If Allah is actually the same God progressively revealed in the Bible, then I have a few questions.
Did He forget His own timeline?
By the time we reached the 7th century, according to the New Testament, humanity was already in the era of grace. Jesus taught forgiveness, loving your enemies, praying for those who persecute you, and turning the other cheek. The apostles were beaten, imprisoned, and killed, yet they never raised armies to spread the faith.
So if this is the same God, why does the message suddenly seem to go in reverse?
It’s almost like watching a teacher spend years teaching addition, then multiplication, then calculus, only to return centuries later and say, “Actually, let’s go back to counting with our fingers or stones.”
Jesus arrived without a sword and told Peter to put his sword away. His followers suffered persecution and martyrdom without fighting back. But in the 7th century, Muhammad engaged in battles and political expansion.
Allah drops commands: “Fight those who fight you!” Instead of love your enemies.
So what happened?
Did God suddenly forget that He had already revealed a covenant centered on grace, forgiveness, and reconciliation?
Or could it be that the God revealed in the Bible and the Allah presented in Islam are not the same being after all?
God’s revelation moves forward, from law to grace, from judgment to mercy, from “love your neighbor” to “love your enemy.”
The question is: why would the same God reverse that progression six centuries later?
I would have believed Muhammad and the Quran if Jesus had not said, “It is finished.”
I would have believed Muhammad and the Quran if all of Jesus apostles had not remained faithful even after His death.
I would have believed Muhammad and the Quran if the prophecies of the Old Testament had not been fulfilled in the New Testament.
I would have believed Muhammad and the Quran if Jesus had not clearly spoken about His blood being for the forgiveness of sins.
I would have believed Muhammad and the Quran if everything had been corrected immediately after Jesus death, before Christianity spread widely, instead of being addressed about 600 years later.
I would have believed Muhammad and the Quran if the Bible had not warned about angels bringing messages different from the gospel.
I would have believed Muhammed and the Quran if he didn’t point people away from Jesus to a strange god.
Lastly, I would have believed Muhammad and the Quran if there had been no misunderstanding about the Trinity and why Christians speak of God as Father.
America faces more than a chronic disease epidemic that threatens our physical health. We also face a spiritual malaise that undermines our mental health.
Our children are increasingly isolated, fragmented, and anxious, spending more than 8.5 hours a day on screens.
This summer, put down the phone and reconnect with nature, family, and community. It's time to Take Back Your Health. Eat Real Food. Get Active. Together, we will Make America Healthy Again.
In 1967 India ran one of the most inconvenient heart studies of the century, almost by accident, and the field has been quietly looking away from it ever since.
Dr S.L. Malhotra had a researcher's dream sitting in front of him: the Indian railway workforce, well over a million people. Same employer. Same medical cover. Comparable pay and hours. Scattered the length of a subcontinent. Strip all of that out and one great variable remained. Diet, which in India meant geography.
In the north, in Punjab and Rajasthan and UP, the railwaymen ate the way their grandparents had. Ghee. Milk fat. Curd. As much as nineteen times more fat than their southern colleagues, and nearly all of it the saturated animal fat that Ancel Keys was at that very moment teaching the West to dread.
In the south the plate was rice, sambar, and seed oils, groundnut and sesame, with far less fat overall. By the brand-new rules being drafted in America, the southerners were the ones doing everything right.
Then Malhotra counted the bodies.
Heart disease deaths in the south: 135 per hundred thousand. In the ghee-soaked north: 20. Seven times the disease in the men eating the wholesome seed oils. Among the railway sweepers, the leanest and hardest-working of the lot, the gap yawned open to fifteenfold.
He chased down every other explanation within reach. Smoking ran the wrong way, the north smoked more. Activity gave no clean signal. Wealth made things worse if anything, executives dropping dead while the sweepers carried on. The one thing that tracked the dying was the fat in the pan.
It was published. Peer-reviewed. British Heart Journal, 1967.
It landed in the exact decade the West was pouring concrete around the opposite belief. Heart associations were prescribing vegetable oils. Factories were tooling up to turn them out by the tanker. A study showing the seed-oil eaters dying seven times faster was not a study anyone with a budget wished to repeat.
So nobody did. Almost sixty years on, the finding still stands, unrefuted and unloved.
It has never once troubled a dietary guideline.
For four thousand years, the Indian subcontinent was the centre of world trade. Sumerian tablets record Indian ships reaching Mesopotamia in the third millennium BC. Rome ran a permanent trade deficit with India. By 1600, Surat was the richest port on earth.
Then, within a single lifetime, India lost its maritime supremacy almost entirely.
The conventional explanation is that Europe arrived with superior ships and weapons. It is a comforting story and it is largely wrong. The deeper cause was internal.
Indian commerce was extraordinarily sophisticated. Surat's leading merchant, the Jain financier Virji Vora, was reputedly the richest man in the world; the East India Company borrowed from him. Merchants of every religion and origin traded together because the system rested on two foundations: religious toleration, established by Akbar, and predictable, low-tariffs. Customs duties were around five per cent. Contracts were honoured. Trust was the real currency.
There was one structural weakness. In Venice, Amsterdam and London, the state and the merchant class shared an interest in trade and invested in it together. In Mughal India, the ruling elite was indifferent to commerce. Merchants financed the state; the state never encouraged merchants.
When Aurangzeb became hostile, merchants had no protection. Religious toleration was abandoned. Temples were destroyed, punitive taxes on non-Muslims reimposed, the Sikh Guru executed. Forty years of war followed. East India Company imports from India fell ninety per cent in seven years. Eight thousand merchants abandoned Surat in a single exodus.
They relocated, many of them to an insignificant island Britain had received as a royal wedding dowry, because it offered the security and toleration the Mughal state had destroyed. It also offered English Common Law. Within a generation Bombay was the commercial capital of India. The Wadia family built the Royal Navy's finest ships there. The Tata dynasty traces its origins to this migration.
Europe did not defeat Indian commerce. It inherited it, by providing the conditions Indian merchants needed and their own rulers had thrown away.
This is not an argument about colonialism. It is an argument about something more fundamental, and it is the thread running through all three of my books on maritime trade. The second ‘The Millennium Maritime Trade Revolution’ is subtitled ‘How Asia Lost Maritime Supremacy.’ It is hardly ever lost to a stronger rival but when a society stops valuing the openness, toleration and commercial purpose that made it great. Portugal did it. The Dutch Republic did it. Britain, in the 20th century, did it too.
The conditions of prosperity are always a choice. And they can be unmade by a single generation that comes to value something else more.
Link to the full Substack essay with sources is below.
@MsMelChen Any decision affecting the quality of the world cup is not good , the reputation if the world cup gets affected by this let there be 48 teams but based on qualifying matches
Let’s compare poor Christian nations with poor Islamic ones.
The Philippines: I was there last year. Majority Christian, about 91%, financially poor. But walk the streets and it's joy and music and hospitality. Cities filled with dancing and laughter. You might get offered a meal and a karaoke mic in the same hour.
Now compare that with poor Islamic countries like Somalia, Yemen, or Afghanistan.
What is the fruit? Fear. Depression. Violence. Kids holding AKs. Women hidden. Joy that feels restricted and illegal. Questioning faith is dangerous. Conversion can be deadly. Apostasy penalties exist.
And our Bible says the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. (Galatians 5:22-23)
Show me that fruit of Islam. Show me gentleness in Sharia law. Show me peace in jihad.
You can’t—because the root determines the fruit. So don’t judge by claims. Don’t judge by numbers. Judge by the fruit you actually see. And if you're honest, you can see which one leads to freedom.
@RealShahriqKhan The very act of Moses punishment highlights the importance of those actions . God wanted this to be noticed and it's first time i learning in this link between disobedience and speak to the rock for the life giving water thank You
Let me be honest. The story of Moses and the rock used to mean nothing to me as a Muslim.
The people are dying of thirst in the desert.
God tells Moses to strike a rock, and water pours out to save them. Exodus 17.
Cool miracle. Moving on. That’s how I read it.
Then I read what Paul wrote about it.
“They drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and that Rock was Christ.” 1 Corinthians 10:4.
The rock was struck once, and life poured out for everyone dying.
But here’s the part that wrecked me.
Later, the people are thirsty AGAIN. And this time God says don’t strike it — just speak to it. Numbers 20:8.
Moses strikes it anyway. And God is furious. It costs Moses the Promised Land.
Why such a harsh punishment over hitting a rock twice?
Because the Rock is only ever struck ONCE.
Christ was struck one time for sin. After that, you don’t strike Him again. You just speak to Him.
Moses broke the picture before anyone understood it.
Islam handed me a water miracle.
The Bible handed me the Rock that was struck so I’d never thirst again.
The pig was never banned to protect anyone's health. That story was bolted on much later, and it falls apart the moment you look.
We are told the ancient ban on pork was about trichinosis, about a filthy animal and undercooked meat. Anthropologists abandoned that idea long ago. The taboo is thousands of years older than any knowledge of the parasite, several of the permitted animals carried worse, and the law itself says not one word about disease. It sorts creatures by whether they chew the cud and split the hoof, a scheme of categories rather than a code of hygiene. What the rule actually did was draw a hard line around a people. Eat this, refuse that, and you are one of us. The forbidden animal became a border, the simplest test of who belonged, and the work it did was social, never nutritional.
See it once and you cannot stop seeing it.
Japan banned meat for roughly twelve hundred years, from the seventh century until 1872. It wore the robes of Buddhist purity, but it ran on power. The state enforced it, the court treated a meat-eater as polluted, and the bloody work of slaughter was forced onto a despised underclass, shunned for handling the dead. The ban kept nobody well. It marked the clean from the unclean and held every man in his appointed place.
India is the sharpest case of all, because the holy cow is a surprisingly late arrival. The Indians of the Vedic age ate beef, the priests included, and killed cattle at their altars. The worship of the cow and the horror of beef came afterwards, and as the taboo hardened it became the great dividing line of caste. Beef passed to the bottom, the food of the untouchable left to skin the dead animal because no one else would touch it. A rule that began in religion and economics ended as a fence run between human beings, sorting the pure from the despised.
Even Christian Europe ran on the same machinery. For a third of the year and more the medieval Church forbade meat, every Friday, the whole of Lent, fast day stacked upon fast day. It was preached as discipline of the soul. It also happened to be control on an enormous scale, and the rich bought their way straight out of it, paying the Church for a licence to eat the butter the fast denied them while the poor went without. A tower of Rouen Cathedral still stands on the proceeds, known to this day as the Butter Tower.
The pattern barely changes across the centuries. Power decides who eats the good food and who goes short, then dresses the verdict as God, or purity, or science. The nutrition is the costume. The control is the body beneath it.
So be careful, in any age, with anyone who insists that the richest food on the table is the one thing you are forbidden to touch.
Jesus is just a prophet, so why do you say he is the Son of GOD? Are you saying GOD had a wife and had sex with Mary? You say Mary is the Mother of GOD.
So goes the accusations - here is the response!
We refer to Jesus as the ‘Son of GOD’ for three reasons: Firstly Jesus refers to himself as the Son of GOD:
•John 10: 15 – Jesus refers to GOD as His Father
•Mark 14: 36 – Jesus refers to GOD as His Father
If GOD is His Father, then He is GOD’s Son!
Secondly, others refer to Jesus as the Son of GOD:
•Mathew 16: 13 – 17: Peter calls Jesus the Son of GOD.
•John 20: 30 – 31: the author of John declares Jesus the Son of GOD
It seems fair to assume they are repeating the claims of The Christ Jesus.
Thirdly, GOD refers to Jesus as His Son
Matthew 3: 13 – 17 – GOD [The Father] refers to Jesus as His son
This is an ultimate stamp; that this title is appropriate.
The title therefore is beyond dispute, however, we want to note an important point here: in each of these three examples, the term ‘GOD’; in ‘Son of GOD’ is a referent to the Father. We are not saying that Jesus is the Son of Jesus; or that ‘God (read as Father) is His own Son’ , we are saying GOD the Son is the Son of GOD the Father.
Nor are we saying, as erroneously taught in the Quran, that Allah needs a wife to have a son; consider this Quranic blunder:
To Him is due the primal origin of the heavens and the earth: How can He have a son when He hath no consort? He created all things, and He hath full knowledge of all things.
Surah 6: 101
We do not believe that the sonship of Christ is connected to any physical union between GOD and any other - we find this idea as repellent and offensive as Muslims do- therefore we ask sincere Muslims not to lay this at our door (as to the insincere they are beyond our help). Christians teach that the divine Logos (The Word) was begotten (came from) of the Father, before Mary herself was created. Mary, who was named the ‘GOD bearer’ or ‘Theotokos’ at the Council of Ephesus, was called this to show that Christ was divine from the moment of conception; in attempt to steer Christians away from heresy. It was to show that the Christ was truly divine from the moment of conception that she had this title bestowed upon her; by the church. The history of this is lost on many; who speak on this title without knowing its historical context. This is not saying that Mary, is ‘mother of the Trinity’; but that she is the Mother of the incarnate Jesus Christ, because of and via His humanity. Note well; all Christians believe that the divine Logos created Mary!
A man may be called the ‘son of the road’ because he has a certain relationship with the road if he is a traveller. Likewise, the Logos (The Word) is called the Son of the Father (GOD) because He is begotten (generated) of the Father’s substance; and because He (Jesus) calls Him (The Father) His Father on earth. We affirm, as Muslims do, that Mary was a virgin and the birth of Jesus was a miracle, therefore, the question of any sexual intercourse is out of the question for sincere students of truth. This begs however, the question – how the Quran could; given it is said to be from GOD almighty, get this so completely wrong!
Furthermore, the Quran acknowledges that Allah could have had a son by adoption:
‘Had Allah wished to take to Himself a son, He could have chosen whom He pleased out of those whom He doth created: but Glory be to Him! (He is above such things.) He is Allah, the One, the Irresistible.’
Surah 39: 4
Therefore, we want you to note that, had Allah had a son, the Quran teaches that he would be worthy of worship:
"Say: If (Allah) Most Gracious had a son, I would be the first to worship."
Surah 43: 81
We are perplexed though as to why adoption by GOD would make a creature worthy of worship - why does Allah teach shirk? Are not adopted creatures still creatures! Surely no one would be worthy of worship except the uncreated creator! Why would Muhammad bow in worship to a creature, just because Allah adopts one as his son? Why does Allah say this through his Prophet! This makes no sense at all. Thankfully, we Christians do not say that the Christ is the Son of the Father because of adoption, but because He comes from the Father Himself as the divine Word that was with Him in the beginning; in the same way that fire begets fire – the two flames being distinguishable but the same in their properties and attributes:
28 I came from the Father and have come into the world, and now I am leaving the world and going to the Father.” 29 His disciples said, “Ah, now you are speaking plainly and not using figurative speech! 30 Now we know that you know all things and do not need anyone to question you; this is why we believe that you came from God.”
John 16: 28 – 30
Christ is the unique Son of the Father as described by the term ‘monogenes’, a word used to refer to a special or unique ‘only child’ as in Luke 7: 12; 8: 42 and . Isaac is also described as ‘monogenes’ in Heb 11: 17 because he is the only son of the promise. And so we see that when Christ is described as ‘monogenes’, it is because He is a unique Son of the Father. This is clearly not by adoption as GOD has those kinds of ‘sons by the tons’, but rather in a unique way as the Word that springs from the Father in eternity past. The Church describes this uniqueness – in its sacred creeds and ‘begotten’; which in some translations of scripture went onto influence how the very term was translated; (though this was back to front thinking); thus when this was corrected in later translations by more culturally and historically aware scholars was often used by equally uneducated critics as some kind of reversal of doctrine which of course it was not.
In conclusion, we call Jesus the Son of GOD because GOD does so, The Christ Jesus himself does so, and the Apostles do so. But we do not mean by this term anything as blasphemous as saying that GOD had a wife or had sex with a women. Nor do we mean anything as silly as the idea that the Father becomes His own Son. The relation in which the Son is of the Father; is spiritual, non-material, eternal, and from before all ages; a generation of being outside of time; in which all attributes and qualities are shared, bar the one distinction of begotten and source.
Jesus didn't say "try harder for me."
He said, "Remain in me."
He didn't say "produce more."
He said, "I am the vine — you are the branch."
The vine doesn't ask the branch to be something it isn't.
It asks it to stay.
Just stay.
That's the whole secret.
Follow for regular deep-dive Bible threads.
Where are you striving right now instead of abiding, and what would it look like to just stay?
The secret of John 15 is:
1. You were never meant to produce fruit; you were meant to carry it
2. The branch's only job is to stay attached — everything else follows
3. Striving is the symptom of disconnection, not the solution to it
4. Abiding is a posture, not a feeling — connection, not performance
5. The prayer promise belongs to the abiding life, not the asking life
6. Pruning happens to fruitful branches — hard seasons are not signs of failure
7. Apart from Him, nothing. In Him, much fruit. The math is simple.
Stop trying to produce what only He can grow.
I once lied on my CV. Confidently said during the interview that I was well conversant with excel. I got hired. 2nd day on the job my manager sends me a spreadsheet and asks me to build a pivot table by EOD. I had no idea what that meant. So I spent my whole lunch break plus a couple minutes after that eatching YouTube tutorials about it. I was sweating and trembling. I submitted the Pivot table at 5:02 PM. Wasn't perfect but manager didn't complain. From that I learnt that the gap between "I can't" and "I'll figure it out" is not as huge as you think. You can always lie in that CV and then you can learn after you are hired. A few weeks or days always enough to learn something
Арнольд Шварценеггер: "Знаешь, почему большинство талантливых людей так и остаются никем? Они включают фальшивую скромность. Они говорят: «Я творец, я просто делаю свою работу. Пускай мир сам меня заметит».
Это чушь. Ты можешь быть гением, создавать лучшие продукты или писать шедевры. Но если люди об этом не знают, у тебя ничего нет. Абсолютный ноль. Твой талант просто умрёт вместе с тобой.
Умение продавать, продвигать себя. Доносить свою ценность до других и убеждать — это не грязное ремесло. Это величайшее искусство, без которого ты никто.
Чем больше людей узнают о том, на что ты способен, тем ближе ты к вершине. Перестань прятаться в тени. Выходи и учись заявлять о себе на весь мир. Твой успех зависит только от этого"
Elon Musk breaks down the exact playbook legacy media uses for propaganda and how they intentionally shape false narratives:
“Unfortunately, what I’ve learned is that legacy media propaganda is very effective at making people believe things that aren’t true
An example is people calling me a Nazi over a random hand gesture at a rally, when all I was saying was, ‘My heart goes out to you,’ while talking about space travel”
They do it on repetition all at once; essentially, that will end up outweighing the reality
Repeat a narrative enough times, amplify it across headlines, television, and social media, and millions will believe it without ever examining the full context or even the actual reality