Answer­ing Islam : Preach­ing What They Do Not Practise ?

In one of their pages, Answer­ing Islam had made the fol­low­ing claim with the clear inten­tion of ​“poi­son­ing the well” where Mus­lim sites are concerned :

(empha­sis are our own)

The rest of the page goes on to either debase or dis­cred­it Mus­lim web­sites for their depen­den­cy on ​“athe­ist” mate­r­i­al and preach­ing about the lack of ​“con­science” on the part of Mus­lims to aban­don athe­ist mate­r­i­al (notwith­stand­ing the fact that most of the links on their page are either bro­ken or no longer exist).

Con­tra­dic­tion in Practice

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, Answer­ing Islam does not seem to prac­tise what it preach­es. Of late they have been rely­ing on athe­ist mate­r­i­al from hos­tile anti-Islam­ic web­sites in order to fur­ther their goal of ​“the pre­sen­ta­tion of the truth and gen­uine Chris­t­ian schol­ar­ship”. Is it con­sid­ered ​“the pre­sen­ta­tion of the truth” to rely on mate­r­i­al from which they them­selves denounce its source — known athe­ist web­sites open­ly hos­tile to Islam such as Freethought Mec­ca, Muk­to-Mona and Faith­free­dom Inter­na­tion­al — to the extent that they are being used freely and wide­ly through­out their articles ?

One of their team mem­bers — despite the so-called ​“offi­cial pol­i­cy” of Answer­ing Islam to nev­er resort to athe­ist mate­r­i­al — even had the audac­i­ty to state in an e‑mail dat­ed Jan­u­ary 21st 2004, as follows :

So much for their tout­ed ​“reliance” upon gen­uine Chris­t­ian schol­ar­ship. The e‑mails we have bold­ed above belong to three promi­nent team mem­bers of Answer­ing Islam : Sam Shamoun, ​“Silas” and Jochen Katz, respectively.

Ques­tion­ing the Dou­ble Stan­dard of Answer­ing Islam

It is also clear that despite the (worth­less) ​“pledge” of Answer­ing Islam, they have used athe­ist lit­er­a­ture for many years against Islam. For exam­ple, a promi­nent athe­ist author they are fond of quot­ing is the Marx­ist-influ­enced Iran­ian, Ali Dashti. Here is what Jochen Katz said five years ago when defend­ing his use of Dashti in a news­group post­ing dat­ed 02/​07/​1999 :

Hence, this begs the fol­low­ing ques­tion : If we Mus­lims are not sup­posed to use athe­ist mate­r­i­al because they reject the con­cept of God, then why does it make sense for the Chris­t­ian mis­sion­ar­ies to make use of mate­r­i­al from groups who open­ly reject their reli­gious belief sys­tem, i.e. the Jews, in their attacks against Islam ? The Jews, though they do believe in God, open­ly reject the Prophet­hood of Jesus^(P) in toto and their lit­er­a­ture are rid­dled with the most abu­sive and insul­tive words against him and Mary^(P). Yet, the Answer­ing Islam team have an uploaded ver­sion of Geiger’s book on their web­site many years ago !

We at bis​mikaal​lahu​ma​.org are firm in our stand that valid schol­ar­ship — regard­less of whether its source is Mus­lim, Chris­t­ian or oth­er­wise — will be used to defend Islam from the mis­sion­ary onslaught. As much as we dis­agree with the fun­da­men­tal beliefs of Athe­ism, Judaism, etc., we shall not hes­i­tate to quote from them if their argu­ment is proven valid with the prop­er schol­ar­ship back­ing up a par­tic­u­lar argu­ment. If ​“Answer­ing (Attack­ing-) Islam” wish­es to use mate­r­i­al from the hea­then who are even against their faith, that is total­ly up to them. But why accuse and lam­bast Mus­lims for some­thing which they them­selves adopt and use freely ? Is this the case of a pot call­ing the ket­tle black ?

In con­clu­sion, it is clear that the issue here is not whether Mus­lims are sourc­ing mate­r­i­al from the ​“hea­then” or oth­er­wise, but that when their argu­ments get sharp­er from rely­ing on gen­uine schol­ar­ship (no mat­ter the source), the mis­sion­ar­ies have no answer to them and there­fore resort to poi­son­ing the well. Even if Mus­lims do use athe­ist mate­r­i­al, it sim­ply means that they are sim­ply adopt­ing ​“Answer­ing (Attack­ing-) Islam’s” method­ol­o­gy, and that those behind Answer­ing Islam are proven to be hyp­ocrites when they demand that we do not use their method­ol­o­gy. Fur­ther­more, their decep­tion are also exposed when they lie about not using athe­ist sources because it ​“con­tra­dicts” their belief sys­tem, and yet they still use works the likes of Dashti and even anti-Chris­t­ian sources to attack Islam. So why is it okay for them to use such sources and not okay for Mus­lims in gen­er­al to fol­low their methodology ?

Athe­ist Sources in Debate Revisited

Answer­ing Islam’s jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for using athe­ist sources, while claim­ing not to adopt their pre­sup­po­si­tions, appears con­tra­dic­to­ry. This selec­tive engage­ment with athe­ist mate­r­i­al, despite an ear­li­er com­mit­ment to avoid such sources, under­mines the cred­i­bil­i­ty of their pol­i­cy. Their argu­ment about main­tain­ing intel­lec­tu­al integri­ty by avoid­ing athe­ist pre­sup­po­si­tions is, in prac­tice, a nuanced form of cher­ry-pick­ing infor­ma­tion that suits their nar­ra­tive. This approach not only reflects a lack of con­sis­ten­cy in their method­ol­o­gy but also rais­es ques­tions about the intel­lec­tu­al hon­esty of their discourse.

More­over, the argu­ment that engag­ing with athe­ist sources inher­ent­ly risks accept­ing their anti-super­nat­u­ral­ist views over­sim­pli­fies the com­plex nature of inter­faith dia­logues. It fails to acknowl­edge that crit­i­cal exam­i­na­tion and use of diverse sources, includ­ing athe­ist per­spec­tives, can enrich reli­gious debates with­out neces­si­tat­ing the accep­tance of their foun­da­tion­al philoso­phies. Answer­ing Islam’s stance, there­fore, seems to be more about con­ve­nience than about adher­ing to a coher­ent set of prin­ci­ples. The ratio­nale pro­vid­ed by Answer­ing Islam for their use of athe­ist mate­ri­als in debates exhibits a selec­tive and incon­sis­tent appli­ca­tion of their own stat­ed poli­cies. This approach not only con­tra­dicts their ear­li­er com­mit­ments but also casts doubt on the integri­ty of their par­tic­i­pa­tion in inter­faith dialogues.