A Theory about MuslimByChoice

OK, so I have a theory.

For how long now we have been providing responses to MuslimByChoice, we'll use the

YouTube name of this individual. You know, I log onto YouTube once in a while and there's all these videos, and some of them he's just posting, he posts everything from Shabir Ali, including a lot of stuff that's from the early

Shabir Ali, and not the current Shabir Ali, which I find interesting. But anyway, he posts all this stuff, and very frequently there's stuff about, well, yours truly.

And he seems to listen to every dividing line, goes through all the videos we post, a lot of time there.

And we've pointed out just error after error after error of thought and category and logic and fact, and just so many things that, finally, a video was just posted about 1

Timothy 3 16. And I think I have a theory. I think I've figured it out.

I mean, I look at it, and what he does is he provides a,

I don't know, almost four and a half, five minute long segment from the presentation

I did, what, about a year and a half ago or so, over in Southern California, on the reliability of the

New Testament. And it's on, specifically, 1 Timothy 3 16, it's one of the last illustrations that I use to talk about how we can use the

Greek manuscript evidence and look at textual variance and things like that. And he provided the whole thing.

And I'm always like, wow, it's great that you're providing this information to Muslims. They need to hear this stuff.

They clearly don't have an understanding of this stuff, most Christians don't either. And then he provides, well, it's not a response.

He provides just this brief little snippet from Adnan Rashid. Now I'm waiting for Adnan to get us the videos from our debates in London, because I think

I demonstrated that Adnan does not understand textual criticism at that particular point in time.

But we'll get to that in a moment. Here's my theory. If he provides all this material, where I'm explaining these things, and then doesn't provide a response, is it possible, is it maybe just possible

Muslim by choice actually isn't a Muslim? Maybe it's someone who's trying to make the

Muslims look bad. Because I can't think of anything, any other reason why someone would put up all this information that explains things so clearly, and then the alleged response totally misses the point.

I mean, the video starts off, is the New Testament corrupted like Muslims say it is? Well, how do

Muslims say it is? I mean, if you're talking modern Muslims, that we don't even have any idea what it originally said or anything like that, nothing that I said was even close to that.

So maybe, maybe Muslim by choice just isn't really a Muslim, and it's just trying to make the

Muslims look bad. Now, that would be a bad thing, but it does seem to be a logical theory in light of just how badly he keeps missing things.

So let's take a look. I'm just going to go ahead and paste in here what

I said on First Timothy 316, because I stand by all of it, and nothing that I said is even slightly challenged, refuted, anything in this particular video.

Let's go ahead, listen to what I had to say, and then we'll listen to what Adnan has to say and point out some rather serious problems with it.

Now, very quickly, because I want to be able to allow for questions, and there's still two more segments

I want to cover. A key theological example. Look at First Timothy 316 in your Bible. Compare the King James and the

New American Standard. King James says, without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness. God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the

Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on the world, received up into glory. The New American Standard says, by common confession, great is the mystery of godliness.

He who was revealed in the flesh was vindicated in the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on the world, taken up in glory.

Now, there's a huge difference between saying God was manifest in the flesh and saying he who was manifest in the flesh.

And he who and God don't seem to look very much alike at all. And this is where King James -only advocates really start preaching, see those godless people that translated the

New American Standard, they're trying to hide the deity of Christ and so on and so forth, and you can preach a real stemwinder if you want to.

But why is there a difference here? Well, obviously, as we've already noted, it's because of the underlying

Greek text. The variant is very evenly matched as far as external evidence is concerned.

There are many manuscripts that read both directions. But I think if you can just see, here's the information, here is the word as it's found in the

Nessiolan text, has, he who, ephanerothe, entharche, was manifest in flesh.

And there is the little thing right there, and there is the information right there. And so you have the text is found in the original of Codex Sinaiticus, the original of Codex Alexandrinus, the original of C, F, G, 33, a few others, and these early church fathers.

The word theos, God, is found in the corrector of Sinaiticus, the corrector of Alexandrinus, the corrector of C, D, and in the majority text.

And these two important, these are miniscule manuscripts, 1739 and 1881, which actually go back to early, much earlier manuscripts before them.

But once again, having that information doesn't necessarily explain why there would be a textual variant unless we look at what it originally looked like as it was originally written.

Here are the two texts as they would have been written in the unsealed text,

God at the top, he who at the bottom. Let me use color to show you what the difference is, and if you didn't see that, let me blow it up for you.

There's a difference between God and he who in Greek unsealed text. Oops, all of a sudden they look very, very similar.

You see, Christians developed this thing called the Nomina Sacra. They would abbreviate sacred names,

God, Jesus, Lord, Spirit. Some expanded that out to even other commonly used words in the

New Testament, sort of as sort of a shorthand, basically. And so God normally is theta, epsilon, omicron, sigma, theos, but you'd put the first letter in the last right letter and put a line over top.

So the difference between hos and theos would be two small lines.

And remember, what were the early manuscripts written on? Papyri. Remember what the papyri looked like?

A lot of lines in that papyri. And if you were reading somebody's manuscript, they're gone, they're dead.

You couldn't go back and ask them. It's real easy to see how someone could have mistaken one for the other.

Now here is Codex Sinaiticus, and you can barely see it here, but there is hos, ethanerothe, and then in a much later hand, at least 700 years later, someone has written in theos, there's three little dots, and written in theos above it.

Now here is Codex Sinaiticus, and you can barely see it here, but there is hos, ethanerothe, and then in a much later hand, at least 700 years later, someone has written in theos, there's three little dots, and written in theos above it.

But there is the original. Very clearly it is theos in Codex Sinaiticus from the fourth century in regards to that.

So that's why there is a difference between the two, is you simply look at the manuscripts. But let me look at,

I'm going to have to skip this one, I'm going to have to go to this one. I have never presented this in this presentation before.

This is added in because of some work that I did just recently, and this is one that people have a lot of questions about.

And so we'll get this one taken care of, and then we can start taking some questions. I'm not sure how it's going to be handled, but I'll ask

Lane to come up and explain that in a moment. Allah tells us in the

Quran, I seek refuge with Allah from the accursed Satan, in the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful. We have revealed this scripture and we will guard it against corruption.

So Allah made a promise that this scripture, the Quran, the message of the Quran, the revelation, will be protected and guarded.

No one will be able to corrupt it. And then about the previous scriptures, because they were not meant to be for eternity, or for the rest of mankind, because these scriptures are given to specific nations in specific times, to specific people.

If I could just jump in here a moment, this isn't the main point, but the idea that while these other scriptures, they're not meant to be for all time, but the

Quran is. I don't even think the Quran teaches that. In the sense that, yes, the

Quran is to be for all time, but not that the other scriptures aren't, because that's not how the

Quran views the Torah and the Injil. Now, Adnan is going to quote, of course, from the

Quran later on, and he's going to misuse a section from, as I recall, Surah 2, that does not have to be interpreted at all as meaning a corruption of the actual text of the

Torah and the Injil. But the point is, if that's the case, then how is it that as late as the days of Muhammad, the

Quran could instruct Muhammad to tell the Jews and the

Christians to judge by what's contained in their own books? That they are to make judgments based upon what's in the

Torah and the Injil. Clearly the Torah and the Injil existed in the days of Muhammad. So if those scriptures weren't supposed to continue existing, why does the

Quran act as if they are going to continue to exist? Unless you're saying the Quran says that the people of the scriptures are going to cease existing, maybe sometime way down the future, but certainly not in the days of Muhammad or for any foreseeable time after that.

It just doesn't make any sense. It's not a meaningful reading of the Quran to go this direction in the first place.

So I just thought I'd point out that the Quran doesn't even support that kind of an interpretation. This book came for all that exists other than Allah.

To say mankind would be an understatement. Because when we read the first verse of the

Quran, the Mufassaroon, they say, Aalameen here means anything and everything other than Allah.

Because everything other than Allah is created. Allah himself is not created. So everything other than Allah is

Aalameen. And Islam came as a mercy for the Aalameen. For everything other than Allah.

And it's a gift of Allah, it's a present of Allah, for mankind, for their salvation, for their peace, and for their harmony.

And we'll see how it happened. But this very idea of Islam's eternity as a message is going to be addressed now.

That the previous scriptures were not meant to be for eternity. Until the Day of Judgment.

They were not meant to be for the rest of mankind or for Aalameen. Why? Because we'll see what happened to them.

Allah says in the Quran in Surah Al -Baqarah, Verse 79, Surah 2,

Verse 79, Surah 2,

Verse 79, Woe be unto those who write books in their own hands and say, These books are from God. And little do they earn.

Woe be unto what they write and woe be unto what they earn. So Allah is telling us effectively that the previous scriptures were corrupted.

They were changed. The Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, this is his second miracle. He was not a theologian.

He was not a textual critic. He didn't have access to the biblical manuscripts to come up with this solution.

One verse gives the formula comprehensively. Guys, listen, watch, hear, obey.

This scripture which came before the Quran was corrupted. Period. One statement.

It was corrupted, it was changed. People wrote books in their own hands and they said, These are from Allah. And by Allah, by Allah, the

Christians and the Jews themselves today, they tell us that this is exactly what the case is.

And they themselves didn't know this until the 16th century. They didn't know this. The Christians and the

Jews, they were thinking their scriptures are preserved. But only in the 16th and the 17th century and then academic studies, into the biblical manuscripts, they came to realize that they don't have the scriptures as they claim.

Now once again we need to step in and correct Adnan at this point. Of course Christians knew this before the 16th century.

There is discussion of textual variation in the most primitive sources, in the early patristic sources.

Origen discussed textual variation in the 3rd century. So Adnan is just completely wrong about this.

There were no critical texts until Erasmus' at the beginning of the 16th century, in the sense of even comparing even a small number of manuscripts, in the modern sense of critical.

But Origen himself did compare different manuscripts as well. So you could say there is a revival of that learning, but you can't say that Christians didn't know about this, because that's just not true.

The Quran told us 14 centuries ago, they wrote the books in their own hands and they said, Deed of Muhammad.

The Prophet s .a .w. was not a Greek New Testament textual critic.

Rather he was a man who was born in the middle of an Arabian desert, and he was an unlettered prophet.

He didn't go to a school or an academy or didn't study any books. So this slide or this presentation will summarize the whole case to you.

Why I believe what I believe. And again, this was another change made in the Bible. Christ as God made manifest in the flesh.

And the ancient manuscript states, Christ who was made manifest in the flesh. But someone added the word

God later on, to make him God. To make him God. Now, you might notice, all

Adnan did, was he pointed to 1 Timothy 3 .16, and said there's a textual variant there. He says people inserted the word

God. Well, interestingly enough, in my slide, you can actually see the word Theos.

Interestingly enough, that was written long after the Quran. So the Quran couldn't be referring to that, could it?

No, it couldn't have been. But there's a textual variant there. There are some manuscripts say Theos, some say Has.

I showed all of this. What relevance is there? There isn't any relevance, unless you just aren't listening to what

I'm saying. Which may be Muslim by choice's problem. But then again, maybe he's just wanting to show the huge contrast between the

Christians who give all this information, all this background information, and the Muslim that just simply makes the assertions, but doesn't actually reason, and apply the same standards to his own text.

One of the things that came up in our debate, is that Adnan was dependent upon this particular book, a book that I did cite in my book, that's forthcoming on the

Quran. The History of the Quranic Texts, a Revelation, a Compilation. And he made the claim, in our debate, that there are 25 ,000 manuscripts of the

Quran from the first century of Islamic history. And I'd seen that in the book, and I was like, wow.

Now, I can't disprove that. I suppose there might be a list in place.

I asked Adnan for it, but he didn't seem to understand what I was asking him for. Because see, I can reach up onto a shelf, and pull down Kurt Ahlen's listing of the

New Testament manuscripts. This is actually somewhat of a dated one, the hard copy.

I got it back before the internet was, well, the internet. And you could get a more updated version of this, but here's a listing of manuscripts, and where they're at, and how much they contain, and how big they are, and what the date is, and all sorts of stuff like that.

And we can do that for the Greek New Testament. Where is this for the Quran?

I'd like to see it. If it's out there, I'd like to see it. It just strikes me as a little bit odd, to be honest with you, that the

Arabian Peninsula could go from producing almost nothing in regards to literary works, specifically the region around Mecca, so on and so forth, to producing 25 ,000 manuscripts in one century, and it's the same century where the

Muslims are expanding. Not years later, when there's establishment of universities, things like that.

Okay, that would make sense. But in that first century, when the armies are constantly away someplace, 25 ,000?

Really? Hmm. I'd like to see some evidence that, other than just someone making the argument that, well, there are, okay, you have this, there's no listing of them in there,

I have this, and the list's all there. You can go online, you can go to the

Munster website and find them all right there, and there's a complete list. That's what I'd like to see, is a complete list of all the first century after Hijra manuscripts of the

Quran, all 25 ,000 of them. That would be very, very interesting to see. But, back to our point.

We are, as Christians, I say we, are wide open about the history of our text.

Anyone can buy, can go online, you can buy programs that have just an amazing amount of information.

And no one says, could I see your Christian card before you purchase this? Anybody can look at it at all. It doesn't seem that that's the same situation on the other side.

I mean, in the debate with Adnan, he made the mistake of having a man attempt to quote from Surah 2 and demonstrate that the

Sa 'ana manuscript was the same as what the man would be quoting. Forgetting that I had just demonstrated, just shown in a slide, that the

Palimpsest reading of the Sa 'ana manuscripts is different. And that that's different from Ibn Masud's reading.

So you have three different readings in one verse in Surah 2. You have to deal with that if you're going to be making an argument.

This video makes no argument. A Muslim by choice might think that there's an argument here. Oh, this text is very, that means it's been corrupted, but that means he's not listening, not hearing, not contemplating what's actually being said.

And if all he's trying to do is to rev up fellow people who, like him, don't think, well, that really makes thinking

Muslims look bad. Where are the thinking Muslims who are responding to these guys and saying, guys, we need to be applying the same standards here.

This isn't how we should be arguing. Where are they? They don't seem to be in the majority.

In fact, they seem to be in a very small minority. So there's my theory. Maybe Muslim by choice is actually just trying to make

Muslims look bad. Probably not. But the other possibility is almost worse in some ways.

So there's an example. Muslim by choice, you can keep cranking this stuff out or you can finally start trying to do something serious.

Listen to what's being said. Try to reason it through. You'll find that what's being said is much more challenging than evidently you seem to understand.