Your response is an excellent example of the kinds of logical and grammatical
fallacies made by many Muslim apologists. I assume that your response came
from a rudimentary ignorance of the laws of logic and the rules of English
grammar.
The first logical fallacy you committed is called Argumentum ad Hominen.
It is logically irrelevant if someone is dishonest or honest because the
most wicked man who ever lived can tell you the truth while the most righteous
man can tell you a lie.
When you wrote, "To what extent he is honest..."(italics mine), you fell
into the ad hominem fallacy and wasted everyone's time by attacking my character
instead of disproving my arguments. Since you do not know me, it is absurd
for you to judge my heart or motives.
The second fallacy you committed is called the "red herring" fallacy. This
is committed when you bring up issues that are not part of the subject under
discussion or debate. The debate was on Islam (Allah, Muhammad and the Qur'an)
and not the motives and character of Badawi or Morey. You changed the subject
from Islam to Morey which is a logical fallacy.
The third fallacy you committed is the assumption that you must quote irrelevant
material when making a point. According to the laws of logic and the rules
of English composition, it is valid to quote only those parts of a document
which are relevant to the point you are making. It is unnecessary to quote
the entire sentence, paragraph or page.
Your only answer to my arguments is the fallacy of saying, "He did not quote
the entire section." From this mistake you further illogically deduced I
am a dishonest person. All of your arguments are logical fallacies!
Fourth, in the English language, when you put "..." within a citation it
indicates that you are leaving out irrelevant material that is not germane
to the point you are making. Evidently, you are not aware of this grammatical
rule in the English language.
For example, when documenting from the Qur'an itself that unbelievers made
the accusation that the Qur'an was composed of old wives tales or myths,
it was not necessary to include the response of the authors of the Qur'an
to that accusation. Thus I put ... in my citation to let the reader know
that I was skipping over irrelevant material. Later when I dealt with the
response of the authors of the Qur'an to that accusation, I quoted the very
words that applied to that point. Kalid, there is nothing wrong with this
procedure. All scholars do this. Thus your entire ad hominen response falls
to the ground under the combined weight of your many logical and grammatical
fallacies.
Just one last word will suffice to show the irrational nature of your response.
You condemned me for not quoting all of a document. You claimed that my failure
to quote all the page or paragraph proved I was dishonest. What if we applied
this same standard to you when you quoted from my paper. Did you give partial
quotations from my paper? YES. Did you always quote the entire page or paragraph
from my paper? NO You are therefore guilty of doing what you condemn me for
doing!
Your response was to attack me instead of my arguments. Why do you, Badawi
and other Muslims do this? First, it shows that you are reacting emotionally
instead of intellectually. I have yet to have a debate with a Muslim in which
he or she did not start attacking me personally instead of dealing with the
arguments.
Emotionalism if not cured can cause people to do and say terrible things.
Some Muslims have threatened me with death or bodily harm. This is the logical
fallacy called Argumentum ad Baculum. Such threats come from emotionalism
and not rational thought. I appreciate the fact that you did not threaten
me in your response. Second, your response reveals once again that Islam
is incapable of a logical defense and is intellectually bankrupt. Allah is
a false god, Muhammad a false prophet and the Qur'an a false book. These
are the facts you must deal with.
In closing, I plead with you to use the brain God gave you and to repent
of your sins and bow your knee to the Lord Jesus Christ who is God the Son,
second person of the Holy Trinity, the crucified Savior of sinners. He is
the Way, the Truth and the Life. No one can come to the Father but through
Him.
First, English is not my first language. I try my best to communicate my
thoughts in written form as clear as possible. Being a Muslim, I use my God
given faculties of reason and logic to distinguish right from wrong. Besides,
In my opinion, Internet is not an academic institution that requires one
to be either a Ph.D. or an expert in the English language to reflect upon
one's area of interest.
Second, I believe that no logical fallacy has been committed by me. In my
response to your paper, I clearly stated that I intend to examine the Islamic
references you cited. On the contrary, it is you who made logical fallacies
in your document "Is Allah of the Qur'an the true universal God?" Let me
at least give you one example. When you quoted verses 101 and 102 of chapter
5 of the Qur'an, you left out second half of verse 101 to support your argument.
By doing that, you committed two fallacies, first called Hasty Generalization
- drawing a general conclusion from insufficient evidence (logical), and
second Sweeping Generalization - (dicto simpliciter) applying a principle
to a specific situation while ignoring the context under which the principle
was formed (conceptual).
Third, when I said that you're dishonest(1) , I had sufficient evidence to
base my opinion upon. In your paper, you quoted Hadith number 555, volume
2 of Bukhari. In that, you actually altered a part of this Hadith. Your altered
part reads, "Allah has hated you... [for]...." Whereas the actual passage
reads, "Allah has hated for you..." In our everyday life, people who indulge
in acts such as fabrication and forgery are called criminals. According to
the Black's LAW Dictionary(2) , dishonesty is defined as "disposition to
lie, cheat, deceive, or defraud; untrustworthiness; lack of integrity…"
Since you fulfil the criteria, I am not hesitant at all to call you dishonest.
I believe, if you had done the same in a legal document, you would have gotten
charged for forgery in any court of law.
Furthermore, in the English language(3), quotation stands for a "pair of
punctuation marks used to indicate the beginning and the end of a quotation
in which the exact phraseology of another or of a text is directly cited.
" In your case, instead of quoting the exact text, you modified the original
in order to prove your argument. Thus, committing another conceptual fallacy
called Quoting Out of Context - manipulating a quote either from an authority
or from one's interlocutor in such a way that the original meaning of the
statement is altered (Fallacy of Authority).
Fourth, in presenting your arguments, you're leaning against the rules of
the English language, which is not a problem as such. Qur'an was revealed
in the Arabic language and the rules of Arabic language must be applied in
order to understand the linguistics of the text. Your arguments against Qur'an
based on an English translation totally fall short of any validity whatsoever.
In addition, if you insist that advancing your arguments based on a translation
of the Qur'an is correct, then be informed that you would be committing another
logical fallacy called False Analogy - reaching a conclusion by likening
or comparing two significantly incomparable cases.
Fifth, I would suggest that you contact your local law enforcement authorities
and notify them of those Muslims threatening to kill or harm you. Otherwise,
you would be guilty of committing another fallacy called Mob Appeal (argumentum
ad populum) - using emotion-laden terminology to sway people. Being a human
being, you are free to reveal your inner self, to criticize, to express your
emotions and so forth.
Sixth, your saying that "your response reveals once again that Islam is incapable
of a logical defense and is intellectually bankrupt. Allah is a false god,
Muhammad a false prophet and the Qur'an a false book. These are the facts
you must deal with." Well, the above statement is based upon emotionalism
backed by extreme ignorance; and according to the rules of Fallacies of
Relevance, you're liable for committing a Genetic Fallacy - attacking a thesis,
institution, or idea by attacking its background or origin.
Seventh, I respect your religious convictions and I thank you very much for
inviting me towards them. I have studied Christianity from its early days
to the present, and found that its fundamental doctrines are unable to withstand
the test of Common Sense, Reason and Logic.
In conclusion, I would humbly request you to please study Qur'an and Sunnah
of the Last Prophet of Allah in its proper perspective that you may be rightly
guided. And fear Allah, fear the moment of Death, fear the punishment of
Grave and finally fear the day when you'll stand before the Almighty to account
for your deeds.
Regards,
KHALID JAN
Servant of Islam
REFERENCES
1. Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics
2. Black's LAW Dictionay, 6th Edition; West Publication Company, 1990.
3. Third New International Dictionary of the English language, 1986