Sir, Please Respect the Audience

Sami Zaatari

 

Most recently Dr. James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries (www.aomin.org) held a public debate with the well known Bart Ehrman, author of Misquoting Jesus and other popular works. As I was checking updates for the debate, Dr. White came out with a brief commentary concerning the debate, his article can be located on this link:

http://aomin.org/aoblog/index.php?itemid=3092

I found this article very interesting and very inconsistent from Dr. White, in point of fact Dr. White made no sense in his latest article. Dr. White writes the following:

I was especially interested in his tremendous fear to even talk about the Qur'an and Islam

RESPONSE

Wow! Perhaps someone needs to remind Dr. White that he was debating an agnostic-atheist! Furthermore the topic of discussion was on THE NEW TESTAMENT, so why in the world would Mr. Ehrman wish to talk about Islam or the Quran when the topic is not even related to the discussion. As I said Dr. White makes absolutely no sense. In point of fact the moderator should have stopped Dr. White IMMIDIETLY as soon as he began to divert the topic.

Dr. White goes on to say:

I thought Dr. Ehrman is a professor of religious studies? The chair of that department, in fact? Yet he professed utter ignorance of Islam last night, once even accusing me of trying to "liken" him to a Muslim! He simply refused to comment on the Qur'an whatsoever, not even theoretically answering the question that if the Qur'an has textual variants, would this not mean that the Qur'an is misquoting Muhammad?

RESPONSE

So notice, Dr. Erhman himself professed to be ignorant of Islam, yet Dr. White STILL wants Erhman's opinion of the Quran! How in the world does that make any sense? How can Dr. White possible want Erhman to comment about a subject he is not well grounded in?

Furthermore just because Erhman is the chair of religious studies does not mean he has to know every exact detail of other religious texts, Mr. Erhman is very well grounded in the study of Christianity, and due to his popular and scholarly works concerning this matter he was made as a chair of religious studies. Also need I remind Dr. White, THE TOPIC OF DISCUSSION WAS ON THE NEW TESTAMENT, THE QURAN HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE TOPIC. All Dr. White is doing is raising an irrelevant red-herring.

All this shows is the desperation of certain Christians, the Christians know their ship is sinking, so they want to take Islam down with them, this is the only explanation one can give. I mean it makes no sense what so ever as to why the Quran would be brought up in a debate with an agnostic-atheist when the topic is solely on the New Testament. You can all bet that if I was debating an agnostic-atheist on the Quran, and that I later asked Q's about the Bible the Christians would all be saying ?oh look at this Muslim, why can't he just stay on his own religion?' I guarantee you that Christians won't apply this same standard to Dr. White.

There is also another reason as to why Dr. White brought this issue up; Dr. White was hoping that Ehrman would say that the Quran was corrupted and so on. The reason for this is quite obvious, Dr. White knows that Muslims often use and quote Ehrman, so if Dr. White ever came across another Muslim who used Ehrman, White would respond back by saying ?oh the same Ehrman who also claims the Quran is corrupt as well?'

Now let's assume that Ehrman called the Quran corrupt as well, does this mean that Muslims would no longer be able to consult Ehrman's studies on the Bible? Of course not! Scholars will always make conclusions that you don't agree with, however so that doesn't mean you can't consult the scholar and quote him on other issues as well. Christians always quote ISLAMIC scholars, I have lost count on Christians who always quote Muslim scholars such as Ibn Kathir, Tabari etc, these are the same scholars who condemn Christianity as a false deviant religion! Yet Christians have no problems in quoting them amongst others to try and help their argument.

So to conclude this article I will borrow a line from Dr. White himself, ?Sir, Please Respect the Audience.'

And Allah Knows Best!

www.muslim-responses.com