Muhammad Meets The Romans

I introduce Surah XXX, and explain the historical context of Arab attacks and conquests of the Byzantine Empire.

Transcript
0:04 · okay and we're live and today I just wanted to start Sura 30 which is
0:14 · entitled the Romans and this is one of the more notable sirs in the Koran
0:19 · because it contains an actual prediction of Muhammad who was as we know a
0:27 · self-declared prophet like Joseph Smith
0:33 · and L&G white and other false prophets throughout history Muhammad declared
0:40 · himself a prophet he wasn't as the Bible mandates a someone whose prophethood was
0:48 · given him by God as all the prophets in previous ages were but the this sir
0:57 · contains an actual prediction albeit a very vague and ambiguous and easily
1:04 · fungible prediction so it's often invoked when Muslims want to point to
1:11 · something to demonstrate that Muhammad wasn't a false prophet even though as
1:16 · I'll explain it really it really isn't evidence of any sort that Muhammad
1:26 · prophesied when you actually when you actually examine it critically but I'll begin with a little bit of a historical
1:32 · a little bit of historical background in to end and when the setting of of this
1:43 · surah at the time that Muhammad came about and he started to go around
1:52 · priscila ties and and trying to gather
1:57 · people to him in the name of Islam even though Islam itself wasn't a coherent
2:04 · ideology at the time it wasn't called that the Roman Empire
2:11 · was in a very parlous state there were
2:19 · two very long lasting dynasties called the Justinian dynasty and the Heraklion
2:28 · dynasty and these were two very very
2:34 · explore lasting dynasties that began with great promise and in some respects
2:41 · were the high-water mark of the Roman
2:47 · Empire after this sack of Rome and and
2:52 · after the division of the Empire but between the East and the West and what
2:59 · we now know is the Byzantine Empire was established and there's a great book
3:05 · written by laws brown words and I'll be reading from it shortly an excerpt
3:11 · entitled loss to the west you can see here he's also he also has a podcast
3:19 · which I believe I'm not sure I think it's called 12 Roman emperors which
3:27 · describes the Byzantine Empire and this is a very short approximately 300 page book it describes the entire nothing
3:36 · well it doesn't describe so much it uh it it goes over the history of the
3:43 · Byzantine Empire which lasted for which
3:51 · lasted for about a mutton millennium it was but he's able to condense all of
3:58 · this history into about 300 pages focusing on the major major points
4:04 · historical turning points and personalities of the Byzantine Empire
4:10 · which really was a remarkable remarkable Empire it was if we think of it this way
4:16 · was an extension of the Roman Empire back then they weren't known as the
4:23 · Byzantine Empire they were known as Roman soap what this Sura is entitled
4:29 · the Romans these these people were simply known as as an extension of the
4:34 · Roman Empire after the sack of Rome the
4:40 · the the Western Roman Empire are sort of
4:45 · receded but even pride for that when the capital was moved to - what's what was
4:53 · known as Constantinople into the early 20th century named after of course the
5:00 · Emperor Constantine the men who decided to first make Christianity legal and
5:07 · then eventually Christianity was turned into the official state religion and
5:14 · there's a lot of interesting dynamics that go into the transition from
5:22 · Christianity from a from a despised
5:30 · occasionally very harshly persecuted minority sect into the official religion
5:39 · of the Roman Empire which I'm not going to get into into this video but suffice
5:44 · it to say this marked a huge transition for Christianity as as a as a global
5:52 · religion once it became official officially legalized and then became
6:00 · mandated as the official state religion of the Roman Empire and there's some
6:07 · interesting details in the book and in this book loss to the west about the
6:13 · conflicts that arose between Christianity as as the as the official
6:20 · church and between the political ambitions and demands of the Roman
6:27 · Empire the conflict between the Roman Empire Emperor and the Pope
6:33 · who was recognized as the as the clerical authority conflict between him
6:42 · and the civil authority of Rome although there wasn't a separation between church and state as we know today but this book
6:51 · is interesting because it does describe the the growth of his early growth of
6:59 · Islam in the Arabian Peninsula and how it challenged the Roman Empire the the
7:05 · empires the dynasties I mentioned the Justinian dynasty and the Heraklion
7:11 · dynasty as I said were marked by incredible growth technological
7:18 · flourishing and and a a renaissance of
7:24 · sorts after after the sack of Rome and the division between the East and the
7:30 · West Justinian dines dynasty managed at a certain time to actually reflect to
7:37 · unite to unite the two halves again but of course it ended in it ended in a
7:46 · tragedy from from the point of view of of the Romans for for several reasons
7:54 · one of them of course being being being the plague and this is this is
8:03 · chronicled in a great book called Justinian's FLE which another book I
8:08 · would recommend reading which describes the effect the plague had on the Romanum on the empire at the time and how it
8:18 · it essentially reversed the the gains
8:25 · that that had been made up to that point that and also the conflict between
8:32 · Justinian and his best military advisor
8:37 · his best general belli Asaka most arias
8:42 · who was who and is considered one of the greatest Roman
8:48 · Roman generals in history up there with Skippy Oh with Caesar with some of the
8:54 · other acclaimed Roman generals he he
9:01 · wasn't defeated so much by his opponents and he was his victories were he was
9:10 · able to essentially snatch victory from the jaws of the defeat particularly when
9:16 · when retaking the Italian peninsula
9:21 · retaking north North Africa he was a hugely successful general and
9:28 · esteemed very highly by his soldiers but conflict with the Emperor himself and
9:36 · his wife forced him to mitigated the
9:45 · success otherwise that he would have had plus as I said the the plague that
9:51 · destroyed and and destroyed entire swathes of Roman and and and Western
10:00 · civilization at the time so you had
10:06 · likewise after that you had the Hera clean dynasty which for a brief period
10:13 · under her Atlas was resurgent was was
10:20 · repelling the enemies the the enemies of the Roman Empire and succeeding having
10:28 · unparalleled successes but that too ended in disappointment and failure and
10:33 · it set the stage for the beginning of what what what would be known as the
10:40 · caliphate and the islamic empire conquests out of the Arabian Peninsula from a ban of Arab nomads led by the
10:50 · successors to Muhammad and these two dynasties bookmarked a very brief tenure
10:58 · interregnum by the Emperor focus he was a thoracic
11:04 · Thracian usurper of the throne he killed
11:09 · the he killed the Emperor and inherited his empire and he's universally regarded
11:18 · as one of the worst Roman empires there's some people who dispute that
11:25 · dispute that assertion but for the most part he's looked at as not only a
11:32 · usurper but a very very maladapted ministry and basically just so that
11:41 · someone who sin which is these two bookends of long long lasting dynasties
11:48 · that had had immense victories and
11:53 · flourishing of a Roman the Roman Empire but both of which eventually have been
12:02 · he declined and set the stage for for
12:09 · bad things but you can see the demise of Periclean dynasty which set the stage
12:16 · for the Islamic invasion and Islamic colonias colonialism seeping in and
12:25 · taking over North Africa taking over the church and basically setting itself up
12:38 · as the main antagonist for Western civilization for Europe for the next
12:45 · seven for the next millennia millennium
12:51 · basically and some people there are
12:56 · different views on this in this book loss to the West the author pushes back
13:02 · to a certain extent on the negative assessments of
13:07 · reckless and tries to hello loving like
13:12 · Clayton um he pushes back on this idea
13:18 · that correctly is the weakness of that
13:26 · his weakness set the stage for the Muslim invasion and the Muslim conquest
13:33 · and points out that the the victories
13:39 · that he amassed mitigated the damage that would have otherwise been been
13:44 · inflicted that that Muhammad's successors and the Muslim Arab Empire
13:51 · would have been posed much more of a threat to the heart of Europe particularly Rome itself much earlier if
14:01 · if it were not for her Elias and he also
14:07 · points out that in with in a concession to to these critics they are correct
14:12 · that if Rome had had a stronger Emperor at the time at the very end of the
14:20 · correctly in Dynasty then they would have been able to fortify the the the
14:28 · distant possessions of this part of the
14:33 · this part of the Byzantine Empire that they would have been able to withstand
14:38 · some of the early attacks by Muslim Arab armies just because of the it would have
14:45 · been better organized and and just because of the the strength in numbers and as as GW points out in the chat the
14:57 · the persians and the romans had been fighting each other endlessly this the the advent of Islam
15:04 · and and the fact that they were able to establish an early beached beachhead in
15:09 · Asia and in order to learn
15:15 · attacks that that was they were able to do that in large measure because the
15:22 · sasanian empire the persians were on their last on their last legs they were
15:28 · about to collapse at that very moment and the room the the Byzantine Emperor
15:35 · Roman Empire was concerned with the Persians and had been for years
15:41 · containing them for sake for containing their ambitions trying to and directly
15:50 · in dynasty of course sort of put sort of
15:58 · put them in terms of decline and the Muslims of course finished off the Persian Empire because they were on they
16:06 · were about to about to go into the dustbin of history but the Roman Persian
16:14 · conflict was so subsumed everything else that that did they they weren't able to
16:23 · focus on this emerging threat from the desert from from Arabia so they couldn't
16:32 · defend their their possessions in the Levant and and leading up to
16:39 · Constantinople but as the author points out the treatments of miraculous did
16:47 · mitigate the damage so that the Muslim Muslim Arab armies were able to to take
16:54 · over North Africa take over a large part of the Middle East but didn't pose a
17:00 · threat to the to the heart of Europe for another century women so even so they
17:08 · did underestimate the threat posed by by
17:15 · Islam at this early stage and there's a great introduction in chapter 12 of this
17:22 · book entitled the house of war of course Islam describes any non Islamic
17:28 · any any part of the words that have been subjugated by Islam as dar al-harb the
17:33 · house of war and it's it's legal from an Islamic perspective to wage war and
17:41 · attack these nations and this is why you have terrorist attacks in Western
17:47 · nations in Western Europe and in North America and in other countries that
17:52 · haven't become fully submitted to Islamic law and and the Trat points out
18:01 · directly is also officially replaced latin with greek as the language of administration in the Byzantine Empire
18:07 · and this is another this isn't the side but one of the even as disastrous as the
18:16 · fall of Constantinople was one of the one of the things it did do was disperse
18:22 · the dispersed all of these Greek speakers into Europe and and help people
18:31 · help people there get a an understanding
18:38 · of the original language of the New Testament so the New Testament was written in in
18:44 · Koine Greek and you in the rest of
18:51 · Europe you you didn't have people who understood this language so their
18:56 · understanding of Scripture was very limited so but after the fall of the
19:04 · constant of of Constantinople in the late 15th century you had all of these
19:12 · Greek speakers who are able to interpret
19:17 · and and and translate the original text of the New Testament of the Gospels and
19:23 · this of course facilitated this this
19:29 · happened at the same time did the Reformation was under way so that one of
19:35 · the one of the things that the the fall of the Eastern
19:41 · and pyar did it actually did did increase knowledge in the rest of europe
19:50 · particularly with regard to an understanding of the original text of the bible the original manuscripts and
19:58 · the language it was written in because these people did speak Greek and Greek became the official official language of
20:05 · the Byzantine Empire excuse me and love
20:18 · and light says I like Greek better than Latin I never I never actually studied
20:23 · ancient Greek I did study Latin for two years and I I actually do like Latin I I
20:30 · thought it was a fun language to the to learn to the extent that I did learn it
20:36 · but it was gradually it was actually replaced in in the Byzantine Empire as
20:44 · mentioned earlier and I'm just gonna read a little bit from this book the the
20:50 · the the Taito is entitled the the chapters entitled the house of war and
20:57 · there's an epigraph here with the sword I will wash my shame away and this is by
21:03 · a boot mmm ninth century Arab poet and this is a great description of of the
21:11 · Muslim mentality the it's a very same based it's a very honor based culture
21:19 · and there's Nabeel Qureshi wrote a book
21:26 · where he and part of it he explains the difference between honor and shame based
21:33 · cultures and also in his his autobiography he describes an incident
21:38 · involving one of his friends who was a thief and was it wasn't regarded as a
21:44 · bad thing by his community until he was exposed and publicly exposed as a thief
21:50 · and then he was shunned and he goes into he goes out to explain how this dynamic in Islamic cultures
21:59 · which is focused so much on an honor and preserving your honor not so much
22:06 · because of an underlying system of ethics so much as a fear that you'll be
22:14 · exposed and shamed and this is why you have honor killings on earth why on
22:19 · earth tones are so prevalent in the Islamic world but this is a great this
22:25 · is a great epic at epigraph with the with the short I will wash my shame away and this was the mentality of early
22:31 · Islamic warriors and one of the reasons they they attacked they had so many they
22:39 · had such an ambition to take over so much of the world and I'll just read a little bit of this the hot desert wastes
22:46 · of the Arabian Peninsula seemed neither particularly inviting or threatening to the Byzantines and there seemed no
22:51 · reason to suspect that they would populated by squabbling nomadic tribes the region hardly seemed likely to pose
22:59 · a serious threat to anyone much less the huge Byzantine state in 622 however the
23:06 · deserts were beginning to stir with a new energy as a man named Muhammad fled from Mecca to Medina and began hammering
23:12 · together the tribes of the interior infusing his followers with a burning zeal Muhammad divided the world between
23:19 · dar al-islam the house of islam and dar al-harb the house of war their duty was
23:26 · a holy jihad to expand the house of Islam at the point of a sword within
23:31 · five years the Muslim armies were unleashed and they exploded out of the desert with frightening speed the timing
23:38 · of the invasion could hardly have been better hungry for conquest the Arab armies arrived to find both great
23:43 · empires of the region exhausted and near collapse the crippled Persians could put
23:48 · up little resistance their king yah staggered the third appeared to both
23:54 · the Byzantines and the Chinese for help but neither could offer any real assistance and his fall was swift within
24:01 · a year his tired armies were defeated and he spent the next decade fleeing from one look to another until a local peasant killed
24:09 · him for his purse Muhammad died in 632 of a fever but nothing seemed able to
24:14 · slake his Army's desire for a land not even Persia pausing to digest the Persian Empire by
24:21 · 6:33 that crossed the deserted Byzantine frontier and there they found a land
24:26 · ripe for the picking Constantinople had never really been able to step out the
24:31 · monophysitism heresy distracted as it was by the war with Persia and when the
24:38 · Muslims arrived they found the local populations eager to welcome them in for the oppressed mono physics Islam with
24:46 · its strict monotheism was perfectly understandable in the Arabs were at least Semites like themselves better to
24:52 · be rude by their Arab cousins than the distant heretical Emperor's in Constantinople especially since it was
24:58 · always easier to despise a heresy than a different face putting up only token resistance they watched as the Muslim
25:04 · army poured into Syria sacked Damascus and besieged Jerusalem and this is a
25:11 · this is a good point someone in the chat points out Dorian's use the death of yes
25:18 · to guard the third and 6:51 as the base year for that calendar this is a good point and and this is a is an
25:27 · interesting interesting sidenote the mono physics this is just the this
25:37 · is something that people should consider when they when they think of Islam as
25:42 · one Muslims think of it as a revelation from God because that's what they've
25:48 · been told to think but in reality it was
25:53 · an accretion of different of different
26:01 · teachings and and religious ideas and concepts that gradually coagulated into
26:11 · one thing so in this passage he's describing the mono physics heretical
26:18 · teaching within early church and people should remember that the early church even though now
26:26 · there are there are all sorts of denominations
26:31 · and even heresies people who purport to
26:36 · be Christian who who believe in some very bizarre doctrines the early church
26:42 · was no different in in terms of in terms of radical thinking and schisms and Paul
26:50 · even warns even warns Timothy and the
26:56 · churches that he planted in in Greece and and elsewhere that there will Iraq
27:04 · the heresies were arrived hi Paul and that there be divisions and this was
27:13 · true in the early church there weren't there were there might not have been all
27:20 · these denominations but there was all sorts of heretical thinking things like
27:25 · Gnosticism in fact Paul Paul Paul says
27:31 · in one of his letters he refers to science all called so this is this is
27:37 · something that would've been known as gnosis that Gnostics were a heresy that crop cropped up very early in the church
27:47 · among people who questioned the true divinity of Christ and and and
27:54 · questioned the triune nature of God so
28:00 · you had Gnostics you also had the beat the mano physics and and other other
28:07 · other other schisms and and groups of
28:13 · people who would believe in heretical ideas questioning the nature of God
28:18 · whether whether God really does did have a triune nature whether there were were
28:26 · truly three persons within the Godhead
28:32 · groups that thought that that Christ was merely a man that he didn't question the
28:38 · the deity of Christ himself and this was something that predominated very early
28:45 · in the church yeah and another another
28:53 · issue was the was was circumcision and
28:58 · keeping to the Mosaic law and this is something the Paul addresses in in letters and in particularly in the
29:06 · Epistle to the Galatians and also the Epistle to the Hebrews people who were
29:12 · being swayed by false teachers particularly those it's referred to as
29:17 · those of the circumcision in other words what we're known as Judaizers people who
29:24 · wanted to keep new new believers who
29:29 · were Gentiles force them to observe Mosaic law or force Jewish Christians
29:36 · Jewish believers in Christ to come back to to come back to traditional Judaism
29:46 · of the type that the Pharisees practiced so this was a huge conflict that emerged
29:53 · in the early church and many Paul's letters address these specific issues so
30:01 · I just want to bring that up because it mentions the the mono physic heresy and this was also something that that
30:08 · embroid the early church and and and
30:21 · here I mentioned earlier that correctly is his even though the dynasty and
30:26 · poorly it could have been much worse so the author describes that situation in
30:33 · this passage but as poor as the Emperor empires fortunes were at her reckless his death without him they would have
30:39 · been immeasurably worse if he hadn't arrived to overthrow focus the Empire would have fallen
30:44 · right to the Persians and when the Islamic tide came rushing out of Arabia there would have been nothing to shield Europe from the flood
30:50 · instead by combining a touch of Justinian's mission with more than hint of Belisarius as generalship correctly
30:56 · said made constant no constantinople a bulwark against Islamic aggression
31:02 · diverting the Muslim advance into the long waste of North Africa and delaying
31:07 · its entrance into Europe now of course this is this is a matter of dispute
31:15 · because of course the early church some of the central parts of the early church
31:21 · were located in of course it wasn't Rome
31:27 · so much as Antioch and and and
31:35 · Alexandria and and and and and this little little part of the Empire so
31:44 · there was a lot lost by by the fact that
31:49 · the Muslims were able to sweep in unimpeded against large large sections
31:56 · of the Byzantine Empire but it isn't worth noting that he does have a point that this the fact that correctly has
32:04 · had bolstered the empire and rejuvenated it did prevent the Islamic armies from
32:12 · moving in to the what we would consider the heart of Europe for Ali for nearly a
32:22 · century just like just like the Crusades even though they were a very delay
32:27 · defensive measure the Crusades the
32:33 · Crusades did manage to give Europe a respite for for for close to two
32:43 · centuries where Islam had been aggressing and conquering Europe but the
32:48 · Crusades diverted the Crusades diverted their intentions and their energies and
32:55 · their military manpower in - trying to recapture Jerusalem and -
33:04 · recaptured Jerusalem and and Israel
33:09 · Lebanon for a huge for a long time and
33:15 · allowed Europe itself to regroup from the onslaught of Islam so even though
33:22 · the Crusades again the Crusades are thought of as a failure in the sense
33:27 · that they established these communities that were just wiped away within two
33:32 · centuries but they they did succeed in
33:40 · delaying the Islamic empire and forcing
33:45 · them to to focus on this this area and
33:51 · not regroup and attack and drive even deeper into the heart of Europe and
34:03 · George Washington says I don't understand what I don't understand is how Islam doesn't tolerate apostasy yet
34:09 · the Atheist ow Maria my career how how
34:15 · Mari was never persecuted for his beliefs right living in the 10th and 11th centuries and this is true there
34:21 · were a lot of what would be considered today heretical Islamic particularly
34:28 · poets uh Arabia had a history of wine
34:33 · poetry and even a walk describes this in his book why I am NOT a Muslim all of
34:41 · these wine poets who would mock Islamic customs and and piety and some of them
34:47 · were persecuted some of them were forced to to flee but others were venerated and
34:54 · it is an interesting question there are a lot of things that uh that are
35:02 · interesting to look at particularly in the early years of Islam with before this Islam as a dogmatic
35:10 · religious ideology had cohered Muslims like would like you to believe that
35:17 · Islam sprouted from the head of Allah and Muhammad and this was just one
35:26 · continuous unchanging system of belief
35:32 · when in fact it really was like I said a coagulation of different ideas and that
35:38 · gradually evolved for example this idea of the eternality of the Quran was
35:45 · something that was considered heretical and the people who espoused that we're even persecuted by early caliphs because
35:54 · it it made attributes of the Quran on par with Allah and it conflicted with
36:03 · the concept of tawheed or becoming one what Muslims would say is oneness this
36:10 · idea of Allah being an absolutely Unitarian God the eternality of the
36:20 · current conflicted with that because it it considered attributes of the Quran as
36:28 · eternal and therefore it set up something along with along with Allah so
36:34 · people who espouse this were persecuted but eventually the eternality of the
36:42 · Quran B became a universally accepted idea in Islam even though it conflicted
36:49 · with another a Lama Chi diya the idea of tawheed or becoming one a unification
36:57 · oneness read the Quran so hard to read
37:02 · so many contradictions it's true and
37:11 · to go back to a point that was mentioned earlier in the chat just to continue
37:20 · that the this this point about reckless his I'll just read briefly from this his
37:27 · early years had seen one glorious victory after another and he had died after the author of crossroads the
37:32 · second with the Persian Empire defeated in the true cross restore to Jerusalem his subjects would have remembered him
37:38 · as one of the greatest emperors to sit on the Byzantine throne this is something to keep in mind his reign saw
37:44 · the great turning point for much of the Middle East for a thousand years these lands have been Hellenized ruled by a Roman Empire and first taken and then
37:50 · Christian they had contributed much to classical civilization providing some of the finest emperors theologians saints
37:56 · and poets of the classical world and this is something else to consider for example Agustin Agustin of Hippo he is
38:06 · one of the one of the thinkers did contributed a great deal to to the the
38:17 · soteriology to the to the to the thinking on soteriology and eschatology
38:23 · and just theology in general of the church both and protestants and roman
38:29 · catholics and and everyone in in the
38:35 · Christian Church regardless of the dominant denomination esteems Agustin
38:41 · rightly so for and you can read his his words and see how he contributed to the
38:48 · sinking of the church in books like the City of God which refutes the idea that
38:55 · pagans did Christianity is responsible for Rome beings being being sacked
39:03 · he he he goes into this in detail refuting this canard that Christians
39:09 · were somehow responsible for this and in fact you could argue to us this is an
39:15 · aside but you could argue that the early that the Roman Empire at that time was
39:20 · very far from being a really a Christian Empire even though it had adopted
39:25 · Christianity as the official religion in the actual beliefs and practices particularly of the Roman emperors were
39:31 · very far from Christianity in fact in this book loss of the loss to the West
39:36 · The Forgotten Byzantine Empire that rescued Western civilization he describes the beliefs the early
39:44 · beliefs of the Roman Empire's most of them most of the very first ones were either Aryan or or quasi Aryan and
39:53 · they're in their beliefs they also believed in baptismal regeneration which
40:00 · is why you see a lot of Roman Empire Emperor's on their deathbed this was after the advent of Christianity
40:07 · Christianity being made the official religion they believe that in baptismal regeneration so a lot of the Roman
40:14 · emperors would only be baptized on their deathbed so agustin tacos that that misconception
40:26 · and also just another aside one of the
40:31 · sky locusts one of the one of the great
40:37 · generals who was tat who was given this impossible task of impossible task of
40:46 · maintaining maintaining control of Roman territory as as the invasions swept in
40:54 · from from from a Gaul and uh and uh and
41:10 · excuse me excuse me styler gets the general he was
41:17 · eventually he was he was persecuted by the Roman Senate which still retained
41:23 · even though even though pagan Roman beliefs had by that point declined
41:31 · greatly among the populace the Roman Roman Senate Senators still it held to
41:38 · these beliefs and they attacked him for his his seeming military defeats and got rid
41:47 · of him he was executed and the roman empire the western half a little minute and probably fell shortly thereafter but
41:55 · this was also a gradual process a very gradual process as i said that the seat
42:03 · of power had already been moved by that point to to constantinople that the new
42:10 · city of Byzantium and this was a very
42:16 · long process but as I said Augustine was was was one of the one of the most
42:23 · important theologians and and thinkers in the early church so this this
42:33 · description is very accurate how the the Eastern Empire contributed so much to
42:41 · early so much to Christianity and so much to civilization and continue to
42:48 · over the next over the next millennium
42:56 · so just to wrap up this since it's getting a bit long I'm just gonna be
43:03 · begin reading from the Romans and and and really delve into the sir in the
43:10 · next video but I'll start by but I'll start by reading the first verse the
43:19 · first couple of verses in the neh alif-lam-mim the Romans are vanquished in a near land
43:27 · and they after being vanquished shall overcome now this is used by Muslims in order to describe in order to say that
43:33 · Muhammad really was a true prophet and
43:41 · some in the chat says the Muslim conquest had a racial aspect as well as religious one and it's true Islam is a
43:48 · very fundamentally racist or religion it it's you have to be Arab to be a
43:57 · Muslim it's impossible and we know this goes against scripture because God is
44:02 · not God is not a respecter of persons he's not a racist he's not a racist God
44:11 · he can speak in any language and anything from Korean to Arabic to
44:18 · English to even sign language there's
44:23 · there there's a deaf ministry called Roman roads for the Deaf which reaches out to people who have no hearing and
44:32 · people who are people who are illiterate and God can can can communicate to
44:41 · anyone regardless of what language they speak or even if they don't speak even
44:47 · if they're mute so the Islamic idea of God of God or Allah who they understand
44:54 · to be God is very limited because in order to become a Muslim you have to become also an Arab which is why you you
45:03 · have people reciting long passages from the Quran in a language in which they don't understand and of course our
45:10 · Muslims had more rights than non non Arab Muslims non Arabs were converted to
45:17 · Islam but I just to go back to this
45:25 · point in a near land and they after being vanquished shall overcome' within a few years our laws the command before
45:31 · and after and on that day the believers shall rejoice with the help of Allah he
45:37 · upstone he helps whom he pleases and he is the mighty the merciful this is our last promise Allah when I fail as
45:43 · promised but most people do not know they know the outward of the words life but the Hereafter but of the hereafter
45:49 · they are absolutely Heelys and so this is this is what Muslims hang their heart
45:55 · on the fact that it says in the new land and they after being vanquished shall
46:00 · overcome and this is what happened initial forays into the Roman desert
46:07 · were unsuccess but eventually they would
46:16 · defeat they would defeat the Romans
46:21 · quote-unquote at the Battle of Yarmouk and this was the turning point which would shifted power in the in favor of
46:29 · the Muslims and a distracted very
46:35 · preoccupied Roman Empire which was preoccupied with conflict of course with
46:42 · the the dying Persian Empire but also
46:48 · more importantly at this point also conflict also the division itself within
46:57 · the Roman Empire between the East and the West and all sorts of other conflict
47:05 · with with with Slavs and a vars from the from the Balkans coming down and
47:12 · attacking so they did not have enough focus to to direct towards this very
47:21 · very seemingly miniscule band of nomadic warriors making war on them but that was
47:30 · ultimately the downfall of ultimately
47:36 · the the Byzantine Empire even though it took even though it took another another
47:44 · seven to eight hundred years and that that was ultimately that the downfall of
47:52 · the empire that they did not have the focus on four warring this threat and
47:57 · they did lose huge Trump's of land in Asia the Near East and North Africa just
48:05 · because they weren't focused so this description they after being vanquished shall
48:11 · overcome they succeeded and then they fell back and of course this is used by
48:19 · muscles as an indication by Muhammad was a prophet but Muhammad really wasn't a
48:25 · prophet hi inky when you think about because your this is a vague description
48:32 · of what will happen the Roman Empire will win then fall back then it hits it
48:39 · doesn't really make any sense when you look at it if this if this is a prediction it's not a very very powerful prediction
48:49 · in in the Bible when someone prophesized or when God foretells what's going to
48:56 · happen he says Cyrus will come into power in Persia and be the Liberator of
49:02 · Israel after it's been in captivity for for more than seven decades and they'll
49:09 · return from Persia to Israel fifty more
49:14 · than fifty thousand and then rebuild the temple and rebuild the walls and this is described in the books of Ezra and the
49:22 · book of Ezra and Nehemiah that's an actual prophecy because this was for
49:28 · toad centuries before specifically what would happen or when Jesus says the
49:34 · temple when when Jesus predicts the destruction of the temple and his own
49:39 · resurrection these are actual prophecies saying the Romans will lose then win
49:45 · then fit and this is not this is not a prophecy the Roman Empire had already
49:51 · been through many defeats and victories and and resurgence says and as I said
49:58 · the constant the Justinian and the erecting dynasties that was destroying
50:04 · these two dynasties immense victories even Justinian reunifying the two halves
50:10 · very but but eventually gradually
50:18 · decline and then in the case that you're spinning about disaster once once the the plague pestis once that hit
50:28 · of course it erased all of the all of the victories that Justinian and his
50:35 · general Belisarius had accomplished so this is not when you compare this to the
50:42 · prophecies of the Bible it really doesn't hold up so if this is the only prophecy
50:48 · it doesn't really were spent and we have to consider the fact that this might have been meant this prophecy might have
50:54 · been written long after the descriptions the the vague descriptions alluded to
51:00 · the events alluded to in this passage so it might not even be a prophecy it might
51:06 · be something that actually happen in that Mohamed Mohamud are the authors of this book are simply describing um yeah
51:18 · I thought that Rome had simply fell in the Surat was simply explaining that didactically yeah the Western Roman
51:26 · Empire had already Rome had already been sacked over a century and maybe like 70
51:35 · years I'm trying to work at the top timeline but Rome fell Rome was basically sacked in the fifth century
51:42 · and then Mohammed in the sixth century rather and then Mohammed in the seventh
51:49 · century came came about so this might be description of de fall of the Western
51:54 · Empire but but it could also be
52:01 · description of the setbacks that the Byzantines had in facing the Muslims but
52:08 · we have to consider the fact that more how I predicted that Rome would fall Rome in the sense of the Roman Empire
52:13 · but also the seat of Rome which would be Rome in Italy now where where the
52:22 · Vatican is and that's never happened even though Muslim raids did attack Rome
52:31 · Rome has never succumbed so in that sense must Muhammad's prediction
52:37 · were were false he was a false prophet because Rome is still standing did the
52:43 · Catholic Church the Roman Catholic Church where I'm where most be when they think of Rome they think of the Vatican
52:49 · or or the seat of the Roman Catholic Church ah that's still there and Italy itself
52:57 · is not even though um it's being attacked through Hitler through this
53:04 · great migration you could say that's undermining but it was never conquered
53:10 · in any sort of military tactical battle um
53:16 · the German Holy Roman Empire supplanted the old Roman Empire from Italy this is
53:23 · another good point the Holy Roman Empire which there's an old adage about or joke
53:31 · about that saying the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy nor Roman or an empire but that was that was seen as the
53:39 · temporal successor and uh would ultimately there's another interesting
53:46 · story in their conflict with the Roman Catholic Church eventually even though
53:53 · their power was vested in the power of the Pope this is another story to go
54:00 · into but I just wanted to read that that brief passage to illustrate that
54:07 · Mohammed was not a true prophet he was a false prophet and this vague description
54:14 · of setbacks whether it refers to C fall over uh the sack of Rome which had
54:19 · happened over a century earlier or it refers to the vicissitudes of the
54:25 · conflict between Islam in the Byzantine Empire in either case it's not a real
54:31 · prophecy the Byzantines refer to themselves as Romans and Constantinople
54:36 · as a new room so Muslims could say the fall of Constantinople in 1453 was what the Quran was referring to Voltaire yeah
54:46 · that's a good point they could say that concept but that was not what of course
54:53 · you have to you have to go back to that time period and understand what was the
55:01 · thought of us Rome and now the bit what we know as the Byzantine Empire which wasn't known as the Byzantine Empire at
55:06 · the time that of course these people thought of themselves as Romans they
55:12 · still thought they were the legitimate heirs to the Roman Empire and to a large
55:18 · degree they were correct in the sense that the culture the religion the the
55:26 · art and everything had its seat in Constantinople and very shortly after
55:32 · the capital was moved from the capital was moved to the east the the Empire
55:42 · there became the the the cultural and
55:48 · political capital of of Rome of the rook
55:53 · the quote-unquote Roman Empire even though the western half of the Roman Empire still existed and I said and as I
56:01 · described earlier Justinian in particular try to unite and unify or
56:08 · reunify these two these two these two
56:13 · empires these two which had which had
56:21 · had grown increasingly separate and this was ultimately this ultimately led to
56:28 · the the downtown fall of the Byzantine Empire because and there's there's the
56:38 · Crusades are also described in in detail in this book and the conflict trying to
56:47 · try to marshal trying to marshal support
56:52 · within both halves in order to the
57:00 · eastern and the western western part of the church trying to unify these two two
57:06 · entities in in in unity against Islam to
57:12 · retake Jerusalem to retake the Holy Land this was a huge conflict and of course
57:18 · during the Fourth Crusade it resulted in huge massacres by the Crusaders within
57:29 · the eastern eastern half and the eventual sack of of the capital
57:37 · Constantinople and the brief replacement of them with a Crusader state and this
57:45 · left left indelible marks on the
57:51 · Byzantines and led to resentment and and distrust of of the the Western the
58:03 · Western Church which it should be noted
58:08 · the the Pope at the time and and there
58:14 · were more forces that were very cognizant of this fact that that this would destroy destroy their their
58:24 · connection to the east which had been gradually attenuating the Great Schism of course happened in the 11th century
58:31 · but this was something that had been developing for for a very long time but
58:38 · again that's that's another story I just wanted to start this Sura and and
58:44 · address the underlying historical conditions that that gave rise to this give it some background in context and
58:51 · in the next video I'll be going more deeply into the sura itself which is
58:57 · relatively brief it's only about four pages I've already gone over the first
59:02 · passage which which which is from which the the title comes
59:09 · but I'll be going into more detail the rest of the Sura uh thanks for everyone
59:15 · that joined me like I said in other videos if you like this video feel free to share it particularly with your
59:24 · Muslim friends this video was more historical and background rather than an
59:30 · exegesis of this specific Sura but maybe it was written during the era
59:37 · of Umar after Byzantine was overrun by Arabs that's another possibility again the Quran is not really this
59:44 · cohesive document and there are a lot of discrepancies that Muslims don't like to
59:50 · address I like I like history too my father was a history major and it's a
59:58 · very interesting subject and I will see all of you later

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