Over the past month or so, many Muslims on social media have been excited that Andrew Tate, a highly controversial internet personality, announced his conversion to Islam. In several interviews on different channels and platforms, Tate has explained not only his reasons for embracing Islam but also his reasons for rejecting Christianity. I have personally never heard of Andrew Tate and know virtually nothing about him, and so my first impulse was to simply let this pass by the internet’s short attention span like so many other briefly popular but ultimately irrelevant stories about this or that famous person converting to this or that religion. However, after watching a couple of the interviews, I decided that it might actually be educational to respond to some of Tate’s arguments, not because they are any good (as we will see, they are not) but rather because they are at least a different sort of bad than the usual Muslim convert and therefore provide a unique teaching moment.
[The quotes below were taken from two interviews. One with Muslim YouTuber Mohammad Hijab, which you can watch for yourself at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnTiTg0Ouhs if you want to see the full context. The second interview was with the popular online personality Zuby, which you can view at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FT8tiMK3aRE (WARNING: There are a few instances of profanity in this video)]
Andrew Tate on Compromise and Violence
In each of the videos, Andrew Tate lays out his case for general belief in God (or, technically, for a dualistic pair of equal and opposite deities, a view that should make all of his Muslim fans cringe because it is decidedly not Islamic). However, the bulk of his time is always given to laying out his reasons for accepting Islam, where he actually puts most of his focus on his reasons for rejecting Christianity. He does this in a specific framework rooted in ideas of force, violence, and defending ideals. In the Zuby interview, he explains:
“I look at the world through a very realistic understanding of force, and I understand that if you’re not prepared to defend something it will be taken and destroyed. I understand that, like we said earlier, violence is the underpinning of all civilized societies; even when I look at a big tree, I see violence. I understand that tree is the biggest because it destroyed all of the other trees around it. If you’re not prepared to defend or fight, then you’re gonna be destroyed.”
This is the central claim that underlies almost everything else that Tate says. His foundational assumption is that the world is fundamentally rooted in violence and conflict (which, again, fits in his dualistic rather than monotheistic view of the world). Thus, his argument for which religion is right, his case for Islam and against Christianity, is that the true religion must be strong; it must defend itself and defeat its rivals; it must come out on top. That’s, in Tate’s view, what makes it right. In the Mohammad Hijab interview, he sets up the general case regarding most religions this way:
“through my personal life, I’ve learned that if you don’t have standards and if you’re not a strong person who’s prepared to defend his ideas, you’ll be crushed. And we look at most religions in the world today which are not prepared to defend their ideas, what’s happened to them? They’re just getting crushed!”
Leaving aside the inaccuracies of Tate’s assessment of global religion, this is important for us to understand if we are to follow his argument. He is not simply saying they are getting “crushed” as a mere observation. This is, in fact, his standard of truth. That they are “crushed” means they are wrong. Note what he says when he goes on to apply this standard to Christianity in the Zuby interview:
“So, when I look at Christianity in its current form, I don’t think they can be right in terms of their interpretation of God because, if they were correct, God would give them the strength to defend themselves. And they don’t! Christianity doesn’t mean anything anymore. If the Christian interpretation of God was correct, then God would be giving them the strength to resist; but they don’t resist anything! I don’t believe Christians have preserved a single thing in modern time. I know in America there’s these hardline Christians who believe that they’re trying hard; they are still failing on a daily basis. And in most of the world, especially Europe, Christianity is absolutely…a joke. The thing that actually finally converted me was about three weeks ago…it was the first drag queen Methodist preacher.”
While we’ll address the substance (or lack-there-of) of this argument shortly, it is worth noting here that Andrew Tate seems to make this argument having never heard of liberal, progressive Islam. If he cared to, he could find plenty of articles headlining things like “Gay Muslim Imam Brings Message of Tolerance to Europe”1 or the American transgender activist who converted to Islam because it would afford her greater freedom to spread her message than does Christianity:
“She converted to Islam last year because she felt that the Baptist religion in which she was raised was anti-gay marriage and anti-gay in general.”2
Thus, if he rejected Christianity because of the first drag queen “preacher” in a leftist, progressive branch of Methodism, shouldn’t he leave Islam because of similar stories about leftist progressive Imams and Muslim activists? The fact is, pointing out that secularized, liberal, progressive perversions of both Christianity and Islam exist has nothing to do with the truth claims of either religion. There are plenty of reasons to leave Islam, but wacky, progressive Imams are not one of those reasons. Apostate “Christian” groups that capitulate to the whims of secular culture are an equally bad reason to reject Christianity. Yet, that is the entire substance of Tate’s case against Christianity. Liberal perversions of the Christian faith exist, therefore Christianity is false. Throughout all the interviews I’ve seen, he spends almost the entire time just pointing out or alluding to examples of compromised Christians without addressing the real thing, all while ignoring examples of compromised Islam and pretending that serious, conservative Muslims are all that exist. At any rate, he continues:
“but this is the point! If you’re tolerant of everything then you stand for nothing. So once you say, ‘I’m a Christian, but I tolerate everything under the name of tolerance,’ well then you no longer have any beliefs. So, if you have no beliefs, then all of it is garbage. If you’re, the only way you can worship a god is if that god gives you instructions. And if those instructions are adhered to and respected by the followers, and also if the followers of this, of the particular god, I’m not going to say names, stick up for and defend those beliefs are prepared to be ridiculed or are prepared to be stigmatized and to (like I said earlier, a bottom line of society is violence) to fight to defend those beliefs. If you have a belief system that nobody will fight to defend, then you don’t have beliefs. Just like feminism. If nobody fights to defend it, it goes away. Like Christianity, if nobody stands up for the rules, it goes away.”
Here he badly garbles the two separate questions of whether Christianity is true and whether a certain person or group of people actually believes it. He says, “if you have no beliefs, then all of it is garbage.” My profession might be garbage, but that doesn’t prove that Christianity itself is garbage. The truth claims of Christianity don’t depend on how sincerely I believe them.
However, that is not the most important part of the above quote. Indeed, here we arrive at the crux of the matter. According to Andrew Tate, Christianity lacks the violence to fight and defend itself. Is this a figurative “violence,” really just meaning to verbally and intellectually defend one’s beliefs and to openly refute and criticize the beliefs of others? If so, he is so woefully and willfully ignorant of Christian apologetics, scholarship, polemics, and conservative Christian preaching and evangelism as to be utterly without excuse. Yet, he gives us clues that he, in fact, has something else in mind. Note how he ends the Zuby interview:
“there’s only one religion on earth I can respect. I can’t respect Christians anymore. They set Notre Dame on fire! Imagine if that was the other way around? Think about it for a second. Think about it for a second. I say this all the time. People walk around with T-Shirts, ‘Jesus is gay’ and TVs; they’re making fun of Christianity on TV; they’re mocking your God in front of your face, and Christians don’t say a word! They don’t say a word. They will take a preacher of whatever background which directly contradicts your holy book and put him in a church to teach to your children and they will not say a [explicative] word! And then they sit there and go, well, they say tolerant because they’re cowards but the truth is this: if your interpretation of God and the world was right, I don’t believe God would allow you to sit there and be such a [explicative] coward. That’s what I don’t believe. I don’t think that God would allow you to do that! I think he’d say, ‘No! You need to defend our ideals because our ideals are good for humanity.’ And Christians fail to defend them, so if they fail to defend them then they do not exist. There’s only one religion left on the planet! That’s Islam. [Interviewer starts to speak. Tate interrupts in a repetitive whine] “But it’s the only religion! It’s the only religion! It’s the only one!”
Again, his claim that Christians don’t defend their beliefs is just flat wrong if what he means is to verbally defend their beliefs. But that’s not what he means. Let’s leave aside the matter of whether or not he is accurately representing what happened at Notre Dame or the fact that Notre Dame is only a holy site to Roman Catholics and is little more than a historical piece of European architecture to most of the Christians Andrew Tate is reviling. What’s his real point here? “Imagine if that was the other way around? Think about that for a second?” What does he mean? He is drawing your attention to what most people assume would happen if you burned a mosque rather than a church or mocked Muhammad rather than Jesus. And what, exactly, do people assume would happen? What’s Andrew Tate calling to your mind? Violence. Not verbal arguments, prophetic rebuke, or rational defense. Physical violence. This is what Tate believes makes Islam true. As he said in the Muhammad Hijab interview:
“God, to me, is strong. God, to me, is something to be feared. God, to me, is someone that people are afraid to mock. God, to me, is someone that you have to go out of your way to prove something to. God, to me, has red lines. Like, God, to me, represents the Islamic faith.”
But let’s be serious. Are the masses of the secular West afraid to mock Islam because they fear Allah? No. It’s because they fear Muslims. Divine, supernatural retribution doesn’t enter their minds. They don’t believe Allah exists. They don’t think Allah is going to hurt them. They aren’t afraid of the Islamic god. They are afraid of riots, beheadings, suicide bombers, etc. They couldn’t care less about the Quranic deity. They fear the men. And Andrew Tate knows this. His argument isn’t that Islam is right because God will fight for Islam. His whole argument is that Islam is right because Muslims will fight for Islam. And by fight, he really means fight; he means using actual physical force to terrorize critics. So, his case for Islam is that (in his assessment) Islam is the only religion left whose members will physically attack people for criticizing it. That is pretty much Andrew Tate’s entire case for why he thinks Islam is true.
Many Muslims, of course, would not agree with Tate here. But that is his argument; literal violence determines truth. This is hardly the kind of argument anyone should be getting excited about. Tate’s case for Islam (and against Christianity) hardly paints a picture most Muslims would want to represent them. Yet (as often happens with celebrity conversion stories), it gets shared enthusiastically and uncritically.
Andrew Tate and his Christian Critics
It is worth briefly noting that I am far from the first Christian to respond to Andrew Tate and his arguments for Islam and against Christianity. Many of his statements have been publicly critiqued by Dr. James White, popular YouTube apologist Jon McCray, and (not surprisingly) by one of the leading Christian voices calling out Muslim errors, David Wood (among others). Indeed, Tate’s conversion has even been the occasion for YouTubers to mock not only Tate but also Muhammad and Islam. If Andrew Tate’s argument is correct, if one’s position is only true if one personally defends it and fights those who oppose or mock it, then doesn’t Andrew Tate have an obligation to stand up for his arguments in a debate with Dr. White? Shouldn’t he be personally confronting David Wood? It seems in the case of Andrew Tate’s baseless and shallow arguments, the Christians are the ones speaking up and defending their convictions while Tate is sitting back, sipping alcohol (which his alleged new religion forbids) and letting the objections and even the mockery stand unanswered. If we were to apply Andrew Tate’s own standard to himself, his Islam is refuted by his own failure to defend it against his many public and vocal critics.
Conclusion – Do False Christians Disprove Christ?
Christianity is true because the Bible is true, because Jesus conquered sin and death by dying on the cross and proved it by rising from the dead in fulfillment of countless prophecies, because Jesus is who He said He is. That compromised and progressive “Christians” exist proves nothing. Indeed, Jesus Himself warned that many would profess His name without listening to what He said and who will perish on judgment day, having never truly known Christ (Matthew 7:21-23). Jesus warned that false teachers would come in his name to lead people astray (Matthew 24:5, 24). False Christianity is exactly what you would expect to see if real Christianity is true. It is what Jesus predicted!
Tate’s arguments fall flat on every level, and we can only pray that he will repent and turn to Christ before the end and that his deceit will fall on deaf ears.
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