Why I left Eastern Orthodoxy for Islam? 🧵 by al-finlandi

Why I left Eastern Orthodoxy for Islam? 🧵

 

I've received a lot of questions about why I returned to Islam after being an Orthodox Christian for a number of years (close to 6 actually, I first inquired for a year, then spent two years in catechumenate and then was baptized in 2021)

 

I'll split this discussion into 3 parts

 

1) Why I originally left Islam

 

2) The problems I saw within Orthodox Christianity

 

3) Why I returned to Islam

 

So, let's begin, God willing, although this isn't meant to be exhaustive:

 

I originally converted/reverted to Islam in 2012, at 18. I spent 6 years as a Muslim but throughout those years I developed doubts about certain issues that now seem minor but bothered me at the time. At the core was my problem with the Qur'an's engagement of Judeo-Christian tradition, especially as it came to certain accounts seen as "apocryphal" or extra-canonical. I'd say I had a very undeveloped view of how the Qur'an interacts with the tradition of the People of the Book, and I tended to have a very black-and-white view of these traditions which subconsciously presupposed a very Protestant idea of canonicity and authority, namely only tradition within the biblical canon was seen as true, and everything outside it was "false". This was at the core of my doubts.

 

While I was struggling with these and other doubts, I also started to study Christianity in early 2018, and eventually was convinced by arguments of conservative biblical scholarship especially as it related to the early Christian beliefs regarding the divinity and resurrection of Jesus, as well as the reliability of the Bible, which eventually led me to converting to Christianity in October 2018.

 

Over the years, I engaged with Muslims a lot on Twitter, and I thought I developed a bulletproof defense of Christianity which

 

A) accounted for Islam and other religions

 

B) couldn't be refuted

 

The argument was based on Deuteronomy 13, 18 and certain NT texts which basically say false prophets can come with miracles and signs which they perform through the power of the devil, and thus lead people away from the knowledge of the true God.

 

Over the years, I engaged with many Muslims on Twitter, and the first time I remember being bothered was maybe in 2020-early 2021 because I noticed everytime we'd talk, a Muslim would have an explanation for the issue at hand with a plausible counter.

 

I also remember the first proper doubt (which became a consistent thought for me over the years) was when an unnamed brother who I've known for ~8 years said to me once during a discussion "why would Satan create a religion that is better preserved, better attested and more coherent than Christianity?". At the time I waved the issue away but it would come to my mind more and more over the years. This leads me to my second point.

 

2) So what led me to doubt Orthodox Christianity?

 

The issue is multifaceted, but I'll try to distill it down to some simple points, obviously this isn't exhaustive.

 

Firstly, while I think it's undeniable Orthodoxy possesses much beauty in its aesthetics and worship, like hymns, liturgical services, readings etc, my experience has been it's almost *entirely* focused on those aspects and very little on intellectual argumentation (there are obviously Orthodox saints who engaged in intellectual argumentation but in my experience and reading so much of the faith is based on the idea of 'the experience of God', so I'd consider this a secondary form of argumentation. Even today when someone asks about Orthodoxy people are generally told "come to church and experience the Divine Liturgy for yourself" or some variation of this.

 

Secondly, I realized much of the faith essentially boils down to faith in the Church as the divinely appointed authority to 'bind and loose', but the basis of this is historically weak.

 

The Church teaches that its inspired teaching is conveyed through "Holy Tradition" which is the idea that there's both a written and an unwritten aspect of the tradition of the Church. The Bible is the written aspect, the oral tradition represents the unwritten tradition passed on from the time of the Apostles without significant change in its core, although it obviously includes later parts, however the core Christological and Marian dogmas are seen as being apostolic. This tradition is also expressed through Ecumenical and local councils, hymns, icons, etc. While this idea is attractive internally, from an external perspective it's very easy to see that the traditional Orthodox claim is difficult to defend, which is why over time modern Orthodox have become more receptive to Catholic ideas of doctrinal development which is the idea the faith 'grows organically' over time and finds deeper expression over the decisions of councils etc.

 

For one, certain traditions that are explicitly refuted in the early church become part of "tradition". An example of this is how the Muratorian Fragment says the Evangelist Luke didn't meet Jesus, but in later Orthodoxy he not only becomes one of the seventy apostles sent out by Jesus in Luke 10, he even becomes the anonymous disciple in the resurrection appearance to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus in Luke 24. There are plenty of other examples. A sub-point here is how certain traditions appear seemingly out of nowhere after centuries (examples include Luke being the first iconographer and the idea that Jesus sent a miraculous image of his face to the king of Edessa) and suddenly become "apostolic tradition" which are universally accepted. Orthodox offer various responses like how there was no need to mention these traditions, but to me they just seemed like copes to deny these are obviously later legendary developments. Examples relating to hagiography or other points could be multiplied. We also see this in theological development and language where the Trinity and its expression clearly developed over time.

 

Thirdly, I realized it's undeniable the faith isn't as well preserved as Orthodox apologists claim. Apart from the issue of manuscripts of the Bible, which are relatively late, as alluded to above, most extrabiblical traditions in the faith cannot be reliably traced to an early period. An example of this is Eusebius being the first to mention Mark the Evangelist being the first bishop of Alexandria, Eusebius is writing almost 300 years after Mark lived. Again, examples could be multiplied, but I realized there is no authentication method to really trace these traditions and ideas. One believes them simply because one has faith in the Church. This also relates to the reliability of the Bible. Because the authors of the Gospels don't give their sources, we can't reliably trace how reliable the traditions they narrate about Jesus are.

 

Fourth, as I've mentioned before the idea of the incarnation became rationally impossible for me to reconcile with the oneness of God and the worship of the Trinity. If Jesus worships God and commanded us to worship God, why would we worship Jesus? (I'm well aware of the Orthodox arguments on this point so I won't belabor my point here. I just couldn't reconcile the worship of the Trinity with the oneness of God and how Jesus eternally exists as one who worships the Father as man. This, to me, seemed to confirm the Muslim polemic about how Christians worship a "mere man".

 

Fifth, in short, reading modern and medieval Orthodox responses to Islam made me realize how weak the arguments were. For example, most of it related to the Prophet's ﷺ marriages or something, or the ridiculous claim he didn't perform any miracles.

 

In general I felt like the Orthodox approach to Islam was very dismissive, and most of the treatments I saw amounted to misrepresentation (plenty of that on the Muslim side too historically to be fair), or bad online polemics about unreliability of the hadith corpus (as if that solves any of the problems with Christianity) or weird fiqh opinions to make Islam look bad. Very little of what I saw actually amounted to mounting a genuine argument against Islam beyond "it's demonic".

 

There were also other miscellaneous issues related to pastoral questions and other points where I felt dissatisfied but those aren't necessarily objective, although they contributed to my perception of Orthodoxy. As I've also argued many of the arguments for Christianity are circular, like messianic prophecy, but we have no way of knowing how accurately the Evangelists narrated their tradition or the source of their traditions.

 

3) What led me back to Islam?

 

In all truth, I was struggling with Islam's claim of being the final revelation of God for a number of years before I finally accepted it again. It seemed to be a priori reasonable God would preserve the final revelation and make its divine source clear, and to make it so that it would be impenetrable to arguments when looked at holistically (this doesn't mean no reasonable arguments can be mounted but merely there are no obvious falsifiers or there's a plausible response to every argument), whereas other worldviews will have fatal weaknesses such as lack of reasonable preservation or clear contradictions (after all, both Christians and Muslims agree God is ultimately behind the revelation and preservation of the true religion and is providentially working "behind the scenes"). This also relates to the Qur'anic claim of tahrif, which I've discussed in other posts.

 

I also saw a lot of the Christian arguments against Islam (such as the denial of the crucifixion) don't take into account the full spectrum of views and interpretations of these issues.

 

Islam also presents a plausible historical counter-narrative to (Pauline) Christianity, and explains the tensions in early Christianity relatively well (considering how fragmentary our early data is), and considering how pretty much everything in the NT comes from a "Pauline" lens and comes after him/influenced by him.

 

I also came to see my idea about "canonicity" was mistaken, and the Islamic tradition should be allowed to define itself and its own idea of revelation instead of attributing Christian ideas into the tradition.

 

I also saw how strong the intellectual tradition in Islam is, starting from the meticulous preservation of the Qur'an and Sunnah to how Muslims actually argue.

 

Finally, it became very difficult for me to see Islam as demonic, whether wholly or partly. The entire religion is wholly focused on the universal worship of God, good deeds, etc, and the idea that it's demonic just seems to me to be based on Christian presuppositions (and one can reasonably argue the devil would want humanity to worship the creation instead of God). It seems most Christians also subconsciously acknowledge the supernatural in Islam. This also relates to the question that unnamed brother asked me all those years ago, how would God allow Satan to construct such a religion which by all accounts has much better evidence for its truthfulness (such as the Prophet's miracles, accurate prophecies, the preservation of the Qur'an, the coherence of Islamic monotheism). Overall the narrative that Islam is demonic just didn't sit comfortably with me over the years when just reflecting considering the weaknesses in Christianity.

 

 

This article played a major part in helping me reshape my ideas in seeing how the Islamic tradition treats its idea of canonicity and Judeo-Christian tradition, may God reward the brothers who wrote it:

https://yaqeeninstitute.org/read/paper/the-qurans-engagement-with-christian-and-jewish-literature

 

In conclusion, these are some of the reasons for why I returned to Islam despite wanting to avoid it for a number of years. Much more could be written but I think this is sufficient for now.

 

Say, “The truth has come, and falsehood has dissipated. Indeed, falsehood is bound to dissipate." (Surah al-Isra':86)