SESSION 3
PART 3: MUHAMMAD OR JESUS? TWO DIFFERENT FOUNDERS
Chapter 9 "The Council of Nicaea"
1. What did Christianity experience before and after the Edict of Milan in AD 313?
2. At the Council of Nicaea in AD 325 what was the controversial view of Arius?
3. What is the popular Muslim misconception about the Council of Nicaea and Jesus?
4. What is the "fundamental fact" that separates Muhammad from Jesus in the understanding of the Islam and Christianity?
Chapter 10 "Comparing the Messenger and the Messiah"
1. When Nabeel hears Muslims say, "We respect Jesus, but you Christians do not respect Muhammad," what are those Muslims really saying?
2. What did you learn about God coming to be among us from Nabeel's teachings from the first chapter of the Gospel of John?
3.What is the "hypostatic union" and how does it support the Christian view of Jesus the Messiah?
4. What is the role of the Prophet Muhammad and the hadith in the life of the Muslim believer?
SESSION 3
Chapter 11 "Questioning the God-Man"
1. How would you answer this question from Sahar, a Muslim woman, "How can you believe Jesus is God if he was born through the birth canal of a woman and that he had to use the bathroom? Aren't these things below God?"
2. How do you answer a Muslim who asks, "If Jesus is God, and God died, who was ruling the universe?"
3. Why is God not unjust in punishing Jesus for others' sins?
4. Why does Nabeel ask, "Sahar, let's imagine that you are on your way to a very important ceremony and are dressed in your finest clothes. You are about to arrive just on time, but then you see your daughter drowning in a pool of mud. What would you do? Let her drown and arrive looking dignified, or rescue her but arrive at the ceremony covered in mud?"
Chapter 12 "Libya's Best Friend"
1. What is Ronnie Smith's story and how does it relate to a discussion of Islam and Christianity?
2. What motivated Ronnie Smith and his family to move to Libya?
3. How was Jesus' teaching and life an Example for Ronnie Smith?
4. What do feel reading Ronnie's wife ending sentence in a letter to her husband's killers, "Ronnie loved you because God loves you. Ronnie loved you because God loved him-not because Ronnie was so great, but because God is so great"?
SESSION 4
PART 4: THE QURAN OR THE BIBLE? TWO DIFFERENT SCRIPTURES
Chapter 13 "The Burning of Scripture"
1. In 2011 what senseless violence happened in Mazar-e-Sharif, considered a safe city in Afghanistan, and what caused the deaths of 12 innocent people?
2. In 2009 what happened at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan when "the US government officially announced that the Bibles were trash,and accordingly they were burned"?
3. Rather than caricatures of Muslims and Christians regarding their holy books, what compelling reality does Nabeel offer regarding the two faiths and their holy books?
Chapter 14 "Comparing the Quran and the Bible" (Because this is a lengthy, significant chapter, more questions will be asked.)
1. What must Westerners know about Islam that makes the thought of burning a copy of the Quran a highly inflammatory insult to Muslims?
2. While Christians do not suggest or like the idea of burning Bibles, what is one reason why Christians do not riot and murder when the Bible is treated as trash by US military officials?
3. How would your view of the Quran be changed if you believed it to be"the closest thing on earth to the incarnation of Allah"?
4. How would you describe the differences in the composition of the Quran and the Bible?
5. How would you summarize the Christian view of the Bible?
6. Is the Islamic practice of "abrogation"?
7. When Nabeel discusses "the sufficiency of Scripture," how does this apply to the Quran? What guides most Islamic practices?
8. How would you contrast the Muslim and Christian views regarding "why" they believe and"what" they believe
Chapter 15 "Questioning Texts"
1. What are the stories of Ahmed Deedat and Zakir Naik and what is their main argument for the superiority of the Quran over the Bible?
2. Why is this observation important in the Muslim/Christian debate: "The Quran is written in one uniform style, whereas the Bible is written in many genres"?
List at least four contradictions within the Quran (see page 120).
3. How does Nabeel, using 1 Peter as an example, answer the Muslim charge about "wholesale omissions or insertions of New Testament teachings, [andl intentional alterations by ruling powers"?
Chapter 16 "The First Burning of the Quran"
1. What did Caliph Uthman do and why did he do it? What does this reveal about human control over the Quran in human history?
2. What is Nabeel's personal story about the impact of the Quran and the impact of the Bible on him at a significant moment in his life?
SESSION 5
PART 5: JIHAD OR THE CRUSADES? TWO DIFFERENT HOLY WARS
Chapter 17 "The First Crusade"
1. How did President Bill Clinton advance the growing popular understanding of the (first) Christian Crusades to take back the holy land?
2.Why was the 9/11 attack in 2001 a very difficult experience for patriotic American Muslims?
3. Contrary to the popular view, how could Crusade scholar Thomas Madden write, "The crusades were in every way a defensive war"?
4. Why does Nabeel confess, "Considering the historical realities, the common Muslim perspective of the Crusades-the perspective I inherited-is a modern invention"?
Chapter 18 "Comparing the Traditions of the Founders"
1. What did you think when Nabeel asked a Muslim friend at a conference in Washington, D. C. on July 4,2009,"So if we were in a Muslim country right now, would you kill me?" and the friend responded,"Yes, I would kill you right now. It is the command of the Prophet (SAW)"?
2. Why does Nabeel write, "But in order to follow a peaceful Islam, one has to ignore or reject vast swaths of traditions from Muhammad's life as well as virtually the entire history of Islamic jurisprudence"?
3.What was one of Augustine's contributions to the Christian understanding of war?
