Category Archives: Other Speakers

Islamophobia and Dishonesty

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I often choose not to respond to vicious character attacks, whether they come from a major Christian apologist or a beginner in the inter-faith field. Recently Jonathan McLatchie decided to go on a string of unfortunate articles where he has targeted several Muslims in the inter-faith field. Collectively, we’ve decided to forgive him. I myself forgive him for what he has said about me, the issue(s) we have with him are purely professional, not personal. Therefore, when I saw his last few posts and articles attacking some of my colleagues, I knew that he’d have to eventually write about me. I’m okay with him having done that, I’m okay with his name calling, his insults, his mistakes. After all, he’s only human. He’s quite young, and as he matures he’d quickly find that such behaviour is inappropriate.

Now unfortunately, Jonathan seeks to blame me for sharing the words that came out of his mouth. I previously had shared a clip of one of his lectures where he openly derides Islam and Muslims as inviting a cancer and virus into European civilization. I’ll gladly share that clip again:

He insists that I’ve somehow misunderstood what he’s said. However, he does go on to state that he made a mistake in his wording, that he said something wrong:

“While I try to present information with a high level of factual accuracy (and I think I succeed in doing this for the most part), occasionally I can make a mistake or change my mind on something that I have said. I take full responsibility for anything that I say that is not accurate, and I hope to always correct those when brought to my attention.”

The problem here is with Jonathan’s thinking. Any sensible person would quickly realise that if you admit that you made a mistake, then whatever was understood from your mistaken words, you are responsible for that mistake. So, what does Jonathan do? He claims to have taken responsibility for those inappropriate words. That begs the question, if I misunderstood him, then why did he find the need to acknowledge what he said as a mistake? If I had misrepresented him as he claims, then it would mean that his words were not mistaken. However, the opposite is true. He’s admitted that he spoke mistakenly, therefore acknowledging that whatever he said was indeed wrong. That’s simple logic, it’s common sense. So from Jonathan’s own words, he said something wrong.

If I have rightfully corrected him on his mistake, then in what sense have I misrepresented him? Therefore, what we are seeing from his behaviour is pure immature nonsense. We need to look at his next statement:

“That mistake on my part aside, did I really describe “Muslim immigrants of an ethnic background to be cancers and viruses that are invading Europe”?”

He says he didn’t say this, he says what he meant was:

In what was regrettably a poor choice of wording on my part, I likened these Muslim enclaves in France to a cancer — my meaning of course was that such enclaves are a breeding ground for Islamic radicalism. It was not intended to refer to the individuals who live in these areas. By likening the enclaves to a cancer it was the ‘No Go Zone’ structure itself I was talking about, and not the Muslims living within such areas nor even the ones who were enforcing such a structure.”

Let’s stop right here. In the first line what does he say? He says he likened Muslims. Fullstop. That’s it. He’s admitted that he’s lying about me. In his own words, he’s clearly stated that when he spoke in the Church about enclaves being cancerous and like a virus, he was specifically referring to Muslims. So which is it Jonathan? Did I lie when I said you were referring to Muslims, when you yourself have said you referred to Muslims. You’ve vindicated me. You’ve thoroughly demonstrated that in your haste to insult me, you did not consider what you had written. In his later explanation, as quoted above, he indicates that he didn’t mean people, he meant structures. Yet, in the very first sentence he says he’s referring to Muslims – people! In the space of one paragraph he has demonstrated his dishonesty. At this point, I have no reason to continue this article. He’s demonstrated for me, through his own words that he was dishonest, deceitful and deceptive. I will continue just to illustrate the lengths through which he is willing to lie, he said:

“To support his allegation, Ijaz links to a video on his YouTube channel, highlighting a lecture I shared on Facebook back in September of 2015. The only problem is that nowhere in the video is it claimed that ISIS is normative for all, or most, Muslims.”

I’ll link the video here:

If anyone watched the video, the lady explicitly says that following the Prophet’s teachings (peace be upon him), naturally leads to behaving like ISIS. The majority of Muslims worldwide follow in some capacity the Prophetic Sunnah, whether Sunni or Shi’i. Therefore, what is normative for Jonathan, if not what the majority of Muslims follow? It would either mean that he lied, that he did not watch the video, or he does not know what the term normative means. I’m inclined to believe all three. Jonathan further argued that I somehow did not represent him correctly regarding his comments about Khalid Yasin. In that very article, click here to read it, I explicitly said:

Should Jonathan correct himself, I will edit this post to reflect this.

Did Jonathan ever message me to tell me that he corrected himself? Yes, he did. Earlier today right before he posted his article complaining about it. What does that say about him? I publicly offered to correct the article if the information was incorrect and Jonathan knowing this, chose to mention he did correct himself shortly before making a post to whine about it. Integrity is important. All he had to do was give me a heads up and I’d gladly have corrected the article, but he chose not to do so. This means that he wanted an opportunity to complain about. He waited for weeks before opening his mouth. This is simply inappropriate behaviour for a person who dares call others names.

As many would know, Jonathan has upset quite a few people in the inter-faith community, both Muslim and Christian. There was a point in time that I asked him, why he joined out of all people, David Wood and Sam Shamoun as partners in his apologetics. There were many other people he could have aligned himself with, Dr. White, RZIM, etc. Instead he chose people who lack credibility in their own Christian circles. He chose to align himself with people that identified with his ideas, beliefs and vitriolic views. Therefore, I find it quite funny that he speaks with such hate against me. His problem isn’t that I misrepresented him, it’s that I dared to publicize his statements. As we’ve seen above, he’s clearly admitted to referring to people as cancerous and as a virus. There is quite literally nothing to debate about, his own words have settled that matter.

Interestingly, it’s almost a weekly occurrence where he says he wants nothing to do with me. Guess what happened today? After posting his article, we exchanged a few e-mails again. He says one thing publicly and another thing in private. I’d like to share something posted by Br. Yahya recently directed at Jonathan‘s deceptive behaviour:

A quick note to Jonathan McLatchie [pass it on to him please]

Firstly, if you introduce me again with such underhand negativity…like you did just now and in your previous comments in your response on the Son of Man (which I let slide) I will be on the brink of playing tit-for-tat with you. That will mean, I will introduce you negatively every time I mention you, right now I’m leaning towards calling you a plagiarist (a true epithet for you…you’ve been found out on a few occasions IIRC).
I can handle negativity, insults and even arrogance. Here’s something I recently received from (perhaps one of your co-religionists):

“Muslims are filthy pig swill….. Go to hell. I would rather fight you cunts till I die than become one of you”

Now, I have a thick skin and don’t usually respond in kind. Sticks and stones break your bones but names…

However, one thing I will not stand for is two-faced behaviour. When you say you want to improve relationships and even want to meet up for a cup of coffee and then continue with underhand slights there’s an issue. It’s an issue with your sincerity.

Another thing I was willing to let slide, you liking comments calling people idiots (namely myself:)) and liking other negative comments about Ijaz Ahmad and perhaps others. You’re ‘notorious’ for it. You seem like a passive aggressive type….your buddy Shamoun beats his cheat and really gets his hands dirty (normally in the act of picking up ‘pig swill’ and hurling at Muslims). Your other buddy Wood strips down and gets into his wife’s undies to have a go. Your buddy Pastor Najm rattles off his anti-Muslim diatribes facing the camera. Those boys, sure their acts are deplorable and betraying their spiritual natures, but you do get the feeling they will stab while you’re facing them. The same with the two con men from Egypt, ‘Prince’ and Dakdok (not entirely sure if they are your buds). You on the other hand wait lull me into a false sense of security and wait for me to turn my back and then get your drawing pin out and prick me…what’s the end game, death by a thousand cuts?

In the end, I forgive Jonathan for his behaviour, his insults, his misrepresentations. He’s young, he’ll make mistakes and hopefully he can find a route to more mature discussion.

and God knows best.

Missionary Mishap: Jonathan McLatchie’s Argument Fails Spectacularly

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Jonathan is known for making mistakes, whether that’s being ignorant of the Bible (he didn’t know God literally inscribed the ten commandments according to Exodus), or ignorant of the Qur’an:

In this amazing video from Br. Yahya Snow, Jonathan claims that nowhere in the Qur’an does Allah say: I am God, worship me. That’s unfortunate, for the Qur’an says:

Indeed, I am Allah. There is no deity except Me, so worship Me and establish prayer for My remembrance. – 20:14.

Br. Yahya has a ton more clips of Jonathan to be released in the coming days. Subscribe to his YouTube channel here: Yahya Snow.

and God knows best.

Reproaching One’s Brother – Jonathan McLatchie

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After spending sometime among Christian activists and preachers, a prominent theme I found amongst them was having the ability to discern between right and wrong, and the act of reproaching fellow Christians if they fell out of line. Many verses were given to me, some of them are as follows: Proverbs 27:17, Galatians 6:1-2, James 5:16, Ephesians 4:25, Hebrews 10:25, etc. This act of reproaching fellow Christians is seen as a mandatory spiritual duty, failing to do so indicates that one isn’t devoted to Christ as much as he should be. A Christian, as I was told, that lacks the ability of spiritual discernment, lacked Christ.

In light of these beliefs, it was brought to my attention sometime ago that most Christian polemicists actively don’t care about Christianity, see my article: Do Christian Apologists Care About Theology? One of the polemicists I didn’t comment on in that article was Johnny (Jonathan McLatchie). I gave him the benefit of the doubt and waited to see what he’d do with his entrance into polemics. Sadly, I waited in vain as he repeated articles from Rogers, Wood and Shamoun. Nothing new was coming from him, nor was he attempting to reach out to heretical Christians. Take for example, his relationship with David Wood.

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David expressly declares his agnosticism on core Christian beliefs and has made those views public. Jonathan as a fellow Christian, who now posts on David’s blog has had the opportunity to reproach David and preach the Gospel to him. However, Jonathan has failed to do so, and according to the aforementioned verses, this would mean he lacks devotion to Christ. Consider the case of David’s agnosticism over God’s ontology. The very nature of God is something that David is agnostic about. How can one be so hypocritical as to preach a religion about a God that they are doubtful about? If Jonathan was a devoted Christian, shouldn’t preaching to, and reproaching a popular Christian speaker be his most important goal? It needs to be asked, does Jonathan simply not care about Christ and is he merely speaking about Islam (an area he is demonstrably uneducated in), for private and personal gain?

Regarding God’s ontology, David is undecided about the power and knowledge of God. He does not know, and he does not care to accept one of the two mainstream beliefs in Christianity: Calvinism and Arminianism. In Calvinism, the Person of Christ – whom Christians consider to be God – did not die in the same way for everyone. This is known as limited atonement. It teaches that Christ/ God did not die in the same way for all men, otherwise everyone would be born-again. On the opposite end, Arminianism teaches universal atonement, that Christ/ God died for everyone in the same way. These are two fundamentally differing views of God. Christians trying to preach to David had to endure verbal threats and abuse from him, one Christian stated:

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David himself said:

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David in this post admits to flip-flopping between his beliefs. This is problematic because it involves his own salvation. According to Calvinist beliefs, the elect cannot become apostates or lose their faith. By this definition, since David is undecided and flip-flopping, then he is not of the elect, which would mean he is not saved according to Calvinist theology. On the other hand, Arminians believe a Christian can fall from grace and lose their salvation. Which view does Jonathan take regarding David? If he takes the Calvinist view, then David is an apostate. Since David flip-flops between the two mainstream views, he’s an agnostic and is not certain about his own salvation. In that case, it must then be asked, why isn’t Jonathan worried about David’s salvation when readers on the blog he posts too are?

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Being undecided about God’s nature regarding God’s attribute of love is a serious issue. It would then mean that Jonathan and David fundamentally believe in two different Gods, with two different attributes of love. It would mean that they believe in two different plans of salvation, two different plans of soteriology. This isn’t something minor and to be ignored, it deals with a person’s salvation. This is the most important discussion that should be happening. Yet, it isn’t. There are many other things we can ask about. Has Jonathan ever condemned and reproached David for cross-dressing?

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David Wood the Voyeur Wearing Women’s Lingerie – Self Admitted Cross Dresser

The question needs to be asked: is Jonathan interested in Christian theology, or does he just want to gain popularity? Let’s take for instance, Jonathan’s appearing on ABN TV. David in an e-mail dated September 15, 2015 says of ABN’s audience:

“The more complicated the set-up, the more problems are going to slip in to derail the debates. Second, the vast majority of viewers would rather listen to us address a topic than a questioner asking us questions. It would be nice if all callers asked relevant, probing questions, but they won’t. Good questions will be only a fraction of the actual questions we get. People will call in with insults, they will start yelling and we’ll have to cut them, and most of the questions will be completely irrelevant to the topics. That’s just what happens when phone lines are opened for anyone to call in.”

David recognizes that ABN’s audience are Christians who insult, yell, and who ask irrelevant questions. David went so far as to cut ABN off, in an e-mail of the same date he says:

“As for ABN, I’ve been working with them for years, but I’m at the end of my rope. I simply want to get these debates out of the way so that I don’t have to deal with this network ever again.”

While David condemns and reproaches ABN, Jonathan runs to them and attempts to get on as many programs as he can. Does this mean that David is lying about ABN and its poor quality of viewership, or does it mean that he is telling the truth and Jonathan just wants to serve his ego? If David is wrong, then Jonathan should condemn him and reproach him for lying about a Christian network. On the other hand, if David is correct, then Jonathan needs to reproach ABN and condemn them. If he does neither, which is most likely, then he is failing to uphold his spiritual Christian duty of reproaching fellow Christians when they fall into evil, whether that be having heretical beliefs, cross-dressing, and lying about fellow Christians.

It remains to be seen whether Jonathan cares about David’s salvation, or of his own.

and God knows best.

Nabeel Qureishi Deemed Heretic by Christian Scholar

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The former Qadiani, Nabeel Qureishi attempted to unceremoniously drag noted Christian scholar and theologian, Miroslav Volf into his response to the Wheaton College suspension of a Professor for promoting solidarity between Islam and Christianity.

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Unfortunately for Nabeel, he earned the ire of Miroslav Volf, who deemed him a heretic for arguing that Jews worship a different God than that of Jesus’s. His argument is that according to the Bible, Jesus acknowledged that Jews worshiped ‘His Father’, despite denying his (Jesus’s) alleged divinity. As such, not only does this demonstrate Nabeel’s lack of education when it comes to his own theology, it indicates to the wider public that Nabeel is not serious about his faith and is clearly more interested in pandering to the lay-Christian audience that follows RZIM.

This is quite disappointing, but in some respect it is a sign that not only does Nabeel not understand Islam, despite trying to study Christianity, he still is unable to grasp its theological nuances to the extent according to one well noted Christian scholar, he holds heretical notions and beliefs.

and God knows best.

Missionary Mishap: Jonathan McLatchie’s Honesty

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People make mistakes, I’ve made mistakes, however if you accept your mistakes and take responsibility for them, you can make amends. There are some people though, where the issue of honesty is not so black and white. In this case, it quite literally is black, there’s no denying it. So, here we are again with another infamous Missionary Mishap! In August of 2015, Jonathan McLatchie unleashed a xenophobic tirade, describing Muslims in Europe as a cancer. At that point in time, he was unable to clear his name, since video evidence was widely available. He never apologized or recanted his xenophobic views. Recently, Jonathan once again unleashed another xenophobic tirade, denigrating Caucasian converts to Islam.

The Muslim community continues to forgive Jonathan for his xenophobic views, and we do not ascribe his extremism to his faith. We do not hold Christianity responsible for Jonathan’s views. However, Jonathan seems to have found himself in another controversy. In his video denigrating Caucasian converts to Islam, he erroneously claimed that Khalid Yasin, the African American convert to Islam, was a white (caucasian) man. After repeated attempts at correcting him, Jonathan insists that Khalid Yasin is a white man. He even went so far as to claim he met Khalid Yasin to prove that he was a white man. This incident is indicative of Jonathan’s inability to correct himself when wrong. Jonathan refuses to acknowledge that he made a mistake.

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I’ve got news for Jonathan. Khalid Yasin is an African American man. He is not white, as is noted by the photo above. To assess Jonathan’s ability to correct himself, he was contacted via Twitter and he continued to affirm that he had not made a mistake, Khalid Yasin was a white man, and the proof was that Jonathan met him.

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In response to that, I too also met Khalid Yasin several years ago when he visited Trinidad at the IBN TV8 studios. I can assure Jonathan that Mr. Yasin, is indeed, not a white man. As proof, I also offer any image or video of the man himself. No one in the Muslim community can make sense of Jonathan’s inability to correct himself in the face of obvious and glaring mistakes. Even when the issue is as simple as the difference between black and white, Jonathan is unable to be honest or correct himself. If he cannot be honest for such simple matters, should he be trusted when it comes to theology? The answer is clearly no.

Should Jonathan correct himself, I will edit this post to reflect this. However, that is as likely as it is for a camel to go through the eye of a needle.

and God knows best.

Jonathan McLatchie Confuses Christians About the Trinity

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In what can be described as completely embarrassing, Christians are once again cringing at Jonathan McLatchie’s views on the Trinity. On the anti-immigrant blog hosted by the previously institutionalized David Wood, Jonathan recently posted a video of himself ‘explaining the Trinity’. In the comment section, one Christian absolutely condemns McLatchie as making the Trinity, ‘as clear as mud’.

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What makes it worse is that while Jonathan has been copy-pasting articles about Islam from Wood and Shamoun, and attempting to present them as his own research, the moment he touches on the subject of Christianity he finds himself being mocked and ridiculed by his fellow Christians (about his understanding of his own faith). It is thus, quite ironic that McLatchie in attempting to promote himself as a ‘Christian apologist’, but cannot even express or defend the Trinity, to the point that other Christians are ridiculing him for it. Peculiarly, Jonathan chose to ignore this criticism and to post other plagiarized articles from Wood and Shamoun, and failed to address this Christian’s criticism of his ignorance about Christianity.

This explains why he is focusing on Islam. Jonathan does not understand his own religion, and when it comes to Islam he is reduced to copying decades old arguments from Shamoun and Wood. He is unable to present his own ideas and research, he is left to plagiarise the works of others, and claim them as his own. This is a new low for Christian apologetics. It almost seems as if they are scraping the bottom of the barrel in some attempt to appease donors to Wood’s website. No new arguments, no new research, and the best they can do is to get an unqualified Christian xenophobe and polemicist to repost old articles while failing to get the Trinity right.

Scraping the bottom of the barrel indeed.

and God knows best.

Jonathan McLatchie Attacks White Converts to Islam

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yahyasnow's avatarYahya Snow's Blog

Jonathan McLatchie, who appears to be writing for numerous blogs/websites nowadays, made some interesting comments on ‘white converts’ to Islam recently – he was  arguing the majority of white converts from Christianity to Islam are ignorant of Christian doctrine (he based this conclusion on two ‘white’ converts and a black convert who he mistakenly thought was white. I’m not too sure why there was such a focus on the white demographic but it became quite apparent that McLatchie had not bothered to even research the ‘white’ converts he was attacking. Or perhaps his research uncovered Khalid Yasin used to be white:)

Having said that his criticism was not consistent as Jonathan McLatchie openly admits the majority of church-goers are ignorant of the Trinity concept – thus it seems redundant for him to bash ‘white’ converts, from Christianity to Islam, for having a knowledge base on par with the average Christian…

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Nestorianism in Light of Modern Christian Apologetics (Part 2)

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In a previous post, I commented on an inter-Christian theological controversy regarding modern Christians and the heresy of Nestorianism. Many Christians were unaware that such a debate existed within their faith today, primarily between the Protestant sects of Lutheranism and Reformed/ Calvinist theology. I had first raised my argument using the study of the philosophy of religion regarding the ontology (nature of being) of the incarnate Christian God during my recent debate with Dr. Tony Costa. Quite a few lay-Christians thought I’d misidentified orthodox Christian beliefs (Dr. Costa and his supporter Anthony Rogers are guilty in this regard), that I as a Muslim did not understand Christian beliefs and as such my claim was based out of ignorance. Rather, through my subsequent posts a number of Christians have come to realise that I had actually raised an argument that Christian theologians themselves had raised, it was in fact the lay-Christians who were ignorant of their own modern day Christological controversies. In his erudite work on Systematic Theology, Louis Berkhof wrote:

1. UP TO THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. The Reformation did not bring any great changes in the doctrine of the person of Christ. Both the Church of Rome and the Churches’ of the Reformation subscribed to the doctrine of Christ as it was formulated by the Council of Chalcedon. Their important and deep-seated differences lay elsewhere. There is one peculiarity of Lutheran Christology that deserves special mention. Luther’s doctrine of the physical presence of Christ in the Lord’s supper led to the characteristically Lutheran view of the communicatio idiomatum, to the effect “that each of Christ’s natures permeates the other (perichoresis), and that His humanity participates in the attributes of His divinity.” It is held that the attributes of omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence were communicated to the human nature of Christ at the time of the incarnation.

Even prominent Calvinist theologian RC Sproul wrote in, “What Is the Trinity?”:

I have Lutheran friends, and I always refer to them as “my monophysite friends.” They refer to me as their “Nestorian friend,” but I always say, No, I don’t separate the two natures, I just distinguish them.”

It’s not an argument or claim invented by myself, it’s quite a well known common argument that many Protestant and Eastern Orthodox Christian sects regard Calvinists as Nestorians. It is not difficult to see why. I tried to convey an argument that lay-Christians would be able to understand during my debate with Dr. Costa, but I will have to use a little bit of mathematics to better illustrate my point. The heresy of Nestorianism, entails that despite Christ having two natures, they are distinguished from each other to the point that Jesus becomes two Persons. Jesus with a divine nature and Jesus with a human nature. Surely in Islam, this enters the realm of polytheism. For the time being, let’s express how Reformed/ Calvinistic Theology about Jesus’s Hypostatic Union is Nestorian.

  • Jesus is a Person.
  • Jesus has a Divine Nature.
  • Jesus has a Human Nature.
  • Jesus = {Divine Nature, Human Nature}

If we were to say that Jesus suffered, does that mean the Person of Jesus with two natures suffered? Calvinists would readily say yes, but they would then additionally say, as James White has claimed, that only the human nature suffered. Thus, logically speaking it is a contradiction in thinking.

  • Jesus the Person with a Divine and Human Nature suffered.
  • Jesus the Person’s Divine Nature did not suffer.
  • Jesus the Person’s Human Nature did suffer.

Thus, this in effect breaks Jesus up into two Persons. They speak of Jesus in terms of only his human nature and of Jesus in terms of only his divine nature. Hence, regardless of their cries of orthodoxy, their ideas concerning the nature of Christ are inherently self-defeating and self-contradicting, thus eliciting charges of advocating the Nestorian heresy. In conclusion, as we have seen, Christians themselves did not know of these inter-Christian debates. That’s why I raised the argument in the first place. To bring attention to a problem that only their scholars seem to argue about, I merely wanted to demonstrate that Christians after 2000 years fundamentally disagree about the nature of God and cannot reconcile the God-man doctrine about Christ.

Why wrestle with confusion, when the solution is simply, there is no God but Allah….

and Allah knows best.

Response to Hill’s and Baez’s Defense of Ravi Zacharias’ Fraud by Steve Baughman

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The following is a guest post by Steve Baughman, otherwise known as the Friendly Banjo Atheist on YouTube. Steve was the first person to bring to the public’s awareness, the issue of Ravi Zacharias’ false academic credentials. To catch up to speed, check this article here. Since Steve’s initial video about Ravi’s fraud, there have been a lot of ‘excuses’ offered in the name of defending Ravi by those close to or working on behalf of his ministry. In this exclusive article, Steve responds to some of these defensive arguments and demonstrates without a doubt that Ravi has personally benefited from the use of fraudulent academic credentials. Perhaps though, what is most troublesome, is that Christians have chosen to defend Ravi, rather than calling upon him to be truthful and honest. Does this mean that Christians are willing to commit fraud, so as long as it benefits their faith?

STEVE BAUGHMAN RESPONDS TO NICK HILL AND PROFESSOR BEAU BAEZ

NICK HILL’S DEFENSE OF RAVI ZACHARIAS

Nick Hill’s defense of his former Christian apologetics teacher is full of facts.  Almost all of them are irrelevant, and what is left is misleading, false or downright bizarre.

The first point misleads. Ravi Zacharias does not stand accused of specifically claiming to have a PhD. The accusation is that hepresents himself as one who has earned a PhD when he has not.  For the specifics of Mr. Zacharias’ “Dr. Zacharias” behavior, see my reply to Professor Beau Baez below.

Nick Hill’s second is bizarre.  The complaint against Mr. Zacharias is that nowhere at his RZIM.org bio does he disclose that his doctorates are “honorary.”  Mr. Hill thinks this no problem.  If we want to know if the doctorates are real or honorary, all we have to do is “google the titles and where he received them” and we can see that these schools do not offer academic doctorates. Thus, we would be able to deduce that Mr. Zacharias’ degrees are honorary.

One wonders how Mr. Hill can be serious that, in lieu of Mr. Zacharias simply putting the word “honorary” in his bio, we are to spend hours researching and visiting the websites of each school to see if they offer academic doctorates of the kinds Mr. Zacharias was awarded.  I say “hours” because Mr. Zacharias does not list the names of the schools that gave him these doctorates, so we would first have to find that out somehow.

Third, and falsely, Mr. Hill tells us that during his sabbatical Mr. Zacharias “was supervised by a Cambridge scholar Dr. Jeremy Begbie.”  Mr. Hill should know, however, that Dr. Begebie did not begin teaching at Cambridge until 1993, three years after Mr. Zacharias was his student at Ridley Hall.  This information is publicly available at Dr. Begbie’s Duke University profile.

https://divinity.duke.edu/sites/divinity.duke.edu/files/documents/cv/BegbieCV-0714.pdf

In his defense of Ravi Zacharias Nick Hill presents us with a fine example of the absurd and sometimes fact-adverse depths to which devotees of Ravi Zacharias will descend in defense of their guru.

PROFESSOR BEAU BAEZ’S DEFENSE OF RAVI ZACHARIAS

Law Professor Beau Baez does not fare much better.  He offers five defenses of Mr. Zacharias. Each one is very easily dispatched.

First, Mr. Zacharias should not be held accountable when others loosely refer to him as “Dr. Zacharias.” 

This is a straw man.  The problem is that Mr. Zacharias actively promotes himself as “Dr. Zacharias.”  We see it at his website, at his YouTube posts, in the jacket of his autobiography, and it seems that he even instructs his secretary to call him “Dr.” (When I called his office to speak to him, his personal secretary answered “Dr. Zacharias office.”  You can too. (770) 449-6766. Ask to be put thru to Mr. Zacharias’ office.)

Second, it is not uncommon for people to call themselves “Dr.” based solely on honorary degrees.

The problem for Mr. Zacharias is that Mr. Zacharias uses the title “Dr.”in academic settings where it is very likely to cause some people (probably many) to believe he has earned an academic doctorate. It is undisputed that this is an ethically controversial practice,

It is undisputed that more people will falsely believe he has a PhD if he calls himself “Dr. Zacharias” than if he calls himself “Mr. Zacharias,”

Mr. Zacharias does not disclose at his website that the doctorate degrees are honorary,

The only conceivable benefit of using the “Dr.” title and failing to disclose the honorary nature of the degrees is that it bolsters Mr. Zacharias’ public image by leading many to think he has a PhD,

and

The potential to mislead can be greatly reduced by simply adding the word “honorary” to his bio and refraining from using the controversial title.

Perhaps most noteworthy is the fact that even one of the institutions that gave Mr. Zacharias an honorary doctorate does not approve of the practice.  In response to my inquiry, Asbury University informed me that, “As a general rule, Asbury University — which utilizes Associated Press style as its foundation — does not refer to a recipient of an honorary doctorate issued by the University as “Dr.”

Knowing the controversial nature of the practice and its potential to mislead, Mr. Zacharias continues to hold himself out to the world as “Dr. Ravi Zacharias.”

Third, Prof. Baez says “when I saw the degrees that he listed on his website I immediately recognized them as honorary degrees. I see no reason to list the obviousness [sic] nature of the degrees–he was not hiding anything.”

This is truly odd.  Mr. Zacharias’s website says

“He has been honored with the conferring of six doctoral degrees, including a Doctor of Laws and a Doctor of Sacred Theology.”

That’s it!  How was Prof. Baez able to “immediately recognize these as honorary degrees” when four of them are not even named?  And how did he know that there was not a real doctorate amongst them?

If one Googles “Doctor of Sacred Theology” and “Doctor of Laws” one immediately learns that these are often demanding academic degrees in both the United Kingdom and the United States (the two countries where Mr. Zacharias spends most of his time).

These are not “immediately recognizable” as honorary degrees.

Now, in fairness to Prof. Baez, he has indicated to me in correspondence that “When I see that many doctorate degrees I immediately conclude that they are honorary degrees. Two earned doctorate degrees is fairly unusual, let alone anything beyond that. ”

But this argument is also odd. Prof. Baez assumes it to be common knowledge that “conferring of six doctoral degrees” means they areall honorary.  But why does he assume this?

A casual investigator trying to ascertain Mr. Zacharias’ actual credentials might find that Allam Iqbal holds 17 PhDs from top universities, and that Viva Luxme has earned 15!

http://answerscdn.com/Q/What_is_the_most_Ph.Ds_one_person_has_ever_earned

I do not know if this is information or misinformation.  But that comes up when one searches.  And it gives the lie to Prof. Baez’s apparent assumption that we are all like him and “immediately recognize” that “conferring of six doctoral degrees” means that all were honorary.

What conceivable reason could Ravi Zacharias, or his people, have for not simply adding the word “honorary” to his bio, other than to mislead?

Fourth, Prof. Baez tells us that “it is possible that Ravi was unaware of the loose affiliation Ridley now has with Cambridge University.”

By way of brief background, Ravi Zacharias has very thin academic credentials. He has a Master’s Degree in Divinity and no academic publications to his credit. The crown jewel of his academic bio is the claim, which he has loudly made for the past 25 years, that he was once a “Visiting Scholar at Cambridge University.”  Without that claim he is just another circuit rider with a preacher’s degree and a load of political connections.

I investigated and found the Cambridge claim to be false.  The true fact is that in 1990 Mr. Zacharias did a sabbatical at a relatively unknown place called Ridley Hall, which was affiliated with Cambridge, and that while at Ridley he “attended” some classes at Cambridge.  Cambridge University confirmed that Mr. Zacharias was never a visiting scholar at Cambridge University.

I then informed Mr. Zacharias of my intent to go public with this information if he could not explain himself. Several days later he withdrew the “Visiting Scholar at Cambridge University” claim from his website bio.

Prof. Baez now asks us to believe that perhaps Mr. Zacharias was confused and honestly thought that being on sabbatical at Ridley Hall and attending classes at Cambridge University entitled him to claim that he was a “visiting scholar at Cambridge University.”

This is very charitable to Mr. Zacharias. But why should we assume “good faith” on Mr. Zacharias’ part here? We may acknowledge the affiliation between Ridley Hall and Cambridge University just as we may acknowledge the affiliation between, say, Babson College and M.I.T.  The fact remains that any Babson student who claims to have been a “visiting scholar at M.I.T.” merely by virtue of that affiliation and attending some classes at M.I.T. would be subject to academic discipline for C.V. fraud.

To make matters worse, I was not the first to raise the Cambridge problem with Mr. Zacharias.

I have a devout Christian colleague who several years ago developed suspicions about Mr. Zacharias’ Cambridge claim.  He informs me that he made several inquiries of Mr. Zacharias’ ministry about the matter and eventually RZIM stopped replying. My colleague then stopped pursuing the matter.

I must also note that Mr. Zacharias’ supervisor at Ridley Hall, Dr. Jeremy Begbie, makes a very clear distinction in his C.V. between his duties at Cambridge and his duties at Ridley Hall.

https://divinity.duke.edu/sites/divinity.duke.edu/files/documents/cv/BegbieCV-0714.pdf

Should we not expect similar integrity and clarity of understanding from Mr. Zacharias?  After all, this was an impressive claim to be making. Are we to believe that Mr. Zacharias just never noticed its falsity until a banjo playing atheist on the Internet threatened to expose him?

Finally, Prof. Baez notes that “From what I understand, as soon as any question was raised about his credentials he quickly clarified them on his website.”

That is not quite accurate.  Mr. Zacharias did remove the false Cambridge claim.  But he continues to refer to himself as “Dr. Zacharias” in his videos and at his website, where the word “honorary” remains tellingly absent.

Prof. Baez asks us to be charitable and to not impute ill motives to Mr. Zacharias.  We can agree that charity is a good policy.  But it cannot be disputed that what we see with Mr. Zacharias on the “Dr. Zacharias” issue is (at very best!) a willingness to construe an ethical gray area in a way most conducive to his public image.  It also cannot be disputed that his practice of calling himself “Dr. Zacharias” is more likely to mislead large numbers of people than “Mr. Zacharias” would. But he chooses to do it anyway.

Such a demonstrated preference for public image over truth makes it more likely that on the “visiting scholar at Cambridge University” claim Ravi Zacharias simply chose to mislead the public because it made him look good and he thought he could get away with it.  And he did, for 25 years.

All interested in making inquiry directly of Mr. Zacharias’ press secretary may contact Ruth RuthMalhotra, RZIM Public Relations, Email:pr@rzim.org   Phone: (770) 449-6766

———————————

Steve Baughman is an attorney and banjo teacher in San Francisco.  He is known on YouTube as The Friendly Banjo Atheist who first exposed the misleading claims Ravi Zacharias made about his credentials.  Mr. Baughman first contacted Mr. Zacharias’ ministry with his concerns in May, 2015. All references to Mr. Zacharias’ website are as of 10/27/15.

Steve can be reached through his Friendly Banjo Atheist channel at YouTube or by email at FriendlyBanjoAtheist (at) gmail  (dot) you-know- what.

Debate: Was Jesus the Son of God Or Only the Prophet of God – Audience’s Review #2

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This is the second of several audience reviews from the debate between Dr. Tony Costa and myself. The following review is from Br. Muhammad Asad (UK):

Main Points / Arguments

Dr Costa made the following points in his opening statement:

• Jesus is both God’s prophet and the Son of God

• We need to go to earliest sources to know about the historical Jesus – the New Testament documents which were composed in the 1st century. All New Testament scholars go to the New Testament writings to know about the historical Jesus

• These earliest documents are unanimous in teaching that Jesus was the Son of God. According to Dr Costa, Ijaz has to produce a 1st century document which states that Jesus was only God’s prophet and no more

• The language of “sonship” is also found in the Jewish Bible. Dr Costa gave examples of how the term “son” is applied in the Jewish Bible (used for angels, for Israel as a nation, the Messianic king etc)

• According to Dr Costa, in Islam while God is the Master and humanity is slave, the Bible goes beyond this and presents God like a father to His people

• When Jesus spoke of himself as God’s son, it was in terms of a unique relationship – as a unique Son of God. Hence the charge of “blasphemy” levelled upon Jesus in the New Testament

• Historians do not go to the Quran to learn anything about the historical Jesus because the Quran came to the scene 600 years after Jesus. Hence the Quran is “historically worthless.”

• Sayings attributed to Jesus within the Quran come from apocryphal sources

•  Jesus never denied that he was God’s son. Gospel of John is cited at this stage as evidence for this claim and the Gospel of Mark is also referred to – Jesus being questioned about whether or not he was son of the most High

• Dr Costa referred to Prof. Tarif Khalidi, author of “The Muslim Jesus: Sayings and Stories in Islamic Literature” who supposedly asserts that the Jesus found in Islam is a “fabrication” and not the historical Jesus “found in the gospels.”

These are basically the points which Dr Costa proceeded to repeat in the rest of the debate. I will offer my reply to some of these points very shortly.

Ijaz Ahmad’s approach, in sharp contrast, was radically different. Ahmad took the philosophical approach to deny that Jesus was the son of God. According to Ahmad, it does not matter to him what the New Testament says. Ahmad explained that when Christians say “Son of God,” they actually mean “God.” Therefore, the title of the debate should be,“Is Jesus God or just a Prophet of God?”  Simply, he will set out to show why Jesus could not be the Son of God (as in “God”) philosophically, ontologically and rationally.

I breakdown Ahmad’s main points as follows:

• In typical Christian-Muslim debates, Christians argue: the New Testament asserts that Jesus is the Son of God, “prophecies” are cited from the Jewish Bible, a few quotations are presented from secular historians, it is asserted that the Quran denies Jesus being God’s son, that the Quran misunderstood the Trinity and that according to the Quran God needs a consort. Muslims respond that the Jewish Bible is cited out of context by Christians, the New Testament is not a reliable historical source, “son of God” is a diverse term and not unique to Jesus and that the Christians are misinterpreting the Quran. Ahmad says he will reject this script in this debate.

• “Son of God,” as used by Christians, means God

• Christians in general are tremendously confused and uncertain about the doctrine of the “Son of God” and even more when it comes to the doctrine of the Trinity. Ahmad quotes the polemicist Dr James R. White and R.C. Sproul in this regard, who acknowledge that Christians misunderstand the doctrine of the Trinity

• In Islam Jesus is God’s Nabi. Thus, Jesus is God’s Prophet and the Islamic position is rational and most probable

• In Islam a prophet does not inherently have future knowledge; this is given to him by God. The problem begins if Jesus is “Son of God,” as in God, Jesus would then be expected to have all knowledge (past, present, future). He would not be given this knowledge. Being God, he would already have it. Yet a prophet by nature cannot be God because they do not possess the knowledge of the unseen (unless God grants them this knowledge)

• The teaching of Islam is: there is nothing comparable to or like God. Ahmad asserted that this is the “best example of perfect-being theology.”

• The “Son of God,” in contrast, is not a perfect-being theology. If Jesus is said to be the Son of God, we then have ontological, philosophical and soteriological problems to deal with – Ahmad cites Michael Rea who asserts that God existing as a Trinity consisting of three persons with one nature could not be derived from a perfect-being theology

• Ahmad asked how God could suffer? To say that only the human nature suffered, argued Ahmad, caused one to fall prey to the heresy of Nestorianism – because the two natures of Jesus are eternally united. Therefore, it cannot be said that only one nature experienced something whereas the other nature did not. It is either Nestorianism or polytheism, argued Ahmad

• Arguing further, Ahmad explained that when Christians assert that God loves them or God speaks, they mean the collective persons of the Godhead. So when it is said that God died or God suffered – and given the claim that God is of one substance and undivided – then how can it be said that only one suffered?

• Ahmad mentioned that faced with this difficulty, there have been some Christians who believed that the Father also suffered alongside Jesus. This is the heresy of Patripassianiasm

• If Christians are to be theologically consistent, then they should worship Satan and not Jesus or God because Satan grants death (author of death), God is the author of life

• Jesus was not a maximally perfect being. He was ignorant of the hour. Therefore, ontologically, Jesus cannot be God as he does not fulfil the criteria of being a maximally perfect being. According to Ahmad, proto-Orthodox Christianity falls into the heresy of subordinationism

• Jesus was strengthened by angels, he was once overcome by death, he was ignorant of the hour and can, therefore, in no way be perfect. The Son of God lacks the attributes of God

Of course, much like Dr Costa, Ahmad too proceeded to repeat his above points throughout the remainder of the debate.

Thoughts on the Rebuttals

It seems that Dr Costa was not expecting such a presentation from Ahmad. Thus, there was really no significant engagement with Ahmad’s arguments. Instead, Dr Costa stated that Ahmad was making irrelevant arguments and avoiding the topic of the debate. This I consider to be a highly disingenuous claim because when discussing whether Jesus is God’s son – particularly when we know that people like Dr Costa take this to mean “more than a man” – then we are inevitably discussing the Trinity. Ahmad was rationally, philosophically and ontologically arguing why Jesus couldn’t be the Son of God, God, the second person of the Trinity, and was no more than a Prophet.

Even more unbelievable was Dr Costa’s following assertion: that by rejecting the authority of the Bible, Ahmad had declared himself to be a “kafir” because as per the Quran, a dreadful torment awaits you if you deny God’s revelation! But this understanding of Dr Costa is not an incontrovertible fact. According to Muslims, this is an example of Dr Costa’s esigesis of a passage of the Quran. Muslims dismiss his interpretation and understand the passage in a very different way (that God is referring to the original revealed books to the Prophets and not the Pauline epistles, the pseudonymous epistles of the New Testament and anonymous ancient biographical type documents such as the gospels).  Ahmad, later corrected Dr Costa and explained that the Quran was referring to the Injil revealed by God and not to ancient biographical type of documents such as the gospels.

This entire cockamamie argument regarding the “Quran endorses the Bible” has received a detailed refutation here: Does Islam Endorse The Bible?

Dr Costa asserted that while Ahmad rejects the New Testament documents and does not care about them, historians do care about what they have to say. I think Dr Costa may have misunderstood Ahmad. Ahmad stated clearly that he was taking a different approach, a philosophical approach, in order to argue why Jesus could not be “Son of God” – as in God, the second person of the Trinity. Hence, for him the assertions of the New Testament are irrelevant because they do not explain away the irrational nature of the Trinity as expounded by Ahmad. Of course, that does not follow that he believes that the New Testament documents should be tossed in the bin by historians who want to investigate historical issues.

Perhaps the most startling assertion by Dr Costa was as follows:

“…those who were eyewitnesses who compiled these documents, we’re interested in knowing what they say.”  Time slice: 48.56 – 49.03

Who are these eyewitnesses who “compiled” the New Testament documents? None. There really are none. The New Testament documents were not even authored by any “eyewitnesses” that we know of, let alone “compiled” by them.

We have no documents from any eyewitness from Jesus’ historical ministry.

Dr Costa also made the following analogy: Ahmad’s arguments are no different from the arguments made by Bahaullah, who claimed that Muhammad (saw) was not the last Prophet of God! But this is surely a false analogy. In a discussion pertaining to the person of Jesus, one is absolutely justified in arguing why Jesus couldn’t be the Son of God / God / second person of the Trinity – be it historically or philosophically. This is relevant. How is this even remotely akin to Dr Costa’s Bahaullah analogy? As Ahmad correctly explained, he was considering the topic through the prism of the philosophy of religion and attempting to ascertain if the Christian stance was rational. The Bahaullah analogy is nothing of this sort.

At one point in his first rebuttal, Dr Costa did attempt to engage with with some of Ahmad’s arguments: Jesus was not literally but only metaphorically the “son of God,” that Ahmad misunderstood Nestorianism because it taught that there were two persons in Christ and that Patripassianiasm was also rejected as a heresy by the Church. Ahmad, however, did not deny that these were heresies. As for God dying on the cross, Dr Costa said that in the incarnation it was only the humanity of Christ which died.  The little problem here is that Ahmad already explained why these answers were deficient – how the divine and the human nature cannot be separated – and how Christians such as Dr Costa are guilty of committing these heresies in their defences of the Trinitarian understanding of God.

Much like his opening statement, from time to time Dr Costa continued to have various goes at the Quran and the next section will be my take on his polemics.

Addressing Dr Costa’s outdated and irrational Polemics

1. Scholars do not approach the Quran to learn about the historical Jesus – this is a strange comment. Indeed the Quran arrives at the scene some 600 years after Jesus. If we a priori dismiss the possibility of miracles and revelation, and deny a priori the possibility of Muhammad (saw) having received revelation from God, then naturally we would not use the Quran to know anything about the historical Jesus. We would go to the earliest sources. In a similar manner, historians deem to be “historically worthless” the words attributed to Jesus pertaining to the prophets of the old. They would go to the earlier pre-New Testament documents to learn about the prophets who were active much before the time of Jesus and would not be approaching the words of Jesus to learn, say, about the historical David, historical Moses, the historical Abraham etc. This does not cause any “problems” for Muslims. We believe that the Quran is the revelation of God. Therefore, it does not matter if this revelation occurred 600 years after the earthly ministry of Jesus. The source is God and God knows what happened.

2.  Historical Jesus Research – Jesus as God and “Son” – From time to time Dr Costa mentioned the “historical Jesus.” He talked about the title “son of God,” cited some New Testament passages and commented how “liberal” scholars deem them to be authentic.

People like Dr Costa are terrific salesmen who are selling a highly deficient product, namely, their evangelical Jesus. I say this because the historical Jesus studies, as a whole, has completely destroyed the evangelical conception of Jesus. For example, consider the divinity of Jesus (emphasis added):

“One of the cardinal principles of historical Jesus research is that the belief in Jesus’s divinity is a post-resurrection phenomenon. During his life, his acts of power were understood as signs that God (or Satan) was working through him– not that he was God.

The gospel of John presents Jesus teaching that he’s divine, but most scholars treat this as a later interpretation rather than a historical fact because it’s so much more highly developed here than in the earlier gospels and gospel sources …” 1

Apologists such as Dr Costa speak as if the historical Jesus research is on their side whereas the truth is the complete opposite.

Consider now the term “son of God.” I cite here the conclusions of two mainstream New Testament scholars (all emphasis added).

Christopher Tuckett (after discussing this title in details, concludes):

“The term ‘son of God’ was thus a very wide-ranging one at the time of the New Testament. But if one thing is clear it is that, at least within a Jewish context, the term was used not infrequently and with no overtones of divinity being ascribed to the person referred to in this way.” 2

John Meier:

“In any event, one must beware of reading into the title [son of God] the meaning it acquired in later Trinitarian controversies.” 3

It is this *new* meaning in the post Jesus environment which the Quran rightly denies.

The above are mainstream historical Jesus views.

3. Why the Historical Jesus Research? Don’t all New Testament Scholars go to the “reliable” 1st Century New Testament writings? – if the New Testament writings are reliable historically, then why is there a need to do historical Jesus research? Why can’t we just read off the New Testament and take its claims at face value?

The answer is simple. Besides the most conservative of Christians, Historical Jesus scholars do not deem the New Testament to be a historically reliable source on the life of Jesus. They have devised criteria to figure out what Jesus probably did or did not say/do as related in the New Testament.

Virtually all scholars acknowledge the fact that there are both reliable and unreliable pieces of information within the canonical gospels.

Generally, scholars agree that stories about Jesus and his words were changed in different ways as these were passed along orally. The changes also occurred when written gospel documents began to appear and even thereafter. The difference of opinion is over the question of “how much/many” changes occurred. But all agree that changes did occur. How can we be sure that stories about Jesus  and his words were altered in different ways? Simple: by comparing the same stories in the canonical gospels. When we do this we encounter some major and many minor differences between them.

1. Jesus preached and taught and left an impact upon many. 2. His followers (and some who didn’t join him) remembered him and talked about his words and teachings, passing them on to others. 3. Here stories and words began changing in different ways; 4. gospel authors tapped into some/many of these traditions – which were already undergoing alterations – and further adapted them to suit their own particular needs. Some stories were changed minutely, some were significantly changed and some stories were even invented and some words were also invented and subsequently attributed to Jesus.

Of course, ultimately we do not know precisely and exactly how (and why) the changes occurred. All we can be reasonably certain about is that changes did nonetheless occur.  All the above type of things must have occurred.

As a result, scholars have devised a number of criteria to evaluate the grade of authenticity of material within the canonical gospels in an attempt to determine the probable authenticity/inauthenticity of the stories and sayings within them. When scholars read words attributed to Jesus within the gospels, they do not just take them to be Jesus’ verbal wording. As Tuckett explains:

“Nevertheless the nature of the Gospel tradition means that we cannot simply take everything recorded in all the Gospels as unquestionably genuine reports about what Jesus said or did in a pre-Easter situation.”4

Given the nature of the material within the canonical gospels, we need to use some type of criteria to make sense of the material and know what is or is not probably historical.

The criteria are themselves not foolproof and the use of some continues to be hotly debated whereas others are widely accepted. Generally, it is believed that multiple criteria need to be applied before we can come to a reasoned conclusion. We cannot just rely upon one criterion.

Furthermore, at the end of the day, we really cannot be certain. We can only speak in terms of probability and not certainty.

All of these points are conveniently ignored by apologists such as Dr Costa and they often speak about the Historical Jesus research as if it is on their side.

4. Where is the 1st century document which denies that Jesus was God’s son and presents the Islamic Jesus? – easy, there is no such document in existence.  Dr Costa is correct, the earliest writings, and the only surviving writings from the 1st century, happen to be the New Testament documents.

But here is the problem: the New Testament documents are not deemed to be reliable by mainstream historical Jesus scholars in what they have to say about Jesus. Therefore, as explained in #3 above,  scholars treat these documents critically, having devised criteria to ascertain as best as possible the authentic and inauthentic details within these writings.  These reconstructions of the historical Jesus are not to be found in any ancient Christian document, whether from the 1st or later centuries.

Once these documents are treated critically, we frequently get a picture of Jesus which is most removed from the evangelical view of Jesus and closer to the Muslim view of Jesus, even if not 100% identical. Typically, while there are disagreements over matters of detail, the below components are frequently observed in historical Jesus reconstructions:

• Jesus in his historical ministry did not claim to be god, divine, the second person of the trinity or “more than a man”

• Jesus was looked upon as God’s Prophet and he presented himself as God’s messiah – though what type of messiah continues to be debated by scholars

• Jesus restricted his preaching to the Jewish people / he confined his activity to Israel (quoting Ed Sanders)

• Jesus did not bring about a new religion

• Jesus is unlikely to have preached that he would die and be raised back to life

• Jesus was an observant Jew and did not overwrite the law; at most, he intensified some aspects of the law

• Jesus was a miracle worker / was accused of being a sorcerer

• Jesus preached repentance and the kingdom of God

• Jesus had disciples

There are many diverse reconstructions of the historical Jesus. But, frequently, the historical Jesus reconstructions are more similar to the general Muslim outline of Jesus than they are to the evangelical Jesus. In fact, the latter is very thoroughly and routinely dismissed again and again by historical Jesus scholars.

Consider James D. Tabor as an example.  He is a very controversial scholar and Muslims would immediately reject a number of things he has to say about the historical Jesus. But Tabor’s reconstruction of the historical Jesus is still, broadly speaking, more similar to the Islamic view as is readily acknowledged by him:

“Muslims do not worship Jesus, who is known as Isa in Arabic, nor do they consider him divine, but they do believe that he was a prophet or messenger of God and he is called the Messiah in the Quran. However, by affirming Jesus as Messiah they are attesting to his messianic message, not his mission as a heavenly Christ. There are some rather striking connections between the research I have presented in The Jesus Dynasty and the traditional beliefs of Islam.The Muslim emphasis on Jesus as messianic prophet and teacher is quite parallel to what we find in the Q source, in the book of James, and in the Didache. To be the Messiah is to proclaim a message, but it is the same message as that proclaimed by Abraham, Moses, and all the Prophets. Islam insists that neither Jesus nor Mohammed brought a new religion. Both sought to call people back to what might be called “Abrahamic faith.” This is precisely what we find emphasized in the book of James. Like Islam, the book of James, and the teaching of Jesus in Q, emphasize doing the will of God as a demonstration of one’s faith. Also, the dietary laws of Islam, as quoted in the Quran, echo the teachings of James in Acts 15 almost word for word: “Abstain from swine’s flesh, blood, things offered to idols, and carrion” (Quran 2:172)

… there is little about the view of Jesus presented in this book that conflicts with Islam’s basic perception.” 5

And this is the case we often encounter when examining other scholarly reconstructions of the historical Jesus.

5. The Quran is reliant upon Apocryphal Sources – This is a much outdated argument which is seldom made by modern Quranic scholars – except for the polemically inclined such as Dr Costa. In the last century, many non-Muslim scholars – who just so happened to be mostly Christians – envisaged the Prophet (saw) to have encyclopaedic knowledge,  with a treasure trove of Jewish and Christian writings at his (saw) disposal – both canonical and apocryphal – from which he (saw) was actively “copying” different stories, giving them twists in accordance with his (saw) taste.  Subsequent studies have disproved this hypothesis.

There are similarities as well as many differences between Quranic stories and parallels found in the canonical and non-canonical Jewish and Christian writings. There are no actual quotations and citations in the Quran from any Jewish-Christian writing. The closest similarity in wording is to be found in three tiny sentences:

A. “We have written in the Psalms after the reminder that ‘My righteous servants will inherit the earth.” – al-Anbiya 105 – compare with Psalms 37.29: “The righteous will inherit the land and dwell in it forever.”

B. “And God spoke directly with Moses.” – an-Nisa 164 – compare with Exodus 20:1:”And God spoke all these things to Moses, saying…”

C. “Indeed, those who have denied our revelations and rejected them arrogantly – the gates of heaven shall not be opened for them and they shall not enter paradise until the camel passes through the eye of the needle.” – al-Araf 40 – compare with Matthew 19:24: “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”

How is it that if Muhammad (saw) had so many documents at his disposal, that only in three small areas he (saw) decided to retain some similarity with the wording of his (saw) sources and didn’t bother to quote anything else? In the words of Prof. Griffith, there is a “…virtual non-existence of the text of the Bible in any of the Quran’s biblical reminiscences.” 6

On the contrary, scholars now tend to argue that the Quran was the very first Arabic document – the first book in Arabic. Stories about Jesus and stories about Biblical prophets were floating around orally during the time of Muhammad (saw) in his (saw) immediate environment. People knew about these stories orally. The Author of the Quran knew these stories and used them by “rectifying” them – correcting them and retelling them so as to say, “this is what really happened / this is how it actually happened.”

In his recent book, Prof. Sidney H. Griffith writes:

“For the past century or more, many Western scholars have studied the Bible in the Quran, looking for its sources and the presumed influences on its text in both canonical and non-canonical, Jewish and Christian scriptures and apocryphal writings. Most often they declared the Quranic readings to be garbled, confused, mistaken, or even corrupted when compared with the presumed originals. Most recent scholars, however, some more sensitive than their academic ancestors to the oral character, as opposed to a ‘written-text’ interface between Bible and Quran, have taken the point that the evident intertextuality that obtains in many places in the three sets of scriptures  … reflects an oral intermingling of traditions, motifs, and histories in the days of the Quran’s origins.” 7

And:

“The Bible is both in the Quran and not in the Quran. That is to say, it has virtually no textual presence, but the selected presence of an ‘interpreted Bible’ in Islamic scripture is undeniable. And the selection process involved in the inclusion of biblical reminiscences in the Quran, according to the hypothesis advanced here, is one determined by the Quran’s own distinctive prophetology … And what is more, the Quran is corrective of, even polemical toward the earlier the earlier readings of the ‘Scripture People’ …” 8

From a purely secular perspective, where we a priori dismiss the possibility of revelation and miracle, when faced with similarities and differences between two or more sources, we can only reach these type of explanations:

• text A copied from text B;

• text A and B are reliant upon the same source – oral or written;

• stories were circulating orally and used by multiple groups, ending up in different written sources

If two sources contain the same stories, whether with some differences or not, then there has to be an underlying explanation for this. Either a textual dependency between documents – with scholars debating the direction of this textual dependency – or both documents being reliant upon the same source,  both documents reliant upon oral traditions or a mixture of the two etc.

So in our case, the Quran mentions Jesus, Moses and David. The stories within the Quran about these and other prophets are similar to stories found in Jewish and Christian writings – with differences as well. How do we explain this? Secular historians who are a priori dismissing the possibility of revelation can only offer a variety of natural explanations, some more convincing than others.

This doesn’t cause any problems for Muslims. We believe that certain events did occur. These were recorded – in varying levels of accuracy – in written sources and circulated orally. God then gave a revelation to Muhammad (saw) and related the actual stories, what really happened, confirming the truth and negating the false elements in the stories of all the Prophets, from Adam to Jesus. Hence the similarities and differences between the Quran and parallel stories in Jewish and Christian writings.

The view proposed by most scholars such as Prof. Griffith, therefore, does not in any manner “negate” the Muslim belief or cause any “problems” for Muslims.

6. Prof Khalidi states that the “Muslim Jesus” is meta historical, he is not even a historical person, the Quranic Jesus is an argument, it has nothing in common with the Jesus of the gospels, in fact, he says that the Muslim Jesus is a “Muslim creation,” he is an artificial creation, he is “meta historical” – he is not even a historical person– Firstly, so what if this is Prof. Khalidi’s view? Dr Costa is more than happy to dismiss mainstream Historical Jesus studies and mainstream New Testament studies for the sake of his historically dubious evangelical Jesus, then why should Ahmad be concerned about the view of Tarif Khalidi? Surely, there are many more Christians who have objectionable things to say about Dr Costa’s view of the Bible than Muslims who say objectionable things about Ahmad’s view of the Quran.

Secondly, Dr Costa seems to have misunderstood Tarif Khalidi. Prof. Khalidi’s book is about the stories of Jesus in later post-Quranic writings from the second / eighth century to the twelfth / eighteenth century. Prof. Khalidi states:

“In referring to this body of literature, I shall henceforth use the phrase “Muslim gospel.” 9

It is this “Muslim gospel” which is labelled by Prof. Khalidi as “meta historical”:

“…the Muslim gospel assembled here has the advantage of a certain impact and novelty. Here is a Jesus who is on the one hand is shorn of Christology, but who on the other is endowed with attributes which render him meta-historical and even, so to speak, meta religious.” 10

Prof. Khalidi is not referring to the Quran. He is referring to the “Muslim gospel” i.e.  post-Quranic writings from the second / eighth century to the twelfth / eighteenth century.

Prof. Khalidi writes:

“… the Jesus of the Muslim gospel takes on an identity quite different from the one found in the Quran, the Quranic Jesus remains an important basis of his later manifestation.” 11

So the “Muslim gospel” and the Quran and two different writings – the former being the label given to a wide range of post-Quranic stories about Jesus.

Moving to the Quranic presentation of Jesus, Prof. Khalidi says:

“The Quranic Jesus is in fact an argument addressed to his more wayward followers, intended to convince the sincere and frighten the unrepentant. As such, he has little in common with the Jesus of the Gospels, canonical or apocryphal.Rather, the Quranic image bears its own special and corrective message, pruning, rectifying, and rearranging an earlier revelation regarded as notorious for its divisive and contentious sects. The Quranic Jesus issues, no doubt, from the “orthodox” and canonical as well as the “unorthodox” and apocryphal Christian tradition. Thereafter, however, he assumed a life and function of his own, as often happens when one religious tradition emanates from another.” 12

Indeed, the Quranic Jesus is unique, with points of similarities and differences from all writings – canonical and non-canonical.  It emanates from canonical / non-canonical  tradition as the Author interacts with these traditions, arguing and presenting what He deems to be the correct view of Jesus.

As explained in #5 above, this sort of explanation is perfectly valid from a purely secular perspective. It causes no “problems” if one believes in the Quran as the Word of God, who confirmed accurate details about Jesus  – preserved in a variety of written and oral sources – and who dismissed and denied the inaccurate and inappropriate elements of the Jesus story. This explains the differences and similarities between the Quranic retellings and parallels in other documents.

7. Quran gets the Trinity wrong and asserts that Mary was part of the Trinity? – not so according to modern non-polemical scholarship.  The Qu’ran nowhere spells out the Trinity in 5:116.  It does not mention the Trinity’s contents. In other words, the Quran does not state, “The Trinity consists of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit; they are not three gods but one God.”

Rather than referring to the Trinity, or to a “deviant” formulation of it, the Quran presents an eschathological interrogation of Jesus in which his divinity and that of his mother is denied. Now we know that Christians do worship Jesus as god. We also know that not only in the past did some groups elevate the status of Mary, but that the largest group of Christians, the Catholics direct worship towards her as “mother of God.” From the Quranic perspective, this IS akin to the worship of two of God’s creatures besides Him.

Therefore, the Quran is only stating how these acts are viewed/seen/looked upon by its Author – God.

David Thomas explains that this passage is:

“…a denial that Jesus and Mary are equal with God, and a warning (q.v.) against making excessive claims about them. Thus, it can be understood as an instance of the warning against the divinization of Jesus that is given elsewhere in the Qur’ān and a warning against the virtual divinization of Mary…” 13

The verse is to be understood as:

“… a warning against excessive devotion to Jesus and extravagant veneration of Mary, a reminder linked to the central theme of the Qur’ān that there is only one God and he alone is to be worshipped …” 14

This is also confirmed by Sidney Griffith, who writes:

“Surely the standard Christian proclamation that Jesus is God, the son of God, and Mary his mother, is the mother of God, would have been sufficient to elicit the Qur’an’s adverse judgment.” 15

It is equally plausible that the Quran intentionally simplifies the Christian belief in the divinity of Jesus to expose its weakness when analysed from the strict monotheistic perspective of the Quran.

This is how non polemicist western academics are reading the Qur’an.  Very different from the misreadings of the polemical authors such as Dr Costa and friends.

8. The Gospel of John and Historical Jesus scholars – Dr Costa likes to mention Historical Jesus scholarship now and then. But he does not inform people that the Gospel of John is deemed to be a highly unreliable source to know about the historical Jesus by mainstream New Testament scholars. Even scholars who attempt to make some use of the fourth gospel acknowledge that it is a highly interpretive account of Jesus. There are many conservative scholars who have made such acknowledgements and a sample of conservative scholarship can be viewed here:

http://www.call-to-monotheism.com/shamounion_straw_men_and_obfuscations__a_critical_commentary_on_sam_shamoun_s__the_purpose_and_cause_of_jesus__death

For now, I just present the view of one of the most prominent Historical Jesus scholar:

“It is impossible to think that Jesus spent his short ministry teaching in two such completely different ways, conveying such different contents, and there were simply two traditions, each going back to Jesus, one transmitting 50 per cent of what he said and another one the other 50 per cent, with almost no overlaps. Consequently, for the last 150 or so years scholars have had to choose. They have almost unanimously, and I think entirely correctly, concluded that the teaching of the historical Jesus is to be sought in the synoptic gospels and that John represents an advanced theological development, in which meditations on the person and work of Christ are presented in the first person, as if Jesus said them. “16

Again note: mainstream scholarship has to be dismissed again and again by Dr Costa and friends.

+++++++

1. Catherine M. Murphy, The Historical Jesus For Dummies, 2007, John Wiley & Sons, Indianapolis: Indiana, p. 178.

2. Christopher Tuckett, Christology And The New Testament: Jesus And His Earliest Followers, 2001, Edinburgh University Press, p. 24.

3. John P. Meier, “Reflections on Jesus-of-History Research Today,” in James H. Charlesworth (Editor), Jesus’ Jewishness: Exploring the Place of Jesus in Early Judaism, 1996, The American Interfaith Institute, New York: The Crossroad Herder Publishing Company, p. 100.

4. Christopher M. Tuckett, Christology and the New Testament: Jesus and His Earliest Followers, op. cit., p. 203.

5. James D Tabor, The Jesus Dynasty: Stunning New Evidence about the Hidden History of Jesus, 2006, HarperElement, pp. 287 – 288.

6. Sidney H. Griffith, The Bible in Arabic: The Scriptures of the “People of the Book” In The Language of Islam, 2013, Princeton University Press, p. 91.

7. ibid p. 56.

8. ibid p. 95.

9. Tariff Khalidi (Editor & Translator) & Edward W. Said (General Editor), The Muslim Jesus: Sayings and Stories in Islamic Literature, 2003 Edition, Harvard University Press, p. 3.

10. ibid p. 45.

11. ibid p. 6.

12. ibid pp. 16-17.

13. EQ, Vol. 5, p. 370.

14. ibid.

15. Sidney H. Griffith, The Church in the Shadow of the Mosque: Christians and Muslims in the World of Islam, 2007, Princeton University Press, p. 29.

16. E. P. Sanders, The Historical Figure Of Jesus, 1993, Penguin Books, pp. 70-71.

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and Allah knows best.

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