Sam’s Sham-wow : Some Notes On Sam Shamoun’s Low­ly Character

Adden­dum : The Debate Challenge

While com­ment­ing upon the for­mat of the debate and the top­ic, Katz writes :

First, Sam Shamoun did not dic­tate the date. He only stat­ed that he has oth­er com­mitt­ments which will only allow him to do the debate in Feb­ru­ary. He gave Abual­rub the full free­dom to choose any date in Feb­ru­ary (or even lat­er, for that mat­ter). Sam Shamoun sim­ply stat­ed the time when he is not avail­able. He did not say : 6 Feb­ru­ary 2005, or noth­ing. That would be unrea­son­able. There is noth­ing unrea­son­able about giv­ing Abual­rub the full free­dom to choose a date in the range with­in which Sam Shamoun is available.

First, this is not a major issue, the major issue is Shamoun’s extreme­ly abu­sive demean­er, some­thing not once con­demned by Katz (does Katz sup­port that behav­iour?). How­ev­er, com­ing to the date, Shamoun did, actu­al­ly, dic­tate the date, and he did not object to Br. Jalal’s say­ing that he did. Br Jalal want­ed to debate Shamoun in Decem­ber, because Shamoun had said (empha­sis added):

“Date : Tues­day, Novem­ber 30, 2004 5:16 PM My man,I am pre­pared NOW to debate you on this subject”

In Eng­lish, ​“now” means now, hence this is why Br. Jalal said :

“Date : Tues­day, Novem­ber 30, 2004 6:45 PM …i am look­ing for a late decem­ber live debate”

to which Shamoun responded :

“Date : Tues­day, Novem­ber 30, 2004 6:56 PM. ​“WRONG!!! Live debate will be on Paltalk JUST LIKE I SAID IN THE FIRST EMAIL WHICH I SAVED. And it will have to be Feb­ru­ary, AND I DO MEAN FEBRUARY.” 

Nonethe­less, the exact date is a minor issue and some­thing that can be eas­i­ly worked out.

Sec­ond, Abual­rub’s for­mat is not a prop­er debate for­mat. Basi­cal­ly, what we have here is a ​“court hear­ing”. The case is : Is Muham­mad a true Prophet of God, or is he not ? This is a com­plex issue that can­not be decid­ed on the basis of any one sin­gle argu­ment. Many aspects have to be tak­en into account. Since the per­son whose claims and integri­ty are in ques­tion is not present to be inter­ro­gat­ed him­self, the case has to be made sole­ly based on evi­dence col­lect­ed from var­i­ous places.

Such a com­plex case — whether pro or con­tra — can­not be pre­sent­ed in two minute tid­bits. I have nev­er heard of a court hear­ing in which the pros­e­cu­tor and defense will go back and fourth in two or three minute seg­ments when they present their cas­es. No, each one will have a suf­fi­cient peri­od to make his case. After­wards, after the case was pre­sen­tend in its entire­ty only then can one ques­tion every detail. But if one were to debate every detail before the whole case is laid out, the hear­ing would be a com­plete mess.

To begin with, there is noth­ing ​“improp­er” about the for­mat pro­posed by Br. Jalal. Pret­ty much the same for­mat was employed in the pre­sendi­al debates of the Unit­ed States where a range of sub­jects were dis­cussed one at a time. If Bush and Ker­ry could dis­cuss com­plex issues as those dis­cussed in their debates, many com­plex issues, which were done in the man­ner sug­gest­ed by Br. Jalal, then how can Katz and Shamoun say it is not a prop­er debate for­mat ? The aim of Shamoun and Katz, in my view, is log­i­cal­ly as fol­lows : let Shamoun speak for 40 – 50 min­utes with his foul mouth so that he can hurl dozens of claims and polemics, so that Br. Jalal can­not pos­si­bly respond to them all in the time allot­ted to him. Both Katz and Shamoun seek to find a way out to get chal­lenged on spe­cif­ic top­ics. Nat­u­ral­ly, Br. Jalal would need more time to ful­ly address the polemics hurled by Shamoun, for instance, pin­point­ing trans­la­tion­al prob­lems of quotes, mis­quo­ta­tions, what schol­ars have to say about a cer­tain mat­ter, analy­sis of the sources of infor­ma­tion etc etc. Now imag­ine the mis­sion­ary fir­ing away one polemic after anoth­er, does Br. Jalal real­ly have to time to address each one, of a diverse nature, in detail ? No. Per­haps he would be able to respond to some issues in detail, but many oth­ers would not be addressed sim­ply due to the time fac­tor. That’s why, Shamoun was offered to have a top­ic by top­ic debate, but he flat­ly refused. He refused to have such a debate with Nadir Ahmed as well.

The top­ic pro­posed by Shamoun was : Is Muham­mad a true Prophet or was he deceived by Satan ? As Katz acknowl­edges above, this is a very wide rang­ing sub­ject, or as Katz puts it ​“Many aspects have to be tak­en into account” and ​“This is a com­plex issue that can­not be decid­ed on the basis of any one sin­gle argu­ment”. Cor­rect, since many argu­ments and issues need to be con­sid­ered, then why not have a debate where we can dis­cuss them all one item at a time ? If this prin­ci­pal is accept­ed, then even the for­mat can be worked out. As long as one spe­cif­ic issue can be dis­cussed at a time, there should be no prob­lem in agree­ing upon a for­mat accept­able by all sides. But this is the prob­lem : both Katz and Shamoun des­per­ate­ly wish to avoid dis­cussing one issue at a time. They want to fire every­thing in one go so that the oppo­nent can only respond to a few points. As we saw in the mails, Shamoun is not will­ing to have a point by point dis­cus­sion and his cheap behav­iour in e‑mails leaves no doubt in ones mind that his inten­tions are insin­cere. Nadir Ahmed offered a very rea­son­able pro­pos­al to Shamoun, where every issue would be dis­cussed in detail, but Shamoun refused. Why ? Because his desire is to have an oppor­tu­ni­ty where he can sim­ply fire away one polemic after anoth­er and the oppo­nent would­n’t be in a posi­tion to respond to them all in time even if he is ful­ly famil­iar with the subject.

There is lit­tle prob­lem with Katz’s objec­tion to the pro­posed for­mat — a side issue that can be resolved — but Katz does not show a will­ing­ness on an item by item dis­u­cus­sion. If he would do so, then I am sure the par­ties could work out a debate for­mat and date.

Katz writes :

Such a com­plex case — whether pro nor con­tra — can­not be pre­sent­ed in two minute tidbits.

No prob­lem, agree upon the prin­ci­pal to dis­cuss one issue at a time, instead of lump­ing every­thing togeth­er, and the for­mat will then be decid­ed through mutu­al agreement.

Insist­ing on ​“only one argument/​aspect at a time” seems to have only one inten­tion : To PREVENT Sam Shamoun from pre­sent­ing a coher­ent case against Muham­mad by inter­rupt­ing him after every state­ment. That is sim­ply not a rea­son­able debate for­mat. Period.

This is absurd, why can’t we have this : pick one, or 2 – 3 top­ics (noth­ing ridicu­lous­ly gen­er­al that it encom­pass­es vir­tu­al­ly every top­ic you can think of) and debate it. After the debate the lis­ten­ers will get the ques­tion and answer oppur­tu­ni­ty ? Sure­ly if you believe that your claims are the truth then you should not be so hes­i­tant to dis­cuss them one by one. That you are only will­ing to have a debate on a very broad sub­ject and refuse to nar­row down to spe­cif­ic top­ics shows you are the one who is bent on pre­vent­ing the truth from com­ing out.

Abual­rub will not have less time. If he believes that he can respond to Shamoun’s argu­ments in 15 x 3 min­utes, then he can just as well do it in 45 min­utes. That is the equal amount of time. The only dif­fer­ence is that, in a longer time, Shamoun can make a coher­ent case against Muham­mad. On the oth­er hand, Abual­rub could then in his time make a coher­ent case FOR Muham­mad. There is noth­ing unfair about this.

How about this : 15X3 min­utes for a spe­cif­ic issue, debate it, have rebut­tals, ques­tions and answers from the audi­ence, and then, prob­a­bly the next day, pro­ceed to a dif­fer­ent top­ic ? This way every sin­gle issue will be dis­cussed in-depth.…This is what Shamoun wants, and Katz seems to want this as well : debate a broad­ly titled sub­ject, throw­ing dozens of polemics in your 45 min­utes, or what­ev­er time peri­od, so that the oppo­nent can­not pos­si­bly address all the issues ade­quate­ly in the time allot­ted to him. This is unfair.

Per­haps Abual­rub feels that he does not real­ly need to make a case for Muham­mad, per­haps he feels that Muham­mad’s claim to prophet­hood is true by default, unless shown oth­er­wise, so that his main goal is to mere­ly pre­vent Shamoun mak­ing a case against Muham­mad. Then his demand for such an unsuit­able debate for­mat would make sense.

Shamoun appears to have infect­ed Katz with his dis­ease of self-decep­tion as well. To repeat again : Br. Jalal wish­es to refute Shamoun’s polemics POINT BY POINT, ITEM BY ITEM, where EVERY INDIVIDUAL SUBJECT is addressed and dis­cussed in detail. This way we can move on from top­ic to top­ic, leav­ing noth­ing unex­plored. That Shamoun and Katz are unwill­ing to dis­cuss one issue at a time only indi­cates that they, either con­cious­ly or sub­con­cious­ly, are aware of the weak­ness­es of their argu­ments. Why would they pre­vent the dis­cus­sion of all the issues in detail ?

Katz writes to jus­ti­fy his unfair demand :

Note that Abual­rub has a huge advan­tage over Sam Shamoun even in the for­mat pro­posed by Shamoun. Here it is : Sam Shamoun’s argu­ments against Muham­mad are already avail­able online.

What ​“argu­ments” are we talk­ing about ? Well, if we go to Shamoun’s sec­tion on answer­ing-islam, we learn he has dozens, dozens, dozens and many many dozens and dozens of polem­i­cal papers against Islam each on a wide range of sub­jects. Now Katz and Shamoun want to dis­cuss EVERYTHING in a one off debate…naturally so a vari­ety of polemics can be hurled so that the oppo­nent is over­whelmed and sim­ply can­not respond to them all in his time. Why not do this : iden­ti­fy spe­cif­ic polemics authored by Shamoun (remem­ber, he has authored mul­ti­ple dozens of papers) and dis­cuss them one at a time ? What is so unrea­son­able about this proposal ?

Abual­rub can care­ful­ly exam­ine them BEFORE the debate and work out his very best argu­ments to counter them.

Which issues, out of the almost hun­dred, is Katz talk­ing about ? I ask you, is this rea­son­able ? A sober mind will have to say no.

Thus, Sam Shamoun is in the much much more dif­fi­cult posi­tion. Nev­er­the­less, he still has accept­ed Abual­rub’s chal­lenge. He only insists on a prop­er debate format.

Which is non­sense because the mis­sion­ary is even not will­ing to debate one sub­ject at a time.

Katz ends with these words :

What makes all of this even more amaz­ing is the fol­low­ing obser­va­tion : Abual­rub answered to a debate chal­lenge issued by some Evan­ge­list E. D. Rosario. He even pub­lished his cor­re­spon­dence with E. D. Rosario on his web­site, and in his fourth response, dat­ed 26 Jan­u­ary 2004, Abual­rub pro­posed the fol­low­ing debate format :
As for the debate itself :
• I sug­gest this title for the debate : Is Islam a Valid Religion ? 
• You speak for 30 min­utes first and then I the same, then you for 20 – 30 min­utes and then I the same. This way, you will have the chance to refute what I say too. 
• Then the audi­ence Q&A ses­sion, unre­strict­ed : I am will­ing to take any ques­tion from the audi­ence about any Islam­ic topic. 

As this for­mat is vir­tu­al­ly iden­ti­cal to the for­mat sug­gest­ed by Sam Shamoun, on what objec­tive grounds does Abual­rub now object to it ? Did he demand an unrea­son­able for­mat mere­ly so that he does­n’t have to debate Sam Shamoun, i.e. try­ing to save face for back­ing down from his own challenge ? 

Here Katz miss­es the sim­ple point that Rosario and Shamoun are not one and the same per­son and have dif­fer­ent argu­ments to offer. Rosario has lim­it­ed issues to raise, there­by mak­ing it pos­si­ble for an oppo­nent to deal with his argu­ments in an ade­quate man­ner in a one off debate. Shamoun, on the oth­er hand, has many, many, many and many, many things to say, rang­ing to diverse top­ics, con­tained in loads of dozens and dozens of arti­cles, there­by mak­ing it impos­si­ble to con­sid­er all the diverse polemics in detail in a 40 – 50 min­utes time peri­od. Instead, it would be more fair and rea­son­able to have a point by point discussion…where both sides can dis­cuss one item at a time, ques­tion each oth­er, receive ques­tions from the audi­ences, and then pro­ceed to the next subject.

If Shamoun thinks he has a case against the Prophet Muham­mad ^(P), then why does he not show up to a live debate in front of peo­ple and spell it out, one piece at a time ? I think this : A debate on an issue by issue basis ter­ri­fies Shamoun and his men­tor Katz. They know that they can­not go up the lad­der if every time they lie, Bro. Jalal will expos­es the lie.