[Update]: After posting this article and then posting another article about a very absurd incident in the group, a number of missionaries and Muslims who I’m acquainted with indicated to me that they have had the same experience with this individual and have posited he may have issues or so to speak. I have since left the group, and do not wish to comment on his person any longer. This was a very profitable experience for me and I encourage Muslims to use the behaviour and example of Mr. Kaimo to further the cause of Islam.

I joined a Facebook group two nights ago without thinking much of it. Turned out it was one of those “debate” groups. You know the kind, 100 links a day, endless arguing, countless adding of friends to get people to like their comments, posts demeaning and insulting this faith and that faith. I wasn’t interested, didn’t care much for it, checked it out, joined a discussion or two and went on my merry way. Wake up the next morning to find a tag of myself in the group with 200 comments on a discussion I’ve yet to comment on. That was quite the surprise! In the time I took my nightly nap, some bloke searched my name, found a few Christian blog posts about me and as it turns out, I’m Satan incarnate! That was news to me, but hey, we learn something about ourselves everyday…..

In any case, I don’t find myself “debating” on Facebook anymore as it’s a bit difficult to count shouting matches as debates. These days I’ll probably shoot off a message to Pastor Samuel Green, maybe have a chat or two with him (he’s really pleasant once you get to know him), and have a fruitful discussion with someone educated about their own religion. Maybe have a discussion via an email thread with a Pastor or Missionary, notable names in the debate and dialogue profession that aren’t concerned about shouting matches. People that can learn from me, and I from them. So, when I saw this post with 200 comments I had no intention of jumping into that frenzy. People who read years old blog posts about Missionaries who are odds with me, suddenly knew me better than myself! So as it turned out, the guy that made the post was Mari Kaimo – nobody I knew but apparently a friend of Shamoun and company, along with being a cast member of some sort for the 700 Club in Asia. He was out for blood, I’m a “condescending, no good, annoying, liar“, I’m also human but he missed that one.

Mari Kaimo

Turns out, he didn’t take too kindly to me being in the group. He tagged Pastor Green in a post I made about the New Testament and said I’d be answered by him. Well, that didn’t happen. I’m assuming that Pastor Green was busy or knew it wasn’t worth it arguing in the group, either way he made one or two comments and ditched that post. When that plan didn’t go through, I turned my attention to Mr. Kaimo. Skimmed through his comments and what do you know? He’s responding to a few comments I made by referencing Jay Smith (of all the people in the world, this is the worst choice anyone can make, he could’ve chosen Santa or the Tooth Fairy and that’d be a better selection), and to make things worse he’s responding to my comments with three decades old information. I noticed he was online, so I quickly replied on the post he made to his comments. Then came the usual insults, “you’re condescending“, “you’re annoying“, “you claim you’re forever 22“, “no one cares what you have to say“, etc, etc. I found his retorts a bit funny, and a bit expected given he’s friends with missionaries who practically hate every bone in my body.

Then he said something. He said he just began to read the journal’s paper I had referenced. He was disagreeing with me, calling me a liar, saying I was wrong and 200 comments later – was just beginning to read the very thing he said I was wrong about. Mind you, that’s 200 comments with fellow Christians brandishing my statements as lies, untruths, deceits, etc. I had shown up after all of that, and he hadn’t read a single word of the study I was referencing. When I asked him how he could call me a liar based on what I had quoted and cited, when he hadn’t read the journal’s paper at all, he jumped on the name calling bandwagon again. That taught me a very important lesson – we all choose our battles. He wasn’t disagreeing with me because I was wrong, he was disagreeing with me because I was Muslim. I’ve met many Christian Missionaries like this in my life and there are some I respect for their honesty and there are others that do not have a single bit of honesty or integrity in them. With the latter type, one thing matters, only one goal – their voice must be heard regardless of what is being said or of what consequences will be gained from it. I didn’t want to be unfair in my assessment of him, so I sent the link of the discussion to two missionaries whom I’ve written about before and both gave the response that he was, “uncouth“, “arrogant” and this was the most interesting one, “a total waste of your time“.

I’m not one to prejudge, he says he’s going to, “read the paper many times” before replying to me. Considering he disagreed before he read the paper, could I really expect him to agree with me after reading it? That’s a long shot, but I’ll take a look at what he approaches me with later today but I’m not expecting much. Other statements of his have been that a change in orthography is corruption, so I asked if the change from scriptio continua majuscule in Greek to miniscule was corruption too – he didn’t reply to that. He also stated that addition to diacritical marks to a text is corruption because no one knows what the text can say without them, so I asked if some of the early Greek manuscripts of the New Testament are corrupt without them – as they too have no diacritical marks, or if when Al Jazeera posts their news in Arabic that no one can know what they say since they don’t use diacritical marks, I got no reply except that I was being, “condescending“. More or less likely, given what he’s said before and his actions thereafter, there’s really no point in me investing my time on a person with such decorum or lack of integrity. I’ll post another article based on what he does next but last night’s experience with him gives me the impression that this was the last of my exchanges with him. Other than that, I’m looking forward with earnest to Dr. Shabir’s debate (see my previous post) and most likely I’ll be waking up when that debate is just about to begin and I’d rather spend my time watching that debate than having an angry missionary lambaste me for not being Christian or explaining to me that the development of orthography is corruption of a text (I genuinely laughed at this claim). Here’s Codex Sinaiticus’ Manuscript of the Gospel of Matthew, guess what we don’t see? Diacritic marks! Or spaces! I guess that’s corruption of the New Testament for Mr. Kaimo as he claims that’s how the Qur’aan is corrupted. Look at this 12th century New Testament Manuscript with diacritical marks, I guess this one must not be corrupted. If anyone thought I was kidding, here’s his post using a slide from Jay Smith (again, this is funny), with alleged information from 1981 – that’s what, three decades? More importantly his claim on diacritical marks is not a quote and is not cited (did we expect better from a guy using Jay Smith’s work?):

When I first saw this, I knew it couldn’t get worse than this. As it turns out, I was wrong, very very wrong. So here’s where it gets worse. After replying to him with the responses I mentioned above, these are his replies. My “assertions” from a cited paper he had yet to read was responded to with what he “knew” of the issues by using a Jay Smith presentation slide with unreferenced information from 1981. Somehow citing a paper from 2010 is wrong in his eyes, despite him starting this post based on me citing that paper in the first place. Suddenly, the paper he’s yet to read is now not the “be all or end all” for his claims (that’s mostly because he couldn’t respond to what I replied to him with):

The height of absurdity was then reached, when he criticised me for using the paper – the same paper he says I lied about and was yet to read himself:

I wasn’t sure how to respond, then he threw in an insult about me not reading the Bible to which I responded with Jesus’ statements in Matthew about judging people. So this is where I lost all faith in him being able to hold an honest discussion. He starts a post without me, about me quoting a few papers, tells me those papers are wrong, then says he has yet to read them, and finally complains I haven’t referenced other papers that he does not have and has not yet read. Can anyone explain to me his reasoning? If you want to see him admit he’s yet to read the paper, yet complains about me not citing others, here’s his comment:

So let thank sink in for a moment. He hasn’t read it through once, disagrees with me, wants me to cite other papers he’s yet to possess and is complaining that I need to quote other papers that he doesn’t know of, as all he knows is what Jay Smith put in a slide from information unreferenced but dated to be from 1981. This is a perfect example of why I no longer invest my time on dishonest missionaries who use insults like this:

I have no idea who his wife is, or why he brought her into the conversation. I’m not even sure that’s an insult. If the wife of this guy dislikes me, I’ll gladly take that as a compliment – I’m not sure how else he’d want me to take it. At the end, he said it was 4 a.m., and he was off to bed. That’s before calling me socially awkward and advising me how not to be socially awkward:

Somehow I don’t think a guy who randomly uses his wife as a means of argumentation is much less socially awkward than an introvert such as myself…….Alas, the “conversation” came to an end:

I guess before he replies to me, after reading the paper from the journal he disagreed with 17 hours ago, he’s going to give us a lovely story about when he was a late bloomer. In all honesty, I don’t think he’s yet to bloom and I cannot take him seriously. I hope he’s just trying to be funny, sarcastic or anything other than what he has presented of himself already. Thank God there’s a Dr. Ally debate with Jay tomorrow, I need something, anything with intelligence to keep me sane after that mess of a conversation!

and God knows best!

Sometimes we make mistakes when writing or citing sources. Most of the time we realise when an error has been made and we correct it, other times we only see an error when someone brings our attention to it. So, if you spot an error, send us an email or comment on the post and we’ll fix the error as soon as is possible. Errors don’t have to be spelling mistakes or wrong references, we could make factual mistakes as well – like when I referred to Erasmus as an atheist because I had read he was a humanist, or that time I referenced a wrong commentary but posted the right link to it. Most importantly though, sometimes I may post an article when provoked by someone’s dirty attack on Islam, like that image I posted earlier this week of Dr. Michael Brown – sure, he was wrong for attacking Islam but it was also wrong of me to make my response personal and so I’ve since edited that article.

As the site continues to grow, the greater the responsibility we have to ensuring that what we post is both accurate and respectable. This is a learning experience for all of us. We learn a lot from our readers who send us emails on articles we’ve posted or when they’ve shared one of our photos 500 times on Facebook. Every email sent, most comments posted are usually read but we can’t always reply to them all. So your voices are being heard, we do listen to our readers but we don’t always have the time to respond. With that having been said, fixing errors is our top priority as we want to provide you with accurate, factual and responsible information to help you understand Islam and defend Islam in a manner pleasing to Allaah.

So, if you spot an error, let us know!

and God knows best.