, complete annihilation) depicted in his own Qur’an, which is amply shown in Surah 69:6-8, where it is related to us that the ‘Ad people (a pre-Islamic Arabian tribe) were completely destroyed (“Then seest thou any of them left surviving?” – ayah 8) by a judgmental act of Allah. Here, we do not just see a command to punish a people who had committed repeated murderous and unprovoked attacks upon their neighbour. We see the complete annihilation, presumably of every last man, woman, and child, of the ‘Ad tribe. The reason given in ayah 4 is simply that they had disbelieved in coming judgment. Thus, if Mr. Ahmed wants to complain about an act in I Samuel which came after several centuries of longsuffering and patient bearing of violence from the Amalekites, then surely he will also want to take issue with Allah’s much-less-provoked genocide against the ‘Ad people.
Another error in Mr. Ahmed’s reason is that the Bible in I Samuel 15 is not “prescribing” anything. The command is specifically given to one Israelite king (Saul) for one particular instance. Nothing in the context of this passage suggests this course of action as a determinate or programmatic means of conducting the Lord’s business, especially for believers under the church age dispensation. Indeed, just the opposite is seen in Scripture. The Lord prefers mercy to judgment (Lam. 3:33,Ezek. 18:23, II Peter 3:9), though if mercy is rejected, then He will resort to judgment. What Mr. Ahmed has essentially done is proof-text, pulling a verse which (when taken out of its textual and cultural context) he thinks will help him to score some cheap points against the Bible.
Lastly, it should be obvious to the reader who has noted Hitler’s own statements, and those of his often-times more impertinent subordinates, that whatever their impetus for the attempt at genocide against the Jews might have been, the Bible certainly was not it. What we see Mr. Ahmed doing is simply compounding his non-sequitur by drawing two points and trying to get his readers to assume that there is a line which can be drawn between them. However, he has completely failed to demonstrate any causal connexion between the judgment of God upon the Amalekites in I Samuel 15 and the Nazi assaults on the Jews in the Third Reich. Considering the attitudes of the Nazis towards the Bible noted previously, this would seem to be a line which cannot logically be drawn.
In summation, it ought to be amply obvious that Mr. Ahmed’s contentions in his essay are completely baseless. Indeed, far from being being supported by history and facts, Mr. Ahmed’s arguments are stunningly refuted by the evidences of first-hand observers to the Nazi regime. Further, his attempt at arguments based upon Biblical statements are easily seen through and demonstrably illegitimate when taken in the context of the full body of God’s Word.
Answering Islam Blog 