Tag Archives: Answering Islam

Dr. James White Rebukes Sam Shamoun

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On the 1st of February 2017, Dr. James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries responded to Sam Shamoun’s incessant attacking of him, dating back to March of 2016. Following months of insults, mockery, and taunting by Sam, Dr. White finally responded to him given the fallout after his dialogues with Dr. Yasir Qadhi. As a consequence of the dialogues, Sam Shamoun led a campaign, asking his social media followers to stop Dr. White’s ministry, which included calling event halls, Churches and conferences to request that they cancel his appearances.

In March of 2016, Sam Shamoun began to openly insult and mock Dr. White for associating and debating Br. Yusuf Ismail of South Africa. In November and December of 2016, following Dr. White’s dismissal of Robert Morey’s call to “destroy Islam” by “destroying the Kabah” in Makkah, Sam Shamoun became increasingly infuriated with Dr. White. Finally, in January of 2017, following Dr. White’s dialogue with Dr. Qadhi in a Church, Sam Shamoun openly endorsed statements referring to Dr. White as an apostate:

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Comment on Sam’s Facebook Page referring to Dr. White as an apostate.

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Sam Shamoun “liked” the comment.

The below video is the summarized version of the 2 hour long Dividing Line episode which aired on the 1st of February, 2017. In this episode, Dr. White responded to Sam’s claims as posted on social media, while also commenting on Sam’s behaviour, trustworthiness (or lack thereof) and anger issues. As acknowledged, Sam cannot control his temper, has anger issues, is openly vitriolic and abusive, and is also referred to as a bully. The summarized version as presented below, includes 40 minutes of Dr. White directly addressing Sam Shamoun:

An earlier Missionary Mishap post covered a timeline of events leading up to the Dividing Line program. We have also produced two short videos based on statements made from the Dividing Line program, one where Dr. White states that Sam views himself as a “Prophet“, as well as another video where Sam’s uncontrolled temper, anger and foulmouthed behaviours are addressed.

and God knows best.

 

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

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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.

Refutation: Comparing the Bible and the Qur’an

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This article is in response to another writing of the same title by Pastor Samuel Green, “Comparing the Bible and the Qur’an“.

Reason 1. The Context of the Bible and Qur’an

Scripture is supposed to be God’s message to mankind, it does not have to be a history book or a biography. It needs to mention what is needed to be known so that the message could be understood. The Qur’aan does not revolve around the life of Muhammad ﷺ, but it does relate many relevant verses about occurrences throughout the Prophet’s ﷺ life. The Qur’aan is not of human production and thus unlike the Bible it is not ordered through human concepts of organization: chronologically, topically, by (chapter) length, by name (title) or alphabetically. It would be crass to expect the Qur’aan to be ordered like the Bible or to provide the same information as the Bible. Whereas the Bible consists of biographies, letters, revelation, doxologies, epistles, pastorials, poems; the Qur’aan specifically consists only of revelation and nothing else. Pastor Samuel goes on to state:

“Thus, to understand the Bible you only need the Bible. In fact, many of the stories which are only briefly retold in the Qur’an are told in full in the Bible. The Bible is self-sufficient, as the word of God should be.”

This would be patently false and one of the ways we can demonstrate this is by the dependence of Christians to rely upon commentaries, exegeses and lectionaries. In fact, to not rely upon any of the three previous categories of writings and to rely upon one’s own understanding of the Bible is considered to be eisegesis. Oxford Biblical Studies defines this to mean, “A comparatively modern term to describe, disapprovingly, a piece of scholarship which appears to find in a given text a significance alien to its context. This might be to provide biblical support for a doctrinal position already held. The term was coined (from the Greek eis, in, and egeisthai, to guide) as the opposite of exegesis (Greek ek), which means an elucidation of.“

In regard to the claim that the Qur’aan cannot be understood without the Seerah (Biography of the Prophet ﷺ) or without the narrations of the Prophet ﷺ, we believe that the Qur’aan can be understood without them to some extent, but for a more accurate understanding and a more comprehensive understanding we must often refer to these other forms of literature. It should be noted that it is the Qur’aan which commands the believers to obey the Prophet ﷺ:

“Say, “Obey Allah and the Messenger.” But if they turn away – then indeed, Allah does not like the disbelievers.” – Qur’aan 3:32.

The only way to do this is to follow his Prophetic Sunnah, and so it can be understood that by utilizing the Prophetic Sunnah to understand the Qur’aan, we do this because it is a command in the Qur’aan to do so.This is more of a safeguard as to avoid the sin of eisegesis, as opposed to the Qur’aan being incomplete in any way, shape and or form. I would agree with the Pastor’s statement, “Therefore to compare the Bible to the Qur’an alone is misleading and inaccurate.” I agree with this because the Qur’aan is unlike the Bible in purpose and historical development. Whereas the some parts of the Bible began as authoritative writings and then became scripture (Councils of Carthage, 393 &397 CE), the Qur’aan from its very inception has been and was always scripture in its entirety.

Reason 2. Practices and Beliefs

The Qur’aan contains all of the beliefs that Muslims must know, the Pastor has not provided an instance where we believe something that is not manifested in the Qur’aan. Whereas the Qur’aan commands us to do certain actions such as to fast and pray, to understand how the Prophet ﷺ enacted these commands we refer to the Prophetic Sunnah. While in Islam we separate scripture or the Word of God (risalah) from the biography and actions of the Prophet ﷺ or the Messenger of the Word of God (rasool), the New Testament mixes both and thus the Word of God is lost among the words of men, history and biographies. The Pastor continues by stating:

“The Bible has everything a Christian needs. The Bible fully declares what God has done to save us and bring glory to himself and how we are to live. It is the basis for our wisdom and defines our liberty. “

This is largely untrue, for example the beliefs about the Trinity cannot be found in the New Testament. Nor can the beliefs about the hypostatic union, the second coming of Christ, the immaculate nature of Mary, their doctrine of salvation solely by grace (their soteriological perspective), the foregoing of the laws of God and the original sin.

Why is the Bible so complete?

The Bible is not complete for the reasons outlined above. The Pastor makes the claim that the Bible contains the teachings of the Prophets. However, as is well known, Christians forego the alleged teachings of the Prophets and follow the teachings of Paul. Therefore including the alleged writings of the Prophets in the Bible is largely useless to the Christian faith. Perhaps what is most troubling is that while Moses lived between 1600 and 1300 BCE, the oldest record of the Old Testament is from 250 BCE, the Dead Sea Scrolls. With a space of over 1300 years between the Prophets and the Old Testament, it would be very difficult to ascertain whether or not these writings were actually written by the Prophets themselves or written homonymously (by authors writing in the name of the Prophets).

A More Accurate Comparison

Whereas none of the major doctrines of the Christian faith can be found in the New Testament or the Old Testament, the major beliefs of Islam can be found with complete certainty in the Qur’aan. Our doctrine of Tawheed? Surah al Ikhlas 112 covers the entirety of that doctrine in 4 verses. The same cannot be said of the Trinity, Salvation by Grace, the Immaculate  Conception, a Divine Messiah, a Second Coming of Christ or of the hypostatic union. As stated previously, whereas the Qur’aan solely contains the words of God, the Bible contains the words of men in the form of letters, epistles, pastorials, biographies, poems mixed with the words of God to the point that it is very difficult for any Christian to ascertain which is from God and which is from man. This therefore, cannot be seen as a deficiency of the Qur’aan, but should be seen as a corruption and blatant travesty against the sanctity of scripture in the form of the Bible. Whereas Islam keeps the distinction between the commands of God and the Prophetic enactment of those commands, the same cannot be said of the New Testament.

Some Application

1. The Bible and the Qur’aan are not the same in their typology (style of presenation) and in terms of their contents. Whereas the Bible is absent of the major beliefs of Christianity (as highlighted previously), the Qur’aan contains all major beliefs of the Muslims. While the Bible contains biographical works, letters, epistles, poems and other works of men, the Qur’aan solely contains the word of God. Thus, the Muslim is able to distinguish between the Word of God and the Prophetic enactment of the Word of God. While the Bible does claim to contain the works of the Prophets, the time span between that of the Prophets and that of the oldest Old Testament is too wide for anyone to claim with certainty that they were written by the Prophets themselves and until such evidence is presented, anyone who holds to that claim has fallen prey to the fallacy of wishful thinking.

2. If Muslims and Christians were to take the Qur’aan and the Bible in order to demonstrate their most sacred beliefs, the Christian would not be able to discuss the Trinity, the Hypostatic union and other major beliefs without relying on the debates of the Patristics (Church Fathers) who articulated most of their beliefs over a 400 year period. An example would be the doctrine of Tawheed versus that of the doctrine of the Trinity. Whereas the Muslim can refer the Christian to Qur’aan Surah 112 (al-Ikhlas), the Christian cannot refer us to any passage that entirely expresses their belief in the Trinity.

3. It is true that the Prophetic Sunnah compliments the Qur’aan and that beliefs can be derived from both. However, while the Prophetic Sunnah can undergo scrutiny, literary criticism and inspection, the Qur’aan does not undergo these things. Therefore beliefs extracted from the Prophetic Sunnah can be studied to verify their authenticity as the Prophet ﷺ may have been commanded to practise an act in one particular way earlier during his life and another way at a later period during his life. In the case of female circumcision, this is a common practise that should not be confused with female genital mutilation. A cliterodectomy is legal in most Western nations and is considered a cosmetic medical practise.

4. All religions with scripture do not condone the practise of extracting one’s own understanding of the scripture by self interpretation. This practise, known as eisegesis (defined above), is actively discouraged in both the Christian and Muslim faiths respectively. To tackle the Pastor’s claim, we invite him to defend the view that the Unitarians who read the Bible and reject the Trinity based on the Bible, that they are reading it correctly. It is quite obvious that when it comes to contentious verses with which the various Christian sects dispute about, the Pastor would turn to his commentaries to explain the proper understanding of those verses. While the Qur’aan can be understood by reading it, a Muslim knows he would be understanding its passages clearly by seeing the enactment of the Qur’aan and its explanation through the Prophetic Sunnah of Muhammad ﷺ. Thus, I find the Pastor’s claim to be wholly inaccurate and a poor representation of both the beliefs of Muslims and Christians in regard to their handling of scripture.

and Allaah knows best.

Samuel Green Admits to Polytheism, Believes in 2 YHWHs

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In orthodox Trinitarian belief, Christians state that there is one God but three Persons. One Elohiym but three Persons. One YHWH but three Persons.However, Pastor Samuel Green agreed with and promoted a post by a fellow Christian polemic which clearly stated that Jesus the Christ was a second YaHWeH.

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I honestly ask, do Christians believe in more than one YHWH? Or isn’t the orthodox belief, that YHWH is one but many persons?

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As you can see from the above photo. Pastor Green has since seen my message to him, inquiring about his change of doctrine and has decided not to respond. This clearly indicates he either screwed up badly or did not realise what he was supporting. I pray that he responds on the matter in a timely fashion.

and God knows best.

Explanation: Qur’aans that contain less or more Surahs

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Many Christian polemicists argue that certain companions of the Prophet (peace and blessings of God be upon him) had varying amount of Surahs in their copies of the Qur’aan. Some had 112, others had 111, etc. Br. Waqar has refuted those claims in detail here. While I won’t go into explicit detail, I will provide the Muslim with the tools to respond to such claims in a simple and concise manner.

The Argument:

Sahabi X only had Y number of Surahs in his copy of the Qur’aan, therefore he didn’t believe in the Surahs not included in his copy.

Responses:

  • The question must be asked to the Christian, where does the Sahabi (companion) say that he doesn’t believe in the excluded Surahs? The truth is, nowhere is that said. Therefore, the onus (responsibility) is on the Christian to provide evidence for such a claim.
  • Codex is a collection, Canon is an established list, so the canonical codex of the Qur’aan is a Qur’aan consisting of all the Surahs from al-Fatihah to an-Nas, all 114 of them. Many of us have booklets at home that contain the last 10 Surahs, or Surah ar-Rahman with Surah al-Baqarah. Do we consider the excluded Surahs from these booklets to not be Qur’aanic? Of course not! Therefore, not every codex is a canon of the Qur’aan. A codex with 2 Surahs does not mean that Uncle Khan or Aunty Summayah believes the Qur’aan only has 2 Surahs or 10 Surahs.
  • So we must ask the Christian, since every codex is not indicative of a canon, why do you apply this belief to the Qur’aan?
  • We can also turn their own reasoning back onto them. Since Paul wrote 10 of his 13 epistles, then the New Testament according to Paul is only his epistles and not the four Gospels, where does he say he believes in the 4 Gospels? Since the Christian says every collection (codex) is a canon, then Paul’s canon of the New Testament, excludes the Gospels. If the Christian says this is wrong reasoning, shake their hands and congratulate them on using such reasoning in the first place.
  • We can further this by saying, since none of the 4 Gospels refer to Paul’s letters and we have no evidence that any of the Gospel authors knew of Paul’s letters, then the canon of the New Testament for the Gospel authors is their Gospel and their Gospel only. So the New Testament to the anonymous author of the Gospel of John, was just the Gospel of John, to the anonymous author of Matthew, the only canonical New Testament book was his own book.

Closing the Argument

We can make things worse for the Christian – yes, worse, much worse. If we go to the earliest codices of the Bible, namely Codices Sinaiticus, Vaticanus, Alexandrinus and Ehpraemi Rescriptus, they all contain extra books, and some even have missing books. Therefore we must ask the Christian, does he take those codices to be canons, and if not, why does he apply such a reasoning to the Qur’aan?

Conclusion

One of the more popular proponents who propagate such an argument is that of Pastor Samuel Green. He’s fond of repeating it, but is unable to see the backward, and illogical reasoning he employs in formulating such an uneducated argument. If you see anyone quoting Pastor Green’s article, send them this link, or use the arguments within – for just like the Pastor, when faced with these responses they will either go silent, try as best as they can to ignore you or simply keep repeating it without attempting to understand what they are saying. If the Christian chooses to be honest, then he would drop this argument and apologize for using it in the first place.

and Allaah knows best.

Is (Trinitarian) Christianity Monotheistic?

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Introduction

Christianity inherits monotheism from the Jewish faith, as Christianity primarily is – Messianic Judaism. Therefore, before we begin our quest in solving the title’s question, we must ask another important question. Is Judaism monotheistic? The answer for our purposes is yes. Both Muslims and Jews can agree on the Shema Yisrael which is found in Deuteronomy 6:4, it reads:

Sh’ma Yis’ra’eil Adonai Eloheinu Adonai echad.
Hear, Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One.

This is essentially the same as what is presented to us in Surat al Ikhlas (Ch. 112) in the Qur’aan:

Say: He is Allaah the One.

If we are to be honest and if we wish to examine Christianity as the post-Christ Judaic faith of which it presents itself as, then our understanding of monotheism must be based on the Shema Yisrael. The problem therefore is, does Christianity adhere to the Shema Yisrael?

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Telling Someone to Bite Their Father’s Genitals: Explicit Phrase or Misunderstood Expression?

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If you’ve ever read anything from Sam Shamoun, then you’d have probably read this narration, in one of the 7000 times he’s probably copy pasted it:

Ubayy b. Ka‘b told that he heard God’s messenger say, “If anyone proudly asserts his descent in the manner of the pre-Islamic people, tell him to bite his father’s penis, and do not use a euphemism.”

For the first time, an Islamic author, my friend and brother in deen, Br. Waqar Akbar Cheema has responded to the claims surrounding this narration. You can access the amazing, well studied, well referenced article here, or you can view the PDF (also for downloading) here.

It’s worth the read, and most importantly, it debunks Sam’s malicious and unscholarly manipulation of traditional Islamic literature. It demonstrates the dishonesty of Orientalists and missionaries, while employing a level of academia that is undoubtedly of high integrity and accountability.

I’d like to thank Br. Waqar for his previous works and presently, for this masterpiece, may Allaah reward him immensely for doing what so many of us were unable to do. Ameen.

Refutation: If Yahweh alone is the Creator, and Jesus a servant sent by him, how can Jesus be God?

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بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ ,

Question:

Isaiah 44:24 says that Yahweh was alone when he created the heavens and the earth. Matthew 12:18 quotes Isaiah 42:1 which says that Yahweh will send his servant, who is Jesus. Now if Yahweh was the one true God (Exodus 20:2-3) who alone created the heavens and the earth and he was the one who was to send his servant (Jesus), then that means that Jesus is not Yahweh. Why then do Christians contradict what their own Bible teaches?

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