Final Report from Norfolk: Amazingly BAD Islamic Arguments

I just returned from moderating the last two debates in the Easter debate series here in Norfolk. These took place at a Baptist church, the preceding ones took place at Old Dominion, and I will never moderate a debate again on subjects that are near and dear to me and that I could debate on myself.

I'm just not going to do it. It was probably one of the most frustrating experiences of my entire life, and it was primarily due to the Islamic debaters. It was all due to Islamic debaters. Both David Wood and Nabil Qureshi did a fine job, and I'm very thankful for their testimony of the gospel and their ability to defend the faith and pray for both of those fine young men.

Misrepresenting Greek in the Norfolk Debates

I would like to address Sami Zatari and Shadid Lewis. Gentlemen, I listened to both of you today mangle, misrepresent, and destroy the Greek language. As one who has taught this language for many years, I was in utter shock to watch you stand before an audience and actually pretend, and it can only be pretending because both of you admit you couldn't read a word of Greek if your life depended on it, pretend to tell people that all major translations of the Bible are wrong, and offer these off-the-wall, unitarian, goofy translations that are utterly impossible, and show not the slightest concern for scholarship and fairness in your commentary.

You must understand that for someone such as myself, what you did today repels me from Islam. It makes Islam repulsive to me if you represent it, because you showed no concern for truth. If I had seen Christians standing before an audience misrepresenting Islam the way you misrepresent Christianity, gentlemen, I don't think either one of you could define the doctrine of the Trinity if you were offered $5 ,000 to do it.

You have not even taken the time to learn the most basic elements of the system that you then criticize. I have seen Christians telling people that Muslims worship Muhammad and Zina, and if I had heard them making things up about Arabic, quoting Muslim cult groups as if they're normative, misrepresenting the Qur 'an and the original languages of the Qur 'an, the way that you misrepresented the New Testament and the Greek of the New Testament, I would have been humiliated for the Christians who did such a thing.

Why Careful Scholarship Matters in Christian-Muslim Debate

But that seems to be normative practice for Islamic apologists. I was thinking, I mentioned to a number of people, over the past week in my own library at the ministry, I have added the 40 volume English translation of Al-Tabari's history.

I added the, I think it's 13 volumes of the Tafsir Al-Tabari in Arabic, the first volume of the series they're printing of Al-Qurtabi. And that's just this week. I spend so much time and so much effort to try to understand accurately the best that Islam has to offer.

And when I look at Islamic apologists who obviously never take the time to actually read what Christian scholars are saying, what Christian, meaningful Christian apologists, when I hear you quoting internet scholars, rather than showing any of the interest that I show in trying to accurately understand your faith, I go, why is it that only one side, why is it only one side has this desire to accurately represent the other?

Isn't one of the 99 excellent names of Allah that he is truth? That he is true? And then after the debate, I talked with Rashid, and I said, so at the end they had done again the, oh well there's, you got this all from the pagans, and there are all these dying and rising gods, this same garbage that Christian apologists have refuted, oh there are entire books out right now demonstrating that if you'd actually go and read the literature, you would see that to even pretend there's a parallel is to demonstrate that you have no concern for consistency of logic whatsoever.

Osiris Comparisons and the Need for Cross-Examination

And so I asked Mr. Lewis, I said, sir, what is the alleged parallel between Osiris and Jesus? Virgin born, you know, God man, well we're talking about polytheistic system here, I mean that one of the points you might want to think about is that any parallel that does not come from monotheism is irrelevant to the subject of Jesus.

These are monotheistic Jews, you think they're ransacking paganism to come up with their beliefs? But be that as it may, that's not what it is. Osiris allegedly is a dying and rising God. And so I said, have you ever read the Osiris myth?

Don't you realize that this has to do with Osiris being cut up into 14 or 13 different pieces, and then reassembled in the netherworld as the lord of the underworld like a zombie? You think that has some sort of meaningful parallel to what Christians believe about the resurrection?

How absurd can this be? And Mr. Lewis' response was, well yeah, right there, there's resurrection. Don't Muslims believe in resurrection? So I guess, using Mr. Lewis' unbelievable logic, that the Muslims must have gotten it from Osiris too, right?

This kind of unbelievable abandonment of all meaningful standards of scholarship and fairness and discernment seems to be par for the course for Islamic apologists. Gentlemen, you would never survive a debate with real cross-examination with me in regards to what you claimed about the Greek New Testament.

John 1 and the Problem of Greek Misreading

I would love to hold you accountable for the things you said. At least one of the questions asked, demonstrated, and Mr. Tsatari, of course, ran from it immediately. It was pointed out that John 1 6, if you make the argument that, well, every time the Osiris doesn't have the article it's supposed to translate, we have to look at the context.

That's the point, Sammy. That's the point. In John 1 1, theos is a pre-verbal predicate nominative. That has meaning. You don't even know what that meaning is, so how can you seriously show respect for an audience and stand in front of them and pretend to give accurate translations?

Gentlemen, you did not show any concern for truth in these debates. It was amazing. As I said, if this represents Islam, then I as a truth-lover am repelled by Islam, because you showed no concern for truth.

A Call for Honest Engagement with the Text

If you want to try to at least be semi-honest, then what you need to do is say, well, you know, I know that Christians see this in the New Testament, but there's a minority of religious writers who on the internet have written this.

And yes, it goes against the majority of scholarship, but maybe it's a possibility. If you're going to go that direction, at least there'd be some honesty. Now, I managed to get a recording of a good portion of the presentation this evening by Sami Zatari, and so when I get back to Phoenix, I am going to take the time to demonstrate.

But what I will do is I will put the text in front of you and I will demonstrate what the truth is from the text, rather than gross misrepresentation, which is what we got in the debates tonight. Gentlemen, for truth-loving people, you repelled from Islam tonight.

Think about it.