Sura al-Fati­ha and the Mis­sion­ary’s Straight Path”

As-salaa­mu ala’ man ittaba’a al-huda ;

Some Chris­t­ian mis­sion­ar­ies have the inher­ent fan­ta­sy that Sura’ al-Fati­hah (the first Sura’ of the Qur’an) some­how sup­ports their false pagan doc­trine of the Trinity.

sura al-fatiha

The trans­la­tion of this Sura is as follows :

1) In the Name of Allaah, the Most Benef­i­cent, the Most Merciful.
2) All the prais­es and thanks are for Allaah the Lord of the Universe.
3) The Most Benef­i­cent, The Most Merciful.
4) Mas­ter of the Day of Recompense.
5) You Alone we wor­ship, and You Alone we ask for help.
6) Guide us to the Straight Path.
7) The Path of those on whom You have bestowed your grace, not the Path of those who earned your Anger, nor of those that went astray. 

The mis­sion­ar­ies, hav­ing an inher­ent dis­ease in their hearts, are unable to appre­ci­ate the Pure Monothe­ism which the Sura expounds. They will first cite the whole ayaat (keep in mind that their main con­tention is with Qur’an, 1:6 — Guide us to the straight path”) and then twist this inter­pre­ta­tion to suit their false doctrine. 

It seems to be a com­mon tac­tic which is not alien to Chris­t­ian mis­sion­ary pro­pa­gan­da, as befit­ting the tac­tics of their Satan­ic apos­tle from Tar­sus. Let us now deal with this lat­est polemic in the fol­low­ing para­graphs, insha’allah.

As one Chris­t­ian polemi­cist had claimed :

    This is the daiy [sic] prayer recit­ed by the Mus­lim every time they pray. Every­day, they are ask­ing God to show them the straight way — this wil go on and on the rest of their lives ! As I read the Al-Qur’an myself, I then found the Straight Way that they are look­ing for.

Then the Chris­t­ian mis­sion­ary con­ve­nient­ly” pro­ceeds to selec­tive­ly quote vers­es relat­ed to Jesus alai­hissalam and the imag­ined straight way”. And of course, that Straight Way” the Chris­t­ian has in mind is then trans­posed to the verse in John 14:6.

Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life : no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.

By this erro­neous trans­po­si­tion”, their claim is two-fold :

    (1) The Qur’an speaks of a straight path”.
    (2) Jesus (and implic­it­ly, Chris­tian­i­ty and Chris­t­ian doc­trines) is the straight path”.

With such fan­tasies that these Chris­tians have, it is amaz­ing that their stu­pid­i­ty always pre­cedes their pro­found ignorance.

It should of course be not­ed that while the Qur’an does speak favourably of Jesus(P) and the mes­sage that he had preached, it is always depict­ed that Jesus(P) is a human Prophet of God and His ser­vant. It is thus quite con­ve­nient for the mis­sion­ary to leave out vers­es which stressed upon Jesus’(P) human­i­ty in the Qur’an, for example :

Christ, the son of Mary, was no more than a Mes­sen­ger ; many were the Mes­sen­gers that passed away before him. His moth­er was a woman of truth. They had both to eat their (dai­ly) food. See how Allah doth make His Signs clear to them ; yet see in what ways they are delud­ed away from the truth!“Qur’an, 5:75

More of such vers­es on Jesus(P) can be found here. It is thus clear that the mis­sion­ary had selec­tive­ly done a pick and choose” on the vers­es that the mis­sion­ary feels” sup­port their Trini­tar­i­an doc­trine. How­ev­er, as the evi­dence dic­tates, this is far from the truth.

Here is a full com­men­tary of Sura al-Fati­ha from Ibn Kathir, specif­i­cal­ly Qur’an, 1:6 — Ihdeena sir­aat­ul mus­taqeem (“Guide us on the straight path”).

On this pas­sage, Ibn Kathir says :

The say­ing of the Exalt­ed, You Alone we ask for help’: mean­ing that we do not seek aid from any­one but You because the command/​affair in it’s total­i­ty is under Your con­trol Alone, no one else has even an atoms weight of con­trol over it. And in this statement’s fol­low­ing His say­ing, You Alone we wor­ship’ lies an indi­ca­tion that it is not per­mis­si­ble to put our trust in any­one except the One that deserves wor­ship because no one else has con­trol over the command/​affair. This mean­ing which is indi­cat­ed here is clear­ly explained in oth­er vers­es, like His sayings,

So wor­ship Him and put your trust in Him’ (12:123)

But if they turn away, say : Allaah is suf­fi­cient for me, none has the right to be wor­shipped but Him, in Him I put my trust’ (9:129)

The Lord of the East and the West, none deserves to be wor­shipped but Him, so take Him as the Dis­pos­er of your affairs’ (73:9)

Say : He is the Most Benef­i­cent, we have believed in Him and put our trust in Him’ (67:29)

When one reads the com­men­tary, it is obvi­ous that there is hard­ly any men­tion of Jesus(P) being God or that he is the Son of God ; that all Mus­lims should just con­vert en masse to Chris­tian­i­ty and be Trini­tar­i­an wor­ship­pers. Such allu­sions are sim­ply ridicu­lous, to put it quite bluntly.

Inter­est­ing­ly though, the mis­sion­ary left out the last verse of the Sura. It refers to peo­ple who have earned God’s wrath and peo­ple who have gone astray. So who are those peo­ple that the Sura’ is refer­ring to ? Here is the answer :

The say­ing of the Exalt­ed, not the Path of those who have earned Your Anger, nor of those that went astray’: the major­i­ty of the schol­ars of tafseer said that those who have earned Your Anger’ are the Jews, and those that went astray’ are the Chris­tians, and there is the hadeeth of the Mes­sen­ger of Allaah(T) report­ed from Adi bin Hatim(R) con­cern­ing this. And the Jews and the Chris­tians even though both of them are mis­guid­ed and both of them have Allaah’s Anger on them — the Anger is spec­i­fied to the Jews, even though the Chris­tians share this with them, because the Jews knew the truth and reject­ed it and delib­er­ate­ly came with false­hood, so the Anger (of Allaah being upon them) was the descrip­tion most befit­ting them. And the Chris­tians were igno­rant, not know­ing the truth, so mis­guid­ance was the descrip­tion most befit­ting them.

It is the Chris­tians ! The Chris­tians are denounced as those who have gone astray”. Obvi­ous­ly log­ic dic­tates that if the Chris­tians are the ones who are denounced in this verse of the Sura, it does not make any sense for the Qur’an to be sup­port­ing any of the Chris­t­ian doc­trines. Thus we see how obvi­ous­ly fal­la­cious the claims of the mis­sion­ary are and with this expo­sure, their argu­ments fall to the ground.

In con­clu­sion, rather than sup­port­ing their beliefs Sura’ al-Fati­hah actu­al­ly attacks their doc­trines and dis­putes their claim that they are the guid­ed ones. The Chris­t­ian mis­sion­ar­ies should thus stop dream­ing that the Qur’an will ever sup­port their lies. It nev­er had and nev­er will. As far as the Mus­lims are con­cerned, Guid­ance is in Al-Huda (Islam), the Straight Path, and it cer­tain­ly does not belong to the Christians.

In the end, we are remind­ed to put our trust in the fol­low­ing verse :

And they say : None shall enter Par­adise unless he be a Jew or a Chris­t­ian”. Those are their [vain] desires. Say : Pro­duce your proof if you are truth­ful !Qur’an, 2 : 111

We are rest assured that the Chris­tians will nev­er be able to pro­duce their evi­dence apart from twist­ing their facts, and their des­ti­na­tion is no doubt the Hell­fire. And only God knows best !Endmark

Cite this arti­cle as : Mohd Elfie Nieshaem Juferi, Sura al-Fati­ha and the Mis­sion­ary’s Straight Path”,” in Bis­mi­ka Allahu­ma, Decem­ber 29, 2006, last accessed March 29, 2024, https://​bis​mikaal​lahu​ma​.org/​p​o​l​e​m​i​c​a​l​-​r​e​b​u​t​t​a​l​s​/​s​t​r​a​i​g​h​t​-​p​a​th/

Published:

in

, , ,

Author:

Tags:

Comments

4 responses to “Sura al-Fati­ha and the Mis­sion­ary’s Straight Path””

  1. Shadowofears Avatar
    Shadowofears

    In fact I will not hold the Chris­tians respon­si­ble for such deceit, but I will hold the holy spir­it respon­si­ble. Chris­tians claim the holy spir­it inspires them, if that is true then the holy spir­it is inspir­ing them to be untruth­ful, and to be dis­torters of truth, and to try and make up a lie. And such actions can­not be com­ing from a holy being, rather such action is inspired by some­one called Iblis, who is shay­tan, because only shay­tan inspires peo­ple to make a lie against Allah and his Noble Quran.

  2. jeff Avatar
    jeff

    I would like to post a few com­ments to the orig­i­nal arti­cle Sura al-Fati­hah and the Mis­sion­ary’s Straight Path” and the first reply.

    First I would like to say that I could not agree more with the arti­cle’s premise that the Qur’an does not sup­port the doc­trines of Chris­tian­i­ty in any way. I can sym­pa­thize with the author’s irri­ta­tion at cer­tain Mis­sion­ary’s attempts at using the Qur’an as a tool” for con­vert­ing mus­lims to Chris­tian­i­ty. Indeed, to me it would seem like play­ing with fire. I firm­ly believe that all sup­port and sub­stan­ti­a­tion for the doc­trines of Chris­tian­i­ty rest firm­ly in the Bible and nowhere else. If some­one were to come to me with a Bible and try to con­vert me to Islam using pas­sages from it as text sup­ports, he/​she would have a very dif­fi­cult time indeed, and so I can also sym­pa­thize with the author’s feel­ings of con­tempt for the intel­li­gence of these mis­sion­ar­ies. It does seem a fool­hardy thing for them to do. How­ev­er, I believe the things they are try­ing to sup­port ; i.e. the doc­trine of the Trin­i­ty, the doc­trine of Christ, and the doc­trine of Sal­va­tion are not lies as the author claims, but rather truths. I believe that plac­ing faith in Jesus Christ is the only way for Sal­va­tion, and I believe the BIBLE sup­ports this. (John 14:6 and Romans 6:23 are just 2 exam­ples) I would enjoy dis­cussing with the author fur­ther about these doc­trines and if he (or any­one else) feels inclined to do so, do not hes­i­tate to con­tact me at my email address. I will not go into my doc­tri­nal sup­ports fur­ther here but will await an invi­ta­tion. How­ev­er, one can rest assured that I will not be using the Qur’an as a sup­port ! In the end, it all boils down to FAITH. Chris­tians believe in Jesus Christ and HIS WORD, and the Mus­lims belive in Muhammed and his teach­ings. Which one is the truth ? That’s a dis­cus­sion for anoth­er time but one that is of Eter­nal Significance.

    In response to the respon­dent that exposed” the con­tra­dic­tion between Jesus, Peter and Paul and the Covenant of Cir­cum­ci­sion I say this : You are open­ing up a deep subject…one that includes both Judaism and Chris­tian­i­ty, and I don’t think that you are real­ly up for a dis­cus­sion on that one. You say (and right­ly so) that Peter and Paul dis­agreed on the subject…this how­ev­er does not mean Paul was wrong just because he dis­agreed with Peter. Peter was a man, just like all of us and he was not perfect…he made mis­takes too…Paul just called him on one of them. Also, your sup­port­ing text where Jesus sup­pos­ed­ly affirms the covenant is not a proof text for the covenant. If you actu­al­ly look at the con­text of that verse you will see that Jesus had been accused of break­ing the Law by heal­ing a man on the Sab­bath. He (Jesus) posed a rebut­tal for that by stat­ing that accord­ing to the Law (of Moses) one could (and need­ed to) cir­cum­cise a boy if the 8th day fell on the Sab­bath. The argue­ment was that if it was ok to do the work” of Cir­cum­ci­sion on the Sab­bath, was it not also law­ful to do the work” of heal­ing ? This text has noth­ing to do with the covenant of circumcision…please don’t take vers­es out of con­text. I belive that the respon­den­t’s goal in this argue­ment was to show the erran­cy of the BIBLE and thus ren­der it use­less and with­out author­i­ty. There are many appar­ent con­tra­dic­tions” in the Bible, but that is just what they are…apparent. Not actu­al. Again, if the respon­dent wish­es to dis­cuss this fur­ther I am open to a dialog.

    Thanks for let­ting me make my comments.

  3. Abdullah Avatar

    The Straight Path is described in Surat-al-Fati­ha as { The Path of those on whom You have bestowed your grace, not the Path of those who earned your Anger, nor of those that went astray }

    And the Mes­sen­ger of Allah (peace be upon him) says : Those who earned God’s Anger are Jews and those that went astray are Christians.

    This hadith is well accept­ed by all schol­ars who made con­sen­sus upon this expla­na­tion of the verse, the emi­nent schol­ar Ibn Abi Hatem notes : I am not aware of any dis­agree­ment regard­ing this interpretation.

    In con­clu­sion, the Straight Path is not the Path of Jews, nor of Christians.

  4. Tarek Avatar
    Tarek

    This is part of the arti­cle found here : http://​www​.guidetos​al​va​tion​.com/​W​e​b​s​i​t​e​/​p​a​u​l​_​v​s​_​e​v​e​r​b​o​d​y​.​htm

    When read­ing the Bible, one of the first things we learn in the book of Gen­e­sis is that God made the fol­low­ing covenant with Abra­ham (pbuh):

    Gen­e­sis 17:10This is my covenant, which ye shall keep, between me and you and thy seed after thee ; Every man child among you shall be circumcised.11And ye shall cir­cum­cise the flesh of your fore­skin ; and it shall be a token of the covenant betwixt me and you. 12And he that is eight days old shall be cir­cum­cised among you, every man child in your gen­er­a­tions, he that is born in the house, or bought with mon­ey of any stranger, which is not of thy seed. 13He that is born in thy house, and he that is bought with thy mon­ey, must needs be cir­cum­cised : and my covenant shall be in your flesh for an ever­last­ing covenant.

    We learn from these vers­es that this covenant was meant to be ever­last­ing. As we con­tin­ue read­ing into the New Tes­ta­ment, we also dis­cov­er the following :

    Luke 2:21And when eight days were accom­plished for the cir­cum­cis­ing of the child, his name was called JESUS, which was so named of the angel before he was con­ceived in the womb.

    So here we see that Jesus (pbuh) was also cir­cum­cised, in keep­ing with the covenant God made with Abra­ham (pbuh). And con­tin­u­ing on to the book of John, we also learn :

    John 7:22Moses there­fore gave unto you cir­cum­ci­sion ; (not because it is of Moses, but of the fathers;) and ye on the sab­bath day cir­cum­cise a man.

    Here Jesus (pbuh) reaf­firms the neces­si­ty of this covenant. After mak­ing it past the gospels, we come to the books of Paul, but here, things sud­den­ly change :

    Gala­tians 5 : 2Behold, I Paul say unto you, that if ye be cir­cum­cised, Christ shall prof­it you noth­ing. 3For I tes­ti­fy again to every man that is cir­cum­cised, that he is a debtor to do the whole law. 4Christ is become of no effect unto you, whoso­ev­er of you are jus­ti­fied by the law ; ye are fall­en from grace.

    Gala­tians 2 : 7But con­trari­wise, when they saw that the gospel of the uncir­cum­ci­sion was com­mit­ted unto me, as the gospel of the cir­cum­ci­sion was unto Peter ;

    Paul now says that cir­cum­ci­sion is not nec­es­sary. This caus­es a prob­lem : Was this covenant meant to be ever­last­ing ? How can Paul sin­gle-hand­ed­ly end an ever­last­ing covenant from God ? So how did the Apos­tles take this ? Let us find out :

    Gala­tians 2:11 But when Cephas came to Anti­och, I opposed him to his face, because he stood self-con­demned ; 12for until cer­tain peo­ple came from James, he used to eat with the Gen­tiles. But after they came, he drew back and kept him­self sep­a­rate for fear of the cir­cum­ci­sion fac­tion. 13And the oth­er Jews joined him in this hypocrisy, so that even Barn­abas was led astray by their hypocrisy.

    Gala­tians 2:14But when I saw that they walked not upright­ly accord­ing to the truth of the gospel, I said unto Peter before them all, If thou, being a Jew, livest after the man­ner of Gen­tiles, and not as do the Jews, why com­pellest thou the Gen­tiles to live as do the Jews ?

    So, obvi­ous by the above vers­es, they did not agree with Paul. So what does Paul do ? He calls them hyp­ocrites and not upright. These are apos­tles that were with Jesus (pbuh), and Paul, who nev­er in his life met Jesus (pbuh) is call­ing them mis­guid­ed hyp­ocrites. Keep in mind that Barn­abas was the teacher and pro­tec­tor of Paul, peter the rock (Matt 16:18And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church ; and the gates of hell shall not pre­vail against it. ) And James the Just. Regard­ing James, the fol­low­ing comes from wikipedia :

    The Gospel of the Hebrews frag­ment 21 relates the risen Jesus’ appear­ance to James. The Gospel of Thomas (one of the works includ­ed in the Nag Ham­ma­di library), say­ing 12, relates that the dis­ci­ples asked Jesus, We are aware that you will depart from us. Who will be our leader?” Jesus said to him, No mat­ter where you come [from] it is to James the Just that you shall go, for whose sake heav­en and earth have come to exist.”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *