Tag Archives: 2014

November 2014 – A Month of Records Due to Jay Smith!

The month of November 2014 has brought Calling Christians some great new achievements that were driven by Jay Smith’s missionary behaviour! Due to Smith’s exaggerated claims during his debate with Dr. Ally, I wrote a paper in response to him, that paper led Calling Christians to new heights:

We’d like to thank Jay Smith for leading Calling Christians to new heights, to new successes and to giving us a wider audience than we’ve ever had! More to come! Look out for posts in the next few days about Jay’s planned response to the paper, his arguments, his references and his criticisms. Unknown to him, sources close to him are embarrassed by his lack of honesty and have decided to fill us in on his plans!

and God knows best.

 

Jay Smith Runs Away from Debate Challenges

Two Sundays ago, prominent Muslim debaters, Br. Zakir Hussain and Br. Ayaz Uddin, met Jay Smith at Hyde Park and challenged him to two debates. Smith refused to debate on the topic whether Jesus is God or not, his reasoning as he states is that it’s clearly obvious and thus not debatable. Well, can’t Brs. Zakir and Ayaz reply the same, that the Prophet’s prophethood is obvious and thus, not debatable?

I find it very odd, that Jay Smith, religiously goes to Hyde Park to debate about Islam & Christianity, and when challenged with an actual debate, he refuses to do so. What is the point of screaming at people every Sunday, and boasting about your debate skills, if you’re refusing to debate on a stage, for a scheduled and moderated debate?

Please enable subtitles to see what each person is saying in the videos.

What is Jay afraid of? Why is he running from Muslims? Can any Christian tell us?

and God knows best!

Jay Smith’s Story Does Not Add Up

On Sunday 16th November, two prominent UK Muslim speakers/ debaters, Br. Ayaz and Br. Zakir Hussein both went to Speaker’s Corner, Hyde Park (London) to confront Jay Smith. They had decided to challenge him to a debate, the video of that challenge will be uploaded soon. The reason I’m mentioning this, is that while speaking to Smith, they told him that, “Ijaz says hi!“, to which he responded that I was a liar and that he’s preparing a response to my paper.

The problem is, and I hope he realises this soon so that he can stop embarrassing himself – he doesn’t need to prepare a response to me. Following the debate, Smith released an email in which he explains that he’s been studying the topic of Qur’anic manuscripts for sometime, with the dates of January 2014 and March 2014 being mentioned. Given that the debate happened at the end of September, it would then mean that Smith had been preparing for this debate for some 9 months or so.

With 9 months of preparation, research and study, he entered into the debate with what appeared to be a large stack of papers which contained that very research, of which he shared several of them with the audience:

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At one point in the debate, he remarked that he’d share his research with the public, and that it was available for anyone to see should they request it. So what does this all mean? Since the day of his debate with Dr. Shabir, he has possessed 9 months of research, collected into that large stack of papers several inches thick on the table beside him. So, the problem is, what does he need to prepare in response to me, if he already has 9 months of research several inches thick already prepared?

Especially when he declared that the research was ready for anyone to see! So what exactly does he need to prepare? Either he did his research over a period of 9 months and had it ready on the day of the debate, or, given the countless errors and lies I found him making during the debate, he really has no research to present for us and is now scrambling to get something done. So Smith, which is it? It’s time for you to clear the air. Either you lied during the debate or you lied after the debate and on Sunday when you made those remarks. Which is it? Can’t get your story straight it seems.

Since you said the research would be shared with anyone who requests it, then I proudly declare that on this day, I request it! Send it over to callingchristians@gmail.com, I’ll be waiting! For everyone else, you can download and view the 53 page paper on Qur’anic manuscripts here.

and Allah knows best.

Samuel Green Changes Views on the Bible

Muslims have always been clear on the status of the Qur’an and Qur’anic translations. The Qur’an is scripture only in the Arabic language, translations of the Qur’an into other languages are only representations of the Qur’an, they are representations of scripture but not scripture in and of themselves. As such, a Muslim’s salaah or prayer is only valid if one recites the Qur’an in Arabic, the original language in which it was revealed. A Muslim fully understands that the English translation of the Qur’an can be wrong, as a translation depends on the understanding of the translator. Therefore, a translation is representative of someone’s understanding of the Qur’an from its original language to a different language. Whereas the Qur’an itself in Arabic is as God has revealed it. This is why, when missionaries criticise the Qur’an, they immediately go to the English translation which best suits their understanding as opposed to the primary text of the Qur’an in Arabic. Christians have boasted that the Bible is a scripture regardless of what language it is in. The New Testament originally written in Greek, is equally scripture alongside an English or Chinese translation. Whereas, for a Muslim, the Qur’an in Arabic is scripture and the Qur’an in English is a representation or interpretation of the scripture, they are not equal.

This however, may no longer be the case with Pastor Samuel Green. Posed with a question concerning a Syriac version of the New Testament, instead of defending it as scripture, he discarded the Syriac version as merely a translation which is not the same as the original. Pastor Samuel, has indeed now accepted the Muslim belief that only the original is scripture and the translation is not! I was very surprised to see him using this view, knowing that I have never heard him say this before.

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For once, we Muslims can agree with the Pastor. Translations should be treated as translations and scripture treated as scripture!

and Allah knows best!

 

Jay Smith is a Professor?

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Is this a……joke? Jay Smith is most certainly not a professor at any academic institution. He is the only person I know to have been attempting a PhD for 16 years and to date has no original research to show for it. Now he’s parading himself as a Professor. Increasingly I cannot find myself able to distinguish between him and Ergun Caner.

During the first few minutes of his presentation he holds two books in his hand. The Bible and the Qur’an. He held up the Qur’an and said that Muslims can only read the Qur’an in Arabic therefore it tells him that the God of the Qur’an can only speak Arabic. Then, he held up the Bible and said you can read it in all languages, so this tells him that the God of the Bible can speak all languages. He then called upon the audience to challenge Muslims with this argument to demonstrate that the Christian God is greater than the Islamic God. To my surprise, the audience erupted with cheering! There is no way a sane person would cheer something so insipid and inane, I felt embarrassed that someone can possibly utter such statements in front of an audience.

To clarify why this is a bad argument, both Muslims and Christians agree that the primary text is the most accurate text. All languages have language devices. For example, Arabic has a syntax construct called the dual. There are singular nouns, dual nouns and then plural nouns. The English language only has the singular and plural nouns. Therefore the dual nouns are lost somewhere in translation between the two languages. Muslims therefore only consider the primary revelation to be the word of God, translations are representative of the word of God, but they are not wholly complete given the language device differences. This is why Muslims adhere to the primary text and strive to study it in its original language. Christians also, extract their exegeses and lectionaries from the Greek Critical texts of the New Testament. However, this is done by their scholars who invest in learning the Greek language of the New Testament.

What this means, is that while Muslims place greater importance on learning and interacting with their scripture in its primary form, this is only relegated for the scholars of the Christ religion, thus their is a schism, a demarcation, a disparity between the scripture and the Christian lay man, while the Muslim has no such disconnect from God’s word. Thus, this is not only a poor argument to use, it’s as if you’re saying your scripture is not important enough to be studied in its primary language and as such, you are comfortable with excluding yourself from having the ability to interact with the scripture in the language it was written in. Muslims do not want to exclude themselves from God’s word, but apparently Jay Smith is comfortable with this and so are the Christians at Veritas Apologetics University. Muslims value their word from God, Christians, do not.

and God knows best!

Update on the Paper, “Response to Jay Smith’s Mistakes”

A number of years ago when I debated Anthony Rogers of Answering Islam, a statement I had made during that debate had angered some Christians. I had mentioned that some Christians worshiped the Holy Prepuce, which historically is accurate but was very upsetting to a number of missionaries. What followed was a video by Anthony Rogers, in which he had taken a brother’s personal translation of a narration that was incorrect and unique to his website that was framed in a polemical manner. Using the brother’s mistranslation, the missionaries produced a video that was supposed to be a response to my allegations in the debate. After I had seen their video, I announced that in a few days’ time I would publish a video response. Several days passed and the deadline passed, so I pushed the date back by a few days, again that new deadline was missed and another deadline was declared. The missionaries, seeing that the deadline was constantly being changed assumed that I couldn’t respond to their video, that the arguments they had presented were strong and so I was trying to pretend I could respond to their video when I could not. I saw their comments about me, I saw them boasting and celebrating that they finally got one over on me, they had a victory against Islam!

This however, was not the case. While editing my video response I was contacted by the brother whose mistranslation was used. He showed me how the missionaries had used his website and read word for word from his article. The brother decided that he was at fault and would like to assist in the response video. So, we both began to work on the video. This was a major breakthrough, not only was a response going to be made but I had evidence that the missionaries stole someone’s research, word for word! As we gathered more information to put in our video, the deadlines passed and the missionaries had assumed I was having difficulty in making a response. Rather, so much work was being put into the video, deadlines passed because of the amount of information and sources we kept finding reasons to include. If I could remember clearly, there were three brothers and two sisters who contributed to the video. We were going to correctly translate the Arabic sources the brother had used and subsequently mistranslated. So we had more than one person translate the material, ensure it was valid, authenticate citations, there was a buzz of activity and sure enough, the video was almost done. In the end, the video was released and to all of us involved in producing it, we can say that it was very successful in what we had set out to achieve.

Not only had the missionaries been exposed as plagiarists, they had falsely claimed someone else’s research for themselves, falsely claimed to have access to sources they didn’t have, falsely claimed to be able to translate fusha arabic, etc. The video was successful, so successful that the missionaries appeared on ABN TV and swore to release a second video in response to ours. It’s been three years now and they have yet to release any video. It would seem like deja-vu all over again in regard to my paper about Jay Smith’s mistakes. When I began the paper, I didn’t have the intention to publish something that would be very detailed. However, as my paper began to spread, there were requests to expand on what I had written and suddenly the paper went from responding to a few of Jay’s erratic statements to fully critiquing his opening statement in a minute by minute breakdown. I learned from my mistake the previous time, in this instance I have not yet set a date for when the paper would be published. The draft was made public for a few reasons. Most importantly, it was made public soon after the debate because I wanted to show the missionaries that we knew Jay had lied and lied badly. Jay had my questions sent to him on a number of occasions in which he refused to answer them. Even in a sit down with some persons who had attended the debate and noted his errors, he refused to explain himself.

The funny thing is, Christians were elated, they thought that Jay Smith had academic arguments and sources, until my draft paper was released. Showing the glaring contradictions between Jay’s claims and the works of the author’s he had mentioned, definitely burst their bubble. The fall out of having published the draft paper was that the missionaries went on the attack against me. We have to remember that Jay claimed to have read these academic publications, that he had access to his friend’s private thesis which was not yet published, therefore how could I, a nobody in the Caribbean have access to his friend’s works? How could I have access to Dr. Deroche’s or Dr. Tayyar’s publications? So, the allegations began to flow in that I was pretending to have possession of those works. That’s until I included quotes from Dr. Deroche’s works, even from his 2009 French work – we had it translated. What was worse is that his gang of friends accused me of lying about Dan Brubaker’s thesis, that’s until I published the cover page of his thesis with his supervisors’ approval signatures! Then came the allegation that Jay did read the works of the authors’ names he had mentioned and that I was lying. So, I turned the tables, I said I’ll gladly admit that I am wrong if anyone could prove that Jay did have access to and did read those works accurately.

A missionary friend of Samuel Green and Shamoun and of Jay himself, while commenting on Br. Paul’s blog claimed that he had received a summary of a paper by a Turkish scholar and the paper itself from Jay. I challenged him to forward that email to me to prove me wrong and since then, he’s never replied to the challenge and has not sent any email. Thereby proving his dishonesty. I would like to say though, that if Paulus the missionary does read this and if he would like to prove me wrong, he can send the email and I’d still gladly concede that I was mistaken. Another missionary criticised me for again, lying on Jay. This missionary is also a friend of Jay’s buddies, they were all there to defend Jay’s character. That’s until a missionary posted a quote from one of the Turkish scholar’s works which directly contradicted Jay’s claim, by almost an entire century! To date, that missionary known as Robert Wells/ Radical Moderate has yet to explain how Jay could utter such deceits if he had actually read the scholar’s work. Let’s take a look at their claims and their sudden silence. Here we have the missionary claiming to have received the email with the scholar’s work from Jay:

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Here’s my challenge, which I issued for a second time and he has since, yet to respond to:

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Here’s Robert Wells/ Radical Moderate’s comment in response to mines. You’d notice that when I mention the glaring error that Jay had made in relation to the fully quoted and cited text from the Turkish scholar’s work, he attempted to evade the evidence and the follow up question. He then sarcastically conceded that I had read Dr. Tayyar’s work more accurately than Jay himself:

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The quote he’s responding to is as follows:

“Altıkulaç dates the Topkapi manuscript to “the second half of the first century A.H. and the first half of the second Century A.H. [due to] “vowelling and dotting.” (i.e. early – mid 8th century) (Altıkulaç, ‘Al-Mushaf al-Sharif’ 2007:81)”

Which clearly states that the Topkapi Manuscripts date to the second half of the first century, which would be from 600 CE to 699 CE, or within the 1st year after hijrah, which is clearly not the 8th century as Jay had claimed. So if Jay did read the Turkish scholar’s work, then he either lied by omission or, if I were to give him the benefit of the doubt, he hadn’t read the work at all and had someone inform him that the scholar dated the manuscript to the second century/ 8th century, which is clearly inaccurate and misrepresents what the scholar stated. Unfortunately, both Robert and Paulus have yet to respond. The end result of all of this drama, is that I do possess the works I have publicly claimed to have, for those who viewed the draft paper before I made it private, I utilized several quotes and citations from those works. What is clear is that the missionaries are confused that I had access to those works and more importantly, that I knew their contents better than Jay Smith and by producing a paper with his intentional lies and deceits, I was denigrating the character of Jay Smith which as a result, casts a damning light on the state of Christian Apologetics. While I can’t give a certain date on when the paper would be fully published or when the accompanying video would be released, I can confirm that the only hindrance to its release has been by worsening health which prevents me from working on the paper on a consistent basis. However, I have a few translators preparing some select quotes from the works of a number of the authorities that Jay appealed to, which would surely embarrass him more and expose him for the charlatan that he is. What I can say, is that the paper should be released early next week or possibly this coming weekend, with the video a week after that – God Willing.

wa Allaahu ‘Alam.

Review: Jesus in the Bible and Qur’an, a Discussion by Shaykh Awal and Pastor Mohammed

Introduction:

Pastor Mohammed has an MA in Theology and represents the Seventh Day Adventist Church. He’s the child of a marriage comprised of a Muslim father and a Christian mother. This explains his religion and it’s odd juxtaposition with his Islamic surname.

Sheikh Mohammed Awal, founder and director of Zaitun Dawah Institute (ZDI), a think tank research center with head quarters in Seattle Washington State USA, and branches in NY, Atlanta, Nigeria, and Ghana.

Sh. Awal is a scholar in Islamic Sciences, Comparative Religion and logic. He is an Islamic apologist, a debater, a motivational speaker and a prolific writer. He holds a diploma in Agric. Science and Irrigation Engineering from College of Irrigation and Surveying, and a degree from the prestigious Kaduna Polytechnic College of Environmental Studies both In Nigeria. He also bags a diploma in logic and philosophy from Seattle Institute of Advance Studies. Read more about him here.

Opening Discussion:

Pastor Mohammed began the discussion and was very well spoken. He did not try to prove that Jesus was a deity nor was he preaching to Muslims. The Pastor did not stray from the topic and stayed very well within its delimits. His presentation involved a number of slides displaying both the Bible and the Qur’aan in respect to our shared beliefs about Jesus the Christ. Below are photos of the Pastor while speaking and one of his slides (click to expand photos).

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He mentioned that both the Bible and Qur’aan taught that Jesus was a Prophet, the Messiah, did miracles by God’s will, raised the dead, cured the sick etc.

Shaykh Awal agreed with the presentation of the Pastor and so decided not to repeat what the Pastor had already spoken. He chose to elaborate and expand on the points previously presented. Shaykh Awal mentioned that Jesus was sent for the lost sheep of Israel, that Jesus came to confirm the Torah and practised God’s laws. His opening also focused on Jesus’ prophesying the coming of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ and referenced the comforter in John 14, 15 and 16, as well as quoting Isaiah 29:12.

Cross Fire Questions and Answers (3 each):

Shaykh Awal opened this round and asked the following three questions:

  1. Does Jesus’ ability to perform miracles make him God?
  2. Why was Jesus baptised?
  3. How did the Prophets (Abraham, Moses, Jesus) pray?

The Pastor’s answers are as follows:

  1. Performing miracles does not make Jesus unique. It is one of the predicted signs of the Messiah that he would perform miracles according to Isaiah. His performing of signs and miracles does not make him unique or divine.
  2. Jesus was baptised to fulfill the prophesy of the Messiah being righteous. Matthew 3 expands on this view. The rite of baptism is symbolic and Muslims can read Qur’aan 2:138 or thereabout for more information. Jesus was baptised so that others would follow this practise and be forgiven.
  3. Muslims pray more like the Prophets of the Torah than the Christians do. He referred to how both Muslims and the Prophets like Moses pray by bowing and prostrating and he believes this is how Jesus prayed. He finished by encouraging Christians to also pray this way.

The Pastor then poised his three questions to Shaykh Awal and they are as follows:

  1. You spoke about not using the English word for God and recommended that we should use the Arabic term as it is more accurate. Before the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ came, what term did the Arab pagans, Jews and Christians use for God?
  2. You said that Jesus only came to the Jews, but I’ve read otherwise. Have you considered John 3:16-17?
  3. You mentioned the Torah, Zabur, etc. If the Torah is for the Jews and the Injeel for the Christians, are these books for all the followers of God or only these specific people?

Shaykh Awal answered these questions by stating:

  1. El, Elah, Alah, these are the Semitic words for God before the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ came. The Qur’aan mentions that some of the Arabs were Hanifah (righteous), following the example of Abraham who was Hanif. They followed his practice of referring to the Semitic word for God, Allaah. The Prophet’s ﷺ father’s name was Abdullah and so we know from this that the Arabs knew of God’s name as Allaah and so they used it before the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ was born.
  2. I’m yet to see a single place in the New Testament where Jesus went outside of Israel and preached to the gentiles. Look at Matthew 15:21, a Caananite woman came to Jesus and he showed her no mercy because she was not Jewish. Why won’t he heal her? When Jesus was alive, where did he say he came for the entire world?
  3. The Torah of the Qur’aan was given to the Jewish peoples. Nowhere does the Torah state that it is for all of mankind. The Injeel is a confirmation of the Torah. Jesus obeyed the laws of Moses as well as what God revealed to him.

Question and Answer Period from the Audience:

Note: I was unable to record the questions and their answers but I did listen to them. Most of the questions were about Jesus being God, they were not in relation to the topic. This was my question posed to the Pastor but he did not choose to read it or respond to it (click to expand):

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My handwriting is not this bad, but I was in a hurry and had to borrow someone’s pen while writing on a chair. It’s absolutely not a fair example of my handwriting. The question and answer period lasted roughly 40 or so minutes and concluded with a question for both speakers, “Shaykh Awal, what is your view of Jesus and Pastor Mohammed, what is your view of Muhammad ﷺ “. One of the questions posed to the Pastor by Br. Reyaz was, “If Jesus died for the sins of the world, does that mean my sins are forgiven and taken care of?.

Location & Organizers:

The Islamic Da’wah Movement and the Muslim Youth of Trinidad and Tobago did an excellent job in setting up and advertising for the event. Br. Zaheer Ali was there and took many photos. Br. Asad Yacobali did an excellent job in facilitating parking and distributing paper for the questions from the audience. Br. Shezad Mohammed moderated the event/ was the chairman and did an excellent job in managing the events on the stage.

The location at Motorway Hall had a lot of space for parking and accommodated quite a large crowd of around 150 – 200 persons. The crowd consisted of a large number of Muslims and the Christian side was adequately represented. Two Pastors from Pastor Mohammed’s Seventh Day Adventist Church accompanied him and sat among the Muslim males. Seating was segregated for the Muslim community.

Conclusion:

The event was well organized and both speakers were on point and stayed well within the scope of the discussion’s title. The dialogue was lively and entertaining, while being informative but very casual. There were no heated exchanges, no personal attacks by the speakers. They kept it very professional and focused on delivering accurate and factual information to the audience. Shaykh Awal did a splendid job in representing the Muslim side and we definitely look forward to more of his dialogues and discussions. Pastor Mohammed was respectful and cordial, I expect him to continue dialoguing with the Muslim community.

and Allaah knows best.

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