Jesus vs. Muhammad: Double Standard in History Textbooks?

[00:00:01]So, for instance, and again, a lot of it is, as you say, lies of omission. Uh in the section on rise of Christianity, this textbook I just mentioned says, "Quote, almost every surviving record about early Christianity, whether about the life of Jesus or early ministry, was written by a Christian believer."

[00:00:18]And then they say in the following page, "On the third day after he died, Christians believe that Jesus was resurrected." And Jesus is simply referred to as Jesus, sometimes Jesus of Nazareth.

[00:00:29]However, let's look at the section on Islam, shall we?

[00:00:33]It's the Prophet Muhammad.

[00:00:35]All right? It's never just Muhammad.

[00:00:38]Um and and and and again to hearken back to what I said earlier, I tell my students, Raymond, in every class whenever we talk about Islam, undergrad or graduate, I said, "You know, you don't because they will do this. They will write something and they will refer to the Prophet Muhammad. I'm like, "You don't have Are you Muslim?" No. But then you don't have to call him the Prophet Muhammad. I don't. You don't have to.

[00:00:57]But it's like they just default to that.

[00:01:00]But the textbook still That's the point, yeah. Yeah. To to indoctrinate them where it becomes automatic. Right. There is no caveat as there was with Christianity to quote almost They they don't say almost every surviving record about early Islam and Muhammad was written by a Muslim believer, but they made sure to say that about Christianity to cast doubt on its truthfulness.

[00:01:21]Oh, here's a good one. On page 248, >> [snorts] >> "Limiting the number of wives a man could take to four was aimed at improving the status of women."

[00:01:31]>> [laughter] >> I'm going to bring that up with my wife and see what she thinks about that.

[00:01:35]>> [laughter] >> Honey, you think it'd be much better for you if I had three more wives?

[00:01:40]See this sword behind me? That would be used on me. So, um yes.

[00:01:47]Would you even want three more wives?

[00:01:48]Let's be honest.

[00:01:50]>> [laughter] >> I'd use that sword on myself, but anyway, Really?

[00:01:55]But um before uh let's all pine real quick real quickly. Um, are are you done with that particular text and passage?

[00:02:02]>> One more.

[00:02:03]Dhimmi status. Dhimmi. Dhimmi, of course, second-class citizenship for Jews and Christians.

[00:02:08]Uh, Dhimmi status was, quote, "A matter of granting privileges to some non-believers.

[00:02:14]And was a special characteristic of Islam, which few other religions practiced."

[00:02:21]All right.

[00:02:22]>> those people made the ride in the back of the bus and get out of the way when the Muslim rode by on a horse and had to drink out of the separate drinking fountains.

[00:02:30]That was for their advantage.

[00:02:33]Okay. So, if I may, uh, interject. So, let's start off with the So, the same book talked a little bit about Jesus and early Christian history and how it was written. And it also talked about a little bit about Islam. And you gleaned to those particular passages, which are, of course, very telling. So, Now, the first my my first observation is if I didn't know all this, when I hear that they talk about Jesus as if they don't call him the Christ and they say he's Jesus of Nazareth, or if they say, you know, this all the stuff that you said would be somewhat, you know, palpable to me if I believed, you know, this is a secular, you know, um, uh, trying to be objective and they're going to treat all religions that way. But, we already saw that's not the case. So, this isn't just a secular trying to be objective treatment. This has an agenda.

[00:03:22]And on the one hand, the agenda, of course, is to convince in the minds of most of the kids who are reading this or being taught by this are in a historically Christian nation. Um, so, we want to put it We're we're sowing seeds of doubt into their head. Okay?

[00:03:36]Um, yeah, all that stuff that you have the Bible, it's written by, um, you know, biased Christians, you know, fanatics who just made it all up. And, uh, yeah, we keep also referring to him as just Jesus, not Jesus Christ, Jesus of Nazareth. Um, and, uh, what else did you say about how they talk about the New Testament or Christianity? Um, everything everything was written by a Christian believer. Oh, on the third day after he died, Christians believe that Jesus was resurrected.

[00:04:03]>> Okay. Yeah. Exactly. So, okay. Like I I could accept that. I could because it's true. It's Christians who believe that.

[00:04:10]I don't expect atheists to believe that.

[00:04:12]So, that's fine. But now when we turn to Islam, it's very interesting because like you said, it's funny you talk about the the prophet Muhammad because this is a thing and I was actually I I did a video interview with someone a a couple of weeks ago. It's a woman from Britain who is no friend of Islam. You know, very very like she's she's as they would say based. She's on board with everything. And but she kept saying prophet Muhammad. Now, I didn't correct her until at one point she caught herself and she's like, "Why do I keep saying prophet Muhammad?" And so, my point is even someone like her who completely gets it has been so conditioned by this system to do that.

[00:04:48]And of course, you know, and there's a simple way. Why why aren't we hearing in the textbook that his followers thought he was a prophet? Or how about this?

[00:04:56]Sometimes I don't you know, because there's so many Muhammads in the world and you it's easier if you put prophet Muhammad. I do is I write the Muslim prophet Muhammad. Okay. He is the prophet of Islam.

[00:05:05]>> say the founder of Islam.

[00:05:07]Okay. That too. That too. Yeah. But so there's all kinds of ways, but it's interesting because they're not doing that. Even though they know how to do it and they did it with Jesus, right?

[00:05:18]Because we're talking about the same book. This is very interesting. Same textbook. The same editors, the same writers took completely different, you know, very subtle views again or or approaches on how Jesus is rendered, how early Christianity is rendered. And that is to say they did it in a way that casts doubt. And then when it comes to Muhammad, I know like you said, not nothing about I mean, as is well known, early Islamic historiography is rife with issues compared to Christianity.

[00:05:45]And the issue and the and the point that only Christian believers or overwhelmingly Christian believers were the ones who mentioned Jesus, well, that's not true at all. I mean, we have Tacitus, we have Josephus, right? So, we have a lot of Roman pagans, non-Christians, who do talk about him.

[00:06:05]So, it's very interesting how they do that. And then the final point, I really have to talk about the dhimmi one.

[00:06:10]And this I see this all the time, which is basically you know, they take an institution which is inherently negative, discriminatory, okay, like the dhimmi the dhimmi status.

[00:06:21]And for whoever doesn't know, just so we're all on the same page, to be a dhimmi is in classical Islamic teaching primarily based on Quran 9:29, which says fight the people of the book, which means Christians and Jews, until they either they have three choices, convert, fight to the death, or pay jizya and become a dhimmi. So, they pay tribute and embrace second-class status, which oftentimes manifests itself like third class, okay? But that's what it's called. And this is not something in any way, shape, or form enviable in a modern context. It wasn't even enviable then. I mean, you lived as you knew your place, you're only tolerated and not killed outright as long as you pay extra money and essentially just do not rock the boat. If people if Muslims rob you, rape you, beat you up, deal with it. Don't don't build a church, don't talk about your God, you know, that's that's what it means to be a dhimmi. So, here they are trying to present that as a sort of enviable wow, what a great thing that they had because and to just to to to cap it off, I'll show you I'll give you another example of the lies, which is very similar to what you're talking about, is the jizya.

[00:07:30]And I've read textbooks and books and by historians where they say, "Oh, the jizya, which I just mentioned, which the non-Muslims had to pay tribute." The Quran says until they pay jizya with willing submission feeling themselves utterly subdued. Okay, so it's a social thing, too. But the Quran says no, what it was is not the Quran these apologists that are in the same field that we're talking about. I So if you talked a lot of people now who who purportedly understand Islam, medieval Islam, and who've read books, they'll tell you no, no, the Jizya wasn't about humiliation. It was about Christians paying money so they don't have to serve in the military.

[00:08:08]>> Right. Right. Which is so absurd because for starters the the military and Islamic military is a Jihadist machine.

[00:08:15]It doesn't want the lowly infidel fighting beside it. And there's no evidence of that at all.

[00:08:22]The the the Jizya thing is exclusively based on the fact that you're an infidel. We don't want you serving in the army because you are a fifth column. We hate you. And we're just exploiting you for money. So I don't even know where that came from because there's no backing for it. But if you talk to an educated person today, that's what he's going to tell you Jizya is really all about. Yeah. Yeah, I've seen that I've seen that in text, too. That's true.

[00:08:44]Yeah.

[00:08:45]Nothing nothing more about four wives being good for women, Raymond?

[00:08:50]Oh, that.

[00:08:51]>> [laughter] >> Well, I mean I I what they're trying to So I guess what they're trying to say cuz I've read this as well before the four wives polygamy was as many wives as you want. So we look at how great Muhammad is, he limited it to four. But they forget to add that he said four wives and as many concubines as you can conquer. Okay, in Arabic in the Quran it's Aymankum which means infidel women who get conquered during war, you can copulate with 100, 1,000, whatever you own. Okay, and they're not even human because the pronoun in the Arabic is not it's it's not a human pronoun. It's like basically an it, a possession.

[00:09:30]So I don't know how great that is.

[00:09:32]But yeah, I suppose if you want to look at it in the context only four wives it's supposed to be some sort of improvement.

[00:09:39]>> As opposed to how many Muhammad had, which it was at what at least >> also interesting because Muhammad, yeah, he's he's the founder of all these laws and he had way more than four formal wives. Right.

[00:09:52]And we weren't going to get get into one being either six or nine years old, so >> [laughter] >> Oh, that. I wonder how the textbooks treat Aisha. Yeah, oh, I know, omission.

[00:10:02]>> [laughter] >> I've never seen Aisha mentioned in one of these textbooks. Yep. Ever. Yep. Good point. Good point.

[00:10:08]>> Yeah.

[00:10:12]Bring back Bring back And the righteous