betwixt

Transcript: "Why Trust the Gospels?" by Peter J. Williams

2013-09-04T22:34:00.004-04:00

What we're gonna be considering in the next few minutes is the question of the reliability of the Gospels, the four Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—which you find in the New Testament. But before we look at the question like historical reliability, one of the things we need to think about is the whole question of evidence. And here, Christianity has a very important principle for how we judge evidence, and that is the principle of consistency. We're not claiming that we alone have that principle. A lot of the time, people want someone to prove something about Christianity to them. Often what they mean by that is to prove as if they could prove it mathematically or philosophically. "Prove to me that God exists." The problem about that is, of course, is that sort of proof only exists in math (mathematics) and in philosophy.

Mathematics, of course, we know is a game. It's about certain principles of rules that you can put in at the beginning, and if you play according to those rules, you get a particular answer. Within formal logic in philosophy, you likewise have rules. You follow those rules, and you get a particular answer. But those things aren't really about real life. They have application to real life, but mathematics is about numbers, and numbers aren't things you that find in real life. You find that, of course, real objects have quantities, but it's not that a number is real in the same way.

So when we ask for a proof about the reliability of the Gospels, often that's an unreasonable thing to ask. So what I think a Christian is bound to ask is that someone is consistent when they ask for proof; that is, they're not asking for more proof when it comes to this historical matter than for any other historical matter, and they're not asking for more proof than the sort of proof that they act on in their lives. Some of the most important things, in fact, I'd say all of the most important things in life can't be proven in that philosophical or mathematical sense.

Take for instance the question of whether anyone at all loves you. Most of us would agree that it's important that some people love us, but can you prove that, say, your parents love you? Well, no, you can't. Look at all the evidence you might quote about how kind they have been to you and all the things they've done for you, but how can you prove that those actions have not been done through self-interest? Those sorts of things you can't prove in a mathematical and philosophical way. Does that mean it's not reasonable to believe it? No. Actually, these things are very reasonable to believe on the basis of evidence.

We have the sort of evidence we use to judge trustworthiness and reliability of people all the time. And so what I'm asking people should do with the Gospels is consider the evidence that they show for their own trustworthiness and reliability as witnesses, and whether Christian principle of consistency comes in. And of course, Christians believe that God will judge people using and probing them as to their own consistency is that whatever rule you've been using with other evidence, that is what it would be reasonable to use with the Gospel. You shouldn't be more skeptical about the Gospels than about anything else.

But before we come to think about the Four Gospels themselves, I want us to think about the spread of Christianity, because I think this sets a background for how we understand the reliability of the Gospels. I can go to non-Christian writers and find evidence about how far and how fast Christianity spread. Take for instance Cornelius Tacitus, a Roman historian who was alive as a young boy around the time when there was a great fire in Rome in the year 64, and he wrote about that and how probably Nero had started the fire and yet Nero then blame the Christians. And Tacitus writes about how there is a vast number of Christians in Rome at the time, and they are suffering, they are being persecuted for their faith. He confirms that Christianity began in Judea, that Christ was the founder of the Christian name, and that He suffered under Pontius Pilate who is the person mentioned in the Gospels and is the figure, the governor of the time of the crucifixion of Jesus and there he is around the year 64, so let's say the crucifixion was around the year 30 or 33. That's when it's generally dated. Well, within 30 or 35 years of the beginnings of Christianity, Christianity spread from Judea all the way to Rome, so to give you some analogies for that distance, if you go, for instance, from Rome all the way to the top of the Shetland Islands, off the top of Britain, that would give you a similar distance. If you wanted to go from Cuba all the way up to, say, West Michigan, that would be about the same distance as you'd find. It's a long way. Christianity had spread just in a few decades. That sort of distance.

We could also look at how Pliny, the governor of Northwest Turkey, the place called Bithynia, wrote to the emperor around the year 112, writing saying how many Christians there were in his area. Well, there he is, 80 years after Christianity began, and yet he describes what went on in a Christian meeting and describes how these people were treating Christ as a God to be worshipped, so that's not just an idea that grew up over a very long period of time. It's attested outside the Gospels quite early on.

Now when we think of the spread of Christianity, the one thing that it starts to show to me is that it was not a very good context in which things could just be made up. The idea that a lot of people have in their minds is that over 30 or 50 or 100 or 200 years, fundamental things in the Christian message were made up. So perhaps at first, Christians hadn't believed that Jesus was raised from the dead, and then over a long period of time, that idea just got attached onto Christianity. It's one of those things that happens as people repeat stories over a long period of time.

The idea of a legend like you would have with King Arthur. You have a long period of time and all sorts of stories can get attached to someone like Jesus. The problem with that is that if a very large number of people are Christians in Rome, suffering for their faith within only 30 or 35 years of the beginnings of Christianity, and that's a non-Christian claim about Christianity. You can find so many Christian claims saying exactly the same thing. If Christianity spread that far and that fast, it really is a very unfavorable environment in which you can have lots of core elements of the Christian message made up, because it's a bit like changing a publicity campaign halfway through the publicity campaign. It's very hard for that to happen. It's hard to think how Christianity spread at all without some core message. So you'd have to have whatever the original core message was obliterated by the new message, and of course, it's very difficult to have that new element coming in once there were so many Christians, because of course if Christians really are disorganized and if there isn't a central means, easy means of communication, then how would you impose any new development on those Christians which are in those different churches right across the Mediterranean? So logistically, I think the evidence of the spread of Christianity makes it very hard to imagine how lots of core elements of the Christian message could have been changed in any substantial way long after Christianity had begun to spread.

We then come to the question of Four Gospels. Well, as now we know from many different media reports, there are other gospels, so why should we favor the Four Gospels? Aren't those the Ffour Gospels that the Emperor Constantine imposed on people in the 4th century? That's the story which is commonly told. In fact, it's not at all like that. The other gospels, apocryphal gospels—gospels like the Gospel of Philip, the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Mary, and so on—in fact, our witnesses to the Four Gospels. They depend on them. They use some of their wordings, some of their ideas. So rather than being evidence against those four Gospels, they're in fact evidence for the Four Gospels.

Moreover, people say that it is power that imposed the Four Gospels on people. Perhaps it was some great powerful committee, because we know that in the 4th century, there was a big church council, the Council of Nicea. Perhaps that imposed the Four Gospels. Well, history says otherwise. We know what was discussed in the Council of Nicea. There are records, and one of the things they never discussed was what should be the books in the Bible. So the idea that that Council decided what the Four Gospels should be doesn't work.

In fact, we find a rather interesting pattern which is different—which is that the Four Gospels are attested in a very wide geographical area before there was any central Christian power. In fact, when Christians were in a very weak position. If we go to the earliest copy of the Four Gospels—it's incomplete, it's fragmented, it's broken off—we go to Dublin and there, from around the year 225, there was a copy of the Four Gospels and the Book of Acts. That's in Dublin, but it's thought to have come originally from Southern Egypt. So we have there in Southern Egypt by around the year 225, that's a hundred years before the Council of Nicea, we have Four Gospels. Before Constantine was even born, someone has put those into a manuscript. That's Southern Egypt.

We could then go across to France and we could go to Lyons, the great city where Irenaeus was the bishop around the year 185, and he wrote at that time about how having the Four Gospels was like having four cardinal directions, having four winds? It was so natural. It was hard to imagine having anything other than four Gospels. Well, Irenaeus was not someone who is far disconnected from the New Testament writers. In fact, it is said that he was the disciple of a disciple of Jesus—a disciple of Polycarp who is a disciple of John who is the disciple of Jesus. He's not a long way disconnected, and he says having four Gospels is very natural thing, like having four winds. And he wasn't just some bishop having a cushy life. His predecessor was martyred in the job, and he was martyred in the Job.

So we have Southern Egypt and France each having four Gospels, but we can go back a little bit further to the year, around the year 175, when a man called Tatian, probably in Syria, made something called the diatessaron. A diatessaron is a harmony of the Four Gospels, taking them and putting them into a chronological narrative. So they are chronologically arranged, but the point is, he affirms having four Gospels.

Well, just think about the geographical spread we have there: Southern Egypt, Syria, and France. It's quite a wide range of places and those places are before there is any central power having the Four Gospels. Notice Rome isn't on the list. What we have is with no centralized power, we find the Four Gospels. So do we explain that because some committee asked them? I would say, "Quite the contrary". The evidence suggests that the credentials of the Four Gospels were what made them set apart and made them recognized. Some people say, "Who chose the Four Gospels?". To me, that's rather like asking who chose the winner at the Olympic 1500-meter race. Well, there is a panel of judges, and they would be called in if there was a photo finish, but if there is no photo finish and there is no infraction of the regulations, then of course, the person who wins the fastest. That's what really decides the matter. And so I would say the credentials of the Four Gospels forced them onto people.

Now on to the Gospels themselves. What evidence do we have within them of their reliability? What of the striking things, and an issue of agreement about the Gospels is that both, whether you take traditional discussion about the Gospels or some skeptical discussion about the Gospels nowadays, people broadly agree that three or four of those Gospels were written outside the land in which Jesus ministered, outside Israel, outside Palestine. They were done away from there.

Traditionally, it's thought that perhaps Matthew's Gospel was written in Judea. Nowadays people tend to think that three or four of the Gospels were written outside the land. And yet what ts so striking is that they show intimate knowledge of the land. Now that's not a trivial thing, because it's in fact it's very hard to get hold of that sort of information if you're writing a long way away. If you are living, let's say in Rome, and you want to find out about the geography of Judea and so on, how will you know the villages there are in Judea or Galilee? Can you go into a bookshop and find a book on the villages of Galilee? No, you can't. People wouldn't write such an uninteresting book. If they wrote about geography, they would write about supposedly the great places of the world, and Galilee was not on the list.

So how is that the Gospels have that sort of knowledge? They not only know the names of small villages, they know traveling distances. They know where the land goes up and down. These are the sorts of things you can just read as you go through the Four Gospels.

By the way, the Apocryphal gospels have almost zero geographical knowledge—hardly any mention of towns. The main town mentioned in the Apocryphal gospels is the town, Jerusalem, which of course is the capital which many people would have heard of, so there's no impressive geographical knowledge there. It's quite a contrast. But it's not just that the Four Gospels have, for instance, the names of places right. They also get other things right, which would require local knowledge. They get discussion of the weather right. Often you get talk of storms suddenly arising on the Sea of Galilee. There, of course, we know storms do suddenly arise. When they describe the storms, they don't describe them as having rains. They describe them as windstorms. Well, of course, that's the way it was. There wasn't much precipitation, but there could be a lot of wind in that narrow valley.

They know what the trade was. They know that they were fishermen, and that they would do this sort of thing. They get the jobs that people have in the right relative proportion. You take a story which is found in Luke's Gospel of a man called, Zacchaeus, supposedly a little man, a chief tax collector, living in Jericho, who climbed up a sycamore tree in order to see Jesus. You don't ask about the plausibility of the story. Well, one of the things that is talk about in Luke's narrative is Jesus is on a journey going up to Jerusalem, and we know that if you are going from Galilee to Jerusalem, Jericho was very much en route because you would go down using the Jordan valley. We also know that it's the sort of place that you would put a tax place for making sure that people who came by were taxed. We then look at the question of the sycamore tree, and you ask the question like, "Well, were there sycamore trees in Jericho?", and in fact, there were. When you look at the distribution of sycamore trees in the ancient world, and even today you can find sycamores in Jericho. It's that sort of thing.

So how would a writer who hadn't been to that city know that there were sycamore trees in that town? In fact, the species, ficus sycomorus, was not found in Turkey, Greece, or Italy. So a writer in those countries probably wouldn't even have heard of that particular plant.

The Gospels also know about local languages, the dialects. They quote various words in Aramaic, particularly Mark's Gospel and John's Gospel. How would someone who's well away from the land get that geographical knowledge? So these sorts of things are very surprising if the documents were written in a different place, and that sort of information can only be explained if they have reliable people who are handing testimony on to them.

Now someone might say, "Well, that only shows that the frame of the narrative has correct details. Historical fiction can do that. Why can't the Gospels be historical fiction?". The problem with that is it doesn't go very well with the common idea that when the Gospels got stories wrong about Jesus, it was through exaggeration and general carelessness in transmission, the sort of processes that might go on in the creation of a legend, because what we know is that lack of attention to detail in one area tends to spill over to lack of attention to detail in another area. So if you got great attention to detail in terms of place names, and in terms of plant names, and in terms of the general environment of a story, it's very hard to say that all the other aspects of the story got changed through some corrupting and careless process.

When we look at the Apocryphal gospels, we find a wonderful contrast. They don't have geographical knowledge. They don't have the right cultural knowledge. They don't have the linguistic insight which the Four Gospels have. In fact, they show what would go on if someone were making up a story. I would maintain that what you have in the Four Gospels is a very different thing.

Now someone might want to say, "Can't I put something like the Gospel of Thomas in my Bible, alongside the Four Gospels as a witness?" Well, just think how the Gospel of Thomas begins. The Gospel of Thomas begins like this: "These are the secret sayings which the living Jesus spoke and Didymus Judas Thomas wrote down". In other words, this is teaching secret teaching of Jesus. If you want to know the real story about Jesus, you need to come to this gospel and this gospel alone. So you can't put it alongside other gospels, because it claims to be something unique.

Similarly, the Gospel of Judas begins saying, "These are secret sayings". What we have in the Four Gospels, the Four Gospels don't claim to be secret, they claim to be what Jesus taught publicly to crowds, to His twelve disciples, occasionally to just a selection of those disciples, but never just to one person. So I would say the Four Gospels should be treated as public records about Jesus. They have a lot about them which says they should be taken very seriously.

On the other hand, the apocryphal gospels give evidence of the Four Gospels but also give evidence of what would happen if people made up stories and it has nothing like the same evidence in support of it.

Thank you very much.

Apologetics 315: Douglas Jacoby Interview Transcript

2013-09-04T21:55:00.000-04:00

This is a transcript of the interview with Douglas Jacoby on December 3, 2012 by Brian Auten at Apologetics 315. Please visit the interview blog post to read more about Douglas Jacoby. You can also download the audio of the interview from there.

Links within the transcript will point you to Amazon.com, Apologetics 315, or related apologetics resources online.

BA: Hello. This is Brian of Apologetics 315. Today's interview is with Christian apologist, Douglas Jacoby. Douglas is adjunct professor at Lincoln Christian University and author of a number of books including Compelling Evidence for God and the Bible: Finding Truth in the Age of Doubt, A Quick Overview of the Bible: Understanding How All the Pieces Fit Together, Genesis, Science & History: A Faith-Building Look at the Opening Chapters of Genesis, and Your Bible Questions Answered: Clear, Concise, and Compelling. He speaks extensively on a wide range of apologetic topics, and in this interview, I'll be asking him about the historical reliability of the Scriptures, his debates, and his advice for those doing apologetics.

Well, thanks for speaking with me today, Douglas.

DJ: You're very welcome. Thank you for having me.

BA: Well, Douglas, would you mind telling our listeners a bit more about yourself and your ministry.

DJ: I'd love to. I came to faith in Christ when I was a freshman at Duke University. I'm very grateful to complete strangers who took a chance on me, just willing to share their faith, and not being intimidated. I'm so glad they did, and it just took me a few weeks. I was already seeking, but I had lots of questions which I think eventually fed into my passion for apologetics.

I ended up helping to plant a church in Europe. I was on staff. Paid ministry for 20 years and now 10 years independent, teaching all over the world and also with a university.

BA: Very good. I'm always interested in people who have spoken in a wide variety of places. How did you get into apologetics in the first place, and maybe as an addition to that question, how do you see the role of apologetics training within the church?

DJ: Well, right. I think I got into it because I had so many questions, and in my personal evangelism, I was regularly meeting other people with questions. I was in college for 11 years. I think the experience of church-planting in Europe, living in Britain, Sweden, Australia, where faith is not taken for granted. As Christians, we needed to come up with really good answers, so I think the search propelled me along.

I began reading apologetics books very young, early in my faith, and I continue to do that. I'm one of those people who thinks that anyone in campus ministry, even youth ministry—high school level or middle school level—needs to know something about apologetics. It’s just the world we live in today. I would say it borders on irresponsible for someone engaged in ministry not to know something about how to defend the faith and answer the common objections.

BA: Yeah, we see the need for apologetics within the church, and we see the need for apologetics in public, you know, in the public domain where people are looking for reasons and answers. What do you think is the greatest area of need of equipping for Christians today from your experience and from your travels?

DJ: Well, it really does depend on the culture. When I'm speaking in the Muslim world, Christian-Jewish...I mean Christian-Muslim relations are very important. Jewish relations, too. In places like that, I think it's important for believers in Christ to read the Qur'an and be familiar. If we're in the more atheistic parts of Northern Europe, then it's a completely different set of issues. There, we have to talk a lot more about the nature of tolerance and debunk the idea that all roads lead to God, though it's a lovely idea. So it really depends where we are.

I live in Georgia. We've lived in Atlanta for coming up to ten years, and here, in a way, I think it's even harder than Northern Europe, because so many people just assume they're Christians because they belong to a church. We have to go back to the beginning and talk about what faith in Christ really looks like.

I think I can't give an easy answer on that one. It really depends on the part of the world we're in and to some extent, even the education level. From speaking to ten-year-olds or twelve-year-olds, which I love to do, it tends to be very simple. If I'm talking to an audience of PhDs, then there's no need to hold back. So, you know, everyone's different.

BA: Part of being a good communicator is not only being educated in your area, as an apologist in this case, but also being able to bridge the gap between recognizing what's needed and how to fulfill that need. What would you think about that?

DJ: I think as apologists and just as Christians, whether we consider ourselves apologists or not, we need to be widely read. I don't wanna limit the work of evidences to just one area, like the integrity of the Bible, though that's important. We live in a world marked by diversity, globalization, and that unfortunately means we've got more work to do. We can't afford to remain ignorant, for example, about the 22% of the world who are Muslims, or 1 in 6 people on the planet are Hindus. We need to branch out into multiple areas. I think we also need to address the popular ideas that are going around the universities today, like the ideas in Dan Brown's book, The Da Vinci Code—the Bible's been changed; there's some huge conspiracy going on. I think we need to be acquainted with all these things, and that's a lot of work. That's a lot of reading.

BA: There's certainly ongoing challenges that arise and just continue to recycle themselves, in a sense. Now, one of the areas that you've done work in is the historical reliability of the Scriptures. What do you think are the most common objections that you encounter when it comes to people not accepting the Bible?

DJ: One certainly of the most common one is the Bible has been changed. It's copy of a copy of a copy. If anyone has taken some time to investigate the history of the transmission of the Bible, they know that's not true. The Dead Sea Scrolls show that the content of the Old Testament has been preserved adequately through the centuries. The New Testament manuscript evidence is even stronger.

I just learned something a couple of days ago. I was at a Biblical scholarship conference in Chicago, and I was talking with someone who's very well-known in the New Testament world and in the world of apologetics who pointed out that from his study, he's seeing that the manuscripts probably lasted longer than we imagined. If you're like me, Brian, you thought of the manuscripts as just wearing out and having been given a decent burial, because, hey, people believe this is the Word of God. They had these parchments or these papyri and eventually, they just wore out. Well, this scholar pointed out that many manuscripts were in use, because they were written on durable materials, for centuries. This was an amazing thought that the originals of the four Gospels may well still have been around and being copied, being referred to throughout the entire 2nd century.

Anyway, that's one of the areas that gets me very fired up, you know, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the manuscripts. There certainly are other ways to talk about the integrity of the Bible, how it corresponds to reality, it's truth content, also how practical it is, the differences it makes in life. So there are many angles. I think the important thing is to begin the conversation.

BA: Everybody might be in a different place in their own understanding when you're engaging with them. I wonder just in general, though, how you personally would go about building a case for the reliability of the Bible. Start with Old Testament? Start with the New? Is there a certain approach that you use when you're engaging?

DJ: I do at the beginning distinguish between the issue of the copying of the Scripture and the content of the Scripture. If the content was false, it doesn't matter how well it's been copied. If the copying was poor, even though the original manuscripts may have been perfect, then we're in trouble, too. So we have to distinguish those two. And that third area, how it applies to our lives.

Most people are unaware of how much evidence there is. They imagine that the Biblical story in the Old Testament is purely legendary. It's set in the misty time of old, and they underestimate how much the story is tied in to space and time, which means that geography (space) and history (time) are vital. When we look at the context and see how the Biblical story is actually anchored in history, we can't really dismiss it as fairy tale anymore. I think that's actually the starting place, particularly in the educated West, where so many people have been told that it doesn't really matter. It's just a book of stories with morals that you can take or leave. That's where I would begin.

BA: Very good. You mentioned there how it's something that happened in space and time, I think of archeology in that regard, and a lot of people might have the objection that or the assumption where, 'Hey, archeology is showing that we can't really trust the Old Testament. These places haven't been found or maybe they've been found in the wrong spot'. From your studies, what have you found as far as the archeological reliability of the Bible, and are there problem areas from the archeological point of view?

DJ: I love that question. I love teaching archeology because it's so visual. You have your PowerPoints. I even have the opportunity to lead tours about the Biblical world about once a year.

Lest we mislead others, it's not generally the case that archeology proves the Bible's true. It's more that archeology illuminates the Biblical world. For example, if you see a 1st century tomb, and you see the flat, round stone that fits into the groove that closes easily but opens only with difficulty. The image that you have of Jesus' tomb is illuminated. It's refined, and I think that's how archeology usually works. There are times when it certainly confirms. For example, evidence found in the last 20 years that's indisputably proving that David truly existed. Or fifty years ago, that Pontius Pilate was an actual figure, not just a prop on a stage. Herod the Great's tomb was identified just a few years ago. We think of the conquest under Joshua. The Biblical picture is not that it was a Blitzkrieg that totally destroyed the land of Canaan. In fact, only three cities are said to have been burned to the ground, and archeology backs that up very well.

That's not to say that there are no difficult areas particularly in the first eleven chapters of Genesis. If people are looking for archeological evidence of the Tower of Babel...yes, there's the Great Ziggurat at Ur. There are many ziggurats that have been found—the stepped pyramids, temples, observatories—but there's no evidence for one single one. If you're trying to locate a literal Garden of Eden or find proof of Noah's ark, I don't believe that's there.

Someone came to me a few days ago. I was speaking in Chicago, and wanted to know what is the evidence for the Flood. Now I know that when we're talking about the Great Flood, this is not archeology, this is geology. I had to say, ‘I think it may be the wrong question’. There are flood stories worldwide, but they come from all different times. I think the real question is, what did that story mean to the people who received it, who were familiar with the pagan account (Babylonian or Sumerian account) of the world being destroyed because the gods couldn't sleep? Humans were just objects. They were created as slaves of the gods, and yet the Biblical story shows that sin is the reason for the flood, and even in the midst of judgment, there's grace. There's some powerful theological [...] (12:40).

Sometimes we have archeological difficulties, because we're asking the wrong question. We're maybe looking for evidence that will never be found. But in general, the old dictum applies very well: Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Just because no proof has turned up yet doesn't mean it won't. We can't argue from silence.

Is that helpful?

BA: Yes, that is helpful. You mentioned leading tours. There's so many people who I've heard from who have gone to Israel and been around the Holy Land. They always come back and, 'Wow, it's real!' It makes everything so real to them from the Scriptures from all the different locations. What's been your experience in actually leading tours like that?

DJ: Exactly as you say. The eyes are opened. If you can't go in a tour, you can still look at the maps at the back of your Bible. You can still do a little background reading, because I think the more we are able to imagine—and having a visual memory, to me, is ideal—but the more we are able to imagine, the more we are able to believe. I'm not saying that if we imagine it hard enough, this becomes a reality. This is not a post-modern kind of speculation. But if we can't imagine it, it becomes abstract. It becomes theoretical. When we actually see the Sea of Galilee, maybe even swim in it or the Dead Sea for that matter; if we go up Mount Carmel and we can think, 'Okay, it was here that Elijah challenged the prophets of Baal and Asherah'; when we can go to Caesarea Philippi or the Garden of Gethsemane or even stand on the Temple steps, many of which are preserved even from the 1st century, then the Biblical stories take on a different light.

So I don't know what's changed except that now we have the power to truly imagine what was going on, and along the way, we learned that, 'Oh wow, there is a lot of archeological evidence confirming the Scripture'. But that's the experience that I think a lot of people have, especially in Israel, but it would be to, a lesser extent, in Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, Greece, Italy. All these different countries.

BA: Earlier, we were talking about the reliability of the Scriptures and different responses people might have. I'm thinking some people might grant the general reliability of the Bible as far as the copying and stuff but then reject the content. They won't get into any dispute about that, but they might say something like, 'Yeah, but why does this book have any authority in my life? What gives it any authority? This is just a story that has no application for me.'

DJ: Well, usually, when people are exposed to a Biblical story and don't see how it relates to them or makes them uncomfortable and they want to change the subject, there's more going on underneath the surface than they may be admitting. We have to remember, we're in a society that is strongly committed to the pursuit of happiness or as the Yale theologian Miroslav Volf puts it, "The managed pursuit of pleasure". I think we need to reframe the quest. It shouldn't be the pursuit of happiness but the pursuit of holiness, and the Bible is just not very convenient, so I think this is where we can't back off on teaching sin and repentance and discipleship. That's vital.

When people say, ' Why would this book have any authority in my life?', well, if there's a God, wouldn't He have some authority in your life? Most people would say, 'Well yeah, if there's a God, He would.' And then I think we can make it a little easier to accept, a little bit more palatable, when we remind them that according the Bible, itself, according to Christianity, God speaks to us in many ways. It’s not just in Scripture, and not just in the history of Israel. He speaks to us through nature to some extent, through conscience, through history, and especially through the person of Jesus Christ. I think when people really look at those Gospel accounts and get to know who Christ is—and Christ is the Word of God—then the heart softens. So instead of trying to persuade them that the Bible is God's Word (even though I believe that), when we show them how Christ is God's Word, His message, His logos, then if their hearts are receptive, they will start to change. What was initially a moral, an intellectual objection kinda fades away as people's hearts soften, then we're really getting down to brass tacks, because fundamentally, all of us are sinners. We all have a problem. Whether we know it or not, we need the message that's in the Bible.

BA: Well, I wonder how you would go about speaking with someone, in just a conversation, who says something along the lines of, 'Well, how do I know that this is really the Truth? What actually gives the Bible authority in that regard? How can I know it's the truth?'

DJ: We ultimately know it's the Truth by experiencing it. This is not just a catch 22—you’ll believe it when you decide to believe it—but we know it's true because it's true to life. It resonates. When our hearts are opened, it is, by far, the best explanation for what's going on in this world.

Now, so when they come from a Hindu background or Buddhist or Sikh background, or Muslim background—and this is where we get into comparing worldviews. Does the Buddhist worldview, which is in fact ultimately atheistic, do a better job in explaining the world we live in? Does the Hindu background, where ultimately our souls will be absorbed into the world's soul, and there'll be no distinctions and in a sense, there will be no relationships? Is that true to life? And so we challenge worldviews, and I think in doing that, the simplicity and the truth of the Biblical worldview shines.

An analogy I use sometimes is I compare the moon the sun. When you look at the moon, you see light reflected, and certainly there's truth in every religion. I mean philosophy, even the crazy ones, always have a carnal of truth, but that's a reflected light. When we look at the sun, it's bright. I mean, you could go blind, because it's incandescent. It's not just reflected. When we look at Jesus Christ, when we look at God's Word, that's like looking at the sun. An analogy that was actually suggested by Malachi 4, the Messiah's the “sun of righteousness”. When we look at the other world religions, we're not surprised that there's some truth there, but it's a derivative truth. It's a reflected light, and so those are some things that I share as I talk with people when I'm sitting on the airplane or just when I’m with friends in Atlanta.

BA: That's helpful. Here's another angle sometimes you get from people I think, and that's the objection that maybe goes along with that misunderstanding you described before where people think, 'Oh, the BIble's been translated so many times'. Well, we know that's not the case, but the idea here is someone will say, 'Well, there's so many disagreements over the wording. Christians can't even agree on anything. Why should I trust the Bible if Christians can't agree on it?'

DJ: Of course, they're making a very good point. The encyclopedia of religions (I'm thinking I've seen this before) lists 34,000 Christian denominations. The poor job that we as believers have done being unified with fellow-believers has, I think, really made it hard for outsiders to believe. I think we need to own that.

But if the objection is that Christians don't agree on the wording, that's fairly easy to explode. There are different translations, but in any translation—and this would be of a classical work or even, say, someone writes a novel in German, and it's being translated into English—there's not just one way to put it. There's a spectrum from strict to loose, from strong equivalents to paraphrases. So the fact that there are many translations in English (more than a hundred) doesn't mean that there's a problem. In fact, I would disagree that there are controversies over the wording. When scholars, for example, wanna make a fresh translation, they use the United Bible Society's or maybe the Nestle-Aland Greek New Testament (it's coming out now in version 28). It's just not true.

In the whole New Testament, there are only 22 verses that are in doubt, and whether they belong in the New Testament or not is irrelevant to the message. But 22 verses, that means the other 99.4% of the New Testament is established beyond dispute. The statistics are not as good for the Old Testament, but there's still no dispute over the basic sense of translation.

I have to say this because I love the translations. I love this field, and so often I hear people saying, 'Oh, it's been translated and copied so many times'. But that's not the disagreement. I think there's very good agreement on what the text says. The disagreement is how much do we have to obey that text?

BA: Yeah, well, good. Now I wanna shift gears now and talk a bit about apologetic dialogues and debates. Now, Douglas, you've been in a few debates yourself, and I would wanna kinda talk about them, but can we draw a distinction between a dialogue we might have and formal debate? What's the purpose of formal debates, and what good do they serve?

DJ: That's a good question, and maybe like Bible versions, it's on a spectrum. In fact, I think, a good debate should have some degree of dialogue and interchange, and yet a dialogue without any passion or any points being made, is maybe just a rambling kind of entertainment. So okay, for example, this year, I had one debate. I debated historian and virulent anti-Christian Richard Carrier. We debated back in January. In the debate, things are very structured. You know, you've got three minutes to say this. He's got five minutes to respond to that. Everything is timed. It’s very strict. It's good. It's powerful, but for the listener, for the audience, it might be good to hear the recording again, because it's very intense. It's very compact.

A dialogue is more free-flowing. There are some general rules. I had a dialogue just a few weeks ago at UCLA with skeptic, Michael Shermer. It was actually our fourth time to meet, and this was informal. We weren't standing up. We were sitting in living room kinds of chairs on a stage. There were a thousand or eleven hundred people in the audience, and they watched us disagree and agree amicably, make our points. Sometimes it was impassioned. For most of it, it was more banter and friendly.

I think whether it's a dialogue or debate, it's a wonderful opportunity for believers to show the world how to interact—1 Peter 3:15-16: interacting with gentleness and respect. So the point is not to slam the guy. There's no room for triumphalism here. We make our point. We do it with love.

BA: Good point. One of the notable skeptics you've debated is Robert M. Price, and the debate was Jesus: Man, Myth, or Messiah. Would you mind talking a bit about that debate, and maybe say first who is Robert Price?

DJ: Okay. Yeah. Most of my debates are with agnostics or atheists, sometimes rabbis and imams. Price is an anomaly. He is a self-styled Christian atheist. He is a member of the Jesus Seminar, the group of self-appointed scholars who decided how authentic are the words of Jesus in the New Testament in which they answered, 'Not very'. They’re really horribly outnumbered by other scholars.

Price calls himself a Christian Atheist. He used to have faith, but now he's an atheist. One thing I asked him about in this debate (this was in Houston in 2009), 'So why do you take communion?' and he's very open about that. He takes communion. He appreciates it, but then he doesn't even believe in God. I think that's actually symptomatic of the deeper problems in Price's theology, but he is a Christian Atheist. He is a professor, and in high demand in television. Obviously, skeptics like someone like that. I mean, even the title, Christian Atheist? Everyone's scratches his head when he hears that.

BA: Well, in regards to the theme of the debate and talking about who Jesus was—man, myth, or Messiah, I'm thinking maybe he's thinking more along the lines of man and myth, but can you describe what Price's view was and how he contended for that in that debate?

DJ: The way he puts in in this book, the Shrinking Son of Man, he says the historical Jesus has shrunk to vanishing point. We know possibly nothing at all about Him. He thinks that Jesus is a composite figure. He's a construct made of bits of mythology from the ancient world. Now the problem is that these patterns, these parallels that he claims to have found don't really exist before the time of Jesus except piecemeal. I mean you find some deities who rise from the dead, but it's not like Jesus. These are gods who are fertility gods. They die and rise from the dead every year, and the resurrection is not to a quality of life. It's to, for example...reigning in the underworld. He'll claim that as a full parallel to Jesus' resurrection. So he takes religious leaders who have disciples who teach, some of them die, and he says that's the background for Jesus Christ. It just doesn't work, and this is actually a viewpoint that was discounted finally by scholarship. This was maybe a century ago, so he's dug up old arguments, and I have to say not many people are persuaded by him. It was perplexing. How do I deal with this? Do I attack the arguments he's making or do I just proclaim the truth about Jesus?

BA: Well, that's what I was wondering, because I'm wondering how you actually go about answering or approaching a view that's so contrary and almost outlandish.

DJ: Outlandish is a good word. It's exotic. It's alien. You know, I think I've learned a bit since doing that debate. I've had a number of debates. Now my view is if someone drops a bomb, even if it's well off the subject, generally you have to come back and deal with it. I think at the time of that debate, when people brought up things that were irrelevant or laughable, I would tend not to want to embarrass them or to clobber them. I was just trying to proclaim what we do know about Jesus.

So how do I respond to that? I would probably be a little more on the offensive actually—after what I said about respect. Funny. I would be more on the offensive from the outset, 'cause I was the first to speak. I would've really gone after these crazy views. I was very familiar with them, because I read several of his books before the debate. But I think you have to decide. Do we go down these rabbit holes? Do we do something with these what appears to be red herrings or do we let it go? Because in the debate, the time's limited. If I take two minutes to respond to something the opponent brings up, then that's two minutes less to present something that I'd thought about that's really important. So I don't think there's a right and wrong on that. The way I dealt with him more gently...I think, people thought at the debate that I was probably gracious with him. Probably I would be a little tougher if we met again.

BA: Well, I suppose there is that public dynamic where you need to go after the ideas, but in the personal realm, maybe there's a different dynamic there. It just depends on the situation. It brings to mind the element of rhetoric in communication. For instance, with Price, I think of his view, as we said, outlandish, but he's really punchy to listen to and he seems completely convinced of his position. He makes it sound like anyone who has any strong claim to know anything about Jesus is just completely off their rocker, you know. So rhetoric, what role does it play on both sides of apologetic engagement? You've got the negative—contrary to Christianity kind of rhetoric that is sometimes very caustic—but at the same time persuasive to the listeners. Can that be countered? How are we, as Christians, to actually use rhetoric in a positive way?

DJ: That is a great question, because now we're not just talking about presenting the truth or defending against false charges. We're talking about how we do it. We're talking about style and manner. Talking about rhetoric, when I debated Carrier earlier this year, he insisted that the Apostle Paul was psychotic and pretty much anyone who followed the Jesus Movement was psychologically unstable. When people say things like that, of course, it's persuasive if you wanna believe it.

But that's a great question. To what extent are we supposed to be colorful or punchy?

I find some scholars, some people I debate, like Price, are a little condescending. If you don't agree with them, you're dense. There's no reason to respect you. Other people I've debated, they change the subject so much—I call it dancing. They just dance around, and if it gets tense, they bring up a new objection. Some are almost the opposite of Price in that respect. Some are very spontaneous, and some really never even deal with the issue. They just use this opportunity publicly to present their thoughts. So everyone's got a different view.

I think we won't go wrong if we've done our homework, we've read up on the person we're interacting with, and we determined prayerfully to be gentle and respectful, and to do that—1 Peter 3:16 (and I know you guys at Apologetics 315 know about this), but we sanctify Christ in our hearts—1 Peter 3:15. When we're very aware that Jesus is in us, and He will speak through us, then we're not so reactionary or defensive. We won't tend to get angry or say things that are harsh or to make cheap shots, if that makes sense.

BA: So many times—now this is just me relating my own personal experience—but so many times when I think I said something right at the moment, but then later I think, 'No, I wasn't walking in the Spirit', and I think, 'This is so important that we try to be constantly and presently walking in the Spirit so that, you know, we ensure that our responses are influenced by the right thing and with the right tone and things like that.’ But what sort of tips or advice would you have for, say, budding apologists to be better communicators?

DJ: Well, you know, most of the advice for communication would apply to anyone who's trying to get a point across, not just to apologists. But I think in apologetics, certainly we need to know the Scripture. 'Cause sometimes I meet people who say, 'Yes, I wanna do evidences', and I ask them, 'Well, are you active evangelistically?'. 'No, it's not my gift' and already alarm bells are going off. So this is someone who doesn't really interact with outsiders very much. I say, 'How many times have you read the Bible completely?' and that man or woman says, 'Well, I've never really finished it' or 'I just read it once'. I'm thinking, 'That's not good', because to do apologetics, you really need to know the Scripture, and for many people, reading through the whole Bible once a year is useful. I'm not gonna make any law on that, but I think it begins with that passion, that devotional aspect of our daily lives, and our interaction with others. So the preparation begins very early.

Then I would say, in speaking, people love analogies, but not just analogies that go nowhere. We need to actually call people to think and to make decisions. And maybe the most humbling advice is to listen to yourself. Almost always, our messages are recorded and it can be painful. I bet you've experienced that. I certainly have.

BA: Oh, yeah.

DJ: [Laughing] You listen to yourself and you think, 'Oh wow. I was flat. What was wrong with me? I wasn't energetic or I wasn't at my best'. We listen to ourselves, and we listen to others, then we realize, 'Oh, I've got so far to go'.

The other humbling thing is just ask others who were present at an event or who read your article or your book, 'What do you think? How could I have been more powerful?'. This summer I asked my Masters degree students at Lincoln Christian University, 'So what did you think of...' (I was referring to my debate I had with an agnostic many years ago). They loved this, and they thought I could've done this better. I'll still ask for input, even though I think I've moved on from that point. I value that. Anyone will be a better communicator if he or she listens to those recordings and asks others for input.

I've given you five or six answers to your question there.

BA: We've talked about your speaking experience and some of these things with communication, but in general, what lessons have you learned that you wanna pass on to your students?

DJ: Well, I think having a daily devotional walk with God. I just emphasize that over and over. I find, sadly, so many who don't have the daily disciplines of time apart to meditate, to pray, to study Scripture. If Christ is gonna be sanctified in our hearts so that we don't give in to fear, we're gonna have to be very devoted—certainly no less devoted than others who are trying to strive for a holy life.

I would say reading is vital. Oh, this is another question I ask. People would say, 'I wanna be a speaker', 'I wanna be a teacher', 'I wanna be an apologist'. I say, 'How many books do you read, say, in a typical month?'. And if they say, 'Oh well, for me, it's more like how many do I read in a year', I can be pretty sure that person's not called to apologetics, because it's a lot of work to prepare, and then you need to keep up with the new things that are coming out.

I think going to university, having degrees is important. I guess, theoretically, you could say Peter and John were ordinary unschooled men, but I think that that passage in Acts 4 is misapplied, because they were unschooled if we mean, in a sense, the seminary of the scribes and Pharisees, but they were schooled in that they went to "School of Jesus". If you read Peter's sermon, for example, at Pentecost, Acts 2, he is masterfully handling the Old Testament. He knows his stuff.

So I would say reading, go to school. The more degrees, the better. If you have degrees, it opens doors, especially graduate degrees and doctorates. So for me, that enables me to teach Masters students. It leads to invitations. Last year, I was invited to speak to two different universities in Bangladesh. All the scholars I was interacting with publicly were Muslims. I don't think they would've invited me if I didn't have the connection with an institution or if I didn't have that doctorate.

And just one more thing: Attend apologetics conferences so you can rub shoulders with other people who share this passion, and you can steal their ideas, and you can be sure that they stole them from others. Sometimes they have original insights, too, but these things are fantastic.

BA: That's great advice and some good insights there. Now, finally, as we begin to wrap up, would you mind pointing our listeners to your website and where they might find more of your resources online?

DJ: I'd be happy to. The primary website is douglasjacoby.com. I also have quite a few clips on YouTube. Go to Harvest House Publishers, and I've got hundreds of podcasts as well, which are being published through iTunes and other locations, starting December 2012. That's where I would point them.

BA: Very good. We'll be pointing people to your resources. Douglas, thank you for speaking with me today, and thanks for doing the interview.

DJ: It's been a pleasure for me, too. Thank you, Brian.

BA: I have been speaking with Christian apologist, Douglas Jacoby. Links to his books and resources in today's blogpost in Apologetics 315.

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Apologetics 315: Michael Kruger Interview Transcript

2013-09-04T21:42:00.002-04:00

This is a transcript of the interview with Michael J. Kruger on September 10, 2012 by Brian Auten at Apologetics 315. Please visit the interview blog post to read more about Michael J. Kruger. You can also download the audio of the interview from there.

Links within the transcript will point you to Amazon.com, Apologetics 315, or related apologetics resources online.

BA: Hello, this is Brian Auten of Apologetics 315.

Today's interview is with professor of New Testament, Dr. Michael J. Kruger. Dr. Kruger teaches at Reformed Theological Seminary in Charlotte, North Carolina (NC). His area of expertise is in the development of the New Testament canon, the Gospels, and the development of Early Christianity. His latest book is Canon Revisited: Establishing the Origins and Authority of the New Testament Books.

The purpose of today's interview is to learn more about the formation of the New Testament canon, the writing of the Gospels, and gaining some insights from Dr. Kruger about understanding and defending the Gospel canon.

Well, thanks for joining me in this interview Dr. Kruger.

MK: Thanks, Brian. Good to be with you.

BA: First off, Dr. Kruger, would you mind sharing a bit about yourself and your background?

MK: Yeah, for those who may not know, I'm a professor of New Testament at Reformed Theological Seminary in Charlotte, NC. My specialty is, not only New Testament, but particularly the origins of the New Testament, including the New Testament text and canon. I spend most of my research on those particular areas, but also deal a lot with other areas of New Testament studies and Biblical studies or broadly.

BA: Well, very good. I'm particularly excited about the interview, because before I got into apologetics, my first question was, 'Yeah, I'm willing to trust the Bible if it's authoritative, but why? Why should I?' So the issue of canon was really big for me at the time, and I still think it's critical. But backing up a bit about your own interest in the New Testament, what got you into New Testament studies and studying the canon in particular?

MK: Well, in a very similar way as you just described your own background, I've always had interest, of course, in Scripture as the centerpoint of the Christian life. That's where we look to for God's Word, and for that reason, I've always wanted to understand it better, and particularly understand its origins, because part of it is authority, depending on where it comes from. So I was interested in both the Old Testament and the New Testament, but I was drawn to New Testament studies particularly during my undergraduate years at UNC-Chapel Hill. There, I was introduced to a lot of critical scholarship. One of my professors there was Bart Ehrman, who many people know, of course, as a famous New Testament critical scholar. I was introduced to the problems with the New Testament Gospels, the development of the canon, the text of the New Testament, as well as to the issues related to the historical Jesus. Of course, as a young Christian, I didn't have many answers to those questions, but I was fascinated by them, wanted to learn more, and committed myself to find out as much as I could about them.

As I dove into those questions, I began to realize I had a real fascination and real interest in that area, and I really wanted to go further. That's what was the beginning of a long academic journey. It was those times that really got me interested in the New Testament half of things and even more than that, but the sort of Jesus quest and canon questions ended up being center stage.

I really have to thank critical scholars for how God has maybe led me into Biblical studies, because it was those challenges and those questions that brought me to where I am today.

BA: I love these questions of authorship and authenticity and, ultimately, authority, and you deal with a lot of that in your latest book, Canon Revisited: Establishing the Origins and Authority of the New Testament Books. You’ve studied in this area and this is your area of expertise, but what approach did you take in this book, and why write a book along these lines these days.

MK: Yeah. Obviously, I'm not the first one to write a book on the New Testament canon, and so the question you have is a good one: What makes this one unique? Why bother at all?

Well, there's two major reasons. One is the gap in time between the major evangelical work on canon and this particular book. If you look back on the major works on canon, one probably thinks of F.F. Bruce's The Canon of Scripture or maybe Metzger's The New Testament Canon. Those were written in the late '80s and the standard books in the field. It's been a while as you can imagine then that a serious and full-length evangelical work has been written. There's been a few things here and there, but I think there's a gap there that needed to be filled. That was the first reason.

The second reason for writing the book is the distinctive angle I take on the question. Most prior books on canon are what I call data books. Their goal is to simply inform the reader about the historical facts—when one book was written as opposed to another, what objections did early Christians have, what were the canonical lists, and so on. So those books end up looking like a dump truck of patristic data that they sort of unload on the reader. Some people want that kind of data and want books like that, and certainly, data plays a role, but I had a very different angle.

What I wanted to solve was not what the details were. That's fairly established and there's not much disagreements on the facts. What I wanted to answer was more of a philosophical question, what we might call an epistemological question and that is, how-we-know question. How does one go about knowing or having any reason to think they can know which books belong in the New Testament?

My question was more, ‘Does a Christian have a foundation for thinking they can know which 27 books are the right ones or whether these 27 books are the right ones?’ Now, once you frame it like that, it's a different kind of book, and truthfully, a book that I think needed to get written, because Christians have that very question.

BA: I wanna dive into some of those questions, and maybe start with the shallow waters and eventually get a little bit deeper. When Christians today open their Bible, they've got this one nicely bound book, complete with books, chapters, verses, and of course, table of contents, cross-references, maps, commentary. So I think sometimes those unfamiliar with the Bible or some Christians who haven't really thought about it deeply, they think that the Bible is just that, a single book. Can you break it down a bit and talk about what the Bible is as far as it being a historical document and collection?

MK: See, this is the trick, of course. The Bible in the way you just described is not like other books. When you think about a standard book, it was written by a single author and even usually in a single location in a singular chunk of time; whereas the Bible, as you well noted, is actually multiple authors and multiple locations and multiple books over long periods of time. Now that's what makes it a complicated phenomenon in that when we talk about the Bible, we're actually talking about a bunch of little books; so what we have to ask is, ‘How do we know these little books all belong together?’ and that's really the core issue with the Bible, but at the center of that is understanding what the Bible is.

The best way to describe it (and I cover this in parts of my book) is to think of the Biblical books, all of them, as deposits of God's covenantal revelation; and when we say covenantal revelation, what we mean is when God engages with His people in a covenant arrangement where He promises to bless them, love them, and save them—what we call and what the Bible calls “The Covenant”—whenever God makes covenants, He ends up giving written documentation of the covenant arrangement and the covenant blessing and the covenant history. This is God's Word to His people, so one way to think of the Bible I think that's helpful is realize that what the Bible is is the periodic deposits of God's covenantal revelation of Himself, how He relates to His people, what He's done for his people, and how His people need to follow and obey Him. What that means is that the Bible and the books in it are ultimately theocentric, meaning they're God-centered. They're from His hand even though they come through people. So the Bible in that sense is certainly a human book, but it's also a divine book. It's a book that ultimately is God revealing Himself to His people.

BA: This other issue is the word, canon, where some people maybe lost, even...'Wait, what are you talking about, the canon?' They think you have a gun or something. What is this word, canon? Can you define it and unpack what it means and what it describes?

MK: The canon is a word that we use. It's not formally in the Bible in the way we use it, even though the root word in Greek appears in the New Testament in a few places, but it's not used in the same fashion we use it. Canon is kinda like the word, Trinity. It's not in the Bible, but it describes a Biblical phenomenon, and the way we would define canon is simply as the authoritative book that God gave His church. That's the way I like to say it.

The canon is basically the group or collection of writings that God has given to His people. To talk about canon is to talk about the collection of books or one might even say the list of books. The word, canon, has a history and etymology behind it. It originally meant rule or standard, and we even use that today to talk about certain canons or certain rules related to certain disciplines or certain things. Even churches talk about the canons of the church, which really means the rules or the standards of the church. But when referring to the Bible, the canon of course just simply means a collection of books that God gave His church.

So in one sense, canon and Scripture are almost synonymous—not exactly, but they're pretty close in terms of the way we normally use the terms.

BA: For those people who have read popular novels like The Da Vinci Code and things like that, they might think that this authoritarian church came along, they decided what books to put in the Bible for their own political/power reasons; but this whole idea of canon formation is the big question. I'm not expecting the entire answer here, but in a nutshell, I think you'd say that's not how the books of the Bible came about. Give us in a nutshell, really the more truthful approach there who went into deciding or determining or recognizing what went into the Bible that we have today.

MK: That's a great question. Yeah, a lot of people have been sort of shaped by The Da Vinci Code-esque reconstructions of Christianity. It's not just the book, The Da Vinci Code, that speaks that way but even the popular media and even folks on the Internet tend to speak on the origins of the Bible in those same lines. The ideas are all the same, which is that the Early Christians didn't have a canon in any meaningful way, no one really agreed on much of anything, there's a bunch of disagreement and only later under political pressure (usually under the leadership of Constantine) decided, 'Oh, we really need to settle this canon question', and so they decided to come up with certain books that they liked, and then they oppressed and suppressed books they didn't like, then forced their use on everyone else. According to that reconstruction, the canon as we know it is simply the result of political power play.

That whole reconstruction, that whole idea that the canon is simply the books that belong to the theological victors, is actually a very old theological idea put out by a scholar famously known by the name of Walter Bauer, who published a book in the 1930s in Germany, called Heresy in Orthodoxy in Earliest Christianity. He's the one who originally started the ball rolling on that reconstruction. That's a very common idea today. Of course, the problem with Bauer's thesis and the problem with that reconstruction that you find in The Da Vinci Code is I think it's largely mistaken in terms of the way the canon developed.

The original question then was, ‘Who chose the books in the canon?’ My answer may seem a little strange to people but I'd argue that when it comes to the core books of the canon, I don't think anybody chose them. You'll go, 'What do you mean by that?'. Take, for example, just Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. People often ask me, 'Who chose the Gospels?'. In one sense, no one chose the Gospels. We don't have any indication in the early church that there was any vote on the Gospels or any council on the Gospels or any major decision on the Gospels. The fact is as far back as we can see within Early Christianity, it seems like Christians were committed to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. These were the earliest Gospels. These were the only 1st century Gospels we're aware of. These are the Gospels that the church didn't choose, rather that the Gospels it inherited. I think that's a better way to think of it. It's not that the church sat down and said, 'Hey, we need to pick some Gospels.' Rather, the church said, 'Where are the Gospels that have been handed down to us?' The answer has always been Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

Now certainly there were dissenters and certainly there were fringe groups (and we can talk about those), but as a core, no one chose these Gospels. They were simply the ones that were handed down. I think what that gets at then is the Bible and its reception isn't really driven by church councils and human decision in the main. Certainly churches played a role, and certainly people played a role, but really driving the process is the fact that these are the books that are there from the beginning, and everyone sort of knew that, and that's how the books ended up handed down and received in the church.

BA: Well, that's helpful. They're inherited. They didn't sit around and decide about that.

Now, I think that one question that comes up with folks is simply the difference between the Old Testament canon formation and New Testament, maybe a different process or way that came about. Is there a difference and could you describe it?

MK: Certainly there are differences historically, and no doubt the time frame for the Old Testament canonical process was much longer, and the New Testament time frame for the canonical process was much shorter, and largely it has to do with the time frame in which the book sometimes were written. The entire New Testament was written within the 1st century, whereas the Old Testament was written over many, many centuries. That really complicates things in terms of the Old Testament. It's not near as tidy or as neat.

Moreover, the Old Testament canon formation is much more difficult to ascertain simply because we have a lot less historical information about it. The further back in time you go, the less historical data you have about how these books developed, how these books were received, and the collections of books that people recognized; whereas in the New Testament area, we just have a lot more information. There are good books out there on the Old Testament canon. I would think the best one out there is probably still Roger Beckwith's book on the origins of the Old Testament canon, which I would recommend. My work, of course, has been largely on the New Testament half.

Now that's sad in terms of the difference, and I think still at the core is the same principle, though. The principle being simply this is that when God gives books to His people, that He works it out so that they recognize those books and eventually receive them. That doesn't mean there's never roadblocks or challenges along the way, but the fact is that God's books are constituted by the Holy Spirit and God's people have the Holy Spirit, and those two factors are joined together so that God's people rightly recognize God's books.

BA: Well, very good. Now talk about some of the criteria for canonicity. What were some of the factors that you could quantify that determined whether or not a book was accepted or inherited as opposed to just falling to the side or being rejected in some way.

MK: The term, criteria of canonicity, is a very popular phrase in the studies of the canon, and it's used a lot. I take a good bit of time in my book to actually critique that idea. The idea of criteria of canonicity, I think, is problematic in some ways.

One of the major ways that is problematic is it almost creates this idea that the church consciously developed criteria and then went around looking for books that met them. That's a little bit misleading based on what I said earlier in some sense. A lot of the books, the church never really consciously picked out of the field of many others, because they were just simply books that were inherited. So in one sense, the idea of criteria of canonicity overplays the role of the church, and this is one of the major concerns I have about it.

What I talk about in my book is I use a different concept besides criteria of canonicity. I talk about what's called attributes of canonicity. Attributes of canonicity are things that set apart canonical books from other books. Some of these overlap with the idea of criteria of canonicity, but the way it's framed and the way you talk about it does matter, and, of course, I can't fully develop that here. Someone would have to get the book to get the full gist of it, but let me talk about what the attributes of canonicity are just so people can get a sense of them.

What I outlined in my book are three attributes of canonicity. One is what I call divine qualities of Scripture, and these are the internal marks that the book is divine. This tends to be, in many people's minds, very subjective in the way they think about it, but I argue in the book that it's actually more objective than you might think, and we can come back to these.

We would argue, and historically, Christians have argued that the books, themselves, bear evidence that they are from God, that the books themselves bear marks of having God's fingerprints all over them. That can include their beauty or their excellency or their unity or their harmony and so on. That's a starting point for an attribute of canonicity.

A second attribute of canonicity that I bring out in the book which I think most people will probably be familiar with is apostolicity—the idea that all books that belong in the canon are from Apostles or from the apostolic circle. This is a very big component within Early Christianity that has been noticed for a long time, and historians are very aware that when it comes to what the early church did, they were very keen to make sure that whatever books they had went back to the Apostles. This really does factor as a major thing, because there's not that many books we have even dated to the 1st century in the Early Church. So if you're talking about books that go back to the Apostles, you have a very short list, most of which are the books that made it into the New Testament.

Those are two of the ones that I would focus on here. I think that's a way we can get started down the road of what constitutes a canonical book.

BA: That's a really helpful distinction, and I see the importance of it now that you describe it. So when we're talking about criteria of canonicity, it's more like what we're seeing or observing after the fact, that these things have already been determined.

MK: Yeah, absolutely.

BA: So saying attributes is like the perfect way of describing it.

When it comes to the New Testament Gospels, as we mentioned just a few minutes ago, some skeptics wanna suggest that there were just these tons of other gospels to choose from. Can you talk a little bit about these other gospels, and why they were rejected, and where they fall in this spectrum?

MK: Apocryphal gospels is the term we use to talk about gospels not in the New Testament canon. These are the media darlings of a lot of scholars. They love to talk about apocryphal gospels, and talk about how this somehow brings into question the truth of the Canonical Four. I find apocryphal gospels fascinating. My dissertation on my PhD work was on an apocryphal gospel. I think they are an interesting part of the history of Early Christianity , but in terms of whether they compete with the Canonical Four, that's a very different question. So let's talk about a few of those issues.

First, how many were there? I read an article just a couple of days ago in UK Daily Telegraph that was a story about apocryphal gospels, and they made the claim—and this is shocking to hear—that there were thousands of gospels in Early Christianity.

BA: Wow.

MK: Now you hear a claim like that, and you have to wonder, 'Did they get that from The Da Vinci Code?' Well, The Da Vinci Code wasn't even that ambitious. The Da Vinci Code said there were 80 gospels that were in play in Early Christianity which is also ridiculous. A thousand, of course, is beyond ridiculous—and 80 is even beyond ridiculous. How many were there? We don't know exactly how many there were, but if you take a look at the gospels that circulated within the first four centuries of Early Christianity, you're probably talking about couple of dozen here, tops. A lot of them were probably overlapping with one another and borrow from one another. So you're not talking about that many types of gospels.

A second factor to think about when it comes to apocryphal gospels is the date of these gospels. We don't have any apocryphal gospel with any credible date at the 1st century. What that means is the only Gospels that date in the first 1st century are Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Every other gospel that we have—whether it be Thomas or Peter or beyond, or even now recently, the Gospel of Judas—all are dated to, at least, the 2nd century or later. Even secular scholars agree with this. There's a few fringe scholars that wanna put Thomas in the 1st century but virtually everyone agrees that the apocryphal gospels are late, and they don't belong to the 1st century and are often actually dependent on the Canonical Four.

If that's true, what that tells you then is that the apocryphal gospels were late to the game. They came on the scene at a later point telling us that they don't have any real claim to apostolic authority or to have any real apostolic connections, and they are actually dependent on the Canonical Four many times in certain ways. So those gospels were written probably to promulgate some sort of theology that maybe was not in vogue at the time or maybe belong to a fringe group, but either way, there's no real reason to think these apocryphal gospels have any real competition with the Canonical Four. This is why the Early Church never took them seriously.

The important thing to realize is that there was never any major movement in the Early Church that centered around an apocryphal gospel. What I mean by that is there's never any indication that the church as a whole was about to adopt [the Gospel of] Thomas or about to follow Peter's gospel. There were certainly pockets here and there, but as a whole, apocryphal gospels were fairly marginalized. There were fringe groups from time to time that used them. There were heretical groups that used them, but the center of Christianity always seemed to be committed to the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

BA: That’s very helpful. When you're talking about gospels—we’re using the word, gospel, here—I wonder if it's really right to describe the other "gospels" as gospels as an actual genre. Will they fall into the same category or they're just named "gospels"?

MK: Actually, both things are true. Some would look a lot like the canonical Gospels, and therefore in that sense, the term, gospel, will probably be appropriate. You think about something like the Gospel of Peter, which is an account of the crucifixion and resurrection that has certain social similarities with the canonical Gospels, and certainly an incomplete gospel, but genre-wise, it'd be similar. One might I think of Oxyrhynchus 840 which is another apocryphal gospel that has stories that are very similar to the Synoptics and to John. In that sense, it would probably be what you will call a normal gospel.

But then there's other gospels that don't look like the gospel genre at all. For example, the Gospel of Thomas. The Gospel of Thomas, even though it gets a lot of media time, most people don't realize it's actually not a gospel in any meaningful way. That means there's no real story of Jesus' birth, no story of His life, no story of His death, no story of His resurrection. All the Gospel of Thomas is is a list of 114 sayings, 114 teachings of Jesus that are just all listed out in a row. This is a collection of Jesus' teachings from some particular groups, but by no means could constitute a gospel, at least, in the way we typically think of the term.

Another example of this is some of the Nag Hammadi codices, like the Gospel of Truth, which isn't really a gospel at all but more of a theological treatise about the gnosticism that was prevalent in those communities. So the term, gospel, is pretty loose. If you start narrowing it down to what genres really count as gospel, then the number even shrinks further, and I think this was your point. Maybe there's two dozens that bear the name, but once you start really shrinking it down, you're talking about maybe a dozen books that really were circulating in these 2nd, 3rd, and 4th centuries.

BA: Well, even the fact that they're 2nd, 3rd, 4th centuries, some of these people are not even around to write it. So what about the authorship? How can we determine the authorship of late, non-canonical gospels?

MK: When it comes to non-canonical gospels, often the best we can do is determine who's not the author. In other words, as you already noted, if that was written in the 2nd century, then we know that any of the apostles couldn't have written them 'cause they are all dead by then. So when you have a book assigned to Thomas in the 2nd century, you know that it's a pseudonymous title, a title that's false, and designed to bolster the authority of the book. Same with the Gospel of Peter. Peter was not alive in the 2nd century when that gospel was written. Same with the Gospel of Judas. He was not alive when that gospel was written. And there are gospels that are attributed to all kinds of folks: There's the Gospel of Philip, the Gospel of Mary, and on and on we can go.

Those all are titles that were added after the fact, designed to try to bring some credibility to those books, and probably designed, to some extent, to mimic the canonical titles and to sound like the kind of titles that were already known in gospels that were circulating. Given the fact that we have very little information about these books, there's really no way to know who the person was that wrote them during that time. We can come with vague senses of date and vague senses of provenance, but we really have very little information about who wrote these apocryphal books.

BA: Many scholars we talk to will say, 'Well, go ahead and read, say, the Gospel of Thomas, and you kind of realize what we're all talking about here’. These things are not really like the canonical books. What would you say about that? If we simply read these other books, would you have the strong impression of, 'Yeah, obviously this doesn't belong in the Bible'?

MK: I think you would. This goes back to a point I was making earlier about the kind of qualities in a book that are God-given and are trustworthy. When you read the canonical Gospels and then you read apocryphal gospels, there is a decided difference between them in lots of ways—certainly a qualitative difference, certainly a tone difference, certainly a style difference, and there's a difference that I think any person reading could pick up on. One example of this is is the canonical Gospels are remarkably humble and tame in the way they describe miraculous events. What I mean by that is they simply tell it like it is in a very sober way—without a lot of embellishment or what you might deem to be truth—or exaggeration or sort of polemical, propaganda-type style.

Whereas in the other types of apocryphal books, that's simply not the case. You see in those books all kinds of embellishments, all kinds of extras, all kinds of different things that would throw it over the top. A particular type of gospel that does this in the ancient world are what we call infancy gospels. Infancy gospels are purportedly stories of Jesus as a child, and these are notorious for legendary embellishment type features.

One very famous one is called the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, which is often confused with the Gospel of Thomas. The Infancy Gospel of Thomas is actually a different gospel designed to tell you what Jesus must have been like as a boy, but when you read the gospel, it doesn't read at all like our canonical gospels. It's not at all a sober-minded assessment of what happened in a historical account; rather, it's sort of a ridiculous, over the top account where Jesus is this little firebrand of a child whom if you upset, he might zap you dead and ends up killing other children and raising them from the dead. He gets in trouble with the authorities for making clay pigeons on the Sabbath, and then he turns them into real pigeons and they fly away. There are all kinds of almost borderline humorous and strange and bizarre stories.

So yeah, the canonical gospels, at the end of the day, sound reasonable and very sober-minded. I would always encourage people to read these apocryphal gospels and if they do, they would find out very quickly they don't sound at all like our Canonical Four.

BA: I was eating dinner with some friends the other night, and something came out about particular books that were apocryphal books that weren't in our Bible, and they said, 'Oh well, it's heretical'. The question that came into the discussion was, 'Does not being part of the canon immediately make something heretical?' and I was hoping maybe you can unpack that a bit as far as the content that we find in these non-canonical books.

MK: Very good question. One of the points that I often make to my students is don't think that apocryphal means, by definition, heretical. What I mean by that is, to simply be outside the canon is not to be inherently wrong. It just simply means to be outside the canon is to not be Scripture. Those aren't the same things. I think one of the unfortunate reactions that we'll have when they hear something like an apocryphal text is I think, 'Okay, this is a book that should be burned' or something like that. But not necessarily.

What you have is some apocryphal texts are orthodox or relatively orthodox within Early Christianity. A good example of this is called The Shepherd of Hermas, which is a famous 2nd century writing about a particular vision that someone had, sort of a book like Revelation, if you will. This particular book was widely received as orthodox, incredible, and helpful. Even a few people think it might be Scripture, but even with that, it was widely rejected when it came to the canon, but nonetheless, it was still regarded as a helpful, useful book.

So, I always tell people, there's two kinds of apocryphal books: there's apocryphal books that are heretical but there's also apocryphal books that might be useful and helpful. So you don't have to always have to throw them all out. The apocryphal book I did my doctoral work on is Oxyrhynchus 840, which is a fragment of an apocryphal story of Jesus. That also is a fairly orthodox document. There's nothing in there that would be decidedly heretical, but it's not in the New Testament, so yet again, you're facing a story that's probably theologically accurate, but we simply just don't know whether it happened, and there's certainly no reason to consider it Scripture.

I think that distinction is helpful, and I think it's important to recognize that not all apocryphal stories of Jesus are necessarily fabricated. Some of them might be based on ancient traditions that made their way into these apocryphal books.

BA: Very good. What would be the difference between the books that we find in most Bibles and those we see in the Catholic Bible?

MK: This is a common question that comes up as well. So I have been talking about apocryphal New Testament books, but there's also the issue of what's called the Apocrypha. Now the Apocrypha refers to, normally, the books added by the Roman Catholic Church—the Old Testament. These are also what we know as intertestamental books, so they'd be books like First and Second Maccabees, and Judith, and Tobit, and so on. These type of books in the Apocrypha were written between the end of the Old Testament and the beginning of the New, documenting various events during the intertestamental time period. At the Council of Trent in the 16th century, the Roman Catholic Church officially declared those books to be Scripture.

Now, as you can imagine, the story behind the Apocrypha is a long and complicated one that we certainly couldn't go into here. The short version is that Protestants have not accepted the Apocrypha as Scripture, and the reason they have not done that is because Protestants would argue, as I would, that the Early Church for the most part did not accept the Apocrypha as Scripture. Certainly there were pockets that did, but as a whole, the Early Church did not, and it wasn't really until much later that those books begin to attain the status that would be equivalent with Scripture, then eventually was declared to be such by [the Council of] Trent in the 16th century.

So Protestants would argue, therefore, that the Apocryphal books should not be considered Scriptural. However, this again brings up the distinction I mentioned a moment ago, which is, just because they're not Scriptural doesn't necessarily mean they're not useful or are necessarily heretical. Now there's some aspects with the Apocryphal books that we might have concerns about, but as a whole, they're fairly useful and I think helpful and I think historically reliable; but I don't think they're Scripture, and I think there's good historical reasons for that conclusion.

BA: That's helpful as well. Dr. Kruger, some people might come from a point of doubt. They might think sort of the same thing as you alluded to at the very beginning of the interview, this whole idea of 'Well, gee, how do I know there aren't some books that maybe have been left out and maybe they should be in my Bible today?'. How do you respond to something like that, and maybe that's a common question?

MK: That's the most common question, and the humorous answer I would give to that is to read my book. I wrote my book, Canon Revisited.

BA: [Laughing] I hope they do.

MK: Yeah, exactly. I wrote my book, Canon Revisited, to answer that exact question; but if I were to give a short answer to it, I would say that our trust in the reliability of the canon is predicated in our trust in God. In other words, if God would've given these books to His people, do we think that God would have given a means by which His people would reliably recognize those books? I think it's a very fair question to ask. So once again, the question is this, if God would give books to His people, would He provide the means that reliably would allow His people to recognize those books? I think the Bible itself provides some of the answers to those questions. I think it shows that God, indeed, is not only the kind of God that does give revelation, does give books, but then he would also make sure when He gave those books that they would be recognized by His church, and He wouldn't leave that to chance.

So one of the indications, I think, of the fact that the church got it right or, another way to say it, is I think an indication of which books should be regarded as canonical is to simply ask the question: Which books has the church achieved a consensus about? Which books has the church achieved a consensus about in terms of what books God has given? Well, one must at least believe as a Christian, if God gave books to His church and that He put the [Holy] Spirit in His church and put the [Holy] Spirit in His books, that the books that the church received might just be the books He intended. I would argue, in fact, that's exactly what we see. We see a remarkable amount of unity around these 27 books. In fact, since the 4th century, when the dust has settled on the original giving of the canon, there really hasn't been much to talk about. Basically, churches all across the world all agree these are the 27 books. We have a couple minor exceptions here and there, but the consensus is wide and the consensus is deep.

So my answer to someone just on the surface is, 'Look, if you believe that God can give books and make sure the church receives them, and they are the books that the church received, then you have good reasons to think they might just be the books that God intended.' I think that's, at least, a good place to start.

BA: In a sense, that's an argument for the faithful transmission and preservation of Scripture.

MK: It's an argument from God's providence. Of course it's an argument from God's providence, but it's also an argument on the basis of God's intent. In other words, if God intended to give His word to His people, we would wanna believe that He would also give a mechanism by which the church would reliably recognize the Word that He gave. That doesn't mean that the church is infallible or the church has some secret revelation. It just simply means that God providentially and also circumstantially created an environment with which the church would recognize His Word as coming from Him.

In my book, I go deeper into this concept in terms of what this environment looks like, and how God does this. You, of course, presume the providence of God and His sovereignty and why He would do what He does.

Another way to say it is that our understanding about the reliability of the canon is predicated on our understanding of the reliability of God's character, in what He's like, in how He acts. I think those are natural deductions from Scripture itself. So I think there is certainly a sense in which providence is in play there, but I think it's maybe slightly a different argument than the inerrancy argument in terms of the preservation of the Scriptures. I think those are a little bit different, and of course its hard at this point to explain all the nuances of why; but at the end of the day, certainly trusting in God's character and trusting in His providence play a role in our assurance that we have the right books.

BA: Thanks for that. Now many of our listeners are gonna be those who are studying or are very interested in the area of Christian apologetics, so they'll be real keen on defending the reliability of the Gospels, understanding and defending the canon of Scripture that we have today. I wonder if you have any advice for apologists who are trying to do this and defend Scripture. I know that there are certain pitfalls that people can fall into unknowingly, so I wanna ask what approach you take to defending the Scriptures and if maybe there are any approaches to defending the Scriptures that you would wanna steer people away from.

MK: That's a great question, and a big one. Several thoughts come to mind. One is if you're going to defend the canon or text of the New Testament, you definitely gonna have to be willing and ready to do some background reading. It's not an easy area. It's a complicated area. It's an area ripe with all kinds of misunderstandings and misconceptions, and so you’re gonna wanna make sure that you're not promulgating some of those. Sometimes I hear evangelicals promulgating misconceptions and misunderstandings about the canon, and certainly anybody who defends it wouldn't wanna be in that camp. That would be one thing that I would say in terms of how to give people encouragement as they defend the faith.

There's probably other pieces of advice I would give as well. The second piece of advice would have to do with the way evidences play a role in our defense. I'm a big fan of evidence. I'm a big fan of facts and giving people good historical answers. But at the same time, I think it's naive to think that apologetics is sufficiently done by simply handing people evidence. People do not come to the evidence neutrally. They don’t come to it with no worldview at all. They come to it with a worldview that's already predisposed against Scripture and against God. So to give them evidence and only evidence is I think a step in the right direction but not a sufficient step. Apologetics has to be done in a more macro level than that. It can't just be backing up the dump truck and unloading the patristic data on someone. It's got to be framed in light of the whole Christian worldview.

Another way to say that is when you're defending the faith, we need to do it on a worldview level, realizing that there are reasons they accept or reject evidence, and it has nothing to do with the evidence. It actually has to do with what they already believe before they look at the evidence. That particular reality is key to doing apologetics, and certainly I would encourage people to pay attention to that as they defend the faith.

So those are the two practical pieces of advice for folks who are heading out there to try to bolster confidence in the Bible.

BA: Very good and very helpful. Well, Dr. Kruger, we covered quite a bit of ground here and it's been really great. I know you've written a lot of good content on your own blog. You've also got a number of lectures available online. So I was hoping maybe you could direct our listeners now to where they can find your blog, your resources, and your writing.

MK: The best way to do that is to start with my blog, because my blog has links to all my writings, many of which are available on the website. Then for the books, there's links to how those can be purchased.

My blog is called Canon Fodder (michaeljkruger.com), and they can find out more information about how they can learn more about both my articles and my books.

BA: Excellent. We'll link to all of those things at the blog post at Apologetics 315. Dr. Kruger, it's been a great interview, and I appreciate you taking the time to do it.

MK: Thanks, Brian. Enjoyed our conversation.

BA: I have been speaking with Dr. Michael J. Kruger, professor of New Testament at Reformed Theological Seminary in Charlotte, NC, and author of Canon Revisited: Establishing the Origins and Authority of the New Testament Books. Links to Dr. Kruger's writings and lectures can be found at today's blog post at Apologetics 315.

Also, don't forget to "Like" Apologetics 315 on Facebook, and be sure to follow Twitter for all the best links to apologetics resources throughout the day.

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You have a question you'd like to address in an upcoming podcast? Just let me know. Email me at brian[at]apologetics315.com.

This is Brian Auten, and thanks again for listening.

Apologetics 315: Greg Koukl Interview Transcript

2013-09-04T21:28:00.000-04:00

This is a transcript of the interview with Greg Koukl on March 22, 2010 by Brian Auten at Apologetics 315. Please visit the interview blog post to read more about Greg Koukl. You can also download the audio of the interview from there.

Links within the transcript will point you to Amazon.com, Apologetics 315, or related apologetics resources online.

BA: Hello. This is Brian Auten of Apologetics 315.

Today, I'm speaking with Greg Koukl. Greg is the president and founder of Stand to Reason, an apologetics ministry focused on equipping Christian ambassadors with knowledge, wisdom, and character. Greg also hosts a weekly radio show, Stand to Reason. He is an adjunct professor in Christian apologetics at Biola University, and he's author of a number of books, including Relativism: Feet Firmly Planted in Mid-Air, and his most recent, Tactics: A Game Plan for Discussing your Christian Convictions

The purpose of our interview today is to learn a bit more about Greg, his ministry in equipping ambassadors, and gain some insights from Greg's experience.

Thanks so much for speaking with me today, Greg.

GK: Well, Brian. I'm glad to talk with you. You know, you're on the other side of the pond, so this is kind of interesting for me. You got a great operation going over there, and I'm glad to contribute.

BA: Well, thank you. Now I'm sure many of our listeners are already familiar with your ministry, but how did you actually get started in defending the faith?

GK: I heard a speaker once say that if you're not in the ministry before you go in the ministry, you won't be in the ministry when you get in the ministry, and that's really characteristic of my own life, Brian. I became a Christian in 1973 and then very, very soon after that, I started getting discipleship and training. I mean, within a couple of months, I was able to connect myself with some people that were really helpful in getting me going. I found that for my disposition, my spiritual gifts, whatever the mix happened to be, I just naturally gravitated towards these kinds of things.

Now, I don't think that defending your faith or being thoughtful about your convictions is just something for the engineering types—you know, the ... [1:49] protectors and everything, the kind of Christian blockheads who are into that. I think everybody oughta be thoughtful and careful. But I do think that some people kind of have a natural affinity for this, and I did. When I first started to learn spiritual things or talked to others about my own convictions, it was kind of with an apologetics bent, and the people that I gravitated toward and began to read, these were the people that had an influence on me. I have to say that I got into it, not by design, if you will, but by temperament and by personal interest. It's just the direction that I happen to go. I wasn't so much drawn to the affective side of Christianity, but to the thoughtful side, not that the other isn't important, but that's just my particular story.

BA: So that would probably a key for those considering which direction to go personally. Their personal gifting and temperament plays a large role in that, you'd say.

GK: Yeah. I really do. That's really huge.

My view of ministry is that God distributes ministry not by calling. This is a little controversial in some circles but because the common view is, "What is God calling you to do?" Well, this notion is almost completely absent in the Bible, particularly in the New Testament. Some other notion, however, is advanced quite aggressively and that is the idea of gifting. So, God distributes ministry by distributing gifts in particular ways, and then people are to pursue their gifts and develop their gifts.

I actually think that spiritual gifts are a fairly broad thing, not just a list necessarily, as we see in 1 Corinthians 12 or Romans 12 or whatever. But I think that there is a kinship certainly between one's natural disposition and natural temperament and natural interests and the spiritual gifting that God gives them. This isn't always the case, but it would make sense, you know. God's not gonna give you natural capabilities through His sovereign...you know, working in your life before you became a Christian then jettison all those, and in my case, there's a fit there.

So I think for people who are thinking about being more involved intentionally in the area of apologetics and thoughtful Christianity, that they have an interest in it and some maybe a native capability to traffic in the world of ideas. It is a good indication that that's where they should be spiritually spending their time. I don't think they should be getting introspective about what they think that God might be calling them to do, because I don't think that's a biblical motif. What they ought to be doing is thinking about where their interests lie, where their capabilities lie, where their giftings lie, and then work at developing those things.

BA: When you were starting out, what sort of apologists or books were most influential to you?

GK: Well, there's two different categories here: one is informing and the other one is influencing.

When I became a Christian in 1973, Brian, apologetics was not a well-developed field. Basically, Josh McDowell and Frank Morrison, who moves the stone and, you know, a couple of things like that but not much more. Now, Josh made a tremendous contribution in broadly in the area of historical apologetics, but it wasn't like we had this tremendous field like we do now, so I picked up what I could pick up. John [Warwick] Montgomery was in the game back then. Still is. There were books out there that I could draw and get some information from, but there were also, over time, especially in the beginning, a couple of authors that have had the biggest influence on me.

I have been well-informed by Lewis, by the way, and he's got a tremendous great work available for us. Arguably the greatest Christian apologist in the 20th century, but I was most influenced by Dr. Francis Schaeffer who had founded L'Abri. I actually spent a couple of weeks up in that area. I spent a little time there in L'Abri. I didn't study there regularly, but I was very familiar with his trilogy, which is his main contribution, and I think Crossway Books now publishes the trilogy under one cover: The God Who Is There, He Is There and He Is Not Silent, and Escape from Reason. Francis Schaeffer, more than anyone else, I think informed my trajectory as a Christian thinker. His insight into the modern mind, because he's speaking to a modernist way of thinking then, was tremendously prescient I think in anticipating a post-modern mind. So everything that I learned from Schaeffer, in the middle of the 20th century, is useful.

Now here, in the beginning of the 21st century where we have quite of a different mindset, but post-modernism, it still applies. And his idea of upper story leap, and the point of tension, and all of these different things that were essential parts of his way of understanding how people think and also then informing how he approaches them evangelistically have deeply influenced my life and have paid tremendous dividends over the years.

The other thinker that has had, not just given information, but the greatest influence on my life; that is, they bring to the table a kind of looking at things that is so helpful, has been J.P. Moreland. In Jay's case, I had the pleasure of knowing him for many years. I took a Master's degree under him in Talbot in Philosophy of Religion and Ethics, and so I was able to, in many ways, internalize a certain mental pace that he has through being with him, listening to him, and reading him in addition to benefitting from the tremendous information that he was able to provide.

Those two men have done more in terms of my intellectual life than anyone else in influencing my trajectory, and I highly recommend them to everyone. A lot of people know. J.P. because he is still in play. I hope that as time goes on that Francis Schaeffer is not passed over because he's a man of the last century, and therefore, his contribution gets neglected, because it's really been sensational in my life.

And, by the way, there are a number of writers now that are writing under his influence as it were: [...] 8:22 is an example. Nancy Pearcey, who has written a lot with Chuck Colson, and now is writing under her own is another example. Chuck, himself, is deeply influenced by Francis Schaeffer, and many more that I have talked to that have been in play for a while that I talked to. I made a new friend, Brian Godawa, who is a film writer and critic. He's written on Hollywood Worldviews and other things. Great resource. We had dinner the other night. He, too, has been deeply influenced by Schaeffer.

So, those are the people that have not just informed me, but actually have influenced me in kind of my whole paradigm as I approach the issue of carefully thinking about my convictions and conveying those convictions and worldview to this culture.

BA: Over the course of time, your ministry has grown and it’s been extremely helpful. I appreciate it a lot.

GK: Thanks.

BA: The ambassador approach is something that you emphasize, and you have three factors that go into that. Could you describe that and how you think those are important for Christians?

GK: Sure. Since I know that you're interested in kind of broad strategic concerns and the broader principles that can help mentor those who are thinking about being more deliberate and intentional about developing their thoughtful Christian life and having an impact in the culture that we're in, let me just try to give all these questions a little bit more background here.

When I started Stand to Reason, I had some general goals, and I wanted to be an apologist. I wanted to offer information, but we wanted to teach people, not just what to think, but how to think. So we wanted to be able to offer them some insight into the process of being careful in our thinking. (This is where J.P. Moreland has helped me tremendously as I mentioned.) But it was actually like three years, I think, into the organization, which started in 1994, that I was able to dial down in a much more precise way what would be the unique kind of contribution or perspective that Stand to Reason would offer, and that's when I realized I'm working with these different concepts in my mind and I'm thinking, ‘Well, we wanna train people with information, but we want to be able to maneuver well, too.’ There's a tactical element here. We also want there to be less shrillness and to have a more appealing face or voice or whatever than what a lot of people are used to. If we wanted to look more, as I say now, “Diplomacy, not D-Day”.

I had a piece of paper out, and I was just playing around with words that would capture categories, and I was trying to find something that would capture my ideas but also kind of catchy in itself, you know, and I came up with this idea: Well, ambassador! That's it. 2 Corinthians 5:20: We're ambassadors for Christ. This is where the three concepts came from. I can still see in my mind's eye, Brian, that piece of paper with all of this stuff written all over it. I was kind of brainstorming by myself and dumping this stuff out onto the paper as we have been in motion as an organization now for almost three years or maybe a little bit more than that and that's when these three categories just crystallized on the page. That was clearly the work of the Holy Spirit, coupled with my work.

Incidentally, this is another one of my philosophy and ministry items. It is 100% God, but it is also 100% me—meaning that God is 100% responsible for His side of the equation, and I'm 100% responsible for mine. So I can't just expect to sit there and pray and have God feed me all of this stuff. There's a process of effort and work and diligence that goes into these things. There's a craft involved, and I'll talk more about that later.

So, anyway, this came in. The three areas then were (1) knowledge, (2) wisdom, and (3) character. If you think about being an ambassador, which is the motif that we're focused on now as you pointed out. In other words, we just didn't wanna give people information, but we wanted to build a certain type of individual. So if there's an incarnational element here—that individual being an ambassador—well, an ambassador who's sent by the president or some other sovereign gotta know a few things. They've got to have some foundational knowledge of the message and the ability to contextualize the message in terms of the individual culture they're going to reach—speak the language, understand the ideas, that kind of thing. So there's a knowledge component.

Secondly, an ambassador doesn't just dump the information. He's got to maneuver in a diplomatic way. This is what I call wisdom and is really at the heart of the entire tactical approach which folks can find in the book that was released last year (which you gave a very nice review to, Brian) and that is Tactics: A Game Plan for Discussion Your Christian Convictions. So tactical wisdom is the second component, but I realized even if you have a lot of knowledge and you're clever at maneuvering in conversations, you know, if it turns out that you're nasty and unpleasant and rude and you bring all these other personal vices to the table, you can see how your character now is going to undermine the message, and that was the third element.

The way I characterized it, you can see it in our website at str.org. Right at the top, there's the banner, and it says "Ambassador: Knowledge, Wisdom, Character" and underneath it are the characterizations. That fell quite neatly for me, and I was glad, because you like things to be catchy. “Knowledge is an accurately informed mind, wisdom is an artful method, and character is an attractive manner”. All the M’s work together, you know, and I was really happy with that, that my hard labor just kind of fell together and when it did, I said, "That's it. That's what I'm after." And that motif, the three elements there—the attractive manner, the artful method, and the attractive manner—these things have become the central feature, a guiding light for us as we carry on our enterprise as an organization, but also as I carry on my enterprise as a follower of Christ going out into the culture. So this is a model for everybody as far as I'm concerned.

BA: Well, I do like the use of the term, ambassador. For one thing, of course, it's Scriptural, but you know, many times, when I think of apologetics and trying to witness to people or sharing Christ with people, I think, "Well, this is apologetics or that's apologetics" and I started thinking of it all falling under that category, and I think, "Wait a minute. This is just being Christ-like ultimately."

GK: Right. Right. And I think there's a liability for us who defend the faith because defenders defend, you know, and them's-fightin'-words kinda thing, you know. You circle the wagons, you pull up the drawbridge, you know. 'Those are the bad guys, we're gonna fight them' kinda thing. So it's built into the notion. I think it's a certain liability. This is what I'm trying to do in the Tactics book and through the whole organization—is to try to change that flow so that if there's a whole different feeling about our engagements with people, again “Diplomacy, not D-Day”. I found that to be, not only effective for me—and by the way, I needed it. People will say, 'Well, great. You're so patient with people.' I say, 'I'm not naturally that way.' I mean, I'm a bit of a short-fuse fireball, you know, so I still have to watch that. It's a learned capability, but it has made my engagement with others much more effective, and I've had feedback from so many others as they changed their approach in light of their tactical concerns that it has made things easier for them, too.

BA: Speaking of character development, what do you see are the practical things, say, on the day to day basis or the long-term habits that an apologist can do to cultivate the character of Christ-follower?

GK: Well, this one's a hard one to answer, and I think probably the thing that's most necessary is vigilance—that is, being watchful of ourselves as we engage other people, as we present ourselves in public. It's actually quite easy to forget about how we're supposed to be and then get caught up in the moment if we're engaged with someone who disagrees and then fall into bad habits or just be not aware that an ambassador's on 24/7, so even the casual interactions with people matter.

I was in New Orleans last fall for a conference, and we have had just bad experiences there in New Orleans, a multitude of them, and I just didn't care for the city at all; so I was up at a window ordering a pizza to take back to the hotel room for my wife and daughter, so we're just gonna hide, and I got to talking to somebody standing next to me, a woman, and I start crabbing about New Orleans. Then she said, 'You from out of town?', 'Yes',

‘Where? Well, what are you doing here?' She started to get a little annoyed. 'What are you doing here?’ Then I realized I gotta tell her I'm here because I'm going to a Christian conference. So now she's connecting this kind of annoyed, nasty, grumpy person with the Christian enterprise, and she picked up on it. She gave me a hard time about it. 'Well, yeah, of course, you Christians are like that.' Blah. Blah. Blah. And then I realized, 'Oh man, did I make a mistake here.' I wasn't being vigilant. I wasn't being aware that, 'Hey, I still represent Christ even when I'm buying a pizza for my family', and when I started opening my mouth, that what I say reflects on my God and my Christian family. And so vigilance, I think, is a big part.

Those who go to our website at str.org, if you go to one of the drop-down menus out there, you'll find a thing called The Ambassador's Creed. I might make more reference to this in a few moments, but these are virtues that are intellectual and character virtues, ten of them. So, you know, the Boy Scouts' Creed: They say 'thrifty' and 'thoughtful' and all these other things. I can't remember. It's been a long time since I was a Boy Scout, but they were these specific things that we had to learn and memorize when we were Boy Scouts and to remember like the kinds of things we can be vigilant to do and help care for towards our life. Every single month, I have it on my schedule to read The Ambassador's Creed to remind myself of my moral and intellectual responsibilities as ambassador, so I can be more vigilant to be effective as a Christ-follower, as you said.

BA: This question might just be almost very similar to the one I just asked, but what sort of habits would you want to see cultivated, whether spiritual or educational, in the next generation of apologists.

GK: Yeah, it is connected, because one of the things that immediately comes to mind is The Ambassador Creed. There is this character element that just can't be—I hope people will go to the website, print it, and hang it up, because there are things there that are really, really important. They're not just words. They're words with descriptor. I'll explain exactly when I mean and how this all plays out.

Because in the Scripture, we’re enjoined to defend the faith. First Peter 3, for example, Peter says to give an answer for the hope that is within you, yet with gentleness and reverence. So it's not just ‘be ready to fight the battle’, but you gotta fight in a certain way and that is the way that is winsome and attractive. He uses those gentle, reverent kind of characterizations, and then if you go to 2 Timothy, Paul tells Timothy that the Lord's bond servant shouldn't be quarrelsome. In other words, not somebody who is out to pick a fight but rather patient when wrong. So this is one side of the enterprise, Brian, is that being vigilant. Again, that last question about the way we come across. Winsome and attractive are two words that we use a lot in Stand to Reason. We wanna be winning in our approach—the way we communicate—because we are attractive. So those are connected. That's half of it.

The other half, though, in answering this question is the—so you have the virtues: intellectual and moral virtues of the good ambassador, but then here's something that's really, really neglected, and so I'm happy to pass it on to your listeners: You want to cultivate an attitude regarding what you’re doing that you are a student of your craft. Let me emphasize this word, craft, and explain it a little bit.

There is not just a science, in a sense, to apologetics. What I mean by that is the objective things—the answers, the lists of ontological arguments, cosmological argument, answers to the problems of evil, and all of these things that you need to get in place—but there's also an art to it. There is an aesthetic element. It is a craft just like being a woodworker's a craft or being a painter is a craft, and what is unfortunate is that so few are intentional about approaching their enterprise as a craft—that is something that they give effort to become more skilled at. So when I think of the craft there in apologetics, there is certainly some informational element. I wanna keep learning.

One of the details of The Ambassador's Creed says that the good ambassadors are never stopped by the same question twice, so we're aggressively seeking answers. But in so far as our discipline, apologetics, is a discipline of engagement in the world of ideas. We are also learning how to be more effective to communicate those ideas. So we communicate in two ways: through writing and speaking.

So at Stand to Reason, our speakers—I don't care how long they've been on board; in other words, how long they've been public speaking—we talk about the craft of communication and public speaking. I go to their events, and they go to my events, and we give each other feedback. We say, 'Well, that was good but this is where you stumbled and maybe you could’ve done this better or this is a little unclear or that kind of way of joking didn't work. Maybe there's another way to do it’. We take it seriously as a craft, and we do the same thing with our writing. We're getting feedback back and forth, so we become better and better at our writing. There are very specific things that you can do, you can put in place that will make you more effective in those things; and so we're very aggressively trying to do that.

I am actually amazed, Brian, at how many people I meet on the circuit (I said we’re out there) speaking who have some native gifts, but they make the most amateurish mistakes as public speakers. They carry the day because they're pretty clever already, but it's almost like their natural gifts are an excuse for not improving. It's like, 'Yeah, I can do this. I've been doing it for 10 years' or something like that. Yeah, well, you've been doing it in some ways wrong for 10 years, too, you know, if this is the habit that you have. I look at them and I think, ‘Oh man, if they were just teachable, they could be sensational instead of just good.’ That is, they could take their natural gift and they could then match a commitment to the craft and developing a better skill, and they can really improve if they can just change a few things.

I don't offer my advice usually unless it's asked for, because that could be a little bit awkward, but when it comes to our team, we're working together in a very intentional way to develop our craft as communicators and develop our craft as thinkers, and this requires that we be teachable with regards to each other. And frankly, Brian, if I came to England and did a talk for you, you and I would be talking after the whole thing was over about how things went. I'd wanna know your feedback and whether I connected with the group or maybe I stepped on some toes or something like that. This is an ongoing practice for me.

BA: That's excellent. I think that's extremely helpful.

Seeing that the area of defending the faith is such a broad field, what sort of study habits would you recommend in particular that would be helpful, to be not only well-versed but kind of well-rounded and knowledgeable across the whole scope.

GK: Yeah, that's another tough one. When I look at my own life, I think now, for example, I don't—you can't tell anybody I said this, but I actually don't study that much right now. Of course the whole world's listening, but the point is, there was a long season of my life and also shorter seasons since then where I did a tremendous amount of study. Now, usually, when you go to university or you're in an official course of study, then you're really working hard on something. Well, maybe when I'm writing a book or something like that, the spaces in between, I'm not doing that much, and I'm not offering that as a model necessarily but I'm just explaining how it worked out for me.

I have two little kids. I've got a five-year-old and a two-year-old, and I turn 60 in a couple of months. I got a family. I got an organization to run, and I have a tremendous team that helps me; but there's still a lot of other kind of different responsibilities that fall to me that makes it hard for me just to sit down and study for two or three hours a day. So, unfortunately for me, I had long seasons before that I have done that, and I'm a fairly quick study, I would think.

So I got my good foundation in my professional education (Bachelor’s, two Master's degrees now) and that really laid a good foundation. So now I can traffic in the ideas because of that, and I find that I just kind of do my best to keep up, but I don't put myself under pressure, for example, to read every emerging church book that comes out, because I'd be reading a book every three days. Instead what I do is I find people who really are focused in and read all that stuff, people that I trust, and then I interview them or I get information from them or whatever. So it is, for me, it is a combination of having laid a foundation early on and this is a foundation not on apologetics first but first on theology. 'Cause if we're defending the faith, we better get the faith right that we're defending.

If you're going to be serious about defending the faith, this understanding has to be granular. In other words, it's gotta be dialed down. You gotta know the difference between Armenian and Reformed. You gotta understand the deity of Christ and how that works and what the classical attacks on that have been. You just gotta have a picture of how theology works and particularly how the Christian worldview operants. Or else you're just not gonna be very good. You're gonna have too many big, giant holes.

Now, I mentioned I'm almost 60. I've been doing this for almost 35 years, so I'm not saying somebody's gotta become an expert overnight, but if you just keep logging the information—you keep your education up, you keep alert, you especially keep talking with people and stay in conversation about these things and with people who are in the know—you’ll be amazed at how much knowledge you can log after a period of time.

By the way, it just occurred to me, Brian, that this is another big thing thing for me, is that I have been able to make friends with people who read a lot, so I can call these guys up, you know. I can call Stephen Meyer or Jay Richards or J.P. Moreland or Bill Craig. I mean, I've developed these friendships since, so I got their phone numbers and when I get stumped on something...I had to call Fazale Rana today on some other issue over Reasons to Believe because I just need to get a little bit of input, and if they can help me, then I'm off and running. Occasionally, I get calls from them, too, on things, so there's a sense in which we are all working together. There is no kind of magic formula that we just get it all, and we're just perfect. It's always a learning process, and we draw from our community, and sometimes we have seasons of intense study, and other times we don't read anything for a couple of months, because we're doing other things, but that's just the way it ends up working out.

I don't know in your own life, Brian, if that bears any similarity to your own experience, but my suspicion is that for most people in our business as it were, it's kind of a herky-jerky affair. Reading and studying and then writing and then going for periods where you're balancing checking accounts and doing promotional material and development for your organization and then you got another project, you focus a little bit more. So it's a little of this and a little bit of that.

BA: A number of people have asked you in the past, 'Well, how do I get started with an apologetics ministry?' and that sort of a thing. 'I wanna do what you do.' You've given them the advice: bloom where you're planted, and you've talked about that just a bit about you have to be doing something before you can actually get into it.

GK: That's right. Right.

BA: Can you describe that just a little bit more?

GK: This question actually dovetails really nicely, I think, into our prior discussion about study habits and stuff.

My wife had a little plaque that was hanging in our kitchen there for a little while, and it simply said, ‘Bloom where you’re planted’. I realized that that phrase captured my philosophy about moving forward in the body of Christ, and it turns out to be quite biblical in one sense. When you think of Jesus, He said, ‘He who is faithful in smaller things will be given larger things’ [Luke 16:10]. And so God in a sense plants us somewhere to bear a modest amount of fruit, and if we bloom there, you know, we might get transplanted. If we don’t bloom there, because we got our eyes set on something in the future, we say, ‘Well, one of these days I’m going to be, you know, a big shot and do all these things and make a great contribution with the Kingdom’ and we’re not contributing now with whatever it is that we have, well, then we have no good reason to expect that God is gonna promote us. You know, we have to be faithful here, and again, going back to my remark that I don’t think that God distributes ministry by calling—like we wait around, and we seek the Lord, and we do these kind of spiritual disciplines that we think is gonna twist God’s arm into crying uncle, and then telling us what he wants us to do. Again, I don’t think it’s a biblical motif.

I think what God does is He give us gifts and opportunities, and He expects us then to use them, and then do the best we can with what we've been offered and then take the next step as it's presented to us.

So very early on, I mean my first year as a Christian, and not that I was introspective about this, it's just the way it worked out, and I look back now, it's a good plan, and now I'm much more intentional about it. I began to teach others in a Bible study. The first Bible study I had was like four people I had won to Christ in 1974. We were sitting on the floor in the living room, and I just got on with my Bible and tell them what I knew. Did I know much then? No, but I knew a whole lot more than they did. So I was able to teach them what I knew. So there was a delta factor or a differential change between me and them. In other words, they had a certain level of knowledge which was almost nothing. I didn't have much more, but I had some more, and then that difference is where I traded in with them. And then the more that I learned through the process of doing this and studying, the more the delta factor increased, that being the difference between what I knew and what they knew, and I was then able to pass that on. I operate within that delta factor.

So the more I learned, the better I was. And in fact, if you learn a lot more, then you could teach people who know more, too, and that's kind of where I'm at now, where I can spend a lot of my time in a leveraged effort, like what we're doing here, not talking in a sense to brand new Christians or beginners, but talk to people who are more seasoned but wanna get a boost into the next level of effectiveness or something.

This happens over time. It happens in part because even if you might have your eyes set on something big in the future...this issue usually comes up, Brian. People say, 'I wanna do what you're doing', and my thinking is, 'Well, you can't do what I'm doing now until you do what I did then'; and that is, I did whatever I could in any situation to give whatever I had. I was blooming where I was planted, so maybe my audience is two people or one, sitting across from coffee at Denny's (that was before Starbucks were around), but that was my audience. Maybe it was, you know, a Bible study, maybe it was a group that, you know, maybe it was a church service or whatever. It didn't matter. I just took the opportunities that I had, and I still do now. I mean, I still talk to small groups if I have the chance to do it, and if I have the room in my schedule, then we do that.

Through the engagement with the ideas, and this is one thing that goes back to your habits that we can cultivate, is not just reading a bit or having seasons of study, but talking a lot about these things. That is a huge secret that people don't realize. They think, 'If I just get a little bit more learning, then I'll be able to get out there.' Well, I got out there right away with the little that I knew, and I used that, and that caused me to learn that so much better, and I learned well and organized my thoughts well on my feet. I think that's just my temperament.

In the process of talking then, it helped me to work through these issues and think of new things and see things and help me become much more familiar with the material. People said, 'How do you know all these stuff?'. I said, 'Cause I talk about it all the time.' It's just part of me. It's just like any rank and file person that knows these stuff about sports. You know, some people have this encyclopedic knowledge of sports or the Lakers or something here in Los Angeles. They didn't go to school for that. They didn't sit down and say, 'Here's the Lakers almanac, and I'm gonna read through the whole thing and memorize all the facts.' No, they love the discipline. They love the field, and they just kept talking with people all the time, and these pieces then begin to stick 'cause your mind gets stickier the more you talk about it.

So I encourage people to talk, talk, talk, talk, talk about these issues that they like. They read it, they can talk about it with their spouse or their kids or their friends or schoolmates or kindred spirits that you find, that you can engage with, or as a teacher of some kind of class. The more you talk with students, the more it becomes part of you. So that's a real critical part.

BA: Well, I don't wanna do what you're doing, because the idea of live radio instills a fair amount of dread.

GK: It's not that bad really, but it is something you get maybe a little used to. It was hard for me at the beginning, but after a while, it's gotten more easy.

BA: You were talking about different influences and things, and I think a question that plays right into that is the role of a good mentor. How would you recommend someone seek out someone to be a mentor in the various areas?

GK: Right. That's a great question, Brian. In my case, though I mentioned Francis Schaeffer and J.P. Moreland and C.S. Lewis and Josh McDowell in some measure early on and others since then that have had an influence in my thinking, these are mentors from afar. I think that's a fully legitimate kind of mentor and for some people, the only kind of mentor they have is the ones that they can read about in books and follow in podcasts and listen to talks and stuff. So there's a sense of an arm’s distance relationship there, but something tremendous is gained by that. That's how it was with Francis Schaeffer for me, and J.P. Moreland was a combination really of something more personal.

But there is a unique contribution or influence of a very face-to-face, personal kind of a relationship that's not like anything else. In my life, I had a mentor for the first two and a half or so of my Christianity. Very early on, I struck up a friendship and a bargain with a man called Craig Englert who is now a pastor in Kihei in Maui in Hawaii in the Pacific. He dedicated a huge portion of his life and his effort and his energy to me. There were some other people who were a part of that group there for those two and a half years that came in and out, but I credit Craig with being the influence that kept me in the straight and narrow and personally and properly in the faith for all that time. He wasn't the significant intellectual element, though, he obviously taught me a lot of stuff. It was his personal influence in my life that was magnificent. Again, I don't know where I would be today if it weren't for those years with Craig.

However, those relationships are not easy to develop, principally because they're not that many men that are willing to enter into—or women, I guess, as appropriate—that are willing to enter into those kinds of relationships with other Christians, where there's a very, very close interaction. There's accountability. There's time spent together, like Jesus spent with His disciples. But it is arguably the most powerful thing that affect a Christian life.

Generally, looking for that kind of relationship, those things find you. I had gone to Craig myself, and I said, 'Will you disciple me?' but he had actually already had the same idea in his own mind when I came to him. He said yes right away, because he had been thinking about it. In the circumstances of our lives, we worked a lot together, and we saw each other on a regular basis. It worked out. Since then, I've had a number of different groups over the years, where I had four or five or six or seven people that I met with and I mentored them for a season—a year, a year and a half, two years. Right now, my staff is my main mentoring group at the present, but those are increasingly turning out to be few and far between.

I encourage people to work, to try to find somebody that they feel that they are kindred spirits with and that they can learn some things with if that person is willing to do that. But ultimately, the discipler chooses that disciple just as Jesus chose His, and that's a little bit of a liability if you don't have somebody choose you. You can go out and find him. You can ask him, and tell him what you have in mind or even kind of informally, get as close to somebody who you spiritually respect as possible and try to spend time with them and maybe that kind of relationship with develop a little bit, but that I think is a very important element of our spiritual growth.

BA: Now on another note, I think the most impactful books of 2009 was your Tactics book, and you discuss how to use wisdom and tact in your interactions with unbelievers, so that you are always ready to give an answer to those who ask. For those who are listening, I think that's an excellent resource. In fact, someone emailed me today and asked me, 'Hey, have you read this book, Tactics? Did you get it?' and I said, 'Yes! Yes!'

GK: As a matter of fact. [Laughing] Good. I think your review on Amazon is the first review that was posted there. Very thorough.

BA: Well, there you have it. I heartily recommend it.

What would you say—I'm not gonna ask you to repeat the content of the book, obviously—but one thing that I think would be something I would wanna learn from you is how do you cultivate a skill or develop a skill of being able to think well on your feet. I mean, you're doing your live radio show and obviously, you’re always in situations where things are just thrown at you that you weren't expecting. How have you developed that?

GK: Well, that's a great question, too. In my case, I don't think that thinking well on one's feet is an entirely natural capability. I think it's something that is learned. Some people maybe can learn faster than others, and I mentioned that I thought I'm kind of a quick study, but part of that is because of another feature in my approach to study. That has to do with structure. I'll get back to that point in just a moment.

Thinking on your feet is a thing that you can develop. When you think of comedians who you see on late-night TV shows, you think, 'Wow, those guys are so funny on impulse (if you will) or on command. How do they think of these things?' Well, the fact is that most of them don't think of those things right then. These are part of routines they've worked out before, and when they get on the air, the host is conveniently kind of tossing them soft balls that allow them to jump into their routine. But that's the way that works much of the time. You prepare the responses beforehand and then when they come up, you're ready for them.

We just sent out our March [2010] newsletter, Solid Ground, this week. I don't know if you got yours or not. You're in England, but we're sending out an enhanced version on email so that virtually everybody on our email list who is part of Stand to Reason—within the next week or two, you will actually get this in the mail and the email. Boy, take a look and read with us, because this particular issue shows where I had a debate with atheist Michael Shermer on radio at the end of December of last year [2011]. What I do in this is show all the steps of preparation that I went into in order to prepare for that. People who listen to the radio thought, 'Wow. How did you know that answer? He was really quick on that one?' Well, because I expected it to come up and I knew what I was gonna say. At least, I knew the first word or two or three out of my mouth to get me going. So that's a preparation issue.

But I also had in my mind, Brian, a sense of the structure in my response. This thing, structure, is really important. I spend more time on structure than just about anything else in my talks and in my writing. I want the pieces to be organized a certain way so I can recall the main points. I'll give you an example. I wrote a piece on the new atheists a couple of years ago that turned out to be kind of a foundational information for my talk with the new atheists. As I studied them and looked at the material of all that they are saying, I thought, 'How can I simplify this broad issue of all the things they're throwing up?' and it occurred to me that the new atheists trade on the problem of evil a lot in some form, of religious evil or the general problem of evil. They trade on science, and they trade on reason and rationality. It suddenly occurred to me these guys think (1) reason is on their side, and Christians and theists are a bunch of idiots. (2) They think that science is on their side, because science has proven that religion is false, and (3) they believe that morality is on their side, because religions are evil in themselves and religious people who believe in God are strapped with the problem of evil in explaining their view. ‘Boy, that was a great outline’. That's the structure.

Now, for my approach to new atheists. Wherever I go, I remember those three things. If you're gonna ask me, "How do you deal with the new atheists?' (1) They think reason is on their side; (2) they think science is on their side; and (3) they think morality is on their side. That gives me then, since I have those kind of tags that I hang things on, then I can just take each individually and remember what it was that I wrote about those things, at least, in general and I have a quick little answer there at the ready. This is true with almost everything I do. When you read this month's Solid Ground [March 2010 issue], it's called, "Prepping for engagement," you're gonna see my strategic approach here that brought things that I wanted to accomplish, that I wanted to remind myself of, and I had it written down and they were in front of me at the radio station.

Now here is my tactical move: if he says this, I say this. If he says this, I say this. Most of the time, I wasn't reading. Sometimes I was using it as a cheat sheet, but the fact that I worked out the responses allowed me to be, as I said, at the ready when they came up. It sounded like, 'Oh, Koukl is so quick on his feet.' No, I just worked really hard prepping and structuring in a way that would allow me to recall without too much difficulty. So I think that's the secret to being quick on your feet. Prepping in exams and especially, and I mentioned this before but I'll repeat it here, not just writing out the answers but saying the answers.

So for weeks before my debate with Michael Shermer, I knew some issues were gonna come up, so here I am talking with my staff about it, with my wife about it, with my two-year-old about it. You know, whoever would listen. I'm just working through these issues verbally and that turns out to be practice for me.

In the morning of the interview, it was pouring rain. We got to the studio about an hour early, and I sat in the car in the pouring rain with Amy Hall, who is one of our bloggers in Stand to Reason, and she had the sheet, the cheat sheet. She had all the notes. She had the whole lay down, and so then she'll bring these issues up and she'll say 'this' then I'd recall as best I could, and that warm-up really got me in the pace. So once I walked into the studio, I was mentally prepared and I really wasn't that nervous.

BA: That's really insightful. I appreciate you sharing that.

GK: Yeah, I hope you get a chance to look at that. When you get your Solid Ground [March 2010 issue], you'll see what I'm talking about. It really lays it out. It's quite transparent about the whole process, and I hope that encourages people like yourself and others who are listening, and how to do that.

BA: Well, I also did hear that the Shermer debate, and I thought it was very smooth and well executed. So, well done.

GK: Thank you. My feeling was I was talking a little too fast, so that's my own takeaway on how to improve next time.

BA: Well, there wasn't a lot of time.

Another question about interactions is I'm sure you've had this situation where you find yourself frustrated when you're interacting with someone. What, in your experience, is the best way to prevent emotions from spoiling a conversation?

GK: Well, I'll tell you what works best for me on the radio—and I'm being completely honest about this—one of the biggest things to help me mind my manners, particularly in radio, is I know that thousands of people are listening to me, and if I'm a jerk, I'm doing it in front of a massive audience. It doesn't sound very spiritual, but that's one of the things that helps keep me in check. I take a deep breath. I'm being watched, so it keeps me on my best behavior.

The goal is to transfer that attitude into other areas of our life where the audience isn't as big, because we are still still always before our audience of one, and that is the Lord. Reminding myself of, in a sense, my witness or my testimony, of how I'm coming across whether to one or thousands, helps me. Also, I'm being aware of what's happening inside, like I can feel that tension mounting inside, like to the moon Alice feeling...well, that's probably an old television reference—when you feel like you wanna belt the guy, basically. Then you realize, ‘Okay, this feeling that I'm aware of is probably expressing itself in my voice, my facial expressions’. Take a deep breath. Calm down. Pace yourself a little bit. Start asking more questions, and maybe that's the biggest tip. If you were asking questions, that means you're giving—that's the Columbo tactic from the book—that means you're giving the other side more of the floor and when they're doing more of the talking, then that means you can be doing less damage 'cause you're not talking when you're all wound up.

So if you're using the game plan that I described in the Tactics book, and you're using your questions well, then the other guy is getting a lot of opportunity to speak, and it gives you a time to collect your wits a little bit. Take a deep breath and calm down.

Those are some of the things that I try to keep in mind. Sometimes I just have to ask my wife to tell me when I was out of line or maybe Melinda, so I still get feedback from other people when they have visibility of me getting crazy. Feedback is a sensational tool. If you've got the steel to take feedback from other people, especially people that are close to you. A lot of people, guys especially, their egos are too big that don't allow them to do that. But if they can get past that, be willing to listen to criticism and not answer back and not make excuses for themselves, but just listen and then eat the meat, tear away the bones. That's a huge secret to improve in just about any area of our lives.

BA: We're starting to wrap up here. If you could say just one thing to, say, a roomful of seminary students, ministers, evangelists, and apologists, what would you tell them about their own character development?

GK: Well, I was thinking about this question, 'cause I knew it was gonna be coming, and there's probably a lot I could say, but one thing that came to me immediately was a line from a song that an old friend of mine (that I hadn't seen for many years) wrote during the Jesus Movement here in the States. The song that he used to sing when he would say goodnight, he does a concert, and then he’d sing this little song by way of saying goodnight to the audience, and the line in the song was simply, "Be as holy in the shadows as you are in the light" and then he added "And so ‘til we meet again, children. Goodnight."

"Be as holy in the shadows as you are in the light. 'Til we meet again. Goodnight."

Now that is a very cool guideline. It's not easy to keep, but it's an important one to keep in mind. So if you're talking about your character development, which by the way, is a huge issue. If you think about people who falter...leaders now who falter badly in their Christian walk—very few of them falter because, you know, some academic thing tripped them up—the thing that breaks them is the moral area of their life. It's a character. And if you think about college students that go away to college, even though there are challenges of an academic or intellectual sort, that is not the biggest thing. The biggest thing is they get away on their own and they never learned how to control themselves and manage their own lives and they go crazy. They get this freedom, and they can't manage it, and that sinks their ship spiritually.

We've all known that it's easier to be holy in the light, but if we can seek to be as good in the shadows as we are when everybody's watching, then I think we've really accomplished something and we're gonna be well-protected for the onslaught.

BA: Well, that's excellent.

Well, Greg, I really appreciate the time you've taken to speak with me today.

GK: It's been a lot of fun for me, Brian. I love talking about these things, and I'm glad to be able to contribute to what you're doing.

BA: Well, we've been speaking with Greg Koukl with Stand to Reason. Be sure to check out his most recent book, Tactics. Also go to his website str.org. There's treasure trove of resources there, and pick up The Ambassador Basic Curriculum, if you're looking for somewhere to get started. That would probably be a good place to start if you're wanting to go deeper into the things that he's been talking about here. And also check out his podcast, Stand to Reason, and you can find that in iTunes.

GK: They can also podcast the radio show from the website, too. That's something they might wanna consider. That's three hours a week of fun stuff. Kind of like what we've been doing here today.

BA: Excellent. Well, thanks again, Greg.

This is Brian Auten of Apologetics 315, and thanks for listening.

Apologetics 315: Jay Smith Interview Transcript

2013-07-27T09:14:00.003-04:00

The following transcript is from an Apologetics 315 interview with Jay Smith. Original audio here.Transcript index here. If you enjoy transcripts, please consider supporting, which makes this possible.

BA: Hello, this is Brian Auten of Apologetics 315. Today, I interview Jay Smith. Jay is a Biblical scholar specializing in Islam. He spent much of his life in evangelistic ministry to Muslims in the U.K. He regularly engages in Islamic debates from the Chambers of the Oxford Union to his regular debates at Speaker's Corner in Hyde Park.

The purpose of this interview is to gain some insights from Jay about Christian interaction with Islam, find out more about what Muslims believe, and ask for his advice for Christians seeking to share with their Muslim friends.

Thanks for joining me today, Jay.

JS: Thank you, Brian. It's good to be with you.

BA: Now, you, like me, are an American but don't live in the U.S. So what brought you to the U.K.?

JS: That's correct. In fact, though I am an American, my accent gives me away. I was not born here nor in the States nor have I lived much in the States. I think, though, I'm 57 years old now, I think I've only lived ten years in America.
I was born in India. Grew up there for my first 17 years. When I finished high school there in India—my parents were missionaries, my grandparents were missionaries, so I'm third generation Michigan—I then went to the States in my graduate and post-graduate degrees there.

While I was finishing off seminary, I went to a one-day seminar on Islam and was told back then—this was back in 1981, so that dates me—I was told there were 800 million Muslims, huge number. Didn't really think much of that, kinda went in one ear, out the other ear. Didn't pay attention to it. The next two numbers really bothered me. I was told that there were only 1500 Christian missionaries working amongst them, and that these 1500 Christian missionaries made up roughly 2% of all missionaries. That really bothered me, and I remember turning to my wife and I said, 'Judy, we gotta do something. We've got to work with Muslims. We've got to engage with this religion that's growing faster than any other.' That was in 1981. We’re now in 2011, and it has increased, double that number. Some say 1.6 billion, could be as high as 2 billion. We really got interested in Islamic work back in 1981.

Now, as far as London is concerned, the reason we’re here in London and have been since 1992, almost 20 years now, was because back in 1991, we had just been 5 years in West Africa, Senegal, working with Muslims there in West Africa when we were told that they were having a real problem here in London with radical Muslims, and that the growing radicalization was happening here in London. No one really knew how to contend with it or work with it. My area of expertise was apologetics, and so I said, 'Well, listen. Let me try London. It's not a 1040 window. It's not really an Islamic country per se, but because of the enormous amount of Pakistani, Indian, and Bangladeshis that are here in Britain—about 70% of the Muslim population here in Britain is made up of people from the Indian subcontinent who are much more radical than, say, your Arab counterparts. Because of that, our mission asked if I'd come and start work here amongst that, so that's why we came, and that's what I've been doing it for the last 20 years, engaging with the radical Muslims.

I was just on the phone with Anjem Choudary tonight. In fact, we just scheduled a debate for the, looks like the 23rd of this month, we're gonna be doing a debate, he and I. Probably the most radical Muslim in Britain today. A good friend. I've debated his predecessor, Sheikh Umar Bakri Muhammad, twice now. That's what I've been doing—taking on and confronting the radical Muslims here in London. «Continue reading at Apologetics 315»

Apologetics 315: Daniel B. Wallace Interview Transcript

2013-07-27T09:11:00.000-04:00

The following transcript is from an Apologetics 315interview with Daniel B. Wallace. Original audio here.Transcript index here. If you enjoy transcripts, please consider supporting, which makes this possible.

BA: Hello. This is Brian Auten of Apologetics 315. Today, I’m speaking with Dr. Daniel B. Wallace, professor of New Testament Studies at Dallas Theological Seminary and an authority on Koine Greek grammar and New Testament textual criticism. He also influences students across the country through his textbook on intermediate Greek grammar, and it’s used in more than two-thirds of the nation’s schools that teach that subject. Dr. Wallace served as senior New Testament editor for the NET Bible and has founded The Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts (CSNTM). The purpose of the CSNTM is to preserve the Greek text of the New Testament by taking digital photographs of all extant Greek New Testament manuscripts and that is found atCSNTM.org.

The purpose of our interview today is to find out more about Dr. Wallace’s work, his debates with Bart Ehrman, the reliability of the New Testament, and his advice for Christian defenders. Thanks so much for joining me today, Dr. Wallace.

DW: Thank you. I’m glad to be on the show, Brian.

BA: Well, first, would you mind telling our listeners just a bit more about yourself and the work you’re involved with The Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts.

DW: I’m a professor of New Testament Studies at Dallas Theological Seminary in Texas, and I have been teaching there about 27 years. I teach New Testament Greek.

I started The Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts nine years ago for the initial purpose of photographing all Greek New Testament manuscripts in the world—that’s our initial goal—and then when we get that task accomplished, the next task is to try to evaluate these manuscripts, which we are doing right now—to try to analyze them and evaluate them to help us get back to recovering the wording of the original New Testament as much as humanly possible. «Continue reading at Apologetics 315»

Apologetics 315: Kenneth Samples Interview Transcript

2013-07-27T08:59:00.003-04:00

The following transcript is from an Apologetics 315 interview with Ken Samples. Original audio here.Transcript index here. If you enjoy transcripts, please consider supporting, which makes this possible.

BA: Hello, this is Brian Auten of Apologetics 315. Today I’m speaking with philosopher and theologian, Ken Samples. He is senior research scholar at Reasons to Believe, and he is the author of Without a Doubt and A World of Difference. He’s contributed to numerous other books as well. He’s written articles for Christianity Today and Christian Research Journal, and he regularly participates in RTB’s podcasts, including Straight Thinking, a podcast dedicated to encouraging Christians to utilize sound reasoning in their apologetics. So, thanks so much for speaking with me today, Ken.

KS: Hi, Brian. It’s a pleasure to be with you. I enjoy your site and enjoy an opportunity to interact with you.

BH: Well, for those who may not be familiar with you, could you tell us a little bit more about your background and how you came to be a philosopher and a theologian?

KS: Yeah. Brian, I grew up in a kind of a nominal Catholic family, and by the time I kind of hit my teens, I was really kind of looking for deeper answers in life. I just kind of felt like I needed a greater sense of purpose and significance and meaning, and I began kind of asking the big questions: How do I know that God exists? Where do I find meaning in my life?

My sister, who had become a Christian a few years earlier, gave me a book by C.S. Lewis called, Mere Christianity. My second year in college, I was studying philosophy. I read Lewis’s book and was just very amazed by it, impressed by it. Again, I kind of grown up Catholic, but didn’t know much about historic Christianity and certainly didn’t comport my life with Christian ethics. So I read the book, and Lewis really taught me historic Christian thinking, and not long after that, I dedicated my life to the Lord, and I immediately thought that I wanted to know more about the Bible. I wanted to know more about my faith, and I began studying philosophy.

I took my undergraduate degree in Philosophy and Social Science, so I was always interested in history and philosophy; then later, I took a graduate degree in Theology at Biola University at Talbot. And those were always kind of burning areas for me. I love philosophy. I love to think and reflect. I love history. I’m a big World War II student. My father was a decorated serviceman in Europe during the Second World War. And, of course, I love theology. I love the Scriptures, and a philosophical perspective. So that’s kind of my educational background, and my areas of interest. «Continue reading at Apologetics 315»

Transcript: An Open Message to Rabbi Jerome Davidson (and Other Critics of Pamela Geller)

2013-04-13T15:56:00.005-04:00

Uploaded by Acts17Apologetics on April 12, 2013

One of the most interesting things about Pamela Geller’s critics is that they rarely condemn her for something that she actually said or did. Instead, they usually misrepresent her position and then condemn her based on the misrepresentation. In logic, this is called the “Straw Man” Fallacy—criticizing a false caricature of your opponent’s position rather than your opponent’s actual position.

Now, why don't Pamela’s critics make the slightest effort to be fair or accurate in their portrayal of her views? It’s simple really: If you state Pamela’s views and claims accurately, most people are going to agree with her.

If you walk up to someone and say, “Oh man, we've gotta do something about this Pamela Geller. She’s against terrorism. She’s against honor killing. She’s against female genital mutilation. She’s against the persecution of religious minorities. She’s against the forced marriage of child brides, and believe it or not, she supports the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution—AND Israel’s right to exist!” If you tell someone that, the response is going to be, “Yeah, we should do something. We should give her a medal for having the courage that the media lost years ago.”

So, if you want to stir up an angry mob against Pamela, you have to get a little creative. You have to invent some things. Let’s look at an example. One of the people responsible for getting Pamela’s speech at Great Neck Synagogue cancelled was Rabbi Jerome Davidson. Why shouldn't Pamela be allowed to speak according to Rabbi Davidson?

[Video clip of Rabbi Davidson speaking]

The synagogue is no place for hate speech. She put posters in the subways which compared Muslims to animals.

What was the hate speech?

She put posters in the subways which compared Muslims to animals.

She compared Muslims to what?

....to animals.

So, Rabbi Davidson, if we look at Pamela’s subway ad, it’s going to say, “Muslims are animals”. Right?

Here’s the subway ad:

It says, “In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat Jihad.” Notice that this ad doesn’t call anyone animals. It calls certain people savages—savages are uncivilized human beings. But what kind of people are being called savages? Muslims in general? No. Jihadists, and specifically, the Jihadists who are waging a war against Israel. Jihadists who are blowing up busloads of civilians, and slaughtering families in their homes, and carrying out suicide attacks.

Now, who doesn’t believe that terrorists who target civilians and children are savages? Since this isn't a controversial statement, critics like Rabbi Davidson have to manufacture a controversial statement by claiming that the ad calls ALL Muslims animals, even though the ad doesn’t mention Muslims and doesn’t mention animals.

But apart from slandering Pamela Geller, notice what Rabbi Davidson has done. He's admitted that it would be wrong and immoral to call a group of people a derogatory term, like animals.

So, let’s test the good rabbi’s consistency by turning to the Qur’an to see what it says about Rabbi Davidson and his fellow-Jews. To make things simple, we'll stick to a single verse of the Qur’an:

QUR'AN 98:6 “Verily, those who disbelieve (in the religion of Islam, the Qur’an and Prophet Muhammad) from among the people of the Scripture (Jews and Christians) and Al-Mushrikun will abide in the Fire of Hell. They are the worst of creatures.”

Who are the worst of creatures? Christians, Jews, and idolaters who refuse to believe in Muhammad, and convert to Islam. So according to the Qur’an, Rabbi Davidson, and his entire family, and his congregation are the worst of creatures. They're lower than dogs according to the Qur’an. They’re worst than pigs according to the Qur’an. In the same world, what would we call this Rabbi Davidson?

[Video clip of Rabbi Davidson speaking]

”....hate speech.”

But wait a minute! If it would be wrong for Pamela Geller to call Muslims animals—which she didn’t do—shouldn’t it be wrong for the Qur’an to call Jews as the worst of creatures? And yet it would never occur to Rabbi Davidson to condemn this verse of the Qur’an or any other verse of the Qur’an. Why the inconsistency? Why the double standards? Why does Rabbi Davidson apply one set of rules to Pamela Geller—it’s wrong to call people names—and a completely different set of rules to Muhammad and his followers?: “You, Muslims, can call people all the names you want.”

Here we arrive at one of the great ironies of our time. Rabbi Davidson thinks that he's showing respect to Muslims when in reality, by holding Muslims to a lower moral standard, he’s insulting and degrading all Muslims, even the peaceful ones.

Pamela Geller, by contrast, calls terrorists savages (and who wouldn't?) but she holds Muslims to the same moral standard that she would apply to any other group.

So who gives more respect to Muslims? Someone like Pamela Geller who criticizes certain Islamic teachings (but only because that’s just how we do things when we have a disagreement in the West) or someone like Rabbi Davidson who shows, by his comments about Pamela Geller, that he believes in openly criticizing views he disagrees with, but for some reason, puts Muslims OUTSIDE the realm of criticism and discourse.

When Rabbi Davidson and the media and politicians say to Pamela Geller, “Pamela, we expect better from you than these things we made up about you,” their botched message is that civilized human beings must adhere to a basic moral principle: Don’t make negative generalizations about an entire group of people. But then the same rabbi, and the same reporters, and the same politicians turn to Muhammad and his followers and say, “But YOU’RE exempt from this basic moral principle.”

Why?

What kind of people do we NOT expect to live by basic moral principles that apply in civilized society? Savages?

Will the REAL Islamophobes please stand up.

Transcriber's note: If you spot any errors, please let me know, and I will make the correction. Thank you!

Introduction to the Old Testament With Christine Hayes (playlist)

2013-01-27T18:56:00.001-05:00

OPEN YALE COURSES
RLST 145: Introduction to the Old Testament (Hebrew Bible)

ABOUT THE COURSE: This course provides a historical study of the origins of Christianity by analyzing the literature of the earliest Christian movements in historical context, concentrating on the New Testament. Although theological themes will occupy much of our attention, the course does not attempt a theological appropriation of the New Testament as scripture. Rather, the importance of the New Testament and other early Christian documents as ancient literature and as sources for historical study will be emphasized. A central organizing theme of the course will focus on the differences within early Christianity (-ies).

Get the details and download class materials at the course overview page.

Here's a list of all available free courses offered by Yale: Open Yale Courses

New Testament History and Literature with Dale B. Martin (playlist)

2013-01-27T18:43:00.001-05:00

OPEN YALE COURSES
RLST 152: Introduction to the New Testament History and Literature

ABOUT THE COURSE: This course provides a historical study of the origins of Christianity by analyzing the literature of the earliest Christian movements in historical context, concentrating on the New Testament. Although theological themes will occupy much of our attention, the course does not attempt a theological appropriation of the New Testament as scripture. Rather, the importance of the New Testament and other early Christian documents as ancient literature and as sources for historical study will be emphasized. A central organizing theme of the course will focus on the differences within early Christianity (-ies).

Get the details and download class materials at the course overview page.

Here's a list of all available free courses offered by Yale: Open Yale Courses

Ravi Zacharias Speaks with a Founder of Hamas

2012-12-07T15:39:00.000-05:00

Do you know why the Middle East is in the cauldron of hate? Because it's living with the logic of unforgiveness.

I was talking to one of the founders of Hamas. Some of you may have heard me tell this on the air. His name was Sheikh Talal [Sider]. I was part of a group with the former Archbishop of Canterbury. About six or seven of us have gone to the Middle East to try and bring the people together to a peace table. So we've met with the leaders from both sides, and the last day we were there, one of the founders of Hamas, a muscle-bound guy who had served 18 years in prison for all of the killings that he'd been involved in. His son, himself, had been in prison. He'd lost many of his children, some of them in, I think, in suicide bombing.

We were all allowed to ask him one question, and when my question came, I asked him the question. I was not happy with the answer. I said, "Sheikh, I'm not happy with the answer," I said, "but I'm not gonna argue with you." I said, "Sheikh, I just want to say this to you: Not far from where you and I are sitting, 5000 years ago, Abraham--whom you revere, whom I revere--went up a mountain. He took his son. You say it was Ishmael. Christians believe it was Isaac. Let's not get argumentative about that now. Let's just agree that he took his son up the mountain."

He said, "That's right."

I said, "And offered him as a sacrifice to God, and God stopped him in the nick of time, and held back his hand, and said, 'Stop!'"

I said, "Do you know what God said to Abraham then?" He just looked at me blank. I said, "God said, 'I, myself, will provide.'" And he nodded his head.

I said, "Very close to where you and I are sitting here in Ramallah, not far from here, 2000 years ago, God kept that promise, and He took His own Son."

I said, "Sheikh Talal, this time the axe did not stop."

He just stared at me. The room was full of smoke with all of his security people [and all there]. I said, "I may never see you again, Sheikh, and you won't like what I'm gonna say to you, but I wanna leave this with you: Until you and I receive the Son that God has provided, we will be offering our own sons and daughters in the battlefields of this world for land and power and pride."

I could just see the man's lips beginning to quiver. He was sitting right next to me. Nobody said anything after that. I thought, "Brother, I've really blown this big time."

As we were walking out, the Archbishop put his arm around me, hugged me close, and said, "Ravi, that was of God." I said, "I meant it. I meant it." He said, "You're right."

As we were all going down, Sheikh Talal went quickly and shook hands with them and embraced them. And he came over to me, and he grabbed me by the shoulders, kissed me on both sides of the face, patted my face, and he said, "You're a good man. I hope I see you again someday," and opened the door to let me in.

When you understand this Christ who offers forgiveness, it is a message that is unparalleled. In Hinduism, you pay with karma. In Islam, you'll never know. It's "Insh'Allah". Your good deeds will have to outweigh your bad deeds in Islam. It's true! They'll tell you that. But the grace of Christ comes to you and says, "If any man comes unto me, I will know why he's a customer." And if we confess our sins--He's faithful and just--He'll forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness

Transcript: "Does Allah Commit Shirk?" by David Wood

2011-11-07T09:49:00.004-05:00

Uploaded by Acts17Apologetics on Oct 14, 2011

According to the Qur'an, the worst possible sin is shirk, associating partners with Allah.

Qur'an 4:48 Allah forgiveth not that partners should be set up with Him; but He forgiveth anything else, to whom He pleaseth; to set up partners with Allah is to devise a sin most heinous indeed.

(Video clip: Zakir Naik defining shirk)

There are lots of ways to commit shirk. You don't have to actually bow down and worship other gods. Muhammad tells us, for instance, that if you swear by something other than Allah, you've committed shirk. If you say, "I swear on my mother's grave!", you're guilty of shirk. We find this in all six of Islam's most trusted collections of ahadith.

Let's look at a few passages.

Sahih al-Buhkhari 6108 Allah's Messenger said, "Verily! Allah forbids you to swear by your fathers. If one has to take an oath, he should swear by Allah or otherwise keep quiet."

Sahih Muslim 4040 Allah's Messenger said, "He who has to take an oath, he must not take an oath but by Allah."

Sunan Abu Dawud 3242 The Apostle of Allah said, "Do not swear by your fathers, or by your mothers, or by rivals to Allah; and swear by Allah only, and swear by Allah only when you are speaking the truth."

Sunan an-Nasai 3795 The Messenger of Allah said, "Whoever swears, let him not swear by anything other than Allah."

Sunan Ibn Majah 2095 The Messenger of Allah said, "Do not take oaths by idols nor by your forefathers."

Jami at-Tirmidhi 1534 The Messenger of Allah came across Umar while he was on his mount, and he was swearing by his father. So the Messenger of Allah said, "Verily Allah prohibits you from swearing by your fathers. So let the one who swears, swear by Allah, or be silent."

Now, why is it wrong to swear by something other than Allah?

Muhammad tells us in

Jami at-Tirmidhi 1535 Ib Umar said, "Nothing is sworn by other than Allah, for I heard the Messenger of Allah say: 'Whoever swears by other than Allah, he has committed disbelief or Shirk.'"

"Whoever swears by other than Allah, he has committed disbelief or Shirk."

According to Muhammad, anyone who swears by something other than Allah has made it a partner of Allah. He's committed shirk, the worst possible sin.

(Video clip: "Whoever swears by other than Allah, he has committed shirk or disbelief.")

So, the worst sin according to Surah 4:48 of the Qur'an is shirk; and Muhammad tells us that you commit shirk when you swear by something other than Allah. Clear so far? Awesome. Now that we understand how shirk works, let's have some fun, shall we?

In the Qur'an, Allah swears over and over again by the Qur'an.

Qur'an 36:2 I swear by the Qur'an full of wisdom.

Qur'an 38:1 I swear by the Qur'an, full of admonition.

Qur'an 43:2 I swear by the Book that makes things clear.

Qur'an 50:1 I swear by the glorious Qur'an.

Allah swears by the Qur'an—but Muhammad said that when you swear other than Allah, you're making it a partner with Allah. Therefore, the Qur'an is Allah's partner. That shouldn't be surprising, of course, since Muslims tell us that the Qur'an shares one of Allah's attributes. The Qur'an is eternal according to Islam. So you might expect Allah to make this eternal book his partner.

But Allah isn't done. He also swears by Muhammad's life.

Qur'an 15:72 Verily, by thy life (O Prophet), in their wild intoxication, they wander in distraction, to and fro.

(Video clip: And he said, "O my beloved prophet, I swear by your life." This is what Allah said. "I swear by your life.")

Allah swears by Muhammad's life, making Muhammad a partner with Allah. This shouldn't be surprising either since Muslims, obviously, don't treat Muhammad like a human prophet. Draw a picture of Moses, no Muslims riot. Draw a picture of Muhammad, someone has to die. Now it all makes sense. Muhammad is Allah's partner.

But Allah has angelic partners, too.

Qur'an 77:5 I swear by the angels who bring down the revelation.

Qur'an 79:1 I swear by the angels who violently pull out the souls of the wicked.

Allah swears by the angels. And since Muhammad said that when you swear by something other than Allah, you set it up as a partner with Allah—we can only conclude that angels are Allah's divine partners.

Allah must've been quite lonely, though, because at the end of the day, he made all kinds of partners.

Qur'an 81:15 I swear by the stars.

Qur'an 85:1 I swear by the mansions of the stars.

Qur'an 56:75 I swear by the falling of the stars.

Qur'an 91:1 I swear by the sun and its brilliance.

Qur'an 91:6 I swear by the earth and its expanse.

Qur'an 74:32 I swear by the moon.

Qur'an 89:1 I swear by the daybreak.

Qur'an 84:16 I swear by the sunset redness.

Qur'an 92:1 I swear by the night when it draws a veil.

Qur'an 86:11 I swear by the rain-giving heavens.

Qur'an 51:1 I swear by the wind that scatters far and wide.

Qur'an 90:1 I swear by this city. (i.e. Mecca?)

Qur'an 68:1 I swear by the pen

Qur'an 52:1 I swear by the mountain.

Qur'an 89:3 I swear by the even and the odd.

Qur'an 95:1-3 I swear by the fig, and the olive, and Mount Sinai, and this city made secure.

Wow. That's a lot of partners you've associated with yourself there Allah.

(Video clip: "When you swear, you're trying to mention the importance of the one you're swearing by, and anything that is created is insignificant when compared to Allah (Subnallah), the Creator. So then we don't swear by anyone but Allah.)

But it gets even worse.

Qur'an 69:38-39 I swear by that which you see, and that which you do not see.

Allah swears by everything that's seen and everything that's unseen. But guess what? That's everything. And if Allah swears by absolutely everything, then everything is a partner with Allah. This means, of course, that Islam isn't actually a monotheistic religion. It's some kind of strange polytheistic-pantheistic hybrid.

(Video clip: "If you break any one of the three [...] of Tawheed, it's called a shirk.")

Think about the implications here. Allah swears by what you see. Do you see this pig? Allah swears by it, and Muhammad says that when you swear by something other than Allah, you've made it Allah's partner. So Allah has made this pig his partner. Are you Muslims ready to worship the cute little swine?

Muslims complain about how women dress in America. Some Muslim leaders compare Western women to uncovered meat in a butcher shop window. Speaking of uncovered meat and scantily clad women, here's Lady Gaga wearing a dress made entirely of meat. You, Muslims, may not like Miss Gaga or her attire, but let's face it: Allah swears by Lady Gaga and by her meaty dress, and the meat probably isn't even halal. So the next time you Muslims pray, make sure you don't forget about Allah's partner, Lady Gaga, or Allah's other partner, the 50 pounds of beef she was wearing.

Allah swears by everything seen and unseen. He swears by dogs and alcohol and crack cocaine and pornography and the herpes virus and used menstrual cloths and toilets and what's in toilets, and yes, Allah swears by Satan, himself. And when Allah swore on these things from all eternity in his eternal partner, the Qur'an, he associated all of them with himself, committing more shirk than the worst Meccan polytheist could ever dream of.

(Video clip: Shirk, according to Islam, is the worst blasphemy and it is the unforgivable sin. There's no way to get back from that.)

But we're not quite done, because according to the Qur'an, the more knowledge you have of right and wrong, the greater your guilt if you sin.

Qur'an 2:22 Do not set up rivals to Allah while you know.

"While you know", i.e. if you know better. This is why Muhammad's companions, who started off as pagans, could be forgiven of their shirk. They didn't know any better. The more knowledge you have, the more responsible you are. But Allah's knowledge is supposedly greater than anyone else's which means that Allah knew exactly what he was doing when he set up, literally, everything as his partner. Allah, unlike a Meccan pagan, can't appeal to ignorance.

Now let's put all of this together. Shirk is the worst possible sin. You commit shirk when you swear by something other than Allah. Since Allah swears by everything seen and unseen, Allah has committed more shirk than anyone else. And because Allah knows more than anyone else, he's more responsible than anyone else when he commits the worst possible sin over and over and over. According to Muhammad and the Qur'an then, Allah is the worst sinner, the most wicked idolater, the most despicable mushrik who's ever existed. And my Muslim friends tell me to bow down and worship him.

This is a pattern I've been noticing in Islam. On the surface, some of Islam's teaching is wonderful: believe in God, pray, fast, give to charity. Awesome. Where do I sign up? But as soon as you dig a little deeper, as soon as you scratch the surface, you find blasphemy.

"Believe in our God, who happens to be the worst sinner imaginable according to his own book and his own prophet." Can't sign up for that, my Muslim friends.

But if you ever come up with a god who isn't the world's most prolific idol maker, call me.

Join the discussion:

Answering Muslims: Does Allah Commit Shirk?
Acts17Apologetics (Youtube): Does Allah Commit Shirk?

Transcript: "Who Killed Muhammad?" by David Wood

2011-11-04T22:34:00.002-04:00

Uploaded by Acts17Apologetics on Oct 29, 2011

David: Hello? I'd like to report a murder.
(listens)
David: His name? Muhammad. Muhammad ibn Abdullah.
(listens)
David: I think he was poisoned.
(listens)
David: No, he's the prophet of Islam.
(listens)
David: Well, it was almost 14 centuries ago, but don't you, guys, have a cold case file or something?
(listens)
David: Not for that long ago! Don't you know how important this case is?! I've got Sunnis telling me a Jewish woman poisoned him. I've got Shias telling me Aisha poisoned him, and I wanna know who killed.. Hello? (snorts) She hung up.

I guess I'll have to solve this one myself—through a careful investigation of the Muslim sources.

By the way, to all my Muslim friends out there who didn't bother to read your most trusted sources, may I say in advance: Mua ha ha.

Okay, I've been through the Qur'an, the hadith, and the sira literature, and I think I've solved the mystery of Muhammad's death. It's actually pretty straightforward. The Muslim sources tell us that Muhammad was poisoned. All we have to do is take everything we know about how Muhammad was killed, and ask ourselves who would've killed him in that particular way. Police do this sort of thing everyday. They match up a bullet with the gun that fired the bullet. They match up fingerprints with the finger [of the person] who left the fingerprints. They match up details of a crime with the criminal who has a certain M.O. So to figure out who killed Muhammad, we just need to do a little profiling.

(Video clip:
Accused: But the fact remains you can't prove that I did it. It could've been anybody!
Colombo: It can only be you—by your own admission!)

The main difficulty we face is that lots of people wanted to kill Muhammad. The pagans wanted to kill him for conquering their cities, smashing their idols, slaughtering their men , raping their women, and enslaving their children. Jews wanted to kill them for seizing their land, destroying their communities, slaughtering their men , raping their women, and enslaving their children. Christians wanted to kill him for threatening to conquer them. Men wanted to kill him. Women wanted to kill him. Old people wanted to kill him. Young people wanted to kill him. Muhammad made a LOT of enemies.

(Video clip: "What's the matter Rodney?" "Ohhh, I don't get any respect at all.")

Fortunately, we can narrow down our list of suspects by ruling out people who would've killed Muhammad in some way OTHER than poisoning. Certain killers like to strangle their victims; they're not going to use poison. Some people prefer knives. Some people set fires. Some people push their victims off cliffs. Colonel Mustard wouldn't poison anybody. He used a lead pipe in The Ballroom.

Interestingly, the Qur'an tells us how Allah would've killed Muhammad. We find Allah's M.O., his preferred method of executing prophets, in Surah 69:44 through 46. According to the Qur'an, if Muhammad were to invent a false revelation, if he were to make up verses of the Qur'an, Allah would kill him by severing his aorta. (The aorta is the large artery that comes out of the left ventricle of your heart. Some Muslim sources call it the "life artery".)

Let's look at different translations of verses 44 to 46 along with a commentary, so we can get a clear idea of what the passage is saying. The Hilali-Khan translation reads:

Qur'an 69:44-46 And if he (Muhammad) had forged a false saying concerning Us We surely should have seized him by his right hand (or with power and might), and then certainly should have cut off his life artery (aorta). [Hilali-Khan]

And in parenthesis, the translators add, "aorta". The Pickthal translation declares:

Qur-an 69:44-46 And if he had invented false sayings concerning Us, We assuredly had taken him by the right hand and then severed his life-artery. [Pickthall]

Dawood's translation reads:

Qur-an 69:44-46 Had he invented lies concerning Us, We would have seized him by the right hand and severed his heart's vein. [Dawood]

ibn Shakir renders these verses:

Qur-an 69:44-46 And if he had fabricated against Us some of the sayings, We would certainly have seized him by the right hand, then We would certainly have cut off his aorta. [Shakir]

Just so we're clear on the meaning, and no one accuses me of misrepresenting the passage, let me read one of the greatest Muslim commentaries of these verses. This is Tafsir Jalalayn:

Tafsir Jalalayn [on Qur-an 69:44-46] And had he, namely, the Prophet, fabricated any lies against Us, by communicating from Us that which We have not said, We would have assuredly seized him, We would have exacted vengeance [against him], as punishment, by the Right Hand, by [Our] strength and power; then We would have assuredly severed his life-artery, the aorta of the heart, a vein that connects with it, and which if severed results in that person's death.

So if Muhammad had been a false prophet and a liar and a deceiver, we know how Allah would've killed him—Allah would've cut his aorta. As long as no one severs Muhammad's aorta then, we can rule out Allah as a suspect.

(Video clip: "I didn't do it! Just because the blood was in my hand, doesn't mean I stabbed the man.")

Now that we've got our strategy, let's turn to our Muslim sources, so that we can put together our profile. According to Sahih al-Bukhari, Sahih Muslim, and other text, Muhammad was poisoned by a Jewish woman.

Sahih al-Bukhari 2617 A Jewess brought a poisoned (cooked) sheep for the Prophet who ate from it. She was brought to the Prophet and was asked, "Shall we kill her?" He said, "No." Anas added, "I continued to see the effect of the poison on the palate of the mouth of Allah's Messenger."

People could see the effects of the poison in Muhammad's mouth. The poison apparently disfigured his palate, making his mouth look strange.

Sahih Muslim 5430 A Jewess came to Allah's Messenger with poisoned mutton and he took of what had been brought to him. (When the effects of this poison were felt by him) he called for her and asked her about that, whereupon she said, "I had determined to kill you". Thereupon he said, " Allah will never give you the power to do it."

Muhammad tells this woman, "Allah will never allow you to kill me!" I guess Muhammad didn't know Allah very well, because the poison ultimately did kill him.

In case you're wondering why this woman wanted to poison Muhammad. She tells us in ibn Sa'd:

ibn Sa'd, p. 252 The Apostle of Allah sent for Zaynab Bint al-Harith [that's the woman who poisoned him] and said to her, " What induced you to do what you have done?" She replied, " You have done to my people what you have done. You have killed my father, my uncle, and my husband, so I said to myself, 'If you are a prophet, the foreleg will inform you; and others have said it: '"If you are a king, we will get rid of you."'

The woman poisoned Muhammad, because he slaughtered her family. I guess Louis Farrakhan got something right.

(Video clip: "But as a man soweth, the same shall he also reap. And that's why Jesus told Peter, 'Shield your sword, because those who live by the sword, will die by it.'")

But there's a plot twist here, my friends. You see, Zaynab didn't act alone. She had a co-conspirator, someone working behind the scenes pulling the strings.

Sahih al-Bukhari 4428 The Prophet in his ailment in which he died, used to say, "O Aishah! I still feel the pain caused by the food I ate at Khaibar, and at this time, I feel as if my aorta is being cut from that poison."

What's that Muhammad? Something about your aorta being cut? That's funny. I seem to recall someone telling us that if he were going to kill you for being a false prophet, he will do it by severing your aorta.

But let's keep reading.

Sunan Abu Dawud 4498 - A Jewess presented [Muhammad] at Khaibar a roasted sheep which she had poisoned. The Apostle of Allah ate of it and the people also ate. He then said, "Lift your hands (from eating), for it has informed me that it is poisoned. Bishr b. al-Bara b. Ma'rur al-Ansari died. So he (the Prophet) sent for the Jewess (and said to her), "What motivated you to do the work you have done?" She said, "If you were a prophet, it would not harm you; but if you were a king, I would rid the people of you." The Apostle of Allah then ordered regarding her and she was killed. He then said about the pain of which he died, "I continued to feel pain from the morsel which I had eaten at Khaibar. This is the time when it has cut off my aorta."

"This is the time when it has cut off my aorta."

Didn't someone tell us in the Qur'an that he would kill Muhammad by cutting his aorta? Notice the passage says that Muhammad's companion, Bishr, died from eating the poison. Interestingly, before Bishr died, he told Muhammad that as soon as he put the lamb in his mouth, he could taste the poison, but he ate it anyway because he saw Muhammad eating it. In ibn Sa'd we read:

ibn Sa'd, pp. 252-253 The Apostle of Allah took the foreleg, a piece of which he put into his mouth. Bishr ibn al-Bara took another bone and put it into his mouth. When the Apostle of Allah ate one morsel of it, Bishr ate his and other people also ate from it. Then the Apostle of Allah said, "Hold back your hands! Because this foreleg has informed me that it is poisoned." Thereupon Bishr said, "By Him Who hath made you great! I discovered it from the morsel I took. Nothing prevented me from spitting it out but the idea that I did not like to make your food unrelishing. When you had eaten what was in your mouth, I did not like to save my life after yours, and I also thought you would not have eaten it if there was something wrong." Bishr did not rise from his seat but his color changed to that of taylsan (a green cloth).

(Video clip: "Friends walk together." "La la la la")

Bishr died because he trusted Muhammad. Muhammad died, too. His pain and sickness just lasted much longer. In Sunan Abu Dawud, Muhammad even described his pain to Bishr's mother.

Sunan Abu Dawud 4449 Umm Bishr said to the Prophet during the sickness of which he died, "What do you think about your illness, Apostle of Allah? I do not think about the illness of my son except the poisoned sheep of which he had eaten with you at Khaibar." The Prophet said, "And I do not think about my illness except that. This is the time when it cut off my aorta."

There's that aorta again.

At-Tabari, p. 124 The Messenger of God said during the illness from which he died—the mother of Bishr b. al-Bara had come in to visit him—"Umm Bishr, at this very moment I feel my aorta being severed because of the food I ate with your son at Khaybar."

Okay, Muhammad, we get the point about the severed aorta.

According to Aisha, Muhammad was in total agony before his death.

Sunan ibn Majah 1622 Aishah said, "I never saw anyone suffer more pain than the Messenger of Allah"

In the end, Muhammad couldn't even walk on his own. His followers had to drag him around.

Sahih al-Bukhari 2588 Aisha said, "When the Prophet became sick and his condition became serious, he requested his wives to allow him to be treated in my house, and they allowed him. He came out leaning on two men while his feet were dragging on the ground."

Now, since the Qur'an says that if Muhammad were a false prophet, Allah would sever his aorta; and Muhammad eventually admitted that he could feel his aorta being severed. You might think we have a pretty good reason to reject Muhammad and his religion, but you're wrong. If you look more closely, you'll see that we have at least ten good reasons to reject Muhammad here.

First, think about Muhammad's argument in the Qur'an. "If I'm a false prophet Allah will cut my aorta!" People who make silly claims like this usually aren't prophets. "I am a prophet! If I'm not, may God strike me with lightning....Ah, no lightning! This proves I'm a prophet." When someone uses that kind of reasoning, chances are, he's a false prophet, but that's exactly how Muhammad argues in Surah 69.

(Video clip: "So logically..." "If she weighs the same as a duck, she's made of wood!")

Second, even though these God-will-strike-me-down claims are usually enough to spot a false prophet, I believe that God sometimes makes things even more clear and obvious for us. If someone's running around saying, "I'm a prophet! God didn't strike me down," God might ignore him, but in some cases, God might decide to thoroughly disgrace and humiliate him. And if any false prophet in history was a candidate for divine judgment, it was Muhammad.

Now, Surah 69 was a Meccan surah, meaning that Muhammad was reciting this to his followers for years. He spent years telling his companions, "If I'm a false prophet, God's going to sever my aorta!" My friends, there are thousands of ways to die. Do you really think that it's a coincidence that Muhammad died in exactly the way the Qur'an said he would die if he's a deceiver and a false prophet? Looks like divine judgment to me.

Third, I don't wanna call Muhammad "stupid" because that wouldn't be politically correct, but let's think about this for a moment. Muhammad and his followers attack Khaibar. After the Muslims kill a bunch of men and rape a bunch of women—standard practice for Muslims back then—a Jewish woman comes up to Muhammad. Muslims had slaughtered her family, and she offers to cook dinner for Muhammad and his band of merry men. Muhammad accepts her offer. "Sure, I love lamb. So nice of you to cook dinner for us after we butchered your father and your husband." Look, if Muhammad doesn't have enough common sense to realize he probably shouldn't eat that lamb, why should we trust anything the comes out of his mouth? If a woman comes up to you and says, "Hi, you slaughtered my family! Care for a delicious meal?" And the only response you can think of is (Video clip: "Duh! Yeah, I think so.) Sorry. You're not a real prophet.

Fourth, despite the fact that Muslims had slaughtered her family, the Jewish woman, Zaynab, was actually open to the possibility that Muhammad was a prophet. She gave him the poison as a test. If you were a true prophet, you wouldn't eat it. If you were a false prophet, you'd die. Since Muhammad died from the poisoning, he failed Zaynab's test.

Fifth, Muhammad's companion, Bishr, who'd tasted the poison as soon as he put the lamb in his mouth. Why did he keep eating? He kept eating, because he believed in Muhammad. "There's no way this lamb is poisoned. Muhammad is eating it. He's the prophet!"

Bishr's faith in Muhammad got him killed; and I'm willing to lay this down as a rule: If I can't trust you with my dinner, I definitely can't trust you with my salvation. If you can't figure out what's waiting for you in food, how could you possibly know what's waiting for you in the afterlife?

(Video clip: "Ignorance is bliss.")

Sixth, when Zaynab told Muhammad that she had poisoned him, Muhammad said that Allah would never allow it! But Allah did allow it. So if Muhammad was wrong about Allah then, please explain to me why I should trust him when he tells me other things about Allah.

Seventh, Muhammad claimed that the lamb he was eating spoke to him and told him that it was poisoned. So he got a special revelation, because he was a prophet. Two questions: (1) Why didn't the roasted lamb say something five minutes earlier, which would've saved Muhammad's life (not to mention Bishr's life) and (2) Why did Muhammad need a revelation when you could taste the poison? Isn't this proof that Muhammad was actually making up revelations? Isn't it obvious that he tasted the poison, same as Bishr, but instead of saying, "Hey, I taste poison." He said, "It's speaking to me! I'm a prophet!" Sounds like a fake to me.

Eighth, think about the justice here. The justice is just a little too poetic. This can't be a coincidence. Muhammad did more than anyone else in history to provoke hatred against Jews. Muhammad did more than anyone else in history to oppress women. Muhammad told his followers that women are stupid. And then, Muhammad died a miserable, humiliating, wretched death after being outwitted by a JEWISH WOMAN.

So God didn't merely disgrace Muhammad by severing his aorta, thereby identifying him as a false prophet. God added to Muhammad's degradation by severing his aorta through the hands of a Jewish woman seeking vengeance against the man who had brought her community nothing but death and rape.

(Video clip: "Fair is fair! We didn't start this. We didn't mean it to happen, but we're not giving up 'til you pay. Fair is fair!")

Ninth, according to the Qur'an, when the Jews tried to kill Jesus, Allah intervened and rescued Him. This is Surah 4:157-58. Allah took Jesus safely to Paradise. He wouldn't give anyone the victory over Jesus. But when a group of Jews wanted to kill Muhammad, what happened? Allah sits back and watches as a woman poisons his prophet, and he does nothing as his prophet dies a humiliating death. Why does Allah protect Jesus from harm—zips Him straight to Paradise—then when he turns around and sees Muhammad wallowing in freakish misery, Allah doesn't lift a finger to help him. Sounds like Allah was showing a little favoritism. Don't mess with Jesus! Allah won't let you, but go ahead and feed Muhammad some rat poison and Allah doesn't care.

Finally, Muhammad's greatest wish was to die in battle.

Sahih al-Bukhari 2797 The Prophet said, ..."By Him in Whose Hands my soul is! I would love to be martyred in Allah's Cause and then come back to life and then get martyred, and then come back to life again and then get martyred and then come back to life again and then get martyred."

If you read the Muslim sources, you know that every time Muhammad wants something, Allah gives him a special revelation granting him what he desires. Muhammad wants to have sex with Aisha, Allah gives him a revelation. Muhammad wants more than four wives, Allah gives him a revelation. Muhammad wants to marry the divorced wife of his own adopted son, Allah gives him a revelation. Allah's got nothing to do but sit around all day making Muhammad's dreams come true.

(Video clip: "Well, I read about genies but I never thought they really... It's like something out of the Arabian nights.")

Muhammad's ultimate wish was to die in battle. It was his greatest desire. But instead of letting Muhammad die while fighting the Jews, Allah let's him die a disgraceful death, in utter agony at the hands of a Jewish woman. Death by leg of lamb.

After spending more than two decades granting Muhammad anything he wanted, Allah suddenly decides not to give Muhammad what he wanted most. It seems Allah had a change of heart.

Putting all this together, we found at least ten reasons to reject Islam just by examining Muhammad's death. If we look at how he lived, of course, we have another trillion or so reasons to conclude that he's a false prophet. What I find most interesting, though, is that Muslims will be upset with me for making this video. They'll complain about the movie clips I used. They'll complain about the things I've said. "David, how dare you put up a Weekend at Bernie's clip to illustrate what we read in Bukhari."

But let me be perfectly clear, nothing I've said about Muhammad comes anywhere near what God said about Muhammad. I'll go a step further, If you take everything that people have ever said or done to insult Muhammad—Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses, the Danish cartoons, people burning the Qur'an—if you take everything critical of Muhammad and roll it up into one big ball, that's nothing compared to the way that God insulted and condemned Muhammad. There's no comparison between some guy drawing a picture of Muhammad and God severing his aorta to humiliate him. God is the ultimate critic of Muhammad.

So, what are you going to do, my Muslim friends? Are you going to run around calling God an Islamophobic bigot because He insulted Muhammad? Or are you going to accept correction from the Almighty?

Islam means "submission". Muslims think it refers to submission to God—but God has already given His answer. He commands you to reject Muhammad. If you continue believing in Muhammad, what you're really saying is, "God can't make me stop believing in Muhammad. I don't care what God says. I believe in Muhammad anyway."

But in that case, Islam isn't submission to God. It's submission to Muhammad. If you care more about Muhammad than you care about God, you, guys, are living in Shirk Central.

David: That's right. I SOLVED the cold case, so put that in your file.
(listens)
David: No, I just wanna hear you to say it: "Colombo, ain't got nothin' on me!"

Join the discussion:

Debate Transcript: Spencer/Zayed on "Muhammad Taught that Muslims Must Wage War against and Subjugate Unbelievers" Debate

2011-08-27T09:37:00.000-04:00

Transcriber's note: As always, any help with corrections is welcome and appreciated.

Muhammad Taught that Muslims Must Wage War against and Subjugate Unbelievers

(Aired January 28, 2011 on www.abnsat.com)

MODERATOR: The issue on whether Islam calls to subjugate non-Muslims is a matter being debated around the country today. Some scholars claim that Islam discriminates against non-Muslims and teaches that Muslims should fight against and subjugate non-believers; while other scholars say that Islam is a religion of peace and that violence against non-believers is not an accurate portrayal of the religion. So, which should we accept?

While we understand that the majority of Muslims are peaceful people, we do recognize that acts of terrorism carried out in the name of Islam exists still today.

Thank you for joining us on Debate Night this evening, Live, here on ABN at www.abnsat.com.

My name is Chris Conway, your moderator this evening.

We have two experts debating this motion topic of tonight: "Muhammad taught that Muslims must wage war against and subjugate unbelievers"--that is, "Muhammad taught that Muslims must wage war against and subjugate unbelievers."

Our first debater: I'm honored to introduce Robert Spencer, who will argue in the affirmative of the motion. Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch, an organization dedicated to bringing public attention to the role that jihad theology and ideology play in the modern world and to correcting popular misconceptions about the role of jihad in religion in modern-day context. He is the author of ten books, including the New York Times bestsellers, The Truth About Muhammad and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam and the Crusades.

I'm also honored to introduce Imam Mustafa Zayed who will argue in the negative of the motion. Mustafa Zayed is a member of the Scientific Board of Qur'an and Sunnah Research of Cairo. He speaks widely in interfaith settings with devotion to bridging peace between major religions and communities. Zayed is the author of several books, including The Lies About Muhammad.

We will hear from each of the debaters an opening statement, rebuttals, crossfire, and closing statements. I'll notify each of the debaters when there are only 30 seconds left on the clock. We will then conclude the formal part of the debate and open the phone lines for you, the audience, to call in. The studio number here is 248.416.1300. We'll give you an opportunity towards the end of the program to call in. So if you're tuning in, we appreciate the fact that you're watching. Stay tuned and listen and prepare any questions you have.

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So again, the motion of tonight's debate is "Muhammad taught that Muslims must wage war against and subjugate unbelievers." At this time, I'd like to turn it over to you, Robert, for your opening statement. And just so you know--we haven't gotten into this in too much detail--but Robert you have six minutes; and then, Mustafa, you have six minutes as well to follow up with your opening statement.

So Robert, you've got six minutes. Please go ahead and start with your opening statement.

ROBERT SPENCER: OPENING STATEMENT (4:10)
Chris, thank you.

The foundation of the idea that Muhammad taught that Muslims must wage war against and subjugate unbelievers is, of course, in the Qur'an--the holy book of Islam, which was revealed, according to Islamic theology through the Angel Gabriel to Muhammad and is the words of Allah himself. I have the Qur'an right here.

And in chapter 9:29, it tells Muslims to fight against those who do not believe in Allah nor on the Last Day nor forbid what has been forbidden by Allah and his Messenger, even if they are among the People of the Book (which is the Qur'an's term for Jews and Christians, primarily) until they pay the jizya (which is a tax) with willing submission and feel themselves subdued. And so our topic tonight is, did Muhammad tell his followers to wage war against and subjugate unbelievers--and this verse is telling Muslims to wage war against Jews and Christians and to subjugate them by making them pay this tax with willing submission and feel themselves subdued. That became the basis for an elaborate superstructure of laws in Islamic history and in the present-day, which mandate that in the Islamic state, the non-Muslim must live in a state of subordination, denied basic equality of rights with Muslims.

Now, to underscore the fact that these things are not something that I am saying or are some kind of a misinterpretation or taking out-of-context of the Qur'anic data, let me go, in the first place, to this translation of the Qur'an which contains commentary by Syed Abul A'ala Maududi, who was a Pakistani, internationally influential Islamic theologian and politician, who died in 1979. He wrote a multi-volume commentary on the Qur'an which is digested as commentary in this edition, and in his explanation of chapter 9:29 (which I read to you a moment ago), he says that "[t]he purpose for which the Muslims are required to fight is not, as one might think, to compel the unbelievers into embracing Islam; rather, its purpose is to put an end to this suzerainty (that is, the rule of the unbelievers), so that the latter are unable to rule over people." In other words, the rule in the state should only be by Muslims. And he goes on to say, "The authority to rule should only be vested in those who follow the true faith. Unbelievers who do not follow this true faith should live in a state of subordination." Let me repeat that: "Unbelievers who do not follow this true faith should live in a state of subordination."

And so, Mr. Zayed, if he is actually arguing that Muhammad did not teach that Muslims should wage war against and subjugate unbelievers, he's putting himself in the position of saying that Maulana Maududi, who is one of the most influential--to this day--Islamic theologians and scholars in the world, is somebody who essentially misunderstood Islam, because he taught, as I just read to you, that non-Muslims must live in a state of subordination in the ideal Islamic state.

Also, he is putting himself against the Tafseer Al-Jalalayn, which is a very, very mainstream and influential commentary on the Qur'an, and it says that the Jews and Christians must pay the jizya in submission or directly [with their actual hands (7:30)] in a state of complete abasement, humble, and subject to the judgments of Islam.

And so here again, we see that, Mr. Zayed, if he is actually saying that Muhammad did not teach that non-Muslims must live in a state of subjugation and that Muslims must wage war against the non-Muslims and live in a state of subjugation, he is saying that the Tafseer Al-Jalalayn, which is a mainstream and very popular commentary on the Qur'an is wrong and has misunderstood Islam. And that Maududi is wrong and has misunderstood Islam.

There's another one, too. Here's the Tafseer Al-Qurtubi, which is yet another important and mainstream commentary on the Qur'an, and it says, "Fight in the way of Allah against those who fight you." And he quotes ibn Zayd and Al-Rabi, who are two other very important Islamic authorities, saying fight the idolaters totally, in which Mohammad was commanded to fight all the unbelievers; fight those who fight you, etcetera etcetera etcetera.

And so this is something... Here again, that we see it is commanded...and it is understood by Muslims to be commanded by Muhammad and by the Qur'an.

And so Mr. Zayed is probably going to say that I'm misunderstanding these things, misinterpreting these things, taking these things out of context. The difficulty that he runs into is that so many Islamic authorities take these things out of context, misunderstand them, get them all wrong. As we see in the world today, when we see jihad warfare being fought against Christians in Egypt with the bombing on New Year's eve, in Iraq with the bomb...the shoot out in the church in Baghdad, the shooting at the church right around Christmas time, the persecution in Pakistan, and so on and so on. These things are all being done by Muslims who understand that they are following Muhammad's command to wage war against unbelievers and make sure that they live in a state of subjugation.

And so, unfortunately for Mr. Zayed, if I am misunderstanding Islam by reporting on the reality of these teachings, the problem that he is has that is far greater is that a huge number of Muslims around the world are misunderstanding Islam in exactly the same way.

The trick that Mr. Zayed and people like him try to do is to claim that I am the originator and people like me are the originators of these teachings and that we are the ones who are claiming without foundation that the Qur'an teaches that Muslims must fight against Jews and Christians until they pay the jizya with willing submission and feel themselves subdued as if that weren't really in the book as I just read to you in the book... [Mr. Spencer's allotted six minutes ends here]

MR. ZAYED: OPENING STATEMENT (10:35)
Actually, Mr. Spencer claim that I misunderstood what these interpreters of the Qur'an had said. On the contrary, I think that Mr. Spencer himself misunderstood the title of the debate that we are doing right now. It is what Muhammad (PBUH) taught about dealing with non-Muslims. If anyone can remind me with one-time where Mr. Spencer quoted Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) himself one single time in the entire six minutes or what about whatever that he said. He brought one verse from the Qur'an which I commented on before and everything else is commentary of interpreters--of course, out of context.

Let me give you an example of what he does. He claims that I think he's the originator. No, He originates fabrications and deception and omitting facts. I'll give you an example. He said that ibn Zayd said, So fight for the sake of Allah. That is the beginning of one verse. The verse is 4:84 in the Qur'an. It says, Fight for the sake of Allah those who fought you and do not transgress even though you have the license to fight and defend yourself. Do not transgress for Allah does not like the transgressors. This is how Mr. Spencer, you know, brought the statement: So fight for the sake of God, etcetera etcetera etcetera. So who attacked you, do not transgress, do not go to an extreme... that's etcetera in the language of Mr. Spencer.

So not one single quotation from the prophet in a debate about what the prophet taught, and he's bringing me interpretations from interpreters who could be right or who could be wrong. One of the fundamentals of Islamic Law that they scare people with is [Arabic (12:16)]. The comprehensions of men are not a revelation of God. For example, Abul A'ala Maududi, who is a great scholar, a lot of people do not know that half of his quotations are during, when Pakistan was a part of India before the partition. So, for example, when you ask him about democracy, he would be totally be against democracy because that would totally demolish the Pakistani population, because they were a minority at the time. Come the partition, now Pakistanis have the rulings, then he went back and started to talk about the consultation mandates of Muslims of Islamic Law.

The verse that Mr. Spencer spoke about, specifically (and I said it before) speak about those who evade paying taxes, non-Muslims in a Muslim state. And a matter of fact, that verse says specifically "People of the Scriptures" because they have an elevated status amongst all non-Muslims in a Muslim state. You can marry Christian and Jewish women. You are allowed to eat from their food. And they have a special treatment all the time. And they are specifically talked about in the Qur'an. And it says [Arabic (13:24)]: [Arabic] here, by the definition... If you say to any Muslim scholar, who is the scholar of Islam in the past 1400 years? They will tell you, Sheikh ul-Islam ibn Taymiyyah. [Arabic] as per his definition [Arabic (13:37)]: That they [are] obliged to the rule of the law upon them, that they cannot live tax-free while the Muslims themselves [do]. If they don't pay taxes, they are to be fought exactly like they are to be fought.

The jizya tax, as I said, one dinar which is equivalent to a hundred dollars per year per only the-able-to-fight person. And the maximum amount that we ever heard of at the time of Umar Al-Khatab for very rich people in very rich areas, was four dinars. In Yemen, for example, it's only one dinar. The jizya, the tax that you pay as an equivalent for the tax that the Muslim pays, is applied [to]--in Arabic [Arabic (14:18)]--the one who's healthy and employed. If you're rich, and you're not working, you're not to pay. If you are someone who has a debt, then you pay your debt first, and then you pay the jizya. If you cannot pay both, then your personal debt supersedes paying the jizya. The jizya is not paid in cash. Whatever that you can afford. If what you have is [threads (14:40)], if what you have is fruits, if what you have is any kind of material, can be taken from you, even if you have liquors and pigs. Muslims allow you if you deal with that amongst your religion because your religion approves it, even though it's not approved in the overall role of Islam, then you're allowed to do that, but you have to sell them and give Muslims the price.

Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). Talking now about the rules of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). He said [Arabic (15:08)]. Whoever would hurt a dhimmi or one in the dhimma of the Muslims and all Muslims living in a Muslim country, I am his opponent on Judgment Day. Sheikh ul-Islam ibn Taymiyyah, I go back to him. He is one of the major scholars of Islam or when you say "the scholars of Islam", you're talking about him. At the time when the Mongolians swept Muslim lands, they took a lot of hostages from the [ --- (15:34)] area, and of course some of them were Christians and some of them were Muslims. So the ruler of the Mongolians wanted to play a divide-and-conquer game like what they play now in the Middle East. So he told him, You know what, I will release all the Muslims and I would keep all the Christian hostages. Sheikh ul-Islam ibn Taymiyyah said, [Arabic (15:55)]. The People of the Scripture (Christians and Jews) to be released to me before you release to me one single Muslim. That is the definition of People of the Dhimma (a non-Muslim in a Muslim land). [One is in according to the integrity of, trusted of the Muslims (16:08)].

I end it with another quotation from the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH): [Arabic (16:16)]. Fear the supplication of oppression from a non-Muslim for there is no veil between it and Allah.

Let me remind Mr. Spencer again, this debate is about what Muhammad (PBUH) have said.

MR. SPENCER: 1ST REBUTTAL (16:45)
It's of course unfortunate but not in the least surprising that Mr. Zayed, in his opening statement, immediately goes to his tried and true tactics of personal attacks as well as fact-free, completely baseless and false assertions.

In the first place, obviously, if something is in the Qur'an, it was something that is taught by Muhammad, something that is affirmed by Muhammad. And so to try...for him to try to make some spurious distinction between what the Qur'an says and what Muhammad says is patently ridiculous on the face of it.

But he wants Muhammad saying that Christians ought to be...that Jews and Christians ought to be subjugated under the rule of Islamic Law, I happen to have that right here. This is Sahih Muslim, which is a hadith collection that is considered reliable my Muslims. And Muhammad, the messenger of Allah, says, Fight in the name of Allah and in the way of Allah. Fight against those who disbelieve in Allah, and when you meet your enemies who are polytheists (and of course, because of the trinity, the Christians are considered to be in that group), invite them to three courses of action. Invite them to accept Islam, and then if they respond to you, accept it from them and desist from fighting them; if they refuse to accept Islam, demand from them the jizya (which is this tax far greater than 100 dinar). This is a ridiculous charge that he's saying that it's a hundred dinars. As a matter of fact, some of the historical records from the conquest of Egypt show the Egyptian Christians in the Middle Ages, having to sell their children to raise money for the tax. And there are several instances in Islamic history of the caliphs actually forbidding conversion to Islam (which would, of course, free the Jews and Christians from the obligation of paying the jizya) because it would destroy the tax base.

And there is a hadith in which Muhammad... Here again, Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, who Zayed is so intent on making sure this is all about, and of course, it is. Muhammad said, Be sure to collect the jizya because it is the source of livelihood for you and your descendants. So it's not in the least some sort of a symbolic tax or some sort of a light tax. It was a very heavy and severe tax and remains so in theory in Islamic Law--the Islamic Law that Islamic supremacists want to institute around the world today. Something that is a very severe tax that was the basis for the economic growth, the economic well-being of the Islamic states in the past. And so it was a far greater tax burden than the Muslims paid.

Mr. Zayed also confuses the distinction between defensive and offensive jihad, claiming falsely (yet again of course) that I was [ --- (19:26)] over the elements of Surah 4 in the Qur'an about defensive jihad. Obviously, there is defensive jihad in many verses. He left out chapter 2:190 and 191, which also say, Fight against those who fight against you but do not transgress limits. He also conveniently left out chapter 4:89, which says, And slay them wherever you find them, as 2:191 also says.

There is defensive jihad, but the offensive jihad that is mandated by the verse that I quoted and others in Surah 9, has no such "do not transgress limits" caveat. And it is in Islamic theology... Here again, you notice that he criticized me for quoting Islamic theologians, but then he quotes Ibn Taymiyya. And so you see, he is completely dishonest and inconsistent in this regard. In reality, I quoted the Islamic theologians, because obviously, they are the ones who understand Islam. They are the ones who are teaching the...what Islam is understood to be--to Muslims.

And so in Islamic theology, you have offensive jihad, being the third stage of the Qur'anic development on jihad. This is something that goes back to Ibn Ishaq, the first biographer of Muhammad, and something that is affirmed by many others: Ibn Qayyim and Ibn Kathir and many others--that there is first tolerance taught in the Qur'an, and then defensive jihad (which Zayed is trying to mislead us into thinking that this is the final stage), and then offensive jihad in order to establish the hegemony of Islamic Law.

Now the hegemony of Islamic Law mandates, as we come back to it, the subjugation of the non-Muslims as inferiors under the Islamic State. Mr. Zayed can never adduce, if he were honest, he could never adduce a single instance in Islamic history or in the present day a geo-political situation in which a majority Muslim polity offer absolute and full equality of rights [to non-Muslims (21:20)] in its state. That has never been the case. Non-Muslims have never enjoyed and do not enjoy today equality of rights with Muslims in any majority Muslim polity. And this is because Muhammad taught warfare against and the subjugation of unbelievers as I explained from Sahih Muslim. There are many other instances in which he says the same thing. Zayed also conveniently left out that I did quote earlier that Muhammad said, I've been commanded to fight against people until they confess that there is no god but Allah, and I'm his messenger. And so, this is something that comes straight from Muhammad.

MR. ZAYED: 1ST REBUTTAL (22:06)
Alright. Mr. Spencer just said that I forgot that he said that Muhammad said that 'I was ordered to fight 'til people say, La ilaha illa Allah'. I want people who's gonna watch this in the Internet recording later on to go back and discover that he never said that in the first [incident (22:21)].

First of all, find me one Islamic jurisprudence book that shows that any non-Muslim, no matter how wealthy he was, paid more than 48 dirhams or about five dinars or 4 and change dinars ever in the history of applying the law--ever--as jizya. This is the challenge from me to Mr. Spencer. And on my blog, TheLiesAboutMuhammad.com, I'll put every proof for every word that I said there, and I challenge him to do the same.

There was three categories: the poor paid one dinar, the middle income paid two dinars, and the rich would pay four dinars. Basic and simple. One dinar equals--in today's dollars--about a hundred dollars. That's it. That is the jizya tax. That's number one.

So the fact, if Mr. Spencer--and look at the logic here--if Mr. Spencer claims that that was a gigantic source of income and that is a part of the income of a non-Muslim in a Muslim land, why didn't the Muslims then kill all the Christians and Jews--every non-Muslim in the country, like everyone around them used to do--and actually take all their money and properties, like everyone around them used to do? Why didn't the Muslims do that? Why even the Muslims would not just let them just, you know, become...give dawa to them and ask them to convert to Islam and lose that great income as per Mr. Spencer statistics.

Mr. Spencer convert a famous story in Islamic history when Hayyan, the employee of [Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz (23:48)] (the last guided khalifa) told him that so many people are accepting Islam and the revenues from the jizya went down. And then he said to him (this is [[Umar Abd al-Aziz] talking about Prophet Muhammad), [Arabic (24:02)]. God has sent Muhammad as one who invite to God, not as a tax collector. That is history, but Mr. Spencer would twist it completely other way around.

Mr. Spencer speak about Ibn Ishaq as he is the first biographer of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). Well, if we have a [discontinuity in (24:22)] the history of Prophet Muhammad, then the earliest biographers would be the most truthful, but that is not the case. [The] Qur'an, the quotations of the Prophet (PBUH), were always memorized verbatim by every Muslim that lived. We have no discontinuity whatsoever. The least credible source of the quotations of the Prophet is Ibn Ishaq hmself--and no wonder, he is the number one source that Mr. Spencer quotes in his books, because it's filled will corrupted stories that he'd like to twist and fabricate and mutilate facts about Islam.

Mr. Spencer would tell you about Al-Tabari, Al-Qurtubi, and Ibn Kathir, and the matter of fact in his book, The Truth about Muhammad, he said that Ibn Kathir is a mainstream, top-notch interpreter of the Qur'an, yet in his book, he quoted him only one time. Two hundred pages [and] he quoted him one time and is actually a twisted time. And his logic about it was absolutely wrong. So if they're that great, why don't you quote them or why are you quoting Ishaq all the time.

Another thing is, Mr. Spencer, went again and made a very big, I would say, deceptive claim about the language of the Qur'an. The Qur'an and Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) never, ever called the People of the Scriptures al-mushrikin. Nowhere in the language of the Qur'an that the People of the Scriptures, or the Christians and Jews, are called al-musrikin or the non-believers. And a matter of fact, people who committed...or became infidels among the People of the Scriptures themselves... Infidels, by God, in the word of the Qur'an, [Arabic (25:53)]. So people who committed infidelity or became infidels among the People of the Scriptures and the people who are non-believers--they're always two distinct groups. So when he says, Go fight the non-believers, then he's not talking about Christians and Jews.

And when you go to fight in Islam, there are specific rules. If you go to Surat Al-Mumtahina, 60:8 and 9, very clear, solid fundamental about Islam: God does not forbid you to fight those who never fought you for your religion and never took you out of your homes. That those people who didn't do any else towards you, that you be righteous and you be just to them. Only the people who did that to you that you do not take them as allies but you be just and righteous. The cardinal rule in Islam, verse 5 number 8: Do not use the unjustice of people as an excuse to be unjust yourself. Be just--that is closer to worshiping God.

Fundamental, cardinal rules in Islam: No compulsion in religion. You cannot force anyone to accept Islam. [Arabic (26:58)]. Guidance of people is not up to the Prophet, it is up to God himself. [So the fact that someone is not Muslim, or non-Muslim is not something to... (27:10)] [Mr. Zayed's allotted 5 minutes ends]

MR. SPENCER: 2ND REBUTTAL (32:15)
In the first place, there is actually, oddly enough, one truthful thing in what Mr. Zayed said in his last segment, and that is that I had actually not stated that Muhammad said, I have been committed to fight against people until they say that there is no God but Allah and I'm his messenger. I actually had that in my notes but I had neglected to say it, and so he's quite right about that. But it would've been better, instead of playing Gotcha, to have dealt with the substance of the fact that he did say it, which of course Mr. Zayed did not do. Since the subject of this debate is Muhammad taught that Muslims should wage war against and subjugate unbelievers, [I would say that (32:50)] that's clear evidence that he did teach exactly that. Mr. Zayed instead decided to play games with whether I had said or not said it, which is just characteristic unfortunately.

He is also completely lying unfortunately about the jizya. He challenged me to produce a text of Islamic jurisprudence that would say that the poll tax was more than one dinar, which is actually 4.235 grams of gold and not a hundred bucks at all. But in any case, this is Umdat Al-Salik, author of the Reliance of the Traveler, which is certified by Al-Azhar in Cairo as being a reliable guide to Sunni orthdoxy. And it says the minimum non-Muslim poll tax or jizya is one dinar per person. The maximum is whatever both sides agree upon, and of course if the Muslims have all the authority in the state and the non-Muslims are in a state of subordination, they're going to agree on whatever they're forced to agree upon. And so there, his challenge is taken up and accepted, and he is shown to be speaking falsely yet again.

And he is also lying about Ibn Ishaq which I have right here somewhere. Here we go. Ibn Ishaq, he said of course, is completely unreliable. He needs to say that because there's so many embarrassing stories about Muhammad, including many in which he is fighting against and subjugating unbelievers in Ibn Ishaq. But unfortunately for Mr. Zayed, according to very many early Islamic authorities, for example, this is Al-Zuhri saying, The best informed man about... I'm sorry. This is [Shuba (34:32)] saying that Ibn Ishaq is truthful in tradition and the emir of traditionalists because of his memory. Sufyan Ibn Uyaynah said that, I sat with Ibn Ishaq for some seventy years and none of the Medinans suspected him or spoke disparagingly of him. Abu [Zurha (34:50] said older scholars drew from him (that is Ibn Ishaq) and professional traditionalists tested him and found him truthful. I could go on and on but, obviously, his reliability was something that is taken for granted and certified by many of the early Muslims.

Mr. Zayed falsely claims that I do not refer to Ibn Kathir and he seems to want me to... He actually challenged me to refer to Ibn Kathir, and so I will do so in the context of the topic of this debate. Ibn Kathir says this: Allah commanded his messenger to fight the People of the Scriptures (Jews and Christians) on the 9th year of Hijra, and he prepared his army to fight the Romans and call the people to jihad, announcing his intent and destination. That of course is referring to the Battle of Tabuk, which was the last great battle or actually the attempt at a battle that Muhammad fought during his career. It was against the Byzantine garrison at Tabuk in northern Arabia. The Byzantines did not engage him. Whether they knew he was coming or not, they left. So in any case, Ibn Kathir here reaffirms Muhammad in saying that he was telling the Muslims that they had to wage war against non-Muslims (Jews and Christians primarily) and to subjugate them, and Muhammad did that in his example in the Battle of Tabuk to which Ibn Kathir refers.

Mr. Zayed also lies about the Qur'an saying that the Jews and Christians are not unbelievers. In 5:17 and 5:72--that's 5:17 and 5:72--it says, Unbelievers or kafara [kufar (36:27)] are those who say that Allah is the messiah, Jesus, the son of Mary. And so of course any Christian who believes in the traditional Christian doctrine of the divinity of Christ is, by the Qur'an's testimony, an unbeliever and thus must be fought against.

And so Mr. Zayed then finally brings in a complete red herring about "no compulsion in religion". Nobody is saying that Muslims force non-Muslims to convert but they subjugate them. That's what the whole topic is about: the subjugation of non-Muslims. Obviously, that they are subjugated, they are not becoming Muslims. And so the no-compulsion-in-religion business, it sounds good but it's just more deceptions, detours, obfuscations, falsehoods, and outright lies from Mr. Zayed.

MR. ZAYED: 2ND REBUTTAL (37:28)
Well, it's very hard to answer that myriad of nonsense in just five minutes, but I'll do my best.

Number one, the dean of Sunni Muslims is Imam Abu Hanifa, not Al-Imam Al-Shafi'i which...[ --- (37:41)] which is not even the book of Al-Imam Al-Shafi'i. It's one of the people that follow his jurisprudence. Again, I challenge you, find me one jurisprudence book that says that it's more or applied more than four dinars. [ --- (38:00)] Al-Imam Al-Shafi'i, (and I'll post it on my blog tomorrow) one dinar, two dinars, and four dinars, and nothing more. There was another tax that applied to Muslims and non-Muslims. The Muslims is [Arabic (38:11)] which is one-tenth of the yield of land, and the equivalent for non-Muslims is [kharaj (38:15)] which is the same thing, if they had a truce with the Muslims. So maybe you have a mistake as far as considering that a poll tax. But as far as jizya, find me one book that says a mandate that a non-Muslim paid more than four dinars. And four dinars...one dinar, at that time, would buy a sheep; a sheep today is a hundred dollars. You know, gold comparison...I have no idea about that. But again, compared to the taxes people paid in Egypt, it's almost nonsense. People in Egypt paid to the Roman empire about 14 different kind of taxes and subjugation was the least that they would suffer if they paid less, nevermind evaded totally paying taxes, that the verse is talking about.

Another thing is the hadith that you said that...you mentioned I didn't mention. Well, the famous hadiths I answered in my book, The Lies about Muhammad. 'I was ordered to fight people 'til they say, We believe as Muslims, or they become Muslims 'til they have the rights of Muslims, like, you know, their monies or their [bloods (39:20)] are forbidden for Muslims. The people that, in the Arabic language, does not mean everyone in the world. When the professor say, The students are here, he does not mean every student in the world. It's the students that the listener and the talker are talking about.

There are specific rules of whom to fight in Islam: you fight who would fight you. There's no such a thing as defensive jihad, offensive jihad. There's one kind of jihad which is to protect yourself from whoever is about to attack you. [Arabic (39:49)]. In the verse that we quoted earlier, God does not like the transgressor. God does not like you to start a war or to go out there and attack people for no reason. When even when the Muslims fought, they would give two options of peace and the third option is to fight, not to kill. Every battle the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) went through was outnumbered. The army, the Muslim army, in the first battle was outnumbered, 1:3. In Khaibar, they were outnumbered 1:7. Not one battle that the Prophet Muhammad went through that he actually outnumbered his enemies, and the [ --- of Mecca (40:21)] was not a battle, one sword was not even raised.

The major Battle of Tabuk--you call it the Great Battle of Tabuk--and then you retract that later on and you claim that it was the Muslims that were attacking People of the Scriptures. The Roman army, the Byzantine army, came to the frontiers of the Muslim territory. So what do you want the Muslims to do? You know, turn around and play dead? They have to go and defend their land. When they do that, they're not attacking because the Christians or Jews or from outer space... They're defending are their land and when they went there, they left. And on the 9th year of Hijra, that's the year when the verse of jizya was mandated upon the Muslims and that's the first time the jizya was applied.

Now let me bring the debate back where it's was supposed to be. What Prophet Muhammad said specifically about the Christians. The Christians of Najran, he [brought them (41:08)] into his church, he let them perform their rituals. And they believed in the Trinity. So they believed. They're supposed to be infidels according to the measurements of Mr. Spencer. And not only that, [ --- (41:20)] Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) in his agreements, [Arabic (41:23)]: No church would be demolished for them. [Arabic (41:26)]. No [priest (40:29)] would be brought out. [Arabic (41:31)]. And they're not to be pushed away or pressed to leave their religion, [Arabic (41:38)] unless they break the treaty, [Arabic (41:41)] or they start to deal in usury, which is forbidden in the Bible before it's forbidden in Islam.

Mr. Spencer asked me about if I can bring him one incident from Islamic history. Ali, the leader of the Muslim, the great khalifa. A Jewish man stole his shield. Ali saw him. He said, That's my shield. The Jewish man said, It's not. Here's the subjugation: Ali put himself in a court of law equal to the man and asked the judge, who happened to be African Judge Shuraih, to rule between them, and Judge Shuraih ruled for the shield to the Jewish man, because the Jewish man had possessions, and Ali accepted. And the man accepted Islam after that because of the treatment that is unprecedented in the history of mankind. I have so many history. I have so many incidents. If I have time I'll mention to the viewers. But Mr. Spencer is saying...as usual. [Mr. Zayed's alloted 5 minutes ends]

MR. SPENCER: 1ST CROSSFIRE (43:02)
Once again, Mr. Zayed is evading the truth. He is denying that I brought him a book of Islamic jurisprudence just as he asked me to. And then he said, No, no, no, that's not good enough. Well, it was good enough for Al-Azhar, which affirmed that Reliance of the Traveler conforms to the practice and faith of the orthodox Sunni community, so I guess Mr. Zayed doesn't.

And he mentioned the kharaj. That's a very important tax to remember because there was no limit on that. And so even if he finds 20 books that say that the jizya was restricted (which was false in any case), the kharaj was not, and that was also levied on non-Muslims.

He's completely lying when he says that in Islamic theology, there's no defensive or offensive jihad. There are many Islamic authorities who refer to it. I named two before: Ibn Qayyim, Ibn Kathir, also Ibn Ishaq, and many 20th century theorists, including Maududi and Qutb.

Then he goes into to complete irrelevancy about Muslims being outnumbered. So what? And he's lying also about Tabuk. The Roman army was not coming into Muslim territory. The Byzantine sent a garrison at Tabuk; it was their territory that Muhammad was trying to invade.

The Christians of Najran were not pressed to leave their religion. Of course, he keeps shifting the topic here. The question is, "Were the non-Muslims subjugated--by the command of Muhammad and Allah--under the rule of Islamic law?" not "Were they forced to convert?" They were not forced to convert, not pressed to leave their religion. But they were subjugated.

And in trying to refute that they [lived in full (44:32)] equality of rights, he brings up some story about a Jewish man. That's not a society. That's not a society that has a system of laws in which non-Muslims enjoy full equality of rights with Muslims. There is no such now and never has been. And he cannot show a single example to the contrary.

MR. ZAYED: 1ST CROSSFIRE (45:04)
Alright. I mean I don't know what to say about the absurdity. I brought him an example of the most powerful Muslim in the land, where the Jewish minority man, who stole his shield. So you cannot have a broader, more telling example. In a court of law that is led by an African man (Judge Shuraih), and it was ruled against the most powerful man in the nation, and he accepted the law. What more equality of rights that do you want? That's number one.

Number two: the issue of the Christians of Najran. Here's the People of the Scripture, totally under the thumb of Muslim power. Prophet Muhammad, according to the norm everywhere around him, he could've killed them. He could've seized their properties. He could've done anything to them that he wanted. He received them in his church. Let them perform their rituals in his church. Said that, I would even...if your church will start to fall apart, I will fix it from the Muslim treasury. No one would even come near you with anything unjust. That is totally against the teaching of God. And he's telling me to give me an example from society. That's Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). That's the example that we're talking about. That's the debate.

So far, you bring me books from outer space and bring me out of text quotations, and he cannot bring me one quotation from Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) that says, you know, subjugate them, treat them as not equal, denying their rights. And a matter of fact, it's totally the opposite: Beware of anyone who you [are] unjust to because for his supplication, his complain, there’s no veil between it and God.

The second thing, I'll give you another example. In Europe, Christians in Christian Europe used to flock to where the Ottoman Empire was, then the East, so they can have some equality of rights and can practice their religion freely. Check the Calvinists. Check the Unitarians. Christians in Christians' lands used to flock to Muslim countries. I have a quote in my book, the patriarch of [--- (46:47)] in Turkey, which Mr. Spencer can have reference of that, who's thanking God for the rule of the Turks. They have less taxes. They have freedom or religion versus what other Christians used to treat them. And again, out of fairness, Christians is something and the teachings of Jesus (PBUH) is something else [like that of Islam (47:05)].

MR. SPENCER: 2ND CROSSFIRE (47:13)
It's interesting that he says “books from outer space “. I quoted the Qur'an. I quoted Bukhari. I quoted Muslim. These are canonical hadith. I quoted Ibn Kathir, who he earlier criticized me for quoting, and now it's a book from outer space. I don't know, you know. It would seem like... I think some of his Muslim friends might take issue with some of the things that Mr. Zayed is saying tonight. If he's gonna cast all these books that I've been quoting into the realms of outer space and say that they have no authority for Muslims, some Muslims might take issue with that.

Also, he's just repeating himself about Ali and this Jewish man. The point is, did any society, any Islamic state ever allow full equality of rights, or did they restrict the non-Muslims in their rights in some way? And obviously, he keeps not answering the question because he cannot, because he knows what I'm saying is true. There has never been a majority Muslim country or an Islamic state that has ever accorded non-Muslims full equality of rights with Muslims. It's never happened.

And this story about Muhammad being nice to the Christians of Najrans is completely irrelevant in the same way, because it does not contradict the fact that they were subjugated. They were allowed to to practice their religion. That's the whole idea of the dhimma is--that the non-Muslims are allowed to practice their religions but they have to accept this subjugated status and know their place. And there are all sorts of ways in Islamic law in which this is enforced. Even the basic ways, not only the tax. But the fact that Muslims are forbidden in Islamic law to greet the non-Muslims with "Peace be upon you" as you would greet a fellow-Muslim, but [ --- (48:46)] peace be upon those who are rightly guided.

And he says... Then he starts talking about Christianity, completely off the point. Very common debating tactic for cornered Islamic supremacists and liars. But completely off the topic. This is not about Christianity. This is about whether Muhammad taught that non-Muslims should be subjugated. And so this is completely irrelevant, but it’s also absurd to say that Calvinists and Unitarians fled to the Ottoman Empire. At the dawn of the 20th century, the Calvinists and Unitarians were all in Europe.

MR. ZAYED: 2ND CROSSFIRE (49:26)
Well, again, I, you know, I'm sorry to do this but I would have to remind Mr. Spencer again: Bring me the quotes that you claim the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) said denying their rights, be unjust to them, be unfair to them, treat them as second class citizens... I showed you, not just a quote that he said but his behavior towards Christians in a way that is unprecedented in the history of mankind. And when you say at the middle of the 7th century, he just let them practice their religions. He did not force them to convert. He did not, you know, take out a priest or whatever they said which is what the prophet did. Compare that to every place in the world around them. And I'll give you another 600 years 'til you reach the dark ages. Unprecedented in the history of mankind by words and by actions.

I'll give you another example. So I'm actually talking to the viewers now, because, Mr. Spencer, whatever you say just, you know, you’re talking to a different dimension here. He has these labels of evasive, you know, jihadist...you know, whatever stealth expressions that he have and he just print it whenever he goes without any reference to the truth. And I remind the people, he did not quote the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH).

[Arabic name (50:42)], the leader of Egypt, had a son. He had a race with a Christian kid. The Christian kid won the race, so he slapped him in the face [and] said, I am son of the nobles. What happened? His father knows Islamic law. He communicated and went to Umar Al-Khatab, the leader of all Muslims. He brought the companions of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) [--- (50:57)] Egypt, and his son, and actually had the Christian kid slap the son in front of his father. And offered him to slap the companion of Prophet Muhammad. And he told him, When did you enslave people when they were born free to their mothers?, which is a legendary statement that is used today. That's real equality in the middle of 7th century, Mr. Spencer, not in your Dark Ages, not the liberty that the Calvinists and Unitarians and people in Europe did not have--when people like you said, you know, "This is a witch. This is a devil-worshiper. Let's put them in the stake and burn them" just because they still not worshipers of God, like what you're doing to Muslims nowadays. And I might add--for a living.

MR. SPENCER: CLOSING STATEMENT (51:50)
Mr. Zayed is really getting desperate. Now I'm burning witches and burning Muslims. This kind of thing, you know, this kind of vicious ad hominem attacks shows the intellectual bankruptcy and the complete dishonesty that underlies his position, and it’s unfortunate but understandable, because in Islam actually, there is no idea that somebody could reject Islam in good faith. And so he has to believe that people who speak the truth about Islam--the truth that he doesn't want known--are evil. But it just shows the emptiness of his positions.

Actually, I have quoted Muhammad. He doesn't want you to remember that. But I've quoted him saying, I've been commanded to fight against people until they confess that there is no God but Allah, and that I am his messenger. And if they do (this is the rest of this quotation), their lives and property will be safe. In other words, your life and property will NOT be safe if you don't submit. And he also tells them, in the other place that I quoted from Sahih Muslim, to fight against the polytheists until they pay then invite them to accept the jizya. And the jizya is something that is collected from non-Muslims but not from Muslims, and so it is a denial of the equality of rights.

He of course frames the question in a way that’s impossible, because he says, Find me something where Muhammad says be unjust, be unfair--but of course, in the Islamic scheme of things, it's not unfair, it's not unjust to subjugate the non-Muslims. It is the law of God. It’s something that is taught by the Qur'an and by Muhammad, and so it's not considered unjust or unfair. And so you're not gonna find Muhammad saying, Be unjust or unfair. That's absurd, but it's also a complete misrepresentation of what this topic is all about in our debate. The topic is, Muhammad taught Muslims to wage war against and subjugate unbelievers. When the Muslims did that in obedience to Muhammad, when he told them to invite them to accept Islam or invite them to pay the jizya and if they don’t do either one, then fight them. They understood what they were doing is an act of justice.

He also told his followers to expel all the Jews and Christians from Arabia, which is hardly the act of a tolerant or pluralistic multiculturalist. He also said on his deathbed that Jews and Christians were accursed, because they prayed at the graves of their ancestors and their saints. And this is something that is hardly consistent with the picture of Muhammad that Mr. Zayed is painting.

And so the question before us once again is, Did Muhammad teach that Muslims must wage war against and subjugate unbelievers? And the reality is that this book of Islamic jurisprudence that's considered a reliable guide to Sunni orthodoxy by Al-Azhar University (the leading institution among Sunni Muslims), it says that Muslims must wage war against unbelievers in this exactly this way. It says that the Islamic community...the jihad is obligatory upon the Islamic community, and it means to wage war against and subjugate non-Muslims. It quotes the hadith about [ how they’re commanded (55:00)] to fight against people until they confess that there's no God but Allah. And it also says details concerning jihad are found in the accounts of the military expeditions of the prophet, which of course Mr. Zayed has not told you anything about because he doesn't want you to know that there are any military expeditions of the prophet or that jihad warfare against unbelievers is an obligation. But this is what the book says. The caliph, the leader of the Islamic community--and this is what the Islamic jihadists are fighting around the world today to do is to restore the caliphate so that this can be done. The caliph makes war upon Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians until they become Muslim or else pay the non-Muslim poll tax. And of course the payment of the non-Muslim poll tax is their subjugation.

And so, if he wants to argue that Muhammad did not teach this, then he's putting himself in a position of saying that the leading authority in Sunni Islam, Al-Azhar University, has endorsed this book on Islamic orthodoxy even though it gets Islam and Muhammad all wrong. Now that's ridiculous. What Mr. Zayed is saying is ridiculous. He is asking you to believe that all the authorities that I have quoted tonight--all the Islamic authorities--the Qur'an itself, the hadith, the statements of Muhammad, the statements of the tafseer (the commentaries on the Qur'an), the Tafseer Al-Jalalayn, Tafseer Al-Qurtubi, Ibn Kathir--all pious Muslims and Islamic scholars who dedicated their lives to understanding and teaching Islam have gotten Islam all wrong and that the leading authority in the world today on Islam has gotten Islam all wrong, but Mustafa Zayed has gotten it right. And that to speak honestly about these things is somehow to victimize innocent Muslims in the world. This kind of shallow and vicious ad hominem attack, once again, show the bankruptcy of his position, the fact that he is not being truthful, and the fact that he doesn't really want you to know the truth about Muhammad and Islam.

MR. ZAYED: CLOSING STATEMENT (57:09)
First of all, again for the tenth time, I want you to tell us how Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) taught about the subjugation of Christians and Jews specifically. I discussed that quotation that you have brought. And a matter of fact, you almost surprised us and we’re about to almost...in the second third of the debate, that there's a military guidelines from Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) when he said in his military expeditions that to go and subjugate people and do things. And still, you did not quote a single quote that book that [ --- (57:43)].

First of all, when you say that the Al-Azhar University endorsed that jurisprudence book of [ --- (57:51)] Al-Shafi'i that is--I'm sorry Mr. Spencer--compounded ignorance. Al-Azhar University does not endorse a book. It started in the Al-Azhar University because it represents a school of thought in the jurisprudence, science, or scholarship. There's million books that contradicts themselves inside Al-Azhar University and that is the beauty of Islamic Law. The beauty of Islamic Law allow you come with ijtihad and bring new laws according to verses in the Qur'an and the quotation of the Prophet in a changing environment that changes from a scholar to a scholar from time to time. So the fact that you say it's endorsed by the Al-Azhar University that means that, yes, the University endorsed one man’s thinking and everything that he says there is absolutely correct and we should follow. And the other three major scholars of Islam might disagree with him on half of what he says. So that's another act of ignorance.

When you say there is no equality because the jizya tax is not applied to Muslims, I've explained many times that Muslims pay zakat--2.5% of their unspent assets--and the non-Muslim pay jizya. And for the non-Muslims, it is different because non-Muslims are not to participate in the Muslim army, and that is actually a very good treatment for non-Muslims. If you go to any other country--and I know the excuse they usually say is, Why are you comparing that with Christianity, Why you compare us with that--because each time, and each way you turn, whether their time or any other time (in the future or the past), Islamic Law is the law of mercy, is the law of God, is the law of equality--in the middle of 7th century. Which planet you want us to compare Islam to, Mr. Spencer, I would like to know for once.

The other thing is that you said that jihad is obligatory. Jihad, by definition, is to defense yourself against attack. [Arabic (59:39)] You [ --- 59:42) fight for the sake of God those who fight you. In another verse, in 4:84, God says [Arabic (59:47)]. Talking to the prophet: Fight for the sake of God. [Arabic (59:52)] You're only task, persuade the unbelievers. (There is the purpose that you never tell your viewers and your innocent victims of readers.) [Arabic (1:00:00)] So your fighting would defeat the evil, the oppression of the infidels. So it is against terrorism. It is against oppression on earth. It is the against oppression that people apply to Muslims. And that's why you fight. In that form, it is obligatory for every Muslim man to go and fight oppression only for the sake of God.

I wanna bring the viewers and the readers who might be interested in reading for you, that Prophet Muhammad's prophethood was throughout 23 years. The 23 years, 13 years out of them were total persecution. Him and his companions, everyone who followed him--they were starved; they were tortured; they were killed; they were boycotted. Prophet Muhammad left Mecca, minutes away from them, slaughtering him in his own bed. Not one single word about that in your books. So it looks like Muslim, when God allowed them to defend themselves, as if they're waging jihad, and they're jihad terrorist, and so on and so forth.

The examples of the Muslims and the equal treatments of the book...the People of the Book on numerous... But I'll go to the ultimate source, so I can save myself [ --- (1:01:11)] of the compounded ignorance. I'll quote you 3:113 from the Qur'an: [Arabic (1:01:14)]... They're not all the same. Some of the People of the Scriptures are a standing nation. They go stand at night continuously reciting the verses of God while they're prostrating. Another verse, 3:199: They're from the People of the Scripture, those who believe in God and whatever that was revealed to them from God and whatever that was given to them by the prophet of God. They only humble themselves to God and they never sell the verses of God for any little price.

Even in the Qur'an, God says in 5:68, Oh People of the Scripture, you have nothing unless you uphold your Torah and your Gospels and whatever that was [later (1:01:53)] revealed to you from God. What you don't tell your readers is the only religion that believes in all the Scriptures and all the prophets of God, all of them--the 25 mentioned in the Qur'an--is the Muslim faith. And if you don't believe in the Torah, if you don't believe in the original Gospels, if you don't believe in all the prophets all the way from Adam 'til Jesus (PBUH), you're not a Muslim.

JOIN THE DISCUSSION

Debate Transcript: "Islam Guarantees Women Equality of Rights with Men"

2011-08-22T14:17:00.002-04:00

Transcriber's Note: I did my best to accurately transcribe the debate with the time that I could put in for this work. I enclosed words and phrases that I wasn't sure of in brackets and indicated in parenthesis where they can be found on the video. I would appreciate your help with corrections.

Robert Spencer vs. Moustafa Zayed: Islam Guarantees Women Equality of Rights with Men

MODERATOR:
The issue of whether women have rights and equality in Islam is a matter being debated around the country today. Some scholars say that women do have equality of rights while other scholars say the contrary. Which should we accept?

Thank for joining us this evening on Debate Night on ABN Live. I'm Chris Conway, your moderator of the evening.

We have two experts debating this motion: Islam Guarantees Women Equality of Rights with Men. I'm honored to introduce Mustafa Zayed, who argue on the affirmative of the motion. Mustafa Zayed is a member of the Scientific Board of Qur'an and Sunnah Research in Cairo. He speaks widely in interfaith settings with devotion to bridging peace between major religions and in communities. Zayed is the author of several books, including The Lies About Muhammad.

I'm also honored to introduce Robert Spencer, who argue on the negative of the motion. Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch, an organization dedicated to bringing public attention to the role that jihad theology and ideology play in the modern world and to correcting popular misconceptions about the role of jihad in religion in modern-day context. He is the author of ten books, including the New York Times bestsellers, The Truth About Muhammad and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam and the Crusades.

We'll hear from each of the debaters an opening statement, rebuttals, crossfire, and a closing statement.I'll notify each debater when there are only 30 seconds left on the clock. We will then conclude the formal part of the debate and open the phone lines for you, the audience, to call in. The number here at the studio is 248.416.1300. Again, the motion of tonight's debate is, Islam Guarantees Women Equality of Rights with Men.

At this time, I'd like to turn over to you, Mustafa, for your opening statement. You have seven minutes.

MUSTAFA ZAYED: OPENING STATEMENT (7 minutes)
Thank you for having me.

Before we speak about the specificity of the topic of women rights in Islam, in generality, dealing with any human being in Islam is included in Islamic Law or Shari'a Law. Shari'a Law is not a law that is made by the limited comprehension of men at a certain period of time in a certain geographical area and then trying to impose that upon all humans worldwide in any time. This is the law of God, and God is just and He forbid injustice upon himself in any topic and forbid it for his worshipers and creations. So when we say "women rights in Islam," we need to understand that it is the law of God, protecting and making sure that women and men are having the [prospective in (3:18)] equal rights.

Two things before we get into the rights of women in Islam and their position in Islam: The first thing is that in Islam, men and women are not in competition. They're not roommates competing for who pays a bigger or smaller portion of the bill or, you know, splitting whatever cost somewhere. They are to complement each other. They are different in physiology. They are different in emotional structure, and Islamic Law [came (3:41)] that they enjoy the best of their life according to their own structure and needing each other and depending on each other and completing each other--complementing each other. That's number one.

Number two, specifically when it comes to the rights of women, a woman, the female in Islam, is your potential mother. And it's not that females are half of, you know, humanity and then they deserve rights, and so on and so forth. No, females are the mothers of the next generation who are to shape and sculpture the character of all men and women, the entire next generation to come. So Islam and Islamic Law made sure to guarantee their protection, their financial sustenance, their stability, so they can perform the best and the most decent job that a human being can do, which is again raising the next generation.

When you took a position, I would say, hopefully objective position, in looking at the condition of women and the rights and obligations before Islam and after Islam, the difference couldn't be more stark. It's the difference between a day and a nightmare. Before Islam, for example, in parts of India, according to Hinduism, a woman was to be burned alive if her husband passed away. She's just there for me. He dies, there's no need for existence. A matter of fact, in other places when they got some progression, she's not even supposed to get married again. Little newborn babies were burned alive. The horrendous mistranslation in the Bible about the concept of Original Sin, that it is through our mother, Eve [that] our father, Adam, was deceived out of Paradise into earth. When Islam comes in, all that was rectified. And our mothers, our daughters, our sisters were relieved when Allah (Subhan'Allah) in the Qur'an said, [speaks in Arabic]. It is the devil that deceived them both out of Paradise into earth. Women had now inheritance rights that in America today, women do not have--guaranteed inheritance rights.

Women have equal pay rights. They have the right to own, to speak their mind, to debate, to run businesses. Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) only wife for a quarter century, Khadija, may Allah (Subhan'Allah) be pleased with her, was a businesswoman. In England, 'til 1882, the end of the 19th century, a woman did not have any right to own a property in her own name. It has to be the brother, the husband, or the son. She could not even stand in court as a legal entity. At the end of 19th century, that right was mandated to, given to Muslim women in the 7the century. So it's not even equal to or similar to or better to. No, that was better rights in the 7th century.

Islam mandated the education of women in the middle of 7th century. In a a correct hadith in Sahih Al-Bukhari, even for a war captive that is now entrusted to a Muslim man that he, even though, she's not a Muslim, he needs to treat her well and educate her. And the authentic hadith says there, Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) would release a war combatant that might turn around and come and kill Muslims, if he taught Muslims how to read and write, and the similar thing for Muslim women, how to read and write.

A woman is not an object of desire anymore, is not a vessel for procreation. She is judged for her character and her mannerism. And the word "religion" in Islam in the language of the Prophet means character. So you can pursue a woman for marriage for her beauty, for her money, for her social status. The Prophet said, no pursue the one with the character, the only thing that she is actually in control of. She has no control if she was born beautiful or rich or from a good family, but she is in control of her character. She is not an object of desire anymore.

A woman, in Islam, is someone who is equal in so many things that you cannot begin to imagine or even available in the 19th century. She have the right of futya; she can give legal opinions, and many women had that legal opinion. The first commerce secretary that is a female in the history in all of mankind was [Ashafat --- (7:37)] who was the commerce secretary at the time of [Omar --- Al-Khatab (7:43)]. He gave her [--- (7:43)], and she used to rule in the matters of the market between men and women. The first political party that is [led] by a feminist, well I would say a feminist party, that is led by a woman was Asma bint Yazzid Al-Ansari when she came to Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), she said, I represent so many women that have the same opinion that I have and saying what I'm saying and here's what we want, here's what we're asking. And Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) responded to her, The only holy scripture in the world, that when it speaks to the believers, speak to them in female and male terms, is the Qur'an, not the Bible, not any other holy scripture. Believing men, believing women, righteous men, righteous women, and so on and so forth. [Reads a verse in Arabic] Whoever do a righteous deed, male or female, we would [--- (8:30)] well and so on and so forth. The only chapter in any holy scripture, the gospels in the Bible or gospels that are outside of the Bible, that is named after a woman is in the Qur'an and which woman she might be. She's the greatest woman that ever lived and will ever live, that's Virgin Mary (PBUH). And in Islam, she is such a pious woman, that's why she was blessed to be the mother of a great, mighty prophet of God. The only chapter in all holy scriptures, that is Chapter An-Nisa (The Women), that is almost a manifesto of unprecedented women's rights now and then.

Islam is not defending the rights of women. Islam, and I represent that position, shows the rights of women that is unprecedented today. That is in Islam. Watch Robert Spencer now coming to you with extreme examples of rural areas of ten villages somewhere and try to generalize them over the entire population of 1.6 billion. Watch him bring in twisted and, you know, misinterpreted and total omissions and mistranslation of books that only God knows where he got their translations from. Watch the circus.

ROBERT SPENCER: OPENING STATEMENT (7 minutes)
Thank you.

I think that I'm not going argue this point. I'm going to let the Qur'an do it, and the Qur'an says, "Men have authority over women, because God has made the one superior to the other, and because they spend their wealth to maintain them." Now I would ask the learned imam, Mustafa Zayed, if that's a mistranslation or taking out of context... What is the context that would justify such a statement. "Men have authority over women, because God has made the one superior to the other." The question before us is, "Islam guarantees equality of men and women." Obviously, that flatly contradicts the Qur'an, and so I assume the Imam Mustafa, as a believer in the Qur'an, believes that God has made men superior to women.

The passage goes on, "Good women are obedient. They guard their unseen parts, because God has guarded them. As for those from whom you fear disobedience, admonish them, forsake them in beds apart, and beat them." And beat them. The learned Imam was very eloquent in saying that the Qur'an is the only scripture, which addresses believers as both male and female. That, of course, is flatly false, but we are not here, I would remind him, to discuss the Bible or Christianity. We are here to discuss Islam and whether Islam mandates equality of rights for women and men. And so, the fact is that the Qur'an does indeed tell believers that they should be distinguished, male and female. They should understand that as being a fundamentally important distinction and does address them as such. And it does not say that women can beat a disobedient man. It says that men can beat disobedient women.

The Qur'an also has this distinction of being the only scripture that mandates spousal abuse. The reality of the spousal abuse is such that in the Islamic world, it is relatively frequent and is taken for granted. And there is a very common hadith, which I'm sure the Imam will be able to refresh us about, in which some Muslims approached Muhammad and asked him what they should beat their wives with. And as it happens, he's brushing his teeth at the time, so he holds up his miswak, his toothbrush, and says, With this, which has been interpreted as meaning that the Muslim should only beat his wife in a symbolic way, and so as not to cause her any pain or cause her any harm. And that's a beautiful thing, I suppose relatively. A symbolic wife-beating seems to me to be perhaps less painful but still rather an odd concept. But, unfortunately, it's contradicted by other hadith.

For example, when Aisha, Muhammad's favorite wife, whom he married when she was six and consummated the marriage when she was nine and he was fifty-four, she recalls a time when Muhammad "struck me on the chest which caused me pain." That's Sahih Muslim #2127. And so it appears that he, himself, did not just use his toothbrush to beat his disobedient wife. And, of course, Muhammad, being the excellent example of conduct, that is, unfortunately, the behavior that is sanctioned, as having the example of the prophet behind it, as something that Muslims can and should, with profit, imitate. And so we see on Saudi television, from the kingdom of the two holy places, a place where it's very self-consciously dedicated to being obedient to every aspect of Islam. Actual television programs discussing the proper implements for wife-beating.

Now the problem here is not just wife-beating. The question before us again is about the equality of rights of women with men. In the Judeo-Christian, Western civilization, of course, while this has been a long battle and something that has many vicissitudes as the Imam pointed out, there is the fundamental idea that women and men are equal in dignity before God, and thus, should have equality of rights before the law. But in the Qur'an, it's very different. The Imam Mustafa pointed out that women could testify in court, but he did not bother to tell you about Qur'an's chapter 2:282, which says that "You should get two witnesses out of your own men, and if there are not two men, then a man and two women such as you choose for witnesses so that if one of them forgets, the other can remind her." And on this basis, Muhammad himself, in a famous hadith told women that he had seen a vision of hell, and there were many more women in hell than men; and the reason why, he said, when the women indignantly asked him why that was, he responded that it's because women were deficient in religion and in intellect. And they asked him again, How is that? And he pointed to this verse in the Qur'an and said you're deficient in intellect, obviously, because your testimony is devalued; and deficient in religion because when menstruating, you're not allowed to pray in the mosque.

And so this was an inequality of intellect and an inequality of spirituality and inequality of rights before the law resulting from it. And so here again, the question before us is, does Islam guarantee equality of rights to women? Obviously, by the testimony of the Qur'an itself and Islamic Law and Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, it manifestly does not.

Chapter 4:11 of the Qur'an.says, "Allah direct you as regards to your children's inheritance. To the male, apportion equal to that of two females." Let me repeat that, "To the male, apportion equal to that of two females." How is that equality of rights? Now, I would remind you once again that I'm quoting from the Qur'an, and the Imam Mustafa may say that this is all out of context, but he cannot--at least if he has any interest in the truth, which, of course, not at all established--but if he does, then he cannot deny that these things are elements of Islamic Law to this day. And that in Islamic Law, as is the consensus, the ijma, of all the Madh'hab of the Sunnis, the schools of jurisprudence, it is agreed upon by them that a man should have greater inheritance rights than a woman, that a woman should not have the same value in her testimony as a man, and indeed is barred from testifying at all in cases of zena or sexual indiscretion, even if she is the victim. [Her] testimony is devalued altogether, and there is this mandate for inequality that manifests itself in many ways, which I am sure we will discuss. But the record of Islamic Law is clear, and so this is not the matter of some obscure village or out-of-context citations. This is a matter of the Qur'an itself as interpreted by mainstream Islamic authorities.

MUSTAFA ZAYED: 1ST REBUTTAL (5 minutes)
Thank you.

Mr. Spencer quoted a verse in the Qur'an, that is chapter 4:34, and obviously, exactly as I predicted, the verse say [reads in Arabic (17:04)]. The verb that Mr. Spencer conveniently, totally obliterated [Arabic word (17:10)] means "to attend to". The building superintendent is not the owner of the building or the boss of all the tenants. "Attend to"--the responsibly of the man to be the man-in-the-house as in our American culture stems from what the verse says after that, by them providing for the family and carrying the responsibility of the family. So men are no way better than women in Islam. So easy, I can go to the Qur'an and when the word says "white", I can translate it conveniently to the word "black" as per Mr. Spencer and what he does all the time.

Mr. Spencer will never tell you the other verse in the Qur'an that says [reads in Arabic (17:49)]. They have the same rights and obligations, as men have rights and obligations. And the only degree that a man by default has, which is that he would be responsible for the family, is condition--if he qualifies by when he supports the family, when he feeds and provides for the family. So there's nowhere in the Qur'an or the hadith of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) that men are better than women. And I would challenge him with any dictionary that qawwamun means "superior"--only in the language of Mr. Spencer.

And I'm shocked, actually, that Mr. Spencer, in the myriad of the nonsense that he brought, he brought verse 2:82 that I caught him, and I put in nationwide press release that the verse speaks about financial transactions, how to record them. When Mr. Spencer removed that in his book, The Truth About Muhammad, and claim that the verse is about rape victims, just show you the man who's, you know, talking about, well, if I know my Qur'an or not. And he dares to bring it back in again. Read his book, and read my press release, and I'm going to put it on my blog tomorrow.

The second thing, Mr. Spencer speaks about the same verse 4:34 when it says, well, if they commit nushuz it say that, well, he can go ahead and beat them for any, you know, situation. The verse specifically [quotes in Arabic], and the word nushuz is repeated only two times in the Qur'an. One time, when it pertains to the nushuz of a wife, and one time in 4:128 where it pertains to the nushuz of a man. So it's not obedience or disobedience. Nushuz is when I go onto a higher ground to look further. In the case of marriage, is to look further for another man or another woman. A man, when he looks for another woman, in Islam with restrictions and guidelines, he can go ahead and get married publicly with, if the, you know, meets the guidelines. When a woman looks for another man, that's an abomination.

And then you do not need to Imam Mustafa Zayed or any interpreter or anyone or any hadith. Let's go to the Prophet himself, talking about the case, you know, the exceptional case of when a wife to be beaten. Rule number one, [quotes in Arabic (19:47)]. You cannot beat up the girls of Allah, as per the hadith. That's the general rule. The extreme exception is when Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) said, in the greatest day in human history, when he said the religion now is perfect and complete, he said [quotes in Arabic (20:01)]. Deal with women righteously and equitably and that's the general rule. [Quotes in Arabic (20:07)] Unless they come and commit apparent abomination, then [quotes in Arabic (20:14)], beat them lightly, a slap on the wrist. In our legal courts, when somebody gets a judgment that is a slap of the wrist, that means that he got the lightest judgment ever. So when the wife commits a crime, that is apparent abomination, two things: you wanna give her to the cop; you gonna give her to the correctional facility officer, you gonna give her to the judge, or within her household, the husband will give her a psychological punishment, that is a slap on the wrist. Which way you prefer. The rule is [quotes in Arabic (20:43)]. But, as I said, he goes to the extreme situation of a crime and try to make it the general rule.

The thing about the inheritance, there's 34 cases of potential inheritance: four cases, a woman inherits half of the man; 30 cases, the other 30 cases, a woman inherits more, inherits the same, and in some cases, about six cases, she inherits and the man does not inherit whatsoever. So Mr. Spencer, quotes you the four cases and does not quote you the remainder of the 30 cases.

When he said that Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) said that a majority of hellfire might be of women, and when they asked him, he put in another hadith totally different about, that you use emotions more than you use reason, and you have lesser ritual duties than men, he mixed two hadiths together in his way, if you don't know, if you don't read to confuse you. And I'll post on my blog both hadith and you will see how Mr. Spencer is trying to outright deceive you.

ROBERT SPENCER: 1ST REBUTTAL (5 minutes)
Thank you.

The deceiver here is the Imam Mustafa. As is clear from anybody who looks at the actual translations of the first part of verse 4:34, which he was disputing. He's saying that I made it up that it says that it makes men are superior to women. That's actually... I was reading from the translation of N.J. Dawood, who is a native speaker of Arabic from Iraq. I guess he got it wrong, that I told him that he ought to mistranslate it in that way. But we can also go to the Muslim translators, Abdullah Yusef Ali, very common, mainstream translation. And he says, Men are the protectors and maintainers of women because Allah has given the one more than the other. And Muhammad Marmaduke Pickthall, a celebrated English convert to Islam who wrote another very common translation, Men are in charge of women because Allah has made the one of them to excel the other. And M.J. Shakir, Men are the maintainers of women because Allah has made some of the to excel others. And so apparently, with my deceiving black arts, I had misled all of these translators, who wrote before I was born, into mistranslating this verse in exactly the same way to say that men excel women or superior to women, and obviously not that they are equal women.

And so its clear that the Imam Mustafa, while self-righteously claiming that I am deceiving, is actually trying to deceive on a grand scale. He's actually written a book-length treatment that is full of deceit, called The Lies About Muhammad, which is very aptly named, because that's all it is.

And another one, regards chapter 2:82, which he's saying he caught me out on. Actually the Qur'an itself, it says, as I quoted before, that you should get a male witness and if you cannot get a male witness, then you get, if there are not two men, then a man and two women, such as you choose for witness, so that if the other one errs, the other one can remind her. That is the translation of Abdullah Yusef Ali. It has nothing to do with the context of rape in the context of the Qur'an, and I never said it did; but it does come into questions of rape, when women's testimony is disallowed altogether as is something that comes from Islamic law.

Now, as far as the beating of the wife, it's interesting to note that this learned Imam is actually granting that a husband does have the responsibility to beat a disobedient woman in Islam, but he's trying to convince us that it is a matter of only beating her lightly or giving her a tap on the wrist. Once again, I refer to the translations of the Qur'an. These are all translations of the Qur'an made either by Muslims or by Islamic scholars. They are not my translations of the word in question, waidriboohunna, and it says in Pickthall, "...and scourge them". Or [Sher Ali] "...and chastise them". Rodwell, also, "...scourge them". Khalifa, Rashad Khalifa, "...beat them" Also Shakir, "...beat them". Al-Hilali and Khan say, "...beat them lightly", as does Yusef Ali, but that "lightly" is not in the Arabic as I'm sure that the Imam Mustafa, were he truthful, would have to admit.

And that since I quoted as I quoted the hadith, which is from Bukhari... No, I'm sorry, from Muslim, that says that he hit Aisha and caused her pain, it's hard to understand how if Muhammad is the supreme example of conduct that his example would not be exemplary in this one particular. And I wonder what the authorities at Al-Azhar would think of Mustafa Zayed if they heard him contradicting Muhammad on this point.

And as for the other hadith in which women predominate in hell, that is easily be found online; and if he is going to post his lies about it, I will post the truth about it at Jihad Watch tomorrow and give you the hadiths in question.

There's also a great deal more, of course, that we were not able to address for reasons of time. For example, Muhammad saying--and this is a Bukhari hadith--that if a husband calls his wife to his bed to have sexual relations and she refuses and causes him to sleep in anger, the angels will curse her 'til morning. And this is the foundation of the Islamic law that a woman has no right to refuse sexual intercourse to her husband for any reason at any time. That reduces her, essentially, to the status of an object for procreation or sexual pleasure. It's kind of ironic that the Imam Mustafa said in his initial statement that the woman is not the object of desire because that's, essentially, all that she is in Islam, is a plaything for sexual relations, and [a cook, of course, (mark :24)] and so on, but that's about it.

There's another hadith in the same way: By him in Whose Hands lies my life, a woman cannot carry out the right of her Lord 'til she carries out the right of her husband, and if he asks her to surrender herself to him for sexual intercourse, she should not refuse him even if she is on a camel saddle. Now, this is plainly just another species of slavery and it has nothing to do with equality of rights whatever smoke this learned and highly deceitful Imam chooses to blow tonight.

MUSTAFA ZAYED: 2ND REBUTTAL (5 minutes)
Alright. I just hope for the people who does see this online recorded to go back to the translation picked, the word qawwamun, he chose "superior to", which what I told him, it does not mean--and Arabic, believe it or not, is my native language. He said, well other people said it, too. Look, Yusef Ali said "protector and provider". I ask any second grader, does "protector" mean "superior to"? Does "provider" mean "superior to"?

And then he went to another translation, "in charge of". If I am in charge of a diamond, that means it's mine, that I'm superior to it? I'm in charge of a hundred children, that my life is better than them or I'm superior to them? It's again the twisted translation, and the only one that he picks. N.J. Dawood, I never heard of his translation, couldn't care less if he is native Arabic or not. "Attend" means to be a protector, to be in charge of. There has to be a leader for the family. By default, that leader is chosen by Allah to be a man, like any other culture, predominantly, and only when he qualifies. That's number one.

The second thing, when he goes to the witnessing, he chooses again the exception and financial transactions. You know, if you don't have one man, bring two women because women, by nature... Go to Wall Street and tell me how many women as a percentage of all the work in men. Be he totally forgo all the other cases where a testimony of a woman is exactly the same as a man. In all kind of cases in Islamic Law except her witnessing a crime of zena or armed robbery, where there's gonna be a penal code. I mean, he should be ashamed when he says that if she was the rape victim, her word would not be taken. How could it be a case that is to be prosecuted if the victim did not even complain to begin with. And that's her testimony. Totally wrong. When she's an outside witness to the event of the hurt that happened, then Islam avoids and protects the woman nature from getting into violent crimes.

Testimonies. A husband. Again, it's [his] wife when it comes to infidelity, in Surat An-Nur, chapter 24:6-9, her testimony is exactly the same. In the case of Al-Sayyida Aisha, Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) pushed her. And Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) was a powerful man, and he was not beating her whatsoever. He never beat anyone, not even his servants. And I will post the same hadith that he's talking about.

When I caught him mixing two hadiths together, when they asked him why are some women are majority of hellfire, he brought an answer from a different hadith. I didn't say that one of them is not authentic. I said that you mixed two authentic hadiths together. Out of ignorance or not, even if you knew, I would not trust that you would tell the truth.

The third thing, we're not talking about disobedience. We're talking about the beating of a wife. It's a wife who committed a crime, and that remote, exceptional situation, should we hand her to the law or should be dealt with a slap on the wrist within the household? And I'm not justifying that for disobedient wife, a wife who committed an apparent crime as per the hadith of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). Apparent abomination.

The other thing is, the refusal of having intercourse. The hadith is apparently clear, and you need to be a genius to look at interpretation or foundation of Islamic Law. The hadith said that the angels will be cursing her 'til the morning comes. It did not say the husband should force her into sex. That is a despicable, that is something that is resentful in Islam, that a law-abiding, [chaste] man wanna have his normal intercourse with his wife and his would wife refuse for no reason. Mr. Spencer, as usual would [slip you in (33:30)], and for "any reason" that...what if she has her period? Totally forbidden to come near the wife. What if she's ill? What if she's sick? But Mr. Spencer will tell you for "any reason". He is in Spencer Land. He's creating his own law and he's making new things. Again, look at the translation that he used, and look at what he's talking about.

And again, in witnessing, he does not wanna say that he totally mutilated a verse in the Qur'an, from the case of financial witnessing to a case of rape victims. And when I caught him, he said, Oh, look at Surat An-Nur, it says they have to be men. And I caught him, and I'll post it again that it means--shuhud--means "witnesses". It didn't specify men or didn't specify women.

So again, take the extreme case, generalize it, incite hatred against Muslims, anything Muslims, confuse hadiths together, a word that means "white", translated as "black", and tell me names of people that nobody had ever heard of. The only people that are reputable translators, and even though I say that they have some mistakes in translation by nature, Yuself Ali said "protector", did not say "superior". The other, Shakir, said "in charge of". He did not say "superior". Who's saying "superior"? Mr. Spencer. Because the job is to incite hatred and demonize all Muslims with the simple-minded people who cannot read for themselves and cannot even understand English. "Superior" does not mean "protector". A woman who's looking for a major abomination or the crime of apparent abomination is not a disobedient wife. That's someone who committed a crime, and the best punishment you give her, a slap on the wrist.

Again, typical Spencer.

ROBERT SPENCER: 2ND REBUTTAL (5 minutes)
The elaborateness and sophistication and persistence of the Imam Mustafa's deceptions is truly breathtaking; and as a liar, I think he is truly unsurpassed today. Really, it's extraordinary what he's doing here--the sleight-of-hand in regard to this passage in chapter 4:34 of the Qur'an. He's arguing about the word that is translated by Ali as "men are the protectors and maintainers of women"--the word being "the protectors and maintainers" part. Or by Pickthall as "men are in charge of women". Or by Dawood as "men have authority over women". But that part is not in dispute. The part that he is taking issue with is in Dawood's translation as "God has made the one superior to the other", which is the next part of the verse, so he's actually getting all upset about the Arabic word that I'm not disputing the meaning of, because that is not the problem. Ali says, "men are the protectors and maintainers of women". That part is not in dispute. And then he goes on to say, "because Allah has given the one more than the other," but he doesn't want you to notice that part, because it shows the inequality of the women. Or as Pickthall, another Muslim, has it: "Men are in charge of women because Allah has made the one of them to excel the other." He does not tell you at all about the Arabic word for "in charge"...the God giving "more than the other" or "excel the other" or "superior to the other" in the Dawood translation, because that of course would not serve his argument. And instead, he's trying to fool the listener into thinking that the argument is really about the part that is translated as "man are the protectors and sustainers of women" or "has authority over women" which is not the issue at all.

It's the same thing with zena. It's a matter of established fact in Islamic Law that women's testimony is not allowed in crimes of zena. And as far as the mixing the two hadiths together, you notice that he said--he's very excited and speaking quickly--but go back and listen to it again, and you will hear that he says that he's not saying on'es authentic and one's inauthentic. So you see, I'm speaking from memory here, and I'm talking about hadiths which I will produce on the website, Jihad Watch, tomorrow or tonight if I get the chance. The reality is, there are hadiths that are considered authentic by Muslims in which Muhammad says the most of the people in hell are women, and in which Muhammad says that women are deficient in religion and in intellect. And he doesn't even dispute the inauthenticity... the authenticity of those. Instead, he's trying to make a big deal about my putting them together a conversational presentation. Well, that's ridiculous. One hadith, two hadiths...fine. The question is, is it part of Islamic doctrine that Muhammad says these things? Yes, these hadiths are considered authentic, and so the question is, do Muslims believe that there're mostly women in hell? If they believe Muhammad, yes. Do Muslims believe that women are deficient in religion and in intellect? If they believe Muhammad, yes. Do Muslims believe that they have the right to beat their wives, and not just as a symbolic tap on the wrist, as he ridiculously claims.

Well, let me just note that the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences--which is not, as far as I know, an enterprise that I'm in charge of or that I've created, and probably is predominantly made up of Muslims--they have determined that over 90% of women in Pakistan, over 90%, have been struck, beaten, or sexually abused often for trivial offenses. The problem is one man's tap and slap on the wrist is another man's brutal beating. These things can [--- (38:45)] all to often in the eye of the beholder. Once you've given the sanction to the behavior, that's where the trouble begins. And Islam does sanction wife-beating and Muslims beat their wives. The Imam Muhammad Kamal Mustafa, an imam in Spain in 2004, was found guilty by the Spanish court for inciting violence on the basis of gender. Because in his book, Women in Islam, he discussed the methods of administering physical punishment of women. So this was something that was clear, was real, was taken very seriously. And so this is a problem all around the Islamic world.

He can pretend and deceive foolish and ignorant people into thinking that it's something that I'm making up, but that is just another part of the sophistication of his deception. This man is a very good liar, but the text say what they say. And all the Islamic translations of the Qur'an, they say in the beginning part of chapter 4:34, that in some way that men are superior to or excel or are greater than or have more than women. And they say that men should beat his disobedient wife, and Muhammad did that to Aisha (which you notice he did not address at all) and caused her pain. And he being the exemplary pattern of conduct as per chapter 33:21 of the Qur'an. That is a very dangerous passage in the hadith.

MUSTAFA ZAYED: CROSS-FIRE (3 minutes)
Please, whoever's gonna watch this recorded after that, please watch from the beginning, and watch Robert Spencer retrace what he says. Quickly. First of all, it was that the victim of rape cannot testify for herself, and now he's saying, 'Oh women cannot testify in that case', which is the second part is the correct part. In the beginning, he wasn't saying that 'til I expposed him.

The second thing, the part that he says, Oh, that's the part that means superior. It says [quotes in Arabic (40:48)]: By what Allah (Subhan'Allah) preferred some over the other. Allah (Subhan'Allah) in the verse did not specify men or women, who's better than each one. As I said, they compliment each other. It could be the woman that has a better aspect than the man or the man has a better aspect. If [quotes in Arabic (40:48)]: By what Allah (Subhan'Allah) preferred some of the other, can you extract for me which is man and which is woman? I'll give you the Nobel Peace Prize, but I'm not gonna give it to you.

The second thing, Robert totally ignores--and he'll ever tell you that, and you should ask yourself--[quotes in Arabic (41:20)]: They have the same rights and obligations, as men do, women do.

In Surat Al-Baqra 2:28. The other one, he keeps saying that you beat a disobedient wife. I explained so many times that the verb in the two verses is nushuz, which is "committing an abomination" or "about to commit abomination". And I brought the explanation of the prophet of Islam, himself, saying, You never beat a woman. You treat them righteously and equitably unless they commit an apparent crime. They become a criminal. And then there has to be a punishment. And then there's degrees. It's not beating right away. You give them advice. You abstain from them a bit. And them after that, you go and you give them a slap on the wrist, which is the lightest punishment, after they commit a crime. So he makes the crime or the criminal the major case.

Again, watch how he retracts. When Muhammad, the women asked him why the majority of women are in hellfire are gonna be that way, and he said that the answer is that they are deficient mind and so on and so forth. The answer is a totally different hadith and a totally different thing. In the second hadith, Muhammad (PBUH), was praising women. He said, I never see more people that they have their emotions supersedes their reason that they can take away the mind of the firm and intellectual man. It's a praise.

And the lack of sexual duties is by the license of God. When they are pregnant, when they have their period, and--subhan'Allah, when they get pregnant, that's how I came to life and so does Mr. Spencer. That's a license from God. That is not something to be ashamed or make him a [list (42:54)] of worshipers. In all aspects of Islam, let us see, Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) said, Your best are your best to the women and I am the best to my women. He used to clean his house. He used to do house chores. When his wife was sick, he used to do house chores for her. He would get groceries for her. He would milk his sheep. He would do everything for his wife. And he said, [quotes in Arabic (43:14)]: Serve your wife, and you will be given a reward as if you gave a generous charity. That is the prophet of Islam.

And that is Robert Spencer.

ROBERT SPENCER: CROSSFIRE (3 minutes)
Actually, there is no difference in what I said from one part to the other about the testimony of women. Actually, women's testimony is not allowed in crimes of zena even if she is the victim. He exposed nothing except his own lies, because, as a matter of fact, it has been established even by Muslim women's rights groups, like the wonderful group in Malaysia, Sisters in Islam, that most of the women who are in prison in countries like Pakistan and others where zena has traditionally understood as being in the realm of hudud punishments, in the realm of Islamic Law, rather than in the civic law, most of the women in prison are there, because they were victims of rape. Their testimonies are inadmissible, and they don't have the witnesses to prove that they were raped, because Islamic Law stipulates in chapter 24:4 and 24:13 of the Qur'an that in such crimes, there has to be four male, Muslim witnesses, who saw the act. And that is, obviously, something that is essentially impossible to establish.

And as for wife beating, you notice once again that he is admitting that a man can legitimately and lawfully beat his disobedient wife, and that's really all I'm interested in establishing, because that is a howling inequality. And what we have before us here is the question of whether women are treated equally as men in Islam or not. But anything that can be beaten like a pack animal when disobedient is not equal. And here again, he does not treat the hadith that I have brought forward that is from Sahih Muslim and is thus, considered to be authentic by Muslims, in which Aisha said Muhammad, and I quote, "struck me on the chest which caused me pain" and that is not something that is symbolic or light thing. When it involves pain, it involves pain. And, obviously, beating a wife or scourging or chastising, as these various Muslim translations have it, is something that's gonna cause pain. It's not something that is some sort of a love tap. And that's a ridiculous apologetic notion that's designed to fool Westerners into thinking that there's no problem here, but unfortunately there is.

And we haven't even dealt with so much more that renders women unequal, like polygamy--that a man can have four wives and as many sexual slaves as he wishes out of the captives his right hand possesses. That is something that, unfortunately for Mr. Zayed, has been recently reaffirmed by certain Islamic clerics: There ought to be a revival of sexual slavery of non-believing women who were captured and made into prostitutes or sexual slaves by their Muslim captors. This has been recently reaffirmed, actually, by a female legislator in Kuwait and by another Islamic cleric.

So he's pulling the wool over our eyes, but I am not going to allow it to happen.

ZAYED MUSTAFA: CLOSING STATEMENT (6 minutes)
Alright. Again, look at the progression of Mr. Spencer withdrawing from the false claims that he used in the beginning. It was "superior" in one part of the verse, and then the other verse was supposed to now mean "superior", and I proved that neither speak about men or women. So that's ended.

What I mentioned is not the authenticity of the two quotations that he did, but a part of his deceptions that when the women asked him why the majority are of women from hellfire, he talked about because they're ungrateful to their husbands who gave them everything and just for one mistake that they made, they claim that 'he gave us nothing.' Ungratefulness.

The other hadith is a totally different hadith, and a totally different incident.The incident with Al-Sayyida Aisha, I challenge him to bring me the incident of by which she was supposed to be disobedient and the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) beating her. Al-Sayyida Aisha was the greatest, probably, wife of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). She was never disobedient to him, and she said [quotes in Arabic (47:44)]: He pushed me. She didn't say "struck me", and she was not disobedient. And I'm gonna publish that hadith tomorrow. Again, "pushed me" is not "struck me". And she was never disobedient.

Again, please Mr. Spencer, read my lips: I never said beat a disobedient wife. I said, per the hadith of the Prophet of Islam, not some Pakistani or Malaysian rural areas and something village, that if she commits an apparent crime. Can you read my lips, if you cannot hear me please. I never said "disobedient." I said the crime of nushuz, an apparent crime. If you can't understand English anymore.

The other thing is, when we go to the witnesses again. That sandbox of Mr. Spencer when he tries to take the poorest countries, the most worst stricken countries and try to generalize them over Islam--his favorite sandbox, maybe Afghanistan--he bring me an enterprise in Pakistan where somebody said this or some female or some cleric in Spain said something... Well, it violates what is in the Qur'an and the model behavior of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), then these people have committed a crime and violated Islamic Law. And for the hundredth time, you cannot judge Islam by the criminal of the few. You can judge people by Islamic Law.

And again, what matters here and what I want to explain to the viewers, it's not the "what", it's the "why". Why Mr. Spencer is doing this? Why Mr. Spencer and his lies are constant inciters of hatred between Americans? Because that's what he get paid for. If you look at what was published recently in the past three years, $920,000, the majority of them, through the Freedom organization... the Freedom Center Organization, was funneled to him through a Zionist extremist, Joyce Chernick. And that is not published in a Muslim magazine, it is published in the Jerusalem Post of his friends, Israel. It's a business. He makes a lot of money out of that. The same way that Walid Shoebat was exposed in CNN.

And the biggest problem with that is not how much money he makes, it's the hatred that he incites in people. Look at what happened in Norway. The terrorist in Norway who killed a hundred innocent people and injured more. That person quoted Robert Spencer in his manifesto over 64 times and referenced JihadWatch.org over 130 times. And I couldn't care less of the authenticity of what he says. It's not freedom of speech. It's fabrications. It's lies. It's inciting hatred. And to the simple-minded people, like the insane terrorist in Norway, the result can be innocent people killed, mostly young kids in a summer camp. And we will be mistaken if we allow that venom to spread, of the lies and fabrications, and the discrimination against Muslims.

In America, we can buy a machine gun that he can kill a dinosaur with just by showing your photo ID in some states. So Mr. Spencer makes a living inciting hatred amongst people. And if I was any of the people of Norway, I would have sued Mr. Spencer as an instigator of that crime of hatred, because that's the ideology that he makes. The followers of Mr. Spencer are not people who read for themselves or can look at translations and objectively understand what is being thrown at them. It's the simple-minded, hatred and [attention]-seekers. People who wanna polarize and hate something just to give a meaning of their life or just bring resentment against someone out there. And if we help that, then one of us or someone who is related to us, Muslim or non-Muslim, any American of any creed will be the victim soon. The blood of these innocent people in Norway is in Mr. Spencer's hand. And God forbid, there will gonna be other crimes of that hatred and incitement.

Why is Mr. Spencer telling us all that, and he is supposed to enlighten us about Islam, and he has no proper education in Islam. He does not speak the language. He does not mention references. As a matter of fact, I quoted him in his book saying something in one page that [all (51:28)] Muhammad evidently believed the rumors of his wife. The following page, he says he brings up authentic hadith, that Muhammad says, I never believed anything like that. It's copy and paste, things that are laughable. He claims that dhimmi in Arabic means "ugly". [Menzel (51:43), where the stopping] location is now a house. All these laughable things. But the problem is his followers are simple-minded. They don't understand. And the hatred is like spilling gasoline above our population waiting for the next spark of the next terrorist to hurt us all. Why the hatred? The blood is on your hand Mr. Spencer.

Drug dealers? No drugs killed, but the money is good. And the money that you make is good from the worst enemies of Islam, the extreme right-wing Zionists of Israel, as published in Jerusalem Post. I don't think the money's worth it, and any decent American, Muslim or non-Muslim, should be alert to the venom and the hatred that is being spread all over the world about Muslims, and specifically in America. Muslims make 3% of the population. Maybe 24% of the doctors that heal Americans are Muslims. Over 25% of the hate crimes against Americans are committed against American Muslims and the instigator is right there.

Mr. Spencer incites hatred for a living. His lies are exposed, and I put them in the book, The Lies about Muhammad. Most of the women that accept Islam in my class, most of the people are from the women gender--highly-educated women. And Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world.

ROBERT SPENCER: CLOSING STATEMENT (6 minutes)
Okay, I'm gonna have to respond to some of this. Although, you'll note that the topic is not The Evils of Robert Spencer. The topic is, Does Islam treat women equally and consider them equal, and that has been amply established that they do not, even by Mustafa Zayed.

But the character assassination and viciousness of this man is clear now. It's really breathtaking how he will stoop to this kind of defamation and demonization. And it's interesting, because he is claiming that I engage in hate speech, but he is obviously trying to get people to hate me. And so I wonder if he thinks that those of Muslims, who give me daily death threats, if those Muslims actually succeed in killing me, will he consider that he, himself, has blood on his hands for trying to demonize me and trying to get people to hate me tonight? That would be very interesting thing. But whether they kill me or not, I'm gonna keep telling the truth up until I die.

And the fact is, I had nothing to do with the Norway killing, anymore than The Beatles had to do with Charles Manson's killings. The man cited me. He cited Barrack Obama. He cited John Locke, Thomas Jeffereson, Charles Darwin. He plagiarized the Unabomber, but nobody is saying that radical environmentalists are to be blamed for this. He started plotting violence in the 1990s, before I had published anything about Islam, except in a college setting, which he never...could not have seen. He was already plotting violence long before I was ever doing anything publicly in this line.

And in regard to incitement, I would challenge the Imam Mustafa and anyone to actually produce a single, genuine example of my telling anybody to commit violence against anyone or to hate anyone. Obviously, he wants you to hate me. But all I'm doing here is telling the truth. And so it's very interesting that he, once again, is proving the adage as St. Paul said, If I become your enemy by telling you the truth... He cannot stand the truth. He keeps lying about chapter 4:34, which I explained that he was taking issue with the part of the verse that is acknowledged to mean that men are the protectors and sustainers of women, then completely ignoring and obfuscating the following part, which is translated by Muslims as 'but because Allah as made the one to excel the other' or in Dawood's translation, 'to be superior to the other'.

He keeps trying to make a big deal out these hadiths that I quoted being different, but the fact is, they are both considered authentic, all are considered authentic. He outright lies about this hadith in which Muhammad says...in which Aisha says and I quote, "He struck me on the chest which caused me pain." And then said, Did you think that Allah and his apostle would deal unjustly with you? That's Muhammad saying...Muhammad striking her on the chest and Aisha saying that Muhammad "struck me on the chest which caused me pain." That is the translation of Sahih Muslim #2127 by Abdul Hamid Saduiqqi, who himself is a Muslim. And so I wonder if Mr. Zayed thinks that I somehow got in the ear of Abdul Hamid Saddiqui and deceived him into mistranslating this passage, which he is now lying about.

But the fact is, all the lies and hate are not coming from me. They're coming from Mustafa Zayed and people like him. And that is because they cannot stand to have the truth about Islam told. The fact is that Islam institutionalizes discrimination against women, it institutionalizes the commodification of women. And anything he says about me is not gonna change that, because I did not originate it.

The fact is that polygamy is mandated in the Qur'an. He never mentioned anything about that, because he can't deny it. The fact is that the Qur'an also stipulates that a man can divorce his wife by saying talaq--I divorce you--three times, and when if he does it the third time, then she is divorced definitively, has to marry another man and consummate that marriage and be divorced by hime before she can go back to her first husband, if he chooses to have her back. That's a kind of a monstrous and barbaric law, but that is part of Islamic Law. And it certainly has nothing to do with equality of rights for women. He didn't say anything about the sex slaves, because he cannot deny.

As I said, that Islamic imams, not Spencer, but Islamic imams themselves have said...have called for the revival of this practice, which is Qur'anic--the Qur'an in 4:3 says that a man can marry up to four wives and then have captives that his right hand possesses, that is, sex slaves. And there is a traditional legal category for sexual slavery in Islam; while the women has to cover everything except her face and hands, according to Muhammad in the hadith. And in Islamic Law, the sex slaves are actually always to be naked from the waist up and accessible to their owner whenever he wishes. And this is obviously something else that is monstrous and barbaric, but that Mustafa Zayed will pass over in silence and then spend all his time smearing and defaming me, and trying to incite violence against me in order to divert attention away from that.

Well, you know something, I don't care. It's not as if I'm not gonna die if I don't do this work. And his...the idea that I have been getting $900,000 is fanciful. I wish I had gotten $900,000, because I could certainly use it to expose his lies and the lies of other people like him and be able to greatly expand my operations, but actually I've got nothing like that. And even if I had, it's irrelevant. Even if I'm the richest man in the world and the most evil man in the world, the question before us is, Does Islam allow for the equality of rights of women with men, and it manifestly does not. And I think it's just shameful that he would spend his time spreading hatred against people who tell the truth about Islam. So desperate is he to deceive unbelievers about this agenda.

One must ask, Why? What's the overall point of deceiving us in this way?

Join the discussion:

The Lies About Muhammad
- Watch Imam Moustafa Zayed crush Robert Spencer in their Debate about Women Rights in Islam

Fora.tv | Tarek Fatah Speech Transcript

2011-08-22T01:10:00.000-04:00

Watch live streaming video from ideacity at livestream.com

Good afternoon, and thank you, Moses, for inviting me. I'm quite honored.

I was listening to Steven talk about death. I just wanted to share with you, before I get on to the gist of what I am saying, that I've just escaped and seen death very close. I'm a cancer survivor now. Just last week, I was informed that I have beaten cancer. Now I'm in rehab.

In the four months that I lay in bed at St. Mike's and other hospitals and got radiated and received horrendous chemotherapy, one tends to look at the ceiling, and I'm some sort of an expert now how they look like or what patches don't agree with me or not; but one does get a television set nowadays and the internet that keeps you abreast with what is happening around the world. In those four/five months, I saw the troubles in Egypt. I saw Osama bin Laden being killed. I saw the Pakistani government double-crossing Canada and the United States, and both countries not having the guts to stand up and say, You double-crossed us. I saw the Japanese typhoons. I saw the earthquakes. But above all, I realized that as a Muslim, fate has put me in a place where I have no escape, because I'm an Indian born in Pakistan, a Muslim born in the Punjabi culture. I'm a Marxist who has seen my own fellow-travelers betray the cause of social justice and aligned themselves with the most horrendous fascists that you could ever meet.

But I want you to leave today with the thought that 65 or 70 years ago when men, like Moses Znaimer, were mere infants, and I was about to be born, we defeated the most powerful army of the world. And to get in context to what happened during the second world war--just in the Soviet Union, 30 million people died. The catastrophic price that human civilization paid to defeat the Nazis has been forgotten by your generation because it was your parents and your grandparents who fought for the freedom that you inherited and now seems to be withering away.

Just in the Battle of Kharkov, that's in Ukraine or slightly west of Russia, 24 thousand tanks and artillery pieces were involved in a battle in which the Red Army broke the back of the Nazis. In 1944, Canadians landed, not to save their own country, but to fight for a cause of freedom, democracy, equality, justice. But in four years, we destroyed Hitler! And in 10 years, we couldn't destroy bin Laden?

We didn't go on tours of duty. We went to fight and knew we would come back in a body bag or come back as victors or end up as POWs. Today, we have privatized our own effort to fight for the freedoms that we have inherited after 400 years of European civilization, but are more interested in the hockey game rather in the Canadian soldier that is being betrayed by the government of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, supposedly allies, but were selling us to the Taliban. Why? Because you are silent.

Let me give you the status of what happened after, what Salman Rushdie calls the Midnight Children, were born (those born in the '40s), when the jewel of the British Empire (India) was divided in two. We had the Cold War, and other than the missile crisis of Cuba, communism was destroyed in a battle of ideas. It took four decades, but by 1990 and by the year 2000, communism was wiped out. The Gulags of Solzhenitsyn and Sakharov were finished, people (Russians) felt the freedom. Today, they live under a different form of oligarchy. That's a separate story, but we destroyed communism without firing a bullet!

Today, we are fighting another idea of Islamofascism that has shut our mouths, and we can't speak because we are too scared that someone will turn around and call us a racist. And mind you everyday, as I speak, a few dozen Muslims would have been killed by now by the Jihadis. But what are we doing today? Are we not more concerned in Parliament about the ill-treatment of the Taliban at the hand of the Afghan army? But do you ever hear about the hundreds of people being slaughtered by the same Taliban right across the world? [It's] a threat they pose to this country, to the extent we have a terror trial coming up every few months. But none of us want to talk about it, because it makes us uncomfortable. The hockey game, the basketball match, the Air Canada Center--all of this is more important to us than the civilization that we've inherited.

Did you know that last week, a Canadian was convicted of terror-related charges in Chicago for involvement in two incidents in Denmark and in India? How many of you know his name? I can tell you, not more than 1% of this country's population knows about this incident, because we have forsaken our country and said we will subcontract it to some gladiator who will take care of us.

In the meantime, the forces of Islamism, and I distinguish it from the religion of Islam, which most of you are finding it very difficult. My point about communism and Hitler was that we knew them. We knew Lenin wore a suit. We knew Hitler wore a suit. We knew he listened to Wagner. We knew someone read Shakespeare. We knew who was Pushkin, and they knew what was our tradition. But in the case of the threat that worldwide Jihad poses to us, we are illiterate, and instead we are admitting that there is not a single a university course that teaches us the ABC of Islamism. We try to subcontract it to consultants who then make a profit by telling us that that is what you have to do. And instead of bringing victory over the fascist forces of the Muslim Brotherhood, we now recognize that their infiltration is right up to the American White House. But we can't say that.

We, today, have a situation where the religion of Islam is being used as a tool by a fascist force. The combination of the thought that life begins after death and the supremacy of Arab Muslims over the rest of the world is not debated. We are willing to even tolerate or discuss the Israel Apartheid Week, but we are not willing to stand up in front of the Saudi Embassy and say that you, in the name of Islam, practice an apartheid that is shameful. We have people not standing up for Air Canada but instead Emirate Airlines, a national airline of a country that practices slavery to this day.

Something, brothers and sisters, has gone wrong. The sponge-like spine that we are displaying could lead us to the end of the civilization as we know it. That men and women are equal and sit in the front row of such an event is not something that was always there. It has come out of 400 years. It has come out of the Enlightenment. It has come out of Europe. It has come out of the French and American revolutions. Trust me. I'm from India. It didn't come out of the Gupta Dynasty. It didn't come from the Ming Dynasty of China. Many of these thoughts originated and crystallized into European civilization, but how dare we feel ashamed of the fact that this is a country where gay people can marry, that you cannot go against the Jews and slander them and practice antisemitism [and listen until you couch] that as solidarity with the Palestinians. And European antisemitism is now creeping into our society under the guise of showing solidarity with Muslims.

It is horrendous what is happening, but no one is speaking because nobody wishes to insult or demean the Muslim community, and that is the right thing to do. However, please understand that there is a distinction between Islam as a faith, which along with every other religion has its own problems, and Islamism, which is an ideology, a political ideology, that says that western civilization has to be destroyed. The books that are distributed at Eaton Center and the Dundas Square clearly state by the founders of the Muslim Brotherhood that all western countries have to be destroyed. They are distributed free of charge. I have never seen one Canadian stand up to the goon who distributes that. We makes noise after lost Stanley Cup games, but we don't make noise of what is happening to western civilization, of which Canada is an integral part.

We are a society and a culture that saves its best parking spaces for handicapped men, like me. We do not throw the marginalized into separate, segregated camps. We take care of them. That culture, that civilization, is superior to the one in which a thousand people can be killed and shot dead by the army of Syria, but nobody speaks about it.

In the closing time that I have, I want you to focus, and I hope you can talk to your families and your friends and your neighbors, that when someone says that there is a penetration of Jihadi Islamists within Canadian society, do not dismiss it as some right-wing, xenophobic, racist rant.

Today, in the White House, there are three members of the Muslim Brotherhood that influence Obama's policy. One is Rashad Hassan of Indian origin, who is the American ambassador to the 52-nation organization of Islamic countries. Dahlia Mujahid who writes his speech, who comes from the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Just day before yesterday, another woman, an academic, was appointed in that circle. This is happening while we sit silent, and I say that as a liberal democrat, as someone who worked and campaigned for Barrack Obama.

We have evidence in Canada of this penetration that's going on. Our campuses are no longer the campuses where you can talk freely. You have antisemitism on the rise at University of Toronto. Just a couple of weeks ago, there was a count of Jews in the University of Toronto--in an academics class. This is happening friends. I'm not talking of Nuremberg or Heidelberg of the '30s. I'm talking 2011 University of Toronto here in the Social Work Department, where the professor said to the class, Oh, half of my peers are Jews, and it went unprotested. And when it starts with the Jews, because they are so few, trust me, it extends to other people.

We have sacrificed a lot to create a society where men and women are equal, where black and white can be of equal status, where citizenship is not based on inherited race or religion. Let us not sacrifice that in the name of pluralism and tolerance, and tolerate bigotry and Islamofascism as if it was something that need to be tolerated. I refer to that as "racism of lower expectations," when you say yes, the rest of us are equal human beings but those Muslims--well, maybe they are not yet fully developed as human beings, so we will put a lower threshold. If that guy beats up his wife and kills his daughter, we won't even call it honor killing. That happened in this city! When Aqsa Pervez died, there were women groups saying that's not honor killing. For crying out loud, 5000 Pakistani women die every year. If you claim you have done an honor killing, you get half a sentence than what you do with a murder. And yet, there are feminist organizations in this city that would refer to me as a right-wing lunatic or an agent of Zionism for having spoken up for the dead body of Aqsa Pervez.

Why is it happening? Because we are not speaking out. And the dangers we face, if we do not confront them today, our children will not forgive us tomorrow.

Thank you very much.