A Particularly Ridiculous Statement to Make

Via Skype, twice I have received a question, both at the same church in Houston, and this individual asked me a question.

I remember he asked me it privately, well sort of privately, after I gave a talk on Islam a couple of years ago, and then he gave it more publicly, and I linked to my talks there in Houston, so you may hear my response to it.

There are only a few times that I have responded to a question as strongly as I did both times that I was asked this question, and sometimes

I feel badly about that, but sometimes there is a time to speak strongly.

And what the gentleman asked me was, in essence, and now

I know where this was coming from, and that's what surprises me, I just discovered where this came from.

Basically what he asked was, I've read that the best way to deal with Islam would be to nuke the

Kaaba, drop a nuclear bomb on Mecca, and get rid of the

Kaaba. That would end Islam, and I remember the first time he asked me this, we were just standing there after a conversation, like I said after a presentation

I had made, and I was like, and I think my response was, that's the stupidest thing

I have ever heard. Now I normally do not respond to even relatively stupid questions, by saying that's the stupidest thing

I've ever heard, but it was hard for me not to say it. Because I was like, who are you reading that would ever make such an incredible, outlandish assertion?

And then he asked it again, this last time I was there, just a few weeks ago, and I again very strongly said, you've got to be kidding me, whoever you're reading, stop reading this person!

Because they don't understand anything! Well, I was just reading an article, and I wish there was a reference to this, and so I am going to say, this is on the internet.

I'll be interested to see if it actually pans out as being accurate.

But it is attributed to Dr. Robert Mori, and here's what it says.

First as I wrote in my book, How to Win the War Against Radical Islam, the war against the Muslim Jihadists, will be long and costly, and will not be won until we bomb the

Kaaba in Mecca. Islam is based on a brick and mortar building that can be destroyed.

They pray to that building five times a day, make a pilgrimage to it, run around it, kiss a black rock on the wall, then run between two hills, and finally throw a rock to the pillar.

What if that building, the Kaaba, was destroyed? They could not pray to it, or make a pilgrimage to it. The old pagan temple of the moon god,

Al -Ilah, is the Achilles heel of Islam, destroyed in the Kaaba. There is the quote.

No reference is given. That bothers me that no reference is given.

But since obviously this is floating around, and people are reading it, may

I comment briefly upon this assertion. First of all, no one who actually understands the

Islamic theology believes that any religion is praying to the building.

The black stone is what the Qibla points toward, not the building. The building has been torn down and rebuilt many times.

The last time, within recent memory, just within the past 30 or 40 years. It's not the building.

The building is not what is sacred. It is the black stone. And so while you might destroy the black stone, the point is the

Kaaba itself is not the focus. And so there is a fundamental misunderstanding at that point.

Was there an idol to a moon god in the Kaaba? Well, there were about 360 idols.

Some stories say that there were even images of Jesus and Mary in the Kaaba. One story is that when

Muhammad had the idols removed from the Kaaba, that he was asked about the images of Jesus and Mary, and they weren't destroyed.

They weren't kept there, but they weren't destroyed. That would be consistent with Sartor Mariam, anyways.

But the point is, might there have been a moon god idol in the

Kaaba? Why? I don't think there's any reason to think there wasn't. There was probably a sun god and stars and all sorts of other things, and you've got 360 idols.

You've got to come up with something for 360 idols. Is it true that the pilgrimages and the circumambulation, the loft going around, did they pre -exist

Muhammad? They did. Did he make changes to those things? Yeah, like you have to wear clothes.

But were they pagan ceremonies, pagan things prior to Muhammad?

They were. The answer provided by Islam, that these actually went back to Abraham, and at least in the traditional sources,

Ishmael, and that the Kaaba was built by Abraham, and in traditional sources, Ishmael, as a place of worship,

I don't think there's a meaningful shred of historical evidence of that. And the idea that, well,

Muhammad was restoring something, please don't expect me to buy that. But that's the

Islamic understanding. Now, is there some connection between the moon god and Allah?

Well, not in Islamic theology. Might there have been people at one point in time that identified a god similar to Allah with the moon?

Well, I'm sure there was. I mean, anybody who, the whole reason I've never bought into the moon god stuff is because it's a two -edged sword, and I have preached for a long time that you need to be consistent in the arguments that you're using.

And the name El can be found in all sorts of pagan religions, just as it's found in the

Hebrew Old Testament. So does that mean something? El, Elohim, must be interpreted within the context in which it was used.

And just because a pagan used El, or Elyon, or even

Elohim, in a pagan context, really means nothing.

Unless you're just trying to prove pure reliance and pure borrowing, which would be pretty difficult to do in regards to the

Old Testament in light of the emphasis upon monotheism. And this is exactly what modern scholars are doing.

This is one of the things I was arguing about when I did the long series in response to the LDS scholar just a few months ago.

Actually, what, six, eight weeks, something like that, on the blog. So you have to be careful.

And the question is, are Muslims bowing down to a moon god? Well, no, they're not bowing down to a moon god.

They don't believe that Allah is a moon god and all the rest of that kind of stuff. So, when it says, what if that building, the

Kaaba, was destroyed, they could not pray to it. They're not praying to it. They're praying toward the black stone. Or make a pilgrimage to it.

The old pagan temple of the moon god, Alilah, is the Achilles heel of Islam, destroy it and destroy Islam's soul.

Well, if those are the words of Robert Morey, then shame on Robert Morey.

That does deserve one of the stupidest statements of all time, identification.

So just no question about it. You nuke the Kaaba and you create 1 .5

billion radical Muslims. They don't need that.

It could be rebuilt someplace else. It would unify them like nothing else in the world would ever unify them.

It is the dumbest, stupidest suggestion I've ever heard anyone ever make at any time in my life. And if Robert Morey made it, shame on him.

How dare he. What foolishness. But I don't know that he did.

I would like to get some evidence that someone, in fact, somebody, I'll bet you dollars don't know, somebody listening right now would be able to tell me.

Okay, alright, thank you. But I still need a reference. I'm getting commentary from people who knew him that said he had said this many times.

But I would like to see real documentary evidence, honestly, of something like that.

Because I just am left stuttering at something like that.

I truly am. Is Doc in channel? Yes, I am in channel.

The great Turretin fan has given me a link.

And this is live. And here is the statement. Dr. Robert Morey, Ph .D.,

Islamic Studies. This is Faith Defenders. That's his website. And there is the exact quote.

There it is. This is faithdefenders .com slash news slash osama bin laden dot html.

By Dr. Robert Morey, Ph .D., Islamic Studies. Not sure where that came from, but anyways.

First, I wrote my book. Yeah, there it is. The Old Pagan Temple of the Moon God. Alaila. It's Achilles' Heel of Islam.

Destroy it. You can destroy Islam. Well, okay. Thank you very much,

Turretin fan. And there we have documentation. You might say, boy, you're really slow on this.

I have never read anything that Robert Morey wrote on Islam. I just haven't.

And I'll tell you why. Since it's out here now, let's go ahead and explain it. I listened to his debate with Shabir Ali.

And I was mortified. Mortified by his behavior in that debate.

I remember this was about 2005 because I was preparing to debate

Shabir Ali. And I remember very clearly that the first time

I listened, I was riding, what's Bell Road, when it goes around the mountain out there?

Sun Valley Parkway. I was riding the Sun Valley Parkway. And I was way out the far end of it.

And I was mortified. And I listened to it again a second time while riding South Mountain. And I just determined, in light of what

I heard in that debate, I'm not even going to invest my time to read, look, anything.

I did have a friend tell me once that after my debate with Shabir Ali, actually right before my debate with Shabir Ali, that he had contacted

Dr. Morey, and he said he wouldn't be attending because I would just be repeating his information anyway.

Which is not the case. In fact, on Islam, the primary sources that I have relied upon, and some people might fault me for this, but the primary sources

I have relied upon are all Islamic. I mean, it sort of bugs people. They ask me about such and such a book and such and such a book, and I go,

I haven't read it. I'm working through Bukhari or Muslim or reading

Ibn Ishaq or getting stuff from Brill on the early canonization process of the hadith literature and listening to various, not only

Shabir Ali, but others as well. And that's been the primary source.

There are a couple of people that I do consider to know

Islam like the back of their hands. And they may not be liked by the Muslims, but the

Assyrian encyclopedia, Sam Shamoon, knows Islam. He knows his sources.

You Muslims, you don't like Sam, but you know why you don't like Sam? Yeah, sometimes Sam's in your face. He's more in your face than I am.

There's no question about it. Assyrians and Scotsmen do not debate in the same way.

But I love Sam. And Sam and I butt heads. We butted heads recently. We really did. But we still love each other.

Despite the fact that I don't always agree with how he says things. And I hope

I have been somewhat of a moderating influence on him. But there is nobody who knows the sources like Sam Shamoon.

And that's why you don't like him. Because you're not necessarily consistent in your use of those sources.

You've got your little view, and he keeps poking holes in it. That's why you don't like him. That's all there is to it.

Anyway. But the primary sources I've used, I've never used.

Bob Morin, I just... When I listened to that debate, I just went, Eww, I don't like that.

And the main thing I didn't like about it, and I've said this on the program, we played on the program, I didn't think I was going here today, but we'll get to the calls in a second.

Mike and Gregory will get to you in a second. And Dividing .Line via Skype, if you want to get on via Skype.

What really bugged me, and it's bugged me again recently, and I guess that's why this probably bubbled up subconsciously, and I ended up doing this.

Actually, it was an RSS feed. I was just looking at my Google Reader, like I frequently do before the program, and there was this thing.

And that quote was in it. And I went, wow, I didn't... I felt it was necessary, given that I have publicly said that's the dumbest thing

I've ever heard, now that I know where it came from, to say something about it. It's just, I think it's... I'm not looking to get into a spitting fight with anybody, to be honest with you.

But... And Bob Morris sort of disappeared off the face of the planet, as far as I can tell, but I'm sure that this will get some type of response.

But what really bugged me about the Shapiro -Lee debate has been reinforced by recently, it was

Sam that directed me to the recordings that have been posted of his debates with Jamal Badawi.

And I really, really wish... Muslims out there who know that I can do respectful debates with you, that are meaningful and are communicative,

I want to debate Jamal Badawi. I really do. I know he's not doing that much anymore, but if any of you have contact with him, would you let him know there's someone that he could do a meaningful dialogue with, a meaningful debate with, where he would not be treated the way he was by Bob Mori?

Because I listened to the two debates that they did. And I just listened to them just recently. And the same issue came up in both of them.

I guess the Badawi debates took place after the Shapiro -Lee debate did. Do you remember what the issue was,

Rich, that I brought up? The thigh and the thing? You do remember. Yeah.

Okay. Here's what happened. I should have queued all these things up. I actually have them on my Mac in the other room, but I didn't, because I didn't think

I was going to be discussing this. But, hey, it's live, and that's how it works. I don't remember how it came up.

I believe... I know that Mori brought it up. But he claimed that in Sahih al -Bukhari, there is a text that says...

Well, one of the companions of the Prophet was writing with the Prophet. That his clothing moved in such a way that he could see his...

Now, I've looked this up. In fact, one of the first things I asked my

Arabic tutor to do was to translate this for me, and to show me the Arabic. It was one of the first things.

I think it was the second or third week we got together years ago. And the

Arabic and every printed edition I have ever seen... Now, Mori claims that he has a printed edition where this isn't the case.

I have a hard time believing this. But, hey, typos happen. But the

Arabic in my edition says that he saw the whiteness of his thigh.

It says it twice. And my Arabic tutor showed me the Arabic. The Arabic term is the same in both places.

It's very clear. According to Bob Mori, it says he saw the whiteness of his thing.

T -H -I -N -G. That is his sexual organ. Well, Shabir gets up, and you know,

I've come to know Shabir. I've debated Shabir four times now. And we've communicated about some other things, you know, like Eric and Kenner.

And Shabir is a nice guy. And Shabir does behave in a particular fashion during debates.

I mean, he's taken Christians apart in debate when they're not prepared. But he has never behaved in debate with me the way that Robert Mori debated in debate with him.

Okay, let's put it that way. So, in other words, we have a Muslim who has behaved a whole lot better in his debates than I felt

Bob Mori did against him. And he gets up, and you can just tell he's like, what on earth are you talking about?

And he goes to the text. He says, it's the same word, and here's the word. Well, Mori gets up, and he says,

I don't speak Arabic, but I have an Arabic -speaking, I have an Arabic expert in the audience.

Does it say thing? And you can sort of, you have to turn it up real loud. Yes, it says thing. And it's like, what?

And then he did the most amazing thing I've ever heard in a debate. And we've played it. We could go back.

I've got the, I've got this in my iTunes. I could play it. I almost feel like playing it, but, what's that?

Yes, right. It's on the 24 -7. Just keep listening to the dividing lines the next couple of months, and it will play through at some point in time.

It may be 3 o 'clock in the morning, but it will play through. There's no, there's no two ways about it. Um, he actually said, now if I said that I saw the blackness of Shabir's thing, what would you think

I was saying? He said this in the debate. I played this. And I just thought, road off the road.

I could not believe this was happening. It was bad enough because he's wrong. W R O N G.

He's wrong. But he would not back down on it. It was bad enough in the one debate, but what has blown me away is just a few weeks ago, you know,

I was pushing, pushing, pushing to get as many miles as I could to make my 9 ,000 of the year, and so I was doing these big long rides, and so I listened to this, um, these two debates between Jamal Badawi and, and, uh,

Robert Morey. And evidently because this is such an easily documented error, the

Muslims were passing out documentation on this demonstrating he was wrong. And so guess what came up again, and if I recall correctly,

I could be wrong about this, I think it came up in both debates because it was on one day. On two different topics.

But once again, he would not back down, and I was watching the videos, and, and he even put up on a, these were in the days of the old overheads, you know, he even put on the overhead a transparency.

I would love to see that transparency. I could barely make it out. It was a 320x4, you know, this is a real small uh, 320x240 screenshot type thing that I could get, and I just, you couldn't really make anything out on it.

But I just could not believe that anybody would go to the mat. This, this was a hill to die on?

And, and he was just simply wrong. W -R -O -M -G. And what bothers me is to hear him saying true things about who

Christ is, at the same time combining it with this kind of stuff, and the kind of behavior.

Because what he kept complaining about with Jamal Badowy was, well, you know, he just gets up here, and instead of giving a positive presentation, he just responds to my book.

And I felt like saying, don't quote me, bro! I felt like I was experiencing once again, when

I got up, and I'm debating Dan Barker, I responded to Dan Barker's published position!

That's what you do in a debate! Well, that's what Jamal Badowy did. He responded to the published position, on the subject of the debate, that was in print, from Robert Mori, and Robert Mori spends the first five minutes complaining about ad hominem, and all the rest of the stuff, you're not supposed to be doing this, and I'm like, it's your book!

It's the position you've enunciated, what do you expect him to do? I, I just, and so I just, I, I about run off the road a few times, and, and just went, okay, well,

I have honestly tried as best I can, no matter who I was debating, even when I debated Nader Ahmed, who is not really in this particular universe, okay?

I mean, he's, it's, it's a different plane of existence, you know? But, but even then,

I try to demonstrate in my behavior, and in my interaction with the other person, something that is, can be contrasted, greatly, with what

I saw in that. So, anyways, you pulled the microphone over, and that normally means that you have a comment to make.

No? You don't have a comment to make? No, you don't have a comment to make. Okay, alright. So, let me just say that, thank you,

Turgeon fan, for pulling that up, but the idea of nuking the Kaaba is dumb.

It's based on a misunderstanding, and it is just simply the dumbest thing I've ever heard in my life.

And I've said that publicly before, and now I know where it came from, so I'm just trying to be consistent, and say, shame on you.