ΚΡΙΣΙΣ

The Verdict

The case closes here. Having heard the evidence of the man, the charges and the witnesses, this page weighs what Paul made of the message of ʿĪsā ibn Maryam, and why rejecting him is a moral question as well as a theological one.

Readers have now been shown the history and origins of Paul, who claimed to be an apostle from Tarsus without any witness, and have seen his claims set against the teachings of ʿĪsā ibn Maryam ʿalayhi al-salām, peace be upon him that still survive in the gospels composed by Mark, Matthew, Luke and John. How can it be accepted that Paul’s testimony and the teachings he brought are the truest?

The verdict is the one the measure delivers. On every principle it names, from the oneness of God and the unity of truth to man’s innocence, the law kept from the heart and deeds done in a good world, Paul’s teaching stands on the other side.

It is plain that Paul falsified the message of ʿĪsā ibn Maryam by turning it into a theological system suited to the taste of the Gentiles. His neglect of the chief teachings of ʿĪsā ibn Maryam in his letters gave this rogue room to mix in the philosophy and myth of foreign peoples, making his religion easier to accept while it lost the foundation of tawḥīd (توحيد, “the oneness of God”) that ʿĪsā ibn Maryam brought.1

A religion without an original #

The oddity raises a question critical scholars often ask: how can a religion that claims to rest on divine revelation possess not a single original manuscript, and depend only on fragments of copies that contradict one another and are full of doubt? Why do all the manuscripts of the New Testament exist only in Greek, when the language used by ʿĪsā ibn Maryam and his followers was Hebrew or Aramaic?

The absence of any sound textual evidence of the original revelation, together with the existence of copies that contradict one another, confirms that the religion was manipulated from the beginning by irresponsible hands. True is the word of God:

وَقَالُوا لَن يَدْخُلَ الْجَنَّةَ إِلَّا مَن كَانَ هُودًا أَوْ نَصَارَىٰ ۗ تِلْكَ أَمَانِيُّهُمْ ۗ قُلْ هَاتُوا بُرْهَانَكُمْ إِن كُنتُمْ صَادِقِينَ

“And they say: None shall enter Paradise unless he be a Jew or a Christian. Those are their vain desires. Say: Bring your proof, if you are truthful.”2

ʿĪsā ibn Maryam was sent as a Messenger of God to the Children of Israel, confirming the truth of the Torah. He brought a revelation named the Injīl, which came from God. He was also sent to announce the coming of the last Prophet and Messenger, the greatest of God’s envoys, Muḥammad ﷺ.

The teaching of ʿĪsā ibn Maryam was founded on tawḥīd. The Trinitarian faith held by Christians today was laid by Paul, a few years after ʿĪsā ibn Maryam was raised to the heavens.

Although the Qurʾān never names Paul, the traits it describes in those who twist God’s revelation fit exactly what he did. Islam is therefore the guardian of the pure message of tawḥīd, correcting the narrative distorted by hands such as Paul’s and building the continuity among all the prophets God sent, from Ādam (ʿalayhi al-salām) to the great master Muḥammad ﷺ.

Page of an ancient Greek manuscript written in four narrow columns of capital letters
Codex Sinaiticus, British Library, London: a page of Matthew from the oldest complete copy of the New Testament, written in the fourth century, three hundred years after ʿĪsā ibn Maryam. Image: Unknown scribe, 4th century, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

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The other side has had its say #

Christian missionaries have no proof to justify their teaching. What they bring comes from what Paul the traitor “corrupted,” and never from ʿĪsā ibn Maryam.

Missionaries may claim that this study treats their belief unfairly, that it only attacks without giving “both sides.” Their side has long dominated the discourse, from the church pulpit and the theology faculty to centuries of spiritual colonization of the Muslim world. What this study does is reopen the historical file they themselves have hidden: Paul was no witness to ʿĪsā ibn Maryam, never met him, and formed a new system of belief with no source in the words or the law of the prophets.

What is called Christianity today is a system of belief formed by a man who never saw Jesus, never heard his teaching directly, and never received a mandate of revelation. In Paul’s case the continuity he claimed was a takeover, and his message from heaven was an inner experience that no one else could verify.

If the disclosure disturbs them, that is only because truth always shakes a certainty built on falsehood. If anyone feels threatened, the cause lies in what this study exposes: a position long defended without valid proof. The author takes no responsibility for the crisis of belief set off when a Christian reader finally confronts the true face of Paul, a man who raised himself to apostleship without a mandate from heaven, and an apostleship without a mandate is ipso facto no apostleship.

The point is set out by the late Isma’il R. al Faruqi:

But we must never lose sight of the fact that this whole history is a function of the Christianist dogma which began in the equivocal statements of Paul. And to understand it well, we must study, as we shall do in the sequel, its relation to the individual theses of the dogma, to peccatism and saviourism.3

Black-and-white portrait photograph of Isma'il R. al Faruqi in a pinstriped suit and houndstooth tie
Isma’il R. al Faruqi (1921–1986), professor of religion at Temple University, Philadelphia. Image: Unknown photographer, Public domain.

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Faith without deeds, and what it licensed #

The effect of Paul’s teaching also shaped the ethical frame of the West that licensed colonization and violence in the name of faith. The doctrine of “faith without works,” later formulated as sola fide by the Protestant Reformation but rooted in Paul’s writings, opened the way to a separation of belief from moral responsibility. Under that theology, religion ceased to drive justice and became a tool for justifying power.

The world has seen how the Western colonial powers used the Religion of Paul as a medium of legitimation. Missionaries came with the colonizers; churches were built on the ruins of mosques; Bibles were distributed while weapons plundered sovereignty. Deeds are the sine qua non of faith in the true message of ʿĪsā ibn Maryam; remove them, and faith stands ready for any power that finds it useful.

Rejecting Paul is therefore an ethical duty to annul a theological legacy that has bred oppression, slavery and the destruction of cultures. Only by returning to the pure teaching of the prophets can the world be saved from the spiritual ruin left by the hands of traitors such as Paul. History has shown how dangerous this deviation is.

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What the demographers project #

The demographic record already shows the drift. In 2015 the Pew Research Center projected the world’s religions from 2010 to 2050.

Christianity began the period as the largest religion, with an estimated 2.2 billion adherents, 31 per cent of the world’s 6.9 billion people, while Islam stood second with 1.6 billion, or 23 per cent. By 2050 the projection brings the two to near parity, Muslims at 2.8 billion and Christians at 2.9 billion; extended further, the Muslim share equals the Christian share, at roughly 32 per cent each, around 2070, and exceeds it after that.4

Share of the world’s population, 2010 and projected 2050Per cent
Christians2010: 31.4%2050: 31.4%
Muslims2010: 23.2%2050: 29.7%
Unaffiliated2010: 16.4%2050: 13.2%
Hindus2010: 15.0%2050: 14.9%
Buddhists2010: 7.1%2050: 5.2%

Source: Pew Research Center, "The Future of World Religions: Population Growth Projections, 2010–2050," 2 April 2015.

The losses come by conversion as well as by birth. About 40 million people are projected to switch into Christianity by 2050, and 106 million to leave it, the largest net loss of any religious group.5

Net change through religious switching, 2010–2050Millions of people, projected
Unaffiliated+61.49 M
Muslims+3.22 M
Folk religions+2.61 M
Other religions+1.88 M
Hindus+0.01 M
Jews−0.31 M
Buddhists−2.85 M
Christians−66.05 M

Source: Pew Research Center, "The Future of World Religions: Population Growth Projections, 2010–2050," 2 April 2015.

In Europe, long the heartland of Christendom, the Christian population is projected to fall from 553 million to 454 million, from three-quarters of the population to less than two-thirds.6

The same projections show the religion leaving its old ground. In 2010 a quarter of the world’s Christians lived in Europe, and less than 1 per cent in the Middle East and North Africa, where Christianity began; by 2050 Europe’s share is projected to fall to about 16 per cent, while sub-Saharan Africa’s rises from 24 to 38 per cent.7

Where the world’s Christians live, 2010 and projected 2050Per cent of all Christians
Sub-Saharan Africa2010: 23.9%2050: 38.1%
Latin America and the Caribbean2010: 24.5%2050: 22.8%
Europe2010: 25.5%2050: 15.6%
Asia and the Pacific2010: 13.2%2050: 13.1%
North America2010: 12.3%2050: 9.8%
Middle East and North Africa2010: 0.6%2050: 0.6%

Source: Pew Research Center, "The Future of World Religions: Population Growth Projections, 2010–2050: Christians," 2 April 2015.

Pew’s update of 2017 carried the projection to 2060. Between 2015 and 2060 the world’s population is projected to grow by 32 per cent and the number of Muslims by 70 per cent, from 1.8 billion to nearly 3 billion, taking Muslims from 24.1 to 31.1 per cent of humanity.

The reasons Pew gives are demographic: Muslim women have 2.9 children on average, against 2.6 among Christians, and the median age of Muslims in 2015 was 24, against 32 for non-Muslims. Switching, meanwhile, is projected to cost Christianity some 72 million adherents over the same period, with no net loss to Islam.8

Projected change in population size, 2015–2060Per cent; the line marks growth of the world’s population, 32 per cent
Muslims+70%
Christians+34%
Hindus+27%
Jews+15%
Folk religions+5%
Unaffiliated+3%
Other religions0%
Buddhists−7%

Source: Michael Lipka and Conrad Hackett, "Why Muslims Are the World’s Fastest-Growing Religious Group," Pew Research Center, 6 April 2017.

This study therefore declares that the era of the Religion of Paul is heading toward its end. Within three to five decades, through the collective effort of re-enlightenment and re-education of humanity, this misguided system will be rejected, exposed and abandoned, as other pagan teachings have vanished with time.9

True is what ʿĪsā ibn Maryam foretold:

4καὶ ἀποκριθεὶς ὁ Ἰησοῦς εἶπεν αὐτοῖς· Βλέπετε μή τις ὑμᾶς πλανήσῃ· 5πολλοὶ γὰρ ἐλεύσονται ἐπὶ τῷ ὀνόματί μου λέγοντες· Ἐγώ εἰμι ὁ χριστός, καὶ πολλοὺς πλανήσουσιν.

4And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you. 5For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many.10

The curse of God be upon the wicked man named Paul. May God grant the guidance of Islam to all who follow Christianity and keep them from the misguided creed of Paul, who received his teaching from Satan.11

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  1. Michael Gary Duncan, “The Curious Silence of the Dog and Paul of Tarsus: Revisiting The Argument from Silence,” Informal Logic, vol. 32, no. 1 (2012), p. 115. ↩
  2. Sūrah al-Baqarah 2:111. ↩
  3. Isma’il R. al Faruqi, Christian Ethics: A Historical and Systematic Analysis of Its Dominant Ideas (Montreal: McGill University Press, 1967), p. 180. ↩
  4. Pew Research Center (Conrad Hackett, lead researcher), “The Future of World Religions: Population Growth Projections, 2010–2050,” 2 April 2015, overview, https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2015/04/02/religious-projections-2010-2050/. The projections rest on estimates for 2010; Pew’s report of 9 June 2025, “How the Global Religious Landscape Changed from 2010 to 2020,” revises the estimates for 2010 and 2020 and offers no new projections beyond 2020, https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2025/06/09/how-the-global-religious-landscape-changed-from-2010-to-2020/. ↩
  5. Ibid. ↩
  6. Ibid. ↩
  7. Pew Research Center, “The Future of World Religions: Population Growth Projections, 2010–2050: Christians,” 2 April 2015, “Regional Change,” https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2015/04/02/christians/. ↩
  8. Michael Lipka and Conrad Hackett, “Why Muslims Are the World’s Fastest-Growing Religious Group,” Pew Research Center, 6 April 2017, https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2017/04/06/why-muslims-are-the-worlds-fastest-growing-religious-group/. For Pew’s latest figures see its analysis of 10 June 2025, “Globally, Islam Grew Faster Than All Other Religions from 2010–2020,” https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/06/10/islam-was-the-worlds-fastest-growing-religion-from-2010-to-2020/. ↩
  9. See Pew Research Center, “Christianity is Poised to Continue its Southward March,” 7 April 2015, https://pewrsr.ch/4mAV7Mp; “Europe Projected to Retain its Christian Majority, but Religious Minorities Will Grow,” 15 April 2015, https://bit.ly/43jZYdl; “The Future of World Religions: Population Growth Projections, 2010–2050 – Europe,” 2 April 2015, https://bit.ly/43LOSxP; “Projected Religious Population Changes in North America,” 2 April 2015, https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2015/04/02/north-america/; “The Future of World Religions: Population Growth Projections, 2010–2050 – Christians,” 2 April 2015, https://pewrsr.ch/3T2XLg9; compare the projection that Islam will become the world’s largest religion by 2100, surpassing Christianity, on the strength of higher birth rates and a younger Muslim population: “Why Muslims are the world’s fastest-growing religious group,” 6 April 2017, https://bit.ly/44ZrmhU. ↩
  10. Matthew 24:4–5 (SBLGNT; KJV). ↩
  11. See 2 Corinthians 11:14; cf. 12:7. ↩