Reflections on the Wood debate 17/07/09

Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Raheem,

On the 17th of July 2009, I proceeded into a debate or interfaith dialogue with the esteemed Professor Wood of Fordham University, New York. Professor Wood alongside his former-Qadiyani now turned Christian Apologist Nabeel Qureshi have now been successfully running a Ministry aimed at converting Muslims known as Acts 17 Apologetics.
Unfortunately due to a lapse in communication on my behalf, the original estimated time of 3 hours allocated to the debate was cut down to 2 hours, with an anticipated Audience Q and A session of 30 mins, cutting down the allocated speaking time of each speaker to 45 mins each.

As I have prior informed most, if the debate were to be analysed on Rhetoric and Oratory skill alone, then there is no doubt what so ever that my esteemed opponent Professor Wood with all his speaking experience had definitely won the debate hands down. For I make no claims to be the calm, composed experienced orator that Professor Wood is.

Prior to the debate, I had asked Professor Wood to kindly restrict any objections he had to ones that could feasibly be responded to within the time frame permitted, he knows as well as I do that defending one’s faith is a lot more difficult to do within a short time frame than to fire out shots at another faith. Professor Wood kindly agreed, unfortunately I felt that during the debate to raise 50 so called “contradictions” in the Qur’an was something that broke our agreement and therefore should be noted, particularly given that our time was cut by roughly an hour.

Other than that, I’d like to thank Professor Wood for his courteous behavior and for refraining from using any offensive language in the debate itself, for to do so would jeopardize the future of interfaith debates of such sorts in Mosques. Despite leveling many hostile criticisms that are expected in such discourse, my opponent remained candid, even at times when I most likely did not, which is a great credit to him.

Self-Criticisms with Hindsight: Unfortunately I entered into some rather cheap scoring points with David due to losing my temper a lot, in which I pulled the classic “Nabeel Qureshi” move of impersonating tone of voice, when reiterating Professor Wood’s objections.
I really abhor the fact I had entered into such a line of fire, as this is one which I myself usually condemn and thus should never be doing myself. I can only reiterate, that I did this out of frustration due to what I perceived to be a lack of integrity on David’s behalf vis a vis a previously agreed upon matter (namely the restricting of objections). I can only hope that such behavior will only highlight my fallibility and lack of experience in the field of Apologetics and shall perhaps allow myself the recognition that I require both more spiritual self-building and also the ability to act in an Islamic manner under pressure and at all times. God Willing, this shall change with time and reflection.

In terms of David’s sly move, which I have made reference to several times:
David and I, approximately two nights before the Debate had made an agreement that he would restrict objections to ones I could feasibly answer within the time frame provided. I, in turn agreed to restrict my evidences of Prophethood to a similar amount of arguments.

Upon mutually discovering our time had been cut to two hours in total, David informed me that his objections were 3, to which I awaited several contextual objections which I could hope to respond to. Then in his opening statement, I was truly marveled to discover that he presented at least 23 so called contradictions in the Qur’an and attempted to claim this was but one argument!
Given that I had merely 10 minutes to respond, one hopes that others can empathize with my shock and horror and inability to respond to every single so called contradiction.
With the exception of this, I took issue with two other areas namely the following:

1) In regards to the Miracle of the Qur’an, I quoted Arabists and recognized authorities in the Western world on the Arabic Language and Literary Devices, ones who would be more than adequately qualified to make a statement on such matters. Where as my friend David, cited the following people.

a) A Naturalist Iranian with real issues against Islam namely Ali Dashti, who has merely 4 years of Arabic study under his belt, and has never specialized in the Arabic grammatical sciences.
b) Dr. Gerd R Puin, who wrote his comments on the Qur’an in the context of the discovery of the Sana’a Manuscripts which are devoid of Diocritical markings in order to establish which harf or letter is which. Dr. Puin it must be pointed out is a specialist on Book bindings and Orthography, hardly an expert on Arabic Grammar or the like and can thus not be forwarded as such.
It is a sad day Indeed when such people are advanced as being as being on par with such arabists as A.J Arberry and Michael Sells and the like!

2) The issue of Historical Accuracy, We saw no arguments of Professor Wood’s to prove the following:
a) Ur of the Chaldeans being a scribal error.
b) Alexander Legend being copied by Islam
c) Second Targum of Esther being Pre-Islamic.
With the exception of these things, I think Mr. Wood presented an interesting case.

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~ by Yahya Hayder Seymour on July 31, 2009.