jonathandebatingA few days ago, I posted a response to a review of my recent debate with Dr. Shabir Ally on the doctrine of the Trinity vs. Tawhid, written by Muslim blogger Ijaz Ahmad. Not long after my article appeared, so did Ijaz’s response. I noted previously that Ijaz appears to have developed a peculiar habit of mishearing or misreading things that I say and write. I make it my policy to be charitable whenever possible, and so I am not going to at this point allege any malintention on the part of Ijaz. What we are talking about, however, is not merely one or two instances of misrepresentation of my statements, views and arguments — it is a habit that plagues much of his writing. At the very least, this does seem to impugn his competence in basic reading comprehension skills (that is the only alternative I can envision to the charge of dishonesty — which I would rather not consider). Even more unfortunate is that Ijaz often continues to defend his incorrect readings even after he has received correction.

Yesterday, a debate broke out on Ijaz’s “Calling Christians” Facebook page when he posted a statement claiming that Modus Ponens is circular reasoning, and that, since I had used this argument form, I was guilty of circular reasoning. Note that this comment appeared after I had already corrected him on this matter in my previous blog. In his blog post responding to my article, he even went so far as to say,

“Unfortunately, all he had to do was think about what he argued, or at the very least, read what he wrote and he’d realise why it was circular. I’ll try to help him in this case. If X, then Y. X, therefore Y.This is the exact form his argument takes, and this is known as circular reasoning. Ergo, Jonathan does not know what circular reasoning is, and was unable to break down his argument into syllogistic form to understand what he was saying in logical terms.”

I and some others took Ijaz to task on Facebook for this ridiculous claim, but Ijaz was adamant that he was right, and that I clearly did not understand logic. Finally, after much tooth pulling, Ijaz admitted to being in error on this point — but only after he had attempted to settle the matter by blocking myself and his other critics from commenting on his page and deleting our comments. He has since deleted the entire thread from his Facebook page. After having consulted his “resident scholar” and being told that I was right and he was wrong, he went into damage control mode. The above-quoted statement from his blog has now been replaced with the following:

“I incorrectly referred to this form of argumentation as circular because I viewed the first premise as entailing itself, “If Tawheed is inconsistent”, which is self-reliant and thus circular. In other words it entailed itself, despite being in the form of modus ponens. After discussing with our resident scholar, I (Br. Ijaz) am indeed wrong. Although the first premise is indeed invalid (it does not logically follow if Tawheed could be inconsistent, that the Trinity is true), and needs to be qualified, the form is valid, but the first premise needs to be proven. So the argument itself is invalid, but the form correct. Apologies to Jonathan for this error.”

Well, that’s all well and good. Ijaz exercised some humility in conceding and correcting his mistake. But notice that in his correction he still manages to misrepresent me. Again. When did I ever state that it logically follows that “if Tawheed could be inconsistent, that the Trinity is true”? I didn’t. He also asserts that “the argument itself is invalid” — which is a technical inaccuracy (I think he means to claim it is unsound). On his Facebook page he also seemed to confuse a circular argument with Agrippa’s Trilemma, which is something quite different. As one Christian apologist put it to me, “Ijaz is a perfect example of someone who tries to sound logical by looking up logic terms and posting them in his responses without having the slightest clue how to use them.”

So what other blunders did Ijaz make in his response to me at his blog? The first two paragraphs were nothing more than a personal attack on yours truly. He starts by saying,

“After finding no one from the Christian community willing to perform a review of his debate with Dr. Shabir Ally, Jonathan McLatchie has finally taken the onus upon himself to “review” my review of their debate.”

Firstly, so far as I know, Ijaz is the only person to write a review of the debate in toto. I know of no other reviews, whether from Muslims or Christians. Second, how does Ijaz come to the conclusion that no one from the Christian community are “willing” to write a review? Perhaps they are just busy. By the same token I could also argue that no one from the Muslim community, besides Ijaz, has been “willing” to write a review of the debate. He goes on:

“It is unfortunate that Jonathan believes that I “misheard” or “misread” him, as this is a common excuse he uses when confronted with any criticism.”

That’s not quite true. Most of my critics read and comprehend what I say and write just fine. It is only a small number who seem to have this problem. He continues:

“Last month it was brought to the inter-faith community’s attention that Jonathan had described Muslim communities in France as a virus and a cancer to European society. If one were to compare his “review” of his debate, with the excuses used when confronted with his xenophobic statements, we’d quickly realise that Jonathan is being perpetually misunderstood by everyone. At first he claimed he never made such a statement, everyone had simply lied about him! Then, it was a statement he made, but everyone simply misunderstood him! Then, it was a statement he made, but it was not referring to Muslims but a cultural structure of extremism, everyone simply hadn’t given him enough time to explain himself!”

Wrong again. As I explained here, I did not make the statement attributed to me at all. Although my word-choice was unquestionably unfortunate, I neither described Muslim communities nor any individuals as “cancer” or a “virus”. Ijaz, as he always does, simply represented what I said in the most uncharitable way conceivable. As far as I recall, I never claimed that anyone had “lied” about me. In fact, I have correspondence with those responsible for propagating these claims wherein I specifically said that I did not think they were being deliberately deceitful, but that they had simply misunderstood what I said. Given that I have now clarified what I said several times and the claim nonetheless continues to be made, I am frankly starting to wonder. He goes on:

“Then, he posts a video in which Muslims who practise Islam are compared to ISIS terrorists and we’re not supposed to be offended by that. The 19,000 people who viewed that article and the 3500 people that watched that video, all seem to have “misheard” and “misunderstood” him.”

Wrong again. I defy anyone to show me where “Muslims who practice Islam are compared to ISIS terrorists” in any video I have shared. He then claims that,

“As one Christian apologist put it, “Jonathan is simply oblivious to any form of self criticism”.”

I am doubtful of this, since I often seek criticism from other apologists of my arguments, presentations and writing. But we can be charitable and give him the benefit of the doubt. He goes on:

“When I announced news that a Christian had accepted Islam following the debate between Dr. Shabir and Jonathan, Jonathan found it impossible that anyone would disagree with his remarks in that debate, such to the extent their faith would be questioned. I remarked to him at that point, that it doesn’t matter what you think of your own arguments, it is up to the audience to decide that. He disagreed, that just could not be a possibility, his remarks were without fault.”

Wrong again. I never said this at all. Nothing I have ever written could be construed as having said that. The relevant thread was a while ago though, and so we can put it down to a failure on Ijaz’s part to accurately recall the conversation. What I did remark is that I was highly surprised that any Christian’s faith would be rocked by Shabir’s presentation at that particular debate. I said nothing, so far as I recall, about my own remarks in the debate. Ijaz continues:

“Jonathan lives in a world, where everyone who disagrees with him, either perpetually misunderstands him, or they misread him, or they mishear him. It’s almost never the case that he has said something wrong, or that he has made a mistake, and this is exactly what we find in his “review” of my review.”

That’s not true either. Shabir Ally, for example, is quite capable of interacting with what I say. Most of my critics are.

“What sort of debater, reviews someone’s review? I mean, there’s the occasional post-debate rejoinder, but I’ve never seen anyone who considers themselves to be a professional, review their own debate. That’s what the community does, that’s not what the debaters themselves do. Jonathan though, does not like to be criticized, and so when my review criticized him, he could not contain himself.”

Well, Shabir Ally has reviewed some of his own debates for example (see this one for instance). William Lane Craig often does as well. So does James White. So Ijaz is simply wrong about this. My response to Ijaz, however, was not really a review of the debate per se, but a response specifically to criticisms of my opening presentation raised by Ijaz. Furthermore, the fact that I respond to criticism in no way entails that I do not like to be criticized.

Ijaz Ahmad accuses me of deception because I stated that he failed to mention any of Shabir’s weaknesses in his opening statement, such as his misuse of Greek grammar in relation to John 1:1 (documented here). Ijaz says that I am dishonest because he did mention John 1:1 in his review of the debate. Here’s what he wrote:

At this point, Dr. Shabir began to speak on the language used in regard to Jesus in the Gospel ascribed to John. John 1:1c is problematic as the attribution of total deity to the Word (later identified as Jesus), is uncertain due to Colwell’s rule. Grammarians do dispute about the definiteness of attributing deity to the Word in this verse due to the absence of a defining article which the original author purposely left out, this opened the wording and subsequent understanding of the verse to dispute. If the author wanted to ascribe total deity to the Word, then they would not have intentionally left out the defining article and thus, total deity cannot be ascribed to Jesus the Christ given the author’s grammatical intentions.

But this is precisely the point. Ijaz simply repeated this poor argument, despite the fact that it has been refuted ad nauseum.

Ijaz then quotes one of my critiques of his review:

The first point to note here is that I never stated that “the Bible is a wholly Trinitarian text”. It is my view that one can demonstrate a multiplicity of divine persons from both the Old and New Testaments, while the doctrine of the Trinity reaches its fullest expression in the New Testament where we read of the incarnation of the Son of God.

He accuses me again of not correctly representing what he said. He claims that “Yet, this is exactly what he said.” He then directed his readers to a timestamp on the debate video where I had stated that “the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ is thoroughly Trinitarian.” Ijaz further remarks,

If Jonathan believes that the words “thoroughly” and “wholly”, are different, then he must consult a dictionary. They mean the same thing. He should also note, that in my very review, I quoted him as saying, “thoroughly”, so on that basis, where exactly does he believe this was something he did not say? Strangely enough, he proceeded to argue that Dr. Shabir did not pre-empt his appeal to the Bible (read as “scripture”), but he did. One of Dr. Shabir’s most important points was “the texts of scripture”. So while Jonathan may disagree, it doesn’t make him right, to the contrary it makes him seem desperate to create points of imaginative disagreement.

The issue of contention, however, is not over the meaning of “thoroughly” and “wholly”, but over the difference between “the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ” and “the Bible”. Those are not the same thing. I never claimed that Shabir did not argue that the Trinity was contrary to the Old Testament. He did claim that. I happen to think he is wrong in claiming that, but Ijaz contends that Shabir in claiming this pre-empted this statement from my opening remarks, which is simply not the case.

He then claims that he did not in fact misrepresent my syllogism regarding Tawhid, even accusing me of being “deceitful”. He simply reasserted what he had said before, however, and failed to interact with my criticism. I did not say “If Tawhid is true, then it must be consistent.” I said, “If Tawhid is true, then it must be consistent with the Qur’an.”

Ijaz then back peddles with his claim from his review that I had made the argument about the eternality of the Qur’an in my opening statement. He said “In my review, I did not claim that he made this argument, I specifically said that he referred to it.”

Really, Ijaz?

Let’s have a look at his original review. Here is what he wrote:

“In attempting to do this, Jonathan disappointed me greatly. All he did was refer (timestamp in video, he says “Those who saw Shabir’s debate with Nabeel Qureishi would’ve been exposed to the problems with reconciling the eternality of the Qur’an with the doctrine of Tawhid.”) to the argument that Nabeel used regarding the Qur’an being the eternal word of Allah, yet physical and created. I was disappointed because this is an argument copied from Jay Smith, which Samuel Green tried to use on me in my debate with him, which Nabeel later picked up and tried to use against Dr. Shabir. The problem here is that Dr. Shabir already addressed this argument, and so have I. Jonathan merely repeated Nabeel’s poor argument. He did not try to revamp the argument, he did not add anything to the argument, he did not articulate it differently, he did not try to incorporate Dr. Shabir’s response to Nabeel into the argument. He quite literally just repeated the argument, which was already responded to. Naturally, I would expect, that if he did his homework and decided to use an argument which was already refuted, that he’d adjust the argument in some way. He didn’t do that. He presented nothing new. It was at that point I wondered why he even offered to debate the same topic if he was merely going to repeat the same points from the previous debate of the same topic by offering nothing new.”

I will leave it to readers to judge for themselves.

He then goes on to say that “Reading comprehension is not difficult and it should not be this difficult for Jonathan.” Oh the irony.

He then claimed that,

“He then spent an inordinate amount of time attempting to validate his bad argument that the Spirit (of God) is the same as Allah. Yet, he does not validate his bad argument, he merely repeats it without meaningfully responding to the criticism leveled against it.”

I will allow my readers to go back to my previous article and determine for themselves whether or not I interacted with the criticism.

Ijaz points out that the Qur’an uses “Spirit” in different contexts. I am quite aware of this, but in the texts that I cited, the Spirit is an agent that is breathed out by Allah in order to create life. This same Spirit is also identified as a personal, conscious, entity in Surah 19. Ijaz also contends that, if I am consistent, I would have to say that the angel of death is a fourth member of the Trinity. But this is simply mistaken — there is no verse in the Bible to my knowledge where we are told that God alone actively brings about death, whereas there are many verses in the Qur’an that emphasise that Allah alone is the sole life-giver, and that Allah has no partners. If Allah had a partner in the creation of life, what might that look like? If one divine God, comprised of at least two divine persons, creates, then this conundrum is resolved.

The next portion of his response is the part we have already addressed regarding his false charges of circular reasoning, which he later had to retract.

He then comments on Surah 3:55 and 61:14. He writes,

“Where does it specify what form the dominance would take? It doesn’t. Which is what I mentioned in my review of the debate. Where does it specify in the Qur’an what form the dominance takes? He chose not to answer this question, even though claiming this is what he was doing, rather he chose to mention that some Tafseer commentators agreed with him. Perhaps he should mention that those commentators presuppose that belief, with first believing that Paul’s true teachings, like Christ’s, became corrupted by later Christians. I fully believe he did not do his research on this topic and at this point, he’s repeating himself without addressing my criticisms.”

I am giving the historical interpretation of this text. Is Ijaz really prepared to say that ibn Kathir, al-Tabari, al-Qurturbi and ibn Ishaq all got it wrong, and that we had to all wait for Ijaz to show up in order to give us the correct meaning of the text? The meaning of the text that I gave seems to me to be clearly the most plausible and the most clear-reading of the texts. Ijaz’s explanation seems rather ad hoc. In any case, even if Ijaz is completely correct about this, he still needs to address my argument that the disciples (whom the Qur’an purports to have been Muslims) were quite clearly not subscribers to Islamic doctrines such as Tawhid.

Ijaz then quoted my statement that,

“Ijaz offered no comment on the third argument I presented in the debate, namely that the Injeel (i.e. the gospel) is Trinitarian and that the Injeel is affirmed by the Qur’an.”

He then replies,

“I actually did offer a comment on it, from my review, I said:

“If we were to identify his main arguments, they would be easily recognizable by anyone who is familiar with Islamic and Christian inter-faith discourse,namely that the Qur’an validates the New Testament, that the disciples believed Jesus was God and that the Bible is historically accurate. He did not present any new arguments, nor any new research, nor did he seek to upgrade any of the arguments he copied from other Christian debaters.””

He may have mentioned it, but he certainly offered no comment by way of response to the argument.

With a large grain of irony, Ijaz concludes:

In conclusion, Jonathan’s review of my review, is a bad attempt at trying to defend his poor arguments used in his debate with Dr. Shabir. At the most, he merely repeated himself, and at the worst he claimed he was misheard. Unfortunately for him, I was able to quote him word for word, and cite numerous places from my review in which I did address the concerns outlined in this review of his. All in all, this comes down to a lack of professionalism. If the Christian community is unwilling to do a review of his debate, and he is left to respond personally to everyone who criticizes him, this says a lot about the community’s perception of his role as a Christian apologist.

I have to say that I am rather disappointed with Ijaz’s review and his interaction with my criticisms. I was even more disappointed to see Ijaz’s original tagging of his blog post (which he subsequently changed). Still, here is the screen shot:

naziracist

 

That’s right. He called me a “nazi” and a “racist”. I hope that, if Ijaz continues to further interact with my material, that he can exercise greater maturity in the future.

 

Ijaz Ahmad is a Muslim blogger wishabir debateth whom I have had some level of interaction. He runs a website called “Calling Christians.” It is unfortunate that Ijaz has developed a peculiar habit of mishearing, or misreading, things that I say and write. It was no different in his review of my debate in London from last month with Dr. Shabir Ally on Tawhid vs. the Trinity. Almost none of his comments pertaining to the argumentation I presented in the debate fairly represented what I had said. I have been quite busy over the last month, and so have not had as much opportunity as I would have liked to comment on the debate more fully. Here, I am going to offer a rebuttal to Ijaz’s critique of my opening statement from the debate.

Ijaz briefly summarises Shabir’s opening statement, curiously omitting any mention of the numerous problems with Shabir’s Biblical argumentation (such as his misuse of Greek grammar in regards to John 1:1). He then begins his critique of my opening statement:

He began by defining the doctrine of the Trinity was. This is something I strongly agree with, opening a debate by delimiting the scope of the discussion. As a proponent of socratic thinking, this was a pleasant and welcomed feature of his presentation. As previously mentioned, it was expected that Jonathan would base his arguments about the nature of God by mainly appealing to the Bible. He opened by declaring that the Bible was a wholly Trinitarian text (timestamp in video, he says, “The Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ is thoroughly Trinitarian.”), which unfortunately for him, was pre-empted by Dr. Shabir who demonstrated it was not, thus Jonathan’s first argument was already weakened by Dr. Shabir. Jonathan then presented three other arguments which he felt negated the validity of the doctrine of Tawhid.

The first point to note here is that I never stated that “the Bible is a wholly Trinitarian text”. It is my view that one can demonstrate a multiplicity of divine persons from both the Old and New Testaments, while the doctrine of the Trinity reaches its fullest expression in the New Testament where we read of the incarnation of the Son of God. Ijaz was thus not far off my position, but he is incorrect to claim that this statement had been pre-empted by Shabir, since it is simply not what I said in my opening statement. What I said is that “the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ is thoroughly Trinitarian.” The “Gospel” is not synonymous with “the Bible.” Ijaz claims that this was my “first argument”, but it was not an argument at all. It was a part of my introduction to the doctrine of the Trinity, before I got to my three-tiered argument.

Ijaz goes on to list the three main arguments I presented in the debate:

  • Tawhid has its own internal problems.
  • The disciples were Trinitarian.
  • The Injeel is Trinitarian.

He then represents my first argument as follows:

Of his first argument, he stated:

P1 – If Tawhid is true, it must be consistent.
P2 – Tawhid is not consistent.
C  – Therefore Tawhid must not be true.

That’s not quite what I said. My first premise was that, from a Muslim perspective, “If Tawhid is true, it must be consistent with the Qur’an.” My second premise was that Tawhid is not consistent with the Qur’an.

Ijaz goes on:

“Technically, this (form of argument) is referred to as Modus Tollens. The problem here, is that you have to prove the premises before you can qualify and validate your conclusion which is expected to be a tautology.”

Yes, this is a Modus Tollens argument. I don’t know why Ijaz seems to think that the need to demonstrate the truth of the premises in order to support the conclusion is a problem with this manner of argumentation. Anyway, he goes on:

“In attempting to do this, Jonathan disappointed me greatly. All he did was refer (timestamp in video, he says “Those who saw Shabir’s debate with Nabeel Qureishi would’ve been exposed to the problems with reconciling the eternality of the Qur’an with the doctrine of Tawhid.”) to the argument that Nabeel used regarding the Qur’an being the eternal word of Allah, yet physical and created. I was disappointed because this is an argument copied from Jay Smith, which Samuel Green tried to use on me in my debate with him, which Nabeel later picked up and tried to use against Dr. Shabir. The problem here is that Dr. Shabir already addressed this argument, and so have I. Jonathan merely repeated Nabeel’s poor argument. He did not try to revamp the argument, he did not add anything to the argument, he did not articulate it differently, he did not try to incorporate Dr. Shabir’s response to Nabeel into the argument. He quite literally just repeated the argument, which was already responded to. Naturally, I would expect, that if he did his homework and decided to use an argument which was already refuted, that he’d adjust the argument in some way. He didn’t do that. He presented nothing new. It was at that point I wondered why he even offered to debate the same topic if he was merely going to repeat the same points from the previous debate of the same topic by offering nothing new.”

The only problem is that I did not make this argument in my opening statement at all. I noted that Nabeel had made this argument in his debate with Shabir, and that I was going to be making a different argument instead. I do happen to think that this argument has something going for it, but I think the argument I did present in the debate is stronger.

He goes on:

“At this point, he presented another argument, namely that there are other creators other than Allah. He did not seem to understand that what he presented was the fallacy of false equivalency, wherein the Qur’an mentioned numerous times that there were agents of God who had abilities attained by the “leave/ permission of Allah”, which are temporal and not absolute. Logically, this would mean their abilities are not inherent and eternal, but appropriated by God, thus his argument was non-sequitur from the get go. I firmly believe that he did not critically consider this argument beyond a cursory copy and paste from Answering Islam’s website. Ironically, he attempted to present this argument in syllogistic form, but the argument was inherently non-sequitur due to its format including the fallacy of false equivalency. How he did not realise this, was impossible to understand, if he is using logic, he should know what fallacies are and how they inhibit his premises. What’s troubling is that in the same sentence he declares that Allah has no partners, then states in the same breath that the Holy Spirit shares in the divinity of God. That’s a contradiction, so either it is his argument and conclusions were wrong, or he forced a false conclusion which he himself did not notice.”

Briefly, the argument I presented in the debate is as follows: According to various texts in the Qur’an (e.g. Surah 2:28; 22:6), Allah is the creator of life. Surah 15:23 tells us,

“It is indeed We, and only We, who give life and bring death, and We are the ultimate inheritor.”

Surah 2:228 tells us that Allah is the one who creates life in the womb.

We also read that Allah creates life by breathing his spirit.

Surah 21:91:

“And (remember) her who protected her private part. So, We blew in her through Our Spirit, and made her and her son a sign for all the worlds.”

Surah 66:12:

“And Maryam, daughter of ‘Imran who guarded her chastity, so We breathed into her Our Spirit, and she testified to the truth of the words of her Lord and His books, and she was one of the devout.”

Surah 15:28-29 also tells us about the creation of Adam:

“Recall when your Lord said to the angels, “I am going to create a human being from a ringing clay made of decayed mud. When I form him perfect, and blow in him of My spirit, then you must fall down before him in prostration.”

Surah 19:16-21 narrates the story of Allah’s Spirit appearing before Mary in the form of a perfect human being to announce the birth of Jesus and to tell her that he is going to give her a boy. This indicates that the Spirit is personal. Here is the text:

“And mention in the Book (the story of) Maryam, when she secluded herself from her people to a place towards East. Then she used a barrier to hide herself from them. Then We sent to her Our Spirit, and he took before her the form of a perfect human being. She said, “I seek refuge with the All Merciful (Allah) against you, if you are God-fearing.” He said “I am but a message-bearer of your Lord (sent) to give you a boy, purified.” She said, “How shall I have a boy while no human has ever touched me, nor have I ever been unchaste? He said, “So it is; your Lord said, ‘It is easy for Me, and (We will do this) so that We make it a sign for people and a mercy from Us, and this is a matter already destined.”

The Arabic word for “give” (Wahaba) means to give/grant/bestow/present etc.

Thus, the Holy Spirit also appears to have been the agent that created life in Mary’s womb and also brought life to Adam. In syllogistic form, I presented my argument as follows:

Premise 1: The Holy Spirit was who created life in Mary’s womb and brought Adam to life.

Premise 2: Allah also created life in Mary’s womb and brought Adam to life.

Premise 3: Therefore, one of three things is true: either the Holy Spirit is identical with Allah, or Allah has a separate co-creator, or one divine God creates life, and the Holy Spirit shares in that divinity.

Premise 4: Now of course, those first two options are not acceptable. The Spirit cannot be identical to Allah, since he describes himself as a message-bearer and also appears to be able to assume human form. Nor can the Spirit be a separate co-creator, since the Qur’an also affirms that God has no partners (Surah 4:116).

Conclusion: Therefore, the only option left is that the Holy Spirit shares in the Divinity, because only God creates.

I then showed that Surah 58:22 suggests that the Spirit has divine characteristics such as omnipresence:

“[Believers] are such that Allah has inscribed faith on their hearts, and has strengthened them with a spirit from Him.”

This text uses the same verb “to strengthen” as 2:87 and 5:110, in reference to the Spirit strengthening Jesus. If the Spirit strengthens all believers everywhere, I argued, does that not at least suggest that the Spirit is omnipresent and omnipotent – being present everywhere and being all powerful? Those are attributes that are thought to be uniquely associated with the divine. This portion of my argument was never addressed by Shabir in the debate.

Now, as to Ijaz’s comments on my argument, I am quite aware of the Qur’an speaking of agents of God who had abilities attained by the “leave/permission of Allah” which are temporal in nature — such as Jesus’ ability to perform miracles for instance. This is the point raised by Shabir in his rebuttal, which is a response that I had anticipated to be his most likely defence. In response, I had cited Surah 32:6-9:

“That One is the All-knower of the Unseen and the seen, the All-Mighty, the Very-Merciful, who made well whatever He created, and started the creation of man from clay. Then He made his progeny from a drop of semen, from despised water. Then He gave him a proportioned shape, and breathed into him of His spirit. And He granted you the (power of) hearing and the eyes and the hearts. Little you give thanks.”

Breathing of the divine Spirit thus appears to be the common mechanism by which Allah creates life. It is by breathing the divine Spirit that, according to Surah 66:12, Allah created life in Mary’s womb — and yet we know from Surah 19 that this same divine Spirit is a personal entity. Shabir accused me at this point of having misread the text of Surah 32, since verse 4 stresses that Allah alone is the Creator of the heavens and the earth and all contained therein. But this was precisely my point. If Allah does not have a separate co-creator, then the Spirit must share in the divinity with Allah — in a similar way to the manner in which Christians believe that Yahweh alone is the creator of the heavens and the earth, whereas the Son and Spirit share in the divinity with the Father, three persons making up one divine being. I did not have time to do this in the debate, but let me at this time support my interpretation of Surah 32 by citing a respected Quranic commentator. Maulana Muhammad Ali notes in his comments on Surah 32:9 that,

“This verse shows that the spirit of God is breathed into every man. This points to a mystical relation between human nature and Divine nature. The word ruh does not here mean the animal soul, because the animal soul is common to man and the animal kingdom. It is something that distinguishes man from the animal world. It is due to the spirit Divine that he rules creation and its due to the same Divine spirit in him that he receives a new life after death – a life which he lives in God and with God – the meeting with God or liqa Allah, as it is called in v. 10.”

Continuing our analysis of Ijaz’s review, Ijaz goes on:

His second argument was that the disciples of Jesus were Trinitarian. Interestingly, I had a debate on this topic earlier in the year and demonstrated that according to the proto-orthodox Christian tradition, the disciples were definitely not Trinitarian. At this point he introduced a very strange argument.

P1 – If the Disciples of Jesus were Trinitarian then the Islamic concept of God is false.
P2 – The Disciples of Christ were Trinitarian.
C   – Therefore the Islamic concept of God is false.

Bizarrely, Ijaz goes on to accuse me of making a circular argument:

“Jonathan cannot make such an argument and believe that he is arguing logically. This is known as the fallacy of circular reasoning.”

There is no way in which the above argument can possibly be construed as circular. The Qur’an makes a prediction about what we should expect to find (namely, that the disciples believed Islamic doctrines such as Tawhid). I then set out to falsify this prediction, in my judgement successfully. Nothing circular about it. It seems to me that Ijaz needs to study some logic.

Ijaz continues:

“What is worse was his attempt at drawing out the logical routes. He presumed that Dr. Shabir could refute his argument in one of two ways, firstly that the disciples were later misled or secondly, that the disciples were overcome (by other groups). Jonathan posited that the second option was impossible as the Qur’an says they were victors. The problem therein with his reasoning is that the Qur’an does not say in what way they were victors. He assumes that it has to be in the promulgation of their beliefs, which the Qur’an does not state itself.

But the Qur’an does specify that Allah would “place those who follow [Jesus] above those who disbelieve up to the Day of Resurrection.” This strongly suggests a continuity of dominance, right from day one. It was the Christianity represented by Paul and the other apostles that achieved dominance. Furthermore, several early highly respected Quranic commentators were led to praise the apostle Paul as a direct result of these verses, as I pointed out in my first rebuttal. Among them are ibn Kathir, al-Tabari, al-Qurturbi, and ibn Ishaq. Since all of those respected commentators affirm my interpretation of these verses, I think that puts me in good company.

Ijaz goes on:

“It is alleged that the early Christians were persecuted and the religion did not become “accepted” until Constantine’s conversion. According to Jonathan’s appeal to the Qur’an, he alleged that the Qur’an mentioned the disciples of Christ were victorious. Yet the Church was not accepted or mainstream until 300 years after them, so in what way were the disciples victorious according to his reading of the Qur’an?”

I would disagree with this historical point, although it would take a while to demonstrate. Perhaps this is a topic for a future debate. I refer interested readers to The Heresy of Orthodoxy by Michael Kruger and Andreas Kostenberger, for a review of this view popularised by Walter Bauer and, more recently, Bart Ehrman.

Ijaz goes on to say,

“At this point, he began to appeal to the New Testament as a historical witness, but for those of you familiar with Dr. Shabir’s works and my own, we already know that the New Testament en toto is not historically viable nor accurate. I have explicitly explained this in great detail in my debate with Steven on the very topic of the beliefs of the disciples using palaeography, papyrology, form criticism, textual criticism and historical criticism.”

My appeals to the New Testament, however, were all prefaced with argumentation as to why we should take the documents I cited (namely, the non-disputed works of Paul, the gospel of Mark and the gospel of John) seriously. Ijaz did not interact with the material I presented (nor really did Shabir). I have argued extensively elsewhere for the general historical credibility of the New Testament, and so I need not reiterate myself here.

Ijaz continues,

“He began to close his argument by referring to hadith criticism’s use of the isnad or chain of transmission. Unfortunately, he merely referred to the use of the chain of transmission by Islamic scholarship, what he utterly failed to do was qualify the authority of these alleged chains of transmission by applying the methods of hadith criticism to the chains themselves. I myself did this in my debate with Steven, in fact this was one of the arguments I researched in great detail and whose historicity the early Church itself disputed. Thus, by both Christian historical traditions and the methodology of hadith criticism, the chains of transmission in regard to John used by Jonathan are known to have been falsified and are historically inaccurate. I do not believe that Jonathan spent more than a few minutes constructing this argument, nor do I believe he consulted any major works of Patristic criticism, especially due to the reason his sole academic source seemed to be Richard Bauckham, whom I also referenced in my debate. I do believe he rushed through this portion of his opening statement, and I do not believe he himself knew in any great detail the methodologies of hadith criticism, and so his appeal to this Christian isnad was mere buzz word dropping.”

I did not apply methods of hadith criticisms to the chains themselves largely due to the time constraints in my opening statement, and also because I was not challenged on it throughout the debate. If Ijaz really wants to do a debate with me on whether the gospels or the Sahih ahadith are better representatives of the sayings and deeds of Jesus and Muhammad respectively, I would be happy to do that.

Ijaz offered no comment on the third argument I presented in the debate, namely that the Injeel (i.e. the gospel) is Trinitarian and that the Injeel is affirmed by the Qur’an.

Ijaz finishes his review by claiming that I did not put much thought into my opening statement, that I did not present any new material, and that I did not present the Trinity. I would disagree with him strongly on all three of those points. As time permits, I will put out some further reviews of the argumentation covered in the debate.

Over the past week, I have been contacted concerning a comment I made in passing, in a recent lecture I delivered on Islam, concerning so-called no-go zones in France, governed by gang-imposed Sharia law. This was not an area of particular interest to me, and so I had regrettably not researched it with my usual care. It was not the focus of my lecture, and was only raised in response to a questioner in the Q&A concerning the effects of the increase of Islam in Europe. I had mentioned the fact that there are now Shariah courts in the UK, and had also briefly touched on so-called “no-go zones” in France. In what was regrettably a poor choice of wording on my part, I likened these Muslim enclaves in France to a cancer — my meaning of course was that such enclaves are a breeding ground for Islamic radicalism. It was not intended to refer to the individuals who live in these areas. By likening the enclaves to a cancer it was the ‘No Go Zone’ structure itself I was talking about, and not the Muslims living within such areas nor even the ones who were enforcing such a structure.

Unfortunately, my words have since been taken by several angry bloggers and made to sound like I was likening Muslim communities in general to a cancer. These bloggers then proceeded to label me a bigot, an Islamophobe, a hate-preacher and a racist (since when was Islam a race?). I have very strong relationships with Muslims across the UK and further afield, and so you can imagine why I found those comments to be rather offensive. I have never said, and never would say, anything negative about Muslim communities in general. Yes, I criticize Islamic radicalism (as I hope any moderate Muslim would join me in doing), but I always make a distinction between Islamic radicalism and the vast majority of Muslims in the west who are peace-loving. For sure, I do on occasion raise texts from the Quran and Hadith literature that I sincerely find to be troubling, but the appropriate response where such disagreement exists is to engage in reasoned dialogue and debate, not to call each other names.

Regarding the French no-go zones to which I referred, I have since taken the time to look more critically at my sources regarding this. I had previously been aware of Fox News’s apology and retraction of statements concerning these no-go zones, but my understanding is that they had dramatically overstated the case (claiming, ridiculously, for instance, that all of Birmingham in the UK was Muslim-only and implying that there were officially-designated Muslim-only zones). Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch (note: I do not endorse everything Spencer says) commented on Fox News’s retraction here:

No No-Go Zones? Really?

Since I have neither the time nor the interest to summarise and review all of the relevant information here, I will offer the following two additional articles that defend the existence of no-go zones in France and Britain:

European ‘No-Go’ Zones: Fact or Fiction? Part 1: France (Soeren Kern)

European ‘No-Go’ Zones: Fact or Fiction? Part 2: Britain (Soeren Kern)

At the time of writing, I have not researched this topic sufficiently thoroughly to come to a firm conclusion. I do, however, have some reason for skepticism. First, it is not entirely clear to me whether these regional problems are permanent or temporary in nature. Second, it is not clear to me to what extent Islamic radicalism has a part to play in what goes on in these poverty-stricken areas, which are reportedly plagued by “high-rise slums, drug-fueled crime, failing schools and poor, largely Muslim immigrants” (New Republic). I suspect that the case has been rather overblown.

To finish, then, it is regrettable to me that my words concerning these ‘no-go’ zones in a talk I delivered recently in England have been misunderstood and misrepresented. I did feel that it was necessary to clarify where I stand, both on my unfortunately worded comment and the existence of European “no-go” zones. I do not at this time intend to comment further on this matter.

On Sunday 16th of August, at 5:15pm GMT (that’s 12:15pm Eastern Time; 11:15am Central Time; 9:15am Pacific Standard Time), I am going to be engaging in a public debate with Islamic scholar Dr. Shabir Ally in London, England, on the question of “What is God Like — Tawhid or Trinity?” The live-stream is embedded above. Be sure to tune in!

See my previous debate on this subject with Abdurraheem Green here. See Shabir Ally’s previous debate on this subject with Nabeel Qureshi here.

For anyone in the UK who might wish to attend this event in person, the details are found on the promotional poster below:

Ally-McLatchie poster

Last weekend, at a church in Middlesbrough, England, I presented the above talk on sharing one’s Christian faith with Muslims in a winsome and persuasive way. Islam is a religion that accounts for well over a billion people worldwide, and self-professes to be the world’s fastest growing religion. It is a subject that we often hear about through the media, but few Christians have a deep understanding of the Muslim religion or are acquainted with what the Qur’an and other primary Islamic sources actually teach. This means that few are equipped to effectively bring the gospel to their Muslim friends, colleagues and acquaintances. In this presentation, I delve into the primary Islamic sources to investigate what Islam teaches about Jesus, the Trinity, and salvation. I explains how to graciously demonstrate the internal problems and inconsistencies inherent in the Islamic religion; as well as how to explain core Christian doctrines in a way that Muslims can relate to; and how to skilfully and persuasively share the gospel with your Muslim friends.

I recently did a debate on Unbelievable? on Premier Christian Radio, a show that airs every Saturday on British radio (also podcasted online), featuring debates between Christians and non-Christians. Last year on the show, I did a debate on whether Christianity is evidence-based, with British atheist Elliot George. The recording of that encounter can be found here. On Saturday 16th May, the show featured a conversation between myself and British Muslim apologist, Abdurraheem Green. Our topic was “What is God Like — Tawhid or Trinity?” I have embedded the debate as a YouTube video above. Enjoy!

 

Tariq Ramadan, an Islamic scholar and writer, wants us to believe that Islam does not demand a death penalty for apostasy. Although he concedes that the ahadith reports Muhammad to have said  “Whoever changed his Islamic religion, then kill him,” (Sahih Al-Bukhari volume 9, book 84, no. 57) and other words to similar effect, Ramadan argues that such a penalty was to be applied only in cases of hostile or subversive attacks against the Muslim community, where perhaps an apostate would join the enemies of Islam, thereby committing treason. Ramadan concedes that his view that a Muslim is free to change his religion has been rejected by the vast majority of Muslim scholars throughout Islamic history.

Ramadan also issues a challenge to provide an example of Muhammad ordering a person’s death as a consequence of apostasy. Providing such an example is not difficult. Read more

Anyone who has had even a mild exposure to Islamic apologetics will have encountered the argument for the Qur’an’s divine origin based on its purported scientific miracles — that is, scientific assertions contained within the Qur’an which have only been validated by modern science. Out of all of the arguments for the Islamic religion, this is the one which, in my judgment, comes closest to being a real argument. Indeed, this is probably the best they’ve got, and it is frequently a lead argument by Muslim polemicists. Nonetheless, the argument has always appeared very strange to me. If the Qur’an is unrivaled at anything, assuredly it is only in its ability to conceive of a Universe so wildly disconnected from reality.

One problem with the positive Islamic argument is that it can only be falsified if one allows both correct and incorrect scientific statements to potentially validate or refute the Qur’an’s divine origin. If correct scientific statements provide evidence for the Qur’an’s divine origin, then surely incorrect scientific statements provide support for the opposite conclusion. For the argument to work, therefore, one must demonstrate not only that the Qur’an contains specific scientific information that could not have been known by a seventh century Arab, but also that the Qur’an does not contain demonstrable scientific errors that we might expect from a seventh century Arab. Unfortunately, it is usually the case that only the passages that are believed by Muslims to comport with modern science are presented in Muslim polemical literature. Read more

Qur'anThe Islamic religion claims that the Qur’an, revealed allegedly by the angel Gabriel to the prophet Muhammad beginning in 610 A.D., is the inspired and inerrant word of God. Such an assertion, however, is highly problematic, and many, many arguments could be given to convincingly refute it. In this article, I am going to offer one of those reasons, which I perceive to be the most damning. In future articles, we will consider some other serious difficulties with the idea that the Qur’an represents the revealed words of God. My argument here can be summarized in syllogistic form as follows:

Premise 1: Either the Bible is the Word of God or it is not.

Premise 2: If the Bible is the Word of God, the Qur’an is not.

Premise 3: If the Bible is not the Word of God, the Qur’an is not.

Conclusion: Therefore, the Qur’an is not the Word of God. Read more

My shocking and eye-opening interview with former U.S. Marine and FBI Counter-terrorism officer, John Guandolo, airs May 7 and May 8 on our Radio program.  You can download for free the entire report that Mr. Guandolo co-authored here.  Go to http://strategicengagement.org to learn more about Mr. Guandolo and the work he and others are doing to inform America about the threat of Shariah law in the United States.