Islam’s prophet Muhammad is Jesus’ “kindred spirit and his brother,” stated Rice University sociologist Craig Considine during an April 25 online discussion of his debunked, new book, The Humanity of Muhammad: A Christian View. This highly dubious statement is merely one among numerous examples of an ideologically contrived identity between Christianity and Islam by the cavalier relativist Considine.
In a November 12 Facebook discussion during Considine’s virtual book tour, this previously self-professed “à la carte Catholic” had pronounced Muhammad a “holy figure” and “prophet.” These comments replicated Considine’s earlier July 31, 2019, tweet, in which he declared that “Muhammad was truly a Prophet” given his supposedly manifest beneficent biography. Thus “Christians should admit it on the basis of the Christian principle ‘by their fruits you will know them’” and, following “that the Holy Spirit spoke by the prophets, the Qur’an should be accepted as divine origin.”
For both Christianity and Islam, Considine stated in a June 16 podcast, the universal love in “Golden Rule is really the heart of both of these faith traditions.” As he tweeted on June 25, 2019, the “Qur’an & New Testament are strikingly similar in many ways.” Thus “compassion for others is a central duty that comes with being Christian/Muslim. It’s our sacred duty.”
Accordingly, Considine has professed to discern no fundamental differences between Jesus and Muhammad, as an October 17, 2019, tweet indicated. “Is this Jesus or Muhammad? Or both?” Considine asked after describing an individual who, among other things, “stressed brotherhood, equality, & love.” Given Considine’s teachings, he recounted in an August 28, 2019, tweet how one of his Christian students found that Considine’s description of Muhammad “sounds a bit like Jesus,” to which Considine responded, “Exactly.”
Seeing Jesus and Muhammad as two of history’s greatest social justice warriors is apparently Considine’s “bigger picture,” as revealed in an August 20, 2019, tweet. “Who is this man,” Considine asked of an individual who “cared for the poor, stood for justice,” and “valued peace,” among other values. “If you answered ‘Prophet Muhammad,’ you’re correct. If you answered ‘Jesus,’ you’re also correct.”
Both Jesus and Muhammad have taught Considine, according to a February 29 tweet, that “caring speaks volumes.” Muhammad’s moral, is that people should “live his example,” Considine stated in his June 16 interview. Thus he concluded in an August 15, 2019, tweet that:
I often hear my Muslim friends say, ‘I love Jesus,’ but I never hear Christians say, ‘I love Muhammad.’ Perhaps one day more Christians will be able to say the latter for the sake of humanity. I don’t think you need to ‘be Muslim’ to love him. You just need to be a human being.
In Considine’s Social Gospel/Social Quran understanding of prophecy expressed in a February 25 tweet, “Muhammad was a prophet.” His supposed good works matter more than any religious claims, for a “prophet is more of a social critic than a fortune teller,” Considine wrote on the assumption that “God is love,” as defined in the Bible, but not in the Quran. Thus a “prophet criticizes elites for not caring about people on the periphery of society” and “speaks against war w/ strong words,” and “challenges leaders to do what God wants them to do.”
With questionable hermeneutics of Christian and Islamic scriptural passages, Considine correspondingly in an October 30, 2019, tweet drew the “Moral of the story = ACTIONS speak louder than words.” Yet his citation of James 2:24 overlooks the centrality for Christian salvation of Jesus’ saving grace through death on the cross. Meanwhile the exact role of good works has historically provoked controversy in Christian theology (in contrast to Considine’s Catholic traditions, Protestants including Martin Luther have condemned James as an “epistle of straw”). Similarly, Islam has historically defined the faith and morals of how to “believe & do righteous good deeds” in Quran 2:25 according to often harsh sectarian Islamic doctrines and not any universal reason.
However much the words of the Bible and Quran disagree over large and small theological matters, such as Christ’s divinity, these are mere details to Considine, who promotes a world of interfaith community organizers. “Instead of arguing over religion & whether one is better than the other, imagine if we used our energy to work *together*” for a better world, he tweeted on March 8. By contrast, blasphemy laws throughout Muslim-majority countries reflect that many Muslims care greatly about differing religious arguments.
Considine’s dream of a diverse, intersectional e pluribus Unum among Christian, Muslim, and other humanitarians has little relation to reality. For all of his puffing up of Muhammad as a parallel Jesus, little evidence supports Considine’s contention that Islamic civilization has historically equaled the Judeo-Christian West in contributing to human wellbeing. Any discussion or debates over these facts or Islamic theology, moreover, has never been empty words, but has always implicated critical inquiry into biblical and Islamic legacies. While Jesus, for example, stated in John 8:32 that the “truth will set you free,” Muslim Brotherhood cleric Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi has convincingly claimed that Islam could not have survived without the death penalty for apostates. Considine is so earnest in wanting a united front among all the world’s religions, yet precisely Muslims have shown the most resistance in following this self-appointed multicultural apostle, as a forthcoming article will show.
Carol says
Jesus was mostly a pacifist.
On the other hand, Big Mo’, islam’s rabid founder, wasn’t; Hadith 8 that has been relayed by El-Imam El-Nawawy, for one thing, comes to mind.
https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Al-Nawawi%27s_Forty_Hadith
owensgate says
Well actually, Jesus was/is God incarnated, that is, God struck a tent of Human flesh and moved in, to redeem man from his sin nature. He was in-the-flesh as 100% “Man” and 100% “God”. The ENTIRE Bible is of Jesus. The koran and muhammad are of Satan. ALL who are not saved by the Blood of the Lamb (Jesus) WILL go to Hell. That’s a Biblical promise you can take to the bank. Wikileaks is not the final authority.
Carol says
An Egyptian Atheist friend of mine has told me that Egyptian Imams and Sheikhs constantly mock Christians by re-iterating that “those who don’t live by the sword will certainly perish by the Islamic Scimitar.”
“Christianity is not the creed of Asia and Africa at this moment solely because the seventh century Christians of Asia and Africa had trained themselves not to fight, whereas the Moslems were trained to fight.
Christianity has been saved in Europe, solely because the peoples of Europe have fought. If the peoples of Europe in the seventh and eighth centuries, and on up to and including the seventeenth century, had not possessed a military equality with, and gradually a growing superiority over, the Mohammedans who invaded Europe, Europe would have been at this moment Mohammedan and the Christian religion would have been exterminated.
Wherever the Mohammedans had complete sway, wherever the Christians had been unable to resist them by the sword, and Christianity has ultimately disappeared. From the hammer of Charles Martel to the sword of Sobieski, Christianity owed its safety in Europe to the fact that it was able to show that it could and would fight as well as the Mohammedan aggressors.
The Civilization of Europe, America, Canada, Australia, and NZ exists today only by virtue of the victories of civilized man over the enemies of civilization; victories through the centuries from Charles Martel in the eighth century and those of John Sobieski in the seventeenth century. During the thousand years that included the careers of the Frankish soldier and the Polish king, the Christians of Asia and Africa proved unable to wage successful war with the Moslem conquerors; and in consequence Christianity practically vanished from the two continents; and today, nobody can find in them any “social values” whatsoever, in the sense in which we use the words, so far as the sphere of Mohammedan influences are concerned.
There are such “social values” today in Europe, America, Canada, NZ, and Australia only because during those thousand years, the Christians of Europe have possessed the warlike power to do what the Christians of Asia and Africa had failed to do — that is, to beat back the Moslem invaders.” — Teddy Roosevelt
john smith says
+1
Wellington says
+2
GreekEmpress says
+3
Hoi Polloi says
‘I love Jesus,’ he says without acknowledging Him as the Son of God. Even the least of us demands that love of any one of us requires that the professor of such should love us as we are. Yet he offers less to the Son of God, who made that very clearly unacceptable and repeatedly and unmistakably declared Himself to be the Son of God. Denying who He said He was and attempting to lower Him to the status of a barbarian is never love. It is, however, obviously and loudly saying CC believes Jesus was either a liar or a lunatic. I would not consider that love and neither does God.
Carol says
Make no mistake, Koranimals will most certainly wipe Western and Eastern European Christians off the face of the Earth, if said Christians don’t follow in the footsteps of their immeasurably gallant ancestors who decimated Koranimals in many a battle, chief among them being the 732 A.D. Battle of Tours, the First Crusade, the Battle of Montgisard, the 1212 A.D. Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa, the 1340 A.D. Battle of Rio Salado, the 1475 A.D. Battle of Vaslui, the 1529 A.D. Siege of Vienna, the 1565 A.D. Siege of Malta, the 1571 A.D. Battle of Lepanto, the 1595 A.D. Battle of Călugăreni, the 1621-and 1673-A.D Battle of Khotyn, the 1683 A.D. Battle of Vienna, the 1694 A.D. Battle of Hodow, and the 1697 A.D. Battle of Zenta.
somehistory says
Never will Christianity be “wiped” off the earth. Jesus promised to be “with” His disciples “until the conclusion” of this system in which we live. Jesus promised a “great crowd out of all nations” would escape the “great tribulation” and go into a Paradise to live forever.
There have been times for taking up the sword…as Jesus Himself indicated when He told His disciples to “buy one.”
There is also a time to “wait” for deliverance from this wicked system.
Just as Jesus said that, if His disciples didn’t preach, the “stones would cry out,” God has ways of dealing Justice to those who wish to harm His people.
Eur says
I once read in a forum that he summarizes the main characters of three religions (Christianity, Buddhism, Islam) in this way:
Jesus and Buddha could be on a beach lying quietly talking about metaphysics ,peace and the shape of the clouds while smoking a joint and listening to reegae music, Muhammad sees them and cuts off their heads.End oh the story.
SKA says
He is a blind guide.
Arch Kennedy says
Uh, I hate to break it to him but Jesus never murdered anyone and Muhammad murdered thousands. Jesus never had slaves and Muhammad had many slaves. And that is just a couple of examples of MANY!
Beneath the Veil of Consciousness says
Does Considine have a unibrow? He looks like someone you’d find in a sheltered workshop assembling widgets. I don’t mean to disparage the disabled by comparing them to Considine, but…
David Longfellow says
Proving once again that a moron can have a book published.
mortimer says
CONSIDINE’S MISCHARACTERIZATIONS !
Considine is neither a Christian nor a scholar of Islam. His book (The Humanity of Muhammad: A Christian View) appears to be flippant and too much tuned into the trends of today to be taken seriously by academia.
There is no possible way for someone to prove the warlord/pirate Mohammed was ever considered a man of peace by his followers or by 40 generations of Muslims. Islam in the past never valued peace-making, seeing it as flabby and weak … and only as a rest period or prelude to further kinetic warfare.
Considine’s distortions and MISCHARACTERIZATIONS cannot be swallowed by anyone who reads Mohammed’s official biography, The Sira.
Total humbug and farm fresh nonsense.
mortimer says
The Koran has three responses to Christianity’s essential, cardinal doctrines (which are necessary for salvation): 1) The Koran flat out denies them (such as the atonement through the cross) 2) the Koran ignores them (such as the silence of the Koran on baptism) and 3) the Koran mischaracterizes the teachings of Christianity (such as its mischaracterization of Christology and the Trinity).
Considine is romping recklessly through the flower bed of Christianity and pretending he is not stomping on the flowers.
Hoi Polloi says
When they call for punishment for blasphemy, we should all point out that it must be reciprocal. Islam is blasphemy against Christianity and should therefore be banned.
gravenimage says
Christians don’t ban blasphemy. The Christian West has freedom of speech.
Hoi Polloi says
Yes. I am referring to muslims and useful to them people like Jeff Bezos, whose WaPo has been used to call for US restrictions on free speech due to its offending muslims. I see increasing calls for “hate speech” treatment (of course, they aren’t admitting their actual intent of instituting sharia blasphemy standards) and it is often in a way that would serve Islamic interests. I would simply point out in a be careful what you ask for sense that laws that treat blasphemous speech would allow for the banning of Islam itself since it is full of blasphemy against Christianity. I hope that is clearer. I often assume the reference is clear in order to post less lengthy comments, but I see that isn’t always the best approach.
eduardo odraude says
Islam denies what many say is the core of the Gospel: Jesus’s death on the cross, his resurrection, and his deity.
Traveler says
To have made a statement like this only shows Mr. Considine’s ignorance of both, Jesus and Muhammad.
gravenimage says
Either ignorance or lying…
Traveler says
Ignorance . . . he’s not smart enough to lie.
CogitoErgoSum says
Jesus rose from the dead after three days and Muhammad did not. Jesus took away the sins of the world and Muhammad did not. Jesus is one with the Father and the Holy Spirit. Muhammad is not. I’d say those are at least three very important fundamental differences. The teachings of Jesus and and the teachings of Muhammad contradict each other. You can choose to believe the Jesus of the Bible or you can choose to believe Muhammad and his Koran. The differences concerning the nature of God are obvious. You cannot believe that Jesus and Muhammad spoke the words that came from the same god unless you believe that that god is a liar. It appears that Craig Considine does … and a god who lies is not the one true God.
Clarino says
Fundamentally, Mohammed was a warlord, Jesus was anything but.
Clarino says
You do not need to be a person of faith to recognise that Jesus (or Buddha, or the Guru Nanak, or Mahavira) was a good person, and a benevolent influence on humanity, and that Mohammed was neither.
gravenimage says
*Very* true, Clarino.
eduardo odraude says
Can Considine really believe the stuff he spouts about Islam and Muhammad? It’s one thing if someone who does not pretend to be a scholar spouts such ignorance. But can Considine, who has had plenty of time to study Islam’s most trusted sources (Qur’an, Hadith, Sira, etc.) really honestly be spouting this stuff? Maybe. But it’s hard to believe.
Islam’s own sacred texts depict Muhammad as
1. buying, selling, and owning black African slaves;
2. using sex slaves
3. torturing a man to get hold of a treasure;
4. consummating marriage with a prepubescent 9-year-old girl;
5. permitting his soldiers to rape their captive women;
6. presiding over the beheading of 600-900 captive, disarmed Jews;
7. provoking his adopted son to divorce his beautiful wife so that Muhammad could marry her, which he then did. In addition, Muhammad then abolished adoption through a “revelation”from Allah, because then Muhammad could say he had not taken the wife of his own son — it was not really his son, because adoption is false and abolished.
8. Muhammad ordered people stoned to death for adultery.
9. Muhammad said their would be no punishment for murdering people who insulted him.
10. Muhammad said women were deficient in intelligence and morals and formed the majority in hell.
11. Muhammad’s Qur’an permits men to beat their wives into submission.
12. The Qur’an denies that human beings are made in the image of God (42:11, nothing is like Allah or in the likeness of Allah).
13. The Qur’an denies that human beings are children of God and that God is a father. For the Qur’an, human beings are nothing more than Allah’s servants or slaves.
14. Muhammad said “If someone changes his Islamic religion, then kill him.”
One could go on and on. Is Considine really so unfamiliar with the Islamic source texts? I find that hard to believe.
Love in the Qur’an has nothing like the place it has in the gospels. Nor does Islam have a golden rule — it is fundamentally dualistic: non-Muslims are “the worst of creatures,” (lower than bugs, or like pigs that can be slaughtered), while Muslims are “the best of peoples.”
eduardo odraude says
To be clear, a lot of Muslims don’t know that much about their religion — don’t realize the kinds of things Muhammad did. David Wood explained once how that ignorance develops. He says that for Muslims, to study Islam is risky, because if you get it wrong, you could go to hell. Therefore, if you are going to study it, you have to become a scholar and do it thoroughly — otherwise, don’t do it at all, and just trust your imams. Obviously, not all Muslims think like that, but this is one major tendency that leads a lot of Muslims not to know that much about Islam, apart from the whitewash their imams give them. In addition, studying Islamic source texts is not one of the five major “pillars” of Islam: saying the shahada, praying five times a day, giving zakat charity, fasting during daylight in the month of Ramadan, and pilgrimage to Mecca if possible.
But even though many Muslims are ignorant of their own source texts, the religious leadership knows those texts and knows Islam is an expansionist totalitarian doctrine.
Carol says
Fine posts, Eduardo!
gravenimage says
Spot on, Eduardo.
Wellington says
I infinitely prefer John Quincy Adams’ assessment of Mohammed: “The essence of his doctrine was violence and lust—to exalt the brutal over the spiritual part of human nature.”
Considine is yet another DWD—Dodo With a Doctorate. They’re all over the academic world these days and doing a great deal of harm. I know first hand; I taught with these monumental fools for decades. They’re idiots with a lot of degrees.
mgoldberg says
Let’s see now. Mo’ claimed he was the last prophet. Israel had some 54 prophets ( there were many many more but they did not speak for the future of Israel and Jews), and all of those prophets asserted the primacy of Moses, and the Torah of G-d. Now, one needn’t be a believer in that, in the sense that they are in danger of having their head separated from their torso if they decide they don’t accept that. Which brings us to the issue at hand: all the prophets of Israel spoke, and or wrote essentially of the same prophecys and traditions as one unified whole. Mohammed was entirely different and in fact broke the laws of prophethood by claiming his Qu’ran changed the Torah, or improved it. So… according to the Torah, he is no prophet of Israel, which of course is obvious, and since cutting off peoples heads, or other Jihad commandments, are entirely against the entirety of the Torah, I think Considine is a man without much honor, and weasel brains too boot.
gravenimage says
+1
somehistory says
This guy is not only an idiot, he is comparable to the Pharisees who said Jesus’s works were from satan the devil…knowing full well it was a lie.
If he doesn’t know he is lying, then he truly is a huge idiot and should not be ‘teaching’ anyone anything.
Jesus never told a lie, never raped a child. Jesus honored women and taught men to treat each other as they wish to be treated. He said the “greatest commandments” were that one “must Love Jehovah with one’s whole heart, soul, mind and strength and love one’s neighbor as one love’s himself.”
Jesus said, “give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar,” meaning that one must obey the laws of man unless they go against the Laws of God.
Jesus kept two of His disciples from harming another man whom they perceived as acting contrary to Jesus.
Jesus told Peter not to call “unclean” what God had cleansed…meaning we are to look at foods that God has given as acceptable, and to look at people as **equal** to us in the eyes of God.
All of these things…and so much more…show the attitude of Jesus Christ regarding Life’s sanctity and His promises to reward with Eternal Life those who follow Him. A promise of Paradise…a Real Paradise for all who have faith or act with love for His brothers. (Matthew 25)
On the other hand…the fake ‘prophet’ that this idiot considine worships…is a sack of slug slime, mass-murdering, raper of children, lying son of satan and never did a good deed, nor did he ever instruct his followers to do a good deed, but told them to “strike the necks” of any who disagreed, “strike terror” in those who refused to follow him, to lie, to rape and plunder and hate, to end up in a drunken sex orgy, raping virgins.
To lie about Jesus Christ, Jehovah God, or His Holy Spirit, while knowing the Truth is to commit the “unforgivable sin,” Jesus warned about. The Pharisees knew what they were saying was a big lie…the “unforgivable sin,” and if this idiot, ‘professor,’ considine knows the Truth about Jesus, it appears he is no better than the Pharisees.
owensgate says
I think, how does the expression go, “You nailed it!”
somehistory says
Thank you very much.
eduardo odraude says
Granted, his main contribution — Islam — is mainly evil, a doctrine that stops human development and with insidious genius and unfathomable brutality attacks the very core of humanity — but might it be going too far to say that he never did a good deed?
somehistory says
“mainly evil”? I say completely evil. Nothing good, nothing of value, can be found in islam.
The sack of slug slime wasn’t capable of doing any good deed. It isn’t “going too far,” because his actions…recorded in the book of filth…are all evil. Raping children, mass-murder, lying, thieving, slave-trading…encouraging others to do the same under threat of death for those who refuse to submit.
If one such as he ever did anything someone else might say was a ‘good deed,’ it would only be done for selfish advancement. Much like big corporations do “good deeds”…give money to charity…to get good PR and a big tax right-off.
I stand by my comment. No good ever came of islam or its fake ‘prophet.’ It’s all from satan the devil.
Clarino says
This is the first time I have ever heard someone suggest that islam has a version of the ‘Golden Rule’ : I would suggest, however, that the christian version is “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” whereas the muslim version is “Do unto others before they do it to you.”
Pray Hard says
Somebody needs to change his diaper.
Patrick White says
With Considine, you need only follow the money.
gravenimage says
Craig Considine: No Fundamental Differences Between Jesus and Muhammad
………………….
Well, let’s see–apart from Jesus being a healer, peacemaker, and the incarnation of a loving God; and Muhammad being a warlord, pedophile, slaver, rapist, and mass-murderer, no difference at all!
Really, how can this fool say this with a straight face?
somehistory says
In the photo above, he has kind of a pained expression, an “Oh, poor me,” look. Probably due to an ingrown toenail digging into his brain stem.
He’s like a bad kid seeking attention, and saying anything, no matter how outrageous, disgusting or evil, to attain it.
Ole Pederson says
Actually that is not too far off, even if this lunatic does not know it.
Both Jesus and Mohammed are literary, not historical persons and oiriginated as one and the same tradition, so Muhammad is Jesus.
Prior to the 7th century a name “Muhammad” for a person did not exist in the then Christian Arab world, this word meant “The anointed” or “Christ” as the inscription inside Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem says, to this day, where it reads “muhammad son of mary”
It was later literary tradition which transmuted this into warlord Muhammad prophet of Islam.
somehistory says
Contrary to your bold statement, there is Historical Evidence that Jesus Christ lived when the Bible says he did. Jesus is ***not*** the same as the arab from the desert who murdered, raped, stole and lied his way onto the world stage.
The mass-murdering, raper of children, slave trader, lying sack of slug slime, son of satan the devil wanted to replace Jesus Christ as One to whom everyone would bow and knees would bend.
moslims have attempted to destroy all evidence that does not suit them, and their evil goals; and it doesn’t matter one hill of beans what is written in their barracks in Jerusalem or any other place. moslims claim to own Jerusalem, the entire Land of Israel and every other place where they have ever set a filthy foot.
Your claim is just assisting them along the way and there is nothing to recommend it.
Ren says
Huge difference between Jesus and Muhammad. Muhammad was a pedophile, Jesus was not.