Jonathan McLatchie and his colleagues have produced lengthy videos and they are in at least three parts. I can’t cover every point but will offer a few responses and bits of commentary on the journey (I only managed to cover about 30 mins of the first part but I suspect much of their later comments will be repetitive or on a similar theme)
2. The mockery and belittlement of Hamza Myatt and an understanding of the culture at Speakers Corner
3. Dr Chris Claus' asked to apologise for his accusations of cowardice, "attacking women" and of intimidation tactics.
4. A discussion on the resurrection claims of the minimalist movement
5. Biblical and Quranic preservation
6. Hadith, and the Isnad from St John to Polycarp to Irenaeus to Eusebius
7. Comments on the importance of manuscripts for Hadith, Quran and the Bible
8. Concerns young Montenegrin Vladimir Susic could be radicalised by Islamophobic Christian groups on the net.
9. My theory on why Hamza Myatt was the subject of a demeaning double standard (controversial!)
10. James White and consistency
11. A few words for Jonathan McLatchie
1. Firstly a message to Liz Mooney
I don’t know you – you seem like a pleasant person so I hope you will look into what “the other side” has to say and help build bridges between sincere Muslims and Christians. I understand you’re new to Christianity; I would ask you to look into the doctrine of the Trinity with respect to its historical origins if you have not done so yet. This is a major dividing line between Muslims and Christians. Please see
2. Jonathan, Chris and Vlad belittling and mocking Hamza
So this is an inescapable observation. Jonathan McLatchie and his two friends (Valdimir Susic and Dr Chris Claus) accuse Hamza of belittling Christians but then proceed with a theme (the bits I listened to anyway) to mock and belittle Hamza Myatt and Muslim apologists in general. I understand this was probably due to them trying to get a bit of “revenge” for what they may have perceived to have been an uncomfortable experience for Elizabeth Mooney but come on lads – you folks come off really childish. You come across as three blokes (well two blokes and one 15 yr old – sorry Vlad had to point that out) trying to white-knight for Liz. I doubt she wanted you peeps come out with the metaphorical pitchforks and torches running towards Hamza.
What I’ve gathered from Speakers Corner is that the bigger personalities try to keep the focus on a subject and thus can be militant about keeping their “opponent” on topic. I understand why they do this; it makes for a better dialogue and it helps the viewers at home follow the dialogue. Far too often those dialogues are frustrating due to interruptions, diversions and a lack of structure. Hence, people like Hamza Myatt try to rigorously instil structure and sideline diversions and interruptions. This may unsettle some people initially but it’s not done for nefarious purposes. I’m sure Liz can understand that.
Beth Grove, Jay Smith, Hatun Tash and co. all do similar. But they bellow down from a ladder at Muslims who don’t have a great grasp of the English language. Beth has come across rude and aggressive towards Muslims in the past. Where are the white-knights for those poor Muslims?
It’s the way things are at that venue. It's not my cup of tea but I like watching some of the encounters and I like the Muslim personalities there. I do a lot of editing of footage from that venue and I get what it's all about. Jonathan should get it too. Thus there’s no need to try and portray Hamza as public enemy #1. Leave him alone guys.
I personally like it when a Muslim keeps the dialogue on track and right now I’m into the way Hashim and Mansur zone in on the doctrine of the Trinity and other related beliefs – these are the first things a Muslim notices about Christianity. Its doctrine concerning God needs to be discussed as this is a foundational difference between the two faiths.
As for the dialogue, it was a mismatch and Jonathan and co perhaps saw it as such hence their lengthy video responses. Liz was in a dialogue with a veteran of that platform and she has pretty recently delved into Christianity. There’s no blame in not being experienced in Muslim-Christian dialogue but there is blame in not wanting to learn and seek the truth. If Liz leaves having learnt something then she has “won”.
NOBODY DIED – THE SELF APPOINTED CAVALRY CAN STAND DOWN. Jk
3. Chris Claus’ Accusations of Intimidation, Cowardice and
“Attacking Women”
Dr Chris Claus' comments in the audio discussion with Jon and Vlad as well as his Facebook comments were offensive.
I would urge Dr Chris Claus to retract and apologise for his comments about the two gentlemen to the left of Liz and his unacceptable allegation levelled at Hamza of “attacking women”.
In the audio he claimed the two gentlemen listening in were intimidating her. Chris, I’d imagine the two gentlemen you spoke about would not appreciate such a smear. Crossing one's arms on a cold day whilst standing still is hardly intimidation and the other benign looking guy on the far left is similar in size to Liz – hardly Brock Lesnar intimidation going on there.
This seems to be an issue with Chris; did Chris ask Liz whether she was intimidated by those two or did he assume that about her? And what about those two poor guys he’s smeared? I strongly suspect they are just really decent and friendly guys.They look like pretty good lads - spending their time trying to learn. Good on them. Their integrity and reputation needs to be defended. I highly doubt they had any other intention but to listen in on the conversation. And Chris, I doubt they are hired by Hamza to crowd the opponent in some sort of tactic of intimidation as you alleged on FB
Another point, how do you know they weren’t Christians or some other non-Muslims? I don’t recall seeing any footage of them declaring their religious convictions – you do get some brown Christians (Paul of Tarsus, anybody?) jk
On top of that, Chris, your claims on social media of Hamza being too scared to debate don’t do you any favours and the allegation that “he is attacking women at a park” is unacceptable and offensive.
I’ll leave it to you to retract and apologise to Hamza.
Right, I think that’s all the loose ends tied up. Let’s focus on some real apologetics. Finally!
For reasons of time I’m not going to cover all the claims the three Christian apologists made.
I’ll leave it to you to retract and apologise to Hamza.
Right, I think that’s all the loose ends tied up. Let’s focus on some real apologetics. Finally!
For reasons of time I’m not going to cover all the claims the three Christian apologists made.
4. “I’m a Christian because of the resurrection narratives” - discussing the resurrection claims and a familiar comment on the crucifixion narrative
Liz Mooney states she is a Christian because of her investigations into the Resurrection narratives.
This seems to me to be a minimalist approach adopted by people like Dr Mike Licona. I don’t understand this line of reasoning. I don’t get how a corollary of the belief that Jesus resurrected is faith in the NT canon, the Trinity doctrine, the incarnation doctrine and Paul’s prophethood.
This seems to me to be a minimalist approach adopted by people like Dr Mike Licona. I don’t understand this line of reasoning. I don’t get how a corollary of the belief that Jesus resurrected is faith in the NT canon, the Trinity doctrine, the incarnation doctrine and Paul’s prophethood.
As for the resurrection story, I
don’t see Dr Mike’s claims about the resurrection of Jesus narrative to be
convincing. In fact he does not champion the biggest resurrection story in theGospels (that of the many saints in Matthew). Bishop NT Wright stated there
were Church Fathers who thought they could go into Jerusalem and talk to these
resurrected saints thus for these Church Fathers this resurrection story was a
historical event. If the author of Matthew made such a huge resurrection story
up, or if he borrowed it from an oral tradition floating around at the time then;
is it not plausible that there were people willing to fabricate resurrection
stories into the oral/written tradition of the time? Thus is it possible the
resurrection story about Jesus was fabricated to be a physical and literal
resurrection or simply some sort of conjecture after he was seen in visions or seen
physically after being saved from a crucifixion?
And why is Dr Licona not trying to prove the resurrection story of the many saints is historical? It’s because his faith does not revolve around it so he marginalises it just like he does with doctrines like the Trinity and Traditionalist Inerrancy. Rest assured if we found a NT manuscript saying the resurrection of the saints is integral to Christian salvation there will be a number of Christians trying to prove it to be historical in the same way Dr Licona operates with the Jesus resurrection narrative.
Dr Licona is a minimalist who has tried to reduce the amount of convincing he needs to do in his preaching to Atheists (and uncertain Christians) hence why he goes down that path. Dr Bart Ehrman would point to the contradictions in and around the crucifixion story and the post resurrection narratives to highlight the lack of reliability of the accounts and he would also state the historical methodology Licona claims to be using does not deliberate on miracles as likely possibilities.
Dr Ehrman would say Christians changed their stories to try and convince people into the faith, hence the resurrection accounts.
And why is Dr Licona not trying to prove the resurrection story of the many saints is historical? It’s because his faith does not revolve around it so he marginalises it just like he does with doctrines like the Trinity and Traditionalist Inerrancy. Rest assured if we found a NT manuscript saying the resurrection of the saints is integral to Christian salvation there will be a number of Christians trying to prove it to be historical in the same way Dr Licona operates with the Jesus resurrection narrative.
Dr Licona is a minimalist who has tried to reduce the amount of convincing he needs to do in his preaching to Atheists (and uncertain Christians) hence why he goes down that path. Dr Bart Ehrman would point to the contradictions in and around the crucifixion story and the post resurrection narratives to highlight the lack of reliability of the accounts and he would also state the historical methodology Licona claims to be using does not deliberate on miracles as likely possibilities.
Dr Ehrman would say Christians changed their stories to try and convince people into the faith, hence the resurrection accounts.
I think I recently saw an email in
which a colleague in online apologetics
is due to publish an in depth survey into 1st century views amongst
Christians concerning the crucifixion. I understand a lot of Christians take
the superficial swipe at Muslims of “ all the historians agree the crucifixion
is a historical event” but for us Muslims there’s a supernatural component to
this – a component historians who use
the naturalist method will not factor into their thinking. This quote sourced
from Blogging Theology is apropos to some of the superficial polemics against
Islam:
The distinguished Christian philosopher and believer in the crucifixion Rev Professor John Hick, was honest enough to admit,
‘Historically it is very difficult to dispute the qur’anic verse since presumably it would not be possible for observers at the time to tell the difference between Jesus being crucified and his only appearing to be crucified – unless what is suggested is that someone else was crucified in his place.’
‘Historically it is very difficult to dispute the qur’anic verse since presumably it would not be possible for observers at the time to tell the difference between Jesus being crucified and his only appearing to be crucified – unless what is suggested is that someone else was crucified in his place.’
5. Biblical and Quranic Preservation
I think I heard the argument of the number of manuscripts – the NT being the best attested book in antiquity. The audio is horrendous but I’ve addressed Andy Bannister’s claim via a video by putting him alongside a NTtextual critic. In any case, Dr Sami Ameri mentions the NT manuscript number is not that high in comparison with the number of Quranic manuscripts we have – we have an estimated 250,000 despite the Quran being copied from the 7th century (centuries later than the NT). And here's Dr Brown:
The majority of
Western scholars also affirm the Quran's date of origin and overall textual
integrity. See Behnam Sadeghi and Mohsen Goudarzi, 'San'a' 1 and the Origins of
the Quran'. Misquoting Muhammad, Jonathan
A.C Brown, Kindle, Loc. 868
As for the preservation of the New Testament I don’t think the issues around the preservation of the NT are as profound as a childish telephone game and I, right now with my personal outlook on the NT texts, wouldn’t be surprised if the Gospel of Mark we have today is pretty close to what the author of Mark originally wrote. And similarly for the text that was given to the community by the editors of 2 Corinthians.
I do have certain contentions with
the NT’s preservation which I’m not going to get into here . I think a couple
of big issues that many seem to overlook:
1. Canonicity and Inspiration. The original
authors did not consider their written work to be inspired. This idea of
inspiration came about later on. The
process of canonisation and the criteria for such is extremely murky and just
seems to be a community decision thus in reality nobody with any authority ever
declared these documents to be inspired.
2. Failure of the Church Fathers vs
the Success of the Sahaba (Companions)
Muslims know the contents of the
Quran, whilst Christian scholars have admitted they do not know the content of
the NT for certain – they believe they have the NT preserved in the manuscript
tradition BUT when it comes to the variants the Christians are NOT certain as
to which variant is from the original NT which may also be an issue for the Christian belief he Holy Spirit guides Christians in Scripture not the mention the idea of Self Authentication of the Bible.
This is really down to a failure
of the Church Fathers and a lack of oral tradition with reference to the NT.
Whilst the existence of the oral tradition of the Quran and the efforts of the
Sahaba thanks to divine providence leaves Muslims secure in what the contents
of the Quran are.
Hamza touched on the lack of
stability of the NT text today. I think us Muslims need to be awfully careful
when making this point (to ensure no immature critics latch onto it and go on a
spree of attacking unsuspecting internet Christians with it) as it is a faith
destroying point for our Christian friends. The NT text is still POSSIBLY subject
to change.
The Bible is not a closed text. There has been a
relatively recent precedent of whole chunks of the NT being relegated to
possible forgery status as per the findings of Dr Von Tischendorf in the 19th
century (cf. John 7:53-8:11 and Mark 16:9-20). They are finding new manuscripts
regularly. There is nothing to stop another unique find relegating other parts of the
NT to possible forgery (scribal addition) status. What if that happens in 50
years time regarding John 1:1-18 and John 20:28? All it would take would be
a discovery of an early MSS of said texts omitting such verses or
rendering different wording in those verses to the extent of changing the
apparent meaning of the text.
And what of all those Christians who passed away
believing in those texts prior to the discovery at Sinaiticus? And what was the
role of the Holy Spirit in their lives?
It's clear Christians cannot have complete confidence
in their NT texts.
6. Hadith
– John and Isnad Chains to Irenaeus from Polycarp
OK,
this is getting really long now and I don’t really fancy going through more of
the video picking out points but I recognise this to be an important area of
discussion. There were a few comments coming from all three of the critics
about Hadith. I’m ging to be lazy and
copy and paste a comment I made on Blogginh Theology to a critic who was trying
to attack the Ahadith literature in an effort to defend the NT. IIRC it was on
Eric Bin Kisam’s post on Hadith on BT.
Before
I paste that I want to talk about this idea of a written isnad (chain) from
John through Polycarp to Irenaeus. It’s discussed in this video. The two points
to come out of the video on this subject: the claim of Polycarp and Papias
having associations with John are thought to be fabrications by Dr Bart Ehrman (reasoning
for this is given in the video) and secondly the claim of a chain of
transmission from John to Irenaeus militates against the idea that John was a
Trinitarian as Irenaeus seems to be a Unitarian as shown via a clip of Dr Dale
Tuggy.
Just
to add another point – it’s not a chain of transmission as there wasn’t an oral
transmission and how do we get from Irenaeus (d. 202) to Eusebius (who was born
60 years after Irenaeus died)? Given
Irenaeus’ work is dated from 175 to 185 CE it means there could be more than a
gap of 100 years between Eusebius' receipt of the documents and Irenaeus’ penning of such. In Hadith studies that
would relegate the tradition to having a missing link (or in this case more
than one missing link) and the missing links are anonymous here thus really posing problems for
the acceptability of the tradition that Polycarp was the student of John. The
two Church Fathers did not directly communicate so Eusebius cannot vouch for
the historicity of the claims - another problem. Eusebius is reliant on written sources coming
his way – who gave them to him is unknown ( unknown narrator/s!). We’ve already
seen how Christians changed the texts of and fabricated texts in the name of
Ignatius of Antioch. What makes anybody think this didn’t happen for the text
Eusebius received?
All
this uncertainty is due to a lack of an oral tradition and a chain of
transmission. We don’t have the time to get into the reliability of Eusebius
but what’s been offered here is plenty of food for thought.
7. Talking
Manuscripts for Haith literature and the Quran (as well as the Bible)
Right here’s an old comment concerning Hadith vs NT that I wrote on BT – check things up if you’re unsure (I wrote it quickly and I’m not a scholar):
You’re comparing apples with oranges. Muslims aren’t reliant on manuscripts to reconstruct any text – be it the Quran or the Ahadith books. Yet Christians are reliant on manuscripts to do so – to the extent that they call the Bible they have today a theoretical construction and the manuscrpts they collect are called “witnesses”. In our tradition, the witnessing is done orally through transmitters. That’s a key difference here.
Sahih Bukhari was heard and transmitted by 90,000 Muslims from Imam Bukhari himself (as mentioned by one of his students). The way the early Muslims did transmission of Hadith was the teacher having the student read from the student’s text back to the teacher or vise versa (the names of both individuals were known). Again contrast this with the way the “witnesses” of the Bible came into being, there was no checking – an anonymous person was just writing the text himself (in fact we don’t know the name of ANY scribes of the NT).
You also asked for manuscripts of Sahih Bukhari. As I’ve alluded to the finding ancient manuscripts aren’t important for the Muslim methodology BUT I want to point out that according to the article I read Manjana (an Orientalist scholar) said the oldest manuscript he came across was written in 370AH. This, with respect to the tradition of Bukhari, is earlier than ANY complete Bible (NT) we have!!!
You mentioned you want an extant and complete manuscript of Bukhari prior to the 11th century (roughly 300-400 years after Bukhari) yet this date is roughly on par with the earliest complete NT (which I believe is Sinaiticus, mid 4th century CE). So if you want something earlier for Bukhari albeit Muslim methodology not reliant on the manuscript tradition I’m sure you will want something much more earlier for the NT – earlier than Codex Sinaiticus. Thus, I believe you will not trust the NT until you discover something much earlier.
For more info, see the article on IslamQA: He is asking for the original copies of Sahih Bukhari and Sahih Muslim. [Sorry I’m having tech probs here and am in a rush so cannot link it – may link it later if I check back on this thread]
NB. I find your comments about the Quran to be absurd. How can Uthman’s destruction of manuscripts mean that the Quranic text we have today is not the one which we had at the time of Uthman? You do realise all the companions were in agreement with Uthman’s actions – thus we can certainly be confident that the Quran we have today is the same as the companions verified and agreed upon it. What more can one ask for? Be consistent, who agreed and verified the NT texts? The original authors never even believed what they were writing was “inspired” thus nobody was walking around with the same care, urgency and respect for those texts as that of the Quran. Not only that, we know the idea of inspiration for those texts began to spring up decades or even centuries afterwards – so much so that Sinaiticus contains books (epistle of Barnabas and the Shepherd of Hermas) which aren’t even considered inspired to this day – there was huge debate over Revelation and the shorter epistles of Paul. This dispute was around at the time of Eusebius where books such as James and Jude were still being debated (amongst others).
Look, it’s obvious Christians would love to have had companions of Jesus agree on their text – it’s not the case. In fact, they don’t even have the companions of the authors of the NT books agree upon and control the dissemination of the text. It’s not the case.
PS Don’t bring up Ibn Masud. It’s been done to death and it’s tiring continually explaining this to Christians.
...Seriously you're just being insincere now or you're utterly unaware of Muslim responses. The Ibn Masud stuff has been done to death. Just seek it out and read up - after doing so you will see why I've dismissed it. The same applies to the Hadith you refer to.
The reason why we don't make a big deal about the manuscript tradition of the Quran as it was never important. Manuscripts were just used as aids for memorisation. Nobody was thinking, hold on folks we need to preserve these manuscripts so people in the future can have a Quran. It was and still is a living transmission. With the Bible it's different and now you guys are scratching around in rubbish heaps (yes the one in Egypt where the majority of MSS were found was a rubbish heap) trying to RECONSTRUCT (yes, the scholars say they try to theoretically construct the NT using available MSS) so much so that textual criticism scholars have given up on the original text.
As for your claim about NT books being debated; they were being debated because originally the authors didn't think their books were inspired and/or the immediate audience. These books ended up being included in the canon based on majority rule and it was all finalised in 397 at the council of Carthage. This actually militates against the belief the Holy Spirit guides Christians in Scripture as there were generations of Christians who did not even know what to consider inspired or not in those days where the Church was debating and deliberating.
In summary, we have a book which all Muslims accept as being complete and having been agreed upon by the companions (yes all of them) and agreed upon by every generation of Muslims thereafter coming to us through mass transmission. That's the Quran. Whilst on the hand the Christians have a book that none of the companions of Jesus nor their subsequent companions ever saw nor sanctioned. The subsequent generations never agreed upon what the Bible was (i.e. what should be in included) and it has never been considered complete since modern textual criticism - even to this day. Scholars look for new MSS every day trying to add to the Bible or at the very least find new "witnesses" to help verify the current text as the current text is not considered to be reliable nor complete. That's the Bible.
There's a world of difference. Christians would love to have a similar situation for their Bible as Muslims have for the Quran. This envy does not work both ways - Muslims would not want to be in the position of the Christian.
Be sincere brother. You'll admit this to yourself at the very least.
Peace
8. Vladimir
Susic
You’re
a young man, please be mindful of allowing an “us vs them” attitude to stultify
you. A lot of this group mentality attacking and belittling Muslims on the
internet from folks like Sam Shamoun, CP, David Wood etc. Is part of the clash
of civilisations mentality and it demonizes Muslims. Jonathan himself had to be
told off for propagating hoax-propaganda of “sharia-no-go-zones” in Europe and
for intimating Muslims in Britain are a fifth column waiting to butcher
Christians.
You’re
from the Balkans and this region has within our lifetime had a bloody conflict
between Christians and Muslims where Muslims were massacred.
The
obvious concern here given your geographical location is this type of negative
propaganda against Muslims and Islam has the potential to fuel further
resentment between communities.
On
top of this, Sam Shamoun recently posted on one of my YT vids explaining why he
acts the way he does. In his formative years a Muslim belittled him and the Christian
faith – this left Sam scarred and partly
motivated him to get into polemics against Muslims and Islam. The end result is
now a middle aged man who posts nonsense
about Muslims on the net like Muslims can have sex with animals, dead women
etc.
Look,
Vlad, there’s a bigger world out there. As you gain more life experience you’ll
see the need for Muslims and Christians to work together. In Western Europe
there’s an onslaught on religion by the secularists. Dr Ali Ataie has told us
the Christians aren;t our biggest enemy. The major threat to faith is Atheism
and secular humanism right now.
Don’t
allow people to snare you into little circles of angry Christian fundamentalism
that lashes out against Muslims for reasons of ideology and/or cash.
Muslims
and Christians need to work together
9. The response to Hamza Myatt was a microcosm of my theoretical landscape
I
saw a comment from Hamza stating he has been misrepresented by Jon. I don’t have the time to look into much more
of this.
Muslims
need to stand up for each other. Sadly
right now I detect a general trend amongst Christian apologists (I’m speaking
generally here offering my observations) where they look down on Muslims and
look up to Atheists/secularists.
A
lot of this is due to the idea of a clash of civilisations so the Muslim is otherized
to the extent that we receive comments from folk telling us we can’t be British
and Muslim and not to mention the veiled death threats we receive from such
folk. With the Atheists/secularis, they are seen by the Christians to be their intellectual
superiors, their professors, their family members, their friends and part of the fabric of the West (in fact
the engine room and pioneers of the modern Western world).
Whilst
Muslims are seen as pretty much the opposite thus when they see Muslims out-debating
a Christian it turns their world upside down. The same happens when aboriginal
Westerners convert to the faith of Islam.
I’ll
give you a couple of examples to illustrate this. Tom Holland upon making the
claim of Christianity being the root of Western civilisation Christians were
fawning over him. Little did they realise his main focus was on the “Christian”
teaching of separation of Church and State (something that in the West has ironically precipitated the rise of faithlessness and secularism!).
Folks like John Calvin would not have agreed but nevertheless the Christians
were lapping it up – their superior (a secularist) dropped a bit of praise on
them. If a Muslim had done the same I doubt the same servile attention would
have been given to him/her.
Just look at the arguments! Christian apologetics has invested billions into trying to convert secularists and they have employed their greatest thinkers in the West to try and engage with Atheists, Nones, etc. They’ve employed sophisticated arguments and have even compromised their faith principles (relented on female pastors, gay clergy, gay marriage, marriage after divorce if the ex is still alive, turned a blind eye to sex outside of marriage, loosened the concept of modest dress, minimized the Bible, etc.) in an effort to accommodate and bring into the Christian fold the secularists. They prize the secularist because the secularist is their superior, their family member and their professor/fave celeb.
But contrast that with what they do to Muslims. The Muslim is the other. Not a superior like the secularist. Not an equal. But a lesser specimen. They speak of Muslims as though Muslims are dimwits – this is reflected in the low level polemics of folk like David Wood and Sam Shamoun (cross dressing, sex with dead aunt, sex with animals, terrorism, polygamy etc.).
Let me say it as I see it. These are my opinions. Not facts but simply my opinions.
In fact, James White and Jay Smith have pretty much given their opinion which conforms to my observation as to how many Christian missionaries are viewing Muslims consciously/subconsciously. They haven’t employed any of their great thinkers to dialogue with us but instead sent Christian missionaries who exploit asylum seekers, engage in the camel method of evangelism and various levels of contextualisation methods. There’s no concerted effort to engage with us intellectually. Their arguments amount to little more than mockery, abuse, otherization, low level polemics and/or emotional arguments (often taking advantage of the situation in the Middle East which was in large part created by Western interventionism but hey, they don’t bank on the Muslim to know this as the Muslim is assumed to be a lesser intellect).
Sometimes it’s said in a subtle way; in the West we learn to think critically but in the East they learn differently like critical thinking is exclusive to the “Christian” West (we know it’s the secular West but our Christian friends like to misappropriate the West to themselves whilst talking to us to try and impress the Muslim (shhh don’t tell the secularist what the Christian does in their absence)
So I say good on folks like Hashim, Hamza, Imran, Zakir Hussain, Mansur and Paul Williams for turning the worlds of some upside down. And good on the others who are following their lead whether on the net or in person.
I find it interesting that there’s an outcry because Hamza had the temerity to try and control a conversation with a young Christian lady. He’s being accused of “attacking women” and of intimidation tactics.
But when folks like Jay Smith and Beth Grove go beyond what Hamza did by bellowing down at confounded tourists who happen to be Muslims from little ladders it’s just a case of ahh those Muslims like it that way because they like to hear confidence and volume rather than logic. As we saw recently Jay Smith's colleagues (and by deduction colleagues of Jonathan McLatchie) aren't averse to delivering volume to Muslim ears in aggressive manners - check out Christian Peoples Alliance's Sid Cordle in action on, ironically, Hamza! Where's Jonathan and co to white-knight for Hamza? Nowhere. You see, Muslims aren't afforded white-knights in this arena.
Jay Smith can be suspected of making up malicious lies about Muslims in the park which endanger the lives of Muslims in Britain and in the rest of the West but there’s not a peep of public condemnation from anybody. No white-knights in sight coming to the aid of the Muslims. Yet we see three blokes invest more than 3 hours (and possibly still counting) up in arms because Hamza had a bit of a one sided discussion with a Christian lady.
I somehow doubt the same would’ve happened if it was an Atheist who bumped into Liz Mooney that day at Hyde Park
The two chaps (suspected of being Muslims) braving the cold to listen in and learn from the teachings of Hamza were smeared as “intimidating” yet the followers/workers of Jay Smith who crowd old Muslim men who don’t know English well enough to even produce a coherent and meaningful response aren’t seen as intimidating.
Beth Grove can be rude and aggressive at Speakers Corner but when Muslims heckle, which is traditionally part of the course there, they are denounced as uncivilised (oh yeah I’ve seen some of the YT comments to that effect).
Maybe I’m seeing something that is not there. Or maybe others see what I see. It’s my personal view. I’m not saying all Christians are like this – I’m not even saying Jon or Chris are like this. I’m saying this seems to be an interesting area for folk to think about and debate. IF it is the case perhaps it’s not even done consciously by those involved. IF it’s not the case tell me why not. Let’s have a discussion. I’m seeing different standards being applied and I’ve been seeing this sort of stuff for a while now.
Is it possible Hamza has been a victim of double standards here – double standards operated by Christians?
10. James White and consistency
There was talk which seemed to present James White as a paragon of consistency. This is far from true – James gets caught up in inconsistency on a regular basis. He's consistently inconsistent.
He lambasts the idea of Functional Subordination yet JohnCalvin believed in subordination within the Trinity doctrine. James White is a Calvinist! The issue here is White probably doesn’t know (he’s not a scholar and I had to find this info. about John Calvin from Prof. Wayne Grudem)
White promotes/is friends with folk from the “Muslims treat women badly” cabal yet this doesn’t fit with distasteful and immature comments about Brigham Young’swives.
White lambasts others for attacking him yet he’s constantly berating Christians who don’t agree with him (as well as Muslims). Recently Prof. Leighton Flowers, the Arminianist, criticised him for his mocking , uncharitable and disrespectful comments in dialogue (those somments were mild in comparison to some of the stuff he comes out with). Is it any wonder we see three young men, Jonathan McLatchie, Vladimir Susic and Dr Chris Claus, followers of James White, exhibiting the same characteristics of James White; mockery, uncharitable comments, and belittlement of the "opponent"?
As for James' apologetics he’s not even consistent on his approach to Biblical preservation. In his attempts to turn the negative of no controlling authority over the NT transmission into a positive he attacks controlled textual transmission forgetting the OT was transmitted in a controlled manner!
My first interaction, not a pleasant experience considering he started belittling me as I was new to the game and had the audacity to correct him, was noticing he was using a translation of a Quranic Verse which was from his then teacher Sam Shamoun ( a bloke who doesn’t know Arabic either). This translation was not in conformation with any of the many known translations available. He used Shamoun's “translation” because it fitted his agenda at the time to build a polemic/rebuttal from and insulted me for calling him to account.
Do you want me to go on. I’ve been going on for a while so let’s leave it.
11. Message to Jonathan McLatchie
Jon, I’ve been informed you’ve recently been blocking people on social media again. I don’t think that’s the way to go about matters. Blocking people who you have even debated in the past is again just another way of closing doors on folk. Up to you if you want to take my advice.
I did notice, however, you blocked somebody suspected of being a Christian who was abusive in the comment section of one of your YT vid responses to Hamza. Fair play to you for not allowing such abuse of Muslims on your platform but I can’t help notice you haven’t censured Sam Shamoun who has again recently been calling us “sewage”. Also can you, with a clear conscious, say the videos you share on social media of Wood et al aren't offensive to Muslims too?
I understand it's more difficult with bigger personalities as you’re new to forging a career/reputation in Christian apologetics so coming out and rebuking folks like David Wood, Sam Shamoun and others you work with/for may seem like self harm but isn’t the “Gospel” not meant to go beyond concerns for oneself – I thought you peeps were meant to die for Jesus rather than even lie to save your lives. So what’s all this with the reluctance to censure your colleagues?
Staying on this theme, your colleague and friend Sam Shamoun recently denounced Dr Bassim Gorial’s ABN as money hungry and lacking integrity. Will you not at least try to look into this just in case Sam’s comments are referencing some sort of profiteering from donations – donations you help to bring in by volunteering to appear on ABN.
I must also take exception to this attitude that Hamza is afraid to debate. I don't think it was you who made the claim, to be fair to you. But you know, as well as we do, you've struggled in many apologetics interactions with experienced apologists - folks can see the Jonathan McLatchie section on my blog, the YT video responses to Jon by myself, Aqil and Darkness2noor (see our respective channels), Ijaz Ahmed and also see one of Jon's earlier dialogues at the park with Paul Williams and Mansur. For purposes of clarity, it's not because you are less intelligent or something like that.
Folks like David Wood censor and ignore responses on the net from people experienced in apologetics and they continue repeating the same old refuted arguments (not to mention inconsistent arguments as they backfire against the Bible) in the hope young and less informed Muslims are swayed by them. Perhaps this is giving the impression that Muslims are afraid. I don't know what it is but it's annoying; nobody is afraid.
Jon, finally have a read of this, I personally think James White would agree with what I'm saying here and I'd imagine folks like Richard Zetter and yourself will quietly nod in approval of my point:
How Jay Smith, Nabeel Qureshi, Sam Shamoun and David Wood Contriubute to the Apostasy of Christians
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