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Setting the Record Straight: Exposing Johnny Bravo’s Distortion of the Facts
Setting the Record Straight:
Exposing Johnny Bravo’s Distortion of the Facts
Sam Shamoun
Johnny Bravo, a.k.a. Usman Sheikh, has published part of his "response"
to my counter-arguments on the reliability and canonization of the Bible and the Quran
on the new blog of the Bismikaallahuma website
(*)[1]
In this particular reply, Bravo seeks to expose Answering Islam for being hypocrites
and liars, specifically in relation to my taking issue with his use of liberal and
critical sources against the Bible.
For instance, Bravo writes:
We will get to Dashti in a while, but first let’s deal with Schacht. Somehow,
Shamoun "forgot" to mention the fact that his website was already making
extensive use of Schacht, against Islam, long before we decided to make use of him in our
paper. Readers can view the article here:
http://www.answering-islam.org/Books/Schacht/index.htm
Also consider the use of Schacht by the missionary polemicist
Gilchrist, whose material is available here:
http://www.answering-islam.org/Gilchrist/Vol1/6c.html
This means that Answering Islam used Schacht long
before us. Logically, we were following their methodology by using Schacht against
Christianity. So how on earth can the missionary possibly object to our use of Schacht
when we are only following his website’ methodology? Unfortunately, Shamoun has never
explained to the readers why it is acceptable for his website and friends to make use of
Schacht to attack Islam but not acceptable for us to use him against Christianity, even
though we use Schacht after his website has made use of him. It gets worse. We did
not in fact cite Schacht even though we are fully justified to do so for the
aforementioned reasons. The missionary is referring to a citation we used against the New
Testament derived from the Encyclopedia of Islam. Do note, however, that Schacht is
simply the editor of the Encyclopedia of Islam and not the author of the cited article.
Regarding my alleged complaint about his quoting Nietzsche, Bravo writes:
Shamoun objects that we should not quote Nietzsche against the Bible because he was an
atheist. Once again, he "forgot" to note that the founder of his website, Mr
Jochen Katz, was already defending the use of an atheist writer to attack Islam almost 6
years ago. While defending his use of atheist polemicist Ali Dashti, Katz wrote:
Obviously, his expertise on the Old Testament is somewhat lacking. That doesn't mean
his knowledge of the Qur'an and Islamic history is similarly shallow. I never recommended
his book for learning about the Bible.
Do note the date of his above comments: 1999/07/02 Thus our use of Nietzsche
occurred long AFTER Answering-Islam had already made extensive use of atheist Dashti to
attack Islam. Katz had to make the above comments when he was confronted with the
following comments against the Bible made by Dashti:
On the same blog, Bravo responds to a reader:
Note, they do not state that Muslims should quote athiests [sic], Jews and
others hostile towards Christianity and Islam, only when it comes to such and such
topics/issues. They demand that we should not quote them on any matter. This is where the
problem arises since they do not practise what they preach.
For example, we are told not to quote Nietzshe because he was an athiest [sic].
No problem, but you see AI already made use of an athiest [sic] years before we
cited Nietzshe [sic]. We are told not to quote a Jew against Paul because Jews are
also hostile towards Islam and reject Jesus (P). No problem, but again you see AI made
extensive use of the writings of a Jewish polemicist to attack Islam years ago. Now to
Goldziher, missionaries besides AI cite him in their polemical tracts frequently without
second thoughts and accept his arguments at face value. Yet as we have shown, Goldziher
was extremely hostile towards Christianity. Cetrainly [sic], he had far more
respect, honour and positive view of Islam. The problem is that the missionaries cite him,
no matter on what issue, and this alone exposes their hypocrisy and doublestandards [sic]
even if they quote Goldiher [sic] saying "I love Islam its soo cool."
In the first place, Bravo erroneously thinks that by posting the date of when some
of our comments and articles citing liberal and critical scholarship appeared, he is
therefore justified in his use of the same. Bravo thinks that since our use of liberal
sources preceded his papers and responses, he is right in thinking that we are hypocrites
and liars, especially for complaining against him for using our own methods against us.
We will now show our readers how this argument actually backfires against Bravo and
proves our constant complaint that he isn’t capable of writing a cogent and logical
reply to us. Bravo really doesn’t have what it takes to be a Muslim Apologist and
writer. His arguments only do more damage to himself, his prophet and his god.
Bravo’s argument here ignores a very important fact. Long before Bravo ever
appeared on the scene, Christians were forced to address and expose the hypocritical use
of critical scholarship by so-called Muslim scholars and apologists against the Bible.
Note for instance the date when our initial series of responses to Bravo were posted:
March 4, 2002
The start of our "First Islamic Awareness Week", during which we will daily
add to our site one or two new articles in response to the polemics produced by
Islamic Awareness:
(Source: http://answering-islam.org/New/2002.html)
Now compare this with the following date of the publication of our article that dealt
with a Muslim’s appeal to liberal and critical scholarship to undermine the Bible:
April 13, 2000
For the occasion of today's debate between Shabir Ally and Sam Shamoun,
here is a major update in the section of
responses to Shabir Ally:
Reflections on Shabir Ally's debate
tactics, including his Misuse
of Bruce M. Metzger's Writings, a response to his analysis of the debate
between Ally and Storkey,
rebuttals to various of his online articles regarding Qur'an and Science
(*,
*,
*), other claims
for the Qur'an (*,
*), and his newest attacks
on the deity of Jesus Christ (*,
*,
*,
*), and
the Bible.
(Source: http://answering-islam.org/New/2000.html)
One of the articles posted that day included my examination of Shabir Ally’s
pamphlet where he suggests that Muslims purchase the New American Bible and use it in
their Da’wah to Christians (*).
Shortly after posting our responses to Bravo, the following rebuttals to Dr. Jamal
Badawi also appeared:
May 13, 2002
Andy Bannister's series The Quest for the Lost Jesus
continues with Part 3: The Coming of the Kingdom. Sam Shamoun
exposes Jamal Badawi's Misinformation and Misquotations -
Part 4 and his Answers to 12 Anti-Trinitarian Arguments
is now connected to the MENJ Rebuttals section, after he was
identified as the original source of the Muslim article. The Arabic subsite
was extended with the translation of Section 2.3 of John Gilchrist's Jam'
al-Qur'an. An article about The Tractate of John of Damascus on Islam
gives some background on early Muslim-Christian encounter. Furthermore,
Is The Qur'an Translatable? Early Muslim Opinion.
And the RECALL NOTICE is an addition to the
Religious Humor section.
(Source: http://answering-islam.org/New/2002.html)
In part 4 of my series, I dealt with the methods and sources which Badawi often uses in
debates and dialogues with Christians. In fact, here are some relevant quotes from my
responses to Badawi and Shabir:
Badawi is fond of appealing to either Christian or Jewish scholars who are liberal in
their views regarding the origins of the Holy Bible. Badawi thinks that by appealing to
such scholars he can undermine the authority, integrity and accuracy of the Holy
Scriptures…
A word of caution here. Assumptions are not necessarily wrong, since everyone has a
set of assumptions that they begin with. Yet when the evidence clearly refutes or does
not support a person's assumptions that person must be willing to discard his/her
presuppositions and let the evidence determine one's position. Clearly, neither Fenton nor
Badawi have allowed the evidence to speak for itself, but have allowed their own
prejudices to affect their reading of the Holy Bible.
In light of the preceding points, we will now apply Fenton's methodology against the
Quran. This will be done to see whether the Quran will be able pass the very same
criteria used by the liberals in analyzing the Holy Bible and seemingly accepted by Badawi
as reasonable criteria to judge revelation from God.
(Source; underline and italic emphasis ours)
The problem with Shabir's source is that it is based primarily on assumptions that
have no basis in fact. Assertions are made that often go against the clear biblical
and archaeological evidence. Furthermore, Shabir applies a critical approach to the
scriptures that can be used more forcefully against the Quran. Yet, Shabir fails to use
this method against the Quran since to do so would debunk his belief that it is God's well
preserved word…
Shabir seemingly has chosen to discard the writings of early Muslim
historians such as at-Tabari and their favorable view of the Gospel accounts such as
Matthew. Instead, he seemingly has chosen to embrace the hypercritical approach of
liberalism, an approach that serves to discredit both the Holy Bible and the Quran…
What Shabir has demonstrated is that there are men who profess to be Christians but
deny the essential truths of Christianity. They do so NOT BECAUSE OF ANY EVIDENCE THEY
HAVE MUSTERED UP, but because of certain presuppositions that are completely devoid of any
substantial and verifiable facts.
The presuppositions held by these men would also negatively effect Shabir's view of
revelation and the Quran, since most of these same scholars would also criticize the
Quran and deny its inspiration and authenticity.
(Source; underline, capital and italic emphasis ours)
If one actually reads my full response to Shabir, one will see that most of the quotes
which I used in my initial series of responses against Bravo are actually taken from this
same article. My quotes from Dashti, Thomas Carlyle, N鰈deke, Watt etc. were used there
long before I used them against Bravo.
The reader may be wondering what the relevance of all this is, especially in refuting
Bravo’s charges against us. It is very simple really. In light of the fact that both
Badawi and Ally have been around a lot longer than the Answering Islam website, and in
light of the fact that both these men have been debating for years and have consistently
quoted liberal and atheist scholars against the Christians, this serves to shatter
Bravo’s complaint of us. Long before having ever read Bravo’s shallow papers, I
was forced to deal with MUSLIM SCHOLARS AND APOLOGISTS WHO WERE USING LIBERAL AND CRITICAL
SOURCES AGAINST CHRISTIANS. Their use of such scholarship is what forced me to use THEIR
OWN CRITERIA AND METHODOLOGY IN ORDER THAT MUSLIMS COULD SEE WHAT WOULD HAPPEN TO THEIR
BELIEFS WHEN THESE SAME SOURCES ARE USED AGAINST THE QURAN! In other words, I was
returning the favor back to Muslims such as Badawi and Ally in order to expose their
inconsistency and hypocrisy since they failed to use the same critical method against
their own religious beliefs and scriptures.
This means that Bravo’s complaint regarding our use of critical scholarship long
before he had posted his papers and responses somehow proves that we are therefore
hypocrites for "complaining" against him, or that we are liars, doesn’t
follow since the premise which he based all this on is mistaken and erroneous. Now it may
be the case that Bravo only cited liberal and critical sources in response to our use of
them (which I highly doubt since his initial paper on the NT documents suggest otherwise),
but Bravo’s whole argument against us completely crumbles form beneath his feet
since, long before he ever appeared on the scene, Christians such as myself were forced to
deal with Muslim hypocrites who would apply specific criteria and arguments against the
Holy Bible which they would dare not use against the Quran.
In fact, even in my initial responses I made it clear that I am using Bravo’s own
criteria against him:
Let us NOW TURN THE TABLES ON BRAVO and see if the Quran passes his test…
(Source)
Let us NOW use Bravo’s OWN criticism of the Holy Bible against the Quran
and see what the outcome would be…
(Source)
More importantly, we highly encourage that our readers cull through the first series of
responses to Bravo, and then read Bravo’s follow up responses, to see who in fact
complained about appealing to non-theists or liberals. In none of my initial replies did I
once complain about Bravo’s use of liberal, agnostic, non-theist authors.
The only time a person’s theological presuppositions were even mentioned was in
Dr. James D. Price’s response, and even then he did so only to highlight the possible
motive behind the author’s gross distortion and exaggerations of the actual facts:
PRICE:
The Interpreter's Bible was written by skeptical critics like Till. But the first
statement above is true because all ancient literature suffered the same fate. We are
blessed by what has survived. However, the statement "the original copies of the NT
books were not looked upon as scripture by those of the early Christian communities"
is not true. It is a supposition not consistent with the writings of the early Christian
community. All the ancient Christian literature (outside of the NT) indicates that the
early Christian community regarded the NT books as divinely inspired and authoritative
like the OT. Statements in the NT even indicate that this was true among the apostolic
church. (Source)
Yet do notice how many times Bravo attacked the data we presented by calling into
question the motives and scholarly credentials of the authors we cited:
Guillaume does not stop there, he has to make more absurd comments in the
citations presented by Shamoun: "Both have suffered here and there from variant
readings...", he is talking about the Bible and the Quran, this also
highlights his ignorance…
A guy called "L. Bevan Jones", according to the missionary, "sums it
up." This again highlights the desperation of these Christian missionaries…
What are the credentials of this person? Nothing but another bigoted Christian
missionary! The guy of course is no authority on the subject and is merely writing a
polemical and extremely biased work, but that does not stop missionaries from quoting him!
Again, we are not at all impressed by that. Further, this guy does not say anything that
is even worth a reply. So why is Sam quoting him? …
Quoting from such bias and extremely prejudiced material actually highlights the
desperation of the Christian missionaries yet again. Norman Anderson is merely another
bigoted, extremely biased and prejudiced Christian missionary, and the above is simply
one of his polemical, biased and narrow minded book on Islam. Just as Sam Shamoun would
not be impressed were I to quote Muslims as authorities against the text of the Bible and
thereby present the "Muslim perspective", we are similarly neither
interested nor impressed by the "Christian perspective" of the Qur'鈔
because they are not the scholars and authorities when it comes to the Qur'鈔 Anderson is
most definately [sic] not somebody you can trust as a fair and unbiased scholar.
Sure, he wrote a lot on the Islamic Law (Sharia'), but that does not make him an authority
when it comes to the sciences of the Qur'鈔. Why is Shamoun quoting him? I am quoting to
him his own [sic] respected scholars [sic] (not Muslim apologists) and experts [sic]
and authorities [sic] on the Bible against the Bible to show him what I am saying is the
truth, that what I am saying is readily accepted and admitted by the majority [sic]
of the top-notch Bible scholars themselves [sic], whereas Sam quotes to me
prejudiced bias and bigoted Christian MISSIONARIES as well as biased orientalists against
the Qur'鈔! I might just as well quote Ahmed Deedat as an authority on the Bible in
my next rebuttals to Sam, but I am sure that will not impress Sam just as it does not
impress us when he quotes his fellow MISSIONARIES as authorities on the Quran.
Furthermore, if one reads Anderson's above mentioned ridiculous book, it will be seen that
Anderson mostly relies on Arthur Jeffery's work and basis his arguments on the material by
Arthur Jeffery. However, we have already seen that Arthur Jeffery's work is nothing
more than shoddy "scholarship" and is extremely unreliable, therefore
Anderson's little citation stands refuted…
In his desperate attempt, Sam next refers to Ibn Khaldun as "Muslim
scholar", in order to give some weight to his feeble citations. Please note that
Ibn Khaldun, as Dr. Haddad also mentioned in one of his SRI posting, "...was a historian,
not a Qur'鈔 specialist and even less a hadith expert."
(Source;
underline emphasis ours)
Bravo calls into question the credibility of these writers simply because some of them
were Christians, and others were not Quran specialists, a very scholarly and rational
approach in analyzing sources (note the sarcasm here). And to think that all these
previous quotes highlighting Bravo’s mastery of logical fallacies such as the genetic
fallacy, poisoning the well etc., are from just one of his rebuttals!
Third, I didn’t complain about Bravo’s use of atheists such as Schacht,
Nietzsche etc., but about his being a hypocrite for complaining when we do likewise. Let
me post what I did say, this time in bold emphasis:
Finally, BRAVO HAS DONE WHAT HE HAS ACCUSED ME OF. Later in this rebuttal, Bravo
will chide me for citing Ali Dashti. Yet here he cites individuals who are just as biased
against Islam as they are against Christianity. For instance, one of the names mentioned
is J. Schacht. To see a "favorable" review of Schacht, please read this Muslim article.
Bravo's source also cites Nietzsche, infamous for the "God is dead" slogan.
Bravo may object and say that it really doesn't matter what Schacht and Nietzsche
believed. What matters is what they say since even unbelievers can speak the truth - SOMETHING
THAT I WOULD AGREE WITH. If so, Bravo needs to retract his criticism of my sources.
Otherwise, Bravo would be guilty of hypocrisy, using a double standard to suit his own
purposes. I will have more to say about this in my response to Bravo's assault on the
Orientalists. (Source)
I also said:
Bravo commits the fallacy of false dilemma since he asserts that either I accept all
that Dashti has to say, or reject it in toto. I am under no obligation to accept claims
that are not supported by the evidence. Dashti's criticism of the Quran's grammatical
structure is based on facts, not opinions as the preceding citations clearly demonstrated.
Even more evidence will follow shortly.
Second, one major reason why I appeal to scholars who do not hold to conservative views
of God and revelation IS TO EXPOSE THE SHODDY SCHOLARSHIP OF MUSLIM APOLOGISTS SUCH AS
BRAVO. MUSLIMS ARE FOND OF QUOTING LIBERAL SCHOLARS TO REFUTE CHRISTIANITY, NOT REALIZING
THAT THESE SAME SCHOLARS WOULD DEBUNK MUSLIM CLAIMS ABOUT MUHAMMAD AND THE QURAN. See
the following two articles for examples of Muslims appealing to liberals in their
criticism of Christianity and my responses to them: [1],
[2].
Amazingly, Bravo now accuses me of hypocrisy for using liberals in my response WHILE
FAILING TO INFORM HIS READERS THAT I AM SIMPLY USING HIS OWN METHODOLOGY AGAINST HIM! I am
simply reflecting back Bravo's approach in order to expose his superficial thinking.
For example, whom did Bravo appeal to in attacking the Greek of the New Testament? Joseph
Schacht and Nietzsche, men that deny revelation and miracles. The direct complaint against
the Muslim use of liberal scholars has hardly ever worked. It never got their attention.
Therefore, I am now doing exactly the same and suddenly they "see" that this is
wrong and get angry at me for doing so. However, Bravo only condemns himself with his
outrage.
Furthermore, notice again Bravo's admission above:
It is also interesting to note that this missionary, Sam Shamoun, got profoundly
angered in our email exchanges (dealing with another topic) WHEN I QUOTED MATERIAL FROM
JEWS FOR JUDAISM WEBSITE. Sam lashed out:
Interestingly, Bravo GETS ANGRY OVER THE FACT that Answering Islam presents the
research of men like Geiger, yet finds no problem with using Jews for Judaism who also
share Geiger's views of Jesus! And yet Bravo has the nerve to call us hypocrites?
So I say, triple shame on you Bravo. Shame on you for using liberals and Jesus-hating
Jews in attacking Christianity throughout your original article. Shame on you for then
criticizing me for repaying you the favor by quoting liberals in critiquing the Quran. And
finally, shame on you for justifying your inconsistency in applying your criteria
objectively with:
But when a Muslim uses A SMALL AMOUNT OF MATERIAL by those hostile to the Christians
(and even Muslims),
Is this an excuse? Since you only claim to quote small amounts this means it is
therefore okay for you to cite liberals and unbelievers? Since when did the amount of
material make a difference in whether one honestly applies their methodology consistently?
Third, the readers can see that throughout my articles I interact with and respond to
the use of liberal theologians by Muslim writers and apologists, provide answers