Tuesday, November 4, 2014

Debate Tonight on the Trinity Channel (Farhan Qureshi vs. David Wood)

Tonight, Farhan Qureshi and I will be debating the topic, "How Should We Confront the Islamic Challenge?" Tune in to the Trinity Channel at 8:00 PM (Eastern Standard Time) to watch.

19 comments:

Unknown said...

Wow! A debate where for once both speakers are in agreement about Islam and still discussing Islam? This ought to be interesting.

apostlepaul said...

hello. I noticed how you guys debated whether you should either focus on criticizing islam or cleared up Islamic misunderstandings of Christianity. There are some arguments that do both.... i.e. the Quran says that Jesus was the Word of God & the Spirit of God. Debating this can be used to both raise doubts in the Quran while promoting Christian doctrine.

Unknown said...

The Truth Hurts. We must tell the truth at all times as millions of people are going into eternal damnation. As long as you are a human being, you will be offended.
Why should we stop telling the truth because we do not want to offend someone's sensibilities. Farhan's arguments have their place but the truth must be shared even if it is not palatable. islam is not special and should not be treated as such. We should avoid auto censorship at all cost. We would be playing straight into their trap. It is time to stand and expose the lies of islam.
David keep up the good work.

Osama Abdallah said...

To Farhan,

One of the points that you should mention that refute trinity is the Bible says that Jesus had to be like King Melchizedek, who was the Jews' highest priest who had no father and no mother and no beginning and no end. The Bible said that Jesus had to be "IN ACCORDING TO Melchizedek".

This is where you get why Jesus was born in a Miraculous way, and why Jesus was given authority and power by GOD Almighty to perform Great Miracles.

To read more on this, visit: www.answering-christianity.com/convert_christians.htm and find the trinity section.

Good luck, and may Allah Almighty open up your heart back to Islam. Ameen.

Osama Abdallah

Osama Abdallah said...

Another point is this:

1- We on earth are far away from GOD Almighty. We are remote and have no direct interaction with GOD Almighty, except for what He the Almighty gave us in the Holy QURANS (Plural) that he sent down to humanity from the time of Adam and onward.

2- Earth is so remote and far away from GOD Almighty that if GOD were to make Angels live on earth, He would still need to send them AN ANGEL PROPHET:

‏17:95 قل لو كان في الارض ملائكة يمشون مطمئنين لنزلنا عليهم من السماء ملكا رسولا

[017:095] Say, "If there were settled, on earth, angels walking about in peace and quiet, We should certainly have sent them down from the heavens an angel for an apostle."

3- The community of BEINGS THAT LIVE NEAR GOD ALMIGHTY do speak directly with GOD Almighty and interact with Him. Example: Allah Almighty speaking with satan, Allah Almighty speaking with Angels about creating Adam, Allah Almighty speaking with Adam and Eve in Heaven.

This Community has MIGHTY BEINGS in it, which Jesus Melchizedek and other are like. But nonetheless, they are no more than creations of Allah Almighty no matter how mighty and powerful they may be.

This is some of my debate material for my near future trinity debate.

Best of luck!
Osama Abdallah

Hiwot said...

Great job David and Farhan. I enjoyed your debate.

I agree with David that Muslims are the same people as any other person on the planet and they should tolerate criticism of Islam and Muhammad in stead of killing people over a carton or video. I also agree with Farhan that we should know the place, the time, and the audience for effective criticism which I also observe the same opinion from David that not every person is the same and we should confront different groups of audience differently.

But Farhan, I noticed that you wanted to be sensitive towards Muslims but how do you think Muslims would react regarding your answer about Muhammad's experience in the cave? You did exactly what David would do in his article and videos and also his answer was the same as yours. For me that was great and I would say that you laid down the facts about Muhammad in a very educational and civilized manner. But, how would a Muslim take your answer that said Muhammad thought of himself as demon possessed and that his prophecy was not validated by God or by himself but by two individuals which one of them is a female that a Muslim god considers inferior than men.

Unknown said...

Great program onc eagain God bless you all from the UK!

Furhan has some good points about individual personality and cultural differences which is why he says we must be careful in our approach when talking about islam.

However i must point out that an individuals values and norms are often derived from their religion. A christian exercising free speech goes as far as producing utube videos and publicly burning the quran. By contrast a muslim exercising free speech is led to violence and murder.

The problem is muslims become frustrated when they are faced with the facts of islam such as

1. the violent verses surah 9.29
2. the pedophilia of Muhammed
3. death for apostasy
4. poor treatment of women
5. amputation
6. stoning to death
7. unequal testimony and inheritance rights
oh the list goes on and on!

Muslims have no escape and the only way to silence any opposition is to eradicate the truth by unlawful killing and waging war.

I agree with David, we must be bold and make a stand with the truth not to be bullied - as christians we are led by love but we are also told to give an answer. Muslims are continually misquoting the bible, telling the world the bible has been changed and flirting with historical facts (shabbir ally come to mind), the truth really does hurt, our mission, unlike the muslims is not to commit religious genocide but to give the good news and expose islam for the truth.

God bless all the team at ABNSAT, keep up the good work and i pray you inspire more and more people to be courageous enough to simply speak the truth

best regards
Khadija and Mickele UK

Farhan Qureshi said...

Hiwot I think talking about controversial issues or
Criticizing Islam is fine, it's how to present the information that triggers a response and reaction is what we are looking at. Some deliberately seek a negative response by being provacative in their choice of words, tone, body language

Farhan Qureshi said...

Bam, I agree the truth can hurt sometimes; the question is how to increase receptivity even if it hurts.

Unknown said...

Is this the same Osama Abdallah- ...the slave of allah. The same allah that told mohammed to separate his adopted son Zayd from his wife Zainab? and then commanded muslims not to adopt again just to satisfy mohammed?
If you are still a slave to this allah, then it tells a lot about your state of mind.
I wonder why Osama did not call in to raise his arguments. He's become a kindergarten in a hide and seek game. Its time to use our God given brain.
On a last note, A Christian couple was killed recently in Pakistan for "desecrating" the Koran.I bet Osama is happy for his allah. We can no longer keep silent, its time to speak up and let the light of Christ shine forth into this dark dark world. David keep up bringing out the goodies, thousands are being reached this way. God bless ABN and all the staff for wonderful programming.

RMuhammad said...

The bottom line is we are talking about effective communication. Jesus is the master communicator. Sometimes he was very gentle and sometimes he let it rip, depending on the circumstances.

When he was dealing with stubborn people, he hit them hard. When he was dealing with someone who had a misunderstanding, he still spoke truthfully but was gentle, like the woman at the well.

He was gentle with her but he didn't sugar coat it when he said to her "You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know". He didn't call her a whitewashed grave like he did with the willfully stubborn Jewish leaders he encountered.

So I think both David and Farhan are correct in their approaches, and the circumstances determine which method we should use.

Based on that, we should be able to both rip into Islam and gently use the Qur'an to show Muslims how favorably it speaks of Jesus as sinless (while the Qur'an speaks of Muhammad as a sinner).

"We destroy arguments and every proud obstacle to the knowledge of God" (2 Corinthians 10:5)

I will echo Farhan's concern in this:

"Some deliberately seek a negative response by being provocative in their choice of words, tone, body language"

We are trying to destroy the hold that Islam has on Muslims, we are NOT trying to destroy the Muslim for whom Jesus died for!

Scripture sums it up best:

Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt so that you may know how you ought to answer every one. Colossians 4.6

KNOW HOW TO ANSWER means to KNOW HOW TO ANSWER. We have to be able to respond from both David's angle and Farhan's angle, because the situation may call for one or the other or both.

I recall Nabeel's testimony about conversations with David. Nabeel reached the point where, after having much of Islam's misunderstandings about Christianity clarified, he still had the position that even if he was 99% sure the Bible was right, he was 100% sure the Qur'an was right.

This led to examination of the Qur'an, like Sura 4:24, where he was faced with the ugly fact that sexual slavery, even of married women, is Islamic. This started to shake his "100% sure about Islam" foundation.

One strategy I like to employ is asking Muslims to read me ayat from their Qur'an. When we say what an aya says, they object with, "You are saying so and so about the Qur'an". But when they read it from their own Qur'an, there is no wiggle room.

RMuhammad said...

Half my family is Muslim. I recently had my first conversation about Islam with one of my uncles. I asked for his Qur'an but he didn't know where it was. When I was reading from 'Umdat al-Salik and my Qur'an, he told his wife to bring out their Qur'an and she did. I then read THE EXACT SAME AYAT in their Qur'an as I had read in mine, and then some. He got the message and told me when he was walking me to my car, "I can't say it would be tomorrow, but I am thinking about leaving Islam."

This same uncle told me that had I wanted to talk about the Bible, he would have never even let me in, but because he overheard me talking about Islam with another person, and then I said I wanted to talk further with him about that conversation, he agreed to hear me out. He later said he though that I had converted to Islam because I was so knowledgeable about Islam in the conversation he overheard between me and a Muslim. And so he was surprised, to say the least, when he saw me exposing Islam from its own doctrine.

The point is that I let Islamic doctrine hang itself, and when he asked questions like why Muslims in America are peaceful compared with Muslim-majority countries, I was able to answer with Sura 47:35.

My uncle got very upset in the midst of our discussion and told me to burn 'Umdat al-Salik. I responded with "but it contains Qur'an verses". So I used his reverence for Islam to hang Islam. He wanted to condemn the book for exposing Islam to him, but if he did that he would have to condemn the Qur'an.

Eventually he calmed down, and laughed with I said I sat by the exit on purpose for this conversation!

Dacritic said...

I managed to find sources regarding Surah 9:5 to refute a Muslim whom I was having an online discussion with about who first broke the treaty of Hudaibiyya. So when I quoted Sirat Rasul Allah and two other Hadiths, another Muslim responded typically by saying that no Hadiths are above the Quran and since such things happen 1,400 years ago it is hard to determine who is right or not, but that we just need to prove whether the Quran is correct. Now bear in mind, all this started because I quoted violent verses of the Quran, to which the first Muslim responded (without quoting any source) by saying it was the Banu Bakr who broke the Treaty. I could respond further, but as the Chinese would say, do not play a piano for the cow.

Unknown said...

Us christians are I a very fortunate position. We have the best teacher Jesus. We should observe his example and talk with zeal when needed and kindness.

The quran is littered with contradictions and is its own worst enemy. We have to allow them to see the quran in transparency and one of the ways of doing this is asking them questions about islam. Having an open discussion is difficult but we must be rest assured that the holy spirit will guide us. We must show love and compassion and speak in accordance to the situation.

Sometimes I guess its very easy to become frustrated and angry at muslims but we have to show them.love.

David Wood said...

Are you the Khadija who called on Monday?

Unknown said...

Hi david!

Yes this is the monday khadija from England! Ive sent an email to you via abnsat. Its regarding a dialouge me and my partner (mickele) had with yusef estes. I hope you get to read it!

I know you must be a really busy man but us guys here in the uk are craving for you to visit the Uk. Theres a real need for the truth to be exposed here. We are infants in our quranic and biblical knowledge compared you guys but I must salute your vigour and courage in speaking out with the truth. I pray the lord uses us to do the same some day soon!

If you could recommend any literature, links, online study etc that would be great!

All the best
Khadija (definitely NOT muhammads wife!)

David Wood said...

Greetings Sister! ABN hasn't forwarded an email to me, but you can just sent it to me directly:

wood_apologetics@hotmail.com

Dacritic said...

Hey David, can I send emails to you too? In reply to Khadija Hanif, I don't get angry at Muslims. Most of the time it is the other way round. If you expose them further and further, you would find that they would be trapped in their own circular logic. You quote something from the Quran that is unfavourable to Islam, they would then say you're quoting Quranic verses out of context or you're "copying and pasting". So then you proceed to show them the context and further studies from the Hadith to justify your position. Then they tell you "oh no, the Hadith is not above the Quran. You have to prove the Quran is right for example from a scientific viewpoint (to sort of justify the 'wisdom' of the Quran)." SCIENTIFIC VIEWPOINT? So now they want you to go back to the Quran. Then again, it's easy to DISprove the Quran from a scientific viewpoint, is that not so? And so never mind that, you do go back to the Quran, and give them the "clear" and "detailed" verses to prove that the Quran promotes violence towards non Muslims. Some of them give up here...but with a twist. They admit that yes, those verses are violent, but different translations in various languages could mean different things. The Quran calling itself "clear" might mean because it is revealed IN FRONT of Muhammad, so therefore it could mean "obvious". Are they kidding me or what?? What, can people back then also read what is physically BEHIND them? Now, when they start giving stupid reasons like this, you know you're entering a dangerous area, especially if you're in a Muslim majority country. Watch out. The last approach they have would be anger, and then they'd accuse of insulting Muhammad or Allah (and/or the Sultan of that area) and start death threats. So we're never the angry ones. We don't have to be. We have the truth.

Hiwot said...

Thanks Farhan. The reason why I mentioned your polite way of communication is because no matter how you present your criticism of Islam, Muslims always are offended since they consider it as blasphemy.