Indo-Chinese Food (Offline)

1. He may not reduce your knowledge, but if you think that knowledge of the social sciences is as black and white as mathematics, then you are deluded. Knowledge can be refined, improved, opinions can be altered whether drastically or not so-. I don't know what these 'dimwits' have to do with it, because this man is a scholar of both Western and Eastern tradition and you might learn something, even if it simply 'how to make a professor look dumb'. Every time we discuss scholars you have this derisory attitude to them: why not email this guy? He is quite open to receiving and replying to emails, as long as they are polite. I challenge you to list 7 Islamic scholars without looking up names. And give a three line description of the major contributions of 4 of them. That way I can be sure that your grand claims are based on experience and learning.

2. Dismissing the Muslim community has being stupid is not exactly a sign of great objectivity or anything else but prejudice. Your experience seems to be limited to TSR 15-year-olds. I have contributed to many threads and engaged in debates with people. Sadly, however, I grew up and realised how poor quality these debates are, how there is absolutely no structure, how each time you set out an explanation, in order to be convincing you'd have to begin by addressing each and every underlying assumption of the other person's argument and then proceeding to explain a lot of deeply complicated relationships and structures before beginning on the topic itself. I am not a professional internet missionary. So nowadays when I have time I just try to pinpoint the other person's generalisations, implicit assumptions, misconceptions and provide a few pointers in the right direction, whether on TSR or YouTube or Facebook (real life friends only there).

regardless, i could study the life and times of the Power Rangers for 12 years, it would nt afford me any respect in worthwhile circles. Except that certain worthwhile circles have discovered the Islamic sciences to be very important - your ignorance on the topic can be easily rectified. I can give you some suggested reading if you want.

now you are tryin to brach off into a different subject - you started trying to justify the status of quranic scholars. Tell me what theologists or philosophers are regarded as great that have 'legendary' original ideas ( ie not copied from the greeks persians and indians like islamic scientiests tried) and secondly what did any of that owe to islam? the great Qur'anic scholars usually were also theologians and philosophers. The Islamic world emphasised the interdisciplinary approach in academia, as did the non-Islamic world at that time, to some extent, because each discipline informs Qur'anic interpretation and helps to develop the faculties and techniques required to do it well. Formal logic, for example, has obvious applications to linguistics, as every linguistics student can tell you.

Identifying their ignorance isnt picking on them, its doing them a favour in most cases. So if only 1 % of muslims only engage at this level, then it is a fringe of islam rather than the norm
Are you telling me that 100% of non-Muslims can hold a very high level argument? I'm sure you're perfectly capable of intellectual discussion when it pertains to History or something, but I am only being brutally honest when I say that you've yet to give me a particularly nuanced point that is not easily dismissible. That may be something to do with the rambling element of our discussions thus far, admittedly. Perhaps in person these conversations wouldn't suck so much. So yeah, would you really expect the other 99% of under-25 Muslims to have such deep knowledge of Islam, when they are studying Engineering or whatever?

Let's respond to the thing from that forum first:
1. The fact that you take TSR or any other chat forum as some serious intellectual battleground for Muslims is itself an issue. TSR stands for thestudentroom. It doesnt attract geniuses with expert knowledge. If you want that, I can put you in touch with a convert Cambridge professor who does know his stuff, and by all accounts knows Islamic history better than you do.

2. I would naturally expect an intelligent Muslim to know more about Islam than an intelligent non-Muslim. In certain cases, you may argue otherwise, but in terms of Islamic scholarship, there is really no way that the intelligent non-Muslim can be expected, on average, to know more about it that the intelligent Muslim. This is common sense. Taking into account the fact that i more-or-less know my stuff and am not ''just another tsr pubescent'', perhaps a more open debate in which you considered that you do not know as much as you think you do about Islam would allow you to learn something, and at the same time allow me to learn something. You enter every islam-related argument with a preconception of the mental capacity and the prejudices of the other person. you do your best to win the argument and never your best to refine your views through life experience. So much for intellectual enquiry.

you convienently ignorned the fact i stated that various non muslims englishmen were the first people responsible for translating the quran into english.
That's because you failed to explain what your point is. In fact, you said that it's the reason I can understand the Qur'an. This is totally false since I don't use those translations, and will be even more false in a couple of months time, by which I'll have reached Arabic fluency.

You may or may not want to see my response to ''Elipsis'' in that thread. I think point 3. is particularly relevant to you, though point 1. would not do harm either.

On the other hand, since I am a prepubescent air-headed Muslim with no thoughts worth considering, perhaps you'd prefer to return to your place in the ''intellectual community'', in which I have surely no place and surely wouldn't be able to bother you.

...jsut that their achivements had nothing to do with islam or an islamic 7 undergraduate 'Ilm-ud-Din' course involvng growing a long beard in order to have the authority to rant on youtube about gays and apostates and israel and Mcdonalds. This only impresses pre-pubescent muslims on islamic chat forums, not members of the intellectual community.

as far as im concerned, someone that has read the quran has as much authority to speak about it as anyone else, regardless of the curliness of their beard. It isnt a complicated book, nor written with any intellectual content - it is simply a book of stories, rituals and political doctrine form 8th century AD arabia. Seeing that neither of us are 8th century AD arabians, we both have an equal authority on the subject- though i would lok at the subject from a clear unindoctrinated independant view.

Nice attempt to make me seem stupid. Clearly, however, 7 years is long for a mere undergrad degree. To be of ''PhD'' level as a researcher in the Islamic sciences, it takes about 11-12 years in total, in large parts of the world. Evidently, bearded brown men seem unintelligent to you.

I've little to say about 'YouTube scholars' - 99% of them aren't of scholarly level, although tragically a lot of people think they are. Your ignorance of the great Islamic legal theorists, philosophers, theologians etc. is now quite obvious.

You enjoy picking on teenagers who copy and paste out of their relative ignorance, but I'm not one of them. There is another world of Islamic discourse which you've no reason to know, and which 99% of Muslims have little engagement with. You are so far removed from it; it's shocking that you can't admit that you don't know and agree to learn more before challenging more knowledgeable persons than yourself to arguments about it.

Re Your last para, I dealt with it months ago, but apparently you were unwilling to reply because any reply would've required to show some humility.

"At the time of the appearance of the Prophet of Islam, all the civilizations in existence were gathered around the Arabian peninsula. But the peculiar geographical location of the peninsula decreed that just as none of the vapors that arose over the oceans ever reached the peninsula, so too not a trace of the surrounding civilizations ever penetrated the peninsula"

http://mohamedn.tumblr.com/post/9636...roaches-to-the

Well Judaism isn't a religion, its a tribe, and Christianity was created in Europe, not the middle east. Saudi Arabia is different to being sumerian. The Greeks never went to Saudi, so I don't know where you've got that idea from, I study classics (Greek & Roman history). There were practices that brought to mecca by Abraham, but over time their teachings became corrupted.

Well, the first part of the Torah was the account of King David, and he existed before moses and roughly 3,000 years ago. "1993 archeologists found proof of King David's existence outside the Bible. At an ancient mound called Tel Dan, in the north of Israel, words carved into a chunk of basalt were translated as "House of David" and "King of Israel" proving that he was more than just a legend."

http://agards-bible-timeline.com/q9_...oof_bible.html

According to my link, the story of gilamesh are around 1000 BC. In regards to Noah "Evidence found of Noah's ark flood victims
Ship probes land below Black Sea submerged 7,000 years ago and linked to biblical disaster

Marine archaeologists have found the first evidence of a people who perished in a great flood of the Black Sea that has been linked with the story of Noah's ark."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/20...ws.archaeology

The torah is estimated to be over 3,000 years of age, the age of the stories is noted in the link. Even if the stories are similar, this does not prove they've been copied, as I mentioned before, God sent messengers to all people, so for people to have similar traditions isn't surprising.

An apple is o pomme in french, but its still an apple. Just because these people call it a different name, doesn't mean they're talking of a different creature. This malevolent creature has the ability to take the form of humans and animals, it also has the ability to posses people and so forth, sounds like the same creature to me.

It is a fact, although arabia was the centre of many civilizations, there knowledge didn't seep into arabia.

I didn't see the wikipedia account but the "http://www.livius.org/fa-fn/flood/flood3.html" tells a different account of the story, which does bare slight resemblance. However, this still doesn't mean it is copied, the Torah predates those stories by over 1000 years, and just because different people have a similar idea doesn't mean they copied one another, juts like the jinns, from north,south america, europe, the middle east and far east, they all have the same concept of this creature, does this mean they copied one another?

Here is my proof:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enûma_Eliš
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panbabylonism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adapa
http://www.livius.org/fa-fn/flood/flood3.html

Where is yours? No, these stories are very different, and the evidence is above.

No, it is you who is making the accusation, therefore the burden is on you to provide the evidence that the stories are copied, even though they're not similar, yet alone copied, as my evidence proves.

I'm not redirecting anything, I'm just pointing out that you're insulting me and that is ad hominem, and show me where redirecting has anything to do with losing an argument, provide evidence.

I have provided evidence for the story you are talking about and it doesn't resemble the Quran, even if it did, doesn't prove that it was copied.

The conversation between you and I is below, I have not insulted you once, you have repeatedly insulted me, and as you can see, that is ad hominem, and "ad hominem attacks are ultimately self-defeating. They are equivalent to admitting that you have lost the argument."

Provide your evidence, like I did, and we'll go from there, and stop attacking me but rather focus that energy towards the debate and attacking my argument.