The scholarly approach to understanding religious scripture.
Okay, since we are discussing scripture; Here‟s a brief explanation of the proper scholarly methodology of examining people‟s religious beliefs that I‟m almost certain the professor is not familiar with:
In order to prove a certain group of people wrong about what they believe, you first have to make sure that this is indeed what they are supposed to believe according to their religion: Only by making reference to their own valued authorities of religion! You should examine the way THEY understand their scriptures, making reference – again – to their most reliable sources in that (reliable to them of course)! If you happen to find that there are debates amongst their scholars on understanding a particular text, with different explanations for it adopted in their scholarly literature, then you should exhibit a minimal degree of scholar integrity, and mention that there is indeed a difference amongst scholars of that faith on interpreting that particular text, and display all scholarly „considerable‟ interpretations, even if you find that among them is a particular one that you don‟t like because it
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blows away your objection! I say “considerable” because not every debate among scholars of a certain religion is tolerable in that religion! And this is why you will have to examine how they manage to expel certain interpretations and differences as baseless, and accordingly how they come to choose the right interpretation!
You will need to examine: By what reference they determine that this is indeed the intent of the original author of the text, because if they have no reliable source for knowing this; they have nothing! A text that is open to all kinds of interpretations that may ever be invented by scholars of that religion is in the majority of cases as good as no text at all! And by “open” I do not mean that false interpretations do not take place to that text at all, there is no such text in human notion, and there will always be ignorance and human error; I rather mean that the scripture of that religion lacks a rigid reference of understanding that could be proven by those who know it that this is indeed the only right way to understand those texts!
Of course if you‟re sufficiently qualified to examine and criticize those different interpretations and maybe even prove which one of them is evidently the correct way to understand the text in question (in the original language of that scripture and its interpretations of course!), then by all means be our guest, put forth your evidence, and enter this arena of scholarly criticism from its proper entrance! But to claim that your knowledge of Zoology or even philosophy qualifies you to mess around freely in any discipline of human knowledge; this is absolutely intolerable by any self-respecting scholar in any field of human knowledge!
Yes of course he will find – for example – scholars of Islam differing on the interpretation of one text or another, this is a natural characteristic of human beings; but what bearing does this natural phenomenon have on the reliability, the usefulness, the validity, or even the actual meaning of this or that scripture, is a question that is obviously way beyond the professor‟s scholarly qualification!
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I am telling him clearly that not everything he finds in the works of even the most highly esteemed scholars of Islam is by necessity correct, in the lights of Islamic sources from which they are all supposed to be taking!
It has become a common trend by many evangelists as they attempt to convert ignorant Muslims to Christianity and “spread the word”, to pick quotations from the works of Muslim innovators, or even errors or misquotations from the works of eminent Muslim scholars, to support their outright lies! They intentionally resort to this twisted forgery in order to pass their false claims about Islam to their audiences! And although I‟m not accusing the professor of deliberately resorting to false sources on Islam, I‟m pointing out that his sources on Islam are not any different from theirs; for after all, the majority of misconceptions currently predominant in the West about Islam stems – particularly - from the work of evangelists, missionaries and similarly oriented writers!
One of the most renowned Arabian Christian missionaries specialized in attacking Islam (a particular bishop who goes by the name Zakareya Butros); is famously known – through his televised shows aimed at converting Muslims - to rely for his knowledge of Islam on the “Encyclopedia Britannica”! I mean, imagine a student of physics referring to “Star wars” or Spielberg‟s “Back to the future” in preparing a scholarly research on the theory of relativity that actually aims at refuting it!
There are of course Muslim scholars who follow the correct methodology (manhaj) and those, on the other hand who follow an innovated methodology! There are those who have minor mistakes, and those who have major, methodological innovations! So how do we know that, and how do we deal with their writings? By readily condemning all those who follow another “mosque” (as in Church) with another “tradition” different from ours? No! We simply know it by examining evidence from verifiable sources!
All estimable scholars of Islam make a clear distinction between the infallibility of authentic scripture, and the fact that all humans are vulnerable to making mistakes! So a scholar may indeed go wrong, but an authentic
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scripture may not! Thus, one of the phenomena that characterize the true religion is that in Islam you can actually prove those who go wrong – dealing with indisputable principles of Islam - to have indeed gone wrong, with solid reference to sound reliable evidence and verifiable interpretation; it would not be my own theological interpretation versus yours or my own “Church tradition” versus yours; but the evidently right position, versus the identifiably wrong!
There is an integral body of scripture – the understanding of which is itself “scripture” in a way, as it is inherited from the Salaf: Disciples and their immediate students – that sets the standard by which every scholar of Islam, and every work of Islamic literature is to be judged! It is a profoundly different process of knowledge from anything any atheist has ever seen under a tag of religion; and it has nothing to do with the way a Church theologian – for example - works to produce “new” interpretations of old scriptures just for the sake of making them qualify for the new mainstream of thought in his society!
The text is either authentic, and you do possess an evidently correct way (or ways) to understand it and work with it, or it isn‟t and you‟re simply working your own way with philosophy in a pathetic attempt to just pick and choose, or make the text more appealing and acceptable! Forging new meanings for an existing text; is as much of a crime against the truth and against all mankind as forging an entirely new text and attributing it to God! If you have no clue to knowing the true intention of the original author of a certain text, and what he exactly meant to say in those texts, then you simply don‟t know what the text means, and whatever you claim it actually meant; is nothing but presumption or cold fakery! The fact that it could be interpreted in a variety of ways, does not make any particular one of those ways by necessity the true meaning of the text as intended by its author!
It is amazing that when a Muslim scholar holds this position in dealing with scriptural texts, he is easily accused of narrow-mindedness, “literalism” and lack of “flexibility”! The same accusation goes against any scholar of any religion who may claim that any given text of scripture should continue to be understood in the same traditional way! He is readily labeled a
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“fundamentalist” as though it were a crime or a moral charge against him! ―You‘re sticking to the old interpretation of scripture? Oh the backwardness!‖ Atheists would call orthodox scholars of Islam „radical Zealots‟ because they forcefully reject every innovated understanding of scripture, but at the very same time, those very same atheists would accuse other scholars of “picking and choosing” and forging new interpretations to a text that is rationally supposed to have a single meaning that is indeed the right intention of its author; so my question to those atheists is: What is it that you really want then? What kind of scripture and what kind of scholarly approach to it are you willing to accept as the true revelation from your creator? Well, we already know the answer to this one, don‟t we?! The words “creator”, “scripture”, and “holy book” are banished from their personal dictionaries! It is their personal blind faith that there is no such a thing as a heavenly revealed scripture on this Earth at all!
It is amazing how the word “fundamentalist” is actually used today to disdain a religious scholar and bring him down in the eyes of people of his religion! If you‟re a man who believes that his scripture is the truth, and that the right way to understand it is the way the direct students of its first teacher understood it, and you – thus – reject and dismiss every new understanding that claims to be the true intent of the authors of that scripture in contradiction with or in deviance from the original understanding; are you – in the eyes of any self-respecting man of religion – to be viewed as a danger to followers of that scripture? This is unbelievable! If your scripture was always understood to deliver the message X, and all followers of this religion ever since the time of its prophet have taken it to mean X, and then after many centuries have passed, and out of nowhere somebody comes along to say that this understanding is not true, or it‟s only true under certain conditions or that it actually means Y rather than X, claiming an unprecedented interpretation 10; by what reason is this new understanding to
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10 A recent example to this is the sad “historical” incident when some woman in America managed to convince some ignorant Muslims to have – for the very first time in the history of this religion - a female Imam lead a mixed congregation in Salat, claiming that it is okay and that this is the right way to understand the scripture! None of them could possibly present any evidence that this was ever taught, done or accepted back in the first three centuries of Islam, or any time later for that matter, because the exact opposite is the case! In fact I believe that only few of them actually know where to look if they were to search for such evidence at all! Some of them never even heard about something called “Ijma‟” in Islam
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be given any weight at all against the original one? Are you – perhaps – claiming that the prophet of your religion failed to teach his immediate students the true understanding of the revealed texts of their religion, and people were left blind about the true intent of those texts all until you came along to fix this problem?
What on earth could be more irrational than a claim that I am free to understand a certain text in whichever way that suits me best, not in accordance with what it was truly intended to mean by its author? This is not poetry or fictional literature here that we could enjoy a mental luxury of contemplating all the possible ways a man could interpret them and enjoy them! This is direct teaching and instruction on the way a man has to live, in order to satisfy the purpose of his existence in this world! So you either understand its correct meaning or you don‟t!
This is why every time a Muslim “thinker” (like for example, the renowned lecturer Tariq Ramadan and his great-uncle in Egypt Jamal Al-Banna) comes along with a proposition to offer us a “new” or” modern” interpretation of the Quran, he is effectively frowned upon; actually “hammered” by serious scholars of Islam, because quite simply; he is committing an act of forgery! He is committing a crime that is only a slighter version of the one that early apostles of the Church committed, which resulted in the loss of the true religion of Prophet Jesus and his followers: Manipulating the religion to bring it to the liking of ignorant people of the time! This is obviously – whatever it will turn out to be - not the meaning those texts are meant to deliver! Those who dislike the way the texts themselves read, and the way they were originally understood, when they fail to manipulate or dismiss the authority (refute the authenticity) of those texts themselves, they find no other choice but to manipulate their
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إجماع (consensus) and the authority that is given to it by the scripture itself! And yet in their unfortunate ignorance, they would find this innovation plausible and in accord with what they call “the true spirit of the Qur‟an”! What spirit? If we did not have a verifiable body of reference by which we could refute such ignorant assaults against our religion; then we might as well consider leaving it behind altogether, for it would be all the same! If it‟s okay for me to interpret it in whatever way I wish, then it should also be okay for me to obey only what I like, and to even break free from Sharee‟a altogether, by means of some twisted “new interpretation” that I find to be plausible! And then we might as well wait for our Muslim version of Paul of Tarsus who invented Christianity and claimed that submitting to the Law of Moses was optional!
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MEANING and claim that they are open for “social contextualization” and “re-interpretation”!
And instead of a society of true believers that is willing faithfully to reshape the community and change their own lives to better observe the teachings of their Lord (which is what the very meaning of the Arabic word “Islam” demands), you get a society of ingrates and hypocrites who are seeking to reshape the religion itself to suit their desires and „moral tastes‟!
So while some proclaimed “Scholars” in the Muslim world may find it a plausible approach – falsely so - to re-read the texts (practicing what is dubbed: selective reading), the orthodox: evidently and rationally correct scholarly position with religious texts is to stick to the way the disciples themselves understood them! They‟ve got to understand that the difference between a truly God-given law, and a manmade law, is that the God-given law in itself, and in the exact way it was revealed, understood and practiced ever since the time of its revelation, is by necessity of reason applicable to people of all nations and ages it was revealed to address! And in the case of the final religion of Islam: To all mankind and to the end of times!
It is a FALSE outcome of ignorance and misconception – even if it comes out from certain officially authorized scholars in the nation of Islam – to claim that with the progress of time, people have to change the way they understand the scripture! The very same rules that were applicable some fourteen centuries ago MUST be applicable today, and in no contradiction or conflict with anything that proves in any nation or in any age to be true or to be in man‟s best interest!
The point is: Only in the true religion of the creator, and with the evidently proper understanding of its texts, should you expect to find this ongoing consistency and perfect harmony of religion with everything that is rational and useful to man, that ever comes to be discovered or invented!
Now true scripture of the Lord – with its only right understanding - could indeed come in conflict with certain cultural norms, philosophies, beliefs or preferences that vary from one nation to another and prevail from one century to another (just as it should come in conflict with all false systems of
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faith), but this is not indicatory of the least sign of a problem with the religion or the scripture itself, and it certainly doesn‟t mean that the understanding of this religion and its scriptures has to be changed!
If you don‟t like a certain commandment of the evidently true teachings of heaven; or don‟t find it to fit with your current cultural norm or social behavior, this doesn‟t in any way mean that this commandment is wrong or inappropriate, or that this particular way of understanding it is no longer to be observed! It actually means that your society suffers from a serious problem with its cultural norms and traditions; one that has to be examined and cured with wisdom, to help this society rebound on a social scale to the true will of their creator!
If I knew that my scripture is the truth and is the perfect wisdom for all mankind, I should not be required to search for a way to make it fit your – or anybody else‟s – cultural and social standards! I should rather address you with reason and whatever evidence I have, to prove to you that the problem is actually with the mainstream of thought that is currently prevailing in your own society, not with those teachings I am propagating and promoting! And that‟s exactly what I‟m doing in this book!
I know that what I‟m saying here may indeed be disturbing to many western Muslims, but I urge them to reconsider their ways and examine their true intentions and motives when they pick this or that scholar and take his Fatwa! By what standards do they judge him? By the fact that he may be closer to the way the western people live than another “fundamentalist” scholar? Is this what it means to be a Muslim (who submits and surrenders)? To seek every Fatwa that suits me best, not those that come from the more pious, the furthest away from innovation and the more knowledgeable in circles of („ulama‟ العلواء )? Is this the kind of religion you expected your Lord would demand of you to follow when you testified that He is the only true authority in your life?
Do not let yourself be intimidated by the accusations of haters, because they will not stop until they have got you out of your way! Yes people could still chop off the hand of a thief or stone an adulterer – for example - according
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to the law of Islam, today in a scientifically advanced society of the twenty first century and do not find that to be in conflict with any evident facts, or to hinder the progress of empirical sciences like Medicine or Chemistry – for example - in any way! In fact, the application of an evidently powerful and complete system of justice in a nation will certainly pave this nation‟s way not only for material development and welfare, but for advancement on all other human levels as well! I know – not out of pride and blind faith, but out of evidence – that all social and spiritual diseases of the west can be cured by no other code of wisdom but that of Islam! Not in the way a certain society wishes it to be practiced, but the way it truly and evidently should be practiced!
So when an ignorant comes out to speak in the name of Islam and say that such rulings are outdated, or that the texts where they are taught should not be taken literally any more, or should be re-read; this is in fact a liar that should be put to punishment, or an ignorant who should be taught the true wisdom in his religious scriptures in the only proper way to understand them and live by them, before he proceeds to spread his own ignorance about the faith!
We can still do great achievements of industry and technology under a total submission to the rulings of Islam, the way Muslims of the first centuries of Islam submitted to them! And indeed it will be guided with wisdom and purposefulness on all levels! History testifies for this, and we all know that there once was a time when Europe was indeed crawling in sheer ignorance and superstition under the authority of the church, while an extremely prosperous nation in all fields of science and knowledge was enjoying the rational and intellectual richness of its religion; under the laws of sharee‟a! So no, we certainly will NOT be living in caves, or criminalizing medicine – like the Catholic Church notoriously did in the Dark ages! - or banning the use of anything that is evidently useful to man, if we submitted to all rulings of Islam, in the exact way that early Muslims (Salaf) did!
This is simply because we know the correct way of understanding texts that are evidently and verifiably authentic, and are indeed complete and perfect wisdom! If you don‟t like the way Orthodox Muslims look or dress or talk or
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practice their rituals, then this is your problem; and it certainly does not mean that there‟s something wrong with Islam, or with the way those Muslims understand it and live by it! When some atheist – for example - whines about or makes fun of what the western society would look like if all women on the streets of Europe decided one day to cover up in „Burqa‟; this is by no means an argument against the moral superiority of the „Burqa‟! He‟s expressing his own frustration with a ruling that would obviously deprive him from a free pleasure that he had no right to enjoy in the first place! So fact of the matter is; he is the one that should be fixed here, not the laws of Sharee‟a!
There will always come a point where you have to say: This is the only evidently – and rationally - proper way – or ways - to understand those texts; and that‟s how it is: So take it or leave it! I do have the evidence that I claim to have, to prove to you that I‟m not telling you to follow an innovation or a philosophy that I or my ancestors invented, or any man for that matter! So sit down and listen to it if you are honestly searching for the true will of your creator!
The claim that any text of scripture is to be understood within the cultural context of the time and place of its reading, not the context and original understanding of its revelation, is simply like claiming that if you left a written will for your children after you, and some of them did not like its literal meaning, you should have no problem with them taking it “metaphorically” or making up a clearly different meaning from the one you specifically intended and sought to express! It‟s simply a claim that the Lord who revealed this text, had no particular meaning for it, and has no problem with people claiming whatever meaning they see fit for it!
You have – for example – texts that speak of Holy war in the Quran; but today many people in the west do not see them fit just because there isn‟t any such war going on where they live; So how do they justify what they read in the Quran? They may find no trouble at all in saying: The Lord was not talking about a physical war, but a spiritual one; or this is only a metaphor not a literal teaching, etc.! This is a clear lie! He either did mean a physical war – with historical evidence to support this understanding - or he
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meant a spiritual war or both! The meaning cannot be changed today to suit the way those people – or their societies - want it to be! It has to be understood properly, in its right context, and the way to do that is certainly not by making up a new “interpretation”!
This manipulation of meaning is exactly what theologians of Christianity do in their “apologetics” all the time, and find no trouble whatsoever with that; especially with texts of the Old Testament! Both Christian theologians and those Muslims who would follow such a method, are to be charged with clear forgery! The only difference is that while Muslims still have their evidently preserved understanding of those texts that stand all scholarly challenges of refutation (as we will demonstrate in Volume 2), Christians do lack the texts and evident explanations that would justify those stories of war and violence they find in the Old Testament, in the light of what the New Testament teaches about God, especially with the particularly vile and indecent language in which those texts are written; so they know they have no choice but resort to innovated interpretations!
As for Muslim scholars; and virtually for any sage man of religion who respects himself, his scripture, and the direct students of his prophet, any innovated interpretation of a text is – quite rationally - viewed to be something the prophet himself and his students never knew or heard anything about; so the question would then be: did the Lord address them by a text none of them understood properly, or managed to apply as He willed in their lives?! Or did He lead them astray instead of guiding them to the proper way (which was only discovered later in history)?
The point my reader - and to not go any further from our subject matter here - is that the professor is certainly unaware of the depth of the ocean of knowledge and wisdom, before which he‟s only a child building a sand castle at the beach! So superficially and so “comically” he addresses the question of “scripture” here, and makes conclusions that he wishfully thinks should condemn and criminalize all religions and all scriptures on earth!
So he may keep debating as many more Christian theologians as he wishes, proving them – as he may think – incoherent and contradictory as he would
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enjoy to do; this doesn‟t by any means put him even remotely close to the truth, and doesn‟t change the fact that there is indeed so much that he still has to learn, before he could come forth with any scholarly criticism against any religion, not to mention ALL “religion” and “scripture”!
The professor starts off in this section on scripture by saying:
―A common argument, attributed among others to C. S. Lewis (who should have known better), states that, since Jesus claimed to be the Son of God, he must have been either right or else insane or a liar: 'Mad, Bad or God'. Or, with artless alliteration, 'Lunatic, Liar or Lord'.‖
Well, clearly this is wishful thinking! It‟s no argument at all! I do agree with the professor on that point though: There is clearly another rational possibility that Lewis forgets here: people may have been telling lies about Jesus after his time, and calling them the word of God!
When he then mentions that there is no historical evidence to prove that he ever said anything about his being divine, or made any similar claim, he is indeed making a sound argument! There clearly isn‟t, and Christians cannot answer to that! All they have is their own choice of interpretation of certain texts that could indeed be interpreted in other distinct ways! There is no proof for an original understanding that could be referred to, and there is indeed no proof for the authenticity of the texts as we argued earlier!
They usually put forth the argument that so many historians telling this very same account could not possibly be all mistaken! And I say yes they could! When a man makes up a story, and people for any sort of reasons find themselves compelled and motivated to believe it (perhaps because they trust him when in reality he is not to be trusted), and then it is passed on to following generations, it becomes a tradition so dominant that it would be no surprise at all that you find it mentioned as an historical fact in as many historical accounts as you would find the story of the resurrection of Jesus, for example! Ask any Buddhist priest about historical evidence for accounted stories or miracles of any Buddha or Avatar that he believes in (a
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god incarnate as well, by the way!); he would give you volumes of such accounts!
So there must be a sound methodology to examine historical claims and stories and identify what is reliable and what is not, other than the childish position that anything that suits the Church creed and is authorized by the fathers has to be the truth! If indeed Christianity was meant to be taught to the whole world and to the end of times, then its methodology of authenticating scriptures and tracing narratives all the way back to their original authors must be superior to all other religions and to any method any historian ever dreamt of; after all if it is indeed God‟s word to all generations of man that are yet to follow, then it‟s God‟s intent to have it preserved for them in a rationally plausible and verifiable manner! After all, the religion was not revealed to those early fathers in Rome, Greece or Alexandria, and they certainly never met Jesus Christ in person, did they?! This perfect methodology I speak of is nowhere to be found in the Christian tradition, just as it is the case with every other false doctrine!
Thus I agree, wholeheartedly, with this statement:
―The fact that something is written down is persuasive to people not used to asking questions like: 'Who wrote it, and when?' 'How did they know what to write?' 'Did they, in their time, really mean what we, in our time, understand them to be saying?' 'Were they unbiased observers, or did they have an agenda that coloured their writing?'‖ (Dawkins p.92)
I am absolutely proud to invite every honest reader, to read about an intricate scientific methodology of historical verification the likes of which the world has never seen! A science in Islam that is known as: “Ilmul Hadith”: “The science of Isnad”, and “ilmul Rijal” “the science of men (narrators)”. When I speak of a methodology to examine stories, their narrators, the continuity of lines of narration of every particular story, the exact verifiable status of honesty and truthfulness of each and every single narrator and the examination of conditions and circumstances he lived in, I‟m talking about something that Muslims are obligated to practice and hold for an essential
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necessity to verify every narrative that is ascribed to their prophet or to his direct followers! This is not something we now wish we had Muslims of old take good care of ever since the first century after the prophet, so we could identify what exactly is evidently the words of prophet Muhammad and what is not! This indeed has been the job of this nation ever since the death of the prophet! Under a powerful rule of his direct disciples, the prophet left behind a nation that has religion at its core, with people not afraid to spill as much blood as it should take for the defense and protection of every single word that qualifies as scripture! And as soon as the first signs of people making mistakes or making up lies about the prophet started to show up in the time of the first disciple kings (Khalifas) (after the events of “Fitnah”) 11, the nation was immediately called to arms and Disciple scholars and their immediate students practiced a very conspicuous process of naming every narrator and examining his religiosity and his honesty. It has to be made clear that this oral practice of memorizing the name of the narrator along with the narrative, and delivering it as such, started at the time of the disciples themselves, during their lifetimes and under their authority, which is the reason why we are now followers of the only religion in the world that rejects any scriptural text that has a broken chain of narration or one that doesn‟t go all the way back to the disciples and from them to the prophet himself!
Again we remind the reader that prophet Muhammad did not leave behind him a number of scattered and persecuted disciples who were in fear for their own lives, as was the case with Prophet Jesus (praise be upon all prophets) and his followers! He left behind him strong warriors and kings who evidently had one and only one cause in their lives: The total submission of the entire nation to their Lord and the preservation and the
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11 The fact the scholars of the first century like Ibn Seereen, senior student of disciples (tabe’ee) – as cited in sahih Muslim - notoriously decided to ask every narrator to name his men on narration (his sources of narration that came to be called “rijal’ in chains known as “Isnad”), and to verify the status of those men, in safeguard against the threat of having innovators mix the lies they forge in their narrations to support their innovations, with authentic narrations (especially Shi’ites whose innovation appeared as early as thirty years after the death of the prophet), is by all means a point of pride to all Muslims, and is clear demonstration of the heavenly wisdom for which this major conflict (Fitnah) had to appear so early in the history of the Muslim nation! Any honest contemplator would have no choice but to admit that the history of this nation was actually forged by the creator in this exact way for the sake of preserving this religion like no other religion ever had a chance to be preserved!
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powerful propagation of the true religion throughout the world! Those noble holders of the religion were never weak or scattered, and they were not only twelve – or even a hundred or more - students, that had to flee for their lives and thus very little is known – and ambiguously enough - about what happened to them or how many of them really kept firm grasp on their faith in their prophet after he left them! NO! We‟re talking about tens of thousands of students and sincere followers here; with strength of faith and of will unmatched in the documented history of any other nation! No other prophet of Allah was given this kind of plentiful, powerful and sincere following companions!
What we know about this first nation and how fiercely it fought for the faith, makes us see clearly that historical conditions were actually shaped by the creator for this nation to rise for one purpose: the preservation of the final message of truth for the whole world to see, all the way to the end times!
The study and examination of authenticity of which the professor speaks here is indeed an essential craft for which an entire nation was built here; with the very blood of its believers I might add! I‟m not going to speak of the fact that the Quran is the only book on Earth that has survived for fourteen centuries without a single letter manipulated or altered! Everybody knows that! I rather urge the reader to open any book of Hadith today and see for himself how Muslims do not accept any story about their prophet and his immediate followers unless it has a continuous line of well known and scrutinized narrators going all the way back to the prophet (Isnad)! The slightest reason to doubt in any (Isnad) (series of narrators: X took from Y, and Y from Z and Z from A, and A from B, and so on all the way to the prophet or the disciple) is enough to undermine the reliability of a text and render it powerless as evidence in Islam, according to detailed rules and conditions of scholars of Hadith! I ask: In what other process of historical documentation in the whole world, do you find a similar methodology of scholarly verification and authentication of scripture?
The author then comes to this point:
―Robert Gillooly shows how all the essential features of the Jesus legend, including the star in the east, the virgin birth, the veneration
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of the baby by kings, the miracles, the execution, the resurrection and the ascension are borrowed – every last one of them - from other religions already in existence in the Mediterranean and Near East region.‖
Now let me explain the problem with this particular reasoning that he applies here! Regardless of how reliable “Robert Gillooly” is as an authority to speak of the issue in hand – he might as well refer to a plumber or a comic book writer for that matter! - , the bold claim that all similarities between different religions have only one explanation; that they copied from one another: is blind falsehood! It brings to my mind the kind of reasoning behind the belief that since so many species look alike, and share similar biophysical properties, and have the property of genetic re-adaptation, then they must have all had a common “primitive” ancestor! It‟s no surprise that a Darwinist would think this way!
However I must state that I agree that much of the Christian tradition is indeed copied from Pagan religions of old, especially the Roman Catholic traditions, due to evidence that cannot be discussed in detail in this volume (it‟s enough to say for now that there is not a single evidence to prove that Jesus or any of his disciples ever taught these traditions!). I also have to say that clearly – and evidently so - much of the Christian doctrine was indeed forged as such to appeal to pagan people of Greece and Rome!
But in all cases: Without evidence, you certainly can‟t jump to the general conclusion that all similarities between different religions should only mean that they all “copied” from one another!
Is it not a rational possibility that certain practices of worship were taught by a true prophet of “God” to an ancient people of old, and were taught again, many centuries later, to another nation by another prophet? After all it is a single creator who sends all true messengers and prophets to nations of mankind, and who has been doing this – as evident in Islamic scripture – ever since the dawn of mankind! Even Adam himself was a prophet who taught his offspring about God! The fact that people do have the tendency to waste knowledge, and get their religions corrupted with time and mutilated with myth and fallacy (and people do tend to copy those myths and get
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influences interchanged), and that their innovations do accumulate in layers and layers with time; is undeniable! However it does not mean that every similarity in certain religious practices or even in beliefs in particular miracles between two distinct religions is by necessity due to this corruption or to mutual influence and copying!
The point is: You cannot make the conclusion that Christianity copied this particular faith or this particular practice of worship from one or more previous old religions, on the basis of similarity alone!
Atheists need to be taught that the fact that they do not know about evidence, any form of evidence in this area of human knowledge, doesn‟t mean that such evidence does not exist!
Of course for a man with a set of beliefs like that of the professor, it is no surprise that at the face of it, all people of religion are nothing but blind followers and copycats for as far as he‟s concerned! This is so easy to claim … isn‟t it? Yes indeed! Who cares what knowledge or evidence any of those poor people think they really have? It‟s all nonsense anyway!
Yet they‟d say to whoever asks them: ―This is only my theory any way; I know that I could be wrong!”
Well, no you don‟t! You wouldn‟t be making your case the way Dawkins does in his book, if you really had any room for the slightest possibility that you might indeed be wrong about (religion)! You wouldn‟t even recognize that there is indeed a whole lot of knowledge that you still have to sit down and LEARN – free from prejudice - before you could take such an attitude! So the truth is; professor Dawkins is just as much a man of blind “faith” as every other „popularizer‟ of a false system of convictions and beliefs!
Bear with me my kind reader and you will see how many more times I will manage to demonstrate this fact to you.
He then proceeds to state the fact that there is no rational reason or a speck of evidence that makes us believe the four canonical books of Christianity to be any more “true” as “word of God” than other books overlooked and neglected by the ecclesiastic council!
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It‟s interesting how in a footnote he draws some examples that might demonstrate how inaccurate many translations of Aramaic words into Greek could indeed result in devastating manipulations of meaning, and we do agree to that in general.
However, what I cannot overlook in that footnote is how in the middle of his argument against manipulative translations, he quotes a particular Indian (Pakistani) „murtad‘ (a revert from Islam) who nicknames himself (Ibn Warraq) to raise the argument that Islam, as well, is accused of the same practices of mistranslation! Ibn Warraq claims, as mentioned by the professor that the belief that Muslim martyrs are rewarded seventy two virgins in heaven is based upon the manipulation of a word by translators which in reality doesn‟t mean “virgin”! I quote:
―The only competitor for the title of champion constructive mistranslation of all time also concerns virgins. Ibn Warraq has hilariously argued that in the famous promise of seventy-two virgins to every Muslim martyr, 'virgins' is a mistranslation of 'white raisins of crystal clarity‖ (Dawkins, p. 96)
Oh yes it is hilarious indeed! I cannot help but laugh at the use of such a quotation in this particular context! The man is desperately trying to make the point that the problems he thinks he has found with Christian scripture are typically to be found in all other scriptures all the same! It is a real pity!
Well, let alone the fact that this particular Ibn Warraq is an admitted enemy of Islam (with a book titled: Why I Am NOT a Muslim!), I urge the fair reasonable reader to answer to this question: What on earth does the ARABIAN Muslim understanding of the ARABIC Muslim scripture have to do with the problem that Christians have with mistranslation of scriptures from Aramaic to Greek to English? By what means of reason could such an argument be given any scholarly value whatsoever?
Here‟s the hilarious part: This Ibn Warraq is claiming that Muslims all across the fourteen centuries of their history have misunderstood the clear Arabic words of their scripture; he actually claims that this is because the
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Qur‟an was originally “written” in Syriac rather than Arabic! I mean, which planet did that man really come from? He thinks that Muslims of the world just found this book one day by accident in a box in some cave, and started “translating” it like some ancient archeological finding! And this man here, the respectable professor of biology, is actually quoting him, and using this bad joke as evidence to prove that Muslims suffer from the problem of “mistranslation” of scripture as well! What translation and what scripture? Does this man even know what he‟s talking about?
This is one of the worst examples I have seen in this book of exactly what he claims to be at war with: Blind faith, false reference, lack of evidence, unscholarly argumentation and unfounded prejudice! He might as well go as far as quoting comic book writers to support his position, and guess what; his followers would accept it all the same!
On the very next page he actually consults a professor of German language (G. A. Wells) who questions the historical validity of the existence of Jesus altogether!
Well, I generally have no problem with a professor of language writing about history or religion! However, a figure of academia as prominent as the professor is expected to take great care: who exactly he‟s quoting, in what field of knowledge, on what basis and for what end! If – for example - I‟m not a scholar of physics, then I shouldn‟t go quote a professor of language on a claim that destroys the consensus of physicists and actually destroys physics itself altogether! Suppose a historian one day wrote a book that refutes a mainstream position in medicine! By what authority could an uneducated layperson (with respect to the field of Medicine), agree with this historian and quote his claim despite the consensus of all physicians throughout history that opposes his claims?
I‟d be very happy to see the professor examine the evidence on both sides in a scholarly manner, to back up this extreme view he is citing here with anything even remotely close to a scholarly argument, or at least to show us why he thinks it may be worth serious consideration! But obviously he‟s only throwing a smoke bomb! It‟s like saying: “Oh and you know what?
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There are actually people who think that Jesus was never even born in the first place!” Well yes of course there are such people! So what? This is called child-play, my kind reader, not scholarly argumentation!
He knows that such writings that question the very existence of Jesus, are not at all worthwhile, and account for nothing really, but he would mention them anyway! He would do anything, anything at all, to attack religion, no matter how cheap, unscholarly and uninformed his arguments are!
He ends this section with a “Journalist” comment on the famed Novel: The Da-Vinci Code, pointing out that Christians should not be very upset with it, because after all, according to him, both the Novel and the scriptures it may oppose are all fiction from start to end! Now, is such a comment expected to offer any valuable argument or evidence of any form that supports his position towards the creator or towards “scripture” and “religion” in general, not to mention Christianity itself? Not at all! So what is he doing, really?
It‟s clearly not a question of „evidence‟ now, is it?!