Islam – Research Resources

Note: In preparation for an update to our entry on Islam, we are in the process of moving the exisiting entry from its old place into our current format.

During the update of this entry, most resources on this topic will still be available here.

Articles

Christian Evangelism

• The Gospel for Shame Cultures Bruce Thomas, EQM — Professional journal for the worldwide mission community, Nov. 2009
  

  I have discovered that one of the most difficult aspects of evangelizing Muslims is getting them to appreciate their need for a savior. I have found the Islamic doctrine of God and man to be such that Muslims tend to be unaware of their sinfulness and inability to save themselves.1 As a result, convincing a Muslim to embrace Jesus as the blood sacrifice for his sins usually requires considerable time and pre-evangelistic effort.

  In observing one particular culture, I have noticed a curious thing. While my Muslim friends and neighbors do not worry much about “little sins” like lying and cheating, their daily lives and religious rituals seem to revolve around something which I would consider to be even less significant, namely their ceremonial purity. The intensity of this insecurity has caused me to consider that defilement might be a basic human problem as serious to some as sin is to others.

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• The Universal Questions Muslims Ask, by David W. Schenk, Journal of Global Christianity, Vol. 2.1, February 2016. Schenk is the global consultant for Eastern Mennonite Missions. He is the author of, among other books, Christian. Muslim. Friend: Twelve Paths to Real Relationship (Christians Meeting Muslims)
  

  Most Muslims have never spoken with a Christian about the gospel. Most Christians do not know what they will encounter even if they begin. This article provides five starting points for conversation. It is not intended to be a substantive theological exploration […]

  [These are] the honest questions that Muslims ask Christians around the world wherever Muslims and Christians meet one another at the belief or theological level of interchange. One of the inhibitors of congenial relations is that Christians are often perplexed as to how to respond to these five questions. What are the questions?[3]

  First, have you changed or corrupted the Bible?
  Second, what do you mean by saying that Jesus is the Son of God?
  Third, what do you mean by Trinity?
  Fourth, how could Jesus the Messiah be crucified?
  Fifth, what do you think of Muhammad?

Important footnote: ¹

Demographics

• Muslim Demographics – fact vs. fiction A personal blog. Includes links to various sources and resources.

Islam vs. Free Speech

• When free speech offends Muslims “Cases in Canada show the value of standing firm.” Rondi Adamson, The Christian Science Monitor [Note], Apr. 10, 2008
• Evolution of Religious Bigotry, Jonah Goldberg, Real Clear Politics, Apr. 2, 2008

Practices

• Explaining the Muslim pilgrimage of hajj, by Ken Chitwood, Ph.D. Candidate, Religion in the Americas, Global Islam, University of Florida. Published in The Conversation, August 31, 2017
  

  Around 1.7 million Muslims have gathered this year in the holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia for the annual pilgrimage — the hajj. The five-day pilgrimage is a once-in-a-lifetime obligation for all Muslims who have the physical and financial ability to undertake the journey.

  So, what is the hajj and what is its spiritual significance? […]

  It is believed that a proper performance of the hajj can absolve Muslim pilgrims of any previous sins. However, Muslims also believe that just undertaking the pilgrimage is not enough: It is up to God to judge the pilgrimage as acceptable or not.
  – Source: Ken Chitwood, Explaining the Muslim pilgrimage of hajj, The Conversation, August 31, 2017

Theology

• A Christian Perspective on Islam by Chawkat Moucarry
  

  At the heart of the polarization between Christianity and Islam lies the divergent historical assessments of Jesus and of Muhammad. The claims of the two religions cannot both be true: they are, as we have seen, intrinsically exclusive. Such recognition never warrants hate or malice: surely both sides are obligated to tell the truth as they understand it, yet such truth-telling should be undertaken with courtesy, respect, attentive listening. When the truth claims are mutually contradictory, and the issues of such transcendental importance, faithful witness equally demands honest and respectful confrontation, frank and courteous debate.

• “It Was Made to Appear Like that to Them:” Islam’s Denial of Jesus’ Crucifixion by Gregory R. Lanier, Assistant Professor of New Testament, Reformed Theological Seminary, Orlando
  

  Of the major theological divides that separate Islam and Christianity, one of the most difficult to pin down is the denial of the crucifixion of Jesus in Muslim tradition. Though the assertion that Jesus did not die on the cross appears in only part of one difficult verse in the Qur’an (Q4:157, see below), scholars agree that the majority view within Islam is that this verse “affirms categorically that Christ did not die on the cross and that God raised him to Godself.” In fact, the rejection of the crucifixion has “become a sort of shibboleth of orthodoxy,” thus presenting a significant challenge for Muslim-Christian engagement.

  This dogma is not, however, without its difficulties: it requires rejection of the broad scholarly consensus that the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth outside Jerusalem under the oversight of Pontius Pilate is an indisputable historical fact; it strains exegesis of other parts of the Qur’an and appears to rely on strained exegesis of one verse; and it has spawned a wide range of often speculative and contradictory explanations. But does the Qur’an itself actually deny the resurrection?

• Muhammad and Jesus: Compare the Men — Compare the Religions
  

  Thomas Carlyle observed that the history of the world is really the biography of great men. And no two men have influenced our world more than Jesus and Muhammad. Nations have used their words as the foundation of their cultures and laws. Fully half of the world’s inhabitants trace the roots of their beliefs back to Muhammad’s words in the 7th century and the teachings of Jesus Christ in the 1st century. So who were these men who have changed our world, and how do they compare with one another?

• What the Quran says about Jesus “The distinctives of the Lord Jesus-Christ in the Koran.” An excerpt from: The gospel of Christ Jesus according to Saint John – As reviewed by the Koran and Muslim scholars, By: Dr. Ben Malik Jamil

Books

• Christian. Muslim. Friend: Twelve Paths to Real Relationship (Christians Meeting Muslims) [Paperback] [ Kindle Edition] by David W. Schenk. This book is the winner of the 2016 Christianity Today Book Award for Mission/The Global Church.
  

  Shenk lays out twelve ways that Christians can form authentic relationships with Muslims, characterized by respect, hospitality, and candid dialogue.

  Rooted in his fifty years of friendship with Muslims in Somalia, Kenya, and the United States, Shenk invites Christian readers to be clear about their identity, develop trust, practice hospitality, confront distortions of both faiths, and seek out Muslims committed to peace.

  He invites readers to both bear witness to the Christ-centered commitments of their faith while also reaching out in friendship with Muslims.

• Reflections on the Revolution In Europe: Immigration, Islam, and the West by Christopher Caldwell
  

  Its most cutting insights, rather than on Muslim immigrants’ capacity or motivations to assimilate — I’d say they turn on Europe’s will to establish more demanding standards for their integration — deal with the Europeans themselves.

  Mr. Caldwell, who is an editor at The Weekly Standard in Washington and writes a weekend column for The London Financial Times, says Europe’s “writers, academics and politicians act as if it is only some quirk or accident or epiphenomenon (and never immigration itself) that has left their country with intractable problems.”

  All European countries, he writes, pursue the same strategy: “elevating Muslim pressure groups to pseudo-governmental status and declaring that doing so will produce an Islam that reflects the values of Europe than vice versa.”

  But because Europe was unsure of what those values are, and accepted a “neutrality of cultures,” Mr. Caldwell finds “declaring immigration a success and an enrichment became the only acceptable opinion to hold.”

  As a result, he concludes, “Europe finds itself in a contest with Islam for the allegiance of its newcomers. For now, Islam is the stronger party in that contest.”
  – Source: John Vinocur, Downturn Draws a Veil Over Islam, New York Times, May 18, 2009

Charts and Outlines

• Christian Reply to Muslim Objections [PDF version of a page from the Internet Archive] Text from a brochure in which issues often brought up by Muslims are addressed in outline form. Includes scripture references to both the Bible and the Koran. Most helpful to those Christians who already have a working knowledge of what Muslims believe and how they defend their faith.

  Issues addressed include the following subjects

  • The Bible as we have it is not God’s Word
  • God has no son – Jesus cannot be God
  • The Trinity
  • Jesus was not crucified
  • Jesus was only a prophet to Israel and Mohammed the universal one
  • The Gospel of Barnabas is the ‘real gospel’
  • Mohammed is predicted in the Bible

  The material also addresses a number of Christian objections to Islamic teachings.

• Christianity vs. Islam Includes a comparison chart.

Glossaries

• Meaning of Muslim names What personal names for Muslim men and women mean.

Multimedia

• Bible in Arabic [MP3] Presented by Arabic Christian Magazine The Grace
• Inside Islam [Online radio] Collaborative effort between the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s National Resource Centers and Wisconsin Public Radio’s Here on Earth: Radio Without Borders. Include archived programs and a blog.
  

  Inside Islam: Dialogues and Debates is a new media initiative that seeks to challenge misconceptions and stereotypical perceptions about Islam and Muslims worldwide through a collaboration between UW-Madison’s nine area and international studies centers, Wisconsin Public Radio, and the public.

News Tracker & News Archive

Islam news tracker & news archive, provided by Religion News Blog.

Software

• Free Arabic Bible Software

Statistics

• Muslims and Islam: Key findings in the U.S. and around the world, Pew Research Center, July 22, 2016
  

  Muslims are the fastest-growing religious group in the world. The growth and regional migration of Muslims, combined with the ongoing impact of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and other extremist groups that commit acts of violence in the name of Islam, have brought Muslims and the Islamic faith to the forefront of the political debate in many countries. Yet many facts about Muslims are not well known in some of these places, and most Americans — who live in a country with a relatively small Muslim population — say they know little or nothing about Islam.

Video

• Islamic practices and beliefs by Nabeel Qureshi, who converted from Islam to Christianity.

Websites

• Apostates of Islam [Contra] [Internet Archive version]
  

  Who we are: We are ex-Muslims. Some of us were born and raised in Islam and some of us had converted to Islam at some moment in our lives. We were taught never to question the truth of Islam and to believe in Allah and his messenger with blind faith. We were told that Allah would forgive all sins but the sin of disbelief (Quran 4:48 and 4:116). But we committed the ultimate sin of thinking and questioned the belief that was imposed on us and we came to realize that far from being a religion of truth, Islam is a hoax, it is hallucination of a sick mind and nothing but lies and deceits.

  What we believe:

  Some of us have embraced other religions but most of us have simply left Islam without believing in any other religion. We believe in humanity. We believe that humans do not need to follow a religion to be good. All we need to follow is the Golden Rule. All we have to do is to treat others the way we expect to be treated. This is the essence of all the goodness. All good religious teachings stem from this eternal principle. This is the ultimate guidance humanity need. This is the Golden Rule.
  – Source: Apostates of Islam, front page, last accessed Aug. 7, 2008

• Euro-Islam.info “News and analysis on Islam in Europe and the United States”
  

  Euro-Islam.info is an active network of researchers and scholars who conduct comparative research on Islam and Muslims in the West and disseminate key information to politicians, media, and the public.

  Sponsored by GSRL Paris/CNRS France and Harvard University, the Euro-Islam research network consists of over forty researchers and hosts over 50,000 unique visitors each month. The site is recognized in political and media circles as the most reliable online reference for Islam in Europe.

• A Muslim Journey of Hope [Also available in Arabic] Website for the television program ‘A Muslim Journey of Hope,’ “brought to you by people whose lives have been changed by the hope we have found because of the love of God and the truth about Jesus Christ.” You can watch (or listen) to the testimonies online
• Spotlight on Muslim Misconceptions Articles, lectures, and dialogues on Muslim misconceptions about Christianity