Author Archives: Ijaz Ahmad

Muslims See Through the Hate

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So lately a few angry Christians have been attacking me.  They’ve  foregone publishing one of the debates while attacking me for not posting another one immediately, irony at its best.

Their comments are  personal, vicious and are not based on discussing the materials or arguments for either debate.  One brother who viewed their comments, saw right through their actions.  Someone half their age, went head to head with their best debater with decades of expertise, and yet I persisted (note: not declaring myself a winner, just saying I persisted during the debate). Here’s his insightful comment:

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Their ad hominem have increased because they cannot stand up to or deal with my  arguments.  It’s therefore become very  polemical and personal. Just goes to show when missionaries attack you this way and this much, it means that I must be doing something right. I just find it funny that grown men who claim to ignore me, can dedicate so much time and effort into following my posts, trying to talk to me privately (Radical Moderate messaged me on Paltalk), write posts about me, publish – review and promote my debates, yet they’re ignoring me. I mean, if you’re claiming to ignore me, and you’re so obsessed with me and my debates – mind you, debates attracting crowds of 120+ (something none of them can achieve), how is it that they’re actually ignoring me?

If I’m such a waste of time, why do they bother to attend my debates, promote them, share them, view them, discuss them, review my articles, comment on my articles, etc? As the saying goes, actions speak louder than words. If this is how they ignore me, I wish they’d ignore me all the time!

and Allah knows best.

Review: An Incarnate God – Fact or Fiction

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Today I present the first of a set of reviews on my debate with Pastor Samuel, these are independent reviews from persons who have watched the debate and arrived at their own conclusions. At present, I am inviting any Christian who would like to have their review posted on this website, to email us [callingchristians@gmail.com] and regardless of their view, it’d be published. Here’s Br. Danish’s review:

Ijaz’s opening statement was impressive both on etiquettes and presentation of his case. He used scholarly arguments, intelligent reasoning and logic to prove his points as he vowed to do at the outset of the debate. His polite urge to Samuel Green to refrain from being preachy is completely justified as the theory of God Incarnate is proposed by their interpretation of the Bible only, as such the credibility of the Bible and their interpretation itself is under question in this debate, hence taking an accused for a witness will be a logical fallacy, therefore a critical analysis of the biblical teachings about the topic will have a lot more appeal for the audience and this is what Ijaz has done fantastically.

Evolution of Jesus as God incarnate/ doctrine of trinity are vividly examined in Ijaz’s presentation. With the quotations from early Christian Patristics he was able to underline the fact that early Christians did not have sufficient proof in favor of the divine incarnation of Jesus and this is the reason why they had to resort to illogical arguments like “you will not be “wise” unless you become a “fool” to the world, by believing” the foolish things of God. Ijaz successfully expounded the sequential development in Christianity into a Trinitarian system of believes owing to the existence of mutually opposing school of thoughts among Christians and opportunist swaying of Roman emperors between Nicean and Arian creeds for their own political benefit. Moreover the statement of Athenesius himself admitting his inability to understand the concept of Incarnation support Ijaz’s line of argument perfectly. Lastly he cites Biblical scholars like John Gill and CS Lewis which leaves no doubt with regards to the falseness of the doctrine of God incarnate.

Throughout his opening statement Ijaz remained polite, well behaved and unprovocative and was able put his case forward strongly and comprehensively and there was no sign of rudeness in his tone and manner.

Allah knows best.

Danish Aqueel

Pastor Samuel Concedes He Didn’t Respond to Me Well During Our Debate

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I really didn’t expect this to be made public so quickly by Pastor Samuel, but here’s his comments on the debate amongst his Christian fans and supporters over at the Answering Muslims website:

Blogger Answering Muslims - Post a Comment (2)

Much of what Pastor Samuel has conceded to is the truth. He didn’t answer close to 1/3 of the historical, theological of philosophical issues I presented with the incarnation theology well. I’m happy he made these statements, as it demonstrates quite a factual reality about our debate. As for his points, my responses are:

  1. Whether fast or slow, the quotes were put there and you had well over 10 minutes and then 5 minutes during the rebuttals period to see those quotes and use them against me.
  2. Not sure how you can call them gross exaggerations if according to the first point you didn’t see the quotes and you didn’t know anything about them (hence why you needed to atleast know something about them to answer them correctly) and thus couldn’t answer them correctly.

These are just shoddy excuses to cover the fact that as the Pastor himself admits, and praise be to God he’s stated this, he didn’t respond to even 1/3 of my points during the debate, which led to a frustrating period for him during the cross fire period.

Addressing Two Hater Comments

One hater boasted that my only argument was the quote from Tertullian which says the belief in Christ’s incarnation was absurd and silly. If this Christian is willing to be honest, he’d have to then explain how in his 15 line quasi review he proudly declared I quoted many liberal scholars, James Dunn, James White and Athanasius. Your own words against me, are self contradictory.

This same hater boasted that I misused the fallacy of confirmation bias, to the contrary, as many viewers of the debate have indicated within the Paltalk room itself, my opening statement and argument was spot on, Samuel did not present any historical, philosophical or rational evidences for his position, he merely said this is what my God in the scripture I believe in said, therefore the incarnation is true. I call upon any Christian to demonstrate that Pastor Samuel did not do this.

One other hater, Anthony Rogers (who is known for threatening to rape me, and also known for getting exposed as a copy paster who claimed to research Arabic sources but instead literally stole the works of a Muslim brother who later called him out on it), claimed I was disrespectful and nasty throughout the debate. I do believe their was a moderator present and Pastor Samuel did not once complain to her, to make matters worse, no Christian during the Question and Answer period claimed the same, nor did any of them post comments to that effect. You seem to have taken issue with my quote of Tertullian, yet quoting your founding fathers of your faith doesn’t make me nasty, it makes them nasty. I understand your misdirected anger though, you obviously can’t attack a Church Father, so I guess I’ll take the hate for him. I also recognize that since our debate, you’ve pretty much been unable to stop me from walking over your ego by becoming more popular in the apologetics circles, I mean you’ve been asking people to ignore me, but since then I’ve – been featured by Dr. James White on his Dividing Line program, Dr. James White’s made videos about me, Sam Shamoun’s found himself arguing with me, your own co-workers at Answering Islam and Answering Muslims (Cl Edwards and Samuel Green) have debated me, you were embarrassed by the Bob Siegel saga which I made worse by publicising it and then to your dismay the guy actually put me on his show and gave me an audience in the week gone. Not only that, our website has exploded in views, doubling really and the Muslim Debate Initiative has made me an official speaker.

So I realised you really didn’t like my quoting of Tertullian, so I did you a little favour and reposted it to my Facebook page of 600, 000 + fans, just to piss you off:

The Message - Many Christians live in denial and cannot face the...

So now because of your silly attack on me, 28, 900+ 42, 400+ 51, 000+ Muslims have been exposed to the statements by Tertullian and I promise, the more stupid things you say, I’m merely going to make more people see how absurd the incarnation is.

Again, I’d like to thank the goodly Pastor for his honest concession and for Anthony who gave me the impetus to share Tertullian’s quote to over more than 28, 900+ 42, 400+ 51, 000+ individuals. More to come.

wa Allaahu ‘alam.

Debate with Bob Siegel: My After Thoughts

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I’m not sure whether to call this a debate or not. It was horribly short, which we anticipated, but for the time we did spend, I do felt as if Bob missed the mark.

Bob’s Opening:

Bob opens with the same argument that he used against Br. Shadid, the Qur’aan claims to validate the Bible and authenticates the Bible. Then he went on to mention Isaiah 53 and Daniel 9 as evidences that it is reliable. That was about it.

Br. Ijaz’s Opening:

I had a little trouble with feedback for 2 minutes, but then I got started. I let them know the Qur’aan at its inception was seen as scripture, the Bible developed into a scripture. The Qur’aan has two strains of independent transmission going back to its primary source. The New Testament has atleast a 90 year gap between its primary sources and its empirical testimony. I demonstrated that in Islam we have CAR, Control + Authorization = Reliability. Our text is reliable because we control what was transmitted and we authorized specific persons with the requisite skill to transmit it, therefore making it reliable.

Question and Answer by the Moderator:

Again, Bob referred to Isaiah 53 and that the Qur’aan qualifies the Bible. Told him to read chapter 52 and that the suffering servant is the entire nation of Israel, I pointed to Devarim 28 to 31 and Yirmiyahu 44. As for the Qur’aan, I pointed to Surah 2, Verse 79.

I mentioned the Jews don’t believe in substitution atonement, he mentioned that Leviticus talks about this, I refuted him and mentioned that Leviticus mentions the Korban Pesach in which an animal is sacrificed, not a human, he did not respond.

The moderator asked about our concepts of heaven (I found this to be a pretty silly question, irrelevant to the topic), Bob mentioned we needed Christ to go to heaven. I mentioned that Christiainity doesn’t speak about heaven, the Apocalypses do and they’re an addition to the Christian faith, a late addition. Only Islam promotes an inclusive heaven, as our God is willing to forgive all sin, even blasphemy. I went on to say that the Christian God is a God which excludes mercy because if I as a Muslim disbelieve in the Holy Spirit (that’s blasphemy) I would then never go to heaven, thus our concept of God is more complete.

Bob was asked when did the NT get written, he said 90 CE, said 2 Peter called the NT scripture and that Christ claimed to be God. For my turn, I mentioned the story of ‘Umar (may Allaah be pleased with him) to demonstrate the Qur’aan was written during its inception in Makkah and we do have a C-1 text from within the lifetime of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) – see Arabica 57, 2010. In response to Bob, I mentioned the first empirical evidence we have is from 125 CE and  anyone can make a hypothesis to claim any time earlier, but we need evidence to support our claims. Mentioned that 2 Peter is a Pastorial and is dated to be from sometime in the second century by most critics. Lastly, I let him know, he can’t know what Christ said or didn’t say from the NT because it was not first person verbatim.

20 Minute Back and Forth/ Free Discussion:

I asked Bob a simple question: Given Psalm 119:89, which canon or codex of the OT and NT do you say is from God. Took Bob around 15 minutes to answer. He went off on translations, at one point he said,”when Muslims read the Qur’aan in any other language beside Arabic, they are reading the Qur’aan”, I kindly let him know that they’re reading an interpretation, a translation, but not the primary text. The primary text is important, which is why us Muslims are like your scholars, your scholars read the primary text in its original languages for understanding and study, the lay Muslim learns how to recite the Qur’aan in its primary language because we value and appreciate our text, something you leave for your scholars to do.

In answering my questions, which I had to insist on, he finally said he accepted all canons and codices, but before I could pose a question to him, he decided to ask me an off topic question. What makes the Qur’aan true? I pointed to the Pythagoreans and the Essenes who settled in Northern Arabia and who later accepted Islam. I pointed to the mass conversion of educated Arian Christians and Jews in Iberia when the message of Islam reached them. The geopolitical success of Islam in conquering the Roman and Persian empires , all from a book that Bob says was written by one man.

Lastly, Bob decided to talk about how violent the Qur’aan is by quoting Surah 9, I responded with Qur’aan 2:190-194. I then furthered my response with mentioning the return of Jesus being vastly more violent, see Zechariah 14, in which Bob agreed Christ would return as a warrior. I began to laugh because Bob found it offensive that the Qur’aan may command violence, but was completely okay knowing that Christ would mass murder non-believers when he returned and this was not a problem for him.

My Thoughts:

The time was too short, the radio signal was horrid – this is consensus by a Christian ally from Canada, a Muslim friend from London. I got a ton of feedback during the show. Bob was unable to answer my questions, on the text of the NT being reliably transmitted. I provided examples and literature which verified the Islamic perspective and the best he could muster up was an argument that someone said the original Qur’aan could not be found, which is when I then referred to the C-1 text.

All in all, this was not worth my time. Bob really isn’t a debater and he seems more interested in polemics than actually discussing the topic. This is a common problem that I faced in all of my debates so far, I tend to speak over the heads of my opponents. I’m more of a reader, an academic, they are more inclined to preaching and so asking technical questions, historical questions is a significant problem on my behalf because I’m unable to get proper answers simply because my opponents cannot make sense of the questions being asked.

I invite Bob to Paltalk, where we can have an discussion unrestricted by time and in which we can talk to the audience. I’m not earnest for it because as I said, Bob is different to me, he’s satisfied with the non-technical questions, I tend to read academic texts synoptically and so my reading and study is different from Bob, but if he’s willing to bite the bullet, I suppose I am to.

wa Allaahu ‘alam.

Debate Tomorrow: Ijaz Ahmad vs Bob Siegel -Which is more reliable, the New Testament or the Qur’aan?

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Looking forward to this debate, it’ll be a short one, 1 hour or so long, 5 minute opening statement and moderated by Bob’s friend, Fred. There will be no question and answer call in session, but the first half hour of the debate will focus on the moderator posing certain questions to each debater, whereas the other 30 mins would be a discussion between Bob and I, the details are as seen below:

Tomorrow (24th November, 2013) at:

  • 6 PM PST (US).;
  • 10 PM (AST) Trinidad Time.
  • 2 AM (London) Time.

Topic:

  • Which is more reliable? the New Testament or the Qur’aan?

Live stream:

cc-2013-bobdebate

wa Allaahu ‘alam.

Brief Summary of Points of my Incarnation Debate

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I recently debated Pastor Samuel Green on the topic of, “An Incarnate God: Fact or Fiction”. I argued that the Incarnation of a God, in this case – Christ, was fiction using the following reasoning:

  1. The Jews have no concept of the hypostatic union or of theophanies in their religious literature.
  2. The earliest Christians debated the nature of Christ and each group ascribed their view to a disciple/ apostle.
  3. The earliest Christians were primarily Greek gentiles who were familiar with incarnation philosophy and theology.
  4. The early Church therefore read the Jewish books with a Greek philosophical and theological understanding.
  5. In both the Greek and Jewish cultures, men of fame and great public interest were declared to be of divine birth/ natures.
  6. The Greek concept of a Theophany is at odds with the Jewish belief of Shali’ah.
  7. The Church unfairly forced a fixed vote promoting one Bishop’s arguments for a pro-hypostatic union Christ.
  8. The members of the Church revolted and in 359 CE Arius’ position (ante-Nicene) was adopted.
  9. Athanasius’ hypostatic union/ dual natured Christ was declared a heresy under larger Ecumenical councils throughout the Christian world.
  10. My conclusion therefore is that an incarnate Christ as a God was a theology developed by Greek minded elements of the early Church, adopted by the Church, refuted and declared heretical by the Church and later re-adopted, thus showing it’s early development into a doctrine as opposed to something which was initially and always believed by the majority of Christians.

Pastor Samuel’s arguments were:

  1. The incarnation theology can be found in the Torah, Prophets and Psalms.
  2. Daniel 7 is an evidence of this.
  3. It’s God’s promise to live amongst us.
  4. To listen to God is to read what He has mentioned in the Prophets.

and Allaah knows best.

Debate Video Release: Samuel Green vs Ijaz Ahmad – “An Incarnate God: Fact or Fiction”

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Here’s the debate video from our Paltalk debate which took place last night between Pastor Samuel Green and I. It’s just about two hours and the audio is quite clear and consistent. Two edits were made, there was a lot of technical sorting out at the beginning (mic testing etc) and the Pastor clarifying the time not to be used during his pre-Opening Speech’s Introduction. The audio gaps of 10 seconds or so were not removed, this occurred when the speakers were changed and I decided to leave them in as it set a good pace and tone for the event.

It hasn’t even been more than a day and we’re already releasing the debate! Much thanks to the room recorder, Br. Abdul Wadud (a fellow Trinidadian Uncle), without his hardwork, dedication and efforts, we would not have been able to release the debate this quickly.

Much thanks to Pastor Samuel and Sr. Waduha who worked through the Day Light Savings time error and allowed us to amicably decide on how to have proceeded with the night’s event. There is one point of note, this is the first debate against a Muslim speaker in which Pastor Samuel chose not to speak off topic on the alleged corruption of the Qur’aan, I’m not sure if this is because he’s found it useless given his discussions with me on it, or if he simply didn’t have the time to do so, either way, it’s a good sign of the intensity and excitement that the discussion carried.

wa Allaahu ‘alam.

Fantastic Debate with Pastor Samuel Green

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Last night’s debate with Samuel was absolutely splendid. The events could not have gone better than I’d hoped and the experience was certainly uplifting and motivating. Here are two quick incidents from last night:

Pastor Samuel: Ijaz you keep asking me for a verse which demonstrates the incarnate Christological (man-God) creed, well I’ve been providing it all along, here it is:

“In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man,[a] coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. 14 He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all nations and peoples of every language worshiped him.” – Daniel 7:13-14.

Me: Pastor, did you even LOOK at the verse? It literally says that GOD was GIVEN authority, glory and power. That’s funny, because the very definition of God is an all powerful deity, how can an all powerful deity be GIVEN power?

If you that that was bad, this was even worse!

Pastor Samuel: Ijaz you’re confusing Greek mythology with Greek Philosophy, the belief in the Son of God in the Greek culture was mythology not philosophy, you need to study ancient Greek culture.

Me: Reminds the kindly Pastor that Plato and Pythagoras were seen as ‘the Sons of God’ and in Greek Philosophy (as quoted by the Apostle Paul himself!), all men were ‘like’ God because we all possess the faculties of ‘reason’.

I should have the debate uploaded to our channel in a day or two, God willing. There were a few technical glitches and timing issues last night, but we were able overcome these trials and have an eventful debate. At one point I lost internet connection and was unable to hear Samuel’s second rebuttal. The room itself was packed with 120+ persons, and to be quite honest I’m certain it went beyond this number, but because I was busy having a debate – I didn’t think to keep checking the room count, in any case there certainly was a significant turn out from both the Muslim and Christian communities.

Lastly, I’d like to thank Sister Waduha, our moderator who was fair and unbiased. This makes it 3/3 debates in which I’ve worked with her and she pulled out all the stops last night by gifting both Samuel and I a week’s worth of Paltalk Extreme, i.e. we get a full week’s service of the paid Paltalk experience.

In relation to the debate and my performance, I’ve been told by Muslims and Christians alike that perhaps my quotations and my use of them in my arguments seemed to have gone over the heads of most people. I presented an unbiased Christian historical perspective on the development of the incarnate Christology, something in which Pastor Samuel was not prepared for and it clearly shows in his rebuttals that he really didn’t know how to respond and so he went into a hundred and one directions and gifted me three smashing cross fire questions that seemed to put him into the hot seat!

Many have been asking for the sources of the quotes I used during my Opening Statement, rest assured that in the coming days, perhaps after my debate with Bob Siegel, I’ll put something together for the public’s use inshaaAllaah.

wa Allaahu ‘alam.

Da’wah is more than writing articles….

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There is a misconception that da’wah/islah involves simply ‘spreading the message of Islam’, whether through articles, videos, or conversations. Da’wah or Islah is much more than this. As a da’ee, I don’t see myself as just an author or Muslim speaker, I recognize that I bear the responsibility of serving the worldwide community, because as a Muslim I must follow my Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him and his family and his companions), and seeing as he is titled a ‘mercy to mankind’ by the Creator Himself:

وَمَا أَرْسَلْنَاكَ إِلَّا رَحْمَةً لِّلْعَالَمِينَ
And We have not sent thee except as a mercy unto the Worlds. – Qur’aan 21:107.

Therefore, I have joined many humanitarian causes and today I am proud to announce that I’ve attended a workshop that has certified me in attending to Domestic Violence victims, this has given me the tools and the knowledge the counsel, reach out to and care for victims while they recover or seek help from this traumatic societal ill:

cc-2013-dvcertificate

 

For security and privacy purposes my name has been crossed out. I intend to use this certificate as I become more active in the Muslim community and as I take upon the responsibility as a peer counselor at my University. As a Muslim, it is my responsibility to love, care and protect my fellow brothers and sisters in the world, from any harm or ill will. Remember, da’wah and islah isn’t just to speak kind words or produce new arguments, we do da’wah and islah because we want to benefit mankind and make a lasting change in the lives of people everywhere.

For Muslims who face domestic abuse or would like counselling, you can visit the following links inshaaAllaah:

wa Allaahu ‘alam.

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