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The official position of Islam is that her martyrs go directly to heaven:
The Prophet said, "The person who participates in (Holy battles) in Allah's cause and nothing compels him to do so except belief in Allah and His Apostles, will be recompensed by Allah either with a reward, or booty (if he survives) or will be admitted to Paradise (if he is killed in the battle as a martyr). Had I not found it difficult for my followers, then I would not remain behind any sariya going for Jihad and I would have loved to be martyred in Allah's cause and then made alive, and then martyred and then made alive, and then again martyred in His cause." (Sahih Bukhari 1.35, also Sahih Bukhari 4.386) It is therefore not difficult to understand why some extremist Muslims (eg. the Hamas) were willing to die for their terrorist acts. Jesus said:] "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven"
ISLAM
What’s the main idea?
On his many caravan rides along the trading route between
Syria and Arabia, a merchant named Muhammad observed people of
all kinds of faiths. He became increasingly concerned that
people were straying from ethical and moral responsibility. In
A.D. 610, when Muhammad was 40 years old, the angel Gabriel
allegedly commanded him to become a prophet, calling people
back to the truth. The foundation of Islam was laid.
Islam is the second-largest religion in the world (after
Christianity), claiming one billion followers, called Muslims.
The religion hangs on the phrase, "There is no god but Allah
and Muhammad is his prophet." Allah (Arabic for "God") is
alone to be worshiped. So it’s a big mistake to think Muslims
view Muhammad the same way Christians view Jesus. Muhammad was
not a deity to be worshiped, but the last and greatest
prophet -- someone who brought a perfect message from God.
Muslims aren’t concerned as much about the right beliefs as
they are about the right actions. In "submitting to the will
of God" (that’s the meaning of the word "Islam"), they stick
to the Five Pillars, a set of important requirements that
includes regular charity, praying five times a day, and making
at least one hajj, or pilgrimage to Mecca (Islam’s holy city).
In addition to this, most Muslims devoutly refrain from
alcohol, drugs, gambling, and certain foods such as pork. The
Qur’an (or Koran), which Muslims believe is the written
recollection of the visions Muhammad received, is the most
important text, although our Old and New Testaments are also
significant in Islam.
ANY COMMON GROUND?
Christians and Muslims share a lot of similar beliefs. For
instance, Moses, Jacob, and David are influential in both
faiths. And Muslims have enormous respect for Jesus, seeing
him as the second-greatest prophet. Muslims also believe in
Jesus’ virgin birth and his miracles, even saying he’s the
Messiah.
WHAT SETS US APART?
Muslims don’t believe in Jesus’ death and resurrection, and
they consider the Christian claim of Jesus’ divinity
blasphemous. In Islam, Muhammad is the greatest and most
authentic prophet. While they think highly of the Bible,
Muslims think the Qur’an is the true Word of God. Most
significantly, the Christian concept of grace is completely
absent in Islam. Allah is relatively cold and removed, and the
principles of right and wrong, do’s and don’ts, form the
foundation of the faith.
Dr. James Lewis, Associate Professor of World Religions at
Wheaton College and Campus Life.
http://ChristianityToday.com/cl/9c2/9c2048.html
June 26, 2002
I LOVE JESUS--AND BUDDHA TOO
I’ve made my choice," wrote the basketball star. "I love Jesus Christ and I try to serve Him to the best of my ability. How about you?" No, those are not the words of David Robinson, A. C. Green or any other Christian currently playing in the NBA. That testimony is from a tract written thirty years ago by Bill Bradley, the former United States Senator who is now running for president. In a recent Breakpoint Commentary, Chuck Colson talked about how Bradley professed faith in Christ while he was a student at Princeton University. There he became very active in The Fellowship of Christian Athletes, and by the time he was playing for the New York Knicks, he was a very outspoken Christian. But things have changed. In his 1996 memoirs, Bradley says he was put off by the exclusive truth claims of conservative Christianity and bothered by the uncharitable and racist attitudes displayed by some Christians. He now says he embraces all religions, from Buddhism to Islam, "so long as they seek inner peace."
SOURCE: Chuck Colson, excerpts BreakPoint. October 5, 1999.
Comments About Muhammad Originate in Key Islamic Source
Two former Muslims responded June 12 to complaints from Islamic groups that a speaker’s comments at the Southern Baptist Pastors’ Conference in St. Louis were "bigoted" and "hateful."
National media have widely reported that Jerry Vines, pastor of First Baptist Church, Jacksonville, Fla., described Muhammad as a "demon-possessed pedophile" during a June 10 sermon and that Vines inferred that Islam teaches the destruction of non-Muslims.
Clarifying that Vines not only quoted from their recent book, "Unveiling Islam," Emir and Ergun Caner said Vines also quoted from the Hadith, a highly respected source for Islamic teaching among Muslim clerics and followers worldwide. The Hadith itself verifies that Muhammad married a 6-year-old girl and consummated the marriage when she was 9, the professor-brothers said.
"It’s simply a matter of quoting [Islamic] sources," said Emir Caner, an assistant professor of church history and Anabaptist studies at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C. "If we are wrong in our understanding of the Islamic scriptures, we would be happy to be corrected."
The specific Hadith citation concerning Muhammad’s pedophilia is in volume 7, book 6, number 64 and 65, said Ergun Caner, an assistant professor of theology and church history at Criswell College in Dallas.
Both Emir and Ergun Caner were Sunni Muslims who became Christians in 1982.
"The comments in question cannot be considered bigotry when they come from Islamic writings," Ergun Caner said.
A lengthy passage from the Hadith, volume 1, book 1, chapter 1, shows that Muhammad himself believed he was under demonic influence, but it notes that Muhammad’s wife is the one who deemed his experience as "divine," Ergun Caner said.
Concerning terrorism and Islamic jihad, Emir Caner noted variant interpretations by Muslims themselves. Some see jihad as a "spiritual war," and others, "physical," he said.
"Some Muslims want to allegorize their own scriptures because they don’t want to defend jihad," Emir Caner said. "But if you take the Koran at its word, or Muhammad at his word, then you’ll find physical jihad."
The highest level of Muslim heaven -- which has 70 perpetual virgins on couches -- is reserved for Muslims who "shed their blood," said Ergun Caner said, referencing Hadith 135.
Islam’s tilt toward violence, Emir Caner said, also is reflected in the
Koran: "Slay the enemy where you find him, Surah 9.92," whereas Christians are commanded to love their enemies.
"A so-called Christian who bombs an abortion clinic or shoots an abortionist and says God told him to do it does that act against the Bible," Ergun Caner said. "But the Muslim who commits acts of violence in jihad does so with the approval of Muhammad.
"When 9/11 happened, we were all shocked. But where was the international outrage when jihad killed 3 million people in Sudan?" Ergun Caner asked.
As former Sunni Muslims, the Caners cite the major differences between Islam and Christianity as the "personalness" of God, and "grace as opposed to works."
"Jesus Christ ... is ultimately personal and wants to have a relationship with me," Ergun Caner said.
The Koran says Allah "is as close as your jugular vein, which is a place of fear, not of faith,"...
Charles Krauthammer also states, "We're now at the dawn of an era in which an extreme fanatical religious ideology, undeterred by the usual calculations of prudence and self-preservation, is wielding state power and will soon be wielding nuclear power."
Professor Bernard Lewis at Princeton University, the leading authority on Islam in America, warned, "Ahmadinejad and his group clearly believe and I don’t doubt the sincere belief, that we are now entering an apocalyptic age, which will result in the triumph of their messianic figure."
THERE WOULD BE NO ISLAM
A Hindu professor once found out that a man in his class was a Christian. The professor said to this student, "If you Christians were like Jesus Christ, India would be at your feet tomorrow." A learned Muslim who recently became a Christian said, "If Christians were truly Christians--like Christ--there would be no Islam."
-– Keith Krell. From a sermon by Gerald Flury, Harmless, 8/12/2010
IS THERE A DIFFERENCE?
In their recent book "Unveiling Islam," Emir and Ergun Caner, former Sunni Muslims cite the major differences between Islam and Christianity as the "personalness" of God, and "grace as opposed to works."
"Jesus Christ ... is ultimately personal and wants to have a relationship with me," Ergun Caner said.
The Koran says Allah "is as close as your jugular vein, which is a place of fear, not of faith," Emir Caner said. "As Muslims, grace was a foreign word to us," he said, having noted in an earlier interview that the only way a Muslim can be assured of heaven outside of dying in jihad is whether his good works outweigh his bad ones.
"So do my beliefs dictate that good Muslims will go to hell?" Ergun Caner asked. "The answer to that is: Good Southern Baptists will go to hell. The issue at hand is not one of religious practice, it is one of personal relationship."
Christianity is "exclusivistic" in its claims, but universal in its appeal to others, Ergun Caner s...
OTHER FAITHS ON HEAVEN
Heaven has many cartographers, and through the centuries many different heavens have been charted. To the variety of celestial landscapes in the West, Islam and Buddhism have raised their own particular paradises: the Koran details a heaven filled with beautiful, large eyed "companions" and youths of perpetual freshness; the sutras speak of a multiplicity of "Buddha fields," pleasant way stations on the journey to Nirvana. Adding to the plenitude, the New Age is now unrolling its own versions of eternity. The best selling author, internationally renowned medium and healer Rosemary Altea, for example, speaks of her vision: "Heaven is not a place; it’s a state of awareness. Heaven is where your heart is, where your soul needs to be."
Muslims have a specific plan of paradise in mind, based on the stories of the Prophet’s miraculous night journey to heaven. rising into the skies on the Buraq, a fantastic creature often described as part woman, part horse, part peacock. Muhammad meets Adam, who resides in the lowest heaven, and Jesus who is only in the 4th level. Abraham welcomes him in the 7th heaven before the Prophet is ushered into paradise for his encounter with God. It was in heaven, according to one tale, that Muhammad, on Moses’ advice, bargained down God’s original demand of 50 prayers a day to 5, the number of times a day each devout Muslim must face Mecca.
Buddhism has as many paradises as there are Buddhas. Each enlightened being has his or her own heaven, a concept probably borrowed from Hinduism, in which gods and goddesses inhabit a series of heavens. The primal heaven, however, was probably the one called Sukhavati, which may itself have borrowed some elements from the florid paradises of Zoroastrian Persia (whence the word pairi-daeza, or enclosure, the origin of our word paradise). As Sakyamuni, the Buddha of our cosmos, teaches, if the denizens of Sukhavati "desire cloaks of different colors and many 100,000 colors, then with these very best cloa...
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