When Mohammed Hijab had his debate with David Wood, he mentioned something interesting. He mentioned in his first rebuttal that in the New International Version, the I AM statements aren’t I AM but “I will be”. This is news to me. I own several copies of the NIV and I don’t find that. I only find I am.
But there is something even more interesting that he said following that. He said that the Gospel of John is not fully authoritative and Biblical scholars agree with him. I knew the scholars would make their presence known in this debate via Mohammed Hijab.
You can go to 57:50 to see Mohammed Hijab make this claim. To show that it’s not authoritative he also said that it was from 95 AD. When I first reviewed the debate between Hijab and Wood I said the following:
One last point. In this debate Mohammed Hijab said that the Gospel of John is late and unreliable. Oh well, to each his own. However, if Mohammed Hijab ever debates on Muhammad in the Bible, he’ll have to skip over the Paraclete sayings since John is unreliable. Will he? I wouldn’t hold your breath. Other apologists have said John is unreliable though it suddenly becomes super reliable when a potential prophecy of Muhammad enters the equation. Except of course when it says that the Paraclete is the Holy Spirit. Then it becomes unreliable again.
This is a direct quote from my website and anyone can check it. Feel free.
Anyways, since this debate I’ve been following his Youtube channel quite closely. He was somewhat of a nobody before the David Wood debate. I think the reason that he took the debate was to boost his profile. He’s now at over 100,000 subscribers on Youtube. Good for him I must say. However, on his channel I recently saw him giving dawah to two Christians in Africa. The clip can be found below.
If you go to 4:30 of this video, guess where Mohammed Hijab goes? If you say the Gospel of John, you guessed it. He went to the Gospel with a lack of authority. Remember that Biblical scholars backed him up on that supposedly? I wonder how many of those scholars say that Jesus predicted Muhammad in the Gospel of John. Either way, why is he using it?
If a Christian cites John for a non-Muslim doctrine, it drops several notches in authority, if a Muslim cites it for a Muslim belief, then the authority is magically restored. I don’t want to sound harsh but this is bankrupt apologetics. Mohammed Hijab and every other apologist has to tell us if John is authoritative or not. Does it reveal truth or not? Then they need to stick to it.
When you believe in a true religion, you don’t have these problems. For example, Christians say that Jesus is predicted in the Old Testament. Now, the Jews would deny this but when we debate Jews we’re not allowed to just chuck anything that we might not have an answer to. That’s why we don’t have to say that previous revelations are corrupted. Both testaments fit together perfectly. The Quran doesn’t so what does that tell you about the Quran?
Also, in this clip right after Hijab restored authority to John, he referenced Isaiah 42 as pertaining to Muhammad. Last night David Wood and Vocab Malone did a livestream thoroughly shredding that argument. See below at 51:00 and keep watching. Thank you David and Vocab!
When your religion has the doctrines of Taqiyya and Hudna, where your prophet encouraged lying and deception for the sake of furthering the cause, and where your deity is the greatest of all deceivers – who even deceives his own followers! – hypocrisy and inconsistency are a feature, not a bug.
Related note: Did you know that ‘hypokrites’ actually originally meant ‘stage actor’? Jesus probably used it in this original sense to apply to the Pharisees – people who are just putting on a show of acting holy.
This sense fits perfectly with the modern meaning as well – Hijab is just putting on a show, citing things he doesn’t really believe or hold to, whatever it takes to get some Dawah points.
Mohammed Hijab doesn’t have any substance. He’s simply a good orator and survives on that. He misrepresented almost all of David Wood’s arguments in his debate. The most hilarious thing was the Q&A and how Islam spread “organically”. I’m still trying to figure out what that means.
Well as you heard one of the Apologetics Avengers put it… Lotta organs strewn around.
Or it could refer to living organisms – many of which devour and consume other living things in order to thrive and spread.
By the way Allan, in David Wood’s 4th video about Allah the Man God, he reads in full the following which I excerpt:
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https://islamqa.info/en/answers/151794/the-divine-attributes-are-to-be-affirmed-in-a-literal-sense-not-metaphorical
Question
I am a teacher of Arabic language, and based on my literary perceptivity and my study of metaphor, I think that some of the verses which speak of the divine attributes are more metaphorical than literal.
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Answer
Praise be to Allah.
Correct belief should be based on what is proven in the Qur’an and Sunnah, as understood by the early generations (salaf) of this ummah, namely the Sahaabah, Taabi‘een and leading scholars.
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The Qur’an and Sunnah came to teach people about the attributes of their God, and this can only be done by understanding the words in a real sense; this is the basic principle with regard to statements. The Prophet (blessings and peace of Allah be upon him) conveyed the Holy Qur’an in both wording and meaning; not a single letter was narrated from him to suggest that any of the divine attributes should be interpreted in a way different from its apparent meaning, or that its apparent meaning is not intended
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How could it be otherwise when it is proven in a number of saheeh hadeeths, the authenticity of which is agreed upon, that these attributes are to be affirmed, and there are other attributes mentioned in other hadeeths, such as His descending, His foot, His smiling, and His rejoicing, without any word to suggest that they should be understood in a way different from the apparent meaning, and without any Sahaabi having found it problematic to take them as they appear to be and according to what may be understood from them.
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When innovations appeared, and people emerged who said that these attributes were to be understood in a metaphorical, rather than a real, sense – as was the view of the Jahamis and Mu‘tazilah and those who agreed with them – the early generations and leading scholars responded by stating that these attributes are to be understood in a real sense, not in a metaphorical sense. Their comments on this matter are abundant and well-known.
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And David Wood then realizes that Mohammed Hijab is a de facto Mutazilite!