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Bob Siegel debates Muslim apologist Ijaz Ahmad. The debate is moderated by Mike Fredenburg and runs for the entire program without commercial interruption.
NOTES FROM BOB SIEGEL:
As with all debates, time limitation prevents opponents from elaborating on important points. There are also instances when a question is asked or a challenge given and time does not permit a response. It comes with the territory but it also warrants explanation.
During the debate, I mentioned that translations are not the problem that people make them out to be. This does not mean that I do not see the value of studying the original languages. But since Greek and Hebrew manuscripts of the Bible are available for study, any uncertainty can always be double checked.
Generally, since these translations are by scholars and linguists, the translations are good. There are certainly times when one does not get the entire sense of a phrase as it changes from one language into another. I even offered an example in a later discussion of the Old Testament, although in that case, the problem was less with the Hebrew words and more with a need to understand Hebrew figures of speech, also important in language study. The particular phrase I used was “idiom.”
In any case, my earlier point was that obviously Muslims as well as Christians see little problem with translations. Otherwise their own scholars would not be translating from Arabic to other languages.
During another part of the debate, Ijaz said that Isaiah was not describing the Messiah as the suffering servant but rather calling Israel itself a servant. On the program you will hear me start to respond but unfortunately the moderator cut me off, which was fine. That was his job and I was out of time. But the subject did not come up again and I never had a chance to address it so I will say something here:
Isaiah did call Israel a servant in some instances, but in Chapter 53 the servant clearly is NOT Israel. This is proven when Isaiah says “He was wounded for our transgressions.” Isaiah was a Jew, not a Gentile. Therefore he is associated with “our” and “our” is Israel which means the servant is somebody else.
ON ANOTHER MATTER: I received many comments from members of my radio audience claiming that they were unable to understand Ijaz because of the heavy accent and not so great phone connection. Knowing that people were having trouble understanding him, I did make it a point often to paraphrase back a little of what he said before responding so you should be able to follow most of the debate despite this barrier.
This is not to say that everybody had trouble understanding. The show has been downloaded off of my Website quite often so I must assume that a good many people are following the debate fine.
A sample of comments from listeners is found below:
From Christian Seberino:
Dear Bob
Thanks for your debate with Muslim apologist Ijaz Ahmad. Your knowledge of the Bible, Koran
and the history of both is impressive. I appreciate knowing people like you are trying to
set the record straight and to educate the public on these topics. I’m not sure how
you knew some of the facts you mentioned about Mohammed but some of them I had
never heard of before. Thanks for shedding some light on this.
Sincerely,
Chris Seberino
Anthony Rogers, a Christian Apologist who specializes in debating Muslims, wrote the following review of this debate on a Website entitled Answering Muslims. Below is a link to the article and a highlight from the article, entitled: Ijaz Goes Bobbing For Apples
“Unfortunately for Ijaz, his desire to debate “the ever-beatable Bob” became both a reality and a nightmare that he will not soon live down. Aside from some connection issues that came up from time to time that occasionally made it hard to understand what Ijaz was saying, the only downside is that the debate was only an hour long. Bob was dealing it to him so handily that I was left wishing it went on for another hour or two.
Anyone familiar with Ijaz knows how quick he usually is to put up debates and declare himself the winner, even when few others think he did well at all (though he usually tries to prop up his pap and drivel by claiming that Christians were flooding his inbox awarding him the laurel wreath). However, with respect to his debate with Bob, Ijaz still doesn’t have the debate up but instead has an excuse piece where he attempts to get his fan base to commiserate with him over the proceedings. No doubt now that I have drawn the debate to the attention of the readers on this blog Ijaz will quickly go into damage control mode and put the debate up. But as you will see when you listen to the debate this is a win-win situation since Muslims will see how Ijaz fares over against a man that is “the easiest person to debate.” Anthony Rogers
****Update****
“As if he wanted to prove I am a better prophet than his own, Ijaz fulfilled my words to the letter by going into damage control mode. As a result of this post he was impelled to provide a link to his debate with Bob, which he claims was too poor in sound quality to post. While I grant that the sound quality was bad, it isn’t bad at all points, and it isn’t so bad that Ijaz’s points aren’t discernible.
One of the more humorous aspects of his reply is the idea that by providing a link here on AM to Bob’s website where the debate is hosted I have created positive advertisement for Ijaz. But that is like saying a link to a local news report about someone finding cockroaches in their chili amounts to positive advertisement for a restaurant. Let’s hope for the sake of Ijaz’s local economy that he does not have designs on entering into the advertising field.
Another point of interest in Ijaz’s latest reply is his admission, coupled with a good bit of lying, that he sat for hours on Paltalk with Christians “MALIGNING” Bob after his debate with Shadid. So there you have it, not only did Ijaz claim that Bob would be “the easiest person to debate” and that “it’s impossible anyone debating him could actually lose,” he now admits that he attacked and slandered BOB for hours on end. For this reason, it has to be all the more embarrassing that his own performance against Bob was so shoddy.
Although much more could have been said than Bob was able to say, and surely some of us would have answered some things differently, Bob’s replies in the debate more than effectively countered Ijaz’s queries about how textual scholars go about their work comparing and collating manuscripts to determine the original readings in cases of textual variants* as well as Ijaz’s laughable argument that the final judgment makes God out to be a mass murderer.
As for Ijaz’s comment that Zechariah 12:10 is not a prophecy about the death of Christ, which has absolutely nothing to do with Ijaz’s stunning defeat at the hands of Bob, the fact is that Ijaz was so thoroughly exposed on this issue that he had to take down an exchange that took place between us on Facebook. One of the more notable aspects of this discussion was Ijaz pretending to know Hebrew and claiming that he was working directly from NA27. I kid you not. He was actually claiming to be reading the Hebrew of Zechariah from a text-critical edition of the Greek NT. Even people who don’t know Hebrew can recognize on sight the difference between Hebrew and Greek.
This is why, as I have said many times over, Ijaz is, as a rule, this response being a rare exception, so easily ignored.
*I am not suggesting that Bob used these words, but that this is what Bob was alluding to when he said Christians look to all the available manuscripts we have to date. Given the time constraints and the lack of any serious challenge to this point from Ijaz, these remarks were certainly sufficient.” Anthony Rogers
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