I’ll be publishing a review of this work this week. It is a fascinating and highly scholastic work, written in accessible language that delves deeply into Biblical scholarship and their recent attempts at maligning Islam, most specifically the claims of Craig Evans. I very strongly recommend this work and hope that many Muslims can pick it up as it provides some excellent material to help us respond to missionaries when they try to use ISIS as a means of preaching their hatred against Islam.
However the author didn’t stop there, he proceeded to discuss other prominent topics relevant to Craig Evans including the historical Jesus, the Biblical presentation of Jesus and their relation to the Qur’anic view of Jesus.
The book’s description is as follows:
This is a critical examination of a number of extravagant claims made by the New Testament scholar, Craig A. Evans, and the polemicist, Jeremiah J. Johnston, in their recently co-authored book, “Jesus and the Jihadis: Confronting the Rage of ISIS: The Theology Driving the Ideology.” Unfortunately, the authors direct their own propaganda styled rage upon the religion of Islam itself and the person of Muhammad.
In this book we will see that the authors’ rage towards Islam often compels them to misquote the Quran, even fabricate claims regarding it, unleash many untruths concerning Islamic religious texts, entirely bypass normative Islamic scholarship and distort the history of Islam. They are not the least bit shy to express their utter contempt towards Islam. Examples are provided in this book to substantiate these claims.
The authors are on the same wave length with ISIS. They “use” Islamic texts using ISIS’ non-scholarly methodology. The rich interpretative tradition of Islam simply does not matter.
This book will show that contrary to the claims of the authors, the Islamic religious texts categorically speak against wanton violence and the killing of civilians, so strongly indeed that a major terrorist organisation, much larger than al-Qaeda, the Al-Gama’ah al-Islamiyah , had to renounce violence after a detailed study of Islamic religious texts.
Also discussed are the topics of the historical Jesus research, the divinity of Jesus, source criticism and Biblical and Quranic eschatologies. It is argued that the basic Quranic outline of Jesus comports well with the results of much of historical Jesus research.
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.
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.
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.
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:
David himself said:
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?
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?
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.
Jonathan still insists that Khalid Yasin is a White man. If he can’t tell the truth in simple matters like this, how doe she expect anyone to take him seriously? Check our previous article here for more information.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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’.
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.
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…
An apologist is one who presents a ‘reasoned defense’ of something, whether that be a faith, an ideology, an argument, a belief, etc. David Wood of the anti-immigrant, right-wing blog Answering Muslims, is a self-professed ISIS apologist (he defends ISIS’ beliefs), supporter (supports their theological beliefs as the ‘true Islam’) and recruiter (condemns Muslims who do not ‘truly follow their Islam’).
David Wood
For many years, David has repeatedly sought to defend and promote ISIS’ violent beliefs. He’s shared many of their common beliefs about the Qur’an and Islam. In a video published last year, David Wood sought to legitimize ISIS’ medieval and violent interpretation of the Qur’an by arguing that the terrorist group’s approach to the Qur’an was not only valid, but the most appropriate and most valid means of understanding the Islamic scripture. He further argued in the video, that ISIS’ version and brand of violent Islam, was the ‘truest form of Islam’, that ‘correctly represented the teachings of the Islamic Prophet’.
As can be seen in the above video, David, who is a career apologist in the interfaith community, attempted to justify and qualify ISIS’ actions and beliefs by appealing to the Islamic scripture. The video which has garnered over 250, 000 views is one of the very few ISIS videos used to defend and legitimize the terrorist group’s brand of Islam. ISIS supporters have traditionally attempted to legitimize their violent actions by re-interpreting the Qur’an and Prophetic Sunnah to suit their violent message. David’s video sought to legitimize ISIS’ actions by presenting a select few passages of the Qur’an and by providing his own interpretation of those passages within a violent context.
This ISIS recruitment video, which has been shared on YouTube, seeks to encourage Western Muslims to believe that ISIS’ faith is the correct faith to follow. David argues that Muslims who do not follow these violent interpretations of the Qur’an are actually failing to practise Islam properly. As an ISIS supporter, David rejects the notion of a true Islam, outside of ISIS’ teachings (in a debate with anti-ISIS Muslim Osama Abdallah, David argues that ISIS is the true Islam that Muslims must follow). Similarly, as an ISIS recruiter, David is against Muslim migration to Europe and the Americas. He shares the terrorist group’s belief that Muslims must stay in the newly created ‘Khilafa’, and that they must be rejected from entering Western nations, adhering to the belief that Western nations are Dar al Harb.
In an attempt to further legitimize and promote ISIS’ ideology, David justified the Paris attack by ISIS as a ‘true Jihad’. This however, should have been expected, as David had previously released a video teaching the ‘three stages of Jihad’, at one point in his video lesson he proclaims that the third and final stage is to practise terrorism against non-Muslims. These two videos are part of ISIS’ attempt to recruit Muslims who are following other forms of Islam, the traditional forms of Sunni Islam. David’s videos are ISIS tutorials on their approach to, and understanding of the Islamic scriptures and beliefs. As an ISIS apologist, legitimizer, and recruiter, David has perhaps the largest audience of them all. In a Twitter post dated December 4th 2015, David Wood posted another tweet endorsing and teaching the belief that Muslims must, ‘fight those who do not believe in Allah’.
It remains whether to be seen why David, despite his popularity as an ISIS recruiter, who openly teaches and shares video lessons about their doctrine, is being allowed to remain actively spreading ISIS’ message on social media. His video lessons about following the true teachings of ISIS’ brand of Islam are also being funded through donations. As recently as a few months ago, David openly called for donations to fund equipment for his recruitment videos. In one post he claims to have received over $1999 (USD), to purchase cameras to use in his debates, one of which he argued that ‘Muslims should be violent because the Qur’an teaches them to be so’ (see his debate, is the Qur’an a book of peace?).
As a Muslim who opposes the message, teachings and actions of ISIS, I am appalled at David Wood’s public legitimizing and defending of ISIS’ beliefs. I reject ISIS’ beliefs and consider them to be heretical, whereas David Wood considers their beliefs to be authentic and the ‘true Islam’.
Calling Christians 
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