WILL THE ANTICHRIST BE A MUSLIM? See also...
Part 1—NO.
Part 2—More below...
The QURAN
“The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger ... is: execution, or crucifixion, or the cutting off of hands and feet ... or exile from the land…” Sura 5:33
“But those who reject Faith after they accepted it...never will their repentance be accepted...”
Sura 3:90
“Any one who, after accepting faith in Allah, utters Unbelief...on them is Wrath from Allah…”
Sura 16:106
“Those who believe, then reject faith...Allah will not forgive…” Sura 4:137
The Hadith
The Messenger of Allah said, “Whoever changes his (Islamic) religion, kill him.”
(Al-Bukhary number 6922; interpreter Ibn Abbas )
The Messenger of Allah said : “It is not permissible to shed the blood of a Muslim ... except ... one who leaves his religion and separates from the main body of Muslims.”
(Sahih-Al Bukhary number 6484 and Sahih Muslim number 1676; Abd-Allah ibn Masood)
The “MUSLIM-ANTICHRIST” CONTRADICTION
The on-going and seemingly endless discussion regarding the question "Will The Antichrist Be A Muslim?" is nonsensical, futile, baseless. It is in the same witless category of asking "Will The Antichrist Be A Christian?" When two unalterable precepts that are diametrically opposed are affirmed in the same breath you have a contradiction. "Will The Antichrist Be A Muslim?" Here is the contradiction of those two unalterable precepts,
1. "There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is his prophet."
This is the first pillar of faith for a Muslim and is considered "non-negotiable...not to be questioned"
(Unveiling Islam, Caner & Caner, Kregel Publications, 2002, p.122)
This is the first of the "obligatory observances upon which the Muslim faith rest."
(Fast Facts On Islam, Ankerberg & Weldon, Harvest House Publishers, 2001, p.17.)
This is the CREED THAT MAKES A MUSLIM A MUSLIM
2. The Antichrist will declare, NOT Allah—but HIMSELF—to be God.
The Antichrist "will exalt and magnify himself above every god...he will magnify himself above them all... [he] opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, displaying himself as being God.” (Daniel 11:36-37; 2 Thessalonians 2:3-4)
This is the CREED THAT MAKES THE ANTICHRIST.........
THE ANTICHRIST.
How can even a demonically-demented Antichrist say "There is no god but Allah" while also saying "There is no god but me"? Could he mean that there is no God but Allah, and he IS Allah (Arabic word for "God"). But that won't work. Paul says that he "exalts himself above every so-called god." That is, when the Antichrist comes to power, "every so-called god" up to that point in history, which includes the Muslim Allah, is put under his feet as he raises himself above every and all previous gods.
The Antichrist is not going to be saying "There is no God but Allah." He is going to be saying "There is no God but me." That makes him--not a "Muslim Antichrist"--rather, that makes him an Anti-Muslim Antichrist.
When the Bible uses the term "so-called god," it refers to every "god or object of worship" including the Muslim “Allah.” The Muslim god, or "Allah," is a "so-called god." The Antichrist won't claim to be a so-called god. He will "exalt and magnify himself" above them all. That is anathema, blasphemy, to a Muslim and the Islamic religion. It is a 'contradiction' to their “FIRST Pillar of Faith,” making a “Muslim-Antichrist” a contradiction to the clear-headed thinking of anyone familiar with the "pillars" of Islam.
The related question, "Will The Antichrist Be A Former Muslim?", is a moot point because it has no bearing on who he actually is when he comes to power. That's because whatever his religion once was, that religion is so totally disavowed-- disowned, renounced, refuted, recanted, rejected, jettisoned, discarded, dumped, ditched— that the Bible says "he will show no regard for the gods of his fathers...or for any other god." This couldn't be plainer.
The Jewish High Priest Menelaus discarded the Jewish Faith when he united with the Syrian King Antiochus Epiphanes to install the statue of the false god Zeus in the Jerusalem Temple in 168 BC . This High Priest was joined by many “apostate Jews in Judea [who]...had long since apostatized from Jehovah and abandoned His Word.”
Exploring The Book Of Daniel, John Phillips & Jerry Vines, Loizeaux Brothers, Neptune, NJ, 1990, p.186-187.
When these Jews “discarded the Jewish Faith,“ they became non-Jews. The first precept of a true Jew is Deuteronomy 6:4-5, "Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD is one!” By disowning this precept a “Jew” becomes a non-Jew.
Likewise, the pillar of the false religion of the Muslim is this: "There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is his prophet." Just as an apostate Jew is the same as a non-Jew, so too is an apostate-Muslim the same as a non-Muslim.
“…[High Priest] Menelaus and his apostate Jewish followers who were rejecting the true worship of God...Those apostate Jews who already had deserted the worship of God...completely perverting the faith of Israel...Menelaus turned to the service of Zeus.”
The Most High God, Renald E. Shower, The Friends Of Israel Gospel Ministry, Bellmawr, NJ, 1982, p.160-161.
“Antiochus promised apostate Jews...great reward if they would set aside the God of Israel and worship Zeus, the god of Greece. Many in Israel were persuaded by his promises and worshiped the false god.”
J. Dwight Pentecost in The Bible Knowledge Commentary, Daniel, Victor Books, Wheaton, IL, 1985, p.1370.)
MUST A MIDEAST ANTICHRIST BE A MUSLIM?
What about the proposition that If the Antichrist arises out of the Mideast, he would have to be a Muslim? Since the Mideast nations are predominantly Muslim, then a Mideast Antichrist must be a Muslim?
Not necessarily.
Quotations from 1993 The Assyrian Connection below...
Pages 142-143—
"The whole campaign is transformed overnight into a landscape of contorted corpses and twisted war implements (Eze. 39:1-16). The Russian republics — both Slavic and central Asian Muslim, Iran, and a host of allies from pan-Arabia and Africa — are virtually eliminated from the stage of world power. Much of the Islamic world is destroyed. Israel is miraculously preserved.
The Assyrian claims the victory as his own." (Also in "The Sequence" p.47)
Page 154—
"The Russian republics and her [Muslim] allies are supernaturally destroyed. Peace is broken in the world (though the Assyrian preserves the Jewish Covenant).
Ed Hinson admittedly “speculates” that since the invasion includes current Muslim nations, and since much of Asian Russia is Muslim, the war of Gog could be the final Muslim holy war (jihad) against Israel
(Hindson, Ed. End Times, The Middle East and The New World Order. Wheaton, Illinois: Victor Books,1991.)
This “speculation” has much to commend it. In any case, the enormous vacuum created by Gog’s demise triggers a mad international rush into the war of wars (Rev. 6:1-4, cmp. Dan, 11:40-43; Mat. 24:7)." (Also in "The Sequence" p.59-60)
Page 272—
"A Russian-Islamic coalition storms into Israel, and God turns toward Jacob. All of these nations, except Saudi Arabia, are either eliminated or emasculated on the mountains of Israel: Russia (Magog; Rosh; Meshech; Tubal; Gomer); Iran (Persia); Turkey (Beth-Togarmah); Libya (Put); Ethiopia-Sudan (Ethiopia); Saudi Arabia (Sheba, Dedan)."
Still, websites and books continue to insist that a Mideast Antichrist MUST BE A MUSLIM.
By the same logic a man who came from Judea and had the title “king of the Jews” would have to be a Jew. But the fact is “Herod [the Great] was a non-Jew, an Idumean, who was appointed king of Judea by the Roman Senate in 40 BC…” And Herod was a native-born Judean (“parts of Southern Palestine which the Edomites had occupied since the Babylonian Exile...Judea...below Samaria”, Edersheim). In the same way that Herod the Great was not a Jew, a Mideast Antichrist does not have to be a Muslim.
THE NIV STUDY BIBLE:: (The NIV Study Bible, Zondervan Bible Publishers, Grand Rapids, MI, 1985, p.1442, Mat. 2:1.
UNGER’S BIBLE DICTIONARY, Merrill F. Unger, Moody Press, Chicago, IL, 1966, p.935.
Alfred Edersheim, The Life And Times Of Jesus The Messiah, Eerdmans Publishing, Grand Rapids, MI, 1883, 1971, Vol. 1 p.122-123.
([Herod] was a Jewish proselyte, not a Jew, 1300/1372.)
This does not "diffuse the Assyrian argument." It may diffuse the Assyrian MUSLIM argument. We have neither claimed nor taught the Muslim thesis. Critiques of the Assyrian Antichrist rely heavily on this one dimensional approach of associating all of the "Assyrian" theses with the Muslim Antichrist theory because it is such easy fodder for "debunking" an Assyrian Antichrist, leaving, in our case, the critic critiquing a straw man. The point of the many Scriptures on this subject is that the Antichrist will have geo-political roots in the Assyrian geo-political realm. The prophecies do not require, or even imply, an ethno-genetic-religious Assyrian-Muslim connection any more than did the prophecies on the Antichrist's forerunner from that same area, Antiochus Epiphanes, who was a Greek-Syrian, require that he be an ethnic Assyrian, or that Paul, born in Asia Minor (Turkey) a Jewish-Roman, be an ethnic Italian.