Jochen Katz: Muhammad was Certain of Salvation and Heaven

Muhammed WAS Assured of Salvation and Guaranteed Paradise!

Two Christian evangelists ( Jochen Katz and his employer, Sam Shamoun) are claiming otherwise, hence a response to correct their bizarre claimsCutting Through Jochen Katz’s Rhetoric: Whistling in the Dark
Exercises in “Islamic Lexicography”

In a response to Bassam Zawadi, Jochen Katz begins with:For some time now, Sam Shamoun and Bassam Zawadi have been involved in a discussion on the question of whether Muhammad was assured of his (eternal) salvation and of Allah’s forgiveness of his sins
Katz qualifies his interjection and distances himself from future discussions; essentially Katz is looking to work a hit and run piece on Zawadi:I am happy to leave the bulk of the theological discussion to them.
Well Katz, I am not happy to leave any theological discussion in the incapable hands of Sam “Islam allows sex with animals” Shamoun as your employer, Shamoun, has a fertile imagination and a history of making things up. Zawadi, I trust, is no Sam Shamoun so let’s leave the discussion to Zawadi and Tony Costa. Oh wait a moment, they have already had a comprehensive discussion/debate on whether Muhammad was assured of salvation or not and the outcome was positive for Bassam Zawadi’s affirmative position. (appendix 1)

Perhaps this blow to Jochen Katz and hi co-religionists is the reason why Katz has stepped into the darkness with whistle in hand ready to whistle tunes of confusion, conflation and conjecture.

Katz, let me be frank, I smelt a rat in learning of your “article” immediately after a positive debate (victory) for Bassam Zawadi thus I came your way and I didn’t like the foul odour of conjecture and fallacy coming from your article.

So let’s see if we can freshen things up for youProof Muhammad was Certain of Salvation and Paradise
It is difficult to believe people are still peddling questions regarding Muhammad’s salvation, ponder upon this Quranic verse:

Surah 9:72Allâh has promised to the believers -men and women, - Gardens under which rivers flow to dwell therein forever, and beautiful mansions in Gardens of 'Adn (Eden Paradise). But the greatest bliss is the Good Pleasure of Allâh. That is the supreme success.
Now Muhammed is a believing man, thus according to the Quran he is to be in Paradise thus showing his salvation is certain. Those who are unsaved are not going to Paradise, only the saved enter Paradise (like Jesus and Muhammad).

Muhammad Declares he Will be in Paradise

Here is the most explicit reference I could get hold of regarding Muhammad:

Sahih Bukhari Volume 8, Book 73, Number 34:
Narrated Sahl bin Sa'd:
The Prophet said, "I and the person who looks after an orphan and provides for him, will be in Paradise like this," putting his index and middle fingers together.

Thus Muhammad is CONFIRMING he will be IN Paradise (and those looking after orphans will be very close to him in Paradise). Anybody of a reasonable disposition will acknowledge this points to Muhammad being GUARANTEED Paradise and SALVATION!


Here is another quick one:

“No one will enter Paradise except a Muslim” ((Reported by al-Bukhaari, 6047).

Muhammad is a Muslim therefore Paradise is guaranteed for him. However knowing Shamoun’s fertile imagination and obstinacy he will claim Muhammad to be a non-Muslim in order to maintain his bizarre claim



We have already seen Muhammad is going to Paradise and therefore is guaranteed Paradise. But let us cut through some of the now obsolete points Katz has been making in order to get a flavour of his shoddy approach to matters related to faithDeconstructing Katz
For the benefit of the reader they have been arguing over S48:12 in order to ascertain whether Muhammed had salvation assured or not.

Lo! We have given thee (O Muhammad) a signal victory, That Allah MAY forgive thee of thy sin that which is past and that which is to come, and MAY perfect His favour unto thee, and MAY guide thee on a right path, S. 48:1-2 Pickthall

As you can imagine Shamoun and those following his methodology such as Katz have been working the “May” angle in an attempt to convince us Muhammad’s salvation was uncertain.
However their attempt to express the word "may" as a word which denotes uncertainty is flimsy as the Quran is explained via Ahadith literature (this is the second principle of Tafsir, see Von Denffer's Ulum al Quran, pg123) and thus we REALISE the "may" denotes CERTAINTY as the Ahadith literature shows Muhammed and all the Muslims WILL be in Heaven, thus indicating they WILL be forgiving. Therefore the "may" denotes certainty and we realise through S48:2 that Mohammad WAS forgiven beyond any doubt. Thus Muhammad was certain of SALVATION

The critics (i.e. Katz and Shamoun) do not like this as it scuppers their arguments but sometimes the truth hurts; in this case it is hurting the likes of Katz and Shamoun.

NOTE: The subsequent passage related to "may" is irrelevant as the word "assa" does not appear in S48:2. However it serves to highlight Katz willingness to resort to shoddy scholarship in an attempt to fly in the face of authority


The Arabic word translated as "may" isعسى ('assa). Ibn Mandhur in his famous Lisaan al-Arab dictionary says that the word 'assa could linguistically either indicate probability or certainty. (Ibn Manzur, Lisaan Al Arab, Volume 15, page 54; under the word عسا)

Jochen Katz gives his amateur nature an outing by declaring:“My guess is that the dictionary actually speaks of “possibility” rather than “probability”.Is this bloke for real? He is guessing? That sounds a lot like conjecture, what is Katz basing his guess work on? He does not say, perhaps it is a “convenient” guess in an attempt to resurrect his dead claim. I don’t know much about Katz, is he always this shoddy or is it just a case of him having no alternative as he is being employed by Shamoun to breathe new life into Shamoun’s old-hat material?

Katz goes on to facetiously attack a spelling error on the part of Zawadi, ever heard of typographical errors or genuine errors Katz?

Jochen Katz then gets into a spot of semantics about “assa” having two meanings:If there is any language that uses the same word to express “possibility” and “certainty”, i.e. the same word means both “perhaps” and “certainly”, this is bound to produce an enormous number of misunderstandings in daily communications. It would be incredibly impractical to use such a word at all. It is nearly like claiming a word could mean both “left” and “right” or “up” and “down” or “square” and “circle” or “yes” and “no”.
It is odd, Jochen Katz is appealing to other languages to prop up his claim, in case Katz did not notice we are dealing with Arabic thus his point is of no use as each language has its own idiosyncrasies and curiosities.

However, I would like to point Katz to good old English, if he is a native English speaker he would know “may” in the English language can denote certainty or probability. I will leave him to figure it out.

Looks like the dictionary reference is getting to Katz:“Occasionally even dictionaries contain errors and misunderstandings”
Yes, he is right, dictionaries can get it wrong on occasions. Curiously this is one of those occasions coming into play conveniently as the dictionary refutes Katz and his cohorts.

It gets worse for Katz because the experts come to play
Classical experts in Arabic and the Quran explain the word “assa” referring to certainty (obligation) in the Quran.
Imam Al-Qurtubi said:
عَسَى " مِنْ اللَّه وَاجِبَة.
'assa from Allah is an obligation. (Abu 'Abdullah Al-Qurtubi, Tasfir al Jami' li-ahkam al-Qur'an, Commentary on Surah 9:18, Source)

Al-Tabari states:
وَكُلّ " عَسَى " فِي الْقُرْآن فَهِيَ وَاجِبَة
Every occurrence of 'assa in the Qur'an is an obligation. (Ibn Jarir al-Tabari, Jami' al-bayan fi ta'wil al-Qur'an, Commentary on Surah 9:18, Source)

So it is really a case of either believing the experts or some bloke on the internet called Jochen Katz. With all due respect Katz you don’t even know Arabic so the people of coherence will side with the experts.

Katz you can either sling it out in the hole of irrational obstinacy, which you and your pals dug, or you can move over to the light with the experts and the rest of us and acknowledge your error. Perhaps you have mitigating circumstancing in that you were coerced by your employer to adopt such an anaemic argument.

Katz if you STILL have not come to your senses yet and persist with such shoddy argumentation then let us deal with a bit more of your material. Here goes, (I know, Katz, it is like pulling toenails) Katz embarrassingly adopted further desperate reasoning in an attempt to explain away the EXPERTS, so we have a bloke on the internet with no qualifications at all challenging one of the FOREMOST authorities (Tabari) on the Quran and Quranic Arabic. Talk about bringing a needle to a gun fight! Katz writes:However, obligation does not produce certainty. This can be illustrated very easily. The five daily prayers are an obligation on every adult Muslim. Does every adult Muslim perform the obligatory prayers? Certainly NOT!
Well Katz the EXPERT (Tabari) said “Every occurrence of 'assa in the Qur'an is an obligation” and you (Katz) expect us to denounce the expert simply because you produced some shoddy reasoning?



For some reason Katz is bent on throwing distracting spiel at the material in order to cover the obvious. I think that is enough toenail wrenching for one day, certainly enough for a reasonable person to realise their error. The rest of Katz material was irrelevant to the subject and he seemed transfixed with a personal tussle with Bassam Zawadi.

PS Word of advice - Katz, If I were you, I’d read the Tafsir literature concerning S9:102, you are setting yourself up for a fall. However I feel you produced your material in the hope/expectation Zawadi will not respond to your article due to the timing and his schedule (hence the artistic freedom within your work). You could do the honest thing and abjure yourself by retracting what passes off as an “article” in the eyes of your employer.An Appeal to David Copperfield (sorry I meant Jochen Katz) and a RebukeKatz utilizes misdirection, surely he knew what he was doing was far from Kosher.
Is this what it has come to Katz? Smoke and mirrors? Have some dignity and respect for your audience, not everybody has an IQ of 0, people who do a modicum of investigation will realise you are leading them up the garden path. This will only serve to increase the growing number of people who don’t trust your site.

If an appeal to self-respect is not enough then how about a concern for the Church, the ministries (specifically referring to Christian outreaches designed to convert Muslims to the Trinity) are in disrepute; you have Ergun Caner being publicly denounced as a liar, the James White saga, Acts 17 affair and Sam Shamoun’s latest batch of audio abuse of a Muslim youth. That area of “evangelism” looks more than a little debauched, Katz.

So brother Jochen, I ask you to stop adding new material to it. Please browse through some of the material in the appendices and rethink your service to Sam Shamoun. I believe Jesus would not partner any “Shamoun” types, I appeal to you to do the thing of Jesus. Think about it, you don’t edify the Church through the shoddy and corrupt approach you evidenced in your article.

Think about it brother Katz
Peace
Yahya Snow

Any articles/material/ private correspondence should be sent to:
YahyaSnow@hotmail.com

Appendices

Appendix 1

Debate review between Bassam Zawadi and Reverend Tony Costa: Was Muhammad Assured of Salvation, Zawadi did an excellent job in proving Muhammad was certain of salvation and refuting:http://muslimdebateinitiative.wordpress.com/2010/07/11/muslim-review-of-bassam-zawadi-vs-tony-costa/



May Allah bless Bassam further and help other brothers to learn from his material, Ameen.

My debate review will appear here shortly, Insha’Allah:

Appendix 2

I have almost given up on inviting Christians to rebuke this shoddy behaviour, perhaps you will oblige, Katz

Jochen, please browse some of this material and do pass it on to Rv Tony Costa as a religious authority is required to rebuke and mentor Sam Shamoun so he can play safe on the internet, Shamoun’s latest outrage is here in audio form:http://thefactsaboutislam.blogspot.com/2010/07/sam-shamouns-foul-mouth-continues-with.html



Here is a spot of James White controversy, oddly enough it was due to White relying on Sam Shamoun, and your employer seems to be cropping up quite often in what appears to be embarrassing turns for the church, feel free to rebuke Shamoun:http://thefactsaboutislam.blogspot.com/search/label/James%20White



Seen as Shamoun is flavour of the month, here is another one for you:http://thefactsaboutislam.blogspot.com/2010/06/acts17-trip-to-isna.html


I think that is enough to keep you preoccupied

A ppendix 3
Interesting:http://qa.sunnipath.com/issue_view.asp?HD=7&ID=1748&CATE=108