Biography
In his first book written in 1997, Against the Tides in the Middle East: The true story of Mustafa, former teacher of Islamic history Gabriel tells of his birth on 30 December 1957 to Muslim parents in Upper Egypt. He explains that his birth name was Mustafa. His parents, wealthy owners of a clothing factory, as well as his six brothers and one sister, were all devout Muslims. He describes himself as a Muslim by birth who taught as professor of Islamic history at Cairo's Al-Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt before converting to evangelical Christianity at the age of 34. [1] [2] [3] In a long interview in Tulsa World, Gabriel claims to have fled Egypt after his own father threatened to have him killed for converting to Christianity, and to have lived in South Africa before moving to the United States in 1999. [4] [5]
Mustafa subsequently changed his name, taking the Christian name of Mark Gabriel. He claims to be unable to use his birth name because of fear of assassination by Islamic extremists. [4]
Baylor University professor Thomas S. Kidd, situates Gabriel in the context of a series of converts from Islam to Christianity whose books and speeches have attracted attention among "conservative American Protestants." These include Ergun and Emir Safa, authors of Unveiling Islam: An Insider's Look at Muslim Life and Beliefs; Pastor Reza Safa, an Iranian-born former Shi'a Muslim and author of Inside Islam; Exposing and Reaching the World of Islam; and Abdul Saleeb (a pen name,) a former Sufi Muslim and author of the Dark Side of Islam (co-authored with R. C. Sproul). After summarizing the details of Gabriel's life story, Kidd mentions that "there have been questions raised about his real identity." [6]
In December 2016 Mark A. Gabriel was awarded a PhD in Public Law by the University of Cape Town for his dissertation Reforming Hudud Ordinance to Reconcile Islamic Criminal Law with International Human Rights Law. [7]
Impact
Reviewing Gabriel's book Jesus and Muhammad: Profound Differences and Surprising Similarities, for Foreign Affairs , Walter Russell Mead described it as one of a number of books that were "doing far more to frame the future of U.S. policy toward the Middle East than most books published by scholars with more conventional credentials and views", since "It is from books like this one that many millions of Americans form their impressions of Islam as the war on terror grinds on". [3]
In Fundamentalism in the Modern World, Oddbjorn Leivik asserts that Gabriel's books Islam and Terrorism," and "Islam and the Jews, were the main source of Pastor John Hagee's "attack on Islam", the former book also being distributed free to members of the Norwegian Parliament. [8] According to Leivik, Hagee's 2006 book Jerusalem Countdown , like the two Gabriel books from which he asserts that it is largely drawn, "combines apocalyptic visions of Israel being threatened by its enemies, with the 'unveiling' of Islam as an inherently violent religion." [9] ' Like the Gabriel books Islam and Terrorism," and "Islam and the Jews, Hagee's Jerusalem Countdown, was published by Charisma House publishers. [9] Gabriel has been described as part of the counter-jihad movement. [10]
Gabriel's website contains a declaration distancing his writings from their use and abuse by "right wing organisations and individuals...Many of these misguided people use my writings to wrongly justify hate against Muslims." [11]
Muhammad was an Arab religious, social, and political leader and the founder of Islam. According to Islamic doctrine, he was a prophet divinely inspired to preach and confirm the monotheistic teachings of Adam, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and other prophets. He is believed to be the Seal of the Prophets within Islam, with the Quran as well as his teachings and practices forming the basis for Islamic religious belief.
The Dome of the Rock is an Islamic shrine at the center of the Al-Aqsa mosque compound on the Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem. It is the world's oldest surviving work of Islamic architecture, the earliest archaeologically attested religious structure to be built by a Muslim ruler and its inscriptions contain the earliest epigraphic proclamations of Islam and of the Islamic prophet Muhammad.
Scholars have studied and debated Muslim attitudes towards Jews, as well as the treatment of Jews in Islamic thought and societies throughout the history of Islam. Parts of the Islamic literary sources give mention to certain Jewish groups present in the past or present, which has led to debates. Some of this overlaps with Islamic remarks on non-Muslim religious groups in general.
In Islam, Jesus is believed to be the penultimate prophet and messenger of God and the Messiah sent to guide the Children of Israel with a book called the Injīl.
Christianity and Islam are the two largest religions in the world, with 2.8 billion and 1.9 billion adherents, respectively. Both religions are considered as Abrahamic, and are monotheistic, originating in the Middle East.
Political aspects of Islam are derived from the Quran, ḥadīth literature, and sunnah, the history of Islam, and elements of political movements outside Islam. Traditional political concepts in Islam include leadership by elected or selected successors to Muhammad, known as Caliphs in Sunnī Islam and Imams in Shīʿa Islam; the importance of following the Islamic law (sharīʿa); the duty of rulers to seek consultation (shūrā) from their subjects; and the importance of rebuking unjust rulers.
Qutbism is an exonym that refers to the beliefs and ideology of Sayyid Qutb, a leading Islamist revolutionary of the Muslim Brotherhood who was executed by the Egyptian government in 1966. Influenced by the doctrines of earlier Islamists like Hasan al-Banna and Maududi, Qutbism advocates armed Jihad to establish Islamic government, in addition to promoting offensive Jihad.
Religious antisemitism is aversion to or discrimination against Jews as a whole, based on religious doctrines of supersession that expect or demand the disappearance of Judaism and the conversion of Jews, and portray their political enemies in Jewish terms. This form of antisemitism has frequently served as the basis for false claims and religious antisemitic tropes against Judaism. Sometimes, it is called theological antisemitism.
Ahmadiyya Islam considers Jesus (ʿĪsā) as a mortal man, entirely human, and a prophet of God born to the Virgin Mary (Maryam). Jesus is understood to have survived the crucifixion based on the account of the canonical Gospels, the Qurʾān, hadith literature, and revelations to Mirza Ghulam Ahmad. Having delivered his message to the Israelites in Judea, Jesus is understood to have emigrated eastward to escape persecution from Judea and to have further spread his message to the Lost Tribes of Israel. In Ahmadiyya Islam, Jesus is thought to have died a natural death in India. Jesus lived to old age and later died in Srinagar, Kashmir, and his tomb is presently located at the Roza Bal shrine.
Al-Ma'idah is the fifth chapter (sūrah) of the Quran, with 120 verses (āyāt). Regarding the timing and contextual background of the revelation, it is a "Medinan surah", which means it is believed to have been revealed in Medina, instead of Mecca.
Michael Leroy Bickle is an American evangelical leader who was the founder of the International House of Prayer (IHOPKC). Once the leader of IHOPKC, Bickle oversaw several ministries and a Bible school. Bickle has written a number of books and served as the pastor of multiple churches.
Al-Masih ad-Dajjal, otherwise referred to simply as the Dajjal, is an evil figure in Islamic eschatology who will pretend to be the promised Messiah and later claim to be God, appearing before the Day of Judgment according to the Islamic eschatological narrative. The word Dajjal is not mentioned in the Quran, but he is mentioned and described in the Hadith. Corresponding to the Antichrist in Christianity, the Dajjal is said to emerge out in the East, although the specific location varies among the various sources.
The Quran is viewed to be the scriptural foundation of Islam and is believed by Muslims to have been sent down by Allah (God) and revealed to Muhammad by the angel Jabreel (Gabriel). The Quran has been subject to criticism both in the sense of being the subject of an interdisciplinary field of study where secular, (mostly) Western scholars set aside doctrines of its divinity, perfection, unchangeability, etc. accepted by Muslim Islamic scholars; but also in the sense of being found fault with by those — including Christian missionaries and other skeptics hoping to convert Muslims — who argue it is not divine, not perfect, and/or not particularly morally elevated.
The first to criticize the Islamic prophet Muhammad were his non-Muslim Arab contemporaries, who decried him for preaching monotheism, and the Jewish tribes of Arabia, for what they claimed were unwarranted appropriation of Biblical narratives and figures and vituperation of the Jewish faith. For these reasons, medieval Jewish writers commonly referred to him by the derogatory nickname ha-Meshuggah.
The Islamic prophet Muhammad's views on Jews were formed through the contact he had with Jewish tribes living in and around Medina. His views on Jews include his theological teaching of them as People of the Book, his description of them as earlier receivers of Abrahamic revelation; and the failed political alliances between the Muslim and Jewish communities.
Jerusalem Countdown: A Warning to the World is a book written in 2006 by American pastor John Hagee which interprets the Bible to claim that Russia and several Islamic nations will invade Israel and will be destroyed by God. This will cause the Antichrist, the head of the European Union, to create a confrontation over Israel between China and the West. A final battle between East and West at Armageddon will then precipitate the Second Coming of Christ. The book was published by Charisma House.
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The Ahmadiyya is an Islamic movement in Egypt with origins in the Indian subcontinent. Although the earliest contact between Egyptians and the Ahmadiyya movement was during the lifetime of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, its founder, the movement in Egypt was formally established in 1922 under the leadership of its second Caliph Opposition to the Ahmadiyya grew particularly in the latter part the 20th century and Ahmadis have seen increased hostility in Egypt more recently. There are up to 50,000 Ahmadi Muslims in Egypt.
