10/26/2004- ... I also added more verses where 42 innocent children were killed by Prophet Elisha in the Bible to the article Prophet Muhammad is a Murderer for KILLING the enemies?  WHAT ABOUT THE BIBLE'S PROPHETS' MURDERS that were blessed by GOD?
(Source: www.answering-christianity.com/whatsnew.htm, 1 November 2004)

Did Elisha really kill "42 innocent children", as claimed by Osama Abdallah? I don't know what range of ages Abdallah wants his readers to imagine regarding these children, but for most people the expression "innocent children" may be appropriate up to the age of puberty, let's say until about 12 years old at most. After that, it very much depends on what these children are doing as to whether or not they are still to be considered innocent. Let's have a look at what this is about. In his article, we find the following:

Killing of Innocent Children:

The following verse was sent to me by brother Jibril; may Allah Almighty always be pleased with him.

2 Kings 2
23 From there Elisha went up to Bethel. As he was walking along the road, some youths came out of the town and jeered at him. "Go on up, you baldhead!" they said. "Go on up, you baldhead!"
24 He turned around, looked at them and called down a curse on them in the name of the LORD . Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the youths.

Important Note:  When Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him tried to migrate from Mecca to the city of Al-Ta'if, the pagans there had their own children throw rocks on the Prophet until his face and body were swollen and bleeding.  The Prophet peace be upon him prayed for the people of Al-Ta'if to be Guided to Islam.  And ultimately they were Guided and they embraced Islam.

While Prophet Muhammad loved and forgave children for throwing stones at him, the Bible shows ZERO tolerance to even innocent name-calling from children; let alone having them throwing stones!!

(Source: www.answering-christianity.com/prophet_muhammad_not_murderer.htm, 1 November 2004)

RESPONSE:

Various issues are involved here. Let us look at the story about Elisha. Remember, we are still in Abdallah's section titled "1- The murders of the Bible's Prophets:", subsection "Killing of Innocent Children:". Abdallah claims (without any evidence) that this group of young men (equivalent to a modern day "street gang") were innocent children. That is the first element of clear misrepresentation. He quotes the text speaking about youths, but then treats it as if they were little, helpless, innocent children.

The second lie is that it was Elisha who killed these young men. Not at all. He did not even touch them. Neither did he send any of his followers to kill them. Because of what these young people did, he called down on them a curse in the name of God. And it was GOD, who is in control of all the wild beasts, who sent those bears that killed some of these youths. If this curse in the name of the LORD had not been in agreement with the LORD's will, nothing would have happened. Elisha's curse is not even said to have been specific. God could have punished them by lightning bolt, or by letting the earth swallow them (like he did with the people of Korah, cf. Numbers 16:1-34), or in any other way. It was the sovereign decision of God whether or not to punish, and how to punish these youths. As stated above, this article is not the place of a detailed discussion of every issue. It is merely to expose some of the obvious lies and gross misrepresentations of the Bible propagated by Abdallah. This incident of Elisha's encounter with these youths in 2 Kings 2 is discussed in great detail in articles by Glenn Miller and J.P. Holding, articles that Abdallah could have found easily if he had been interested in knowing the truth. Let's hope that he will at least read them before he makes any further comments on the issue.

A couple of side remarks:

(a) Contrary to the above example, in which a gang of youths was punished for what they had done (though critics may argue whether or not the punishment was appropriate), the Qur'an contains a story of a man from God who kills an innocent boy on the mere suspicion that he may become disobedient in the future:

So they went on until, when they met a boy, he slew him. (Musa) said: Have you slain an innocent person otherwise than for manslaughter? Certainly you have done an evil thing ... And as for the boy, his parents were believers and we feared lest he should make disobedience and ingratitude to come upon them: Surah 18:74, 80 Shakir

Abdallah apparently considered his argument so strong and so important that he even added it in big bold letters to the main entry page of his site:

42 innocent children were killed using Wild Bears by Prophet Elisha!
Prophet Muhammad on the other hand loved children even those who threw stones at him in the city of Al-Ta'if. (click here)

(Source: www.answering-christianity.com/ac.htm, 1 November 2004)

However, as even Abdallah admits here, these were wild bears, i.e. under God's sole control. They were not some bears owned by Elisha that he unleashed on the youths simply because he felt like it. Some evil people keep ferocious dogs and sometimes command them to attack other people. Elisha didn't own a ranch with dangerous animals that he could command, he was not even at home at the time, but on the road traveling, and the context of 2 Kings 1-2 suggests that he was traveling alone. Abdallah's scenario is again without any foundation. He is wrong on both counts: neither were these innocent children, nor did Elisha kill them. It is merely his wishful thinking that so desperately seeks to find something (anything!) negative about prophets in the Bible as if that could somehow justify the crimes of Muhammad, and exonorate him in the eyes of an increasingly sceptical world.

Interestingly, Abdallah is able to quote from the Bible (even though he completely misrepresented his source), but about Muhammad he only makes claims without presenting any evidence. Where is Abdallah's citation of original sources for this incident at al-Ta'if? After all, does he not want his readers to be able to verify whether his claims are true? His track record in regard to accurate representation of sources is hardly a recommendation for believing any of his statements without checking up on them.

Since this article is not about Abdallah's eulogies of Muhammad, but is concerned with his lies about the Bible, I will place my evaluation of his claims regarding Muhammad in al-Ta'if into an appendix.

In any case, by adding yet another false claim about Elisha, Abdallah did nothing but increase the number of lies and and misrepresentations of God's prophets in his article. On 27 October, however, he reacted to my above critique of his false claims by (a) writing a separate response article (on which I will comment below), and (b) by making a couple of minor changes to his original article. First, Abdallah added one new paragraph to his claim about David. Though most is still the same, I am going to quote his complete ‘revised’ section about David again in order to provide the context:

2-  Maiming of enemies' bodies in an extremely brutal way in the Bible:

Cutting the hands and feet and hanging the alive bodies until they DIE:

2 Samuel 4
10 when a man told me, 'Saul is dead,' and thought he was bringing good news, I seized him and put him to death in Ziklag. That was the reward I gave him for his news!
11 How much more-when wicked men have killed an innocent man in his own house and on his own bed-should I not now demand his blood from your hand and rid the earth of you!"
12 So David gave an order to his men, and they killed them. They cut off their hands and feet and hung the bodies by the pool in Hebron. But they took the head of Ish-Bosheth and buried it in Abner's tomb at Hebron.

It is not clear if the maimed bodies were hanged on the trees before or after they were fully dead.  This is why I took the worst-case-scenario and used it against the bible; that is the bodies were still alive when they were hanged.  Also, since David killed them, then they technically became his enemies.  It doesn't matter whether they were Israelites or not.

RESPONSE:

This last paragraph is the part that was newly added. Supposedly this is Abdallah's answer(??) to the fact that his claim had been exposed as blatantly wrong (see above; read it again carefully). Frankly, this is a rather lame excuse. Either somebody is dead, or he is not dead. And if somebody is not dead yet (i.e. he is still alive), then he was not killed. However, the sentence BEFORE the part about the cutting of hands and feet and hanging the bodies at the pool states clearly that they had been killed. So, if they were killed, then they were dead. This is obvious to anyone but Abdallah.

[Also, Abdallah's innovative theory that "they technically became David's enemies" after they were killed, is utterly ludicrous. The point is whether or not they were his enemies at the time when David decided that they had to be killed. The clear answer to this question is: No! The problem here is not that the passage is unclear, but it is Abdallah's inability to admit that he was wrong. However, the longer he tries to defend the indefensible the more ‘intelligent’ he will look. Finally, since we did not even mention the ethnicity of the people, I am not sure what objection he tries to ‘refute’ with the last statement he made in the above paragraph.]

Actually, even though Abdallah refuses to acknowledge that he was simply wrong about this claim, with the first sentence in his newly added statement, "It is not clear if the maimed bodies were hanged on the trees before or after they were fully dead", he admits at least that it is not clear evidence for the claim that he had put in big and bold letters over this section of his paper, i.e. "2- Maiming of enemies' bodies in an extremely brutal way in the Bible". Since this was the only passage he had quoted to support this claim, he is now left without any proof at all for it. Even in his own "court room", by his own admission, his ‘evidence’ is now tossed out as inconclusive.

The matter is very easy: If this passage had been about Muhammad, and any Christian had then claimed what Osama Abdallah claimed about David, Abdallah would have been absolutely outraged, would have called him an obvious liar, and would have invented many more insults for him. However, since it is not in the Qur'an, but in the Bible, he therefore feels fully justified to do what he does, and doesn't need to have a bad conscience about it. If it is in the Bible, then it is good and right to assume the worst, to argue from silence, and even to rearrange the verses to make them say what they don't say. To anyone who reads the story with an unbiased mind, the difference between these two incidents is absolutely clear:

Regarding Muhammad:

... The news reached the Prophet early in the morning and he sent (men) in their pursuit and they were captured and brought at noon. He then ordered to cut their hands and feet (and it was done), and their eyes were branded with heated pieces of iron. They were put in 'Al-Harra' and when they asked for water, no water was given to them."

Regarding David:

... So David gave an order to his men, and they killed them. They cut off their hands and feet and hung the bodies by the pool in Hebron. ...

Abdallah, however, feels fully justified to rearrange the sequence of events in the verse and read instead:

... So David gave an order to his men, and they first cut off their hands and feet. Then they hung the bodies alive by the pool in Hebron until they died under great pain. That is how they killed them.

Abdallah constantly accuses Christians of having corrupted the Bible. However, the only one who feels obviously free to corrupt its plain meaning is Abdallah, and he doesn't even have a bad conscience about it. Any decent person who cares the least for truth would have immediately withdrawn this claim and apologized for misrepresenting David so badly (particularly since David is a great prophet of God even in the Qur'an). However, by doing so, Abdallah only exposes how little he cares about truth; he is only concerned about maligning the Bible by any way imaginable.

Ironically, it is exactly as Abdallah said: "I took the worst-case-scenario and used it against the bible." What is a ‘worst-case-scenario’? It is something that is speculative, it is not reality. I.e. Abdallah sat down and asked himself not, "What does this report mean?", but "How can I make this story appear in the worst possible light?" Well, as often, the question determines the answer, and doing so he assumed something that was not written, even a meaning that is against what is plainly written, and ‘used it against the Bible’. That is the whole point. Instead of properly interpreting what is there, he injected his worst imagination into the Bible text, and then he claimed that this is what happened. In plain language, that is called a lie.

Actually, the fact that Abdallah called this ‘the worst-case-scenario’ is itself an indictment against Muhammad, since Abdallah projected Muhammad's actual deeds into the story of David. David didn't do this, but Muhammad did. Using Abdallah's own concept: Muhammad is the worst-case-scenario of a prophet. Muhammad is more than a nightmare, he is the worst-case-scenario come true.

[ Side remark: Was Muhammad really that bad? Ponder this: Not only did Muhammad give orders to his followers to brutally torture the Uraynian shepherds (who may well have deserved the death penalty), he also commanded his men to torture Kinana in order to get at his hidden treasures. After it was clear that he would not reveal them, and Kinana was about to die any minute because of the cruel torture that had been applied on him, he ordered them to strike off his head. ]

Apart from adding this one insubstantial paragraph as an attempt to justify his misrepresentation of the story about David, and slightly rearranging the sequence of some other statements, Abdallah did not change ANYTHING in his article in response to my rebuttal. He did not correct even one of his errors, let alone apologize for making them. This in itself is further evidence that they were not unintentional mistakes, but were deliberate lies from the beginning.

Instead of correcting his false claims, he did something else. Abdallah published his reaction in a separate article under the title "Refutation to the preposterous LIES of Jochen Katz about his Bible not containing inhumane murders from its Prophets!" Abdallah seemingly operates under the assumption that if he screams at the top of his lungs, flings insults at his opponents, and charges them with all kinds of evil things, then people will overlook that he has actually no answer to the arguments presented by them.

Abdallah calls me a liar, even more, he claims that I published "preposterous lies". However, Abdallah overlooked that it is not enough to CALL somebody a liar and producer of "preposterous lies", but one needs to PROVE it. Otherwise this charge is merely an insult; actually, it is a lie in itself.

Since it will be a rather tedious exercise to respond to the nonsense Abdallah produced in that article, I will do so in a separate rebuttal instead of unduly lengthening this paper. Nevertheless, let me answer at least to the charge made in the title chosen by Abdallah. His accusation can only refer to the one statement made at the end of my discussion of the story about David in 2 Samuel 4 (see above), where I wrote that "There is not even one prophet in the Bible who did to his enemies what Muhammad did to the Uraynian shepherds," and the context of the statement makes it clear that I was talking about the cruel torture that Muhammad ordered his men to perform on these people.

As I said, it is easy to call anyone a liar. The issue is if one can prove the charge. Therefore, we have to ask: How would anyone be able to show that my statement was indeed a "preposterous lie"? That should not be hard, right? One would simply have to quote the Bible passages in which the prophets of God were torturing their enemies. That would in fact be the only reasonable way to do so. [Note that it must actually refer to a multiplicity of passages since Abdallah charges me not only with one lie but with "preposterous LIES" (in the plural), and he also speaks about inhumane murders (plural) committed by the Biblical prophets (in the plural).] Well then, does Abdallah quote such passages in his reply? Not one! I read Abdallah's article several times (that is torture in itself), and was unable to find even one passage which Abdallah presents as evidence that the "Bible is containing inhumane murders from its Prophets". No, I do not mean to say that Abdallah brought some passages to the table, but they were all misrepresented, as is the case so often in Abdallah's articles. It is just as I said: Abdallah did not even attempt to present any such passage at all.

Thus: In what sense has he refuted me? This will probably forever remain Abdallah's secret.

Although Abdallah's response was nothing but hot air, if the reader wants to put himself through the torture of examining step by step the absolute nonsense that Abdallah produced in order to evade the issues raised in my original article (above), he is invited to continue with my answer to his ‘refutation’.

Rebuttals to Osama Abdallah & Answering-Christianity
Answering Islam Home Page