Tag Archives: which is the word of God

Release: A Critical Analysis of Jay Smith’s Mistakes About the Qur’an [Update]

Update: I have been made aware that some persons are unable to access the paper via Scribd, you can therefore click this link and download the PDF directly: Response to Jay Smith’s Mistakes.

All Praise is due to Allah alone. The paper has undergone some minor changes, which are listed in the paper under the title of, “Structure of the Paper”. A formatting error for some headers were corrected, especially for Appendix B.

and Allah knows best.

Originally Published: 12/11/14, 6:46 a.m.

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.

Response to Jay Smith Being Published Soon (14 or 15.10.14)

Edit: Delayed to 14th or 15th due to unforeseen circumstances.

My paper critiquing Jay Smith’s allegations and claims in his recent debate with Dr. Shabir Ally, entitled, “The Bible or the Qur’an: Which is the Word of God?“, will be published tomorrow via a PDF on both Scribd and Google Drive. I cannot at this moment give a specific time when the paper would be published, but barring any sudden and unexpected incidents I expect it to be published during the course of tomorrow. At present, the only hindrance to the publishing of the document would be a translation I’m awaiting of a French work that is otherwise not available in English. Considering the inclusion of the French quote’s data as a peripheral to the cause of the paper, when it is made available to me, I shall append it in due course. Following the publishing of my paper, another paper by another Muslim speaker would be subsequently published on a similar theme but more in depth concerning a specific work referenced during the debate. While my response is a point by point rebuttal to Jay’s allegations, this coming work is an overtly critical analysis of an academic work that was mentioned but not really used during the debate. I have not worked in conjunction with this other Muslim speaker, but we have exchanged sources during the course of our writing.

Perhaps what is most interesting is the silly claim that because I have not published any works on this site which include the literature of Deroche or Walid Saleh, it then means that I did not know of them before the debate with Jay hence the lengthy duration of time it took for me to prepare the paper. The assumption or rather the assertion is that I was unfamiliar with their works completely. This is an absurdly baseless allegation. There are many works I read on a daily basis which I do not quote or reference on this site or in my debates, but of which I post to my private Facebook account or which I use in personal correspondence in response to questions. Case in point, I have dug through my personal Facebook timeline, to dig up this post by me on August 4th, 2014:

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This is one of the many examples on which I’ve commented on either of these men’s works. I’ve blurred out the name of the evangelical missionary apologist I was condemning in this post which in retrospect was unfair of me and not of proper decorum. For those who are my Facebook friend, you’d be able to see this post on my timeline which I’ve re-posted today so that we all can access it in an easy manner. I have stated before and I will state this again, the only impediment in regard to my writing of the paper has been my health which has been on a steady decline for some two years now via a chronic illness to which no medical institution has been able to adequately decipher. A state of health which most missionaries and apologists are well aware of. Following the publishing of the paper, a video response will accompany it in the coming weeks which at this time I cannot give a definitive date for.

and Allaah 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.

Debate: Which is the Word of God – Dr. Shabir vs Jay Smith [Today, Live Stream]

Dr. Shabir faces off against Jay Smith on a popular topic: “The Bible or the Qur’aan: Which is the Word of God“. Hosted by E&AM in Toronto, Ontario (Canada). It’s roughly 14 hours from the time of this post. You can check the Facebook Event Page here. Times for New York, London, Trinidad, Toronto, LA and Mumbai are listed below.

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Times for Saturday 27th for all locations except India below:

  • Trinidad:     2:30 PM.
  • New York:   2:30 PM.
  • Toronto:      2:30 PM.
  • London:       7:30 PM.
  • LA:              11:30 AM.
  • Mumbai:      12 AM. (Sunday 28th).

If your time zone is not listed above, check World Time Buddy and search for your city, followed by choosing 2:30 PM as the time in Toronto for a quick and easy conversion. If you are still uncertain about the time for the start of the event, click the Live Stream’s link below and there is a timer counting down to the start of the event.

Link for Live Stream (free): http://new.livestream.com/accounts/291710/events/3400440

and God knows best.