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 Nabeel 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.

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 discernment, 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 had 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

Koran and the original languages of the Koran, 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. 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 true? 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.

And so I asked Mr. Lewis, I said, sir, what is the alleged parallel between Osiris and Jesus?

Virgin born? No. 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 parallel to what Christians believe about the resurrection?

How can, how absurd can this be? And Mr. Lewis's response was, well yeah, right there, there's resurrection.

Don't Muslims believe in resurrection? So I guess, using

Mr. Lewis's 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. I would love to hold you accountable for the things you said.

At least one of the questions asked, demonstrated, and Mr. Zatari of course ran from it immediately, was pointed out that John 1 6, if you make the argument that well, every time

Theos appears, it doesn't have the article it's supposed to translate in AGOT, 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 translation?

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.

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. At least, 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 from the debates tonight.

Gentlemen, for truth -loving people, you repelled from Islam tonight.