A loudmouth Muslim apologist by the name of Nadir Ahmed (NA for short) has accused the Answering Islam team of running from his debate challenges. Normally we would simply ignore such statements and allow our published material to speak for itself. Another reason to ignore Muslims such as NA is that responding to their material gives them credibility and exposure that they do not deserve because the quality of their argumentation is very poor.

In spite of this, I consider it necessary in this case to correct and address some of the claims made by NA.

In an article titled "Answering Islam on the run!"(*), NA claims:

Praise is due to Allah, we have had 2 wonderful debates, which resulted in the total humiliation of Answering Islam, you can download both debates from my website:

TOPIC: "The Quran and Bible in light of Modern Science"

Dr. Zakir Naik vs. Dr. William Campbell

TOPIC: "What the Quran says about the Bible (corrupt or uncorrupt)"?

Nadir Ahmed vs. Sam Shamoun

RESPONSE:

NA claims that he has "humiliated" the team at Answering Islam, specifically me. This may be NA’s personal opinion, or simply his wishful thinking. However, propagating a triumphant claim hardly establishes reality. I am convinced that I soundly refuted and defeated NA in our debate. In fact, I felt that NA’s performance was an embarrassment for the Muslims. I even stated such here:

I also alluded to what to me was an easy victory in the very material which I had prepared specifically for this debate:

In fact, portions of this material were successfully used in refuting a Muslim neophyte named Nadir Ahmed in a live debate held on July 16, 2003 at Paltalk titled "What the Quran says about the Bible." If and when possible, we will try to make tapes of the debate available for anyone who is interested in hearing it for themselves. [For now it can be accessed online here: http://www.islamiccenterofpeoria.org/debates.html.] (Source: http://answering-islam.org/Shamoun/bible_authentic1.htm)

I did so again in an endnote to the following article:

[1] For a glimpse of just how solid the Islamic evidence is concerning the first Muslims believing that the Holy Bible is the preserved word of God, we welcome our readers to listen to a debate between Sam Shamoun and Nadir Ahmed on this topic which took place on Paltalk (http://www.islamiccenterofpeoria.org/debates.html). (Source: http://answering-islam.org/Shamoun/tahrif.htm)

So it is quite strange that I would provide a link to our debate in several places, and even claim that I soundly defeated NA, if I ever thought that he came anywhere close to humiliating me.

As far as Naik is concerned, I have no qualms about admitting that he won his debate against Campbell. Yet, this is far different from saying that Naik’s refutation of Campbell was due to his sound arguments, logical consistency and factual content. In all honesty, Naik failed to refute any aspect of Campbell’s book with solid facts and sound argumentation. He managed to dazzle his audience with a lot of rhetoric which was devoid of any substance. We produced a section exposing Naik’s lies, textual misinterpretation, logical fallacies and cheap debate tricks:

We are so confident that our series of articles sufficiently expose Naik’s deceptive argumentation that we challenge NA to try and refute them and post his responses on his web site for all to see. We challenge him to show that Naik’s argumentation was based on an accurate exegesis of the Bible and the Quran, as opposed to misinterpretation and empty rhetoric. Furthermore, we have already begun a series of responses exposing NA’s empty rhetoric and gross errors since he too has chosen to follow Naik’s example of promoting lies in order to convince people of his religion (see "NA & Science": [Part 1], [Part 2]).

Continuing with his article, NA then makes the following erroneous assertions and excuses:

Sadly, I don’t think there will be anymore public debates with the Answering Islam team. The reason is quite simple, Answering Islam is now very cognizant of the fact that they can not "win" a debate against knowledgeable Muslims, and now, resorting to filibustering tactics. The Answering Islam team have now refused to debate narrow, well defined topics anymore, like the one me and Sam have had done in the past, rather they are now only willing to debate broad titles, which host 20000 different subtopics. The reason is simple. If one of their arguments gets refuted in the debate, they can then easily "shotgun" their opponent with several red herrings and drag the debate into a quagmire, because they know that their opponent could probably only have time to properly respond to 3 of the 7 allegations against their religion. After the debate, they can then smugly boast, that, "look, the Muslim debater could not respond to all these points which I bought up in the debate!". This is a very famous smoke screen tactic.

Anyway, in our debate, I challenged Sam Shamoun to debate me on the topic "Preservation of the Quran". But now, after the debate, Sam Shamoun is refusing to debate me, rather, he said, "no lets debate Is Muhammed(P) a Prophet first!" This was a very strange request, but I said, "sure no problem, but please lets narrow the topic down a bit, right now the topic is too broad, for example all of the following sub topics are directly related to Is Muhammed(P) a Prophet:

Preservation of the Quran

Moon God myth

alleged inconsistencies

alleged scientific errors

are Arabs ishmaelite

Scientific miracles

Attributes of Allah in the Quran

Prophet Muhammed(P) in the Bible

Prophet Muhammad(P) and the Making of Wills

Quranic prophesies

What the Quran says about the Bible (corrupt or uncorrupt)"?

Alleged Pre Islamic influences

the young age of Aisha (R)

Is Islamic peaceful

did the crucifixion really happen

communication of ants in the Quran

Islam's view of Paul

Prophet Muhammad(P)'s Night Journey and Ascension to Heaven

concept of Tawheed in Islam

Jesus or Muhammad(P): Who is God's True Seal of Prophethood?

Alleged variant readings

Is their any idolatry in Islam

plagiarism

The Birth Narratives of Jesus in the Quran

Prophet Muhammed(P) and the making of wills

What is the Holy Spirit in Islam

Definition of Trinity in Quran

Cosmology

The Truthfulness and Integrity of The Recipient

The Literary Challenge

The Internal Evidence

The accurate description of embryology in the Quran

Is their shirk in Islam

who is the The Angel of the Lord in Islam and Christianity

Did Waraqa Ibn Nawfal invent Islam

Objective evidence for the inspiration of the Quran

And much more……..

I volunteered to Sam Shamoun, It would be ridiculous to try to squeeze in all of these related sub topics in one debate, rather, lets pick a topic together for the debate in which we can discuss perhaps 1 or 2 of these sub topics per night, and have a series of debates, I am ready to debate each and every single sub topic listed above, we can call it the "Is Muhammed(P) a Prophet debate series".

Or lets debate your articles which you write on Islam, and see if your arguments are sound, this would be my challenge to you. This is only logical. Upon hearing this, Answering Islam REFUSED! It then became very clear that Answering Islam was in reality looking for a way out, and this was only a "face saving" tactic to hide their true cowardice.

RESPONSE:

As far as our being "cognizant of the fact that we can’t win against knowledgeable Muslims", this is simply another example of NA’s wild, and very unsubstantiated, assertions. We need to expose the gross lie that we are unwilling to debate narrow, well-defined topics, since we have been literally pleading with NA to debate us on the following well-defined, narrow topic of whether Muhammad is a genuine prophet! Here, he tries to make excuses in order to avoid admitting that he is simply afraid to debate the credibility of his prophet.

We also need to put things in perspective, since NA got his chronology mixed up. In a Paltalk chatroom NA was challenged to debate this subject sometime in June 2003, and after being pressured by people in the room, he initially agreed. The date was set for 28 June 2003 on Paltalk. NA started getting cold feet and tried to make excuses, such as asking me to send him my debate material in advance, and he would send his to me. (Talk about being desperate!) In fact, the Christians in the room were astonished at NA making such a request and clearly saw this as his way of trying to back down since he knew he couldn’t win such an exchange and had to save face somehow.

Seeing that he lost face, NA then challenged me to debate the Quranic view of the Bible, which I gladly accepted since I knew that this would be a very easy win. I was right. And unlike him, I didn’t ask him to send me his material in advance.

After our debate on the Quranic view of the Bible had taken place on July 16, 2003, I decided to reissue my initial debate proposal. From then onwards NA produced excuse after excuse such as those quoted above in order to avoid a debate on the prophethood of Muhammad.

We again would like to invite our readers to listen to the debate with NA and see for themselves who was guilty of tossing out red herrings and trying to drag the debate into a quagmire. To give you just one example, in our debate NA brought up the verse of Jeremiah 8:8 to prove that the Bible had been corrupted. By the grace of God I refuted his red herring and gross misinterpretation of the text both in our debate as well as in writing. The point of bringing this up here is to expose NA’s excuse-making for all to see. Our debate topic was defined as what the Quran says about the Bible, not what the Bible says about the Bible. Despite this, NA still brought this up and yet here he has the audacity to make the excuse that by not narrowing down the topic we will manage to introduce unrelated issues! We will provide another example of this later on. It is quite clear that NA is desperately trying to save face for losing the debate and for backing down from debating Muhammad’s credibility.

So we are going to call out his bluff.

NA continues his smokescreen:

In light of all of this, I would ask the readers of this article to ask the Answering Islam team the 3 deadly questions:

1. Why did you refuse to narrow down the broad topic and commit to specific topic like you had in your debate with Nadir Ahmed? What do you hope to accomplish by squeezing in so many sub topics in one debate?? WHAT ARE YOU AFRAID OF??????

This one is utterly silly. The list of these alleged "subtopics" was made up by NA, and has very little to do with the issues I would raise when debating on the prophethood of Muhammad. I never tried to squeeze all these issues into this one debate. Thus his question to me is mute. On the contrary, NA is desperately trying to find some reason to avoid a debate on a very clear but uncomfortable topic.

2. Why did you run away from Nadir Ahmed’s challenge to debate per article on your website? How do you expect your followers to believe what you are writing about Islam is true if you refuse to open up to cross examination???

Does anyone hinder NA to write a response to any of my articles found on Answering Islam? If he thinks he can refute them, let him write a rebuttal and let the reader decide whose arguments are better. Feel free to fire all your questions at them. We won’t evade any of them.

In particular, I have written several papers on the issue of Muhammad’s claimed prophethood (see these articles: Muhammad's False Prophecies, Muhammad's Alleged Night Journey, and the two three-part series on Muhammad's Bewitchment and Muhammad's Suicide Attempts), but instead of wanting to debate these articles on our website, NA makes every excuse NOT to debate it. Yet he still claims I am running away from having my papers made the topic of debate.

3. Why have Silas, Quennel Gale, Jochen Katz not step up to meet Nadir Ahmed’s challenge to them in the ahmed-shamoun debate? Why are they hiding from him? Especially in light of the fact that Nadir stated, "we will hunt them down, and bring them to justice!"

RESPONSE:

Here are my three deadly answers to his three "deadly" questions:

1. Sam Shamoun has narrowed down the topic for you and for all to see. Here it is again: Was Muhammad a true Prophet of the true God, or was he a man Possessed? So why not stop hiding behind the lame excuse that this topic is too broad, since you can’t get any narrower than this. Sam Shamoun already took you up on your own topic and defeated you. So you need to save face and prove that you can actually win at least one debate, especially regarding your Prophet’s credibility. Do you think that by hiding behind the excuse that debating Muhammad’s prophethood entails debating all the so-called sub-topics you listed will wash with the readers? IT IS OBVIOUS THAT YOU ARE IN FACT AFRAID!!!!!!
2. Sam Shamoun has exposed your lie that he ran from your challenge to debate per article on our website. He has shown that your proposal was nothing more than a way to save face from backing down from his initial challenge to debate on Muhammad’s prophethood. Once Sam Shamoun defeats you in the Muhammad debate, he will be more than happy to defeat you on any of your attempts of refuting his articles. So enough of the excuses and let’s get to debating, so that other Muslims will see that you are not simply a mouth without substance.
3. The reason why these gentlemen haven't stepped up is because they don’t feel that your work is deemed worthy of being taken seriously. Plus, they realize that Sam Shamoun is sufficiently equipped to expose and refute your pseudo-scholarship. They know that just like in the first debate, Sam Shamoun will continue to defeat and refute you and show that you are no hunter, but are actually the hunted!

Realizing that he lost his debate with me, NA tries to cover up with the following misrepresentation:

I think to get a better idea of why Answering Islam is running from the challenge of debate, is to look at the past 2 encounters in which they attempted to debate Muslims on Islam.

As for the first debate, Answering Islam has come forward and has publicly admitted complete defeat, but as for the second debate, they are dragging their feet (hoping that people wont listen to the debate and just take his word for it). Therefore, I would like to comment a bit on the second debate. Allow me to remind Answering Islam what took place that night in the "What the Quran says about the Bible" debate, in doing so, perhaps they will accept reality.

One of the high lights of the debate in my opinion, is when I confronted Sam Shamoun about him red handed LYING to his followers about the true status of the Bible. I mentioned that Sam stated:

"I don’t believe anyone can corrupt the Bible"

"It is the pure word of God"

And he agreed with with a group of Jews that the Old Testament was 100% the Word of God. But now, prepare for the shock. When Sam Shamoun is confronted with Biblical Scholars or qualified critics of the Bible, this is what Sam Shamoun has to say about "uncorrupt", "pure", "word of God":

"No document of antiquity (referring to the Bible) has come down variant free, without corruption"

Sam continues, but we know where the corruption in the Bible is. So, to his blind congregation, Sam Shamoun champions the Bible as the uncorrupt and pure Word of God, but when knowledgeable people cross examine him, he calmly and plainly admits to them that the Bible is corrupt (but still good). I guess Sam figured that what they (his congregation) don’t know won’t hurt them. I further challenged Sam repeatedly through out the entire debate to respond to this serious charge of fraud, yet he refused to and ducked it, till he briefly stated what he believed about the Bible in the question and answer time, but could not dismiss the serious charge of fraud nor even attempt to challenge my allegation. Therefore, this is pure deception, and a deliberate attempt to mislead unwary people. And it is this type of fraud, which has earned Sam the title:

RESPONSE:

What is pure deception and a deliberate attempt of misleading unwary people is how NA misquotes me. He even thinks he will get away with it!

First, to put things in perspective NA deceptively quoted only a portion of my response in my debate with Shabir Ally regarding the variant readings of the Bible. He chose to conveniently ignore THE REST OF MY COMMENTS WHERE I SAID THAT THE QURAN HAS ALSO SUFFERED SCRIBAL CORRUPTIONS AND CONTAINED THOUSANDS OF VARIANT READINGS. I stated that by NA’s criteria the Quran needs to be trashed also since it is no good due to all of its variant readings. I also said that Shabir Ally was forced to admit that the Quran contained variant readings when I confronted him with the facts. What was NA’s response to this? "As for Shabir Ally… forget about him, you’re debating me"!!!! And this is the very gent who claims that he has "humiliated" us!

Second, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand what I mean that the Bible is the pure, uncorrupt word of God while also acknowledging scribal corruptions to the text. But since NA doesn’t get it, or doesn’t want to get it, let me break it down.

By claiming that the Bible is the uncorrupt pure word of God, I mean that the original, inspired revelation that God communicated through the authors of the Bible has been preserved intact. The variant readings do not call into question the preservation of the original message of the inspired autographs. There are indeed variant readings amongst the extant MSS, but God’s uncorrupt message is still preserved within the MSS. Nothing has been lost. This is what I have always stated in my writings. Case in point:

There are nearly 25,000 whole or fragmentary copies of the individual books of the Bible in our possession today, with some dating back four, six, and even eight centuries before the compilation of the Quran. Due to the fact that everything was hand-copied, thousands of variants arose. Yet, textual critics who are not necessarily Christians, have carefully examined these variants and have concluded that we have 98.33% of the original reading, with the 1.77% still remaining intact within the variants. HENCE, WE HAVE VIRTUALLY 100% OF THE ORIGINAL READING FAITHFULLY PRESERVED VIA THE MANUSCRIPT COPIES. Further, the critics have also established the fact that none of these variants affect any major doctrine, since most of them are nothing more than misspellings, numerical discrepancies, and scribal notes which were assumed to be part of the text by later scribes.

An example of a variant is given here for further clarification:

Y*u hav on a illion llars
Yo ave w*n mill dollars
You have won a * dollars
You * million ars

A careful examination of these variants would lead us to the conclusion that the original document read, "You have won a million dollars." This exemplifies the majority of the variants found in the Bible, and clearly demonstrates that these in no way affect any tenet of faith whatsoever. (Source: http://answering-islam.org/Shamoun/aboutbible.htm)

You can also read the following articles documenting my view on this very issue:

Furthermore, notice that NA admits bringing up the issue of variant readings in our debate. Now why is this important? It is important since it demonstrates what I stated earlier, namely that NA’s claim regarding wanting to narrow the topic before he would consider debating me is an excuse to save face in the eyes of the readers. Please do remember that NA and I were debating what the Quran said about the Bible. We were not having a discussion on the variant readings of the Bible and the effects they have on the Bible’s preservation.

NA failed to realize that his discussion of such irrelevant issues as Jeremiah 8:8 and variant readings did nothing to prove his false assertion that the Quran does not support the 100% preservation of the Bible. It only shows that he is a master of logical fallacies and that he knew he was losing the debate and had to switch subjects. Just in case NA does not see how bringing these issues up failed to prove his point, we will break it down for him.

There are two completely unrelated sets of data to examine:

a. The historical evidence about the Bible: Possible conclusions: The Bible is well-preserved (a+) or it is corrupted (a-).

b. The Quran’s teaching about the Bible: Possible conclusions: According to the Quran the Bible is preserved (b+), or it is corrupted (b-).

After these two sets of data have been examined, then we compare their conclusions and see whether they agree or disagree, and what kind of implications their (dis)agreement have for further discussions. These are the possibilities:

1. The Quran can claim that the Bible has remained intact and yet the Bible still be corrupted (a-, b+). This would only prove that the Quran is in error regarding the accurate transmission of the Bible.
2. The Quran can claim that the Bible has been corrupted, and yet the Bible itself as well as the MS evidence and the analysis of the variant readings show that it has been preserved (a+, b-). This would only prove that the Quran is in error regarding the transmission of the Bible.
3. The Bible, the Quran and the MS evidence can all be in agreement that the Bible has been preserved intact, despite variant readings (a+, b+).
4. The Bible, the Quran and the MS evidence can all be in agreement that the Bible has been corrupted (a-, b-), and therefore cannot be completely trusted.

NA thinks that by arguing that the Bible supposedly claims that it has been corrupted or that it contains variant readings he then somehow manages to show that the Quran does not teach that the Bible has been preserved intact! Talk about one huge logical fallacy!

This leads me to the other gross, logical fallacy NA commits.

Exposing NA’s Big Sham

NA writes:

And lastly, we can not forget what took place in the question and answer period. To be very honest, I don’t think I have ever witnessed such a moment. Answering Islam was clearly refuted and had no response with the following verse:

(referring to crucifixion) and those who differ therein are full of doubts. They have no (certain) knowledge, they follow nothing but conjecture. For surely; they killed him not [i.e. 'Iesa (Jesus), son of Maryam (Mary) ]: (An-Nisa 4:157)

The point was made that the Christians follow the Bible in which they get the story crucifixion, and the Quran calls it conjecture (corruption). Rather than doing the honorable thing, and honestly coming forward and admitting, "fine, ok, you got a point", Sam Shamoun remained defiant, stubborn and arrogant, yet, he could not refute this point. But, he paid for it dearly. What took place after that was probably one of the worst beatings that ever took place. For 30 long grueling minutes, Sam was belted with this one verse, unable to refute it, Sam simply tossed and turned, frothing at the mouth, hurling insults, but he could not respond to this verse. To be very honest, witnessing Sam Shamoun in those conditions, I felt that I was performing an exorcism for those 30 long minutes. Up till now, I still don’t know what possessed Sam Shamoun from not coming out and admitting the obvious, surely, he would not have to go through that torture. And finally, all of this may be hard to digest for Answering Islam’s fans, I can appreciate that, but I would invite you to take a look for yourself and see if what I am saying is not exactly as I stated it in this article, you can download the debate from my website:

RESPONSE:

It is indeed true that what happened in the Q&A was quite unforgettable. And I agree that I don’t think I have ever witnessed such a moment. It was one of the greatest displays of a Muslim’s inability to both comprehend and refute the answer to his argument. NA kept ignoring my repeated claims that I had already addressed this red herring and that the problem had to do with his inability to understand the point. It was quite evident that NA was getting desperate since all he could do was repeat himself ad nauseam. Yet, even after readdressing the issue he still couldn’t comprehend the response! I believe that the Q&A session perfectly illustrated why NA wasn’t prepared to debate me and paid for it dearly.

To begin with, this is not a statement about the Bible. It is about a claim that some Jews allegedly made. As such, it is not immediately applicable to the topic that he discusses. To see another reader’s analysis of this passage, exposing Nadir’s gross misuse of this verse, please see this discussion.

Furthermore, who differs with whom? The Jews and the Christians AGREE that Jesus was crucified. "Those who differ" are the Muslims. It is the Muslims who differ both with the Jews and Christians, and even among themselves as the various theories give testimony about. So, who is trapped in conjectures?

The statement itself is impossible: No Jew would BOAST that he killed Jesus, THE MESSENGER OF GOD. The Jewish leaders wanted Jesus to be put to death because they considered him to be a blasphemer and FALSE prophet, i.e. the opposite of the Quranic statement. Clearly, Muhammad inserted his own opinion about Jesus into what supposedly is the verbatim quotation of some Jews, rendering it an obviously inaccurate statement, a clear misquotation.

And now, for the sake of our readers, we will post the response we gave in the debate so that everyone can see NA’s failure to address the point. The quick and simple answer is that by denying the crucifixion while affirming the Bible as God’s preserved Word, the author of the Quran exposes his gross ignorance and fallibility. The author wrongly assumed that his denial of the crucifixion didn’t conflict with his views that the Bible was God’s preserved Word, providing more proof that the Quran is not from the true God. Or, the author of the Quran assumed that he could appeal to the Bible while denying one of its essential teachings by claiming that these passages are either misunderstood or misinterpreted.

In other words, this is just one more proof that NA is a master of evasion and logical fallacies. He has erroneously assumed that since the Quran denies the crucifixion then this somehow means that it also denies the authority and preservation of the Holy Bible. It seems we need to also break this down for him to get the point:

This of course presumes that the Quran actually denies the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus Christ, which leads me to my next point. NA has drawn a wrong inference from 4:157 either because he doesn’t understand what he is reading or because he is deliberately misinterpreting his own book. Note what he says here:

The point was made that the Christians follow the Bible in which they get the story crucifixion, and the Quran calls it conjecture (corruption).

NA gives the misleading impression that the Quran is explicitly denying the crucifixion, specifically the Bible’s teaching on this issue. Instead of exposing his gross misreading of his own book, we will simply defer our discussion to the following article:

This article was mainly written with NA in mind. In fact we now issue the following challenge to him:

The foregoing should show that NA’s diatribe titled Answering Islam on the run! is nothing more than his way of saving face for losing our debate and from running away from debating Muhammad’s prophethood.

If NA tries to continue with his ranting and raving, while refusing to debate Muhammad’s prophethood, this will only constitute further proof that he is afraid and realizes that he can’t win such an exchange. We hope that he proves us wrong by finally agreeing to debate us on this issue, instead of making excuses and writing articles that are nothing more than smokescreens aimed to save face. We will inform our readers if he decides to take us up on our challenge and if he has attempted to respond to our article regarding the Quran, the Bible preservation and the crucifixion.

Until then, we invite our readers to listen to our debate and see how the evidence thoroughly refutes NA and proves that the Quran does teach that God’s true Word, the Holy Bible, has remained intact.

Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. Amen.

UPDATE

Summary: As we knew all long, Nadir tried to back down again from yet another topic we both agreed in front of witnesses in Paltalk on May 1, 2004. Having run away from debating me on Muhammad's prophethood for over a year now by making every possible lame excuse, I finally gave in and agreed to debate his topic of choice, the Quran and Science. Yet after agreeing to debate this topic, Nadir comes back the next day on May 2, 2004, and decides to change the topic, obviously because he knew I would defeat him for a second time. I clearly said that we would debate on just how corrupt the Quran is, and promised to further refute his weak arguments, but insisted that he first stick to the assigned topic. Nadir refused and started to make excuses. Nadir is obviously afraid and, after his first humiliation, will seek any reason to avoid debating me.

What is truly amazing is that here he will try to downplay the importance science has on Muhammad's prophethood, even though on his website challenge he originally placed Quran and Science as the first topic of discussion! The following will present the details.

On 26 April 2004, NA published this:

Question to the reader: Have a careful look at the title of this debate series and then at the suggested subtopics. What do you observe?

Isn't it amazing: The name of Muhammad has completely disappeared! Isn't it rather strange that NA considers questions like "Is the Bible reliable?", "Why should we believe in Paul?", and "Is there really any evidence for Christianity?" to be relevant subtopics when investigating the answer to "Is Muhammad a Prophet?", but doesn't think one should talk about the issue of whether or not the revelation brought by Muhammad contains genuine prophecies, nor should we look at Muhammad's personal life (his words and deeds) in order to examine whether his character was that of a man of God? It is rather obvious that NA wants to discuss everything BUT the person of Muhammad.

What more is needed? Nadir Ahmed's own formulation of the challenge provides clear evidence that he is running away from discussing the credibility of Muhammad's claim to prophethood.

Actually, even the topic that may at first glance look most like being relevant, i.e. "Preservation of Quran", has very little to do with establishing whether or not Muhammad was a true prophet. This is very easy to grasp: Muslims believe that Moses and Jesus are true prophets, despite claiming at the same time that their message has become corrupted, i.e. is not fully preserved. On the other hand, Muslims consider Mirza Ghulam Ahmad and Baha'ullah to be imposters, false prophets. Even if the Baha'is and Ahmadiyya could conclusively prove that the religious writings of their founders have been perfectly preserved, no Muslim would conclude from this that they are therefore true prophets. Examining the Quran is important when investigating whether or not Muhammad is a true prophet of the true God, but it is the internal features (content, message) not the external features of the Quran (like preservation of the text) which need to be looked at. Again, it is an utter mystery why this would be a series on the issue of Muhammad's prophethood.

As mentioned above, recognizing that NA would most likely never dare to discuss the topic of Muhammad's credibility, I finally gave in and agreed to debate his topic of choice, the Quran and Science. Carefully note the first topic in the above series as given by NA:

Based on this challenge, I accepted his topic of choice, i.e. that we would debate the alleged scientific evidence for Islam, the topic that NA himself had put first in his above quoted "CHALLENGE TO DEBATE". NA agreed to this "Quran and Science" debate on Paltalk on 1 May 2004.

Yet, on the very next day, 2 May 2004, NA demands that we change the topic again.

And, in order to deceive his readers and hide the fact that he ran away from his own proposed topic, he has omitted his challenge to first debate "Scientific and Archaeological evidences for Islam" and placed it on the bottom of the list! His challenge page now displays this sequence:

I was more than willing to refute his arguments on the Quran's alleged preservation, but insisted that he follow his own sequence and honor his agreement in front of witnesses to first debate Quran and Science. But it is evident that he only wanted to save face and, seeing that I exposed his bluff, he now wants to find more excuses for not debating me. Nadir could have provided no greater proof for being truly afraid to debate me than what he said in our private message on Paltalk.

I have corrected the grammatical errors for smoother reading. MonkyPox is Nadir Ahmed.

Excuses, excuses, excuses...

Note: In his first published article ("Answering Islam on the run!"), NA put the scientific issue three times into his list of subtopics:

... all of the following sub topics are directly related to Is Muhammed(P) a Prophet:

Preservation of the Quran

Moon God myth

alleged inconsistencies

alleged scientific errors

are Arabs ishmaelite

Scientific miracles

...

Cosmology ... (bold emphasis ours)

Yet, in the above quoted Paltalk exchange, he now claims that the preservation of the Quran

... is a CORE topic, science is not, in fact, it is not even related to "is Muhammed(P) a Prophet?" because even if there was no science, he could still be a Prophet (bold emphasis ours)

What is it? Is science now "directly related" to Muhammad’s prophethood, or is it not related at all? It is very obvious that NA contradicts himself over and over again in his attempt to run away from debating the topics he himself agreed to originally.