Pints With Aquinas - 230: From Islam to Catholicism w/ Ex-Muslim Jacob Imam

Episode Date: November 3, 2020

Today I’m joined at the bar table by Jacob Imam — a doctoral student at Oxford University. Together we discuss his conversion from Islam to Catholicism. Jacob shares: How growing up in a split Muslim/Evangelical household led him to start asking some deep metaphysical questions at a very young age Why he went from being an Eastern Orthodox catechumen to choosing Catholicism How the story of the Prodigal Son led to his father’s conversion just weeks before his death   SPONSORS EL Investments: https://www.elinvestments.net/pints Exodus 90: https://exodus90.com/mattfradd/ Hallow: http://hallow.app/mattfradd STRIVE: https://www.strive21.com/   GIVING Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mattfradd This show (and all the plans we have in store) wouldn't be possible without you. I can't thank those of you who support me enough. Seriously! Thanks for essentially being a co-producer coproducer of the show.   LINKS Website: https://pintswithaquinas.com/ Merch: https://teespring.com/stores/matt-fradd FREE 21 Day Detox From Porn Course: https://www.strive21.com/   SOCIAL Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mattfradd Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattfradd Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mattfradd   MY BOOKS Does God Exist: https://www.amazon.com/Does-God-Exist-Socratic-Dialogue-ebook/dp/B081ZGYJW3/ref=sr_1_9?dchild=1&keywords=fradd&qid=1586377974&sr=8-9 Marian Consecration With Aquinas: https://www.amazon.com/Marian-Consecration-Aquinas-Growing-Closer-ebook/dp/B083XRQMTF/ref=sr_1_4?dchild=1&keywords=fradd&qid=1586379026&sr=8-4 The Porn Myth: https://www.ignatius.com/The-Porn-Myth-P1985.aspx   CONTACT  Book me to speak: https://www.mattfradd.com/speakerrequestform

G'day, g'day, and welcome to Pints with Aquinas. My name is Matt Fradd, and today I am joined around the proverbial bar table by Jacob Imam to discuss his conversion from Islam to Catholicism. We'll be talking about different things, such as, is Islam perhaps the largest Christian heresy? We'll be talking about violence within Islam. We'll talk about Muhammad, how he's viewed, how we should view him. I want to make it clear that I know people often say this and it doesn't really help, but I'm going to say it anyway. We really mean no offense to our Muslim friends who are watching this. We love you. We care about you. Just like you would think that Christianity is a perversion of the truth. We also believe that. And I'm not offended if you think that about Christianity. And I hope you won't be offended as we seek to explore that with Jacob regarding Islam. But it's very good to have you no matter who you are or

where you're from. So welcome. If you have not subscribed to this channel, do us a favor, click subscribe, click the bell button. I'm not sure if Google is in the business of wanting to proclaim and spread the Christian message. So you can help us out by clicking subscribe, click that thumbs up button and sharing this on Facebook or social media. That really does help us. So without any further ado, Jacob, it's great to have you. Matt, thanks so much for having me on. Are you allowed to tell people where you are right now? I am. Well, generally, I'm currently in one of J.R.R. Tolkien's former homes.

He has many around Oxford, so nobody will ever be able to guess which one. But it's pretty special to be here nonetheless. That's amazing. Tell our viewers a little bit about who you are and what you're up to these days. I'm currently a DPhil student. That's the Oxonian, the Oxford term for a PhD. I've been here since 2015, first as a visiting student, getting some training in the classics, before coming back to do my master's in Islam before settling here, now working on a Catholic theology of money. So this is what

I'm doing. I'm married to a beautiful woman named Alice. We have one child named Blaze. He is blonde hair and blue eyes, most strange-looking imam that you've ever seen, but a happy baby. All right, man. That's awesome. Hey, do us a favor.

If you have other YouTube tabs open or Google tabs, maybe close them, Jacob, because we were just getting some delay there. But yeah, man, it's great to have you on the podcast. So you say you're in England right now, but you have an American accent. So do you live in America as well? I do. We live in Steubenville, Ohio, the other half of the year when we're not in England. We moved there only a year ago,

a year and a bit ago. It's an amazing place. Most people know it for the university, Franciscan University of Steubenville. The rest of the town is dilapidated. It's been defeated on so many levels. And so the only thing that people really have there is one another and the Lord. And we decided to move there specifically, neither one of us are from there. We decided to move there because we really thought our kids would have the best chance of becoming saints around these people rather than just us. So it's been a real gift to be there. That's really cool. And that's where you and I met. We had a beer in Supermille a few weeks back. I was giving a talk. We had a little luncheon after that,

and it was great to meet you. But I was telling you before the Skype interview that I really know nothing about you other than you used to be kind of a Muslim. So I'm really looking forward to hearing your story. So tell us how you grew up. I'm sure you grew up Muslim. Take us from there. Yeah, well, I grew up almost, I was born a Muslim, technically speaking, and I grew up almost schizophrenic, which is a mean of offense by this term, jumping back and forth between my mom coming into the room to say prayers at night, hands folded, kneeling by the bed as she was an evangelical, and my father coming in at night, lying down as he was a Muslim. He was born and raised in Jerusalem. His father, Farid Imam, founded the

first local travel agency in the Holy Land. He actually was one of the brokers of the Dead Sea Scrolls as well, these ancient documents that held the sacred scriptures on them, amongst other things. His father was the Imam of Al-Aqsa Mosque, so he was the prayer leader at the third most holy site in the world for Muslims. And his father was the Mufti of Jerusalem. So for Muftis, it's a legal expert within Islam. Think of a mix between a Catholic bishop and a civic judge, merged into one. So we come from a pretty well-known Muslim family. You mentioned Imam, and that's your last name. So what's the deal there? It is. It's actually a bit of a funny story. So my great uncle was Mufti Husseini. He was the one that Benjamin Netanyahu, prime minister of Israel, claimed gave Hitler the idea for the final solution, the extermination of the Jews. It's not true,

don't worry. But it was true that he was pro-Nazi. And so our family changed our name from Husseini to Imam, mirroring what our historic spiritual function was in the family to get a little bit of a distance from him. So that's the story. But just as the Catholic Church has seen a number of scandals in the last number of years bubble up and come to the surface. So the Muslim community saw some of that as well. And my grandfather was a bit disenchanted by that. My father was certainly disenchanted by that. And particularly as my grandfather was studying the Christian holy places and leading tours there, he began to read the New Testament frequently. He went to a New Testament Bible college for archaeology. He didn't want his

assets divided up, but according to Sharia law, at the end of his life, and he told my father to marry a Christian. And so there was this slow transition away from this faith of his father's that he began. And my father, likewise, was, but even more so, rather disenchanted. And so when he met my mother, who moved to Jerusalem for a little while as a study abroad student from Michigan State University, and met her and married her and moved back to the States. It was a slow process of liberalizing for him. And so even though he taught me the Koran growing up and taught me how to pray here and there, it was times expressive of his doubts as well. And so I was raised constantly thinking between these two faiths.

He didn't want me to be a Christian. He didn't want me to learn the faith. He didn't know that my mother was doing this at first, praying with me. And so there was this all in the home in my early years. What a strange way to grow up, because I imagine a lot of people in America have the experience of two different denominations within the home, maybe a Catholic and a Protestant. And I wonder how they try to reconcile that maybe by thinking, well, we're really kind of both the same. And so it's not that much difference. And so there's not much kind of cognitive dissidence, but how did you

deal with that? Well, I was four years old. I remember it really clearly when I realized that my parents believed different things, you know, we prayed in different ways, and they said things that were strange, but it was a conversation around the dinner table where my father finally found out that my mom was saying some things to me about Jesus and the good news. And so he went up in a ball of flames and was very angry about this, and I kind of realized then that I had a long journey before me. It was kind of constantly nagging at me, which one's right, the faith of my father or the faith of my mother? Up until I was about nine years old or so.

And at nine, I realized I just was too young to deal with these questions. So I kind of put it off. I was going to a classical school at the time. I thought maybe the Romans got it right. Maybe the Greeks got it right. The tragedy, the tragic universe, the tragic cosmos that they envisioned made a lot of sense to me, given the depravity that we see in ourselves and in other people and really in the environmental chaos that surrounds us. But it was short-lived, just because it was around the time I became 14, 15 is when I started to read the sacred scriptures and come to a new conclusion.

And how did you get your hands on the scriptures? What motivated you to want to read the sacred scriptures and come to a new conclusion. And how did you get your hands on the scriptures? What motivated you to want to read them? Well, it actually came about because of a school project. This classical school was also a classical Christian school. My father was fine with that. They're people of the book, he said. But they had me start to read the New Testament. And at that same time, I had a deep conviction of my sin

that was all-encompassing. And so I turned to the God of my father first and said, you know, what can I do to make atonement for what I have done? And I saw that the answer was really do better, try harder. I could have moved to have more Muslim friends in a Muslim community, and that could have helped. But it seemed like it just wasn't taking my sin seriously enough. If I really grieved the God who created everything, then I'm going to try and reform and say a simple sorry. It wasn't good good enough and then i looked to the faith of my mother this awareness of your sin did that come about through your teaching the teaching of islam i'm i'm imagining you were practicing the faith that you were going to what mosque no i never did

actually it was it was it was with my father in the home this was part of his liberalizing as he came to the States and so and so I certainly studied the Quran certainly read the Quran certainly prayed from time to time but nothing nothing like going to to mosque it was it was really a seeing my friends and I start to watch bad movies and watch and listen to bad music and recognizing that this was obviously against both faiths. of my own sin that was the first trigger to make me think that, well, if I did something this bad, then there needs to be something that was done about it. And Islam did nothing about it, and Christianity did. Jesus died on the cross for our sins, taking our sins upon himself and giving us a path to heaven. That made sense all of a sudden. How did your mom feel about you picking up the New Testament? I don't think she knew, actually. Yeah, I was trying to do this a little bit in secret because

I knew how it was, you know, a bull in a China store, whatever, however that phrase goes, bringing that up in the home. So I really did this privately. But the other big thing was that I recognized that this culture that we have that was so laden with sin, that was so far from God, didn't matter which God it was, but clearly so far from the divine, would never have been tolerated by Allah. He would never have had the patience for it, the long enduring suffering from this. But the Trinitarian God of the Bible really did.

And so it was really those two things as one that finally brought me to settle on my mother's faith rather than my father's. That's really interesting because I imagine there's a lot of people who aren't moved by the scriptures. They're moved by some charismatic preacher or some large prayer event. And it's from that that they then perhaps have a desire to read the scriptures. I wonder if it says something about your kind of classical education upbringing that prepared you to read the scriptures. What do you think that was? It could have been. I mean, it certainly was an assignment first from school.

The fact that I carried on from there was basic exposure and teaching me. Definitely grace, for sure. The grace of our Lord. Yeah, no kidding. I'm taking that as a given. But in a more material sense, I do think that there's something about preparing a child's heart for receiving truth, goodness, and beauty. And that really does need to be taken seriously, because then you're participating already in the grace that God has given you to raise up children in the way that they should go. Okay, and so did you have other Christians in your life, any friends who were committed Christians?

I, you know, I certainly did, but I didn't, we didn't really speak about Christianity. It was never a topic of conversation apart from in school, apart from outside of class. But it was really kind of a nerdy conversion at first. That's really beautiful. What happened next then? Did you go to your mother about it, your father? I went to nobody for a while about it. Eventually I did go to my mother, and I recognized,

I don't know where this came from either. Again, must be grace, but in a material sense, I have no idea where this came from. But there was an overwhelming desire to be baptized. And so I didn't really know any practicing Catholics or Eastern Orthodox. And it was quite a low church community that we were in, an evangelical community. But there was an obvious need for the sacraments immediately. And so it was at the end of my freshman year of high school that I went to this church pastor that my mom knew of the church that she was attending and asked him if he would baptize me, and he did. Could you read Arabic? Could you read the Quran in its original language? I can now, yeah. Not really at the time. No, my dad never taught me Arabic until I got to about middle school.

Did you pray the kind of Muslim prayers daily? Not daily, no. I bring this up because I can imagine someone saying, okay, well, this guy wasn't really a Muslim, and that's why he's now a Christian. He was never really exposed. He didn't go to mosque. He didn't pray the prayers regularly. He couldn't even read the Quran when he was young, only too recently. So yeah, this is not surprising. But what would you say to that? Well, it's not necessarily surprising that I became a Christian, or rather, it's not

a given that I would become a Christian. But I think there is something that we all take for granted as the greater heresy that's running around today. And that really is liberalism, this understanding of personal sovereignty, this vicious individualism, this vicious with the tyranny of relativism, as Pope Benedict called it, that is manifested and given order by the market and by the state and and that really changes a lot of people's Perspectives and particularly for Muslims who move to the West and they don't have the legal structure That Islam does require to be able to truly live the faith That really takes them for a loop. You're not actually even able to live out the full Islamic life, even without the, even with the prayers of mosques. Yeah, it's fair enough. So I can see somebody saying, okay, like it's one thing to leave the

Islamic faith, it's another to adopt Christianity. Okay. And so how did you journey from that small Christian church where you were baptized to Catholicism? It was the same story as so many, as John Henry Newman says, to begin studying history is to cease being a Protestant. And I went to Baylor University to study classics and historical philosophy. And there I began to know the great tradition that is Christianity. And so I started to read St. Augustine and St. Thomas and quickly realized that the only way that I could really have certainty of this new faith is if I was entering into a tradition. If you were entering into a tradition, you said? Mm-hmm.

Okay. So then how did you, I mean, fair enough, this was an intellectual process for you then. You were kind of looking at different claims made by different Christian sects and decided that Catholicism went all the way back and that was for you or what? I originally became an Orthodox catechumen, actually. I found that one of my friends had transitioned from being a Pentecostal to an Eastern Orthodox believer. And so I started to ask him questions,

and he began to give me some really interesting answers. And so I went and became a catechumen, and they started to always juxtapose what they believed to Catholics, to the Catholic faith. So I thought, why not just do both catechetical processes at the same time? So that's what I did. And it made for a really kind of easy transition, to be honest. It was very clarifying. And I left the Orthodox faith being a huge fan of it and knowing that I had to become a Catholic. And so I started that process at Baylor in Waco, Texas, before I moved

to Oxford for that one brief period as an undergraduate exchange student. And I... Did you have a good, was there a good parish you were going to in Waco? It was an excellent parish. I think the last two years that I was there as an undergraduate, some years ago now, I think there was 40 people received into the church, just the last two years. My two dearest friends were received into the church there. It was a beautiful place. Did it celebrate the tradition or had it become modernized? No, not modernized at all. By my senior year, the priest was celebrating Ad Orientum in the Latin Mass twice a week, I believe. And so there's been some changes since then, but it was a beautiful place. I wonder what would have happened if you

had been going through the catechumenate with the Orthodox Church, which so beautifully upholds its tradition, and went to a, and here I'm not painting with a negative brush all Novus Autos, but I'm saying if you had went to a more liberalized Novus Auto, what that experience may have been like for you. I wonder if you would have ended up becoming Orthodox. I don't think so. There were a number of things, again, rather a nerdy conversion experience, so. There were a number of things, again, rather a nerdy conversion experience, that were important. One, the understanding of sin, that it was just not genealogical, but actual and original, that Mary was really who she is and proclaimed for all of her goodness as the Immaculate Mother of our God. And then lastly, just the fact that there was no developments made in the church for a thousand years. It seemed like it was almost a dying tradition.

And the fact that there was this inversion almost that occurred where the royal was supplanting the priestly, occurred where the royal was supplanting the priestly, where the ethnic groups of the church were, of the Eastern Orthodox Church, were rising up above the sacerdotal authority that the church actually has, that was made obvious. And that was something that hadn't really happened since the fourth century and the crisis with Arianism. So I think that all of these almost political issues were coming to the surface, as well as the more obviously theological ones as well. What was your biggest obstacle, the biggest doctrinal obstacle to becoming Catholic, would you say? It was certainly the papacy. I mean, that was, without a doubt, the biggest doctrinal obstacle to becoming Catholic, would you say? It was certainly the papacy. I mean, that was without a doubt the biggest issue.

And I'll tell the story. I really think that this is why orthodoxy does appeal to the modern Protestant. It feels like the modern Protestant has no roots. He's sort of severed from any substantive heritage or tradition. He wants the tradition. He wants the beauty of the liturgy, but he doesn't want the papacy. I don't say that's the case with everybody, but I can see that being a big factor. So, all right, tell us about that, why it was an obstacle and how you overcame it. Well, it really is real authority from heaven. I mean, this is a place in which God speaks to his people. It's the place from which governs the nations, governs our lives. And that's no small thing. So there's no wiggle room,

really, with the Pope. He really is the vicar of Christ, and you have to take that claim. But I moved to Oxford midway through my catechesis, and I arrived on a Thursday evening, you know, was walking through the town on the Friday, see the, I see the Oxford Oratory, a famous place where Tolkien went to Mass, where John Henry Newman preached, Gerard Manley Hopkins was a curate there for some time and thought, I got to go there. So Saturday morning, I go to the Mass, I look around for a man with a collar on, and I go up to him at the end, he was talking to an old man, and I asked him, could you carry on my catechesis, my catechetical formation. And he said, oh, actually, I'm not the man that

you should be looking for. And he started to look around. And the old man that he was speaking with says, no, he's not the priest. He's the bishop. And I just couldn't be able to, I wasn't able to identify him. I don't think he was wearing a pectoral cross or any purple. And then the bishop turns around. He says, yes, well, this is the man of Oxford. This is Walter Hooper. And Walter Hooper was C.S. Lewis's former secretary. And so I thought, wow, 36 hours in, this is an awesome experience. But anyways, I eventually did find the right man with the right collar on. And I asked him if he would carry on my catechesis. And he said very sternly in a grave and very, you know, it was very serious and very holy man. And he asked me, is this catechesis

to become a Catholic? And my heart dropped to my stomach. And I said, yes, I think it is. But I immediately called up the Orthodox priests at that point, and I actually had a chance of meeting Metropolitan Callistos Ware, a bishop in the church, and he's an amazing man. Anyways, I was able to ask him some questions about a meeting that happened between the patriarchs. Please spare no detail at this point. Please tell us everything. So there we were drinking sweet sherry after a Vesper service he celebrated. And I started to ask him some great questions, thinking in for his books and all that. And I came to this question of a meeting that he had with the patriarchs and Pope Benedict in 2008. And I said, you know, what were the details of

reconciliation that you were speaking about then? And he said, oh, it was not just for reconciliation that we met. We needed to gather together and we needed the Pope to be able to lead us and gather us and unite us because we were having so many contentious conversations on our own. And I thought, oh, my gosh, if you need a pope, then I sure need a pope. And that was very relieving at that point. Wow. What did he think? Did you share with him your interest in Catholicism?

Well, I didn't, actually, because I was I was always very scared, to be honest, to bring bring this up with people. And I would always kind of pivot one way or the other, saying, you know, I'm really going to become Orthodox, or yeah, I'm really going to become Catholic, and depending on who I was talking with. And so I never got an answer, but I had the questions that I was looking for answered. Now, I don't mean to pry, so no need to answer this if it's too personal, but I'd love to know a little bit about how your family is reacting to this, maybe even just your mother or uncles, aunts, what's going on with them? They must be aware of your journey to Christianity at this point. Certainly. Well, there was immediate tension with my father,

and that was hard to push away, to be honest, until, and there was a good falling out between us, until he was diagnosed with lung cancer about eight years ago. And that was a great opportunity for reconciliation for us on many levels. But I was also reading in Imam Bukhari in one of the hadith, the sayings and doings of Muhammad that he recommended, that Muhammad recommended reading the sacred scriptures at one point. So I offered that to my father. And so we did reunite. We had a time together and we uh and we began to read sacred scripture together as well reading all of john's gospel and then moving through parts of luke and matthew and i'll never forget the night when we were reading the story of the prodigal son and he was expecting a different ending he had never heard it before he was expecting that as his son was returning,

the father would go out and kill him for his negligence. He really was. That's actually how he thought it would end. And so when it was quite the opposite ending, he just said that was the most beautiful story I've ever heard. And the day after that, we read that my burden is easy and yoke is light. And I was explaining to him a little bit of what that meant. And that's when we reached out to God in a personal way, asked to be baptized. And so I was able to baptize my father about three weeks

before he died, seven years ago in a day yesterday. So you broke up a little bit there. So it was fine when you talked about reading the Prodigal Son. You said you read another story, and it was at that point he asked for Jesus Christ to be his Savior, or how did that happen? Yeah, he asked to be baptized. He asked to be baptized. And so I baptized him three weeks before he died. And were you a Catholic at that point? No, I was still a Protestant at that point, actually. But there was still, again, kind of like my own, an understanding of the necessity of baptism. Glory to Jesus Christ.

Did you have other family members who were Muslim? I certainly do still. And they're all still Muslims. There was certainly some even major falling out when I informed them of my father's baptism, which perhaps was a mistake. But I've been in touch with almost everyone since, and because it was such a point of shame for the immediate family, they didn't speak about it to our extended family all too much, which has saved some peace. Okay. Well, I want to take a pause here, and then I want us to talk about whether we should view Islam as a Christian heresy. I'd

also like to take some questions, maybe even some objections from those in the chat. But before we do, I wanted to say thank you to Exodus 90, who's a sponsor of this podcast. Exodus 90 is a 90-day Catholic spiritual exercise for men where you get together with a small group of men. And for 90 days, you give up things you'd rather not give up, perhaps like alcohol and snacks between meals and things like this. You take on things like cold showers every single day. It is really bloody difficult. I'm not going to lie to you, but it is amazing, and it is transforming the lives of Catholic men. I think one of the things that actually draws men to Islam, at least in a superficial sense, is that they see what they perceive to be, and I think what oftentimes is the case, a sort of rigor and masculinity that Christianity in the West doesn't have. And so this really does celebrate the sort of ascetical tradition

of our church. So go to exodus90.com. There's a link below. If you go to exodus90.com slash Matt Fradd, again, it's right in the description. Click that, sign up, because we're going to start in January. And so we'll give you more information as we approach that day. But please check it out. Exodus90.com slash Matt Fradd. Exodus90.com slash Matt Fradd. Would you agree with that? About this sort of like we like I remember being in New York City with my wife and we were getting on the plane and I think maybe we're driving to the airport and seeing these men who worked at the airport who were clearly Muslim

with their prayer mat out, bowing their heads to the ground. You're like, this is beautiful. Like this, the seriousness with which they take their faith. And you go to so many Catholic churches and it's like, we don't even, we don't even care. I totally agree. I think there's another thing. I have quite a number of close Muslim friends here in Oxford. And all this might be a little bit of a surprise for them, but they once, one guy in particular challenged me one day. He says, you know, it seems like Christianity, in Christianity, God really doesn't care about your whole life. He cares about like how you pray, what you believe, but he's not actually changing your social order at all. Like the legal structures are the same. He doesn't actually care how you walk, how you talk, how you conduct business, other than just maybe being nice to

your coworkers. And that was a really challenging point too. I think you're right to say that men in general hope to give their lives for something greater, to actually die for something good, die well, and live well, live in a totalizing way. And I think that it's not true Christianity that says that God doesn't care about all aspects of your life. He cares about the political structure in its very form. He cares about the economic structure in its very form and the ways in which we conduct ourselves in the public square as well. And so, you know, I'll give a short little plug. That was inevitably something that led me to help co-found New Polity, which was a think tank that we have started in Steubenville, Ohio, to really think through what it means for Christ to be king of the universe and king of our social life as well. But really, but I think it does come back to your

point that people, and particularly men, want something to live well for and to die well for as well. Yeah. I want to share with you a couple of quotations here because I think it's fair to say, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, that in the Middle Ages, people viewed Islam more as a Christian heresy than a separate religion. I want to give you a quote here from Hilaire Belloc from his excellent work, The Great Christian Heresies. He says, yeah, the chief heresiarch, Muhammad himself, was not like most heresiarchs, a man of Catholic birth and doctrine to begin with. He sprang from pagans, but that which he taught was in the main Catholic doctrine oversimplified. It was the great Catholic world on the frontiers of which he lived, whose influence was all around him and whose territories he had

known by travel, which inspired his convictions. Thus, the very foundation of his teaching was that prime Catholic doctrine, the unity and omnipotence of God, but the central point where his new heresy struck home with a mortal blow against Catholic tradition was a full denial of the incarnation. He taught that our Lord was the greatest of all the prophets, but still only a prophet, a man like other men. He eliminated the Trinity altogether. I could also quote from St. John Damascene, St. Thomas Aquinas, but I bring that up because, you know, sometimes you can see the multiplicity of religions and think, well, maybe we're all just sort of saying the same thing. But if you look at the three great religions, like Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and realize that, well, Christianity is the fullness of Judaism. It's

what the God of the Jews wants for them. And if you look at Islam as a perversion of Christianity, all of a sudden, you're like, okay, so Christianity really is this rather unique thing. So what do you have to say about that? What do you think of the idea of thinking of Islam as a heresy, Christian heresy? Well, I was hoping you were going to quote Vatican II that says the same thing functionally. Do you have it in front of you? I don't, but I have pieces of it in my mind that I can share. So there's one part in particular that it was kind of bothersome for me for a while

when the Second Vatican Council and Lumen Gentium and Nostra Aetate, excuse me, said things like, we respect the Muslims who adore the same God with us, was how it was phrased in translation, that qui adorant deum unicum nobiscum was what it was in the Latin. And so I thought, wow, this is really strange that there's this claim that it's the same God, especially when they are so different, fundamentally different in so many ways. And so I went here to Blackfriars, which is not too far away in Oxford, and I saw the notes of the council. They're huge volumes, volumes of untranslated notes from the Second Vatican Council. Just if you think about writing an essay about how many notes you take before you sit down to write, it's kind of what they did.

And so I was starting to read through these notes, and I found that the council fathers only ever exclusively referred to Muslims as Mohammedans, which changes everything because you only ever call a sect after its followers name if you think it's a heresy. So you think of Arianism coming from Arius, Nestorianism coming from Nestorius, even Lutheranism coming from Luther. This is a way that they phrased it. And of course, in encyclicals prior to this, like from Leo XIII, it was likewise considered to be, or called rather, Mohammedans. And then I started to realize again that they were not appealing to Muslims' worship of God as an understanding of the divine from a natural philosophical understanding of the world, but rather from Revelation itself, citing Abraham, whom they

take pride in linking themselves with. And I thought, this changes everything. At this point, it is quite clear that the tradition has locked in that Islam came out from a misunderstanding of revelation and not just from a misunderstanding of a natural theology. And so I actually ended up continuing on and studying that for some time. And I think what we find in the Quran specifically is very interesting. Most fundamentally, we find that there are these authoritative biblical stories that are taken by the author of the Quran, whoever that might be, Muhammad or someone else. And the details were changed ever so slightly so as to apply a new theological backbone upon them. So I can give you an example. Take the Annunciation story. In the Christian tradition now today, we find that Mary is the queen of heaven, the mother and the spouse of the Holy Spirit.

But this nuptial mystery was back in the Syriac fathers and in their tradition, the people who surrounded the nascent Islamic community, just as it was in ours. They have long liturgies, long homilies, long treaties, They have long liturgies, long homilies, long treaties, spelling out Mary as being this divine mother of God and also the chaste spouse of the Lord. And you see that primarily taken out when she asks the question out of the biblical passage, when she asks, how will this be done? You say that I'm going to be bearing this child. How will this be done? And the angel Gabriel responds to her by saying that the Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you, very intimate language. And that's what the Syriac fathers understood to be that

that intimate nuptial really divine wedding proposal and so when she ultimately responds fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum let it be done unto me according to thy word she's saying yes to that divine wedding proposal and all of a sudden, heaven and earth become one flesh. But what do you find in the Quran? Instead, and there's many details that are changed, but the important ones, instead of responding to Mary with that intimate language, you find the answer to her question, how will this be done, is rather, it is easy for me. It's just very simple, very plain, and all about the power of Allah.

It goes further. Instead of waiting, begging her for her yes to God, what happens instead is that that same subjunctive fiat that Mary said, let it be done, let it be, that's taken out of her mouth, put in God's own mouth as an imperative, be, and it is. And Ibn Kathir, a very, very well-known Muslim exegete, said that it was unbefitting for a woman to control what was going to happen. God wanted it done, and he got it done. There's none of this intimate language and really this necessity of a relationship that is built on a free will, that is built on love. on love. And these start to bring out some of the ways in which the Christian narrative is assumed and changed within Islam to provide a new theological outlook.

What do you think of those who claim, and I believe the Catechism of the Catholic Church says, though I don't have it in front of me, that Muslims and Christians worship the same God? Yeah, that's the deum unicum nobiscum thing that I was mentioning earlier, that we worship the same God. And I think that there's two ways of really understanding this, of the internal and external trinities that the church has thought about so much. And is it the same God in the sense that it was the God that gave us the revelations about Abraham? And is it the same God in the sense that there really is only one God out there? There's no two gods out there. So they are certainly trying to praise God. That's genuine. And so far as they are worshiping a monotheistic God, they are doing so. But are the persons of those gods the same? Absolutely not. And I don't believe that the

Second Vatican Council is making that claim at all. And maybe there's another way of backing into this as well, is that you find there's a lot of claims about Islam being a violent religion. And there's a lot to be said about that from a legal standpoint, from a historical standpoint, but also from a modern standpoint, because you find that most Muslims today are just some of the most wonderful people you'll ever meet. I mean, they're just awesome, awesome people. just some of the most wonderful people you'll ever meet. I mean, they're just awesome, awesome people. And they'll never claim anything other than Islam is a religion of peace.

And they'll even go so far, and I think this is clearly from Christian influence, to claim that God loves like a mother loves a child in her womb. Now, most Muslims will say that's too intimate, that's too close. Don't dare claim that for us. But there are a select few that do. And that's captured in the way that the Quran opens up. Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim, in the name of God, the merciful, the compassionate. And you hear those words, rahman, rahim, that rahma root, which categorizes these words together. And there's another word that shares that same root, and that's rahim, it means womb. And so that's where some of these people say that, look, he loves, his compassion is like that of a mother suffering with her child in her womb. And I think even at its best, that's what Islam has offered. And that is gorgeous,

and it is beautiful. But there is still a fundamental difference between what a Muslim believes and what a Christian believes in that. because a Christian will go so far to say that God so loved the world that he became that child in the womb, which is something that a Muslim would never dare say, even those most influenced by Western Christianity. All right. Well, if it's okay with you, I'd like to turn to some questions that we're getting here on YouTube. Did you want to say anything else before we dive into that? No, that's great. Thanks. Absolutely. Before we do that, I want to ask all of y'all watching, and this is pretty cool. We have around 500 people watching right now. Do us a favor and smash that like button, click subscribe, share this video on Facebook or Twitter. That's really one of the best ways you can support the channel other than being a patron. So we'd really

appreciate it. One of the questions that just came in from our patrons, and we've touched upon it, comes from Bart Uppart, who I had on the show recently, actually. He says, can you please ask him what's the significance of the Virgin Mary in Islam? Yeah, it's a great question. The significance of it. So I guess we don't really know his question all too well, but the significance in its founding, I believe, like the way in which Mary is written about in the Koran is very special. She's the only woman ever named in the Koran. All other women are considered to be the wife of so-and-so. But Mary's given not just her name, but also an entire surah, a chapter of the Quran dedicated to her, surat Maryam. And you find that she is indeed a virgin, and she gives birth to Christ in this miraculous way. And what I think is actually happening at the foundations of of islam is that what muhammad is doing is taking this character that people love this person that that people love and they're he's changing

some of the details about her so that they don't know that they're being inculcated into a different vision of who she is but the but the veneration of her goes on today and with great praise, especially in Ephesus. Yeah, I understand that we want to be charitable in our discussions with Muslims and that it can be a real sign of charity and sort of to begin with what we agree upon. I think sometimes we overemphasize that, though, when we need to be condemning Islam as a heresy. How do we balance those two things? Well, speaking the truth in love is a really tricky thing.

But one thing that I've noticed has been really helpful for me in speaking to Muslims has been juxtaposing these stories because most Westerners say that look at all these details that they get wrong about Mary. Like at one point, it seems like they confuse Mary for the Trinity. Certainly as a member of the Trinity, there's a verse in the Koran that says, you Jesus, did you tell our followers to worship me, you and your mother? So certainly there's like a Trinitarian linking that shows up multiple times. But also at one point it seems like they mistake her for Aaron and Moses' sister Miriam, as they call her the sister of Miriam, or the brother, excuse me, yes, the sister of Aaron.

And so there's quite a number of these details that seem out of place. And so there's quite a number of these details that seem out of place. And so what I've tried to do with part of my research is to show that these were not accidental changes made out of ignorance, but they were very purposeful. And even though you might have a different understanding of Mary than we do as someone whose fiat is absolutely essential, than we do as someone whose fiat is absolutely essential, who's like the welcoming of the divine approach is essential. And that that is purposefully changed in the Quran. Most Muslims and all that I've met will say, yes, thank you. That is the correct story.

That's the better story. Who are we to say it's not a slight against them? It sounds like a slight to us that we're not granting her that power and the intimacy that makes love possible. But for them, it's no problem. We need the power of God to be uncompromised. And so I find that a lot of these stories that you can tell about the Annunciation, the creation of Adam, a whole slew of them, Cain and Abel, where the details are changed, they like it, but you finally have a clear vision from that juxtaposition of the two stories. Okay, thank you. Here's a question from McAfee Studios. He asks, how do Muslims in general view Catholics versus Protestants versus Orthodox, etc.? Do they

view Christian groups differently? Interesting question. Haven't thought about that before. Yeah, it's a great question. I can only speak from my own experience. I've never really studied the question directly. But I do know that Protestantism doesn't even seem like real Christianity to them, that it's not unified, it's not grouped together, there's no real hierarchy. They understand religion not in the liberal sense. And I recommend an article by Andrew Willard Jones, it's a liberal conception of religion, Our Problem, I think is what it's called,

where we think about religion as just the thoughts that we have behind our eyes and between our ears, maybe in our heart. But religion in the pre-liberal sense is this understanding of something that is totalizing, that captures all of our life. And Muslims still have that same understanding. And so I, and for them, they see that Catholicism and orthodoxy is a true religion, and for Protestantism, it lacks that fundamental thrust oftentimes. Okay. Another question comes from Bearistotle, as in Aristotle, but not. He says, what do you think are the best lanes for discussion with Muslims to move them over to Christianity? think are the best lanes for discussion with Muslims to move them over to Christianity?

Well, to be honest, a big one that I've seen work with many of my friends has actually been direct criticisms of Muhammad in the Quranic text. Oftentimes I find, though, that you're going to lose a friend or convert the friend at that point. And I like these stories instead to give you an accurate vision of God and then to welcome them in from their conviction of sin, which is taken care of by Christianity, by Jesus Christ alone. What's your opinion of David Wood? Are you familiar with him? You know, I'm not that familiar with him. Let me rephrase it. What is your opinion of those on YouTube

who criticize Islam very strongly and mock Muhammad? I don't like that at all. I don't like that at all. I think that love does better than that, to be honest. And there's a lot of problems within Islam. There's a lot of problems within Islam. And it is a false religion and it is a heretical religion. But there's a difference between Islam as the religion and Muslims themselves.

And evangelization is a primal act of love where you're inviting people to know love himself. And I do think that that should be, as C.S. Lewis says, a wooing. Robert Boylan asks, as a former Muslim and Protestant, both traditions against the veneration of images. Right. How did Jacob get over the hump of what Roman Catholic theology teaches about the veneration of images and statues? Right, well that was tough. I'll never forget.

I think the only thing that really would have done it is, first there was kind of the intellectual conversion through reading John Damascene on images, on icons, and Theodore of Mopsuestia, if I'm saying that name anywhere close to correct. I'm not sure. But his, it'll get you far enough on Google, that those two books, Defending Sacred Icons, and of course the Seventh Ecumenical Council was about this. Those helped my intellectual conversion.

But I remember when I was an Orthodox catechumen and it came up at the end of a divine liturgy to kiss the crucifix. Yes. Oh, my gosh. I don't think if my friend Kevin hadn't grabbed me by the arm and brought me up there and forced me to kiss it, I could have ever gotten over it. It was a tremendous thing. And it was actually a gift, too, because it really was kind of a breaking the seal. And yes, intellectually, I'm there. I think this is right. Wow. Wow. OK. This question comes from Ren Ren.

Do you find that Muslims copy argumentation against the Trinity from Jehovah's Witnesses? And if so, do you? Yeah, I'm not sure. Do you think we have just as much of an obligation to see them as a heresy on the same level? So I guess another way of thinking about this is there are different Christian, well, non-Christian sects that have some things in common with Christianity, such as the Jehovah's Witnesses. Do you see, maybe when Muslims try to argue for why God is one person, do you think they're borrowing from Jehovah's Witnesses? And should we see them on the same level as far as a heresy is concerned? Yeah, well, I don't know that much about Jehovah's Witnesses. I won't see you on this at all. But as far as their Aryans, they are heretics. I see the connections between Mormonism more readily apparent, where

the leader finds these scrolls out of nowhere, he builds a community, it's polygamous, and it really is totalizing of your life as well. I had a Muslim friend come to me once, she was watching a documentary on Mormonism. She says, what's up with this? This guy just claims that he has this book out of nowhere, and he has all these wives, and I start to look at her like this, and she gets big-eyed, and she says, never mind, turns around and leaves. And so I do think that there's obvious connections there, but I can't speak about Jehovah's Witnesses. I'm sorry. What I love about this channel is we have people from all across the spectrum and you're all so very welcome. For example, we've LDS and atheists and one LDS just asked this question again, Robert Boylan. He's like, and let me see if I can phrase his question that he probably doesn't mean it this snarkily. Let me, let me put some snark to it. Yeah,

that's great about John Damascene, but this dude's from the 700s. So pointing back to the 700s isn't much of an argument for why we should venerate images. Maybe the earliest Christians never did something like that. Where's that taught in Scripture? Isn't it forbidden in Scripture to make graven images? I'm happy to respond to that too, if you like. Sure. No, I'm happy to do so. I don't think that an argument becomes a bad argument based upon its chronology. So it's distance from us or the distance from the early church. It doesn't make it wrong. And in fact, if you go back and look at the early church and they're worshiping in the catacombs, you can visit the catacombs today. They have icons on the walls that were participating with them in the divine liturgies they celebrated there.

So archaeologically, the early church used them. But I think that the real argument of St. John Damascene is really important and should be considered with the due time that it deserves. His argument in a nutshell is that when you find in the second commandment, second commandment to not worship any graven images, that that was because God was not visible to the people, that it was in contrast to all the nations around who had these idols that represented the hidden gods. God said, that's not right. And when he did engrave himself in a physical image as Jesus Christ,

then it is actually part of our creedal duty to affirm this truth by making him into an image. I would also point out that if someone, and I'm not saying, I'm not putting words in Robert's mouth here, I'm not sure what he thinks, but if somebody wants to condemn the making of images based on that commandment that you should make images of things above the earth, then God broke his own commandment, not just in becoming man in Christ, but in Exodus 25, chapter 25 and elsewhere, where religious iconography and tapestries and golden angels were commanded by God. So now if you want to respond to that and say, well, yes, but I think I've heard James White say this in a debate. I thought it was such a terrible answer. He was debating Jimmy Akin.

He said, yes, but then look at how those Israelites went on to kind of sort of have an idolatrous relationship with such statues or something to that effect. Sure, but the abuse doesn't negate the proper use of it. So I've never really understood why Protestants seem to be, not all Protestants, but some seem to be allergic to this idea of religious iconography and statues. It's such an out-of-date idea, too, to put it a little more with an edge to it. As you say, this is something that was dealt with in the Seventh Ecumenical Council. Yeah, which meant it was important as well. I guess I should add that.

Say that again. Which means that it was important as well, that if they were dealing with it at an ecumenical council, it was something that we should take the time to resurrect the council's decision and to explain it again. Salt and Pepper, probably not their real name, says, Jacob, how did you deal with people when you converted to Christianity? Surely they didn't agree that we all believe in the same God.

So I guess just in general, I think you may have already answered this, but how did you deal with people kind of really disagreeing with your choice to become a Christian? You know what, you take it. I mean, that's you just as Christ took the lashings and those are real lashings for a while and they hurt, but it makes you realize that you just have, you have Christ and you have his church, you have a new family, and you share in the same blood as well, a new blood relationship through the Eucharist? I think like a similar sort of trilemma exists with anyone who claims to be a prophet, as much as it does with Christ. So if Muhammad says he receives a message from Gabriel, this comes directly from God,

it seems to me that we have basically three, maybe four options, right? Either he's right, and he did in fact receive that revelation, or he didn't. And if he didn't, he's either mad, or he's a liar, or maybe he's possessed by an evil spirit, which I suppose would also make him a liar. What would you choose out of that trilemma or quadrilemma? Yeah, it's tough. I think it's a great question. And I think that the answer is one that falls to many religious leaders.

Like, did Caesar believe that he was actually a god when he wielded the whole world? For Muhammad, I believe that he may have at one point begun to believe his own lie as it was almost coming to fruition, as his armies were growing. In the last years of his life in Medina, he fought 86 battles and won most of them. He was spreading it out and he declared, as Sahih Muslim says, one of the Hadith reports,

that I have come to expel all Christians and Jews from the Arabian Peninsula. And so, and at that time, there was a great conception, Peter Brown brings this up very well, that if you were winning in battle, it was divine blessing. And if you were speaking as a holy man, a crazy holy man who would stand on pillars for days and yell out to the people or hide in caves, that that was your greatest authority in life. And so it's almost like the way that we think about celebrities, that they think they thought about holy men in the same way. And Muhammad certainly designed himself to be in that form.

And there really isn't, I think, a good explanation for this other than there is, he did believe it truly. You can't convince somebody with a lie that long, and you can't gain that much power without real spiritual forces augmenting them. Okay. Veronica asks, I heard Muslims believed the crucifixion happened, but Jesus escaped and was replaced by one of his disciples. Is that true? Well, there's kind of juries out on this one. My grandfather actually had his own theories about where Jesus was crucified in Jerusalem. We could put that out to say that those were one of his inclinations towards the Christian tradition again. But again, I can't speak too much. He did die a Muslim. And so Muslims do have, are split on that

point. The Quran makes it, there's two ways of interpreting that passage, that either that he made it look like Christ was crucified, and it's either it made him seem like that he was crucified by the Jews, or he actually changed the face of Jesus upon the cross to Pontius Pilate, which is what many of the Hadith and Tafsir reports hold. So the jury's out on that one. But I think that the latter, that Christ really was not crucified, is more predominant. Have you been hearing stories coming out of predominantly Muslim countries in which Muslims are having dreams of Christ and are converting? Absolutely. Tell us about that. Muslims are having dreams of Christ and are converting.

Absolutely. Tell us about that. Well, these are kind of extraordinary events, something akin to a Genesis 28, where Jacob is wandering towards his uncle Laban's house, and he has this great vision of the angels descending and ascending on these ladders. He's alone, and God comes to him and calls him for himself. And I think that this is what God is doing when we're not doing the work of evangelization. He's doing it for us. He loves these people too much to let them go. And so he does come to them

in dreams. The Virgin Mary comes to them in dreams. And these often lead to conversions, but also often leads to disbelief. One of my cousins had a series of these dreams as well, where Jesus, the most beautiful man in the entire world, he came to me. He said, I can save you. He just, still, it's in the back of his mind. This cousin is still a Muslim? Mm-hmm. Still doesn't know how to handle it. And so, but it happens,, it's in the back of his mind. His cousin is still a Muslim? Mm-hmm. He still doesn't know how to handle it. But it happens, and it's real, and God craves this intimacy with us, and he won't let anything stop it. Beautiful.

Hey, this has been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so kindly. We've had like over 500 people just kind of watching. They're watching now. I've been doing this for a while, so that says a lot to how bloody interesting and articulate you are. So thanks so kindly for taking the time to do this. Any final words? Yeah, thank you. Yeah, you're welcome. Anything you want to point people to before we wrap up? Thanks very much. Newpolity is the think tank that I mentioned earlier. We

have a landing page and some discounts and ways of just getting involved and understanding what our project is at newpolity.com slash frad. You're welcome to go there. We're really creative here. Okay, thanks very much. Appreciate it. But we'll look forward to welcoming you there. Yeah, awesome.

Well, I would like to kind of invite people to consider becoming a patron of Pints with Aquinas. We are putting out a ton of stuff regularly. I got the greatest compliment recently. Somebody said that I do more for my patrons than anyone else that they know of. So I'm going to go ahead and take that. Right now, we're doing a seven-part video series on Augustine's Confessions, led by Dr. Chad Englund from the University of Dallas. We've done a 21-part series on Dante's Confessions. We had Father Damien Ferencz do a seven-part video series

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If you type in Pints with Aquinas Español onto YouTube, you'll be able to see them. And they're really, really professionally done. We have video editors and marketers, and all of this costs money. So if you like what you're seeing, if you'd like to see it go from good to great and see more of it, please consider becoming a patron. Even for a dollar a month would be awesome at patreon.com slash Matt Fradd. Patreon.com slash Matt Fradd.

Thank you. This was wicked. Thanks so much. I really appreciate it. It was great talking with you. Look forward to buying you another beer in Steubenville. You got mine, actually. You got to come back.

I'll get yours this time. Thank you. Anything cool in that Tolkien house? Just for those who are just tuned in, just so you know. Jacob is in one of Tolkien, as in J.R.R. Tolkien's old houses. Anything in there sort of cool from when he lived? Nothing super cool. We're in, we're currently, my wife and son and I live in Walter Hooper's flat. And in our bedroom, right next to us, is the very desk that C.S. Lewis wrote the Narnia Chronicles on. No! Do you sometimes just curl up against it and pray for genius?

No, I don't do that. But my wife was like emptying all of our stuff when we were first moving in and like stacking it up on there. I said, you got to be a little bit careful with that one. That's amazing. Well, thank you for your time and God bless you. Hey, God bless you. Thanks, Matt. Bye.